Passover

by Aphrodite Anagnost

  “This is not on me, Sheriff.” Creed took his hand back and pointed at the sheriff. “Anything happens it’s your fault. No matter what you say, Sheriff Wise, I think you believe in spooks. You’re like that old woman.”

  “Mr. Creed, you’re tellin’ me you don’t believe in spirits?”

  “I didn’t say that. I took down those coordinates from Mrs. Fulbright’s Ouija board because I was asked to. I don’t believe Mrs. Fulbright’s parlor game can tell us how to find a ghost.”

  “I’m more concerned there might be a living human being down there,” said Lev.

  Dave switched the light back on and searched the corners of the pit with its weak beam.

  “Ain’t no livin’ flesh down there.” Wise unhitched his flashlight from his belt, clicked it on, and lit the center and the corners of the room with a single powerful shaft of light. “That junk atop the door has been there for twenty years or more.”

  “That’s some battery you got there, Sheriff.”

  “Yup.” The sheriff reached behind his neck and unclasped a bronze chain from which dangled a small guardian-angel amulet. He held it out to Lev.

  “I don’t need that, Sheriff.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “All right, I’ll take it if it makes you happy.” Lev took the chain and without looking at it fastened the amulet around his neck. “Thanks. Now, out of my way.” Lev got on the first rung and in less than five seconds was on the dirt floor, looking up. “The ladder’s no problem.”

  Dave stared into the pit and took in a breath. Even lit by the sheriff’s flashlight, the cellar appeared deep, and ominous, like a black-and-white chamber from a cheap Hollywood movie.

  Creed climbed down next, grumbling, followed by Dave, and, finally, the sheriff. Wise’s bulk caused the rungs to creak. They found themselves on a cold surface of frozen dirt. Their breaths were visible in the air. Creed’s teeth chattered. Their shadows, cast by the single flashlight in a danse macabre, bounced like echoes from wall to wall. The old brick walls were tapestries with reeking black fungus. Only inches overhead, the remains of oak plank flooring were bowed from years of bearing the weight of the house’s sprawling corpse.

  “Today is Passover,” said Lev, as if he realized something very important. “It’s Passover. I’d forgotten.”

  Dave chuckled. He’d been wondering when someone would bring that up.

  “What did you say?” said Creed.

  “I said today is Passover,” Lev repeated, firmly.

  “What does that have to do with what we’re doing?” asked Creed.

  “Everything,” said Lev. “Everything we’ve seen and everything that’s going to happen.”

  “How’s that?” said Wise.

  “Let’s search first,” said Lev. “Then I’ll tell you what I know.”

  The investigation, lit by the Surefire C2, took two minutes. The only thing in the basement was a shelf built into a wall and a black leather salesman’s case with rusted brass buckles.

  Dave dusted off the old box. “Lev, grab one end.”

  They swung the display case onto the shelf. Creed pried open the latch with his pocketknife.

  The compartmentalized satchel held pages of photographs cut from books and periodicals, a stack of newspapers, and a single magazine dated 1963, The New York Magazine of the Arts.

  The sheriff shone the light onto the tattered, water-stained photographs as Dave flipped through them, uncovering piles of the naked and the dead from Treblinka, Belsen, Auschwitz, Majdanek, Buchenwald, Dachau.

  “The guy who lived here was some kind of son of a bitch,” muttered Creed.

  “Not necessarily.” Lev turned his eyes away from a torn picture of birds feeding on a heap of emaciated children in an open grave. “He may’ve had relatives who were victims of the Holocaust.”

  “Look here,” said Dave, scanning more pages with his tiny lamp—photos and articles about concentration camps, its victims and murderers. “Our guy was really obsessed.”

  “Check the magazines,” said Lev.

  Dave switched on the penlight and flipped to one of the magazine’s tables of contents. “There’s an article here by a man rescued from Belsen at the age of four.”

  “That’s enough for me.” The sheriff put a hand on his gun. “Put it all back into the case. We’ll look closer at the house.” He focused his beam on the top rung of the ladder. “Now, let’s get outta here.”

  Dave collected the pages and stacked them, placed them in the box, and clicked the lid. His lips were dry and cracking. “Getting out of here’s a good idea. We need to make it back before dark.” The thought wrapped its icy arms around him and he couldn’t shake himself loose. The Holocaust.

  He carried the salesman’s case to the ladder and started up the rungs.

  Zack sat at one end of the dining room table, practicing his finger picking, playing phrases from Appalachian bluegrass tunes. His mother sat next to him, hunched over a tray of milk and cookies, separating her Oreo Double Stuffs and eating the tops first, then smashing the other two halves together to make a quadruple stuff. Grandma Beatricia was ignoring everyone again, dealing out cards to herself, turning them over, one by one. The Good Witch of the East strikes again, Zack thought.

  She turned over The Tower and let out a little hmpph.

  She pressed a palm to the side of her face. “Dave’s been gone too long. I don’t trust those four together. Creed’s a loose cannon.”

  Rachel groaned and rolled her eyes. “Mom, you’re making me nervous with those greasy cards.”

  “I think Grandma’s cards are cool.” Zack bent a blue note.

  “Ya' got that right,” said Crockett, looking up from the Little Book of Wisdom.

  “Whatever are you talking about, Rachel?” Beatricia arched an eyebrow and resumed shuffling the golden deck.

  There they go again, Zack thought, like a couple of wolf bitches. He played an arpeggio from Bach’s Air on the G string for harpsichord at triple speed. He figured this would impress Isabel and the hot girl deputy. The adults had no clue what was going on here. Five times since the Harper twins had died, he’d seen the tire swing in the neighbor’s backyard swaying high and wide for minutes at a time under an invisible rider.

  “The sheriff’s been on the wrong track all day,” said Rachel.

  “That’s a little harsh, Doc,” said Ruiz.

  “Sheriff Wise is the only one on the right track, Mom,” said Zack.

  “Poor Lev looks exhausted,” she said, ignoring everyone. She flicked a black crumb off her shirt. “He should’ve taken the train to New York yesterday.”

  “I’ll get those.” Zack rose, the guitar still hanging over one shoulder by its strap like a gun belt. He carried her dish and cup to the kitchen and dropped them into the soapy water that filled the sink, then grabbed Dave’s binoculars from the windowsill. He panned the back forty for any hint of movement on the western fringe of the woods, but saw only the wall of trees.

  He hustled back to the dining room and turned on all the floor lamps, driving some of the darkness into corners. Beatricia was frowning at a row of nine cards that ended with the Ten of Swords. The three deputies sat sipping coffee at the other end of the table, Ruiz drumming her fingers on the leather pad. Rachel knocked over the peppershaker, frowned, and swept the grains into a palm and left the table. Zack could see that Deputy Leveaux was the only other person in the room to notice when Grandma Bea slapped down the next and final card, Judgment Day. Leveaux’s golden-brown eyes darted over the spread.

  Deputy Crockett tapped a Sasquatch-sized toe on the floor.

  Zack slipped out of the guitar strap and rested the instrument against the wall in a corner. Leveaux sang out “Babalu.”

  “That’s some Ricky Ricardo imitation, Francois,” said Beatricia, looking up.

  “No,” he said, a tincture of Haitian creeping into his Eastern Virginia accent. He fingered the string of blue and white translucent glass beads around hi
s neck. “It’s Santeria.”

  Beatricia made a shooing gesture at the card with her knotty fingers.

  “And that’s The Final Judgment,” he said, pointing at the spread, pupils dilating. Sweat bubbled out on his forehead, the whites of his eyes enlarging.

  Three Winchesters were leaning against the table in a tight, orderly row. As if of its own volition, one slid along the edge, felling the other rifles like dominoes.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Leveaux, trying to catch them with an outstretched arm, but too late. He inhaled through thick plum lips the color of spoiled meat. His heavy chest rose and held its breath as the rifles clattered to the floor. At last, he bent and picked his rifle up.

  Is he afraid, Zack thought, that the guns will be contaminated when they had been on the floor for more than three seconds, like food?

  Crockett smiled, leaned down, picked up the other two with his long fingers and handed one to Ruiz. “You’re gettin’ jumpy, ain’t you, Leveaux?”

  Leveaux pointed at the last card in Beatricia’s spread and rose from the table. “Guess I’d better have a look around the barn.”

  “Go right ahead,” said Crockett, smirking.

  Without another word, Leveaux took his rifle and left through the kitchen, pulling the back door quietly shut behind him.

  “I want to go out and shoot baskets,” said Leo, bouncing down the stairs. He landed with a thud in the foyer.

  “Not now,” said Rachel.

  “Come on, Mom,” he whispered, trying to spin the orange and black ball on the tip of an index finger.

  “Not today,” said Rachel. “You have to stay inside. Go put your toys away.”

  “Don’t call them that, Mom. We’re too old for toys.” Zack turned to his mother and locked eyes. “You’ve said so a million times. I’m going to sit on the porch.”

  “No.” Rachel’s eyes hardened. “You have the habit of asserting gravitas. You demand too much freedom. It’s premature. You’re only fourteen.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You want special treatment,” she said. “To be a man. But you’re still a boy.”

  “The bottom line, Mom,” said Zack, stretching to his full five feet ten inch frame, “is that you want me to stay a kid. Those days are gone. It scares Dave he won’t be able to tell me what to do forever. He’s not my dad and never will be.”

  “If that’s your perception,” said Rachel. “You’re entitled to it. But—”

  “Forget it,” said Zack, heading for the staircase in the foyer. “I’m gonna go shave.”

  Rachel followed behind him. “Stop it, Zack. If you want to shave, use the bathroom downstairs.”

  He stopped, saying nothing, looking at the ceiling.

  He didn’t need to shave. He wanted to talk to his ghost friend, Isabel, in the tiny room on the landing. She was always so sweet and nice, saying little, listening to him rattle on about his life, and nodding her head. He was sure Isabel was in love with him. Sometimes it seemed so, anyhow. He was her first, her only lover. It made him feel good to hold her icy hand and kiss her pale cheeks.

  When they spoke of death it was always in hushed tones, as if the subject was between the two of them alone—a sacred matter not to be shared with anyone, but each other.

  “I want to use the upstairs bathroom,” he said.

  “I said no and meant it.” Rachel caught Zack by the shoulder as he began his first step. “I need you down here with me now.”

  “Damn it, Mom,” Zack said. But he felt unwilling to break away from her grip, though it would have been easy. She could be so foolish sometimes. If only he could talk to Isabel, he could probably find out who or what was threatening the house. Then again, maybe not. If Isabel had all the answers, she would’ve told him already. Still, she must be in a better position than anyone else to figure out what was happening on Burnt Chestnut, and why.

  Zack and Rachel returned to the living room to watch Beatricia lay out another Celtic Cross, mumbling to herself. Otherwise, everyone was quiet. The men would surely return from the forest soon—they’d been gone an hour. Leo was dribbling his soccer ball around the house, and Wolfie, the dachshund, had long since taken to his cushion in the pantry, huddled beneath shelves stacked with jars of jams, pickles, and peaches, panting.

  “There’s something in this house,” Beatricia announced, looking at the cards spread before her.

  “No shit,” muttered Zack.

  “It’s upstairs,” said Beatricia, looking up at Rachel. Who, in turn, looked away. “There’s nothing upstairs, Mother,” said Rachel.

  Zack had recently been reading a book on poker tells. Studying his mother’s too-passive face and tapping fingers, he decided she was lying. She must’ve heard the moaning from the master bathroom and seen the shadow of Old Mr. Nelson, leg amputated, bleeding in the bathtub. Zack had, more or less, ignored the image.

  “We’re going upstairs,” said Beatricia. Taking the two canes in hand, she hoisted herself to her feet, pushed back the chair, and rounded up Crockett and Ruiz, who were finishing up their coffee in the dining room. Soon, she was leading a posse up the staircase, the two deputies smirking at each other, Rachel annoyed, and Leo and Zack trailing behind.

  Rachel put two fingers on her neck. Zack knew she was counting her pulse. One of her sayings was, “If things go south in a crisis, take your own pulse first.”

  “As a matter of record,” she said. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Really, Mom?” Zack said. “I do.”

  Beatricia sank into the Victorian loveseat on the landing to catch her breath. Zack put a hand on the doorknob to Isabel’s room, then thought better of turning it.

  “No ghost has ever been observed in a laboratory. Or dissected. Or measured. Or properly photographed,” said Rachel, using her lecturer’s voice. “Nor has ESP or any other psychic phenomena been proven by any qualified researcher.” She scanned the faces of everyone, then took a deep breath. “If ghosts were real they would, by definition, have to exist in a realm beyond natural law. Which means they would not be able to function in a universe in which natural law is operative.”

  “That’s not really true,” said Zack, still holding the glass doorknob, which felt cold now.

  “Let me finish,” she said, slumping, as if deflated, voice weakening. “The same holds true for other supernatural entities: demons, fairies, unicorns, vampires. All are fantasies developed by infantile cultures and should be dismissed with a minimum of thought. Right?”

  “No,” said Beatricia.

  “Mother, that you might find the location of a supernatural entity in my house is harder to believe than me flying.”

  “Well, dear,” said Beatricia. “How do you know you can’t fly? You haven’t tried it yet.”

  Zack felt better to have everyone flocking upstairs to check the place out, rather than sitting downstairs, leaving the upstairs mysteriously hanging over them. If pipes were moaning now, they would be heard. If Mr. Ewell’s misty image were still hanging in the shower, it would be seen. Still, he was not yet ready to have Isabel discovered, not against her will.

  He and she had their secrets.

  The group searched one room at a time, growing quieter in each—the bathrooms, the four smaller bedrooms, the master bedroom, the hallway.

  “There’s nothing here,” Beatrica said at last.

  Grandma didn’t sense Isabel, Zack thought. Surprised, but relieved.

  “Are you satisfied, now, Mother.” Rachel tipped her head back and rolled her shoulders. Zack reached up and kneaded her neck, sensing her elation. As if, despite knowing better, the threat to her family had disappeared. Foolish again.

  “No,” said Beatricia, taking a step up the small stairway that led to the attic, “Not yet.

  Somebody help me up here.”

  Deputy Crockett stepped up behind her. Putting his hands under her arms, he lifted her step after step until at last she was able to open the attic door and s
tand in the doorway.

  “Not here, either.” Beatricia scratched her head. Then, supported by the towering Crockett, she backed down the stairs hunched over the handrail.

  Zack smiled to himself. On the way to the second floor, she’d passed the door to the little room without pausing. Which probably meant Isabel had heard them coming and had made herself scarce.

  What can Grandma do about her, anyway—exorcism? Zack had heard about exorcising evil spirits, but never a good one. Still, it was better Beatricia had found none.

  • • • •

  Rachel hated the cold. It made her tired. Unfortunately, it was chilly on the landing.

  Beatricia stopped in her tracks. “Something’s here,” she said.

  Rachel sighed and looked away. The ridiculous euphoria she’d felt moments before gave way to a sense of her own absurdity. Her lips tightened to suppress a sob. Her mother was driving her bat-shit crazy.

  “Something’s here,” said Beatricia, tapping the floor of the landing with the tips of her two canes. “In this spot.”

  The sudden smell of camphor wafted past Rachel. She broke her stumble by catching hold of Zack’s shoulder.

  He sucked in a quick breath.

  Deputies Crockett and Ruiz looked at one another, Crockett frowned, Ruiz drew closed her premature smile.

  Rachel wrung her hands in silent protest. Zack whispered, “Shit!”

  Leo fought his way through the crowd to his grandmother’s side, eyes huge with excitement.

  Several minutes slipped by as Beatricia waved off the barrage of questions and protests assailing her. Leo clapped his hands. Rachel slumped down on the Victorian fainting couch as Zack slunk back upstairs to watch the flurry of activity from above.

  “Rachel, bring my cards and planchette,” said Beatricia. “All right, Mother,” Rachel said wearily.

  Rachel willed herself to her feet. “Ghosts,” she muttered to herself. “Ridiculous.”

  Rachel counted the stairs as she descended and listened to her own footsteps as if they were falling like stones. A veil of unidentifiable odors, the sort you would find wafting from a forty-year-old time capsule freshly shaken loose from dirt lingered around her. A metallic aftertaste coated her tongue. Everything was wrong, altered somehow. The orange rug sprawling in the foyer blurred as she approached. The pierced tin pendant light overhead shimmered in what remained of the afternoon light. Dave’s latest painting, the ox horn and the black fleece, shined, seemingly still wet. She was lightheaded. It was as though all the good air had been sucked from the house. Though she was still trudging downstairs, the heavy footsteps faded to a patter, as if a bell jar had dropped from the ceiling to encase her.