The Seven Boxed Set

by Sarah M. Cradit

  “Oh, yes. You’re counting on my obedience. It wouldn’t do to lose a great male professor, or my generous donations.” She reached forward and snatched the folder from the desk. “There will come a time where you both regret this.”

  “Colleen—”

  “No, you were right before, when you called me Miss Deschanel. And one day, you’ll be sitting across from me, and I’ll be the one telling you what you’re going to do, and you will remember this.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t until she was free and clear of the drab building that Colleen released the breath trapped in her chest. She pitched forward, heaving out the air in her lungs as if it were poisonous… the emotion rolled forward, outward, until the gasps turned to sobs.

  Eighteen

  The Assault

  Maureen didn’t ask how Charles had come upon the clothing of Daisy Mae and John Hannaford. These are the shirts they were wearing when they both died. Best I can do, he said, and she almost laughed at how short he sold this. If this was going to work, he couldn’t have found anything better to bring her. She imagined him bribing the police and quickly stopped herself from going too far down that rabbit hole. With Charles, knowing was being complicit, and she had enough of her own skeletons to last a lifetime, thank you very much.

  Daisy Mae’s shirt was a yellow sweater, the kind Maureen was forced to wear when she was still in bobby socks and pin-curled hair. The wool was thick and distorted, like when you accidentally put it through the washing machine, but that made sense with how she’d died. John’s shirt was another matter. She couldn’t tell what color it had been before Franz took the rock to him, but it was a dark, faded copper red now, thick and hard in the heavier spots.

  She didn’t want her hands on either of these things, but as far as she knew, that was part of the deal here. Constance Guenard hadn’t appeared until Maureen ran her hands over the rusted and derelict tractor that had killed her.

  What if she was wrong? What if Constance was a fluke? How would she know?

  Practicing summoning Daisy Mae was out of the question, because it was likely this was a one-shot deal, and she wasn’t taking any chances. Once Constance spoke her piece, she said she was going to be getting on. To where, she didn’t say, but when Maureen tried to get her back, she was gone. For real gone.

  Maureen pummeled her fist into her thigh. Oh, there was so much she didn’t know! What if Daisy Mae and her father were for real gone, too? How did someone even do that? Why were her ghosts not forever gone? Were they lost?

  Hell’s bells!

  Maureen buckled and unbuckled her seatbelt. The metallic clicks lulled her, kept her calm. Charles was supposed to give her the signal. Once Franz’s last guest left, they would knock on the door to the townhouse and deliver their message.

  An engine started nearby. She strained to see, but Charles had parked the car around the corner and given explicit instructions not to leave the car until and unless he gave her the signal. The sound roared to life then ebbed as it faded into the distance.

  One flash of light. Then two.

  Maureen grinned and pushed hard on the heavy door of her brother’s Trans Am.

  * * *

  Franz let them in with no more resistance than a glare of mild annoyance. He waved Charles in and assessed Maureen with an expression that gave away the fact he didn’t remember meeting her before, though they’d been introduced twice.

  “Is this one of your girlfriends, Charles?” the man quipped. “I’d hoped you’d exercise better discretion.”

  “My sister,” Charles grunted. “I know she’s about the right age for you, but you even try it, you’re a dead man.”

  Franz scoffed at this, but his eye stayed on Maureen a moment longer than she was comfortable with. He wasn’t terrible to look at, honestly, but one couldn’t forget he was a murdering rapist who’d kidnapped her sister and exploited her.

  “What is it? It’s past ten,” Franz said. For the first time he seemed to be coming around to the realization that the visit was not a typical one.

  “Maureen has something she’d like to show you. Isn’t that right, Maureen?”

  “Show me something? What is this, show and tell?” He rolled his watch forward on his wrist and made a point of checking it, despite the clocks positioned all around the room. “Charles, I don’t know what you’re playing at here, but I’m not interested. It’s been a long day, and I have an early meeting tomorrow.”

  Charles nodded at Maureen. Her hands shook as she withdrew Daisy Mae’s shirt.

  “What? What is that?” Franz asked.

  Maureen closed her eyes. She whispered the name of the dead girl aloud, which elicited an audible gasp from Franz, and then waited.

  The silence in the room was deafening. Her pulse throbbed as the seconds ticked, and nothing happened.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Fi—

  Maureen passed out.

  * * *

  It all happened so fast. Maureen was alert and focused in one moment and the next she was flying back through the air in a soft arc. Charles’ instincts threw him forward to catch her before she could hit the ground. Her light weight bowed his arms, and he had an irrational but powerful fear that she might be dead, and if so, it would be his fault.

  Her body rocked forward as a gasp overtook her. She struggled for breath and clawed at her face and hair, eyes darting around the room like a wild animal who’d awakened to find itself in a cage. She ripped loose of his arms and crouched low on the ground, poised to attack.

  Neither Charles nor Franz moved. Charles didn’t breathe.

  The tension released from Maureen’s limbs and she fell back onto the carpet. “Where am I?”

  “Maureen? Are you okay?” Charles hovered before her in midair, afraid to touch her.

  “Maureen? Who’s Maureen?”

  Franz crossed his arms. “I don’t know what devilry you two are up to—”

  “Mr. Hendrickson?” Maureen rolled forward onto her hands and lifted herself up. “What’s going on? Where are we?” She turned around and looked up at Charles. “Who’s he?”

  “Maureen?” Charles circled around his sister. He stood at Franz’s side, united in their growing confusion. “What’s wrong?”

  “Why do you keep calling me Maureen?”

  “Well, shit, Maureen, what should I call you, then?” Charles asked.

  “Most people call me Daisy Mae, so I don’t see why you would do any different.”

  “We’re done here,” Franz said, with a note of authority undermined by the squeak of a cracking voice. “Get out.”

  “Maureen…” Charles warned, but couldn’t decide what he wanted her to stop doing. Was this an act? It didn’t seem like it. What it seemed like was that his sister was gone and someone else had taken her place. She didn’t wink or give him any indications this was part of the plan. Although she wore the face of his sister, something had shifted just beneath the surface, and it was enough to make her seem like a complete stranger.

  Daisy Mae turned to Franz. “I’m… well, I’m waking up now. I was confused for a moment, but I’m not so confused now. I shouldn’t be here.”

  “You’re damn right,” Franz said. He was frozen in place.

  “I shouldn’t be here, but here I am,” Daisy Mae continued. She lifted Maureen’s arms and inspected them, turning her hands over. Flexing. “I’m not myself.”

  “Stop it!” Franz pointed at Charles. “Make her stop.”

  Charles threw his hands up, helpless.

  “Will this last?” she asked Charles.

  “I don’t even know what this is,” he said. His chest tightened. His control over the situation had slipped away with whatever had happened to Maureen. The unknown chewed at his guts. What if he couldn’t reverse this? What if this dead girl never left? Even if he could convince her to pretend to be Maureen, no one would believe it. One family dinner was all it
would take for the whole thing to come crashing down.

  Irish Colleen would murder him.

  “Bullshit,” Franz said, but now his voice lacked the earlier vigor.

  “Maybe I don’t have much time,” Daisy Mae mused. “Maybe God has given me this gift.”

  “You aren’t from God,” charged Franz.

  “I’m not from wherever you come from, either,” Daisy Mae said. “People like you don’t go to the place people like me came from. I thought I’d never see you again, Mr. Hendrickson, and unfortunately I was wrong about that, but there must be a reason I’m standing here in front of you again, after all these years. How many has it been?”

  “I’m not playing your games.”

  “Twenty-three or so,” Charles answered as he swallowed down a growing lump at the back of his throat. “That’s my age, anyway, and I wasn’t born yet, but I was on the way.”

  “So I’d be almost forty,” Daisy Mae said. She offered a sad smile, which looked foreign and strange played out on the face of his sister. Charles could now see her for who she was beyond the physical form she now possessed. “I don’t feel that old. I still feel just as I did when I died, only… different.”

  Daisy Mae regarded her host’s hands once more before clasping them together. “I’m here for a reason, it seems, and my father taught me never to waste the gifts given to us.” She turned to Franz. “Remember that thing you used to call me, when you thought no one else was looking? Not even my father knew. Your little dandelion. When you pressed my face into my father’s desk, you told me you were plucking my petals, one by one. Did you ever pay for your crime?”

  “What the fuck,” Charles whispered, running his palm over his lips.

  Franz’s face was a mask of white terror.

  “I guess I should be more specific, Mr. Hendrickson. Did you ever serve even a day for raping me and then murdering my father?”

  Franz was a stone statue. The only sign of life was the bobbing of his Adam’s apple.

  “No, of course you didn’t. My father knew who you were. He knew you were lily-livered. A coward with no loyalties and no morals stronger than your desires. You’re no better than an animal, are you? It’s like you never evolved into a full man. You’re missing pieces.”

  “That’s not how it happened,” Franz choked. “You were attracted to me… you said—”

  “Tell me, what did I say that made you nearly strangle me to death as you had your way?”

  “I can’t remember, but you wanted it. I know you did.”

  “I never wanted it. I never wanted you. What I wanted was to graduate high school and go to college in California. I wanted to design buildings. I wanted to get married and have children, and watch them grow up. I wanted to paint in my spare time, and I was pretty good at it, you know? I wanted to learn ballroom dancing, and my father even signed us up for a class, but we never went because you raped me, and then when he did what any father would do, you killed him.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “She does,” Charles said. He stepped forward. “You killed John Hannaford and then bribed my father into helping you cover it up. You ruined two lives, and then you ruined his, and now you want to ruin mine by making me marry into your terrible fucking murderous family so you can continue to skate by without any consequence.”

  Daisy Mae regarded Charles with a curious smile. “I remember your father. You look so much like him. He was a good man.”

  “I’m sorry he helped prevent this monster from being punished. I’m so sorry.”

  She touched his arm. “Mr. Deschanel did what he needed to do to protect his family, just as my father did. Mr. Hendrickson does what he needs to protect himself.”

  “This isn’t real… you’re…” Franz stammered.

  “Your little dandelion?” she finished. “I was never that. I was never your anything. And do you know why I killed myself?”

  “You loved your father,” he offered weakly.

  “I killed myself because he had you listed as my guardian in case of his death, and I couldn’t bear even a minute in your hands.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Charles whispered. “Why?”

  “I’ll give you one guess.”

  Charles glared at Franz. “You sick shit. You convinced him to unknowingly prostitute his own daughter, and then you killed him. You were always planning to kill him.”

  Franz ignored him. “I never meant for your father to get hurt. He said he wanted to talk, but then he went insane!”

  “I wonder why,” said Daisy Mae.

  “It was self-defense!” Franz cried.

  “Ahh,” she said. “So that’s how you sleep at night. But I know something no one among the living knows.”

  “What?”

  “What really happened.”

  Franz searched for something to do with his hands. He reached first for the nearby chair, but it was too far, and then he looped them behind his back. With a grunt, he moved them to his pockets. “No one was there. No one except John and me.”

  “And where do you think John is now, Mr. Hendrickson?”

  Franz’s mouth flapped in helpless pursuit of words.

  Daisy Mae laughed. “Did you think I was going to actually tell you where the dead go? No, you’re not worthy of such privileged information. But I’ve seen my father. He was the first thing I knew after the darkness took over, and he couldn’t believe I was there, too. He was so sad, and so furious, because he knew why I’d done it. Before I moved on, he told me what happened in that house. How you first denied what you did to me, and then taunted him, laughing, claiming he was a terrible father who couldn’t even keep track of his daughter. He demanded you turn yourself in, Mr. Hendrickson, and when he wouldn’t take no for an answer, you waited for him to turn around, and then, like the coward you are, you hit him from behind with the rock.”

  Franz stopped trying to talk. He listened to her, visibly deflating with every word she spoke.

  “You hit him again and again. And when he rolled over, hands before his face, in surrender, you brought the rock down against the front of his face and delivered the death blow. You looked him dead in the eyes as you killed him. So, you’re wrong, Mr. Hendrickson. I know what happened. Now Mr. Deschanel’s son knows what happened. And what’s most important of all is, you know that even if you never see a day in prison, you raped a young girl who couldn’t defend herself, and then took her father’s life while his back was turned, like a cravenly pig.” Daisy Mae put her hand to her mouth and covered a smile. “Yes, thank you, Maureen, for this gift. I’ve said what I came to say. Mr. Hendrickson knows what he must do now.”

  * * *

  Maureen awoke in her brother’s arms. Her head throbbed with the worst headache of her life, worse than any hangover she’d ever had. She used Charles to right herself and then stepped away.

  “Do not fuck with my family, Hendrickson! You hear me? There’s fucking more where that came from!” Charles was yelling.

  “It’s all lies!”

  “Fuck you and your little dandelion bullshit!”

  “I don’t know what happened… are we ready to try?” Maureen swayed on her feet.

  Franz and Charles were both white as ghosts.

  “What?”

  “We already did it. It’s done.”

  “What are you talking about? I passed out.”

  “Daisy Mae was here… she was in you,” Charles said.

  “In me?”

  “She spoke through you.”

  Maureen looked at Franz, as if he would be of any help at all. His head shook, not at her, not at anything. He was there, but he wasn’t.

  She looked at the clock. The time read 10:27. They’d arrived at 10:10. “No… really? She really spoke through me? You’re not making this up?” But they weren’t. Their faces said far more than their words.

  “I think we’re done here,” Charles said.

  Maureen had so many questions! This was
huge… a huge, huge step forward in understanding who she was and what she was capable of. She’d only just learned she could summon the dead, and now they could speak through her. There were so many possibilities she could hardly stand it!

  “What are you going to do?” Franz asked, and the fear in his voice, in his eyes, reduced him to an even lesser man than the one they knew him to be already.

  “Me?” Charles snickered. “Nothing. Not a damn thing. I did what I came to do.”

  Maureen, hands on hips, nodded, though she remembered none of the lashing Franz had taken.

  “Which was?”

  “Lizzy said you’re going to kill yourself. If Lizzy says something, it always comes true. Always,” Maureen said.

  Charles looped an arm around her waist and winked at Franz. “We just helped you figure out the ‘why.’"

  Maureen held back her inappropriate laughter until she was safely in the passenger seat of Charles’ car.

  “Holy shit! You have to tell me everything!”

  But Charles didn’t share her enthusiasm. He wrapped his fists around the wheel and then pressed his forehead to the worn leather.

  “What? It was successful, right? He saw her? He believed?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  “Don’t you understand? Lizzy said he’d kill himself next year, but she also said I was going to marry Cordelia. If both things are true, then he doesn’t off himself quickly enough to save me from a future with that terrible hag.”

  Maureen’s smile faded. She considered what kind of comfort Charles might want and decided he wanted none at all. “He still deserves to die, Charles.”

  “I almost killed him with my bare hands tonight.”

  “But you didn’t, because Lizzy said—”

  “Just once I wish Lizzy had the good sense to lie.”

  “Maybe Cordelia will die in a tragic car accident on your wedding night, before you have to fuck her.”

  Charles lifted his head and smirked in the dark car. “Only you would have the balls to say that aloud.”