• chapter thirteen •
Winter finally melted into summer, and summer brought two changes with it: (a) two of my paintings were bought by a puzzle making company, which meant that they were now being sold as 500-piece jigsaw puzzles, and (b) Liam and I went out every evening for a walk after my art class. I don't really know how or when it started. I guess it began from the day we went to the bookstore together.
On a warm April afternoon when the sun was about to set, we were lying on the grass under a tree after our walk. The weather was nice, and the grass was soft, and I was tired. Putting my head on my art-bag, I somewhat closed my eyes and looked at the bleeding sky through my lashes.
When I woke up an hour later, it was becoming dark. Two stars twinkled in the sky like the eyes of a wolf. Liam was lying with his arms crossed and looking at me with a smile. A dreamy kind of smile. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey." I sat up slowly and tied my messy hair into a loose ponytail. "What time is it?" I looked at my watch. "Wha—? Oh my God, I slept for one hour?"
"Yep."
"And you just lay here and watched me?"
"Yep."
That surprised me. "You should've woken me up."
"I like watching you sleep. You look pretty."
I smiled. "Do I? Didn't you get bored or anything?"
"Not at all. I enjoy your company."
"Really? What do you like about me?"
He propped himself up on his elbow. "What do I like about you? I'll tell you what." He took my hand and looked at me with utmost seriousness. "When I look at you, I see a girl whose favorite word is 'meraki', a girl whose favorite color is that mauve you see just after sunset, a girl who loves blue orchids, a girl who loves to look for shapes in clouds, a girl who loves the smell of books and old pages, a girl who dreams her paintings and paints her dreams, a girl who's shy on the surface but has this... fire inside of her and when she really puts her mind to it, she can get anything she wants, is beautiful and incredibly interesting when you get to know her, a girl who shares her sandwiches with strangers, a girl who always wants to help others out, and you know what else I see?" He came closer till he was leaning over me. "I see the girl I've fallen in love with."
I froze, wondering if I'd heard him right. "What?" I whispered.
"I..." He suddenly lost his confidence. "I've wanted to say this for so long. I'm in love with you, Hazel."
Lots of emotions started brewing inside me. My breathing quickened. I stared into his eyes. They were a soft grey, like the sky after a rainy day. And the way he was looking at me...
A huge grin crept to my lips. He closed the distance between us and kissed me. It was electrifying. It set me on fire. Sparks shot through my skin wherever he touched me. I ran my fingers through his hair and pulled him closer, and we kissed for a long time, till my lips became numb.
He stopped reluctantly. The cool wind blew a strand of my hair into his face. He caught it and tucked it behind my ear.
I didn't dare to open my eyes. It felt like everything would fade away if I did. I wanted to be locked up in this moment. So I held on to him, our noses touching, our breaths mingling, our arms around each other.
Then he pulled away and lied down on the grass again, and I did the same. Night had fallen. The stars had come out now. They glittered in the sky, and they were beautiful. My heart swelled in my chest. Everything seemed better: the grass was softer, the sky was darker, the night was warmer. A new chapter of my life was starting. I was falling in love, and I was happy. At peace. I breathed in and my lungs filled with the scent of summer grass and ecstasy.
We didn't say anything. We just lay and gazed up.
"Do you know any constellations?" I asked finally.
"Yeah. I know Orion, the hunter."
"Can you spot it?"
He smiled. "I've never found a constellation. But if you can spot the Sirius star, then you can find Orion, too. If you imagine a straight line passing through the three middle stars of Orion, and if you look along this line towards the East, you'll spot Sirius. It's the brightest star in the night sky."
"Wow."
He took my hand and squeezed softly. I squeezed it back, but he squeezed mine again, and I realized he wanted me to look at him. I did.
"You're beautiful," he said.
"You, too."
He laughed. "I'm a boy."
"Boys can be beautiful too."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
Then he kissed me and I shut up. I rested my head on his chest; he looped his arm around my waist. We lay for some more time, even though it was time to go home. It was late, and his curfew was ten, and even though I didn't really have a curfew— one of the perks of living alone — I tried to get home by ten too.
The silence hit me abruptly. The park was deserted, and it was dark and eerie-quiet. I sat up and looked around. "Liam, we should go home."
"Why?" He sat up too.
"That ghost...she usually comes at night, and..." I trailed off.
The hair at the back of his head was sticking up. He smoothed it down with his hands. "You think it will be any different at home? That bitch can come wherever she wants to."
I closed my eyes and exhaled.
"I don't want to leave you alone, Hazel. Last time when she touched you, you kind of blanked out and..." He shuddered. "I'm not leaving you alone. Not now." He took my hand. "Do you want to sleep with me?"
"What?" I raised my eyebrows. He suddenly realized how that sounded. "I mean, do you want to sleep in the same bed as me? Not in a 'hot night of passion' kind of way, silly."
I laughed. "Yeah. That sounds much better than sleeping alone."
We walked to my house to collect my night-things, then his.
His dad was sitting on the couch. He looked up when we entered.
"Dad, this is Hazel and she's my girlfriend, and we're going to my room." I choked out a polite 'hello' before Liam dragged me away. I was his girlfriend, huh?
When we were halfway to his room, he ran back to the living room and said, "And she's going to sleep here today."
"What? You guys are not sleeping in the same room!" he called, but Liam was already walking towards me.
"We are! I'll sleep on the floor!" he answered and opened the door. His room was still as messy.
"Gosh, why don't you ever clean this place?" I asked.
He grinned. "I like it this way. And if you have a problem with walking, then —" he picked me up with one arm around my shoulders and one arm under my knees, carried me to the bed and threw me on top of the covers.
I laughed. He jumped on me and kissed me softly, his hand twisted into my hair. It made me dizzy. I kissed him back, gently caressing his lips with mine, and he pushed me into the mattress and dug his teeth into my lips.
"Liam! I can't breathe!" I murmured, but he ignored me, so I started tickling him. He laughed and rolled off me. We looked at each other and laughed for what felt like an eternity.
Nothing was particularly funny, but there were plenty of things to be happy about. Liam wanted me as much as I wanted him. And despite the fact that we were accursed and that a crazy ghost could pop up anywhere at any time and do God-knows-what to us, it felt like everything was going to be okay.
When I came out of the washroom wearing pyjamas, he wasn't in a playful mood anymore. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, feet resting on the ground, elbows resting on the knees, chin resting on his hands, looking seriously at the wall. I kissed his cheek and climbed into bed. "Something wrong?"
"I was just thinking—" he lied down next to me, "—that you're sleeping here just for today. I mean, I would love it if you slept here everyday, but dad would kill me. And you live alone. And that woman could come and kill you and no one would know till the next day. And Ash lives alone too. Did I tell you she saw that ghost?"
I shook my head. "When?"
"I don't remember. She saw the nurse in the mirror, just like you did. She told just me." He sighed. "We need to get rid of her somehow. This can't go on."
∞
I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was Liam lying on his side, looking at me, wearing shorts and sneakers. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. His hair was a messy nest. A smile crept across my face.
He said, "Hey, love."
I said, "Hey, loser. Where have you been?"
"Jogging."
"You went alone?"
"I thought you won't want to wake up at five thirty." He grinned, then groaned. "Let's get ready for school."
"No. It's Saturday."
"Oh, great." He slipped his arm around my waist. His breath tickled my neck. I felt my heartbeat quicken.
He kissed me and sat up. "Do you want to go for a walk?"
"Okay." I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood. "I'll just go to the washroom—"
He hopped out and stood next to me. "I'm going first."
"Yeah? You sure about that?" I ran towards the door. He caught up with me, lifted me up by the waist and spun me around.
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure about that."
I laughed. "Stop! Put me down."
He did, and while I was stumbling around, recovering from the dizziness, he went into the washroom, grinning.
When I could finally stand, my gaze fell upon a folded-up piece of paper on the nightstand. It had obviously been placed there recently; it was definitely not there at night. I opened it. Something was written in pencil.
'I gave you many chances. Now I'll have to take your soul.'
I gasped and dropped the note. But it wasn't the message that scared me; I had been half expecting something creepy and nonsensical. What unnerved me was the handwriting. I recognized it.
How could it be...?
I knew who was sending us the notes; I knew who the woman was, although it made little sense. This was the most important — and hopefully the last — piece of this crazy puzzle. I sat down on the carpet next to the chit, dazed.
When Liam came out of the washroom, I jumped up again. "We got another note."
"What?"
I gave it to him. He read it and looked at me. "Again?" He sounded tired and defeated. "What does she mean she'll have to take our souls?"
"Probably that she wants to kill us. Duh." I rolled my eyes. My own tone surprised me. I should've been frightened, but I wasn't. I was getting used to this. "But I know who wrote this."
"Who?"
"This might sound crazy—"
"Just tell me who wrote it." He sounded angry.
I took a breath. "Mary."
"Mary?" he repeated blankly, like he'd been expecting me to name someone from school.
"The day after Zack's pizza party at your house, Ash showed me a note that she'd gotten. At that time the handwriting seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it. And the rest of the messages that we got, they were either on walls or mirrors, so obviously it was impossible to make out who wrote them. But this, this is definitely Mary's handwriting. It looks exactly like the handwriting in her diary."
He looked at the paper again, and nodded slowly. "It sort of does."
"And we know for sure that the ghost who we see is sending us the notes."
"That can only mean one thing." His expression was grim.
I nodded. "The ghost isn't of the nurse who was killed in 1932, like we thought. It's Mary's ghost."
"But the ghost had said that William killed her. That means William killed Mary? But they loved each other."
I sat again. "You know what I think? I think they had a, um, hot night of passion—" at this, the corner of Liam's mouth lifted up slightly, "—and Mary became pregnant. This was the secret she wrote about in her diary. And unwed pregnancies were shameful at that time, and William probably didn't want anyone to know, so he called Mary in Room 502, and he killed her. Remember when Mary touched me that day in the street and I had a glimpse of the past? I saw her going into that room, and William was talking about that secret. He definitely killed her because she was pregnant."
"But she killed herself because she was pregnant. Her body was found hanging," he objected.
"What if he staged it like a suicide?" The wild idea just popped into my head. "He hung her body so that no one would know that she was killed. And at Christmas, Zack told us that he read about an investigator who went to the sanatorium. He drew the picture of a body hanging from a noose. When he closed his eyes and let his hand move by the influence of an unseen entity, his hand spelled out the words 'wrong' and 'no' with an arrow pointing at the picture. What if the unseen entity was Mary and she was trying to tell him that she didn't kill herself!" The more I thought about it, the more correct it seemed. "Oh my God, we've got it! We have to tell Ash and Zack!"
I grabbed his hand and ran outside. I could smell summer in the air. We half-jogged, half-ran to Ashley's house. On the way Liam called Zack up, waking him, and shouted at him frantically to meet us there.
When we got there, they were standing at the door, waiting for us anxiously. Zack hadn't even combed his hair. He wore pyjamas, as did I, and Ash was without make-up.
"Hazel figured it out," Liam said.
"Figured what out?" asked Zack. "How to get rid of the ghost?"
"No. Figured out who that ghost is," I said, and Zack went mad.
"That's it? You've fucking figured out who she is? You guys woke me up just for this? It doesn't matter who she is! What we need to figure out is HOW TO GET RID OF HER!! I slept at 1 a.m. in the night! And I have a fucking hangover!" He glared murderously at me. I felt my excitement die down.
Liam put his arm around my waist. "Don't take out your anger on her."
Zack grabbed Liam by the shoulders and pinned him against the wall. "I'll take it out on you, then."
"Guys!" I jumped between them, putting one hand on Liam's chest and the other on Zack's. "Break it up." Liam's ears had turned red, like they did when he was angry.
Zack was about to start shouting again, but Ash hugged him, and he calmed down slightly. He buried his face in her hair. "I'm sorry."
"Okay, so..." Liam began, then paused to see if Zack would do anything. He didn't. "...the ghost is Mary's. We got a note today, and the handwriting in the note and Mary's handwriting totally match. So she was pregnant with William's baby, and he killed her because he didn't want anyone to know about it, and then he hung her body to make it look like suicide. That is why she wants to kill him now."
There was a pause as they digested this.
"But won't William be dead by now?" Ash asked. "In Hazel's vision, he was twenty-something. And that was 1928, when Mary died. Now it's 2009. I don't think he's alive anymore."
"You try telling that to the ghost. I bet she'll be really happy," Zack said. We glanced at him. "Look, she doesn't understand that it's 2009 and that William must be dead. She's probably stuck in a time warp. She's angry, and all she can think about is taking revenge on William. She wants to kill him on her own, she wants to see him die, only then will she get the satisfaction and leave us alone. If we tell her that William is already dead, the fact that she was too late to kill him will make her even more angry, and she'll take it out on us."
"Actually," Ash said, "I think if we tell her that he's already dead, she'll go away. Why would she stay after that? She's bothering us only because she wants us to kill him. Once we tell her he's dead, she'll leave us alone. Duh."
"You know what the worst thing is?" Liam said. "The worst thing is that all the time we sit and discuss this like idiots, and it's not getting us anywhere. And we can't tell anyone about our problem because no one will believe us, because no one else can see Mary."
"Why the hell can't anyone see her?" Zack fumed.
I thought about it. I thought back to the day it all had started, and the answer came to me. "Remember when we touched the diary, we'd all felt dizzy?"
"What has that got to do with this?"
I shrugged. "Mary practised dark magic when she was alive. Maybe she did something to the diary. Maybe the diary connected us to her in some way."
After a while Ash asked, "What does the note say?"
"Note?"
"The one you got today."
"Oh, yeah." I passed it to her. "Mary says she gave us many chances and now she'll take our souls." Zack started off again. "Our souls? Why does she want our souls now? As if that will help her kill William! Just because we don't want to kill William, she'll kill us? Why can't she kill him instead?"
"Whatever, guys. Next time when we see her, we're telling her that William is dead so please leave us alone," Ash said firmly. She was trying to be calm, but I knew she was scared. "Now who wants pancakes?"
No one answered. We went inside the house, trying to be cheerful. Liam and Zack sat on the couch and talked about cars. I was about to sit with them when I realized that my breath stank because I hadn't brushed my teeth. I went to the washroom and rinsed my mouth, and then stuck out my tongue in the mirror. It was white-ish. I started to scratch it with my nails.
I had read that the bad-breath bacteria lived on your tongue and not on your teeth, so if you wanted to get rid of the smell you had to brush your tongue till it was red again. White-ish tongue meant bacteria. I scratched till I was satisfied and rinsed my mouth again, then went to the kitchen to help. Ash was almost done. She laid the table while I made the rest of the cakes.
"Guys! Come to the table!" she called, and sat. Liam came in first, walked over to me, put his arm around me and kissed my cheek. He started to say something, but Ash started screaming, "Oh my God, you guys are together?"
"Yeah," I said. She jumped up and hugged both of us at once. "Finally! We can go on double-dates now. I've been waiting for this for so long!" She turned to Liam. "Couldn't you have asked her out earlier?" Then she looked at me. "He's had a crush on you for, like, six months. Since we threw that surprise party on his birthday, remember?"
"Whoa, really?"
Zack walked in. "What's going on?"
"These guys are dating."
He smiled and slapped Liam's shoulder. "Finally, huh?"
Ash started jumping again. "We'll go to prom together!"
Liam raised his eyebrows. "Prom is like a month away." He sighed. "Can you guys believe school is ending? I mean, no more timetables, no more homework...it would be weird."
"Mmm," someone said from the table. Zack was sitting there, already stuffing himself. We sat down and picked up our forks. Liam nudged me, leaned over and mumbled, "Our walk?"
I smiled. "After breakfast."
∞
Somewhere in the last week of April, Liam called me up and asked the following question: "Pizza or burgers?"
"What?" I said.
"I'm coming over, and I'm bringing dinner. Pizza or burgers?"
I thought about it. We'd have to share the pizza, and while taking out the pieces from the box, our fingers would touch, and we would look at each other and smile. Burgers would be unromantic.
So, "Pizza," I said, grinning to myself stupidly.
"Okay. See ya. Wear something nice."
He hung up. I looked at the clock. It was 7:15. I made some calculations. If he had called from his home, it would take him ten minutes to pick up the pizza and another five minutes to get here. That gave me exactly fifteen minutes to make myself presentable, which included showering, getting the paint off my fingers and face, and choosing something nice to wear.
I painted the last strokes of the blue ocean, which finished the painting. Then I ran to the bathroom and showered.
Wrapped in a towel and dripping from head to toe, I stood in front of the cupboard for five whole minutes, wondering what to wear. Finally I picked out a knee-length white dress, not too formal, but not too casual either.
Since I didn't have any white sandals to wear, I decided to be barefoot.
Then I went to the kitchen and spread a white tablecloth on the table, and put down two plates. I considered putting a candle in the centre, but decided against it. It would be too much.
I sat down to wait for him. My butt had just touched the sofa when the bell rang. I ran to open the door.
He wore jeans and a black t-shirt, which sort of hugged his figure and showed off his muscles. I smiled at him. "Hey, handsome."
He whistled. "Is that a dress I see? You finally decided to dress up like a girl?"
"Yeah, I guess," I replied as he stepped closer and slipped his arm around me.
"You look beautiful, by the way," he mumbled against my neck. The proximity made my heart pound.
"I always do," I said, and we smiled, "but thanks."
He walked over to the table in the kitchen and put down the pizza box. Then he took out a candle from his pocket, lit it and put it in the centre of the table. And I liked it. I liked the fact that he had brought a candle with him without worrying about it being too romantic. I smiled. Like, a huge smile.
I took out two cans of Coke from the fridge. When I turned around, he was leaning forward against the chair, hands on the backrest, and the box lay unopened, as if he was waiting for me to open it.
I lifted the lid, and gasped. On the inside of the move-able flap of the box, covered in grease, scribbled with pen, was a message. It caught me off-guard. I grinned like an idiot.
Liam raised his eyebrows. "Well?"
"Liam, you're just...perfect." I read the message again, just to be sure I'd read it correctly:
'I know this is cheesy, will you go to prom with me?'
I jumped on him so hard that he stumbled, and hugged him tightly. "Of course I'll go with you."
I'd been waiting for him to ask me to prom. Often I'd worried that instead of asking me, he would just assume that I'd go with him because I was his girlfriend, and so I'd often teased him about when he was going to ask me. But I'd never expected him to ask me like this. It was straight out of a teen romance novel.
He laughed. "Should we start eating?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, and we don't need plates, do we? I have a better plan." He winked.
We ended up sitting on the couch with our legs entangled, the pizza box resting on our laps, drinking Coke from the same can. The candle gave out the only light in the room.
"Was this your idea?" I asked. "The whole writing-on-the-box thing."
"Yup. I'm smart. Even Zack asked me how he should ask Ash to the prom."
"How did he ask her?"
"He took lots of tennis balls and wrote 'prom?' on all of them, and then he put them on a table along with a note that said, 'I finally got the balls to ask you to Prom!' Ash went crazy when she saw it."
"That's genuis. But I like your way better. I got free pizza."
He grinned. We ate in silence after that, and that was one of the things I liked about us: we could sit with each other and not talk for hours and still not get bored.
When we'd finished, I asked, "Movie?"
"Um, no," he said. "There's, uh, one tiny problem."
"What?"
"I don't know how to dance."
I laughed. "Really? Me neither." I took his hand. "But we can practise. I know a little bit."
"Okay." He stood. "Music?"
"We don't need it." We walked to the open space and he placed his hands on my waist. I wrapped my arms around his neck.
"Now we just have to move our feet around."
He chuckled. "That's pretty helpful."
"Let's just move from side to side."
"Okay." He pulled me closer till our chests touched. I could smell his cologne. We started swaying. I rested my head on his shoulders and moved with him. He kissed the top of my head. "Your hair smells like strawberries."
I laughed. We swayed some more, and then he tried to twirl me around, but I stumbled. He caught me before I could fall.
"I think I'm a better dancer than you are," he teased. His face was so close to mine that I could see all the colors in his eyes. He kissed my neck. I shivered. "You look beautiful."
"You've already told me that."
"And I'll say it a thousand times more."
∞
Hi! Since you have made it this far, I'm guessing you're enjoying this story! Have to become attached to the characters yet? Do you plan to read till the end? If yes, please leave an inline comment so that I know who you guys are :)