Puzzle (Haunted Series)

by Alexie Aaron

  “Hey, now, I’ve been behaving,” Mike pouted. “You girls are harassing me. I’m going to tell Burt.”

  “Oooh, run to Daddy just when things get rough, big baby,” Mia taunted.

  Audrey started laughing. Mike and Mia joined in.

  “Tell me what’s on the menu? It smells wonderful,” Audrey said to change the subject.

  “You need to get your nose fixed. Corned beef and sauerkraut Reubens may be tasty but smell horrible,” Mia said in disgust.

  “Ah, but only Philistines would think it was stinky. In my neighborhood, Mama Kowalski’s house always smelled of kraut and cabbage. She was a wonderful lady and free with her food. I guess I just associate the smell with love.”

  “The mad woman called us names and thinks love smells like farts,” Mia commented to Mike.

  “She’s a redhead; they’re all a bit daft,” Mike said.

  “I’m going to tell Ted on you,” Audrey warned, “if you don’t stop picking on me.”

  “Now who’s being a tattletale,” Mike observed.

  ~

  Murphy approached Mia as she exited the command center after delivering the food. She smiled at him as he tipped his hat to her. “Hello, Murph, got something on your mind?”

  Murphy, in his man-of-few-words way, told her of Ira, the soldiers and Ira’s reaction to the delivered message from her. He also told of Ira overhearing Deville’s plan to possess Cid and Ted.”

  “Ted!” Mia said. “Thank you, I appreciate the risk you took in going in there. I admire Shelby and his men for staying there and protecting Ira. I’ll let Ted know about him being on the possession list.” She patted his arm. “We had some luck over at the coach’s hidey-hole,” she said and encouraged him to follow her to the truck. “We have some books that will help us track down the hex and a chest that matches the big one we dug up.” Mia opened the passenger door and reached in and pulled out the small chest. “I bet we find rooster feet and all sorts of evil little charms in here,” she said, lifting the locked container in the air.

  Murphy took a step backwards and crossed himself.

  “I promise not to open it until I know what kind of tomfoolery the man was up to. I’m going to have to sit down and study the book his great grandmother claims he was using.”

  Murphy nodded and tipped his hat before he left her.

  Mia watched him leave. She felt the familiar sense of loss she had whenever they parted. Was it memories of the intense moments they shared or the bond that was forged when he first befriended a lost little girl that screamed in cemeteries? Whatever it was, she was glad that Ted understood.

  She walked back to the truck and looked in. Ted was munching on a sandwich while typing one-handed. He sensed her presence, turned and winked at her. She smiled. “Ted,” she started, “I have some good news and some bad news.”

  “Better give me the bad news first.”

  “Deville’s aiming to possess you.”

  “Who wouldn’t? The good news?” he asked.

  “I’m not going to let him.”

  “Well then that’s settled. Thank you, Mighty Mouse.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said and watched him as he went back to work. She stood there thinking about how lucky she was to wake up from her childhood crush on Whitney and see Ted patiently there waiting for her.

  “Mia,” Burt’s voice penetrated her thoughts.

  She turned around and apologized, “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you. My mind is occupied with too many things,” she explained.

  “Can I help you with that chest?”

  “Waa, oh, this,” she said, holding up the box. “Yes, please. We need to get it protected from the ghoulies until we get around to opening it.”

  He took the chest from her and nodded over at the tent he and Cid had erected while she had been gone. Inside the clear plastic walls were the larger chest and the lead box containing the rifle and mess kit. Audrey was sitting at one end of the folding banquet table Homely had left in their care. Her eyes were fixed on Stewart’s diary. She stopped to make a note on a bright pink Post-it and stuck it to the page she was reading.

  Mia picked up Emma Peat’s book and sat down beside her. “You’ve made a lot of headway,” Mia observed, looking at the multitude of Post-its marking the pages.

  “Stewart King wasn’t a great essayist, but he did write most everything down. I’ve just gotten to where he has discovered the book in the bottom of the box. By the way, he scored four thousand dollars on the first edition King book. Makes me want to look through my dad’s library the next time I visit.”

  “Books bring us joy when we read them and sometimes wealth when we discover them again.”

  “Who said that?” Audrey asked.

  “I did,” Mia giggled. “Sometimes I can sound so pompous. It’s the professor gene.”

  “Speaking of professors, any news from the parents?”

  “Nope, just like I like it. I’ll need therapy the day they remember they have a daughter and want to bond.” Mia made a face as she crossed herself.

  “That bad?”

  “Don’t get me started.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The headaches won’t stop. The principal has taken to coming to the track and field practices. He leaves after a few minutes, shaking his head. I have to find a way to stimulate the young athletes!

  Audrey looked from the diary and over at Mia. She was flipping through the book at a mad pace. At one point she got up, left and came back with Burt in tow. She pointed out a few things. They whispered amongst themselves before Burt left again. “How’s it going?” she asked Mia.

  “This is so confusing. It doesn’t read like a book. It’s sort of like a collection of recipes, but the ingredients aren’t available at the local market. There are notes in the margins in another hand. I can’t be sure they are Stewart’s. What do you think?”

  Audrey got up and examined the notations. “It looks like the handwriting in the diary. I think you can assume it’s his. What are those symbols?” Audrey pointed to the thick swirls that ran across one of the pages.

  “Burt’s going to take a photo of them and send them to my godfather Bernard at the Field Museum. I think they’re Samoan. If so, this is the eighth culture represented in this book. It’s almost as if Emma was drawing power from every culture that uses magic that she knew of. She was making up her own magic, like one would adjust a recipe for cookies. She’d try a little Voodoo and found she didn’t like the result, but it and Yoruba did amazing things for her beefsteak tomatoes. I think she was screwing around with things better left alone,” Mia alleged. “Here is the Helm of Awe.” She tapped a symbol that took up half a page. “Vikings wore this to be invincible, but see here how she’s changed it by running an image through it. This is one of the Aztec symbols for strength.”

  “I don’t get it. Why not just stick with one religion to explore and refine?” Audrey asked Mia.

  “It seems like our Miss Emma was after the garden club prize and wasn’t above stealing magic from other religions.”

  “You’re telling me that all the information gathered in this tome was nothing more than a gardening book?” Audrey asked her. “Are we dealing with the fallout of another mad woman?”

  “No. Not like Bonner. There are also healing rituals, recipes for salves and potions. But there is a dark side also to her herbal wanderings. She became convinced that the dead could come back to life.”

  “If you bring up zombies, I swear I will smack you so hard,” Audrey warned as she watched the twinkle in Mia’s eyes dance.

  “I won’t go that far, but she did, according to her notes here, bring back the spirits of the long buried. One of them gave her vital Yoruba information.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Miss Emma went to a graveyard on a plantation down south and dug up the remains of a slave reputed to have ‘powers.’ She used her bones in a ceremony.”

  “All for…”


  “Her tomatoes.”

  “Some people need to get a life. There is more to it than winning prizes at the county fair,” Audrey pronounced.

  Mia nodded in agreement. “So now I have to figure out what recipes the coach used to bring about the return of Deville and undo it.”

  “In keeping with the present conversation, I’ve just read how he knew where Deville was buried,” Audrey said, reaching for the diary. She handed it to Mia to read.

  Day started off bad. I got out of bus duty but was pulled into being a chaperone for the sixth-grade excursion to the Hansenville Historical Society. While the children were being lead around the building, I was struck by one of the portraits. I asked the guide, an elderly but spry gal, and she mentioned it came to them from a private donation along with a few of the soldier’s personal effects. She pointed to a glass case in the corner. Trevor Deville was from a wealthy family. They were slave owners and farmed a large piece of property south of Hansenville. The guide also mentioned under her breath that he wasn’t the sort of person they would normally have adorning the walls of the building, but the portrait that normally hung there of a decorated officer was out being cleaned.

  I asked why poor Trevor was consigned to the back corners of the storeroom. She replied that he was a convicted felon found guilty of dabbling in black magic and murder. I asked her how she came upon this information. She took me to where a display of the newspapers of the day was housed in airtight panels. Sure enough, there was old Trevor and the charges against him. “It must have devastated the family,” I told her. She wagged her finger at me and said, “I think that sort knew what that man was capable of long before he went to war. Rumor had it that they rose to wealth using the dark arts.”

  I asked her how she knew this. Again I was taken by the hand to a table where her ancestor’s diary sat. She pulled on a set of white gloves from her pocket and carefully opened the book. She read, “I was abashed to see how far the Deville’s had risen. When I last preached here, they were dirt farmers, nothing more. Now a grand house stands where a cabin did before. I remembered officiating at Mary Morgan’s wedding to the recent widower Deville before I left for Chicago. I ran into the boy of that union at the market. He did not resemble the father, but the mother who, like the wife before her, had died young. The older boy and Mary’s son were placed in the care of a slave woman.” He mentions a call he made to the family. He was turned away from the door by the woman, and as he left, he recalls her spitting on the ground where he had stood before.

  I asked the old woman where the Devilles buried their people. She didn’t know but added that Trevor Deville never made it home to be buried. I was excited by the thought of Trevor Deville being the new conduit for Emma’s magic, but heartbroken that no one knew where he was buried.

  Mia looked up. “So he must have figured it out.”

  “That’s the assumption. I’ve got a lot more to read. If he wrote it down, I’ll find it,” Audrey promised.

  Burt came back with a digital camera and took pictures of the pages Mia had questions about. Audrey sat back down and continued to read. She had the scent, and soon she would find the information they needed.

  “What was the name of the historical society again,” Mia asked, squinting at some scribbles in the margin.

  “Hansenville,” Audrey answered.

  “No, the other one, the one that had the account of the soldiers…”

  “Oh, B something…”

  “Was it Bertram County?”

  Audrey pulled the papers out of her briefcase and scanned them. “Yes, Bertram County, why?”

  “Look here in the margin. It says, ‘Bertram County agrees.’”

  Burt leaned in and nodded his head, agreeing with Mia.

  “But these papers don’t tell of the graves. They only confirm where the soldiers were at that time.”

  Mia moved her hand over the page she was on and nudged a paper loose that had gotten folded up in some black ribbon. She handed it to Audrey. “I think this may help.”

  It was a list of Civil War era graveyards. Alver was circled.

  “Still, how would he know which bones were Trevor’s?” Audrey argued.

  “How about a conjure recipe that uses an object owned by a person to find them if they are missing?” Mia said and held up the book, displaying the list of ingredients. “All this time I though a honeycomb was just for the bees,” she remarked as she read the list.

  Burt looked from Mia to Audrey and smiled. They worked well together. Mike’s suggestion of taking Audrey on fulltime was a good one, he thought.

  “Eureka!” Audrey shouted as she found more information in the diary. She read:

  After an exhausting search, I have found him. First I must liberate more of his belongings before taking a chance on the gravesite. Soon the Clinton Cougars will run faster and jump higher than all the other schools. I will have the principal off my back and maybe a raise in salary to boot.

  “Shit, he should have just given the kids steroids,” Mia said.

  Burt and Audrey looked at her aghast.

  “Come on, tell me you weren’t thinking the same thing,” Mia said and resumed her research.

  ~

  Deville returned to the gymnasium to recover. Andrew was nowhere to be seen. He pushed his little brother from his mind; he had his own problems. The spirit that was once Stewart King was becoming restless. He no longer wanted to join forces with Deville and tried at every opportunity to pull away from him. They were bound by a spell that needed great power to hold them. It was time for Deville to call upon his talismans and the power in which they held.

  “I call upon the north where my bones rest, give me power.” He made a quarter turn. “I call upon the east where my watch ticks, marking time.” He started to feel a resurgence as he pivoted again. “I call upon the south to where my conquest was made.” He didn’t feel anything, but he moved slightly and smiled as the power flowed to him. He made his last turn. “I call upon the west where my rifle is laid to rest.” Like with the south, he did not immediately connect with the power source. He moved slowly in a circle and then faster. Still he felt no power, nor the presence of his weapon. It was gone. Rage filled him, and he screamed.

  The men that huddled around the blue flame heard him and shuddered. Shelby put a protective arm around Inky.

  Murphy stopped in his tracks and looked towards the school. He smiled a wry smile. First he heard a scream and then the sobs of a frightened man. Deville and King were becoming two.

  Mia wrinkled her nose. “Audrey, do you smell something?”

  Audrey sniffed the air. “It’s coming from over there. A metallic sort of smell.”

  Mia followed her nose and found herself standing by the lead box. She smiled and said, “Take that, you miserable bastard.”

  Audrey looked at her, a question forming on her lips.

  “It’s Deville. He called for his power, and we have it in that box. It was buried in the west. We find the other three talismans, and we will diminish him,” she told her.

  “Where was the chest buried?” Audrey asked.

  “It was also buried in the woods west of the school. I expect we’ll find the bones of the others, including Morgan, resting in this,” she said as she pulled off the tarp. Mia knelt down at the hasp and pulled on the lock. She picked at the wax seal with a penknife. Once she cleared the keyhole, she reached into her pocket and extracted a set of skeleton keys. She fitted a couple in and decided on one. Mia pushed it in the lock and took a pick to make up for the shape the key did not have and pushed in as she turned the key. The lock opened. She pulled it off the hasp and stood up. “I guess maybe I ought to let the others know before I open this,” she said to Audrey.

  “You stay here, and I’ll get them,” Audrey instructed and took off running.

  Mia noticed Murphy had wandered over. He opened his mouth wide and pointed to the school.

  “He screamed, huh?” Mia said.

 
Murph shook his head. He showed her two fingers pressed together and ever so slightly pulled one away from the other.

  She laughed an evil laugh. “So he can’t hold King without full power, cool beans.”

  Murph nodded towards the trunk.

  “Yes, I think we can open it now. It doesn’t have anything to do with Deville’s power,” Mia confided. “I’m waiting on the others before I open this.”

  Murphy nodded and let her know he would stand by just in case.

  The PEEPs team arrived. Ted had the command console transferred to the iPad. He gave her a warm hug.

  “What’s that for?” she asked.

  “Always a good idea. Hugs are very powerful magic. My mother used them to ward off the effects of class bullies,” he said.

  Mia smiled. “I wish Homely was here. He did most of the work.”

  “I don’t think he would mind,” Burt said as he stood on one side of the sea chest.

  Cid moved over to the other side. Mike trained a video camera on it. Mia pulled the slotted lever off the staple and nodded to the men to raise the lid. The rusted hinges let out an awful squeal as they pushed back the lid. A smell wafted out that the team was all too familiar with. Old bones and rotted clothing greeted them. Mia leaned over the edge and picked up a skull. She handed it to Ted, counting, “One.” Soon she had another and another. Still two more were nestled in among the leg and arm bones. “Five,” she said, handing the last one to him, noticing that it had one side bashed in. “That’s all that’s in here,” she announced. “Skulls anyway, I expect the rest of these bones must go with the skulls.”

  “We had to assemble a full skeleton in one of our tests,” Ted told Mia.

  Burt nodded and guessed, “Maybe it was Deville’s skeleton up there.”

  “Damn, I hope that it was Deville’s,” Mia said. She thought a moment. “But it would be, wouldn’t it? King would have needed the skeleton for his conjure.”

  “Could it also be used as a source of power?” Audrey asked.