Silent as the Grave

by Zoe Aarsen

  We reached the main intersection in town, right near the entrance to the shopping center where the grocery store was located. Violet slowed to a stop for the red light. We were in the exact location where Mom’s brakes had failed back in January and had caused her to get into an accident with Mischa’s mom.

  “Were you able to figure anything out about what went wrong this afternoon?” Violet asked me.

  I reached inside my jacket and withdrew the mason jar. Those two little drops of condensation were still clinging to the inside of the glass. “Current theory is that I accidentally pulled Mischa’s soul out of her body along with the evil spirits, and they went right back in and locked her out.”

  Trey asked, “What does that mean? Is Mischa… dead?”

  “Not dead, exactly,” I said with an exhausted sigh, praying that Mrs. Robinson was right about all this. “Just displaced. I’m pretty sure she’s right here, in this jar. And… probably really pissed off.”

  From the back seat, Trey asked, “Where exactly are we going?”

  Violet hung a right turn onto the rural highway that led to her house. “My parents had to reschedule their trip to St. Barts over Christmas because my mom got sick. So they left on Friday night, and they’ll be gone until Tuesday.” She hesitated and then added, “I probably shouldn’t be telling that to either of you in case you decide to murder me as soon as we get to my house, but that’s the truth. You can both stay until Tuesday if you need to. No one will know.”

  Trey lurched forward in the back seat. “No. No way. I’m not going into that house!”

  “Trey, we don’t have much of a choice,” I reminded him over my shoulder. “We’ve really only got tomorrow to end this thing, or—”

  “No. Anywhere but there. I’ll sleep in Tallmadge Park if I have to.”

  “Sleep?” Violet scoffed. “If we accidentally pushed Mischa out of her own body, and McKenna’s supposed to die before the next new moon, then I don’t know why you guys think we have time to sleep.”

  We. She’d said “we.” For whatever reason, Violet seemed to really be in this. Although I was grateful, I didn’t say anything for fear she wasn’t aware of what her choice of words had implied.

  She slowed to a stop just a few feet before the gated entrance leading to her family’s mansion. Her car’s high beams cast cones of light outward into the forest. The display on her dashboard gave the time as 9:17 p.m. and the temperature as thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. It was way too cold for anyone to consider sleeping outside.

  “So, what’s it going to be?” Violet asked. “Do you want to sleep on a park bench, or do you want to put our heads together and figure out how the hell we’re going to prevent McKenna from dying?”

  After a tense couple of seconds when I could practically smell Trey fighting the urge to tell Violet to go to hell, he finally grumbled, “Fine,” and she flipped on her turn signal. I shifted in my seat to turn around and smile at him as Violet pulled the car forward, lowered her window, and tapped in the security code to open the gate.

  Once again, the eerie sense of being transported into another world came over me as we were swallowed by the trees lining the private road to the Simmons mansion. I never could have known the very first time I’d crossed onto this property back in the fall, when I was simply trying to get closer to Violet to gather information, that I’d be returning to this place so frequently. And every time I came back, it seemed to be under much more abysmal circumstances.

  In the side-view mirror, I caught a glimpse of Trey where he sat behind me. His eyes stared straight ahead as he took in the grandeur of the house and fountain out front. I wondered if he was estimating the value of the house, and how much of it was rightfully his as Michael Simmons’s biological son.

  Violet parked in the circular driveway at the bottom of the front steps, and led us up to the front door. She tapped a long code into a security panel on the brick wall next to the doors, and the doors opened in unison with a click as a green light flashed on the panel. She stepped inside first and held the door open to welcome us.

  Trey couldn’t help but marvel as he entered the foyer, just as I had the first time I’d entered this house. An enormous arrangement of peach roses and white tulips was set in a swirled glass vase atop a marble table in the center of the entryway, behind which sprawled the grand staircase leading to the house’s second floor. The imposing portrait of Grandmother Simmons was hung on the wall along that staircase, which kind of made her seem like she was frowning down at the parlor area to our right.

  “Shoes off, please,” Violet said.

  As Trey kicked off his sneakers, he joked, “Does the butler have the night off?”

  Violet didn’t even turn around to look at him when she replied, “Of course. It’s Easter Sunday.”

  Trey shot me a frown, and I shrugged. I’d never seen hired help at Violet’s house before during previous visits, but it seemed reasonable that her family had at least a small part-time cleaning staff. The house was enormous—far too big for all of the rooms to be used often by its three occupants. I couldn’t imagine Violet’s parents, both of whom worked full-time, spending their weekends maintaining the vast property.

  We followed Violet into the parlor area and then onward to the kitchen. “So, I think we need to conduct an exorcism on Mischa,” I said as I sat down at the table.

  Violet took three glasses out of a cabinet and set them on the counter. “Exorcism,” she repeated dubiously as she opened the fridge and removed a bottle of water. “Are you guys hungry?”

  I hadn’t thought about it until that moment, but I hadn’t eaten anything all day. If I had to guess, Trey probably hadn’t eaten much over the last two or three days either. “Kind of,” I admitted, although depending on more of Violet’s kindness made me uneasy. She handed both me and Trey glasses of water, and then, without saying a word in response, she took a frozen pizza out of the freezer. She then turned on the oven to preheat it before sitting down at the table with us.

  “So, how do we go about performing an exorcism?” Violet asked as casually as she’d once asked me to come up with fund-raising ideas for the junior class trip.

  “How should I know?” I said. I was next in line to die, didn’t she understand? I was exhausted from everyone always expecting me to have answers. Violet had been dealing with the curse for far longer than I had; I was starting to get annoyed that the strategizing always fell on my shoulders. “Please don’t think I’m some kind of witch doctor or ghost hunter, because I’m not. I don’t know any more about this than you do. I just have a slight advantage in being able to ask my sister questions.”

  “I’m sorry,” Violet apologized. “I didn’t expect that you’d know. Honestly. I was just wondering aloud. I mean, I guess we’ll need a priest, right? That’s usually how those things go?”

  Trey rolled his eyes. He replied with a distinct air of sarcasm in his voice. “Yeah. Any idea where we can find one of those?”

  Violet looked at me with an expression communicating, What is his problem? But before I could reply, Trey stood up.

  “Is there a bathroom around here?” he asked.

  Violet thumbed over her shoulder. “Back through the living room, on the other side of the staircase.”

  Trey nodded and stepped through the doorway.

  Once I was sure he was out of earshot, I explained what had happened in the fall. “We went to Father Fahey at St. Monica’s for help, but he basically turned us away.”

  “Father Fahey,” Violet murmured as if she recognized the name. “My grandmother knew him. He might have even married my mom and dad. They got married here in town, you know. At St. Monica’s.”

  I was surprised by that. Although I’d known that Violet’s father had grown up here in Willow, I figured her mother would have wanted to get married somewhere in Chicago. Somewhere more impressive than our little one gas station town.

  Just then, we both sat up straight up in our chairs as we heard footst
eps overhead.

  “Did Trey… ?” Violet began to ask, but I rocketed out of my chair because I already knew what he was doing. He’d slipped up to the house’s second floor to either look around, or to look for something. Whatever he was up to, and no matter how much I sympathized with his curiosity about the Simmons family, I feared he was overestimating Violet’s coolness. Sure, she’d invited us into her home. But if she thought he was snooping or stealing anything, I didn’t think she’d hesitate for a second to call the police.

  Unable to tear my eyes away from Violet’s alarmed gaze, I called loudly, “Trey?”

  Sensing my panic, she, too, stood up from her chair. Then, in an unexpected burst of energy, she bolted out of the room. I followed her, and we both raced up the grand staircase in the living room. We scaled the steps with such speed that my feet slipped on each hardwood step, and when I reached the landing I couldn’t believe that I’d made it to the top without having fallen. Ahead of me, Violet trotted down a long hallway past two open doorways until she arrived at a door that was closed and jiggled its brass doorknob. It was locked, so she pounded on the door with her fist.

  “Hey! Unlock this door!”

  I caught up to her, and we both stood there, slack-jawed, listening for signs of activity from inside the room. I could vaguely hear a noise that sounded like drawers opening and slamming shut. “What’s in here?” I asked Violet.

  She side-eyed the door and whispered, “It’s my dad’s office.”

  Of course. Trey was probably looking for anything he could find detailing Violet’s illness or the contract that Mr. Simmons had drawn up to pressure him into donating a kidney. I had to trust that he knew what he was doing; his plight was just as dire as mine. But I feared Trey might have forgotten what a delicate situation we were in.

  “He shouldn’t be in there,” Violet said, looking terrified. “My dad will know if anybody’s been going through his stuff.”

  “Um, Trey? What are you doing?” I asked, entirely for Violet’s benefit.

  His voice was muffled as it reached us through the door. “I’m just looking for something.”

  Violet bit her lower lip and told me in a quiet voice, “That’s the one room of the house I’m not supposed to go in. He keeps confidential client files in there.”

  Sensing that Violet might break at any second, I knocked on the door again. “Trey? Whatever you’re doing, you’re freaking Violet out, and that’s not the wisest thing to be doing right now.”

  Finally, the door opened, and Trey stood before us, holding a laptop cracked open as he smiled from ear to ear. “Found it,” he announced.

  “Found what?” I asked.

  “Proof!” he exclaimed.

  Violet pushed past him and stepped into the office, surveying the messy piles of paper on top of the desk and the file cabinet drawer abandoned on the floor. The office looked kind of like the private chambers of a comic book villain, with heavy drapery flanking windows that overlooked the gardens below, and a thick rug under the desk. An antique lamp with a green shade stood next to an oversize monitor on the desktop.

  And there, next to the base of the lamp, was a handgun. My eye was drawn to it, even before Violet marched across the room toward it. As if she’d known all along that this was the real thing that Trey had been searching for in the office, she picked it up with a familiarity that suggested she’d handled it before, squinted at Trey, and asked, “Where did you find this?” Answering her own question, she placed the gun back in the ajar top drawer and locked it with a key that had also been left out on the top of the desk.

  “Um, is that a real gun?” I asked. A lot of people in Wisconsin were into hunting, so certainly rifles were prevalent around town. It wasn’t uncommon at all for people my age to get their hunting licenses for their twelfth birthday. In fact, I would have bet that Henry had one. But I’d never seen a handgun in person before in my entire life.

  “Of course. My dad just has it for protection, and it’s supposed to be locked up at all times,” Violet snapped, her eyes fixed on Trey. “Do you think you’re investigating crimes or something in here?”

  Trey thrust the laptop toward us for emphasis. “Your father paid someone to assault me.”

  Violet shook her head at him. “Is this more of that kidney BS? I already told McKenna, my dad would never extort an organ from someone, okay? Besides, you could easily just sue him to establish paternity and get him to pay child support, which I’m sure he knows.”

  Violet stepped out from behind the desk and took a few steps in Trey’s direction, and he swiveled to prevent her from grabbing the laptop away from him, assuming that was her intention. “It’s right here. An invoice from your father’s law firm detailing costs for preparing a contract for me, Trey Emory. Fees for in-person delivery with the address of my school, and then another pass-through fee described simply as ‘payment for services rendered,’ ” Trey informed us. “Fifteen thousand dollars in ‘services.’ ”

  Despite the fact that Trey sounded convinced he’d discovered something important, I had started tuning out both him and Violet. My scalp had broken into a rage of tingles, and I was getting the distinct sense that Jennie wanted me to inspect Mr. Simmons’s bookshelves on the other side of the room.

  Violet rolled her eyes. “That’s not proof of anything! He had to pay his attorney to draft up whatever contract he gave you to accept your half of the inheritance.”

  Trey looked over at me in confusion, and from where I stood in front of the bookshelf, I shrugged. Distractedly, I told him, “She knows about the contract.” In front of me, the shelves were lined with finance journals and nonfiction hardcover titles about foreign investment strategy. What could Jennie have possibly wanted me to notice? I’d left my phone on the kitchen table with the mason jar, and considered running back downstairs to grab both.

  Behind me, Violet and Trey continued bickering. “Great,” Trey snapped in my direction. “Did you tell her about how he paid one of the administrators at my school to arrange for me to be beaten up?”

  “That’s a little far-fetched,” Violet was shouting at Trey. “Maybe someone just beat you up at your school because you were asking for it with your charming personality.”

  I did my best to block the two of them out. “What is it? What do you want me to see?” I asked Jennie aloud in a tiny voice. And then, as if she’d physically redirected my eyes upward, I noticed a leather-bound Bible on the top shelf. Why on earth would a businessman who didn’t regularly go to church have a Bible in his office?

  “You guys,” I said loudly enough to interrupt them. “Look.”

  I reached for the Bible and pulled it off the shelf, already suspecting what I’d find inside. Sure enough, a folded piece of paper was jammed into the middle, and when I opened it, my pulse sped up as if I were being chased. It was a handwritten note on a sheet of personal stationery, which had yellowed with age. At the top was printed FR. JAMES G. FAHEY.

  When Trey sidled up beside me and saw what I was holding, he muttered, “What the…” Trey understood why I was stunned to find any kind of communication from Father Fahey inside the Simmons house. The priest had allowed us to relay the entire history of what had happened—from the moment Violet had predicted my friends’ deaths all the way up to the hauntings I’d been experiencing in my bedroom—and he hadn’t breathed a word about being acquainted with the Simmons family. He’d even warned us that it sounded to him like Violet had a very powerful bond to the spirit (or spirits) that were enabling her to predict deaths with such accuracy.

  Trey exhaled in disgust as, like me, he must have been reflecting on everything that Father Fahey had told us. He was the one who’d told us that an object tied Violet to the spirits. It was at his suggestion that we’d attacked her during a basketball game back in November to tear away the locket that she wore around her neck, and we’d led cops on a high-speed chase up to the Lake District so that we could dispose of it. All of that had been for nothing,
obviously.

  In fact, it now it seemed as if perhaps the pastor at St. Monica’s had deliberately misled us.

  “He knew,” Trey murmured, arriving at the same realization as mine. “He told us to break the connection to throw us off. Don’t you remember? As soon as we mentioned that the new girl in town was involved, he got a lot more interested.”

  Violet joined us and took the piece of paper from me. “Are you guys saying that a priest at St. Monica’s told you to steal my locket?”

  “Something like that,” I admitted.

  She scanned the note with furrowed eyebrows. “What the hell does this even mean? It looks like something on a poster at a yoga studio.”

  I took the note back from her to examine it. What was written on it looked like a poem in masculine-looking handwriting, all capitals.

  3X

  AS YOU DIG, BE MINDFUL OF CREATING SPACE.

  AS YOU SPREAD THE ROOTS, BE MINDFUL OF ENCOURAGING LIFE TO FLOURISH.

  AS YOU PAT THE SOIL IN PLACE, BE MINDFUL OF THE FRAGILITY OF LIFE.

  THE NEW MOON, FEB 1, 2003 4:48 A.M.

  “It’s a spell,” I said, recognizing immediately that these were directions for planting something, intended to be repeated three times. Kirsten had told me that a lot of spells were most effectively cast during full or new moons. New moons, in witchcraft, signified the beginning of a new phase or chapter.

  “Spreading the roots?” Trey asked. “That sounds like rosebushes. The roots are always in a ball.”

  Kirsten had told me that she’d been able to determine that whoever had cast the original spell that had resulted in the curse had planted three rosebushes on the Simmonses’ property, one for each of the daughters Vanessa and Michael Simmons had lost. Two had been planted later, after Violet was born. We’d always assumed that Violet’s grandmother had cast the original spell. In fact, Violet was the one who’d told me that her grandmother had planted the rosebushes.