Passover

by Aphrodite Anagnost

  “Feels damn cold where I’m sittin’.” said Deputy Crockett, his back to the fireplace. He stretched long arms behind him, reaching for warmth that wasn’t there.

  Rachel winced. Below Crockett’s loose cuff an angry red boil marked the pale flesh of his wrist, like a living creature, risen from Exodus.

  Rain tapped at the windows and roof.

  Dave sniffed. “What’s that burning stench?”

  “Ain’t nothin’ burnin’.” The sheriff glanced at the sofa and sighed. “If it were, the place would warm up.”

  Only then did the cold bite at Rachel’s fingertips. She pulled her coat tight around her. It was as if a dry frost moved in pools that floated around the house. Everyone was shivering, but its touch still seemed personal. Downdrafts, she thought. The tiny bit of wind outside was finding cracks and crevices, now one, now another. Or one of Revel Petty’s famous inventions, causing a commotion, yet unfound. Then again, perhaps she was imagining things. Likely that. Fear was cold, and dense too. It drew the heart’s warmth. How? She didn’t know. Some kind of mind- body thing. She would figure it out.

  “Please sit in a circle,” said Beatricia, also eyeing the sofa longingly. “Push the furniture out of the way.”

  Rachel recalled Revel Petty’s skull spilled open, brains splattered on the wall. Clean-up crew did a damn good job, she thought, but still there were stains she hoped the children didn’t notice. She wondered if the boys saw the gaping hole where the painting of Daisyland had hung.

  The men scraped the grandfather clock aside and shoved an end table, then a long leather sofa against the yellow walls. Petty had been a tall man, Rachel remembered. A photograph of him sat on the mantle, still in place, apparently, despite the creepy rearrangement of the furniture. As if whoever killed him had wanted him to see what was happening to his house.

  Rachel moved a salon chair to the wall without asking for help. Finally, a large space was cleared in the middle, lined by vacant furniture.

  “Better, ma’am?” said Lev.

  Beatricia cupped his cheek, and squeezed it. She leaned over and did the same to her two cringing grandsons.

  “Everybody sit.” She took the sheriff’s arm again. “Phil, lower me. Slowly, please.”

  He held her, easing her into a kneeling position onto a pillow. Then thumped down beside her, heart-pine boards creaking under his weight. The others dropped to complete the circle.

  For a moment, no one spoke. Only the sound of the creaking porch swing, suspended from rusty chains, creeped into the house between sills and windows to fill Daisyland’s quiet spaces.

  Gauzy dust gleamed like minuscule fairies in sunbeams slanting through wavy windowpanes that lit the spirit board with an oval of light.

  “Perfect.” Beatricia cleared her throat. “First, we need to generate animal magnetism. It’s powerful. It can animate anything. Take the hand of the person on either side of you.” Rachel was last to obey, waiting until a hand on either side of her grew impatient and reached for hers.

  Bea tapped her nails on the edge of the planchette and closed her eyes. “This isn’t truly the correct way to proceed, but it’s the best I can do.” She glanced over at Rachel. “Considering.”

  The creaking stopped. No sounds came from outside; not since the wind had weakened.

  “Don’t forget, Phil found the table upside-down like a dead cockroach,” Beatricia said. “Such disorder isn’t unusual. Books about ghosts report strange occurrences in old mausoleums. Coffins found standing on end, unshelved, scattered.”

  “And you can explain that, Mother?”

  “No need to be scornful, dear.” Beatricia smiled, eyes narrowing. “It would take the energy of the living to lift and slide coffins. Energy is expended in mausoleums. That is, physical energy. There’s also the energy of joy, grief, and pain. All human energy produces animal magnetism. In mausoleums, when the physical work is done, the expended effort is sealed up. Over time, it magnifies, waiting to be used by spirits, who have little of their own.”

  Rachel lifted an eyebrow. “Spirits, Mother?”

  “Ghosts,” said Beatricia. “A ghost is a spirit who uses deposits of animal magnetism and has a purpose, confused or not. A ghost can move things—coffins, machinery. A ghost who is confused moves things at random. ”

  “This house is not a mausoleum,” said Rachel.

  “Exactly. There’s a great deal of energy because Mr. Petty suffered and died here. But the house is not sealed well and too little time has passed for energy to magnify. No, the ghost who killed Mr. Petty has gotten his strength from somewhere else.”

  “Not the magnetic generator?” Rachel snickered.

  “Long gone,” said Wise.

  “So that’s your explanation?” Creed smirked. “What about a band of bad guys—like, a home invasion?”

  “Why would the furniture have been moved, Mr. Creed?” Beatricia frowned at the two boys, who were poking each other in the ribs. They straightened up like good little Prussian soldiers, eyes forward, grins wiped from their faces.

  “Creed’s right,” said Rachel. “We’ve destroyed a crime scene for this crock of shit?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” said Dave.

  “I’m offering a theory.” Beatricia closed her eyes serenely. “Let’s see what happens. We’re adding our personal energy to that which has already been festering here. It’s growing exponentially. Like debt.”

  She waved her palms over the board. “I’m clearing the energy so the spirits can transmit.

  Now quiet,” she said, voice descending. “Concentrate on calling a spirit to tap into that energy.” She peeked at Rachel. “And if you can’t do that, just try to empty your mind. Focus on your breathing.”

  “Really, Mother.”

  “Quiet. Concentrate.”

  Rachel’s hands fisted into a white-knuckled clench, and she flattened her lips in concentration. She had never felt the need to test the boundaries between reality and the supernatural, even as a teenager. Beatricia had tried to arrange consultations with priests to help her combat her night terrors, but Rachel had refused, dismissing the clergy as well meaning, perhaps, but, at the end of the day, delusional, no better than mediums.

  “We should be doing something to protect ourselves from the killer, not wasting our time with Victorian parlor games,” she said.

  “Stifle yourself, dear,” Beatricia snapped. “We are doing as you wish, even if it’s not the way you think it should be done.”

  Rachel lowered her head, so her mother could not see her eyes through the shroud of fallen hair. “Sorry.”

  Beatricia fixed her gaze straight ahead on the window overlooking the jonquils in the front yard, then began slow, deep abdominal breathing. “I am emptying my mind,” she said. “And coiling the serpent of energy at the base of my spine. There’s a small ball of fire, like a miniature sun, appearing in the glass of the living room window. Rolling between the panes, spinning like a dreidel. I don’t know what it is, but suddenly I’m freezing.”

  Beatricia’s fingertips quivered as she touched them lightly on the edges of the planchette.

  A dagger of ice just punctured my heart, thought Rachel, figuratively.

  Rachel wiggled, cross-legged, and squeezed her eyes shut. The sooner this is over, the better off we’ll be, she thought. She suppressed the same frenetic energy that often caused her to hyperventilate and shout or cry, driving Wolfie to his pantry. Dave squeezed her hand harder. Did that mean shut up and get on with the charade, or was he offering support? Well, she would be quiet, cooperate like the others.

  Their feelings seemed transparent. Sheriff Wise was worried about this little gathering being a violation of legal protocol. Creed had been laughing with his eyes. Lev alone seemed truly reverent. Perhaps his Jewish upbringing had brought him to respect all trappings of religious ritual, even this one, in spite of his loss of faith. Her boys were both suppressing laughter and waiting for something extraordinary to happen. Le
o because of his age, no doubt. And Zack? She frowned. He seemed to be hoarding some delicious, mysterious secret.

  Her mother put one hand on her lower abdomen and pressed, exhaling through parted lips. A minute or two went by. Then Rachel heard the faint hiss of the planchette moving over the wooden surface of the spirit board. She opened her eyes to see it was pointing out one letter after another, so quickly she failed to unscramble them into words, the words into sentences.

  Everyone else watched, wide-eyed. The planchette was moving with such sure purpose, it was impossible to believe her mother was not consciously controlling it.

  At last, Beatricia’s hand stopped.

  “I’m done,” she murmured, sagging. She sat for a moment looking dumbfounded, stunned. Then shifted her gaze from the window down to the planchette as if she’d forgotten what it was. She lifted her fingers; the nails were pink acrylic, white-tipped. But her fingertips looked purple.

  “Really?” Rachel inspected her mother, assessed her condition. She looked like a dry orchid, droopy, brittle, sad. She was so cold, blood vessels in her hands had constricted, the skin on the tops were gooseflesh.

  “Did anyone get the message?” Beatricia frowned sharply at Dave as though he was a schoolchild caught daydreaming.

  “Too fast for me,” he said.

  Then, untouched, the planchette moved. Inchmeal, at first. “Look,” said the sheriff.

  Beatricia stared. “God in Heaven.”

  The planchette seemed spurred on by their comments. It picked up speed, as though it were in a supernatural race, as though it couldn’t spit out words fast enough. Yet so fast it seemed to stutter p—p—p—a—a—a—a—s—s—s—s—o—o—o—v—v—v—e—e—e—r—r—r.

  “Passover,” whispered Rachel.

  “Fire!” screamed Beatricia, thrusting her frozen hands away from her as flames leapt up first from the tips of her nails, then from both palms.

  Wise jumped to his feet and removed his coat. He threw it over her hands and smothered the flames.

  The planchette circled the board, then took off like a trapped hummingbird and whizzed around the room.

  Rachel reached for her mother and discovered her own fingertips, once frozen, aflame.

  Cries of fire blurted from everyone’s lips as all the hands in the room spontaneously ignited.

  Now the planchette was slamming into walls, cracking the yellow paint, denting the plaster. Rachel saw a golden orb rotating just inside the window. The planchette whizzed by her head like a wild bat and smashed into a windowpane, as if spooked by the circle of fire, shattering the glass to thousands of icy shards. Then, it disappeared into the sooty afternoon sky.

  Beatricia fell into Wise’s arms. “Did you get it, Phil?” she gasped.

  “I was lost,” said the sheriff, still trying to blow out the red and blue flames on his hands. Everyone else did the same, shouting in horror and slapping their hands together or against their clothing.

  “Didn’t you get it?” Rachel said to her mother. “Weren’t you supposed to get the message and interpret it?”

  “No, I wasn’t. I’ve already told you I couldn’t, before we started.”

  Beatricia belonged in a hospital. She was curled up on her pillow, leaning heavily against the ample sheriff. Rachel had seen ICU patients who’d looked better after a big heart attack.

  “I’m just the medium,” Beatricia sounded flustered, unsure of herself for the first time that day.

  “Well, I got it,” said Lev, gazing at the ten tiny yellow flames sputtering at the tips of his spread fingers. “Most of it, I think.”

  “Oh, I got it too,” said Creed, amusement still plain in his eyes, ignoring his ashy palms. There was no sensation of burning, not even a smidgen of it. There had been nothing to feel, except the icy cold, even when the flames had sprung, newly born.

  The boys were laughing, examining each other’s nails as the sparks fizzled out, their hair standing on end.

  “You’re good boys.” Beatricia lowered her eyelids for a moment, as if drifting in and out of a morphine-laced sleep.

  “Let’s go get it.” Creed stood up and began checking the loads in his rifle. He had a wide smile, and his eyes were sparkling. “May all be bullshit. But it’d be worth it if it’s not.”

  He was ready to strike out, Rachel thought. A bantam set to fight a wolf pack, not just to achieve an end, but to please and prove himself.

  “The message was, to the effect,” said Lev, in slow, incantatory, rabbinical tones, “… that in the stretch of woods east of the Ewell house…there is a force. This force cannot be stopped…and it is coming like a judgment to the Shelton house. We must find its source. The spirit board has given exact coordinates.”

  “I can take us there with my GPS,” said Creed.

  Rachel smelled ashes, her nose wrinkling. Ashes in the cold, swept fireplace, falling in flurries of snow from the ceiling, silent, invisible.

  Thunder rolled across the sky, as if in response to the prophecy.

  Rachel sniffed the charred tips of her nails. Weird, yes. But so were Petty’s house and inventions. She wasn’t comforted by the thought that the sheriff’s department had supposedly cleaned things out. There was probably a magnetic generator hidden under the floor, perhaps hidden in wet ashes, far too close to her boys.

  Something seized her shoulders and shook her. But why should she believe such things?

  If Ouija boards were things to go by, Beatricia would have already won the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge. Open portals, my ass, she thought.

  • • • •

  Zack sat on the front porch of the Shelton house, swinging hard, boiling with anger. His mother and grandmother had gone into the kitchen with Leo. The deputies were spreading themselves out, arrayed about the farm with their rifles. He was old enough and tough enough to have gone into the woods with Dave, Lev, Creed, and the sheriff, but here he sat, left behind with no consolation but the lie on Dave’s part that he was needed at home to look after Beatricia, Leo, and his mother.

  The splatterings of rain that reached him on the swing were refreshing but not cooling, He felt burnt, embarrassed, worthless, and not a little ashamed to be treated as a child. Leo was having lunch. Zack didn’t want any. He’d refused to answer when his mother called. If he wanted a chicken salad sandwich with almonds, he could make it himself, maybe with his pocketknife to show he didn’t care about rules.

  The ambulance-chasing attorney, Tripper Enwright, pulled up into the gravel driveway in his red Corolla with the flip-up headlights burning and its windshield wipers flapping. Zack wanted to wave him away, but knew Enwright wouldn’t leave for a while, no matter what. Not after driving all the way from Onancock to Zebulon in the light rain and wasting all that gas. What a tightwad. What a cheesy car.

  Behind the windshield, the guy’s head wobbled like a bobble head on a coiled spring. The door opened a couple of inches. Then the man pushed it open with his knees and arm. Zack looked away to avoid being noticed.

  Fat chance, Zack thought. Enwright sprang out of the car and headed to the porch, a newspaper over his head catching the rain.

  “Anybody home?” he said.

  “Nope,” Zack shook his hand. “Only my brother, my mother, my grandmother, and most of the sheriff’s department.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Enwright, “Guess I’d better come up there to keep you company.”

  Enwright’s head was not only too big for his body, it was almost bald except for the jet-black stubble on his chin that looked painted on with a brush. He had small black eyes that looked poked into the clay of his face and wore a dark coat and tie with a handkerchief peeking from a breast pocket.

  Enwright was good at standing up at public meetings and mouthing off about anything with stupid jokes that made old people laugh. Zack had heard him speak at school assemblies, at church, at picnics, at the community center in Hope, at PTA meetings, at political rallies, and at other places to which he’d
been dragged, and was particularly grossed out when weird Mr. Enwright was called “cute” by old ladies.

  “My mother’s not at home.”

  “Oh, I guess she is.” Enwright stepped onto the porch, head wobbling. “Can you get her for me?”

  “No,” said Zack. “You can knock on the door yourself.”

  “All right, I will.” He faced the door and knocked on it loudly enough to be heard over the sound of the rain, coming harder now, each second, as if to protect Rachel from this badly formed intruder.

  “There are things your mother should know in this troubled time,” continued Enwright. “I’m here to inform her. I’ve seen fit to make the trip all the way from Onancock in spite of the danger, which speaks well for me—you’ll be kind enough to agree.”

  Zack sat sullenly on the swing, not agreeing, as the eyebolts holding the chains of the swing to the porch ceiling groaned, adding more groans to the house.

  Rachel appeared at the door in an apron and stepped out onto the porch. She sent Zack indoors with a look and took his seat on the swing. She offered Enwright the porch chair beside her with a gesture of her hand. Instead of retreating into the depths of the house, Zack pulled up a dining-room chair and sat beside the cracked front door, where he could keep an eye on Enwright. Seated in the porch chair, the attorney seemed a scrawny, mythical creature with a head so big it appeared almost hydrocephalic. He had two great big floppy feet like a clown’s.

  “You know, of course,” said Enwright, “Your stable hand, Lev, is Jewish.”

  “Jesus Christ,” muttered Zack. He had heard Enwright speak of Jews enough times to know what would follow. His stomach turned and growled. The Jews of Enwright’s imagination were fat, hook-nosed and as hairy as the fungus, “Hairy Jew’s ear.” They had huge, sloppy lips and curly black hair. Covered with boils and warts and unclean sores, they concealed their horns with hats and their hooves with oversized shoes. As for forked tails, they must be tucked down a pants leg or hidden by long-tailed jackets. Zack snorted. Funny in a disgusting sort of way.