No Rest for The Wiccan

by Madelyn Alt

  Liss patted her on the hand and gently prompted, “You were about to tell us why you sought us out. Am I wrong in assuming you’re having trouble of the paranormal kind?”

  The cat was out of the bag, so I guess there was no need to keep it in velvet mittens. Libby bit her lip. “Well, I—I’m worried that there might be . . . there has to be some reason all of this stuff seems to keep happening to us. There is a . . . black cloud hanging over my husband and his business. Things keep happening there. Minor accidents, personal attacks against my husband and the property itself. I mean, it could be something . . . demonic . . . couldn’t it?”

  She said it almost hopefully, and I had the sense that she wanted it to be true. I thought it odd; but then, who knows. Maybe in some twisted way it was easier for her to accept something like that than to accept the more likely explanation: personal liability. Meaning, sometimes a black cat was just a black cat. Sometimes a person needed to take responsibility for their own actions and the cause and effect they will have on others. Human frailties were so common that a paranormal reason for something like what Libby was describing was almost overkill.

  “Well, now. That does sound trying.” If Liss was feeling as skeptical as I was, she did not show it. “Has there been anything else?” Anything that couldn’t be explained, is what she meant.

  Encouraged, perhaps, by the fact that no one was laughing at her, Libby relaxed her fearful edge just a bit. “You mean, have I seen anything? Shapes and shadows and energy distortions and the like?” I raised my brows at her use of the lingo. I couldn’t help it. Seeing my reaction, Libby hurried to explain, “I was reading up on it this morning. After Melanie’s phone call last night, I didn’t sleep a wink. It was all I could think about. You understand, don’t you?”

  What I understood was that Melanie had opened her big mouth and scared the bejeebers out of this woman for no good reason that I could see, other than the sheer joy of being the one to drop the stinkbomb on an unsuspecting audience. And it was all my fault, because I’d just fed into her almost pathological need to be at the top of the gossip chain. I’d forgotten the number one rule: With Mel, it was always “Have Gossip, Will Spill.” And it was all downhill from there.

  I made myself push all that aside for the moment. “Of course we understand. It’s normal to focus extrahard on things we find disturbing. Have you experienced anything like the things you mention, then? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  She bit her lip, but shook her head. “No. Well, I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, there have been weird sounds and all, but at the time . . . I guess I just never thought it was possible for it to be anything like . . . this.”

  Liss patted her hand again, the soul of sympathy. “If you will accept my reassurances, there is no reason to suspect anything paranormal as yet. In these things, it’s always best to rule out all ordinary explanations before making the leap to the dark side,” she said with a wink.

  It was meant to alleviate tension, but at this suggestion, Libby’s gaze flew to hers in alarm. I opened my mouth to change the subject in hopes of easing her apprehension, but Libby beat me to the punch. “Do they . . . do people—spirits, I mean—hang around when we die, then? Is that what you believe?”

  “Some do,” Liss told her gently. “And some move on instantly, as we are all meant to.”

  “Why?” Libby pressed, leaning forward with a curious glint in her eye. “Why do some stay?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a complicated issue, my dear,” Liss explained. “It has been my experience that some stay due to a state of confusion. Perhaps they passed quickly and do not realize they are no longer alive. They cling to whatever familiar things and people they can find because they are lost in the mists of time and space. Others stay in fear of passing completely to the other side. They have convinced themselves that they are unworthy of the goodness of the light, and are suspicious of those who beckon to them from the other side. Still others . . .” A shadow crept over Liss’s fine-boned features, one she tried very hard to disguise. “Still others are not ready to pass. They want more of the very thing that has been stripped away from them . . . Life. They act out against those who come into their sphere because of that very desire.”

  Libby’s eyes had gone wide. “I was just thinking of those poor people whose lives were . . . who were . . . murdered. This year has been terrible for Stony Mill.”

  She could say that again.

  “Terrible,” she repeated, following my thought processes to the letter. “I don’t know what made me think of them, but . . . when you said that, I couldn’t help thinking that they could be hanging around right now bent on . . . revenge. Don’t you think?” she asked, her eyes intense.

  “Unfinished business,” I mused, nodding. “There is that.” Only I couldn’t help thinking that revenge was the least of Stony Mill’s problems. There was something else there. Something else underlying us all. And if I thought about it for too long, it scared the crap out of me.

  Libby fell silent, lost in thought. The only sound to be heard was our breathing and the occasional rustle from the front. I exchanged a questioning glance with Liss, who seemed to be as bemused as I was feeling.

  “Libby,” I said at last, edgy after several long minutes of watching her chew on her lower lip, “if you are experiencing something . . . well, even if it turned out to be nothing, maybe we could come out to do a clearing of the site for you.”

  She looked up at once. “You can do that? Will it send away anything that might be there?”

  I nodded. Well, I myself had never done one, but I knew it really was simple in theory, and I knew without a doubt that Liss and the N.I.G.H.T.S. would have my back. Besides, it was about time I learned. At the very least it might make her feel better.

  Libby jumped out of her seat, nearly startling me out of mine. She scrabbled at her bag. “I have to run now,” she said. “I have to get home before my husband does.”

  She was out of the room so fast that the air didn’t quite seem to have a chance to close in on the space she had been occupying.

  “Well, now,” Liss murmured. “How very interesting.”

  “Quite,” I said, imitating my boss’s posh accent. She raised her brows at me, and I dissolved into giggles.

  “Such cheek.” Liss grinned. “Hm. She didn’t say whether she wanted a visit from us. What were your impressions? Everyday situations or paranormal?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know. She really didn’t give many details, did she. It could be anything at this point. But . . . there was something there, in her voice. In her face. In her energy.” I looked her in the eye. “Fear.”

  Liss nodded. “Yes. Fear.”

  My cell phone started chiming airily away in my purse. No longer the “1812 Overture,” thank goodness—I had figured out how to change it at last, despite being slightly low-tech by nature—but I wasn’t sure this canned fairy twinkle-toes selection was any better.

  I grabbed my bag and did the usual dive-and-scramble to dig through the flotsam that always accumulated at the bottom in order to find that tweedling bit of technology that was quickly starting to run my life. I’ve never been able to ignore a ringing phone. Somehow a cell phone call seemed even more urgent than usual.

  My fingers closed around cool plastic that buzzed as I touched it. Success!

  I flipped open the case. “Hel—”

  “Maggie!” The voice of my sister cut off my greeting without a by-your-leave, but I was used to that. What I wasn’t used to was the sense of terror that came sizzling across the airwaves. “OhmyGod! Maggie, you’ve got to come now.”

  “Mel, what’s wrong? Is it one of the girls? Are you hurt? Where’s Mom?”

  “No, not the girls! We’re okay, but just come, Maggie! I think I did something stupid. Really stupid. Maggie, come over! Please! Now!”

  The phone went dead, empty air space echoing in my ear. “Melanie!”

  Liss mobilized into immediate action. She picked up my
bag from where it had fallen to the floor when I jumped out of my chair—I hadn’t even noticed—and handed it to me. She even found my ring of keys for me, and pressed them into my hand.

  “Go,” she said.

  By the time my feet crossed the threshold, the urgency in Mel’s voice had started to hit home even harder. I toyed with calling the police—my fingers clenched reflexively around the case of my cell phone more than once—but something stayed my hand. She’d done something stupid, she’d said, without elaborating. And she’d called me to fix it. Not Greg, not Mom, not even Dad, but me. This had to be a first. I was worried, but my intuition was telling me there was a reason for it. So instead I left the parking lot with a roar of the ancient motor and a spit of limestone gravel, and began the short trip across town.

  At top of the hill, where River Street crossed Main, I was forced to stop for a red light. Not the easiest thing to do on a hill when one was driving an old manual shift clunker—er, antique beauty—with an iffy clutch. While putting the majority of my focus into not backsliding down the hill and trying not to worry about what was going on at Mel’s place on the other side of town, I happened to catch a slight movement out of the corner of my eye—a flash of aqua and a sense of the familiar. Distracted, I flicked my gaze in that direction. Libby Turner had stopped at the old pay phone on the corner. Her back was to me, but between the outfit and the sheen of her dark hair, there was no mistaking her. She looked as tense as she had in the office minutes ago as she tapped her fingers in a sharp, never-ending staccato against the glass wall. Didn’t she have a cell phone? I wondered. Why hadn’t she just used the phone at the office? It would have been much quieter and far more private. But then, perhaps she hadn’t wanted to impose. Perhaps the need to call had come up as an afterthought. Who knew why people did the things that they did?

  The light ahead of me changed, bringing me back into the moment and reminding me of the need for speed. From there, I made it across town in ten minutes flat, in spite of all the inevitable afterwork traffic choking the two-lane state highways and residential byways that made up the bulk of Stony Mill’s road system. When I arrived moments later at Mel’s taupe split-level modern with its stylish eggplant-hued shutters, I was a little taken aback to find several cars there ahead of me parked along the curb—she hadn’t mentioned that she had company. What on earth could have panicked her so much when she was surrounded by friends and—yep, Mom’s old sedan was there, too? Moving forward a bit slower now that I knew she wasn’t alone and helpless, I switched off the engine and crossed the lawn, bypassing the tastefully curved granite pathway for the more direct route.

  I let myself in. “Mel?” I called.

  No answer.

  The quiet disconcerted me, I had to admit. Especially following on the heels of the panicky phone call. What. The. Heck? Where was everyone? Where was my mother?

  I tried again, making my way toward the kitchen. “Hello?” I called, peeking around the corner. “Mom?”

  Nothing. No one. Not there.

  My heart started beating faster, a tattoo of worry combined with the sudden sense that the quiet was too quiet. There were no clocks ticking, no hum of the refrigerator, no sound of cooling air rushing through the ductwork. My hand reached automatically for the switch on the wall.

  No lights. No power. Power outage.

  A rush of relief swept through me. At least there was an explanation for that much. The early heat wave must have pulled too much through the circuits in that part of town. Breathing a little easier, I passed through the kitchen and made my way for the stairs. But every step that I took, the heavier the air felt.

  Spirit heavy.

  But this didn’t feel like the girls’ invisible friends’ spirit energy that I had felt the day before. Invisible friends don’t make your chest feel like it’s caving in on itself because the air around you has turned itself inside out. Invisible friend energy didn’t get in your face and make you feel like turning right back around and getting the hell out of Dodge.

  “Well, well,” I said in an undertone from my position on the fifth step, where I’d stopped to reassess. “What—or should I say, who—do we have here?”

  The air billowed up against me, crowded around me, questioning, testing . . . and then in an instant, it withdrew.

  I took a careful breath, but it was gone. Full retreat. Or maybe it was just strategizing. Looking for the right opening.

  The right opportunity.

  I didn’t like the thoughts that were springing into my mind. What on earth was going on? Where did this spirit come from?

  What had the girls let in?

  Chapter 6

  Putting one foot in front of the other, I made it to the top of the stairs and tiptoed down the hall’s thick carpeting. The house was utterly, coldly still. All the doors to the bedrooms and bathrooms off the hall were closed. Melanie’s was the nearest to the stairs, so I headed there first.

  I rapped my knuckles lightly against the wood panel. “Mel? You in there?” I tried the lever knob. It wasn’t locked. The door opened easily beneath my hand. For a moment. Then in the next, it pulled out of my hands and swung sharply inward, ricocheting off the dresser behind the door and slamming shut again. Before it did, I had the briefest glimpse of the pale and frightened faces huddled together on Mel’s bed on the opposite wall. They were all, every last one of them, inside this room. I heard the smallest wail coming from within, a muffled sniffling cry.

  My heart leapt to my throat. Little Courtney . . .

  And that was all it took, because when faced with the urgent need to protect those we love, we never even stop to consider the risk. We just act.

  I felt the energy within me rise, adrenaline mixed with something inherent that emerged from the very core of me, rushing upward and outward as I closed both of my hands around the brass lever, pressed downward, and shoved with all my might. The door resisted, but I pushed harder, steadier, mightier than the force that was opposing on the other side.

  And then the resistance was gone, as if it had never been there at all. The door crashed inward again, but this time it stayed open with the slightest pressure of my hand. The action also seemed to relieve the fear holding Mel’s friends in position. Suddenly the utter silence lifted and the air was filled with a flood of female voices, agitated chatter, and frightened sobbing. The room, so still before, became a flurry of movement as—I should have known—Margo Dickerson-Craig and Jane Churchill scrambled off the rumpled bed and dove for their purses and car keys, their white faces giving testament that something had indeed scared the living daylights out of them.

  And I think I knew what that something was.

  A Ouija board sat in the middle of the duvet, pushed slightly to one side by Mel’s legs when she had drawn them up as a protective measure for herself and the girls, who were cowering at her side. My sister’s eyes were huge, her face pasty. The girls still hadn’t pulled their faces out from their hiding places beneath their mother’s arms. When they finally realized that the Big and Scary Whatever was gone, at least for the moment, they withdrew from their mom and slid off the edge of the bed, launching themselves at me as one.

  I held them to me, Mel’s babies, and pinned her with a pointed stare. “What’s been going on, Mel? Where’s Mom?”

  Her gaze had not moved from the board at the end of her bed. The pointer lay on the floor, halfway across the room.

  “Mom?” she parroted vaguely.

  I stalked across the room and picked up the pointer. Mel flinched when I set it back on the board.

  “Yes, Mom. You know. Medium height. Gave birth to us. Likes to go to church. A lot.”

  Melanie just shrugged and looked confused.

  “What’s this all about, Mel?” I hissed at her. “What’s with the board, and the friends, and . . . please tell me you didn’t use that thing.”

  She blinked. “We . . . It was supposed to be for fun. To see if we could talk to the ghost that you felt was he
re. Find out a little bit about him. Margo said she’d used a Ouija board when she was a kid, and since she knew how it worked . . . it was supposed to be safe. It’s just a game.” She lifted her gaze to mine, pleading for me to understand. What she really wanted was for big sister Maggie to fix things for her.

  My sigh was heavy with resignation, perhaps even a teensy bit of fear. That was no game she had been playing, and the result was not a fun little spirit sprite who would entertain and tease. The energy I had felt a moment ago . . . well, I wasn’t sure it had ever been human. It had reached out to me, its only purpose to size me up and, perhaps, intimidate. And it had accomplished its goal only too well. I knew enough by now to temper my fear, to shelter it behind the personal shields I had been learning to erect and strengthen with each breath I took, with every beat of my heart. But the fear was still there. I would have to deal with it sooner or later.

  I chose . . . later. With backup. Lots of backup.

  Sometimes procrastination was the only real answer.

  But right now, there were more important things at hand. I bent down to my nieces and curved my arms around them. “It’s all right, girls. Why don’t we go downstairs and get you both a snack, and maybe you can help me find Grandma.”

  “She’s in the basement,” Jenna said with a sniffle as she wiped the back of her hand beneath her nose.

  I looked into her eyes, so clear and blue. “In the basement? Why would she be in the basement?”

  “She’s locked down there,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears again. “Coco says It didn’t want her to interfere.”

  It. I was about to question her further about the hows and the whys, but I saw the look in her eyes, and I knew there was no mistaking what was there. Intelligence and understanding beyond her years.

  Jenna knew things.

  And Melanie was not the type of mom who would understand.