by Ava Day
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask Joy.
“Yes, for the fifth time, Penny,” she replies as she pulls a large metal bowl out from under the sink.
With the book open to the page with the spell, we follow the directions exactly or as closely as we can in our inebriated state. With a final pinch of fine powder that feels like ashes between my fingertips, Joy picks up the crystal pendant and together we recite the spell.
“What was hidden is now free. Unlock the potential inside of thee. So mote it be.”
A surge of energy ripples through my body and the bowl begins to bubble and smoke. Joy looks up at me with worried excitement. A loud pop accompanies a plume of black smoke.
“I don't feel any different,” Joy says.
“I thought I felt something for a second, but it was probably just the wine.”
“Yeah me too. Well that was fun. Like a science experiment.”
“It even cleaned itself up,” I say, pointing into the bowl which is now empty of any trace of the ingredients we added. “I don't know about you, but I am tired. Too much wine.”
“Agreed.” Joy stumbles off to her room. I sit and ponder what we just did before heading off to sleep.
I'm jerked awake by the sound of Joy screaming. Throwing the covers back, I jump out of bed and rush over to her room. Joy has her blanket pulled up around herself tightly and when she sees me she points to the chair behind the open door. I peek my head around the door, confused at what could have her so upset. I nearly leap out of my skin when I see a transparent figure in a pink cardigan and floral print skirt sitting in the chair.
“It's a ghost, Penny. It's a fricking ghost!”
I must still be dreaming. I rub my eyes and pinch myself on the arm but nothing happens. The ghost looks exactly like the woman we found in the basement. She's trying to speak but I can't hear what she's saying and I don't read lips. I turn to ask Joy if she can understand what the ghost is saying.
“She just vanished.” Joy mutters as I turn my head and see that the ghost is indeed gone.
“That was strange.”
“You're not the one who woke up with a ghost in your room. I sure hope I'm still drunk. I'm just glad you could see her, too.”
“We need to figure out who she was. Like, today. Get yourself some coffee, looks like we’re on a mission,” I tell Joy. The first thought I have is to head over to the library to look up old newspaper clippings. After grabbing a quick shower I join Joy in the kitchen for some strong coffee.
“If that was real, Penny… I'm sorry if that spell we cast brought that ghost into our home.”
“Maybe it just unlocked some ability to see ghosts? We don't really know anything about how magic works. If it's real, that is,” I reassure her.
It's still pretty early and I'm not even sure where the library is so I pull out my phone and start laughing at myself because of course it's only one block over. I drag Joy in to the kitchen and plop her in chair while I get some coffee brewing. There's so much work that still needs to be done here but we can't keep going until we solve the mystery of the woman in the basement. Especially if she's now a ghost who's haunting the theater.
Chapter 9
I'm so lost in thought that Joy has to waft a steaming cup of fresh coffee under my nose to get my attention. “So, are you ready to get some answers?” she asks.
“Yes. Finding out who she was and how she died could be really important. What if her murderer is still out there?” I say while sipping my coffee.
Joy gulps down the rest of her cup and zips off to take a shower. Once we're both all cleaned up, we walk on over to the Spring Valley Library. It's located in small storefront with large windows framing both sides of the door. A large round table is visible through the window on the left. There is a group of four ladies sitting around it, each with the same book in front of them. Two of the ladies are waving their arms excitedly at each other and pointing to the novel in question.
Joy pulls the door open and as we enter the library the smell of musty books hits me. This place is a little rundown and was probably last updated in the 70's. A large square counter takes up the center of the space. I approach the librarian sitting behind the desk.
“Excuse me, my friend and I are looking for your old newspapers,” I ask as quietly as possible. Even the women debating heatedly are keeping their voices low.
“We don't have any fancy digital contraptions here, it's all on paper. Back corner on your left, sorted by year,” the librarian replies without looking up from her work. Joy and I hurry over to the corner.
“Penny, where do we even start? We don't know how long that body was even down there.”
“Hmm, we could just go by those old movie posters that were left hanging up in the theater. If we think she was somehow tied to witchcraft, I doubt they were showing movies at the same time.” I whisper the last sentence into Joy's ear. The last thing we need is for someone to overhear us and think we're a bunch of loonies.
“Let me find out when The Breakfast Club was released,” Joy replies as she starts typing away on her phone. “Got it. 1985.”
I scan the date ranges listed in the drawers and pull out the year we need. Pulling out a large stack of papers starting in the summer of 1985, I hand them to over to Joy. For myself, I decide to start in the winter of 1986. With our treasure in tow, we haul ourselves over to the nearest empty table and start searching. I glance up to see that Joy's stack moves from one side of the table over to the other with no clues yet. After searching for nearly an hour, Joy finds something that gives us hope.
“Look Penny. The Beacon Set to Close for Good,” Joy reads aloud from the front page of a tattered old paper.
“Great! When is that issue from?” I ask excitedly.
“December 15, 1985.” Joy replies. “We might need to look farther ahead than 1986 to find our mystery woman.”
“I'll keep looking through these and you can go grab some more,” I say while handing Joy a stack of newspapers to put back in the drawer.
The dim light in here and these worn pages are tiring on my eyes, but I keep going. I just can't get the image of that poor woman's body out of my head and then to see her ghost this morning… We need to at the very least figure out her name so we can stop calling her ‘that woman.’ Joy comes back with another armload of papers and plops them down on the desk. With a tired smile aimed in my direction, she gets back to work. Just as I'm about to give up for a lunch break, I find a small article in the back of the paper, no big headline.
“Joy, look!” I say pointing to the small picture of two women standing in front of the Beacon. “It says here that two sisters bought the property. Beth and Laverne Honeycut.” I skim the rest of the small article before handing to Joy to read.
“If I'm reading this correctly, some people were angry because they weren't going to reopen the Beacon. They just bought it with no plans?” Joy asks.
“Well, we know what their plans were. They stored those books and occult supplies in the auditorium. But why would they need to buy an old theater to do that?”
“Now that's a good question, Detective Penny. Based on the caption under the photo, our mystery woman is named Laverne.”
“We seem to have found more questions than answers. What happened to Beth? Are we going to find her stuffed in some other nook in the basement too? It might be time to start asking the locals and find out what they remember about these sisters.”
“Another brilliant idea,” Joy laughs. Before we clean up our mess, I snap a few pictures of the article and a close up of the two sisters with my phone. We decide to ask the librarian if she knows anything about the Beacon.
“I know that it's an eyesore. I wasn't living here in the late 80's. You might want to talk to some of the older ladies in the book club over there. I'm sure they could talk your ear off about it, but please keep your voices down. This is a library, not a schoolyard,” the librarian says in a polite but authoritative tone.
Even though I know she's just being preemptive in her scolding, I can't help but feel the heat rise in my cheeks. Ducking my head, I mumble a quick thank you under my breath like a child and scurry over to the ladies in the book club hoping to find safety. The sound of quick footsteps close on my heels tell me that Joy is right behind. Trying my best not to butt into the conversation, I politely raise my hand like I'm in school. Joy starts giggling uncontrollably. A woman with her hair coiled into a bun finally looks over at me and speaks.
“Spit it out. We're not blind. You got something to say or did that librarian scare you too bad to speak?” Her lips part into a wry smile.
“Yeah, she's a little intimidating what can I say. My friend and I were wondering if we could ask you some questions about the Beacon?”
“The old theater? Why do you two young ladies care about that old place?” another woman with a short dark bob interjects.
“We're the new owners,” Joy chimes in. “This is Penny, I’m Joy.”
“Oh! You're the two that everyone in town's been talking about. I’m Edna. Nice of you two finally show your faces.”
“Honestly, we've been busy trying to sort through everything,” I reply.
“Don’t worry yourself about this crabby witch,” the first woman with the short bob says as I try not to laugh aloud. “Half the town can’t stand her. I’m Diane. My brother owns the general store next door. What do you want to know?”
“Do you know what happened to the sisters who bought the theater back in 1986?”
“I heard they found one of them down in your basement,” Edna remarks. “I bet that’ll be great for business. I hear you’re planning to sell coffee?”
“Uh…”
“I happen to remember one of them quite well,” Diane interjects. “She was always down at the old bakery every morning buying sticky buns. She was pleasant but a little kooky.”
“What was kooky about her? We're just trying to figure out who owned the Beacon before us,” Joy says.
“Kooky is being nice. She was always talking about evil spirits and keeping the town safe. Like I said, she was nice otherwise.”
“Did she ever mention who she needed to keep it safe from?” I ask.
“No, not really. Half the time I don't think she knew that she wasn't keeping her words in her own head.”
“What about the other sister? Was she around a lot?” Joy steps in.
“Never saw much of her around,” Diane explains.
“I caught that horrible woman stealing my flowers one evening! When I confronted her she knocked me down like some kind of animal,” Edna exclaims.
“Oh, that's terrible!” I say.
“You've got that right. I was growing those flowers specifically for a competition. The nerve of some people.”
“What happened to the sisters? Where did they go?” Joy asks.
“No one knows. They weren't around much anyway and I guess we never thought about where they went,” Diane replies. “Well, you know, until now.”
“In the article we found it mentioned that people weren't happy about them buying the theater and not reopening it,” I say.
“Sure, a lot of people wanted a place to watch movies and those two just lived there like it was a house. Very strange,” Edna says. Joy and I exchange nervous glances because that's currently what we're doing.
“Were there any threats made or anything like that?” Joy asks.
“There was one man who threw a brick through the box office window. He never got in trouble, but we all knew it was him,” Diane tells us.
“May I ask who he was?” Joy adds.
“Let me think for a minute…”
“I remember. It was Oscar. He's still around if you want to go talk to him yourself.” Edna interjects.
“That would be great, where can we find him?” I ask.
“Over on Pine street. You'll know his house, it's got the white picket fence and the yard looks impeccable. Shame the rest of the neighbors don't keep up their properties like Oscar does.”
“Yeah but don't let the nice yard fool you. That's one mean old man. He's not known for his kindness to strangers. Watch your step around that one,” Diane warns.
“Thanks for your time ladies. It was a real pleasure talking with you,” Joy says as we smile and start to make our way out of the library.
“Well, do you plan to sell coffee, or not?” Edna calls after us.
“Shhh!” The librarian stands up from at her desk, wagging her finger. We make sure to walk a couple of blocks away before we decide to discuss what we just learned.
“The only lead we have is an old man named Oscar. That's not much to go on, Penny.”
“Yeah, but like you said, it's all we've got. We had one victory today. We figured out Laverne's name and that she had a sister,” I say optimistically.
“Maybe we can find Beth and ask her in person,” Joy responds.
On the way back to the Beacon we spot Brent's truck heading towards us down the street. I wave at him and he pulls over to the curb. Joy and I cross the street to talk to him.
“And what trouble are you two up to this fine afternoon?” he teases.
“We were just down at the library getting to know some nice older women,” Joy replies.
“You should stop by later so we can talk about the renovations. The apartment looks great by the way,” I say.
“Sure thing, want me to bring anything? Pizza?” Brent asks.
“Are you kidding? We're from Chicago. Pizza is just another word for dinner,” I say.
“Ok, I'm still running some errands but I'll come by later.” He waves as he drives off.
“What's our next step, Joy?” I ask as we’re window shopping on the stroll home.
“Next step?”
“We figured out Laverne's name. What are we going to do about solving her murder?”
“How do you know she was murdered?” Joy asks.
“You don't lock yourself in a closet after barricading the door for no reason. So maybe nobody physically killed her, but she didn't randomly die either,” I explain.
“Do you really think some old man killed Laverne?”
“He wouldn't have been that old 30 years ago and he's the only lead we have so far.”
I ponder our conversation as we come upon the Beacon. It's starting to feel like it's our home. The windows above the marquee glow invitingly. We must have really taken our time walking back because by the time I'm unlocking the door, Brent is pulling up in his truck. Joy helps him carry the food upstairs as I flick more lights on in the lobby. When I turn around to walk up to the apartment, I nearly jump out of my skin. Laverne in all of her ghostly glory is standing right in front of me.
“What do you need?” I ask, trying to calm myself.
Of course she doesn't reply but instead she gestures for me to follow her. I nod my head and she floats towards the auditorium with her feet hanging limp just inches above the ground. This is so weird! Walking through the doorway, I am not at all surprised when Laverne decides to go through the wall. That’s what I would do if I didn’t have a corporeal form. Her visage starts to waver as we near the first row of trinkets. She stops suddenly and turns to me. I step up next to her and she points to at the shelves.
“What do you want me to get?” I ask. Again, she points at the racks, so I just start searching and decide that Laverne will stop me whenever I find what it is that she wants. I'm so engrossed in my task that I don't notice when Joy and Brent come up behind me.
“What are you looking for?” Joy asks.
“I don't know. Laverne brought me over here,” I reply. The quizzical look on Brent's face tells me that I need to do some more explaining. “The ghost of the woman we found in the basement wants me to find something in here.”
“Are you two joking?” Brent asks skeptically.
“We are not,” Joy and I say in unison.
“You two don't actually expect me to believe that y
ou can talk to ghosts,” he replies.
“See, that's the problem. We can't talk to her. We can only see her,” I inform Brent.
Laverne’s eyes grow wide at me and she points to Brent, shaking her head. I shiver as the room grows colder. Then she fades away entirely.
“Okay, so a ghost led you in here to find something, but you don't know what it is?” Brent asks.
“Well, she stopped right in front of this shelf, so I think whatever it is must be right here…”
Joy takes a look at the shelf full of trinkets we don’t understand. “I don’t see anything special.”