“So, Thea,” he said, putting the case between us and using it as an armrest. He opened the paper bag and twisted the cap from the bottle. “You’re a freshman. How do you like our school so far?”
My mouth opened to tell him the lie. That the school was great, I was great, everything was great. Instead, I took the bottle he offered and drank before I spoke.
“Not great.”
He nodded, as if I’d offered a profound statement for him to ponder.
I had left the dorm without my coat, even though it was cold. I’d thought I’d be going right back to my room. I crossed my arms, trying to warm myself. He passed me the bottle and then shrugged his jacket off, handing it over. “Sorry, I guess you had other plans than hanging around on a rooftop, huh?”
“Not really, no.” I sipped from the bottle. It burned and was thrilling. I had drunk whisky before, but not on a rooftop, not in a crowd of kids my age being wild and restless and obnoxious in the loudest possible way, not with a boy older than me with dark shining eyes and thick hair. He leaned on the beer case again, and our arms pressed together, his skin warm against mine. He leaned forward, grinning, and offered the jacket to me. I took it but didn’t put it on. I wanted our skin to stay in contact. I pulled the jacket up by my chin like a blanket.
I handed the bottle back to him. “You haven’t told me your name yet.”
“It’s Calvin.”
I smiled. “I like it.”
“Yeah?” He drank from the bottle, which was almost half gone. I felt a bit lightheaded. “So…Thea and Calvin. The only two people who don’t dress up for Halloween. Why is that?”
I shrug. “I can never think of a good costume. How about you?”
He leans far over the edge, spitting. Two painted skull faces look up at us.
“Seems unwise to mock such things.”
“You believe in monsters? Demons and zombies and all that?”
“I keep an open mind.”
“Ghosts? You believe they exist?”
He leaned farther over the building. “Yeah, I do.”
“Really?”
“I’ve seen one,” he said to the ground far below.
I wake up exhausted. And thirsty. The room is quiet, dark. Outside, the rain still falls. Mitch and Rita haven’t returned.
I pour a large glass of water. I still feel sick from the beer I drank at Martin Fisher’s, and I’m exhausted from confronting Sosie. I have the first pounding pulses of a headache. It’s only 3pm, but I’ve barely slept since we left Illinois.
And what do I have to show for it?
The only additional information I have is the confirmation that Sosie was the one who filmed George on the Throne. George himself posted it on his website the same night, but it was also posted on Sosie’s site.
I have never watched it.
I open my laptop and find the video on the PorticoWitch.com.
Lydia pops into my head. She spends most of her time watching videos online. I wonder if she’s watched this. It occurs to me that most likely she has. Almost certainly. For one wild moment, I want to call her and ask her. I want to know what she thinks of all this. But what kind of mother would I be? She shouldn’t have to see this. How can I take this video down? Block it somehow? I should look into that. Lydia would know.
I hit play.
George, smiling, begins by chatting to the camera. In the dark, he climbs up and sits on the Throne. But then, as he’s smiling and charming the internet audience, a white orb appears in the upper right, over George’s shoulder.
The white orb is a video edit, a highlight, so that the viewer can see what was overlooked in the original: a shadow, a brief movement.
The video then changes. It jumps back four seconds and plays repeatedly the same four-second loop: the shadow’s brief movement.
I scroll down to the comments.
What is this supposed to be?
Someone - or something - was there.
Oooh! Creepy!
It’s a fucking raccoon. Or a smudge on the lens.
If it’s a smudge on the lens, then why is it moving independent of the camera phone? And if it’s a raccoon, or any other animal, why is it moving so slowly. Most woodland animals move in small, jerky movements. And why the fuck is it so high? It’s over his shoulder.
After many attempts, I manage to pause the video at the exact moment the shadow appears, the moment the editor added the highlight.
Let’s assume it’s not the malevolent spirit of a nineteenth century witch. What is the only reasonable assumption?
An animal.
A present-day witch sneaking out to the site.
Martin Fisher with the police.
A tree branch.
Head down on table.
Deep breath.
No wonder people go crazy considering these things. If even a shadow on a video is open to interpretation, we do nothing but interpret it. We drive ourselves and others insane doing so.
I understand why people stick to their choice, whether to believe or not, because to open to question is to slide into the insane world of unknown. Too many choices, too many paths of belief.
For instance: George and Sosie. I get to choose what I believe. Either she was leading him into danger to further her own insane ideas, or she was drawn to him by their mutual interest in the occult. Either he was using her to gain access to the Throne or he was fascinated by her particular brand of crazy.
Either they were meeting to discuss witchcraft and legend in Portico, or they were meeting for other reasons.
I brace myself to face the screen again and the stilled image, George’s smiling face.
A knock sounds on the door before it opens. “Thea?”
It’s Mitch.
“Come in,” I shout, wiping my tears.
“What a complete waste of time,” Rita is saying as she stomps in the room, halting when she sees me. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Sure. What happened?”
“They weren’t there. As soon as we got to the highway, we met the whole line of cars driving back into town. We turned around and followed, drove around town a while, hoping to spot them in one of the cars, maybe see a crowd gathered at someone’s house or something, but nothing.”
“I’m going back out,” says Rita.
“Now?”
“I’m going to ask around. I’ll go back to that bar if I have to. What are they going to do? Cast a spell on me?”
She left quietly enough, but I heard her swearing in the hall and then the tires squealing as she pulled away from the inn.
“Hey,” says Mitch, “tell me what’s wrong.”
I shake my head.
He glances at my computer screen, at George. “This woman at the bar. You still think she’s hiding something?”
“When George called you that night. You said he talked about me. What did he say?”
“Good stuff. He was glad you were on the trip this time. Said the two of you hardly traveled after the girls were born. He said how hard you worked researching, writing, organizing everything for him. That he was lost without you. He said he didn’t deserve you.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah. And he meant it. I could tell.”
“You also said he was drunk.”
“Yeah, well. Drunk people tell the truth.”
“My dad. That was the ghost I saw.”
Calvin took another swig of whisky and passed me the bottle.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Died when I was fifteen. Heavy smoker.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “My parents were divorced for years, but we’d visit him every other weekend, a few weeks each summer. His new wife was nice. We liked her. My brother was just a kid when he died. He was broken up about it. So about six months after he died, Mary Ann—that was our step-mother— decides to sell the big house they lived in. She’s packing up hi
s study, and she asks me and my brother if we want to come and pick something of his to remember him by.”
He swallows more alcohol, waves at a guy on the street below dressed in robes with blood red circles painted around his eyes.
“One Saturday, my mom takes us up there, and she goes shopping while we pick our mementos. My mother couldn’t stand Mary Ann. Anyway, so my brother picks some cheap plastic model plane on one of the shelves. I don’t even know if he still has it. I think he just wanted to pick the first thing that caught his eye and get the hell out of there.
“But I knew exactly what I wanted. When I was little, before my brother was born, my dad used to smoke these cigars that he ordered special from a cigar shop that imported them just for him. And they came in these wooden boxes with brass hinges and a little doohickey closure thing on the front. And whenever his cigars came in, he always let me have the box. They smelled so good. They smelled like him.
“I had six of them, I think. And one way or another, I lost them all. I think I left some behind when they divorced. And then I think I gave one away. One got broken. I got older and didn’t care about them much anymore. But I wanted one of those boxes to remember him by.
“Well, I couldn’t find one. I searched that study all freaking day. My mom came back; she was lecturing me. Even Mary Ann was getting impatient, I could tell. My kid brother was being a pain. But finally, finally I found one.”
He laughed. He stared off into the distance as if watching his story play out like a movie in the night sky.
“It was hidden on the very top shelf in his study behind a row of books. Didn’t have anything in it, no cigars, no keepsakes, just empty, but it was hidden. Protected. Put aside. Safe. I had to climb up on a ladder to find it. I had to bring a goddamn ladder up from the shed. Thought Mary Ann was finally going to kick us out, say she’d had it. I could hear Mom yelling at my brother. I could see Mary Ann from the window out on the lawn, her arms crossed, watching my mom’s car.
“I climbed down from the ladder, and when I turned, my dad was sitting in his chair by the fireplace.”
I couldn’t think of a single word to say. I pulled his jacket tighter to my chin.
“It scared the shit out of me. Not like a horror movie, scared of ghosts, scared of the dead coming to life. It scared me because everything else was normal. The sunny day, my angry mother, my annoying little brother. The room was ordinary. Except that he was sitting there and he wasn’t supposed to be.
“My legs gave out from under me. I just freaking collapsed. And when I pushed myself back up, he was gone.”
“What did your mom say?”
“About seeing the ghost of my father? Uh, I didn’t tell her.” He rubbed the back of his neck. His hands fell to his lap, and he stared at them. “I’ve never told anyone.”
He walked me back to my dorm sometime in the early hours of November 1, and when he stopped at my door, I handed him his jacket. He hesitated.
I wanted him to say keep it. He wanted to say keep it, I know he did. To this day, I know he wanted to say it.
But he didn’t. Instead, he took the jacket, stepped forward, wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me to him, pressing his mouth hard to mine.
He pulled away first but held me close, lips brushing my cheek, over my eyelids, my forehead. He pressed his face into my hair and inhaled. My head was tucked under his chin, his pulse was right at my lips. I pressed them to the base of his throat.
He stepped back. “Bye, Thea.”
I watched him turn and walk away.
That was the last time I saw him—that version of Calvin Drake.
Mitch and I order sandwiches from the inn’s restaurant and eat them while watching Naked and Afraid. While the show is on, he’s occupied, instructing the participants—“You build the shelter first, idiots!”—and criticizing their fire-starting capabilities—“Who doesn’t choose to bring a fire starter to the Amazon, Thea? Tell me, please. What completely masochistic survival fanatic has to use the hand-drill method? What in God’s name is he trying to prove?”
We pass two not-terrible hours this way, but the show ends, and Mitch gets restless, cleaning his camera, rearranging the books on the shelves, pacing the room. I flip through the channels mindlessly. By midnight, Rita still hasn’t returned.
“I’m going to look for her.” He pulls on his coat and takes the umbrella. It’s still raining hard.
“You don’t have a car.”
“I’ll check the Corner, then I’ll…I’ll just walk down Main Street. She’ll find me.”
He leaves with a quick salute.
Calm settles as soon as he’s gone, and the room feels twice as big without him. I turn off the television and think about calling Officer Tims to ask if he’s found any information on George’s phone, but if he was on duty this morning, I doubt he’ll be at the station this late. I don’t have any other number for him.
Should I ask Officer Tims about Sosie? Ask him to find out if she was with George that night? God, what would he think about that question? I already feel stupid enough telling him about the ghost phone calls.
The four-poster bed in our room is enormous. I lie back again, phone on my stomach.
Mitch and Rita are convinced Beverly Donneville had something to do with George’s death. The whole reason we came here was to confront her. And that is the last thing I want to do.
I must fall asleep because I wake up at the sound of my phone ringing. Without thinking, I roll over and look at the screen.
George’s face smiles back at me.
My hand shakes. My thumb hovers over the answer button. It’s not George. I know it’s not. But who?
Beverly?
Sosie?
Jeremy Fisher?
I tap answer.
Nothing. A low white noise. The kind of stuff Rita used to analyze hours of waiting for something to pop or shuffle.
“Who is this?” I croak.
Nothing.
“Whoever this is, you’ve won. I’m already scared. I’m scared all of the time.”
Nothing.
JOURNAL OF THEA DRAKE | MAY 30
Guess where I found most of the details regarding the death of Michael Poste in 1980?
Charles Donneville.
Specifically, his book, A Practical Guide to Demonology. I know it’s been years since you’ve read it, so I summarized the relevant passages here.
1980 – Michael Poste
Tenatree Lumber finally closed for good in 1979 after enduring over a century. One hundred fifty-eight men and women were laid off from the mill and its offices. In the year after its closing, three of those former employees committed suicide. One of them was forty-three-year-old mill foreman and father of three, Michael Poste.
By all accounts, Poste was a nasty son of a bitch. He was an alcoholic who was constantly angry, even when he was sober. When he was drunk, he let his temper flare at anyone, most often his wife and three children. His ex-wife, who would never admit to the abuse, would not press charges, but over thirty years later, she was upfront about how extensive it had been. Both physical and mental, and constant.
In early August of 1980, Portico was in the middle of a rare heat wave. The Poste house didn’t have air conditioning, and so the family was sleeping on the porch the early morning hours of August 8 when Michael Poste stumbled through the yard after a night of drinking at the Corner.
Barbara Poste woke up to find her husband standing over her, pointing a shotgun at her nose.
“I thought I was dead. I thought that was it. My life changed that day, even before he went and shot himself. I saw how useless and powerless I had become. I could do nothing. I couldn’t save myself. I couldn’t save my children. I’d barely been surviving. I had made this terrible choice to align my life with his, and it slowly killed me. By the time he pointed that gun at me, I was already dead.”
Michael told her to get up. Barbara did so, leaving her children on the porch, awake but terrif
ied to move. He took Barbara into the bedroom and began to rifle through the top shelf in the closet. Throwing shoes, clothes, boxes all over the room. Finally, he found what he was looking for: a battered shoebox.
It was filled with notebooks. He opened one and showed his wife. Line after line of Michael’s slanted, almost indecipherable, scribble filled the pages, thousands of pages. There were at least two-dozen notebooks in the box.
“He wouldn’t tell me what was happening, what he was doing. He wanted to show me this box. He said it was his ‘work’ and that he wanted me to pass it on if something happened to him. He was drunk and waving a gun around. I barely heard what he was saying.”
Barbara promised to do whatever Michael asked. He was so drunk, he kept falling against the furniture. He tripped and fell to the floor once. Barbara was hoping he would pass out so she could take the gun, but after showing her the boxes, Michael took a bottle of vodka he always kept in the freezer and walked away in the same direction from which he’d come.
“I watched him walk across the porch, knowing that he could point that gun at each of our children, bam, bam, bam, and there was nothing I could do about it. But he kept walking. I watched him walk away until he turned the corner at the end of the street and disappeared.”
She picked up one of the notebooks. Along with the writing, which she could not understand—it was filled with words in a foreign language she didn’t recognize—there were drawings. “Horrible, disgusting drawings.” When pressed to describe the drawings, she shook her head and refused.
“We left that night. I had the kids pack their school bags with a few clothes, that’s it. I took a loaf of bread, some peanut butter, some bags of chips, and we left. We took the car as far as Los Angeles and abandoned it on a street I can’t remember the name of. By the time the police tracked me down to tell me about Mike, we were in a shelter in South Gate.”
The Witch's Throne (Thea Drake Mystery Book 1) (Thea Drake Mysteries) Page 14