A Charmed Death

by Madelyn Alt

  She motioned for us to gather around and lead the group in centering. One on one, she showed me how to create a personal cone of protection made of pure white light. Built in the mind’s eye, it was a defense not easily breached by negative forces.

  “Maggie, the most important thing is that you keep yourself centered. And believe. The light is protection. It cannot be broken unless you break it yourself. Now, I’m going to cast a circle for the lot of us to work within tonight. Marcus, will you assist?”

  A circle would create a sacred space that would keep us safe, but it would also protect others outside the circle from possible exposure and hold in any energies that were raised. I’d been part of the group’s protective circle before—my first experience with raised energy—and it had been an eye-opening experience.

  “Everyone, you’ll need to be within the circle. If you would all move in while we take care of this, please?”

  Taking a deep breath, I sandwiched myself between Eli and Joe’s bulk and followed the trail of Gen’s Maglite, with Evie bringing up the rear. The flashlight was almost overkill. All around us, glowing white beneath the full moon, were stones whose carved lettering had faded beneath the battering force of the elements. I shivered, wondering if I could get away with shadowing one of the men for the entire evening.

  From her car, Liss took a duffel bag and carried it to where the line of graves began. Marcus followed. No one else moved, preferring instead to stand by and watch the proceedings. From the duffel bag Liss removed two canisters of sea salt, five pillar candles, a small bundle of herbs tied with twine, and what looked like a twisted and gnarled twig. She took a canister of salt and, beginning from the same point, proceeded to draw a large circle of the protective mineral around the perimeter of the small cemetery. Marcus took the bundle of herbs and touched a match to it until it began to smolder and smoke, then followed in her wake. Their low-voiced chants carried on the night breezes as they walked the circle they made three times ’round:

  “Lady of the silver moon

  Enchantress of the night

  Protect me and mine within this circle fairly

  cast.

  Earth Mother, mother of the sleeping earth,

  Keep safe all who gather here

  Within the protective shelter of your arms.”

  Candles were placed on each of the compass points, each lit in turn as the chant continued.

  “By the earth that is Her body,

  By the air that is Her breath,

  By the fire of Her bright spirit,

  And by the living waters of Her womb,

  Our circle is cast.

  None shall come to harm here,

  From any forces,

  On any level.”

  The final candle went in the very center of the cemetery, the light it made casting grotesque, flickering shadows on the stones nearest to it.

  “As we will,

  So shall it be done.

  As we will,

  So mote it be.”

  Was it my imagination? When I closed my eyes, I could almost see a blue light shimmering on the fringes of the circle all around us.

  “I can’t believe we’re here tonight,” Evie whispered, huddling up against me in her bubblegum pink parka, her blond hair sticking out in a cute shaggy fringe from beneath a knit cap. She stamped her feet against the cold. “I never seem to get used to these.”

  “Have you been on many?” I whispered back.

  “Enough. Some are more eventful than others.” She paused. “Oh! Did I tell you that the police were at the school today?”

  “No. What happened?”

  “They wanted to talk to a bunch of different kids who knew Amanda.”

  “Really? Did they talk to you?”

  She shook her head. “I hardly knew her. I’m just a nobody at school. Nowhere near her league.” She gave a self-deprecating shrug. “They did talk to Lily and Candace, though. The girls who came with her to the store that day? They hung out with her most often, so I guess they knew her best.”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  She lowered her whisper to an even more confidential level. “I heard they talked to Jordan Everett, Amanda’s boyfriend.” She paused, and then added, “I also heard they talked to Charlie Howell.”

  I wasn’t sure who Charlie Howell was or what connection he had to Amanda, but Jordan Everett I’d heard of. Who in town hadn’t heard of the Everetts? Transplanted from nearby Fort Wayne within the last five years and rich, rich, rich, they were Stony Mill’s version of a royal family, and Jordan Everett was another notch on the old money belt. The captain of the SMHS varsity basketball team, in the last year he’d given more quotes to the Stony Mill Gazette (Established 1852, and published daily, except Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) than the mayor himself. “I suppose they always have to interview the people a victim is known to have had relationships with.”

  “Yeah. Especially when she was supposed to see Jordan that afternoon before heading home to get ready for work. And because they weren’t exactly what you would call an ideal couple.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, you know. Always bickering and arguing. Amanda was a bit on the bossy side. Everyone knew it. I kind of felt sorry for Jordan sometimes. She was always getting on his case in front of his friends and the whole school if he didn’t treat her exactly the way she thought she should be treated.”

  Our whispers were interrupted when Eli turned to me. “All ready, Maggie?”

  Chapter 10

  I started guiltily. I’d almost forgotten about Eli’s dowsing trick. “Um, sure,” I said, pulling the homemade Goddess stone pendulum out from where I’d stashed it in my pocket.

  Marcus and Felicity approached, their protective work complete. “Anyone want to back me up?” Marcus asked.

  Evie practically tripped over herself to volunteer. Liss exchanged an amused glance with me over Evie’s blond head before saying she would stay at the fringes of the circle, watching for Devin.

  Gen and Joe looked at each other, then made quiet arrangements to walk around the circle and make observations. That left just Eli and me alone in the center.

  “Okay, Maggie. You right-handed? Okay. You hold the string between thumb and first two fingers. Like holding a pencil, ja? Let the stone hang free, and hold your hand very still. The stone will hang, see? Not much movement. Okay. Now, empty your mind. Breathe. Look at the stone. See it? Watch it, but don’t watch it. You understand?”

  Well, not really, but I was willing to give it a go. It was harder than I thought to keep my hand relaxed. I used that as my focus, breathing deeply and watching the stone to be sure that I didn’t purposely exert any influence on the string. If this stone was meant to move, I was determined that it wouldn’t be because of anything I was doing.

  “Um, Eli? Now what?” I whispered when nothing happened.

  “Too tense. You pinch the string. You relax some more, ja? I go over here awhile so you don’t have to see my ugly face.”

  Relax. In the middle of a cemetery. In the dark. On a full moon.

  Right.

  Still, Eli had taken the time to try to teach me. Even if it was bunk, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I thought about what he had said about getting in touch with one’s spirit guardian. How everyone has at least one. Well, Spirit Guide, if you’re out there, I thought, come on down!

  “Is there anyone out there?” I asked out loud, feeling ridiculous. “Anyone at all. Bueller? If there does happen to be someone bodily challenged out there, please show me a yes answer so I can figure out how this thing works.”

  The stone was vibrating at the end of the string, just kind of trembling on its tether. I squinted at my hand, concentrating. Cold though I was, my hand remained still. I slid my gaze down the string. As I watched, the stone began to move, minutely at first, then more decisively, forward and back. “Um, Eli? Eli, is it supposed to be doing this?”

  He hustled
back over in his dusty Carhartt coveralls. “Ja, ja! You’re getting something, sure. Ask a question, ja? Ask whether you talk with your spirit guide.”

  I cleared my throat, my eyes drawn by the back-and-forth motion of the stone. “Okay. Am I speaking with a spirit? If so, show me a yes answer.”

  Slowly the motion of the stone changed, from a back-and-forth swing to a tiny continuous circle that rotated to the right. It circled several times, then to my surprise slowly reverted to the back-and-forth movement as though waiting for another question.

  I darted a glance at Eli. He nodded his head, as though to say, Go on.

  I tried again. “Am I speaking with my spirit guide? If yes, then please show me a yes answer.”

  Again the motion of the stone changed until it was circling in a clockwise motion as though in answer to my question. Coolness. But what if it was a natural phenomenon? Something with an explanation rooted in physics, probably. Quantum string theory, or some other kind of scientific hooha. Of course, that had to be it. Still, it was interesting to experiment with. One thing I was sure of: I wasn’t moving it, even subconsciously.

  After experimenting with trying to ask various questions of my spirit guide (all the easy questions, like: Are you an ancestor of mine? No. Did I know you before you died? No. Can you tell me your name? Yes. Did you die in the winter? No. Summer? No. Are you in heaven? Yes.), I began to ask a series of questions, the kind with answers that I knew I could check out.

  “Are the locks on Christine engaged?” Yes.

  I didn’t remember doing that, but goodness knows that didn’t mean anything. Christine had a mind of her own.

  “Is Marcus wearing a red shirt?” No.

  “Is Tom going to call me this evening?” No. Drat.

  “What color of bandana does Grandpa Gordon have tucked into his back pocket? Red?” No. “Blue?” Yes.

  And so on and so forth. Until:

  “Are Marcus and Felicity having a torrid affair?” I whispered this one, not wanting them to overhear. Of course, I already knew the answer, but as I said, the point of this line of questioning was to obtain confirmation.

  The stone circled strongly to the left. No. I frowned. It was the first time the stone had gotten it unmistakably wrong all night. “Maybe you should take this back,” I told Eli. “I think I must be getting tired.”

  “Ja, sure.” He took it from me. “You maybe want me to show you more next time? Or maybe you want to watch me tonight.”

  “Sure.”

  Truth be told, the makeshift pendulum was starting to freak me out a little. As my questions had progressed, the rotations had become stronger, more pronounced, and somehow the stone seemed to grow heavier the longer I used it, as though it was being pulled down by an unseen hand.

  Eli had begun to steady himself already. “The energy you tap into with the stone, it is strong. I could see that. If you hold the stone over your other hand, just so”—he demonstrated—“you will feel it. The energy, it shoots down the string and through the stone. Different spirits, different energies. Here—feel.”

  Hesitating only a moment, I held my hand out, palm up, beneath the pendulum as he worked it. “Is there a spirit here with us now?” he asked in a voice bold and clear, his Deutsche accent even more noticeable when he was preoccupied. He didn’t have to ask it to show him a “yes” answer. The stone began immediately to rotate clockwise, strong, certain movements. And to my surprise, I did feel it. An electric, tickling path that felt like someone tracing their fingernail lightly in circles on my palm.

  “My God,” I breathed.

  “Ja,” Eli said, with a peaceful smile. “Mein Gott.”

  I stared at the stone, in amazement. “Can you ask the spirit who it is?”

  He shook his head. “Not here. There is a way, but it is not so easy. But then, you don’t want it to be too easy.”

  “No?”

  “No. If Gott let it be too easy, all the lower-level spirits come through. That would be bad.”

  Bad. I wondered what he meant by lower-level spirits. There were levels? What, like a cosmic version of the social register? I sighed, finding it terribly deflating to think that, even in the great beyond, I might feel somehow lesser than my angelic counterparts.

  On the road a single vehicle approached, slowing as it neared the cemetery with our roving flashlight beams. Its headlights blinded us momentarily as it turned into the drive. The driver killed the engine and leapt from the car in the same instant.

  “Hey, everyone! Sorry I’m late. I’d promised dinner with my mom and of course my father went into his favorite tirade. You know the one—when am I going to get off my ass and get a real job rather than wasting my life with another meaningless degree.” It was Devin, the N.I.G.H.T.S.’ electronic Boy Wonder. He opened the back door of his car and hauled out a sturdy canvas duffel bag, slinging it over his shoulder before approaching the invisible edge of the salt circle. “Anyone gonna let me in?”

  Felicity came over and, using the edge of her hand, cut a slit into the invisible workings of the circle. Devin crossed the threshold, shivering as the vibrations teased his body, then stood aside for Felicity to seal it once more.

  Dropping the duffel bag to the grass, Devin squatted down and began pulling out carefully wrapped cords and sundry electronic devices. “Video and audio recorders, digital camera, magnetometers, thermal readers. All present and accounted for.”

  He began doling out the equipment to the members of the group. Eli was the only one to pass on the technology, preferring old ways over new.

  As for me, I declined taking anything, preferring instead to shadow those who knew what they were doing. Gen had taken a digital camera, Evie a laser thermometer. Evie had felt psychically drawn to the far corner of the cemetery, where a number of exquisite markers from the previous century gathered together shoulder-to-shoulder like warrior kinsmen against the encroachment of time, so Gen had followed to take pictures. Felicity was filming the entire proceedings with a DVD camera, a slick little number that fit into the palm of her hand. Eli had changed his method of using the stone pendulum. Before he’d remained in one place and held the pendulum on a short string, holding it over his free hand. Now he walked around, slowly, and had lengthened the string, suspending it out before him. I made a note to ask him what the difference was in the two methods.

  Devin held two devices, which he told me were an infrared recorder and a magnetometer to read electromagnetic fields, or EMFs. Joe followed him, a microphone and tape recorder at hand to record wherever the EMF readings were high. That left Marcus, with his ordinary handheld recorder, and me with nothing but Gen’s Maglite that measured the full length and breadth of my forearm. I’d decided Marcus would be as safe to follow as anyone else.

  We wandered slowly between the gravestones. I kept my light trained to the frozen ground to help identify the graves with ground-level markers—because the last thing I wanted to do was to walk across one—and tried to keep my psychic defenses up. How was that working for me? Touch and go. I’ll keep you advised.

  Marcus’s gravesite of choice for investigative purposes stood at the very heart of the cemetery, one marked by a statuesque granite marker. “There’s something here,” he breathed to me. Not that he needed to. As soon as I allowed myself to relax, I knew it myself. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it.

  He stood beside the marker, avoiding the graves that surrounded it. The marker was a familial stone, the name chiseled into all four sides of it common to the area. “Spirits who have passed beyond the Veil,” he murmured aloud, “if there is any among your number who have something to say to us, anything at all, we are listening.” The tape recorder whirr, whirred in his hand as he paused, waiting for . . . an answer? One that was not forthcoming. “We’re here for you. If you have anything to say, speak now. We’d like to hear what you have to say to us.”

  The air felt close, and intensely cold. I hunched my shoulders up around my ears and jammed my hands int
o the pockets of my wool coat. I was shivering fiercely. The flashlight I’d tucked under my arm wobbled with the movement, causing the light beam to swing, casting crazy shadows here, there, and everywhere. I pressed my elbow more tightly against my side to steady it.

  “We know you’re here with us.” Marcus’s voice was as soft and inviting as a goose-down comforter. “We can feel your presence. Can you speak to us? Can you say something for our equipment? Something we can take with us to remind us of your presence.”

  I swallowed convulsively. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would the voice come aloud, as a voice we could hear in the air around us? I was certain of one thing, though. Something was there. I felt a heaviness crowding around us, a pocket of syrupy thickness that somehow also held a sizzle of unearthly promise. And the cold! From the moment Liss and Marcus had erected the protective circle around the perimeter of the crumbling graveyard, temps seemed to have dropped significantly. Probably the result of the sun disappearing completely beyond the horizon and no more, but my tingling toes couldn’t tell the difference.

  “We are here to communicate with you. If there is any way we can be of assistance, we ask you to speak to us while we are here in this sacred space between worlds. We ask that you do not follow us to our homes.”

  Wait a minute. Follow us? No one said a word about anything potentially following us.

  “Marcus. You getting anything?” Joe called from the far corner.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Of course, we’ll have to analyze the tape and clean it up, but there’s something here, yeah.”

  “Gen? You?”

  “Some pretty fine clicks of orbs. The buggers are all over the place. Evie had one nearly a foot across hovering around her shoulders. The thing was following her, no matter where we moved.”

  “The temp around me was a full fifteen degrees colder than when I handed the laser thermometer to Gen,” Evie added. “Totally wild.”