by Shannon West
“Are you kidding me? I live here! My grandmother’s in there.”
He started to respond, already shaking his head, but Nick must have heard my voice, and I heard him call out. “That’s okay, Will, let him in.” I pushed past the deputy and I heard Nick calling to me from the kitchen. I raced to the door and almost collapsed with relief when I saw my gran, Aunt Rose and Nick’s grandmother Claudia all sitting with him at the kitchen table. Though the ladies looked pale and frightened, they were alive and unharmed and that was the important thing. I ran over to hug my gran and Rose, and I saw all three of the women were sniffling and their cheeks were wet with tears.
“Are you hurt?” I asked as gently as I could. “What happened here?”
“No, we’re all right,” Gran said. “Just upset about Janet. Our friend, Janet Hicks? She’s dead, Noah. They said she shot herself.” She pulled me closer and whispered in my ear, loud enough for the deputy at the door to probably hear her. “But it’s not true. That damn demon killed her.”
“Oh, Gran.” I hugged her to me and couldn’t help glancing over her head at Nick, who was sitting with his arm around his grandmother. He gave me an unreadable look and an infinitesimal shake of the head. We both heard the sounds of people coming up the basement steps then, and he squeezed his grandmother’s hand and stood up.
“Stay with them, please, Noah. I have to go out to speak to the coroner.”
I nodded and took his seat. “Rose,” I said, just to give her something everyday and mundane to do to keep her busy. “Why don’t you make us all some iced tea?” I glanced over at my gran and squeezed her hand. “Maybe put a little slug of bourbon in it just to calm our nerves?”
Gran sniffed and sighed. “You’re such a good boy, Noah.”
Rose got up to make our drinks and Claudia turned to look behind her. “Oh dear. They’re bringing poor Janet up now.”
I squeezed her hand too, just like Nick had done. “Let’s not think about it or talk about it for a little while. I know Nick will have some questions for all of you in a bit, so let’s just wait for him, okay? Would that be all right?”
They nodded, and I got up to help Rose serve the tea. We kept a giant, plastic container of the stuff in the refrigerator all the time, because Rose liked it so well, and all she had to do was add a generous splash of the bourbon and some ice in our glasses. We had time to drink that one and make ourselves two more glasses before Nick returned.
“Y’all feel up to answering a few questions now, ladies?”
“I feel a little stronger,” his nana said. “Maybe another one of these iced teas might help, though.” She hiccuped in the middle of that remark, and Nick gave her—and me—a suspicious glance. I saw Rose, who was standing at the counter, push the bottle of bourbon behind the cookie jar.
“We’re better now,” my grandmother said, and though Nick still looked doubtful, he nodded.
“Can we go sit in the other room and be more comfortable?”
“Of course.” I got up and helped Gran to her feet, so we could all go to the front parlor as my gran called it, which, honestly, glorified it a bit too much. We rarely used it, so it was musty and a little damp. We all had a seat, with Nick sitting in an old armchair across from us and looking official as he took out his little notebook and a pen.
“Who would like to tell me what happened? He looked around at all of us and settled on the one I would have picked too. “Aunt Rose?”
“Well, let me see. We had our book club meeting this morning.”
Gran spoke up. “We’re more or less in the planning stages with a new book.”
“I see. So what happened this morning? Can you walk me through it?”
“Well,” his nana said, “I, for one, expected trouble. I brought your granddaddy’s pistol with me,” she said. “Because of what happened last time.”
“What do you mean you expected trouble? What happened last time?” Nick said, looking at her in surprise. “Wait a minute…you brought granddad’s old .45?”
“Yes I did.”
“Nana, that stays in the gun safe.”
“Well, it doesn’t do me any good in the dang gun safe, son.”
Nick looked speechless so I took the opportunity to ask a question. “But that’s not the pistol Ms. Hicks used, is it?”
“No, she brought her own gun too.”
Nick sat back in his chair, blinking rapidly. “Nana, what in the world did y’all think you needed guns for? Some kind of shoot-out at the old ladies corral?”
“Oh ha ha, very funny. We needed guns for the demon, of course.”
Nick began to turn an interesting shade of purple. He scrubbed his hand over his face and took a deep breath. “Okay. Why don’t we start over? Let’s forget all about demons and take this from the top, shall we?”
The ladies looked back and forth at each other. “We have to talk about the demon, hon, because that’s why we had our meeting,” Claudia explained, reaching over to pat his knee. She looked at the others. “He just doesn’t get it yet. Give him a minute.”
Nick made a growling sound and gazed upward at the ceiling. For strength, I was guessing.
“Okay,” he said. “You say you didn’t have a book picked out yet for your book club. So can you tell me exactly what y’all were doing down there this morning. Step by step.”
“Oh, we were lying about the book. What we were really doing was summoning the demon, dear,” Claudia was quick to answer. “With a ouija board.”
“A ouija board.”
“That’s how you say it, right?”
He nodded absently, still looking stunned.
My gran leaned forward intently. “It’s a way to summon demons according to the Google. We knew it might be dangerous, but we had a plan that we thought would make it leave for good. We hoped it would work, but as it turned out, it didn’t.”
“We did everything it said to do,” Rose added. “Well, except we had our summoning during the day and not at midnight. Do you think that made a difference, Noah?”
“Well, I don’t…”
“And we put incense around the room and chose five candles like the website said, to ‘fit’ the aspect of the demon. We used black because we think aspect means the way it looks and it’s ugly and mean.”
“Yes,” Claudia said. “And you’d be surprised how hard it is to find the black ones when it’s not Halloween. We had to drive all the way over to Huntsville.”
“Anyway,” Gran said, continuing her story, “we drew a big pentagram in the floor with some chalk, and put the candles on the five points to represent the elements of the earth — air, water, earth, fire, and spirit, though I wasn’t too sure about that last one. I feel like somebody just added that one in to make up the five. Anyway, we drew a sigil in the middle of the pentagram. That’s a magic symbol, Noah,” she put in helpfully.
I nodded, feeling dazed.
“Then, according to the book, we were supposed to sacrifice a black chicken, while we recited the Lord’s Prayer backward, but Janet said she wasn’t going to kill any chickens in the basement, because that was just cruel, and I didn’t want that mess in my basement anyway. Rose said she didn’t want to recite the Lord’s Prayer backward, because that seemed sort of sacrilegious.”
Nick’s face was getting darker, his eyes stormier, and I was beginning to worry about him having some kind of seizure or stroke.
“Gran,” I said quickly, trying to move things along, “Tell the sheriff about the shooting itself.”
“I’m getting there, dear. Now what was I saying? Oh yes, so Janet went to the butcher shop and got some chicken blood. Probably not from a black chicken, though. Do you think that made a difference too, Noah?”
I waved my hands helplessly in the air.
“Well anyway, we tried to prepare the best we could. We all started wearing our cross necklaces along with our agate jewelry, and Rose went down to the Catholic church and got some holy water. Demons and other evil things just
hate water—remember the wicked witch of the west in Wizard of Oz? So this should be twice as good.”
“How in the world did you get that, Miss Rose?” Nick asked. “Surely you didn’t ask the priest to give you some.”
“No, dear. I filled up a little water pistol with some at the door, where they keep a font of it at the entrance. So people can sprinkle themselves with it? I filled up three little guns with it, as a matter of fact. Just to have extras, in case.”
Nick shook his head in disbelief. “You stole holy water?”
“We thought God would understand. So anyway, we had made our preparations if things went wrong, you see. Janet and Sylvia were both supposed to come, and Ida Lou Harrison too, but Ida Lou got cold feet and Sylvia claimed she had a migraine. So that just left the four of us. Still plenty to get the job done. So we all sat down at the ouija board inside the pentagram and I called up the demon.”
“How did you do that?”
“Who cares how they called up the imaginary demon, Noah? I can’t believe I’m listening to this.” Nick interrupted sharply, and I flinched and gave him a dirty look.
He glanced over at me and blanched a little. He mouthed the word, “Sorry” at me, but I ignored him with a sniff. Gran ignored him too and patted my hand.
“First we called his name three times, but he wouldn’t come. So I just told the demon to get out there. I said, “Demon, get your ass out here right now, or I’ll burn the book and trap you forever!”
“And that worked?” I asked.
“Like a charm. But then when the demon showed up, everything went wrong! We started our chanting—”
“Wait,” I said. “What chant?”
“It was one we found in the recipe book, but after everything happened, and we finally got rid of the demon, Rose discovered two of the pages were stuck together, and the chant we were using was one to get rid of mold.”
“Excuse me? Mold?”
“That’s right. I guess people have always had a problem with it. Elizabeth Seegars had several pages in her book on how to get rid of it.”
“Anyway, the demon just laughed at us. It made Janet mad and she stepped out of the pentagram, ran over and grabbed her pistol out of her purse and then turned and let the thing have it, right between its ugly, little eyes.”
“Yes,” Rose agreed. “But it only made it mad. It grabbed her around the throat, twisted her wrist around and made her turn the gun on herself and squeeze the trigger. Ugly bastard. It laughed and laughed when it killed her. Then it threw her down on the floor and came after us. The rest of us were wearing our agate stones and our crosses, though, so we were safe. Plus I had my sigils drawn, and I shot it with the holy water, because I knew it couldn’t bother the rest of us as long as we stayed inside the pentagram. I told Janet that, but she never listens.”
“I told Janet to wear her agates and her necklace too!” Gran said, shaking her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I told her, but she said they didn’t go with her outfit. Crazy woman.”
“Wait, hold up. Gran, you can’t be serious with all this. Just explain what really happened.”
“Because there’s no such thing as demons!” Nick thundered at us.
My gran fixed him with a gimlet eye. “Tell that to Janet, why don’t you?”
There was a brief stare-down, but Gran beat him hands down. Let’s face it, she had years of experience on him, though Nick gave it a hell of a shot. Finally, though, he threw his hands in the air in defeat.
“All right then, show me.”
Claudia intervened to shake her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You have such a bad temper, Nick.” She leaned over to whisper loudly to Rose. “He gets it from his mama—she was a Yankee. From Pittsburg.” Rose shuddered delicately as Claudia nodded.
Nick stood up decisively, despite his grandmother’s caution. “Okay. You say you were able to summon a demon. So show me. Unless, of course, you think there’s some reason a demon won’t show up. Is there, ladies? Do you really want to keep on with all this, or does somebody finally want to tell me the damned truth?”
****
The doorbell rang.
Coming as it did into that charged atmosphere, it actually took us all a moment to register what it was. We looked at each other and then I shook myself, rubbed a hand over my face and went to the door.
“Hello, Noah-Noah. I do hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”
My mouth fell open and I simply stared. There on our doorstep stood Adrianna Reinhart, tall, statuesque, and oddly bigger than I remembered her being. She actually was several inches taller than I was now, so I had to look up at her. And what was with the name she called me? I recalled the first time I’d met her at Ms. Millican’s repass.
She stood up and drifted closer to me, holding out a limp hand. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I caught your name?”
“Noah…Noah Smith.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Noah-Noah.”
At the time, I’d thought surely she was being sarcastic, making a joke at my expense. Now I didn’t know what to think.
Unless she really was something…otherworldly. The words my grandmother used about Adrianna loomed in my mind like unexploded ordnance. They hadn’t gone off at the time she’d first said them, because I just didn’t believe her, but now suddenly, they posed a deadly risk of detonation.
“That was no niece! And that was no woman either! That was the demon.”
I couldn’t get those words out of my head. I stood there staring at her. Her long black hair rippled down her back in curls. And now that I knew what she was, or what I suspected she might be, I could see the black curls actually were moving—writhing on her back like a coil of snakes. I took a quick step back from the horrible image, shook my head and looked again. This time it was just long, wavy hair, with no snakes in sight.
“I see your grandmother has been telling you her wild stories. Surely you don’t believe any of them.”
I just stared at her, a chill washing over me. How had I not noticed how strange this “woman” looked before? Her beautiful face was still a little too carefully made up. It was cold and still like a marble tomb. Her mouth was a blood-red gash across her white face. From some old poem I once read in college, some lines suddenly popped up in my mind. “Her skin was white as leprosy, The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.”
I shivered and looked her up and down. She was all in black, except for those red stilletto heels. The only clothing I’d ever seen her wear. How bizarre. Didn’t she have anything else?
Or could she be not entirely familiar with the concept of clothing?
“I came, because when I was here the other day, visiting your grandmother, I left something in your basement. You don’t mind if I run down and get it, do you?”
She darted past me before I could stop her. “Wait,” I called out, but she was already halfway down the basement stairs. I scrambled to follow her and I heard someone coming down the stairs behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see Nick, right on my heels.
“Ms. Reinhart, wait. This is a crime scene—you can’t go in there!”
“Oh really, sheriff?” she called back over her shoulder, still moving fast. She busted through the yellow tape across the entrance and looked around curiously. Suddenly spotting the book shelf, she made a beeline for it.
“Ms. Reinhart, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Didn’t you hear me? This is a crime scene—you can’t just…”
“I’m sorry I’m catching you at a bad time.” Adrianna said distractedly, her gaze scanning the basement. But I left something here that I need. I’ll only be a moment.” She was picking up one book after another and throwing them back down haphazardly, most of them landing on the floor, looking oddly vulnerable lying on the floor with their pages splayed open.
I found I couldn’t say a word, even to ask her to stop. I’d told my gran she was crazy for the things she’d said about A
drianna, but now they seemed chillingly real. What if Gran weren’t so crazy after all? There really was something seriously…off…about Adrianna Reinhart. Nick gave me a little nudge as he moved closer to her.
“Stop that, Ms. Reinhart! What the hell are you doing?”
Books were flying off the shelves now, and as we watched her, she emptied one bookcase and started on another one.
“Are you high?” Nick shouted at her. When she ignored him, he pushed me to the side, pulled out his service weapon and took a stance, aiming the gun at her. “I said stop that and turn around!”
She whirled back to look at us, her eyes wild and gleaming in the dim light of the basement. I took an instinctive step backward.
“Where’s your grandmother?” Adrianna asked me, glaring at me and completely ignoring Nick, who was staring at Adrianna in probably the same way I was, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
“Put your hands up, Ms. Reinhart. Do it now!”
“I need to ask your grandmother about my book,” she said, hyper-focused on me. “Get her down here!”
Nick kept yelling. “You need to listen to my commands, and put up your hands!”
“She’s upstairs, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know. Just leave my house!”
“I’ll be leaving as soon as I find my missing item.”
Nick made an aggressive move toward her and she flicked out a hand toward him, like she was shooing away an annoying fly. His gun flew in one direction and he went in the other. He crashed into the wall behind us, and I ran over to him and knelt down beside him. He was stunned, but already coming around.
“Get out of here!” I screamed at the thing as it took a step toward me. I threw myself over Nick to protect him, and that’s when I heard my grandmother’s voice from the doorway,
“Could this be what you’re looking for?”
She was holding the old, tattered book in her hand, the so-called witch’s grimoire. I hadn’t heard Gran come downstairs, but the little room was beginning to feel crowded, the air dense and heavy.