I shook my head and kept working. “In a minute.”
Sweat rolled down my back despite the cooling temperatures. The sun burned straight above us, robbing us of any shade, but didn’t seem to penetrate the canopy of the surrounding woods. Whatever silent birds or animals who lived in the trees watched us from the darkness, their eyes boring into the back of my head as I leaned in and out of the hole, bringing up handful after handful of earth.
Just when I was thinking I’d have to crouch in the hole to dig any deeper, my fingers brushed against something harder than the surrounding dirt. The nervous tension in my belly tightened and a low buzzing filled the air.
“Here!” I called.
Kit and Yuri leapt to their feet. Mark brought the camera closer to me as I lifted our prize out of its resting place. It was a wooden box, about the size of a Rubik’s cube and very light in my hand. As I got to my feet, the buzzing grew louder, drowning out the sound of Kit’s applause.
“Do you hear that?” I shouted.
Before they could answer, my nausea crescendoed. Bile filled my mouth, and I collapsed to the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Drink,” Penelope ordered, passing me a water bottle from the driver’s seat of her Lexus.
With shaking hands, I struggled to do as she commanded. My body didn’t want to swallow, and when I finally convinced it to, the cold water slid painfully down my burning throat. I moaned and slid down in the car’s passenger seat, willing myself to keep the water down. Penelope had thrown the words “emergency room” and “IV fluids” around when she’d first arrived and found me vomiting into the hole I’d spent so long digging. She’d shepherded me to her car, drowning out my weak protests with a series of orders to sit down and put my head between my knees.
Through her windshield, I watched a city employee use a tow truck’s hydraulic arm to hoist one end of the Soul Searcher’s van into the air. The front of the vehicle crunched inward where it’d slammed into the tree. I winced, thinking about what could have happened to Kit and Mark’s legs if the crash had been any more serious.
“We should take her to the ER in Moyard. It’s the closest one,” Penelope told Yuri.
He stood by the driver’s side door, arms folded across his chest. “I don’t think it’s heatstroke. Her pulse is steady and—feel her forehead—her temperature seems normal.”
She rested a cool hand above my brow for a moment and grunted. “But she’s been vomiting and her shirt is soaked through.”
My annoyance at being talked about as though I wasn’t there was dwarfed by the layer of exhaustion that pressed down on every muscle in my body. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to raise my voice above the beeping of the tow truck, so I stayed silent. I’d save that energy in case I needed to revive my protests against being taken to the hospital, where there would surely be needles involved.
“I’ve seen this before,” Yuri said. “Her abilities are extremely powerful. If this place is truly as ‘cursed’ as they say, she could be feeling that force so strongly that she’s manifesting symptoms in response to it. We should get her home and see how she does.”
There was no further argument from Penelope. Once the van was securely hoisted, the rest of the Soul Searchers piled into the backseat of her car, and we followed the tow truck up the dirt road. I glared suspiciously at the trees as we passed them, sure we would crash again. It wasn’t until we were cruising down the paved backcountry road toward the highway that I realized I’d been bracing my feet against an imaginary brake pedal under the dashboard.
I hoped Yuri was right and I’d start feeling better the farther we got from Cambion’s Camp. There were improvements. We stopped at a gas station off the highway for some soda to settle my stomach and some antacids to calm the burning in my throat, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was following us from the clearing. No matter how far we drove, a faint buzzing tugged at my mind, teasing the back of my skull. I imagined something trying to get inside my brain and shuddered.
“Are you okay?” Penelope asked.
“Fine,” I said, not trusting myself to string multiple words together. The more I opened my mouth, the greater the risk I’d need to use the gas station grocery sack Penelope had pointedly left at my side.
“Try to get some rest,” she suggested. “We have a long way to go.”
I took her advice, dozing lightly for the rest of the drive. Every few minutes, a bump in the road or a snatch of conversation from the back seat jolted me awake, but I slept enough that the journey passed quickly. Soon, we passed the painted wooden sign that welcomed visitors to Donn’s Hill, and a flash of guilt burned in my chest.
Something was tracking us, and we’d led it straight to our home.
Graham’s father’s truck and trailer were parked in the Primrose House parking lot when we returned. Tears welled up in my eyes at the sight, pouring down my face when his tall figure burst out the back door of the house and he jogged to Penelope’s car.
“Mac!” He threw open the passenger door and gathered me into a hug before I’d even unbuckled my seatbelt. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” My words were muffled against his shoulder, but I meant them. I immediately felt better with him there. Even the buzzing against my brain was more muted, as though Graham provided a physical shield between me and the thing that’d followed us here.
“Striker’s waiting for you,” he said. “She’s been screaming at me since I got home.”
He helped me out of the car, and I threw an apologetic glance at my team. They had to deal with unloading the equipment from Penelope’s trunk and ferrying it up to Kit’s apartment. Some of it was already stacked on the lawn, and—
Something I’d seen registered in my mind, and I whipped my head back toward the pile of equipment so fast I heard a pop in my neck. On top of our microphone case sat the small, wooden jewelry box from the clearing.
I sagged against Graham. “That’s been in the trunk this whole time?”
“What?” He followed my pointing finger with his eyes. “The wooden thing?”
It had been following me. I’d assumed something from the clearing had been trailing us under its own power, but we’d given it a lift. It’d been ten feet behind me the entire ride home, poking and scratching at my mind from the trunk. Nausea welled up inside me once more, and I vomited clear soda onto the lawn.
“It’s okay.” Graham stroked my back. “You’ll be okay.”
I shook my head, panting between dry heaves. “Don’t let them… bring that… inside.”
“Bring what?”
“Box.” I wagged a hand in the pile's direction. “Wooden box.”
“Here, sit down.” He led me to the back steps before disappearing into the house. He returned a minute later with a glass of water. “Sip this slowly.”
The back door opened again and Amari joined us on the steps, crouching down beside me. “Mac! Are you okay?”
With a few dozen yards of lawn separating me from the box, I was able to honestly nod. At this distance, I could still sense the box. I felt it strongly enough that I was sure I could point to it even if they blindfolded me and spun me around a few times, Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey-style. But my head was clear, and the nausea was fading.
“That box… it’s like it’s radioactive,” I croaked. My nausea might have dissipated, but my throat still needed to recover from the most recent dose of bile.
“What box?” Amari asked.
Graham saved me from having to strain my voice any further. “I think it’s something they brought back from their investigation. I was about to go ask Kit about it.”
“You stay here with Mac. I’ll see.”
As she walked across the grass, Graham settled onto the steps and put an arm around me. I leaned into him and watched Primrose House’s newest resident sneak up on my best friend. Kit was distracted, pulling cases out of the car, and Amari was able to get right behind her and jab her in th
e kidneys.
Kit spun around, and her annoyed expression immediately brightened. She shrieked in delight, yanking Amari into a hug. Amari pulled backward, cupped Kit’s face in her hands, and demanded to know what’d caused the spatter of cuts and scratches.
“I didn’t realize Amari would be back today,” I said.
“She wanted to surprise Kit.” Graham smiled. “She was a little cranky when she showed up this afternoon and you were all gone.”
“Do you think she’ll stay in Donn’s Hill long?”
“I hope she will. It’s nice to see Kit so happy.”
Kit was relating the story of the van crashing into the trees with an oddly elated expression, gesturing dramatically. I couldn’t help but laugh as she grabbed the broken boom arm out of Penelope’s trunk and reenacted our labors in the clearing. She used the stick to point to the little wooden jewelry box, explaining to Amari that the box matched the description Horace had given me.
Amari picked up the box, turning it over between her fingers. Squinting, she scratched at one of the sides. Her eyes widened, and she threw the box to the ground and crossed herself.
“Hey!” Kit moved to pick up the box, but Amari threw out an arm and stopped her.
“Leave it.” Her sharp voice carried across the yard. “This box must not come inside this house, or any other.”
“Why not?” Yuri demanded. “What is it?”
“It’s a Dybbuk Box,” Amari said. “If you keep it, you will die.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Five of us crammed in and around the window seat in the turret of my apartment. It was physically the farthest we could be away from the box in the backyard without leaving Primrose House, and I was too tired to go anywhere else. Cool air breezed through the open windows, carrying in the chirps and whistles of nearby birds.
I leaned against Graham on one half of the bench, and Yuri lay on his side across from us. Kit and Amari had carried up two bungee chairs from Kit’s apartment that looked like dream catchers; Amari sunk into hers gingerly but declared it to be more comfortable than it looked. Mark had gone home to get ready for his freelance job the next day, and I was envious that he was all the way across town, physically and mentally away from the thing we’d brought back with us.
Striker took possession of my lap the instant I’d sat down. My stomach already burned from the abuse of her claws; for whatever reason, she seemed to think the best remedy for stress and anxiety was for her to kneed her paws into my belly again and again for hours.
As she worked at my stomach, I tried to resist mentally feeling for the box. We’d left it on the lawn where Yuri covered it with a white handkerchief embroidered with a small, gold Orthodox cross. He’d explained his uncle, who’d been a priest in Russia, had blessed it.
“I’ll admit,” he said to Amari. “I’m surprised to hear you mention a Dybbuk box. Such cursed objects are considered ‘urban myths’ by most people, even within the paranormal community.”
“But not by you,” she said.
“No, not by me. But then, I grew up in a place where there was no such thing as superstitions. There were only traditions.”
She smiled. “Yes, I understand that completely.”
“Can we back up?” I asked. “What is a Dybbuk box?”
“A Dybbuk is an angry spirit from Jewish mythology,” Yuri explained. “Someone sold a wine box said to contain a Dybbuk on eBay and the legend spiraled from there. The term went viral and has become a catch-all with any kind of container that supposedly contains a malevolent entity.”
“In recent years, the idea went viral,” Amari said. “Many copycats and fakes have popped up online. You can find dozens of videos of so-called Dybbuk boxes, or haunted containers, but I’ve only seen one true instance in all my travels.”
Kit pulled out her phone and showed me the screen. Amari was right; there were videos with titles like, “We opened the box: you won’t believe what happened next!”
“They’re clickbait,” Kit said. “We’ve never been contacted by anyone claiming to own one, and we’ve never reached out to them either. We figured they were a hoax.”
“You’re right about most of them,” Amari said.
“Okay, assuming these things are real, can these ghosts get out of the boxes?” I asked.
Amari nodded. “Opening the box releases the spirit back into the world. It may still be tied to the box, following that object around, but the spell containing the spirit’s power is broken when the box is opened.”
I eyed her levelly. She’d just said two things I wondered if she’d ever talked about in front of Raziel: ‘spell’ and an admission of the existence of spirits.
“And you’ve seen one,” I said flatly.
She nodded. “I know what you’re thinking. I told you the other day: I believe in the spiritual world. I’ve seen magic—real magic, not stage illusions like those Raziel performed.”
“Magic like… witches?”
“Yes.” Her eyes narrowed as she watched me process her answer. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“My friend Gabrielle told me witches who were burned at the stake were sometimes psychics whose gifts were misunderstood. But I didn’t think there were witches left.”
“Neither do many people, but there are thousands of witches in the United States alone, practicing in a variety of ways. Herbalism, hedge craft, et cetera. There are even more around the world, working their craft in peace. But there are also some who practice arts you might describe as medieval.”
“Such as?”
She paused and glanced at Kit. “I don’t want any of this to make it into a Soul Searchers episode.”
I expected Kit to argue, but she said, “I understand.”
Amari nodded then turned back to me to explain. “There are things we call ‘superstitions’ that other people call ‘medicine.’ Witch doctors all over the world kidnap and kill people with conditions like albinism, believing their skin or organs to contain magical properties. I believe many of these crimes are carried out by individuals who don’t even believe in the power of these poultices and magic pouches. They do what they do for profit alone. Body parts can sell on the black market for tens of thousands of dollars, because the people buying them believe in their power.”
Something clicked in my mind. “That’s why you don’t want a story like that to air on our show. People might take away the wrong message.”
She nodded. “People need to know this is still going on, but it has to be presented the right way. That’s why I leapt at the chance to join Raziel’s team and help him grow his audience.”
“But wait—you said you’ve seen a box like this before. Raziel’s show… He said there are no such things as psychics and mediums and ghosts.”
“We disagreed about how firm a line to draw in the sand. But I stood by his goals, and I plan to continue to work toward them.”
“Did he see what you saw?”
“No, this was before I met him. I was traveling with”—Amari glanced at Kit—“a friend. We’d gone to Romania to look into reports of a poltergeist. In a village near the southern border, an elderly woman’s house would light up at night, and her neighbors witnessed her furniture moving around on its own through the brightly lit windows.”
“Sounds like a poltergeist.” I’d had more personal experience with those than I’d have liked.
“Yes, and that’s what we thought it was. Then she developed lesions on her skin and inside her mouth. We wanted to visit her, but the villagers forbade us from entering the house.”
“Why?” I asked.
Amari paused for a moment, considering her next words. “Did you know that in some cultures, there are no such things as ghosts? Any kind of supernatural activity is blamed on demons. If the spirit looks like someone who died, it’s because the demon is playing a trick on us. Letting outsiders see such a demon would be considered very dangerous.”
“But you saw her anyway,” Kit guessed,
elbowing her.
“You know me too well.” Amari elbowed her back. “Yes, we went into the house. I saw the disturbances with my own eyes, and my friend attempted to treat the woman’s injuries. The woman begged us to take a large, wooden hatbox with us. She claimed it would heal her faster than anything my friend could do. I attempted to open the box, and she screamed so loudly….” Amari shuddered. “I’ll never forget that scream. The village priest rushed into the house and chased us out. Then, he brought the box into her garden. He ordered it to be buried deep in the forest, away from anywhere the villagers hunted or fished.
“We left the village three days later. The woman’s lesions had completely healed, and there’d been no further disturbances in her home.”
I stroked Striker’s back and thought about Amari’s story. Apart from the lesions, it sounded exactly like a poltergeist. Objects moving by themselves, flashing lights, and a haunting that wasn’t tied to a specific location. But none of those things seemed related to what we’d experienced at Cambion’s Camp, unless we counted the van smashing itself into a tree.
“What makes you think Horace’s jewelry box is like that hatbox?”
Amari folded her legs beneath her and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “There are a few things that bother me about that box. First, it had the Seal of Solomon engraved on the bottom.”
Before I could ask what that was, Graham drew one on my palm with the tip of his finger. The shape was invisible, but I could see it in my mind: a six-pointed star, surrounded by a circle.
“A Star of David?” I asked.
“Slightly different and a little older,” Amari said. “Imagine two triangles interlaced with one another, impossible to pull apart. The Seal of Solomon was said to give the ancient king power over demons, who would be drawn in by the beauty and simplicity of the symbol and get trapped by the never-ending pattern.”
“Okay, so they both have the same symbol on them. But that could just be a coincidence. Religious symbols are everywhere.”
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