The Fog Maiden

by Jane Toombs

The icy way of the hiisi, the demons

  Go forth from here

  Even though it be to nothingness

  Foul spirit

  Be gone!”

  Sweat beaded her face as she finished. She flung Toivi’s hand from her. “I command you to go,” she ordered. “Mine the power.”

  A roaring filled her ears. I’ve lost, she thought. Toivi is consuming me. But after a moment Janella realized she was hearing Red’s motorcycle, the motor catching. Then the sound faded and was gone. Red was gone. There was silence in the Tower. Darkness and silence. Where was Toivi?

  The stairs creaked. Janella waited, incapable of movement. The door was opening, she could hear the click of the knob, and then she saw a small flicker of light, a candle. She shrank back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Janella?” Lucien’s voice. She rushed toward him and he put his arm around her, holding her close.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Toivi…” she said. “Where did she go?”

  Lucien held her away from him so he could see her face. “Toivi? She’s back at the house.”

  The candle flame flickered in the cool dampness from the open window, casting distorted shadows on the walls. Janella shivered. “No, she’s here—didn’t she come with you?”

  Lucien raised the candle high, and they could both see that the Tower contained no one besides themselves.

  “But she was. Where…?” Janella stared at the open window, went quickly to it and looked into the fog. What was that light patch on the roof beneath the window? Was it Toivi in her white robe? “Lucien—oh, Lucien, I’m afraid she’s fallen.”

  Then there was an eternity of holding the light while Lucien maneuvered his wife’s limp body back through the window and down the two flights of stairs into the Entry Hall.

  “Is there a phone?” Lucien asked.

  “In Doris’s office, but the door is kept locked. And the caretaker—I couldn’t get in…”

  “No—he’s gone out. He left when I came. Toivi must have crept in without my knowledge. I was in the Music Room, wouldn’t have heard the door. She could have taken a taxi.”

  They stared at one another.

  “We’ll have to put Toivi in the car. That’ll be the quickest way to get her to a hospital,” Lucien said.

  The Jaguar was jammed with the three of them. Janella tried to find Toivi’s pulse but was unable to in the cramped quarters. If she’d dead I killed her, she thought. I drove her out of my mind and she would have been lost, not able to get back, like Mama. She blinked to keep back tears. What good was the power Toivi craved so badly? All it brought was death and misfortune.

  “You were in the Music Room,” Janella said to Lucien, her voice an accusation.

  “I’d rented Villa Montezuma for tonight some time ago.”

  “What will you gain if you do surround yourself with shadows?” Janella cried. “Is it better than love? Does it take the place of happiness? Is it—is it worth this?” The limpness of her aunt’s body frightened her.

  “Janella…”

  “No—don’t ask me to understand. I can’t. I don’t want any part of your world of shadows. Or Toivi’s…” She stared fearfully at the dark shape she held.

  The attendants in the emergency room lifted Toivi from the car, and Janella saw her aunt’s face clearly. “She’s dead,” Janella said, her voice harsh in her ears. “Oh, Lucien, I’ve killed her.”

  They waited in numb silence after that, not touching, each with their private guilts. A young doctor, his long hair caught back with an elastic band, came over to them at last.

  “Did she fall?” he asked.

  “I…”

  “We think so,” Lucien said firmly, cutting off Janella. “Neither of us actually saw the fall.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you she’s dead, was dead when you brought her in. Fractured neck with severance of the spinal cord.” He looked at one, then the other of them. “You understand I’ll have to notify the coroner?”

  “Yes,” Lucien began, but Janella started to laugh and couldn’t stop, her laughter rising higher and higher until sobs racked her body. Deaths in threes. Akki. Arnie. Toivi. What would the coroner’s office think?

  She felt arms around her, holding her close, her head pressed into Lucien’s chest. “It’s all right, mielikki,” he said. “Nothing is your fault. It’s all right.”

  They were led to a lounge, told to wait.

  “Janella.”

  She turned weary eyes to Lucien. What was there to say?

  “Don’t go away from me. I’ve been as wrong in my way as poor Toivi in hers. Good intentions can be deadly. That boy out there.” He waved his hand and she knew he meant Red. “I hated him, blamed him for the condition Chris was in when I found her that night huddled in the grove. I thought he gave her the drugs I knew she’d had—but it was Toivi all along, lying to me as she has from the beginning.”

  “Where is Chris?”

  “In a mental hospital. She was still hallucinating when I last talked to her doctor.” He shook his head. “They don’t know if she…”

  “Did you tell Red?”

  “Yes. I should have told him weeks ago. He is her brother, after all. But he’s a strange, violent type, and I thought I knew best.”

  “Did you—love Chris?”

  He shook his head. “No. I found her attractive at first, but she and Toivi were closer than I ever was to her. Those pictures in the gallery…”

  “I saw one.”

  “Chris enjoyed them in the same way Toivi seemed to. I couldn’t destroy them—they were Toivi’s, hers before I ever met her. But I took them down. I—they made my skin crawl. Even then I couldn’t believe Toivi was giving Chris drugs. She’d promised me never to use them again. She had the idea they enhanced her power.”

  “What power, what did Toivi see? Shadows, too?”

  “She believed she could go into other minds if conditions were right. It was an obsession with her. At one time, she thought my music would help.” He shook his head. “Poor Toivi.”

  He looked so haggard sitting there next to her on the hard orange settee that she had to fight her impulse to cradle his head, murmur comforting words. There is no comfort, she thought.

  “But you left Toivi and me alone in the house to go to Villa Montezuma and play to your own shadows.”

  “Don’t,” he begged. “I know I’ve been selfish. But I didn’t dream Toivi would try to harm you.”

  “She must have followed you to Villa Montezuma in a taxi,” Janella said. “Why?” Even as she asked, Janella thought she knew the answer. Toivi must have thought she was with Lucien, thought the two of them were betraying her, as she’d said.

  “Toivi had to possess people. Own them. Whether she cared for them or not.” Lucien sighed. “We never should have married; I should have realized there’d be problems.”

  “How did she shut off the lights?” Janella asked.

  “She’d been at the Shephard house before. They showed her all over. Even the lower level.”

  “That’s where the fuse box is,” Janella said. “But Toivi wasn’t well. How could she…?”

  “That was a lot of nonsense. She was thin, emaciated even, but physically as healthy as you are. Remember I told you she had an illness of the spirit?”

  And I couldn’t understand, Janella thought. “Why were her pupils so dilated?”

  “She was using eyedrops to hide the fact that she was back on drugs. She thought I’d see the small pupils and know.”

  “Where did she get the drugs?”

  “Drugs are everywhere if you have the money. Toivi is—was wealthy.” He looked at Janella. “I want you to have her money.”

  Janella started to shake her head but then stopped. She could use some of Toivi’s money to enroll in the nursing course she’d always hoped to take. Use the money to find a way to turn her power to good, not evil. If she really could stop
blood she could be a healer, she could help people, not harm them.

  “I’ll accept enough to get through a nursing course,” she said. “I don’t want any more of her money.”

  “And what then?”

  Janella shook her head, then bit back a cry as he jerked her to her feet. He put his hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “I won’t give you up. Take your damn nursing course if you must. But then…”

  She gazed into the amber eyes. I'll tell him we can never be together without the reminder of all we’d rather forget. I’ll tell him it’s impossible, she thought. But she looked into his eyes and felt herself back in the golden light of love and warmth.

  “The power…” she began.

  “I’ve given up my part. What I was trying to do was turn my back on life. I’ll play the piano again for people, not spirits.”

  He gathered her to him and bent his head to kiss her. The golden warmth flooded through her.

  When at last she pulled away she said to him, “I’ll never pass the words of power on to another. It’s a terrible knowledge, a burden that destroys the carrier. If only Toivi had realized…”

  “It’s too late for Toivi, our poor Toivi. And I agree that to use the power is dangerous. I’ll never ask you, never use my own small portion. It’s not too late for us.”

  Looking into his eyes she knew she wanted to be part of his golden world. I won’t lose myself now, she thought, I’ve found my path, the way I must go. I can accept love and still be Janella, I can love Lucien and not let him possess me.

  She reached up, and touched his face. “It’s not too late,” she agreed.

  About the Author

  Jane Toombs, author of around a hundred books in all categories except men's action and erotica, is now caretaker for her Significant Other who has Parkinson's. They've been together since 1994, are currently owned by a calico cat named Kinko and live in what used to be their home town on the south shore of Lake Superior.

  Jane's website at: www.JaneToombs.com contains all her books, most recent ones first.

  Look for these titles by Jane Toombs

  Now Available:

  Writing as Jane Toombs

  Point of Lost Souls

  Tule Witch

  Writing as Fortune Kent

  Isle of the Seventh Sentry

  Coming Soon:

  Writing as Jane Toombs

  A Topaz for My Lady Fair

  The Star-Fire Prophecy

  Writing as Fortune Kent

  The House at Canterbury

  House of Masques

  The Opal Legacy

  She was drowning in the nightmares of her past…

  Point of Lost Souls

  © 2014 Jane Toombs

  At six, Mara was found in the waters of Lake Michigan. With no memories of how she got there or where she came from, she only knows she has a psychic talent—perhaps one inherited from her unknown relatives.

  Adopted by a kindly judge, Mara has grown to adulthood always yearning to discover the secrets of her past hidden in her nightmares. Stumbling across a deck of tarot cards, Mara gleans some clues to her past and follows them to the lakeside cottage of her childhood. But sometimes secrets are meant to be buried, and the past is best left alone.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Point of Lost Souls:

  Mara tossed in her bed, unable to sleep. If she relaxed and drifted, let her guard down, what would come? There’d been a long time without dreams. No dreams to remember until the bad time with Mike. Then the old nightmare came back, over and over, but she had ways to deal with the known—it was the new dream, the new horror that frightened her now. If she closed her eyes…

  She sat up and switched on the bedside light. This was the farm, her old bedroom at the farm. She wasn’t at college—no more Mike—she was home. The closet there and the dresser over there and Mara in the mirror staring back. Dark hair tangled over her face, she appeared disordered, abandoned—what Tim called her haunted, gypsy look. She was safe, safe at the farm in the Judge’s house.

  But safe wasn’t good enough. Susan would wrap her in the familiar cocoon of love and protection and she’d smother. The new dream meant something, no matter how frightening, had gotten past the barrier in her mind. Mara shuddered, almost convincing herself she saw the glowing skull begin to form in the shadows of the room. The skull could be Mike’s fault, part of the whole hideous bit with him, but she wouldn’t think about that right now, not ever again if she could help it. She was over Mike, no longer wanted to warm herself in the glow from his charm. Charm which concealed the darkness within him.

  But she did need to know herself, to search for a way to break through the mind block shutting off part of her life from recall. She shivered again, thinking of the whispering skull dream—one word repeated over and over, “cottage, cottage.” She would have to start there. The cottage. If she could only convince the Judge…

  Mara got up and pulled her red terry cloth robe over her thin nightgown. The Judge was a stickler for covering up. She could well remember her first bikini and how shattered she’d felt when he told her, “You’d be more decent nude than in such a provocative bathing suit—please refrain from wearing it in my sight.”

  He was in the library, his library since no one else dared use the room. Even Tim never had, and he was the Judge’s only grandchild, indulged in most things. Why was she standing here outside the door? The Judge was just a sick, old man in a wheelchair, wasn’t he?

  The door was ajar, so she edged it open and saw him behind the old oak desk, sitting straight as always in his wheelchair, useless legs blocked from her view. The paralyzed left arm was folded into his lap but he clutched an old pipe in his right hand. The pipe was always there, but Mara thought she had never seen him light it in all the years she had lived with him. His white hair and beard were neatly trimmed, as usual. She smiled tentatively but said nothing.

  He did not speak, either. This was his way, this silence, an attempt to force you to weaken your position by speaking first. He looked at Mara and she stared back at him. Indestructible old man, like some immortal ancient king who could not be killed but yet must suffer the ravages of age and disease. She thought the left side of his face still sagged slightly; he did not look well.

  He nodded, a brief movement. Not exactly speaking, but she conceded. “I couldn’t sleep,” she told him.

  “A common affliction.” His voice was ever so slightly slurred, but still resonant. He was acute mentally though he’d failed physically since his last illness. A CVA—cerebrovascular accident. In her mind Mara could hear him all over again when she’d called it that.

  “Damn it! A stroke’s a stroke. You sound like Tim and the rest of those witch doctors—using polysyllabic medical jargon doesn’t change what happened one damn bit. I blew out a blood vessel. That’s a stroke, isn’t it? Getting too old for my innards.”

  But the fierceness seemed assumed where it had been real enough once. Now he couldn’t use his left hand and arm, and this besides the paraplegia he’d had since the boating accident all those years ago. The accident in which he had lived and his son had drowned.

  “I’ve been dreaming again,” she said, refusing to share her insomnia with him.

  His eyes sharpened. “The same nightmare? You still dream about the night Tim’s dog found you?”

  “Mr. B? No, I don’t dream about the dog. Just water and the dark. And now I have a new one…” her voice faltered but she swallowed and went on. “I hear something whisper to me.” She couldn’t tell him about the skull. “I think maybe if I went out to the cottage and stayed—at least for the summer—I might begin to remember. Maybe this new dream is a beginning and the cottage will bring more back.”

  The Judge put his pipe down on the desktop and slowly rolled the wheelchair out around the desk, closer to her. “The mind won’t be forced, Mara. You must know enough about traumatic amnesia to realize it may be best left alone.”

  “Let me t
ry.” She took a step nearer, held out her hands, palms up.

  “I can’t understand your desire to live in a place you dislike. Still—I won’t refuse you the use of the cottage. I am not unreasonable.” He was silent a long time and she dropped her hands, watching him.

  “Your living there will prove to be as useless as your earlier stratagems. I thought you had become reconciled.”

  She shook her head wordlessly.

  “Why must you rehash this, Mara? Susan will be distressed, as usual, I am already annoyed and the end result will be nothing, also as usual.”

  Mara blinked fast to keep tears back—she knew better than to show them or the Judge would leave in disgust. He dominated everything, as he always had.

  “I have to try it,” she repeated.

  “Very well. But I must point out once again that all the important avenues were explored years before, when you were a small girl. I did the necessary advertising, contacted law enforcement agencies about the area, even hired a private investigator. If nothing came of this when the clues were fresh, certainly no new material will be found so many years later.”

  She wanted to cry out that her mind had never been searched—no one knew what might be there—but hesitated remembering the one time she had made an appointment with a psychiatrist.

  The Judge seemed to read her thoughts. “I know you’re not mentally disturbed—God knows I’ve dealt with enough of those fool head doctors in court. You’re all right, Mara. But you must learn to forget your obsession once and for all.”

  She looked at the old man in the wheelchair, useless legs hidden now by his violet lap robe, and wondered, as she often had, if he resented her. “But you will let me use the cottage?” she insisted.

  He seemed to study her for a while, then nodded. “I don’t know about the road,” he said. “They want to fix it but not the way it should be done. I’m trying to work things out, but…” He put his good hand to his face. “I’m an old man, Mara…”