by Ania Ahlborn
There had been no mention of the Ouija board during Maggie and Brynn’s long-distance conversations, just as there had been no talk of avoiding Arlen’s dinner table, or depression, or churches and seeking out safety from the unknown; no mention of carving letters into bedposts the way a scribe would have fashioned ancient runes into stone. But their phone calls had been punctuated with that same recurring question that Maggie was certain would haunt her forever: When are you going to visit? Please, why don’t you come home? And Maggie’s answer, steadfast: she was too busy with school, too involved with her internship, she and Dillon had something coming up, the timing was bad, she couldn’t make it work.
Meanwhile, that shadow had been lurking in the background, listening all these years. It had heard every excuse; had grown tired, embittered, and rancorous, taking umbrage at every untruth. Each one of Maggie’s refusals had brought deeper insult.
Maggie had broken her promise. She had left this place and refused to return.
Brynn was left to suffer for Maggie’s sins.
And now, with Brynn gone, that darkness would turn its attention to someone Maggie wouldn’t be able to so easily ignore.
Because Hope was innocent. Just a kid. A perfect victim for the evil Brynn had so casually described as a girl, that Maggie had been sure had just been another spooky story too far from the truth to heed.
It wouldn’t be long now, and Arlen would be furious—an anger that would be too reminiscent of their mother’s rage to bear. All Maggie wanted was to hurry and pack her bag, take Brynn’s car to the airport, abandon it in short-term, and let the damn thing get impounded. Except all she’d do would be to sit there, staring out the airport windows as rain pelted the tarmac. If the shadow thing couldn’t keep her here, Florence wouldn’t let her leave.
Now that Auntie Bee is gone, you gotta stay.
For a second that felt like an hour, she couldn’t find air. She pictured Arlen’s van flying off the road—the kids in the back—all four wheels off the pavement as it sailed across an embankment and into a tree. A lake. The oncoming grille of a semitruck doing eighty on the freeway just outside of town. Vivid. So real she could hear the metal of Arlen’s van buckle and twist. The boom of igniting gasoline. Arlen screaming as she tried to pry her seat belt out of the latch. All three children flailing against the orange lick of flames. The kids, wailing. Hayden’s high-pitched toddler cry, undiluted innocence piercing through the chaos.
The yelling in her head turned real. Hayden was screaming again, but rather than being consumed by fire, she was in the throes of another tantrum somewhere down the hall. Her words were shrill and indecipherable, angered by the fact that life wasn’t as simple as it should have been. No orange juice when you wanted it. The last of the French eyes devoured by a cantankerous sibling. Her mother, having fled the house in search of her older sister, leaving Hayden to battle her crippling emotions alone.
That tantrum was the fulcrum. It veered Maggie’s own emotional state away from panic and toward response. She gave in to her instinct and ran out the door, leaving two underage children alone, just as she had abandoned Hope outside the cemetery gates. But staying would mean facing Arlen’s wrath, and to save the last of her tribe, she had to avoid Arlen’s demand for Maggie to pack up her shit and go. Forget the funeral. I want you out! Maggie had to fix this before she was forced to leave, before tragedy found them once again.
She climbed into Brynn’s car and drove, stopping in front of Friendship Park to stare down its center lane. She tried to imagine what her sarcastic sister would tell her to do, what strange and dark suggestion Brynn would make to appease the ghost Maggie had released unto the world. Just kick it in the ass, Mags. Exorcise that shit.
Spotting movement, she found herself blinking at Arlen’s van. A few more seconds and it would turn down that center road. Maggie shoved her foot against the gas and sped away.
Fuck it. She needed to find Cheryl. Perhaps if they held another séance, if she could just get through to whatever it was that was living in the corners of those walls, maybe then she could fix what she’d broken. If a broken promise could ever be repaired.
. . .
She knew Cheryl wouldn’t meet up with her again—not after how she had fled from Maggie’s house. When they were kids, Maggie had eventually backed off, dissuaded by Cheryl’s fear. But that wasn’t going to be enough for Maggie to stay away this time. Back then, it was a matter of hurt feelings. Now, Hope needed help.
She grabbed her phone off the passenger’s seat and Googled the number for Saint Michael’s Church, then asked the receptionist where their youth camp counselor could be found. “It’s an emergency,” she explained. “I’m a friend of Father John.” The woman on the line didn’t question it. Instead, she handed over Cheryl’s location and wished Maggie the best of luck.
If only luck could help me, she thought, then disconnected the call.
Hell, if only God could help me, maybe things would still be okay . . .
Perhaps Brynn hadn’t been searching for a safe haven. Arlen had said it herself: Brynn had been seeking answers. Perhaps, then, this was the question she was looking to resolve: How do I save my family? How do I stop this thing? Could it have been that that was why Brynn had been so adamantly pleading with Maggie to come home? Had she been desperate for help, for someone to listen who would actually believe?
She found herself pushing eighty down a winding stretch of road just outside of town: Southern coastal lowcountry dotted with swamps, swallowed by the drooping branches of live oak heavy with long tangles of witch’s hair. Florence snarled overhead—dark and angry, ready to crack open and re-create Noah’s flood. Maggie slammed on the brakes at the last second, nearly missing the turn, and whipped the car onto a narrow and unpaved road that guided her through a rusted steel utility gate. PRIVATE PROPERTY. That sign shuddered in the wind, threatening to come off its screws. After a minute of bouncing down a washboard road, what looked to be a working farm came into view. There was a barn, the Saint Michael’s Youth Camp logo fading against the wood. Long rows of picnic tables were lined up beneath a wide awning that jutted out from what looked to be a stable of some sort. Most of the tables were empty, but some still donned plastic tablecloths, which were held down by grapefruit-sized rocks, the vinyl flapping like ghosts struggling to get free.
In the distance, a handful of older kids were running around in a rush. Some carried buckets and gardening tools. Others were tending to animals, trying to herd them to the safety of a big red barn.
Cheryl wouldn’t be happy to see her. At all. And talking about what had happened at the house would almost certainly have found a firm place on her list of conversations to avoid—especially right now, with her charges running around like a manic mob of sheep. No matter. Maggie stepped out of Brynn’s Camry and made her way toward the barn, only to stop short when she heard her name spoken into the wind.
“Maggie . . . ?”
She turned and squinted against the gale. Cheryl had stepped out of the stable, embroiled in the struggle of keeping her hair at bay. “What are you doing here?” Maggie had half expected her to start screaming that her space was being invaded, that Maggie had to go. But rather than raging, Cheryl looked concerned.
“Cher, I . . .” What series of words would convince her old friend to come back home with her, to return to the place Cheryl had told Maggie to leave? She faltered, unsure of how to proceed.
“Oh. Wow. You took my advice,” Cheryl said, derailing Maggie’s spiraling thoughts. “You left.” Maggie opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. “Um . . . hey, if you need a place to stay, just until after the funeral, there’s a room in the rectory. It’s tiny, but it’s a bed.”
“Cher, no.” Maggie looked down at the tips of her sneakers, the bluster stealing away her words. A particularly heavy gust threw off her balance. Maggie braced herself against it with a few sidewa
ys steps. Cheryl watched her in silence, and Maggie could feel her mood shift from accepting to on guard. “Look, I already know what you’re going to say—” Maggie began, but Cheryl cut in before she could continue.
“So, you didn’t leave.”
“No.”
“Then don’t ask. I told you, I’m done. I shouldn’t have let myself get sucked into this stuff again.”
More thunder overhead. Florence was no longer coming. She had officially arrived.
Maggie drew in a breath, ready to protest, but Cheryl beat her to the punch.
“I know it was my idea, Maggie. Nobody likes seeing a friend blame themselves for things beyond their control. Nobody with a conscience, at least.”
“But now?” Maggie asked.
“Now . . . I think that maybe you’re right. Maybe you’ve been right all this time.”
Maggie’s eyes paused upon the abrasion on Cheryl’s collarbone. Its half-heart shape made her want to scream, Can’t you see what it looks like? The necklace . . . A coincidence, no doubt. It had nothing to do with friendship, nothing to do with wiping out the competition, rendering Maggie lonely, pushing her toward that board day after day.
“Cher, please. I can’t do this alone. I need your help.”
“Why?” That single syllable fell flat, unrelenting. If Maggie couldn’t come up with a good enough answer, the conversation was over.
“Because I think it’s gotten to Hope,” she said, shoving strands of loose hair behind her ears. “I think that if I leave—” She swallowed the spit that had collected at the back of her throat, the mere thought of something happening to her niece, the thought of it being Maggie’s fault all over again . . . “Don’t you get it? This is why Brynn wanted me to come home. She needed help, too. It’s why she went to church. And now she’s gone.”
When she glanced back to Cheryl, Maggie noticed her gaze was distant, focused on the kids rushing around the barn a dozen yards away. She was a woman who didn’t belong anywhere in Maggie’s world, a girl who shouldn’t have ever heard Brynn’s weird stories or placed her fingers on Maggie’s plastic planchette. A person who, now that Maggie was giving her a good hard look, wouldn’t sacrifice any more of herself than she already had, not for a long-dormant friendship. At least not now, not after this.
“I need help, Cher,” Maggie repeated. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t know what you should do, either,” Cheryl said. “But I can’t . . .” She hesitated, fumbling for the right words. “I’m sorry, Maggie, but I should have never gotten involved.”
Maggie bit her bottom lip, nodded despite herself. Had she been in Cheryl’s shoes, she wouldn’t have wanted to be part of it, either. And the fact that Cheryl had experienced something malicious enough to have her running for her life—it meant that whatever Maggie had invited to live inside that house was able to reach out, to lay hands on anyone who dared get in the way of its ultimate goal. Like Cheryl had said once upon a time, it was contagious. It could infect, damage, destroy.
“All I know,” Cheryl said, “is that whoever you’ve been talking to . . . I don’t think it’s who you think it is.”
“The girl from the cemetery,” Maggie said.
“Yeah, that. I don’t think so.” Cheryl frowned. “You know what the Bible says? And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. The most dangerous spirits disguise themselves as innocent. Why would a little girl do what’s been done to you, Maggie?” Cheryl asked. “If what you say is true, if it’s all linked, why would a child do those terrible things?”
Because she was evil, Brynn had said. She was born bad.
And then there was Maggie’s broken promise. Children threw tantrums when they didn’t get what they wanted. Hayden was perfect proof of that. This spirit, if it was a child, would have turned Arlen’s house into a hub of poltergeist activity. It would have knocked over picture frames, slammed doors, pushed dishes off counters, and spilled glasses of milk.
But Maggie’s ghost did none of those things. It worked in far darker shades.
Except that was crazy, wasn’t it? More demented than Maggie believing that she was responsible for the deaths of her parents and big sister. No, Cheryl’s theory was nuts; too left-field.
“I don’t believe that,” Maggie said. “It’s not—”
“What, a demon? Are you sure about that?” Cheryl’s fingers grazed the abrasion upon her skin.
Maggie’s fingers trailed to her own chest, recalling the way Cheryl had torn her side of their best-friend necklace from around her neck. That hand drew backward to press into the knot of muscles that, for the first time since her return, seemed to have relaxed. That sense of being watched, the feeling of balancing upon the edge of calamity, she’d felt it again last night. And maybe she was going nuts, but it had felt stronger than before, as though Brynn’s suicide had somehow lent it fortitude. But now, at the camp, it was gone.
Because it lives in the house, she thought. It’s waiting there, just as it always has. I have to go back.
Cheryl looked away again, back toward the gaggle of kids in matching T-shirts, all of them scrambling, some laughing, others looking up at the sky, freaked out, because maybe this was it. The sky was falling. It was the end of the world.
“These types of things, they can attach to other people,” Cheryl said. “I’m sorry about Brynn, Maggie. I really am. But I can’t do this. There’s just too much on the line.” A pause, a searching glance. “I don’t know,” she finally said, giving up on the calculation. “I wanted to help, and now I . . .”
“I’m begging you.” Maggie tried again, because if Cheryl wasn’t going to help her, who would? “One friend to another. Please don’t abandon me again, Cher. She’s just a kid.”
Cheryl’s tense features softened, if only a little.
But Maggie wouldn’t accept the refusal she knew was inevitably coming. First Arlen and now Cheryl—they were leaving her with no option but to give up, and how was she supposed to do that when she knew that Hope, Harrison, and Hayden were in harm’s way? Didn’t they understand that she was trying to make things right?
“You’re part of this, now,” Maggie said. “You invited yourself over. You wanted to try again, and now it feels like it’s stronger. I trusted you, Cher.”
Maggie’s assertion sparked a change in Cheryl’s expression. The muscles in her neck went rigid. Her lips pressed into a tight line. Another gust of wind blasted them both, each woman momentarily struggling to keep her footing.
“How do you know it hasn’t already attached itself to you?” Maggie asked. “How do you know that this thing, whatever it is, isn’t going to target you if I leave this undone?”
Cheryl’s cool exterior began to crack, her face twisting into a mask of something between aggravation and fear. She glared at the kids in the distance. To Maggie, it was all about Hope; to Cheryl, those kids were what mattered. “You need to go now, Maggie,” she said, her tone steady. “You can put the blame on me all you want, but you know better than anyone: you did this. This is your fault.”
The response struck Maggie in the chest like a full-fisted punch. The night Maggie’s father died; Brynn’s accusation coming out of Cheryl’s mouth.
But Cheryl was right. Whatever was lurking in the corners of Maggie’s room, whatever it was that she’d pulled from the other side, Maggie was the one who had ushered it into the world of the living. And rather than dealing with it head-on, she had run away, allowing it to stay exactly where it wanted to be. And that’s where it had festered. Where it had grown.
“I’m sorry,” Cheryl said. “Please leave. Right now. And don’t come back.” She turned away, walking back toward the stable, adding finality to her demand.
Maggie struggled not to cry. She stared at Cheryl’s back, hoping that maybe, at the last minute, she’d change her mind—maybe she’d t
urn and offer some parting words of encouragement. It’s going to be okay. But Cheryl disappeared into the building, and Maggie was left standing in the wind, the first patters of hard rain like needles against her cheeks.
. . .
Maggie drove back into town, but she couldn’t bring herself to return home. Lingering in Friendship Park, she disregarded the weather as she walked among the headstones, just as she had when she was a child. She nearly scooped up a bouquet of weather-beaten silk flowers from beside a grave, the petals soaked and drooping with rain, but resisted the temptation. It was one thing to retrace her steps, to try to gather her thoughts and figure out how to make this work. It was another to continue giving the dead the wrong impression. She was no longer the little girl inviting ghosts to her home. It was time to reject that part of her life . . . and she was certain that one spirit in particular would rage in response.
She stopped at the tomb she had visited just that morning. The shattered doll was gone. Because of course it was. It’s why Hope had ridden Maggie’s bike to the cemetery in the first place. Whatever it was hiding in the shadows wanted back what Brynn had gifted so long ago. Except Brynn hadn’t just bestowed that doll upon it. No, she’d promised more, hadn’t she?
She’d pledged her own little sister.