by Zoe Aarsen
I said hi to Glenn and mumbled something about having gone to yoga with a friend when I passed him on the front steps on my way into the house. Running into Violet had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. What she’d said about the curse never ending if I died was probably true; it was only my ability to communicate with Jennie that had led to us saving Mischa back in January. Without someone who could get reliable direction from a spirit on the other side, Violet, Mischa, and Henry really didn’t have much of a chance of ever breaking the curse completely.
And for that reason, I knew I needed to find the strength to be selfish. I had to draw inspiration from Violet and take advantage of someone innocent in order to save myself, as well as everyone else. Exposure to her attitude was the reminder I needed about doing whatever was required of me, even if I hated the idea of it.
In my room, I called Mrs. Robinson at Oscawana Pavilion, hoping that she hadn’t chosen that day to suddenly start socializing with her fellow residents and hang out on the patio or in the TV lounge. But fortunately, she picked up on the third ring after the front desk transferred my call to her room.
“Mrs. Robinson. It’s McKenna Brady,” I said. “The aide at the assisted living facility?”
“I know who you are!” she replied. “I may be old, but I’m not feeble. Not yet, anyway!”
“Sorry, sorry,” I apologized. I went on to explain that we’d decided on a person to lure the spirits out of Mischa’s soul. “But I need you to tell me what that process looks like because whatever happened yesterday, I think my connection to my sister has been broken. I don’t know what happened to her; she’s just gone.” My entire body deflated when I heard myself say the word “gone.” I wasn’t prepared for the possibility that Mrs. Robinson would confirm my worst fear: that I’d finally reconnected with Jennie again only to lose her.
And that I might realistically die before I could find her, and still be unable to communicate with her in whatever followed my time in this life.
It sounded like Mrs. Robinson was making clucking noises and smacking her lips together on the other end of the call as she tried to figure out how to reply to me. “Hmm… She’s not gone. Can’t be gone.”
I exhaled in relief so powerfully that I fell over on my back across my bed. Jennie wasn’t gone. I didn’t want to know how Mrs. Robinson could be so sure; I figured she knew about all the places where souls might end up just like I knew what radio static sounded like when someone’s spirit was trying to contact me through it. As long as Jennie was somewhere, I could hang on to hope.
“Do you think the spirits did something bad to her?” I asked.
“No, they can’t harm her. But they can block the channel between the two of you. I imagine that’s probably what’s happening—they’re just causing interference.”
I imagined Jennie in “the dark place,” and couldn’t help but think of her as being vulnerable there, wherever “there” was. The thought of her connection to me being blocked—especially in light of how happy I’d been to finally be able to communicate with her again after eight long years—was enough to bring a lump to my throat. But I couldn’t cry; not then, not until I had some kind of plan in place to fix things. “Can you tell me how to get this evil out of Mischa, and what to do with it once it’s out?”
“You need to get yourself a bottle or a jar,” she informed me. “Now, that’s for the last part, but there’s no point in doing all the other stuff if you don’t have something good to capture them in. Something that can be sealed off with a cork or a tight lid.”
Mrs. Robinson went on to explain exactly what I’d have to do once I had both Mischa and the bait in the same place. As she rattled off directions, I took notes on a piece of paper and wondered just how the hell I was ever going to pull this off—in public, no less, with my entire community in attendance.
“Don’t forget the drums,” Mrs. Robinson reminded me after I thanked her for her guidance. “It may not seem important, but loa can’t resist a strong beat!”
Drums. Right. Mrs. Robinson gave me the phone number for her room so that I wouldn’t have to reach her through the assisted living facility front desk anymore, and I added it to the contacts list in my phone. She assured me that she’d work on trying to reestablish my connection to Jennie but encouraged me to collect all of the items I’d need and not leave any until the last second. “Things have a way of disappearing out of the blue when you need them most for magic work,” she mused.
I thanked her again wholeheartedly. Despite the fact that Mrs. Robinson had given me instructions in a matter-of-fact way that made me think that my task the next day would be quite straightforward, I was still keenly aware that this might be the last time we’d ever speak. “I’m so lucky to have met you, Mrs. Robinson. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have your advice.”
After a moment, Mrs. Robinson replied, “You’d do your best, child. That’s what we’re all doing, all of the time. The best we can.”
* * *
For the rest of the afternoon, I dodged my mom’s requests that I help out around the house by instead collecting the bizarre items that Mrs. Robinson had specified. Animal blood, red brick dust, rum and cornmeal. And, of course, drums.
Getting my hands on animal blood was the easiest of all, given that Glenn was a veterinarian who did house calls. When he’d moved into our house temporarily, he’d brought with him his minifridge for storing samples and vaccinations. As I stashed a small sample vial in the top drawer of my dresser, I prayed that Glenn wouldn’t notice it missing in the next twenty hours. I really had no idea how I would ever explain myself if Mom found that in my room.
Then I vacuumed the living room and hallway so that my mom would stop nagging me for a little while, and texted Henry to see if there was any chance his parents had a bottle of rum in the house.
HENRY 2:19 P.M.
Yeah, of course. My mom loves dark & stormies.
Without providing a reason, I asked him to bring a thermos or water bottle full of rum to the Portnoys’ memorial the next day. He agreed, and texted me back again to see if I wanted to hang out and talk through the plan, but I couldn’t find the words to reply. My feelings toward Henry were as impossible to sort through as different colors of glitter combined. I very much wanted to hang out with him and lock down our plan for the next day, but at the same time, I didn’t want to see him at all—because I wasn’t sure how I’d feel around him after having seen Trey earlier that morning.
The truth was, I didn’t want to feel anything at all except platonic affection for Henry, and I wasn’t sure that would be the case.
So I didn’t text back. Eventually, I would have to speak with Henry or see him in person to explain the role he’d have to play at Gundarsson’s. But I wasn’t ready, not just yet.
Cornmeal. In a lot of other people’s houses, there might have been a Tupperware canister of it in the pantry, or a dusty, unopened bag at the back of a cabinet. But my mom was not the type to randomly be inspired to whip up a pan of corn bread from scratch. Fortunately, cornmeal was an easy enough thing to purchase at the grocery store; it was by far the simplest remaining prop on Mrs. Robinson’s list to obtain. So I mentally set that requirement aside.
But red brick dust posed a different kind of problem. There weren’t voodoo shops in Willow where I could buy a mason jar full of the stuff. A quick Google search and a tutorial on YouTube told me I could make my own, but first I had to get my hands on a brick. I scoured the website of the Willow Gazette in search of any mentions of construction around town where I might be able to find a stray red brick because I didn’t know if it was possible to buy one—just one single, solitary brick—at the hardware store. When my search results came up dry, I had an epiphany. There had to be bricks scattered all over Mischa’s subdivision from the tornado’s path of destruction.
The Portnoys’ gated community was a long walk from my house, but not impossible to get to on foot. But everything I’d heard about the st
ate of the Portnoys’ neighborhood suggested that the tornado hadn’t done much damage anywhere but to their house, so I had every reason to believe there would be a guard stationed at the gate, and I might be turned away if none of the residents at Timber Creek were expecting me as a visitor. That being the case, I might have to climb over a fence or push my way through thick hedges to trespass.
I tied the shoestring on which I’d hung the gris-gris three times at the back of my neck, hoping that might make it harder for any spirits with evil intentions to unknot it. Then I shook a little salt into each of my shoes and set out. I told Mom I was going to walk to the grocery store to buy something for dinner, figuring I could perhaps pick up both the cornmeal and the brick in one trip.
The journey would have been more pleasant if I’d brought Maude along with me, but I thought better of taking that risk. Even though I’d already decided what I would have to do the next day, the long walk across town felt like a just punishment—or at least part of one. Unable to shake my fear of a car veering off the road and striking me, I walked all the way to Timber Creek on the grass after the sidewalk ended. I was less than twenty-four hours away from attempting to break this curse, and surely the spirits were aware. Every experience I’d had with them since September suggested that they would find a way to try and stop me from making it to the Portnoys’ memorial. There was no precaution too silly or extreme for me to take that day.
“Air” could mean anything.
Sure enough, when I reached Timber Creek, I spied a bored guard sitting inside his little station, watching a video on his phone and laughing. So I continued on past the main gate and rounded the corner, walking the perimeter of the subdivision until I reached the unmanned side gate, which was flanked by pine trees. Perhaps six months earlier I would have felt like a creep lurking beneath pine trees until a driver came along and tapped the security code into the security panel to raise the gate, but sneaking into Timber Creek was a breeze compared to sneaking out of the Sheridan School for Girls. Within five minutes, a maroon SUV rolled up. Its driver-side window lowered, and a middle-aged woman tapped in the code. The gate rose, and as soon as she’d driven through, I trotted behind her onto the property as the gate began its descent.
The reports that the tornado had only damaged the Portnoys’ house hadn’t been exaggerated. Aside from a few broken shutters on houses along their street and some overturned patio furniture, nothing looked askew—until I arrived in front of Mischa’s house. Its roof had been torn clean off, and half of the westernmost wall was gone too, making the house look as if an enormous monster had taken a bite out of it. My mother liked to jokingly refer to houses in Timber Creek as McMansions, implying that they were cheaply made status symbols. I had to admit that there appeared to be truth to her assessment from the way the drywall seemed to have just been blown away by the wind, with bright pink insulation hanging out of the top of the damaged wall. Yellow police tape had been wrapped around the base of the house, and a fluorescent orange sign had been fixed on the front door: CONDEMNED.
There were bricks, of course. They were scattered all over the front lawn and the space between the Portnoys’ house and the next amid family photos, kitchen plates, underwear, pages of books, fridge magnets, pillow stuffing… just about every kind of household tchotchke and kitchen accessory imaginable. There were bricks everywhere. They were more orange in color than red, but I picked one up from the Portnoys’ front lawn and slipped it into the tote bag I’d brought with me.
Standing there, in their front yard, I could see directly into what remained of Mischa’s purple bedroom on the second floor, right next door to Amanda’s room. Her bed had been carried by the wind close to where the floorboards had been torn up, and it looked like another strong gust might blow it down to the living room. Her closet doors had been torn off the hinges and were long gone. As I carefully picked through some of the detritus in the grass, I thought it was shameful that no one had come by to clean all of this up and store it for Mischa. But then, who would? Prowling through a family’s belongings out on their lawn wasn’t any less intrusive than breaking into their home.
Just as I was about to walk back to the side gate, I noticed a photo on the ground as I almost stepped on it. As I bent to reach for it, I realized it was one of those goofy old-timey fake Western photos that you can have taken at the theme parks in Wisconsin Dells. In it, Mischa, Olivia, and Candace, all around thirteen years old, were dressed as Depression-era gangsters with newsboy caps and blazers. Mischa was chomping on a cigar and holding a fake machine gun. Candace’s wide smile revealed braces on her teeth. They must have had it taken on our eighth-grade trip; I had a similar photo of myself posing with Cheryl and Erin somewhere at home.
My connection to Jennie had only been broken for a day, but I already missed the tingling sensation she’d send me whenever I needed to be mindful of my surroundings or take notice of something. Although I’d gotten a creepy sense that my stumbling across that photo was no accident, I still shouted when a floorboard in Amanda’s bedroom gave way behind me. Her nightstand crashed to the first floor, and the WHAM it made upon impact stopped my heart.
A wind kicked up around me, strong enough to stir some of the papers on the ground surrounding the house. Wind. Air. My feet began carrying me back to the gate before I was even aware that I’d ordered them to do that. By the time I reached the side entrance and squatted behind one of the two columns flanking the gate to hide myself from approaching drivers, the wind had died down, and the afternoon had gone completely silent.
Eerily silent.
Deadly silent.
I hadn’t been paying particular attention to the soundscape of the neighborhood until it was suddenly gone. A dog had been barking in the distance, but it had stopped. I was sure that occasional cars had been driving down the next street over, and that I’d subconsciously been listening to traffic speed past on the main road beyond the gate. There had been birds, too—not many, but chirping. Now? Nothing. It suddenly felt like I was the last living creature on Earth. I couldn’t remember having been this uncomfortable during the day before. The sky overhead was blue, and a handful of cheerful clouds floated past, but there was an electric charge in the air—just like there had been after school the day Olivia died—as if a storm was coming.
Slowly, I became aware that I wasn’t alone. Something was watching me, waiting for me to make a move.
I felt a strong urge to turn my head and look back at the Portnoys’ damaged house. But something deep inside of me refused to let me turn my head. I slid the photo I was holding into the back pocket of my jeans, figuring there was a reason it had literally crossed my path that day. The creaking of the gate as it rose distracted me, and a vehicle from a private security firm passed through at a slow speed, so I inched around the column to remain out of view before making a run for it.
I ducked beneath the gate and took off as fast as I could, not caring much if the security officer who’d just driven past me could see me in his rearview. I ran in the direction of the grocery store, the brick in my tote bag slamming into my hip with every step, and I paused on the corner of Glenn’s street because my lungs felt like they were on fire. As I doubled over to catch my breath, I debated whether or not I should stop by Glenn’s house to check in on Trey. There was no good reason why I should do that, I knew. There was a chance that one of Glenn’s neighbors would see me, or Trey, and that would be the worst scenario possible. But still… the urge to walk in that direction was powerful.
I thought of how confused and distracted I’d become the day that Trey and I had chased Violet through Willow High School to grab her locket. This was a similar sort of feeling, and despite acknowledging that my thoughts were probably being manipulated, I remained frozen on the sidewalk even after catching my breath, staring down Glenn’s street toward his house. However, when I pressed the gris-gris I wore around my neck between my thumb and the knuckle of my index finger, I suddenly—almost magically—had the
strength to turn away and continue to the grocery store.
The fact that Mrs. Robinson’s magic actually seemed to work gave me hope for the next day. The sun had set, and the temperature had dropped by the time I crossed my front yard carrying my brick and my purchases from the grocery store: two mason jars, a bag of cornmeal, two cans of coffee, and ingredients for a modest salad to justify my walk across town in case Mom asked. In the kitchen, I dumped ancient flour out of an old Tupperware container into the trash, rinsed out the inside of the container, and poured the ground coffee from both cans into it. Then I placed the plastic lids back on the now-empty cans, and voilà: two makeshift bongos—at least the closest thing to drums I was going to get my hands on before the next day.
Realizing I could no longer put Henry off without jeopardizing our plan, I called him from my bedroom and ran him through the steps we’d have to take at Gundarsson’s. He did not dismiss the plan or doubt its potential because it sounded ridiculous. But he did say, after mulling everything over, “If we pull this off, it’s going to be a miracle.”
“Don’t say that,” I warned him, thinking about the approaching new moon. “This has to work.”
The tutorial I had watched on YouTube about making red brick dust had suggested all I needed to do was set down some newspaper on concrete to catch the dust, place the brick on it, and hit it with a hammer while wearing safety goggles. I knew without checking that we didn’t have safety goggles in the house, so I fished Mom’s swimming goggles out of the linen closet in the bathroom.
