by Madelyn Alt
Instantly I snapped to a decision. Jenna needed protection. She needed someone to watch out for her, to guide her through. Maybe if I had had a mentor when I was growing up, someone who understood me and knew what I was feeling and experiencing, someone who didn’t make me feel like it was all my fault, maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have grown up to be the neurotic mess I sometimes was. It didn’t have to be that way for Jenna. She had me.
I took the girls by the hands and led them toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go get Grandma.” I glanced back at Mel. “Does Mom know what you were up to?”
Her eyes still on the Ouija board, Mel shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Good. Hide the board. I’m going to get Mom.” I issued her a warning glare. “You stay there.”
She opened her mouth as though she might try to object. I closed the door behind me before she could gear up the engines.
Courtney tugged on my hand. I looked down into her dark eyes that communicated with me so soulfully. “Don’t wike that. Bad thing.”
I squeezed her fingers to reassure her. “I know, honey.” The Ouija wasn’t exactly the most reliable of tools for communicating with the spirit world. The gate it opened was just too indiscriminate. It was like giving a party pass to the Spring Break filming crew. Forget sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. The kind of crew the board was liable to bring in was more likely to include spooks and dark entities, getting their buzz on, wild-style. H’aints and imps and shadow creatures, just hangin’ with the homies. And good times would be had by all . . . all except you, the clueless person with the fingers on the pointer, that is.
What had Mel been thinking? I fussed as I followed the girls down the stairs. Using a Ouija board with another consenting adult might be ill advised, but at least both persons involved had a choice in the matter. Having children present, with their beautifully open minds and their life forces so shiny bright and new, was like hanging a Welcome sign on their psyches for all earthbounds in the vicinity. Those souls who were either too confused, too angry, or—and these were the most worrisome—too fearful owing to their immoral, unethical, or downright cruel activities here on earth, to move on. Talk about an invitation for disaster.
The basement’s only access was through the garage, a design flaw that Mel had always complained about. Mel and Greg had discussed what it would take to hire a contractor to remedy that situation, but hadn’t taken the financial plunge as yet. If Mom was locked down in the basement, that would explain why she hadn’t heard me calling. At least, I hoped that was it.
Sure enough, the deadbolt was engaged on the door to the basement stairs. I unlocked it, feeling the thunk of solid metal as it slid back. I opened the door. “Mom?”
I heard a scurry of footsteps down below, where no lights shone. A pale face floated into view at the bottom of the steps. “Margaret? Is that you?”
“That’s not Margaret, Grandma,” Jenna piped up, her high-pitched voice echoing down the stairs. “That’s Auntie Maggie.”
“Auntie,” Courtney chimed in.
“Oh, thank the Lord,” Mom said, stumbling up the steps. “I thought I would be down here until Greg got home.”
“What happened?” I asked, giving her my hand as she mounted the last of the steps. “Why were you sitting in the dark down there?”
Mom shook her head. “It’s a long story, and I need a cup of coffee.”
Her hand was trembling within mine. I gave it a squeeze. “Come to the kitchen and I’ll fix you a cup. Girls, take Grandma’s hands.”
The kitchen was blissfully bright and calm and ubernormal, with no trace of unwanted entities hanging around. Mom had made fresh ginger cookies that day, despite the heat wave, so I sat the girls down at their little table set in the nook with a snack of cookies and milk before settling into the familiar task of making fresh coffee. Mom sat perched on the edge of a stool at the counter, looking dazed and a little fragile, but no worse for the wear for her ordeal, I noted gratefully.
With the coffee bubbling away, I sat down next to her. “So? What happened?”
She sat back in her chair and shook her head. “I . . . I’m not sure. I went downstairs to transfer the laundry over to the dryer. The next thing I knew, the lights went out, the dryer stopped working, and I was completely in the dark. I tried the fuse box, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. They simply wouldn’t come back on.”
“And the door?”
At this she seemed even more agitated. “I don’t know. If the girls hadn’t been upstairs with your sister, I might have thought they were playing a joke on their old grandma. Maybe the lock turned when I twisted the knob and I didn’t realize it. I guess it must have. I thought I had propped the door open, but . . . it must have closed itself. I called, but they couldn’t hair me upstairs.”
I didn’t tell her it wasn’t the lock on the knob, that it was the deadbolt itself that had been engaged. A deadbolt that was wholly separate from the doorknob assembly, and that could only be engaged by purposeful intent. I couldn’t see Margo or Jane coming downstairs to lock Mom away for the duration. I didn’t much like them, but I knew better than to take my personal prejudices that far.
“I’m glad you came when you did, though,” she continued, with a nervous little laugh. “The darkness was starting to get to me. I kept imagining I was hearing things. Awful things.” She shuddered.
I peered at her, curious. “What kinds of things?”
She shook her head, but I noticed that her hand had crept to her bosom, where I knew she wore a crucifix beneath her simple, short-sleeved blouse. “Just the house settling, I guess. You know how imaginations can run wild in the dark.”
Boy, did I ever. Unfortunately, I also knew that it wasn’t always one’s imagination that was causing the problem.
I poured her coffee for her, and we sat in comfortable silence for a while, listening with half an ear while the girls chattered. Soon enough, the chatter turned quiet enough for it to register with me.
“No, Courtie. Coco says you shouldn’t tell.”
“Yes, Jen-NA!”
“Coco says Grammy can’t know,” Jenna hissed. “Not yet.”
Coco again. I let my gaze drift toward the girls as in-conspicuously as possible, but the two of them had already clammed up and were sitting on opposite sides of their table, arms crossed stubbornly over their chests, their rosebud lips huffed out in the prettiest little pouts. Mom hadn’t noticed the exchange. She was still staring off into space with her hands curved around her coffee mug.
Mom pushed to her feet and set the mug down on the counter, for the most part untouched. “If you don’t mind, dear, I think I’ll head for home.”
I nodded. I couldn’t say that I blamed her. If I had been locked in a basement by a thing that I couldn’t see, a thing that promptly turned off the lights and made noises, I’d have already been out the door. Of course, she believed it to be an accident, at least on the surface, but it appeared to have been no less unsettling, however one defined it.
With Mom gone, I escorted the girls back upstairs. Courtney dug in her heels as we approached Mel’s closed door.
“Don’t want to!” she said. “Bad thing! Cee Cee don’t like it.”
“It’s okay, Courtie,” I told her. “The bad thing is gone. Cee Cee chased it away.”
Jenna looked sideways at me, and I could see the hesitation in her eyes. She didn’t believe me for a minute.
“All right,” I said, relenting. “If you girls promise to be good, you can go on into your room and play with your dollies. I need to check on your mommy, but we’ll leave both the doors open. Will that be okay?”
They nodded in tandem, big-eyed and grave.
There was no reason to worry with the doors open, I reasoned. And until I could discern exactly what the issue at hand really was, perhaps it was best to keep them away from the scene of the crime. Keep them where they’d be safe.
“Be good and stay here, ’kay? I’ll be
right back.”
Mel’s door was still closed, so I knocked lightly before turning down the lever and sticking my head in. “You okay?” I asked.
She looked up at me and bit her lower lip. She hadn’t moved from her nest at the head of the bed except to draw the covers up around her neck like a tent. The Ouija board had fallen to the floor when the duvet slid out from beneath it. It lay facedown on the carpet, nonthreatening and forgotten. Or at least it would have been, had there not resurfaced an indefinable something that lurked there, on the fringes of the bubble of energy and human existence that filled the room. Melanie’s life force was as strong as her personality, but she had been playing with things she had no understanding of. And I, I had been mistaken to think it had left so willingly.
Wishful thinking, that.
“Take that thing away, would you?”
Without a word, I picked the board up from where it lay and placed it on the table by the window. Instinct told me to leave it facedown, so I did. It felt less of an open invitation that way, for some reason.
“It’s still here, isn’t it.” The question Melanie posed already had an answer in her tone of certainty. “It hasn’t gone at all. It’s just waiting for me to let down my guard.”
“Mel . . .”
“It is. I don’t know how I know it, but I do. I—I feel it. Is that crazy?”
I sighed deeply and shook my head as I sat down on the end of her bed. “A Ouija board. Did you have to use a Ouija?”
Her composure, hard-won, cracked beneath the strain of her fear, and her face crumpled. “I didn’t know! It was supposed to be just a game. That’s what everyone says, don’t they? God! I thought Margo was being her usual pushy self when the pointer moved. It would have been just like her. I mean, she is my friend and all, but facts are facts, plain and simple.” She swallowed hard. “But when I saw her face . . . and Jane’s, too . . . I knew they weren’t doing it. I only wish that they were.”
Wishes were all well and good, but prudence worked much better, in hindsight. Prudence, and humility, and respect, especially when it came to those forces in the universe that most of the time went unseen and undetected. Forces most people had forgotten even existed. Some of us learned things the hard way.
Mel lifted her head suddenly. “Maggie . . . where’s Mom?”
“Home. Somehow she locked herself in the basement,” I told her, avoiding her probing stare.
“Somehow?”
“The deadbolt was turned.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I don’t suppose Jane or Margo left the room?” I asked hopefully. “Or maybe one of the girls?”
Mel shook her head, and her eyes met mine. “No one. You know what that means? Jesus . . . If it can do something like that . . . what else can it do?”
I didn’t think we really wanted to find that out.
She looked really frightened now. “What am I going to do, Maggie?” she wailed.
Well, I knew one thing for sure. There was no way in hell I was going to let my baby sister and my beautiful nieces swing in the breeze while some unknown entity was swimming the astral beneath their dangling feet. Liss was right. Blood was thicker than water. “We are going to get rid of it, that’s what,” I said with a firm defiance I was doing my best to feel. “The last thing you need right now is to worry about . . . intruders. But I might need a little help.”
“Your friends?”
I nodded, my mouth a grim line. “My friends.”
“They’ll know what to do?”
“I hope so. Between the lot of us, at least, we’ll figure something out.”
“Good. How soon are we talking here? Because Greg’s going to kill me when he figures out what’s going on. If he figures out what’s going on. It’s not like he’s been spending a lot of time at home lately,” she said, her mouth making a small moue of annoyance.
“I’ll call Liss and let her in on your little problem. We’ll see what she says.”
She sniffled and nodded, but I could tell that her relief over a possible solution to the spirit problem was working to diminish her fear. Still, she asked me to get her crucifix and prayer beads from her jewelry box. As an afterthought, I brought her a flashlight and double-checked that she still had her cell phone as well, just in case.
Liss, bless her heart, was ready in an instant to cancel her last remaining appointment and come straight over to assess the situation. Since she was unfamiliar with the twisty and turny maze of the extensive subdivision, I offered to drive to the store and bring her back with me.
“You’ll be okay while I’m gone?” I asked Mel. The girls had been exhausted and had gone to bed early after a quickie supper without a single complaint.
She nodded. “Just hurry, would you? I feel a little weird being alone right now.”
Once at the store, Liss and I decided that it would be easiest for me to drive rather than take two cars, as I had to drive back downtown on the return trip anyway. We were back at Mel’s in no time. Greg was still a no-show.
Since Melanie was confined to bed, I let her know quickly that we had arrived, and that I would be giving Liss the N.I.G.H.T.S. version of a guided tour along with all the background information I could remember. I showed her the basement first, explaining what had happened to my mother. Her expression remained neutral throughout. The kitchen and downstairs living areas didn’t give her pause, so we quietly moved on to the bedrooms upstairs. In the girls’ room she smiled once, closing her eyes, then backed out of the room with a satisfied nod. But when we approached the open door to Mel’s room, I saw her hesitate. Only for a moment, but it was enough to worry me.
I went in first. Mel had been craning her neck from the bed to see what we were doing. Liss barely acknowledged her presence as she walked through the room, her fingers trailing over surfaces, her eyes touching everywhere. Curiosity burned in my sister’s eyes, but her face showed disappointment. Had the situation been slightly less dire, I might have laughed. Perhaps she had been expecting something a bit more . . . exotic? Of course, she didn’t know that Liss didn’t need all the bells and whistles to sense . . .
“Strong one,” Liss whispered.
My head came up. I had been lost in thought, not paying complete attention. Liss was standing at the dresser, gazing into the mirror with eyes that were not quite focused. I glanced at Mel. The disappointment she had shown only a moment ago had gone. Now her eyes were fever bright and following Liss’s every move.
Liss turned to my sister. “Well. I don’t know what you girls were doing, but you seem to have picked up a little more than you bargained for.”
“What is it?” I asked her. The room had felt heavy, the air thick, from the moment we walked in. I realized I’d been holding my breath—not with anticipation, but because it felt easier, better somehow, to go without.
“Is it . . . demonic?” Mel asked, her voice ending on a squeak. Her hand was in a tight fist, from which her prayer beads overflowed.
Cocking her head to one side, Liss stood quietly a moment. “No. No, I don’t think so. It’s not of the light, but not what I’d call of the darkness either. It is of the in-between places.”
The In-Between. “Human?” I asked her. My ears were burning. On fire. The top of my head was prickling uncomfortably.
“Hmm. No. No, it feels more . . . interdimensional to me. Very assured. As though it goes wherever it wishes, as it wishes.”
Interdimensional sounded ominous somehow. Powerful. Capable of just about anything.
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” Melanie quavered. “How do I get rid of it?”
Liss was about to answer when we heard the front door slam downstairs, followed by heavy male tread coming up the carpeted stairs.
“Melanie?” Greg’s voice preceded him, but only by a moment or two.
“In here,” Mel called back, tucking her crucifix under her covers and holding her finger to her lips to warn us not to say anything to him. �
�Maggie’s here, and—”
He paused in the doorway as he caught sight of Liss and me. “Oh, hello,” he said, his brows quirking in mild surprise. He smiled politely at Liss. “Friend of yours, Maggie?” He seemed oblivious as the energy pulled itself back to more manageable levels with his sudden appearance. Interesting.
Clearing my throat, I stepped up to make the introductions. “Liss is my boss at Enchantments,” I explained.
“Ah.” He looked at us expectantly.
“Well, we’d best be getting out of your hair now that you’re home,” I said, edging toward the door. “The girls are in bed, Greg, and you have a little something waiting for you in the fridge.” To Mel, I said, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, sis. We’ll chat more about everything then.”
“A pleasure, Greg,” Liss inserted, holding out her hand. “Melanie, my dear, be well.”
Easier said than done when you had a potentially interdimensional, not-dark-not-light something-or-other from the in-between places in your home.
Oy.
Over our heads, the half-moon glowed from behind a haze of condensation and cloud cover, but the night seemed otherwise calm. Liss and I ensconced ourselves in Christine’s worn but comfortable interior before continuing the conversation.
“Interdimensional?” I prompted.
She smiled at me, hearing the concern in my voice. “It was a very strong, very assured energy. Powerful. Bigger than your average spirit. Not all who visit are from earthly dimensions, you know.”
Unfortunately, I didn’t. “Is it something to worry about? I mean, I know you said you didn’t think it was demonic, but . . .” I risked a glance at her. “What kinds of entities are we talking about here?”
“Well . . . angels are interdimensional, obviously—they can appear anywhere at will—but I didn’t exactly get ‘angelic’ in there, did you?”
I thought of how it had bumped up against me, testing me. Perhaps even challenging me . . . “No.”
“Entities from other planets certainly are a possibility.”
“Other pla . . . aliens?”