Donn's Shadow

by Caryn Larrinaga

  “That’s true,” Graham said. “I get asked to put the Seal of Solomon on a few sculptures every year. I doubt they’re being used to trap evil spirits.”

  Amari nodded, conceding the point. “You’re right. It’d be impossible to prove there’s a malevolent presence in that box unless we opened it. But I think it’s better to be cautious, don’t you?”

  I wanted to leap to my feet and start cheering. Yes, let’s be cautious. Cautious enough to throw the box into a fire and be done with it.

  “However, that’s not the only thing that bothers me. Yuri, what did you think about the age of the box?”

  “Hmm.” He stroked his chin. “Yes, it seemed too new to belong to Mac’s ghost. If it had truly been buried for over a hundred years, I would have expected far more decay in the wood. Every corner is still perfectly sharp. You can even still see the shine of varnish. That should have worn off decades ago.”

  “But it matches his description exactly,” I protested. “What are the odds of there being two wooden boxes, both the same shape and the same size, buried in the same abandoned lumber camp?”

  “That’s another thing,” Yuri said. “It was too easy to dig out. The earth was loose and soft, as though it’d recently been moved.”

  Kit stared at him. “You mean somebody buried the box recently? How long ago?”

  “Even one winter would have hardened the earth more than that.”

  The implications of his words were staggering. “Wait… If we assume there weren’t two boxes, and this was the one Horace told me about, that means it’s some kind of magic box that resists decaying and is always easy to dig up. Or he was lying to me.”

  Yuri nodded.

  “Have you ever known a spirit to lie before?” Graham asked.

  “I’ve never had the gift of speaking to spirits as clearly as Gabrielle,” Yuri said.

  “Neither have I.” As I said it, the truth of the words hit me. Every ghost I’d encountered before had been mute, either unwilling or unable to speak directly to me. The exception was the spirit I’d seen talk through Gabrielle, using her as a megaphone to amplify his own voice. She’d promised to teach me how to do the same thing. Then she’d been arrested, and that promise had evaporated.

  With or without her, my abilities had been growing. I felt my strength increasing every time I used my gift. Now I was strong enough to speak to Horace and understand his replies. Was that normal? Or was it the abnormal side effect of being somewhere like Donn’s Hill?

  I looked around my little circle of companions and again felt the pang of loss. None of them would know the answer. Gabrielle might. Maybe my mother would have too. Neither of them were easily accessible to me. One of them was in jail, and I prayed the other had moved on.

  “There’s one thing that bothers me most of all,” Yuri said. “Let’s assume the simplest solution is the correct one. That would mean Horace not only lied to you about the provenance of that box, but he also knew something had been buried there recently. How would a spirit know that? Especially one supposedly tied to the Oracle Inn?”

  Amari ran a hand over her shaved head. “And if there’s a demon trapped in that box, what does Horace want with it?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I stayed up late after everyone left, researching the recent surge in supposed “haunted box” phenomena that’d spread across the internet. It was impossible to know if any of the stories were genuine, but there were a few details that synced up with tales of other cursed objects that made my stomach hurt. The stories confirmed the suspicion I’d had that bringing the jewelry box back with us was a mistake, because everyone who encountered objects like these suffered terrible misfortunes. I read about a chair that doomed those who sat in it to an early death, a painting that appeared to survive house fires caused by its very presence, and a mirror that gave its owners odd skin conditions. Where the objects went, tragedy followed.

  The sources of the so-called Dybbuk Box hauntings were never clearly identified in the stories I found online, which struck me as odd. There was plenty of lore about malicious spirits called Dybbuks, but they’d historically clung to people the way Thomas Bishop had followed me around. Like poltergeists, they haunted people instead of locations. But in all the recent stories, the spirits attached to an object—the box—rather than a particular person or even a particular place.

  That begged the question: was there something special about the spirits themselves or about the boxes they haunted?

  I kept reading deep into the night. Guilt nibbled at my consciousness, growing stronger with every anecdote and article. I’d felt something wrong in that clearing, but I’d still brought something back. I blinked at the screen, forcing myself to stay awake, hoping I’d find a story that included details about how to stop a curse from taking hold once some foolish psychic let it follow her home.

  Eventually sleep won out. My eyelids slid closed, opening again in my mother’s backyard. The New Mexico heat warmed my back as I faced the house. As a child, that house had been everything. Home, sanctuary, magic castle. Looking at it now, I realized how much time had passed since I’d been inside. How many years had gone by since the day a neighbor had helped me pack my things to go live with a father I’d never met?

  The small, single-story bungalow was a common sight in the Albuquerque suburbs. Back then, the house had seemed enormous. Now, compared to the overlarge structure of Primrose House, my childhood home stood small but proud. My mother had taken good care of this place, tending the gardens and learning how to make small repairs from This Old House reruns on TV.

  She’d watched me play in the backyard from the window above our kitchen sink in the evenings after dinner. In the disconnected way of dreams, her figure appeared there now, shimmering and indistinct. I didn’t need to see her face to recognize her, and I started up the steps, excited to sit down and catch up with her.

  Before my hand touched the knob, the buzzing in the back of my mind spiked intensely. I winced and rubbed the back of my head, but it was useless trying to massage it away from the outside. I glanced up at the window, expecting to see my mother’s worried face, but two glowing, red eyes watched me instead.

  Horace stood at the window, one arm outstretched so his palm rested on the glass. A sudden wave of déjà vu disoriented me, and I stumbled backward off the steps, careening across the patio. Instead of landing on the grass, I floated upward, enjoying the sensation of flying. It was something I wouldn’t be able to do when I woke, and I savored the feeling of weightlessness that buoyed my limbs.

  Up I went, over the roof and into the front yard. I’d never played out here; there was no lawn to tumble across, no patio to draw on with my chalk. There were just bark chips and stones and succulents. I wondered if it’d been that way when she moved in or if my mother had engineered things that way so I would stay where she could see me from the kitchen window.

  My feet touched down on the asphalt in front of the house and I started walking. I had no destination in mind, but I wanted to be away from the house while Horace was there. I traveled faster than I could while awake, and soon I was outside the city. There, the desert stretched away from the highway until the edges shimmered in the sunlight. Magic, my mother had called it. I knew now they were optical illusions, and I thought of Raziel. He’d make a distinction about the difference between magic and tricks of the eye. I didn’t feel such a thing was important.

  I stepped off the road and kept walking toward that shimmering nothingness. A figure waited for me there. She was my height, and her skirt billowed in the wind. She pushed her dark hair behind her ears with both hands at once, and for the first time, my mother’s face came into clear view, so similar to my own—large blue eyes and a narrow bone structure, framed by waves of brown hair.

  Tears spilled down my cheeks when I saw her smile. I’d never expected to see it again. I wanted to run to her, but my feet refused to quicken their pace. Fear stabbed my heart; I was certain she’d fade b
efore I reached her.

  But she didn’t fade. Not this time. Only her smile melted away. Her lips parted until her mouth fell open in a silent scream. Eyes wide with terror, she raised a hand and pointed behind me. A shadow approached from the road, his top hat visible even through the heat lines rising from the earth. His red eyes glowed, illuminating a wide, toothy smile.

  My mother grabbed me from behind and yanked me backward into her arms. Cradling me, she whispered in my ear, “He lies.”

  His shadow descended upon us, and I woke up gasping for air. My laptop slid off my legs and onto the window seat beneath me. Above me, moonlight shone down through the windows. I slipped off the bench and into my kitchen, wishing I had a privacy screen or some blinds to give me more privacy. I couldn’t get the memory of those burning red eyes out of my mind, and the sensation of someone watching me followed me around the room.

  My arm ached where my mother had grabbed me in the dream, and I realized I’d been squeezing my biceps in my sleep. It took a full glass of water and several long minutes of reminding myself I was in Donn’s Hill—not New Mexico—to shake the buzzing from my mind and the tingling from my skin.

  While most of the dream faded into echoes and vague memories, my mother’s warning rang in my mind. Whether it had truly come from her, or if my brain had just used her image to tell me something important, that was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever truly know. Regardless of the source, I felt the truth in her words.

  Horace lies.

  Questions churned in my mind as I climbed into my bed and hid my head beneath the covers. Why would a spirit lie? What did he have to gain?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Do you ever get tired of change?” I asked Graham the next morning as I leaned against the kitchen counter with my second cup of coffee in my hands. The first had disappeared in a quick series of scalding gulps but still hadn’t chased away the lingering unease my dream had left behind.

  “You mean, like there suddenly being such a thing as cursed boxes?”

  The jewelry box in question was gone. Yuri had taken it with him when he’d left the night before, promising not to bring it into anyone’s home. He didn’t say what he’d do with it, and I thought that might be for the best.

  “It seems like every day since I’ve come to Donn’s Hill, I’ve found out that something I assumed kids made up to scare each other actually exists. But I mean bigger change.” I sighed. “This past year has felt like walking through a minefield. There’s no time to adjust to the status quo before life throws something new at me.”

  “Not all new things are bad, though.” He put an arm around me and kissed the top of my forehead. “I’m glad my life changed when you got here.”

  I smiled up at him. “I never asked you how the exhibition was.”

  “Not bad.”

  “Yeah?”

  He grinned. “Come see.”

  I followed him out to the back where he’d parked his father’s cargo trailer beside the garage. He drummed his fingers on the trailer’s white siding for a few moments while simultaneously making a drumroll sound with his mouth.

  “Exciting enough for two drumrolls, huh?” I teased.

  “You don’t even know.”

  He pulled open the back door to the trailer, revealing an all but empty space. A few scraps of bubble wrap littered the floor, but not a single sculpture remained.

  “You sold out?” I stared at the barren trailer. “Really?”

  “Really!” He grabbed me and spun us around in a circle for a few dizzying moments. We whooped and cheered in the backyard, and I wished we’d taken the time to create a special high-five in anticipation of this moment. I wished I’d been in the right mindset to celebrate with him the night before instead of letting the supernatural hijack our evening.

  I told him as much, adding, “I knew this would happen.”

  “You didn’t, but I appreciate your confidence in me.” He closed the door on the empty space and folded his lanky arms behind his head. “And you were right about Raziel. He put some photos of my sculptures online after the cocktail party, and a ton of people already knew who I was before I even got to the exhibition.”

  “Holy cow. That’s awesome.”

  “Yeah. And yesterday, Amari asked me to sculpt a bust of Raziel for his gravesite in the same style I used for the Donn statue. She said he genuinely loved my work.”

  For a moment, I forgot how much Raziel had hated me and every other psychic in town. He could have rubbed my name in mud for ten years, and I would have forgiven him the moment I saw this look in Graham’s eyes. For once, there was no self-doubt clouding the victory. There was no fear that nepotism or cronyism had played too large a role, and no sense of imposter syndrome. There were only pride and joy, and I felt the same emotions threatening to burst out of every pore on my body.

  “We have to celebrate,” I said. “Brunch?”

  “Deal.” He grabbed my hand, leading me into the kitchen where his car keys hung on a hook above the coffeemaker. “Hey, next time I go to one of these things, I want you and Striker to come with me. It wasn’t the same without my sidekicks.”

  “Your sidekicks? I thought you two were my sidekicks.”

  “Let’s be honest. We’re Striker’s.” He chuckled. “I realized how much I cater to her when I unpacked my cashbox in Chicago and found a bag of kitty treats under the money tray.”

  Hearing the magic “T” word, Striker limped into the kitchen. She favored her left hind leg, barely picking up that foot as she took each step forward at a pitifully slow pace.

  I raced forward to scoop her up, but when I touched her back, she growled.

  “Whoa, what’s wrong?” I kept my voice low and calm, but inside, I was screaming. Had she fallen off the banister and landed wrong in the foyer? Been too reckless when jumping from my open windows to the trees outside? Hesitantly, I reached out a hand to stroke her back, and she swatted at me with full claws.

  I threw a panicked glance at Graham as he raced out of the room. He returned a few minutes later with the hard-sided cat carrier we’d used to take her to the Franklin cabin. He put it in front of Striker, and I dreaded what was sure to happen next. She would refuse to get in, we’d try to lure or force her, and by the end she’d be howling with pain and we’d be covered in scratches.

  Oddly, as soon as he opened the little metal door, she limped inside and settled down.

  I stared at Graham. “Did she go that easily when you loaded her up for the cabin?”

  “Nope. But that should tell us how much pain she’s in. Come on, let’s get her to the vet.”

  Striker howled in the car all the way up Main Street. The sound twisted the muscles in my back, and I hugged the carrier to my chest. When we pulled up to the Donn’s Hill Animal Hospital, a red CLOSED sign hung in the window.

  I swore. “Of course. It’s Sunday.”

  “What do we do?” Graham asked.

  I racked my mind for a solution. There might have been an emergency vet in Moyard, but that was an hour away. In desperation, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed a former housemate.

  “Mackenzie!” Phillip Lee’s familiar, dramatic voice poured out of the phone at top volume. “What a pleasure to hear from you!”

  “Hey, Phillip. How’s New York?”

  “Delightful. The energy here cannot be beat, and I’ve been spoiling myself with tickets to all the best shows. Come visit! You’ll love it, and you can stay in my guest room.”

  I rolled my eyes at Graham, who smothered a laugh with his sleeve. He’d been sad when Phillip had left Primrose House to join a prestigious financial firm in Manhattan, but I hadn’t missed the constant invitations to brunch or late-hour cocktails in the butler’s pantry, always accompanied by hyperactive eyebrow raises.

  “Thanks for the invitation, Phillip. I have a question for you—does your sister do emergency appointments on Sundays?”

  Phillip’s sister, Dr. Lee, was Striker’s veterinar
ian. The two of them shared the same upbeat energy, but she’d funneled her outgoing nature into a thriving animal practice instead of generalized lechery.

  “No, on Sundays she does her on-site visits to farms with her equine partner. Why, what’s the matter?”

  I filled him in on Striker’s behavior, and he clucked into the phone.

  “Poor little minx,” he said. “I do miss her knocking bits of garbage under my apartment door. I’m sure the good doctor would see her first thing tomorrow morning. In the meantime, you might try my friend Elizabeth Monk.”

  “Is she another vet?”

  “No, but she’s the closest thing you’ll find in Donn’s Hill on short notice. She does furrapy out of her shop in The Enclave.”

  “She does what?”

  “Furrapy. Pet massage. She works with animals all the time and might be able to tell you if this is urgent enough to warrant a trip to Moyard.”

  Striker’s yowl from the carrier in my lap convinced me anything was worth a shot. I checked my watch; it was after eleven, so the shops in the little occult district would be open. Graham drove us there and parked the Geo in the same spot I’d used when taking Stephen home the week before, and we carried a howling tortoiseshell cat through the cobblestoned neighborhood, looking for Elizabeth Monk’s shop.

  Halfway down the block, a wooden sign hanging from the eaves of a building advertised reiki, massage, and furrapy. I remembered seeing the strange word the last time I’d been in The Enclave and hurried toward the building’s door, holding it open for Graham and Striker.

  We passed the darkened door of Daphne’s tarot shop as we headed up the narrow stairs to the second floor. At the top, a glass door greeted us. The design etched onto the clear surface featured animals and humans in various postures, all of them active: running, jumping, doing a cartwheel, and in the case of a large dog, chasing its own tail.

  An electric doorbell sounded when we entered, and a tall, broad-shouldered woman emerged from behind a curtain made from strings of wooden beads. A network of fine lines crisscrossed her tanned skin, and deep crows' feet ringed her heavily shadowed eyes. Her snowy hair was pulled back from her face in a long, loose braid that cascaded over her left shoulder. Dozens of short, black crystals hung from silver bracelets around each of her wrists, jangling pleasantly.