Page 21 of Road Trip With the Ghost Hunter

I shook my head frantically. I could still hear the echo of them. I could feel the wrongness of that place.

“Li. Talk to me.”

My eyes welled up with heat. This is why you don’t talk about the dead. This is why you leave that alone. I felt Lucas approach cautiously. I had to heed the warning. I needed to stay away. I didn’t want to disturb lao lao in her peace.

“Li,” his voice broke.

Finally, I looked him in the eye. “I can’t.”

“What did you see?” he asked, gently.

I shook my head. I swore there were animals out in that field. I could see dark silhouettes. And the eerie chokehold offear suffocated me and turned my insides cold. And in my head, familiar voices, my parents, my lao lao, other Chinese-speaking voices. I felt them warn me to leave.

“I’ll take us back,” Lucas said, carefully walking around me to open the car door. He waited for me to get inside. I needed to be away from him. His curious need seeped out of his pores. I couldn’t risk disturbing my ancestors’ spirits. I felt mad with confusion and fear.

“Come on, Li. I’m sorry I brought you. Let’s get back,” he tried coaxing.

Reason finally broke in. I couldn’t get back on my own. And this was the last place I wanted to be for another minute. I rushed around him to get into the passenger seat.

The drive back was dead silent except for the soft purr of the engine, the bumps along the road, and the occasional night sounds buzzing by. The inside of his car was thick with uncomfortable tension. My body was wound so tight.

The moment we got back to the hotel, Lucas had barely put the car in park when I jumped out and rushed to get my shit and go. Where? I didn’t know. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I shoved the few things I took out of my bag and packed them back up.

“Please. Talk to me. What happened out there?”

I shook my head and grabbed my suitcase and bags, then pushed past him outside to drop them at the side of the door. I was acting insane, I knew, but pure instinct was driving me in that moment.

“What are you doing?” he asked, following my every move while being careful not to get too close. Finally, he snapped as I tried to make it past him. “Talk to me!”

“No,” I yelled back. “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” I yelled. “I never should have talked about it.”

His expression was a mixture of anger and sympathy. “I shouldn’t have let you come. It was too much. You didn’t want to.”

“And you should have?” I challenged.

He flinched as if I’d struck him. “What?”

”Is that really what you wanted to experience? You want to face dark, haunting things in the night? For what? What is that supposed to accomplish?”

“I thought you understood,” he forced out, trying to keep from breaking.

“What would speaking with them one more time do? What would it fix, Lucas?”

He turned away from me, but I was too charged up not to have this confrontation. I chased him till he was forced to face me again. He huffed in annoyance.

“I had to get out of there,” I told him, my voice breaking again. “They warned me. I had to get far away. Why? Because stirring up that shit in hopes of finding lao lao won’t change that she’s dead.” My throat closed, but I pushed through. “They’re dead, Lucas. We can’t change it. We can’t bring them back.”

His face twisted, fighting emotions.

“We have to learn to live with it. This is reality.”

“ I can’t accept that,” he cried out in my face. But his anger, I knew, wasn’t at me.

“We have to.”

“No. There are answers out there. I need to find them.” He turned around to get into the car.

“No,” I yelled. If we were going back to that God-awful place, I wanted my stuff out. I ripped open the trunk of his SUV.

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