Last time on the Summoning, Chloe decides to follow the ghost up into the hidden attic in the dead of night, because nothing could go wrong with that plan.
She decides to compound the madness by leaving the light off. She does have reason, she’s worried about being noticed, but no one’s awake right now. The odds of someone just happening to wake up and noticing the lights are on is really low, and even if they do investigate the closed door at all she’d probably hear them open it, so her worry they’d overhear her talking seems odd. In contrast, if there’s anything she could walk into or a hole if the floor the ghost could very easily lead her over it. Priorities, Chloe.
The ghost finally talks again to just call her “girl”. Get to the point!
I took a deep breath. Whoever he was, he couldn’t hurt me. Even that janitor, as hard as he tried, couldn’t do anything more than scare me.
You don’t know that at all!
For one thing, it’s possible the janitor, while definitely a dick, just didn’t want to hurt you. He didn’t try to claw at you and curse your lack of bleeding, and he mostly seemed frustrated with you. For another, you have no idea how ghosts work. The fact one ghost couldn’t hurt you might just mean there’s different types of ghosts, or hurting people is something it takes time to learn. Remember, Liz’s polgertiest was able to chuck stuff around so you know it’s possible somehow. And you do know they can change forms, so it’s also possible they can cause general illusions and get you to walk into/off something. Or there might be something else that’s supernatural around that the ghost knows about and is leading you into – maybe talky ghosts have a symbiotic relationship with less intelligent poltergeists, like how in Exalted people have two souls and the lower one is a mindless beast.
I had the power here. I was the necromancer.
Current list of necromancer powers:
Ability to see ghosts
Ability to hear ghosts
Possibly ability to be seen/heard by ghosts.
Current number of necromancer powers that actually give any control or power to the necromancer: 0
I’m still holding out hope for zombie hordes, mind you, but if she’s got other powers you’d think Simon would have mentioned that instead of just saying she has the power of making ghosts want to chat with her. It doesn’t even seem to include ghostwhisperer powers, where she’s got supernatural charisma with them so they’ll actually be helpful.
She finally asks the ghost who it is. Then at last we have an explanation for why it isn’t being chatty like the rest. It tries to talk and she only hears one word at a time.
“. . . blocked . . .”
Something was blocking him from making contact? Leftover meds in my system?
“. . . basement . . . try . . .”
“Try that door again? Forget it. No more basements. No more attics. If you want to talk to me, do it on the main level. Got it?”
“. . . can’t . . . block . . .”
“Yes, you’re blocked. I think it’s something I was taking, but it should be better tomorrow. Talk to me in my room. When I’m alone. Okay?”
Now, it would be plausible to wonder if maybe the meds were doing anything. The problem is Chloe is assuming the meds are doing that by design, and the fact she’s so certain of it. What should happen here is that after she realizes the ghost is being blocked, she then considers the idea that maybe the medication is messing up her connection.
At which point, though, she should remember that she saw the ghost hand the first time before she went downstairs to get her meds. The ghost was having similar problems manifesting then. In order for the meds theory to fly, whatever stuff she took the day before that made her so doped up must ave been jamming the signal too, which in turn means she shouldn’t assume it wears off that fast.
Perhaps similarly annoyed by Chloe, the ghost disappears, She hangs out for a couple of minutes waiting to see if it’ll come back.
The Liz shows up instead.
“Bless you.” A giggle. “Do you know why we say that?”
Blood pounded in my ears as I recognized the voice. I could make out Liz, a few feet away, dressed in her Minnie Mouse nightshirt.
“It’s because when we sneeze, our soul flies out our nose and if no one says ‘bless you,’ the devil can snatch it.” Another giggle. “Or so my nana always said. Funny, huh?”
This all seems incredibly creepy in context, but apparently it’s just supposed to be Liz rambling. Also, notice how Liz does not seem to have any trouble appearing or speaking.
So, that means one of three things: Liz is something other than a ghost, age or some other factor internal affects a ghost’s ability to manifest and Chloe happens to be saddled with a sickly one here, or whatever the blocking affect is, it’s somehow targeted to only the original ghost. Maybe they’re on hallowed ground or something and the other ghost is buried in the basement, while Liz is somewhere else so the wards don’t affect her manifestation.
Liz still seems confused and like no time has passed since the last time. That doesn’t fit with the ghosts we’ve seen so far, which seem to have a decent grasp of before and after. Liz doesn’t appear to be conscious on her own, she’s only perceiving her surroundings when near Chloe. But maybe ghosts normally take a while to manifest properly.
Chloe asks if Liz sees a guy around. This is (perhaps unintentionally) quite clever – if Chloe’s right about the medication blocking things, or even if there’s some general block, another ghost should be able to see a ghost, and if she and Liz can hear each other fine, then Liz could relay questions.
So, naturally, Liz sees no ghost. We do know ghost s can interact because Hobbs in the prologue drove out the other ones, but we don’t know if they can see each other all the time or just when manifesting, so that doesn’t tell us anything about Liz’s own status.
“Chloe?”
This voice was sharp and I spun to see Mrs. Talbot feeling her way over to me.
Okay, I will grant Chloe not paying attention to her surroundings, because hey, her possibly dead friend just appeared. But how the hell did mommy nurse suddenly appear?
I turned back to Liz. No one was there.
And why did Liz vanish? The first time she vanished made sense, Chloe had just put an arm through her and she panicked. But she doesn’t know anything’s happened, so why would she disappear when another person she knows even better than Chloe appears?
“Chloe, what are you doing up here?”
“I—I—I—I thought I heard … a mouse. Or a rat. Something was moving around up here.”
“And you were talking to it?” Tori stepped through the attic doorway.
“N-no, I—I—”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure I heard you say ghost. And you were definitely talking to someone. It seems you aren’t quite as cured as you said you were.”
Tori’s appearance does not explain mommy nurse, because her own appearance doesn’t make sense. If Tori has supernatural tattling senses, she’d have been better served when Rae was photocopying confidential documents.
Chloe’s last sentence, incidentally, was just “ghosts”, which is not very incriminating.
We know Chloe lies very easily and about stupid things, because we just saw her spin a tale about how her aunt found out about Derek. It was a pretty complex one, actually, I probably wouldn’t have managed something half as good put on the spot like that.
And here’s how I could lie my way out of this:
I had a nightmare about a ghost in the attic. I haven’t seen anything since I’ve been taking the meds for the last two days, so I went up to prove to myself there wasn’t any ghost and I was cured.
Tori told me there was a ghost up here and I figured that would prove that they were just hallucinations, if I went up here and didn’t see anything. (Bonus – this casts doubt on how Tori “just happened” to notice me going upstairs.)
I did see a ghost. I wanted to ask it about when it died and then I could look it up and prove it was all a a figment of my imagination.
Ramble, a lot of apologetic “I know they’re not real but I just wanted to be sure, it was so awful when the burned ghost was yelling at me” stuff, try to gauge her mood and alter the story as it goes to emphasize whatever’s getting a good response, try to feel out exactly how much she overheard. The key points are that I wasn’t actually talking with a ghost, I was looking for it, and I was doing it to try to debunk the idea it’s actually ghosts. A bit weird? Sure, but the kind of weird people get when stressed, not the kind you need a padded room for.
Mrs. Talbot brought me a sleeping pill and waited while I took it. The whole time, she didn’t say a word to me, but as I heard her feet tapping double time down the stairs, I knew there would be a lot of words for Dr. Gill and Dr. Davidoff.
I’d blown it.
But Chloe, who’s been lying the entire time she’s been there, can’t say a word in her own defense, because plot.
When she gets back to the room, Rae immediately just knows this means Chloe really can see ghosts, because if someone with hallucinations walks off after the hallucinations, that means your pet theory the hallucinations are real is proven. Rae is pissed off Chloe kept this fact from her.
When I closed my eyes, I saw Liz again and my stomach clenched.
Had I really seen her? Talked to her? I struggled for some other explanation. She couldn’t be a ghost because I’d seen and heard her clearly—not like the ghost who’d called me up there. And she couldn’t be dead. The nurses had promised we could talk to her.
When could we talk to her?
I struggled to get up, suddenly needing to know now. But I was so tired that I couldn’t think straight and hovered there, propped up on my elbows, as the sleeping pill kicked in.
Something about Liz. I wanted to check. . . .
Terrible excuse is terrible. She already saw Liz before and already should be concerned about her. This would be a bit more workable if this was the first time Liz had appeared, because then I’d believe that she could forget about it because of the sleeping pill messing with her memory. But she’s been blowing off what happened this entire time already.