Only later, after he read my journal and discovered how much I knew, how involved I was, did he come up with his plan to call me from your phone, to use my fear to lure me back.
I’m sorry it took so long to find the entry about Allerton, to figure it out.
But after that last entry when I told you I was leaving, in the space that followed those words, my entire life shattered. You died. I kept living.
It’s better now, but I’ve missed my journal. I’ve missed talking to you in this way, because that’s what I was doing. I was always talking to you when I was writing in my journal. Funny. Most people write to themselves, maybe. I write to you.
But after that night, after we fought, I couldn’t bring myself to write in this journal anymore. I felt guilty about our fight. I felt guilty for the words that were said. And I’m also sorry that we didn’t say all those words sooner.
I felt like your death was my fault. That’s the truth right there. If we hadn’t fought, you wouldn’t have stormed out in anger that night and you might be alive right now.
I wish you were alive right now. I miss you.
You were right about a lot of things. But you were wrong about some things, too.
Most of the Throne deaths were murders, but not all.
The police inspected Randle Garrety’s car and found no evidence of tampering. His death was an accident. He wasn’t found at the Throne like the others. He was not involved in witchcraft, had no connection to Martin Fisher like the others. His girlfriend merely blamed his death on the Witch’s Throne to make sense of her grief and guilt.
But Martin Fisher used Garrety’s death. He was the one to contact the Donnevilles and offer the deal of access to the Throne, knowing Beverly’s appearance would attract notice after Garrety’s death, keep the Throne legend alive.
Martin was also the one to call Charles to inform them that you were in Portico, that you had asked for access to the Throne. That’s why they arrived in Portico so soon after you posted the video of you sitting on the throne.
You were right that Beverly Donneville is a fraud, but she also believes everything she says. She believed the journal came to her through your preternatural power from the beyond. She believed in the Throne. She believed in her ability to save people from its evil influence. She believed the curse took your life.
She believed her husband was good person until late on the night of All Hallows’ Eve, after my big speech, Sosie Powell burst into the Burns’s home and told her that, if she cared to look, she would most likely not find him in his study on the third floor but at the Witch’s Throne.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR | NOVEMBER 18
Today is a good day. Day 176.
Day 16 since I’ve needed the pills.
I close my journal and place it on the desk. I am in my office, which is to say, the tower room that used to be George’s office. George would have wanted it that way. I’ve left the framed covers of George’s books on the walls and his letter from James Randi.
But I bought a new desk. And I turned it around, so now I sit facing the window, looking out on the land George and I bought together. I watch Lydia lying in the hammock beneath the oaks, eyes on her phone, music in her ears. I see Juliet kicking the soccer ball from one end of the yard to the other.
Thanksgiving is three days away, but the weather has warmed this week, each day sunnier than the last. I called Joe Holt, a boy Lydia’s age from town, to come and blow the leaves from our yard and bag them. It was a job George loved. I think his favorite part was the leaf-blower. It was the kind he wore as a backpack, and he would look like a strange sort of country astronaut out there in the landscape of whirling leaves, a heavy mechanism on his back with hoses and cords. He would wave the blower around, looking like he barely had control of the thing, and the leaves would be swirling in all directions. But somehow, after an hour or two, they would all be in piles along the lane, and he would pack them all into bags while the girls did their best to scatter the piles by jumping in them and stomping through them.
This year, the girls didn’t jump in the leaves. Lydia talked with Joe while Juliet kicked a few piles, then somehow talked Lydia into pushing her on the tire swing. Both of them waved at Joe as he left, turning around in the lane in his pickup and driving off.
I realize, sitting here now, watching my girls through the window, that I barely have three years left with Lydia living at home. She will go to college. That’s her plan. She’ll come home on holidays and to visit, of course, but it will be different. Then Julie will grow up and do the same thing a few years later.
My phone rings with an unknown number. Fear flips my stomach, but I answer anyway.
It’s Jeremy Fisher.
“Did you hear?”
“I hate when people begin conversations with those words.”
“They destroyed it.”
“What?”
He sighs with exaggeration. “The Witch’s Throne, what else?”
“How?”
“Ground it up with this kickass machine that chewed it up in about twenty minutes.”
“Wow.”
“I’m sure they’ll make the site into sacred ground and go right on with the same bullshit.”
“Probably.”
“Listen...I also called because I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. About stealing your journal and selling it to those people. I really needed the money. If I had known...if I’d had any idea…”
“I know, and it’s okay.”
“There’s one thing I don’t understand, though. If Charles didn’t really want George’s voice notes, why did he take George’s phone?”
“He knew he could use it to scare me.”
I kept my promise to Martha Sassaman. I never told another person outside our group what she had done. When she died, we drove with the girls more than an hour to attend Mrs. Sassaman’s funeral. Juliet was three months old. Lydia was eight. Liddy had recently learned what cemeteries were and wanted to talk about them constantly. She made drawing after drawing of tombstones and stick figures with X’s for eyes.
I was exhausted and frumpy and bloated and basically disoriented with life altogether. Juliet cried constantly. I remember being terrified she would begin to wail inexplicably in the middle of the service, and that I would have to figure out why and stop her. Afraid that Lydia would ask how Martha died or would draw a picture of her corpse and show it around.
But Lydia stayed quiet through the whole ceremony. I don’t know why. Juliet did not cry, and in fact, slept through the entire two hours we were there. Liddy drew but kept the pictures to herself. George carried the infant seat through the line, and I held Lydia’s hand and as we passed her coffin.
At home that night, George and I sat in our living room. Lydia was in bed. I was half-asleep in the rocker recliner, Julie in my arms.
George muted the television. “You know what I’ve been thinking about?”
I opened my eyes slowly.
“That day at the Sassaman’s. You were writing in a notebook, remember?”
“Yes.”
“You still have it?”
I told him it was probably with the boxes in storage in the attic, and then I fell asleep.
The next morning, I was still in the recliner, and George was at the small desk in the corner of the kitchen where we kept the computer, typing.
Sixteen months later, George Drake’s The Widow’s Revenge hit number one on the nonfiction bestsellers list under the paranormal category. It stayed there for three weeks.
The Widow’s Revenge eventually fell to number two. Right behind Charles Donneville’s The New Century Guide to Demonology.
I’m on the back porch, watching the sun set over the fields below, when my mother appears and sits beside me on the porch swing.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Good.”
“Are you sure?”
“Stop.”
S
he throws her hands up. “Just checking. The offer still stands, you know. You and the girls are welcome at our house any time. No need to rattle around in this big old place.”
I manage to keep my thoughts to myself. “Thank you.”
Lydia pokes her head out the back door. “Going to Kelly’s,” she says.
Mom opens her mouth and I squeeze her knee. Hard. She yelps.
Lydia smiles. I haven’t seen her smile for...ages.
“All right,” I say. “See you later.”
“Bye,” she says.
My mother crosses her legs and arms but to her credit manages to keep silent. Finally, she returns to the house without—and I give her credit for this—saying another word.
Alone, finally. I sip a glass of wine.
Nothing happened between George and Sosie Powell, just like nothing ever happened between Calvin and me. But that doesn’t mean nothing would have ever happened. That doesn’t mean we didn’t indulge in the potential of what might happen.
Deep love and anger.
Good and evil.
Insanity and deception.
Which would I have chosen if my marriage had lasted another twenty years?
A shadow moves in the farthest part of the backyard, right at the tree line.
I stand up. The chains of the porch swing squeak and pop.
The shadow moves closer.
It’s a man.
I’m reaching for my phone to call 911 when the man lifts his hand and waves. He steps into the back yard, in the pool of light thrown from the porch.
Calvin.
He’s wearing the sheepskin coat George gave him for Christmas last year and the Doc Martin boots he’s had since college. His hair is shorter than the last time I saw him.
At George’s funeral.
His hand drops. He stuffs them in his pockets. “I didn’t want the girls to see me yet, or your parents. I saw you out here when I drove by, so I parked down the road and walked up through the trees.” He glances at my phone. “Did I scare you?”
“No. What are you doing here?”
He climbs the steps and stops in front of me. He takes my hand.
“I couldn’t stay away one minute longer.”
THE END
Haunts of the Brethren
(Thea Drake Mystery Book 2)
Available DEC 2017
WANT TO READ HAUNTS OF THE BRETHREN FREE?
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STACEY ANDERSON LAATSCH
is the author of mystery, fantasy, and historical fiction, including her debut series, the Thea Drake Mysteries. She holds an M.A. in English and Creative Writing.
Notable of her life’s accomplishments include a commitment as primary caregiver to her two daughters throughout their formative years, a successful marriage and partnership sustained over two decades, and the realization of an absurd lifelong plan to write fiction for a living.
She foresees an expansive future. Watch it unfold at www.StaceyAndersonLaatsch.com.
The Witch's Throne (Thea Drake Mystery Book 1) (Thea Drake Mysteries) Page 24