In the Midnight Hour

by Katrina VanBuskirk

  He started to recite the charm that would wake him up.

  But then the ghost said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Remy kind of stopped at that. “What do you mean?”

  “You forgot who I am,” she said angrily. “How could you forget?”

  “I’m serious,” Remy said, his annoyance returning. “I don’t remember you at all. I’m sorry.”

  “Well then. Maybe you remember the mutilation case? In Missouri?”

  Remy really stopped. He stared at her for a long moment.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Are you shitting me? You’re ….”

  “Yes. I am.” Her voice gurgled, a ghost’s way of showing strong emotion, barely suppressed.

  “Oh my God.”

  “So you do remember.”

  Remy did not want to.

  “You need to come back to Missouri,” she said. “It’s happening again, but now other actors are in play.”

  “Like hell I’m going back to that goddamned state,” Remy said.

  The ghost whispered a laugh. Then she said something that chilled Remy to the marrow.

  “Everything old is new again.”

  Remy stood there, trying to process this saying that he’d hated since he was a child and his parents were on the run. He’d grown into a man here in the safety of southern California.

  He thought he’d been done with Missouri, with everything it had done to his parents and family.

  But now the mayor of Los Angeles was sending his goons after Remy. He needed a place to lie low until this all blew over.

  “So … I’m going back there again,” he croaked.

  The ghost grinned.

  “You’re going to hell,” she said.

  A Rare Bird

  Sarae walked along the endless row of soybeans, the bean plants brushing her knees as she followed the long furrow. At least the night was cool, and the moon, a mere sliver, had set at 10 p.m., so she could work by starlight.

  The glittering stars in their constellations dusted the velvet-black night sky, and a cool breeze blew over the silent world, not even enough to rustle the soybean leaves. A heron croaked far away from the trees that lined the Missouri River, and cars quietly whooshed by on the interstate five miles off.

  The world, so beautiful and so lonely.

  She’d been walking for hours, and she was no closer to having found the trapped dead who had called her. Yet she didn’t grudge the walk, for the night was so beautiful.

  “Are you sensing anything?” she said quietly to her screech owl, who was fluttering here and there above the endless field of soybeans that must have been a solid half-mile wide.

  “It’s still fuzzy, but you’re in the right area,” Zoe sang in reply. The screech owl had a tiny voice, but hearing her speak made Sarae smile. It still kind of blew her away to be talking to an owl.

  Usually the trapped dead who called to her were locals, and most of them had died in the last 50 years, though some called her from up to 200 years ago—pioneer families, Natives, fur trappers—who’d died in this part of northwest Missouri.

  But this voice was especially faint—ancient—like a radio playing softly in the next room.

  “Find me,” he had whispered in her sleeping mind. She’d awakened with a gasp, and her owl’s eyes had gone wide and black in astonishment.

  She’d already walked part of the soybean field the previous night, looking for him. Now she was walking more of it. At least the rows were straight, so she knew she wasn’t covering the same ground over and over.

  Her owl, Zoe, was hunting for mice and snakes – precious few in this field drenched in insecticides and other chemicals.

  “I wouldn’t eat any of those,” she told her.

  “I’m not,” said the little screech owl. “I’m just bored.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Just then, Sarae felt something.

  “Zoe!” she called, halting among the soybeans.

  She heard a trilly small whinny from a little distance away. That was Zoe, flying toward her in the moonlight, though Sarae couldn’t see anything in the darkness and couldn’t hear her soft-feathered wings.

  But Sarae felt a little push of wind from her wings, a little burst of air as Zoe backwinged to land neatly on her shoulder. Sarae always had a little patch of tough leather sewed there to protect her shoulder from the owl’s sharp, strong talons, but even now she felt the prickle of the claws that curved in from her landing.

  The little owl turned her head, tufts up and alert. “Keep walking forward.”

  Sarae moved forward in the dark, soybean leaves brushing her at her knees. She felt, or sensed, a tiny wrinkle in the air before her.

  Wow, she thought, reaching out her hand to delicately touch it. Usually the trapped dead were much, much easier to find. But this one … she’d never sensed anything this old. White history here in northwest Missouri began only about 250 years ago. The whites had erased all other history, erased it again and again until nothing of it remained.

  Her stomach dipped – excitement, fear. She crouched and began getting her items out of her backpack, laying them in the correct order on the ground for untrapping the dead. Zoe, balanced on her shoulder, overseeing the operation, her little beaked face looking from item to item in silent approval.

  Once everything was in place, Sarae took a breath and stood, touching once again the wrinkle in the air. It was impossible for her to say what trapped the ghost here, and for so long. The wrinkle felt like rain-washed quartz under her fingers, cool and unnaturally smooth. It brought a thrill of ancientness.

  “How on earth is he still here?” Sarae whispered to Zoe, taking another deep breath. “Trapped here for a thousand years. How am I the first one to find him?”

  She thought of Roman rings of gold, buried in some farmer’s field and only coming to light after three thousand years. The world was a huge place, even in small-town rural Missouri.

  Sarae took a deep breath. “Zoe, get me started, will you? I’m starting to freeze up.”

  Zoe hooted, a call that pierced the veil between the worlds. Her tremolo voice invoked the spirit and cut a path into the world Beyond.

  Then Sarae raised her voice in song, an invocation calling the spirit. In a tone solemn and measured, she bade it speak to her.

  A glimmer of light traveled down through the air, like the glimmer of sun upon the water. Then another one, the glimmers weaving together. Sarae held her breath. She felt Zoe on her shoulder, alert.

  A pair of gnarled hands reached out through the glimmers and slowly parted the veil. An old black-haired man stepped through, squinting and shading his eyes as if even the moonlit night were too bright for him. Skin darkened by years of sun, obsidian eyes, and he trembled as he drank in the world. He blinked up at the stars, slowly shaking his head.

  “Ah! I always love stepping through the veil,” he breathed.

  His language was like nothing she’d ever heard, a lilt that was lovely to listen to. This is a language that has been silent for hundreds of years, she thought, with a pang of grief at the loss.

  “I am Sarae Cervantes,” she said.

  A broad smile spread across the man’s face, deepening its wrinkles. “I have a name, but I keep it for myself. You may call me Roan.”

  Sarae couldn’t help but stare in wonder at this man, this ghost, who was a thousand years old. The grand canopy of stars, the owl sitting on her shoulder all attentive, and Sarae not hardly daring to breathe, listening intently to him, not wanting to miss a word.

  She got flustered and bowed. “How is it possible that I’m talking to you, sir?” She involuntarily switched to high formal, as if addressing royalty. “I am only a girl of seventeen. Surely there have been many others, long before my thieving ancestors’ time, who have been more worthy of this honor than I. How is it possible that I have been the only one to have discovered you, across so many centuries?”

  “You’re not,” the man said. H
e seemed so alive that she couldn’t think of him as a ghost. “I have met others, as well.”

  “There are others like me? Others who speak to the dead with the help of owls?” Sarae exchanged a glance with Zoe, who was sitting very quietly. Sarae still didn’t know how Zoe’s presence made it possible for her to see and communicate with the dead.

  “Yes,” said the man. He seemed very amused by her question, though in a gentle way, and his dark eyes crinkled. “The last person I met before you – a ghost man, white – insisted he was going to ‘fix my plight.’ He started chanting before I could manage to get a word in edgewise. So I just softly faded away before his eyes.” The old man raised his two worn hands with a smile. “I waved to him like this as I vanished. He did not like that. He did not like that at all.”

  Sarae smiled. But then she said, “Who was this man? Might I know him?”

  The old man stuck a tongue in his cheek and looked up at the stars as if charting something. “Dubious. I spoke to him about seventy-five years ago.”

  Sarae slumped a little, as if wilted. “But, you called me. How am I supposed to help you?”

  “I regret to say that I didn’t call you here for help,” he said.

  Sarae was agog. “Really?”

  “Oh, no. I simply wanted to meet you. See who the local Strigithanos is.”

  “Strigithanos?” Sarae struggled to remember her Latin classes. “Owl-death? So I’m a … Strigithanos?”

  He smiled. “Yes. For you with your owl free the dead from where they have been trapped. The trapped dead, as it were.”

  “But are you one of the trapped dead?” she asked.

  “No,” he said gently. “I am a rare bird. I stay here on this earth because I do not want to leave. My reasons, like my name, shall go unspoken here. But like the great river, and like your magic, my reasons have slowly changed over time. I called you because I wanted to talk – to hear a voice from the present.”

  Sarae didn’t want to leave him, but she was starting to get sleepy. She suppressed a yawn. “I still need to free you now, don’t I?”

  “No, young lady. You will do no such thing. I choose to stay.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Sarae was certainly not going to argue with a thousand-year-old gentleman on this. “Um, will I find you again?”

  “You will find me when I want to be found.” The man raised both worn hands and waved – and slowly began to fade.

  Sarae laughed and waved as he faded.

  He burst into laughter. “You are a gentle one. You might be just what the world needs right now – if you and the other Strigithanos don’t kill each other first.”

  “Wait, what?” Sarae cried. “The other Strigithanos? Kill each other?”

  Roan’s smile glimmered in the air. And then he was gone.

  Be It Ever So Humble …

  Sarae was so tired she could hardly see straight as she drove home in her old pickup truck, rolling down the deserted highway at 3 a.m. Yet she was overflowing with jubilation. “That was amazing! I can’t even comprehend how amazing that was. Oh, my gosh.”

  She yawned for so long that she had to finally force her eyes open to be sure she wasn’t driving off the road. She rolled down both windows, trying to stay awake. The cool night air blew in, sending her hair flying.

  “I hope you’re watching the road,” Zoe said in her little owl voice with a flutter of her wings. She sat on the back of the seat, her feathers getting adorably fluffed in the wind.

  “I’m half-tempted to pull over and take a nap, but I’m so close to home,” Sarae said. “Do you think he’ll want to talk to me again?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m a screech owl. I just fly around and eat mice.”

  She drove into the tiny village of Smith’s Creek, population 52, and climbed out of her truck, almost ready to lie down on the yard and go to sleep.

  “Nighty-night,” Zoe said, flying past her into the darkness around her house, where she vanished to do some hunting. Sarae gave Zoe nice morsels to eat – the screech owl was crazy about chicken nuggets – but she still liked to fly out into the forest and catch her own.

  The night air was alive with the trills of field crickets in the grass. She breathed deeply of the spicy scent of the forest up in the hills. Her favorite fragrance. She’d lived here for a year, and was still a little frightened of the quiet of the country. But she was growing to love the sounds and smells of where she lived.

  Sarae came in, locking the door behind her and turning on her light.

  She said, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place ….”

  She sucked in a breath. Couldn’t believe that had come out of her mouth.

  Her house was simply decorated. A few Degas prints on the wall, some houseplants by the window, a big bookshelf full of books she’d brought with her from Buffalo. She’d been reading Greek plays since she’d come here. She had left home a year ago.

  Be it ever so humble ….

  She’d been ready to go to sleep before she’d said that. Now she was wide awake.

  And her heart ached. If only she had somebody in this world to cling to. Somebody to love.

  She’d lived much like a hermit over the last year, and had been too shy to seek out any men to bring home with her, even for the night. But she dreamed about it, and her dreams left her drenched with unfulfilled desire, and nobody to work it off on.

  But there was also nobody to talk to. Sex was no good if you couldn’t share your heart with the one you were making love with.

  Okay, scratch that. Maybe it could be. But she wanted a friend and a lover.

  Sarae snapped on the light, sat down at the kitchen table, and pulled her plate with her lemon cake over to her. Aimlessly, she started eating as she scrolled through her texts on her phone.

  Her cousin, the county sheriff, had sent her a couple of texts.

  Not much tonight. A rooster has escaped in Smith’s Creek. Be on the lookout. He’s a mean one.

  Sarae smiled wanly.

  We have a few dogs at the pound if you want to see if you can find their owners, Ava added in a later text. Emily has a softball game tonight so if you feel like stopping by, we’d like to see you.

  Sarae smiled a little more. Her cousin did worry about her. She couldn’t do much about the softball game – that had happened while she was on her way to the soybean field. But she could stop by the pound later. She looked at the clock. 3:30 a.m.

  Ava was the reason that Sarae had come out here in the first place. Ava was the county sheriff, and her cousin. They’d always been close when they were kids. Then she got married and moved away, and quickly put her criminal science degree to work out here in the wilds of Missouri. Even though she’d been there for ten years, and a Sheriff for seven, a lot of people still considered her an “out of towner.”

  She and Ava had kept in touch, and after everybody in Sarae’s family had died last year, Ava had offered her a place in her garage apartment. Sarae had sold everything she’d owned and left the graves of her family behind.

  After what she had seen at the burial service, she was not going to stay in town another second.

  But she’d met Zoe the night after that awful scene. Sarae was lying out in the back yard that night in the dark, hyperventilating, when the little owl had fluttered down to her. Just like that. She thought she was dreaming, or, more to the point, still in that nightmare of loss.

  The owl had said, “Sorry. I know it’s a bad time.”

  “Why the fuck is an owl talking to me!” Sarae had yelled, because her mind had pretty much melted by this point. She wanted to run inside and slam the door and cry until she passed out, or fell asleep. But Zoe was patient.

  “I’ve done this before,” the owl said.

  “But why? And for who?”

  “For whom,” said Zoe pedantically. “I’ve helped those who can speak to the dead.”

  And she’d explained. Sarae was from a long line of witches who freed trapped spirits, back in the days of S
alem. And Zoe would help her.

  When Sarae had moved to Missouri, Zoe went with her. So many of the trapped dead had crowded her in New York state. Missouri was much more peaceful.

  But the little owl couldn’t save her from her own dreams.

  * * *

  She was in the old vacant lot down the street from her house, where she used to play when she was a kid. She turned side to side, frantic. She didn’t want to come back here. She didn’t want to come back. Catastrophe was unfolding. She began to run, though her feet were so heavy, and it was coming for her.

  Then she was back in the soybean field, much to her relief. But instead of the old man, a number of dead were talking to her, pulling on her arms, asking questions she couldn’t make out.

  The dead could approach Sarae in her dreams. When she was awake, they were tethered to the place where they’d died – those that hadn’t moved on, that is. But her dreams were where they’d call to her for help.

  One of them was an insistent woman from the 1980s that Sarae knew well. Heather. She had shoulder pads, clothes in flowery pastels, and a big nimbus of poofy hair that must have required a whole can of Aqua-Net to stay that huge. Not safe for the environment, I bet, Sarae thought.

  “You need to help my girls,” Heather said.

  Sarae sighed, trying not to show that she was sighing. What was wrong with people, that they just couldn’t ask politely, like my mama said ….

  She swallowed. Used to say.

  “So, what happened to your girls this time?” Sarae asked. Heather was the perpetually worried ghost who hung around the cabin where she’d died. Now some girls visited there now and then, and she constantly fretted over them. “You know, if you let me free you, you wouldn’t have to worry about these girls. You’d be enjoying sweet Elysian peace.”

  Heather glared, her corpse look beginning to show through her makeup. “You don’t believe me,” she said, her voice beginning to gurgle. “You never believe me. And you complain too much. So I’ve called somebody else. Somebody who’s more prompt.”