Spirits of the Season Read online

  I stepped back. “Excuse me,” I mumbled.

  He wore a khaki uniform with gold buttons, heavy brown boots, and a hard rounded hat. An American flag patch was sewn on one sleeve.

  The other sleeve fluttered in the slight breeze.

  Empty. The soldier had only one arm.

  He leaned toward me, his head inches from mine. Dangerously close. His face was young and extremely pale.

  As if all the life had drained from him.

  The pungent smell grew stronger. A smell I’d smelled before. The odor of death.

  He locked his gray eyes with mine, and in that instant, I knew.

  The man was dead.

  Chapter 2

  I ran.

  Away from the man. Away from death. Away from ghosts that were forever following me.

  “In here,” I said, tugging Lily’s scarf, pulling her with me.

  “Really?” Lily followed, calling good-bye to Adam.

  A bell rang as I pushed through the first door I found. “Welcome to Coastal Decor. Happy holidays!” a petite woman with frizzy red hair greeted us.

  “You too,” Lily said, not looking at the woman, but staring strangely at me.

  I peered out the large front window, scanning the sidewalk. He was gone. Disappeared.

  Or hiding.

  Waiting.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked.

  “I think we’re here to buy a sofa for the boy she likes. You know, so she can sit next to him,” Lily replied. “Or maybe candlesticks.”

  I gazed around the small shop, cluttered with wooden tables made from ship’s wheels, anchor-printed pillows, blue-and-white nautical-themed sofas and chairs.

  “N-no,” I stuttered. “That’s not it.”

  “Really? I’m thinking that lamp says Jayden to me.” She pointed to a lamp in the shape of a mermaid.

  “Are you interested in that?” The woman hurried over.

  “No. Sorry. I—uh—thought this was a different store.” I checked the sidewalk again. All clear. “Let’s go,” I told Lily.

  “Whatever you say.” Lily followed me out of the store. “Though I’m thinking every boy at school wants starfish napkin rings.”

  “Stop it!” I found myself smiling, even though I still felt queasy.

  On the sidewalk, I looked around. Really looked. Not at the beach-town stores that lined the main street. Not at the Salvation Army Santa waving his bell at the corner. Or at the lampposts wrapped with pine garlands and twinkling white lights.

  But at all the people.

  The dead people.

  The ghosts.

  I had never seen so many in one place.

  Peering out of windows. Sitting on benches. Boarding the bus. Wearing clothing from every decade. Old men. Young women. Children.

  Shimmering, vibrating with an intensity that made my head throb.

  Everywhere. They were everywhere.

  “I need to get back,” I told Lily.

  I couldn’t be here. Not with them.

  “Okay, let’s go.” She turned to walk toward our street. We lived two houses away from each other.

  Their energy pulled at me.

  “I need to go now. I mean, I’m really late.” My voice faltered. “I’m going to run. Okay?”

  Lily hesitated. “Sure.”

  “Talk to you later?”

  “Okay.”

  I began to run. Down Beach Drive onto Ocean Grove Road, not stopping until I reached our huge yellow Victorian with burnt-orange trim on Seagate Drive.

  I leaned over, hands on my thighs, panting. As I caught my breath, I wondered at Lily. She never asked questions. Every time I acted weird, she just went with it. Never took it personally. Never made me tell her the truth. The truth I’d kept secret from everyone.

  I saw ghosts.

  I’d been seeing ghosts since I was a little kid.

  They used to just appear. Just show up. That was all.

  But ever since I’d moved here, they’ve been wanting things. Seeking me out. Talking to me.

  Scaring me.

  I climbed the steps onto the huge wooden porch with the decorative railings. Dad and I rented the top two floors from Lady Azura. She lived and worked as a fortune-teller on the first floor.

  I unlocked the front door and paused in the foyer. The house was quiet except for the sound of a man singing.

  “Fools rush in . . . ,” the rich, deep voice sang.

  I followed the sound, pushing through the thick, purple velvet curtains draped over the doorway to my right. The room behind the curtains was dark and empty. A crystal ball sat on a round table covered with a red-and-gold cloth in the center of the room. The faint aroma of cinnamon lingered from the candles that were lit when clients came to call. Shelves along the back wall displayed colorful crystals and gemstones, old books with leather spines, and liquids in glass containers. I noticed a dark liquid in a jar that hadn’t been there yesterday.

  I resisted the urge to pull back the heavy front draperies and let daylight in so I could explore. I loved Lady Azura’s fortune-telling room, but I wasn’t allowed to go poking around. She was strict about that, and I respected that.

  A doorway in the back corner of the room was hidden by another curtain. The man’s voice rose from behind it. Some guy from long ago. Lady Azura had a retro record player, and she played his records all the time. At over eighty years old, she wasn’t the iPod type.

  I didn’t know what type she was. I’d never met anyone like her.

  “Straight or crooked?” she called. “Take a look.”

  She always knew when I was outside a room.

  I stepped through the curtain, and she turned to me. Her head seemed unnaturally tiny today, poking out from a scarlet sweater with an enormous cowl-neck. With bone-thin arms and legs, Lady Azura seemed small and frail at first glance, but she was the opposite. Her deep brown eyes rimmed with jet-black false eyelashes and thick eyeliner betrayed her fierceness.

  “The calendar,” she said in her husky voice, when I didn’t answer.

  I gazed over her shoulder at a worn Advent calendar taped to the wall by her vanity. It was the paper kind in the shape of a bright green Christmas tree, with little windows that opened for the twenty-five days in December leading up to Christmas.

  “Straight,” I said. The calendar looked out of place in her sleek black-and-white bedroom. Or maybe it was her ultramodern bedroom with its black-lacquered vanity, glass tables, black armless chairs, and stark all-white bedding that was out of place in the run-down old house.

  I took a step closer. “Why did you do that?” I asked, pointing to the windows for December 23, 24, and 25. Each window had been taped shut with a small piece of silver duct tape.

  “I did that many, many years ago.” She sat on the stool by her vanity and scrutinized her face in the brightly lit mirror.

  “But why?”

  “Some days are diamonds. Some are stones.” She opened a silver tube and twisted up a column of dark red lipstick.

  “So you don’t like Christmas?”

  “Of course I like Christmas. Why wouldn’t I?” She stared at her reflection as she carefully lined her thin, wrinkled lips.

  “Then why stop counting the days after the twenty-second?”

  “I am not counting the days. I’m finding the days that count.”

  I often felt as if she was speaking in code, and I lost my copy of the codebook.

  I watched her apply a final coat of lipstick and was struck again by how little I knew about her. True, for a while after Dad moved us in here, I did everything I could to avoid her. But that had changed.

  “Do you go anywhere for Christmas?” I asked.

  “Where would I go?”

  “I don’t know. Relatives, maybe. The Randazzos have, like, a billion cousins at their house. When we lived in California, we sometimes went to my aunt Charlotte’s house when I was little. That’s my dad’s sister. She’s all organic and vegan, and she’d se
rve this turkey, but it wasn’t really turkey, it was tofu, so Dad and I stopped going.”

  Lady Azura stood, wobbling slightly on her gold heels. “I’m not fond of turkey, but a good honey ham . . .” She headed through the curtain. “Your dad’s out. Something about going to the office, even though it’s Saturday. We should have time before he gets home.”

  I followed her into her fortune-telling room. She’d been helping me since Halloween, since I realized that she could also see the dead. She wasn’t scared like me. She’d learned how to control and work her power. That’s what she called it. Our power. She was showing me that it was a good thing, not something to fear.

  I still wasn’t totally convinced.

  She turned on two small, fringed lamps, bathing the cozy room with a soft glow. We sat around the table.

  “Take a deep breath, Sara.” She rested one of her hands on mine. “Your positive energy will bring their positive energy. They are looking for openness. Your fear frustrates them.”

  “Sometimes they frustrate me,” I mumbled.

  “You need to protect yourself. The same way a firefighter wears special clothes or you wear sunscreen when you go to sit in the sun. Surround yourself with White Light.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a feeling of happiness, of calmness, of self-assuredness that comes from within. Bring it up and cover yourself in it, much the same way the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz covered herself in a floating bubble of goodness. Close your eyes and try.”

  I thought of Glinda the Good Witch. I thought of myself in a bubble. With a wand. And a pouffy dress. I started to giggle. “You came to me, Sara. You asked for my help,” Lady Azura reminded me.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “This White Light or bubble will allow you to live your life as you want to live it. It will give you the power to keep the dead at a distance.”

  I thought about the dead soldier. How he’d brought his face so close to mine. No barriers.

  “What was happening today?” I asked. “There were all these spirits in town. Usually there are one or two, here and there. But this was strange.”

  “It’s Christmastime,” Lady Azura said simply. “The Twelve Days.”

  “Like the song?” I asked.

  “Not quite. There is a . . . let’s call it a window, that’s open for the twelve days before the holiday. During this time, the departed return to visit or check up on loved ones. It’s not only those who are trapped here, trying to resolve issues, but all who miss someone dear.”

  “And now’s the time?”

  “The Twelve Days started yesterday, on the fourteenth, and end on the twenty-fifth. I should have warned you.”

  “Do other people, people not like us, know they’re here?”

  “To many people, the holidays are bittersweet, for they can feel the tug and the presence of those whom they’ve lost, but they don’t know how to describe or process it. It is more of a lingering feeling than a realization.”

  I thought back on all the Christmases in our little stucco house in California. The tree in the family room and the ornament I made in preschool with a photo of Mom on it.

  “Do you think my mom comes back?” I asked quietly.

  Lady Azura grasped both my hands in her cold, bony ones. “I do not know, my child. I would like to think so.”

  “If I see all the others, then wouldn’t it make sense that I would see her, too?” I’d struggled with this question for years, turning it over and over in my head. Why couldn’t I see the one dead person who meant anything to me? Where was she?

  “Nothing is ever that simple,” she said. “Maybe in time.”

  “I don’t want to wait!” I pulled my hands away from her. “I don’t want to keep seeing some creepy guy. I never got to see my mom when she was alive. Don’t you at least think I should get to see her now?”

  “There are many people I would like to see too.” She stared down at her hands. “I miss my love.”

  She said it so quietly, I almost didn’t hear. Suddenly I realized how alone Lady Azura was. As far as I knew, she had no relatives. Or at least none that ever visited or called.

  “Where is your family?” I asked.

  “Gone.” She shifted in her large armchair. “My husband, Richard, died more than twenty years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.” I tried to imagine her husband. A dashing businessman, probably. “What was he like?”

  “He was an ornithology professor. You know what that is? Birds. He studied birds. Richard traveled all over the world, studying the migratory paths of birds. And when he wasn’t traveling, he’d be wading waist deep in the Pine Barrens swamp in search of one feathered friend or another. He was a wonderful man, and a good father, but way too crazy about his birds—”

  “Where are your kids?” I interrupted. I didn’t mean to ask so bluntly, but the words just came out. Lady Azura had mentioned a daughter to me, but I didn’t know anything about her.

  For the first time ever, Lady Azura became flustered. She gazed up at the ceiling for the longest time, and I wondered whether she was angry or if she would cry. Finally she murmured, “I had one child only. A daughter, Diana. I don’t anymore.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Did that mean she died? Was it okay for me to ask?

  “I’m going to make a cup of tea,” she said abruptly. “We’ll work on barriers another time. Why don’t you go upstairs?”

  “Sure,” I replied slowly, watching her leave.

  Upstairs in my bedroom, I gently closed the door. We lived on the second floor, but technically the third floor was ours too. I had a cool crafts room up there that my dad had made for me, complete with a photo printer and other art supplies. With these two floors all to ourselves, there was way too much space for just the two of us.

  As I sat on my bed, I wondered about what had happened to Lady Azura’s family. She must be lonely, I thought. I couldn’t imagine how empty this huge house must have felt to her before Dad and I moved in.

  I stared at the framed photos I’d arranged on the wall. Photographs my mom had taken. My favorite one was a picture: a pretty porcelain angel with a halo of blond curls.

  Even though I didn’t have my mom or many relatives, I had Dad. He always made every holiday fun, especially Christmas. He’d dress as Santa and leave muddy reindeer footprints in our yard. We’d always cook a big dinner together with lots of mashed potatoes.

  Suddenly I knew what to do. We’d have a real family Christmas this year. A tree, presents, Santa, even a honey-baked ham—and we’d surprise Lady Azura with it. We’d make her part of our family.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Dad.

  Chapter 3

  “Please, stop,” I whispered. “Please.”

  Her wretched sobs continued.

  I wrapped my pillow over my head to muffle the sound. I still heard her labored breaths, the sorrow surfacing in strange gasps.

  Her crying had been a constant in my life since we’d moved into this house. All day. All night. I’d pretty much learned to ignore it. Block out her pain like bad dentist-office music. But this Sunday morning it had gotten worse. Louder.

  There was no chance I was going back to sleep. All the woman in the room next to me did was cry and rock in her rocking chair. All the time. Forever.

  An unhappy spirit whom only I could see.

  Lady Azura was too old to climb the steep, narrow staircase. She hadn’t been upstairs in years and never saw the spirits that haunted the upper floors. But I’m sure she could hear her today.

  Why was the woman so sad? I wondered.

  Had she lost her husband? A child? A parent?

  What could cause someone such eternal grief?

  I hoped that whoever it was knew about the Twelve Days and came back. I wanted the woman to be happy.

  I also wanted her to be quiet.

  I heard a creak. Then another.

  Everything in this old house creaked. The floors. The spirits. />
  I peeked out from under my pillow, afraid of who I’d see.

  “Good, you’re up too!” Dad greeted me from my doorway. His brown curls were matted on one side from his pillow, but he wore a wide grin. “Getting in the Christmas spirit? Remember how you could never sleep the night before Christmas?”

  “That’s over a week away,” I grumbled. “It’s too early to be that happy.”

  “What you need is waffles,” he proclaimed. “Waffles make everyone happy, especially when the syrup pools in the little squares. Meet you in the kitchen!”

  I contemplated staying in bed with my head buried under the pillow. Then I thought about the waffles. Dad was right. Homemade waffles were way better than listening to a spirit cry.

  I mixed the batter while Dad greased the waffle iron. Through the window, the first glimmer of morning light cut through the darkness. We spoke in whispers so as not to wake Lady Azura. Not that that was really an issue, since she slept until noon most days. She stayed up way into the night. Sometimes I heard her roaming about, talking to herself.

  I filled Dad in on my Christmas surprise.

  “Excellent! We need a tree, pronto!” he exclaimed, no longer whispering. “There’s a guy selling big ones down by the lighthouse. We’ll go today and dig out the box of ornaments and buy some lights and garlands. Maybe a wreath or two.”

  “If we get a tree today, there’s still plenty of time to decorate.” I handed him the batter.

  “Actually, not really.” He gave me a sheepish glance. “I was going to talk to you about that. I’m going away next weekend.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, hoisting myself up to sit on the counter.

  “Not we, kiddo. Me.” He paused. “And Janelle. Ben Lewis, who we work with, is getting married in Philadelphia. We thought we’d go to the wedding and stay over in Philly.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I thought you could spend the night with Lady Azura. You could invite Lily or some other girls. Have a sleepover. That would be fun, no?”

  I still didn’t say anything. Dad looked so worried. I knew he was scared that I’d be unhappy spending the night with Lady Azura. But I didn’t mind about that. I’d actually wanted to spend time with her, so I could ask her more questions about our powers. I wasn’t speaking because I couldn’t believe that he actually liked Janelle enough to go away with her.