Rocks & Gravel (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 3)

by Catie Rhodes

  I reached inside the dollhouse, not even thinking about black widow spiders and asps, and pulled out something I’d loved ever since I could remember loving anything. The cheap gold plating on the compact had worn off in spots, but the cloisonné black and blue butterfly on the front still looked as beautiful as I remembered. I turned it over and looked at the engraving as I had so many times as a kid.

  To Barbie on her 16th. Love Mom and Dad.

  I’d always pretended my mother passed down her compact to me. The truth was, I kept playing with the thing, even after she told me not to, and dented it. She’d come to me screaming and raving and threw the thing in my face, the metal cutting my chin. I remembered how ragged and full of grief her voice sounded when she hollered I could just have the fucking thing since I’d fucked it up. I rubbed the scar left by Barbie’s tantrum until I realized what I was doing and touched the cool metal to my hot cheek, the way I always had as a child, trying to let it comfort me. Yes, I’d loved this thing no matter how much pain it represented.

  The compact started out with a mirror, but it went missing somewhere along the way. By the time I put it in my dollhouse for my dolls to use as a floor-length mirror, I’d glued a cheap mirror pried off a plastic throwaway compact into the place where the original mirror once was. As an adult, I saw my makeshift repair left much to be desired. For one thing, the mirror was crooked. I’d used the compact’s powder puff for a throw pillow on the dollhouse’s bed, leaving the spot for the powder cake open.

  For the first time, I noticed a tiny indention on one side of it. Holding my keychain flashlight in my mouth, I examined the thing more closely. The gold frame could be raised and removed for the powder cake to be placed in the well. The frame would then be popped back down to hold the cake in place. The manufacturer’s instructions, smudged beyond reading, sat at the bottom of the well, protected by filthy netting.

  The fog lifted from my brain fast as a fart stinks up a car. Could this be it? Could the forgetting spell be hidden underneath those instructions? By the time I was four, this compact already belonged to me. My pulse raced, and I used a game piece from an old set of pickup sticks to pry up the frame. This won’t be it. It’s too simple. I lifted out the manufacturer’s instructions and sucked in a surprised breath. My luck was in, for once. Sitting there was a folded slip of paper with dirt on the creases.

  The black opal tingled on my chest, signaling the paper had magic in it. I reached for it, hesitating as I wondered if touching someone else’s spell against me could somehow hurt me. I could go inside the house for a pair of tweezers. Nah. My curiosity held the driver’s wheel right then. I pinched the paper between my thumb and forefinger, pulled it out of the compact, and unfolded it. On it was the weirdest scrawl I’d ever seen. The words, if they were words, were written in a type of lettering unfamiliar to me.

  Julie said she’d destroyed the paper she found in her perfume bottle and her memory came right back. I took out my cigarette lighter and lit the corner of the paper. It caught fire faster than I expected, stinking worse than any other burning paper I’d ever smelled. The black opal heated fast on my chest, as though it somehow absorbed the fire, or perhaps responded to something I couldn’t see. Smoke drifted up from the burning paper, and the odor of rot filled my senses. I grunted and tossed the paper on the dirt floor, standing close so I could stomp it if the tiny fire got out of hand. The paper curled in on itself, the flames turning green and sparkling, and finally blackened until it was nothing but flakes.

  I waited for my memory to come back, holding on to a support beam in case the force of it threw me off balance. Nothing happened. After several minutes, I got bored and gathered the ashes from the paper into my cupped hand and took them outside and buried them. Then I brought the rake back inside the barn and turned the packed earth on the place where I’d allowed the paper to burn. By my estimation, thirty minutes had passed, and still no recovered memory.

  A strong gust of wind hit the barn, rattling the rolling door on its track. I went to the opening, scanning the sky for a coming storm. The sky, white with heat and humidity, looked hot but not stormy. Another gust of wind came, rippling my clothes and caressing my skin like the fabric had come to life. The black opal sent painful jolts into my skin, maybe warning me. I was too ignorant of its power to know for sure.

  I scanned the world around me and still saw nothing out of the ordinary. The black opal flooded me with a painful tide of energy, rocking me on my feet. Refusing to learn the black opal’s signals hadn’t helped me stay normal any at all. I’d still lost everything—Dean, my business, Memaw. I thought of Mysti, Brad, and Wade, so comfortable with what they could do and so confident in doing what needed to be done.

  What if I learned how to really use the black opal, faced what I am without apology? I’d lose any hope of normalcy. Drama and negative consequences from supernatural shit would taint everything. Keeping the weird stuff on the outskirts of my life left me a little hope of a happy, normal life doing mundane things.

  Another gust of wind blew into the barn, making the junk behind me clatter. A sheet or piece of fabric beat against whatever it covered with the intensity of the wind. I stepped outside the barn, expecting to feel a few stray drops of rain against my upturned face. The air hung still and humid, but there was no rain. I turned back to the barn and peered inside. Had the wind been only inside the barn? I debated the merits of going back inside to investigate and had pretty much talked myself out of it when I heard my car start.

  What on earth? I ran across the huge yard to the carport and found my car sitting empty, running on its own. I grabbed an old hoe off the pegs sticking out of the wall, found a bare space and pressed my back against it so nobody could sneak up behind me.

  “Who’s here? I’ll whup your ass you don’t quit messing with me. See this hoe? I’ll use it.”

  Nobody answered, but another hot wind raged across me, chilling the sweat covering my body. I listened as hard as I could but heard nothing. No birds singing, no frogs hollering, no crickets fiddling. Muscles tensed and ready to fight, I began to shake, trying to hold the fear back and stay alert enough to defend myself. The black opal quivered against my skin. I wish I knew how to use it, wish I knew the limits of my powers. Fuck being normal. When shit like this kept happening, normal was beyond my reach anyway.

  The driver door to my car swung open. The dirt next to it indented with the weight of an invisible foot. I pressed my back harder against the corrugated tin wall, gaze darting madly for an escape route. Footsteps crunched closer and closer to me. I could climb over the hood of my car and then scoot through the narrow gap between my car and the opposite wall, but I’d have to act fast if I planned to run.

  The scrape of a foot against the floor spurred me into action. I clambered over the car, slamming into a stack of plastic buckets and sending them flying. There was barely any room between the car and the wall, but I knew I could squeeze through. I raced forward, heart slamming hard enough to jar my vision. I saw the passenger door of my car opening and knew it was too late to stop but tried anyway and slammed into the door with my side and hip, the hoe digging into my shin.

  The collision knocked my own breath out, and I hunched forward, jabbing the wooden hoe handle into my eye, and falling backward. I hit the ground hard but gave myself no time to recover, scrambling to my knees and slapping my hands against the car, groping for anything I could use to pull myself back to a standing position. Icy arms closed around my middle and dragged me to my feet, staying at my back.

  “You shoulda stayed outta this. I can’t help you.” The almost familiar voice came from within my head, part of me but not part of me, and the black opal vibrated with its timbre. The last time I’d heard this voice was at the prison when I visited Jesse, but this wasn’t Jesse. It was my father.

  My skin tightened against his touch, and a shudder ran through me. I jerked away from him and spun to face him, breathing hard. I saw he held Priscilla Herrera’s curse
box in one translucent hand. I reached for it, but when my fingers made contact, it shocked me, and I ended up back on the ground, looking up at my father’s ghost.

  “You can’t ignore this. Time to fight or die…like me.”

  “Who’s doing this to you? Tell me, and I’ll…” I didn’t know what I’d do. Kill someone? Maybe. This person had indirectly killed my grandmother, tried to kill me.

  My father’s mouth opened to speak, and garbled noise came out. He squeezed his eyes shut, straining against the force controlling, him. His words, when they came, shook the air so hard the hair on my arms moved.

  “Memory…of the day…I died.” Another strong wind whipped through the carport, making the old tools hanging from the walls sway with its force. My father blew away with it like a stray piece of paper, tilting and whirling in its grips until he disappeared from my sight.

  I stumbled to the front porch and sat down on the steps. All my effort the last few days, everything I lost, had been for nothing. The curse box was gone, and the asshole had it. If I did nothing, they’d use it to remove the curse from the Mace Treasure and destroy us all while trying to steal the treasure.

  Steal it? Those words sounded an awful lot like I thought there was something to steal. If there was, I didn’t want the asshole to have it any more than I wanted Priscilla Herrera’s spiritual minions to level Gaslight City. Yeah, I hated a lot of people here, but letting them die when I could stop it was not the way Memaw taught me.

  Besides, me and the asshole had a score to settle, didn’t we? The asshole had killed my father, Eddie, Julie, and my memaw. The asshole tried to kill me. I’d take a pig shit bath before I let the asshole get away with anything else.

  My father’s ghost said I had to remember. My memory would tell me the identity of the asshole. The information had been hidden in there more than quarter century. All I had to do was find a way to access it.

  I’d done what Julie said—burning the paper part of the curse—but there had to be something else. Exactly how could I get at the memories? I wished I could ask my daddy’s ghost but the idea of contacting him scared me after what happened to Mysti. I didn’t have time to let the asshole controlling him drive me crazy.

  What if I went to the place where my father died? I couldn’t be in any more danger there than I was here alone at Memaw’s house. The asshole had proven how easy it would be to get to me. I took out my cellphone and wondered who I should call. I can’t call anybody. It would do nothing but put them in danger, too.

  I picked myself up, went out to my car, and started driving.

  17

  The place where my father died was on a white sand road less than a mile from downtown Gaslight City. While other outlying areas filled up with housing developments or shopping centers, this little hollow stayed wooded and untouched. I passed the remains of Hezekiah Bruce’s general store. Long closed, the building listed to one side. The little shack behind it where the family had lived had gone back to the earth with only a stone chimney to prove its existence.

  I slowed my Nova to a crawl. I’d always heard the murder site was right past the store, but all I saw was a bunch of trees. The road went on a few hundred more yards before it dead ended at Lonnie and Amanda King’s driveway. Their huge brick mansion surveyed the quiet landscape from a slight rise a quarter mile away. Priscilla Herrera’s homesite had to be in the trees somewhere. I stopped the car and looked around.

  Local legend trippers considered the place where my father died a prime destination. The number of tire tracks on the one lane road attested to the place’s popularity.

  “What a bunch of ghouls.” I got out of the car. “Bet they’d shit their underroos if they saw anything real out here.” I’d hoped seeing this much would jog my sluggish memory back into gear. No luck. I didn’t remember ever being out here.

  The rough croak of a bird came through the woods, sounding as though it was right on the other side, in the clearing I’d come to see. I forced myself to take a few steps in its direction but stopped. This was stupid. Somebody needed to know where I was in case the asshole came to get me. I took out my cellphone and tried sending a text message to Hannah, but it came back undeliverable. I took a closer look at my phone’s screen and saw the dreaded No Service in the corner. Maybe I should leave, come back when someone knows where I am. But what if I get them killed, too?

  There it was again. The possibility of more blood on my hands. Nope. Not happening. I pushed my way through the thin screen of skinny pines, sweat already rolling down my back, acid burning the back of my throat. Then I was there, in the place I saw in my vision. The little lot bore marks of the legend trippers’ passage—empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, and other basic garbage. The cabin I remembered from my vision of the day Priscilla Herrera died still stood and bore surprisingly little damage. All the window frames stood empty, reminding me of sightless eyes, but the cabin’s door was closed tight and looked structurally sound. I tried to swallow and almost gagged.

  Settle down, girl, I coached myself. You won’t accomplish anything if you don’t calm down. Nobody’s here but you and maybe some ghosts. And you can’t go anywhere without seeing a bunch of damn ghosts.

  I stood still, closed my eyes, and took deep breaths, trying to control my racing heart. When I thought I had myself under control, I opened my eyes and took stock of the clearing. The pine trees surrounding the cabin were old with thick trunks stretching so high I couldn’t make out their tops. Pine trees this tall usually clattered and whispered with some kind breeze, but these trees were still. I didn’t hear any of the songbirds I expected to hear this time of day, either. The only life I heard was a sick-sounding croak near the cabin.

  I took baby steps in that direction, wanting to see what I’d come to see but not wanting to all at the same time.

  I reached the cabin and peeped into one of the windows. The floor was bare, the boards buckled with time and pitted from years of rain coming through a leaky roof. My memory flashed onto the vision of this room neatly swept with a fire burning in the stone hearth and Priscilla Herrera bustling around, getting ready to die at her persecutor’s hands.

  A glint from something high in the structure’s rafter’s blinded me for a second, and I jumped away from the window, sure the boogeyman had me in his clutches. Then I realized it was just a piece of glass some creepy wannabe had set up there. A car went by on the road outside, noticeably slowing, probably wondering what my car was doing here. I had to hurry if I wanted to do this. Someone would come soon, pretending to be concerned about me, but really wanting to be nosy, wanting to be the first person to have some new gossip about crazy-assed Peri Jean Mace.

  I walked around the clearing, looking for anything to jog my memory, but the site had been trampled and examined by a lot of pilgrims before me. Maybe nothing was left here of my father or of the child I’d been the day he died. Then the awful croak came again, this time very near me, almost even with my eyes. I gasped at what I saw.

  Someone—either my father or my uncle—hard carved a heart into the trunk of a pin oak tree. Inside were three initials: P, P, J, and the year, 1989. It was the year all three of us died, really. I traced the heart and then the initials with my fingertips, eyes stinging with unshed tears. The awful thing in the trees croaked again, and this time I thought maybe it was a sick crow, probably dying on the poison in this sad place. Then I heard the voice.

  “Daddy, is this place haunted?” Footsteps crunched in the leaves and branches on the ground, and two figures came into view. I almost didn’t recognize myself. I was so small, my messy black hair pulled back with a silver barrette, and wearing a matching red shirt and pair of shorts with a cartoon character on them. My tiny shoes bore images of the same cartoon character, who I vaguely remembered being my favorite. I had a band-aid on my chin.

  “Ain’t nothing haunted,” my daddy put one hand on my back and gave me a gentle push. “Not for you at least. A place that’s haunted is a place that�
�s scary. You see them—the other ones—and understand them. Nothing scary about it.”

  Judging from the expression on my little face, I wasn’t so sure I believed my daddy. Uncle Jesse entered the clearing, carrying a bunch of shovels and picks.

  “Where you think she buried these stones?”

  “Dunno,” Paul said. “Maybe under the floorboards of the house? She coulda dropped ‘em down the outhouse.” He gestured at a narrow ramshackle building behind the cabin. “You can look in there, Uncle Jesse. Can’t he, baby?”

  “Yes!” Seeing the expression on my uncle’s face, I jumped up and down, screaming with glee. My daddy liked my enthusiasm and laughed, too.

  “You see anything here?” He leaned down to my eye level to speak to me.

  I stared around the small homesite, my dark eyes serious for someone so young. I seemed to know exactly what I was doing, what I wanted to see. How did I go from the brave little girl to the scared adult I am now? I marched around my daddy, my little hand forming into a fist with my pointer finger extended.

  “Here.” I pointed to a spot on the ground where a tree had fallen. “Something’s buried under here.”

  “What?” Jesse asked.

  “What the lady wants you to see.” I pointed to the cabin, jumping up and down. “She’s in there.” Sure enough, there was a figure standing inside the cabin. Neither my daddy nor Uncle Jesse seemed to see her.

  “Wanna do it?” Paul asked Jesse. “If we can find this treasure, it’ll be fifty-fifty. Me and Peri Jean is getting out of here. I ain’t keeping my daughter here. Not after her own mother…” Paul glanced down to see little me watching him, eyes big. He put on a big smile. “Let’s get to work.”