by Hailey Piper
She swiped in front of her. “Spirit, you’re not welcome here!”
The lioness’s throat quaked. She stepped to one side, into the salt circle. Her back arched, the forelegs outstretched. She was about to pounce.
Margaret shoved her weapon in front of her, now a shield.
The lioness hissed. Margaret hadn’t ever heard a sound like that from such a big cat. No, it came from beside her. From Natalie. Margaret turned to her.
Natalie hissed again and tore off toward the wall across from the desk. The lioness kept pace with her, to the edge of the smoke, and then Natalie alone smashed through the window. A much weightier creature hit the ground by the sound of her crash and then took off to places unknown.
Margaret glanced down at her hands. Her vision remained smudged, even with the smoke dissipating, but the form of the trophy in her hands was unmistakable—the lioness head she had seen mounted on the wall this afternoon. If she got in her car, she could chase after them. Letting Natalie alone out there, without her midnight snack at the fridge? Someone was going to get hurt.
Someone was already hurt. Margaret dropped the taxidermied head and rushed to Heather’s side. “Mrs.—Heather, are you okay? Can you speak to me?”
Heather groaned. “Am I okay?”
“That’s what I asked.”
“I don’t think so.” Heather reached down her side. Her hand came back red. “I think I’m dying.”
5
Margaret sat in the waiting room outside the ER, her head in her hands. She didn’t know what had become of Heather yet. The ambulance took her hours ago and she was already in surgery by the time Margaret arrived. She tried to call Heather’s sister, but there was no answer at Alicia’s house and she hadn’t tried again.
She spent the following hours ruminating on her failure, with intervals of sleep here and there. Morning arrived before any news.
A demon had seemed so obvious until it wasn’t. Nathaniel’s ghost wasn’t a bad guess, for everything Heather had suggested. Margaret had considered other options, other kinds of spirits. With Nathaniel’s penchant for world travel, anything was possible.
Margaret hadn’t considered possession by animal. She had heard of animal avatars that were welcomed to commune with human hosts as part of religious and spiritual practices. This was different. This was an eleven-year-old girl in the heart of Connecticut, who made the innocent mistake of sitting in her late father’s study, likely because she missed him. It wasn’t her fault that dead animals lined every nook and cranny of that room.
Which brought Margaret to the recordings. She hadn’t had the chance to listen to them until after the ambulance pulled away, after the police finished questioning her, while she decided whether she was going to drive home from the Glasgow house or head to the hospital. Before she listened, the recordings didn’t seem like they could tell her much she didn’t already know.
She was wrong about that, too. They pushed her to drive to the hospital and warn Heather herself.
“Ms. Margaret Willow?”
Margaret placed her spare spectacles on her face and looked up at a nurse in blue scrubs. Her nametag said Rachel.
“Heather Glasgow is awake,” Rachel said. “She’s going to make it.”
News that should’ve filled Margaret with ecstasy only gave her the slightest relief. Heather would live. One less thing to feel guilty about.
Rachel led Margaret away from the ER, down another corridor to the post-op room where they had brought Heather Glasgow. “She’s only come up from anesthesia minutes ago. We gave her another sedative, and something for her pain because Lord knows she’ll need it. You’ll only have a few minutes, is what I mean.”
“Thank you.”
Margaret and Heather would have a conversation. She would’ve liked it later, but in case there was no later, it had to be now. Natalie was missing. Margaret wasn’t sure how to help. And then there were the recordings. Heather wouldn’t be awake long. Margaret wasn’t sure she could say any of this before time ran out.
“Were the two of you at the circus or something?” Rachel asked. “That wound. Some big cat must’ve done that. A cougar or a lion, right?”
Margaret turned to the open doorway. “I need to talk to Heather. I don’t mean to be rude.” She stepped into the room, up to Heather’s bedside.
Heather lay under a thin sheet. The lioness had gored her left side, under the ribs, likely when they collided beside Nathaniel’s desk. Her face was pale, her eyelids heavy.
Margaret leaned over her. “You have your husband’s way with animals.”
“Don’t make me laugh, Ms. Willow. It’ll hurt.” Heather’s hand snatched Margaret’s, quick as a snake. The sedative was going to hit her hard. “When they find out what happened, they’re going to blame her. Don’t let them hurt Natalie.”
“I won’t if I can help it.” Had she guessed at Margaret’s uselessness? Had she listened to the recordings herself since last night and hadn’t said anything? Margaret doubted that. Now didn’t seem the time to tell her.
Heather stared up with warm, wet eyes. “Promise to help her. I’m sorry I rushed it, but it’s not her fault. It’s her father’s, I’m sure of it. That stupid man.”
A promise like that was going to be hard to keep at this point. Not making the promise while Heather lay there, her consciousness fading, would’ve been even harder.
“I promise,” Margaret heard herself say. As if she had a choice. Natalie was already deep in a mess. Nothing else Margaret did could make it worse.
“Okay. You promise.” Heather’s hand let go. “I want to see her draw more animals, Ms. Willow. I want to see her go to high school. I’m parenting for two. I need to see her live her life, and that means she has to live it. Get that thing out of her. Get it out before she kills someone. Before it kills her.” Her eyelids slammed shut. “I love her so much.”
Margaret stood up from the bed. Heather put it succinctly, didn’t she? Get it out of Natalie. Margaret left the hospital bed and found her way back to the waiting room. She could sit there a while longer, but dwelling on her mistakes wasn’t going to help Natalie.
There was work to do. Margaret headed for the parking lot and started her car.
The police had been to the Glasgow house, put up their tape, and done some investigating, but no one stood guard in the driveway or at the front door. Had Heather died, things would be different. As it was, this was only an accident with some peculiarities. Anyone searching for Natalie Glasgow only did so out of concern. She had gone missing after her mother suffered a wild animal attack and was only eleven years old, after all.
Margaret parked on the street, same place she left her car last night. Heather’s car sat in the driveway. The broken window of Nathaniel’s study faced the back of the house, which meant Natalie had started from the ground there and probably kept going in that direction.
Which made it all the stranger when Margaret approached Heather’s car and found Natalie asleep in the back seat. Her feet were black with soil, her nightgown torn on her left sleeve, and a few burs stuck to the same shoulder. Her mouth looked clear, but her reddened fingernails said she might have eaten in the night.
Margaret opened one door, rolled down a window, and closed the door. Best to let Natalie sleep while she decided what to do with her.
It would be smart to call the police. Let them know where Natalie was, where they could take her off the street so she wouldn’t hurt anyone else. That was blood on her fingers, under her nails, no doubt about it. A rabbit? A bird? Something larger? Margaret clasped her hands. Something Margaret-sized?
If she called the police, they would bring Natalie to the hospital, where her mother couldn’t hide her any longer. Night would come and then Natalie would give them a reason to lock her up. She wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else. She also wouldn’t get any better.
Out here, maybe there was a solution to be found. If they detained Natalie, was there a judge in this world who
would let Margaret and her colleagues perform some archaic ritual? She doubted there was one who would even let a priest perform an exorcism. The old ways were nonsense in the days of the new ways unless they could be exploited.
Which meant if she called the police, Natalie would spend the rest of her life in an asylum. The lioness would eventually wear her out and kill her from the inside.
Margaret stepped through the unlocked front door and paused in the living room. She looked up at the second floor stairway. Natalie had spent most of her time in her bedroom throughout this ordeal, but that wasn’t where the ordeal began. Margaret headed for the study, where yellow police tape crossed the shattered door. She opened the other door and slipped inside.
The room remained as she left it—the salt circle, the snuffed candles, the blackened bundle of spruce. The saucer remained intact, but the belladonna was nothing but shriveled pulp. A key with a one-time use.
Outside the circle lay the lioness’s head on a wooden mount. Nearby, a partial paw print smudged the salt. Margaret supposed that could be misinterpreted for anything, but she’d seen the lioness cross the circle. She was present. Perhaps if not for the smoke she would’ve been trapped behind lines of salt.
She picked up the head and placed it back on the wall where it had been mounted yesterday. If the lioness wanted anything, it wasn’t this head. The head had warded her off. Was the spirit bent on revenge or did the lioness have a stake in this beyond her own demise at the hands of Nathaniel Glasgow?
“Your body.” Margaret glanced over the walls. “What does a man do with a lion’s body when he only wants the head?”
She imagined in many cases where lions were part of the ecosystem, the lion was eaten, either by hungry people or scavenging animals. A call to the taxidermist wasn’t out of the question. She would have to hope he was still in business and that Nathaniel kept his number in a rolodex, perhaps knocked off the desk last night.
A step toward the desk made glass crunch beneath her foot. She leaned back on her heel, expecting to find her spectacles from last night, even more broken than before.
Instead she found the framed photo of Nathaniel, his foot proudly planted on a wildebeest. No wildebeest prize graced the study. Maybe it wasn’t impressive enough to him or he couldn’t drag it back to the States. Or maybe it was only bait for another hunt. Hence, the photo. It had to be a compulsion for him, a means of mastering the world. He might have expected that when he was gone, the study left intact, that people would step through those double doors and his wife would show them the marvel that was her husband.
“Nothing on this Earth that man couldn’t find and kill,” Heather might say, if she was a different kind of person. Her words to Margaret when they first entered the study told a different story. Heather was embarrassed by this room, afraid it made her husband out to look like something worse than he was.
And she had no idea how bad it was. Margaret knew. She had listened to the recordings. At first they played only snippets of her conversation with Heather from inside Heather’s bedroom. Then there was Natalie’s door and Natalie herself, and the weight of the lioness she carried through the house.
But there were other sounds. They began with insects in the distance, a foreign-sounding cicada cacophony. It might’ve sounded normal if this wasn’t autumn. There was no rationalizing the other sounds. An elephant’s cry. Galloping hooves, maybe gazelle, maybe zebra. A bear, a hissing crocodile, birds of all kinds.
“I don’t know why you had such a potent draw,” Margaret said to the photograph. “I’ve never seen it so bad. Everything you killed became a frayed yarn ball of fury, ready to snag anything it touched after you died. Even here, even with me. How can I know I’m not being exposed to any of these poor animals right now?”
A color caught her eye. She peered closer at the photo.
And then she saw it. She saw it, knew that shade of gold, and remembered what Heather told her about it, if it was the same. It had to be the same.
“If I’m right.” Margaret set the frame down on the messy floor. “Please, I have to be right this time.”
She couldn’t leave Natalie to be found. She would have to come with, maybe get some water in her, take her to the restroom at some gas station on the way. They couldn’t delay too long. It was morning now, but eventually it would be night again.
Margaret returned to the living room with her bag. Most of what she brought to the Glasgow house last night was useless here now, but she had her own book of numbers and addresses. She picked up the receiver for Heather’s rotary phone on the wall and began her calls.
First she called Trish at home and told her she wouldn’t make it for supper again, and perhaps not to expect her until morning. She left out the severity of the situation.
Second, Margaret called Alicia again. This time, she answered. Margaret told her not to ask questions, but that she needed information and Heather wasn’t in a state to answer. Alicia told her what she needed to know and she told Alicia what hospital to find Heather.
Last, because Margaret couldn’t get the recordings out her head, she gave Alicia instructions, and to either have Heather carry them out after she recovered, or for Alicia to carry them out herself. Someone had to take responsibility and Margaret couldn’t be sure she was coming back from this.
“Take everything Nathaniel ever brought to the Glasgow house from afar, pile it up in the backyard, and burn it at sunset.” Burning would sanctify. Burning would free anything that shouldn’t have been there.
She didn’t elaborate. There wasn’t time. The sun had been up for too long already.
6
The sky grew graciously overcast by the time Margaret arrived at her destination. Natalie stirred in the backseat as they pulled through the front gates, her voice a childlike whimper. Margaret had made sure to give her some water and help her to a gas station restroom on the way, but if she wet the backseat while Margaret worked, so be it. There wasn’t time to babysit her.
The car parked on a grassy patch not far from where Alicia had directed. Margaret would’ve liked nothing more than to sit in the car and talk to Natalie. Easier to make promises than keep them, but if she didn’t keep this promise, sitting in this car was going to become lethally unpleasant by nightfall.
“It’s illegal,” Margaret said. “Sometimes considered blasphemous, but less often than you might think. In your case it won’t be immoral. Still.” She reached over the seat and caressed Natalie’s head. A feverish warmth cooked her skin. “This thing inside you is angry. I can’t blame her.”
Margaret stepped out of the car, locked it, and grabbed a shovel out of the trunk. Then she stepped across the grass.
Heather said Nathaniel had a favorite hat. Margaret presumed it was the hat in the photograph, a hat the same color as the lioness’s fur. Perhaps—hopefully likely—this was what the lioness wanted. And where was that hat? Heather had told Margaret yesterday afternoon.
“Nathaniel Adam Glasgow,” Margaret read aloud. The headstone was a black block of clean slate. The dry flowers at its base had been there for maybe a month. “Husband, Father, Traveler. May He Roam Heaven as He Roamed the Earth.” She drove the head of the shovel into the earth, grown over with faded grass.
Margaret had performed strange activities and rituals as a midwife, or a witch, whatever you wanted to call her. She’d taken soil from graves before, with permission, and only to help people. Never in her life had she unearthed a grave in a race against the sun.
Nathaniel was a few feet down. Since he died of heart failure and not some horrific accident, Margaret could assume he had an open wake or funeral, which meant the top half of his casket would open on its own. She would only need to dig up his upper half. More of him would have to be dug up just so she could reach that far down, but the soil could form a slope rather than a six-foot long rectangle.
Hours of digging dragged by. Two feet down. Three feet down. The work itself was dull, but time was short. The da
y dragged on, yet every hour gone was an hour more she wished she had. Now and then, she glanced back at her car. The doors remained closed. Natalie was harmless in the daylight. Margaret wished to get in the car and leave. Her mind hung back in Heather’s bedroom, sweating, her nerves on fire, dreading what was to come.
It didn’t occur to her until the mid-afternoon that the graveyard was far more dangerous than the Glasgow kitchen. Natalie would awaken with the lioness inside her when the sun set wherever she was, but here in this place of death, there were no promises that the lioness herself wouldn’t manifest like in the study.
Margaret grasped a clump of soil from her pile and let the grains sift through her fingers. “Never underestimate the power of graveyard dirt.” That power went both ways. She could have used it in her ritual last night, but the belladonna seemed more welcoming to a departed family member. It also gave strength to the presence of the dead.
Gloom overtook the sky prematurely thanks to the overcast. A trick of the light, maybe, but more likely the day would soon end and Margaret wasn’t done. She hunched atop the lower half of where the coffin would be and thrust shovelful after shovelful of soil out of the hole. There had to be a bottom to this.
She couldn’t help but stand up straight to glance at her car. The windows were beginning to fog. Heather had warned on Margaret’s first night that she couldn’t set a watch to Natalie’s episodes.
“It’s just from Natalie’s breathing.” Margaret returned to digging. She couldn’t be too far from Nathaniel’s casket. She began to dig in one spot so that she could reach the casket’s lid sooner and confirm how far down she still had to go, or how short she was going to fall from finding that hat before—
The car squeaked. Margaret couldn’t help herself. She glanced back again.