K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 13 - Ghost Story Read Online Free Page A

Make her stop.  I’m scared!
    Darcy couldn’t place the source of the whispered plea.  She thought at first it was Helen, connecting with her somehow through Darcy’s sixth sense.  That wasn’t it, though.  She could feel the speaker in her mind, could sense them, and it didn’t feel like Helen.  It was the feeling of someone very, very young.  Someone Innocent.
    Mouth falling open, she looked down at Addison in her mother’s arms.
    “One of you will pay!” Helen demanded in that other voice, slamming the flat of her hand down on the table, yanking Darcy’s attention back.  Saliva drooled out of the corner of Helen’s mouth.  “One of you will be my tool.  My weapon.  I will hold you in my hand and I will use you to take my town back.  It shall be mine once more!”
    Not wasting any time on how impossibly crazy this all seemed, Darcy stood up, standing close to Jon.  They were depending on her.  Everyone, including Helen.  No one else knew how to relate to spirits.  “You are the ghost of Nathaniel Williams?” she asked, her mouth dry.
    “Aye,” Helen answered in the ghost’s voice.  “I am he.  You are trespassers.  This land is and always has been mine.  All of you will leave, down to the last woman and child, or else you will suffer.  Suffer!”  The ghost added a special emphasis on that word, wracking Helen’s body into a hard spasm.  The sight of it twisted Darcy’s stomach in knots.
    “How?” she made herself ask.  “How will we pay, Nathaniel?  Tell us what you want.”
    “I want you to leave!” Helen shrieked.  Her fingers clawed at the table, digging into the wood, leaving trails of her blood as she tore her nails.  “You will leave my town, leave me alone, or you will pay the price!”
    “Okay,” Darcy said, wanting to keep the ghost calm, wanting to keep him talking, but scared for what this conversation might be doing to Helen.  “All right, Nathaniel.  We’re listening.  Tell me how we will pay.  How will we suffer?”
    Darcy, please, make her stop!
    The force of a tidal wave built up in Darcy’s brain and she was suddenly doubled over, holding onto the edge of the table for dear life, the nice meal she had just eaten rising up in her gorge.  She grabbed on to the back of Jon’s chair with both hands and made herself stay in control.
    “How, Nathaniel?  How will we pay?”  Darcy had to raise her voice to be heard over the roar in her ears.
    She saw Jon and Aaron down on their knees, Aaron holding his head in his hands, Jon clutching his throat like he couldn’t breathe. 
    “Tell us how!”
    Grace huddled protectively over Addison as her baby screamed and cried and shouted in the background of Darcy’s thoughts.
    Into that ballooning pressure Helen drove words like spikes.
    “ONE OF YOU WILL BE CONDEMNED TO KILL!”
    Darcy’s ears popped and her mind exploded into buzzing silence, and everything went black.
     
    ***
    “Darcy?  Darcy, wake up.”
    She did, but she regretted it. 
    When she had been asleep, blissfully unaware of anything around her, she hadn’t felt the hammer blows her pulse kept striking against the inside of her skull.  She sure felt them now.
    “Ow,” she said.  “Ow.  Ow.”
    “There you are.”  Jon smiled down at her as she opened her eyes.  She was on the floor, looking up, and he was kneeling over her.  A dinner table was next to them.  She could see where plates and glasses and trays of desserts had fallen, scattering everywhere.  Oh.  Oh that’s right, she thought.  We were at Helen’s for lunch, and she…
    “Where’s Helen?  Is she—?”  She broke off midsentence as she snapped herself up into a sitting position and nearly passed out all over again.  Stars swam in front of her eyes.  Her stomach rose and then fell and then rose again.  “Oh, that does not feel good.”
    “Tell me about it, sis,” Grace said.  She was sitting up, on the floor as well, and Darcy could see her through