The First Time I Fell

by Joanne Macgregor

“Trees, snow, rocks. A body.”

  “You know what I mean, Garnet! Did you have any visions? Get any messages from the beyond?”

  I hesitated, nibbling on a fingernail, knowing that if I told her what I’d experienced, she’d grill me with a hundred other questions and pepper me with far-fetched theories of what was happening to me. Better to deny anything had happened.

  But I’d paused too long.

  “You did!” she said, thumping a fist on the table so hard that her knife rattled on her plate. “I knew it.”

  Dad sighed and forked another portion of turkey into his mouth.

  “I had a funny feeling at the top of the quarry, but I think it was just vertigo,” I fudged.

  “You aren’t heightaphobic,” she said, like a lawyer pouncing on a witness’s lie.

  “Acrophobic.”

  “Don’t try to distract me, young lady. What else happened at the quarry? You tell me every single thing right now!”

  – 8 –

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” I told my mother, “but nothing much happened.”

  Dad said, “You may as well come out with it, because your mother won’t stop until she knows everything.”

  He wasn’t wrong, so I told them what I thought I’d felt and heard at the top of the quarry, and what I'd experienced when I’d touched the body on the stretcher.

  “Psychometry!” my mother declared.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re a psychometrist, dear.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “It’s a form of ESP that occurs when you touch an object with residual memory and pick up emanations from its energy field, because the past is always entombed in the present via atom exchange.”

  “Setting aside the fact that I have no idea what you just said and fully believe it made no sense, can we just back up a minute? A psychometrist is a psychological professional who administers and scores psychometric instruments like IQ and aptitude tests.”

  “Are you sure, dear?” she said, with that politely incredulous look she always gave me whenever I said anything inconveniently logical or scientifically true.

  My mother would find it easier to believe that a posse of leprechauns had carried me off to the end of the rainbow than to trust any of Newton’s laws.

  “Yes, I'm sure,” I snapped. “I've got— I’ve almost got a master’s degree in psychology; I know what psychometrics are.”

  “Don’t bite my head off, Garnet. That might be what psychometrics are. But psychometry is the skill of object-reading. It definitely is.” She gave a firm nod, as if the question were settled.

  “You people can’t just co-opt established terms for your woo-woo nonsense,” I said, outraged.

  Blithely ignoring this, she continued, “The old term for it was psychoscopy, but nobody calls it that anymore. Goddess, this is so exciting! Objects get infused with energetic signatures, you know, especially of past traumatic events. And now you have the psychic ability to read the residual energies inside them through touch, to possibly even connect to their previous owners! I wonder …”

  Her gaze wandered around the room, and I knew exactly what was going through her mind. She was searching for an item on which I could test my “object-reading” abilities.

  “Did you feel anything when you touched the bone?” Dad asked.

  Mom’s head snapped back around, and her gaze locked onto my face.

  “That was different,” I told my father. “It wasn't the same as when I touched the woman’s body. It felt — I don’t know — horrible. Bad.”

  My father stared at me, his face creased in concern, although I couldn’t tell if he was worried about my sanity or just alarmed at the prospect of being outnumbered two-to-one by the crackpots in his family.

  “What did you see?” Mom said.

  “Darkness.”

  She sucked in a breath and then, with a thrill of horror in her voice, said, “The presence of evil!”

  Despite this being exactly what I’d felt, and even what I’d thought, I was instantly irritated.

  “No, it wasn't. It was me knowing that there could be no good reason for a human rib to be lying out in the wild,” I retorted, flinging Ryan’s explanation at her.

  “Your second sight is growing in power, Garnet. You can deny it all you like, but you have the Gift.”

  I faked a yawn. “I'm really tired, guys. Would you mind if we called it a night?”

  “No problem, kiddo,” Dad said, no doubt sensing the argument that was looming.

  “Hold the telephone,” Mom said. “We haven't decided what mother-and-daughter activities we’re going to do.”

  “I need to work,” I reminded her.

  “You get some work done tomorrow, and we can have an outing on Wednesday afternoon when I have an assistant in the store. We could have lunch in town, or I could do a tarot reading for you, if you like?”

  “How about that maple syrup tasting you suggested before? You said it was at the Sweet and Smoky factory?”

  I felt a strong compulsion to go and see the place where Laini Carter had worked, and to check whether I could pick up anything more.

  “I doubt they'll be running tours now, dear. That poor woman isn't even cold in her grave yet. I wonder when the funeral will be?”

  So did I. Maybe I could sneak in and see if I got anything more.

  “There won’t be a funeral,” Dad said. “No memorial service of any kind. Just a cremation.”

  “Fancy that!” my mother said, clearly shocked at this flouting of the conventional formalities.

  “According to the grapevine, she was an atheist. Her brother, who hails from the South, is coming up tomorrow and meeting with the Medical Examiner in Burlington to formally identify the body, or some such thing. And then he’ll be in Pitchford on Wednesday to meet with the police.”

  Mom and I stared at Dad, amazed by this flow of information.

  He smiled back. “I got the whole lowdown from Hugo.”

  Hugo was the owner of the town’s old hardware store, and he knew almost everything about everyone. In fact, he knew things about people which even they didn’t — because they weren’t true.

  “I'll call tomorrow and find out if the factory tours are running,” Mom said, collecting the empty plates.

  I helped her with the dishes and on my way out went to say goodnight to my father, who was sitting in the living room with a thick forensic textbook open on his lap.

  “I’ve been reading up about skeletonized remains,” he said, cheerfully. “Did you know old bones can be black, white, brown or red, depending on the chemical and mineral make-up of the soil in which they’ve lain?”

  “I do now,” I said.

  “They’ve even found jaw bones from medieval Greece which are stained green from the copper coins placed in the mouths when they were buried — fare for the mythical ferryman who would take them across the river Styx and into the world of the dead.”

  I pressed a kiss on his forehead. “Well, whatever their color, my bones are weary. Goodnight, Dad.”

  Catching me at the front door, my mother said, “It worries me that you had that bone in your house. You might be contaminated.”

  I’d thought the same thing, but I’d been worried about germs.

  She pressed a bundle of rolled, dried leaves into my hands. It looked like a massive joint.

  “Mom?”

  “It’s white sage for smudging, dear.” At my blank look she explained, “You light this end and then walk around every room of the house, waving it in the air.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s an ancient ritual for purifying your space from harmful spirits. And these” — she handed me a small paper bag — “are bath salts. Epsom salts to reduce stress, relax the muscles and detoxify the body.”

  “You can’t extract toxins from the skin, Mom.”

  “Plus, sea salt for a spiritual cleanse, and baking soda to pull out blockages from your aura. And I put some vanilla essenc
e in, too.”

  “What’s the vanilla supposed to do?”

  “It just smells nice, dear.” She slid me a look that implied it was wacky to think vanilla essence might have metaphysical properties and gave me a white gauze bag with five small gemstones inside. “This is a seer kit.”

  From the living room came the sound of Dad snorting.

  I said, “A what, now?”

  “To increase your psychic abilities,” she explained. “Azurite for the third eye, and bloodstone to keep you open but grounded. Bloodstone will help your sex life, too, and goodness knows you could use some energizing in that area!”

  I scowled at her.

  “Turquoise, of course, and labradorite for clairvoyance, and moonstone because you’re so reluctant to embrace your abilities. And moldavite” — she indicated a green stone — “to give your spirit guide something to latch onto.”

  “What spirit guide?” I snapped.

  “Colby.”

  Stunned, I took a step back. My mother thought Colby might still be hanging around, guiding me? Back in December, Cassie had told me about a psychic medium who’d insisted that Colby hadn’t fully “moved on” to the other side, that he was trapped in “a limbo of unknowing.” If that was true, then surely solving his murder would have freed him? I didn’t want him still hanging around.

  Or did I?

  My mother studied me through narrowed eyes. “Hmmm. Or would your spirit guide be Johnny?”

  “Johnny? Johnny who?”

  “Your childhood spirit companion.”

  “My childhood imaginary friend,” I corrected.

  “Well, whoever’s guiding you, the moldavite will help. Now, quartz is essential for seeing, of course,” my mother continued, “but I’m assuming you still have the piece you picked up at the pond?”

  I would rather have swallowed it than admit to my mother that I’d kept the unusual stone — purple at one end and clear at the other. With a jolt, I realized it had been in a pocket of the parka I’d worn on my hike to the quarry. That I’d been fiddling with it shortly before I’d gotten that vision of Laini Carter.

  “Always keep these on you,” she said, closing my fingers around the crystals.

  “So, just to be clear, I must use the stones to attract psychic phenomena, and the bath salts and sage to repel them?” I said, but my sarcasm was wasted on her.

  She beamed at me, clearly delighted that I was such a fast learner.

  “That’s exactly right, dear!”

  – 9 –

  After a day’s hard work on Tuesday, I made a late-afternoon run to the grocery store in town; I was running low on food and had used the last of the coffee trying to caffeinate myself into productive alertness. Plus, I was going to need more alcohol. And chilis — definitely chilis. Bizarrely, the Andersens had nothing spicier than ground white pepper in their kitchen cupboards.

  What had once been my father’s mom-and-pop grocery store on Main Street was now a Best West supermarket. I wandered the aisles, snagging a bottle of Sriracha and a jar of pickled Mucho Nacho Jalapenos (fatter, longer and hotter than their common cousins) along with basic groceries and a bunch of snacks — chips, salsa, several packets of sour Skittles and a giant bag of Barnum’s animal crackers. As a nod to good nutrition, I grabbed some ripe tomatoes and grapes from the fresh produce section, before I steered my cart to the wine aisle for a bottle of pinot grigio and a six-pack of beers. That was when I saw her.

  Jessica Mantovani, who’d been my best friend back in high school when she was still Jessica Armstrong, was standing staring at a shelf of expensive-looking chardonnays. With her sleek bob of auburn hair, her subtle makeup and cashmere coat, she looked just as elegant as the last time I’d seen her — at Cassie’s funeral. On that day, Jess had given me a silent nod and a look as cold as a penguin’s ass, clearly still angry that due to my investigative efforts, her lover had been arrested on a bunch of charges.

  While I pondered whether to march up and greet her or make a cowardly retreat — the latter option appealed way more — Jessica glanced up and saw me, forcing the issue.

  “Hi, Jess!” I walked over to her with arms open and a smile glued to my lips.

  She didn’t hit me or push me away, but she didn’t return my hug either.

  “Didn’t know you were back,” she said, with no hint of enthusiasm.

  “Yup.” I explained about the house-sitting and then, to break the awkward silence that followed, added, “Hey, let’s get together and have a chat. You know, catch up and … clear the air?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Okay.”

  “You could come around for dinner.”

  She arched an eyebrow at that. “You cook now?”

  “Good point,” I said. “Drinks at the Tuppenny Tavern?”

  “Lunch, at the Frost Inn,” she said. “Friday at twelve-thirty would work for me.”

  “It’s a date!” I said, my tone overly cheery.

  “Well,” she said, turning her back on the chardonnays and cabernets, “I need to get going.”

  “Your boss at the gallery nitpicky about working hours?” I joked, because Jessica was the boss, and owner, of the Art on Main gallery.

  The slightest flicker of a smile flitted across her expression. “I promised Nico that I’d get him a nice steak for dinner.”

  “Oh, right.”

  In the decade since high school, Jessica had become a modern Stepford wife — slim, perfectly groomed, and effortlessly juggling the tasks of raising children, running a business, and getting meat and potatoes on the table for her spoiled husband. It was impressive, but also disconcerting, because she was now so different from the girl I’d once known.

  Back in the Andersens’ minty kitchen, I let the dogs out for a toilet break and fed them another serving of the kibble, topping each bowl off with a juicy chunk of the rotisserie chicken I’d brought home from the store for my supper. I ate on the couch in front of the television, checking to see whether there was anything new on either of the quarry stories. I had to search through the channels to find the local news channel again, because the TV was on a different station when I switched it on. An electrical appliance behaving oddly? I could just hear my mother telling me it was a sign of a ghostly presence.

  Eventually, I found the right channel, but there were no updates on the story and no live crossings to The Hair. Perhaps he’d taken the evening off to deep condition his tresses. The repeat footage of the quarry gave me flashbacks of the woman’s corpse in the pit and on the stretcher, killing my appetite.

  I fed the remains of my meal to the dogs, then poured myself a large glass of wine and took a deep, candlelit bath, sprinkling in my mother’s salts, which smelled like freshly baked cupcakes. I should have felt relaxed as I soaked in the steaming water, but instead, I grew increasingly edgy. Being in this bathroom, with its pink tub, tiles and towels, was like being stuck inside the rosy depths of a giant conch shell. Bathrooms should come in any color as long as it was white.

  I picked at the scabs on my scraped hand by the light of the flickering candle while I reviewed the day, trying to identify the source of my unease. I’d put in a good day’s work, so no guilt or anxiety there, and I’d taken care of the dogs. Maybe I was dreading the upcoming lunch with Jess — it was bound to be uncomfortable — or perhaps I was still experiencing the increased autonomic system arousal of post-traumatic stress. Given the events of the day before, that made sense, but it didn’t make me feel any more relaxed.

  I cut short my bath, wrapped myself in one of the fluffy pink towels and brushed my teeth. A sensation like a faint itch prickled behind my shoulder blades. I froze, feeling the fine hairs on my arms lift and goosebumps pucker my skin. Someone was watching me; I could feel it. I spun around.

  No one was there.

  Of course no one was there. The only eyes in the bathroom apart from my own mismatched pair were the beady black ones of a sappy mermaid statuette on the shelf below the mi
rror. Damn these freaky figurines! I shoved the vile thing inside the cabinet beneath the basin and slammed the door shut, but I still felt the flesh-creeping sensation of not being alone.

  The rib bone. Maybe my mother was right — she was bound to be sometimes, if only according to the law of probabilities — that it hadn’t been a good idea to bring human remains into the house. What if I’d brought some spiritual presence in along with the bone? Oh joy, I thought sourly. Either I was imagining things, or I’d just discovered another unpleasant aspect to this whole psychic tangle.

  As soon as I’d gotten back from the previous night’s dinner at my parents’ house, I’d tossed the sage blunt in the trash. Now I half-wished that I had moseyed through the house, smoking away the bad vibes.

  The dogs, however, didn’t seem at all agitated by any possible ghostly visitation. They were stretched out, sleeping, on the top of my bed.

  “Oh, no you don’t, you charm-monsters. You get down right now!” I ordered them, pointing at the floor.

  Reluctantly, they jumped down and nestled together on the floor beside my bed, Darcy resting his head on Lizzie’s paws. I slipped into the ratty old T-shirt I always wore to bed and half-cajoled, half-carried the dogs downstairs to settle them in their baskets. Back upstairs I snuggled into bed with a crime novel. Despite the eerie moaning of the wind outside and the sounds of the unfamiliar house settling around me — creaks and rustles in the ceiling and cracks of the floorboards — I was feeling better. The sensation of being watched had faded and I could breathe more easily. Maybe I’d just imagined it, after all.

  But, as I drifted off to sleep, I thought I caught a faint whiff of cola-flavored lip balm. The type Colby had always worn.

  When my phone on the bedside table rang the next morning, Sting’s Every Breath You Take was playing so loudly and clearly inside my head that it took a few moments to realize there wasn’t a radio playing the song in my bedroom. I’d been dreaming about Colby. I strained to recall the dream images, but it was like trying to hold mist between my fingers.

  “This is Officer Ronnie Capshaw from the Pitchford Police Department.”