A Darcy Sweet Mystery Box Set Six

by K. J. Emrick

  So, Jon had found a little dresser with drawers that locked, and brought it home, and they had put it over here in the corner of their bedroom. It was no taller than Darcy’s hip, and the four sliding drawers were never going to be good for much, but they did the job of keeping curious children away really well. She kept her spirit communication kit in one drawer, and Jon kept his gun in another whenever he brought it home from work. There were only two keys, and they were always with Jon and Darcy.

  This used to be a lot easier, she reflected as she lifted the heavy wooden box of her kit out of the drawer. Back before they had children in the house they could just leave these things out in the open without any worry. Her communication stuff used to be down on a shelf in the living room. Not anymore. Jon’s gun was unloaded whenever it was here in the drawer, with a trigger lock to make it extra safe, just in case. That was just good sense when there were kids in a house.

  The danger a gun presented was obvious, but they’d found out how Darcy’s box of stuff could be just as dangerous the one time that Colby had tried to do a communication on her own. She still felt queasy when she remembered how hard it had been to pull her daughter back to herself that day. Or, how that candle accidentally knocked over by Colby’s foot had nearly set her room on fire. If Smudge hadn’t jumped in to help… well. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened. Yes. She was definitely going to miss that cat.

  Ever since then, Colby had promised not to try it on her own until she was older, and Darcy had shown her how. Still, better safe than sorry. Sometimes even good little girls broke their promises when they thought there was a good enough reason. The communication kit was going to stay locked up when not in use.

  Tiptoe appeared at her feet, winding her way between Darcy’s legs, rubbing her face along Darcy’s calves. Box in hand, she knelt down to scratch between the cat’s ears. “You ready to help me out with this?”

  The cat twitched her whiskers, looking back at Darcy with steady, unblinking eyes. It wasn’t exactly a ‘yes.’ More like I don’t want to, but I guess I’ll have to.

  There was a lot of building to do in their relationship, obviously. Still, Darcy counted it as progress that Tiptoe was here and ready to help. Plus, she wasn’t still hiding in the closet like she had for a few days after Smudge had died.

  Disappeared, was more accurate. One day he was here, the next he was gone. Darcy knew that animals did that sometimes. They didn’t want to be a burden on the ones who loved them, so they went off on their own to… pass on to the next place. She didn’t blame Smudge for it. She understood that death came for everyone in its own way. So, there hadn’t been a burial or a service, but in the backyard there was a stone about the size of a shoebox with Smudge’s name etched into it, and the year he left them. It was a nice memorial marker.

  In fact, it sat exactly where Darcy had dreamed herself talking to Aunt Millie in her lawn chair yesterday morning. Interesting.

  Darcy set all of that aside in her mind as she and Tiptoe made their way downstairs. She needed to concentrate on what she was about to do. The spirit communication had to take her full attention. She could feel the carved surface of the box under her fingers as they traced some of the designs. Jon had gotten this one for her as a gift, and she loved it. Inside was everything a girl needed to call on the ghosts of the dead.

  If that girl was Darcy Sweet, that is.

  In the living room she set the box down on the couch and lifted the lid open on its tiny hinges. She took out the six short, fat candles first, along with the six flat glass circles neatly stacked on their edges. There was a lighter in there too, but that would come after. She set down a glass disc, and then a candle on top of it, and then repeated that until all six candles were laid out in a circle in the middle of the floor. When it was perfect she lit the wick on each one. These were blueberry scented, for no other reason than because she liked the smell. The aroma didn’t matter. Just the pattern, and the light from the flickering bits of flame.

  Actually, the candles themselves didn’t matter, either. They were a way to focus the practitioner’s thoughts—her thoughts—and allow her mind to flow through the veil between this world and the next. A spirit communication was a mental and spiritual act. It was necessary to leave your physical form behind for a little while. That’s why it had been so dangerous for an untrained Colby to try this. Sometimes, it was difficult for Darcy to get in and out of the communication state.

  In other words… kids, don’t try this at home.

  There were packets of spices in the box as well. Salt, and sage, and garlic, and a few others. Each one had a purpose, but none of them were anything she needed for this. There were only two other things that she needed now. A connection to the ghost she wanted to call on, and something that would ground her to the world of the living.

  A connection to Steve Nelson had stumped her at first. It wasn’t like she was holding on to souvenirs of the people she’d helped put in prison. Steve had been an acquaintance, but never a real friend, and she didn’t have any objects of his in her house. What she did have was a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings. Not about her, specifically, but about Misty Hollow. It was on a shelf just over there.

  Taking it down, and flipping through a few of the pages, she found the story she was looking for.

  Misty Hollow Mayor Arrested For Double Homicide

  Lifting up the clingy plastic cover layer, Darcy carefully took out the clipped article from when Steve Nelson was arrested for killing Anna Louis and Jeff Thomas. It was one of the first articles in the scrapbook actually, right next to the article about Misty Hollow hiring Detective Jon Tinker. That one was just a little square blip, barely four lines long, but Darcy smiled over it just the same. Those two stories went hand in hand. Solving Anna and Jeff’s murder, and arresting Steve Nelson, was what had dropped Jon into her life. The bad news in her one hand had brought her the good news in her other.

  Funny how life did that for you sometimes.

  This news article clipping was going to have to be good enough as a connection to Steve. It was all she had. Taking it with her she sat down carefully, cross-legged, in the middle of the circle of candles. She put the clipping on the floor in front of her and laid the back of her wrists over her knees, and then looked expectantly over at Tiptoe. The gray cat was just sitting there, watching.

  “Well?” Darcy asked her. “This is where you come in.”

  Tiptoe got up on her feet, took a step toward Darcy, and then stopped. Her ears flicked, and her nose twitched.

  Darcy sighed. She understood. “It’s all right. Your father used to do this with me all the time. You saw him a few times, remember? Smudge was an old pro at watching over me while I slipped into a communication. Just don’t let me stay under for too long, and if one of the candles tips over and catches the house on fire, well then you can bite my nose to wake me up, so we don’t die.”

  The cat’s eyes got really wide and the fur on her tail puffed. Darcy laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  “I’m only joking. I’ve never burned anything down. Well. Not from a communication, anyway.” Tiptoe seemed unconvinced. “I could really use your help. We depend on each other in the Tinker-Sweet household. Cats, too. If you don’t want to, or if you’re scared, I understand, but I could really use your—”

  With a low rumbling in her chest, Tiptoe jumped across the imaginary line of the candle circle and climbed up to fold herself defiantly into Darcy’s lap. She looked up, once, and huffed a breath out of her nose. Darcy had no trouble reading that look.

  I’m not afraid of anything. Don’t judge me. You don’t know me. Just do the stupid communication already.

  Darcy thought that just maybe she was starting to truly understand this beautiful gray cat. In her heart, she knew that was what Smudge would have wanted.

  She settled a hand on Tiptoe’s back, feeling the warmth of her body and the softness of her fur. This was her lifeline back to the land of the l
iving in case she lost her way during the communication. There was a medallion in her box that would work, too, but cats were always better. When she was in that state Darcy could literally sit for hours on end without realizing it. A cat didn’t have that kind of patience. Sit still with them for a few hours and they were bound to wake you up just to ask when dinner was.

  At least, that was how it had been with Smudge. Hopefully Tiptoe had learned enough watching her daddy do this with Darcy to know the basics.

  Closing her eyes, concentrating on the news article, and on the comfortable weight of the cat in her lap, Darcy took three slow breaths. One at a time. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in… breathe out. Breathe in…

  …breathe out…

  The rhythm and the motion of her breath cleared away the constant hum of her thoughts. In her mind’s eye, she created the image of an endless blank space. Nothing at all, in every direction. There. Now, into that nothingness she imagined clouds of billowing white fog, rolling in from everywhere, all at once, filling up the entire empty space completely. It was a representation of the bridge between this world and the next. A gap between this reality, and the next one. When she was in that gap she could call upon the spirits of the dead to come and talk to her.

  Sometimes the call to the other side got redirected, like a wrong number. Sometimes, without meaning to, Darcy could find herself engaged in a conversation with a ghost who desperately needed to reach out to the living but who had nothing to do with whatever mystery she was trying to solve. Once, she had a long conversation with an Asian woman who spoke nothing but Cantonese. In the end she still had no idea what that woman wanted, and she’d scared off the ghost Darcy had been trying to reach so that the whole communication had been a bust.

  Hopefully, that wasn’t going to happen this time.

  Darcy opened her eyes. She stood there, in the empty space surrounded by the shadowy fog, and called out to the ghost she needed to talk to.

  “Steve? Steve Nelson. I’m here to help you.”

  Her voice echoed around the space, back to her and away again, bouncing off the billowing curtains of mist all around. There was no other sound. Nothing moved.

  “Steve?”

  Steve... Steve… Steve…

  Sometimes the call from the spirit communication went completely unanswered. It depended on how badly the ghost wanted to stay silent, and how far they had crossed over. Which was why she could talk to ghosts like Steve, and not Abraham Lincoln, for instance. All those so-called psychics out there using their crystal balls to call up the spirit of Cleopatra or Rasputin or Caesar Augustus. Bogus. Complete fakes. The recent dead, those who hadn’t yet crossed over, were the only ghosts anyone could ever talk to.

  Of course, ‘recent dead’ was a relative term, and she knew of a few places where Civil War soldiers still walked…

  She was getting distracted. She needed to concentrate if this was going to work. Steve had definitely been trying to hide from her at his mother’s house, but then he’d come out and shown himself by being all cryptic and lying down on his grandfather’s sick bed with his hands crossed over his chest like he was in a funeral home. Steve was still here. Even now, Darcy could feel that he hadn’t crossed over completely yet. He just wasn’t answering her.

  “Steve! Get your sorry face out here where I can see it, right now!”

  Her words echoed again, getting all twisted around themselves and repeating from odd angles until every bit of her demand was coming at her all at once.

  “Sorry face…”

  “Can see it…”

  “Sorry…face…Steve…your…now…”

  “…see…your…here…get…!”

  “…right…now…”

  “Steve?”

  “Steve…Steve…Steve…”

  “Where are you?”

  “…see…”

  “…your…”

  “…where…you”

  “All right, that’s enough of that.”

  But the echo of her voice continued.

  “…where…that’s…enough…of…”

  “…see…”

  “…your…”

  “…face…”

  “SEE YOUR FACE”

  That time the echo was a scream from right behind her and Darcy whirled, stepping back at the same time, tendrils of mist coiling and swirling, in a place where direction had no meaning and distance was relative.

  Right there, right there behind her, was the ghost of Steve Nelson.

  Darcy’s heart was hammering. She couldn’t catch her breath. The ghosts in her communication usually didn’t scare her. There had been a few, however, who terrified her. Steve had come right up to her in this in between space without her even knowing he was there. He had intentionally snuck up on her and turned her own words back on her. Yeah. Terrified fit the situation pretty well.

  He grinned with a smile that was too wide, pushing back the skin of his cheeks until she could count all thirty-two of his perfect white teeth. He was just like she’d seen him at his mother’s, wearing those clothes that were too baggy for his body. Ghosts ordinarily manifested in outfits that were familiar and most often, it was the clothes they died in. Darcy still thought it was odd for Steve to be wearing clothes that were too big. It was almost like he hadn’t dressed himself. Like someone else had done it for him.

  She gathered her courage again and stared him down. “Okay, Steve. I see you. Um. I guess, first things first. You know you’re dead, right?”

  In life, he’d never been a very imposing man. In fact, he was always nervous and fidgety. Darcy had chalked it up to him knowing he was a sinner, a thief and a murderer, with maybe a conscience that was eating him up from inside over what he’d done.

  Here, in the in between space, he glared daggers of fire at her. His eyes blazed red. His grin was wicked. His ghostly, transparent hand came up to reach for her throat…

  And Darcy slapped it away.

  Well, not so much slapped. Steve didn’t have a physical body. Her hand went right through him, shredding the appearance of his arm into a hazy mist, like colored smoke.

  He stared at himself as he came back together again, turning his hand over in disbelief. Transparent and intangible, he was only an echo of what he used to be.

  “That’s right,” Darcy said to him. “You’re dead. Sorry to be so blunt, but honestly? I don’t like you. I’m here because someone killed you in Misty Hollow and I want to know who. Can you tell me that? Was it Jess O’Conner?”

  He flexed his hand, over and over, tendrils of mist coiling off the fingertips with every motion. “Dead,” he whispered in a voice from beyond the grave.

  “Yes, Steve.” Darcy felt her impatience echoing across this space like the reverberation of a rubber band pulled tight and then snapped. “You’re dead. We just went over that.”

  “Dead,” he repeated.

  “Yes, dead. For Pete’s sake, try to keep up, okay? All I want from you is information, and then I’ll leave you to whatever afterlife swallows people like you. Was it Jess O’Conner who killed you?”

  He looked at Darcy now, staring straight through her, the heat from earlier gone from his cold stare. “Dead.”

  Darcy fisted her hands against her hips. This was not going well.

  “Dead… my grandfather is dead.”

  Oh. Well. That was progress of a sort, she supposed. “Okay. Yes, your grandfather is dead, too. He died two months ago. That’s why you came back to Misty Hollow, right? You just got out on early parole and you were here for the reading of the will, hoping you were in it. Don’t get me started on what I think about someone like you getting early parole. Let’s stick to my question. You came here because of Merlon’s will, but you told Jess O’Conner about it too, right? You told her, and she wanted that money. So, did she come here to meet you? Did she kill you?”

  “My grandfather,” he repeated, “is dead.”

  Darcy sighed, a sound of rushing wind here among the rolling m
ists. This was how it was sometimes when you tried to talk to the dead. Instead of answering the questions you wanted them to answer, they would fixate on one piece of information. Something only they thought was important. For some reason, Steve’s ghost was stuck on the idea of his grandfather dying.

  “All right, Steve,” she said to him, trying a different approach. “If it wasn’t Jess, then was it maybe… Bruce Turner?”

  She hated herself for even asking the question, but she had reason to believe it could be him. He was very protective of Helen, and Steve had come close to ruining Helen’s life. Now here he was, back in town. Motive. Opportunity. It was all there.

  His ghost moved again, this time falling down to his knees, and then lying on his back, and crossing his hands over his chest.

  “My grandfather…”

  “Is dead,” Darcy finished for him. “Yes, Steve. I know. You’re dead, too. We know how your grandfather died. He was very old, and sometimes that’s all it takes. Everyone eventually dies. It sucks, I grant you that, but it’s also kind of comforting to know that no matter who you are, death comes for us all. We’re all equal that way.”

  Steve didn’t seem impressed by her simple truth. He closed his eyes, and his image wavered.

  “Don’t you dare fade out on me, Steve! You stay right here with me until you’ve answered my question! Who killed you? Who killed you, Steve?”

  “My grandfather,” was the answer, “is dead.”

  Darcy realized that wasn’t an answer to her question after all. He was just repeating the same words over and over. His grandfather was dead, his grandfather was dead. Darcy knew that. Merlon Nelson had died months before Steve got out of prison, long before he came back to town. It didn’t make any sense that the grandfather could be involved in this mystery…

  Unless he was, in a way.

  The answers she’d been looking for came to her in a rush. It was all guesswork, all theory and wishful thinking, but she believed she was right. Steve was telling her the answer after all, in his own way.