Hex Marks the Spot

by Madelyn Alt

  Liss, despite her personal belief system, didn’t seem to need to sweat the details. “What will you do, Eli?”

  Ever the personification of the strong and silent type, Amish edition, Eli turned back to his work and began to clear away the wooden planks he had just finished cutting to size. “I will work. And if God is willing, I will find another to help me in my business. What more is there?”

  Well, I would have worried and fussed and tried to plan things somehow, knowing all the while that nothing I prepared for would manifest into existence. It was part of my process.

  While Eli continued to work and I wondered how to say what was on my mind, Liss wandered around the barn’s open center space, drifting toward the Dutch door on the west wall below the depleted haymow. “Have you been having any more trouble out here?” she asked conversationally.

  Instantly my radar went on high alert. “Trouble? What sort of trouble?”

  Eli had hoisted the planks onto his shoulder. He carried them over to where others just like them were stacked against the wall and began to rearrange them…a sure sign that all was not well, because they were already arranged to the point of an obsession with tidiness. “Well, you know, just the usual,” he said slowly. “There is the cold spot that follows just behind you. The child spirit. A number of animal spirits.”

  “How often?”

  “It used to be once or twice a month, no more. But lately, it is as it is with every place else we’ve been investigating. All the time.”

  “Mmm. Joe mentioned that the spirits on his property have been having regular powwows, too.”

  That would be Joe Aames, a former high school football star who’d given it all up to be a pig farmer. He had a psychology degree from Purdue, but didn’t care to use it. He said it was because pigs made a lot more sense than people, and a lot less mess. I guess that didn’t apply to Eli—the two were diehard best friends.

  “Ja. We go out in the fields at night sometimes, just to keep our eyes on things. With my own eyes I saw a fire ring burning that was not there.”

  Liss came back to stand beside me, oblivious to my sudden skittishness. I knew that Rosemont Cemetery was active—the N.I.G.H.T.S. had done an investigation there in December, my first on-site experience of a ghost-hunting expedition—but somehow I had forgotten that the farms surrounding the cemetery were hotbeds of activity as well. Was no place sacred anymore?

  “I don’t feel anything negative, though, Eli. There’s energy, certainly, but it’s all on the neutral side of the wheel. Neither dark nor light.”

  “For now, ja.”

  I did what I always did when I got nervous. I changed the subject. “You know, Eli, I had just met Luc Metzger’s wife at the farmers market. All I could think of when Marcus and I stumbled across everything yesterday was how awful it would be for her and her children when they found out.”

  A troubled frown flickered across Eli’s normally stoic brow. “Hester is taking it very hard, but she is trying not to show it. It will not be easy for her, that is for sure. The children are young, and she has the farm to run with no man to help her.” Most Amish in our area owned their own working farms and also took jobs at the local factories. Even the Amish needed health benefits and steady pay.

  I couldn’t begin to comprehend being a young single mother responsible for the well-being of four children, let alone four children, a house, and an entire farm—crops, animals, and all. Despite what I wanted my mother to believe, sometimes I could barely take care of myself, let alone anyone else. “Does she have family who will help her?”

  “No. No family here. Her people are in Pennsylvania, near Lancaster.”

  “Pennsylvania? Really? How did she end up here?”

  “Luc’s people came to this area in the eighteen-hundreds, but some are in Pennsylvania still. He went out to Lancaster to marry Hester and eventually brought her back here.”

  “Do you think she’ll move back there, then?”

  He shook his head. “She says not. Jonah Ritter asked her that yesterday. She says her life is here now, and here she will stay.”

  “But how will she manage?”

  “Hester is a good woman. Strong. If anyone can find a way, she will. And the community will make sure she does not want for much. We take care of our own.”

  It was all well and good to say that, but realistically speaking, platitudes, however well-intended, did not put meat on a kitchen table. “And the children?”

  Eli’s shrug spoke more of uncertainty than of dismissal. “I hope she will not need to send them away to relatives until she gets her feet on the ground. We will do our best to help.”

  Poor Hester. She’d seemed like such a nice young woman. To have your whole world destroyed in one fell swoop…Poor Luc didn’t even have a chance to duck the Great Sucker Punch o’ Destiny, and his pretty wife never saw it coming.

  “Perhaps…” Liss had been quietly attuning herself to the energies of the barn, but now she came forward, a familiar light in her eyes. “Perhaps we could do something for her as well. Take up collections of money and donations of useful items. What do you think, Maggie?”

  I nodded, still seeing the strange darkness in Hester’s eyes the day before. “My mother might be able to help, too. The Ladies Auxiliary at St. Catherine’s often takes on families caught in circumstances beyond their control, with an eye toward helping them through their suffering. I’ll talk to her about it. If—” I glanced questioningly at Eli—“if you don’t think our efforts would be taken the wrong way.”

  He gazed at me, then nodded his head. “I will talk with her, ja? Anything would help. Luc said often that money was tight. It was why he was working with me. He had been asking for more and more hours. More than I could give. And there is…trouble…between Hester and the other women-folk. Some hard feelings, I think. I do not know why, but it is there, unmistakable. She may not accept help from our women.”

  He gave me a meaningful look, the kind that said You know how women are. From anyone else, the look might have annoyed me, but no one could take offense at anything Eli said. Least of all me.

  Trouble, he said. Had I witnessed one example of that at the booth, when Hester had gone all strange on me? The ladies staffing the booth with her had seemed downright hostile. Trouble in noodle territory.

  And Eli didn’t know why. But then, Eli was a man, and couldn’t be expected to understand the complexities of female relationships, if that’s what it was. Then again, I didn’t get the feeling that the women in the booth had acted out of jealousy. They were reacting out of fear.

  Hester had spoken of trouble, too. We who see…

  Was that it? Was Hester an intuitive as well? Had she foreseen her husband’s death? Was that why she had been trying so hard to keep him home?

  “I took a ride over to where Luc was found,” Eli was saying. “Earlier this morning, after I left Hester’s. I…it was wrong of me, but I took my pendulum with me.”

  “You did?” Liss’s attention sharpened with curiosity. “What did you find?”

  “I walked around a little bit, poking around. The police had been out there again at first light. Their searches were very thorough. I did not find anything amiss. I was hoping…”

  “You were hoping to find something they had overlooked, something that would help them find who did this to Luc.”

  “Ja. Ja, I guess I was. It was wrong of me, perhaps. We are not meant to judge others—it is not our place—but I cannot help but want them to find the person who did this. Not to punish, of course, it is not our way; but to bring to justice. Such…enmity toward the Amish community is…unsettling.”

  Unsettling, to say the least. “This is the third attack in this area alone,” I mused by way of agreement, deciding it was okay to repeat what Tom had told me since it had appeared in The Gazettes and I was probably the last person in Stony Mill to hear of it. “And the second in this county. But it is the first to have gone this far. I wonder why.”

&n
bsp; Eli shrugged. “Bad luck for Luc. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was after dark; he should have been home with Hester.”

  “Tom said the police have issued warnings to your community.”

  “Ja. Stay home after dark. Travel with companions. Do not stop for others you do not know. Do not help. Do not trust.” He shook his head regretfully. “It is not the Amish way to live in these conditions. It is much to ask of us.”

  “But it’s for your own safety.”

  “A man cannot live his life in fear.”

  I’ve long thought that fear is just a person’s safety barometer, a useful tool that serves to remind a person to watch their back, keep their eyes open, stay away from high places, and for God’s sake, don’t accept candy from strangers. In other words, it is there for a reason. To ignore it is beyond foolhardy.

  “Eli…” Liss paused expectantly, waiting to be sure she had his attention before continuing. “You didn’t say. What did you discover with your dowsing?”

  Eli shifted uncomfortably. “Well…I didn’t use it after all. Things felt too fresh. Too jittery. I knew Luc. I’m not sure that I want to know if he is hanging around.”

  So much for a man not living life in fear.

  “Would you feel better if you had company?” Liss offered.

  Whoa, there. “Uh…”

  “That might be okay. Safety in numbers.” Eli fished in his pocket and withdrew his pendulum, a Goddess stone he had found on his property. The doughnut-shaped stone was familiar to me—Eli had introduced me to it during my very first dowsing lesson. Seeing it again, dangling from a leather thong, I felt the throb of energy in my palms, just as I had that first night. The energy pattern of the stone itself, a remembered response.

  “Shall we go, then?” Liss asked.

  Eli and Liss turned and gazed expectantly at me. As if there was any way I could stop them. They both knew I couldn’t bring myself to deny either of them anything. “Ohhhhh…all right. Lead on, if you must.”

  Liss gave me a wink. “It won’t be so bad,” she reassured me. And then she spoke some familiar words of power, words that many people in this world know, but few use as effectively as my witchy boss: “Trust me.”

  I was a goner.

  Eli piled into the back seat of the Lexus while Liss and I took the front.

  “Which way?” Liss asked.

  I gave her quickie directions. We were there within minutes.

  The barricades were down, but the crime scene tape was still up, supported by wooden stakes pounded into the earth at regular intervals. Liss pulled onto the thin strip of shoulder. It was scarcely wide enough for the Lexus’s tires. Which meant, of course, that I had to straddle the shallow drainage ditch upon exiting. But hey, it was all in the name of lending support to good friends.

  I felt myself pulling back, just a bit, as Liss and Eli headed toward the taped-off area. Luc had been bludgeoned, hadn’t he? Didn’t that mean there would be blood, and lots of it? What if they hadn’t yet had a chance to clean up the area?

  Worse yet…what if the energy drain we had experienced last night really was the spirit of Luc Metzger? And what if he had decided to stick around for a while? I knew from my involvement with the N.I.G.H.T.S. that often people who had died suddenly or who felt they had unfinished business remaining in the physical world refrained from crossing over into the Otherworld. Earthbounds, they were called. Murder victims had to be pretty high up on the unfinished business list.

  So, to me, the question of the moment was this: If Luc Metzger had indeed stayed in nonphysical form in the physical world, would his misty energy be tied to the place where he had died? Or to the place he loved the most?

  Did I get a vote?

  Probably not.

  I trudged along behind Liss and Eli, quieting my steps as much as possible on the rough chip-and-seal surface of the road. No sense in accidentally awakening…whatever. But I could delay for only so long. Eli had pulled his stone out by the time I reached the crime scene tape. Liss, on the other hand, stood as still as a stone, her eyes closed and her chin tipped up ever so slightly. Her hands were held out, palms up. Her fingertips fluttered delicately.

  “What do you feel?” I found myself asking.

  “Chaos energy, very hectic, but nothing specific,” she said. She opened one eye to peer at me. “You?”

  I didn’t want to open myself up to it, so I just shrugged and instead put the whole of my thought processes to work strengthening my personal boundaries against invasion by outward forces. Liss accepted my noncommittal response without comment and went back to putting out feelers. Eli’s pendulum, in the meantime, was swinging jerkily back and forth on its leather tether.

  “What is it doing?” I asked, frowning.

  Eli was frowning, too. I did not find that reassuring. He muttered something under his breath in German and moved away, keeping his eyes on the prize in his hand.

  I couldn’t bear to stand next to the crime scene tape. Some kind county worker, who probably wasn’t being paid nearly enough for the gruesome task, had covered the area with a plastic tarp pinned down at the corners. Whether to preserve the evidence or to protect the delicate sensibilities of passersby, I didn’t know, but I was grateful nevertheless.

  I turned my face toward the field, clutching my arms protectively over my chest. The dirt had been newly turned, the vestiges of last night’s light frost long since melted and absorbed by the clods of musty earth. From somewhere nearby there came the rumble of a big tractor engine, a reminder that spring’s labors were in full swing. Living in town, even one as small as Stony Mill, it was easy to lose track of the turn of the seasons. Here on these county roads, far from suburban sprawl, the evidence was everywhere.

  “Over here. Here is where the trail of energy ends. Right here.”

  Eli had paused on the other side of the road, where just a short leap over a narrow ditch, an overgrown trail led into the woods. Yes, that’s right, woods. Most people, when they think of Indiana at all, think of cornfields and wheat stretching as far as the eye can see—and granted, we do have a lot of that—but here in the northeast quadrant of the state, we also have quite a lot of wooded expanses. The one that bordered this part of the road was quite thick. Eli stood just within the first row of trees, his feet planted wide in the tangle of long grass. He tucked the Goddess stone into his back pocket, turning his attention to and fro as he did so.

  “Right here,” he said again. He toed the ground where he was standing for good measure.

  Liss opened her eyes, then narrowed them, squinting through her eyelashes at the spot where Eli stood. “Yes, I do think you’re right. There is a disturbance in the astral right behind you. I can see it now. A rip or a wrinkle, as it were. You are standing just within it, Eli. It is drawing upon your aura, which I’m sure is why I can see it now…but it is not enough to heal.”

  I did everything I could to see it. Looked out of the corner of my eye. Squinted. Crossed my eyes. Nothing.

  “Why don’t you step away for a moment?” Liss suggested, holding her position. Eli did as she asked. “Yes, it fades considerably once you’re away from there. How are you feeling?”

  “Okay, now. When I was standing there, I felt…anxious, I guess. It was not comfortable. As though my insides were boiling away, but without the heat. Just the rumbling and churning.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked. “What does it mean that the energy trail ends where Eli is standing?”

  “Just that, for whatever reason, it doesn’t go beyond. Energy imprints generally have a beginning and an ending. Sometimes they are confined to a very finite place, like a cold spot, and other times their boundaries are a bit broader. This imprint is actually quite large; it encompasses the area between where Luc was found and the trees over here,” Liss said with the intrigued tone of a scholar examining new evidence on a well-proved theory.

  I watched from the distance as she gracefully skipped across the ditch like a
woman half her age to join Eli on the other side. She joined hands with him and they closed their eyes, swaying slightly together in the gentle afternoon sunshine. I felt oddly compelled to go to them and offer my energy up…but that was crazy. I did not want to do that. The nudgings were just going to have to go find themselves another sensitive.

  I made myself look away from Liss and Eli, forced myself to break that connection. As I did, a flash of white farther back caught my eye. Probably just a scrap of newspaper or a plastic bag that had been blown into the trees by the winter wind. And yet curiosity burned within me, sudden and sweet. I found my feet moving, propelling me on.

  Propelling me on. Toward…what?

  The answer came a moment later. It wasn’t something that could be seen from the road—a pair of big spruce trees nearly obscured it when it was being viewed head-on. I don’t know what kind of odds had contributed to my catching a chance glimpse of it from where I stood, and I wasn’t about to start ciphering them now.

  There was a sign of some sort on the trunk of a big maple tree. A circle of wood, painted in black and white. I made my way toward the tree, rounding the larger spruce until I could see it clearly.

  This was no ordinary graffiti, and it was not an identifying mark made by lumbermen to designate which trees were to be culled from the woods this season. This was a sign, almost decorative in nature, that someone had specifically placed there. A stylized drawing of an angry-looking owl with horns for ears, outlined in white paint on a black background. Two axes were clutched in its claws and thorny roses bloomed beneath those clenched talons. Around its head, a circle of something jagged. Above it, what looked like an orange star. I reached out to the tree, hesitating a moment before placing my fingertips against its bark.

  Somehow I didn’t think it was meant to advertise the Preservation of Owls Society.

  Just as quickly, I yanked my fingers away. The tree was buzzing. Like it was full of bees, or…like it was alive.

  Mother Mary, I thought, gazing up at the tree and the weird sign with a mixture of horror and fascination.