by Alt, Madelyn
E . . .
Once the first letter had been selected, the glass began to slide about in a frenzy of movement, from one letter to another, then came to a stop.
E-L-I-A-S
“Hello, Elias,” Tara said. “Are you a spirit connected with the Grace Baptist Church?”
The glass moved to the sticky note marked “yes.”
“Are you a spirit of the Light, Elias?” Marcus asked.
The glass circled but did not indicate a single letter.
“Hm. Not liking that,” I fussed.
“Elias, why have you come here today? Why did you follow us?” Evie asked, her voice soft but firmer than I had expected. The girl had a core of strength that came through for her when she needed it. “You came here today because you followed us, didn’t you?”
L-O-N-L-Y
Misspelled, but its point was clear.
“Was your spirit released somehow from the room that was exposed by the big machine today?” Marcus asked.
Again the glass moved to “yes.”
“Were you tied to that room?”
Yes
“Why were you tied to that place?” Tara, this time.
No answer, only circular movement.
“Did you once live on the land that the church stands on?”
Yes
“Well, that’s something,” I said. “Elias, were you a farmer?”
No
“A woodsman?” Evie guessed.
No
Well, this was getting us nowhere. I thought of a new tack. “How old are you, Elias?”
H-O-W-O-L-D-A-R-E-Y-O-U
A shiver zipped up my spine. There was something strange and confrontational about that response. Why wouldn’t he just tell us his age?
“He’s a child,” Marcus guessed. “It’s a game he’s playing with us.”
I felt ashamed suddenly for jumping to conclusions. It was the fear again, that instant, inbred fear that a youth spent with ruler-wielding nuns and catechisms had propagated to the minutest of molecules within my makeup. Whether it made sense or not, that fear was still there. It was something I constantly struggled with.
“Was there something you wanted from us?” Tara asked the spirit.
I felt the puff of a breeze wafting across my face, down the back of my neck. The temperature in the room when we had started was cool—it was always cool down here in my apartment. But the air around us seemed to have chilled considerably, and it was swirling, ever so gently.
Slowly the glass spelled out F-R-E-I-N-D-S.
Wistful. He was a child. And apparently not always the best speller. “Elias, don’t you have other friends? There are others on the Other Side who are waiting to help you cross.”
D-E-A-D
“That’s true. They have passed over. But they are there to welcome you home—”
No
“There is a light, a very bright light that is there. The others—your family—they are waiting for you there, within that light. Can you see it there? Can you look—”
No
The atmosphere in the room was getting thicker, heavier. My stomach muscles had coiled up as tight as a constricted snake. The movements of the glass were at their strongest, boldest.
“Don’t you want to go be with your friends and family?”
No
“Why not?”
D-O-N-T-L-I-K-E
“You don’t like your friends and family?”
Circles but no answer.
“Why not?”
More circles.
I was getting a little impatient. So far, we hadn’t learned anything, really, about why he had followed us. “Elias, what is that room that was uncovered? Why was it closed off the way that it was? Buried?”
S-E-C-R-E-T
“It was covered over in secret, or it bears a secret?”
Yes
Hm. Interesting. “Which one?”
Circles.
Tara asked, “Elias, do you have a message that you want to give to us today?”
T-R-O-U-B-L-E
We had gotten that already through Evie, so it wasn’t news. “What sort of trouble?” Tara pressed.
B-A-D
Bad trouble. Well, I suppose almost anything that most of us considered to be trouble was bad by the very definition of the word.
“Trouble in the past that you want to share? Or trouble in the future?” she asked.
W-A-R-N-Y-O-U
“Warn us?” Tara narrowed her eyes with a thoughtful tilt of her head. “Warn us about what?”
U-L-C
“Ulc. What does that mean?” I asked, looking to Marcus for insight.
“I’m not sure. The glass isn’t moving as quickly now. Maybe he’s used up his allotment of the energies in the room and needs to rest.”
“I know!” Tara said, hopping up and down in her seat—a real feat, considering her fingers were still lightly positioned on the glass. “U-L-C. You’ll see. See?”
We saw. It made sense, but I had to ask, “Why won’t you just tell us what we should expect, Elias? If you’re so interested in warning us?”
U-L-C, the glass spelled out again. Then, U-L-C-U-L-C-U-L-C-U-L-C-U-L-C-U-L-C-U-L-C-U-L-C-U-L- C-U-L-C.
“We’ll see. You can’t tell us more. I think we got it,” Marcus said wryly.
He shifted to a more comfortable position on the sofa, and his knee bumped the outside of my thigh. The touch was so unexpected that I couldn’t help myself: I started and bit my lip as my pulse leaped ahead like a racehorse just out of its docket.
Lucky for me my fingertips were still connected with the glass, because otherwise it might not have spelled out M-A-R-G-A-R-E-T.
Did I say lucky? My jump-started heart nearly failed. But the lucky part of this particular twist of Ouija fate came into play because the movement of the glass distracted Marcus enough that he didn’t even notice my reaction.
“Is that for you, Maggie?” Evie asked, her brow furrowing prettily.
“I don’t know why it would be. It must be another Margaret. It may not be so common now, but at one time it was very popular. At least, that’s what my mom always told me whenever I complained about it.”
But Evie wasn’t convinced. “Elias, do you have a message for our Maggie?”
A- R- O - S - E - B -Y- A- N-Y- O -T- H- E - R- N- A- M- E -W-O-U-L-D-S-M-E-L-L-A-S-S-W-E-E-T
A lovely sentiment but cryptic as hell, in my opinion. “Honestly, I don’t see how any of this relates to me.”
T-O-M
Now, that got my attention. I stared at the glass, not really wanting to believe that I was receiving messages from the Great Beyond. Personal messages. From a spirit I knew absolutely nothing about.
“I guess you were wrong,” Tara said, eyeing me curiously.
“What do you mean?”
“No need to get defensive, snookums. It was just an observation.”
The glass began to move outside of its circular path again: B-E-C-A-R-E-F-U-L.
Be careful. Be careful of what? Of whom? Of Tom? Is that what the spirit meant? Why was he reaching out to me to begin with?
T-R-O-U-B-L-E
The last thing that the glass spelled out was S-I-S-TE-R , then it stopped just as suddenly as it had started and the air around us returned to normal. All except for the scent of lavender and licorice, which came and went so suddenly it might never have been there at all.
We all stared at the glass, wondering if it was only a brief reprieve. I know I half expected it to start circling again with a vengeance, but it didn’t. With a communal glance around the table, the four of us as one let our fingers slide from the glass. But none of us relaxed back into our seats.
I was the first to find my voice. “Well, that was interesting.”
Marcus’s brow was drawn in a frown. “Interesting, yes. But I don’t know if I’m okay with it.”
I looked at him with surprise. “What do you mean, you don’t know if you’re okay with it? You said
you were okay with it.”
“I did. But that was before I started to think you might have a spirit trying to attach itself to you,” he said reasonably. “Don’t look like that—it can happen to anyone. We can handle it.”
Sure it could happen to anyone. Anyone who was messing around with a Ouija board, that is. “Why would it be trying to attach itself to me?” I asked. “I’m not anywhere near the strongest sensitive in the room. Evie is. And you, Mr. Medium.”
“I prefer Mr. Expert. Mr. Medium is so . . . average,” he quipped, cracking a smile.
His attempt to lighten the burden of my fears worked. I fought the smile twitching about the corners of my mouth, but in the end they won out. I was never very good at keeping laughter inside. “Very funny.”
“Thanks, I thought so.”
“But your ego is completely beside the point.”
“True. Sad, but true. Honestly, I don’t know why he’d choose to attach himself to you. Maybe he likes your energy. Maybe your energy signature is all sparkly and swirly to those on the other side. Who knows?”
“Maybe he followed Evie and picked on you because your energy is all over this apartment?” Tara offered. “You know . . . the predominant energy of a new place?”
“He is lonely; he said so,” Evie chimed in. “Maybe he just likes you.”
“Maybe.” But if that were the case, why wouldn’t the frown pulling at my forehead go away? I couldn’t help but feeling there was more to Elias than first meets the eye. Or the Ouija.
Minnie woke up and stretched, then wandered over to sit by the door, yawning widely. I wasn’t surprised when less than a minute later a knock sounded on the door. “Pizza delivery!” a muffled voice cried. And not a moment too soon. How long could it take to make and deliver a pizza across Stony Mill for goodness sake?
The four of us spent the next couple of hours gorging ourselves on heavenly deep dish, and hashing and rehashing what the girls and I had experienced at the church site and what we had all just experienced with the church spirit, Elias. Add in a pinch of giggles and a healthy dose of good-natured ribbing, and the time seemed to fly by.
During a lull, Tara leaned back and patted her concave, teenage stomach. “I am stuffed! I’ll bet I gained five pounds with all the pizza I ate.” She glanced at the small windows, where the smallest measure of daylight still shone through the short, gauzy sheers I’d hung when I first moved in with the hope of admitting as much light into the rooms as possible. It was difficult to gauge time of day when living in a basement. Somehow the earth that surrounded the walls seemed to swallow up as much daylight as it did sound. “What time is it, Maggie?”
I glanced at the clock over the stove. “Almost eight o’clock. What time did you girls need to be getting back?”
“Eight o’clock?” Tara wailed in a completely un-Tara-like fashion. “I was supposed to hear from Charlie by seven! I wonder why he hasn’t called.” Marcus rolled his eyes. She dove for her purse and dug within. Not finding what she was looking for, she stirred the contents around some more, then ended up dumping it all out on the table amid the Ouija sticky notes. “Ohmigosh. My cell phone. I can’t find my cell phone.”
“Don’t panic, Tare. It’s got to be around somewhere,” Evie said reassuringly. “When do you remember last having it?”
Tara thought a moment. “At the fundraiser. When I called Charlie’s cell to see where we would find him. But my cell isn’t in my bag.”
Evie shook her head. “You weren’t carrying your bag, remember? You left it in Maggie’s car because you didn’t want to carry it.”
“Hey! That’s right! I put the phone in my pocket.” Tara’s face brightened considerably. “Maybe it fell out in the car. Maggie, can I see your keys to go check?”
I tossed them to her. “Have at it, chickie.”
Evie handed Minnie to me, then she and Tara ran out of the apartment and up the stone steps. They had returned before I even had a chance to get uncomfortably comfortable with Marcus.
“Nope, not there. Argh! Just my luck.”
“I’ll bet you dropped it out at the work site, Tare. Either that or in the church where we were waiting with Charlie.” Evie nodded to herself. “We could do a Finder’s Spell.”
“Why don’t you just look for it first, before you resort to magick?” I asked them. “You know, be normal first, then magickal second.”
Tara shot me a measuring stare that was more curious than aggressive. “Maggie, why are you so afraid to use magick? It’s not like it’s going to hurt anyone. The old Harm fits here, you know. It’s not a big deal. Trust.” Then she paused a moment and relented. “But in this case, since I know where I’ve been and it shouldn’t be too hard to backtrack, I probably don’t need to. It would take too much time anyway, and I really need to find it fast.”
Marcus had leaned back against the sofa to watch the interplay between us. “You’re both right, you know. It depends on the situation. It’s at every witch’s discretion and judgment.”
Appeased, Tara backed off and was suddenly as sweet and smooth as Annie Miller’s sugar cream pie. “So, um, Maggie? Do you think you could take me back out there to look for it? I hate to ask you,” she said quickly, “but Big Lou will kill me if I’ve lost it. It won’t take long, I promise. Witch’s honor.”
“I have a better idea,” Marcus said. “Why don’t we all go out to look. Four sets of eyes have got to be better than two.”
Chapter 7
Something made me think that maybe, just maybe, Marcus was doing his best to extend our impromptu get-together. The thought left me feeling . . . confused. But the afternoon had been completely harmless, just friends enjoying friends. Exchanging pleasantries.
Contacting the spirit world.
Okay, so mostly harmless. I knew some people would disagree with that assertion, believing any and all but all’s well that ends well. It had been an interesting experiment, to say the least. Chalk it up to experience and understanding.
“We could all go in Christine,” I offered, trying not to laugh as I pictured the four of us squeezing into the tight confines.
“I have a better idea,” Marcus said. “I’ve been trying to get Maggie to go for a ride on the back of my bike for weeks. Why don’t you girls drive the old Bug, and Maggie and I will follow? If that’s all right with you, of course, Maggie.”
Tara leaped at the notion. “That’s a great idea! I could really use some practice on an old stick shift anyway. It took me forever to get the hang of it in Driver’s Ed.”
“Me, too,” Evie said. “My dad won’t let me touch his old pickup truck, though. And he only uses it for fishing and hunting anyway.”
Poor Christine. This was what she’d been reduced to? Still, I relented. “Fine, but you have to take care of the old girl. She needs lots of TLC. She’s not as young as she once was, you know.”
“Kinda like you, right?” Tara asked in an innocent voice. “Kidding! Just kidding. Honest!”
Tara used my phone to call Charlie’s cell. He was still with the construction crew. He said he’d been trying to call her and offered to meet us out at the church to help look for Tara’s phone.
“Come on, Granny,” Marcus teased. “We’d better get a move on. It might take you a while to swing your leg over the back in your rapidly deteriorating state.”
The ride through the golden dusk along quiet country roads was nice. Peaceful. Even the helmet flattening my hair to my head and the mosquitoes and lightning bugs smacking into me along the way didn’t dim the sense of complete freedom I felt riding on the back of the bike. And the man guiding the bike, whose long muscles I could feel as we leaned into every turn? Bonus! A sinful bonus, perhaps, if you believed in that sort of thing—but a bonus nonetheless. I even had to hang on.
The churchyard was quiet when we arrived. Though the tents and tables still remained, the area was abandoned. Long shadows stretched across the area from the tall steeple and the windbreak of old maple trees
, ever-deepening shadows that reached dark fingers toward the expansion project area.
Tara maneuvered Christine to a surprisingly smooth halt in the parking lot, parking her beside an old, beat-up Volkswagen Rabbit. Marcus pulled up alongside her. I withdrew my hands from the supple muscles at his waist before the girls could notice, and buried them beneath my thighs.
“Any ideas where you want to start looking?” Marcus asked the girls.
“The church meeting room in the basement,” Tara said. “We were sitting down there with Charlie for a while, waiting around for the groundbreaking to start. I could have left my cell on a table. We didn’t really go into the actual fundraiser except to walk through, and I did have my cell with me after that. Other than the church, I guess it would be out at the excavations.” She glanced up toward the church, then indicated the Rabbit with a jerk of her thumb. “That’s Charlie’s. He must be up there looking already.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you two go find Charlie, and Marcus and I will head over to the parsonage to let them know why we’re here and what we’re doing. The church might be locked. We might need someone to let us in.”
Tara nodded. “ ’Kay. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Good thinking. Come on, Evil.”
Was that a compliment from Tara? Would wonders never cease?
The parsonage was situated off to the left and behind the church itself, and was connected by a nicely maintained walkway. Marcus and I headed in that direction, walking slowly side by side. After the close proximity of the motorcycle ride, I felt the separation from his energy acutely. More so than was all right to feel. Neither of us spoke, and yet I heard thoughts and wonderings that could have been his in my head . . . and what’s more, I think he heard mine. The farther we walked along the path, the closer he seemed to edge toward me. Did I reciprocate? I wasn’t even sure anymore.
I knocked on the cranberry red front door of the parsonage, a small colonial-style farmhouse with symmetrical windows on the second floor that looked a bit like eyes looking out over the mouth of the porticoed entrance. The door opened to the thin, pale woman I had seen with the pastor earlier. Thin—I would almost say gaunt, seeing her from close up. Pale hair and pale eyes also contributed to the overall bloodless look of her. She wore a thick, comfy bathrobe with a nightgown peeping out from beneath, and a towel wrapped turban-style on her head.
