She Smells the Dead

by E.J. Stevens

  I squeezed his hand and moved closer to him on the couch. “So you only change around the full moon, right?” I asked a mischievous smile playing on my lips.

  “Yes,” Cal answered, the blue of his eyes deepening.

  “Good, then it’s just the two of us,” I said and kissed him.

  I kissed a werewolf and I liked it.

  Chapter 21

  Cal had offered to give me a ride to school the next day, but I had already made plans with Emma. When Emma pulled up she couldn’t wait to find out about my plant research. Oh that.

  “Um, I kind of got distracted,” I answered with a slow smile.

  “Wait, did something happen with you and Calvin?” she asked.

  “Uh, you could say that,” I said turning to her in the driver’s seat. “We kissed. It was awesome.”

  Emma squealed and congratulated me. “So do you think he’ll go veggie now that the two of you are dating?” Emma asked.

  I tried to picture a wolf eating tofu. Not so much. “No, probably not,” I answered.

  “Good. I need a victim to practice my arguments on,” she said and we both laughed.

  Things were good and life was going back to normal. Except my boyfriend was a werewolf and I smell dead people. Almost normal.

  Calvin was waiting for me at my locker. He was leaning against the wall of lockers and looked good in his blue jeans and t-shirt that stretched tight across the chest. Better than good. My eyes slid over to his right arm and I made a mental note to ask him about his tattoo. I’d have to wait until after classes were over since we couldn’t talk about his wolf issues here at school. We also hadn’t decided if we should tell Emma. Telling your friend you turn into a wolf each month around the full moon was a bit more complicated than telling her you had a strange psychic ability. Shaking off stressful thoughts, I went to go spend a few minutes with my boyfriend before class.

  At lunch time Emma and I filled Cal in on the details of our visit to the Green farm and our impressions of Grace Green. Emma went on about how Grace was a heinous violator of bee labor rights and I finally worked in the bit about me suspecting her of murder. Calvin was taking it well, but I could tell he was concerned.

  “I don’t think either of you should go back to that farm,” he said looking back and forth between us, “just in case.”

  Emma looked like she was going to argue but then sighed. “I don’t think I could face those poor subjugated bees,” Emma said, “at least not until we find a way to overthrow the evil despot.”

  “Would putting her away for murder fall into that plan?” I asked innocently. Emma and I smiled wickedly at each other.

  “That would do perfectly,” Emma said.

  Calvin just looked back and forth between us and threw up his hands. “I’m going to get another burger,” he grumbled, “and leave the plans for world domination to you two.”

  He walked away to peals of laughter. When it came to planning world domination, or in this case how to bring down a murderer, I was glad to have Emma on my side. She was good at research and once she set herself a goal she never gave up.

  I asked Calvin to give me a ride home and hang out after school and for Emma to come by after dinner. That way I would get a chance to ask Calvin about his tattoo and we could still fit in some ghost research. I was pleased to have a plan of action and my boots squeaked as I bounced all the way to my next class. Don’t worry Jackson, I’ll help you find your way. I can be your flame in the darkness. I know I can.

  Chapter 22

  Cal was waiting for me by his truck after school. He was leaning against it reading something as I approached. As he closed the notebook, I realized it was my dream diary. “Sorry, I forgot to give this back to you yesterday,” he said handing the diary back to me.

  “Thanks, there’s actually something from my dreams that I still need to ask you about,” I said as I stuffed the notebook into my backpack.

  Calvin held out his hand and pulled me to him. “You can ask me anything,” he said, “anything at all.”

  “It’s about your tattoo,” I said looking up at him.

  “Oh,” he said looking uncomfortable. “That’s kind of hard to explain,” he answered.

  “More difficult than explaining about turning furry?” I asked playfully. “Because I find that hard to believe.” I was trying for the one eyebrow raise, but was pretty sure that I was failing miserably.

  “Can we take a detour on the way to your house?” Calvin asked. “It would be easier to talk about somewhere else,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said and gave him a quick hug before getting into his truck.

  Cal drove out towards his parent’s house, but just before his driveway he turned onto a muddy dirt road. I realized that he was taking me out to his dad’s workshop. I hadn’t been out here for years, but I remembered the pottery wheel and the smell of clay from previous visits. His dad claimed that working with clay was therapeutic and helped to relieve stress. My few failed attempts didn’t make me a believer, but I knew Cal always liked to hang out in the workshop as a kid.

  Cal pulled his truck to a stop and we walked up to what looked like a small cabin. Calvin let us inside and I was surprised to see a small cot and desk had been added against one wall.

  “Have you been living out here?” I asked. It wasn’t far from his parent’s house but the trees gave the cabin a feeling of privacy.

  “Sort of. I needed some space when I was trying to understand the changes over the summer,” Cal said, “and my dad seemed to understand. He let me use his workshop when I needed to get away and couldn’t get out to one of our retreats in the woods.”

  In the woods. I realized that there was still a lot I had to learn about his wolf side.

  “Here,” Cal said handing me a folding chair. “It’s not the Ritz, but we don’t have to worry about people listening in,” he said. “So you wanted to know more about my tattoo?” he asked.

  “Yeah, can I see it again?” I asked. Calvin pushed his t-shirt sleeve higher up his arm so that the tattoo showed clearly against his tanned skin. “Where did you get it done?” I asked reaching out but not quite touching it.

  Cal saw my hesitation and moved his arm closer. “It’s o.k. you can touch it if you want,” he said. “I had it done by a friend of my father,” he answered. “There is a tradition amongst the old blood that when a child reaches the age of change they are to be marked with the image of the wolf spirit that resides within them,” he said starting to blush. “We are also marked with the symbol that grounds us. The second symbol usually represents our soul mate and comes to us in a vision, kind of like the symbols in your dreams.” He was definitely blushing now.

  You’re blushing Calvin Miller.

  It was then that I saw the second symbol, the thing that the wolf was chasing around Cal’s arm and that in turn was chasing the wolf. “Calvin is that a dung beetle?” I asked incredulously.

  “Sacred scarab,” he muttered.

  I remembered the tattoo of the wolf and eagle on the arm of the man in my dream. His soul mate must have been represented by an eagle and Calvin’s by a scarab.

  “Is that supposed to represent me?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I should be happy about that or irritated.

  “If I say yes, are you going to hit me?” he asked.

  I looked from Calvin’s face to his arm and back to his face again. Rolling my eyes I sighed, “I just don’t like having a beetle for a spirit animal. I am glad you chose me though.”

  “It was fate,” he said and kissed my forehead. “My dung beetle princess,” he said with a grin.

  I moved to hit him, but he was already running out the door to his truck. Laughing, I ran after him. You better run Calvin Miller.

  Chapter 23

  We grabbed a drive-thru dinner. I ordered a salad and Calvin ordered three burgers and drove to my house. I had a bit of a mishap with the dressing packet and was wearing half of it on my shirt. I sulked that Cal must have driven over a
bump, but it was probably just my bad luck catching up with me. Today had been fun and exciting. If the worst that happened was me having to smell like a condiment, I wasn’t complaining. I could barely smell anything other than vinegar anyway. I’m working on it Jackson.

  I left Calvin in the kitchen where he was finishing his last burger and ran upstairs to change my shirt. I tossed the soiled shirt into the laundry hamper and grabbed a tissue tee and cardigan. As I pulled my hair through the shirt collar to hang loose at my back I felt a prickling sensation along my arms and the hair rose at the back of my neck. I could have sworn I was being watched.

  Making sure that Calvin hadn’t followed me upstairs, I tiptoed back to the door and looked up and down the hallway. Nobody there. Crouching down I tiptoed across my bedroom to the window. Careful not to cast a silhouette I slid the curtain aside an inch and peered out. The sky was darkening, casting everything in the gray monochrome of twilight. A streetlight a few driveways down was beginning to flicker on, but that was the only movement I could see. I waited a few more seconds but didn’t notice anything suspicious. I guess it was nothing. I slowly stood up and sighed, chiding myself for being jumpy, but as I went to leave the room I turned back and hung the bell covered ribbon across my windows. Better safe than sorry.

  Twenty minutes later Emma was standing in my bedroom dangling papers in front of our faces and asking who the supreme goddess of research was.

  “If I say it’s you can I read those printouts?” I asked hopefully.

  Calvin just rolled his eyes and reached for the papers.

  “While you two lovebirds were off playing, I went to the library and did some hardcore research,” Emma said smugly.

  “Playing?” I asked, “How do you know we weren’t doing research too?” We hadn’t been, but she didn’t know that.

  Emma looked at my newly changed shirt, not the same one that I had been wearing at school today, and winked. I blushed so bad my face felt like it was on fire. A million excuses, all true, ran through my brain, but I realized that they would just incriminate me further.

  Sighing I said, “Emma, supreme goddess of research, please illuminate us with your wisdom.”

  Emma nodded at me then put her hands on her hips and gazed imperiously down her nose at Calvin. They both stared at each other until Emma finally looked away first. Did he just growl? Before the two of them could get into some crazy battle for dominance, I grabbed a pillow and tossed it at Cal. Calvin grudgingly moved over to make room for Emma. Giggling, I asked Emma for the scoop. She finally sat on the bed and spilled about her trip to the library.

  “In the media library I found where they had archived local newspapers going back to the date of the boating accident that killed all three of Jackson and Grace Green’s sons,” Emma said. “They had copies of articles from papers with such tiny circulations that they don’t have websites,” she explained.

  What she had just said was sinking in. If these local papers weren’t online, then I wouldn’t have found their articles when I did my Internet search. It made sense since the only articles I found were from the larger newspapers based in Portland, Portsmouth, and Boston.

  “I hit, I do believe, pay dirt,” Emma said gloating. She was really loving this.

  In the end Emma had proven to indeed be the supreme goddess of research. There was a journalist who seemed to have taken an interest in the case of the three brothers drowning and he wrote an article, and a later follow up article, on the events surrounding their deaths. Apparently the three brothers had come to Maine to vacation at their parent’s farm, however, their father had been too busy with his business to go off fishing with them. Jackson Green was lobbying against the use of airborne pesticides, which he felt threatened his organic farm, and spent the day at the Statehouse in Augusta. The three brothers borrowed their father’s boat and went out fishing on a nearby lake. When they didn’t return home for dinner their mother, Grace Green, called the police and fire department. It was over twelve hours before state forest rangers trained as emergency divers could make it to the scene. By then all three men were confirmed dead by accidental drowning. Later investigation showed that poor upkeep of the Green’s boat had likely led to the boating accident.

  “The thing is,” Emma was saying, “Grace Green never seemed to forgive her husband for the death of her sons. She blamed his devotion to his business for their deaths, since he had both neglected repairs on the family boat and hadn’t gone with their sons that day.”

  Son of a dung beetle.

  “When you add her grief and her anger at her husband to the poisonous plant Deadly Nightshade we found growing in her herb garden, it does sound suspicious,” I said. The words barely left my mouth before I was smothered in vinegar. The smell was so intense I felt like I was suffocating. I reached for my throat trying to breathe and little flashes of light started to spot my vision. I guess we were onto something. Please, oh please, make it stop.

  Chapter 24

  With a wash of wet dog smell, the vinegar smell faded and I could breathe freely again.

  “Yuki, are you o.k.?” Calvin asked placing his arm around my shoulders. “Do you need to lie down?” he asked. He sounded worried. Had his wolf spirit somehow protected me?

  “I’m better now, thanks,” I said taking another deep breath. “I think Jackson was trying to let us know that our suspicions were correct,” I said looking at Cal and Emma, “I just wasn’t ready for the vinegar assault.”

  Calvin was the first to ask what we were probably all thinking, “So what do we do now?”

  Good question.

  “I think Jackson would want his contributions to go to the charities that he had set aside money for,” I said hoping our discussion wouldn’t trigger another violent smell impression. The smell became stronger but not too strong. Maybe Cal’s wolf spirit was providing a barrier. Thank you. “I think that was a smell signal for yes,” I added.

  “What about Grace Green’s inheritance?” Emma asked, “Would he want his money going to a murderer?” It was a good question.

  “We could send everything to the police with a copy of the articles you found and copies of the pictures from the garden,” Cal suggested. “If we include an anonymous letter with our suspicions they would have to investigate.”

  They both looked expectantly at me.

  “This is going to sound crazy, but I think I have an idea,” I said feeling a little silly that I hadn’t tried this before.

  I grabbed a notebook and flipped it open to a clean page. I then grabbed a black sharpie marker and wrote in large letters the words “YES,” “MAYBE,” and “NO.” Emma and Calvin both looked at the page confused.

  “It’s like a Ouija board,” I explained, “except Jackson won’t be pushing a pointer to the answer. We’ll ask a question that he should feel strongly about and see if his smell impression gets stronger on one of the answers.”

  Calvin reached for my hand and squeezed it once. “Are you sure you’re ready for that?” he asked, “It sounds like it could get intense. Jackson’s ghost almost overwhelmed you earlier.”

  I wished there was some way to communicate my suspicion about his wolf spirit helping me. Emma was sitting there watching us both and listening intently though, so there was no way to talk to him about it.

  “I think I can do it with you here,” I said a little breathlessly.

  He was leaning in close now and my heart was starting to beat faster. “O.k.,” he said and squeezed my hand.

  Emma rolled her eyes. “Can we get this show on the road?” she asked, “No offense Yuki, but I have a date with a mud mask tonight. Some of us still need to find a date for the homecoming dance.”

  I closed my eyes concentrating on the question. “Jackson, do you want us to go to the police?” I asked. With a shaking hand I pointed at YES, then MAYBE. On maybe the smell impression was strong. “I think that’s a maybe,” I said.

  “Can we ask if he wants his wife arrested?” Emma asked h
opefully.

  “O.k. Do you want your wife Grace arrested for your murder?” I asked. I pointed to YES, there was no smell, then MAYBE and NO. On no I felt dizzy and the room flooded with the smell of vinegar. I could still breathe, but the smell was incredibly strong. “That’s a no,” I gasped. Panting a little I looked up to see Calvin shake his head.

  “That’s it for tonight Yuki,” he said firmly, “we can finish this tomorrow.”

  I wanted to argue, but he was right. I was completely worn out and a headache was creeping up from my temples.

  “Emma, it looks like you’ll have time for your mud mask after all,” I sighed, trying to smile.

  Emma helped pick the papers up off the bed, laying them on the nightstand and Calvin told her he’d make sure I got some rest.

  “Night then Yuki,” she said on her way out, “don’t ever let anyone tell you your life is dull.” Turning to Calvin she said, “Take good care of her.”

  When the front door closed, Calvin came over and started unlacing my boots. I could barely keep my eyes open.

  “Calvin Miller did you slip me a roofie because I feel like I’m about to pass out,” I mumbled.

  Cal laughed and pulled the blankets up under my chin. He came back a minute later with a glass of water. “Drink up, Dung Beetle Princess,” he said handing me the glass. “Working with spirit will drain you fast, especially when you’re just learning how to use it,” he said. Setting the glass over on the nightstand, he stood to leave. “Goodnight Yuki,” he said and leaned down to kiss my forehead. He ran his finger along my cheek brushing hair off my face.

  Goodnight Calvin. I was sucked down into the dark oblivion of dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 25

  I woke up to a pounding headache and the acrid smell of vinegar burning my nose. Go suck eggs Jackson, I thought as I rolled over and pressed the snooze button on my alarm clock. Go suck pickled eggs Vinegar Dude. Calvin was right. I needed to be more careful when dealing with the spirits of the dead. What I needed now was knowledge. Was there someone out there who could teach me how to control my power? I couldn’t face the thought of feeling this horrible for the rest of my life. There had to be an easier way.