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

by Catie Rhodes

  My daddy tried to roll the huge tree off the spot I’d indicated. Jesse pushed, too, both brothers grunting. They stopped, both of them breathing hard.

  “Got to get a chain, pull this damn thing out of the way,” Paul said.

  “Chain’s back at the house,” Jesse said. “I’ll go get it. Bring us back some sandwiches too.” He walked out of the clearing, and we heard his truck start up.

  “You want to go on an adventure with Daddy?” He squatted down in front of me. I’d been busy scratching at the band-aid covering my chin and looking into my brand new gold compact. My daddy gently took it from me and repeated his question.

  “Will we go to Astro World?”

  “Sure. Then we’ll find some people like you, who’ll help you learn to be strong so you can be happy all your life.”

  “See there? He’s lying to you just like he’s lying to me. He’s not taking either of us anywhere.” The nasty, strident voice came from the woods, but neither big me nor little me needed to see the speaker to know who it was. The little version of me grabbed my daddy’s hand.

  My daddy stood from his crouch just as Barbie came into the clearing from the thick woods on the other side of the cabin. Another young woman with long, blond hair followed her. The way she moved seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her until she scraped a stray lock of her hair behind one ear. Amanda King. So much for Amanda and Barbie barely knowing each other beyond their hair stylist/client relationship. Daddy and I backed away from them.

  “See what I told you?” Barbie yelled at Amanda. “This cheating bastard told me we’d find the treasure and move to a city, and then he told you whatever he told you. But you heard him: his real plan is to find the treasure and use it for her.” Barbie, red faced and screaming by the end of her declaration, pointed at the little version of me.

  Daddy glanced down at me and said, “Go back out where we parked. See if Uncle Jesse left the cooler. If he did, get us both something to drink.”

  “But, Daddy, she’s mad,” I whined, shifting foot to foot. “She’s gonna hit.”

  Daddy put himself between my awful mother and me and said, “It’ll be fine. Go on.” The little version of me left the clearing, glancing back fearfully over her shoulder a few times. From my vantage point, I saw the little version of me never really left. She simply walked a little way into the trees and stood very still so she could listen to the fireworks. I could tell by the expression on her face she was scared for her daddy. From what I knew about the events of this awful day, she had every right to be.

  “Barbara, I am sorry for you to find out this way.” My poor doomed daddy faced his wife, his expression stony. “It is over between us. You’re abusive and neglectful to our child and a horrible person in general. I don’t want to be with you anymore.”

  “You obviously don’t want to be with either of us.” Barbie gestured to Amanda. “We just heard you saying you were going to take Peri Jean away from this place, so it could be you and her against the world.”

  “Is this true, Paul?” Amanda’s mouth turned down and trembled, and she raised a shaking hand to wipe at her nose. Paul turned to face her and his shoulders slumped.

  “Amanda, baby, I do care for you, but I need to get by myself for a while and concentrate on my daughter. You’re married to somebody else anyway.” Paul backed away from Amanda, probably realizing the shit was hitting the fan, and bumped into Barbie who shoved him away but moved so she could stay at his back. I wanted to scream at my daddy to run away from them both but knew it would do no good. I could only watch, whimpering, as the scene unfolded.

  “You’ve been lying to me.” Amanda started blubbering, making it hard to understand her. “Saying the three of us were going to leave town and be a family. You never intended to really do it.”

  Paul held up his hands in surrender. I didn’t know my daddy well and never would, but I knew how a man looked when he got caught red-handed.

  “You lied to get me to use magic to help you look for treasure clues?” Amanda’s tear-filled voice raised to a choked yell. “You lying, cheating son of a bitch.” She ran at him, slapping him and clawing his face. Paul raised his hands, trying to ward off Amanda without hitting her. While he was occupied with Amanda, Barbie took a couple of steps forward, removing a folding razor from her pocket. This time I did scream, but none of them acted like they’d heard me. Barbie raised one arm and slit my daddy’s throat. He clapped his hand over the spurting geyser of blood and turned to face Barbie, his eyes huge and fear-filled.

  “No,” Amanda yelled. She ran around Paul and tried to take his arm.

  “Get away from him.” Barbie pulled Amanda a few feet from Paul. “You’ll get blood on your clothes.”

  “What did you do?” Amanda screamed, bucking in Barbie’s grasp, trying to get away from her. “We’re going to jail.”

  “No, we’re not,” Barbie said. “Joey agreed to help us cover this up. All we have to do is sort of make it look like Jesse did it.”

  “No, no, no.” Amanda put her hands over her face, letting out loud, honking sobs.

  “You agreed to this.” Barbie shook her finger at Amanda, going into full-on bitch mode.

  “No, no, no. I didn’t agree to kill him.” Amanda shook with her sobs.

  “But you did agree to help me get the treasure, and we’re about to get it. He was digging right there,” Barbie points. “I heard him tell Jesse all they needed was chains to pull this tree out of the way. We’ll wait until Jesse gets back, incapacitate him—didn’t you say you had a spell to do that?—and find the treasure. It’ll be over.”

  The little version of me—oh, how I wanted to not be her—climbed out of the bushes and ran to her father who was still choking on his own blood, dying. She knelt next to him and began weeping. It was the saddest sound I think I’ve ever heard. The real me, the big me, clapped my hands over my mouth to keep from screaming, even though I knew none of them would ever hear me.

  “Shit. I’d forgotten about her. I wish I could forget her forever.” Barbie scooped the knife from the ground and walked toward her child.

  Amanda grabbed her around the waist from behind, holding her arms away from little me. “I won’t let you kill her. No matter how I feel about what Paul did, she’s only a little girl.”

  “She’s creepy and weird and she’s ruined my life,” Barbie screamed.

  “L-l-let’s make her forget. I can make a spell where she’ll forget even seeing Paul’s murder. All I need is something she loves.”

  “All she loves is Paul and his damn mother,” Barbie said.

  “What about her little compact?” Amanda said. “There it is lying on the ground. She’s always playing with it when you come to get your hair done.”

  “All right.” Barbie went to get the compact. “What do we do?”

  Little Peri Jean, realizing something bad was about to happen to her, tried to run from Barbie. The bigger woman caught her after a few steps, grabbing her daughter by the foot and pulling her down. She dragged the screaming child back to Amanda, who watched the whole scene with a pained expression on her face.

  Amanda took a slip of paper out of pocket and began writing on it, saying stuff about forgetting. Barbie stopped her.

  “How do I know you won’t remove the spell to get her to remember so you can send me to jail?”

  “You’ll hold the focus of the spell, the power that holds it intact.” Amanda shoved Barbie’s hand off her. “You’ll have to make a point to make physical contact with Peri Jean, frequently at first, but later—once this memory would have naturally faded anyway—every ten years or so should do it.”

  “What about for Jesse? You said you’d make him forget us stealing the treasure from them. The forgetting has to be really good or we can’t frame him for killing Paul.”

  Amanda sagged. “You planned this all along, didn’t you? No, don’t answer. I see it on your face.”

  “I can kill you, too, keep the treasure all
for myself.”

  Amanda shook her head and kept preparing the spell. Barbie walked over to her and kicked her to get her attention. Amanda spun to face her, red faced and pissed, but stopped short of giving my mother exactly what she deserved.

  “What about Jesse?”

  “You’ll hold the focus of his spell, too. If you can’t make physical contact with him, send him letters every once in a while.” Amanda took the compact apart and hid the slip of paper inside as she talked. “All we need is some physical item he loves and hopefully won’t get rid of, but we can hide the ticket—the spell itself—well enough so it hopefully won’t get destroyed even if Jesse gets rid of the item.” Amanda touched her hand to little Peri Jean’s head, said some words, and the vision ended.

  “Find what you were looking for out here, kiddo?” Barbie’s voice came from behind me. I turned, still shaky from the intensity of what I’d seen. She stood in front of me holding an axe handle and grinning. She brought the axe handle up. Fury welled in me, sharp and hot, and I swung one foot out to kick her at the same moment she swung the handle. I don’t know where she intended to hit me, but it caught the top of my head. The whole world went white and filled with the sound of the stupid bird croaking, croaking, croaking.

  Head throbbing, I listened to Barbie and Amanda grunt as they dragged me to the base of a slim tree. They leaned me against it and looped a length of nylon cord around my chest. The rope tightened until it dug into my skin through my shirt.

  “Hold her hand out,” Amanda said in the same businesslike tone I’d heard her use in her hair salon.

  Barbie grabbed my wrists. I struggled against her, but the blow to my head had made me weak, and I ended up slapping at her like a kid in her first playground tussle. She deflected my attempts with no more effort than a fly dodging a flyswatter. I shook my head, trying to get some sense back into myself. It just made me dizzier.

  Amanda drew a wickedly long dagger out of a metal sheath attached to her belt. The jewels on its handle winked in the sun, blinding me and making my head hurt even worse. Barbie’s grip tightened on my wrists. Realizing what Amanda intended, I knotted my hands into fists.

  “Please don’t.” In my panic, my voice paled to a whisper. “I won’t do…I don’t know. Please don’t.”

  “Get her hand open, Barbara.”

  The woman who gave birth to me dropped one of my hands and focused her grip on the other. Fast as a snake striking, she jammed her thumb in the webbing between my clenched middle and ring fingers. It felt like someone was driving a nail into the bones. I gritted my teeth, straining against the pain, until I shook all over. My hand suddenly let go without my permission. Amanda grabbed my fingers and used her dagger to lay open the skin nearly to the bone. Blood slowly welled in the cut, and the first throbs made me mewl. Amanda grabbed an ornate silver goblet and motioned Barbie to hold my hand over it. They milked blood out of my hand. Ashamed of myself, I screamed each time they put pressure on my wound.

  “Ok. I think we’ve got enough,” Amanda said. “Tie her wrists so she can’t get away and come help me with the rest.”

  “You said we were going to end her so she couldn’t interfere.” Barbie, eyes wild, stood over me holding another length of nylon rope. “Why not kill her this second? You’ve got the blood to unlock the curse.”

  Kill her this second. I went cold at Barbie’s words even though they shouldn’t have surprised me. She wanted to kill me when I was a little girl. I tried to swallow and almost choked.

  “Because I want to collect her spirit. Use it like I have her daddy’s. She’s much more powerful than he was.” Amanda handed the goblet to Barbie, leaned forward and pulled the black opal necklace over my head. She kissed it and put it on herself. Then she winked at me. I wanted to kick her teeth in.

  “Perfect,” Barbie muttered and looped the nylon rope around my wrists, pulling it way too tight. My fingers began to tingle almost immediately. The pain from my hand wound and the discomfort from my bonds swept some of the fog out of my head. I waited until she had some tension and yanked my arms, throwing her off balance. She kicked me in the stomach twice. I brought my knees up too late to deflect the kicks and shuddered as the pain spread through me, aching in my bowels. It felt like she’d implanted a fiery ball in my belly, and it weighed six hundred pounds. Barbie wrapped my wrists with the precision of a rodeo barrel racer and sneered in my face. “You ain’t the only one who can win a fight, Peri Jean.”

  I sneered right back and said, “We ain’t done…Mom.”

  She raised her eyebrows in challenge.

  “Leave her alone.” Amanda walked across the homesite to the path where I’d entered. “I have to draw these dimming symbols in the road and on the path so people’ll drive on by.”

  “I’m not helping you do magic. That’s not the deal we made.”

  “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you this is what we have to do—and fast—if we want to take care of our business here. If we don’t remove the curse, we’ll never find the treasure, and we’ll both die penniless. Sound fun to you?”

  Barbie followed Amanda grumbling and the two of them used sticks to draw something in the white sand, Amanda speaking in a low voice and sprinkling water on the drawings. They came back to where they’d tied me, and Amanda began setting up a spelling area. I recognized some of the things she did from the night I helped Mysti.

  “You two murderers are still looking for the treasure after all these years?” I struggled against my ties, letting them grind into my skin as I tested their strength and wilting when there wasn’t any give at all. There had to be a way out of this. Had to.

  “Your mother only found out half the story before she killed your daddy. She never has the patience to plan things out. Everything’s done on impulse.” Amanda rolled her eyes at the heavens.

  She returned her attention to her altar and set a worn, leather-bound book next to the mini treasure box she’d stolen from me. Priscilla Herrera’s spell book. I recognized it from my vision. Amanda must have managed to remove the glamour making it appear to simply be a book of folk remedies. She opened it and ran her finger down the page. She placed the cup of my blood and the dirty dagger on the opposite side of the makeshift table. Then she turned to me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Your father was looking for Priscilla Herrera’s spelling stones the day Barbie killed him, not the actual treasure.” Amanda paused to glare at Barbie, disgust pulling her mouth down. “Paul told me he thought Priscilla buried them here on the home place before she was taken to town and hanged.”

  I didn’t have to ask if my father’s theory had been wrong. I knew the answer. The stones were wherever Priscilla Herrera’s body rested unless someone had cut them out of her stomach.

  “What was under the tree then?” I remembered my insistence the lady in the cabin wanted us to see what was buried under the tree.

  “A big-assed dead bird,” Barbie said. “Soon as we dug it up, a bunch of crows—”

  “They were ravens,” Amanda said.

  “Who gives a shit?” Barbie yelled. “A bunch of big, ugly black birds came down on us like the wrath of God.” She pulled up her three-quarter sleeve and walked over to me. “Bit me here. Still got the scar. See?”

  I turned my head to look and she popped me across the cheek with her open hand and hissed her sour breath into my face. “I know you made it happen somehow.”

  I kicked out at her, wanting so badly to do her harm. She danced away and used her foot to sling dirt in my direction. It peppered my face, and I spat, which did nothing to clear the grit from my mouth.

  “You’re not going to remove the curse without the spelling stones. I saw Priscilla Herrera do the curse in my vision.” I knew I might have been telling too much, but I’d do anything to stall the proceedings. I didn’t want to see what would really happen if Amanda managed to separate the dark spirits from the mini-treasure chest.

  “You accessed a vision of what happened the day she died?�
�� Her gaze sharpened and fastened onto me. She shook her head. “If you weren’t so stubborn, we could work together instead of this.” She clicked her tongue and shrugged. “I don’t think I need the stones. The spell book says she used blood to seal—or protect—the spell. I’m going to use your blood to unseal it.”

  “What do you think is going to happen once the curse is unsealed?” I heard the tremor in my voice as I imagined every kind of hell breaking loose.

  “The entities Priscilla Herrera attached to the treasure to carry out the parameters of the curse will be detached from it.” She paused to light her candles.

  “You’re forgetting I saw her attach them. She gave them instructions to destroy Gaslight City and everybody in it if anybody but her detached them. You’re going to kill us all.”

  “No.” She turned to me, and the expression on her face chilled the August heat away in an instant. “Just you. I can use your blood to detach them from the treasure and to attach them to you all at once.”

  Vertigo spun me. If the ropes hadn’t been holding me up, I’d have fallen. I hung there, ropes holding me up, and a wild hope hit me. Maybe I could lie my way out of this.

  “It’s not going to work.” I said the words like I believed them. “The curse Hezekiah Bruce wrote about left out one big detail that I saw in my vision. The person who removes the curse has to have Priscilla Herrera’s blood. Mace blood might be needed to find the treasure, but Herrera blood is needed to remove the curse.” I widened my eyes for emphasis. “My blood isn’t going to help you.”

  Amanda smiled at me, eyes crinkling at the corners. “It really is too bad I’m going to kill you. You think fast under pressure.”

  “I figured out you were the Herrera heir when I eavesdropped on your conversation with Julie at the antique store, you nitwit.” Barbie pursed her lips and shook her head at me. “That’s why I asked about your ugly fucking tattoo.”

  Her words washed away the last of my hope. I bit my lip because I didn’t want to cry in front of her.