Dead Spell

by Belinda Frisch

  Special thanks to Glen Krisch and AJ Brown for their keen editing and to Summer Dawn Hammond and Shahrukh Husain for their tireless cheerleading and overwhelming support.

  This book is dedicated to my loving husband, Brent.

  Thank you for making my dreams come true.

  Also by this author:

  Crisis Hospital: Dark Tales from the Ward, the World, and the Bedside

  CURE

  1.

  Adam cut the Chevy’s engine, silencing the rumbling exhaust. It was Harmony’s first time home in weeks and she postponed the visit as long as she could, but now that fall was giving in to winter, she needed warmer clothes and to relieve her nagging conscience.

  She put on her camouflage jacket, careful not to scrape the fresh cuts on the inside of her arm, and froze with a momentary fear of what she might find inside. Afraid that if her mother was dead that there was no place safe to run to. The security light on the trailer next door glistened across the frosty lawn and burned through the windshield like a spotlight.

  Her own trailer was dark. Something covered the windows from the inside, but no light seeped around it. The loose front stair had finally collapsed and the door had several new dents. One for each new boyfriend. The place looked condemnable and Harmony couldn’t wait to leave it.

  Adam turned to Harmony and sighed. He was exhausted from worry, the dark circles around his eyes lending a skeletal hollowness to his thin, but handsome face. “Promise me you’re going to that appointment tomorrow,” he said.

  Family court had ordered monthly psychiatry visits in an attempt at keeping Harmony with her mother after she overdosed on antidepressants. They went to only two sessions and the last time Harmony saw her mother, it was clear she was in no shape to go to a third. She was running out of excuses.

  “Please don’t start that again.” Harmony straightened the garter clips on her thigh highs, smoothed her long, black and pink-streaked hair over her shoulders, and climbed onto his lap. The steering wheel jabbed her in the back and she couldn’t get comfortable.

  Adam slid the bench seat back and rested his hands on her hips. “Don’t even start with the distractions.”

  But distractions kept him from talking. She opened her mouth against his and tasted his sweet mint gum with the familiar and not at all bothersome hint of tobacco.

  Adam held her off even as she tried to unbuckle his studded belt. “If they put you back in foster and take you away, what do you think it means for me?”

  “I know what this means for you.” She reached between his legs and grinned at his eagerness.

  “Stop it.” He grabbed her wrist and she drew back, smacking her knuckles into the door.

  “What the hell did you do that for?”

  Adam held his hands up, confused. “What are you talking about? I barely touched you.”

  She couldn’t admit she was cutting again and he would never believe that it wasn’t her fault. That something or someone was making her do it. She spent her whole life looking for explanations for why she felt better with pain, but this time was different. A ghost named Tom was to blame and he was going to kill her unless she figured out who he was and what he wanted in time to stop him.

  Adam tried to look at her arm, but she blocked him.

  “I’m fine,” she said. The burning pain faded to a dull sting and then disappeared altogether. Harmony leaned into Adam. She pressing her corseted breasts to his chest and crushed him with kisses. Her long hair fell around her face and Adam wrapped it around his hands using it to draw her closer.

  His hips moved beneath her. The studs on the belt pressed into her thighs and she pushed them away. His breath slowed to labored panting and she knew she had him.

  “I still want to take you to your appointment,” he said. “Tell me you’ll let me.”

  “Shh…” She lifted her short, pleated skirt and undid his zipper.

  “What about your neighbors? What about the…”

  She shrugged and flashed a naughty smile. “Who cares?” she whispered. “Let them watch.”

  * * * * *

  The dark trailer reeked of stale cigarette smoke. The clutter was nothing less than encroaching. The door was blocked by boxes and garbage and Adam had to force it to get inside. Charity, Harmony’s mother, lunged at them. She was disheveled and wearing black-on-black clothes.

  “What the hell?” Adam shoved Harmony behind him and fumbled for the light switch. It clicked, but no lights turned on.

  “Power’s off again.”

  Adam turned on his key ring flashlight.

  “Shut that off before they see,” Charity hissed, her breath liquor-soaked.

  “See what?” Harmony took her mother by the shoulders and struggled for eye contact. Her mother’s pupils were dilated and fixed on the floor. “There’s nothing to see, Mom. You’re fine.”

  Charity growled and shrank into the shadows--a frail, broken, shell of a woman strung out and off her meds. If she recognized Harmony at all, there was no indication. “Get out of my house.” She swiped her hand at Adam as if she had claws.

  “Mom, it’s me, Harmony.”

  “Harmony? Oh, God. They’re coming.” Charity sniffled and blood ran from her nose. “My baby, they’re going to take you away.”

  Harmony cried at the lucid moment and the pain of the memory of when that was true. “No one’s coming, Mom. Not this time.”

  Adam rummaged through the countertop clutter for the bottle of sedatives that was usually there. “She did a number on this place,” he said.

  It wasn’t the first time.

  Cardboard covered the tiny windows and was held in place with duct tape. Charity fashioned bunkers out of boxes, couch cushions, and blankets and from the garbage all over the floor appeared to have been living inside them.

  Harmony shook her head and looked for the pills. “See, this is why I don’t stay gone.”

  Charity curled up against the wall and pulled her knees tight to her chest.

  Harmony found the pills tucked inside the aluminum foil-lined bread box. “I got them.”

  Charity picked at the patch of scabs on her forearm, shushing no one in particular. “The place is bugged,” she whispered. Her bloodshot eyes sprang wide and she waved away the beam of the flashlight.

  Harmony filled a cup half-full with tap water and handed Charity two white pills. It was easier to play into her delusions than fight them so she offered a story with as straight a face as she could manage. “Here,” she said softly, “The pills will make it so they can’t hear you.”

  Charity smiled and swallowed them without argument.

  Harmony sat down next to her mother and smoothed a tangle of ratty hair away from her sunken cheek. The bones were more prominent than even a week ago and Harmony sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Adam held his top lip between his teeth. His eyes glossed over. “This is why I can’t go tomorrow,” Harmony said. “Dr. Reed’s expecting her and she can’t see him like this.”

  “You missed too many appointments already, Harmony. You’re going to have to think of something.”

  2.

  The number twelve bus was full of morning commuters reading and drinking their coffees. Harmony leaned her head against the window and hid her bloodshot eyes behind a curtain of hair. Concrete Blonde played loudly through her headphones but neither angst nor ballads could soothe her.

  “This is such a bad idea.” She huffed at the lady flipping and folding the Life section in the seat next to her.

  The lawyerly woman stared at Harmony’s knee-high boots, her trench coat, her piercings, and the pentagram necklace dangling in the low cut “v” of her black lace bustier with obvious disgust.

  “Why don’t you take a picture?” Harmony hit the filter end of
her cigarette box hard against her palm.

  The woman changed seats without saying a word and settled in next to a neurotic, middle-aged man furiously texting on his smart phone.

  The bus slowed and Harmony took out her left ear bud.

  “Next stop Parker Center,” said the driver.

  The filter end of an unlit Marlboro dangled between Harmony’s lips and she drew a breath through it, antsy for a light.

  The bus stopped at the corner of 9th and Oak and holding her black trench coat closed, Harmony pushed her way through the line of standing passengers.

  “This is me,” she said barely making it out before the driver closed the door. She stepped onto the sidewalk and lost her cigarette down a sewer grate.

  “Perfect,” she said and rolled her eyes.

  The wind blew her coat open and it flapped like a bisected flag, exposing her fishnet stockings. She pulled it closed hoping to avoid drawing further attention, but a scruffy man in ripped-up jeans and paint-splattered work boots standing outside the check cashing place already noticed her. He whistled and headed in her direction.

  She put her hands in her pockets, tightened her grip on the pepper spray in her right hand and laced her keys between the fingers of her left. If she had to hit him, it was going to hurt.

  “Hey, sexy, where’re you going?” The man’s untied boots clapped the cement and he weaved as he walked, drunk on whatever was in his brown bag. “Hey, come ‘ere a minute.” He slurred closing the gap between them.

  “It’s way too early for this, loser.”

  “No such thing as too early. Come on, wait up. I just want to talk to you.”

  She held the pepper spray out with her finger on the trigger. “One more step you sick drunk and I pull.”

  He pressed her, backing her toward the alley.

  Tires squealed and the smell of skidding rubber surrounded her as Adam’s massive black Chevy jumped the curb. The yellow smiley face dangling from the rearview mirror contrasted the skull-emblazoned hood except that it had an “x” where each of its eyes should be and red blood trailing from the corners of its half-moon smile. The grill cover gave the appearance of vampire teeth and the screaming death metal music was louder even than the obnoxious exhaust.

  Adam got out, his face tight with anger. His furrowed brow pulled the skin around his fresh eyebrow piercing, making it bleed a little.

  “Get in the truck.” He shouted over the deafening music and left the driver’s side door opened into honking traffic.

  Harmony folded her arms across her chest. “Did you seriously follow me? Seriously?”

  The drunk stepped in between her and Adam. “I don’t think she wants to go with you, man.”

  Adam pulled his arm back and delivered a single, solid punch to the drunk’s jaw, knocking him unconscious.

  “Of course I followed you. Now get in.” He opened Harmony’s door and shook the dripping blood from split knuckle, splattering an expired parking meter behind him.

  Harmony stuck her chest out defiantly but could see he was in no mood.

  “I’m not going to say it again. Get in.”

  Harmony stepped up on the diamond cut chrome running board and pulled herself up.

  The drunk came to and headed down the alley. Harmony was relieved by his retreat.

  No victim, no crime.

  Adam squeezed the fish mouth wound closed to help it clot. “Damn it, Harmony.”

  What did I do? She wanted to ask, but instead said, “You all right?”

  “I’m fine.” He unclenched his jaw and pointed to the glove compartment. “Hand me one of the napkins in there, would you?” She handed him the wrinkled stack of McDonald’s napkins and he wrapped a few of them around his hand, tucking it under the leg of his black skinny jeans for compression.

  “Why did you follow me?”

  “How about ‘thank you for saving me from the belligerent pervert’? I was making sure you made the appointment.”

  “I was on the bus, wasn’t I?”

  “That doesn’t mean you’ll make it to Reed’s. Not two minutes off it and I’m already rescuing you. Dressed like that, you’re asking for trouble.”

  “He was the one asking for trouble. I totally had it handled.”

  “Harmony, I’m trying to help.”

  “I help myself, thank you.”

  “You’re going to help yourself right back into the system going to the shrink dressed like that. Here.” He reached behind her seat for the change of clothes he brought from his apartment. “Put these on.”

  She took the jeans and tee shirt from the backpack and rolled her eyes. “See what I mean? You treat me like I’m helpless or stupid and then wonder why I don’t want you to drive me places.”

  “This isn’t a negotiation and you’re not going to make me feel bad for being the one person with enough sense to know you need taken care of.”

  He pulled into Parker Center—an old, brick school converted to office space that housed most of the county’s programs—and parked next to an overfull dumpster at the far end of the lot.

  “You should be fine to change here. No one can see in.”

  “Like I care.” She slipped on the pair of well-worn jeans with holes in the thighs and the long-sleeved, girly tee and hopped down, mortified. “I really hate you right now.”

  “I know.” He kissed her and put her discarded clothes into her backpack.

  3.

  Brea woke to the sound of her mother shouting from downstairs for her to answer the phone. She’d snoozed the alarm so many times that she was a half an hour late getting up for school. It was a long night of worrying about Harmony, about whether or not she was going to be sent back to foster care, and about what was going to happen to her if she did.

  “Brea, come on. Pick up. Your father wants to talk to you.”

  Her father, Kurt Miller, moved to Peach Springs, Arizona when she was two-years-old, under what some people called mysterious circumstances. He came back only once for his father’s funeral and spent the brief two day stint holed up at the Beech Tree—a rundown motel off route 32—hiding.

  Her mother, Joan, still wore her wedding ring and slept in his sweatshirt.

  “Brea, come on. I mean it.”

  “Just a second, Mom.” She threw on a pair of jeans and the top two shirts on her dresser. “I got it.” She picked up the cordless off her desk and waited for him to say something.

  “Brea, are you there?”

  “Yeah, Dad. It’s me.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Fine.” He didn’t deserve conversation.

  “Good. Good. I’m glad to hear it. Listen, I’m making plans for summer vacation. I thought you’d like to spend some time out here. A couple of weeks or a month, maybe? We could go to the zoo…”

  “I’m too old for the zoo.”

  “Okay. We can catch up on old times.”

  “We don’t have any old times.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Not fair? It’s been five years, Dad, and you haven’t visited once.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is unless you count funerals.”

  “Listen, I don’t want to fight. I thought it would be good for you to get away. Your mom says you’ve been hanging around Harmony and I…we…need to talk about that.”

  “I gotta go” she said, “before I miss my bus.”

  Her parents rarely collaborated, except for when it came to Harmony. For as long as Brea could remember, long before Harmony’s legal troubles or the widespread small town chatter about Charity’s wealth of problems, Joan and Kurt Miller were a bastion of anti-Wolcott sentiment. They forbade Brea to see Harmony, but didn’t have the man power to enforce it. Brea stopped asking for an explanation after years of not getting any and couldn’t come up with anything on her own that would explain why her parents stonewalled a kid before she was old enough to enter kindergarten.

  4.

  Harmony and A
dam stood in the doorway of the overfull waiting room. He wrapped his arms around her and knitted his fingers together at her waist. There were pieces of napkin stuck in his now clotted wound and his hands were stained grease black from changing oil at the garage. No matter how often he washed them, they never came clean.

  A white noise generator hissed under the chair next to them, masking the confidential psychiatrist-patient conversations, while a red-haired girl with Down’s syndrome pled with her elderly mother to go home.

  “Pease,” she begged, leaving out the “l”. “Wanna l-e-a-v-e. Pretty pease,” the girl wailed.

  Harmony tried not to stare. I’m with you there, kid. A nervous sweat dripped down her side, filling her nose with the smell of lavender deodorant.

  “I should’ve cancelled,” she whispered and Adam shook his head.

  “It’s going to be fine.”

  “Harmony Wolcott?”

  Dr. Reed stood in his office doorway. His wrinkled khakis were an inch too short and the tails of his button-down shirt hung beneath the waistband of a food-stained sweater vest.

  She walked toward him with her head down and an overwhelming nauseous feeling in her stomach.

  “Good to see you again,” he said.

  She didn’t answer, but took a seat on the lumpy, old couch that could have come from the Salvation Army.

  Therapy wasn’t like in the movies. No high-end leather or panoramic views from the 46th floor of a high rise—at least not at the kind of places Social Services refers you to. The flattened, red-on-blue plaid cushion sucked her in and she tucked her leg underneath her for balance.

  Dr. Reed sat behind a chipped, oak desk and looked up from Harmony’s file. “Is your mother planning on joining us today?”

  His close-set eyes reminded her of a pig’s and were magnified by the coke bottle, black framed glasses perpetually slipping down his slight nose. His thinning salt and pepper hair was tied back in a low ponytail and his breath reeked of onions.