The Family Tree: a psychological thriller

by S. K. Grice

  Panic seized my chest and I struggled for a breath. If that was true, the family had no intention of stopping. “How did you hear that?” I asked.

  He leaned his elbows on the table. “I have a few friends at the police department. They talk.”

  A drug dealer with police connections. It didn’t surprise me. “And? Any clues to what happened?”

  “Well, here’s the kicker.” Jackson sat back and clasped his hands together. “Word is that Carol Morton, Mike’s mom—she hired a psychic.”

  A knot twisted in my belly. I didn’t believe in psychics, per se, but the family’s desperation gave me no comfort. “Guess they’ll try anything to find him.”

  Nancy looked at me. “Jackson’s one of those conspiracy theorists. Thinks man never landed on the moon.”

  Jackson laughed. “I don’t go that far. But you have to admit, there’s some strange shit going on.”

  I shifted in my seat. Strange shit. “Like what?”

  Jackson looked back at me. “Apparently, both the police and the private investigator are taking what the psychic lady says seriously. She’s pretty well-known here at the beach.” He rubbed his nose. “She’s convinced Mike’s mom that he’s buried in the woods somewhere around Crab Creek Road and Willow Road.”

  Jackson narrowed his eyes and looked closer at me. “What’s your theory?”

  A vein in my neck pulsed. “About what?” I raised my brows and took a sip of my drink.

  “About what happened to Mike Morton,” Nancy said, as if I’d been living under a rock. “Everyone has a theory.”

  I smiled, like this was a fun game. “Oh, uh… let’s see… I bet he’s living someplace down south where it’s warm year-round.”

  “Is that what you really think?” Jackson asked.

  His question ruffled my calm. Did Jackson know something more? Or was paranoia distorting my rational thought? I’d used ERPT before coming tonight. Breathed enough air to blow up a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. “Well, I don’t believe in psychics,” I said, “so I’m thinking of other possibilities.”

  “Lots of psychics have solved crimes,” Nancy said, her tone taking a turn toward sarcastic.

  It was true, but the conversation made me uneasy. I ran my fingertip around the rim of my glass but said nothing.

  “This psychic is supposed to be the real deal,” Jackson said. “She’s helped police in other crimes.”

  I twisted the cocktail napkin, picking at the corners and nearly shitting myself. Was I about to get caught? So many questions came to my mind, but I was afraid to ask. Afraid of the truth coming out. Nah. Police station gossip. But even gossip could include a shred of truth. What else did Jackson know?

  A bearded man in shorts and T-shirt knocked on the wooden table and pointed to Jackson. “We’re up, dude.”

  Jackson downed the last of his beer and then rubbed his hands together. “Time to hit the drums.”

  A moan of disappointment stuck in my throat. I didn’t want Jackson to leave us yet, not until I knew everything he knew about the investigation.

  He slid out of the booth and put his meaty hand on my shoulder. “Now that you’re back into the neighborhood,” he said in a fun and flirty tone, “we should hang out sometime.”

  I wanted to do that, to see Jackson again. I had so many more questions. But his come-hither grin told me he had other motivations. Nancy watched us with tight lips. I wasn’t there to start drama, so I brushed his hand off my shoulder. “Yeah. See you round the ‘hood.’”

  Jackson took off toward the stage, seemingly unaware of Nancy’s forlorn face.

  The curiosity was killing me, so I asked Nancy a direct question. “Something going on between you and Jackson?”

  She half-shrugged and scrunched her face. “He’s just a friend. Besides—” she lifted her hand and wiggled the flashy diamond, “I’m married. Remember?”

  Richard had always been a low-key guy who blended into the background. Easy to forget. “How is Richard these days?”

  “Old and boring.” She glared at me. “But you’re single now. So, you and Jackson are both free to see each other anytime you want.”

  “I don’t want. Jackson’s a nice guy and all. Just not my type.”

  Nancy’s lip twitched. “Why’s that?”

  I had plenty of reasons to list, starting with conflict of values. But Nancy was ready to defend him to the death. “I guess he’s too nerdy.”

  Nancy’s face softened, and she laughed. “True that.”

  I threw back the last of my martini. The only thing I wanted from Jackson was more information about the police investigation. I couldn’t shake the thought of cops banging down my door. I never wanted to be under police scrutiny again.

  “Welcome to Ocean Joe’s, folks!” the long-haired lead singer screamed into the microphone. The crowd cheered then the band ripped into “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

  My leg bounced, not to the beat of the music, but to the thump of my rapid pulse. Why was the psychic focused on Willow Road? What did she know? This information was too close to home on so many levels. I crossed and uncrossed my legs.

  Socializing had opened my eyes and made me realize how detached I’d been from the rest of the world. Staying locked up in my mole-hole had dimmed my vision, and I had no intention of staying in the dark.

  “Guys,” I rubbed my temples. “I’m sorry to do this, but… I feel a migraine coming on. It’s been happening a lot lately. I have some medication back at my place.”

  “Oh, you do look pale,” Denise said, patting my back. “And listening to Jackson on the drums isn’t going to help. Do you need a ride home?”

  “No, thanks. I took a Zoomer here.” I gave her a quick hug and scooted out of the seat, looking as queasy as I could. “I’ll book a driver and wait outside. The fresh air might help.”

  Nancy didn’t stand but waved and said, “Stay in touch, girl.” A shadow of a sneer was on her lips.

  Pushing my way through the crowd, a guitar riff cut through the air, shredding everything but the image of Mike Morton’s bones under the oak tree.

  Relieved to be outside, I booked a Zoomer on my phone app and made my way off the pier to join the tourists strolling along the esplanade lined with mid-rise hotels. The balmy night air was filled with the familiar smell of fried donuts, cotton candy, and saltwater.

  Come winter, when the beaches turned cold and windy, this place would become deserted, and businesses boarded up, but tonight every hotel was full and live music spilled from oceanfront bars and restaurants.

  I took the landscaped path between two hotels which led to Ocean Avenue, the main drag bustling with souvenir shops, a small amusement park, and a few haunted houses. A Honda with a Zoomer placard on the back window idled in a No Parking zone next to the Seabreeze Hotel. I hopped into the backseat.

  “Hot night,” the middle-aged woman driver said, turning around with a smile.

  I rubbed my head and sighed. “Yes.” I wasn’t in the mood for conversation and felt relieved when she quickly tuned into a local pop radio station. Who the hell was the psychic Mike’s mother had talked to?

  The driver turned left off Ocean Avenue and onto Lighthouse Beach Boulevard, the main road running a straight-line east to west through the town.

  Heading west, the lights of the resort area gave way to the dim back streets where the low-rent homes and apartments spread out for the next ten blocks. We passed an Applebee’s, Dairy Queen, and a Popeye’s Chicken. American cuisine. The driver merged into the right turn lane as we approached the town’s main intersection and commercial hub. She stopped at the red light.

  The turn signal clicked to the beat of Niki Minaj on the radio. Besides the oceanfront resort, there wasn’t much to see in town. Straight ahead was the town’s shopping mall and car sales lots. If we turned left, we’d head toward the rural part of town, to the farmlands and into the wooded zone, to my new home. The light turned green, and the driver t
urned right, toward the bayside of town with hospitals and banks and leafy middle- to upper-class neighborhoods. My townhouse was here, on the fringe of this side of town.

  Five minutes later, I was at home sitting cross-legged on the floor with my laptop on the coffee table and my back against the sofa. Jackson’s news about the psychic might’ve kept me awake all night agonizing and analyzing, but the double dose of Xanax I’d taken a few minutes ago would soon take care of that.

  I typed ‘lighthouse beach psychics’ into my browser. I wasn’t as worried about the police finding my search for local psychics on my laptop. I’d lost two significant people in my life recently. Three, if I wanted to include my father. A lot of people hired psychics to help heal their grief. Why would I be any different?

  The search yielded seven names—three doing business near the oceanfront. Top rated of the three was Madame Celeste. I visited the website and blinked at the image on the screen. It took a moment, but I recognized the silvery-blonde hair with corkscrew curls. The woman I’d seen wandering back and forth past the house on the day of Patsy’s funeral. “Bingo.”

  Then I remembered how Noah and his dad had greeted the psychic like they’d known one another. My heartbeat pounded at my temples. What did they discuss?

  I clicked through the psychic’s site pages. World-renowned. Spiritual Advisor. Intuitive Readings. Mediumship. The testimonials spoke of warm and insightful experiences.

  One-hundred-fifty dollars for one hour. A long-distance call to the dead wasn’t cheap, but even at extortion level prices, I wanted to talk to her. If I had any balls, I’d go in pretending I was a news reporter and interview her about Mike’s disappearance.

  It wouldn’t take a psychic to see I was a twisted ball of anxiety. What if she saw deeper into my being? Intuitive people worked that way. The last thing I needed was a psychic reading my spiritual aura. Worse yet, what if she found out I lived on Willow Road? Surely, she’d report her suspicions to the police.

  I wasn’t game to test the waters. I snapped the laptop shut.

  My eyelids grew heavy, and I lifted myself onto the sofa. The fuzzy warmth of Xanax rolled through me.

  I’d have to wait for more public news about the investigation, just like everyone else.

  Chapter Nine

  The transfer of Patsy’s property into my name took place one hot August afternoon and without interruption. The attorney handed me the keys, and I headed straight to the house for my one o’clock appointment with Katie.

  I arrived thirty minutes early because I wanted to face my grief head-on and alone.

  I was already familiar with the warm-up for ERPT. Desensitizing started with a moment of meditation. I stood on the verandah and kept focused on the present moment. Cotton-ball clouds floated high in the clear blue sky as a symphony of cicadas and crickets filled the silence.

  This was a chance to become a person unencumbered by unwanted thoughts and compulsions. Free of disturbing memories. Someone who people didn’t know was crazy.

  A true fresh start.

  Stepping inside, I felt mold and dust weighing heavy in the stale air. Muddy footprints tracked through the living room. I huffed. Patsy wouldn’t have liked that. She’d always kept the house clean.

  I hung my purse on the staircase rail and looked around. It was still sinking in. This land, house, and all its contents now belonged to me.

  A layer of dust covered every surface. The room had a hazy hue from muted sunlight.

  The place was dated. Ethan Allen country furniture from the 1990s. 1980s sponge-washed walls. Patsy had had good taste, with a lean toward the eclectic and trendy. Pure Patsy. But the fuzzy pink chair shaped like a hand had to go.

  I walked around downstairs. When I had been a child, this house had seemed like a mansion. At thirty-six years old, I saw it for what it was. A tired, two-story farmhouse. Four bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. A formal living and dining room, and a large kitchen with enough space for the dinette and family television area. The huge deck off the kitchen.

  The house was quiet. Everything exactly as Patsy had left it.

  I went upstairs. On my right was the master bedroom, Patsy’s room. The location at the top of the stairs had made it hard to sneak in late when we’d stayed out after curfew. I looked inside. The comforter was pulled over the pillows in a half-effort to make the bed. The curtains were open, and the window framed the family tree. My stomach hardened. A lump grew in my throat. I closed the door. It made sense to make this my room, but I wasn’t ready to sleep in the room where she’d died.

  The two bedrooms at the end of the hall had been used as guest rooms, though one was more of a storage room. These would become Jennifer and Eric’s bedrooms.

  Annette’s childhood bedroom door was open. It had remained untouched, exactly the way she’d kept it during our college years, before she’d moved out on her own. A bedroom frozen in time. Snapshots of friends and fun times pinned to a corkboard. The canopy bed with its rumpled bedspread and a dent in the pillow. I sat on the edge of the mattress. A pile of crumpled tissues was next to the pillow. Tissues filled with the dried tears of a mother who’d lost a child. I thought of Patsy being alone in this room, this house, crying herself to sleep each night. My heart grew heavy.

  Slam.

  A vein across my temple pounded against my brain. The noise had come from downstairs. Like the front screen door.

  Katie.

  I bounced up from the bed and smoothed my hair. Katie would be pleased to see how I’d coped with being here in the house. So far, so good.

  At the top of the stairs, I froze. The heavy, red front door was wide open, as I’d left it, with the transparent screened door closed. My purse still hung on the rail. No one was at the entry. “Katie?”

  No answer.

  My heartbeat pounded against my head as I tip-toed halfway down the staircase. A quick eye scan showed no one in the living room.

  Rap, rap, rap. The screen door hit against the jamb. I took a relieved breath and hurried down the steps. I mustn’t have closed the door all the way. I checked the driveway. Only my car was there.

  “Damn wind.” I clicked the door tight and headed toward the kitchen. A flash of green caught my eye. An oak leaf lying on the pinewood floor in front of the fireplace. I froze. My pulse pumped a few hard beats. I didn’t remember seeing it when I’d come inside. I picked it up—fresh and tender to my touch.

  I whipped my head around, searching every corner of the room. Had this leaf come from the family tree? Or had it blown in when I’d come into the house?

  I’d never believed in ghosts but thought maybe I should’ve.

  Was this leaf a message, like the leaves I’d been getting in the mail from some weirdo?

  No. No. No. No. I couldn’t have thoughts start up now. I inhaled deep, in and out. Focus on the breathing. Leaves blew into houses all the time; there was no need to obsess.

  I crept into the kitchen. A drip of water plunked into the stainless-steel sink. The smell of stale spices and cooking grease hung in the air. The round dinette table, and the two-seater sofa and small flat-screen television she’d set up in a cozy corner. Nothing had changed. The remnants of Patsy’s presence in the house still lingered.

  I bolted out the kitchen door and onto the deck. The hissing and rattling of the cicadas drowned out all sound as I walked into the backyard. I counted aloud in sets of five. “One, two, three, four, five.” Again. “One, two, three, four, five.” Again. I repeated the process until I stood before the majestic family tree full of green summer leaves.

  The leaves on specific tree species could vary; they could be as distinct as an ethnic group of people. People fit into different groups and families. So did trees. The forest surrounding the house had grown into a community of loblolly pines, birch, holly, maple, and the common white oak. The leaves on forest oaks had rounded tips on their lobes.

  The family tree was different. It was a Southern Red Oak. The leaves on this tree
were oblong with eight slender and pointy lobes. Exactly like the leaf in my hand.

  Ice cold shivers ran down my scalp, my spine, and to every limb in my body. My knees shook. Someone had been in the house. Someone had intentionally put the leaf on the floor.

  The hiss of cicadas grew louder. Males screeching for mates. I tossed the leaf aside and it landed with the cicada exoskeleton shells littering the ground. The relentless insects crawled all over the branches, and I quivered as a slow growing prickling sensation spread across my skin. It was late into the season for this many cicadas to be around.

  For seventeen years, the insects had lived deep in the ground under the family tree, feeding on the juicy roots. The same roots which fed on soil soaked in the blood of Mike Morton. Roots which carried human DNA through every limb on the tree.

  A cicada jumped on my bare arm and I flinched, brushing it off. “Get off me, you bastard.” Another cicada flew at me and hooked itself onto my long hair. Chills pushed through my body with the force of an icy shower.

  I swung my head back and forth as the cicada dug deeper into the tangle—bzzz, bzzz, buzzing toward my scalp like an electric razor on a mission. My fingers desperately threaded through the mass of hair, separating strands to free the bug.

  “Jolene?” A man’s voice called out.

  I turned my head. It was Noah, walking toward me from the side of the house. “Fucking great,” I mumbled with my head upside down. I wasn’t in the mood to talk with a cop.

  “You doing okay there?” He drew closer.

  “Damn cicada flew into my hair. Can’t get it out.” The buzzing moved closer to my scalp, and I pulled through my hair even harder. Noah was a couple years younger than me, but probably remembered my ‘Psycho Girl’ days, so if he’d ever doubted my sanity, this moment would have confirmed it.

  Noah gently grasped a handful of hair, with the bug now so close to my scalp that I could feel the prickle of its legs. “Stay still for a second,” he said. “I’ll get it out.”