Silent as the Grave

by Zoe Aarsen

  Trying my hardest not to become emotional—because at that moment it truly felt like there was nothing I could do to save myself or Mischa—I asked, “If I did actually get Mischa’s soul locked out of her body, is there any way to put it back in?”

  “Of course there is. But you’d best make it a more hospitable environment before you try.”

  If Mrs. Robinson said it was possible to rectify this situation, I had to believe her and try—as she liked to say—my best. Although I didn’t know her well, I could tell she wasn’t the type of person to placate me just because I was young. She assured me that when it came to voodoo, there was always a way to undo what could be done… except, of course, bringing the dead back to life. And even after saying that, she hesitated, but then perhaps thought it wise not to continue.

  I said good-bye after thanking her again and tapped to end our call. At least it kind of sounded like Mrs. Robinson was enjoying herself. Since it didn’t seem like her daughter much appreciated her religious beliefs or knowledge of occult practices, it might have been a long while since she’d had an opportunity to advise anyone on these kinds of things.

  The clock on the wall overhead in the seating area gave the time as ten after six. I pressed my fingertips to my forehead, wishing with all my heart that I could just go home, climb into bed, and wait for Trey to tap on my window. But my bedroom was gone. Every single thing I’d ever owned and loved—music boxes, teddy bears, books—was gone. Trey would never climb through my window again.

  Trey.

  I had to find a way to warn him. Glenn had a sister in Green Bay, and there was a good chance that either she or Mom would head over to his house to grab some of his things. This meant that on top of the Mischa mess, I was also going to have to figure out another place for him to hide while I developed a new strategy.

  But if I dawdled in the cafeteria for too long, Mom might have freaked out in light of everything else going on, so I ordered a turkey sandwich for her and leaned against a column while it was being prepared. After popping my earbuds back into my ears, I tapped the radio app on my phone to see if Jennie was really back. As expected, all I heard at first was static. Trying not to get upset just yet, I tapped the volume buttons on my phone to spare my ears from the crackling, and then said, “Hello?”

  “Mayo?” the guy behind the counter asked as he built Mom’s sandwich.

  “Please,” I said, and then I heard garbled words on the radio that ended with, “… house is gone!”

  “Jennie?” I cried out, ecstatic to hear her voice again. I’d blurted out her name so loudly that the sandwich guy shot me a look over the counter. But I didn’t care if he thought I was being rude; I believed I only stood a chance at fixing the mess I’d made and preventing my own death if I had Jennie’s help. “Were you able to see what happened?”

  “Yes. Not while it was happening, but I can see what’s left. Everything burned except for the big things inside like the fridge and the oven,” she told me.

  Once again, I pictured my bedspread, all of my yearbooks, my color guard uniform—not to even mention all of Mom’s clothes, her computer, our couch—all burned to ash. But there wasn’t time to mourn any of it. They were just objects, and if I didn’t stay focused, I’d die. “Were you watching us at the funeral home? When we were with Mischa?”

  The sandwich guy gave me an odd smile as he handed me the sandwich on a paper plate and I mouthed, Thank you, at him.

  “No,” Jennie replied as I carried the plate over to the only open cashier. “I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t see what was happening. Everything was dark.”

  “Well, we tried to, uh, get something bad out of Mischa.” I selected my words carefully so as to not sound insane to the bearded man standing in front of me, awaiting his turn to pay. “But I think we messed it up, and now they’re stronger than ever.”

  I took a step forward as the line advanced.

  “They are,” Jennie confirmed. “Before, they could only take one soul for each cycle of the moon. But now they have much more flexibility to hurt anyone who tries to stop them.”

  The cashier rang up the sandwich, and I smiled politely as I handed her cash. After walking out of earshot from the checkout area, I griped, “I still just don’t understand why Why would the souls of Violet’s dead sisters want to collect a new soul every month? Just to keep Violet alive because she has this degenerative disease?”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with Violet anymore now that its connection to her has been broken. The physical world likes cycles. Not just the moon. Photosynthesis. The carbon cycle. Matter and energy fall into patterns, and so does evil. This evil is going to keep repeating as long as it can.”

  Something Violet had mentioned to me back in January crept back into my thoughts. She’d referred to the spirits as belonging to her five dead sisters, but had said that maybe they were something else, pretending to be her sisters. I hadn’t asked her what she’d meant by that. But before I had a chance to ask Jennie about it, the familiar prickling sensation broke out across my scalp and down the back of my neck.

  “Don’t step into the hallway yet!” Jennie warned me just as I was about to pass through the cafeteria doorway and back into the hall. Holding my phone and Mom’s sandwich in one hand and the mason jar in my other hand, I stepped aside and pressed my body against the wall so that anyone about to walk past wouldn’t easily spot me.

  A second later, I heard a man’s voice saying, “… see if they’ll make an exception because it’s a holiday.” I dared to lean forward by a few inches to catch a glimpse of who was walking toward the elevator bank, and I flinched in surprise when I saw Mischa and her uncle Roger. They both still wore all black, as if they’d come straight from the funeral home to the hospital to visit Amanda.

  “If they won’t let us in to see her, then you can just drop me off at Matt’s house. I’m tired,” Mischa replied to him, sounding like she wasn’t the least bit interested in visiting her sister. Then, just as I thought my presence had gone unnoticed because they were about to clear the entrance to the cafeteria and press the button to summon an elevator, Mischa slowly turned to look over her shoulder directly at me, and she smiled.

  “Look away,” Jennie commanded me over my earbuds. I maintained eye contact with Mischa for another long moment before tearing my eyes away, and in that second, the overhead lights flickered. Other people sitting in the cafeteria murmured in surprise, even after the lights stabilized. With my eyes focused down on the beige-flecked tile floor, I forbade myself to raise my head and glance in Mischa’s direction. “They’re just trying to intimidate you.”

  “Yeah, well, they burned down our house today without even being anywhere near it. So it’s working,” I whispered.

  Farther down the hall, a musical ding sounded as the elevator doors parted, and a moment later, Jennie told me, “It’s okay now. They’re gone.”

  But it wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. Glenn was still in the hospital, and if Mischa was so easily able to manipulate electricity then he wouldn’t be safe there—no one would. His injuries were my fault; he’d burned his right arm, which was the arm he used to perform surgeries on animals. The mistake I’d made with the ritual may have cost him his career. If I made another, the man who’d restored my mother’s belief in love might end up dead. My mother might end up dead.

  “What should I do now? How do I fix this?” I asked, feeling completely helpless and defeated.

  There was a long pause before Jennie replied, “You need to command them out of Mischa’s body and then banish them so that she can return.”

  Eager to get out of the hospital now, I began walking toward the waiting area. “Like a real exorcism?” Trey and I had sought help from Father Fahey, the pastor at St. Monica’s, in the fall. He’d turned us away, claiming that aiding us would expose the other priests who lived in the rectory to more danger than he could allow. I didn’t think there was any way he’d entertain the idea of helping us now, not
when breaking the curse was even more dangerous.

  “Yes. But you’re going to need help. And you shouldn’t be near Mom right now,” Jennie told me.

  “She needs me, though. She’s super upset.” I didn’t want Mom spending the night alone at the only motel around for miles. This fire was probably going to cause nightmarish memories to resurface for her. And to be perfectly honest, if I was going to die within the next ten days, I wanted to be around her as much as I could while I still had time.

  “You’re making it too easy for them if you’re around her. It’s hard for them to apply energy in more than one place at a time. If you and Mom are in different locations, they’ll fight over who to torment. They won’t be able to come after you simultaneously,” Jennie explained.

  This, strangely, made sense to me. Perhaps the evil spirits had the ability to know what I was doing at any given second, which gave them the upper hand in always being one step ahead of me. But I’d been thinking of them as if they had futuristic powers, and in reality, they were probably a lot less sophisticated in terms of formulating complicated plans than I was giving them credit for being.

  In the waiting room, Mom was so distraught that she hadn’t seemed to notice that I’d been gone almost forty-five minutes. Glenn’s doctor had met with her and told her that she’d be allowed a brief visit that night in an hour or so when he came out of sedation. They expected he might need a skin graft on his right arm, and two of the fingers on his right hand were in bad shape, but it was too soon to tell.

  Mom told me she was going to hang out around the hospital until she was permitted to visit with Glenn, even if it was just for a few minutes. She thanked me for the sandwich and ate a few bites of it while I wondered how in the world I was going to separate myself from her, and where in town I could possibly go. The sad truth was that I had already burned all of my bridges in town. Cheryl was probably still disgusted with me for what I’d dragged her into earlier that day. And even though my mother loved the idea of my spending more time with Henry Richmond, sleeping at his house for even one night was a last resort.

  But I didn’t have to think too hard about finding a solution, because one found me. Just as Mom started talking about how she thought we should go to Glenn’s house that night since the bedrooms hadn’t been damaged and the contractors were supposed to start working on the roof the next morning, I got a text from Violet.

  VIOLET 6:53 P.M.

  R U OK? Just heard about your house.

  Violet.

  Not too long ago, she would have been the last person on Earth I wanted to ask for help. But now she was in some ways my best option. I wouldn’t have to lie to her about my reason for needing to stay away from my mom at a time when it seemed completely insensitive to leave her on her own. And although I didn’t want to disclose anything about Trey’s presence in town to her, she’d also understand the importance of keeping him hidden just a little while longer. She had seemed genuinely willing to help me over the last few days, and she had nothing at all to gain by doing so. I had to admit that if I were in her position, having been finally freed from the curse, I might not have been as eager to pitch in.

  As a plan came together in my mind, I told Mom, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to stay at Glenn’s at all. I mean, the damage to the roof may be more complicated than just what we see. There could be electrical issues. And besides, it’s cold.”

  To my surprise, Mom actually seemed to agree. “Well, we could stay at the Waukechon Inn in Ortonville. I guess one night wouldn’t break the bank. But I hate the idea of being so far from the house. You know, the police said they’d post someone there overnight to keep people off our property, but I just don’t know.”

  She was playing directly into my hand, which made me feel both good and guilty. “Mom, why don’t you spend the night at the Emorys’ so that you can keep an eye on things, and I’ll just sleep over at Cheryl’s?” I proposed. Then, to really drive home my point, I added, “You know you won’t sleep at all tonight if you’re worried about the house, and Glenn’s going to want to see you first thing in the morning.”

  Mom yawned unexpectedly and said, “You’re right. That’s an excellent plan.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into a hug. “What would I do without you?”

  I tried my best to banish negative thoughts from my mind and to instead appreciate her sentiment. But the nightmare of this day was my fault. There were a million things I could have done differently to avoid ending up in the hospital waiting room that night, ranging from declining the invitation to Olivia’s birthday party to refusing to fly back to Willow to attend Mischa’s parents’ wake. Since I’d first suspected that Violet was to blame for Olivia’s death, I had foolishly believed that I could get to the bottom of the curse and protect Candace and Mischa. But now I was realizing that belief had been narcissistic. It might not be possible to save everyone, including myself, and I regretted not choosing more carefully whose lives I wanted to protect most.

  Mom left me in the waiting room to visit Glenn, and I fought the urge to ask her to take the stairs instead of the elevator for her own safety, since Mischa was probably still somewhere in the building. I hoped with all my might that spending the night apart from Mom would serve to protect rather than endanger her.

  CHAPTER 13

  IT WAS PURE LUCK THAT Mom pulled into Cheryl’s driveway, idled until I reached the Guthries’ front steps, and then drove away. It would have been awkward if she’d lingered until I rang the front doorbell or worse, until someone answered the door, since I hadn’t called Cheryl in advance. But I had other plans.

  From the Guthries’ driveway, I could hear the television in their living room. I already knew what a cozy night at Cheryl’s typically entailed: a movie on TV, buttery popcorn, and a highly competitive round of Trivial Pursuit with her family. My heart yearned for the days when I was a frequent participant in nights like that, but a quick glance up at the moon overhead in the night sky—it was just about half-full—was a sharp reminder that I had no choice but to keep moving.

  In my black pumps, which had been rubbing blisters onto my feet for hours, I walked to the corner of Cheryl’s street and waited for Violet to arrive. The temperature had plunged when the sun had gone down, and now I shivered as I lowered the zipper on the front of my coat to tuck the mason jar inside, pressed against my chest, so that I could shove my right hand into my pocket for warmth. I wondered as I stared down the dark street if I could really trust Violet to help out with whatever was required of us next. There was a tiny chance that she thought she’d earn herself a kidney, but I don’t think that was her motivation for driving across town to pick me up. She may have agreed to fetch me from the Guthries’ corner and give me a place to crash for the night out of a sense of guilt. But I was starting to get the sense that Violet had an appetite for closure similar to Henry’s. She seemed to really want to help end this thing, as long as I was willing to take the lead.

  My sigh of relief released a white puff of condensation into the night air when Violet’s green Mini Cooper pulled over to the side of the road and I saw Trey slouching in the back seat. He flashed me a what the hell? expression as I opened the front passenger door and climbed in after deciding it would be rude to get in the back next to him.

  “Thank you so much,” I told Violet through chattering teeth.

  “I almost didn’t make it because your friend, here, nearly killed me,” Violet said as she pulled away from the curb and gave Trey a dirty look in the rearview mirror.

  “What did you think was going to happen when you broke into a stranger’s house?” Trey snapped. “Sorry I didn’t greet you with milk and cookies.”

  I had called Violet on the sly from the hospital waiting room while Mom had gone up to the ICU to visit Glenn, and requested that she pick up Trey first at Glenn’s address before meeting me on Cheryl’s corner. Not too long ago, putting my fate as well as Trey’s into the hands of Violet Simmons would
have seemed like a terrible idea. But I had to acknowledge that she’d exceeded my expectations at the funeral home. Besides, if I was going to drag another person into peril, I felt considerably better about that person being Violet instead of Henry.

  “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe I expected you’d thank me for canceling my plans with my boyfriend at a moment’s notice and driving over to save your ass?” Violet shot back at him.

  I had never before considered the possibility that Violet and Trey shared personality traits as half siblings, but it took effort not to laugh at their similar stubbornnesss. “You broke into Glenn’s house?” I asked Violet in amusement.

  “I just popped the lock on the front door with a credit card. Not a big deal. And only because I knocked for like five minutes, and Trey wouldn’t open the door,” Violet said defensively. “You should really tell your mom’s friend to get a dead bolt installed. This quaint little town isn’t nearly as safe or as welcoming as you all like to think it is.”

  “Sorry,” I told Trey though the space in between the front seats. I was trying to compartmentalize my emotions to stay focused on the biggest issues I faced, but thinking about all of the events of the day threatened to make me burst into tears. “I don’t know if Violet told you, but my house burned down today right after we confronted Mischa.” I stopped speaking as I felt myself choke on the phrase burned down, knowing that sobs weren’t far behind.

  “Violet told me everything,” he said to relieve me from the burden of having to explain in greater detail. He reached forward to rub my neck under my hair. “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what to say. It’s just not fair.”

  I knew what he was implying: It wasn’t fair that my mom and I were being punished for what his and Violet’s grandmother had done. But there wasn’t time to bemoan injustice. And even though I was feeling less chilly toward Violet, I still didn’t want her to see how devastated I was. So I concentrated on the present moment and the fact that we were headed to the Simmons mansion with no plan in place. “Well, apologies for the mystery and drama. But it wouldn’t have been safe for you to have stayed at Glenn’s, not even overnight. My mom’s probably going to drive over there first thing in the morning to pick up some of his clothes because everything he had at our house is gone now.”