Down

by Kirsten Weiss

  Connor stopped in front of a green, metal table on the sidewalk. Wisteria vines loaded with plump blossoms twined up the nearby trellis. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll get the coffee.” He winked. “I know how you like it.”

  “Wait, I should–”

  But he’d already gone inside the shop.

  I gazed longingly through its windows. The only way I ever resisted their cupcakes was by not going inside. Now I was dangerously close to running into the bakery and ordering a red velvet piled with cream cheese frosting. Resist, resist, resist – both cupcakes and Connor.

  I sat in a chair facing the street and hooked my purse over its back. Though it was only May, summer had arrived, and the morning was already making rivulets of sweat on my back.

  A ghost walked past bundled up in furs, his beard a tangled mess, a pick ax over one shoulder. He grinned and tipped his hat to me, and walked on.

  I pulled out my notebook and wrote down the details. The dead man’s rough energy. The weather-hardened hands, brown and calloused. The hope and desire in his stride.

  “Lenore?” a man asked, his voice rich and filled with concern.

  I looked up.

  Councilman Steve Woodley loomed over the table, the sunlight haloing his tonsured head. His silver hair was as sleek as his pressed blue slacks and a button-up shirt, open at the collar and exposing his muscular chest. His goatee was elegantly devilish.

  “Councilman Woodley.” I straightened in the metal chair.

  He motioned negligently. “Call me Steve. I was so sorry to learn about Mike. How are you doing?”

  “I miss him.” My throat closed, and I couldn’t say anymore.

  “Of course you do. I miss him too. We’ve been friends for ages. He went to school with my youngest brother.” The muscles in his face shifted to disapproval. “Before my brother left town.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I suppose Peter and Gretel will be taking over the store?” he asked.

  God, I hoped not. But there was no getting away from it. “Yes, I think so.”

  “I’m glad. This town needs a bookstore.” He hesitated. “I’ve heard that you’re not convinced Mike’s death was an accident.”

  “I think it should be investigated like any other.”

  “Mike was old,” he said. “These things happen.”

  Not to Mike. “I suppose,” I said, fighting irritation. Steve’s attitude was logical, but he didn’t know.

  “Well. Let me know if you need anything.” He nodded and strode down the shaded walk.

  A black SUV drove past. It looked like Nick Heathcoat’s, and I closed the notebook, squeezing it in my hands. In two months he and Karin would marry. In three months, they’d be dead.

  I jammed my notebook into my pocket. We had to stop the curse that had hung over our family for generations, killing every Bonheim woman at the birth of her first child, ensuring the child was a girl, and killing the husband soon before or after. And we had a chance to stop it. For the first time since the curse began, there were three Bonheims to fight it. That had to mean we had a chance.

  Connor emerged from the bakery with two paper cups. “Still thinking about that crosswalk, I see.” He set the cups on the table.

  “No. I mean, yes,” I said. “There’s so much to think about. Have you learned anything new about Mike?”

  His expression shifted, and he scraped the empty chair across the concrete and sat. “We won’t have anything back from the county coroner for at least a week or two.”

  “But the coroner is looking into it? So you agree his death was suspicious?”

  He shifted in his chair. “An autopsy is routine when no one is there to witness a sudden death.”

  Disappointed, I lowered my head. “So you don’t think it was suspicious.”

  “People fall, Lenore.”

  “Mike wasn’t unsteady on that ladder.”

  “He was getting up there in years,” Connor said.

  My hands tightened on the mug. “Not all elderly people are doddering!”

  “Anyone can slip up.”

  Biting my lip, I turned the coffee cup in my hand.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked.

  “No.” Nothing admissible in a court of law.

  He leaned closer and placed his broad hand over mine.

  In spite of my grief, my breathing quickened.

  “Lenore, you can talk to me. I know Mike meant a lot to you. If there’s anything you need, let me know.” Removing his hand from mine, he settled back in his chair. “After all, we’re friends right?”

  I swallowed. Right. Friends. “All I need is to get his death cleared up, and I know you’re working on it.” But was he?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Smarting from my driving mistake (I’m a dweller), I drove across Main Street’s troll-free stone bridge and onto the looping highway east.

  A field of thistles flashed past. A woman picked her way through it, her head bowed.

  My grip tightened on the wheel. Someone was at the site of the missing Bell and Thistle. But all of Doyle had come here once the police tape had come down. We’d stood and stared in silence, looking for some sign or explanation.

  Later, we’d come looking for that damned bell, the one that had hung outside the Bell and Thistle’s front door. Its phantom toll haunted the town, stopping us in our tracks, bringing sheens of panic to our faces. No one could predict when the bell would ring or fathom what it meant.

  We’d searched for the source of the sound, hoping someone had found the bell and hung it as a prank or remembrance or warning.

  In vain.

  The town council banned all bells, wind chimes, and alarms over one hundred and ten decibels.

  And still the ghost bell tolled.

  Grimacing, I focused on the highway. I had human ghosts to worry about.

  The road narrowed, and I slowed, crowded by the tightening loops of macadam and tall pines. I never knew whether to be relieved or disappointed that I’d never seen my father’s ghost on this highway where he’d died.

  My sisters and I had already outlived him.

  Below a ski resort, small lakes glittered like sapphires against milky granite boulders. Patches of snow dotted the jagged mountain peaks, the far-off trees appearing near-black.

  The woods in Doyle had become no-go zones for my sisters and I. Karin and Nick had gone in once and the paths had changed, getting them lost. Jayce had gone inside and been attacked by a murder of crows. The Doyle woods were fairy territory.

  But higher up, in the true Sierras, we were safe, and I drove there now. I wasn’t going to give up my connection to the woods and mountains. And I wasn’t going to give up my solitude either. Both were too important for a shamanic witch.

  I parked in a dirt lot beneath a trio of pines and locked my Volvo. After I’d hiked in a hundred meters, I ditched the dusty trail and clambered over boulders and moss-covered logs and up a steep hill.

  At the top of the hill, a twisted pine grew out of a granite slab. Leg muscles groaning, I sat against the tree and enjoyed my ghost and fairy-free view of the lakes.

  I opened my backpack and drank from my water bottle and thought of a future without Mike. Tears leaked from my eyes and mingled with my sweat. I dashed away both and dug my notebook and pen from my pack.

  The branches whispered in the breeze. I closed my eyes and listened. There were no words in this wind to haunt me, and a sense of peace descended, loosening my limbs.

  I wished Connor were here. He didn’t need to talk and analyze every experience. The deputy was the sort who could just be. I imagined leaning against his broad chest, the feel of his well-muscled arms enfolding me. His—

  My eyes flashed open, my sense of peace gone. What was I doing?

  Hurriedly, I finished my poetic notes, tucking the notebook into my pack. I stood, dusting off the seat of my shorts, and climbed higher.

  The trees thinned on the steep slopes an
d made way for wildflowers – yellow mule ears and red paintbrush and purple lupine.

  A stitch pinched my side, but I drove myself onward, wanting the exhaustion.

  Finally, panting, I stopped beneath a pine and dropped onto a flat rock. I gulped water and closed my eyes, tilting my head back against the bark.

  The Sierras had their own magic, and I felt it now, an electricity that raised the fine hair on my arms. When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t surprised to see the white wolf seated, panting, beside me.

  I looked over the lakes. They glittered, dazzling, and I shielded my eyes from the reflected sunlight. “I understand now what the vulture was trying to tell me. What brings you here?” I turned my head.

  The wolf was gone.

  “That’s not helpful.” Unless the messenger was the message. Was someone waiting in Doyle for me with news? Or perhaps I’d already received the message and needed to figure it out?

  I pulled out my notebook and pen and let the words flow – scraps of images and feelings that I’d later shape into a poem. The more I observed and thought about what I was observing, the more the world seemed to unfold. The ripples of light off the lakes. The silent wheeling of a bird of prey overhead. The scent of the pines. In spite of my sorrow, my heart swelled.

  When I ran out of words, I repacked my backpack. Nearly ninety minutes had passed. I picked my way down the hill. Down was always more treacherous than up, and off-trail I moved carefully, each step a meditation. Finally, I reached the trail and strode to my Volvo.

  Something white glinted in the soft earth of the trail.

  I bent and pulled a cattle jawbone from the dirt. It was smooth, angular, and narrow as a blade, with a single molar. I found its twin a foot away. It too had a molar in exactly the same place as the first. Shaking my head, I wondered at that, and at what had killed the animal, and why it had been left to rot for so long. But that’s the problem with spending so much time in Middle World – the ground we walk on and which I perceive so differently. Things get muddled. It gets hard to tell the difference between real and metaphor.

  I listened to the forest for answers, but all I heard was the wind soughing in the pines. Why hadn’t a tourist plucked these bones from the earth to mount on the wall? Why had they been left for me?

  I jammed the jawbones into my pack and continued down the trail.

  Driving back, I treated the road as a meditation as well, paying deep attention. Maybe that guy, Van Oss, had been too far away to be in any real danger, but it frightened me that I hadn’t seen him. I’d been lost in thought, and driving in a trance state is the quickest road to disaster. The not-so-near miss had been a wakeup call.

  I turned onto the road to town. In front of a yellow house, strings of grapevines rustled in the breeze, their grapes small and hard and green. Winding past a stone barn that had been converted to a wine tasting room, I turned onto Main Street

  Tourists were out in force this sunny afternoon. I slowed, my gaze flicking from the cars to the people crowding the sidewalks.

  Heedless, a blond boy, no more than six, raced into the street in front of my car. I braked hard, stopping a few feet from his startled face.

  He goggled his eyes, widening his mouth and touching his tongue to his chin in a gruesome grimace.

  In spite of myself, I burst into laughter, shocked by his youthful audacity.

  His mother ran into the street. Scolding him, she grabbed him roughly by the arm and scooped him up. They hurried to the shaded sidewalk and into a boutique.

  I blew out my breath and relaxed my grip on the wheel. So the morning’s clash with Mr. Van Oss had been a warning message. I’d thank the man if I didn’t suspect he’d take it badly.

  I drove on and drifted to a halt behind a sand-colored Range Rover. It didn’t budge from its spot in the middle of the road.

  Ahead, horns bleated.

  Five minutes passed. Releasing a loud breath, I leaned out the window, but I couldn’t see past the Range Rover.

  Finally, I pulled off the road and parked between two young maple trees. Doyle was too small for me to be stuck in traffic.

  Grumbling to myself, I strode past frontier-style buildings housing boutiques and restaurants and tasting rooms.

  “…atmosphere is thinner here,” a florid tourist told her husband. She adjusted her floppy hat. “You must be careful.”

  Her husband held a leash, a terrier straining at its end. The man licked an ice cream cone and looked skeptical.

  Past a blue Prius, the source of the traffic hold-up came into view. Alba Pollard, wearing a sandwich board, was blocking traffic. Angry black scrawls raced across her board. She shouted, rambling and waving her arms.

  Tourists stopped to watch the show then realized the woman was insane and scurried down the sidewalks, their faces averted.

  Fifty-something and scrawny, Alba made a u-turn in front of the Prius. Her sandwich board clunked against its bumper.

  The driver honked, cursing out his open window.

  I slowed my steps. No one listened to Alba, the town schizophrenic, so we had that in common. “Hi, Alba. How are you doing today?” Working with spirits, I’d found the only way to calm them down was to keep calm myself.

  It didn’t work with Alba.

  Her blue eyes blazed with rage. “You! You!” Her long gray hair was lank and wrenched into a pony tail. Her skin was suntanned, leathery. Her loose, black tank top and jeans were two sizes too big for her. The fabric slithered around her narrow frame, threatening to expose too much Alba.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The corporations are using psychic attacks to keep people sick. You know all about it.”

  “Y– yes, you told me about it before. Remember?”

  She pointed at me, and the sandwich board over her shoulders shifted. “Witchcraft!”

  I stepped away. “What?”

  “That phone is witchcraft!”

  I glanced at the cell phone clutched in my hand. Quickly, I slid it into the pocket of my shorts.

  “You’re corrupted like the rest of them.” She jabbed me in the chest with her bony finger. “You’re not real! Nothing here is real.”

  Scalp prickling, I rubbed my breastbone. “Alba–”

  She grabbed my arm and yanked me close. Alba stank of sweat and garlic, and I was close enough to see every wrinkle, every discolored patch of skin. “You need to run,” she said. Her scent turned acrid – the odor of fear. “She’s coming for you and your sisters. She needs a sacrifice to stay in this world. The Bell and Thistle wasn’t enough.”

  My breathing quickened, turned shallow. “What–?”

  “Alba, what on earth is going on?” Doctor Toeller strode toward us. Her short, silver-gold hair glinted in the sun, but she looked ice cool in her blue silk shirt and wide-legged white linen slacks.

  I stiffened, forced a smile. Then I realized how inappropriate a grin was and settled for a worried look. Worried was easy. The doctor scared the hell out of me.

  Alba’s grip tightened on my arm. “Run,” she said, her voice hoarse. “She’ll get you. She and Britney Spears!” Her voice rose to a howl.

  It was Mike’s warning, his shriek, all over again. My stomach turned, and I pressed my hand to my mouth to suppress my rising nausea.

  The doctor put her hands on her hips. “Not Britney Spears again. Alba, you’re blocking traffic. Now go home.”

  Alba glared at her battered tennis shoes. “Britney’s part of the corporations,” she muttered. “They’re making us sick with their psychic powers.”

  “And you’ll make yourself sick out here in the heat,” the doctor said. “Now go home before the sheriff comes. You won’t like it if she takes you to jail.”

  Releasing my arm, Alba shrank behind me. “Don’t let the sheriff take me away.”

  “She won’t if you go home.” The doctor nodded up the street.

  Alba turned and ran off, the sandwich board flapping against her thighs.

&nb
sp; I stared after her, my lips parted. Like the rest of the town, I’d never looked too closely at Alba. Until today.

  The doctor turned to me. “Are you all right?”

  I swallowed, mouth dry.

  A car honked, and I jumped.

  The doctor waved to the blue Prius. “We should get off the street.”

  “Ye-es.” I hurried to the sidewalk and stood in the shade of the balcony above Antoine’s Bar.

  “Poor Alba,” the doctor said. “In another age, she would have been committed. But the laws today...” She shrugged. “Refusing to commit the mentally ill doesn’t seem particularly compassionate, does it?”

  Sweat trickled down my temple. Normal. Everything was normal. Be normal. “Are you her doctor?” I asked.

  “No. Alba refuses to see a doctor.” The doctor shook her head. “I’m afraid neither of us can do anything for poor Alba. But how are you?”

  “I miss Mike.” My voice cracked.

  “Of course you do.” She grasped my hand, and I flinched. “How long have you been working for him?”

  “Since I returned from college. He was a good person.”

  “I couldn’t help but overhear what you said to Officer Hernandez. Do you think his death was foul play?”

  One way or another, Doc Toeller had a hand in all Doyle’s recent, sudden deaths. If Mike had died, she’d pushed the murderer his way, just like she’d done for all the others. A sudden fury boiled inside me. “You would know better than me.”

  Her blue eyes narrowed, turning arctic, and something… other, feral and dangerous, slipped out. “What do you mean?”

  That otherness had the effect of an ice bucket challenge, turning my anger to chill fear. I’d been stupid, and I had to fix this, fast. “You were the first doctor on the scene to examine him,” I floundered. “What’s your opinion?”