My Best Friend's Exorcism(58)

Silence. The fiber-optic ball on her dresser faded from purple to red.

She heard a mechanical echo down the line, wind blew static through a metal pipe. Her digital clock read 11:06.

“Abby?” a faint voice said.

Even furred with distortion, Abby recognized it instantly. This was the voice that reached down her throat and wrapped its fingers around her heart.

“Gretchen?” Abby said.

There was a series of clicks as solenoids snapped into place somewhere in the darkness of the phone company switching center. Deep space pops flew down trunk lines buried underground.

“Abby?” Gretchen said again, clearer. “Please?”

“Where are you?” Abby asked, her voice dry. “What number is this?”

A wall of static washed across the line. When it had passed, Gretchen was already talking.

“. . . need you,” Abby heard her say.

“I can fix this,” Abby said. “All you have to do is talk to me. Tell me how to fix this.”

“It’s too late,” Gretchen said, and her voice peaked and distorted. “I think? What time is it?”

“Are you home?” Abby asked. “I’ll meet you at Alhambra.”

“It’s dark,” Gretchen said, her voice drifting away. “He tricked me . . . he switched places with me and now I’m here and he’s there.”

“Who?” Abby asked.

“I think I’m dead,” Gretchen said.

Abby was suddenly very aware of the phone in her hand, her body on the bed, the thinness of the walls, how her window wasn’t locked, of the darkness pressing against the glass.

She imagined the phone lines running underground, through the dirt, past Molly Ravenel’s grave. She knew it was an urban legend but she imagined Molly hugging the Southern Bell cable tightly to her bony chest, clutching it with her hard fingers, throwing one leathery leg around it and drawing it close to the dry, insect-heavy center of herself, pressing her skeleton lips to the line, the clips and clicks echoing behind her grinning teeth.

“This is me,” Gretchen said, suddenly loud and clear. Then the sound of a tuning radio buzzed in Abby’s ear. “That isn’t me. That’s . . .” Metal crunched hard around the next few words. “You have to stop her. I mean me. I mean her. This is so hard, Abby. I can’t think clearly and it hurts to do this for long, but you have to stop her. She’s going to hurt everybody.”

“Who?” Abby asked.

“What time is it there?” Gretchen asked.

“11:06,” Abby said.

“What time?” Gretchen repeated with idiotic simplicity. “What time is it there? What time is it there? What time is it there?”

Abby tried to appease her.

“It’s Thursday night,” she said. “October 27.”

“Halloween is coming,” Gretchen said. “You have to be careful, Abby. She’s been planning something for you. She wants to hurt you most of all.”

“Why?” Abby asked.

“Because you’re my only friend,” Gretchen said.

The last word dissolved into a metallic echo, and then something thick and plastic snapped in Abby’s ear and the line was clear.

“Gretchen?” Abby whispered into the receiver.

Gretchen was gone.

Abby called the number back but the phone just rang.





Monday was the start of the blood drive, and during fourth-period break Margaret went out to the Red Cross Winnebago parked in front of the school to give blood. When she got up off the couch afterward, she seemed unsteady, then she said, “Mom?” and passed out. It happened all the time, but the Red Cross nurse was alarmed at how thin Margaret was and insisted they send her home.

Something was happening. Abby thought about the phone call with Gretchen, and how she was putting Glee in vestry and helping Margaret lose weight, and how she seemed to be dating Wallace. Something was going on, and Abby needed to stop it, but she couldn’t do it alone.

She would find a way to talk to Glee, even if it meant going to Communion during lunch, because Glee was spending all her time doing vestry, which was a very un-Glee thing to do. She’d talk to Margaret, too. Maybe even Father Morgan. If they didn’t believe her, she had the daybook, but that was a last resort. A school administrator would see that and put Gretchen directly in Southern Pines. She couldn’t show it to anyone until she was sure.

But first, there were the dead bodies.





She Blinded Me with Science


Abby had been dreading this moment since ninth grade. Everyone knew it was coming, and the only thing you could do was pray it wasn’t as bad as you’d heard.

On Thursday morning, the school loaded all the tenth graders onto Albemarle’s one yellow school bus, put the ones who couldn’t fit inside the red sports van, and carted them over the West Ashley Bridge to downtown Charleston. It was time for that most feared and anticipated rite of passage: the gross anatomy lab field trip.

Gretchen and Glee made sure they were in the red van because it was being driven by Father Morgan, but Abby didn’t even try to join them. She sat on the big yellow bus with everyone else, crammed against the rear window next to Nikki Bull. All around her, students were nervous or scared or excited, and they talked nonstop. Mostly they were talking about Geraldo Rivera.