by Skylar Finn
“I’ve never done this before,” said Emily, “so I’m not entirely sure how this is supposed to work.”
“And I am?” Jesse surveyed their handiwork. “I mean, this looks pretty terrifying, so I’m guessing we have a pretty good handle on it.”
“Maybe we should build a fire,” said Emily. “So we can turn the lights out.”
“Oh man,” said Jesse. “Let’s just make this as freaky as possible.” Reluctantly, he arranged the logs on the hearth inside of the fireplace. It was only their first month out west, but already their fire-building skills had considerably improved.
Emily lit the candles with a long match from a box in a kitchen drawer while Jesse lit the fire. Widget came in through the dining room, looked at them with her head cocked, then turned and left the room.
“Even the dog thinks this is weird,” said Jesse.
“Only because it is,” said Emily. “If I knew what we were getting ourselves into, I might have just stayed in Florida and lived in a box. But, as Theresa said—if wishes were horses, then beggars could ride.”
“What does that even mean?” asked Jesse.
“Think about it: if you had nothing and no means, but you could wish for whatever you wanted, then you wouldn’t have to ask anyone for anything.”
“Oh. I get it,” he said.
“Are you stalling?” asked Emily.
“Absolutely,” said Jesse.
“I know it’s a little unsettling,” said Emily, and Jesse’s eyebrows practically rose right off his face at her choice of words. “Okay, highly unsettling, but I really believe that Matilda and the children want to protect us. I believe we can help them. And I think that Cynthia’s alive and this may be the key to finding her.”
“Okay,” said Jesse, resigned. “Let’s do this.”
Emily placed the planchette on the board and read off the back of the box. “Okay, so apparently, we just rest our fingertips on the planchette and then focus on a question. We can ask it out loud, but we also need to focus on it with our minds for the information to be revealed.” They placed their fingertips on the little wooden triangle.
“What are we asking first?” asked Jesse.
“I think we need to establish how many presences are in the house,” said Emily. “Confirm whether there are four or five.” She paused. “How many of you are here?” she asked.
Emily closed her eyes as she tried to fix the question in her mind. She was unsure how much time had passed before she felt it, just beneath her fingertips: movement.
“It’s moving,” whispered Jesse.
She opened her eyes to see Jesse, wide-eyed, leaning over the table. The little planchette glided across the board.
“Are you moving it?” asked Emily.
“No,” he said. “Are you?”
Emily shook her head and bit her lip.
They stared as the planchette slid to the numbers at the bottom of the board: 4.
“Oh, man. This is so weird,” Jesse moaned.
Emily was now intently fixed upon the board and barely aware of his discomfort. “Is Cynthia Harkness here with us?” she asked.
The planchette glided up to the upper right side of the board: NO.
“Can you tell us where she is?” Emily asked excitedly.
The planchette hovered, as if uncertain, then went back to NO.
“Oh,” said Emily, disappointed.
“If they can’t leave the house, there’s no way for them to know,” said Jesse.
“Is she still alive?” Emily asked.
Again, the planchette seemed uncertain.
“They probably can’t know that for sure, either,” said Jesse.
“Did she get away? The night everyone disappeared?”
The planchette paused, as if deciding something. Then it slid up to the upper left part of the board, landing on YES.
“Is this Matilda?” asked Jesse.
The planchette, moving much more quickly now, as if excited, immediately slid to YES.
“What happened the night you died?”
The planchette skated so quickly between the letters it seemed to spell out the word all at once: M, U, R, D, E, R.
It had been obvious all along, but having it confirmed filled Emily with dread. Tears formed in her eyes for this kind and selfless person who gave so much. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I promise that we’ll do whatever we can do to help you.”
The planchette raced over the letters once more: D, A, N—
“Dan? Was that who killed you?” Jesse asked eagerly.
“Dan? Who’s Dan?” said Emily.
—G, E, R.
“Dan Ger?” said Jesse. “Does he work for Three Star?”
“No, she’s saying ‘danger,’” said Emily. “Matilda, are we in danger?”
The planchette raced to YES, then began spelling out another word: DELPHINE. Emily stared at the name: Matilda’s grandmother and Emily’s great-great-grandmother.
“Is she here, too?” asked Jesse.
The planchette slid to NO. Then it went back down to the numbers: 1,9,2,7.
“1927,” said Emily. “That’s the year the photo was taken in the book I found in the library. But what does it mean?”
A knock sounded at the front door.
The planchette slid to the bottom of the board: GOOD-BYE.
“Good-bye,” whispered Emily.
“If that’s Richard…” Jesse shook his head as he got up to answer the door. “I swear, that guy has like the worst timing ever.”
She heard Jesse’s voice change as he opened the door. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.” He couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic if it had been his mother-in-law. Emily went to the front door to see who it was.
It was Sheriff Oglethorpe.
Emily felt herself tense. She thought of the words on the Ouija board: DANGER. Was this who Matilda meant?
“How are you folks doing tonight?” asked the sheriff with a pleasant smile.
“Fine,” said Emily cautiously. “How are you?”
“I’m about as well as can be, thank you. Just got back from the mountains. It’s beautiful up there,” he said with his wide wolf’s grin.
“I’ve heard,” said Jesse.
Emily couldn’t shake the fear that the sheriff had learned of their request for the police report and this was the reason for his unexpected visit.
“What can we do for you, Sheriff?” asked Emily. She tried to sound calm, as if they had nothing to hide.
“It’s more about what I can do for you,” said the sheriff, tipping his hat genially.
“For us?” said Jesse curiously.
“I just wanted to make sure you folks felt safe and there’s been no further activity on your property,” he said. “I just got back and hadn’t heard anything, but since I haven’t been here for a couple days, I wanted to come by and check on you folks. Make sure you were okay.”
“We’re okay,” said Emily with a forced little smile. She wanted more than anything for him to leave.
“Glad to hear it,” he said, winking at her. She felt a little sick. What kind of cat-and-mouse game was he playing? “Anything suspicious happens, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”
“We will,” said Emily, thinking go away go away go away go away. “Thank you so much for stopping by.”
The sheriff smiled. “Y’all take care now,” he said, adding, “Be safe.” He turned and strode down the steps to the waiting darkness, crunching down the gravel driveway to his unseen SUV.
“Campaigning,” muttered Jesse under his breath. “What a swell guy.”
He shut the door, and Emily was unable to control the overwhelming wave of thoughts that crashed over her brain: Was the sheriff sincere, or was it a veiled threat?
Was he the danger Matilda had warned them about?
20
With Sheriff Oglethorpe back in town and showing up randomly at their house, Emily felt that time was of the essence.
“We’ve got to find Cynthia,” she told Jesse in front of the roaring fireplace. Neither of them wanted to let it die in the wake of the chilling events of the evening. “She’s alive, I’m sure of it. I think she was hiding in that shed behind Theresa’s trailer. I think she’s out there somewhere.”
“Why not go to someone for help?” asked Jesse. “Why not come to us?”
“For all she knows, we’ll just turn her over to the sheriff,” said Emily. “She doesn’t know whose side we’re on. If someone came out of the woods talking about conspiracies and showed up at your house, you’d call the cops. That’s probably what she thinks we’re going to do.”
“How can we find her, though?” said Jesse. “She’s obviously pretty good at hiding.”
“She had to have some connection with somebody in town besides Matilda,” said Emily. “She didn’t just materialize out of nowhere. In the journal, she tells Matilda she came ‘home’ to Colorado. Where was home for her?”
“Was Harkness her name? Or was that her ex-husband’s name?” asked Jesse.
“I didn’t even think of that.” Emily buried her face in her hands. “Now do you get why I didn’t want to change my name? It’s like she no longer exists.”
“Maybe she changed it back,” suggested Jesse. “If she hated the guy, why hang on to a bad memory?”
“Let’s look her up,” said Emily. “If it’s her name, we’ll find her family. If it’s the ex’s name, maybe we’ll find him.”
They opened Emily’s laptop and searched for Cynthia Harkness. The first thing that came up was a series of newspaper articles about the disappearance. Most of them quoted Sheriff Oglethorpe, who always seemed to subtly imply that Matilda had most likely taken the children.
“He told me that was stuff the town was making up,” said Emily indignantly. “Yeah, making it up because he said it first. What a liar.”
“Are you surprised?” said Jesse. “Wait! Do you see this?”
Emily leaned closer to the screen, squinting.
At the bottom of one of the last articles they’d opened was the line Cynthia Harkness’s husband, Ray Harkness, was unavailable for comment.
“Ray Harkness!” she said. “That’s it!”
“What if he’s in Dallas?” asked Jesse.
“Don’t even say that,” said Emily, typing his name.
There were three local Ray Harknesses. The fourth was a moderately successful comic book artist who lived in Australia. Of the remaining three, one was a child, posing in a Little League uniform; one was a local musician named Stevie Ray Harkness, who appeared to be a woman; and finally, a glowering, beetle-browed man named Ray Harkness appeared at the bottom of the page, where he sold insurance in Thornton.
“Man, his SEO game is terrible,” said Jesse.
“I bet you this is him,” said Emily.
“Why, cause he looks like a jerk?” asked Jesse.
“Well, I mean, yeah,” said Emily.
“What do we do? Email him? Call him? He doesn’t look like he spends a lot of time on social media. Should we maybe use LinkedIn? I bet he’s on there all the time.”
“No way,” said Emily. “What will we say? ‘Hi, we’d like to ask you about your dead wife who we think is possibly still alive?’ There’s no way a guy like that is getting back to us. This isn’t Theresa Plumber we’re dealing with here.”
“He looks like that guy in Rear Window,” Jesse observed, studying Ray Harkness’s picture. “That dude who offs his wife and hides her in the garden.”
“We’ll have to ambush him,” said Emily. “At his office. We’ll make an appointment to buy some insurance—”
“Probably should do that anyway,” Jesse murmured. “Under the circumstances.”
“—and while we’re there, we’ll bring up the fact that we live in this house, which is bound to get a reaction out of him—unless he’s a robot—and then we’ll ask him about Cynthia.”
“You do realize,” said Jesse, “that this is like, the worst plan ever, right? Trapped in a small office under false pretenses with this weirdo who might have had his wife taken out?”
“I admit, some things could go wrong,” said Emily. “But unless you have a better plan…”
The ride to Thornton the next day was a brief one, just under thirty minutes. The highway was surrounded on both sides was endless prairie with mountains in the distance. Emily would have thoought it was pretty, if it hadn’t reminded her of how isolated she felt here.
She and Jesse stopped short of wearing actual disguises, but they didn’t want to appear entirely recognizable, either. Jesse wore his only suit, a pair of fake glasses, and a side part in his normally unruly hair. Emily wore a conservative pencil skirt with a long blazer and matronly shoes. She found a pair of reading glasses in an upstairs drawer that she had to wear on the tip of her nose so they wouldn’t affect her vision. She styled her hair in a granny bun.
“You look like Old Maid,” said Jesse. “Like from the card game?”
“You look like an insurance salesman,” she said. “We’re supposed to be buying insurance, not selling it.”
“How am I supposed to know what people wear to buy insurance?” said Jesse. “I’ve never done it before.”
“Neither have I,” said Emily. “I guess I just figured people in insurance offices dress pretty conservatively.”
“Well, in that case, maybe we’ll blend in.”
They didn’t. The secretary who greeted them, young and dressed in jeans (“casual Friday,” Jesse muttered to Emily upon seeing her) regarded them curiously when they came in. All the insurance salespeople wore black, gray, or navy, and Emily and Jesse’s matching brown business casual made them look like they were in a 70s caper about a stolen briefcase.
The secretary, however, was cordial enough to hide her concern over their odd appearances. “Mr. Harkness will see you now,” she said pleasantly, removing a pen from her messy bun to write something in the appointment book on her desk. “Down the hall, third door from the left.”
Emily and Jesse skulked nervously down the hallway in their strange attire, hoping Ray Harkness wouldn’t see through their ridiculous disguises.
They were in luck. Ray Harkness barely looked at them at all. For a salesman, he wasn’t very charismatic. Dark circles under his eyes suggested he hadn’t been sleeping well, possibly for months or even years. His dark suit was rumpled, as if he either hadn’t taken the time to press it or didn’t own an iron in the first place. His comb over was hardly convincing, and he sounded like he had sinus problems. Emily couldn’t help but stare when they sat down. He looked like he could barely get out of bed, let alone plan a murder. Or several.
“What can I do for you folks today?” he said tiredly. His smile was thin and seemed like an afterthought.
“We wanted to buy some insurance,” said Jesse.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place for that,” said Harkness. “What kind? Life? Health? Homeowners? Property and casualty? Long-term care? Ideally, you’re looking for homeowners’ insurance, because that’s what I sell. If you need life insurance, I can send you across the hall, to Perkins.”
“Oh no, we specifically wanted to meet with you regarding your home insurance policies,” said Emily. “I just inherited a property from my aunt. Unfortunately, I learned after the fact that she let quite a few things lapse, financially speaking.”
“Inheritances,” said Harkness, shaking his head. “They’re a real double-edged sword, let me tell you. You might think you’re getting valuable property, then you discover the person who left it to you had a bank lien and a reverse mortgage. So it’s not even your house at all. And to not have home or property insurance in an area this dry? Practically criminal.”
“Um, yes,” said Emily, who understood only half of what he was saying. “So my aunt, Matilda Meade—”
Harkness went chalk white, as if all the blood spontaneously drained from his face. Emily was used to the negative effect her aunt
’s name had on people, since so many seemed to assume she was a kidnapper, murderer, or both. But she could never have anticipated the dramatic effect it would have on Cynthia’s ex-husband.
“Did you say Matilda Meade?” demanded Harkness. It was clear he was badly shaken as he reached for his coffee mug with a trembling hand.
“I did,” said Emily, acting bewildered. “I’m sorry, did you know her?”
Harkness reached for a handkerchief he’d tucked sloppily into the front pocket of his suit jacket, dangling out like a limp sock. He mopped his brow. He was sweating profusely. “I apologize, but I don’t think I can sell you this policy. If you’d like to reschedule with Mollie at the front, Edwards down the hall is really exceptional—”
“Are you all right?” Jesse interrupted Harkness before he could attempt to get rid of them. “Do you need a glass of water? Let me get you a glass of water.” He jumped up and ran from the office before Harkness could protest, leaving him no choice but to deal with Emily.
“Did I upset you?” asked Emily, feigning worry. “I know there are terrible rumors about my aunt, but I can assure you, they aren’t true. That’s why we came all the way out here for insurance. No one in town would sell to us.” Emily made sure to let her voice quaver and catch a bit at the end.
“I’m very sorry,” said Harkness, still sweating profusely. “I wish that I could be the one to help you, I truly do, it’s just—I have a very personal…connection to your home, and I just wouldn’t feel right about it. Really, it would unsettle me greatly.”
“Wait,” said Emily, as if something were just occurring to her. “You’re not related to…Cynthia Harkness, are you?”
Ray Harkness looked at her with open devastation on his face. For the first time, Emily felt guilty about the charade they were imposing on this poor man. Then she remembered Matilda, and it strengthened her resolve.
“She was my wife,” said Harkness, and it appeared to be all he could do not to break down in tears. “We had some issues and we were separated, but I loved her very much. I always thought we’d work it out. I tried to forget myself in my work, but we only grew more distant. And then she…disappeared.” He broke off with a choked little sob. It seemed that he hadn’t spoken on the subject for a long time, if ever, and once he started, he could no more prevent the words from coming out than he could stop a torrential downpour.
