Witch House

by Dana Donovan

  “Oh.” Kinsley set her hands on the steering wheel at the ten to two position and drove on, and that was all she had to say about it.

  That was when Lilith first called to tell me about the house. Later, while Carlos and I were driving out to the Wampanoag Indian reservation, she and Ursula stole back there with candles and incense to attempt a more structured séance.

  They returned to the dining room where the spirit energy seemed gathered in greatest concentration. Ursula pulled the table back into the center of the room and collected the chairs around it. Lilith lit the candles, eight in all; four yellow—one in each corner of the room—one brown, aligned with the current position of the moon and three red, forming a triangle in the middle of the table with jasmine incense burning in the center of those. Along the windowsills and across the doorway, Lilith laid down a heavy bead of brick dust. When asked by Ursula what it was for, she replied, “It’s to ward off evil spirits and make our ghost feel safer in trying to reconstitute.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Sure, and it also works on vampires, zombies and Bush Republicans.”

  “Really?”

  Lilith shrugged. “Nah, probably not on the last ones, but if it makes our ghost feel any more comfortable, I’m all for it.”

  All during the preparations, the lights overhead flickered without prompting and occasionally something in the room fell and broke on the floor: a glass ashtray, a framed picture, small knick-knacks from the mirrored hutch. During it all, the girls never broke concentration, and soon they were sitting at the table opposite one another, heads bowed, arms stretched in reach with hands clasped. Lilith winked at Ursula from across the table, her pupils glimmering in the candlelight. “You ready?” she asked.

  Ursula gathered her deepest breath and surrendered it through puckered cheeks. “As ever I may.”

  “Okay then. Do you want to start?”

  “Aye.” She took another, though shallow, breath and began, “Hear ye, ol` spirit, heed my call, pass thy image through these walls. What flame doth break shall let me see, be it shadows, or be it thee.”

  Lilith echoed, “Be it shadows, or be it thee,” and they both choired, “Be it shadows, or be it thee. Be it shadows, or be it thee….”

  They ran this mantra in a steady flow until their voices sounded as one. Already they could feel the room growing colder, even as the candles burned stronger, their flames snaking in cattails high above the table, licking the light fixture and brushing the ceiling in whispers of pencil-thin smoke trails. The windows, having fogged over rapidly, soon iced up completely, with temperatures plummeting to something below freezing.

  “It’s happening,” said Lilith. “The portal is opening.”

  Ursula squeezed Lilith’s hands tighter. “I am cold like the wind,” she said. “Thou art sure what door doth open doth so easily shut?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not real practiced at this. Give him another call. He seems to like your voice.”

  “Aye, `tis not my voice I fear he wants, but my body heat and thine.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Give him another shout.”

  “As thou wish. Hear ye, ol` spirit, heed my call, pass thy image through these walls. What flame doth break shall let me see, be it shadows, or be it thee.”

  Again, they joined, “Be it shadows, or be it thee. Be it shadows, or be….”

  In the middle of their fifth refrain, the candle flames fell to mere winks of flickering light upon their wicks. A soft push of warm air rushed up from beneath the table, lifting the girls’ hair in swirls and filling the room to a tempered pitch. The windows began dripping with melted ice. A low creeping moan bled from the walls and floor as if the house were relaxing after tensing up briefly. Smoke from the incense began gathering amid the triangle of red candles. It hung low in milky trails, collecting and condensing into rolling swirls, resembling a face reflected in rippled pool water.

  “There!” said Lilith. “You see it? It’s trying to reconstitute.”

  Ursula leaned back in her chair, startled, though her handhold with Lilith maintained. “Indeed, `tis the spirit, I know, for his face doeth stare me down to my bones.”

  “Let it come, Urs. Talk to him.”

  “And say to him what?”

  “Ask him his name.”

  She leaned in some and addressed the vaporous apparition. “Good den, my Lord. To us, pray tell, what be thy name?”

  The spectral image gathered in tighter swirls, as shade and shadow lent it definition. Still, it did not attempt to communicate. Lilith whispered across the table, “Try again.”

  Ursula cleared her throat. “Kind sir, I have asked thee now, how say ye friends what call thee? Be it spoken in mine or words of thine?”

  “Geezus,” Lilith snipped. “Ursula, you really must work on your modern English.” She broke handhold and clapped twice. “Yo, ghost man, over here!” The spirit-face turned one-hundred and eighty degrees and looked upon Lilith. “Yeah, that’s right. You’re not an old soul, are you? You’re from this time. Do you understand me okay?” The ghost opened his mouth, but could utter no sound.

  “Methinks he is a mute,” said Ursula, looking through the back of his head to his face.

  “No,” said Lilith. “He’s not mute. He can talk. We just don’t have the energy between us to reconstitute him all the way. Here, give me your hands again.”

  The two clasped hands again. At once, the ghostly cloud boiled to life in a milky swirl confined within the boundaries of an invisible ball. Ursula pulled back, but did not break Lilith’s hold. “He grows stronger,” she said, “does he not?”

  “Yes, he feeds off our energy. Keep giving it to him.” To the ghost she said, “Who are you, spirit? Why are you here?”

  As it did before, the hazy apparition struggled to speak, but could not. Details and definitions in its gestures continued to morph like rain clouds into angrier looking faces, none, however, resembling human form clear enough to identify. Lilith persisted. “Who are you? Why do you haunt this place? Give us a sign, spirit; give us a sign that you can hear me.”

  At once, the tremors returned, causing the windowpanes to shudder and the few remaining knick-knacks on the hutch to chatter upon their shelves. In the corner, the dead ficus rose on a column of air and began rotating counterclockwise, slowly at first, but faster by degrees. Ursula seemed more worried about that than did Lilith, though both made notice of it only through fleeting glances. Overhead, the light fixture that had flickered earlier in the séance began dropping crystal pendants onto the table in random bombardments. Lilith looked up at Ursula and smiled teasingly, “Guess we have our sign, eh?”

  “Sister?”

  “What?”

  “Thou doeth make with words ye spirit move, but hast thee the words to stop it.”

  “Stop it? Why would I want to stop it?”

  “Come now, I pray thee. Dost thou not see that ficus yonder? How chance the spin there doth quicken as the floor doth shake? Doth not it frighten thee that it perchance might fly?”

  “Fly? What do you mean, fly?”

  The words hardly passed her lips when the potted ficus crashed before them, scattering dirt and broken branches upon the table and spilling the three red candles. Several small fires flared upon the tablecloth, burning in spotted pools of melted wax. The two girls kicked their chairs out and folded the cloth onto itself to smother the flames. The ghost image in the smoke ball faded, but the rumbling beneath them continued, shaking bits of plaster and paint down on their heads like rain.

  “What say thee we leave?” said Ursula.

  “Yeah,” said Lilith, blowing out the brown and yellow candles as she scooted around the table. “I say that’s a good idea. Lead the way.”

  They hurried from the house, retreating as before in serpentine fashion to dodge the hail of flying objects of anything not screwed to the walls, ceiling or floor. Out on the porch they laughed and embraced, intoxicated by the adrenalin and exhilarated beyon
d measure. Lilith grabbed Ursula by the upper arms and shook her. “Girl, was that fun or what?” she squealed. “Did you see that ficus fly?”

  “Indeed, sister, but I have want for no more a mirthful sight, for methinks I peed my breeches!”

  “No! Ursula!”

  She laughed boldly. “No, art thou mad?”

  “Then you didn’t?”

  “Nay, fool woman, but do heed, for I shall if thou doth lead me not away hence.”

  “Then hence we go,” Lilith answered. “Come, fair lady, thou chariot awaits.”

  And so was the excitement that Carlos and I missed on our way to the Wampanoag reservation.

  NINE

  We arrived at the Indian Casino around three in the afternoon, a good time of day for catching the chief, since the place was not too busy; it is that point after the lunchtime gamblers have thinned out and before the diner crowd arrives. Otherwise, I am not so sure he would have received us.

  Daniel Mochohyett kept an office upstairs overlooking the casino floor. From there he could survey all major venues and monitor all operations without leaving the comfort of his plush leather chair. And that is exactly where we found him after two imposingly large casino bouncers escorted us up to his office.

  We took our seats across from him after introducing ourselves, dispensed a few pleasantries and then got right down to business.

  “Mister Mochohyett,” I said, “we want to ask you about René Landau, if we may.”

  “Please,” he said, and I thought he was going to tell me to call him Daniel, but I was wrong. “Call me Chief Running Bear, Chief Mochohyett or just Chief. On this reservation we observe customs and respect traditions.”

  “Of course.” I looked to Carlos so that he understood that meant both of us. “Chief Running Bear, I don’t know if you are aware of this, but René Landau got out of prison yesterday after serving seventeen years for robbing your casino.”

  “Yes, I know that,” he said.

  “Did you also know that someone killed René last night some eighteen hours later outside a barroom on Jefferson?”

  “I saw it on the news.”

  “Where were you last night, Chief Running Bear?”

  “You think I killed him?”

  “No, but I have to ask.”

  “I was here.”

  “All night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  He pointed out the plate glass window overlooking the casino floor below. “We have sixty four cameras out there, Detective. I am sure at least one of them saw me walking about out there.”

  “You think that one of them saw you this morning, say two o’clock?”

  “At two o’clock I am sure I was sleeping.”

  “I see, and I don’t suppose you have camera footage of that.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “I’m sure.”

  I gestured over my shoulder. “What about the two bulldozers outside the door there?”

  “What about them?”

  “Can you vouch for their whereabouts last night?”

  “Why don’t you ask them?”

  “I might.”

  “Detective,” Mochohyett pressed on the armrests of his chair with his elbows and straightened up tall. “I know you are doing your job. René Landau robbed this casino of six million dollars and no one has ever found the money. Now the man is dead. Naturally I am a suspect. I can tell you, however, that I had nothing to do with Mister Landau’s misfortune. You see, the casino’s money was insured, every dime of it. So he did not really steal it from us, he stole it from the insurance company. So, why don’t you go interview someone there?”

  Carlos cut in. “Because a witness saw your thugs at the bar with Landau last night, roughing him up just hours before he died!”

  “Carlos, please.”

  “Detective,” said Mochohyett. “Control your partner or leave the premises now!”

  “Tony, you know he is lying.”

  “Carlos, maybe you should wait outside the office.”

  “But Tony….”

  I pointed toward the door. “Carlos, please.”

  He looked at me, wounded. I think he knew that we would get no more answers out of Daniel Mochohyett if he did not capitulate, but that did not make it easier. I softened my expression to include a fleeting smile. He stood, reluctantly, pulled the wrinkles from his coattail and left to stand outside in the hall. I turned in my seat and watch until he went out the door and it shut behind him. I then turned back and offered up that same smile for Mochohyett. “Forgive the outburst,” I said, “He gets excited sometimes.”

  “Understandable.” The chief resettled into his chair, lacing his fingers on the desktop and leaning in to it. “I have people like that working for me, too. It is good to see their passion.”

  I laughed. “Yes, well Carlos has lots of passion, I assure you.”

  “And so do you. I see it in your eyes, and something else. The Indians call it spirit. You have an old one living within you. It is good. It would make you a fine chief.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, in my next life maybe.”

  “Tell me, Detective, what else would you like to know? The details of seventeen years ago might seem sketchy in this old brain of mine, but I am always happy to cooperate with New Castle’s finest.”

  Now it was my turn to straighten up in the chair. This is the point where Carlos would whip out his notepad and start jotting down the little things that might prove invaluable later on down the road. We both started the practice when we hit our forties, as we noticed our memories were not as sharp as they once were. After my return to prime, however, I found I seldom carried a notepad, be it out of pride or lack of need; I admit I cannot say. I only hoped I would not forget anything Chief Running Bear had to offer me now.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that. How `bout we start with the robbery? Six million dollars, that sounds like an awful lot of money, even for a casino. Is it normal to transport so much money by armored car in one shot like that?”

  “Normal no, but not unusual. You see we were in the middle of a large remodel back then, with the bulk of the improvements centered on our vault and the security systems. We were retrofitting the vault with a new door utilizing the latest in laser sensor technology. Workers needed two days with the vault door opened. The only other safe in the building was the one in my office, and that one could not hold all the money.”

  “Were they in sacks or anything like that?”

  “Oh yes, have you ever seen six million dollars in various bill denominations? It is quite a pile of money. As you might imagine, it took several large bags and a few smaller ones to fit it all.”

  “What are we talking, grocery bags?”

  “Actually, there were two large duffle bags stuffed with cash and three smaller sacks containing receipts, markers, vouchers and whatnot.”

  “So, you had all this cash and receipts, and you were moving it to a bank?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s when Landau and Allis made their move to steal it.”

  “By hitting the armored car, yes.”

  “You say that that money was insured, so the casino lost nothing?”

  “That is correct, Detective. Oh, sure we were majorly inconvenienced by the slow turnaround the insurance company took in paying out the claim, but we managed.”

  “That is interesting. Chief Running Bear, what do you think happened to the money?”

  “My understanding is that it burned up in some cabin fire a day or two after the robbery.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I have no reason to doubt that.”

  “No? A moment ago you said that René Landau robbed this casino of six million dollars and no one has ever found the money. So, which is it, lost or gone?”

  He smiled that guilty grin that I have seen a thousand times before, when one’s own words trip him up in a lie that he cannot back out of. “Detecti
ve, I am sure you are aware of the rumors surrounding the money. Some say it was destroyed; some say it is still out there somewhere, buried perhaps. Of course, now that René Landau is dead we will never know for sure.”

  “I suppose you are right. Let me ask you, Chief, do you own a handgun?”

  “Of course, I own several and I have permits for all of them.”

  “Mind telling me what they are?”

  “Not at all. One is a Smith &Wesson 38 snub nose, one a Colt 45 and the other a Taurus 9mm. And so you know, I also own a double-barrel .12 gauge and an old thirty-aught-six that my father gave me.”

  “You hunt?”

  “I am an Indian. My people are born hunters.”

  “Have you used any of the guns lately?”

  “I use them all often.”

  “What about last night?”

  He smiled that guilty grin again. “No.”

  I stood and offered my hand. “Thank you for your time, Chief Running Bear. I hope we haven’t been too much an inconvenience.”

  He stood and we shook. “Not at all, Detective. Thanks for coming, and on your way out why don’t you stop at one of our tables and try your luck?”

  “Thanks anyway,” I said, dismissing that prospect outright. “Every day is a gamble with me. I don’t need to press what little luck I have.”

  I picked Carlos up outside the door where he had been talking with the two bouncers that had escorted us up. Just as before, they accompanied our travels out, one man leading with the other shadowing from behind. We both kept a tight lip until we were out of the building, and that is when Carlos really let me have it.

  “How dare you send me out of the room like that! I am not some punk rookie you can order around any time you wish. I would not even do that to Dominic. Do you know how that makes me feel? I don’t—”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “What?”

  “You are right. I should not have done that.”

  “Well, you can’t be sorry yet. I’m not finished.”

  “Okay, continue, then.”

  He pursed his lips and then smacked them tight. “Forget it now. I lost my place.”