by Laura Bickle
“It’s chi! You’re interfering with our chi!” I got the impression this was an oft-repeated argument.
“Go away!” my grandfather bellowed.
Mincing feet retreating behind the door with a tap-tapping sound.
“Damn old farts.” Grandpa waved dismissively at the door. His glasses slid down his nose, and he looked over the bifocal line at me. “Don’t get old, Di.”
“It’s better than the alternative,” I muttered, thinking of my father.
Grandpa’s smile faded. “How is that son-in-law of mine?”
“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. My dad seemed so much less vital than Grandpa at this moment. Tears burned behind my eyes, and I jammed my hands into my pockets and turned away. I was desperate to change the subject.
My hand closed around the obsidian lump in my pocket. I pulled it out, eyes blurry, and thrust my hand toward Grandpa.
“Look at what I found,” I blurted, like a child with something shiny.
Grandpa peered at my outstretched palm. He plucked the piece up, turned the shard over in his fingers. “Where did you find this?”
“At the back of our—of Mom and Dad’s—property, beyond the nature preserve. There’s lots of it.”
Grandpa’s eyes narrowed. “Oh?”
“Yeah. I saw a falling star, chased it. This was where it fell.” I didn’t mention the dead deer, for fear he’d go off on alien conspiracy theories again. “Do you think it’s a meteorite?”
He turned the stone over, squinting at it, tapping it with his thick yellow fingernail. “No, I don’t. You see anything else ’round there? Anything...strange?”
Damn. He was thinking about aliens. “There was half a dead deer. But it was gone by morning.”
My granddad leaned forward. He’d seen war; he could smell the fear on me. His eyes were sharp as glass, and his hand shook.
“Stay the hell away from there.”
CHAPTER 3
I SAT BACK ON THE bed, flinching from the intensity in my grandpa’s warning. But also curious. “Why? What’s wrong?”
The old man looked past me, through me, the way he did when he was remembering. This was the same unfocused expression he wore when he talked about the war.
“I used to find a lot of these, when I was a young man. After the war, I worked for the railroad, digging tunnels. The mine needed a new route to get all that coal out. It was a lot like the work your dad did—plenty of things that blow up.”
I knitted my fingers in my lap, forcing myself not to react to the past tense of what my dad did, once upon a time.
“It was also like mine work in that it was unlucky. Lotta accidents, things gone missing. Somebody brought a minister in to bless the mountain we were working on. I don’t think he was a very good minister. Next morning, all our shovels turned up missing.
“Then...then people started vanishing. Two guys disappeared, one after the other. The sheriff ruled one a suicide. Mark. They found his body on some live track, missing his head. They never found the other one, Charlie. Rumors flew—maybe he took off with a gal. Maybe he was on the run from the law. Charlie had a record back east for theft. Petty stuff.
“Anyway, I attributed that bull to Charlie’s sticky fingers and superstitious nonsense. Until ...” He trailed off, rubbing the bit of glass like a worry stone.
“Until?” I prompted then bit my tongue.
He blinked, pulled out of his trance by my voice. “I wasn’t a good man when I was young. I drank. A lot.”
I nodded. I knew. My mother told stories of the legendary rows he’d had with Grandma. He never hit a woman, but she used to say he had the devil’s hands on the fiddle and the tongue to match. I never quite believed those stories. I’d always known Grandpa to be gentle and sober. He’d stopped drinking before I was born. My mother never knew why. It was sudden, and it was forever.
“I was hoofing it back from the bar one night in early March. There was still snow on the ground and a beautiful full moon overhead, bright as a light bulb in a closet.
“I walked along the railroad tracks. Well, maybe stumbled is a better word.” He rubbed his wiry eyebrow. “They were the same tracks the deputies had found Mark’s body on three weeks before. I was feeling a little maudlin, I guess. I came to a tunnel through the hillside. It was black as pitch in there, but I could see light at the end.
“At first, I thought it was the glare of snow on the other side. I walked toward it.
“But then, I realized that it was two lights. And that I must’ve been drunker than I thought, because I didn’t hear the train coming.
“I turned to run, heard this ungodly roar. It blew me out of the mouth of the tunnel. I landed face-down in a snowdrift.”
He lapsed into a long silence.
“And then?” I couldn’t help myself.
“I dug myself out. Ran home. Never touched a bottle after that. It wasn’t a train. That roar was like nothing I’d ever heard. And the snow...the snow on the tracks was undisturbed. There was nothing there.”
“What was in the tunnel?”
“I don’t know. Lotta stones like these. Something angry.” He made a face. “The woo-woo crowd calls it Buzzard Bill.”
“Woo-woo crowd? Buzzard Bill?”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Ever since that damn New Age store opened on South Hamilton Street, people’ve been insisting that the hills are haunted. They’re trying to capitalize on that Moth Man stuff from Point Pleasant.” He glared at the door. “And those damn charlatans like to push Tai Chi on the elderly.”
I couldn’t imagine Coldridge being able to support a New Age shop—they’d barely been able to run a burrito store, and every Chinese buffet that opened folded within six months. That was about as exotic as Coldridge got. “There’s a ghost?”
“Nobody knows what it is. But weird stuff’s been happening, like back in the day.” Grandpa shook his head. “And where there’s weird, rest assured there’s some yahoo trying to make a buck.”
*
I had a dollar, so I went to check out the woo-woo.
But the woo-woo was hard to find, so I nearly missed it. The Enchanted Broomstick was tucked down a one-way side street, behind the craft mall. I would’ve sworn the merchandise in the windows of the craft mall—seasonal costumes for concrete yard geese, handmade soap, quilts—was exactly the same as when I’d left.
But the shop next door hadn’t been there before. It was, more properly, an old two-story house that someone had painted lavender. A hand-lettered sign suspended from a chain on the porch announced that The Enchanted Broomstick was open. Dozens of wind chimes that stirred in the breeze in varying timbres and major and minor scales were interspersed with multi-colored Tibetan prayer flags. I’d seen those before at the head shop at school. My steps creaked on the porch, and I hesitated in front of a concrete gargoyle perched beside the door. He wasn’t too terribly fearsome—a yellow tabby cat had fallen asleep on top of his head, snoring softly, his tail twitching across the gargoyle’s nose.
I opened the door with a clatter of bells, and immediately smelled incense. What had once been the sitting room of a house had been converted to a shop floor—a shop floor of strange and unusual wares. Bookshelves contained slick paperbacks promising to guide the reader in astral travel, astrology, belly dance, and witchcraft. A giant geode reached almost to the ceiling, open like the maw of some great purple-toothed prehistoric beast. Canning jars held various herbs labeled neatly with stickers. Multicolored crystals glinted from assorted baskets, accompanied by cards explaining their miraculous properties. My hands hovered over the crystals. I recognized some of the stones on sight: pyrite, onyx, opal, jasper. Others were more exotic, gems I wouldn’t ever find in this area: amazonite, prehnite, selenite. I picked up an informational card about obsidian, which read:
Promotes grounding, protects from evil, releases negative karma, centers spirit into current incarnation, prevents fear.
I made a face. Great.
Leave it to me to find a stone purported to enhance my satisfaction with my rapidly-disintegrating life.
“Can I help you?”
I turned toward the counter, upon which a large golden Buddha statue sat. A woman about ten years older than me was perched on a stool before the cash register. Her long, straight brown hair was piled on the crown of her head, and she was wearing a sheer blouse in a watercolor blue pattern. Peacock-feather earrings brushed her shoulders.
I squared my shoulders. This must be one of Grandpa’s charlatans. “I, uh...was wondering a couple of things. Are you guys hiring anytime soon?”
She shook her head. “Unfortunately, it’s just me running the store right now. But if I get to expand, maybe in a couple of months.”
“I bet it’s sort of hard trying to establish a large clientele around here.”
She gave me a half smile. “It’s coming. But right now, I’m doing most of my business online.”
I looked at her counter, where dozens of blue and white USPS Priority Mail boxes were stacked. Some were taped up and addressed, while others still gaped open, vomiting bubble wrap.
I nodded. “I’m curious to know if you have any information about Buzzard Bill.”
She reached for a stack of pamphlets on the counter. “There’s a local group that likes to try to catch pictures of him. This is their meeting schedule for when they go on buzzard hunts.”
I flipped open the brochure. It included a drawing of something that looked like a large, cranky vulture. “Is that him?”
“They say that’s him. They haven’t gotten any pictures of him, yet.”
“I’ve lived here all my life and never heard of Buzzard Bill.”
The woman shrugged. “One of the group members has dug up information about a ghost in the hills going back as far as the Native Americans. They think he’s sort of like the Thunderbird, a Native elemental force.”
“Hmmm.”
“Somebody’s going to write a book about him soon, I know it. The theory is that his habitat is disturbed, and he brings bad luck upon those who disturb him.”
I glanced at the pamphlet. “Hunting him would surely qualify as disturbing him?”
“Well, they’re not trying to shoot him with guns. Just cameras.”
“How do they know where he is?”
“Nobody really knows. They just guess, based on the latest accident at the mine or sighting of an unidentified flying object. I think storm chasers have better luck, honestly.” She pushed a stack of bumper stickers across the counter. The stickers read: Have you seen Buzzard Bill?
I gently pushed them back. “Thanks for the info...”
“Julie.” She raised her hand to shake mine.
“I’m Di.”
“Nice to meet you.” She met my eyes and held my hand for a beat too long.
I shrank back.
She released my hand, but her gray eyes remained fixed on mine. Her palm had been tattooed in a complicated-looking series of rings. “You don’t really belong here, do you?”
I rubbed my hand on my jeans, trying to scrape away the woo-woo, and my gaze slid to the door. “I, uh...” I bit my lip, and my vision blurred. I cleared my throat and said: “I’m home.”
Julie watched me with liquid eyes. “I didn’t mean to pry. But you’ve got a very agitated aura. I felt it when I shook your hand.”
I took a step back toward the door. “Mmm. Things have been busy.”
She leaned over the countertop. “Have you ever had your cards read?”
I paused. My heart tapped out four beats before I spoke. “No. No, I haven’t.”
“Would you like to?”
I glanced down at my shoes. The childlike desire to embrace any scrap of magic in life warred with the mantle of adulthood that had settled around my shoulders. Not that it mattered much; I had the sneaking suspicion this was something I couldn’t afford. My cheeks burned. “I’ve only got five bucks. So, I’m gonna go back and look at some of the rocks...” I gestured at the display behind me.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t going to charge you, silly. Do you still want one?”
I hesitated, wondering what the catch was and when there would be cash due. Nobody ever did anything for free. “Um. Sure.”
“Okay. Let me get my cards. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared behind the rattle of a beaded curtain.
I wandered around the store, fingering a statue of Isis and an impressive stock of hand-dipped candles that smelled like beeswax. A bulletin board had been nailed beside the door. I scanned it, hoping to find a job for the summer. Instead, I found notices about community action meetings and demonstrations to stop the spread of mining by a group called Friends of Sawtooth Mountain. Stop the rape of the land! one handbill announced in red letters. It listed several bullet points of environmental destruction, from groundwater contamination to habitat for a variety of species being destroyed. Nowhere did it mention the human cost.
“Are you ready?”
Julie sat on the floor in the center of a braided rug. I joined her, sitting opposite. She pulled a deck of cards out of a velvet pouch and shuffled them. After a few moments, she handed the deck to me. “Think about your question and shuffle. When it feels right, give them back to me.”
I shuffled, hearing the whirr of the worn cardstock in my hands. I thought about what I most wanted to know. Not whether my father would survive. Not about the mystery of Buzzard Bill. But, selfishly, whether I would be stuck here forever.
I handed the cards back to her. She cut the deck three times and plucked four cards off the top. She placed one before me and three in a line below it.
“This is you,” she said, turning over the first card. It depicted a blond, blue-eyed girl holding a chalice. A fish leaped from the chalice, and the girl had a surprised expression on her face. The ocean roiled in the background.
“This is the Page of Cups. The Page of Cups is a sensitive person. An artist or musician. You can be a bit naïve, idealistic, prone to fantasy.”
I stared at the picture. That sure sounded like me.
Julie turned over the next card in the row below it. “This is your past.” The card showed a cloaked figure with a hat and broom fleeing stacked chalices on a beach. It was night around the figure, and windy.
“This is the Eight of Cups. This is about abandoning previous efforts. You ran away from something. Abandoned something that was important to you.”
I swallowed. That could mean either my family or my internship. The hair lifted on my neck. Creepy. But maybe I was just being naïve.
The next card showed a man and a woman in an embrace. An angel looked down on them from Heaven. I frowned at it. I wasn’t in a relationship, and couldn’t foresee that on my radar.
“This is the Lovers card. Love has come back to you. A choice needs to be made, perhaps between what you possess and what you think you might want. Be very careful that you choose the person who’s best for you.”
Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. My love life was not complicated. At all. I liked it that way. I’d purposefully stayed unencumbered by relationships at college. And high school was done and over with.
Julie turned over the third card. It showed a horned demon holding a nude and cowering man and woman on a leash. Its eyes glowed brightly—brighter than the fire behind it.
She frowned. “The Devil is usually about bondage. Suffering and failure.”
My heart dropped. I thanked her for the reading, but was careful not to shake her hand again. I spent my five dollars on rocks she said were good for enhancing fortune—aventurine, green calcite, and moss agate. I hoped her cards were wrong. The bit about my love life clearly was—why wouldn’t the part about my future in bondage be?
But, as I left the Enchanted Broomstick, I couldn’t forget the burning eyes of the Devil. They reminded me of the glowing eyes Grandpa had described at the end of the train tunnel.
In spite of the spring warmth, I shuddered.
*
> For the rest of the afternoon, I made the rounds of Coldridge to pick up job applications. I got some from the hardware store, the coffee shop, the grocery store, the discount store, and the gas station. I was hopeful about the grocery store. I’d worked there as a cashier through high school, and the manager had remembered me. He seemed to believe I was home for summer break and handed me the temporary staff application. When I asked him for the full-time application, he gave me a look of pity I tried very hard to ignore.
With a fistful of paper beside me on the seat of the Chevette, I headed home. I drove slowly, not excited about the prospect of returning to the house stuffed full of my mother’s worry and my father’s weakened snoring. I was lost in thought, taking the curves automatically, pondering the card reading and what Grandpa had told me. Unseen monsters like the Devil and Buzzard Bill were much easier to contemplate than anything real and breathing in my living room.
A terrible scraping sound emanated from the undercarriage of the car, jolting me from my thoughts. I winced, hoping the damn exhaust system hadn’t fallen out of the bottom. I slowed, searching for a place to stop and check the damage.
On this serpentine road, the best I could do was pull off at a slight divot in the gravel shoulder beside a mailbox. I was able to limp the car about two-thirds off the road; any further would’ve sent me irretrievably into the ditch. I checked for traffic, popped the door, and crossed to the front of the car. I squatted down to check the damage.
A piece of metal the size of a cake pan had partially dislodged from the undercarriage and was dragging on the pavement. Awesome. I had no idea what it did, but I was hoping it wasn’t the oil pan or something mission critical.
I crawled under the car and grabbed it. I hissed immediately—it was hot as a pan from the oven. Grumbling, I pulled my shirtsleeves over my hands to try again. This thing was already half-broken...my best bet was going to be to tear it all the way off. I could have Dad look at it when I got home...
I squeezed my eyes shut. No, I could not have Dad look at it when I got home. Dad was not moving beyond his recliner. I pulled as hard as I could at the hot metal.