Mayhem in Jinx Cove

by Savannah Mae

  “Legitimate? How do you figure what happened here is legitimate? What was that? What did you do to her?” Ben screeched, backing away from her gnarled finger.

  The lights clicked on over our heads, startling us. We had full-view of the dank bar. It was the epitome of a dive bar. If we weren’t in the middle of nowhere, I’d expect a group of bikers to be parading in and out of this cantina on their bikes and, perhaps, a few cowboys and a herd of cattle to boot. This place had to violate health codes, but I imagined because it was in such a remote area, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, no one bothered to check the conditions on a regular basis.

  Miss Maita scooted herself out of her seat. “You, young man, should call her and apologize. She won’t take you back, but at least your conscience will be clean.”

  Ben swallowed hard.

  “Call who?” I asked.

  Ben narrowed his eyes at her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I stepped forward, placing myself between them before either of them lunged for the other in anger. “What is she talking about, Ben?”

  His face reddened. In a low voice, he answered, “I don’t know. I think we should just go. This was a bad idea. This lady isn’t psychic. She doesn’t have answers to anything. Look where she works. That has to tell you something about what kind of outfit she’s running.” He turned to leave, but Miss Maita wasn’t done with him.

  “It’s been two months, Mr. Silva. Don’t you think it’s gone on long enough?” She smirked when Ben stopped in his tracks, his shoulders inching up above his ears.

  She continued speaking, addressing him directly. “She still loves you. She misses you. That photo of the two of you at the county fair sits by her bedside on the nightstand next to her journal.”

  Ben turned suddenly, his hazel eyes brimming with emotion. “How do you know that?”

  My hands started to shake. How did she know about Ben’s broken relationship? He and I hadn’t discussed it. It was a sensitive subject for him. He’d talk to me about it when he was ready. Judging by his reaction to Miss Maita, it was safe to say, he was nowhere near ready to talk about it now, especially with a stranger.

  “Ah, now I have your attention, don’t I?” Miss Maita’s face looked even more frightening under the harsh glow of the halogen lights. If I wasn’t afraid of coming off as rude, I’d suggest she needed more than a regular hair appointment. If things panned out well, I’d be willing to offer her some makeup tips, not that I was a raving beauty, but I did have my PhD in proper makeup application courtesy of the abundance of teen and women’s magazines my mother had to keep in stock at the library.

  “No, you don’t have my attention. That would mean that I buy this nonsense you’re trying to sell me. Well, I don’t.” Ben turned to me. “Are you ready to go?”

  I looked from him to her.

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he waited for me to answer him.

  “I think that answers your question then,” Miss Maita said after an uncomfortable minute. “You’re free to leave if you’d like.” She walked past Ben to open the door and let him see that the vultures were still hovering above the building, blanketing the sky with their ominous presence.

  “No, that’s not true. I… I don’t know what I want to do yet. Let me think. I’m not sure I understand what just happened. Do you know each other?” I asked them. I thought I knew the answer to that question, but it was worth a shot.

  The bartender groaned, “Oh, will you sit down and let her talk? What will it hurt? If she’s wrong, then all it did was cost you a few minutes. If she’s right, well, that just might save your life. I think it’s worth a listen, don’t you? Otherwise, you can quit wasting our time and go home.”

  Miss Maita snickered as she brushed back past us to sit on a stool by the bar. “Give me a drink, Dee Dee.”

  Without hesitation, she pulled a bottle off a shelf behind her and poured a clear liquid into a cylindrical glass and placed it on the bar in front of Miss Maita.

  “What are you drinking?” I asked, moving tentatively to the dirty stool beside her.

  “Brain juice. I drained it from the last doubting Thomas that came through here trying to prove me wrong.” She laughed a thick, throaty laugh, the kind a long-time smoker might have.

  “Okay. Sounds delicious,” I said, signaling for Dee Dee to pour a glass for me.

  Ben warned, “Don’t drink that. You don’t even know what is. Besides, you don’t drink.”

  I looked over my shoulder. “How do you know? A lot happened in Chicago. I may have taken up drinking. What’s wrong with that?”

  He grabbed a napkin off the bar and placed it over the seat next to me and sat on it. “Everything is wrong with that if it were true. You can barely handle vitamins. The last thing you need is alcohol in your system.” He took the glass and signaled for Dee Dee to take it away. “Turns out she’s not so thirsty after all.”

  Miss Maita pounded her fist on the bar top, startling us. “You’re too funny. If you didn’t have such a bad attitude, you and I would get along just fine.”

  Her raucous laughter eased the tension in the room. We had been on edge. We needed the laughter.

  “It’s mineral water. I stopped drinking a long time ago,” she explained.

  Ben’s cheeks reddened. “Sorry. I didn’t know. I thought… Well, congratulations. How long has it been?”

  I tried to stifle a giggle, but it didn’t work. Soon, my shoulders quaked and my laugh snorted out of me like a little piggy. I couldn’t stop it no matter what I did.

  Miss Maita laughed harder, nearly falling off her seat.

  Ben moved to stand behind her, bracing himself to halt her fall.

  She stopped suddenly, took a deep breath and said, “Your family isn’t the first family he’s done this too.” Her face hardened, no trace of the jovial smile remained.

  “Excuse me? What?” I asked in between deep breaths.

  “Zephyr Willis is a thief. He’s done this before and I’m sure he’ll do it again. I’d be willing to bet my life on it.” She looked me in the eyes.

  My mouth went dry. How did she know that? Who told her?

  Ben asked, “How do you know about Zephyr?”

  She grinned, obviously proud of herself for proving Ben wrong. “That’s part of the reason why you’re here, isn’t it, Melanie?”

  I didn’t know what to say. A feeling of uneasiness washed over me.

  “Can you hear me?” she whispered.

  “Yes, I can hear you,” I answered.

  Ben looked at me like I’d grown another head. “Who are you talking to?” he asked.

  “To her. She asked me if I could hear her,” I explained, pointing to Miss Maita.

  “No, she didn’t.” Ben shook his head.

  She smiled widely, every tooth in her mouth showing.

  “You can read my mind. Good. That will help you.” I heard Miss Maita say, but never saw her lips move.

  “How are you doing that?” I asked out loud.

  She chuckled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She smiled coyly at me. “Did you hear something strange?”

  “How are you throwing your voice like that?” I asked, assuming she was playing a trick on me.

  “Ben can’t hear me. Don’t answer me out loud. He might think you’re losing your mind,” she whispered in my ear, but remarkably she hadn’t moved from her position on the stool on the other side of me.

  Is this for real? Are you in my head?

  She answered, still smiling at me, “No, you’re in mine. Now, I’m going to show you how to use your gift to save your family.”

  I turned quickly to see if Ben could hear what we were talking about. He looked at me with his eyebrows quirked up.

  “What’s going on with you? Why are you breathing so heavily? Another seizure?” Ben asked, reaching to put his hand to my forehead to check for a fever.

  Dee Dee answered his questions, �
�No, she’s not sick. She’s gifted. Isn’t she, Maita?”

  Miss Maita answered, “She sure is. Now, it’s up to us to show her how to use her gifts properly and help her save the family farm.”

  Chapter Six

  “You’re making my ears hurt. I can’t concentrate.” Ben took his hands off the steering wheel to cover his ears. “La-la-la-la-la-la.”

  “Oh, that’s real mature. I can do that too, you know.” I belted out the first song I could think of. “And a one, two, one, two, three, four-”

  “Stop! Don’t do it!” The car swerved out of our lane as Ben begged me not to sing the song I made up when we were kids. I used to belt it out anytime I wanted him to do anything for me. To be honest, I couldn’t remember the lyrics now, but I knew the melody and was prepared to use it on a moment’s notice for emergencies.

  Ben righted the car back into our lane. “You’re lucky no one lives out this way. If there had been another car on the road, the last thing I would have heard was the sound of you singing that dumb song.”

  I giggled. “How sweet! The last voice you would have heard would have been mine. My voice would have guided you to your first destination before you went south for all eternity.”

  “South? What’s that supposed to mean?” Ben scoffed. “If anyone is going south, it’s you, chickie.”

  “Chickie?” I wanted to say something sarcastic but caught a case of the giggles and lost my words.

  Ben turned up the radio to drown out any further singing on my part. I was thankful for the smile on his face. When we left the Hog’s Nest Cantina, our nerves were on edge. I don’t know how she did it. I have no explanation for it, but whatever she did, she hit the nail right on the head as far as specific tidbits of our lives were concerned. She knew more about us than either one of us had ever wanted to reveal. That made for an awkward few minutes on the way out of town.

  After we’d driven about a mile further up the road, Ben lowered the volume on the radio and asked, “What was that?”

  I didn’t have to guess what he was talking about. I knew what he meant.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you think she researched us or something?” I asked, knowing that couldn’t have been the case because where on Earth would private information about our most intimate thoughts and feelings would be posted for her to find and in such short time? She had no idea we were headed her way. Neither Ben nor I made mention of it to anyone. Up until we walked out the door of my house, I wasn’t entirely sure Miss Maita’s ‘office’ was the place to go.

  Ben shook his head. “No. Where would she even begin to look for information like that? I haven’t told anyone anything about Jacqueline.”

  Ah, that’s what her name was! I knew it had a formal tone to it. I’d never met her. She lived on the other side of the state. They’d met in college. What I knew about her was only what Ben was willing to share. I found that to be odd, but I never pressed the issue because, as I was often reminded by my mother, Ben could live his own life and it wasn’t my place to butt in or comment on his relationship.

  “I know. I don’t even know anything about her,” I answered.

  He sighed, strain evident on his face. “It’s complicated. I didn’t want to get you involved.” His eye twitched in that way it always did when something upset him. I didn’t question it. I pretended I hadn’t noticed as he rubbed that area with one hand. “Jacqueline is different. She likes her privacy.”

  I nodded. “I can respect that,” I said. We all like our privacy, especially as of late. Given my job situation, I understood all too well how valuable privacy was.

  Ben shoulders tensed. I bit my lip to prevent myself from asking him a litany of questions, which was usually the case.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “I should have told you about her. I wanted to, but you know? Things were complicated,” he said.

  “Yeah, you told me that. I don’t want to pry. You know I love you to the moon and back, but I’m at a loss with this. If you want to talk about it, you can. I’m a good listener,” I offered.

  He laughed. “No, you’re not, but thanks. It’s over. I don’t know why it still bothers me so much. Some days, I’m fine. I don’t think about her. I’m doing my thing, then something happens and-”

  I finished his thought for him. “And you can’t stop thinking about her. I get it. I’m sorry. It must be hard for you. I didn’t know Miss Maita would bring her up. I didn’t know she would bring up any of the things she brought up.”

  Ben smiled. “Miss Maita is the real deal or she’s good at making people believe she’s the real deal.”

  I shivered to think about all she’d been able to tell us. I knew there was no way she could have guessed and been as right as she was. She knew too much.

  “I hoped she’d be able to help me, but I never anticipated she’d be able to get all of that right. How do you think she knew that stuff?” I asked, still trying to wrap my mind around it.

  Ben turned his head to face me. “She’s a psychic. Isn’t that her job to know?”

  “Oh, so now you want to believe?” I teased him. “When we were there, you were ready to blow a gasket. You were ready to storm out of there.”

  He smiled, turning his attention back to the small state highway.

  We sat in silence for a few miles. Every few minutes, I’d catch him looking up to the sky. I didn’t want to mention it, but I noticed them too. The vultures flew with us, like they were attached to us somehow. Miss Maita said that they would until my problem was resolved, but that didn’t give me much comfort. How was I supposed to live normally knowing that a committee of vultures followed me everywhere I went?

  “Wow!” He slowed the car down, so he could look out the window. “I don’t know if I want to hang out with a girl who has a bunch of vultures following her everywhere she goes. It reads a little macabre to me.”

  “I don’t see why not. I’ve been hanging out with a vulture my whole life,” I teased him about something my father said about him all the time. Ben had a knack for finding food everywhere. I don’t know where he put all the extra calories he ingested, but he somehow managed to gulp down astronomical amounts of food and still remain lean.

  He laughed heartily.

  I stopped joking and told him what I thought about Miss Maita’s analysis. “I think she has to be psychic. There’s no other logical explanation. Not that I’m entirely convinced the ability to read people is real, but how else can I explain it? She knew about my family’s financial problems. She knew about your issues with Jacqueline. She got into my head. I could hear her thoughts and she could hear mine. That alone is enough to make me think she’s for real.”

  Ben sighed. “I don’t understand how that’s possible. And, what’s with these vultures? Aren’t they a sign of evil? Are we talking the devil here? I just don’t get it. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I shuddered to think about it. The devil was the furthest thing from my mind. “She would have mentioned that, I hope.” I folded my arms over my torso. “This is what I got out of our conversation - she has this ability. She can read people or read situations. I don’t know how. At this point, it doesn’t matter. Now, she says I have this ability too. I don’t know about that, but whatever the case, she knew stuff no one should know. I haven’t told you about that stuff and you’re my best friend in the world.” I sighed. “It’s going to sound crazy, but I believe her. I believe she read me.”

  “Do you think you’re psychic?” he asked, sounding hurt.

  I swallowed. “I don’t know. I know that something is different suddenly. I know that I sensed things when I was younger, but lately, it’s like those things intensified - like I got stronger or my ability got stronger. I ignored it. I thought I was imagining things, but I never once considered I could be psychic.”

  “You’re special all right,” Ben teased as he pulled into the lone gas station on this stretch of h
ighway. He pulled the car next to the gas pumps, sighing.

  “What a day,” I quipped.

  “Yeah.” He looked out the window for the vultures. “They’re still here.”

  I nodded. “She said they would be for a while.”

  I figured he didn’t want anything more to do with this. Things had gotten weird and it wasn’t fair to ask him to tag along for the rest of my ride, so to speak.

  “You don’t have to do this with me,” I offered him a way out. “This is my problem, not yours. All I wanted was to make some sense of what was going on. I didn’t expect it to turn into some big thing with these crazy birds following me around and magical powers.”

  Ben opened the car door and started to step out, pausing to say, “You don’t have magical powers. You have a sixth sense. They’re not the same thing, silly girl. And, you’re not getting rid of me any time soon. Are you kidding? You can read minds? Do you realize what I could do with your gift? Imagine the possibilities!” He flashed his familiar, bright smile at me, easing the tension I felt.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t look forward to moving on alone. Although I’d gone in search of a way to help me figure out the weird dreams and visions I’d been having, I felt a little better prepared to face Zephyr. Miss Maita could confirm he was a bad guy.

  “You’re ridiculous. You can’t use my gift unless I let you do it and I have no plans to do that. Ever.” I laughed.

  He stepped out to put some gas in the car. I watched out the window to see what the vultures were doing. They didn’t notice him from their perch on top of a wire connecting a light pole to the building. It was obvious I was their chosen target. The question was, why? What did they want with me? Miss Maita never clarified that for me. All she would say was they would disappear when their job was done and that I was to keep my eye out for any signs of aggression.

  What did that mean? Were these things going to attack me?

  She never elaborated on those questions. Instead, she focused on letting me know that what I was seeing, and hearing was real. I wasn’t hallucinating. I had a gift. She didn’t want to explain how or where I got this gift, but she could confirm I’d probably had it my whole life and it was becoming more evident as for a reason. She had no idea what that reason was and explained that I would understand when it was time to understand, which meant very little to me and did nothing to comfort my shattered nerves.