Not much had changed since her last visit. There was still only one stop light in the town, right at the intersection of County Line and Route 9. She sat idling at the red light, looking over at the old buildings that had been there since the town was founded in the late 1800’s. There was an abandoned barbershop, a bank that was still functioning, the General Store where most people got their groceries, and now...a new video and DVD store right next to the post office.
When the light turned green, she gunned the accelerator, determined not to let a pickup truck full of teenagers outrun her. Was that her nephew, Stevie, in there? She glanced back, unable to see the boys’ faces through the reflection of the clouds on their windshield. Stevie, born out of wedlock before her sister’s boyfriend had caved in and married her, was the sole reason (along with a few bottles of gin) that Marsha and her grandmother had a falling out almost two decades ago. It was a pity that anyone could hold a grudge for so long, but Grammie had been grieving for Grandpa and Marsha had an acrid tongue.
A few minutes later, when she snapped back to the present, Georgia realized that this would be the first time ever that she was driving into Calathia without the anticipation of her grandmother’s warm hug. Her heart felt ten pounds heavier by the time she reached the gravel driveway—the Blake house. Grammie’s house.
Chapter 8
Late Saturday morning, Opal prepared for spiritual battle.
As she marked pages in her Bible with passages that she thought might work for self-protection and repelling evil spirits, she wished that she could phone her Aunt Grace and ask her for advice, but the old woman didn’t have a phone and the drive to her house out in the country was several hours long.
She thought about the fact that there was going to be no one around to help her if she ran into danger at the Blake house. But, as the sun rose higher, she convinced herself that she was getting overworked for nothing.
What were the chances that the spirit was still there? If spirits could manifest themselves and hang around indefinitely, she figured that we’d see them walking down Main Street in the light of day.
But just in case, she should be prepared.
After a quick warm bath, she rubbed her body with salt to purify it, then sat down in her robe on her living room floor and meditated to clear her mind.
When she finished, her mind was filled with serene thoughts. Leaving the meditation was like coming out of a pleasant dream—a sunny meadow filled with daisies below a heavenly blue expanse where she was surrounded with a pure white light of protection.
Opal had never been a fan of organized religion after having it brow-beaten into her by her mother from an early age, but she had come to a very important conclusion during her psychic studies. If there were such things as ghostly spirits and angels that rescued people from burning buildings—there must surely be an almighty God connected to the whole scheme of things.
But, even with that back door recognition, she had no intention of giving up her New Age toys and trinkets. Her studies of magical correspondences—her herbs, crystals, and aromatic oils—were all tools of her trade that gave her pleasure.
She dressed in a long rainbow-colored smock and placed a black striped agate stone in her pocket, an earthly form of protection.
Then, she found her deck of Tarot cards, shuffled them, and spread them out. After a staring at them for a moment, she closed her eyes and focused her thoughts on her visit to the Blake house. She drew a card—the Ten of Swords. Trouble.
The card depicted a slain man laying face down in a pool of blood with ten swords piercing into his back. She knew that on many levels, the card meant death or at least an ending of some sort.
Something profound might happen today. Someone’s life could be forever changed, and possibly not for the good. Her hands trembled as she placed the deck back into her velvet pouch.
After a half hour of shoring herself up to go, she finally dragged herself towards her front door with her bag in her hand.
Before venturing through, she reached up above the doorframe and pulled a small pewter cross off the wall and dropped it into her dress pocket.
Outside, the sky looked like a quilt of slate gray storm clouds dotted with a few broken patches of blue. She looked up and studied it for a moment, worried. The last thing she needed for her fragile nerves was an ominous backdrop of thunder and lightning.
As she shuffled towards her car, she saw a wooden plant stake lying on its side next to a potted marigold. She leaned down to pick it up then checked herself with a giggle. I’m not going vampire hunting. But, she tossed it into her bag, figuring that it might not hurt to bring it along just in case she ran into something otherworldly that could be staked in the heart when all else failed.
She got into her car and gripped the steering wheel, unable to turn the key. No more stalling...
But, she thought of a reason to make a quick detour before checking out the Blake house.
“What’s a little more time?” she reminded herself as she headed towards town. “The house is empty.”
Chapter 9
Georgia sat in the driveway with her hands still clenched around the steering wheel and looked up at the house.
The Gingerbread House.
She had called it that ever since she was six years old and learned that the dark green trim on front of its red brick exterior was called, “gingerbread”, back in the Victorian age when it was built by her great great grandfather, WilliamCrawford.
The house showed its age. The front porch sagged a bit in the middle, many of the brick’s corners had crumbled to red dust, and parts of the trim were broken and in need of fresh coat of paint.
She looked up at the round Queen Anne turret that had been Grammie’s craft room. Tendrils of ivy climbed up it, nearly obscuring the small square window sixteen feet up.
There were already signs that Grammie was gone. The geraniums in her window boxes, usually lush with bright red blooms until the first fall frost, were wilting, and there were dandelion puffballs and cottonwood seedlings dotting the ankle-high lawn.
She killed the engine and stepped out as a flock of black birds exploded from a large cherry tree in the field to the left of the house. They settled amongst some crab apple branches along Annie and Fred’s house, fifty yards to the west.
She shaded her eyes from the glare of the sun peeking through the clouds and looked to see if there were any signs of the neighbors around. But, there were no cars outside, and she didn’t see anyone in their yard.
Cursing her pointy-heeled boots, she did a hopscotch jig up the muddy driveway, leaping between puddles leftover from an early morning rain shower.
When she reached the first step of the porch, she stopped, unable to bring herself to go inside...not yet. She decided to have a look out back first.
A stone path wound around the east side of the house. It ended at a picket fence with white peeling paint right next to the garage. Its gate led into the backyard and gardens, the field, and the river behind it.
It creaked open with ease as she pressed the rusty latch.
Inside, the stone path split into two directions. She had the choice of going left towards the back door of the house, or right towards the vegetable garden and on to the rose garden.
She went right, silently counting the steps. One summer when their parents were still alive and her sister was only three, Georgia had taught her to count using those stepping stones, rewarding her with little prizes of pretty stones from the river, peonies, or roses.
She rounded a thicket of raspberry bushes and stood in shock at what she saw next.
The vegetable garden was in shambles. Sweet corn swayed in the wind on dry, lifeless stalks. The rhubarb plants had seed stalks reaching for the sky. Bolted lettuce heads looked like strange leafy architectural pyramids. Pumpkin vines sprawled across the mulched path—their orange heads and curled tendrils looking like the remains of battlefield victims amongst the bloody red mess of strawberries that
had likely been smashed by crows and marauding raccoons.
“Good Lord...” she said out loud. Maybe Grammie had gotten a little senile in her last days. It wasn’t like her to leave a ripened berry unpicked or mature corn ear on the stalks. It was September—much of it should have been harvested, canned, and put away for the winter by now. Yet, it looked like the vegetable garden had been untended for weeks.
She gasped as a garter snake slithered out from underneath a wilted tomato plant. It just missed the toes of her boots as it crossed the path and disappeared into a patch of thistles.
When her heart slowed to a normal rhythm, she glanced back at the tomato plant. Large overripe fruit dangled from it like Christmas ornaments, and something else seemed to be moving down under the foliage. She backed away just before the long pink tail of a field mouse whipped out from one side.
With a heavy sigh, she walked the few yards past the vegetable garden to the arbor that marked the entrance to the rose garden. Two large pink Bourbon rose vines covered its black wrought iron frame. She had to grab a stick and push away spider webs before she could walk through it.
Inside this garden, she was just as amazed at the neglect.
The rose garden was a large teardrop-shaped area with a sixty-foot border of roses surrounding a central area of lawn with the crumbled remains of a stone fountain in the center. It had also been constructed by her great great grandfather, WilliamCrawford, who had been a successful farmer and avid rose breeder. He had planted many of the rose specimens himself over a hundred years ago. The fact that they still survived to this day was a testament to the diligence of care by his progeny over the years.
She winced at the sight of the overgrown tangle of rosebushes around the perimeter. By now, Grammie had usually deadheaded and pruned, inspiring a second fall flush of blooms that she used in her crafts and bouquets. But, they were all tall and gangly with few blooms gracing their skeletal limbs.
She had no doubt that her great great grandfather’s bones would roll in his grave if he knew the condition of his prized flowers. His passion for roses began on a whim when he entered a flower contest at the County Fair with one of his grandmother’s heirloom roses and won first place. He eventually began breeding his own from specimens he collected from around the world. With the fertile Kansas soil, supplemented by manure from the chicken coop and mineral-rich water from the river, he developed his own renowned line of beautifully colored Hybrid Tea roses. Many of his prized beauties fetched a hefty price from collectors around the country and helped to supplement his income from the farm.
Wary of the thorns, she leaned down to a satiny blood red specimen with only a few petals remaining and inhaled deeply. Its rich perfume made her dizzy.
A few moments later, she retraced her steps along the stone path and headed toward the back of the house. From the far end of the patio, she stood with her hands on her hips and looked out across the empty field to the river, a hundred yards in the distance. She could see a sliver of water from this far back just beyond cottonwoods that lined its banks like mighty soldiers.
She imagined the neighbor, Annie, looking out from that perspective and seeing Grammie’s red robe lying in the weeds at the feet of those giant trunks. What could have brought her Grandmother out there so far from the house in the middle of the night?
As she took a step backward on the patio, her heel crunched on something. She looked down and saw a brown eggshell. There were dozens more pieces around it. Annie must have dropped her basket of eggs.
She backed up another step without looking and clanged into something metallic. Turning, she saw a pet food dish with a circle of paw prints around its rim. Maybe Grammie had been out looking for the cat and was startled by something ...and then what?
Caddy corner to the patio, about ten yards across the grass, there was an old green and white shed. It leaned crooked on its foundation, and most of the exposed wood where the last coats of paint had chipped away had been beaten to a silvery gray by the elements. She knew that it used to hold garden tools, but for some reason, after Grandpa’s death, Grammie had padlocked it and forbidden anyone to go in it again. She had no idea what Grammie might have been hiding. Maybe she could find a key inside the house.
She looked up at the large pile of farm equipment just to the left of the shed. On top of the cement slab that had once housed a chicken coop, there sat the remains of a century of farming. Rusted tractor wheels, axels, ploughs, rotten wood, and perhaps hundreds of pieces of old farm implements that only an antique collector could appreciate sat in the giant pile. Grandpa never could part with anything...and Grandma never could part with anything of Grandpa’s after he died.
She had once dubbed the mess, ‘Rustenstuff’. As a young teenager, she had dug herself a hole in the junk next to an old seeder. When she was young, it had been her hiding place to get away from Marsha and sit and draw in her sketchpad...pictures of fairies, elves, and monsters.
She was lost in the memory when she was startled by a shadow next to her.
Chapter 10
There were candles lit around the altar casting a shimmering golden glow over the empty wooden pews inside St.Mary’s Catholic Church.
Opal tied her scarf tighter under her chin as she looked around and thankfully saw no one that might question her presence. She had half a mind to find some Holy Water and run out the door with it. But, what good would a stolen holy relic do for protection?
“May I help you?” a man’s voice asked from behind her.
She turned around and saw a tall lanky man in priestly garb with strawberry-colored hair. He was many years younger than her, but he had the presence of authority that came from more than his collar. “Father...”
“Yes, dear. What can I do for you?”
She fumbled for words. Did she dare tell him the truth for her visit?
She extended her hand, and he clasped it between his warm palms as he smiled.
“My name is Opal Peabody.”
There was a pause, as his eyes narrowed and he released her hand.
“You’re not a parishioner here.”
“No, Father. I’m not. I wouldn’t be surprised if you—”
“Yes. I know who you are, and of course I don’t approve of your line of work.” His lips became tight and thin like stretched rubberbands. “How may I help you, Peabody?”
She decided that it was time for an unofficial confession as she settled down into a pew and motioned for him to join her. “I’m afraid I may have done a bad thing.”
His right eyebrow arched into a perfectly round curve.
“You know I sometimes help folks contact with their deceased loved ones?”
He nodded.
“And you’ve heard that VirginiaBlake was found dead on her property a couple of days ago?”
“Yes—”
“I’m afraid that I may have inadvertently had something to do with that.”
His jaw dropped, and she saw him stiffen as if a steel rod had just been inserted inside his spine.
“Oh...no. It’s not that! I didn’t murder her. Well, not exactly. A couple of months ago, at her request, I performed a séance to reach her dead husband, but instead of reaching him, a demon may have come through instead.”
He inhaled a deep breath, looked up at the beams on the ceiling then crossed himself before raising his hand up high in the air. “Thus, the dangers of dallying with—”
“Please, Father. I don’t need a sermon. I need help.” There’s a chance that whatever spirit came through killed Virginia...and may still be in the house. I’m on my way over there to find out.”
“I see,” he said as he leaned his elbow down on one knee and rubbed his chin.
She told him every detail that she could think of including the strange spirit’s odd attire and accent and Virginia refusing to speak to her for two months after his appearance.
“I see,” he said again as he began drummed his fingers on his cheek.
The do
ubt in his voice was unmistakable. She figured that he really didn’t believe her, and probably thought she was as crazy as some of the stories he had heard about her...or that she’d had a few cocktails for breakfast along with her toast.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I saw him. He was real. I can’t prove that he had anything to do with Virginia’s death, but in my heart I know he did.”
“In that case...why didn’t you try to get help sooner?”
Opal clutched her bag of protective baubles and trinkets closer to her chest then looked up at the wooden statue of Jesus behind the altar. “I don’t know. I guess I thought it was something that I could figure out myself, or had myself convinced that the problem had gone away on its own when she refused to talk to me afterwards.”
“Maybe you’re worried for nothing. Maybe it’s not as bad as you’ve imagined. Why don’t you go check out the house and see for yourself. There might not be any reason for your panic.”
She looked into his pale Irish eyes. The sincerity that had welcomed her in the door was gone. Maybe to him, evil spirits and demons were bizarre entities that only appeared in scary movies and old European castles. Or, maybe if he believed in such things, he just didn’t want any part of it, preferring to stay in his nice candle-lit sanctuary and not get involved—
“Father, at the very least, I was hoping to get a blessing from you...and maybe some Holy Water?”
He stood up as if she had just said the magic words that would allow him to send her on her way. “I think that can be arranged.”
Without another word, he turned and walked to his office.
She paced on the hard floor, feeling like a knight pleading to the king for help to fight an imaginary invisible dragon. Instead of sending in troops to help her out, he was going to give her a potion of blessed water and a pat on the back before wishing her good luck in the enchanted forest.
But, when he came back, there was a new seriousness on his face. He held out a white plastic bottle. “You know...demon manifestations are pretty rare. Do you really believe that it was in your power to summon one by accident?”
The Gardener Page 5
