Spirited Away

by Fern Michaels

  “I don’t have germs,” Sophia said. “You need to relax that Miss Manners shit. It ain’t gonna score any points with the nuns, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Teresa and Mavis giggled, then the bell rang, letting them know they had exactly three minutes to get to math class.

  Sophia hid her cigarettes and matches while Teresa blew her breath on her hand to see if she smelled like smoke. Ida and Mavis followed them as they rushed to their lockers, all located within talking distance of one another. Sophia grabbed a well-worn book from her locker, then turned to the three girls, who seemed to want to follow her lead. “Let’s meet here after school. We can walk home together.”

  For a few seconds, the other girls said nothing, then all three nodded their agreement. Little did they know this would be the beginning of a friendship that, literally, would last a lifetime.

  Chapter Six

  “What were you doing in my house? I didn’t give you permission to just . . . go inside and roam around! What the hell did you think you were doing?” Sophie flew out of her chair and began pacing the length of Toots’s large kitchen, almost tripping over Frankie. “Dammit, Ida, you should know better! I swear, I can’t trust anyone these days!”

  Frankie ran around in circles, barking up a storm. He knew that Sophie was very upset. After she leaned down and gave him a pat on his long back, he wiggled over to his favorite spot under the dining-room table.

  Goebel, knowing why Sophie was acting like she was losing it, raced around the table and took her hand. “Soph, you’re not being reasonable. Calm down.” He gave her back a reassuring pat, mimicking what she had done with Frankie, then kissed the top of her head. Whispering in her ear, he said, “Remember, we don’t want to divulge what you suspect.”

  Sophie nodded, then pushed away from Goebel. “Why were you at my house in the first place?” She had to know.

  Ida, who appeared more out of sorts than Sophie felt, shrugged, hoping to hide her confusion. “I can’t seem to remember. I had to . . .” She searched the faces around her for guidance. “I’m not sure.” Stunned by her own words, tears trailed down her cheeks like two silver ribbons. “What is happening to me?”

  The kitchen became so quiet, you could’ve heard a pin drop. Sophie knew what Toots was thinking and vice versa.

  “You’ve had too much sugar,” was all Toots could come up with. “Whatever the reason you went to Sophie’s, it doesn’t matter. You’re here now, and I think we need to . . .” Toots hesitated. “We need to propose a toast. Yes, that’s it, so let me find that good bottle of booze I put away.” She hurried to the pantry, knowing all eyes were on her as she hustled around in search of the booze. Seconds later, she was back with a bottle of Glenfiddich, a bribery gift she’d received via FedEx the day after George Spector made his offer on the Informer. She tucked the bottle beneath her arm and grabbed a stack of red Solo cups off the shelf. All eyes were on her as she lined up six cups in a neat row. She opened the bottle of whiskey, filling the cups with a generous amount of the smooth single malt.

  “Robert and I will not be drinking that stuff this early in the day, so don’t bother,” Bernice said casually as she sipped her premium-blend coffee. “We have an appointment this afternoon. I don’t want to show up drunk as a skunk.”

  Robert just smiled and nodded his agreement.

  For once, Toots was glad for Bernice’s crudeness. “And I suppose this has something to do with the secret you’re not quite ready to share with us?” Toots inquired.

  “Who cares?” Sophie said, then winked at Toots. “I say let’s get snookered and forget about Bernice’s stupid secret.”

  Both Toots and Sophie knew what Bernice’s response would be.

  “I’ll sew my lips shut before I tell you now,” Bernice shot back. “Robert, don’t you say one single word!”

  “Yeah, Robert. Don’t think for yourself. Let Bernice. She knows everything,” Sophie added before taking the red Solo cup and another for Goebel. “Ida, are you going to share our toast?”

  Again, Ida appeared befuddled and confused. “What are you talking about? Toast? I don’t eat carbs, you know that!” She crammed the last praline down her throat and reached for the red cup.

  Clueless as to what she’d planned to toast, Toots held her red cup high in the air, and announced, “To Phil. May his new medical thriller be a bestseller!” Lame, lame, lame, she thought. It would happen, just as Sophie predicted, but he didn’t know this. Two weeks from now, when it hit the stores, he would be in for the surprise of his life.

  Sophie and Goebel raised their cups high in the air.

  “To Phil,” they cheered.

  Ida chugged her scotch in one long swallow as if it were water, then slammed her cup down. “Give me another one.”

  Sophie glanced at Toots. Both knew things were getting way out of hand.

  “You don’t need another drink, Ida. We’re going to . . . to . . .” At a rare loss for words, Toots searched her mind for something, anything to explain herself. And she hadn’t a clue what the hell she was trying to explain. “Sophie is going to read for us. Right?” Toots winked at Sophie, and she nodded.

  “Read a book?” Ida asked. “Why in the world would she do that? We’re not children!”

  Toots’s eyes doubled in size. “Ida, I want you to listen to me, okay?”

  Ida nodded.

  “Have you had anything to drink this morning, other than this?” She nodded at the bottle of scotch. “Any pills or anything?”

  Again, Ida appeared confused. “Not that I recall. Look, I don’t know what has come over me! I felt fine this morning when I drove Daniel to the airport.” She ran her hands over her face. “I feel just fine!”

  “Bernice, call Dr. Pauley and tell him I need him to make a house call. And make sure you say STAT!”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake! You don’t need to call the doctor. There isn’t anything wrong with Ida. She’s just pretending to be stupid—no wait, maybe she’s not,” Bernice cackled. “But then again, Daniel seems to think she’s the greatest, and I want to agree, but I don’t know.” She let her last words dangle in the air.

  “Dammit, Bernice, why do you have to be so . . . ornery? Sophie, should we have Dr. Pauley take a look at Ida?”

  Sophie’s dark brown eyes circled those seated around the table, stopping on Ida. “No, not now. I’m going back to the house to check on that mess Ida mentioned. I think it’s a good idea if we all meet back here, let’s say in”—she glanced at her wristwatch—“an hour. I have some leftover lasagna Goebel stuck in the freezer. We can have lunch together.”

  “Good idea. Bernice, why don’t you make a salad? Robert, you’re good with bread. Find a loaf in the freezer and make us something tasty. Jamie keeps us loaded with breads, and it’s time we started eating the stuff. Ida, I need you to . . . help me upstairs. I need your advice on what to wear to Phil’s book-launch party. Do you feel up to that?”

  Ever indignant, Ida replied, “Of course I do! I am an expert!”

  Toots, Sophie, and Goebel all smiled. This was more like the Ida they all knew and loved. But they’d never tell her that.

  Chapter Seven

  Sophie wished like hell that her old spiritual mentor, Madam Butterfly, was still alive to advise her. She hadn’t given much thought to the good-versus-evil stuff, except for where Walter, her deceased husband, was concerned. While he was a bastard of the highest order, he wasn’t evil in the true sense of the word. He was just a nasty old jerk who’d delighted in tormenting her. No, this was something far greater than being mean in spirit.

  There were signs to look for, and so far she didn’t see any that were totally off the rails. Ida was acting beyond strange, and Sophie knew this was just a small physical change, and that in itself wasn’t too alarming at this point. Ida could just be whacking out, too. She was over seventy years old. Not that that was old, but Sophie didn’t know if early dementia, or early-onset Alzheimer’s ran in Ida’s family
. Before she jumped to conclusions, she had to investigate further.

  She’d converted the spandrel, the empty space beneath the staircase, into a home office of sorts. Though she would have liked more space, she liked the total privacy the area offered. She kept all of her psychic reading materials here, along with a few treasured items she didn’t want to display to anyone. One of those private treasures was a book given to her by Madam Butterfly. It didn’t have a title or a known author. Sophie had never opened the book’s yellowed and fragile pages. When she’d received the book as a gift all those years ago, she’d known without Madam Butterfly’s telling her that it was to be put aside, and she would know when it was time to open the well-worn brown leather cover and read its contents.

  Handwritten, in a spidery scrawl, the first page read: The Roman Ritual. Of course, she thought as she carefully turned the page. Being Catholic, she’d heard of this book, but had never really given it much thought. She knew it contained rituals that were hundreds and hundreds of years old, rituals that were performed daily in the Church, such as Baptism, Communion, and Mass. She held the ancient book, handwritten in both Latin and English. Cautiously, she turned the page, and began to read. Half an hour later, she was startled by a light tap on the door, and she quickly closed the book, returning it to the mini-safe where she’d kept it since her move to Charleston.

  “You ready to take this lasagna over to Toots’s?” Goebel asked.

  Sophie turned off the desk lamp and gave the narrow space one last look to make sure everything was as it should be. She felt creepy now, as though she had somehow been tainted by a source of true evil. “I’m ready,” she said, and stepped out into the formal living area. Sophie had yet to see the disaster in the kitchen, and had told Goebel just to get what he needed and get out. As soon as she felt ready, she would tackle whatever entities had destroyed their kitchen.

  Goebel held a green reusable Publix shopping bag in one hand and a jug of unsweetened tea in the other. He refused to drink sugar-sweetened tea since he’d lost so much weight. He didn’t force his good eating habits on Sophie the way Mavis tried to, but she now found herself a bit more conscientious about her eating habits since they’d married. Grateful for the interruption, Sophie hurried out the front door, with Goebel following close behind. “Make sure you lock the door,” she called out to him as she headed for the car. If by some odd chance someone had broken into the house, at least with the doors locked, they would have more of a challenge this time around.

  She watched as Goebel juggled the bag and the tea so he could lock the door behind him. He swiftly made his way to the car, then placed the items on the backseat. “You don’t look so hot, Soph. Did something happen that I need to know about?”

  She took a deep breath before answering. She’d never told him about Madam Butterfly’s gift, and wasn’t sure if it should be revealed or not. Didn’t matter, she thought. She would simply wing it, and whatever she said would be said and not taken back. “I got super creeped out when I was in my office. You know that little safe I have?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen it but figured if you wanted me to know its contents, you would’ve told me.”

  “There’s nothing in there but a few keepsakes, really. Nothing important, well, except for this book.” She waited a sec for him to ask what book. He didn’t, so she continued. “You remember my telling you about Madam Butterfly?”

  Backing out of the drive, Goebel looked in his rearview mirror. “Wasn’t she that psychic woman who told you all those years ago that you had the gift?”

  “The one and only,” she said, looking at him as he drove. “She gave me a book—actually it looks like more of a journal than a book. Leather-bound, and the pages are much bigger than normal.”

  “You’re stalling, Soph. What gives with this book?”

  “Have you ever heard of The Roman Ritual?”

  “Yeah, sort of. Isn’t that a book used in the Catholic Church, something to do with sacraments?”

  “Something like that. Madam Butterfly gave me this book, and it’s all handwritten, in both Latin and English. It contains the Holy Sacraments, the Sacrament of Baptism, and Confirmation. In chapter thirteen there are four sections on exorcism.” She actually whispered the last word.

  Goebel took his gaze from the road and looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Sophie, did you just say what I think you said?”

  She had known that this was going to happen. No one liked that word—hell, it scared the bejesus out of her—but it is what it is, and she had to tell someone. “I did. Madam Butterfly told me that I would know when the time was right to read this book. As soon as Ida started acting like . . . like an idiot,” she said because she didn’t dare voice what she really wanted to call it. “Well, let me just say that I thought it was time for me to take a peep at that book. I did, and it frightens me, Goebel. Truly. It scares the living daylights out of me.” Sophie took a deep breath, hating that she’d burdened him with this evil, but she had to tell someone.

  He didn’t say a word, yet she knew he was thinking about what she’d just told him. When he didn’t have answers, he wouldn’t say a word until he’d thought things out. She liked this about him because it made her feel as though whatever she said must mean something to him as well.

  “You don’t want to voice what you’re thinking, am I right?” he asked as they arrived at Toots’s.

  “You know me well, don’t you?” she asked.

  He pulled the car around to the back of the huge Southern plantation home, then shut off the engine. “I like to think so. I am your husband. Isn’t it part of my job to know what’s going on in that beautiful little head of yours?” He took her hand in his and gave a reassuring squeeze.

  She was so damn lucky to have this man in her life. She smiled. “It is. And you’re very good at it, I might add.”

  “I am a work in progress,” he said. “Seriously, Sophie, are you okay with this? Do we need to see a priest or something?”

  “No!” she exclaimed, perhaps a little too emphatically. “Promise me something, okay?” She had to fight to control her emotions just then.

  “Anything,” he agreed.

  “Don’t use that word around Ida and the others. It brings up . . . bad images when . . . just don’t mention anything about this.”

  “You don’t want me to talk about priests because . . .” Goebel appeared confused, too.

  “Damn, I don’t want to say it out loud, but it looks like I need to. Toots said the same words earlier, and I warned her not to voice this . . . evil to anyone until I came up with an answer. Priests, evil, the Roman Ritual. I don’t need to spell it out for you, now, do I?”

  “Exorcism? Is that the word you don’t want to hear?” Goebel asked.

  Trembling, all she could do was nod.

  Chapter Eight

  Goebel’s cell phone rang. “Hello? Yes, this is he. I appreciate you calling. Of course. I’m not sure. Let me ask my wife.” He covered the cell phone with his free hand. “This is Ted Dabney, the great-great-nephew I told you about. He’s in town for the night. Said he wants to meet with us, and asked if we would join him for dinner tonight?”

  A million thoughts swirled through her brain. No, she did not want to see this man, but she had to. “Sure. It’s not like I have much of a choice, is it?” she answered.

  “I can go. You stay here with the girls if that will make this easier for you.”

  It would, but that would be taking the coward’s way out, and she was a lot of things, but she was not a coward. “No, tell him we’ll meet him for dinner. Just name the time and place. I need to talk with this man.”

  Goebel spoke into the phone. “Yes, we can meet for dinner. How about seven o’clock at Cristof’s? Sure, see you then.” He clicked off and took her hand. “Look, you don’t have to do this. I can ask whatever needs to be asked. It’s not like this has anything to do with . . . Ida. We want to know the history of our home, right? That has n
othing to do with Ida’s problem.”

  He was so wrong, and she told him so. “That’s where I think all of this is originating. My dream, then the crushed smokes, the twins’ being frightened the other day. And now Ida’s acting so out of character after a visit to our house. I’m afraid it does have something to do with the history of the house.”

  “If you say so, then I agree. You’re rarely wrong with this stuff. Now, why don’t we put it out of our heads for a bit? Let’s go inside and have lunch, okay? We’ll deal with this together, I promise.”

  Again, she couldn’t believe how lucky she was to have this man by her side, especially at her age. She leaned across the console and cupped his face in her hands. “I love you. Have I told you this today?”

  He smiled. “Now that’s the girl I know and love. For the record, I can’t remember if you told me or not, so why don’t you tell me again?”

  “I love you, Goebel Blevins.”

  “Ditto, Sophie Blevins. Ditto. Now, let’s go inside before they come looking for us. Toots will accuse us of having sex in the car.”

  “Nothing she herself hasn’t done a time or two, trust me on that,” Sophie observed as she opened her door.

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Goebel grabbed the tea and lasagna from the backseat. Sophie whipped out a cigarette, took a few puffs, then crushed it out in the coffee can next to the back-door steps. Before she opened the door, she turned to Goebel. “Remember when you referred to me as ‘sweet cheeks’?”

  He nodded his head. “I do.”

  “Exactly what did you mean?”

  Goebel chuckled. “You have a nice rear end.”

  “Oh,” was all she said before entering the kitchen.

  The kitchen was a hubbub of activity. Bernice was at the sink washing lettuce leaves while Robert smeared a loaf of French bread with fresh cloves of garlic and olive oil.