by Zoe Aarsen
I took a shallow breath, looked Henry in the eye, and then unzipped my bag to make it clear to him that we had no choice other than to act right there, right then. “She’s not doing so great,” I told Cheryl, feeling queasy about manipulating her into partaking in our plan with half-truths. “She’s taking a moment to pull herself together over there with her gymnastics coach. It would probably be nice of you to say hi to her now before she goes back inside. You know? Just in case she gets emotional again.”
Cheryl looked at me with a confused expression and said, “Why? I’ll just give her some space and say hello later.”
“Both of her parents just died,” Violet jumped in, sensing what I was driving at, which was that we needed to shepherd Cheryl to the side of the building to get her in front of Mischa. “And just about everyone in town is here. It’s a little overwhelming, you know? You guys have all known each other since, like, preschool. It would probably mean a lot to her if you speak with her one-on-one. Now. Before she goes inside again.”
Cheryl looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded. We were wasting time, and I could practically feel seconds ticking by in my bones. I forced a smile and extended my arm in the direction of the garden to suggest that Cheryl and Dan should take the lead. Still looking uncertain, Cheryl finally stepped ahead of the rest of us and walked down the path toward the garden. Following, I reached into my bag and handed the empty coffee cans to both Henry and Violet. To Henry, I also passed the mason jar of red brick dust, and he removed its lid to be prepared to toss its contents. I twisted off the cap of the water bottle and dropped it into the tote bag, then pulled the rubber stopper out of the top of the vial. In my haste to have everything prepared by the time I turned the corner and came into Mischa’s view, I dropped the stopper into my tote bag, realizing after the fact that it was probably smearing cow’s blood all over the interior.
When I stepped around the edge of the building, seconds after Cheryl and Dan, I saw Mischa rising from the bench where her coach remained sitting. “… so nice of you to come,” Mischa was saying.
This was the moment.
Cheryl stood about five feet away from Mischa, and it looked like either Mischa would take a few steps closer, or Cheryl would move to give her a quick hug. My scalp burned with tingles; this was exactly what I’d been waiting for, so I wasn’t sure if Jennie—if the tingles were even being caused by her—was trying to warn me, or why. There was no time to think. Henry and I dashed forward to arrive on both sides of Cheryl. As he reached in front of her to pour a shaky line of red brick dust near her toes on the sidewalk, I tossed the vial of blood at Mischa.
“What the…” Mischa looked down at the front of her black dress. There hadn’t been more than about two tablespoons of blood in the vial, but the substance was still recognizable against the dark fabric. “Is that blood? Are you serious right now?”
The blood begins the ceremony, Mrs. Robinson had told me. It’s how you tell the spirit world you’re getting started: with a sacrifice.
Cheryl reached for my arm, trying to stop me from doing whatever I was up to. “McKenna, what are you…” But I shook her hand off of me. Henry and Violet stood on either side of Cheryl, facing Mischa, both tapping the plastic lids of the coffee cans they held to the beat established by Henry.
The drums summon the spirits.
Ignoring Cheryl and Dan, I tried not to notice that Mischa’s hands were balling into fists at her sides, and her scrunched-up face was turning red with fury. And despite the fact that her Hulk-size coach had gotten up from the bench, I continued.
I dropped the empty glass vial to the sidewalk and transferred Henry’s water bottle from my left hand to my right to give me more control over it as I poured it onto the sidewalk on Mischa’s side of the line of red dust Henry had scattered between her and Cheryl. As I tilted the water bottle over and fragrant yellow sludge slid out and down to the pavement, I chanted the French words Mrs. Robinson had instructed me to practice: “Sortez, sortez, méchants.”
The spirits can’t resist the smell of rum and cornmeal.
“What is going on here?” Mischa’s coach yelled at me in a thick European accent.
“McKenna, this is just…” Cheryl shook her head in confusion. She reached for Dan’s hand and turned away from me as if she was going to walk back to the parking lot. But anticipating this, Violet stepped in front of her to block her path. This was why conducting this ceremony inside would have been ideal; if Cheryl made a run for it out here, we’d be in serious trouble.
But Cheryl wasn’t the type of person to ever make a run for it.
And Mischa—or the spirits inside of her—had figured out exactly what we were attempting.
Mischa narrowed her eyes at me with a devilish smirk on her face. “You have no idea what you’re doing,” she taunted me in a singsong voice. Although Mischa was often sarcastic, I had no doubt that these words and the voice that had spoken them were not her own. It had to be a sign of progress, or at least I hoped it was, that the spirits were revealing themselves to us.
“Stop this!” the coach yelled at us.
To my right, I heard Dan say to Violet, “Come on, Violet. Let us go. This is freaky.”
We were almost done—so close. If only Cheryl would stay still for a few more seconds.
Tease them out. Tempt them, Mrs. Robinson had advised. This wasn’t like an exorcism in the movies. She had seemed confident that these spirits would not respond well at all to one of us commanding them to leave Mischa’s soul. They had to leave of their own accord, and temptation was the most likely way to make that happen.
I threw the empty water bottle into the grass and reached into my tote bag for the second mason jar—the empty one. With one quick flick of the wrist, I took off its lid inside the bag, where Mischa couldn’t see my hands.
“Sortez, sortez, méchants. Venez dans votre nouvelle maison.”
Clearly furious but still seemingly amused, Mischa took another step closer to the cornmeal mix on the sidewalk, maintaining eye contact with me. Challenging me. She raised her right leg as if she was going to step over the scant red brick dust barrier on the sidewalk separating her from Cheryl. But instead of setting her foot down on the other side, she kept it suspended in the air below her bent knee, as if the dust was a kind of force field preventing her from passing. Either that, or she wanted me to believe that it was.
Henry and Violet continued their tapping on the coffee can lids. Cheryl raised her voice to Violet, saying, “You guys are crazy. Seriously!”
And then, suddenly, Mischa’s hands flew to her throat and clasped around it. She appeared to be choking on something. Her eyes popped open so wide they looked like they might fall out of their sockets. She struggled to cough, her chest heaving, but no sound escaped her mouth, as if her airway was completely blocked. “Mischa!” her coach shouted in alarm. He reached around her waist to perform the Heimlich maneuver.
But I knew that Mischa wasn’t choking on anything.
She was strangling herself.
Or rather, the spirits inside of her were making her do so. Mrs. Robinson had warned me that they did love a spectacle. They’d do anything to resist the effect of the drums, the rum, and the cornmeal. And they’d resort to theatrics to try to make us stop. Choking… a sarcastic nod to the death Violet had predicted for Mischa back in September? Even though I had been expecting something along these lines, it was still horrifying to watch. If it weren’t for my own life in the balance, my love for Trey and desperate desire to have a future with him, the dramatic display might have made me lose my courage.
I had warned Henry about this. His and Violet’s drumbeat slowed, and I snapped at both of them, “Keep going!”
“She can’t breathe!” Dan shouted at me.
Cheryl shook her head angrily at me. “Just stop this, McKenna!” she shouted.
Ignoring Cheryl, in as soothing a voice as I could manage, I said again, “Sortez, sortez, méchants. Venez dans votre n
ouvelle maison.”
Suddenly, the day went completely still, just as it had when I’d gone to the Portnoys’ house to fetch the brick. Car noises from the nearby parking lot were silenced. Chatter from attendees of the memorial service who were smoking around the front of the building faded away. The rhythm of Henry and Violet’s tapping took on a strange, monophonic audio effect, as if the sound waves were being slightly flattened.
Mischa’s coach pumped his clasped hands upward beneath Mischa’s rib cage as if trying to dislodge whatever she was choking on from her windpipe. She broke free from his tight hold on her, surprising him, and she leered at me. The blood had drained from her face, but her speech was unencumbered, making it obvious that she’d never actually been choking.
“Even after all this time, you think you can outsmart us,” she hissed, no longer sounding anything like herself. “And all you do is just keep making this easier.”
A chill ran through me. I’d never heard the spirits address me directly like that before. Without taking my eyes off of Mischa, and with my scalp burning so badly that all I could think about was scratching it, I shouted to Henry and Violet, “Keep going!”
Their beat continued.
I repeated, “Sortez, sortez, méchants.”
Then Mischa’s body contorted. She doubled over, writhing, and clapped her hands over her nose and mouth. Her hands flattened against the skin as if she was trying to keep something from escaping either out through her nostrils or her lips, and her eyes darted wildly.
“Mischa!” her coach exclaimed.
“This is it, you guys,” I warned Henry and Violet, who in turn increased the speed at which they were banging on the tops of their cans.
And then—the moment I’d been hoping for—Mischa’s petite body lurched forward, and she vomited watery foam onto the sidewalk. It hit the ground with a splat that sounded deafeningly loud in the otherwise eerie silence, which was otherwise only punctuated by Henry and Violet’s drumming on their coffee cans. Hoping with all my might that Mrs. Robinson had been correct about this part of the ceremony, I held the empty mason jar up in front of Cheryl’s stupefied face as if I was expecting to catch something inside of it, then clapped the lid over it and twisted it shut.
It was impossible for a few seconds to know whether or not I’d caught the evil spirits in the jar. Mrs. Robinson had warned me that they were invisible. But she had told me that spirits create condensation when they’re captured during those first few moments of distress, when they realize that they’re trapped. Henry and Violet both stopped tapping on their cans in amazement and focused their attention on me.
I held up the jar so that Henry could also peer inside of it.
First one drop of condensation formed on the inside wall of the glass.
Then a second.
I became keenly aware of a car behind us driving slowly through the lot, and the song playing on its radio. The weird sound bubble around us seemed to be fading away, and the world was returning to its normal volume.
Mischa gasped sharply as if she’d been stabbed, and stood straight up with raised eyebrows. For just a fraction of a second, she looked completely shocked—as if she didn’t recognize her surroundings. But then she blinked and relaxed her posture as her coach fussed over her. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.
“Did it work?” Violet asked with enormous eyes.
Relief flooded over me with such power that I stumbled backward and caught myself before falling over. I really and truly believed we’d been successful. Overhead, fat clouds rolled across a bright blue sky. Everything seemed normal. For the first time since Trey and I had thrown Violet’s locket into White Ridge Lake, I was confident that we’d finally freed ourselves from the Simmonses’ evil.
“I don’t know what you guys were doing, but that was really not cool,” Dan told me before turning and yanking Cheryl’s wrist to make her follow him. She lingered for a moment, frowning at me as if I’d just deeply betrayed her.
Feeling guilty, I called after her, “I’ll explain later!” She didn’t reply, though; she and Dan were already stepping off the curb and marching back across the parking lot.
Mischa’s coach glared at the three of us and pointed his meaty index finger at us. “You should be ashamed, playing games on a sad day like this.”
For once, Henry didn’t try to assuage the situation. I took a step back to be closer to him and Violet, all of us watching for any sort of change in Mischa. But instead of announcing that she felt weak or unburdened, or that the curse was broken, her lips curled into a slow, mischievous smile. She raised one eyebrow as she asked me, “What’s in the jar?”
As Mischa smiled at me over her shoulder while her coach ushered her back toward the entrance of the funeral home, muttering Russian curses under his breath, the raging fire on the top of my head gave way to a cold sweat. A strong shiver rippled through my body from my head to my toes, strong enough to make my teeth chatter. Because although there had always been a sparkle in Mischa’s eye, a little hint of ferocity, what I just saw was something new. Unfamiliar.
“What… the hell…,” Henry said.
“Didn’t she sound weird? Just now?” Violet asked, looking at me and then over at Henry. “That didn’t sound like Mischa.”
With a trembling lower lip and a sharp lump in my throat, I raised the mason jar in my hand and looked at the two small drops of liquid clinging to the inside of the glass. My breath was so shallow that I was becoming light-headed as I found my voice despite my fear. This couldn’t have happened. It was too horrible to believe. My mouth could barely form the words, “I don’t think that was Mischa.”
Henry shook his head. “No. We were both right here, watching! I mean, did you notice what happened with the sound around us? We did something just now. I think we broke the curse.”
But Violet pointed down at our feet, and when my eyes followed her finger to the sidewalk where I’d poured the rum and cornmeal, I knew that we were in real trouble—worse than ever before. What had just, moments ago, been a bright yellow, grainy liquid was now unrecognizable from its original form. It was completely black and charred, as if it had been baking in the hot sun for days. Mrs. Robinson hadn’t mentioned anything at all about spirits actually consuming the rum and cornmeal, or transforming it into something. Even with my limited knowledge of the occult, I guessed that any kind of matter suddenly being burned to a crisp was a very, very bad sign.
“We have to find her,” I whispered. “Whatever we just did, we have to undo it. Now.”
Without waiting for Henry or Violet to agree with me, I spun on my heel and broke into a run in my uncomfortable shoes. Frantic thoughts raced through my head as I wondered what the hell we could have possibly gotten wrong. I’d followed all of Mrs. Robinson’s directions. Even with the unanticipated change in location, we’d done everything right. “Do you think the spirits went inside Cheryl?” I heard Violet ask Henry behind me.
“Cheryl seemed fine,” Henry replied.
There were even more guests inside the funeral home when I burst in through the front door than there had been when we’d stepped outside. More people from Willow High School and others I didn’t recognize. “Excuse me,” I mumbled as I squeezed my way among clusters of people, trying to reach the viewing room.
Mom spotted me across the crowd and waved. We’d been there almost forty-five minutes. That was about as long as she could tolerate any social situation. But I couldn’t leave yet—not without figuring out what we’d done. I flashed a half-hearted smile at Mom but didn’t wave back, instead ducking my head down and turning sideways to squeeze in between two large men.
When I finally stepped through the open French doors into the viewing room, it became very obvious that whatever we’d just done to Mischa was bad. Very bad. Henry caught up to me and stood on my right side, Violet on my left, and the three of us watched in sickening wonderment as Mischa returned to her place at the back of the room.
With each step she took, the atmosphere seemed to sour. The velvety petals of the orchids in the flower arrangement closest to the two caskets began to wilt, shriveling up and turning into blackened buds among the greenery. Then the same thing happened to each of the other flower arrangements. Roses wrinkled, and the buds dropped to the carpet. Bright white petals dropped off daisies and were scraggly and yellowed by the time they hit the floor. The black shroud placed over the mirror at the back of the room slipped off on its own and landed in a pile.
None of the guests standing around sharing memories of Adam and Elena Portnoy seemed to notice anything at first. But the powdery, floral scent of the funeral home was slowly overpowered by a musty, rotten stench, and attendees tried to respond politely as they became aware of it by covering their noses with their hands and handkerchiefs. Mr. Gundarsson—not the owner of the funeral home, but his adult son—sniffed the air delicately and stepped out of the room, presumably to alert his housekeeping staff that something strange was happening.
Mischa turned away from the guests, and her eyes landed on me, Henry, and Violet. She stared at us with a firm frown, expressing that this was her territory, and we were intruding on it. Matt approached her, slipped an arm around her waist, and whispered something in her ear. She twisted her neck to face him while replying, and whatever she said to him was surprising enough that he backed away from her with his jaw hanging open and retreated to the other side of the room, where his mom was seated with his brothers.
“There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Mr. and Mrs. Richmond arrived, and Mrs. Richmond kissed Henry on the cheek. She looked as well put together in her black dress and cashmere coat as she always did, although now that I’d seen the piles of clutter in the Richmonds’ house, I thought of her differently. As she greeted me with a warm smile, my eyes fixed on her gold earrings, which were shaped like crosses. I knew I wasn’t imagining it when the crosses slowly turned upside down in her earlobes.
“Your mother? Is she here?” Mrs. Richmond was looking at me with a concerned expression on her face. I snapped out of the daze the earrings had put me in, realizing that she’d already asked me once about Mom.
