by Boris Bacic
“Yes, Medford. It’s a small town just a couple hours away from—”
“Send me the address in text. And I will come tomorrow afternoon. Okay?”
“Okay, but—”
“I will come tomorrow, and I will see what the problem is. Then we will fix it together, wi?”
“Wi,” Jill instinctively said.
“Byen. Send me the address in text. Okay?”
“Okay, I will.”
“Byen. Bòn nwi. Bye-bye!”
Before Jill could say anything, Fabiola disconnected the call. Jill was flabbergasted. She glanced at Cheryl to see if she heard that, too.
“I guess I should send her the address,” Jill shrugged and then entered the messaging option on her phone.
“Are you sure we want to hire her?” Cheryl wrinkled her nose.
“We don’t have a choice. She is the only one who can help us with this.”
“Maybe she didn’t understand you well. Springfield is about two hours away from Medford.”
“Maybe she travels. I mean, the website said she helps thousands of clients, and I doubt all of them are from Springfield,” Jill shrugged.
“How about hiring a priest instead?”
“A priest wouldn’t be able to help us understand what loa Mom was trying to summon. We have to try this.”
Jill sent the address to Fabiola. She replied five minutes later with a text.
Okay, I will be there tomorrow 6 pm, cheri. The cost is $900.
“Geez, she’s expensive,” Jill scoffed.
“No wonder she’s willing to drive out, huh?”
“For nine hundred bucks? I’d do the same.
Jill leaned on her seat and pensively stared at the dimly lit room on the second floor. Cheryl curled back up into a sleeping position.
“Let’s just hope she isn’t a fraud,” she said through a yawn.
Chapter 25
Cheryl was woken up by the obtrusively bright rays of sunlight gleaming in through the window. She tried to ignore them as much as she could, but not only were they visually annoying, but the car was getting too hot to sleep in, too.
After some unsuccessful attempts to fall back asleep, Cheryl pulled herself into a sitting position. Jill was not in the car. The first thing that came to her mind was the traumatic event from last night. She remembered seeing Erika all broken at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes staring blankly into nothingness. It made Cheryl feel sick.
Last night, she had trouble falling asleep because of it—among other things.
Jill had already fallen asleep by then, by Cheryl was still tossing and turning, thinking about Erika, Mom, and all the creepy stuff Jill told her about. Eventually, she decided to browse social media a little bit.
That turned out to be a mistake, too, because she saw something that she shouldn’t have. She was scrolling her feed on Instagram when she came upon a picture posted by Tom. It was a picture of Tom and Paula hugging and smiling at the camera. Underneath the picture was the caption “Love this woman so much” and a bunch of heart-shaped emojis.
Cheryl thought she’d feel anger or sadness. She thought she’d go hysterical for the knife she had embedded in her back. She was surprised at how calm she actually was. Not only calm, but little she cared seeing it.
When she further tried to click on Paula’s profile, she realized that she couldn’t.
She must have blocked me, she thought blankly.
She entered Tom’s profile instead, but realized that that was his only new post recently. She also noticed that he removed all the pictures he had with Cheryl. At first, Cheryl just stared at his latest picture. She kind of expected this to happen sooner rather than later, so she wasn’t even surprised.
The only thing that bothered her was how people would be talking behind their backs because Tom, up until recently, posted pics with Cheryl. In the end, she deduced that she would be the victim here—Paula was the slut who stole someone’s boyfriend.
Eventually, she just thought to herself sardonically that she hoped the two of them were happy before blocking Tom on all social media. As soon as she did it, she felt an invisible stone drop from her heart.
Cheryl fell asleep almost immediately after that.
Now that she was awake, she took a moment to ponder whether she felt anything regarding the picture she saw last night. Maybe her emotions were blunted from the trauma she went through last night, but if things stayed like this, then she could safely say that she was free of Tom’s toxic influence.
When Cheryl entered the house, she saw Jill’s childhood doll still sitting on the floor. She’s been in that position since last night, facing the living room, creepily staring towards it. Cheryl went around it in a wide arc and loped through the living room.
“Sleep well?” Jill asked her as soon as Cheryl walked into the kitchen.
The sound of something sizzling came from the pan on the stove. A savory redolence which Cheryl instantly recognized as pancakes filled the air, causing her mouth to water. Cheryl was surprised to find Jill in here, especially given how timid she was yesterday about entering the house. She supposed it was because the house was much less unsettling in the daytime.
“I guess so. You?” Cheryl asked as she sat at the kitchen table.
“Fine. I noticed you couldn’t fall asleep,” Jill said as she flipped a pancake on top of the already finished ones on the plate next to her.
“No, I guess I couldn’t,” Cheryl opened up.
Jill grabbed the plate with the stack of pancakes and walked over to the table, where she promptly placed the food in front of Cheryl. The syrup was already there.
“The whole thing with Erika?” Jill asked as she sat down.
“Some other things, too. But mostly Erika, yeah,” Cheryl said as she picked up the syrup and pulled the plate of pancakes closer to herself. “Thanks for the breakfast, sis.”
Sis.
She hasn’t called Jill that since they were kids. The word accidentally left her mouth, but somehow it felt natural to utter it. Jill seemingly noticed this, too, because she smiled when she heard that. She visibly tried to hide it, but it was too late.
“Is it Tom?” Jill cleared her throat and asked.
Cheryl nodded and poured the syrup over the pancakes in abundance. It slid all the way down to the bottom of the plate, creating a moat-like puddle.
“Wanna talk about it?” Jill asked.
“It’s nothing major. He just posted a picture with his new girlfriend,” Cheryl said.
“I’m so sorry, Cherry,” Jill reached across the table and gently put her hand over Cheryl’s. “How do you feel about that?”
“To tell you the truth, liberated,” Cheryl chuckled.
Jill leaned back in her chair and smiled.
“Really?” she asked.
Cheryl stabbed a piece of pancake on her fork and nodded.
“Really. I didn’t even realize how toxic our relationship was until he left me.”
She stuffed the pancake from her fork into her mouth and chewed a few times. The pancakes were good, really good. She’d even go as far as to say they were as good as Dad’s.
“For example,” Cheryl said as she swallowed. “He tried to convince me not to go home after Mom fell into a coma.”
“Why?”
“He said that she didn’t have much time left anyway, and I’d be wasting the weekend traveling.”
“Jesus. He said it in those exact words?”
Jill probably thought that Cheryl twisted Tom’s words, but she didn’t. She remembered him saying it very clearly.
Babe, I’d hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your Mom’s probably going to be gone soon. Why don’t you just come over to my place for the weekend and try to relax?
“Yeah,” Cheryl said. “He was probably too lazy to drive me all the way out to Medford. And he made it very clear how much he hated the fact that he had to cancel the plans with his buddies to give me a ride.”
“
What piece of shit,” Jill shook her head.
“Yeah. But, then again, Tom just had a tendency to say the stupidest things ever, just out of the blue.”
“It sounds like a lot of stuff had been piling up with you guys.”
“Yeah,” Cheryl nodded.
Jill had no idea exactly how much had piled up between Cheryl and Tom. Their relationship was doomed from the start. Now that Cheryl was out of the relationship, her eyes were wide open, and she realized just how much bad stuff she turned a blind eye to.
When they first met at a dorm party, Tom was so kind and compassionate. Cheryl had a lot of guys hitting on her in college—mostly because they thought she was easy—and although she may have seemed like she was only looking for one-night stands, she wasn’t the kind of girl who would sleep around (courtesy of Mom’s upbringing).
That’s why she fell for Tom almost immediately. He was polite, he wasn’t pushy, and he attentively listened to Cheryl as she talked about herself—not like the other guys who would nod and pretend-listen and then invite her to their room.
Cheryl and Tom fell in love with each other pretty early on in their relationship, but Tom’s side of emotions seemed to burn out rather quickly. The kindness and compassion he had at the beginning of their relationship was replaced by indifference, and then later, hostility. He stopped telling her that he loved her and showed less affection, criticized her for everything she did, got irritated quickly…
It happened so gradually that Cheryl couldn’t pinpoint when exactly it started. And now that she was finally out of the relationship, she couldn’t help but wonder why she tolerated all that. She wasn’t a saint herself, she was aware of that. She took Tom for granted and was self-centered, but she didn’t deserve to be cheated on.
“I see you finally managed to perfect Dad’s secret recipe,” Cheryl said as she took another bite of the moist pancakes.
“It’s about time. I make these pancakes for Charlie from time to time, and he loves them,” the look in her eyes turned sorrowful as she mention of her son.
Maybe she was wondering if this was all going to end well.
“You don’t have to do this,” Cheryl said.
Jill looked at her in bafflement.
“Do what?” she asked.
“All of this. You can get back inside your car and drive home to your family. It’s that easy.”
For a moment, Jill looked like she was tempted to do just that, but a moment later, she smiled forlornly and shook her head.
“You think I’d let you take care of this alone?”
“No, I assumed not. But you probably need to think about this. You have a husband and a son. You need to take care of them.”
“I also have a sister. And I don’t plan on letting you face whatever’s in this house alone. Not this time.”
That almost brought a tear to Cheryl’s eye. The knowledge that Jill still cared about her meant the world to her. Cheryl smiled. She was mostly playing with her pancakes by this point.
“You think this woman… Fabiola… is going to be able to help us?” she asked.
“I did some research on her today.”
“Of course you did.”
Yup, that was Jill. Ever the vigilant sister who made sure nothing went wrong. Jill ignored Cheryl’s remark and continued.
“A lot of people vouched for her. Lots of them claimed they had problems similar to ours and that Fabiola managed to fix them in just one or two visits.”
“Did they have problems as severe as ours?” Cheryl asked, taking another bite of the pancakes, now mostly out of boredom.
“No. But there were some creepy encounters that other people had.”
“Do tell.”
Jill shifted in her seat and leaned on the table with her elbows.
“Well, this one guy said that his wife used to talk in her sleep. When I first read it, I thought he was joking, but things started to actually get really freaky. She’d sleepwalk and talk about all sorts of scary, incoherent things. And one night, he woke up to find her standing with her face against the wall and walking sideways while feeling it with her palms. When he asked her what she was doing, she shushed him and said ‘they are in the walls’.”
Jill made quotation marks with her fingers.
“Who was?” Cheryl jerked her head back in confusion.
“No idea,” Jill shrugged. “Anyway, it got so out of control that he ended up calling Fabiola. And according to Fabiola, the wife was haunted by some malevolent spirits. She did some stuff to the wife and cleansed the house, and apparently, everything’s been fine ever since.”
“Any negative experiences from other people?”
“A few, but they were minimal in comparison to literally the hundreds of positive ones that were there.”
“What did they say?”
“One of them complained that Fabiola talked too much and too fast.”
Cheryl raised an eyebrow. She had long since placed her fork down and stopped eating pancakes. She offered them to Jill, but she politely declined, stating that she wasn’t hungry.
“But what about her paranormal problem? Did she resolve that?” Cheryl asked.
“They didn’t say. They just wrote one sentence that Fabiola talks too much.”
“Some people…” Cheryl rolled her eyes.
Jill stood up from the table, pushing the chair backward with a loud scraping noise.
“Well, I’m gonna go through the things I still haven’t seen in my room. What are you gonna do?”
“I think I’ll…” she wanted to say that she’d do the same, but then she remembered the nightmare she had in her room yesterday. “I think I’ll be lazy, and then I’ll go check on Mom later.”
Jill glanced at her momentarily. There was caution in that glare, and rightly so. Cheryl didn’t want to step inside Mom’s room, either.
“I’ll be fine, don’t worry, Jill,” Cheryl chuckled.
Jill nodded and gave her a fake smile.
“Alright. When you decide to do it, I’ll go with you.”
Chapter 26
As soon as she stepped out of the living room, Jill stopped dead in her tracks.
Damn, I forgot all about Lola, she said as she looked down at the doll. It was in a seated position, facing the living room. Up until yesterday, Jill found her charming. Now, she saw the doll as the embodiment of creepy. Still, a part of her felt attached to Lola, and she couldn’t throw her away just because of what happened last night, no matter how distressing it was.
She bent down and picked up the doll. It felt cold to the touch, but not unnaturally so. She’s been in the shade, away from the rays of sun all morning, and the house was already cold as it was, even in the spots where the sunlight landed. Jill turned Lola over in her hands, examining it for any sustained damage. She looked as good as the day the boy gave it to her.
The boy.
Who was he? Jill tried remembering more about him over the past few days, but she just couldn’t remember anything more than blurry snippets of her and the boy playing as kids.
Maybe Cheryl would remember. She was very young back then, but she would surely remember any boy that Jill would have played with. It’s not like that many people visited them back then, anyway.
Jill took Lola upstairs towards her old room, not letting the door of her mother’s bedroom out of sight. She touched the pocket of her jeans and felt the outline of the key there, much to her relief. The house was silent right now, unnervingly so, but Jill preferred it that way.
Last night, at some point, she was sure she heard the radio playing from her mom’s room.
Shoving those thoughts out of her mind, Jill went into her bedroom and placed Lola on the nightstand into an upright sitting position. She was on the fence about bringing the doll back home, but after everything that happened in the house, she was sure she wouldn’t be doing that.
Even though she didn’t want to actively admit it, a part of her feared that she’d bring some e
vil with the doll into her home, and that the same things might start happening. That suddenly got her thinking about the whole thing.
Why was her mom holding Lola last night in the first place? It’s not like the doll was in her room, so she picked it up off the nightstand and ran outside. The doll was in Jill’s room, which made Jill think that her mom—or whatever possessed her—went out of her way to grab it.
But why?
Jill scrutinized Lola once more. Was there anything on her that she was supposed to see? She flipped her around in various positions, expecting to see a small, hand-drawn vèvè, but of course, there was nothing. Determined not to bash her head around a mystery that may not have been a logical mystery at all, she put the doll back down and exited her room.
***
Sometime later, the sisters decided to check up on Mom. Jill had the key in her hand, which she clutched so firmly that veins bulged on the back of her hand.
“Are you sure you want to check up on her?” Jill asked.
Cheryl nodded. She actually wasn’t sure, but she had to ensure that Mom was okay.
“Just a quick glance, and we’re out,” she said.
Jill furrowed her brow. The creases on her face were more prominent from this angle, with her head only partially illuminated by the sun. Jill approached the door and bent down, leveling her eye with the keyhole.
As she peered inside, Cheryl went silent. She heard the muffled beeping of the machine inside the room. Suddenly, she felt a foreboding sense building up inside her. She couldn’t help but imagine some Vodou ghost on the other side of the door and sticking a sharp, elongated finger through the keyhole.
She wanted to tell Jill to move away from there, but at the same time, she didn’t want to panic for nothing. What if she was just exaggerating? Jill wouldn’t trust her as she used to. But what if she wasn’t, and something really was in there? What if it poked Jill’s eye out and—
“It seems okay,” Jill said a moment later, straightening her back—much to Cheryl’s relief.
She stuck the key inside the keyhole and slowly turned it. The lock clicked in an overly loud manner. Jill pushed the door and allowed it to open on its own, revealing the dim interior of the room.