Ghost in the Canteen (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 1)

by Rasmussen, Jen

  “I just robbed an old lady,” I told Cal.

  Okay, but what was she going to do? Call the police and tell them Caroline Bingley had stolen her ill-gotten teeth? And anyway I needed them. Technically they were Greta’s, but surely Jeffrey had also prized the evidence of his savagery. He’d certainly come in contact with them, anyway, and as far as items in that category went, the teeth were all I had access to.

  She’d all but confirmed that I was right about the true name being important, too. I wondered if it was part of the incantation for fiends. But it didn’t matter, because I hadn’t gotten it, and had no way to get it now. I didn’t think Greta Litauer was going to invite me over for tea again anytime soon.

  I reached over with a shaking hand and ran my fingers gingerly over the top of the box.

  “Well at least that’s one more item off my list.”

  Dinner that night was a somber affair, with both Charlie and I thinking about Nat and neither one mentioning it. You’d think after five years we’d be able to celebrate his life, tell fun stories to Warren on this day. But other than Brian McLeary always acknowledging it, it was the same silent avoidance every year. Maybe when someone you love dies violently you can never make peace with it.

  Things looked up a little the next morning when I got a reply from Cyrus’s cousin with names and email addresses for the bookstore and collector his sister sold Cyrus’s books to. It was a short-lived triumph. Ten minutes online told me the bookstore closed over a year ago, and sixty minutes after that told me a big fat nothing about the former owners or what might have happened to their stock.

  I stopped wasting my time on the bookstore after that. It was a long shot anyway; it wasn’t like they’d have records of who bought every book, which meant my only hope was that Cyrus’s had remained unsold, even in the “75% OFF—STORE CLOSING—EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!” phase. And if that were the case, they’d probably ended up in a recycle bin, never to be seen again. The collector was a better bet. I sent an email off and hoped for the best.

  I spent most of the rest of that day shopping for Halloween things, including Warren’s much-anticipated zombie costume, and doing the Bakestravaganza crap: updating the social media sites, making the graphics pretty, and drafting the mass email that would remind the parents of how very important it was that we all show up and sell cupcakes to one another.

  When I called Katie about it the next day, she was all sunshine and smiles, so I guessed I was off her shit list for the time being. “Oh and before I go, did you have a chance to find anything else of Tom’s?” I asked as casually as I could.

  “Tom? Oh, right, no, I’m afraid...” Katie paused in a way that made me pray she was just taking a drink of water, as opposed to preparing to say something difficult. That prayer was not answered. “Well, things have been kind of hectic around here, Grandma Maisie passed away, and I’ve been working on funeral arrangements and so forth.”

  My stomach dropped like I’d swallowed an anchor. “She... what? But she just went to assisted living! I thought you said she’d do better there!”

  Katie was clearly put off by my reaction. “Well, she was old, she had a very nice long life, and we knew this was coming,” she said, somewhat defensively. Of course, she would have no idea what it meant to me that Maisie had died. What it would mean to Tom.

  I struggled to keep my voice steady while I said what was expected of me. “Of course. But it’s never easy. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Katie didn’t answer for a few seconds. Then she said, “I’m sorry Lydia, that was a text from Carol Atkins, and I have a voice mail from the funeral director too, I need to go.”

  I said something else vaguely appropriate and ended the call. Then I went to the kitchen sink and leaned over it, because I swear, without drama-queenspeak, that I thought I was going to throw up.

  The girl, his girl, Tom wanted so badly to come back for was gone. His last bit of unfinished business, never to be finished. What would become of him now, if I did get him out of there? Would he ever be able to move on, with this last thing left undone?

  And he’d been so certain that in the moment of her death, Maisie would see him and know the truth. So there was someone else I’d fucked over when I banished him. Maisie would never get the chance to meet her father now. Maybe she would know, in the next life, but that wasn’t the same thing as seeing that smile, hearing that voice.

  Tom would never forgive me. I might never forgive myself.

  And I’d done it to dozens of other people, too. The more I thought about it, the more I leaned toward Charlie’s way of seeing things, that it was time to put the canteen away for good. I’d like to say I spent the next ten minutes over the sink reflecting on that, on the morality of my job, on the people I’d hurt and their pain and whether there was any way to make it right.

  But that would be a lie. I was selfish. What consumed me most as I stared at the breakfast dishes and the coffee grounds that hadn’t quite made it into the disposal was that Tom would hate me forever.

  The next day was Saturday, which meant going to the corn maze and picking out pumpkins and generally pretending, for Warren’s sake, to be enjoying all that autumn had to offer. But later that afternoon, some clever and possibly not entirely legal searching yielded a phone listing for the book collector. I left a message and hoped for the best, but the sight of my checklist did nothing to lift my spirits.

  I was no closer to the incantation; I didn’t know how I’d banish Jeffrey; I had no new remnant for Tom; and I had no idea how I’d get it to him even if I did. In my mind banishing Jeffrey and bringing Tom home were one and the same problem, not just because I’d promised Charlie that these unresolved things would be the last I attended to under his roof (one way or another), but because I had it in my head that while the canteen was open for Jeffrey, I’d also be able to send a remnant through for Tom. Somehow. Even though I knew that wasn’t how things worked, that you couldn’t just toss whatever you wanted in there like it was some great cosmic trash bin.

  But if I did manage to get something through, I thought there was a chance he’d find it, with all the hours he spent in the swamp. Looking for a watch he’d probably never find. So he could get home to the daughter who was already gone.

  You can hardly blame me for feeling some self-loathing, given how much there was to loathe. All I wanted was to steep in it, so I was delighted when Charlie reminded me he was going out with Norbert that night. The delight turned to horror when he also reminded me that I was going with them. It was Martha Corey’s birthday party, the one she’d invited Norbert to specially.

  “I’ve already got Laura Hodges coming to babysit. This is not optional,” Charlie told me.

  “Come on. I’m a third wheel. Why waste money on a sitter for this?”

  “First, because Martha will be crushed if you don’t come to her birthday. I got you a lovely present to give her, by the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Second, because I need you there. I can’t have Norbert surrounded by nothing but the neighborhood bitches staring at us sideways while Martha tries to make him drink a potion for sexual longevity or some shit.”

  “Amy and Frank will be there.”

  “I need all the normal people I can get. We have to outnumber the rest.”

  “And you’re including me in the normal faction?”

  “Look at the candidate pool!”

  Couldn’t argue with that. I picked out a nice shirt for Charlie, which was a good thing, because Norbert was looking awfully cute. I walked over to Martha’s a few paces behind them, where I could observe their hands almost-but-not-quite touching, their pinkies just occasionally brushing against one another.

  Martha wore a long, shapeless purple dress speckled with cat hair. Her table was set with a strange but not necessarily unattractive combination of refreshments that included pimento cheese, assorted chocolates, sushi, ham sandwiches, lollipops, several bottles of champagne, a
nd a giant birthday cake in the place of honor. The cake was in the shape of a pile of spellbooks (cleverly titled Bubble Bubble, Toil and Trouble, and Something Wicked), topped with a black cat wearing a witch’s hat.

  Looking at that cake, I was suddenly so glad Charlie had made me come that I crossed the room and kissed him firmly on the cheek. Then I walked away with a wave at his and Norbert’s questioning faces and went to find Martha.

  Cyrus and his books seemed lost to me, but he wasn’t the only one with incantations and spells on his shelf. I didn’t know any other warlocks. But I did know a witch.

  Of sorts, anyway. It was an act of desperation, a fourth quarter Hail Mary. I told myself not to get my hopes up, that it wasn’t like Martha was a real witch. Still, crazy ladies who thought they were witches were bound to purchase witch accessories on occasion. Such as books.

  She was in the kitchen, alone in one corner, putting mushroom caps on a tray. Not stuffed ones, mind. Just the caps. I had been considering how to broach the subject, but taking in that scene I decided to just come out with it. What was I worried about, that Martha Corey might think I was crazy?

  “Martha, do you know anything about banishing fiends?”

  “Fiends?” Martha picked up a glass of champagne from the counter (I hoped it was hers) and took a sip. “Do you mean brownies and evil gnomes? Or do you mean demons?”

  “Well, neither as far as I know, but I guess demon is a closer word to what I mean,” I said. “Except I always thought of demons as kind of a God-Satan thing, and I’m not sure if the fiends I’m talking about are actual residents of Hell.”

  “Evil spirits, then.”

  “Sure,” I agreed.

  “You don’t have a possessed object in your house, do you? How awful!” Martha’s eyes were wide with an expression that suggested such a predicament would be the opposite of awful. “My cousin Gina had a possessed sugar bowl once. Everyone thought it was harmless, even a little cute. Oversweetening the coffee, fighting with the salt shaker. Until one day it killed her cat.”

  “Her sugar bowl killed her cat?”

  “Oh yes, it was terrible.”

  “How does a sugar bowl kill a cat?”

  Martha leaned forward and whispered, “With evil energy.”

  “But... are you sure the cat didn’t just die?”

  “The cat,” Martha said with a sage nod, “was not old.”

  “I see. Well no, this isn’t anything like that.” Martha looked a little disappointed. The poor woman must be terribly bored and lonely, if exorcising evil spirits from sugar bowls was a fun prospect for her. I made a mental note to stop being such a bitch and visit her more often. “It’s not even for me. Or it is, but...” I sighed. “I have a part-time job, Martha. I don’t really make it known in the neighborhood. You know how people can be about supernatural stuff.”

  Martha sniffed and ran one long finger around the rim of her champagne glass. “Yes I do. Don’t think I don’t know what the kids say about me. Don’t think I don’t know their parents just look the other way when they do what they do to my house on Halloween.”

  “Well, Warren never says anything about you except how much he enjoys your cookies at Christmas,” I offered. This was completely true. I left out that Charlie had plenty of things to say about her, most of them a bit too colorful to be said in Warren’s presence.

  “Never mind,” Martha said. “Tell me about this job.”

  “I banish apparitions who won’t let go.” Bizarrely, I felt a need to justify this, even to crazy Martha Corey. “Most of them are doing harm to the living.” Most. Not all, though. Sometimes they’re just trying to stay close to their daughters, but I banish them anyway because I was hired by a greedy acquaintance whose main concern is for property value.

  “Apparitions,” Martha said. “That’s an old-fashioned kind of word. How do you define it?”

  “I was taught there were four kinds,” I said. “Ghosts, shades, poltergeists, and doppelgangers.” Martha nodded, as if this made perfect sense. “Some people include fiends in that list, because they can haunt places too when they want to, but they’re an entirely different thing,” I went on. “They take human form sometimes, but they’ve never been human. So the ritual for banishing them is different, and I can’t find it anywhere.”

  “Well.” Martha set down her champagne, picked up the tray of mushrooms, and gestured for me to follow her. “I must have something around here. Let’s have a look.”

  After she set the tray on the dining room table and greeted a couple of newcomers, Martha walked me upstairs. Jack Nimble was on the landing, staring morosely down at the commotion. He flicked his tail and followed us into a spare bedroom Martha seemed to be using as an office of sorts, with bookshelves on three walls and what appeared to be an altar on the fourth. She closed the door and started rummaging through the shelves.

  As it turned out, she had three somethings that dealt with the subject of banishing evil spirits. She directed me to an armchair in one corner of the room and handed them to me one by one. The first called for sacrificing a rooster, burning its entrails, then mixing its blood with a paste of sage and salt, and sprinkling this concoction around the four corners of the place you were trying to protect. Oh, and eating the rooster’s heart. There was no mention of whether it was acceptable to cook it first. I gave that one back, hoping it wouldn’t come to that.

  The second I also rejected; it didn’t mention entrails, but it dealt mainly with traditional Christian exorcism rituals, which I was quite certain I was not qualified to perform.

  The third book looked promising. It was old, so old that the corner of the cover crumbled a bit in my hands.

  “Where did you get this, Martha?”

  “Well, I don’t know.” Martha stood behind me with Jack Nimble in her arms, studying the book over my shoulder while I flipped through it. “That was one of my grandmother’s, I think. I don’t know where she got it. She was quite a medicine woman, my grandmother.”

  “How nice,” I said absently. I did not care about Martha Corey’s grandmother, which sounds mean, but I was too distracted by what I’d found in the book, on a page titled Keeping Evil Spirits from the Home. The illustration showed a great big wolfhound snarling at a dark, winged, red-eyed monster. Hounds were the enemy of spirits, the introductory paragraph explained, not only because they could detect them, but because they could reach other planes, and therefore bite a spirit the same as they could a person. I was assured that malevolent spirits would never enter anyplace a hound lived, and that they could also be kept away with iron and salt. Wearing an iron cross was recommended for personal protection.

  But if protection failed or was applied too late, an evil spirit could be expelled from a place, never to return, with salt, fire, and a spell repeated without interruption. That part sounded a lot like a certain other ritual I knew. The spell followed, and the final word of the final line was:

  Kahrosh.

  The word Jeffrey shouted the day he sent me into the canteen; the word Drayne shouted after he got really, really mad at me. It was even spelled something like I’d imagined it would be. Clearly a word of some power in that fiend language of theirs. Power and aggression, maybe, the fiend version of fuck you.

  Well, fuck you Jeffrey Litauer. This was my incantation. It had to be. I needed it to be.

  In fact, I had no idea just how badly I needed it to be until dinner three nights later, when Warren asked, “Who’s Two Colors?”

  My fork froze halfway to my mouth. “Two Colors?”

  “Yeah. It’s a person. I thought it was a bad guy from a superhero movie, but Blake Jefferson said he’s real.”

  “Do you mean True Colors?” Charlie asked.

  Warren shrugged. “Blake Jefferson said Two Colors killed his brother’s friend’s girlfriend. He was telling everyone on the bus.” We spent the rest of dinner trying to explain to our little boy about serial killers in the nicest way possible, which is still not very nice
. Especially when I was fighting off panic the whole time.

  I’d been busy trying to work out how I could accomplish the rest of my list. Too busy to see any news. Or to return two messages from Sherrie, which I now supposed were to tell me that Jeffrey had woken up, and in as big a way as I feared.

  Sure enough, the news sites were splashed with pictures of a fresh-faced girl of seventeen. Her body had been found on the side of the road, two miles from the Litauer house, her heart nailed to her wrist. The police surmised it was a copycat, that True Colors himself was dead. One for two, police.

  And it was my fault. Wasn’t it? Of course it was. I’d failed to banish him twice now. And I still wasn’t ready for the third try.

  I forced myself to read every single story about Lucy Winchowski, every random detail her shell-shocked friends and family were holding close, before she faded into a distant and distorted memory, no longer a person, just a trauma in their past. She was a senior at the local high school. The kids on my street, in my neighborhood, all probably knew her. It could have been any of them just as easily. She’d just finished playing Maria in the school production of West Side Story. She liked to swim and watch football games and eat burritos. She had a dress ready for the homecoming dance that would sit in her closet unworn. She had a boyfriend who would be staying home that night. She had a younger sister who would be scarred for life. She had a mother and a father who I couldn’t even think about.

  I called Sherrie back. She was even more panicked than I was, which was understandable, given who she lived with. Except she wasn’t living there anymore. She’d moved her family to a hotel until, well, until I did my job.

  “My daughter was at a retreat for church when it happened.” Her voice shook as she spoke, whether from fear of Jeffrey or anger at me, I didn’t know. “Otherwise it might have been her. You said you’d call me when you were ready, Lydia.”

  “But I’m not ready.”