by Ania Ahlborn
Cheryl’s fingers snaked across the table, catching Maggie’s hand. “No,” she said. “You know that’s crazy, Maggie.” Just a loose screw . . .
“Then why are you so pissed at me?” Maggie pulled her hand away. “If you think it’s all bullshit, why did I practically have to beg you to meet me here?”
“Because I know what you want to talk about,” Cheryl fired back. “And I don’t want to talk about it. What’s wrong with that?”
“You’re scared,” Maggie said flatly. Cheryl belted out a laugh, setting Maggie’s already frayed nerves on a razor’s edge. “What? Why is that funny?”
“Because it’s nonsense,” Cheryl said. “We’ve been through this before. First with your dad, then with—”
“Yeah, thanks for the recap, Cher. I know.”
Their friendship had deteriorated more than a year before Maggie’s father had died, but to Cheryl’s credit, when she had heard the news, she had come running. Maggie had bawled her eyes out on Cheryl’s shoulder; she had blubbered about how it had been her fault, how if she hadn’t gone to the beach with her cousins, maybe she could have saved her father from such a tragic fate. It told me not to go, but I went, and now . . . Back then, at thirteen, Cheryl hadn’t been of the mind to rebuke Maggie’s belief that she had somehow cursed her father. By the time Maggie came back to Savannah for her mother’s funeral, Cheryl had firmly placed one foot upon the neck of logical explanation and the other in the hands of God.
“Look.” Cheryl breathed out a sigh, then leaned back in her seat. “I don’t want to come off as unfeeling or anything, but Brynn had issues. She always did. When I said hear it from me, what I meant was that people are talking. And they’re saying some crazy stuff.”
Maggie glanced up again. Cheryl’s cinnamon-colored hair was glowing in the sunshine. For a blip of a second, Maggie saw the girl she used to love more fiercely than anyone in the world. Her closest friend—the one who used to help her catch lightning bugs in empty pickle jars; the girl she used to walk with along the train tracks, placing pennies upon the rails; the companion who had allowed Maggie to place a stupid board across her knees, who had put her hands upon a planchette, not knowing what the future would hold; the friend who, after what had happened in Maggie’s room, refused to ever come over again. The one who had torn her side of their best-friend necklace from her neck and thrown it onto Maggie’s carpet so many years before.
“Like what?” Maggie asked.
“Just crazy stuff.” Cheryl rolled her eyes. “Like how Brynn had been into witchcraft and voodoo. Personally, I think that’s ridiculous. There’s a rumor that she was a Satanist or whatever . . .”
Maggie would have laughed had she not been on the verge of throwing up, if Cheryl herself hadn’t once suggested that Brynn was into weird stuff because she didn’t look like everyone else. Or maybe Brynn had gone through with the Church of Satan story after all, and all of Bible-thumping Savannah had bought the lie.
“But someone said they saw her hanging out at Friendship Park in the middle of the night just a few days before all of this happened, lingering next to the kids’ graves,” Cheryl continued. “Just like she used to when we were kids.”
Maggie tensed. Okay, Brynn hadn’t mentioned anything about Friendship Park in years. After their dad’s accident, she hadn’t breathed the word ghost in Maggie’s presence, as though afraid of waking a slumbering beast, and she certainly hadn’t gone to the graveyard unless it was with the family, in broad daylight, to place flowers onto their father’s headstone.
“That particular detail,” Cher said, looking down to her hands. “Well, it’s a little hard to rebuff, you know?”
“She was probably just visiting our parents,” Maggie protested.
“Okay, I’ll give you that. But then she showed up at Saint Michael’s . . .”
“Wait, what?” Now this was making no sense. The idea of Brynn attending church was ludicrous—unless, of course, she had gone there to burn it to the ground.
“I know, right?” Cher gave Maggie a look: Yeah, weird. “I wasn’t there. Camp has been nuts this year. We’ve got, like, fifty kids running around. But my gran never misses a service. She saw Brynn sitting in the last pew . . . and Maggie, she said that Brynn looked bad.”
“Bad how?”
“Sad, exhausted . . . sick, I guess.”
Sick.
“And less than a week after my gran brings up Brynn Olsen, I get a call from her little sister, as though you had somehow overheard Gran ask, How is that friend Maggie of yours, anyhow?”
Maggie’s stomach pitched. She stared down at her lap, the buzz of people coming and going nothing but muffled cotton in her ears. It didn’t make sense. Why hadn’t Arlen mentioned Brynn being sick? Maybe Arlen hadn’t noticed it with how scarce Brynn had made herself in the end, but that theory was blown apart by Hope’s warning Maggie to stay out of Brynn’s room. If the kids knew that Brynn had been ill, Arlen did, too. She should have at least texted Maggie to let her know. Or at least brought it up on their drive from the airport.
And then there was the church. The church. Why in the world would Brynn have—
“Sanctuary.” Maggie whispered the word beneath the noise of the café, the revelation lighting up each and every nerve.
It’s the only thing churches are good for, Mags, Brynn had explained during one of their cemetery visits. If you’re scared, you go to church and the evil can’t get you, because evil things can’t go inside there.
How come? Maggie had asked.
Because evil is superstitious, Brynn had said. It’s like walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror. You know nothing bad is gonna happen, but you aren’t gonna go out of your way to do those things, either. Evil stuff doesn’t believe in God. But it’s not gonna go marching into a church to find out if God is real, either. Evil stuff is a coward. So, if you’re ever really scared, you go to church.
Brynn had been running from something. She was seeking protection.
“She was scared,” Maggie said. “It’s why she kept asking me to come home, but I didn’t. I could have, but I—”
“Maggie.” Cheryl reached out again, placing her hand on top of Maggie’s own. “I wish you’d stop this,” she said softly, her words muddled by the hiss of an espresso machine, the whir of a burr grinder. “You have to stop this. You’re going to drive yourself insane.”
“So, how do I stop it?” Maggie asked, genuinely wanting to know the solution. Because as far as she was concerned, there was no way. This was her life. It was her fault. It was who she’d become.
“I don’t know, I just . . . I wish there was some way to prove . . .” Cheryl paused, then straightened in her seat.
Maggie looked up at her friend. “What?”
Cheryl’s expression went dark. Her features shifted from soft to determined. “You know I’m training to become ordained,” she said. “I’m not official yet, but maybe if I was there, with my knowledge. I don’t know. Maybe it would help.”
“Where’s there? Help with what?” Maggie shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“Let’s just do it again.”
“Do it again . . .” Maggie swallowed against the lump that had lodged itself in her throat, dry like a pill. It was pointless to play dumb. Neither one of them had forgotten their final night together, the evening they had started to grow apart. “But you said—”
“I know what I said. But my beliefs don’t have any influence over yours, right? You aren’t just going to believe me if I say it’s not real. But if I can show you . . . I think it would help.”
Help. Hearing that word come out of Cheryl’s mouth made Maggie want to jump out of her seat and march across the parking lot toward Brynn’s car, just get in and haul ass out of there. What would Jesus do? Brynn would have thrown her head back and howled: Run, Forrest! Run for your life
!
Maggie pulled away from Cheryl’s touch. “I don’t know . . .”
“Look, you’re studying oceanography, right?” Cheryl asked. “That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. Forget me and all the religious stuff. You’re a scientist. If you believe in logic over old wives’ tales, it doesn’t make sense for you to have any issues. So, let’s just do it. Nothing will happen,” she pressed. “And when we find ourselves sitting there like a couple of idiots, it’ll prove that this has all been in your head.”
Except Cheryl didn’t know the whole story. Nobody did. After Dad, there was no way in the world Maggie dared breathe a word of it to anyone.
Don’t go.
She’d promised to be a friend to whatever was living inside her house.
Don’t go.
She’d spent countless nights with that board—the same device that had destroyed her and Cheryl’s friendship—but, rather than Cheryl sitting across from her, there was no one. Not even Brynn.
Don’t go.
It was Maggie’s fault, all of it; it had been her reality for so long. If Cheryl was right, though . . . if she somehow proved that Maggie’s role in the deaths of her parents was nonexistent? How would that feel? Who would she become, then? If this tragedy wasn’t of her making, who did that make her? Who was she?
Maggie’s bottom lip trembled.
“Maggie.” Cheryl’s tone was steady. “I know we’ve gone our separate ways. Things aren’t the way they used to be. That’s just life, you know? But I just . . . I’m sorry how things turned out between us. I feel bad. I’ve felt bad. I owe you this.”
“I don’t know . . .” She echoed her doubt, barely a whisper this time around.
“Hey, I don’t really want to do this, either. I don’t know what they’d say if they found out at seminary. But I just . . .” She hesitated. “Maybe I want to make sure, too. Maybe it’s something that’s been bothering me, that question of what if. I mean, you said it wasn’t you, right? That night, when we . . .”
Maggie shook her head. No, it hadn’t been her. She hadn’t spelled out those words. Her fingers had been on the planchette, but her hands had been guided by an invisible force.
“So, let’s just do this,” Cheryl said, making the decision for them both. “If only to prove to us both that this has nothing to do with you. Okay?”
Maggie squeezed her eyes shut, but she managed a nod. “Okay,” she whispered. Because at least Cheryl wanted to help. Beyond that, she was on her own.
EIGHT
* * *
BRYNN’S INFLUENCE OVER her youngest sister came into its own on Maggie’s twelfth birthday. Armed with a pocket full of celebratory cash, Maggie wandered the aisles of the local Toys R Us without adult supervision. Her mom was next door at the Barnes & Noble, having a coffee and thumbing through magazines. No matter, though. That birthday cash was burning a hole in Maggie’s pocket, begging to be spent.
She didn’t know what she was going to buy, but despite officially being a tween, she couldn’t quite shake the childish need to leave the store with something. The Barbies were immediately passed up; Maggie never was into those, and besides, Arlen had left boxes upon boxes of them up in the attic when she moved out. Maggie considered the stuffed animals, but decided against them—too babyish and boring as far as she was concerned. A selection of art supplies was perused. Maggie loved art, but her desk drawers and half her closet were stuffed full of Crayola markers, sticker books, reams of construction paper, and tubes of glitter glue. Anything she bought would just be a repeat of what she already had. A new bike would have been nice—hers was starting to show some wear and tear, and she didn’t even have streamers like Brynn’s for her handlebars—but she only had forty bucks. Sure, she could buy streamers now, but putting them on her beat-up old bike seemed lame, and a brand-new bike was way out of her league. Maybe she’d get lucky next year, for her big one-three.
But for now, she aimed herself toward the board games at the back of the store. If she couldn’t find something that she’d enjoy on her own, she could at least pick up a game that she and Cheryl could play during their upcoming sleepover. Heck, if she got something good, perhaps Brynn would skip out on talking to her boyfriend all night and want to play, too.
The selection was vast. Floor-to-ceiling game boxes had turned an entire wall of the store into a colorful checkerboard. But none of them sparked Maggie’s imagination. That was, until she spied something simpler and far less vibrant than the rest. Tucked into the corner of a shelf like an exile among its more dazzling brethren was a white box bearing a picture of two pairs of hands. They were candlelit, basking in the glow of mystery. One of the pairs bore heavy rings—a fortune-teller gazing not into a crystal ball, but into an off-white plastic heart with a hole in its center; some sort of wooden board lying beneath it, decorated by a smiling sun and discontented moon.
OUIJA, the box announced. MYSTIFYING ORACLE.
Maggie took a step closer, pulled it from the shelf, and flipped it over to see what the game was all about. Except the back of the box was blank—nothing but white cardboard, as if to suggest that what rested inside defied explanation. It was, after all, mystifying. Only the oracle could accurately illustrate its power.
Maggie vacillated over the decision for a few minutes. The Mouse Trap game did look fun, and she’d lost a lot of her plastic Hungry Hungry Hippos balls when she had overturned the box in the attic, white marbles spilling everywhere, lost forever among Gram and her mother’s useless old junk.
There was, of course, the grown-up option: buy nothing and save the money. But it was her birthday. Spending her cash on a game she knew nothing about was risky, but the idea of going home empty-handed was too lame for words. Besides, those glowing hands were alluring, beckoning her to dare. She glanced over her shoulder. Was a dawdling store employee watching her from behind the shelves, wondering if she had the guts? She didn’t see anyone as she tucked the box beneath her arm. If it was awful, she could always return it. At least, if she could get her mom to drive her down here again.
Maggie’s mom was waiting for her next door at the bookstore. Sipping a latte from the B&N café and reading a freshly purchased copy of Southern Living, she never saw her daughter’s purchase or asked for specifics. Stella Olsen wasn’t one to pry. Besides, what could Toys R Us possibly stock that Maggie wouldn’t be allowed to have?
“Got what you wanted?” was the only question she posed, tossing her paper coffee cup into the trash bin as they walked out to the car. Beyond the magazine, she was clutching a new Nora Roberts novel, more than likely itching to get home, grab a glass of Riesling, and read.
“Yep.” Maggie held the bagged board game close to her chest, an anxious tingle assuring her that she was getting away with something she shouldn’t have, that she was somehow getting in way over her head. Those mysterious hands on the box didn’t seem like they were meant for kids, and there was something ominous about those rings, something foreboding about the blankness of that white cardboard back. Even the cashier, who looked like she was about Brynn’s age, had eyeballed Maggie’s selection, as if considering warning the twelve-year-old against taking it home. And yet there it had been, next to Operation and Apples to Apples. That in itself was proof enough: she had nothing to worry about, and she couldn’t wait to show her sister.
. . .
Brynn regarded her little sister’s birthday purchase with more skepticism than Maggie had expected.
The fifteen-year-old high-school sophomore peered at the box as she stood in the center of her room, the walls plastered with posters of bands their dad found infinitely amusing—Depeche Mode, the Cure, the Smiths, and a group that called themselves the Police. Maggie thought that was a pretty peculiar name, because who the heck named a band after cops? When Maggie had posed the question a while back, Brynn had shrugged and showed Maggie an old record their dad had given her by the same gr
oup. I guess he grew up listening to them, too, she had said, wearing the faintest shadow of distaste. It was never cool to be into your old man’s music, but that record had somehow found its way onto Brynn’s wall—a keystone to a menagerie of glossy paper, all of it radiating outward from a black record sleeve with bright red digital gibberish at its center: GHOST IN THE MACHINE.
“You don’t think it’s cool?” Maggie asked, disappointed in her sister’s nonreaction to the game box Brynn now held in her hands.
“No,” Brynn said, flipping the box over for the umpteenth time, as if not believing that it was completely blank. “I’ve seen these before. They’re just a bunch of crap. Too bad, too, because it’s not like Mom is gonna drive you all the way back there to return it.”
“Well, what’s it supposed to do anyway?” Maggie asked.
Brynn gave her kid sister an Are you serious? look.
“I mean, it doesn’t say anything,” Maggie reminded her. “The back is blank. I couldn’t just open it to see . . .”
“It’s supposed to let you talk to the dead,” Brynn said.
Maggie felt her eyes widen, big as her mother’s fancy teacup saucers—the ones she only used on special occasions, and sometimes not even then. I don’t want the girls damaging them, Peter. They’re heirlooms, for heaven’s sake.
“I told you, it’s fake,” Brynn said. “It’s for, like, parties and stuff.”
“Oh.” Maggie’s wide eyes narrowed with subtle disappointment. This impulse purchase was clearly a mistake. “Have you played before?”
Brynn shrugged, not committing to an answer.
“Well, can we try it anyway?” Maggie asked. “Since I spent my birthday money?”
“Not now.” Brynn dropped the box to her feet and casually toed it beneath her bed.