The Curse of the Old Woods

by Elizabeth Andre

  “That sounds nice, but I really do need to get going.” She pulled her hands from Gabi’s grasp and finished pulling up her pants.

  Gabi flopped down on her bed. The glint of morning sun highlighted the creamy curve of her back. She said, with maddening indifference, “Okay. I’m not going to be around tonight, if you’re wondering. I’ve got a date.”

  Julie sighed and finished getting dressed as fast as she could. Gabi yammered on about tonight’s date, a doctor who had just started at an ob-gyn practice on the other side of town.

  “She’s taking me on a moonlight helicopter ride. Isn’t that romantic?” she said and then rolled onto her back.

  “Sure. Sounds real romantic, Gabi,” said Julie as she headed out the door. She was pretty sure Gabi’s date story was a work of fiction designed to make her jealous. It worked. On the drive home, she couldn’t decide whether to berate herself for not making this goodbye final or not staying behind for a little more nookie.

  Chapter Fifteen

  How to anchor a ghost

  When Maya got home after the evening at Promontory Woods, she sat in her kitchen feeling exhausted, although she wasn’t ready for sleep. Katie was not the first ghost she’d spoken to, but she had never been as close to a ghost as she had been to the lost teenager earlier that night. Maya wasn’t sure how she felt. There was part of her that felt used and scared, but she also felt privileged that she was able to allow Katie to speak to her sister.

  Penny made some Mexican hot chocolate for Maya, despite it being early summer, and placed the mug in front of her. Penny knew that it was something that always helped calm Maya down. As Maya sipped the steaming concoction, she explained how Katie had spoken to her inside her head and how it felt when Katie took hold of her.

  “Okay, so Katie says it wasn’t possession, but it sure sounds like it was,” Penny said as she took a seat.

  Maya nodded and reluctantly agreed. “It all was just so weird. So much was going on. I found it hard to concentrate. There was Katie and her sister getting the reunion they needed. There was Katie using me as her anchor. There was …” Maya looked off into the distance and let her eyes lose focus.

  “What?”

  Maya hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she should mention it because she didn’t want Penny to worry, but she also didn’t want to feel like she was alone in this.

  “Do you remember when I first told you about how I can see and talk to ghosts?”

  Penny nodded. “Yeah. You said it never freaked you out. I remember thinking, how could it not freak you out?”

  “Well, I got kind of freaked out tonight.”

  “Because of Katie?”

  Maya shook her head and sipped some hot chocolate. It was perfect, but it wasn’t having the usual calming effect. “Not just because of Katie. I felt something else. There was something else in there with me. We weren’t alone.”

  Penny took a rapid breath through clenched teeth. “What do you think it was? How do you feel now?”

  “I feel all right. I don’t know what it was that I felt besides Katie. I can’t describe it.”

  They sat in silence for several moments. Maya finished drinking her hot chocolate. Penny had opted for a beer.

  “You know we’ll go back to the woods, and Katie will want to use you again.”

  “I know. I don’t mind her wanting to do that, and, maybe when she does, I’ll get a better idea of whatever it is I also felt in there with her. It’s probably what’s keeping her in the woods.”

  Maya saw Penny tense up. Maya knew that Penny, like anyone else who’d grown up in this area, had always thought the woods were creepy. Now the creep factor had jumped exponentially. After Maya assured Penny repeatedly that she was okay, they headed to their bedrooms. It was late and time to go to sleep. They both needed to get in early for their job-jobs.

  As tired as Maya was, she lay in bed wide awake. The something else that had been with them was at the same time heavily silent and screaming in pain. Sometimes it seemed like one entity. Other times it seemed like many, both victims and victimizers. She finally drifted off to sleep by telling herself that one more time being Katie’s anchor would be the last time. That would be all it took to figure out a way to free Katie so she’d never need Maya again.

  She woke up sweating. She felt something grabbing at her ankles. When she looked under the sheets, there was nothing there.

  Chapter Sixteen

  How can we free Katie?

  Maya arrived at Steve’s house on Sunday afternoon, less than forty-eight hours after she had been Katie’s anchor to the world of the living, and she still felt untethered. Eddie, Steve’s husband, made lunch for her, Penny, Julie, Jason, and Mrs. Forcier for their afternoon of strategizing and brainstorming. They were going to figure out how they were going to free Katie. Maya assured them all that she was just fine.

  As they ate the carrot orzo and lemon chicken, Maya overheard Eddie telling Mrs. Forcier about the community cable access TV show he and Steve did back in the day. That was how they met. Steve had placed an ad in a local alternative weekly, saying he was looking for someone to write some copy for the show. Eddie, who had always been interested in the paranormal and worked as an editor at a food industry trade magazine at the time, said he thought it would be a hoot to write for a cheesy cable access show. Steve overheard this and objected to Eddie using the word cheesy to describe the show with a disgruntled, “Hey!”

  “Turns out, it was more fun than I thought it would be,” Eddie said. “I started going out on hunts with Steve, contributed what I could, you know? We got to know each other and here we are.”

  Jason, carefully cutting a piece of chicken, said, “That’s cool. What was the name of your show?”

  “The Paranormal Grievance Committee,” Steve said.

  “What?” Mrs. Forcier asked, puzzled.

  “It’s just a goofy name we came up with because we had to call it something,” Eddie said. “Besides, ghosts always do seem to have some sort of grievance.”

  Maya had heard about the cable access show before, but this time when Eddie talked about it, she thought it might be time to resurrect the name in some form. She made a mental note to talk to Steve and Eddie about her idea, most likely after they’d wrapped up this investigation.

  After lunch, Maya wandered into the living room where many of Eddie’s photographs were displayed. He dabbled in photography so several framed photos from trips he and Steve had made to Death Valley and other desert landscapes adorned the walls. Since Maya’s first visit to Steve’s house a year ago, she had loved drinking in the bright golden tones of the desert as depicted in Eddie’s photos, but her favorite photo was the most surprising one to her. Eddie had taken it at night when the red, yellow, and gold tones of the desert floor were muted, and the night sky dominated the image. The clarity of the sky and the brilliance of the stars in that photo never failed to astonish Maya. She tried to calm herself by looking at the photos. She pointed out to Mrs. Forcier the ones she liked, especially the nighttime one.

  After a round of homemade profiteroles, Eddie lured them to the living room with a pitcher of what he called his world famous sangria. “Let’s get this show on the road. Who’s for sangria?” He began filling glasses.

  “Okay I’ll start,” Maya said, using her most authoritative tone, as she sat next to Jason at one end of the large purple sectional sofa that dominated Steve and Eddie’s living room. “I made a few notes based on my reading of that forest service dude’s notebooks. It’s a lot of him just keeping track of what he did every day. I mean, he made notes about when he made copies at the office copy machine, so mostly very mundane.”

  “He must have been a fun date,” Penny said in the dry manner she sometimes managed.

  “Exactly, but as time went on, he clearly got more interested in the Promontory Woods. I think it’s because his duties changed. He got promoted and became some sort of assistant manager, which gave him more responsibility over a wi
der area. He was especially struck by the woods’ caretakers. Just within the first six months of his promotion, the woods had four different caretakers. None would stay more than a month or two.”

  Julie piped up. “Did this Norton guy write about why the caretakers wouldn’t stay?”

  “He couldn’t seem to get an answer that satisfied him. He said that each one of the caretakers he spoke to, and he had to go to Pennsylvania to track one of them down, said they felt uncomfortable in the job or that the job and accommodation weren’t what they’d been led to believe they were. He was suspicious that successive men, who were all enthusiastic about getting the job initially, would just up and leave after such a short amount of time. The guy he tracked to Pennsylvania literally left in the middle of the night. He couldn’t find anything that would make more sense. He seemed to know that something wacky was happening out there. At one point, he filled one page of the notebook with the saying, ‘There’s no smoke without fire.’ And then there’s this.”

  Maya showed the assembled the final page that implied he knew an answer, but the remaining pages were blank.

  “Whatever happened to this Norton guy?” Penny asked.

  “I asked Tia what she could find out, but she came up empty. Records from that far back were destroyed as a matter of policy,” Maya said. “I did an internet search but couldn’t find anything about him.”

  Mrs. Forcier cut her off and everyone went quiet. “All fascinating, but how does this get us any closer to helping Katie?” She rolled up her sleeve revealing, once again, her I.V. port. She scratched a patch of dry skin on her arm. Her skin looked older. A bruise had developed around the I.V. port. Mrs. Forcier seemed to be aging rapidly.

  “I want to bury my sister. I want to be with her again. You know, I outlived my husband. He died young, and we never had children. I never remarried. I never found love again. I’ve found my sister again. I won’t lose her again. I won’t.”

  The air in the room felt frozen.

  “She’s right,” Julie said. “We need a plan.”

  Steve drained his glass of sangria and poured himself another. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this since the first time we met Katie. The fact that she says she can’t leave the woods indicates that something’s got a hold of her.”

  “Okay. Yes. That makes sense,” Mrs. Forcier said, sounding impatient. “So what? How do we get it to let go?”

  “That is precisely what we need to figure out, and I have some ideas.” Steve revealed some of the research he had carried out yesterday at a local paranormal bookstore and the historical society. He believed that they were dealing with a cursed entity that had been stuck in the woods for a long time and had trapped others with it.”

  “A curse?” Jason said, incredulous.

  “A cursed entity no less,” Penny said. “I guess I can see that. So, are we talking Mayan or Viking or African or Illiniwek Indian? How far back are we going?”

  “I don’t know,” said Steve, dramatically dropping a pile of dusty books on the coffee table.

  “It would explain why there have been so many stories over the years about the woods,” Mrs. Forcier said. “You think that’s why Katie can’t leave?”

  Steve nodded. “And I think she’s not the only one. I think this entity has trapped others. It needs them for something. I’m just not sure what.”

  Maya felt a chill. This cursed entity was most likely the thing that had sent those vines after Julie. But what was Mike’s involvement in all this? And whatever happened to Gale Norton?

  “Of course, we’ll have to be aware that Mike is probably a part of this in some way,” she said.

  Julie nodded. “How could he not be?”

  This entity could also have been the other presence Maya had felt when Katie had used her as her anchor. It was so big and vague. She wondered if its other victims were touching her, too. She wondered if they wanted to try to use her as an “anchor.” She noticed Penny watching her. She had that concerned look on her face again. Since she’d told Penny about what had happened with Katie in the woods the other night, Penny had been extra solicitous of her, like she was handling her with kid gloves. Maya certainly felt vulnerable, but she didn’t want Penny, or anyone else, to treat her like she was made of glass.

  “When we go back, do you think you’ll be able to get Katie to appear to us like she did Friday night, Maya?” Mrs. Forcier asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Maya said, hoping she didn’t sound scared.

  Jason asked, “How did that even work?”

  Maya felt all eyes on her. She told them how Katie spoke to her and how she helped moor Katie to the world of the living. She took a deep breath before telling them that she’d felt that Katie wasn’t alone when she used her as her anchor. When Maya finished, Julie was staring at her. No one spoke for a couple of minutes until Mrs. Forcier broke the silence.

  “Something else was in you with Katie? What was it?” Mrs. Forcier looked terrified. The sangria that had seemed like such a good idea when they had sat down wasn’t soothing anyone.

  “I don’t know. I think the only way to find out is to go back and let Katie, well, use me again,” Maya said.

  Penny put her hand on Maya’s thigh and squeezed. “Are you sure?”

  Maya nodded.

  “We need to find out what was in there with Katie and what this cursed entity is,” Steve said. “Only then can we figure out how to deal with it.”

  “Do you think it would be worth it to talk to Mike, the caretaker, again?” Jason asked.

  Julie nodded her head vigorously. “I think he’s involved in all this … somehow. We need to talk to him first, figure out what he knows.”

  They decided to visit Mike at dusk and put away the sangria.

  “I need to be sober for this,” said Maya. “But I wish I didn’t have to be.”

  “Me too,” said Penny, who looked forlorn as Eddie took away the pitcher.

  Maya noticed Penny, Steve, and Julie exchange glances. Mrs. Forcier raised one of her eyebrows as if puzzled by the silence. Jason got up from the sofa and started to pace.

  “What?” Maya said.

  Julie fixed her with an intense look in her eyes. “You probably shouldn’t come tonight.”

  “Why?” It rankled and frustrated Maya, Julie’s concern. She’d never been one to turn tail from something that might be scary. Besides, Julie was the one who was found on the ground talking about her underwear. Maya had stayed upright the entire time.

  “I agree with Julie,” said Penny. “I think it would be better for you to get some more rest. You still seem tired, and we need you in good shape for when it’s time to talk to Katie again.”

  “This is bullshit!” Maya realized she’d drunk way too much sangria before the pitcher disappeared. She set the glass down on the coffee table angrily.

  “After what you told us earlier, about how you felt there might have been something else in there with Katie,” Steve said, “I don’t think you should risk getting trapped somehow by whatever it is.”

  “I can handle it. Besides, Julie is just as much at risk. The entity went after her, too,” Maya said stubbornly, not mentioning that ever since that night she had sometimes felt pressure on her legs, like something was trying to keep her from moving forward.

  Then Mrs. Forcier turned to Maya. The sadness Mrs. Forcier had carried deeply buried for so long had been reaching the surface. Her make-up couldn’t hide the faint redness in her eyes. Her voice could no longer cover up her sorrow. Her hair seemed grayer.

  “Please don’t go tonight,” she said. “I know I’m being completely selfish in asking you to do something that is clearly against your nature, but I want you to be available to help my sister. If something were to happen to you tonight, you’d be of no use to me. I need you. I’m going to stay home as well. I’m saving everything for Katie.

  Maya said she’d think about it, but she knew they were right. They reassured her that they would tell her wh
at happened and what they learned. Penny even offered to wear a camera that would feed images back to her at their apartment.

  Maya got over her frustration by throwing herself wholeheartedly into the discussion about what they needed to bring with them in case Mike confronted them. Steve offered to bring some salt Eddie had had blessed by his mother’s priest. He’d also been experimenting with pistols that used bullets filled with salt and thought those might come in handy. Penny had some sage sticks imbued with cedar oil that she could bring plus a bunch of other herbs used to cleanse spaces of spirits. Jason had a collection of gemstones he felt had similar properties. Julie was a fan of lavender oil. They didn’t know the source of the entity or the curse, so it was hard to know what would work.

  “If we get into his cottage, I should definitely do some smudging,” Penny said, making a motion with her hands as if she was holding a bundle of burning dried sage and she was ready to waft the smoke over the area.

  Jason was nodding. “We definitely need to get into his cottage. It might tell us something.”

  “We went there and the only thing his cottage told us is that he likes old things,” Julie said.

  “Old things?” Steve asked.

  “His living room seemed like a museum, like he’d never updated anything since he moved into the cottage,” said Maya. “He started working as caretaker in 1980.”

  “Nothing creepy about that, is there?” Mrs. Forcier asked.

  “He looks like he’s in his thirties,” said Maya.

  Another silence fell on the group. Maya knew they must be trying to work it out themselves, the disparity between the age that Mike looked and the year he said he started working as caretaker.

  “That’s not right,” Eddie said, slowly shaking his head.

  Steve agreed. “We definitely need to talk to that dude. He knows something.”

  “Knows something? He is the thing!” Jason said.

  Julie exhaled. “Jason’s right, so we gotta be careful when we’re out there.”