“I don’t know, Father. But whatever he was, he wasn’t human...and he wasn’t very nice.”
“Well...I hope this is all just for nothing,” he said as he dipped his thumb into a small pot at his side.
She closed her eyes as he anointed her forehead with oil and said some words in Latin that she didn’t understand.
When he finished, she said, “Thank you. If this turns out to be serious, and I need help with an exorcism?”
He shook his head and let out a throaty chuckle. “Exorcisms are rarely done by the Church these days. I’d need solid proof to submit to the Vatican for approval. Then, they might send out an experienced Exorcist...but it could take months for that process.”
She hoped that she had that long if her imagined worst case scenario proved true.
“Thank you again, Father. I...I have to go now.” She turned and ran back out to her car, because she felt a sudden urgency to get herself back on the road going towards the Blake house.
Chapter 11
“Oh...I thought that was you when I saw the car,” Annie said as she crept up behind Georgia.
“You startled me!”
“I’m sorry, dear. I came around from the front looking for you.”
Georgia watched as her upper lip began to tremble. She thought the old woman might drop the pie she was holding in her hands.
“It’s cherry,” she quivered. “I got so many quarts off the tree this summer; I’ve been baking dozens of pies. I thought if it was you over here, you might like to have one.”
Georgia took the tin from her. “Thanks, Annie. Really, you didn’t have to—”
Annie threw her arms around her, nearly knocking the pie to the ground. She smelled of sugar and cinnamon, and her apron was covered with flour and what might be stardust from Annie’s magical baking. Georgia didn’t care as it smudged all over her black slacks. At eighty-one, Annie didn’t seem to be slowing down. Georgia imagined that she still got up every morning at the crack of dawn and fed her chickens and baked pies. If she made it to a hundred, she would probably still go out in her housedress, apron, and slippers after a storm to pick up sticks that had fallen from the trees. Then, she’d get back to rolling dough for her baked treasures.
Annie held the embrace for another minute before the torrent poured out.
“I’m so sorry Georgia. “It was so awful to find her like that...she was blue like she’d been lying there all night...just waiting for someone to find her. I can’t believe it. I mean who would have thought she’d just go so quickly like that. She must have just gone out and had a heart attack. Poor thing...I hope her suffering wasn’t long.”
Georgia thought that it did seem like such a lonely way to go with no one around but the birds and the moon to witness her last breath. Couldn’t it have happened in her bed where she might have been able to reach the phone and dial 911, so someone could have known sooner if not helped in time? “What do you think she was doing out there at night?”
“Oh, I don’t know...she might have gone out to look for that wild cat. She’d been feeding him, you know. I saw him once by my barn. Big gray tabby. Real big. Virginia was worried about him with cold weather coming on soon. I guess she thought she might make a pet out of him.”
“Well, Grammie did have a love for wild creatures.”
“Yes, she did, and maybe that’s just what done her in.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. There’s not much around the farm these days except geese and pheasants. Maybe a coyote, I suppose. But, I don’t think that’s it. She lived on this land for a long time. There’s not much that would frighten her. But, I think she had an obsession with some kind of critter other than that cat.”
“What do you mean?”
“She hadn’t been herself you know.”
“Do you think she was getting senile? That’s what my sister said.”
“Well, I’d say something was going on. You’ve seen how she let things go around here. I’d go over and find her bent over that tangle of roses or picking beans, and she’d be out there just chatting away as if she had someone standing next to her. Always scared the dickens out of her when she finally saw me.”
“It’s not uncommon to talk to yourself...especially as you get older. She always talked to the birds and the squirrels, probably even her plants.”
Annie rolled her eyes. “’Who are you talking’ to?’ I’d ask her. She’d look around nervously and tell me to mind my own business. I couldn’t believe it. Her talking to me that way!”
“It definitely wasn’t like her to be rude, but she was lonely, Annie. She wasn’t the same ever since Grandpa died. Maybe, she was embarrassed that she was talking to herself.”
Annie leaned over and whispered into Georgia’s ear, “Yes...but I think she thought she was talking to someone real.”
“Annie! Don’t go telling people that. Maybe, it was just the cat. He might have been in the bushes.”
“Oh no. I won’t say another word. But, between you and me...I think she was slipping a little.”
Georgia changed the subject, not wanting to hear any more talk about her grandmother being crazy. It just wasn’t possible. Her grandmother had always been a little eccentric. That didn’t mean anything was wrong with her. She had never detected anything amiss in their phone conversations or letters.
“She hadn’t had me over for cards or tea in quite awhile neither. I’d ask her, but she’d always say she had things to do in the garden or was busy muddling around the house.”
Georgia sighed. “I’m sorry. I know it must have been difficult.”
Annie shrugged and shook her head.
Georgia looked up towards the sun as a jagged cloud drifted by. It was uncomfortable to think that she may never have any further explanation for Grammie’s death. She was lost in her memories as an ant scurried over the toe of her boot.
“Are you staying here or at your sister’s?”
“Marsha’s...tonight, anyway.”
“How long are you...” Her voice trailed off as she stopped and looked up towards the window on the northwest corner of the house. “Did you bring someone with you?”
“No,” Georgia said as she followed her gaze up.
“I’m must be getting old and seeing things too.”
Georgia followed her gaze up to the window. “What did you see?”
“I just thought I saw the curtains move up there.”
Georgia shaded her eyes and looked again, but the ruffled curtain over the window that used to be her sister’s bedroom hung still. “I don’t see anything.” She laughed. “You probably just saw the air conditioner come on and blow the curtain.”
“Maybe...”
“Well...I’ll check it out. I’m going to go inside and have a look around before I go to Marsha’s.”
“Do you want me to send Fred over to have a look with you? It might be a little spooky going in there alone for the first time.”
She thought for a moment, and then said, “Thanks, but I’d rather be alone right now.”
“Alright. We’re just a holler away if you need anything.”
Georgia gave Annie another hug. “I’m going to miss your grandmother.”
“Me too,” Georgia said.
Annie turned to leave, and then stopped. “You know, this town ain’t as safe as it used to be. There’s been some burglaries around here.”
“I came from New York, remember?” Georgia inhaled a long breath of crisp fall air, taking in the scent of withering leaves and freshly cut hay from the bales in back of Annie’s house. “This is the safest place on earth to me.”
Chapter 12
The spirit watched the two women talking from his perch on the window ledge in the upstairs bedroom. He didn’t know who the younger woman was, but as they embraced, it was obvious that she was quite close to the neighbor.
There was something familiar about her. But from this distance, he couldn’t make out her featu
res clearly enough to ascertain why.
One did not need a telescope, though, to acknowledge that she was a delightfully beautiful woman. Even with her short, boyish hair, there was a youthful femininity about her. He enjoyed watching the sway of her hips as she gestured and stared at her long slim legs enclosed in her manly pants. Bellissima!
As the women prattled on, he wondered if she was a relative of Virginia’s. He knew she had a brash granddaughter on the other side of town who made infrequent visits, and another who lived somewhere far away. Perhaps this woman was her—come back to mourn Virginia’s death.
He hoped that she would stay around long enough for him to get to know more about her, because he needed some fresh company. With Virginia gone, he did not relish the loneliness of the house. There was no challenge in a solitary life. He missed Virginia’s conversation, the way she hummed as she worked in the garden...the way she had once obeyed him and treated him like a king.
But then, she had been convinced that he was someone else. He had played the role of her dead husband as long as he could stomach it. He faked knowing about their lives together. He told her that he had come from Heaven, and that it was a beautiful place that he was sad to leave until he heard her reaching out to him.
“It is the grace of God that has brought you back to me,” she had said to him often as she cupped his cheeks in her hands.
He merely nodded and kissed the back of her wrinkled hand as if she were as radiant as a young bride.
The role-playing came as naturally to him as eating and sleeping. He was not skilled in many things, but persuasion was his forte. It was this talent that had landed him the job of Gardener at the Crawford estate in 1897.
He had been traveling westward, planning to seek his fortune in a silver mine on the west coast, when he chanced to stop for the night in Calathia. Leaning against a buggy post with his rucksack at his side, he saw a beautiful vision—the lovely daughter of WilliamCrawford graced a roadside flower stand on Main Street. When he saw her doe-like eyes, hair as smooth and silky brown as the finest cup of caffe, and lips as kissable as the Mona Lisa’s, he knew that he had to have her.
That day, he dreamt of ways to approach her as more than a poor immigrant. Over the next couple of weeks, he set his plan into action. He studied books on roses, the Farmer’s Almanac, and journals on gardening that he found in the town library. Then, he laid out in the sun in nothing but his breeches to tan his skin. He plunged his hands into soapy water to weather and chafe them, and ground dirt under his fingernails to make them look like hard-working tools of the trade.
Only after all of this, did he approach the girl’s father, WilliamCrawford, with a plea for a job.
The patriarch was impressed with his humility and eagerness to put long hours into the rose garden that he was building as a showcase for his prized roses. He awarded him a room in the tool shed behind the house, and there he spent a multitude of nights peering out the window up at the house towards her room. He watched her brush her long hair in the moonlight on her windowsill and bided his time.
Margaret was her name. MargaretCrawford. The sound of each syllable still felt as sweet as honey on his lips.
It was weeks before he spoke to her. He was a patient man. Then, he began with subtle glances and deliveries of flowers to her room. He told her that he had noble origins. He was really an Italian Count that had fled his homeland to avoid being married off to a woman that he did not love. He said that he was so enamored of the fresh country air and the flowers that he decided to make a simple life as a gardener.
It was this experience in the art of deception that he also used to woo VirginiaBlake. He procured hundred-year-old bottles of Chianti and Merlot that were hidden in the walls of the cellar, and serenaded her with Henry’s poetry that he found on scraps of paper in a closet. As his human form grew stronger, he accompanied her out to the garden and kept her company as she planted vegetable seeds and tended her flowers. “Oh, Henry. You never used to care so much about my roses,” she giggled and blushed.
Though, as time went on, she cared less and less about the gardens as he drained the life energy from her core.
It lasted for a good while. He was able to keep up the flat modern Kansas farmer shtick that he practiced from listening to the moving picture box and the radio...but then...on occasion...he would relax and forget...dribbling into a little of the old Italian slang from his home country.
Virginia began to get suspicious and questioned him more and more about the details of their former life. When, he couldn’t tell her where they had taken their honeymoon or what year their daughter was born, he told her that it had been many years...and his time in Heaven had erased many of his memories.
But, then she began to jump when he entered the room. She snuck outside to the garden by herself...and was obviously disappointed when he followed.
One evening, she tried to attack him with a shovel. He snatched it from her trembling hands, but not before she sliced it across his shin.
He remembered laughing at the feeling of pain. It was blissful. There was even a wet red bloodlike substance that oozed from the wound. That could only mean that he was becoming stronger...and human again.
As he gained a more solid appearance, he took care to hide himself when the neighbors were out. It was best to let them think Virginia was losing her mind...talking to the wind rather than have them ask too many questions.
It was not his fault that Virginia had to be dealt with. When she stopped believing that he was Henry, he had no choice but to tell her the truth. Instead of understanding his plight and rejoicing with him at his newfound life, it only made her enraged.
Now, he regretted that he had succumbed to honesty. Chi piu sa, meno crede. The more one knows, the less one believes.
He should have stuck to his lies and bent her to his will.
But, then again...she was an old woman. She would have died before long anyway.
If he couldn’t have Margaret or Virginia for company, he needed someone new to share his new life with.
He glanced out the window again. Benissimo. She is coming this way.
Chapter 13
After Annie traipsed back across the field of tawny weeds to her house, Georgia walked around towards the front porch and set the pie down on the bottom step.
She creaked up the steps and glanced at the sad pots of geraniums. They needed water in a hurry, or they’d soon be completely dead. She made a mental note to look for a watering can or pitcher inside.
She found the key under the rooster planter in the same spot that it had been for decades. A groove was worn in the porch wood in its shape.
A gentle breeze blew across the front of the house and caused the porch swing to sway. Nostalgia flooded over her. A boy had given her her first kiss in that swing. She had just had her braces taken off the week before. It was an awkward quick peck, followed by a sharing of art sketches. She had feigned interest in his drawings of sports cars and battle scenes, paying more attention to the way his hair curled up near his ears and framed his soft eyes. She remembered that her little sister spoiled the scene, leaning out one of the front windows at the most inopportune moment and chanting, “Georgia and Jimmy sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” Somehow, she still blamed Marsha for him breaking up with her—a result of all of the meddling and jealous tantrums.
The key slid into the front lock with ease, and the heavy oak door with stained glass tulips swung open on its own without needing much encouragement.
The house was dark and filled with shadows as she stepped inside. A few sunbeams penetrated through the western windows, seeping through a break in the lace sheers and heavy drapes. They blazed golden stripes across the Oriental rug that covered a large section of the wooden living room floor to the left of the entrance. She could see dust particles dancing in the light like tiny stars glowing in a churning sea of air.
It was disturbingly quiet.
She couldn’t remember ever walking i
n that door without the sound of Grammie’s cheery voice to greet her. When she was young and came in the door without Grammie noticing, she could always find her by following the sound of humming. She often hummed while she worked around the house—a slow tune while dusting, something a little faster for scrubbing the kitchen floor, and something light and airy for tending the flowers out in the garden.
Now, there was nothing more than the tick-tick-tick of the grandfather clock on the far wall next to the fireplace. Grammie never liked the quiet. If she wasn’t humming, she always had a waltz playing on the stereo, or the television turned on low volume just to keep her company after Grandpa passed away.
As she walked through the living room (or the “parlor”, as her grandmother used to call it), she couldn’t help feeling like an intruder. It was a strange feeling, being that the house had once been her home, and felt as warm and safe as a wool blanket on a chilly winter night.
It seemed as if Grammie was still near, watching her in some way. She had had the same feeling when her ex-husband’s father passed away. When she helped clean out his apartment, it felt like his ghost was looking over their shoulders, watching every move and listening to every word they spoke. She supposed that unease was normal right after someone died, and that it would pass with time.
But, the feeling of being watched was heavy on her shoulders...and she couldn’t shake it.
As she passed into the kitchen, she saw a vase filled with mums and asters in the center of the dining table. Once lavender, orange, and golden yellow, their heads now drooped down, weeping dried brownish petals onto the tabletop. The water in the vase was a swampy green.
The kitchen seemed to be in order. Copper pots hung neatly on their rack; cotton dishtowels were ironed and folded next to the empty dish drainer; tin canisters of flour, sugar, and coffee were in their place lined up in a neat row.
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