“This is different.”
“I don’t think so anymore. When I saw Annabelle Bowman today, I saw an old lady with a lot of fear and regret. Whether she knows about all the witchcraft and Hull and ghosts, who knows? But it doesn’t matter. None of that changes anything. No matter how much she pretends the past is over, she can’t outrun this. And in the end, because she won’t deal with it, she’s still just an old lady with a lot of fear and regret.”
“Is that supposed to comfort me?” Sandra asked. They both shared a quiet smile and held hands across the table.
Max leaned his head back and said, “Did I ever tell you about Archie Lee?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He was a guy I knew back in college. I think he was Korean. Well, Asian, anyway. Isn’t that horrible? I should know something like that.”
Sandra shook his hand. “You got a point to all this?”
“Just that, I remember sitting with him in this house—it was at a party at somebody’s house, and he was telling me all about his life. I must’ve said something to get him going or maybe he was just so drunk he’d have told anybody but he told me about how he had moved around a lot since he was seven years old. I forget how much but it was as if every other year he had to up and move to a new state or a new country or whatever. And he said that, at the time, he learned to love it because he got to try out new personalities with each new place. I remember him telling me that he knew he was a bit of a nerd, and when he would move, nobody knew anything about him. He could pretend to have been the coolest, most popular kid from his old school. He would wear the cool clothes, get the right haircut, the right book bag, whatever it took. Who could say otherwise?
“But then he got real silent. I thought it was the beer finally getting him down but he grew very serious and shook his head slowly. He said that it never worked. That no matter what he tried, eventually, the new kids would figure out that he was just a nerd.”
“You think we’re just nerds?” Sandra said.
“The reason Archie Lee was still a nerd was because he had focused only on changing the outside. It didn’t matter how many times he moved. Nothing was going to change for him because he kept paying attention to the wrong things.”
“Still waiting for the comforting thoughts in all this.”
Max drank some more of his hot chocolate. “If we were to pack up and leave, run off to some other job in some other state, we’d end up stuck in it just like this time.”
“Nothing is like this time.”
“Okay, well, maybe not the exact same thing, but the point is we’d still be the same people making the same choices we always make. But if we stay, if we fight our way through all this, then maybe we can improve ourselves enough to make things different. I don’t know, make things better. Besides, aren’t you the one who told me we had to push through?”
Sandra said nothing for a few minutes, then she looked upon Max and said, “You know something? I love you.”
Part of Max wanted to talk this out further, but he tried to listen to his own words. The old way was talk and talk and talk until every angle and emotion had been explored. In the end, they would make love, but the next morning, nothing much would change. This time, Max decided, would be different. This time, he would take her love and hold onto it, forget about analyzing it to death, and instead, draw on its strength. After all, they were about to go ghost hunting in Old Salem. He needed all the strength he could get.
Chapter Twenty
They parked on Salt Street, a quiet area dominated by one ancient tree and a wall of younger trees, and in full view of the backyards of the houses lining Main Street. Light drizzle fell, and the midnight moon glossed the wet pavement with a dim, quarter-crescent glow. The sound of water drips hitting fallen leaves peppered the air. Though people lived here, nobody appeared to be up at two in the morning.
“See anything?” Max whispered.
Sandra peered around. “There’s a dog sniffing that tree.”
“You see dead animals, too?”
“No. There’s a real dog sniffing that tree.”
Max followed Sandra’s eyes and saw a small, black Dachshund puttering around a maple tree. Stifling a nervous giggle, Max said, “Let’s just get to this.”
Sandra pecked his cheek and headed up the street. “Honey, relax. We’re just talking to some ghosts.”
“There’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear.”
“I mean it. You’ve got nothing to fear.”
“You’re the one who said they can get all angry and hurt us when they’re not bound.”
“But you’re with me. I won’t let them harm you.”
“You know some special handshake or something?”
“Let’s just get this done,” she said and turned onto West Street at a fast clip.
Max hurried to catch up. “Where to first?” he asked.
She gestured toward the town square. “That seems like the best place to start. I’ll be able to see a lot of the area from the center.”
Together they walked toward the grassy square, a truck passing on a distant street the only sound not of their making. Max listened to their breathing, their footsteps, their nervousness. More than just fear, he thought. If a person’s imagination could have accidentally altered reality, he knew he would be bringing terrible creatures upon them. The idea of abandoning this pursuit, of rushing back to their car’s safety and slipping home, seduced him for a fleeting moment. Then they arrived at the center, ringed by tall evergreens scenting the air with their wet fragrance.
“Okay, ready?” Sandra asked. Max could only nod. Sandra took a cleansing breath and turned in a slow circle. Her eyes darted about. She squinted at one spot, glossed over another, until she returned to the position where she had started. Another breath, another slow circular turn, another return to the start.
Max started to speak but Sandra snapped her head to the side. “What is it?” he asked, peering over her shoulder toward the Salem Academy. “What do you see?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Not a ghost. At least, not like the ones I’ve always seen. This was more like a wisp of smoke, like black smoke that moved of its own will. But I didn’t see anything solid.”
“This place is hundreds of years old. Most of these buildings are original. It should be teeming with ghosts. Shouldn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?” Sandra said, raising her voice enough to sound violent in the still night air. “What do you know about it? You’ve seen one ghost and you think you understand it? I’ve been dealing with this my whole life, and I’ve been doing it on my own—no formal training, no mentor, nothing. So forgive me if I can’t make it all work just the way you want it on cue.”
Max stepped back. “I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t feel comfortable here. I want this to be over. That’s all.” But that wasn’t all. He didn’t want to tell her that he had caught sight of the black wisp, too, and to him it was not a shadowy spirit at all, but rather a shadow—they were being watched.
“There,” Sandra said and pointed in the opposite direction of the shadow.
“What do you see?”
“I don’t know yet. Something, though. A faint glimmer of something,” she said and headed across the slippery grass.
Max followed, glancing over his shoulder several times but never catching even a glimpse of the shadow he had seen before. Perhaps it was just an overactive imagination playing on his nerves. The idea made sense, but Max just couldn’t believe it.
Sandra crossed the street and stepped onto the brick laid sidewalk. Old trees pushed up the bricks with their roots, making the path a series of miniature mountains and valleys. She knelt down and smiled into empty space. “Hello,” she said. Max squatted behind her but he saw nothing. “You’re very pretty … I can’t hear you too well,” she said. Then she jumped to her feet. “Wait! Come back!” Wiping the damp hair out of her face, she turned to Max. “She disappeared. Damn. I
don’t think she knew, you know? That she was dead? I must’ve scared her pretty bad.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure she runs from ghost-seeing people all the time.”
Sandra responded with just a hint of a smile—enough to ease them both a little. “This is going to be tricky,” she said. “Don’t worry, though, we’ll get one of them to help us.”
Together they stood on the sidewalk, each silent, each searching the empty grounds. Max checked every window, every doorway, every nook he thought might harbor an enemy.
An enemy? The idea that he now had faceless enemies to contend with, had been contending with for some time, eroded any illusion of security he still horded. Come on, ghosts, he thought. Show yourselves already.
Another five minutes passed before Sandra said, “On the corner.” She waved and approached like a tourist seeking a little friendly information—not too far from the truth, in fact. “Excuse me,” she said, “I’m looking for a book that was placed around here awhile back … a book … no, no, a book.” To Max, she said, “I think we’re supposed to follow.”
“Then let’s follow.”
Max kept a few steps back from Sandra so as not to crowd her or her invisible companion—plus, it afforded him a better distance to react from in case somebody moved against them. Not that he had an inkling what to do should anything happen, but some chance was better than none at all. Watching the sway of his wife’s hips sent a jolt through his body—he would rather be at home in bed with her than traipsing in the drizzle, but then he’d rather never have heard of Hull or any of this in the first place.
“This way,” Sandra said, pointing to the long building Max had toured during daylight—Single Brothers House.
“How do we get in?” Max asked as he jiggled the locked door handle.
“I think,” Sandra said and they heard a click from behind the door. “Looks like our ghost is being helpful.”
“Let’s just keep on his good side.”
Sandra frowned. “How did you know that?”
“I assume an angry ghost would not be a good idea.”
“No, you said his. You said, ‘Let’s just keep on his good side.’ How did you know the ghost was male?”
Had it been broad daylight, had they not been talking about ghosts of long dead settlers, he might have had a flippant or sarcastic reply. Instead, under the thin moonlight and steady drizzle, his chest grew heavy. “I don’t know,” he whispered, afraid to think the question through. “Just a guess.” Without waiting for a response, he tried the door handle again and this time it opened with ease.
They stepped into the wide foyer, the hollow sound of their footsteps on old wood echoed throughout the empty building. A musty odor tickled Max’s nose, thicker than when he had visited before, and though rather open in design, Max felt the walls tightening around him in the darkness. He fumbled for his flashlight, and when he flicked it on, the narrow, pale beam made the claustrophobic sensation worse as if only the illuminated sections of the building existed.
Sandra drew a quick breath. “Wow,” she said.
“Ghosts?”
“Just two others, but they’re impressive looking. Their light is so bright.”
Max moved the flashlight around but saw only an empty foyer. “Can you see our fellow?”
“It’s hard,” she said, squinting in the dark.
“Call him. Maybe he can still hear you.”
“Shh. Please, let me do this.”
Max waited, wondering what the ghosts were doing, where they stood. Did they see him? Did they feel his presence? Perhaps that’s why he felt so closed in—perhaps he felt them surrounding him.
Sandra turned right and crept down the trade hall. The joiner’s room on the right looked menacing in the flashlight beam—wooden skeletons of unfinished furniture surrounded by tortuous tools of assorted sizes. They proceeded further down the hall. The potter’s room on the left with its foot-powered spinning wheel turned into a macabre lair where strange experiments of creation occurred under their nighttime gaze. Then, to Max’s dismay, the ghost led them downstairs to the darker, colder basement floor.
Max struggled to recall the pleasant daytime feel of this building but even the scuffling of their feet against the stone floor transformed into a hideous monster lurking just beyond the flashlight beam. He followed Sandra and the ghost down the hall until they stopped at a door on the left. A placard on a podium explained that this room had once been used for training but later came to be a storage room. Sandra stepped over the rope barring the entrance and pointed to a dusty pile of junk filling up the corner.
“I think it’s in here,” she said and started sifting through the pile.
Max entered the room to help. Broken pottery and old wood scraps lay around, haphazardly discarded in the room. A broom, a mop, bits of paper, and other leftovers filled in the numerous nooks of the small room. When Max pulled out a large, metal hook, Sandra said, “Crap.”
“What?”
To the empty space, she said, “Book. I said, ‘Book.’ With a B. Damn.”
Letting the hook clatter to the ground, Max said, “Great.”
“Don’t go,” she said, stepping toward the outer-wall. Then her shoulders drooped. “He’s gone.”
“I’m sorry, honey, this was just a bad idea. These ghosts aren’t going to help us.”
“That’s only the second one. We’ve got to give it more time. It’s not easy. Not all ghosts are as connected with the world like Drummond. Some of them are barely here at all. It’s like trying to get directions during a snowstorm in Siberia and you don’t speak Russian. Get it?”
“I know. I’m not blaming you. But, really, this could go on all night with no luck.”
“Or we might hit it big.”
Max heard wood creaking from above. “Shh,” he snapped and turned out the flashlight. With slow, quiet movements, he edged toward Sandra. He stepped into the corner of something sharp, pain bursting at his hip, and grunted as he wrangled back the urge to yell. He felt around—the podium with the placard. Inching a few steps at a time, he worked around the podium and reached Sandra, put his mouth to her ear and whispered, “I think somebody’s been following us since we got here.”
“How do we get out?” she asked, her voice steady despite her rigid body.
“To the left and upstairs there’s a door. It leads out back to the gardens. When we go, I’ll turn the flashlight on and keep it pointed straight at the ground. At the stairs, I’ll turn it off and the rest we have to do in the dark. Move quick but not so fast that you’ll get hurt. And … I don’t know. That’s the best I can come up with.”
“It’s plenty good.”
“I love you, you know.”
“Right back at you,” she said, turned her face and pressed her lips against Max with such force that his chest swelled with an overwhelming sensation—love and dread swirling like two wrestlers forever clenched together.
When she pulled back, she exhaled slow and deliberate. “Okay. I’m ready.”
“Okay,” he said, “I’m turning on the flashlight. Get ready to move. Here we go.”
Max pushed the flashlight’s button, and it blazed light onto the floor. He saw the podium and the various piles of wood and boxes, and in the doorway, he saw the figure of a man lunging toward him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Together, Max and Sandra let out a startled cry. The man leapt atop Max and the flashlight banged to the floor, shutting off, leaving them in darkness. Max shoved hard but could not budge his attacker. Two strong hands gripped his throat, pushing his head back and slicing his ear against the corner of some plywood. Again, Max attempted to push off the man but the struggle for air weakened him.
“Max? Max?” Sandra called as she fumbled in the dark. He wanted to reach out to her, to hold her hand, and the thought flashed in his mind that, at least, it wasn’t her throat being strangled at the moment. He pictured this man straddling her, choking her, and hoped
she had the sense to run now while she could get away.
The image in his mind brought to the forefront that he should have done what any sensible woman would have attempted from the beginning. Mustering the last of his strength, Max garbled out a yell and rammed his knee upward into the man’s groin. His knee hit something hard and he heard a crack. The man grunted a cry and rolled to the side, curled in a fetal position and whimpering.
Max wheezed and gasped as he crawled forward, one hand massaging his throat, the other seeking the flashlight. The fight had sent ages of dust into the air, drying out Max’s mouth with its dead taste. Blood dribbled from his ear. He felt a hand grab his wrist, but before he could utter a painful yelp, he heard the welcome voice of his love.
“It’s me, it’s me,” she said. “I can’t find the flashlight.”
He pulled her hand towards his chest and breathed in her hair. Together, they stumbled to their feet and groped a path into the hall.
“This way,” Max said, every syllable searing his throat. He turned left and moved as fast as he dared in the darkness. When he reached a wide door, slants carved into the wood, he searched for a handle or knob.
The door wouldn’t open. Calm down, he scolded himself. Don’t panic. “I think it’s locked,” he said.
“Be sure,” Sandra yelled.
“We’re wasting time. That guy’s not going to be down for long. He was wearing a cup, for crying out loud. A fucking cup. What kind of person wears a cup?”
“A professional, honey.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Now, let’s go back the way we came. I can get us out of here.”
“But the door.”
“Sandra, trust me.”
He heard the rustling of her clothing as she nodded. Then he heard something that shot adrenaline through his body—silence. Why didn’t he hear the groans of their enemy?
“Sandra,” he whispered. Her hands fidgeted about his arm until they found his right hand again where they affixed firm. Without another word, he led her back down the hall, his left hand trailing the rough wall.
Modern Magic Page 181
