The Haunting of the Gemini by Jackie Barrett Page B

ordeal, but it was getting more and more difficult to concentrate on them. Did the more I interacted with the other side—the dead—mean that I slipped further into that side? Had part of myself been left behind? Maybe the underworld was fighting over the half of me I had managed to keep. Maybe the devil was competing to win the whole of me. Maybe I was like my mother, a prize he would win.
    I buried my head in my hands, but I couldn’t block out Will’s words.
    â€œOn these long night strolls, where do you go? Your feet are covered in dirt in the morning. Look at the sheets! Do I have to start following you?”
    He had every right to ask for answers. I had none, but there was something . . . I went into our bedroom, with its Southern Gothic furniture and my beloved painting of the wolf whose spirit protects me, and pulled everything out of my closet. There, in the back, was my journal.
    This was my very first journal—I had never kept one before. Some people keep diaries or journals and pour out their deepest thoughts and fears. Not me. I had always been afraid that if I wrote down things that I had felt or experienced—as opposed to writing down the thoughts of the dead who speak through me—and someone found it, they would find the key to things that needed to stay in hell. Some things did not need to be written down. Some secrets you need to hide. The dark images in my mind, the thoughts I could never escape—I always carefully tucked all of these things into the most inaccessible parts of my mind. I kept them away from the dangerously curious. Writing them down would have made them easier for others to find, and to use. It was safer to keep them buried. I knew this better than anyone.
    I slid down to the floor, and Will joined me. Fear came over his face as I opened the pages.
    I’m writing this to my family. I’m becoming a victim. My days are full, and my nights, I stalk. I’ve been pulled back into a time I don’t remember. I’m living a life that isn’t mine . . .
    I flipped through the journal, showing Will drawings I had done of a masked man and other pages that were ripped and shredded—Patricia’s doing, not mine. Pages written as if by a child, with drawings in red crayon. There was one of a red ball and another of the little girl, who would often visit me, and a man taking her.
    Will closed the book, and I put it back in the depths of the closet, like I was hiding it from myself.
    â€œSend her back, Jackie. I’ll help you.”
    Something inside me fell into place, something I think I had really been hiding from myself. In my desperation to get rid of this woman, I had not seen it. But now it clicked, like the snap of a lamp being turned on in the dark.
    â€œI can’t,” I said slowly, as the light began to penetrate just a little into my black-as-night brain. “If she doesn’t complete her task, I will become her . . . She’s showing me something . . . while something else is hunting her like an animal . . .”
    If I could just stay in my full body and mind, I could figure it out. If only I could . . . The phone in the kitchen rang and jolted me up from my seat on the floor. I was heading for it when Will yelled, “You can’t run from me, Jackie.” I looked back in surprise—why would he say that?—and where Will had been was the tall man in black.
    I bolted into the kitchen and went straight for my trusty knife. With it in one hand, I ripped the phone off the hook with the other. The caller ID said it was Will’s cell phone. I whispered into the receiver, “He’s in the house. Please help me.”
    â€œCall the cops. I’m on my way.”
    I fumbled with the phone and dropped it as I turned. The tall man in black stood in the kitchen doorway, turning from the vague hologram I sometimes see into a solid mass of a human