What She Inherits

by Diane V. Mulligan

  When she was no closer to sleep an hour after shutting off the light, Angela gave up, got out of the bed and fetched her laptop. Then she dug in her purse for the business card Belle had given her. She took the card and the computer back to the bed and typed the name Calliope Savidos into the search engine.

  The top result was Calliope’s own website. Below that were Yelp reviews, a Facebook page, and other things like that. Just as Angela was about to open Calliope’s website, a result halfway down the page caught her eye: The Low Country Amateur Paranormal Activity Investigators Club. She clicked.

  A sleek, professional-looking webpage opened with a black background that looked like a starry sky that was animated to swirl slowly. When Angela clicked the middle of the screen, the star pattern dispersed and revealed a Welcome page.

  “We, the Low Country Amateur Paranormal Activity Investigators Club, know there’s more to this world than what we can see with the naked eye. We believe that science can prove the existence of a spirit world.”

  Below this bold declaration were a series of tabs: Events, Field Notes, Membership, and Links. Angela opened the membership page, where she learned that interested persons and the press were invited to drop in at twice-monthly meetings at Third Eye Books to learn more. There was a meeting tomorrow night. She looked up Third Eye Books and learned it was only about twenty minutes away, in one of the shopping centers in Palmetto Landing. There was no reason she couldn’t go to the meeting, sit in the back, check it out, and see if maybe they could help her.

  Except, of course, that these people were likely to be nut jobs. And did paranormal include stuff like vampires and zombies? Then again, nuts or not, it would be nice to meet people who wouldn’t tell her she was “just grieving” if she said she thought her mother was haunting her.

  ***

  The next night, Angela found herself in the parking lot of Third Eye Books, watching other people enter the store. They looked normal enough. Most of them were men, ranging in age from late teens to advanced middle age, and she guessed these were the ghost hunters, as they all were arriving in time for the meeting. The people entering the shop didn’t appear to have any visible satanic tattoos or anything, and only one was wearing a Goth get-up. Not a single one was wearing a cape, much to Angela’s relief. She glanced at the clock. 7:03. It was now or never. She took a deep breath and got out of the car.

  The paranormal sleuths were gathered in a small room, sitting on folding chairs and chatting amongst themselves. There was harsh-smelling coffee brewing in the corner. Angela lingered in the doorway. As she looked at the backs of the heads of a roomful of believers whom she knew, in light of recent events, she should not judge, she couldn’t help but wonder if Nicole and Molly had been right. Maybe she really was suffering from grief-induced insanity, because a few weeks ago she wouldn’t have set foot in this bookstore, let alone this meeting.

  A young man stood up and walked to the front of the room, and everyone quieted down. He spotted Angela in the doorway, smiled, and gestured toward the chairs. Angela hesitated a moment longer and then found a place to sit near the back.

  “Hey, y’all. Big crowd tonight,” he said.

  He looked familiar. Angela tried to think of how she might know him as she scanned the room and did a quick head count. Eighteen people, counting herself, about a dozen more than she’d expected, truthfully.

  “Most of y’all know me,” the man went on. “But for those who don’t, I’m Randy Davis.”

  Randy Davis. She knew that name. She studied him more closely. He had a rich, creamy-coffee complexion, big brown eyes, and close-cropped hair. He was average height with a runner’s build, lean and lanky. When he smiled, he had adorable dimples. Randy Davis... And then she remembered. Elementary school. He had been shy and nerdy, with glasses. In her memory, she saw him sitting alone at the edge of the playground with his comic books.

  “So our top priority tonight is Saturday’s investigation,” Randy was saying. “Jack and I scouted the Lawton Railroad Bridge, and Neil checked out Marsten Hills, but honestly I’m not sure either will be very exciting.”

  A man in the front swiveled in his seat to look at the rest of the group. “Lawton’s played out. It might be a fun place for teenagers to go for a laugh and a fright, but honestly, it’s not worth the trouble of hauling equipment up there,” he said.

  Angela had heard urban legends of the Lawton Railroad bridge, some story of a hobo waiting to hop on the train and getting run over instead, or waiting to hop off and misjudging and leaping as the train was crossing the bridge over the ravine, or something like that. If this club took those sorts of lame stories seriously, she was in the wrong place.

  “The owner of Marsten Hills says we can send a team,” someone else said, “but no more than four people.”

  “Now, I know we’re down to the wire here, so unless y’all have any ideas, we might have to skip this month,” Randy said.

  Angela watched as people exchanged glances and murmured.

  A woman raised her hand. “Since so many of us are going up to Charleston for Halloween next month, I say we skip it.”

  “Good point, Jen,” Randy said.

  “Yeah, but what about all of the rest of us who can’t afford your little excursion? We aren’t all so lucky,” a small woman with spiky silver hair said, shooting Jen a dirty look.

  “I’m open to suggestions, Krissy,” Randy said, shrugging.

  There was more murmuring and grumbling, and after a few minutes, Jen said, “I think we should move on to talk about the trip. Obviously no one has ideas. Four people can go to Marsten Hills and the rest of us will skip this month.”

  Krissy guffawed, but no one else spoke, so Randy invited Jen to come up to the front. Jen was a tiny bird of a woman with hair dyed purple and a face pocked with acne scars. She began going over a list of details such as when and where to meet the bus, who was still looking for roommates if anyone wanted to cut costs, who still owed final payments, and things like that. As she spoke, Krissy got up loudly and left, taking two men with her. Apparently this was a contentious bunch.

  When Jen was done, Randy invited everyone to hang around and have some snacks, and like obedient students, everyone queued up at the table of cookies beside the coffee maker. Angela waited a moment and then approached Randy, who was still at the front of the room, deep in conversation with an elderly gentleman. When the man finally walked away, Randy noticed Angela and gave a bright, dimpled smile.

  “Hi there. First time joining us?” he asked.

  Angela nodded, trying to work out what she wanted to say.

  “You look really familiar,” he said.

  Angela blushed, for no reason she could think of, and said, “I think we went to grade school together.”

  He furrowed his brow and cocked his head. “I’m terrible at putting names and faces together.”

  She introduced herself and he opened his eyes wide and gave a little shake of his head. “I would not have expected to see you here,” he said. His friendliness toward her seemed to cool a little. When he thought she was a stranger, he was all smiles, but now he was guarded.

  “I mean, and don’t take this the wrong way, but you were definitely one of those too-cool girls, you know?” Randy said.

  Angela winced. What he was saying was that she hadn’t been nice. It was true that she’d been popular but she hadn’t been cliquey or exclusive. Had she? The mean girl trope was a high school thing, not a grade school thing, right? They’d only gone to school together through fifth grade. How popular was any fifth grader? Could a fifth grader even be too cool?

  “Except, I do remember that story you used to tell, about your brother.”

  She didn’t remember telling Randy stories about Ryan. She didn’t remember talking to him at all. Maybe she really had been a mean girl if she couldn’t even remember ever speaking to Randy, while he recalled stories she’d told him.

  “So you still live around here? Are you in scho
ol?” Angela asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “Yeah, still here. Actually I’m a computer programmer. I maintain websites for local businesses and I’m starting to develop apps.” He crossed his arms and said this as if he was now too cool.

  Angela nodded. That explained the club’s slick website.

  “So what brought you in tonight?” he asked.

  “What does a site investigation involve?” Angela asked.

  They sat in a couple of the cold, metal folding chairs, and Randy explained the logistics of a site investigation. The team usually arrived on site around eight to get familiar with the place. Then they secured the area—which was why they hated outdoor sites like the Lawton Railroad Bridge, so hard to secure—and set up their equipment. Members of the club each brought their own equipment, whatever they had. Generally they coordinated in advance to avoid redundancy and make sure they covered all the basics: infrared cameras, night vision goggles, microphones. They set up a command center in an area of the site where little or no paranormal activity had been detected in the past and shut off lights everywhere else. They used video chat from team members’ cell phones to laptops in command center to track the investigation, which lasted until dawn.

  He told her all of this in a disinterested way, as if he thought her question was insincere or he was bored with talking to her. What in the world had she ever done to him? she wondered. He had been all welcoming smiles as host of the meeting, and now he was acting like he’d rather be anywhere else. Still, she’d worked up the nerve to come here, so he pushed on. She asked, “How many people to a team?”

  “Depends on a lot of factors,” Randy explained, “the size of the site, the availability of club members, the preferences of the site’s owner.”

  Angela considered all of this, and then asked, “So y’all’s equipment, it would detect stuff that can’t normally be seen? Like if a ghost had only ever been seen by one person, even if other people were in the house at the time, you could maybe confirm that the ghost was there?” Her palms were sweaty and her voice shook. She couldn’t look him in the eye. She felt so silly saying all of this aloud.

  “That’s the idea,” he said.

  “Do you ever communicate with the ghosts, or do you just detect them?” she asked, swallowing the lump that had risen in her throat. She felt color flood her face and tried to will herself not to cry.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s like they want to talk,” he said. “Sometimes we bring a medium along, or come back with one later, if we think the ghost is trying to communicate.”

  Angela sniffled, nodded, and then sighed. “My mother died a few weeks ago,” she said.

  “God, that’s terrible. I’m sorry,” he said, sounding sincere for the first time since she’d introduced herself.

  “Everyone thinks I’m nuts, but I know her spirit or whatever is still in the house, and I really need to talk to her.” She dropped her elbows to her knees and put her face in her hands.

  Randy reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, and his kindness tipped her over into a fresh wave of sobs. But soon her crying subsided—in the past few weeks she had learned that even when it seems like you might cry forever, the tears do run out eventually—and as her breathing steadied, she felt flooded with embarrassment for this outburst in front of a total stranger.

  “I’m so sorry—”

  But he cut her off. “Don’t apologize. Of course you’re upset. Let me give you my number and if you decide you want an investigation—”

  “I do,” she said firmly. “As soon as possible.”

  Chapter 13

  Devil’s Back Island, Maine

  Casey stood by the register of the empty Beach Plum Café, leaning over the well-worn paper of her mother’s letter and rubbing her forehead as if to massage away a headache. She had read it enough times that she could do so now without fear of crying. She’d moved past that stage of grief. She was on to anger now. She read it again and caught herself grinding her teeth as she did. She contemplated crumbling the damn thing up and throwing it away, got as far as picking it up off the counter, and thought better of it.

  When she heard the sound of the noon ferry’s horn bellow through the fog as it approached the pier, she carefully refolded the paper and tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans, shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts. Nothing would be better than a distraction in the form of a few customers. She wondered how many passengers had decided to brave the wet weather that day. September was always slow on Devil’s Back—the final, childless tourists enjoying the last warm days of the season before leaving the island until next summer—but the past week, with all the rain, cold, and fog, had been as bleak as November.

  “Things’ll pick when the foliage starts,” Rosetta kept saying, but Casey had her doubts.

  Like the entire Maine seacoast, Devil’s Back depended on June, July, and August for the income that would carry islanders through the rest of the year. Although Casey kept the café open throughout the winter, it was the visitors of the summer season whose purchases paid her bills. She considered staying open in winter a community service to the year-rounders, since almost everything on the island closed from November through April.

  Casey stepped out from behind the counter and walked to the windows to peer out toward the harbor. The fog was thick, turning the other buildings and the boats beyond into ghostly apparitions. She didn’t see anyone coming up the lane. No surprise there. Just as she was about to go back to her post behind the counter, though, a flicker of movement caught her eye, and she was startled as a man emerged from the fog to stand on the porch of the café. She had been looking off into the distance, expecting the usual late-season tourists—retirees with slow gaits—and so had not seen this man nearing her own doorstep.

  She hurried away from the window and was halfway to the counter when the bells on the door jingled at his entrance.

  “Hell of a morning,” he said cheerfully, as the door slammed shut behind him.

  “Nothing compared to yesterday,” Casey said, rounding the counter. “Poured buckets.”

  “Don’t think less of me if I admit that I was supposed to arrive yesterday, but I couldn’t bring myself to board that ferry.” He smiled and came to the counter to study the freshly chalked menu on the wall behind her.

  He was maybe a few years older than she, Casey guessed, with light brown hair and the tanned complexion of a tennis player or sailor. He wore neatly pressed khakis, a blue and white checkered button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and boat shoes. And he had arrived all alone. He was in no way a typical Devil’s Back tourist, late season or any other season, and very good-looking.

  Most summer visitors to the island were either elderly couples who came to fish, sunbathe, and sit around, or families with young children who came for the peace of mind they could only find in a place with no cars, no athletic events, no shopping malls—essentially a place free from modern life. Single middle-aged men were practically unheard of. Casey glanced at his left hand. Bare.

  He wasn’t her usual type, which was grungier—artistic she liked to think of it—but he was certainly easy on the eyes. She felt a twinge of guilt as she thought about Jason, who was probably still asleep upstairs. But she and Jason weren’t even dating. They were enjoying a convenient arrangement.

  “So is the coffee any good here?” he asked after a minute.

  “I should hope so,” Casey said. Did he really expect someone working in a café to admit she made bad coffee? Her high hopes for him dipped a little.

  “Sorry, it’s just, so many of these out of the way places I visit, it’s like, I find myself wishing there was a good old reliable Starbucks.” He flashed a winning smile. “To be honest, when Rosetta said there was an actual café here, I was surprised.”

  So he knows Rosetta, Casey thought. She wondered what the connection was. Knowing Rosetta was a definite black mark against him as a potential rom
antic interest. “Well, if Starbucks is your idea of good coffee, you’ve got another thing coming,” she said. “How about a latte? And if you don’t like it, it’s on me.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got soy milk?” He gave a shrug and an apologetic look.

  Casey nearly groaned aloud. He was good-looking, yes, but his flaws were rapidly becoming apparent. Any romantic notions were swiftly evaporating from her mind. Well, she wasn’t thinking about romance, she was thinking about sex, but either way, this guy wasn’t the one for her. Soy milk lattes—could anything be less appetizing? Of course, she did have soy milk and almond milk and oat milk to cover all the various allergy possibilities, because she needed happy customers. She opened the fridge beneath the counter, produced a carton of soy milk, set about making the espresso.

  “So what’s the word around here? Anything exciting going on?” he asked, when she placed the coffee before him.

  “Couple of weeks it’ll be perfect leaf-peeping season,” she said, suspecting he was not interested in foliage.

  He took a sip of the drink, savoring it and looking contemplatively at the ceiling for a moment before meeting her eye again. “Excellent coffee. What do I owe you?”

  Casey punched in the latte on the register, $2.45 for the latte and an extra $0.50 for the soy milk, a price so low the café didn’t make a penny on it, but as high as she felt she could charge for a cup of coffee in good conscience. The café’s income came from selling the homemade goodies in the glass cases next to the counter.

  “Something to go with your coffee?” she asked, gesturing to the displays. They were a little thin that day, because she knew how slow it would be. She couldn’t go filling her cases when no one was buying. Still, she had whipped up a batch of her best blueberry crumb muffins and oatmeal scones that morning, along with a couple of kinds of cookies.