04 – Ghosts, Demons, and Changelings

Erika Walker stared at the ceiling of her room where a Red Hot Chili Peppers poster hung. The four strips of masking tape at each corner were losing their adhesiveness at a glacial yet still noticeable rate. The tape needed to be replaced. Soon. Otherwise, she would end up with the poster falling on her while she was sleeping.

Or, it would if she ever managed to get some sleep.

In the last five days, since becoming aware of her mother, Erika found it difficult to sleep. Most of her napping occurred in class. It just felt… dangerous to fall asleep when, a room over, some unknown thing had taken her mother’s place. It was probably a silly worry, at least for her own personal safety or that of Carter’s. After all, she had slept like usual for two full weeks before even noticing something was wrong. If the fake Leah wished them harm, it would have had plenty of chances.

So what did it want? If not to harm them, then just to, what, live life as Leah?

Erika didn’t like that. If something benign wanted to step into their lives, she probably would have been fine with it were it not for the whole replacing her mother thing. Just imagining a dozen horrible scenarios of what had happened to the real Leah made the base of her skull tingle with stress and tension. It filled her with an unpleasant static.

Was Leah still alive? It had been two—no, nearly three weeks at this point. Erika could only hope that this was some Harry Potter bullshit where her mother was kept locked up at the bottom of a trunk. Or, as Daniel had given her the idea, that she was somehow possessed in a way that she could be unpossessed.

Erika’s phone started beeping with her morning alarm. She slowly sat up and got out of bed. After a quick shower, she put on her makeup—taking a little less time than normal—and headed out to the dining room.

Leah was already out in the kitchen. She stood over a skillet, cooking up some scrambled eggs. She looked over with a smile and a tired albeit genuine “Good morning, Erika.”

She was hard to hate. It looked like her mother. Acted like her mother. Erika didn’t even feel the loss, sorrow, and mourning that would have come had her mother died in a car accident. Leah didn’t look dead. She stood right there. Hard to miss what wasn’t gone.

It was Thursday morning, three days after the Monday night she had tailed the Corolla around Chicago. Six days after the Friday when she realized something was amiss. There was no sign that the fake Leah knew she had snooped around or followed her to that church. Just a warm smile on her face.

“Eggs?”

“Please,” Erika said as she moved through the kitchen to toss some bread into the toaster.

Normal.

Everything was normal.

She could stop here. Easily. She doubted it would take much to convince Carter that their mother had simply watched them enough to figure out how to do the things that they could do. They could sit around and be a family. There might be some pretend at first but that would fade.

“Erika? You’re staring. Something on my face?”

Erika blinked. She hadn’t been staring at her mother, just off into the distance where Leah happened to be. Forcing a smile, Erika started slathering some butter onto her pieces of toast. “Just tired. Didn’t sleep well.”

“You need to stop staying up so late. And stop going to bed at random times and waking up at random times,” Leah said, genuinely upset as she gestured with the spatula. “Or else you’re going to have sleeping disorders by the time you’re twenty-five and probably have a stroke by forty.”

Despite herself, Erika couldn’t withstand rolling her eyes. “Thanks, mom. I’ll file that off in the box of all the useless advice I’ve gotten.”

“You…” Leah said, giving Erika a light swat. With her hand, not the spatula. She turned back to the skillet and dumped some of the eggs onto Erika’s plate. “You’re going to call me up when you’re thirty, telling me how much you regret not listening to me.”

It was normal. Not a single tiny expression on her face looked out of place. Her wan smile wasn’t strained or forced. Her eyes had that half-joking half-serious look to them that was completely genuine.

Normal.

“You can say ‘I told you so’ all you want if that call happens,” Erika said, her smile a little more forced. “If,” she repeated.

Leah gave an exasperated shake of her head, during which she noticed Carter standing over near the table. “Eggs, Carter?”

He stared, long and hard, before his eyes flicked over to Erika.

She gave him a slight nod of her head which he then repeated to Leah.

Breakfast with Carter was a little stiffer than usual. He was normally a reserved boy, happy and excitable when he saw things that he was interested in but otherwise fairly quiet. For the last near-three weeks, quiet was an understatement.

Leah didn’t comment outright, though Erika did note a few worried looks at Carter when she thought nobody else would notice.

He didn’t speak at all until he got into the pickup and they were well on the way toward his school.

“How do you do it?”

“It?”

“Smile at… her.”

At the stop light, Erika leaned her head back against the headrest, staring up at the roof of the truck in thought. This point, right here, would be the point to tell him that everything was normal. That the Leah who served them perfectly cooked eggs this morning was the same Leah who cooked for them their whole lives, just with the added ability to do supernormal things.

She was the one who had been doing investigative work. She was the one who had been out and about, tailing the Corolla and spying on Leah’s contacts. He would trust her judgment on the situation.

As the light turned green, she looked down to the road with a grim expression on her face.

“I smile to keep her off guard. To make her think that we don’t suspect things,” Erika said. She took a breath, fingers tightening around the steering wheel. “I’ll either find a way to bring our Leah back…

“Or I’ll find a way to break her replacement.”

---

Erika didn’t dislike school.

She didn’t particularly enjoy it either.

School, as a whole, was busywork. Something that needed doing not for any real purpose beyond the act of doing it. Erika wouldn’t say that she never learned anything. Those days were few and far between. Granted, she had likely missed a few of those days with how often she skipped class but odds were that she hadn’t.

Erika didn’t like busy work. She didn’t like feeling like she was wasting her time. There were so many better things to do with her days than sitting around with a worksheet quizzing over the dates of birth of historical figures. Exact dates didn’t matter in the greater scope of history. Especially not birth dates. Unless the figures were royal twins fighting for a throne, the parts of people’s lives that mattered generally came much later.

So Erika ignored the sheet in front of her.

She ignored the disapproving look Mister Willis was giving her as well.

That was the interesting thing about the school’s social hierarchy. It was easy to break it. An upstanding student who never missed school and always turned in assignments on time would get a heavy reprimand if he stepped a toe out of line. Meanwhile, Erika could do a nude hula dance on the other side of the line and receive nothing more than a disappointed shake of the head in return.

Erika’s fingers drummed along the surface of her phone. She wasn’t bothering anyone so nobody bothered her in return despite the flagrant usage of her phone in the middle of class.

Oddly enough, she was looking up history at the moment. Mythological history. Far more interesting, in Erika’s opinion, even if nothing came of it. The idea that changelings, doppelgangers, or even ghosts existed was a bit far-fetched in her opinion. Nonetheless, Daniel had planted a seed of thought in the back of her mind and she was at least willing to entertain it. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do in most of her classes.

Unfortunately, perusing the internet for valid information was an exercise in futility. Especially regarding supernatural topics. She had come across more scam sites trying to sell kooky healing crystals and dreamcatchers than she had thought could exist. All these ghost hunter sites with actual footage of bad infrared camera shots showing something maybe moving in the background for a single frame did not fill her with confidence.

One topic led to another and Erika somehow found herself watching obviously faked UFO videos when the bell rang to end class. She said a few pleasantries to Kassandra and Lewis in the halls before parting ways.

Brownstone High School operated on an A-B day schedule. Five classes a day, alternating every other day. Lunchtime came either before or after the third period, staggering the student body so the entire school’s population wasn’t trying to cram into the cafeteria at once. Today, she was supposed to go to a graphic and web design class.

Instead, she headed to the cafeteria.

It took a few minutes to scan the crowd. The more people that settled at the tables, the easier it was to look around.

Daniel sat at a circular table, unpacking a homemade lunch. For a minute, Erika just watched, wondering if the poor junior had no friends. With a sad shake of her head, she slipped through the cafeteria and took a seat next to him, dropping one elbow on the table as she angled herself to face him.

He stiffened, arms freezing with a sandwich half out of a paper bag. A rather decent-looking sandwich too with its Kaiser roll bun and plenty of meat and vegetables. Slowly, he looked over, eyebrows high on his forehead.

“Um. Hi?”

“Sup,” Erika said.

“I…” He paused and then frowned. “You… missed Home Ec yesterday.”

“Yeah, I was busy stalking a nun.”

He blinked twice. “A what?”

“Don’t worry about it. Nothing came of it. Didn’t even see her.”

And hadn’t that been a waste of a day? Several people went in and out of the Old St. Patrick’s Church. None were a nun and about as many looked suspicious.

“What.”

“Hey, listen. I had some questions about that thing we were talking about the other night.”

His eyebrows, already halfway up his forehead, managed to climb a little more as a look of confusion took over the rest of his face. The look of confusion died down almost immediately and he promptly narrowed his eyes. “The ghost thing? I told you, that’s nothing. My family believes it. Not me.”

“It is fun to theorize anyway, isn’t it?” she said, pulling out her phone. “I’ve been trying to think of things that would cause sudden changes in a person. Ghost possession, changelings, doppelgangers, and things like that.”

“Sudden changes? Have you tried seeing a doctor? Or going to therapy?” He trailed off, leaning over to see the notes she had taken on her phone. “This seems like a bit more than theorizing.” Daniel stared at her, eyes searching back and forth. “Is something wrong?”

Erika hesitated. It was one thing to toss ideas around, especially under the guise of mere curiosity or interest in the supernatural. But Erika had no idea what she was getting herself into. Professed ghost hunter or not, dragging someone else into this…

What was more, there was only one rule in the Walker household. Erika could get tattoos, stay out all night for a week straight, even rob an ATM or two and she would get nothing more than a disapproving frown. But telling people about her or Carter? That was a guaranteed ticket into far worse than a talking-to.

Leah wasn’t her or Carter, but the situation felt… close. It was a strange thing that she assumed other people didn’t experience. That certainly counted. It wasn’t even that she was worried about reprimands from Leah at this point, but Leah had always insisted that if the wrong people found out about what they could do, bad things would happen.

“Do you need help?” he asked, voice serious, cutting into her thoughts. “Dad always says to ask that. Lots of people won’t answer otherwise, especially if something strange is going on.”

Erika gave Daniel a flat look, finding herself a little dazed as she focused on the world around her once again. “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that last part. At least not until I’ve answered.”

“Well… do you? Need help, that is.”

Erika nibbled on the inside of her cheek. It took a long moment to respond. When she did, she shook her head. “Just need someone to bounce ideas off,” she said with a smile. “Although, tomorrow I was thinking—”

“Hey, Dan. Who’s this?”

Erika blinked and looked up. She felt a bit bad for assuming the worst about poor Daniel. He did have friends after all. A group of three sat at the table—all of whom had cafeteria-provided lunches and thus had needed to wait in line.

“This, uh… Erika. A senior in my Home Ec class.” Daniel sucked in a breath and leaned over, whispering. “Don’t say a word to them. I’m normal.” He cleared his throat and gestured toward each of the three in turn. “Liz, Marc, and Michael.”

Liz, a young woman with immaculate eyebrows and olive-toned skin took a seat with barely a nod of her head in acknowledgement. Michael sat to her immediate left. He was a nerdy white guy whose head probably scraped most ceilings. Marc sat a few spaces away, his weight bumping the table. He only had an apple and a drink on his tray.

“Hello,” Marc said, looking down at his meal with a frown.

“Nice shirt,” Erika said, nodding.

Marc glanced down further, looking at his shirt, before he looked back up to Erika. He had an Outsiders band shirt. One of the limited-run shirts for their tour. He might have even been at the same concert that she had been at a few weeks back. Over the top of it, he wore an odd necklace. A bit of rope was bent in half and tied across the middle, leaving a loop on the upper side, connected to a chain around his neck.

“Thanks.”

She smiled at him. It was a bit of a forced smile. Although she had nothing against them, they were a major damper on her goals if Daniel didn’t want to talk in front of them. So she stood. “Was just checking in with Danny here about what I missed yesterday. Kool-Aid popsicles,” she added as an aside. “Don’t take Home Ec, kids.”

“Wait,” Daniel said, placing a hand on her wrist before she could head off.

Erika fought to suppress a flinch. He hadn’t even grabbed her. Just touched. She carefully pulled her arm closer to her side.

Daniel didn’t seem to notice. “You going to be in class tomorrow?”

“Eh. Fifty-fifty. Depends on if I find anything better to do.”

“We’re a month into school and you’ve missed at least half of the classes. Are you even going to graduate? There is an attendance requirement, you know.”

“Yeah, don’t care.” At his look, Erika sighed and added, “I got my GED at the start of last year. I’m only here to take classes that interest me, network with interesting people, and because I didn’t really want to be a sixteen-year-old college student.”

“Can you even get a GED at sixteen?”

Erika glanced over to the speaker. Liz. The woman had barely looked at her when she first sat down. Now she was leaning in, listening intently.

“There were a few hoops to jump through,” Erika said after a moment. “And technically I’m not supposed to be enrolled here while also having a GED. The school district has to handle a few tens of thousands of students though. One or a hundred slipping through the cracks isn’t surprising. The system is a bit broken.”

Liz put on a frown, sticking a fork into her potato bowl and mushing it around.

Erika shrugged, wondering if Liz was interested in getting out of school as much as Erika had been. It certainly was a load off her back, not having to pay attention to worksheets or bad teachers. But Erika didn’t say anything more. She started to head off…

Only to freeze as she noticed someone at the opposite end of the cafeteria.

“Oh god…” Erika dropped back into her seat and ducked her head, trying to avoid notice.

“What?” Daniel asked, looking alarmed.

“Nothing. Just don’t draw attention and—”

“Huh. Is that a teacher here? She looks familiar.”

Erika’s eyes widened in horror as she looked over to Daniel. Sure enough, his eyes were on the woman swiftly approaching their corner of the room. “Oh god,” she said again, this time directed at Daniel.

“Erika!” the woman called out. Her voice was far, far too loud and she started calling from halfway across the cafeteria. She had to be doing this on purpose.

Not sure if she was grimacing or forcing a smile, Erika turned as the woman approached. “Hey, mom. Fancy seeing you here.”

“Erika, I was getting ready for work when I noticed you left your wallet on the counter,” she said, holding up a thin metal wallet. “So I came to drop it off.”

“You could have left it with the front office,” Erika said through the most forced smile she had put on yet. At the same time, she patted down her vest pockets and found her phone but no wallet.

Erika could have gotten it herself. At any time. Leah knew that. As long as it was plausible to have it in her pocket—and really, where else would a wallet be?—Erika didn’t need it delivered. So what was the ploy here? A subtle threat?

“And miss out on seeing my daughter’s friends? Hello,” she said, turning to three people who barely knew her and Daniel. “I’m Leah. Erika’s mom.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Erika said before any of them could say anything. “Lovely meeting you too. My wallet?” she asked, holding out her hand.

Leah lowered it toward her but snapped it back at the last minute, tapping it against her chin in faux thought. “You know, it’s funny. I did go into the front office to see what class you were in. Imagine my surprise when you weren’t there.”

“And just imagine Reece’s surprise when you’re late to work because you were harassing me,” Erika said. She stood and broke her wallet out of her mother’s loose grip, slipping it into her pocket in one smooth motion.

Leah didn’t respond for a long moment, staring down at her fingers with an odd look of confusion on her face. The moment passed and she looked back to Erika with an exaggerated pout. “Fine. Fine,” she said with a good-humored chuckle. “But if you’re going to school, you should go to school.”

Erika shrugged, gesturing around her as she retook her seat.

“You know what I mean, young lady.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get going.”

Leah pursed her lips and then smiled. “It was nice meeting you,” she said to the rest of the table. With that, she turned and walked out of the cafeteria.

Erika drew in a deep breath, closing her eyes. That hadn’t gone so terribly. Odd, yes. Out of the ordinary, yes. Erika didn’t remember forgetting her wallet. Then again, she hadn’t had cause to use anything in it today. It wasn’t a usual thing but it wasn’t impossible.

“Embarrassed about your mother?” Michael asked, making Erika open her eyes.

“On so many levels. I love my mom. But…” Erika opened her eyes and looked off toward the open doors of the cafeteria. “I’m just never sure what that woman will do.”

Daniel’s pensive look caught her attention when she looked back at the table. He was also staring off in the direction her mother went. She moved herself into his line of sight and popped an eyebrow.

“Notice something?”

“I… Is your…” He pressed his lips together and shook his head.

Now he had her interest. Did the King family have some supernatural sensing ability? Could he detect whatever possessed her mother? “Spit it out,” she said.

“I just…”

“Say it. I’m not going to be upset.”

He looked back to his other friends and then motioned to her. She leaned in and gave him her ear. “Is your mom…” he started, whispering.

“Yes?”

“Is she Angel Skye?”

Erika pulled back, keeping her face carefully neutral. She had said that she wouldn’t be upset. So she wouldn’t be upset.

Judging by the cringe on Daniel’s face, she wasn’t as good as she thought at keeping her emotions level.

“Oh god,” she said, standing. “I… I need to go. Have fun… Oh god…”

There was only one reason someone would know that name. While Erika didn’t care about her mother’s former profession, she really very much absolutely did not need to know who else knew that name. She headed straight to her graphic design class in the hopes that some busy work might distract her from this whole lunch hour.