Southern Rites

by Stuart Jaffe

  Sandra stayed focused on her old texts. While he had been at the theater learning about the shape of Edward Wallace’s fists, Sandra had uncovered several spells for breaking other spells, but in each case, she had to know the specifics of the original before it could be broken. She then delved into numerous books boasting a Call to Power spell in their contents, but so far had come up empty with anything that sounded like what Abagail Wallace had used.

  Max had spent the time searching for two important pieces of information. First, he wanted to find out the name of the last person whose cursed bones Wallace sought. Second, he needed to find out if Wallace had indeed found that person’s bones.

  He started by going through Chester Stanton’s story to see if any of it had been true. Max pulled up newspaper articles from the time, academic papers on the subject, as well as some wonderful primary sources — Tryon’s personal journals and official reports had been preserved as well as several invoices for arms, ammunition, food, and ominously enough, coffins. From these, Max determined that the general idea of what Stanton said was correct but the details tended to be wrong. There were only about eight cannons, not twenty, and while many of the Regulators had come expecting the incident to be another protest, clearly some arrived raring for a fight.

  The office door opened. J and Mrs. Porter entered quietly. She carried two take out boxes and placed one on each desk.

  J said, “We thought you might be hungry, and I told her that when you guys hit the books, it can go all night. I figured if you were still here when we got back, that’s what you’d be doing.”

  Sandra set her pen down. “You know us well.” Her tone straddled a line between complimenting J and jabbing at Max’s mother.

  Before an argument could spiral away, Max said, “Thanks. I could definitely eat.”

  Mrs. Porter scanned the office. “If it’s okay, I think I’ll do some cleaning in here. I promise I won’t bother your work, but it’ll give me something to do, and the place could use it. No offense.”

  Sandra’s fingers dug into her desk, but she forced a smile. “That would nice. Thank you.”

  Taking a few awkward steps toward the door, J said, “Y’all seem to have things good here, and I got to get checking on PB. So, unless you need something?”

  “Go ahead,” Max said, wanting to chuckle but thinking better of it. “See you in the morning.”

  As J left, Max opened the take out box — a turkey sandwich from the coffee shop on the corner. He tucked into the food while Sandra returned to her books. In the silence, Mrs. Porter dug a rag from under the bathroom sink and went to work.

  But only a few minutes later, she said, “It’s no wonder you never eat well when both of you bury yourselves in work. You’ve got to take care of each other. It’s no fun when your spouse passes away because you didn’t do the simple things like eat well.”

  Neither Max nor Sandra responded, and thankfully, Mrs. Porter returned to cleaning in silence. Another half-hour passed, and Max had yet to come across mention of Chester Stanton, Archibald Henderson, or Jonathan Shoemaker — at least, not the ones he searched for. There were plenty of men with these names scattered throughout the US, but none with any connection to the 1700s. He tried searching for them in some lesser known databases, but again turned up empty. Glancing over at his wife’s furrowed brow, he could tell she had not found success either.

  Catching his gaze, she pointed to one of the books. “This is our best chance but it’s in an old German dialect. The Internet’s helping translate some of it, but most of it I have to piece together by cross-referencing similar texts I have in English. It’s a real pain.”

  “Keep at it, hon. You can do it.”

  “Oh, I’ll get this sucker. I just don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

  Max decided to shift gears and focus on Abagail Wallace and the Wallace family. After a few cursory searches, he learned that the Wallace family had stayed out of the news for their entire existence. Not surprising, but he had hoped some basic searches would pull up enough information on the family to be a primer.

  Instead, he went by the tried and true methods of researching a family history. He started with the national census. Those searches brought up more than enough to put together a decent family tree — not all the way back to Abagail but all the way back to the start of the census. Of course, many of those listed would belong to other non-family people named Wallace, but by searching the Internet with each name, Max expected the narrowing process to go rather quickly.

  It did. But not as he had expected. After two dozen names, he picked up on the pattern — anybody who had any information on their life, whether a newspaper article from 1927 or a Facebook page from 2015, anybody that Max could find did not belong to Abagail Wallace’s clan. Thus, anybody who did not exist beyond an entry in the census did belong to the family. In fact, the only other documents Max could locate for a true Wallace were birth announcements and obituaries, but those were outliers rather than the norm.

  Max’s mother let loose a long sigh as she sat on the couch. Max glanced around the office. “Wow, Mom. The place looks great.”

  “Oh, no need to thank me. I love taking care of you. It’s important that somebody does.”

  Sandra ignored the comment, and Mrs. Porter waved off Max’s rebuttal. It wasn’t a dismissive wave, however, but rather one that said she did not want to argue anymore. That felt like progress.

  Max checked his watch. “Another thirty minutes and we’ll go.”

  “It’s getting dark.”

  “Thirty minutes. I promise.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Max’s mother sat quietly with her cell phone. Max tried to focus on his work, but he could hear every annoyed shift of her clothing, every perturbed huff, every sigh. He fought the urge to pack up and go early. This thirty minute wait had become a line in the sand, and if he budged, he would lose.

  It had happened before between them.

  Growing up, lines like this one formed on most days. Their battle of wills could ignite over anything. As a toddler, when his mother demanded he get ready for kindergarten, he stalled as long as possible, pushing her but always relenting short of getting spanked. As a boy, he refused to eat what she required, frustrating her but always relenting short of getting sent to his room. As a teen, he rejected his chores, angering her but always relenting short of getting grounded.

  He could not relent this time. He was an adult, and he had a job to do. This time she had to be the one to give in.

  As Max battled this out in his head, his mother meandered around the office. Nine minutes left. He sifted through papers and brought up a few historical websites. Busy work, of course, but at least it looked like work.

  She slid a chair over and sat opposite him. He glanced at her. She offered a humble smile.

  Not going to work. Eight minutes. I’m staying the full thirty.

  He sensed her leaning forward, reading his papers upside-down. And then she made a slight sound. “Huh.”

  Max dropped his hands on the table with a loud slap. “We’ll leave in a little over five minutes. Please, let me work.”

  Mrs. Porter cocked her head to re-read one of the papers. “Oh, I was only wondering why, back in the 1700s, well, why did they make more coffins than they needed for a hanging?”

  “What?”

  “That page there says they hanged six men after this battle, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I thought I saw the order for nine coffins to be made. That’s a lot of work when you already know you only need six.”

  Max’s heart jumped a beat before racing away in his chest. He picked up the invoice for the coffins. Sure enough, the order stated nine coffins to be made. With frantic energy, he rifled through his notes.

  Sandra lifted her head at the sudden flurry. “You have something?”

  Smacking a paper with the back of his hand, he said, “Right here. Thompson and Sons.”

&nbs
p; “Which is what?”

  He looked from his mother to Sandra. “They made the coffins for the six Regulators hanged after the Battle of Alamance. Only, as my mother pointed out, they made nine of them. And right here is the business register of companies and employees. Tryon needed these lists for taxes. Guess who built those coffins.”

  “I’ll go out on a limb and say the name Wallace popped up.”

  “Andrew Wallace.”

  Sitting straight on the edge of her chair, Mrs. Porter said, “Who’s that? Did I solve the case?”

  “No, Mom. But you helped us with a big part of it. Andrew Wallace made three extra coffins so that his wife, Abagail, could use them for a special spell. She planned —” Max froze as his mind pulled several pieces of the puzzle together. “The men that she buried with the cursed bones — they were never Regulators. Or if they were, they didn’t fight in the Battle of Alamance.”

  Sandra snapped her fingers. “She used the battle as cover.”

  “Exactly. She murdered the three men or had them killed or maybe they sacrificed themselves, but the battle was used to hide their deaths. Just three more in the massacre. That’s why I can’t find their names in anything about the battle. They were never part of it.”

  Drummond shot out of the bookcase as if he had sprinted in from far off. “Not quite.”

  As Drummond perched near the front door, Max got to his feet. “What do you mean?”

  “I know who the third man is, and he did fight in the Battle of Alamance.”

  “Do I have to guess?”

  Drummond paused long enough to make Max think the answer was yes. But then the old ghost pushed back his hat and said, “Chester Stanton.”

  “But —”

  “The guy we talked with in your car wasn’t Stanton. That guy’s name was Theo Russett and he lived in the 1950s. Abagail Wallace threatened to curse his living family if he didn’t take on the Stanton role and guide us to the theater.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  “I’m a detective. And a good one, too. Things weren’t adding up right, and I had a hunch that it all seemed to break down with Stanton. So, I went back to the Other, tracked him down, and got him to tell me the truth.”

  “He just blurted it out? Isn’t he worried about his family?”

  “I may have made a few promises about what we can do to help him, but that’s for another day. Right now, we’ve got to go talk to the real Stanton.”

  “You found him, too?”

  “That part was easiest of all. Abagail had targeted Theo Russet for a specific reason — the guy was a historian. Care to guess what time period he specialized in?”

  “The American Revolution.”

  “That’s the one. Even stuck as a ghost in the Other, Theo couldn’t stop his historian brain. He’d been interviewing those that remained from the 1700s for his own personal satisfaction.”

  “He knew exactly where to find Chester Stanton.” Max perked up. “The details he told us — some of them were wrong by a long shot. Was he dropping us hints?”

  “I think so. He didn’t put up much resistance when I found him.” Drummond clapped his hands together once. “So, Stanton’s never left the battlefield. Should be easy to find him. Let’s go.”

  The adrenaline rush that always came with a major leap forward in a case now flushed through Max’s system. He whirled back to his to get his coat. Sandra stood behind her desk, her face ashen as she watched Mrs. Porter.

  Max’s mother stared at him with a horrified gasp. “Why are you talking to the wall?”

  Chapter 18

  Max’s cheeks reddened as he faced his mother. He needed a lie, a good one, anything that would make even the slightest bit of sense, but her eyes stopped him. She was scared. Her little boy might be going insane right in front of her.

  Sandra burst out a sharp laugh and quickly covered her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry, but I’ve told him for years somebody would think he’s nuts. The idea that it’s you is too funny.”

  Confused, Mrs. Porter moved her head an inch toward Sandra, but her eyes stayed on Max. “What are you jabbering about?”

  “Max isn’t crazy. That’s just the way he does his best thinking. When we were younger, he’d be out mowing the lawn, yapping away at nobody. He’s thinking out loud, that’s all. But I’ve always said to him that our neighbors were going to think he’d lost his mind.”

  Max forced a guilty grin. None of that was true — they had never even owned a house with a lawn until moving to Winston-Salem — but he had known people who talked out their thoughts. Maybe Sandra’s lie would work.

  “Good thinking,” Drummond said.

  But Mrs. Porter shook her head. “I heard him. That was not talking through a problem. That was a conversation. He paused to listen to his imaginary friend talking.” To Max, she said, “Who do you think you were talking with?”

  “No, Mom. It’s like Sandra said. I was thinking through our case.”

  “You’re not well, dear. I should’ve known when I first got here. I did know. I ignored all the signs. Your constant distraction, the way you were running off all the time on this big case, but it’s not true. None of this is real.” She walked across the room and clasped hands with Sandra. “I see now that you’ve been dealing with this a long time. I had a friend, Ernie Schleffer, very nice man. But he wasn’t right in the head either. Thought he spoke to tiny creatures in the forest. His dear wife, Sylvia, she spent years indulging his fantasies in order to keep him out of an institution.”

  Sandra said, “That is not what’s going on here.”

  “It’s okay. I know we’ve had our differences, but I see the stress you’ve been under. You’re not in this alone anymore. You don’t have to play along with his fantasy.”

  Drummond paced near the door. “I think your mother is the nutcase. Does she really think you’re paying for this office and going around taking clients that don’t exist?”

  Max went to his desk and tapped on the files. “Mom, I’m not crazy. The case is right here.”

  “Of course, dear. You sit down and get back to work on your case. It’s about witchcraft, right? Magic spells? Did you have a breakthrough on the culprit?” She turned back to Sandra and whispered, though loud enough that Max heard anyway, “I know people up north, professional people, who can help Max. Please, allow me to bring him up there. You come, too. We’ll get him all the care he needs.”

  Sitting in his chair, Max watched on. His heart warmed at how his mother handled what she perceived as the destruction of her son’s mind. She wasn’t crying or yelling, but rather, she truly wanted to get him care. She behaved quite admirably.

  Sandra, on the other hand, had shifted toward anger. The more Max’s mother insisted on helping, the more she refused to accept Sandra’s plausible explanation, the angrier Sandra became. “No,” she finally said. “I’m not sending Max to an institution. He’s not crazy.”

  “You’re not hearing me. I know the truth. You don’t have to hide it from me anymore.”

  “You are so far off base from the truth, it’d be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous.”

  Drummond soared over to the desk. “Max, I think you better stop them.”

  Max wanted to say something back to Drummond about self-preservation, but he guessed that talking to the empty space next to him would only fuel his mother’s convictions.

  “Please, dear,” Mrs. Porter said as she closed in on Sandra. Her attempt at an understanding and sympathetic face chilled Max. He couldn’t imagine Sandra liked it any better close up. “The only danger is letting Max continue to be sick. He needs a doctor — a trained professional.”

  “You amaze me,” Sandra said.

  Drummond pointed toward her. “Don’t do this.”

  “You come to us uninvited, barge into our lives, and after only a couple days, you think you understand the world we live in. You think you can understand my life. The arrogance that takes.”

  “
Arrogance?” Mrs. Porter said, the edge coming back to her voice. “Now, you listen here. I can see that times have been rough for you, but I’m trying to be nice. There’s no need to be insulting.”

  “It’s insulting that you think you can dictate what Max and I want to do — especially when you don’t have a clue as to what is really going on here.”

  Max got to his feet, his brain finally clicking in to what Drummond feared. “Honey, it’s okay. Let’s not bring all that up.”

  Mrs. Porter’s eyebrows lifted. “You two are hiding something else? Is his condition worse than talking to imaginary people?”

  Pounding her fists on the table, Sandra said, “He’s not crazy!”

  “It’s obvious that you are in denial.”

  “It’s a ghost. Okay? You want the truth? Max was talking to a ghost. A dead detective that Max and I can both see. In fact, he’s right over there.”

  Mrs. Porter looked in Drummond’s direction. Her lips trembled, and her hand went to her chest. The way her eyes darted from Max to Sandra and back spoke for her — she thought they both had lost their minds. Which left Max with no choice.

  “It’s true, Mom.”

  She bit back a few attempts to speak.

  Sandra nodded to Drummond. “The ghost is going to pass his hand through you, and you’ll feel it. It’s cold. Try not to freak out.”

  Drummond drifted behind Mrs. Porter and raised his hand. He glanced at Sandra, and she nodded again. Max watched that pale hand descend, and he wanted to scream.

  This part of his life should never have been revealed — certainly not to his mother. This part of his life belonged between Sandra and him. It was private, personal, something that he did not want shared with anyone but his wife.

  Yet Sandra was right. Better his mother thought him cursed, better she was scared into believing the supernatural, than to have her trying to lock him up in an asylum.

  Drummond swiped his hand across the back of her shoulders, and she yipped like a frightened poodle. She whirled around to stare at her empty chair. “W-What was that?”