Page 20 of The Mare Rider of Cornwall Cove
He broke down again, his shoulders heaving. I shimmied up to hug him to my side. I stroked his hair, rubbed his neck, and did what I could to try to ease him through it. The memory of harboring another soul inside my body overwhelmed me for a moment, but I pushed it aside. That night at the lake had been voluntary. I’d opened myself up for a ghostly child to inhabit. She had been a lovely spirit, full of childlike wonder, but even so, my life force had been drained by her presence. I’d felt cold inside for weeks, weak as a kitten, and overly sensitive to paranormal fluxes around me.
“You’ll be okay. It’ll wear off soon,” I cooed, holding him close. The sobs began to fracture and dwindle, his chest slowing as he ran out of energy to carry on. “It chills you right down to the bone.”
“I feel sick, like violated. I’m sorry. I just sat down to check the battery and covered up and I fell asleep. Then I had dreams, bad dreams, shit that I hate to think about during the day.” He swiped at his damp eyes with his coat sleeve and then seemed to finally gain a little focus. “Where are your glasses?”
“Over there.” I rolled my hand in the air. “I can see you fine now. Do you want some water or a snack bar?” He nodded, falling from his heels to sit on the floor with his long legs out in front of him. “Okay, sit and breathe. I’ll get you something to help with the aftereffects.”
I crawled over to find my glasses, plunked them on my head, and then rifled through our bags for water and something sweet. I’d found that sugar helped after a body was physically drained like that. Honey was best as it was all natural energy, so I grabbed two bottles of slushy water and a box of honey and oats granola bars.
Phil was holding something when I returned, his pallor upsetting. “It broke,” he explained in a tone that tore me in two.
“Here, eat this and have a drink.” I smiled encouragingly at him as he passed over the busted Wi-Fi extender. “Damn, that sucks. You’ll have to get your folks to send you another one when we get back home.”
He shook his head wearily as he pulled off the wrapper on the granola bar with quaking fingers. “I’m sure they’ll do it when you ask. I know you said they don’t approve of you dating a guy or doing this whole thing but—”
“No, you don’t understand. They won’t send it, Arch. I borrowed this one from the film studies department, and now I’ll have to pay them back.” His exhalation was laced with tragedy that seemed over the top for one busted little gizmo.
“Phil, baby, I get how upset you are. I mean, being taken over by an entity is terrible, but this thing maybe costs a couple hundred bucks at the most?”
He lifted his melancholy blue eyes from the extender and his trusty—and obviously more rugged—camcorder to meet my stare. “Nah, about eighty bucks for a nice one.” He lowered the half a granola bar to his leg. “I don’t have eighty bucks.”
I pulled the sleeping bag over him, concerned about how chilled a person got after housing an otherworldly being. “Your father is a congressman. I know they make pretty big bank. And if he’s not willing to cough it up over some sort of homophobic shit, then—”
He shook his head strongly. “No, Arch, he cut me off when I refused to go to the college he wanted. He’s pretty conservative. He hates that I’m at some woke college and dating a man. We’ve not talked since I started here as a freshman. Of course that’s all hush-hush, but yeah, no money from the congressman. Only what my mom sends me out of guilt. That’s all on the sly too since she doesn’t want to cause a scandal by having someone find out their only child is mopping floors or flipping burgers. Two hundred bucks don’t go far, you know.”
I sat there stunned. Like truly stunned for a moment, but then as I began to mull things over, flipping through memories of our past, a lot of what he was admitting to now began to gel. I’d often wondered why the son of a senator slash congressman would be attending a college like Liverswell. Sure, it was nice, but small and certainly not Ivy League. And why he seemed to always be borrowing equipment and eating at the cheapest places and wearing old sneakers. The list was endless now that the cat was out of the bag. Poor Phil. Man, what shitty parents. I was doubly glad he had Grandpa and Monique in his life.
“I’m sorry. You hate me, don’t you?” His question struck me in the chest like a fist.
I jerked my sight from his camera. He looked like a sickly whipped dog. “No, I do not hate you. I love you,” I assured him and leaned in to kiss his stubbly cheek. That made him cry again. Oh shit, this poor man. I dabbed at his tears until they stopped and placed a finger under his chin to lift his eyes from his honey and nut bar to me. “I could never hate you. I’m confused as to why you would lie to me since I’m as poor as they come. I wouldn’t give a shit if you were broke, dude. I’m in a perpetual state of financial ruin.”
“I don’t know. I think I wanted to believe the bullshit lies about my loving family.” My eyes flared. “You’re so smart, and I’m this dopey ass nobody who’d be eating out of the trash can behindthe campus cafeteria if not for room and board being covered by my scholarship.”
“Phil, holy shit, baby, I am not in any better shape financially than you are. Did you forget we’re sitting here in this freezing cold asylum at eleven at night on New Year’s Eve because I’m so poor I need to make money to pay the taxes on the shop?”
“No,” he mumbled in a toddleresque way that made me smile. “I don’t want to lose you. Please don’t bail on me over this. I didn’t lie about anything else. I swear. I’m still needing help in classes, and I hate mint ice cream, and I never once read a whole book all the way through other than the one we deconstructed for class.”
“I’m not going to bail on you. I love you. And I kind of get it.” I reached down to lead the granola bar to his lips. “You need to eat. I don’t like how pale you are.”
“That thing…my dreams…it was fucked up, Arch. It got into my head somehow and stirred up my dreams. It made me remember when my asshole father would leave us for Washington, and when my mom would bolt for some remote island as soon as he left. It was just me and the staff, maybe some old nanny. I was so scared every time they left me alone at night. I had nightmares. And that thing found them. It pulled all the monsters out from under the bed, and then…then I don’t know what it did with me then, but…but…but I do not want to have it happen again. We need to leave.”
“Yeah, that seems to be the consensus. We’re going to go. As soon as you get some color back. I’m going to try to contact Grandpa and Monique. That entity did not dig the gris-gris bag that I was carrying.”
He bit down on his lower lip. “I didn’t have mine. It’s in my camera bag. I meant to get it out, but I sort of forgot…”
I rubbed his cheek with my thumb. “We all forget things. I’m going to get it, and you need to put it in your right pocket. Okay?”
“I will. Kiss me, please.” I took his face in my hands and kissed him gently but with as much devotion as I could muster in this awful place. “Please don’t dump me.”
“Never. Now, eat and drink, while I try to find a signal strong enough to contact Grandpa.” He began to work on the food and water. I dug into his camera bag, found his gris-gris, and placed it into his hand. I stood there until he shoved it into his front right pocket. Only then did I plop down, my head spinning from everything that had taken place in the last hour or two. I held my phone over my head and got one sickly bar. When I tried to load messenger, it just spun and never fully connected.
“You just huffed. Is it not working?” Phil asked, his cheeks filled with granola. I sighed and shook my head.
“No, it’s not picking up the signal. We’re going to have to move outside, I think.”
“Good, we should go back to the truck, get in it, and fucking leave. I don’t want to go through that again. That monster…what even was it? If that’s the kind of ghosts you see all the time…”
“No, no, that is not the kind of ghosts I see. Most of the specters I interact with are friendly.” I’d not mention the shit the twins told me about doing to one of the Connor boys. That would just freak him out, and I didn’t want him to be scared of being at my home. By the sounds of things, my rundown apartment over a dusty bookshop was the only real home Phil had. And yeah, there was probably some fancy mansion somewhere, but he was no longer welcome there, so a cramped space with two beds, one bath, and a couple of old folks was his heart home. His dorm room was pretty much unused now as he preferred to be with me and Grandpa. “This one isn’t a phantom, I don’t think. I’ve not done a lot of reading on demons, and from the few passages in the Kee family journal—”
