Skeptic

by Denise Mathew

  5. ELISE

  With less than three hours of sleep, my head was pounding, but I ignored the pain as I sped up the on-ramp to the highway. I couldn't let something as trivial as sleep deprivation stop me, I had business to take care of. And if it went as I expected, my business would get Tansy off my case for good.

  I glanced at the GPS. I had already driven a couple of hours, and according to the map, I would arrive at my destination in just over twenty minutes. Luckily, the morning traffic was light, and the farther away from the city I drove, the thinner it got.

  Everything from the night before was a blur, except for being with Dakota. From the moment I had called him, I had wanted to salvage our relationship, but with so much to confess, my belief that he would take me back, was almost nonexistent. When he had shown up at my door, smelling like soap, with a shadow of dark stubble on his face, and the muscles of his chest, framed perfectly by his thin cotton t-shirt, it was tough not to throw myself at him.

  I hadn't bothered waking him before I had left, and had allowed myself an extra minute to watch him sleep. Curled up on my bed like a cat on a rug, Dakota was nothing short of stunning. His sharp cheekbones seemed softer, more boyish now, and his hair was wild from sleep, but there was no mistaking he was all man, and I wanted him so badly, that it made the muscles in my pelvis tighten. In that moment, I pondered canceling my plans for the day. It would have been easy to jump back in bed with him, and ignore the mounting problems in my life, but the gauze bandages on his forearms reminded me that I had to deal with Tansy, before she hurt anyone else.

  As I turned off the highway, I remembered the last time I had been to the farm. It had been spring then, and tulips of red and yellow, had decorated the front yards of many of the homes, the grass had been new green, and though there had been a nip in the air, the brilliant sun had more than made up for it. Now, the leaves that covered the trees, were turning shades of crimson, and were beginning to collect beneath the trunks. The sky was a dark grey, and at this time of year, could have easily brought snow, or rain.

  I was dressed in my usual Skeptic attire, a black pencil skirt, and a fitted blouse, that went to just below my waist. Today my blouse was a salmon color, and I had donned knee-high black leather boots, that I switched out for my summer black pumps, and finished the look with a long black trench coat. Since I wasn't on official Skeptic business, my hair was loose, and my makeup was light.

  I had never planned to dress the same for every investigation as I now did, but it had somehow worked out that way, and now had the added benefit of allowing me to slip into the Skeptic persona, as soon as I changed clothes.

  In the distance, I recognized the organic herb farm, and turned onto the dedicated dirt road leading to it. Gravel crackled and popped beneath my car tires, and the car jostled me when I hit a few potholes. As I approached the stone and brick farmhouse, that was over a hundred years old, I noted that the fields were deserted, which made no sense, since there should have been workers harvesting the last of the summer herbs. The red painted barn looked desolate, and with the clouds hanging low, depressing even. I didn't see any vehicles in the area, but I did spot a For Sale sign posted on the front lawn, and fear gripped me. The farm had been Violet's life, so why was she selling it?

  I parked my car as close to the house as I could, and stepped out, maneuvering around the puddles that dotted the dirt driveway. The heel of my boots squished and stuck in parts, where the dirt had turned to mud. When I was almost at the front door, I judged by the sheets of plywood covering the windows and the corroded nails that held them in place, that the house had been abandoned for a while. Another wave of anxiety coursed through me, because if Violet wasn't here, where was she?

  I opened the outer screen door, and knocked on the indigo painted door a couple of times.

  "Hello," I said, banging on the smooth surface of the wood a little harder.

  I felt stupid knocking, since it was obvious that no one was home, and hadn't been for some time, but I couldn't stop myself from going through the motions. When, as expected, no one answered, I tried the knob. It rattled like something was loose inside, but stayed firmly locked.

  "There's no one in there," a voice that seemed to be made of wind, said from behind me. I smiled, and spun to face her.

  "Violet?" I said, relieved, but as soon as I laid eyes on her, I deflated. “No," I said, shaking my head. It couldn't be true, I had been counting on her help, and if she couldn't help me, then where did that leave me?

  She wore a printed fuchsia tank top, beneath white overalls, that were stained with dirt and green, and her oversized clothes seemed to swallow her tiny frame. The beige straw hat perched on her head, did little to tame the frizzy wisps of her blonde hair that reached her narrow shoulders.

  I inhaled a shaky breath.

  "You can't be dead."

  The apparition that had once been Tansy's sister Violet, gave me a slightly embarrassed smile, and I felt all the blood leave my face, and my stomach knotted.

  "When...when did it happen?" I asked, as if knowing when she had died, would somehow make everything okay.

  "I don't really know," she said, gazing out at the vast expanse of herbs, wildflowers, and too many weeds, that stretched as far as the eye could see.

  "A day, a month, a year, it's hard to know," she said in a disembodied voice.

  "How?" I said, which again seemed an odd question, but I was grasping for anything I could hold on to. I didn't want to accept that with Violet dead, my plans to get her to help me with Tansy were over.

  Violet closed her blue eyes, and a tear rolled down her freckled cheek.

  "I never meant to do it, I only..."

  She clutched her throat with a slender hand. "I wanted to sleep...it was tough, when people started to doubt me. Helping people was my life, and I didn't know what to do when they stopped coming."

  Violet's words cut me deeper than a boning knife, and I fought the tears that pricked at my eyes.

  "So it's true, I did ruin your life," I breathed.

  I glanced once again at the fields of forgotten farmland, that had once been a thriving business, and guilt weighed even heavier on me. Before I brought my focus back to Violet, I spotted a cloud of black in the sky. At first, it looked like a low hanging storm cloud, but when it started to move toward me, faster than any cloud I had ever seen, I knew it was something else.

  Soon, it was close enough to see that it was a swarm of Monarch butterflies. Orange and black wings beat furiously, as the mass of creatures closed the space, between the house and the fields. It seemed too late for butterflies to migrate, but I wasn't an expert on the matter, and ignored them, turning back to Violet.

  Her face was set in terror, and her expression sent a new chill through me, because what could a ghost possibly be scared of? Violet vanished, and when I opened my mouth to call for her, the sound, a cross between a loud humming, and ocean waves crashing on the seashore, silenced me. When the butterflies were just a few feet over my head, their flight pattern changed, and they formed what appeared to be a tornado, swirling and churning, the drum of their wings so loud, that I covered my ears.

  I stared up at the spinning vortex of butterflies, now directly over my head, and one of them helicoptered down from the sky, and fell at my feet. Moments later, another one dive-bombed from the air, then they were coming in clumps, their bodies frozen in mid-flight. Yet there was no reason that I could see for their sudden deaths. Lifeless butterflies, landed all around me, like black and orange pieces of crumpled tissue paper. Soon, they were in my hair, adhering to my clothes, some of them clung to life desperately, their fragile legs twitching for a second, before going completely still.

  I frantically swiped them away, but as soon as I cleared a few carcasses, more replaced them. In no time at all, a too perfect, eight foot circle, made of mounded bodies, formed around me, and I knew that there was nothing even remotely natural about their deaths. I lurched forward, butterfly corpses
crunched and burst beneath my boots, making a slippery mess. And even as I moved forward, they continued to come down around me, as if I were a magnet for their descent. As I pelted across the driveway toward my car, that now seemed so far away, I screamed, as if it would somehow help.

  When I reached my car, I fumbled in my coat pocket for the keys, but every time I almost got hold of them, they slipped from my grasp, as if someone was pulling them away. Tears streamed down my face, temporarily blinding me, and I was sure that if I didn't get away from the onslaught soon, I would go mad. Finally, my fingers clasped around the keys, and I jammed the car door remote button and almost collapsed with relief, when I heard the familiar peep, and the car doors unlocked. Even as I swung the door wide, more butterflies hit me, and some even landed on the drivers seat, but I didn't bother brushing them away, before I hopped into the car, and slammed the door shut. The relentless taps and pings on the body of the car, with every falling body, continued, and I threw my hands over my ears to block out the sound.

  Then, without warning, the bodies stopped falling, and I welcomed the silence that followed. I plucked the last few insects from my hair and clothes, and leaned back against the leather seat, and closed my eyes. I took a few deep breaths, and tried to regain my composure, because there was no way I could drive in the state I was in.

  "Dark magick did this," Violet's said.

  "What? How do you know?" I asked. I was out of breath, because there didn't seem enough oxygen in the confines of the car to fill my lungs. Violet shook her head.

  "Tansy's hurting, but I don't think she's strong enough to perform the kind of magick required for all this," Violet said.

  Her form shimmered in the seat beside me, as if she was having a difficult time staying visible.

  "She really took my death hard, but I don't think that she would break her promise to keep to the light..."

  Her face was taut with regret, and seeing it made me ashamed of all the lies I had told, lies that had inadvertently cost this poor woman her life.

  "She's into dark things Violet, things that you might not know about, like Astral magick."

  "Astral magick?" Violet said, her eyes growing large. "She would never."

  She shook her head violently, as if it repulsed her.

  "But she did, two times, once on a flight I was on, and a second time in my apartment, she even attacked my boyfriend."

  It made sense that Violet didn't want to believe the worst about her sister, but there was no way she could help me if she didn't understand what I was up against. Violet stared at me, tears glistening in her eyes. Her ghostly lips trembled, and her image flickered.

  "Please, you have to help me Violet, you can talk to her."

  But even as I said the words, I realized that Tansy probably couldn't see ghosts, and Violet wouldn't be able to make contact. Violet's image wavered like a strobe light, and she shook her head.

  "No matter how hard I try to show myself to her, she can't see me," she said, confirming my fears. She turned her specter head toward me, and her face went out of focus and bleary, like an unfinished painting.

  "If what you say is true, she's into dark magick, deeper than I thought possible."

  Violet broke off, and covered her mouth with a wispy hand, and grew even more translucent. In another time and place, I might have urged her to work harder to connect with Tansy, but I knew I had no right to ask her for anything else. Yet before she left, there was one thing I needed to do. I turned my body toward her spirit, and balled my hands into fists.

  "I know it means nothing now, but I'm so sorry for what I did to you," I said, swallowing a few times before continuing. "I deserve to be punished for lying and..."

  My voice broke off, as I tried to form the words, but it seemed as though my lips were frozen in place by shame. I wondered when my will to succeed had morphed into something so ugly, that I was ready to discredit an innocent woman, to gain the approval I so needed. With sudden and startling clarity, I knew that no matter what the consequences were, I needed to do what Tansy wanted, and admit I was a fraud.

  "Don't feel guilty," Violet said, her voice almost too low to hear. "There were so many things I could have done..."

  Other than a fuzzy outline, she had almost entirely dissolved.

  "But it's done, and I can't go back." Her image wavered and finally vanished, and with it, all my hopes that I could somehow save some part of the life I had built as the Skeptic.

  As I drove back home, a sense of overwhelming hopelessness weighed heavy on me, and it surprised me how quickly my expectations for the day, had been dashed to bits. With Violet out of the picture, I didn't see a way forward.

  When I hit the accelerator, I felt the mashed butterflies caked under the soles of my boots, and I couldn't wait to get home and clean, or maybe even toss the boots away. I turned back onto the highway, just as heavy drops of rain spattered the windshield. Lightning flashed in the distance, and a rumble of thunder vibrated through the air. For a moment, I entertained the idea that Tansy had somehow sent a storm to make my trip home a nightmare, but quickly pushed it out of my mind, witches couldn't control the weather, or at least I hoped they couldn't.

  As the wipers squeaked a continual rhythm against the glass, Dakota's face formed in my mind, and I wanted to be in his arms again. The evening before had felt more than right, and if anything good came out of Tansy threats, it was that she had forced me to admit the truth to Dakota. Now, with him by my side, I knew I could survive the hornets nest that had become my life.

  I glanced at my watch, and realized that it was already well into the afternoon, and I was more than a little late for my meeting with Jim Shaw, my producer. I had checked my phone before I had left Violet's farm, and it showed at least ten missed calls, half were from Jim. I had never been late by even a minute my whole career, so the staff at the studio probably thought I was dead or maimed in a ditch somewhere. I chuckled, because right then, being dead seemed a lot easier than being truthful with Jim.

  Jim, for the most part was a great guy, but if someone crossed him, he turned into a viper, and could easily make even the bravest souls submit to his will. I wasn't deluded enough to think that if I told him everything that I would still have a job, but I knew he would at least treat me fairly. It was the lawsuits and the other unknowns, that would make me wish I had never become the Skeptic, not Jim. In a burst of optimism I wondered if Jim, who seemed to have all the answers, could somehow pull my life and career from the flames.

  As if in answer to my question, my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I touched the hands free button to answer. Even though talking to someone, especially Jim, was the last thing I wanted to do, I couldn't be MIA forever, at some point I had to meet my fate head on, no matter how daunting that seemed.

  "Elise Weston," I said in a formal tone.

  "Hello, Ms. Weston," Dakota said, with a note of humor in his voice, and my tension eased. I had heard his voice a thousand times over, but after everything that had gone on at the farm, his characteristically smooth as silk masculine tone, was as good as a sedative.

  "God, it's good to hear your voice," I said.

  "Well, that's a relief," he said. "I was hoping that you wouldn't wake up and regret calling me over last n..."

  "Never," I said, not letting him finish.

  My heart sped up. There was a pause on the other end, and I was certain he was just as shocked as I was, at how quickly I had replied.

  "So where are you? Jim's been going nuts around here," Dakota said, and my balloon of comfort collapsed.

  "I went to Tansy's sister's place...to see if I could get her to help me."

  The words seemed to stick in my throat, and I fought to keep it together. The rain was coming down so hard, it seemed like someone was throwing buckets of water at the glass. The wipers struggled to keep the windshield clean, but seemed to be fighting a losing battle.

  "How did that go?" he asked.

  I gripped the wheel a little t
ighter, until my knuckles were sharp white mounds.

  "Not good, I'll fill you in later. I better get off the line, I'm in the middle of a rain storm... just tell Jim I'll be there soon."

  I was almost relieved that I had a legitimate excuse for cutting short the conversation, because though it was good to hear Dakota's voice, the last thing I wanted was to relive my experience at the farm before I was safely home.

  "Will do, drive safe, and Elise... I can't wait to see you," he said, then the phone went dead.

  Just thinking about seeing Jim, made beads of perspiration form on my brow. I flipped on the air-conditioning, not that I thought it would help, then flicked on the radio for bit of diversion, but since I was still on the outskirts of the city, my usual stations were just static. I reached for the radio scan button, and as I did, an eerie voice whispered from the speakers. I recognized it immediately as Tansy's, and as if on cue, day seemed to turn to night.

  "Do you really think I don't know your every move?" Tansy hissed, and my hand froze, hovering in front of the controls.

  "How dare you go to Violet's farm?" she shrieked, as if right in my ear.

  Surprised, I flinched and let go of the wheel. The car swerved, but I grabbed the wheel again, bringing it back in control mere seconds before I crossed paths with an oncoming minivan. I blanched, and put my full focus on the highway ahead. Lightning speared the road all around me, and made me wonder if I might have been too hasty in discrediting Tansy's ability to control the weather. I gulped a mouthful of air, and tapped the off button for the radio.

  "I was going to give you a chance to admit that you're a lying bitch, but killing you is going to feel so much better," she said, her voice like fingernails scraping on a pane of glass.

  I shuddered. The stench of rotten eggs, infused with overpowering roses, filled the interior of the car, and I gagged then coughed. The rain came in torrents, making it impossible to gauge what part of the road I was on. With the wipers at max, I knew I had to pull off to the side before I had an accident, but it felt like I was driving underwater, and I couldn't find the paved shoulder.