Intersections

by Megan Hart

  "You should go help your brothers, Luka. If there's another storm coming, we need to make sure we have enough wood to keep warm. The power will certainly go out," Mother said calmly. She'd put her hands on the planchette again, like a smoker who couldn't be without a cig for more than the time it took to light the next one after crushing out the first. "Perhaps for days."

  With a nod and a glance at Tori, Luka left the dining room. The weight of the baby in Tori's arms shifted as Rose sank into the boneless heaviness of sleep. Tori watched as Luka came out of the house and headed toward his brothers. He paused, gesturing, pointing back toward the house. Then the four of them turned and went back into the woods.

  Tori let the curtain fall back over the window and faced the old woman. "I need to use your phone to call my dad. He's been waiting for us. He'll be worried."

  NO

  Mother cocked her head as the planchette drifted around the board. "Of course, my dear. You can leave the child with me while you make the call. It's been a long time since I bounced a baby on my knee."

  "Look," Tori said with narrowed eyes and a gritted jaw, "I'm not sure what, exactly, is going on here. But there's no way I'm letting you hold my baby."

  "I won't drop her."

  Tori frowned. "I'm not afraid you'll drop her."

  "And we've been so kind to you," Mother said as though Tori had deeply wounded her. "How very rude."

  "I'm sorry. I need the phone."

  Mother smiled serenely. "It's in the kitchen. We only have the one."

  YES

  Tori glanced at the board on the table. "I never believed those worked."

  "Oh, it works. Very well. I have lived a good portion of my life being advised by this very board. I acquired it when I was a young woman, without direction or inspiration. Full of desperate choices and bad decisions. It will surprise you to learn that I was much like you, when I was your age."

  YES

  Tori cupped the back of Rose's skull, holding the baby close to her. "And then what happened?"

  "I was given this board as a gift from an admirer. A paramour," the old woman said with a grin and a wink so disturbingly lascivious it set Tori back a step or two. "He encouraged me to embrace the intersection between this world and the next. To connect with the world beyond."

  Tori's nose wrinkled. "Uh huh. Like what. Ghosts?"

  "Spirits," the old woman said. "One spirit, in particular."

  "Maybe it's a demon," Tori replied flatly, not believing it and well aware that yanking Mother's chain was not her smartest idea, but unable to help herself. "Watch out, you'll get possessed."

  Mother smiled, a wide grin that bared her teeth. "When you stand at an intersection, how do you decide which direction to go?"

  "It depends on where I want to end up."

  "And how do you decide where you want to end up?" The smile had become a grimace.

  "Well, I don't do it by asking a spirit or a demon or whatever, I can tell you that much."

  Mother gave the baby a pointed, lingering glance and Tori another of those curl-lipped smiles. "And look where it got you so far."

  "If you ask me," Tori said, "depending on the advice of a Ouija board to tell you what to do doesn't exactly sound to me like you're making any better choices."

  NO

  YES

  "Believing in the board, listening to the board, has shown me the best and most important things inside of myself. The pieces of me I would never have otherwise known." Mother's fingers twitched on the planchette before she lifted them and gestured at Tori. "Come here and try it for yourself. You'll see."

  Tori didn't particularly want to use the Ouija board, but that dark thing inside her moved her toward it, if for no other reason than she intended to prove Mother wrong. Ignoring the old woman's outstretched arms and silent request to take the child, Tori placed the fingertips of one hand lightly on the planchette. It tipped for a second or so before settling firmly back onto the board.

  It began to move at once, urged on by the subtle twitching of Tori's fingers as she deliberately moved it. One letter at a time, she spelled out a message while Mother looked eagerly on. Tori held herself back from laughing only by biting her tongue, glancing from the corner of her eye at Mother's intent expression.

  E V E R Y T H I N G

  I S

  B

  Her fingers slipped a little as the planchette circled.

  B

  Mother looked at her. "You have to open yourself up to what's inside you."

  B

  B L

  Again, her fingers skidded on the plastic. The arm holding the sleeping baby was getting tired. Tori frowned.

  B L A

  "Bullshit," she muttered. "Everything is --"

  B L A C K

  She took her fingers off the planchette and stepped back. She shifted Rose to her other arm to ease the stiffness in her muscles and gave Mother a lift of her chin. A defiant look.

  "It’s all bullshit," she repeated.

  Mother was no longer smiling. Her eyes had narrowed. Her mouth pursed. She hesitantly hovered her hands over the plastic triangle, but didn't touch it. She shook her head.

  "Apparently there’s nothing inside you." She looked up with an expression Tori couldn't interpret. She might have said it was fear, if that had made any kind of sense.

  "If you say so. I'm going to use the phone." Tori paused, looking the old woman over. Her fingertips felt oily from touching the planchette, although there hadn't seemed to be anything greasy on it. "You know, it's not that I'm not grateful for the help."

  "Go make your phone call."

  In the kitchen, Tori shifted the baby to one arm again and found the phone, an old-fashioned rotary, hung on the wall near the equally vintage fridge. She no longer had the crumpled scrap of notebook paper, but she'd memorized the number. She'd stared at it often enough over the years, never reaching out but holding onto the idea that she could if she needed to.

  She had never actually used a phone like this and had to try several times to figure out how to dial it. She wasn't graceful, and doing it one-handed made her even less so, but she managed. After a moment or so, the phone blurted a series of grunting rumbles she didn't recognize at first as an indication that the line was busy. She hung up. Shifted the baby to the other arm. Tried again. Another busy signal. Still, she wasn't about to give up. On the third try, there was silence and then a discordant jangling that sounded very far away.

  Finally, a woman's voice. "Yeah? Hello?"

  "Hi, I'm...This is Tori...I'm trying to reach ummm...." She coughed, her throat closing with emotion. "George? I'm trying to reach George."

  "Who is this?"

  "Tori. His daughter."

  The sharp bark of a laugh ripped through the phone. "Right. You know it's illegal for debt collectors not to identify themselves, right?"

  "I'm not a debt collector. I'm Tori, his daughter. He never spoke about me?" Despair made her eyes itch.

  The woman's laugh was no less harsh the second time. "Honey, if George ever procreated, either he never knew about it, or he made damn sure he'd blocked it out. Believe me, there were a couple years in the beginning that I thought maybe we might try for a kid. Thank God he was so dead set against it, or else I'd be up shit's creek right about now, in a boat springing a leak. If you know what I mean."

  "I don't!" Tori cried. "I don't know what you mean!"

  "I mean that George is dead. He died a little over a year ago. He left me saddled with a shitload of debt and not much else." The woman paused before adding, "if you're looking to cash in on something, there's nothing for you. You can try, but it all went to pay off what he owed."

  Tori shook her head, even though the woman couldn't see her. Her dad had told her he would be there if she needed him, and she’d been stupid enough to believe him, so much that she hadn’t even tried to call him before heading for his house. If she’d done that, she wouldn’t be here now.

  "I don't want money fro
m him. I just needed someplace to go...I had a baby...I just wanted my dad. That's all. He told me if I ever really needed him, he'd be there for me. I believed him."

  "You're not the first person George let down." The woman's voice turned a little more kind. "Hell, he could talk the birds out of the trees, when he wanted to, make you feel like you meant something, and then turn around and throw it all in the shitter. He wasn't right. He had something --"

  "Let me guess," Tori said flatly, "he had something dark inside him."

  The woman was silent for a long time, the only sound creeping through the distance the ruffle of her breathing. "That's what he used to say. Yes. Something in his blood. Never went to the doctor. Said they’d never find it. I guess maybe you are really his kid."

  "It doesn't matter now. Not if he's dead," Tori said. "I'm sorry to bother you."

  "I'm sorry you had to find out this way. If I'd known, I would have found a way to get in touch with you."

  Tori swallowed hard. "It wasn't your fault, I guess. Can you at least tell me how he died?"

  "Oh, honey...I'm not sure...you say you just had a baby? You should focus on that little one and not worry about what happened to George. It's not a nice story."

  Tori swallowed again, tasting bitterness. "I'd like to know."

  "Well." The woman sighed and was silent again for so long Tori thought maybe the connection had dropped. When she spoke at last, she sounded worn and sad and sympathetic, yet her voice was tinged with the sort of giddy glee that comes from telling a story guaranteed to shock. "He stopped eating. He'd always been a big guy, so when he started dropping weight it didn't seem like a bad thing, you know? Then I thought maybe he was sick with the cancer. But it wasn't that. It was all in his head. He starved himself to death. Why, I'll never figure out."

  Tori hung up the handset without another word. She cuddled Rose close to her, eyes closed, rocking from foot to foot while she crooned a wordless lullaby that was meant to soothe her more than the baby, who hadn't yet awoken. Another rush of copper flooded her mouth so that she had to swallow again and again against the metallic sting.

  For a moment, she leaned against the wall with one shoulder. It felt like it had been forever since she hadn't been bone-deep exhausted. It had been stupid of her to think her dad was the solution to any of her problems, but damn, she'd been counting on that safe place to land. She looked around this kitchen instead, wondering what the hell she was in for. Next to the back door was a set of metal bowls. One bore the painted name RUSTY. Both were empty. When the lights flickered overhead at the wind's sudden roar, Rose woke up.

  "Shhh, Little Bit," Tori soothed as she rocked the baby. "It's all going to be okay."

  She was no longer so convinced of her own promises, but Tori kept her chin up. The baby was too small to understand what was going on, but Tori knew Rose could sense her mother's distress and react to it. She had to keep calm, for both of their sakes.

  She looked out the window again, watching as Luka grabbed an armful of wood with as much effort as if he were lifting a pile of feather pillows. She was stuck here, and she had no idea for how long. For now, though, they were warm and would stay that way, at least based on the amount of firewood the brothers had stacked. She couldn't be sure of the food situation, but the way the brothers consumed their meals left her with some confidence that they kept their pantry full. So far, other than the slowly rising sense of unease with the batshit old woman and her Ouija board and the beastish pack of her sons, Tori didn't feel immediately threatened or in danger.

  She'd been in worse situations in her life, many times, with people who were supposed to be taking care of her. For damned sure, she would do a better job of protecting her daughter. She kissed the top of Rose's head and breathed in the smell of warm skin, sour milk, the underlying odor of her own still-leaking blood.

  One of the kitchen doors opened onto a set of clean basement stairs lit by a bare hanging bulb. The walls had been lined with shelves full of dried goods, so she'd been right about the food. Another door led to the laundry room she'd used before. The hallway was just past that, and she crept along it on soft feet, certain that Mother would be at her permanent place at the head of the dining room table.

  Across from the dining room, on the opposite side of the stairs, Tori entered a living room. It was darker even than the dining room, windows hung with the same heavy velvet curtains and furnished with an assortment of heavy, antique pieces that looked like something out of a museum. This room also had a fireplace, but it had been boarded over. In one corner was an upright piano, but when Tori tentatively touched the keys her fingertip came away coated in dust. It had been a long time since anyone had used this room regularly.

  The wall switch near the door turned on a couple of fringed lamps on the end tables, both of them also coated so thickly with dust they didn't cast much light. It was enough to see the framed portraits on the wall, however. Tori had half-expected old-fashioned oil paintings of people in Victorian clothes, but each of the oversized frames held what looked like standard high school photos. One for each of the brothers. Another for Mother. Her hair had been as thick and dark as that of her sons.

  She studied the photos, trying to figure out what was so off about them. Something in the poses, all of them identical, with matching blank stares? No, that was common enough in studio photos. It was something else. Something in the way the boys in the pictures were dressed. She tilted her head to try and figure it out, but couldn't manage to put the pieces together.

  A thick photo album, the kind with sticky pages, sat on a sideboard directly below the framed photos. It lay open as though left behind by someone who'd been flipping through it but had been interrupted. Tori tucked the baby more firmly against her, and turned the pages to the beginning.

  There was Mother as a young woman. Formal portraits in clothes fashionable decades ago. Very few candids or snapshots. Some of the pages featured pressed flowers or ticket stubs, a program from a theater production, a couple foreign coins secured with yellowed tape. Tori studied the program's front cover, which matched the poster hanging in the laundry room. It had survived better than the poster, though, and was still readable.

  MYSTICAL FEATS OF IMAGINATION

  THRILLING DISPLAYS OF THE SPIRIT WORLD

  COMMUNICATE WITH LOST LOVED ONES IN THE WORLD BEYOND

  Midway through the album, a single picture took up an entire page. Also formally posed, it was of Mother sitting in a high backed chair. A tall man with black hair tied back in a tail at the base of his neck stood next to her. His dark suit was ill-fitting, and his loafers, likely brown, obviously didn't match. Even though the photo was black and white, his eyes were clearly a pale, light color. Green, Tori thought. Like Luka's. Mother looked polished and elegant in a long gown with a ruffled neck and matching ruffles at the cuffs.

  She had the Ouija board on her lap.

  Tori shifted the baby to her other arm and leaned closer to study this photo. She didn't have enough light to make out all the details, and time had faded a lot of it anyway, but she noted the ring on Mother's hand. Maybe this was a wedding picture. The man looked enough like all the brothers that he could certainly be at least Jackson's father, but this photo had also clearly been taken decades ago. She'd seen old photos of her grandmother wearing similar attire.

  Tori flipped the page to find a picture of Mother along with a toddler on her lap. Based on the clothes, Tori guessed it was Jackson. The photos on the next page, opposite each other, were almost identical except for the number of people in them. Mother on a chair, a toddler on her lap. Her older sons, first one, then two. Mother, Jackson, Declan and Micah, Tori thought, looking closer at the stairstep children.

  She stared again at the portraits on the wall. If Luka was eighteen, that meant Jackson, the oldest, should have been at most, what? Eight or ten years older? In the framed portrait he looked to be about eighteen or so. She leaned closer to the photo. In the lower right corner, written in a
tight but feminine hand, was "Jackson, 1983."

  Tori hadn't even been born in 1983. She looked again, more closely this time. If that was indeed Jackson at eighteen, that would mean he'd have to be close to fifty now. No way did he look that old.

  She flipped to the next page and found one more picture, exactly as she'd expected. Three older boys surrounding their mother, with a toddler on her lap. That would be Luka.

  The next couple of pages were blank, although squares of white against the faded yellow showed there'd once been pictures there. She flipped all the way to the end of the album, but there were no more photos. Closing it, Tori stepped back to again look at the pictures hung on the wall.

  "You shouldn't be in here," a male voice said from the shadowed doorway.

  Tori turned. Luka had slipped into the room while she was looking at the photo album. "I wasn't hurting anything. Just looking."

  For a big man, he moved so silently she could barely hear him as he walked toward her. He stood shoulder to shoulder with her to also stare at the framed portraits. The way they were standing made it difficult for her to move without brushing against him. She almost did it anyway, if only for the fleeting sense of heat she knew she'd get from his body.

  He was too young, she told herself with a sideways glance at him. Barely an adult, even if he looked and acted much older. She was in no position to be thinking of him as anything but a stranger who'd helped her and Rose out of a bad situation.

  "How old are your brothers?"

  "Older than me," Luka said.

  Tori pressed her lips together, not sure if she ought to laugh. Maybe he wasn't trying to be funny. "Well, yeah. I got that. But I mean, how much older?"

  "Why do you want to know?"

  Tori paused before answering, remembering the times she'd replied to an intrusive questions with a similar reply. "Curiosity?"

  Luka smiled but didn't answer.