by Lisa Shea
He asked, “Is there a way to actually … trap a spirit? Like the … what was it … the Muon Trap in the Ghostbusters movie?”
His arm around me was just so comfortable. I relaxed against him. “There was this thing on eBay, a wine box, that Kevin Mannis wrote a story about in order to get it to sell at a high price. He claimed a woman who survived the Holocaust had bought it in Spain. Unbeknownst to the woman, somewhere along the way a malicious spirit – a dybbuk - had been trapped within. Kevin got the box from the granddaughter who just wanted the box gotten rid of.”
I smiled. “Of course, Kevin was able to drive up a high price for his spirit-filled-box and each subsequent owner has talked about the bad dreams and other problems this spirit had caused for them. Kevin got a movie deal out of it. Nobody ever really explained who the spirit was, why it was so attached to this box, and why nobody simply took the box back to Spain where the spirit would, assumedly, be at peace again.”
“So I assume this Kevin released the spirit, once he got the box, to know it really existed?”
I nodded. “The story goes that once Kevin opened the box, the dybbuk chose to stay around it. It’s not as if this spirit then went roaming the world. It stayed right with the box, harassing each subsequent owner. One of the later owners of the box researched with Jewish rabbis about how to force the dybbuk back into the box.”
Marc pursed his lips. “That seems fairly cruel. Why not just put the box elsewhere? Or bring it back to Spain, like you said? Think about the spirit’s point of view. If this spirit was unhappy, why jam it back into the prison where it’d been stuck all this time?”
I gave a small shrug. “That’s how some people can be about spirits and ghosts. They think of them as inconveniences. Bugs to be dealt with – not actual conscious entities to treat with respect.”
I yawned. “In the earlier days of our culture, we were much more in tune with spirits and ghosts. We had All Hollow’s Eve – the night when the veils between our world and the next were thin. We knew that contact could be made and we looked forward to that. It was considered natural to treasure your ancestors. To pray to them for guidance. When you read the grimoires of the times – the recordings of paranormal practices – the process of easing a spirit along was called giving them ‘license to depart’. It was about coming to an accord. It was never about punishment or driving them off.”
He ran a hand down my hair. “We think of ourselves as more civilized now. But sometimes it seems as if we’ve become more sterile. More closed off.”
I closed my eyes. I was tired, so tired. “Ghosts and spirits were people once. Just normal, frightened, lonely people. If we can understand that – if we can reach them and calm them – then it’s better for us all. It brings balance into our universe.”
A symbol floated before me. The yin and the yang. The light and the dark. The sense that all things were interconnected and mutually supporting. There could not be up without down. One person’s right was another person’s wrong.
And where was Anna … where was Anna …
* * *
The golden sun streamed in through my living room window, I stretched to full length – and then blinked.
I was alone. Fully and utterly alone.
For so long that had been my normal state, and I’d simply accepted it. I’d resigned myself to the situation and considered myself happy with what I had.
And then Marc and Sarah had come into my world.
It had been such a brief period, and yet somehow they seemed a normal part of my environment now. To have them gone –
A key sounded in the door.
I blinked in surprise. Nobody had that key, except the landlord, and it seemed unlikely –
The door pushed open, and Marc came in, followed by Sarah.
He smiled. “Looks like someone’s finally awake.”
Sarah came running over to me. “We had so much fun! We went to the farmer’s market and got all sorts of vegetables. They looked even better than the ones Momma used to grow. And then he took me by the library to check in on Cassandra. You wouldn’t believe how many books are there! It’s like a dream palace!”
I smiled at her enthusiasm and stood. “I’m glad you had fun, Sarah.”
Mark headed into the small kitchen. “Amber, you go ahead and get showered and dressed. I’ll take care of lunch.”
I teased, “What happened to breakfast?”
“You slept through that already,” he retorted with a smile. “The police lab already has my mother’s body. We should hear the results in a few hours. In the meantime, shower. Dress. Relax.”
I didn’t need a second prodding.
A short while later I was clean, clothed, and enjoying a delightful ratatouille with zucchini, yellow squash, and garlic. I looked with concern over to Sarah, who was dangling some yarn over Felix’s head.
I asked, “Does the garlic bother you at all?”
She laughed. “Gertie adores garlic. I wouldn’t have gotten far if I had to run off every time she brought a garlic-and-linguine dish into the library to snack on while she read one of her romance novels!”
She dangled the yarn a bit higher. Felix swiped at it.
I called out, “Watch out for his claws, they’re –”
His claws passed harmlessly through her translucent fingers.
I chuckled. “Guess there’s some up-sides to being incorporeal. No cat scratches.”
She wriggled the yarn. “I have to be careful about how I materialize. I have to be able to hold the yarn while not being interactive with his paw-daggers. It’s a fun challenge.”
I thought about the garlic. “All right, so garlic seems fine with you. How about white sage? I have used it here in the past, so there’s probably some trace of it.”
She looked up with interest. “Want to give it a try, to test it out?”
I pressed my lips in concern. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you in any way. What if it made you sick?”
She pointed at the window. “Why don’t you light a little bit of the sage over there. If there’s a problem you can just put it out again.”
I nodded. Once I finished my lunch I headed into my bedroom. I gently laid my hand on the small statues of my father, mother, and aunt. Then I lifted the white sage bundle and the shell from its shelf and brought them out.
Marc came over and drew open the window for me, leaving the screen. Felix immediately hopped up into his spot and peered out, watching the street below.
I held the shell in one hand and the white sage bundle in the other.
I nodded to Marc.
He lit a match, and then carefully eased it along the edge of the bundle until the face of it caught. He blew out the match, waited a moment, and then blew out the stick.
A wafting curtain of gentle smoke rose up.
I looked over at Sarah. “All right, it’s ready. If you feel any trouble at all, let me know.”
She nodded.
Slowly, carefully, she drew near us.
I asked, “Anything?
She shook her head.
She crept closer … closer …
She drew in a long, deep breath.
She smiled. “You know what? I can actually smell it! A lot of things in your world, they don’t have any reality to me. I can pass my hand through doors. Through furniture. I walk as if I’m on the floor but really it’s just a level I choose. I could just as easily walk mid-air if I chose to.”
She breathed in deeply. “But this? This I can smell. I can feel it soothing me.”
Marc considered this. “I wonder if that’s what upsets some spirits. They are used to having their world neutral. Calm. Quiet. Then some other person comes along and intrudes on their world. Forces them to smell things they don’t want to.”
Sarah nodded. “I’m fortunate that I’ve had friendly people in the house all this time. Happy children. Loving couples. But what if Gertrude and Prudence had sold the house? What if a new family had moved in, people w
ho were cruel and nasty and screamed and yelled?” She shivered. “It could have driven me crazy. Maybe I would have turned into one of those malicious spirits.”
I asked, “But you don’t think that garlic or white sage would have deterred you?”
“If I was roaming from place to place and just stopped into one? Maybe. Maybe the fact that they were stinking things up would have me go look for somewhere else quieter. But if it was my house? My place? And these nasty people moved in and started ruining it?” Her eyes glared. “I’d do whatever it took to get rid of them. To make them run screaming.”
I glanced at Marc. “Remind me never to get on her bad side!”
He nodded, a smile on his lips.
I put out the white sage. “All right, then. I think we’ve confirmed what we already suspected. If a spirit has no real tie to a place, and you want to gently ease them out, there are ways to do that so they feel honored and comfortable with the process.”
Marc looked down to Sarah. “But if a spirit has ties to a location, or develops personal anger against someone, they’re likely to stick around out of sheer spite. It becomes fuel for their fire.”
I thought again of the supposed dybbuk box. I asked Sarah, “Is there anything that you can’t pass through? Anything that seems to resist you? I’m trying to figure out if anyone could ever capture you – or Anna – by putting you into something you couldn’t get through.”
She gave that some thought. She moved around the room, swiping her hand through the wall, the sofa, the bookshelf, and the coffee table. She bent down and swiped her hand through the floor.
She shrugged. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
Marc said, “Let me try something.”
He tugged the coffee table out of the way and sat down in the middle of the living room floor. He crossed his legs in and put each hand down on a knee, the middle finger touching the thumb.
I watched, intrigued.
He closed his eyes and his breathing slowed. It became low, quiet, and deep.
A sense of stillness settled over the room. A gentle hush.
Sarah was staring at Marc with a growing sense of wonder. At last she said, “I see it.”
“What do you see?”
She took a step toward him, and then stopped. “It’s like a sphere around him. If you looked just at the floor level it would look like a circle. A glowing circle. But that’s just one of the dimensions. The circle is actually a full sphere. It goes all around him. It’s … energy, I guess. It’s his personal energy.”
She carefully, slowly, moved toward him, stopping about four feet away. She whispered, “My toes are right at the edge of the circle now.”
I let my gaze go soft. I breathed in slow and deep.
I waited … waited …
Yes, there. I could see it now. It did seem to be a circle on the floor, but Sarah was right. If I mindfully brought my gaze up, there was a shimmer in the air. The merest hint of where the sphere made its curve.
I glanced at her. “What do you think would happen if you moved into that space?”
She cautiously moved her hand toward the sphere – and shied back. “It feels … I don’t know how to explain it. Wrong. Uncomfortable. Like he is him and I am me. Like I might lose myself if I did that. Get lost in the him.”
She shivered. “I wouldn’t want to do that.”
“So if that energy were somehow wrapped around a box? And you were inside it?”
Her shiver grew stronger. “I wouldn’t want to pass through it. I’d be trapped in there. I’d be furious and frustrated and angry. No wonder the spirit stuck in there for decades would burst out in a fury once they were released. I’d want to punish whoever I found, figuring they were the one who did it to me.”
I looked again at the glowing circle on the floor. “I have to imagine that this is where the traditions of circles of protections came from. Some practitioners mark it with salt, and some with chalk, but many covens insist it is simply a placebo construct. That those visuals make it easier for everyone to visualize where the boundary is – but what is important is the caster maintaining the focus. Keeping the energy strong.”
Marc blinked his eyes and put his hands to his chest. Then he stood. “I’ve meditated for years. You have to, in a job like mine. Or drink. Or skydive. There has to be something to release the stress. To keep your mind focused.”
Sarah looked concerned. “So if someone were good enough with their energy field, they could have captured Anna somehow? Into a place where she couldn’t get out?”
“We’ll figure it out,” I promised her. “Maybe the three of us should head back over to Marc’s place.”
Marc frowned. “I don’t know that I want to expose Sarah to that. It could be Alex or Roger who is responsible for everything. If they realize Sarah is with us, they could easily try to trap her, too. We need more pieces of the puzzle first.”
His phone buzzed, and he looked down. His lips pressed together. “That’s the Chief. She says the lab results are back. Shall we take a drive?”
I put out a hand to Sarah.
Her fingers shimmered, solidified, and when she took my hand in hers, I could feel the pressure there. The warmth. The reality.
I smiled at her. “We’ll figure this out. We’ll find your sister, and we’ll make everything right.”
Her eyes were large and all-knowing. “I know we will.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
It had only been twenty-four hours since we were last in Captain Moynahan’s office, but somehow it felt like much longer. We had learned more than any one person should ever know about poisons, toxins, and the countless ways in which a human body could fail. We had also explored and experimented with the ways in which the spirit world and human world interacted.
Now Marc, Sarah, and I sat in our wooden chairs before the large mahogany desk, watching Moynahan’s face for any hint of the news she was about to give us.
She tapped the brown folder idly with one finger, her gaze moving between me and Marc in turn. I knew the only reason Sarah was not getting her share of attention was that Moynahan had no idea she was there.
Moynahan’s voice was deceptively calm. “So, Marc, tell me again why you suddenly decided to have your mother exhumed? And specifically checked to see if there were potassium crystals lodged in her organs? Pear-shaped crystals?”
Marc’s gaze was steady. “Lanceolate,” he corrected her. “As in the head of a lance.”
“Lanceolate,” she murmured. “And you just happened to think this up?”
“I decided to read some of my mother’s books,” he replied. “Online versions, so I didn’t disturb her rare first editions. And in one of them it happened to mention that an overdose of potassium can sometimes manifest as a heart attack. Since the body already has potassium in it naturally, it might not show up as anything abnormal in a toxicology report. But that overload of potassium would show up as –”
“Lanceolate crystals in the organs,” muttered Moynahan.
She opened the brown folder and turned it around to face us.
“Well, it just so happens that your mother’s organs did indeed have the lanceolate crystals in them. So the pathologist performed a detailed examination of every millimeter of your mother’s body. It hadn’t seemed necessary before, given the diagnosis of a heart attack and the clean pathology. But now that our M.E. had a sense of what she was looking for, she found it.”
Marc leaned forward. “Found …?”
Moynahan put a hand face-down on the open folder. “This is now a murder investigation, and as one of the two beneficiaries I don’t have to tell you that you are now a suspect. If you seek to misdirect or hinder us in our activities, there will be penalties.”
Marc held her gaze.
Moynahan asked, again, “What caused you to take the step of exhuming your mother?”
Mark paused. Clearly he was weighing something in his mind.
Then he shuffled through the photos. He
pulled out the two showing the bookcases. He turned them to face Moynahan. “Amber and I noticed that two of the books had been accidentally switched. The way those two books are placed on the shelves in your crime scene photos don’t match the way they are now. One of the books was on herbs – but the others was a book from 1820 on various types of poisons. Potassium was mentioned in there.”
Moynahan’s brow creased. “A misplaced book? And potassium is just one of – what – maybe a hundred different poison types reviewed in that book?”
“It was the only one which could mimic a heart attack,” clarified Marc. “The symptoms of the others ranged from mild to extreme, but they were all fairly clearly poisoning symptoms. But with potassium?” He shrugged. “Even in modern times we have a challenge detecting it.”
Moynahan’s gaze moved over to me. It seemed to bore straight through me. “And you’re sure there was no other source for your theory? Other than these two misplaced books?”
I wasn’t good at lying. I just wasn’t. I had never been sure if that was something to be content with or a flaw, but at the moment it was seeming like a fairly serious flaw.
I kept my mouth shut.
The corners of her lips turned down, but she sighed. “Whatever it was, it seems your instincts were accurate.” She leaned back. “When our M.E. examined the body with an aim to map every square millimeter of her skin, we found it. A tiny puncture wound at the base of the ear. There’s no way it would have been found if we hadn’t been searching that determinedly for it.”
Marc’s face drew tight. “Someone injected her with that potassium. Someone wanted her dead.”
Moynahan nodded. “It certainly seems that way. It’d have been quite a trick for her to do that to herself, to commit suicide. And besides, with her knowledge of herbs, she could have found a thousand other ways to go with would have been painless and peaceful.”