by Madelyn Alt
My gaze fell on the fat magical encyclopedia of symbols that Liss had left under the counter. I pulled it out, grunting at the weight of the tome as I hefted it to the countertop. Good grief, it was heavy. Must be a thousand pages in this thing. I flipped through some of the pages. Image after image in photographs and pen-and-ink representations of symbols leapt out at me, categorized by chapter headings that were organized by country and region. Looking at it, seeing the names of magical traditions that crisscrossed the world over, absorbing the relevance of it all…
Sweet Mother Mary. So many.
I didn’t know whether to be impressed or unnerved. Because where there was a tradition of magic, there was also a tradition of need for it. A need to exert some control in an out-of-control world.
Frowning, I flipped the book over and opened the back cover with its loose flyleaf. The author’s photo leapt out at me—I don’t know why. I held the cover open with the flat of my hand and gazed down into eyes that seemed so familiar to me, even though I knew I had not seen this man before. They were kind eyes, gentle, alive with a light of deep intelligence and, I felt sure, filled with good humor. But more than anything, I felt a calling as I gazed into them. A tugging from spirit to spirit. A whispering on the winds of the astral tide. Can you hear me…Do you see…
Hear what? See what?
The photo was black and white, no more than a head-and-shoulders shot. I could tell that he was trying to look academic, but he resembled a stuffy old professor about as much as I did. Dark hair, longish, with curls that were swept back and a little mussed, as though he’d just pushed his fingers through it. A broad forehead, the lines across it showing both concern and expression as well as the advancing of years toward middle age. Strong features. And eyes that were both blue and green, a mix of colors as quixotic as the man himself.
The photo was black and white, but I knew I was right about their color.
The eyes are the windows of the soul…
Dr. Merrick C. Butler, M.A., Ph.D., I read, is a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh’s Parapsychology Unit, and has been recognized worldwide for his contributions to the emerging field of parapsychology. Years of fieldwork and scholarly endeavors have contributed to the massive undertaking of this encyclopedic work, which is meant to provide a deeper understanding of the symbology used in magical practices of all traditions.
I traced my thumb over the photo, wondering why I kept seeing a winding stone staircase in my mind’s eye.
“What do you think of it?”
I jumped guiltily. Liss was standing on the other side of the counter, watching me. I hadn’t heard her come through from the back. “Wh-what?”
She nodded toward the book on the counter. “What do you think of the book?”
“Oh, this?” Relieved that she had not picked up on more than I was willing to surrender for now, I patted the oversized volume. “It’s amazing. Quite scholarly. I was dumb-founded by the sheer number of entries. That there are so many different magical traditions across the world. Well, it’s amazing,” I said, knowing I was repeating myself but unable to think of a better word with my bum sizzling away on the hot seat.
She came forward and pressed the back cover open so that she could see. “Did you find anything of interest?”
Instantly my cheeks flamed, and I was a stumbling fool. “Oh, lots! Loads. So many interesting…drawings and symbols. Just…amazing.”
Liss nodded, a smile tilting up the corners of her mouth. “I’ll be sure to pass on your compliments to my nephew.”
“Nephew?” My ears perked up. “Your nephew is a professor of metaphysical subjects?”
“Among other things,” she acknowledged. “He has a degree in sociology, and a doctorate in metaphysics. I guess you might call his specialty parasociology. The effects of the paranormal on a society at large.”
I didn’t even know there were such fields of study. I had an idea it might have been considered little better than snake-handling in some intellectual circles, though.
So Dr. Butler was an academic pariah of sorts.
“As you can see, it runs in the family. The interest in all things Otherworldly, I mean. It’s a part of our heritage. Although, I must say, he does an admirable job of keeping a scientific view of all of his theories.”
A scientific view of the mysteries of the paranormal world. Oil and water, in most people’s eyes. Liss’s nephew, I decided, was either a man with an iron constitution and diehard self-confidence, or he was too far gone to realize how close to reputation ruination he actually was.
I might have asked Liss more about her nephew, but our chat was interrupted by the yammering arrival of Evie and Tara.
“Liss! Maggie! You’ll never guess what happened today!” Evie breezed her way toward the counter, her blond hair shifting in the air currents caused by her passing.
“Yeah. You’ll never guess.” Tara came at a much more sedate and dignified pace, slinking in like a salamander. As dark as Evie was light, she was her friend’s antithesis and foil in every other way as well. And yet the two girls had found enough common ground to form a friendship so tight in the last few months that I could easily envision it lasting well into adulthood. In them, I saw myself and my best friend, Steff, a few years ago. Best friends forever.
“All right, then,” Liss said, smiling with a motherly pride at her two youngest protégées. “Tell us.”
“Guess,” Tara replied with a self-satisfaction that left no doubts as to her preference for having the upper hand. She shrugged out from under her backpack and dropped it to the countertop with a muffled thud.
Obviously not one for guessing games, Evie blurted out, “The police came to the high school!” Her china blue eyes flashed with excitement and concern.
My eyebrows rose, but I waited for one or both of them to continue. Liss was less patient. “What happened?”
Now it was Tara’s turn to provide information. “Cops came and took away three boys. Snagged ’em right out of Mr. Grant’s Industrial Tech class, from what I heard.”
“Industrial Tech?” Liss echoed, looking to me for clarification.
“Shop class,” I explained quickly. “So, what’s the deal? What did the boys do?”
“No one knows for sure,” Evie explained breathlessly.
“But I heard it had something to do with that Amish guy’s murder,” Tara inserted quickly, not to be trumped.
From the depths of my memory I dredged for what Tom had told me about the previous attacks on Amish men. Hadn’t he said that the only other victim from our county had said there were multiple attackers?
High school boys responsible for the death of Luc Metzger? Could it be?
“Who were they?” I asked.
“Tony Perez, Jeremy Connor, and Joel Kelly, I heard,” Tara provided.
“Blackhawk boys,” Evie added with a meaningful lift of her brows.
Liss looked at me again. “Blackhawk Juvenile Hall,” I translated. “It’s where they send minors who have been in trouble with the law. Repeat offenders, mostly.”
And hadn’t Tom said that he was heading out to Black-hawk after lunch? It couldn’t be coincidence. Frankly, I didn’t believe in coincidence anymore.
But what could the connection be? Tom had mentioned that the director had found evidence relating to a possible burglary. Perhaps Tom hadn’t realized the full import of the evidence at the time, because I was pretty certain that if he had, he would never have mentioned it to me. And then there was the small matter of the sign on the tree.
“Do either of you know if these boys have a background in magic? Even if it was only playing around with it?” I asked them.
Evie looked puzzled. Tara shrugged.
Liss met my gaze. “You’re thinking about the symbol we found?”
I nodded. “It has to be tied to Luc’s murder, doesn’t it? There’s no other reason for it to be there that I can see. I mean, it’s not exactly in a well-traveled area, is it?”
“What symbol?” Tara pressed.
I looked at Liss, silently questioning.
“Stop doing that!” Tara waved her hands at us as though warding off a cloud of bees. “Geez, just say what you mean. We’re not children, you know.”
Liss shrugged as though to say It can’t hurt.
I pulled the encyclopedia out and opened to the page that Liss had left off on, where my chicken-scratched drawing was serving as bookmark. Silently, I held the scrap of paper out to them. Evie looked but didn’t touch it, her frown evidence enough that our theory about the symbol was right on the money—Evie had a psychic radar that was stronger than my wildest dreams. Tara, on the other hand, demonstrated her usual full-speed-ahead lack of restraint—she snatched the paper out of my hand and began to examine it. It wasn’t that Tara didn’t have gifts of her own, but unfortunately psychic precaution didn’t seem to be one of them.
“Tom thinks—well, someone on the force does, anyway—that the symbol is a sign of satanic worship.”
Tara made a face. “It figures. Cops are always looking for the worst in people.”
“Tara!”
She held up her hands, her expression a well-honed smirk. “Hey! I call ’em as I see ’em. But this isn’t satanic. It’s hoodoo.”
“It’s what?”
“You know. Hoodoo.”
Something was getting lost in translation. “You mean voodoo?”
Tara rolled her eyes with a green flash of impatience and impertinence combined. “No. Hoodoo. Like, you know, folk magick.”
I stared at her, open-mouthed with surprise. “How do you know that?”
She shrugged her slender shoulders. “You have your secrets. I have mine.”
I asked Liss, “Will that information help us find the symbol in your nephew’s book?”
“Well, it can’t hurt,” Liss replied. “But it may in fact do us little good unless we can discover who made the sign on the tree. The trouble is, folk magick is so very customized. Symbolism is often specific to a region, a family, even one person, depending on what is meaningful to them.”
So we would be barking up a very large and convoluted tree. But what choice did we have? Someone, somewhere in the area, had a history of magick.
My cell phone rang again, with my mother’s number showing on my Caller ID. I excused myself and turned away. “Hi, Mom.”
“I have the Metzger relief meeting all arranged, dear. Can you get away around six thirty? It would be nice to get this thing going.”
I glanced at my watch. Three forty-five. “Sure, that should be okay, I guess. Tonight is one of my early nights.”
“Ah, good. That worked out nicely, then. You can meet me here and we can ride together.”
As soon as I hung up, I turned back to Liss. “My mom has arranged a meeting to get things started with donations for the Metzger family. Can you get away at six thirty tonight?”
Liss looked stricken. “Oh, my dear, I’m afraid I can’t. I have an appointment that I just can’t get out of.”
“We could reschedule.”
“No, that’s fine. Better to get things started. You can always ring me on my cell if you need my input on anything specific.”
I would have loved her help, but I had no doubt that my mother would have more than enough input for all of us.
Chapter 11
Mom was waiting for me when I pulled up in front of Ye Olde Homestead. An old-style farmhouse adrift in a sea of nondescript suburban modernity, it was as warm and comfortable as a slouchy knit sweater. I wouldn’t have minded the chance to pop in and say a quick hello to my dad and Grandpa Gordon, but my mom immediately jumped in the car and nodded toward the road. Between that, her fussy wool jacket-and-skirt combo that might have been in style in the early Eighties, and her purposeful expression, it was pretty obvious she wasn’t in the mood for delays.
“What’s wrong with your heater?” she asked as she fiddled with the limited number of knobs, levers, and buttons on Christine’s dash.
“Oh, you know. Old vehicles. Sometimes they get a little testy.”
Her mouth made a little moue of distaste. “You might think about getting yourself a more reliable vehicle, you know. Reliability, that’s the ticket. A young woman needs dependable transportation. You can’t afford to be breaking down on the side of the road in this day and age. There’s just too much…too much…Well, a young woman can’t be too careful.”
That was as close as she would come to saying that recent events had rocked her world. And my mom wasn’t exactly a rockin’ ‘n’ rollin’ kind of girl. More like stallin’ ‘n’ stoppin’.
“Iam careful, Mom,” I said as I steered Christine down the road, full speed ahead. “And besides, I have a cell phone now, in case I do break down on the side of the road. It’s the next best thing to a spanking new ride.”
“Hmm,” she mumbled, unconvinced.
“Where are we going?” I asked, hoping to distract her.
“We’re meeting at Louisa Murray’s house over in the Woodhaven subdivision on Alden Road
. Just a small crew this evening on such short notice, but that will do for planning purposes, I should think. You remember Louisa, she was your Sunday school teacher when you were little.”
I didn’t, not really, but because it was easier, I said, “Um, yes. Sunday school. Right.”
“Louisa was very keen to head this up when I talked with her,” Mom said conversationally. “It was a brain wave on my part to call her, you know. She was the one who fell in love with that armoire that Luc Metzger and your Amish friend made. I knew she’d want to help, and of course she has so much experience, I was inclined to let her organize the whole thing. All the better for poor Mrs. Metzger, and that’s what’s important, after all. Besides, it gives Louisa a sense of purpose. After her husband died a couple years back, she foundered a bit, as though she didn’t quite know what to do with her time. She needed something to draw that eagle eye focus of hers, and the Ladies Auxiliary has helped.”
I listened to her chatter on about her friend, the other ladies in her group, and the various projects they’d tackled, but only with half an ear. As I zigzagged across town, Mom eventually fell silent. It might have been the car that blazed through the stop sign on Wabash, a near miss, or maybe it was just my driving in general that made her nervous. Whatever the cause, conversation ceased but for the occasional muffled groan and wild grab for the door handle whenever I rounded a corner a little too fast for her liking. Funny how she had a way of still making me feel all of sixteen and newly licensed, with all of the driving uncertainty that entailed.
The Woodhaven subdivision rested on the very northwest edge of town. Not too terribly long ago, this had been a middle-class neighborhood, fashionably hugged by old and sprawling Alden Woods. In recent years it had begun to show its age, but while peeling paint and sagging fences were often the name of the game, the meticulously maintained lawns had the mark of undivided attention. I had a feeling many of the homeowners were aging as well.
“There it is. Number five-oh-two,” Mom said. “The last house on the left.”
Compared to some of the neighboring properties, Louisa Murray’s home was almost kingly. Not new enough to be considered a hot property, but kept up sufficiently to keep it from being written off as undesirable, the house was a large cottage style, complete with deep front porch and porch swing, and fronted by a pretty white picket fence that looked fairly solid. Set back from the house, an old carriage barn had never been replaced by a more modern garage. Only the advancing sprawl of the woods detracted from the simple beauty of the property—surrounded on the right and from behind, the place had a strangely hemmed-in feel from the overhanging trees and encroaching underbrush, as though the woods were trying to reclaim some of the space that the subdivision had carved out of them.
The driveway was blocked by a nondescript sedan, so I made a neat three-point turn and pulled up to the curb in front of the house. As I di
d so, a woman rounded the corner of the house from the back yard. Louisa Murray, I would assume. Mom was right, I did sort of remember her from Sunday lessons of half a lifetime ago. She wore, incongruously enough, a trim calf-length skirt, a frilly blouse that tied at the neck, and a sturdy canvas apron that fronted her from sternum to knee. In one hand she carried a steaming bucket; in the other, a shovel. Following on her heels like a pair of nipping puppies were two just as fussily garbed ladies. The first I recognized as an Enchantments regular, and I was also pretty sure I remembered both of them from the farmers market the other day: Ladies Pink and Periwinkle. What a surprise that my mother knew all of them.
Not.
We got out of the car and waved a greeting as the women registered our arrival.
“I’ll be with you in just a minute or three,” Louisa called to us with a tight smile of welcome.
Perhaps because she dressed a lot like my mother, my first impression was that of an older woman. But beneath the Church Lady threads it was obvious she had a good figure still, and when she turned to face us, I could see that Mom had a good ten years on her.
“Sorry to have to keep you girls waiting,” she apologized as we approached, “but I just found this here. As you can see, it’s not the kind of mess you can put off cleaning until later.”
My eyebrows rose as we drew nearer. The mess that Louisa referred to turned out to be a sizable pile of manure on her front doorstep. It was also swiped across the front door in big, malignant smears.
“Well, good heavens! What in the world is this town coming to?” my mom exclaimed, her gaze sweeping the scene as she took it all in.
“We just found it this way,” Pink Lady said, breathless and quivering. Her eyes were bright with excitement. “Frannie and Louisa and me, we just got here after the weekly soup kitchen planning meeting up at the church.”
Frannie nodded vigorously. “We were only gone the afternoon, but I suppose that’s long enough if someone’s got mischief on their mind. You need to get yourself one of those motion detector cameras, Louisa. Get yourself set right up and catch those little rascals red-handed.”
