by Foxglove Lee
“But not wide enough,” Tiffany said, laying the tray beside the hole. “See? We’d have to bury her standing up.”
I kept seeing a person. Every time I looked at that plastic bag, I saw the corpse of a young girl. It made me want to throw up, but I steeled myself against the sick feeling and dug the hole wider.
“Are there any magic words in that book?” Tiffany asked Leonard.
He shook his head.
“I feel like we should say something when we bury her.”
“How about that whole ‘ashes to ashes’ bit?” my uncle asked, and for the first time ever I felt like he believed all this was real. It wasn’t an overactive imagination, and I wasn’t crazy. This doll really was haunted.
Tiffany jerked the tray, and I thought maybe she’d slipped. Then I caught the look on her face. She’d seen a ghost.
“Hurry up,” she said. “We need to get this thing in the ground before it tries to kill me again.”
“The hole should be wide enough now,” my uncle said, standing back.
I turned to see if my brother and my aunt had collected enough sage. Their hands were full of the stuff. “Come on, guys.”
“Should we take her out of the bag?” Tiffany asked.
“I think so.” A chill ran down my spine. “But I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to see her.”
We were all quiet. The moon flickered above us like a fluorescent light on the blink. The trees reached around us like skeletal hands across the sky. Where had the stars gone? There were none.
“I’ll do it,” Uncle Flip offered. He propped his shovel against a tree and started unloading salt boxes from on top of Yvette’s young corpse. Tiffany’s arms were shaking, and the tray rattled as my uncle ripped open the plastic bag.
I tried not to look, but I couldn’t help it. Her face seemed bloated and broken, as though she’d truly drowned in the lake. The only thing worse than the sight of her was the stench. It was so bad we uttered a collected “Ohh!” and turned our heads.
Uncle Flip picked her up with his bare hands. Her dress was waterlogged and stained. Her fire-red hair had lost its curl. I pictured how she’d looked before, and bit my lip. It was so sad. She’d been so beautiful.
“Say something,” I told Leonard. “Anything.”
“Uhh… yes, right…” He cleared his throat. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”
Uncle Flip got down on his knees and set Yvette in the pit.
“More,” I said. “Say the rest of it.”
“I’m not sure I know it, to be truthful.”
“You’re a book guy,” Tiffany shot back. “You must know it. Something about… ‘We are gathered here today…’”
“No, that’s for weddings,” my aunt said. “For funerals, they say, ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil because…”
“The Lord is my shepherd!” Uncle Flip joined in. “I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He… oh, what’s the rest of it?”
Their silence made me anxious. “Throw the sage on, guys.”
My brother tore the leaves, releasing its fresh aroma to cover Yvette’s stench.
“Oh, I remembered it,” Leonard said, perking up. “Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our sister departed. We commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure hope of the resurrection unto eternal life.”
“No, don’t say that!” I shrieked as my aunt threw sage leaves into the hole. “She’s already come back from the dead twice. This time she needs to stay put.”
“Sorry,” Leonard replied. “That’s how it goes. I didn’t write it.”
Nobody was saying anything, and my aunt was out of sage. I grabbed a box of salt from Tiffany’s tray, setting it off-balance so it fell to the side. My heart started palpitating. This was such a disaster!
While my uncle picked up boxes of salt, I begged, “Please someone, just keep this funeral going.”
I tried to open a box of salt, but the glue stuck firm. Everything was going wrong.
And then Tiffany spoke up. “It’s the eye of the tiger…” Her breath rattled in her chest, so loud I could hear it. She tripped over her words, stammered and slurred, but she took a chance and recited as many song lyrics as she could remember. “And he’s watching us all with the eye… of the tiger!”
“Well, that doesn’t make me feel any better,” my aunt said, gazing out into the forest. “Gives me the creeps, as a matter of fact.”
I finally got the salt open and I was about to pour it when Leonard shouted, “Stop!”
“What? Why?”
He had the book open in his arms. “We’re doing this all wrong. Hold off for a second.”
I must have really trusted him, because I held the box of salt against my chest.
“Make a circle with the salt around the outside of the hole. Do that now.”
My hands were shaking, but I managed to walk all the way around the pit without catching a glimpse of Yvette. It sure was dark down there.
With one eye on the book, Leonard said, “Negative energy shall not stay. We release it now and send it away. Negative energy, we banish thee. As I speak these words, so shall it be.”
A shiver passed through me and my eyes filled with tears.
“Spirit,” Leonard went on. “Yvette, whoever you are, you are not welcome here. You must move on, move away. In thirty seconds, we will close this pit with salt. You have thirty seconds to leave.”
Leonard started the countdown and we all joined in, raising our voices in unison. It was the longest thirty seconds of my life, and I spent it clinging to my half-full box of salt while Tiffany, my aunt, and my uncle opened the other boxes.
“Five,” we said.
The wind started to pick up.
“Four.”
It was more than just a breeze.
“Three.”
Tiffany’s hair rustled against her shoulders.
“Two.”
A distinct something. I couldn’t see it or name the sensation, but I could certainly feel it strongly.
“One.”
The wind tussled pine needles and leaves around our feet, circling up, and then dying down.
And then nothing.
“Was that it?” I asked. I wanted to see something with my eyes. I wanted some sort of explanation.
“Pour the salt,” Leonard instructed.
Everybody held off so I could to go first, but I didn’t want to.
“What are you waiting for?” Tiffany asked. “You want to see if she’ll kill me for real next time?”
“No.” I couldn’t explain it. “I just… I’m not sure if she’s… gone?”
“I’m not waiting around to find out.” Tiffany dumped her salt over Yvette’s grave. The white crystals made a whooshing sound as they left the box and scattered over that little porcelain frame.
My heart hurt. Physically hurt. The pain was so real I grabbed my chest, but nobody seemed to notice. Uncle Flip and Aunt Libby poured their salt over the grave. The sound should have soothed me, like waves on a beach, but instead it made me inexplicably angry.
“Your turn,” Tiffany said. “Pour it.”
I didn’t want to. Something didn’t feel right.
“Go ahead, Rebecca.” My aunt smiled kindly. “Let’s end this for good.”
I could feel my head nodding, even though I didn’t agree. My hand raised the box and poured salt into the pit. It didn’t smell so bad anymore. Smelled like ocean air and sage, and that was nice… but something was wrong. I knew it.
“Well, Mike.” My aunt took my brother’s hand. “Time for bed, I’d say. You’ve had a long day.”
“Thanks for the gift certificate,” I said as my aunt led him back to the cottage. “And thanks for…”
How do you word it when you’re thanking someone for participating in a ritual to destroy an evil doll? Particularly when you’re 99% certain that ritual didn
’t work?
When my aunt and my brother were gone, Leonard closed the book and we all stood in silence. The forest was usually full of sounds at night, but everything went quiet. No stars, no sounds. This was not a normal night.
I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. Everyone stared into the pit.
“Should we toss all this dirt on top?” my uncle suggested.
“No, not yet.” Leonard opened the book again, flipping to the page he’d lost. “You’ll have to leave it uncovered for twenty-four hours.”
“What if she climbs out?” I asked. My voice sounded small.
“Bec, that’s not going to happen.” My uncle smiled the same way he had when he’d talked about me seeing a therapist. “Yvette is in the ground. We performed the ritual, we buried her in salt. She’s gone now, and she’ll never hurt anybody ever again.”
Uncle Flip’s voice was so warm and reassuring I almost believed him.
And then I heard another voice, familiar and unmistakeable. It said, “We’ll see about that…”
Chapter 25
I didn’t know where to look: up in the air, down at the ground? “She’s here! It didn’t work. She’s still here.”
Uncle Flip’s brows arched like a sad dog. “Bec? Are you feeling okay?”
“Don’t look at me like that! I’m not crazy. Yvette is real, and she’s here. Somewhere.”
“Where?” Tiffany didn’t think I was crazy. She knew better. She was scared. Biting her lip, she said, “God, she’s gonna kill me!”
“We won’t let that happen.” Leonard flipped through the magic book. “There’s got to be something in here that can help.”
But we’d already tried that. We’d gone by the book, and the book didn’t work.
Tiffany shook so hard her dress quivered around her thighs. She backed away from Yvette’s burial site like her feet were moving on their own. The fear in her eyes sent rage through my body. I grabbed my shovel. “Enough!”
“Becca,” my uncle said. “Shh! Not so loud, okay?”
Tiffany backed up all the way to the tepee and watched from a distance as I shouted, “We don’t want you here, so just go away! Hear me, Yvette? Go away!”
“Make me!” her voice screamed through the sky like thunder.
“Oh my God, I’m gonna die!” Tiffany sobbed while the rest of us looked up into the blank night. We’d all heard it.
“I hate you!” I cried, raising my shovel like a sword. When I drove it into the hole, the pointed end met salt. I wasn’t sure if I’d made contact with the doll.
“I hate your guts!” I told her. Then I pulled the shovel out of the salt bed and thrust it in again. This time, my shovel made contact with porcelain. I heard a crack, and it was loud. Then, just as loud, a scream like a whistle on the wind. I speared the salt and the wind howled so fiercely my ears ached. But that didn’t stop me.
“You’re evil! You’re bad!” I pounded my shovel into the hole, and this time I cracked her skull. I could feel it. The porcelain shattered in that bed of salt, and Yvette’s putrid odour joined the scent of sage on the air. “I don’t know why I ever liked you. I must have been crazy! There’s nothing good about you. Nothing!”
“Rebecca!” my uncle called. “This isn’t helping.”
“It’s helping me.” I whacked the salt bed with all my might. My muscles screamed and my fingers were full of splinters, but I didn’t care.
I had to protect Tiffany.
I had to kill Yvette.
The wind screeched like a thousand owls, blowing the trees so hard that branches started cracking overhead. I looked in Tiffany’s direction, but I couldn’t see her face. The wind whipped her hair around her head like a golden cocoon. Her red dress lashed her legs, blowing away the cotton balls she’d glued around the hem. I wondered if some of the screams were hers, but I couldn’t see her mouth.
What had I done?
I looked across Yvette’s grave, hoping Leonard would have the answer, but the wind blew so hard the pages of his book started tearing out, carried into the treetops by unseen hands.
“Make it stop!” I screamed.
Leonard shook his head. “I don’t know how.”
The day had been warm, but this swirling windstorm pierced my eardrums like icicles. I had no choice. I had to drop my shovel and cover my ears with both hands. Even the cold couldn’t dispel the hot rage burning inside of me.
“Goddamn it, Yvette! What are you gonna do, kill us? Fine! Go ahead! Destroy us all. Destroy everything, because all that matters is you, right? Who cares about anyone else? It’s all about you, what you want. You don’t care about anyone but you!”
A gust of wind swirled so brutally it knocked me to one side. I struggled to maintain my footing, but I couldn’t fight the force. The same thing happened to my uncle, then to Leonard, and then Tiffany. We all met the ground with a smack.
Tiffany struggled to her feet. “Shut up!” Her palms and knees were filthy with dirt and pine needles. Her hair whipped around her face, into her mouth, and she spit it out to scream at me. “Stop encouraging her, Bec! You’re gonna get us killed.”
I could taste her fear. I shared it, truly, but my anger took over. “Do it! Kill us all! Makes you feel big and strong, doesn’t it, pushing us around like that? Well, you’re nothing but a jerk and a coward. You make me sick!”
I screamed so hard I could taste blood, and it wasn’t until I looked up at my uncle’s shocked expression that I realized I’d just said everything I’d always wanted to say to my father. I’d been screaming those things at him in my head since I was six years old.
For a moment, I stared at my uncle and he stared back at me, like we were communicating telepathically. He saw right through me, as usual, and my vulnerability echoed through the forest. The wind died down, and everything went quiet.
I didn’t move. Not a muscle.
No noises. Just quiet.
“It’s over,” Leonard said.
“Can’t be.”
Tiffany brushed her hands together, knocking pine needles to the ground. She took a few cocky steps toward the pit. Her smug grin hadn’t even finished bleeding across her lips when the wind picked up again. Tiffany screamed as the force knocked what was left of Leonard’s book out of his hands.
The other gusts had been wicked, sure, but this one was unrelenting. Leaves, dirt, and pine needles picked up in a swell, racing in circles around Yvette’s shallow grave. I grabbed hold of my shovel, digging it farther into the ground so I could cling to something stable.
“It’s a tornado!” my uncle hollered.
“Can’t be.” Leonard clung to a tree trunk at the forest’s edge. Nowhere was safe. Branches were coming down in the wind, and they were big. In all my life, I’d never been so afraid. We were all going to die. And it was all my fault.
A resounding crack rang through the dark of night. A tree was coming down on us—had to be—but the air was too full of swirling debris to see anything clearly.
When I heard Tiffany’s screams, I realized it wasn’t a tree. Our tepee was coming down.
“Tiffany!” my uncle cried.
I shielded my eyes, and looked over just in time to see the red of her dress disappearing beneath those thick branches. My impulse was to save her, and I would have, but the top of the tepee came straight at me. I backed away, but a moment too late. The massive cluster of branches caught my shovel, knocking the handle straight into my face. I fell back. The pain was so intense I couldn’t steady myself.
Everything went black.
My head started to buzz, and I tasted blood. It was in my throat and on my lips. My nose felt like fire, throbbing, but all I cared about was the girl beneath the tepee.
I choked on blood. Was I crying? I hadn’t realized it until that moment. “Tiff, are you okay?”
I couldn’t hear anything besides my heartbeat and the wind. Where was my uncle? Where was Leonard? I couldn’t see a thing, but I felt my way across the pine nee
dles until my hands met the top of the tepee, still intact. “Tiffany?”
No answer. Nothing.
Blood dripped onto my hands as the turbulent wind picked up again. This time I didn’t expect it and I wasn’t holding on to anything firmly enough. The wind grabbed me like two metaphysical talons, like a ghost eagle picking me up and lifting me clear off the ground.
I willed myself down, convinced I was dreaming. That shovel must have knocked me out. None of this was really happening. But that didn’t stop me screaming, “Help! Uncle Flip! Help me!”
“Nobody’s going to help you,” the voice cried out. The voice of Yvette. “Without me, you’re nothing. I’m all you have in the world, Rebecca.”
“No!” I kicked my feet. They weren’t touching anything. I must have been a foot off the ground, and the force of Yvette was pulling me upward. “I’m not coming with you, Yvette. I hate you. You’re hurting me! You’re hurting everyone!”
The harder I resisted, the more pain streaked through me. I felt stretched like spaghetti. My middle ached. My bones were going to break any second. I could feel my vertebrae trying to pop apart. I wriggled, but it didn’t do any good.
And then I heard my uncle’s voice, like he was speaking to me from another dimension. “Your anger isn’t helping you, Becca. Show some compassion. Tell her you care.”
That was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. “But I don’t! I don’t care about her! Only Tiffany. Where’s Tiffany?”
The pull intensified. My legs felt like they were ten feet long. I couldn’t struggle against the force. I couldn’t do anything.
“Tell Yvette you understand,” my uncle called out. “Tell her you forgive her.”
“But I don’t!” Why was he being so weird? “I don’t forgive her. She’s hurt me too much. She’s hurt everyone!”
“I know, but you can choose compassion, Bec. Choose to be loving. Show her you care. You have such a big heart, Bec, the way you take care of your brother and hold the family together. You have it in you to show anyone you care—even if they’ve hurt you.”
Tears stung my eyes. I clung to my anger, but I was desperate. I would do anything. Anything to stop this pain.
