“He could be, but nothing my pistol can’t handle.”
“Now, Mama, that’s just what I mean. I really wish you’d get rid of that thing.”
“Your daddy bought it for me and taught me how to use it. I feel safe with it here next to me in my nightstand. So over my dead body will I get rid of it. In fact, you can bury me with my gun in one hand and a book in the other,” Beatrice said, pausing. “I’m glad to know you’re concerned about me, but I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be damned if I’m leaving my home over some vandal.”
“It’s more than vandalism, Mama. You were stabbed. Maggie Rae was murdered earlier that same morning. Seriously. Think about coming to stay with us until this blows over, and call me if you need me for anything.” Then with a concerned hug, Vera left the house.
Now alone, Beatrice immediately thought about her cousin Rose, who knew more than most people about ghosts. The more she thought about the dark thing in her home, and what Ed had said, the more she believed it was Maggie Rae. What to do about it? And why her? She decided to give Rose a call.
“How do, cousin?” Rose said. “Seems like we just got off the phone.” She chuckled.
“I’m not so good today, Rose. A lot has been happening here.”
“Well, we have the Internet out here now,” said Rose. “Have everything you do, except the crowds and the murders and the stabbings.”
“Well, then, let’s get right to it,” Beatrice said, laughing.
Beatrice told her story to her cousin. Rose had never left the mountains—never traveled anywhere. Her sons brought her groceries once a week from town and she made her own clothes—mostly cotton skirts and dresses. She had no use for “dungarees,” as she called them—nor did she have a use for cosmetics. Her face was weathered and worn—but a subtle beauty clung to it, like a faded jewel.
She learned her skills as an herbalist as a child from her and Beatrice’s grandmother, who was a skilled midwife, much in demand. She also knew the old healing ways with herbs.
Beatrice used to talk with Ed about crazy old Rose talking to her plants and to her spirit friends. But the older Beatrice got, the more she herself turned to her mountain heritage, which seemed to be mostly in the form of chats with Rose—whether on the phone or occasionally in person. They were in close contact.
The mountains could close in on a person. When she was growing up, she wanted nothing more than to escape. Rose was one of those individuals closed off to anything but the mountains. But, Beatrice acknowledged, Rose’s wisdom with herbs was vast, and was proving to be right on target with what some of the newest herbalists and doctors were claiming. In fact, one of the ways Rose earned money was by selling her mountain herbs and teaching classes twice a year.
Beatrice explained what had happened that morning.
“You need to do a cleansing of your house, first,” Rose was saying. “I’ll send you the dried sage. I want you to burn it, go through your house, clockwise in each room. When you’re doing that, picture a white light wrapping around each room, then expand it in your mind and wrap your whole house in this light.”
“Hmph,” Beatrice said. “Is that all there is to it?”
“I don’t know,” Rose said. “Maybe not, but that’s the place to start.”
“So, can you make sense of any of this?”
“I think Ed was warning you. I think there is a darkness around you and your house. If it’s this Maggie Rae’s spirit, I’d suggest you find out more about her. Also, just tell her to leave you alone. She can’t hurt you.”
“But she broke my window,” Beatrice reminded her.
“Oh, yes, ghosts can break things. Windows are their favorite way of letting you know they are not happy. They can also attack you—but their attacks don’t last long enough to really hurt.”
“What? Ghosts can hurt you? Well, I have heard of everything now.” Beatrice felt a sudden panic.
“I thought we might go to the caves the next time you visit, but the boys didn’t think it was such a good idea,” Rose said, changing the subject as if they had just been talking about the weather, instead of ghosts.
“Why not?” Beatrice asked.
“They tell me there’s a group of suspicious characters up there these days.”
Beatrice harrumphed. “More suspicious than usual?” “Yes,” Rose said, suddenly serious. “You know about all the stories about the caves?”
“Well, some of them.”
“As long as I’ve known about the place, there’s been stories about it,” she said, and paused. Beatrice heard her sipping a drink. “There’s the one about the lovers.”
“Oh, yes, I remember that one,” Bea said. “An Appalachian Romeo and Juliet story.”
“Then there’s the one that claims that our caves are located on some kind of special axis and have magical properties. The water there comes from a pure spring and runs along those beautiful quartz and calcite rocks—”
“Yes, I remember... .”
Beatrice still dreamed of the place sometimes. For a child, it was like a fairy kingdom full of sparkling rocks and mushrooms, not to mention the wildflowers and herbs that grew outside the caves. In fact, in her dreams, she danced with and spoke to fairies often. And she always thought, I need to remember this, and would forget what the fairies told her upon awakening.
“It’s a perfect place for ritual, really,” Rose went on. “According to the boys, someone is doing ritual—and not in a good way.”
“Animal sacrifices?” Bea said, and laughed.
“No, Bea,” she said. “It’s really very serious. They are trying to manipulate the ‘energy.’”
“For what?” Beatrice said. “Can you be more specific?”
“I wish I could. All I know is they have several holy books and are picking and choosing what they like and creating a sort of cult. Maybe a Mennonite faction. I was up there a few days ago and I can tell you, the energy is different. It feels dead.”
Beatrice’s heart sank. “It was so vibrant. I still dream about it.”
“We all do,” Rose said, as if Beatrice should have known that. “We are a part of this land. And it’s a part of us.”
Chapter 25
Paige laid the thick yellow scrapbook on Vera’s desk. “I’m done with it,” she said. “I don’t know how I managed.”
Vera looked up from her paperwork. Her friends just flat-out refused to acknowledge that she actually worked for a living. They just stopped by and interrupted her every chance they got.
“What do you mean?” Vera finally asked, looking directly into Paige’s big doll-like blue eyes.
“Daniel. He reminds me a lot of my boy. The soccer games, the art projects, that funny little crooked smile ...” Her huge blue eyes reminded Vera of saucers as they widened.
“Well, maybe you should call him,” Vera said, bracing herself. Still, it needed to be said—but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t said it before over the years.
“Goddamn you, Vera,” Paige said. “He knows where I am, and phones work both ways.”
“I know, dear,” Vera said, turning to her computer because she didn’t want to see Paige’s fair complexion turning angry red. “But he thinks you’re ashamed of him.”
“Well,” Paige said, her blue eyes flaring. She pushed a strand of her blond hair behind her ear while she tapped her manicured nails on the desk. “How would you feel if your son was gay?”
“I don’t know, Paige,” Vera answered, looking back at her. “Randy is a wonderful young man. Has a great job, and is doing well for himself. Why is his sexuality such a big deal?”
Paige looked crushed. Her thin lips turned down. Her face flamed red.
“Can you just put this behind you? Pick up the phone and call him.”
“The Bible says—”
“It says nothing,” Vera finished. “As far as I remember my Bible, it celebrates love, in all forms. Are you willing to go to your grave not having a wonderful close relationship with your son
—all because of whom he chooses to love?”
“Well,” Paige finally said after a few moments. “I hadn’t thought of it quite like that. Still, there’s Earl. He will never accept his son being gay. I just know it.”
“Earl is Earl, and you are you. Time goes so fast, dear. I think we need to hold on to the people we love, don’t you? This thing with Maggie Rae, you know, should make us all sit up and take notice.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She sighed, and then spoke again after a moment. “Maybe I’ll call him later today. But now, Vera, what happened to your mom’s house? I saw the broken window when I drove by.”
“Nobody knows,” Vera said. “Vandals. They never could find the rock or the brick that was thrown, though. And they still don’t know who stabbed her.”
“Boy, your Mom’s having kind of a rough time of it.”
“Can’t get her to admit that, though. Old fool,” Vera said, smiling. “Can’t get her to stay with us for a while, just until things calm down. She won’t let me stay there, either. It’s so frustrating.”
What Vera didn’t tell Paige was that she thought her mother was finally losing a little bit of her mind. She’d always been an odd bird. Had always insisted that her daddy was still with her and talked to him frequently. All of the quantum physics stuff played into it. Vera couldn’t understand the language of it, but she knew it had to do with a separate reality or creating your own reality, and she always felt like maybe Beatrice was creating her father’s ghost, at least in her mind.
But today, her mother talked about Maggie Rae. And she was concerned because her late husband had warned her, and then the incident with her window had occurred almost immediately afterward.
“I swear I saw something very dark in my living room,” Beatrice said. “It flew out the window so quickly.”
“A bird?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Beatrice said. “I’ve been thinking about what your father said—that Maggie Rae’s caught in some dark void. Something is holding her here and that it’s not good.”
“Mama, what are you saying? That Maggie Rae’s ghost broke your window? That she was the dark thing you saw?” Vera questioned, with a chill traveling through her.
“I know it sounds crazy, girl. I know it. But I’ve also known my whole life that’s there more to this life and the next than what we know.”
“Oh, now, Mama, you’re scaring me,” Vera said. It was true. Her mother scared her frequently—for her whole life—talking about such things. Vera wanted nothing to do with ghosts or the spirit world. This world was what mattered. Flesh. Bones. The child inside her.
“I have to tell you, Vera, for the first time in years, I’m a little scared, too.” Her mother’s eyes were wide, and her hair was uncombed. She looked a little scared. That frightened Vera even more.
“I don’t believe in any of this nonsense, you know that,” Vera said, biting into a cinnamon roll. “Mmm, this is good.”
“Thanks, I think there’s more in the freezer.”
Did her mother really believe it was Maggie Rae who had broken her window? Did she really think her husband came to her and talked to her—even though he’d been dead for twenty years? Well, if it was Maggie’s Rae’s ghost—and that was a big if in Vera’s mind—why would she be at Beatrice’s house and breaking her windows?
“That would be the mystery to solve,” Beatrice said when Vera asked her. “I didn’t really know the woman.”
“We’re finding that none of us really did,” Vera replied.
“How about that Maggie Rae?” Paige said, sitting down. She took off her blue cardigan sweater and hung it over the chair. Her large bosom was poking out of a too-small V-necked T-shirt. “Writing dirty stories. How about that?”
“Shocking,” Vera said, flipping through a file.
“What would possess a woman?” She leaned forward on Vera’s desk. Her thin shoulders rested on bony arms.
“I wondered that, too. I’m sure everything will be revealed in due time. Don’t you think so?”
“I asked Earl about it. He said he’s read some of her stuff—he’s quite the porn guy, my husband.” She rolled her eyes. “He said it was good, but kind of kinky and violent.”
“Really?” A brief image of her old lover, Tony, smacking her bottom flashed in Vera’s mind—no matter where their lovemaking took them, she found it pleasurable. Even a little pain added to the pleasure. Bill would never do such a thing—he was too much of a gentleman.
“Yes, evidently, we are talking whips and chains and everything.”
“Oy,” Vera said. “That’s kind of embarrassing that we know that. Poor woman. I’m afraid all of her secrets will be revealed as time goes by. Honestly, who wants to know all of that?”
“Honestly?” Paige said, with a wide grin. “I do.”
Chapter 26
Annie was compelled to look away from the computer screen as she read about sadism and masochism—commonly known as S&M. She was surprised to find tears lurking at the edge of her eyes, thinking about Maggie Rae. As one drop slipped down her cheek, she took a deep breath. Why would a woman want to be humiliated and hurt? With so much pleasure to be found in sex, in life, why the pain?
She looked up “submissive” on the Internet. On Wikipedia, she found:
Dominance and submission (also known as D&s, Ds or D/s) is a set of behaviors, customs and rituals involving the giving by one individual to another individual of control over them in an erotic episode or as a lifestyle.
Hmm. Interesting, but not quite what she was looking for—what she wanted to know was why would a person be attracted to being hurt, what kind of psychology was behind it. Then Annie keyed in, Psychology of Submissives.
One website came up and said:
According to Freud, people become masochistic as a way of regulating their desire to sexually dominate others. The desire to submit, on the other hand, he said, arises from guilt feelings over the desire to dominate.
Hmm, Annie thought, feeling as if she was dipping into murky waters. Freud? What a nut.
Another website said:
Despite the research indicating that S&M does no real harm and is not associated with pathology, Freud’s successors in psychoanalysis continue to use mental illness overtones when discussing S&M. Addiction, for one thing.
Addicted to S&M? Annie groaned. Addiction seemed to be the modern epidemic. Everyone wanted that easy fix, instant gratification—drugs, alcohol, and even sex. She read further.
According to a sex magazine, masochism is a set of techniques for helping people temporarily lose their normal identity ... that stress makes forgetting who you are an appealing escape. That was the essence of the “escape” theory, one of the main reasons people turned to S&M.
Fascinating, thought Annie. A form of escape. To want to be hurt.
Annie turned away from the computer and looked at her boys, who were napping in her bed. One of them sighed in his sleep.
She picked up the brown envelope that the detective had left on her doorstep with Maggie Rae’s papers inside. She stuck her hand into it and pulled out a birthday card from Gracie to Maggie Rae. Love you, Mommy was written in purple ink, smelling slightly of grape. She smiled. Her boys loved those scented pens, which were scattered throughout her house.
A note slipped out of the envelope. It was from Maggie Rae to Grace:
I always wanted to be a mom, but I want you to know there’s more to life than marriage and family. Oh, it can be good, sometimes. But mostly it’s thankless. Thank God, I have my writing, my fantasies, my friends. Otherwise, I fear I’d slip into absolute nothingness... .
Annie’s heart felt like it stopped for one moment. There in the midst of something she couldn’t relate to at all—the S&M—Maggie’s words reached out to her and Annie felt a deep sense of compassion and connection. She took a deep breath. There but for the grace of God.
For generations, women had lived their lives simply tending to their child
ren and their husbands. Why wasn’t it enough for all women? Why did Annie get bored with her kids? Want something more?
The S&M made Annie uncomfortable. She’d always been pretty straight with her sex life. Still, it was within the realm of “normal” sexual behavior. She admitted that reading about S&M helped her to understand Maggie Rae’s personality. She was more certain than ever that Maggie Rae’s story held more richness and depth than she’d ever know. She was not just about sex or even erotica. She was a person who was responding to a pivotal event in her life. But what was it?
Annie meditated on a picture she found of the young Maggie Rae, her sister, Tina Sue, their mother, and their father; all were seated on a porch swing, with an apple tree behind them. Tina Sue was smiling at her sister. The mother looked stern, staring straight ahead at the camera. Maggie Rae was tucked under her father’s arm and smiled adoringly at him. He smiled back. Nothing was menacing about this faded Polaroid snapshot with a diagonal jagged edge. Still, she stared at it, wishing she could step into it, take the hand of young Maggie Rae, and listen to her secrets.
Chapter 27
Sheila explained to Annie that vellum paper was a little difficult to use—but it was so beautiful. “You just have to be a little more careful when you cut it. It tears and frays so easily.”
Annie ran her long fingers over the smooth milky paper. “So this adhesive won’t show behind it, if I put it on the back? It will still hold?”
“Yes, it will hold. When it dries, it becomes invisible,” Sheila said. She was sitting next to Annie, but on the other side of her was a pile of new scrapbook paper—beautiful shades of orange and yellow and brown.
Vera loved to watch Sheila explaining some technique to a newbie. She held a certain “I know my business” look on her face—almost the same look she would get when they were young girls playing at being bank tellers. That thought made Vera smile. She looked at Sheila’s face, which was just now beginning to show wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. That one tiny mole on her cheek had vexed Sheila for years. Finally she just gave up and accepted it. That was one of the blessings of aging—acceptance.
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