by S. A. Hunter
She hit the answer button and said, “Hello?”
There was silence on the other end. After waiting a few seconds, she hung up the phone. It was probably a survey calling, and she didn’t want to stay on the line waiting for the person to come on to start their spiel, but as soon as she hit the end call button, it began ringing again. The display was still blank. A survey call wouldn’t ring back.
She hit the answer button again. “Hello?”
No one answered.
“I’m sorry I can’t hear anything. Try another phone.”
She pressed the disconnect button, and it began immediately to ring again. The display was still blank.
“Hello?” Still no sound. “I’m sorry, but I can’t hear anything. Try calling from a different phone or call back later.”
Again she hung up and it began ringing immediately. She was beginning to become suspicious. She picked up the call and immediately hung up. The phone barely missed a beat ringing again. The lack of phone number and incessant ringing was starting to really irritate her.
She jabbed the connect button and didn’t bother being polite this time. “Look, whoever this is, lose my number. You don’t want to mess with me.” She waited for some sort of response. They’d gotten prank calls before, but installing the caller ID had quickly taken the fun out of it for the pranksters when the police showed up at their door. There was no response to her threat.
She hung up the phone, and it started ringing again. This was getting ridiculous. Her annoyance was swiftly escalating to anger. She jabbed the talk button. “You know I don’t need caller ID to find out who you are. I have other ways.”
Finally, something faintly began coming through. She couldn’t make out what it was. “Hello?” She pressed the phone to her ear and covered her other one. She couldn’t tell what the sound was. It didn’t sound like a person.
The strange sound suddenly blasted her ear. And she immediately recognized it. The sudden volume increase startled her, but it was the actual sound that terrified her. It was grinding machines and insect chittering. There was no mistaking it.
She threw the phone across the room and leaped up from the chair to stand in the doorway. Her eyes darted around, but it was daytime. Sunlight streamed in. There were no shadows.
“Mary?” She whirled around. Gran stood behind her. She had a concerned look on her face. “What’s wrong? You’re white as a sheet.”
She turned back to the living room. The phone lay on the floor, and she could faintly hear the discordant tones indicating it was off the hook.
“I thought someone was prank calling us, but the last call sounded like the Shadowman.”
Gran gasped. “What? Are you sure?”
“I had it up to my ear when it started. It scared the hell out of me. I’ll never forget that sound.”
Gran picked up the phone. Mary reached out to stop her, but the phone was just a phone. Gran turned it off and peered at it.
“How the hell did it call us?” Mary exclaimed.
“Language, Mary,” Gran said.
Mary pressed her lips shut. Gran pushed the call button twice to get the dial tone. She punched in star sixty-nine. She listened to the automated voice and turned off the phone.
“What’d it say?”
“The last number that called was Mrs. Lincoln. I spoke to her earlier this afternoon.”
“But the phone rang a whole bunch of times! Something had to be recorded.”
“If it rings again, let the voice mail take it.”
Mary rubbed her arms and found herself peering into all the corners. She didn’t know if she’d ever get over her fear of the Shadowman, but the thing itself was gone. She’d killed it with Max’s help. But what had been on the phone?
“What do you think that was?”
“I don’t know, dear. Maybe it was some sort of prank call, like you said.”
Mary had no idea who could be capable of prank-calling as the Shadowman. The only person who seemed possibly capable of it was Vicky, but she didn’t think the cheerleader would do it. Vicky had seemed honestly grateful for Mary’s help. That left no one else. And there was still the possibility that it hadn’t been a prank call.
Gran seemed willing to let it rest for the moment. She put the phone back in its cradle and went back into the kitchen. Mary followed. Gran pulled out sandwich makings for lunch. Mary grabbed the potato chips and a pair of sodas from the fridge. “How are Nina and Neil doing?” she asked.
Gran shrugged. “Fairly well, considering the circumstances. They will be going on a short trip soon. The ghosts want to come along.”
“That would be awkward.”
“In a word, yes. We may end up anchor-sitting them.” She set two plates of sandwiches on the table.
“Can we just stick them in the shed?”
Gran shook her head with a small grin. “No, that wouldn’t be very polite.”
“Don’t care. Well, Gladys can stay in the house, but Marvin can’t.”
“He just likes to rankle you. Don’t take him so seriously.”
Mary shook her head. Marvin did seem to like to pick on her. If they had to anchor-sit, he was going in the shed. They ate a few bites in silence.
“On Monday, we have the funeral,” Gran announced.
The change in topic caught Mary off guard. “What funeral?”
“Ezekial’s. He didn’t have any family, so I set it up. I don’t know who will attend. It may be just us, but someone should go.”
“Gran …” She didn’t know what to say. She remembered stepping over Mr. White’s cooling body. That memory would always haunt her. She may not have stabbed him directly, but by killing the Shadowman, she’d killed him as well. Gran looked at her for a moment and then looked away. Gran’s silence made her feel worse. Mary wanted her to say something, lie to her and say everything was okay, but Gran stayed silent.
The box, the phone call, and now the funeral. Mr. White and the Shadowman were gone, but they were still haunting them. She took a deep breath. She had to tell Gran about the box.
“I have something you need to see. I just have to dig it up,” she said.
“Dig it up?”
“I’ll explain when I come back inside.” Mary rose from the table and went outside. She got the garden gloves and trowel and dug up the box. It had only been in the ground a few hours. She felt stupid now for going through all the trouble of burying it. The cardboard box didn’t look too bad for having been buried. Had the burial tripped the curse? Had it caused the phone call? So much for leaving it and forgetting it. She took it in and set everything on the kitchen table before Gran.
“What’s this?” Gran asked.
“Something Mr. White sent me.”
“What?” Gran asked sharply.
Mary took out the letter and handed it to her. Gran put on her reading glasses and slowly read the letter. She stood up and looked inside the cardboard box.
“I wouldn’t touch the wooden box. It made my hands feel weird,” Mary warned.
Gran nodded with a frown on her face. Mary wondered what she was thinking. She took off the garden gloves and held them out to her. Gran shook her head and picked up the box with her bare hands. “Ezekiel, what are you playing at?”
“Wait, don’t your hands tingle?” Mary asked.
Gran nodded. “Yes, I can feel the protective ward, but there’s no curse.”
“No curse? Well, what about what’s inside?”
Gran shook the box and shrugged. She set the box down and picked up the letter again.
“When did this arrive?”
“Yesterday. If you look at the package, it looks like he sent it the day he died.”
“Why didn’t you show this to me immediately?”
Mary hunched over. “I thought it would upset you, and thought burying it would get rid of it.”
Gran’s brow lowered. “Completely ignoring the warning in Zeke’s letter.”
“It was only in the bac
kyard,” Mary protested lowly.
Gran shook her head. “You should’ve shown this to me immediately.”
“Do you think burying it caused the Shadowman call?”
Gran frowned again. “It’s a possibility, but like I said, there’s no curse.”
“How can you tell?” Mary asked.
“It’s the energy. If you ever touch a cursed object, you’ll know. It has a hot, electric feeling. This is only a cool tingling. Zeke would have to know I’d realize that as soon as I picked it up.”
“Maybe he didn’t expect me to show it to you,” Mary muttered guiltily.
Gran waved her comment aside. “You’ve showed it to me now.”
“So if there’s no curse, why send it? Is the curse on the thing inside it?” Because something was clearly inside. They could hear it when they shook the box. Gran set the box down.
“I need to research this. See if I can learn anything. We do need to know what’s inside it.”
“What about Mr. White’s note? He said not to try.”
“He wrote ‘Don’t bother’. Well, I intend to bother. I intend to bother the hell out of this box.”
“Language,” Mary said.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The next day, Gran called Mary down to the kitchen. Mary had been up in her room sleeping in late. She felt a little under the weather. She was just stressing too much about Mr. White and the Shadowman and that had kept her from sleeping well. She didn’t know if Gran had slept at all. She’d been puzzling over Mr. White’s box since Mary had shown it to her.
When Mary entered the kitchen, she found an array of tools spread out on the kitchen table. Gran held out a pair of goggles to her. “Put these on,” Gran ordered.
Mary put the goggles on. “Um, what are we doing?”
“Testing the ward. Hold the box on its side for me.”
Mary did as instructed and watched Gran grab a chisel and hammer. “Oh, boy,” Mary muttered, getting a bad feeling.
Gran heard her. “I won’t hit it very hard.” She pushed the chisel tip into the top’s seam. “You can let go,” she said.
Mary stepped back, and couldn’t help clenching up as Gran raised the hammer. She brought the hammer down and there was a boom. Mary was thrown to the floor, and Gran hit the counter. “Gran!” she shouted, scrambling over to her.
“I’m okay. I’m okay,” Gran said as she picked herself up.
“Well, we’re not doing that again,” Mary said, taking the hammer from her.
“I didn’t hit it that hard,” Gran protested, glaring at the box.
“Yeah, but Mr. White said don’t bother. I think this is why.”
Gran went over to the table and picked up the saw.
“No,” Mary said.
“We have to test it.”
“No, one test was enough. We’re putting all of this away. You said it isn’t cursed, so let’s just rebury it in the backyard.”
Gran frowned. “We can’t just ignore it. We have to figure it out.”
Mary held her hand out for the saw. “Figure it out another way. How’d he make this ward? What conditions are on it? Can it be broken? Research. Books. Internet. No power tools.”
Gran handed her the saw. “Fine. I’ll consult my books some more, but I wasn’t coming up with anything.”
Mary set the saw on the table. “Promise me you won’t try to do anything without me.”
“Of course.”
Mary looked at Gran’s hands. She wouldn’t put it past her to promise with her fingers crossed. Gran did have one hand in her pocket and it looked suspicious. “Okay. While you look in your books, I’ll look online.” She picked up Mr. White’s box and turned to go to her room.
“Hey, I’m gonna need that,” Gran said.
Mary was not leaving her alone with the box. “Let me keep it for now.”
Gran rolled her eyes. “Fine. If I need it, I’ll come get it.”
“No, you’re going to yell for me, and I’ll bring it to you,” Mary countered. Gran still wasn’t supposed to take the stairs unless she absolutely needed to.
“Fine,” Gran said, but she clearly wasn’t happy.
Mary took the box upstairs and put it on her bed. She booted up her computer and opened a web browser. The most common protective wards were those against the evil eye. Mary had some nazars, wards against the evil eye, hanging in her window that to anyone else would look like suncatchers: glass disks with concentric colored circles in dark blue, light blue, white, and dark blue again. She’d bought them more because she thought they were pretty than as wards, but a little protection never hurt. She also had an apotropaic necklace in the form of a hamsa that she often wore, usually when things at school got tense and bad. It was a hand with an eye in the palm. She looked up these symbols to see if she could find anything that could counter them. If something could break their protection, maybe it could work on the box. She found nothing. The subject of breaking these wards was not even broached anywhere that she looked. She suspected only dark magic could do anything, and she had no interest in getting into like that. Maybe that was how Mr. White planned to thwart them. By using white magic, he’d found a way to confound them because they were not twisted and evil like he was.
Some of her general reading on wards indicated that they were usually powered by the earth. Maybe burying the box hadn’t been such a good idea. She may have supercharged it. She sighed to herself and changed tracks. She typed “magic box” into the search engine. The web results were a bust. There were a lot of different companies that used that name. She switched over to the image search and scanned the results. The few that were relevant were handcrafted items by artists. They had no mystical powers. Maybe “mystical box?” Again more video game references. Finally she tried “pentagram box” and got somewhere.
There was a shop selling boxes very similar to the one she had, though they were resin, not wood. They explained that magical tools should be kept in their pentagram boxes. The website mentioned a downward pentagram could be used for banishing or binding. Considering the box wouldn’t open, she figured the upside down pentagram was for binding on the box.
She saw it was a little after four o’clock. She needed to start getting ready. She picked up the box and carried it down to Gran. There was no point in her holding it any longer. Mary would have to leave Gran alone with it eventually. Gran was in her office with a pile of books on her table.
“Here. I couldn’t find anything except that wards are usually powered by earth magic, downward pentagrams are used for banishing or binding, and these types of boxes usually hold magical tools.”
“I could’ve told you all that,” Gran said, as she skimmed a page in a ratty hardback.
“Have you found anything?”
The crease between Gran’s brows deepened. Mary took that as a silent “no”.
“I’m going to get ready to go out, okay?”
Gran waved a hand at her to go without looking up from her book. Mary backed out of the room still unsure of the wisdom of leaving Gran alone with the box. “No power tools, remember?”
Gran finally looked up from her book to give Mary a monstrous scowl.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Rachel beeped her horn from the street. Mary called “bye” to Gran. She heard a distracted “Be careful!” in response. She slung on her purse and went out to climb into Rachel’s mom’s station wagon. She gave Rachel a friendly hello and proceeded to not tell her anything about the Shadowman phone call or the box. Without that, she had nothing to talk about. But it was okay. They were going clothes shopping. With Rachel, it was often like going on safari. Strange and unusual things were often spotted and brought home. They drove to the local Goodwill, a regular safari destination, but Mary began to suspect something was up about this trip when Rachel went directly to the fancy dress rack. She was not a fancy dress girl. Mary kept her distance and looked at some purses, but the other shoe dropped with a thud when Rachel bodily dragged her over to the rac
k.
“This one would be perfect!” Rachel declared, as she draped a dress over Mary’s front.
Deciding to play dense, she asked, “Perfect for what?”
Rachel gave her a withering look. “For homecoming.”
Mary pushed the dress away. “I’ve got plenty of time to find a dress.”
Rachel waved the dress at her. “You have two weeks and that’s nothing. Now try this on.” Mary huffed and took the dress, but before she could protest further, Rachel pushed her into a dressing room and closed the door firmly behind her. “And I want to see you in it!” Rachel called through the door.
Mary shot a glare at the door. She knew Rachel was pushy, but this was ridiculous. She finally took a proper look at the dress. It was “retro”, meaning it had been made in the last few years, but it looked like an older style dress. It was a dark, shimmery blue. It had narrow arm holes and a close neck line. The dress flared out as it went down. It looked like it would fall to just above her knees. Rachel knew her too well. If she had to wear a dress, she’d be willing to wear this one.
She changed out of her clothes and slipped the dress on. It fit her pretty well. She looked at herself in the mirror and started planning what accessories to add. Some fishnet stockings or some lace ones would be neat with it.
“God, you’re fat. Just kill yourself.”
Mary froze and stared at herself in the mirror.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
“You say ‘no’ now, but you should’ve said no to those donuts.”
Mary smoothed the dress with shaky hands. She stared at herself in the mirror but no longer thought about accessories.
“God, you’re a fat, disgusting pig. Kill yourself, please. You’d be helping the world. Just think of all the worms you’d make happy. It’d be a veritable nation!”
Mary yanked the dress up and jerked it off her head. She quickly put her clothes back on, grinding her teeth the whole time, as she kept glancing at her reflection and noticing jiggling thighs and bowed stomach. She balled the dress up and stalked out of the room.