Calm Down, Emily

Chapter One

Her brother was dead, and her niece had snapped.

She clutched the girl’s hand in a haze, searching for a way out.

Save the child, save herself.

When Emily Harper stepped in front of Grace Harper, the girl looked at her with nothing but suspicion and fear.

A tear slid down Emily’s cheek. She took the girl’s hand. “Grace, I’m here. Don’t be afraid.”

Grace tried to pull back. Emily held on.

Emily’s chest tightened. Grace’s shoulders were hunched, her eyes dull. She still had a teenager’s softness, yet her face carried a grief no normal girl should bear.

If she hadn’t seen her father’s intestines spill across the floor, Grace wouldn’t be like this.

Emily’s brother, John Harper, had writhed on the ground in a blur of blood, and Grace had walked in on it.

The blood was everywhere, bright and shocking. John, stubborn as ever, somehow kept talking even with his belly torn to shreds.

They rushed him to the hospital. The doctor stitched him like he was lacing a shoe, round after round. Blood kept seeping from John’s gut. A few hours later, he died on the table.

Thinking of it made Emily’s heart knot. The dead don’t come back. Now the only thing that mattered was Grace.

John, like Emily, had never married. In their twenties they adopted Grace. On paper John was the father, but both of them raised her as their own. Emily especially had treated the girl like a daughter.

With John gone, Emily and Grace were the only family left.

Emily couldn’t read what was going on in the girl’s head. She rubbed her shoulder. “From today on, you’ll stay with me. If you want, think of me as Mom.”

Grace was tall now, almost level with Emily. She kept her head down and glanced up. She didn’t object.

From then on, it was the two of them against the world.

In truth, not much changed. Emily had lived with her brother and the girl for years. Now there were two instead of three.

Soon, though, something felt off.

Grace had lost her grip.

Maybe she’d broken the moment she saw her father die.

She drifted in and out, as if she saw things that shouldn’t exist. Her face twisted through strange expressions. Sometimes she flung her arms and covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

Other times she watched Emily from behind. When Emily turned, Grace snapped her gaze away.

At first Emily told herself it would pass. It didn’t.

The house began to feel haunted.

There were sounds with no source, a noise here and there, never a person in sight.

Maybe it was only Emily who couldn’t see it, because Grace kept reacting to those sounds like they meant something.

A chill lived in Emily’s bones. She spent hours talking the girl through it, reason then tenderness, anything to pull her out of the dark and back to a normal life.

She knew it wouldn’t happen overnight.

It didn’t. Everything she tried fell flat. Grace stayed the same, maybe worse. The way she looked at Emily grew more unsettling.

More than once, sweat broke cold down Emily’s spine. “What is it, Grace? What did you see?”

Grace startled every time, like she was the one being spooked.

Exhaustion wore Emily down. She started to wonder if it was John’s ghost.

She asked Grace straight out if there was anyone in the house besides the two of them.

Grace would give her a crooked look, like Emily was the crazy one.

Emily knew she wasn’t. The poor kid was.

Even so, fear crept into the walls. Sometimes Emily herself felt a presence.

That everywhere ghost gnawed at her nerves. Slow, relentless, impossible to bear.

“John, if you’ve got unfinished business, come tell us in a dream. Don’t worry about Grace, I’ll take care of her. Please, stop tormenting us.”

She spoke to the air. Her head swam. The air seemed to shift. Far off, someone was talking. The words slid past her ears like water.

The voice grew louder. Emily pressed a hand to her chest and turned. Her eyes went wide. Sweat sprang cold from her scalp.

Her father, dead for over a decade, stood behind her, lifelike.

No, not her father. Her brother, who looked so much like him. John Harper.

Her legs turned to lead. John walked toward her and reached out a hand.

It dripped red.

His mouth moved. Emily couldn’t make out a single word.

Her throat made a hard gulp, and the scream that tore out of her was razor-sharp.

Chapter Two

It took a long time for Emily to come down from the ragged breathing.

John was gone. She was sitting on the bed. It was deep night.

She peeled sweat-damp hair off her face and stared at her shadow on the dark TV screen. She shook like a ghost.

Once a nightmare took root, fear spread like a vine.

The next morning, after a long think, she told her niece, “Grace, let’s leave this place.”

Grace looked stunned, then pulled away. Emily frowned. “You’re not scared living here? You talk to the air every day. Something’s going to happen.”

Grace seemed more afraid of her. She yanked her hand free and ran back to her room.

Over the past few days, Grace’s unspoken fear of her had only grown. She either hid in the bedroom or bolted whenever she got the chance, anything to avoid being near Emily.

The pain of it made Emily’s chest ache. She only wanted to protect this kid. How had it turned into this?

What was hiding in the dark and working against them? Was it John’s ghost?

After a sleepless night, she made up her mind. She was Grace’s only family now. She would not let anything terrible happen.

Or it would be too late.

At first light, she tossed a few things in a bag, grabbed the sleepy girl from the bed, and rushed out the door like they were running for their lives.

She hated leaving in a hurry, but staying one more night would break them both.

She ignored Grace’s struggling and hauled her all the way to the station. They got on the first coach that pulled in.

How they would manage after that could wait. Getting out was enough, just for now.

The bus rocked. Emily dozed off.

She woke up a few times, still arguing with someone in her dreams. When she finally opened her eyes for good, the bus was still moving. For a second she forgot why she was there.

Grace sat beside her with a pinched face, staring out the window. Regret pricked at Emily.

Did they really need to run this far? They could have found a place nearby.

The impulse felt foolish, but it was too late. They got off in a different town and started looking for a place to crash.

Grace seemed resigned. She didn’t fight the way she had before and let Emily pull her along the street.

The neighborhood looked familiar, like a place they had once visited. Emily didn’t dwell on it. Hungry and light-headed, they ducked into a restaurant.

It was the Himalayan Bistro. They were between meal rushes, and a few girls in Tibetan-style dresses were chatting by the counter. When they came in, the girls broke into bright smiles.

One of them came over with menus. “Sit anywhere.”

Emily noticed Grace staring straight at the girl. She almost laughed. A kid, after all. Pretty clothes, and her eyes were glued.

The laugh died fast. As the girl turned to go, Grace grabbed her.

“Whoa!” The girl stumbled, then looked back, surprised. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

“It’s fine.” Emily forced a smile and pried Grace’s hand loose. “She likes your dress.”

After the girl left, Emily leaned in, annoyed. “What are you doing? You scared her. She’s going to think I’m snatching you.”

Grace shot her a complicated look.

Emily pulled out her phone, ignored dozens of missed calls, and started searching for a motel.

“Grace, we’re wiped. We’ll find a place for the night.”

Grace didn’t answer. She kept watching the glass door like she was waiting for something.

Maybe she really was starving. On any other day she would have slipped out the second Emily blinked.

“How about this one?” Emily turned the screen around and pointed to a motel.

Grace looked back, unfocused, then her eyes lit. She looked past Emily’s head, toward the front.

Emily’s stomach dropped. She glanced over her shoulder. The server was pointing in their direction and talking to someone. A pillar blocked the view, and behind it, someone seemed to be standing.

Grace was already on her feet. Panic flared. Emily grabbed her wrist and headed for the door.

As they passed the table, Emily risked a quick look. There really was a shape there, but something in her head warned her not to look closely.

The feeling was back, the same one from the house, as if the ghost that never left them had followed all the way here.

If Grace met its eyes, something bad would happen.

Emily dragged her out into the street. She didn’t slow down. She didn’t care how hard the girl fought.

Grace was stronger now. Somewhere along the line the kid had grown, no longer the little thing Emily could lift with one arm.

She was still thinking that when Grace wrenched free in a hard snap and spun around. Emily jolted and turned. Grace was already heading back inside.

No.

Alarms rang in Emily’s mind. She chased her. “What are you doing?”

In the next breath, Grace stopped in front of someone. Emily called her name and followed without thinking. The person’s face blurred, as if a fogged mirror had been wiped in a single stroke.

A face she didn’t recognize came into focus.

The person saw Emily coming and, without warning, slapped her across the face.

Chapter Three

At one thirty in the afternoon, Emily walked under a brutal sun to the hospital, took a number, and followed the signs upstairs to psychiatry.

The getaway had failed, and somehow they had drifted back home.

That slap had knocked the sense out of her. For a long time she moved in a fog. When she finally came to, she and Grace were back in the house, safe, and the person who hit her was gone.

“Who was he? Who was that?”

She shook Grace until the girl swayed, yet no matter how she asked, there was never an answer.

Later, fear crept up on her. She felt drugged, slow and useless, wanting to help and having no strength to do it.

At the same time, Grace slipped back into that state where she wanted to run. Emily’s talking and coaxing did nothing.

Emily believed they couldn’t stay in that house. Before leaving for good, she decided to trust her gut and bring Grace to the hospital.

She tried more than once. Every time she made a move toward the door, Grace locked herself in the bedroom and refused to come out.

There was no other way. Emily locked the apartment and came alone to see what help she could get for the kid.

When she reached the third floor, she froze.

Endocrinology, pain management, and neurology sat quiet. Psychiatry was packed. The hallway was wall to wall with people.

She gaped and pushed inside. The room was worse, rings of patients circling the doctor like he was the one on display.

She couldn’t squeeze in. “Why isn’t anyone lining up?”

Heads snapped her way. “Who isn’t lining up? Who do you think you are?”

She grimaced. “Nobody, number thirty-eight.”

A few people clicked their tongues. “Thirty-eight has a long wait. Don’t get jumpy.”

She found a bit of floor and stood, bodies pressed to her front and back. A hand tapped her shoulder.

She turned and saw a heavyset woman with soft stacked chins, an old neighbor from years ago, Patricia Lopez.

“Emily,” Patricia sighed from deep in her chest, “what are you doing here?”

Emily did not want to explain. She gave a small smile. Patricia let it go and tried again. “Is this for you or for John?”

John?

Emily blinked. Patricia craned toward the number slip in her hand, snatched it, tossed it, slid a crumpled twenty-five into her palm, and dragged her toward the exam room.

They tumbled inside. A young man sat across from the doctor answering clearly, nothing odd about him.

The doctor nodded and said he was improving. The kid lifted a long pinky nail, snapped it twice, and flicked his sleeve with a theater flourish.

The doctor frowned. “Next.”

Patricia sighed and shouldered through the cluster, slapped a twenty-four on the desk, and dropped into the chair.

Emily realized Patricia sighed every few sentences. Each “ah-yah” blew across the desk and made the chart pages flutter.

The doctor kept sliding his stool sideways to avoid facing her head on. “You can speak in full sentences. Try it. Look at me, like this.”

“If I could hold it in, I wouldn’t be sick, ah-yah. I don’t want to be like this, ah-yah, ah-yah.”

“How did the meds I gave you work?”

“When did you give me meds?”

“A few days ago.”

“Ah-yah, I have taken them for a year, ah-yah. A little better.”

“Then keep taking them.”

“Fine, ah-yah.”

“Ah-yah, next.”

Patricia stood and gave Emily a wry look. “Life is no fun, ah-yah. Your brother…”

Her words were swallowed by the noise as she shuffled off. Emily wanted to ask more, but Patricia was already gone.

She sat. The doctor met her eyes for two seconds. The show began.

“Name?”

“Grace Harper.”

“Sex?”

“Female.”

“Age?”

“Fifteen.”

He glanced up, then wrote. “Ha, all right, still a teenager.”

Emily had not caught up. She started to explain how Grace fell ill and when it began. The doctor wrote, paused, spun his pen, his face shifting between a smile and a wince. “Go on. Keep going.”

Emily slipped into the story and the ugly facts. Her voice grew tight. Her eyes stung.

The hallway roared. The doctor ignored it all and kept up his gentle chant. “Keep going, do not stop.”

Halfway through, Emily snapped awake and jumped to her feet. “Doctor, I didn’t make that clear. I am here for someone else. I am not the crazy one.”

He looked at her with a tired almost-smile. “I know you are not. No one said you are. Go on.”

“Please don’t look at me like that. I know you are exhausted. There are so many people behind me.”

“Thanks for caring. Anything else to add?”

“Grace is my niece. I am here to get her help and a prescription.”

“Why didn’t she come herself?”

“She cannot leave the house. She is afraid I will take her away.”

“Oh, so you are not Grace, and Grace cannot go out. All right, keep going.”

“Doctor.” Emily’s voice broke. “I am going to end up sick at this rate.”

“In that case, let me ask you for your name, age, job, and address.”

She answered one by one. At the address, his eyes lit up. “I bought a place over there. We are neighbors then. My mistake.”

Emily took the tissue he offered, wiped the sweat from her hairline, and finished Grace’s case. The doctor frowned. “From what you describe, we are looking at classic schizophrenia with delusions. Basic meds might not touch it.”

“Please help us.”

He leaned back and looked over her head as if thinking. “I can write a script and you can try it. It will probably be a waste of money. The direct route is inpatient care with electroconvulsive therapy.”

Emily stared. “Tie her down and shock her?”

“That is the first step.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

She shrank back. She could not let the kid go through that. In the end, she walked out empty-handed.

People flowed past on the street. She stood on the curb and drifted for a few minutes. The sun was fierce and needled her skin.

Parents passed with their children, on foot or on bikes, peeling off toward every corner of the city.

Emily narrowed her eyes. Something clicked. She spun around and bumped into someone behind her.

She did not stop. She turned again and walked straight back into the hospital.

Treatment sounded brutal, yet maybe a jolt would make Grace speak.

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