by Lynn, JB
RV shrugged. “Maybe, but I don’t know anything about the kinds of things you’re talking about. How do you know the skull was cursed?”
I chose my next words carefully. “My dad told me. He’d had it locked in a storage area, but then my brother found it, and Zippy stole it from him.”
RV blinked. “That sounds complicated.”
I didn’t tell her that the real complication was that the skull had belonged to Delveccio. “I don’t even know where to start,” I confessed. “I guess I could go over to Ian’s place, that’s my brother, to see if I can find the skull.”
RV nodded. “You do that, and I’ll see if I can find us a witch.”
5
I headed back to the main compound to gather the animals to go in search of the skull on Ian and Thurston’s property, but I was intercepted by Armani.
She walked up to me, shaking the box of Scrabble tiles.
“Pull,” she said.
“I have other things to do.”
She shook her head. “This feels important. Pull.”
Knowing it would be quicker just to do what she asked than arguing with her, I reached into the box and quickly pulled out seven tiles. I turned them face up in my palm, and we laid them out in alphabetical order. Six of them had letters, one of them was a blank, E, H, M, O, R, T.
Armani stared at them with intensity. “Homer T,” Armani declared. “Do you know a Homer T?”
I shook my head.
“How about a T Homer?” she asked. “It could be someone’s last name.”
I shook my head again. These wild guessing sessions that we had were not one of my favorite activities.
She stared at them for a long moment and then yelled out, “Hem Rot.”
“What in the blazes is Hem Rot?” God muttered from my bra.
“What did he say?” Armani asked, her eyes wide.
“He wants to know what Hem Rot is,” I told her. He wasn’t alone. I looked down at my palm for a moment and said, “Mother.”
Armani nodded. “That makes sense.”
“Because I have Katie back?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I think it’s literally about your mother.”
I wondered, instead, if it was about the mother of Susan, Loretta, Leslie and my own. I mean, she was the mother that was causing problems at the moment.
“You have to go see her,” Armani told me.
Instinctively, I took a step backward. I hated going to see my mother in the loony bin.
“Today,” Armani said, nodding her head with conviction. “I can feel it, you have to see her today. Now.”
“I—” I began to protest.
“I’ll take care of the kid,” Armani promised. “You need to go.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Armani acting as a babysitter for Katie. I mean, she’s a good friend and all, but she is a little out there, and I was worried about the influence she might have on my niece. At that moment, Susan came strolling back out to her car.
“Maggie’s going to go see Mary,” Armani announced.
I shot her a dirty look, not liking the way she’d now manipulated me into going, by telling that to Susan.
Aunt Susan beamed. “Oh, I’m so glad to hear that,” she said with a wide smile. “Would you like me to stay and keep an eye on Katie for you while you’re gone?”
I found myself nodding grudgingly. It was bad enough I had to go visit my mom, I really didn’t want to be worried about Katie while I was away. “If you don’t mind.”
“I never mind about taking care of family.” Susan grinned again and headed back into the house.
Armani gave me a sideways look. “You don’t trust me with her?”
“It’s not that,” I lied. “I’ve been trying to get back into Susan’s good graces and this was the perfect opportunity. You set it up for me, thank you.”
Armani blinked, obviously not sure if she’d just been insulted or complimented. “Well, now you have no excuse,” she said finally. “Go. Now.”
“I just need to tell the animals I’m going,” I told her.
She shook her head. “Don’t you dare walk back into that place, somebody else will grab your attention and you’ll never get out.”
“I can tell them,” Matilda offered.
I looked down at the oinking pig. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” she said. “I assume you want me to warn them not to leave Katie alone with Zippy?”
I nodded.
“What’s the pig saying?” Armani asked.
“She wanted to know if she could go with me,” I lied. It wasn’t as though I could tell Armani that I trusted Matilda to get a message to Piss and DeeDee more than I trusted her.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Armani said. “I would assume they have pretty strict rules about animals visiting.”
“Exactly,” I told her. “She’s going to stay here.”
Needing no further coaching, Matilda trundled toward the house, and I watched as she squeezed her fat little behind through the swinging cat door.
Feeling like I’d insulted my friend, and wanting to make up for it, I told her, “I talked to RV.”
“Is she going to be able to help you?”
I shrugged. “She’s going to try to find me a witch who can help.”
Armani’s jaw dropped open. “A witch?”
I nodded.
Wanting her to feel like she was an important part of this, I asked, “Do you think you can help her?”
“Find a witch?” Armani asked. “I don’t know any witches.”
I didn’t reveal to her RV’s theory that witches were a higher percentage of the population than anybody knew.
“She’ll probably need all kinds of supplies and whatever, too,” I said, totally spit-balling this theory. “Maybe you could help her with that?”
Armani nodded, eager to help. “You go visit your mom. I’m going to go help get rid of this evil spirit.”
She handed me the Scrabble tiles, then began to limp toward the camper. I stared at the game for a long moment. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this,” I muttered under my breath.
“Burn it,” God suggested from his hiding spot in my bra.
I couldn’t do that, so I just carried it up to the front porch and left it on one of the chairs. Then, thinking Armani was right, that if I went inside, I’d probably get caught by somebody, I got into my car.
“We’re off to the loony bin,” I said to God.
He scrambled up my bra strap, down my arm, and onto the dashboard. “It’s a mental health facility,” he lectured for the umpteenth time.
Rolling my eyes, I put the car into drive and headed toward the mental health facility where my mother resided.
“That may be,” I told him, “but some really crazy stuff happens there.”
6
Visiting my mother always causes me anxiety. Partly it’s because I never know which version of her I’ll see. Sometimes she doesn’t know who I am. Sometimes she’s being incredibly unreasonable and throws stuff at me. And sometimes, if I’m really lucky, she’s in a lucid state.
But that wasn’t the only reason why I got nervous visiting her. I always had the fear—well, ever since the car accident that had orphaned Katie and had left me with the ability to talk to animals—that I’d end up here, too. I mean, if you think about it, I talk to animals, I kill people, albeit only bad ones, and now I was totally buying into the idea that there was an evil spirit possessing my grandfather’s dog, and that I needed a witch to get rid of it. You’ve got to admit, that does sound kind of crazy.
I moved slowly down the hallways, trying to avoid eye contact with the residents that I passed.
Every once in a while, I’d hear maniacal laughter, or a heartbroken wail.
But these people, whose grip on reality was even more tenuous than mine, broke my heart.
God was uncharacteristically quiet as I made my way down the halls. When I reached my mother’s
room, I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders, bracing myself for whatever I’d find.
I knocked softly and then pushed the door open. She already had another visitor with her.
They both turned to face me, and I’m sure they saw my shocked expression.
“Maggie,” my mother said with a genuine smile. Recognition glowed in her eyes and warmth flowed from her tone.
I let out the breath I had held on a shaky sigh of relief. She knew me. “Hi, Mom.”
My gaze moved over to her companion. “Hi, Dad.”
“Don’t be mad, Maggie May,” he said, standing up. He’d been sitting on the bed with my mother. They’d been holding hands, like lovestruck teenagers.
I held up a hand to stop him. “I’m not mad.” I pulled the door closed behind me. “I’m sorry for interrupting.”
Technically, my father wasn’t supposed to be visiting my mother, and if Aunt Susan found out, she’d hit the roof. But my mother was happy, and lucid, and those two things made me glad to see them together.
My mother got to her feet and glided across the room, glowing with happiness.
I sucked in a breath, struck, as I sometimes am, by her ethereal beauty. For a moment, I flashed on RV. I’d labelled her appearance as “exotic” in my mind, but in that instant, I realized that wasn’t it. It was like she, like my mother, wasn’t quite of this plane of existence and was therefore more fragile and valuable than most.
I shook my head at the odd thought. RV was anything but fragile.
Mom took my face in her hands and peered at me closely. “Let me look at you,” she said as though she hadn’t seen me in years and years.
She often forgot that people had come to visit her. Not that I visited as regularly as I should, but I had been there more recently than she was acting. “You look tired,” she said with a disapproving cluck of her tongue.
“Life’s been busy,” I said, looking over her shoulder at my father. I wondered if she’d been told that the B&B had been blown up, that Herschel had re-entered everyone’s lives, or that Darlene had left town.
My father’s expression was unreadable, leaving me to traverse the land mines of my mother’s mind on my own.
My mother dropped her hand away from my face and took a step back. “Did you bring me anything?”
She’d never asked me that before. I stared at her, wondering what it was she was expecting from me.
“When Susan or Loretta or Leslie or Marlene come to visit me,” she said, “they always bring me something.”
I felt terrible, realizing that I had come empty-handed. The one time she’s completely lucid, I end up disappointing her. My heart sank.
“It was sort of a sudden thing,” I said apologetically. “I don’t have anything for you.”
“Excellent.” She clapped her hands for emphasis. “I get tired of being treated as an obligation of a family member.” I barely had time to feel relieved before she grabbed my hand and propelled me along with her. “Come, sit with us.” She patted the bed and sat down on my father’s lap. “How are you?”
Shrugging, I chose my reply carefully. “We have Katie back.”
My mother scowled. “Yes, I know, Darlene came to see me before she left.”
“She did?” I asked in surprise.
“She wanted to know what I thought she should do with Katie,” Mom said, waving a hand in the air.
“And what did you tell her?” I asked.
“Well, you have her, don’t you?” my mother asked.
I blinked, realizing she was partially responsible for Katie being returned to the family fold. “Thank you.”
Mom shrugged. “She didn’t want her. I knew you would.”
A lump rose in my throat as I realized my mom had made a difficult decision, choosing between her daughters about the fate of her granddaughter. I was touched that she had that much faith in me.
“Thank you, Mom.”
She leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “You’re a good girl, Maggie. You always were.”
My father watched the exchange silently, but I saw that his eyes shimmered with what looked like tears.
Unable to face him or her at the moment, I looked away.
“What’s bothering you?” my mother asked.
I clenched my fists, trying to control the wave of emotion that hit me. For most of my life, my mother had not been accessible, so she wasn’t the person that I was accustomed to confiding in, not that I hadn’t wanted to. It felt strange that she seemed to be so in sync with me now. And while I wanted to trust it, I knew it wouldn’t last.
“I needed to talk to you about something,” I said carefully. I was worried that what I was going to bring up would upset her and we’d lose the lucidity that she possessed at the moment.
“It’s about your grandmother, isn’t it?” my mother asked.
I gasped, shocked that she was able to infer that. “How did you know?”
“Your father told me,” she said matter-of-factly.
I lifted my gaze to Dad and saw that he was nodding at me encouragingly.
“Did you tell her about…?” I asked.
“About your grandfather?” He nodded.
“I know this is going to sound crazy.” I winced at my choice of words, considering where we were, but neither of them seemed to notice. “But I think that she’s haunting him.”
Mary frowned. “Isn’t that just like that bitch?”
I gasped again. My mother wasn’t in the habit of badmouthing anyone. And to hear her speak that way about her mother shocked me.
“Why did she hate him so much?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if that was the information that I needed from her, but it felt like the right question to ask.
Mom interlaced her fingers with Dad’s and hung her head. “Your grandmother was not a nice woman.”
“That hasn’t escaped my attention,” I told her.
She flashed a wry smile. “She probably belonged in a place like this more than I do.” She waved her hand to envelop the mental health facility.
I bit my tongue, not wanting to tell her that she definitely needed to be here. While she was fine at the moment, she had more non-lucid moments than lucid ones. She was a danger to herself and others, and this was the best place for her.
Mom leaned forward and put her hand on my knee. She peered deep into my eyes, and said, “Be careful, Maggie. She wants to destroy you. She’s always wanted to destroy us all.”
7
I was feeling really good as I left my mom at the mental health facility. It was really nice to have her lucid and pleasant, and my dad had been a joy to be around, too. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been around both of my parents and had such an enjoyable time.
“I really shouldn’t doubt Armani,” I said as I began to cross the parking lot toward my car.
“Why not?” God asked from his hiding spot in my bra. He, too, had contributed to the joy of my visit, by being silent the whole time.
“She was right about me coming to see my mother,” I said. “That’s the best visit I’ve had in forever.”
“Everybody has to get lucky once in a while,” God said.
“Look,” I said, “I know that you’re not the biggest fan of hers, but she’s been loyal to me and she gives great advice.”
“Oh, I actually like her,” God said. “All I’m saying is that it won’t serve you well to rely on others. You’re going to have to make decisions yourself.”
I refused to let him ruin my mood, so I began to whistle as I walked.
My lips were pursed when I saw someone standing by my car.
The tune died, and I found myself frowning.
“Gee,” the man said as I drew near. “You never look happy to see me.”
I shrugged helplessly at Gino and then offered a tentative smile. He was always coming to tell me that his boss wanted something from me. It wasn’t the easiest of relationships, despite the fact that he’d always been good and fair to me.
“Let me guess,” I said. “The boss wants to see me.”
Gino shook his head and grinned like a boy about to tell a secret. “No, actually, he’s busy preparing for a Skee-Ball championship.”
I found myself smiling back at him. “There’s a championship Skee-Ball match?”
Gino shrugged. “Guys with too much time on their hands. He just wants to know how your search for the skull is going.”
“Slowly,” I replied honestly.
He nodded and frowned. “A lot of people want to get their hands on that.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you,” I challenged.
He put his hands on his hips and gave me a hard stare. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to intimidate me or determine the seriousness of my question. My eyes flicked to the way his shirt clung to his arms, then back to his face before he noticed I was ogling him. Whatever he was trying to do, it probably wasn’t having the effect he wanted.
I ignored the butterflies in my stomach and met his gaze steadily.
“I’m hungry,” he said. “How about you?”
I didn’t know if this was literally his way of breaking bread with me or if there was some other message in what he was asking.
“I could eat,” I said carefully. Maybe he did notice me ogling him.
“Get in,” he said, jerking his chin in the direction of his car.
I slid into the mobster bodyguard’s car, wondering if I was making a big mistake. He got behind the driver’s wheel and glanced over at me. “Relax,” he said. “I guarantee you that you’re going to survive this trip.”
I chuckled nervously, uncomfortable that he’d guessed what I was thinking.
“Your paranoia serves you well,” he said, putting the car into drive. “I try not to take it personally.”
This was one of the points of contention in our relationship. I’d once believed he was arriving at a place to kill me, when he had really been there to save me. It had made things uncomfortable for us ever since.
He drove to a nearby hot dog shack. “You do eat meat?” he asked, eying me suspiciously.
