by Ira Bloom
“A technicality. Cool it, daddy-o, you’re such a square. I was a hepcat. Anyway, since I hit it off with Becky, we did the deal for three generations. Good old Becks. I wonder what she’s been up to lately?”
“Nothing. She’s dead,” Esme said, flipping on her turn signal. Their exit was coming up.
“So? Some of my best friends are dead.”
Dr. Frederick Stein and his son, Franklin, lived in a converted free clinic that had been run by a small group of local doctors and nurses and funded by a local charitable trust. The clinic had originally been a large house deeded to the trust by the wealthy dowager who’d lived there. The Steins had moved in at the end of July. Dr. Stein intended to see outpatients pro bono, but the new clinic wasn’t operable yet, and they were still in the process of converting the upstairs back into a house.
Dr. Stein worked at the state university in the city, where he’d accepted a very nice position teaching neurobiology based on his world-class reputation and his ability to pull lucrative research grants from Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies. During the week he stayed in a comfortable off-campus faculty apartment. He traveled home every weekend to be with his son. At about one o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, there was a knock on the front door. Norm and his dad were in the partially refurnished living room, playing a game of chess.
“Hey, Wilson,” Norm said, opening the door. Next to Wilson on the porch, with an expression of anxiety and discomfort almost painful to witness, was Jackson Gartner. The side of his face was covered in gauze bandages.
“Dude, we need to talk to you,” Wilson said. Norm stood aside to let the two into the house.
“Wilson,” Norm said when they were all standing awkwardly around the living room. He rested an enormous hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry about your family, man.” He didn’t know what else to say. Everything he could think of seemed so meaningless.
“Yeah, man, thanks,” Wilson said, studying the floor. “It’s real bad.”
“Jackson, this is my father, Dr. Frederick Stein. Dad, you know Wilson, this is Jackson Gartner. He’s in some of my classes at school.”
Dr. Stein rose to greet the boys. He looked clownishly short next to his son, paunchy, with curly, graying hair, a prominent nose, and wire-rimmed bifocals. He extended a hand to Jackson. “Call me Fred.”
Jackson shook, weakly. He was perspiring freely. He looked like he wanted to run and hide in a closet. Very odd behavior for a boy Norman knew best as an insensitive lout and a bully.
“Can we go talk someplace?” Wilson implored, eyes darting to Norm’s dad.
“Is this about Jackson’s apparent case of malaria?” Norm asked, not moving. “Because he looks like he needs medical attention.”
Jackson took one quick step backward, as if he wanted to bolt for the door and run for his life. Norm put a hand on his back to steady him. Dr. Stein moved decisively. He was a foremost expert on idiopathic neuropathy. “Jackson, would you please step into the clinic for a moment? Whatever you’re nervous about, I’m a doctor, so you’ll be in very good hands.” He gestured toward the door to the lab. “Unless you bite, and then all bets are off.”
Jackson looked around the room for an escape, eyes full of panic, but with Norman’s hand on his shoulder, he allowed himself to be coaxed into an examining room.
“He’s not sick,” Wilson said. Dr. Stein and Norman waited patiently for elucidation. “But there’s something wrong with him, I didn’t know what else to do, and you’re the smartest guy I know. He’s just fine, unless you try to ask him questions about the fight. I saw Logan in the hospital, and he’s the same. If you ask him any questions about the guys that beat them up, he’s too terrified to say anything. He’s got IV needles in both arms, and that thing that beeps, with the wavy lines? I tried to get a description of the pickup those guys were driving, and Logan tried to pull all the needles out of his arm. You know Logan, he’s reckless, not nervous. What could have put the scare into them like that?”
“Let’s find out,” Dr. Stein said.
While Dr. Stein checked Jackson’s vitals, Wilson and Norm waited on chairs in the hallway. “Why’d you want a description of the truck?” Norm asked, though he could guess the answer.
“Okay, me and some of the guys from the football team and the weight room were going to go to Davidsonville and try to find those guys. Because it’s not right, what they did to Danny and Logan and Jackson. Danny … you should see him. He’s so messed up. He’s never going to be the same; he has massive head trauma. He coulda been all-state.”
After the examination, they all returned to the living room to sit around the coffee table. “Let’s give Jackson a few minutes to get acclimated to the meds I gave him,” Dr. Stein said. Jackson’s pallor and appearance seemed improved, though he looked a little lethargic. He certainly wasn’t in the state of panic he’d been in on his arrival. “I’ve given him a sedative, and some serotonin reuptake inhibitors. He’s had an injection of anabolic steroids, some mood stabilizers I had handy, and some neurohormones. How are you feeling, Jackson?”
“Better,” Jackson replied.
Norman decided that Jackson looked a bit giddy, like a stoner kid he knew at school who always reeked of pot after lunch. “A little heavy-handed on the sedatives, don’t you think?”
“Well it was touch and go for a while there,” Dr. Stein explained. “I had to give him a little post-hypnotic suggestion, and I told him he’d feel wonderful when he came out.”
“So what do you think, Dad?” Norman asked.
“A very interesting case,” Dr. Stein said. “Jackson is experiencing severe anxiety, panic attacks bordering on sheer terror. At first I assumed he was having extreme post-traumatic stress related to injuries he’d sustained in his recent conflict. But that didn’t explain his mood swings. When I mentioned his friends or the fight, he had the panic reaction, but when I changed the subject, his blood pressure immediately dropped to normal range, and he calmed down. I drew blood and tested it three times, once for a base, two times during the panic attacks. I checked peptides, adrenaline, endorphins, serotonin, everything. In a normal panic attack or in a pathological case, the neurohormones drive the reaction. But in Jackson’s case, the mention of the fight caused his endocrine system to spontaneously produce unprecedented quantities of glucocorticoids and catecholamine, the neurohormones associated with fear.”
“So what do you think is the problem?” Norm asked.
“I’ll need to do some research. But I think that Jackson here has been given a very intense post-hypnotic suggestion that stimulates his endocrine system to go haywire when he tries to recall the details of the fight. And it’s not a normal pathology, either: Someone did this to him deliberately. Jackson, do you think you can talk about the incident now?” Dr. Stein asked. “Can you tell us who beat up you and your friends?”
Jackson still looked a bit anxious, darting his eyes back and forth. “Okay,” he said at last. “But you can nev’r ev’r tell anyone I told you. And no police.” He paused for a long time, gathering his nerve. “It was Zack.”
“And this Zack fellow,” Dr. Stein asked. “Is he um … as big as Norman here?”
“Pi’squeak,” Jackson declared, shaking his head once with conviction.
“Don’t worry,” Dr. Stein assured. “We aren’t going to tell anyone. I have to look into this.”
“Are you crazy?” Norm asked. “We have to tell the police. I knew there was something wrong with that guy the minute I laid eyes on him. He’s a danger to everyone. Somebody could have been killed! And he knows how to hypnotize people? We have to warn everyone!”
But Wilson had a look of deep consternation on his acne-riddled brow. “No, dude. We can’t tell the police. We can’t tell anyone.”
“You too, Wilson? Don’t you understand how dangerous he is?”
“Yeah,” Wilson replied, worrying his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. “But I just thought of something
that scares the hell out of me. Logan already did talk to the police. Remember, Norm? He said he saw Sandy following Zack’s car on the night she disappeared, and that was the last anyone saw of her. And now he’s in the ICU.”
“But he was just talking smack, right?” Norman asked. “Did he really go to the police?”
“Was Sandy one of those girls who disappeared?” Dr. Stein asked.
“Yeah,” Wilson replied, thinking deep, an odd expression for a guy who never rubbed two brain cells together to create a synapse unless he was deciding between a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder with cheese. “Sandy was, like, the second one. After Miss Edwards. Who was Zack’s teacher. Logan did talk to the police. My uncle Rob asked me did I know Logan and Zack. He asked me if Logan was the type of person to start trouble. He wanted to know what I thought of Zack. I told him, Zack gets all the girls, but we all think there’s something wrong about him. Like you said, Norman, a sociopath or something.”
“Yeah, but … you aren’t saying … ”
“My uncle was murdered. The whole family. They found the dog outside in the dog run, with a broken neck.”
“You know,” Dr. Stein said, “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to go to the police at this juncture. Because I just thought of something else it could be. And if this is that, we’re going to have to think long and hard about what we intend to do about it.”
It was early afternoon when Esme and Kasha arrived at her mother’s store. The front of the store was fairly busy, the result of Melinda’s pseudo-magic crystal business and a few lines she’d recently added to pay the bills, including tabi socks, yoga pants, and aromatherapy candles. Melinda had originally intended for her store to serve the Wiccan community when she’d named it The Old Town Herbalist, but the Earth Mother–wannabe trade paid the bills.
Melinda only sold crystals because her customers wanted to buy them. She told them that crystals promoted domestic harmony and came in handy for spell casting. She didn’t mention that crystals only promoted domestic harmony when you threatened to hit your man in the head with one if he didn’t come to his senses, and were only useful in spell casting if you were working from an old scroll and needed something to weight down the edges.
Kitaro’s meditative new age music wafted through the store, creating a spiritual mood, and sandalwood incense scented the air. The little bells above the door jingled when Esme entered, followed by her sleek, striped familiar.
“Excuse me, miss, is that your cat?” asked the salesgirl, a neo-pagan Goth with pink highlights and enough hardware in her face to back up an airport security checkpoint for a half hour. “Wait a minute.” A look of consternation replaced her normally vacuous expression. “I know that cat.”
“Is my mom in, Vanessa?” Esme asked. Vanessa had been working at the Herbalist for over three years, and she had a pathological inability to recognize people or put names to faces. So naturally, she’d pursued a career in sales.
“I go by Venus now,” Vanessa corrected. “Uh … hi. Uh … yeah. You. Long time no see. She’s in the back doing a tarot reading.”
“I’ll be in the apothecary getting supplies,” Esme said. “When you see Mom, tell her I’m here, will you?”
The Old Town Herbalist was on the border of the warehouse district, over two thousand square feet zoned for retail, subdivided from a huge old feed store. The area was undergoing urban development and was in danger of becoming trendy. Coffee shops and secondhand clothing stores were sprouting like weeds. The apothecary section was in a back room with lofty ceilings of rough-hewn red oak beams. There was no direct light on the herbs, because exposure to light could change their properties. The room had originally been used for grain storage, so it was dry and dark and a little cooler than the rest of the store.
Esme used a wicker basket to gather packets of botanicals and minerals and dried animal products. She picked up some amber and sage and wolfsbane for the purification rituals the beauty potion required. She needed bachelor buttons and dragon’s blood and poppy—both seed and flower—mugwort and mullein and powdered orrisroot, also known in voodoo as “love drawing powder.” In her basket she put echinacea and citronella and skullcap, which she needed to channel Kasha’s eldritch energies for potency.
“Don’t forget to pick up some catnip,” Kasha reminded her. “Always useful to have around.”
Esme decided to forego the little lidded teapots for steeping, the hot plates for slowly leaching herbs to maximize the potency of ointments, and the copper-lined pots for evenly boiling down extracts. She had already picked up a supply of Bunsen burners and test tubes and beakers from a laboratory supply website. Esme was not an old-school type of girl. As a scientist, she demanded clinical perfection.
When Melinda entered the herb room after her session, she strode briskly to Esme, arms open for an embrace. And suddenly she halted, stunned, like a bird that had flown into a glass door. “Kasha,” she muttered. “It’s … wait … give me a second.” Melinda bumbled around for a moment, punch drunk. “It’s you, you’ve … I forgot all about you. I’ve been walking around here like a zombie for the last five months, looking everywhere for something I’d lost without knowing what it was. And now you’re back.”
Kasha was nonchalant. Nobody does nonchalant better than a cat, except maybe a demon cat. “Melinda,” he acknowledged. “You look like hell. And I know what hell looks like.”
Kasha had a point, Esme thought. Her mother was in her mid-forties but had always looked much younger. People didn’t exactly confuse them for siblings, but in public it didn’t usually occur to strangers that Melinda was Esme’s mom. But she looked old enough now.
“I thought you’d dropped off the face of the earth,” Melinda told Kasha.
“Stupid woman. The earth is a sphere. You can’t drop off the face of it. It’s all face.”
“I’m glad you’re back,” she said, getting on one knee to scratch him behind the ears. “I need you. Don’t ever disappear like that again.”
“Too bad, I’m with Esme now.” Kasha stretched out on the floor and began licking himself.
Melinda stood, slowly, like she was weighted down. She crossed her arms and regarded Kasha, then her daughter, back and forth a few times, before settling on Esme. “No you’re not,” she declared. “I won’t allow it.” She took a step toward Esme. “What are you doing here, what’s all this stuff for?” she accused. She began pulling herbs and powdered animal parts out of Esme’s basket. “What’s this for? Orrisroot powder? Do you know what this does? And Osha root, Solomon’s root, agrimony? Is somebody cursing you?” As she pulled the packets out of Esme’s basket, she threw them on the floor.
“Those are for Ronnie, if you must know,” Esme returned with bitter self-righteousness.
“Who said you could make potions? Who said you could have a familiar? I’m still your mother,” Melinda reminded her.
But all she reminded Esme of was how demanding she could be. Esme had been locking horns with Melinda since her horns had first grown in. “You left us to fend for ourselves, Mother,” she returned. “So I’m fending.”
“I’m still your mother,” Melinda volleyed. “I have a right to know what you’re doing.”
“Oh, you want to be my mother again, Melinda?” Esme returned. Her horns were bigger now. She was a sixteen-point buck. “Are you planning to move back home? So you can make Ronnie keep her panties covered in school, because I’m tired of fighting with her every day about her microscopic skirts. And so you can cook us a meal, Mom? And do the shopping and vacuum and take Katy’s dogs to their vet appointments and Ronnie to her ballet classes. And sleep with Dad, before somebody else gets the idea. And help Katy with her homework. If it weren’t for me, she’d be in remedial math. Since you’re coming home, you can deal with it. Because I’m not the mother, you’re the mother.”
Melinda took a step, arm drawn back, hand flattened for a slap. Esme stood her ground, defiant. She even jutted out her cheek a little, pre
senting a target. But after a second, Melinda only touched Esme’s cheek with her hand tenderly. “I only want what’s best for you, honey. I never want to stop being your mother. Not when you’re ninety-nine years old, and I’m a hundred and fifteen.”
“She probably shouldn’t help Katy with her math,” Kasha quipped.
Esme hadn’t meant to launch like that, but all the putrid little frustrations and resentment had suddenly surfaced like a fart in a bathtub. “I want you to always be my mom,” she said. “But you abandoned us! Can’t you come home? We need you.” She needed Melinda, to straighten out the boy thing. Ronnie was too young to date and Katy didn’t have a responsible bone in her body, not even a sesamoid, which was only an ossified node.
“I promise, I’ll try to get home more. But I have to go to Amesbury in two weeks for a council meeting on the solstice, and I won’t be back until after the vernal equinox.”
“Stonehenge? For four months? You can’t go. Not now!”
Melinda hugged her. “It’s a major pagan event. I committed to this over a year ago. I told you all about it. There are solar, lunar, and stellar alignments that won’t reoccur in our lifetime. I’m a keynote speaker.”
“But you’re never home. Can’t you get out of it?” Esme pleaded.
“Honey. I wish I could. I’ll help you with your potion, or whatever you’re working on. But Kasha? Do you know what he is? Do you know what you’re getting yourself into? I don’t want you getting mixed up in this stuff. You need to get a little more experience under your belt.”
“Unfortunately, it isn’t up to you, Melinda,” Kasha said.
“How could you just leave me like that?” she reproached the cat. “Damn you!”
“Redundant, that,” he reminded her.
“I’ll get you a Siamese kitten. Blue point. From a breeder. I’ll let you pick her out.”
“Tempting. Esme, I hope you’re taking notes. I do have a fondness for Asian chicks. But no, I’m going to give Esme a whirl.”