I Call Upon Thee: A Novella (Kindle Single)

by Ania Ahlborn

  “Okay,” she gasped. “Okay.” Reaching out, she pulled the board free of the sheet, drawing it to herself despite every fiber of her being telling her, Don’t, don’t, don’t.

  But this was not a matter of choice. She’d made that years ago.

  Crossing her legs lotus-style, she placed the board upon her knees. “I–I call upon thee.” She half wept the words. But before the planchette could move, Maggie found herself gasping at the onset of sudden, inexplicable silence.

  The blare of the storm was gone.

  No wind.

  No rain.

  It was a different sound now, a splashing from beyond Brynn’s window. A sound so familiar it had Maggie pushing through the pain, shoving away the board, and scrambling to her feet. “Dad?”

  She threw back Brynn’s heavy drapes and discovered the window unboarded, unbroken, unshuttered. One story below, the pool shimmered with bright underwater lights. The wind was gone. The rain had ceased. Nothing but a figure—her ­father—swimming back and forth, executing a perfect fly, while a little girl sat on the edge of the shallow end, her bare feet kicking against the lapping waves.

  “Dad . . .” The word left Maggie’s throat in a breathless whisper. This was impossible. “Dad!” Louder, attempting to get her father’s attention. But all it rendered was the upward snap of the small girl’s head. Their eyes met.

  That should be me.

  But it wasn’t Maggie, and it wasn’t Hope. It was a different child altogether, donning a dress that looked nearly identical to that of the doll’s; she was kicking her feet and grinning, but the smile wasn’t friendly. It was forewarning.

  Hi, Mags, hi.

  Spinning away, Maggie ran for Brynn’s open door and bolted for the stairs. If she could get to the pool, maybe she could see her father again. Perhaps, even if he was just an illusion, she could tell him she loved him. She missed him. She was sorry. Please, forgive me . . . But a scream brought her to a startled standstill, a repeat performance of the night before. But it wasn’t Hope.

  A voice called out: “Mom?”

  Maggie felt herself go faint, her fingers clutching the newel post.

  “Oh my God, Mom?!”

  That voice. It was Brynn.

  The yelling was coming from beyond the master bedroom door. Brynn, discovering their mother’s body, limp and bleeding upon the bathroom floor.

  A wave of nausea hit Maggie head-on. For a second, she was sure she was about to fall headlong down the staircase: another tragedy at the Olsen house. Poor Maggie, neck broken only a few days after her sister had passed. But she somehow managed to change course, throwing herself toward her mother’s old bedroom. Her destination was, however, denied again, by the sound of shattering glass coming from Brynn’s room.

  What’s happening?

  Maggie veered around, her breathing coming in uneven heaves.

  What the hell is happening?!

  Not knowing where to look, she cried out when she noticed the tremors in her arms, reminded of the night she’d crawled down that very hall to the door she was standing at now. The scent of smoke grew heavy, almost suffocating as she tried to draw in breath. And as if determined to make that memory as vivid as possible, the thing that had been living in her closet all these years scurried out from her bedroom and into the hall on its hands and knees. Rather than being a blot of darkness, this time that thing had taken shape.

  It was small. Black. Its skinny, spiderlike limbs feathering like burnt paper, like wood that had turned to coal. It ducked into Brynn’s bedroom so quickly it seemed like nothing short of a hallucination, a blur.

  Maggie stood petrified, unsure of how to continue or where to go. Her mouth worked against the air, trying to draw in enough breath to cry out. Wake someone. Anyone. Arlen or Howie, even one of the kids would have been better than the solitude that surrounded her. But something told her that they wouldn’t hear her; something assured her that right then, she wasn’t in the same house as them. It’s why the rain was gone. Why the wind had stopped. She was somewhere else, somewhere beyond what should have been possible. In between worlds, where screaming wasn’t allowed.

  Not afforded a yell, she felt her breath stolen once again. Brynn’s voice came from beyond her sister’s open bedroom door.

  “Why won’t you come home, Maggie?”

  Her heart tripped over itself.

  “I miss you. Why won’t you come home?”

  That voice sent her into an involuntary forward stumble, desperate to see her beloved Brynn one last time. Bee, I’m sorry. But when she tripped into the room, Brynn wasn’t there. But the spirit board she had abandoned moments before was surrounded by dozens of flickering candles, lit just as they had been on Maggie’s twelfth birthday, the night Brynn had taught her little sister how to summon the dead.

  The window, which had been unbroken, was now but a jagged glass-rimmed portal to the outside world. Maggie dashed across the room, remembering her father. Downstairs, the little girl was gone. Two figures, however, remained.

  The wind returned, blasting into Maggie’s face.

  Another crack of lightning illuminated her father, half tangled in a tarp, floating facedown in the center of the pool.

  The rain returned, nothing short of a torrent. Water crashed into the pool, turning that iridescent, glowing liquid into a raging sea.

  And there was Brynn, unmoving upon the flagstones, like a shattered doll fallen from a shelf.

  “Oh God.” Maggie careened backward, searching for the thing she had seen scurry into the room mere seconds before. “Where are you?” She turned in circles, scanning the corners. “Where the hell are you?” Another vindictive response: the pain in her neck and shoulders gripping her like a vise.

  Maggie’s eyes went wide with surprise, shocked by its intensity, by its pitiless unrestraint. She stood motionless, paralyzed with both anguish and dismay, staring at the wall of mirrors Brynn had left behind, gaping as the sheets that covered them were all simultaneously torn away by the frenzied gale.

  And there, in half a dozen identical reflections, perched atop Maggie’s shoulders, was that thing. Charred and long-limbed with an almost oversized head attached to its frame, that skeletal figure. A child. Its blackened feet and bony fingers digging hard into Maggie’s skin.

  Maggie bellowed out a cry. Reflexively, her arms swung high, hands flying around her head and neck like trapped moths against a bell jar’s curve. She screamed again, spinning like a top, stumbling into Brynn’s cloth-covered dresser, which was stacked with makeup, hair brushes, blazing tea lights, and creams. The collection tumbled off the dresser’s top and onto the floor. Candles splashed melted wax across the baseboard and the corner of an old afghan rug.

  Maggie stood frozen in place for a moment, her arms stretched outward as if to keep herself steady on her own two feet. Maybe she’d scared it off. Maybe it was gone. She swallowed hard, afraid to look anywhere but at the sheet covering the top of Brynn’s mirrored dresser. “I imagined it,” she whispered. Perhaps if she spoke the words aloud, they’d somehow become the truth.

  Except, no. As soon as that denial crossed her lips, the pain came back, this time more vicious than before. Maggie yowled and crumpled to the floor. “Stop!” She intended it to be a yell, but was too breathless to project the demand, too overcome to be strong-willed.

  But you can’t give in this time. You can’t let it win.

  Pushing through the anguish, she snatched Brynn’s nail file off the floor.

  Get up. She imagined Brynn making the command. Narrowed eyes. Looking mean. Get the fuck up, Maggie. I tried to fix this for you, but—

  Maggie forced herself to her feet, back in front of the mirrors. Regardless of whether she wanted to see that thing again or not, this was her fight. She had started it. It had to end with her. If it was still perched on her shoulders, she’d stab
at it over and over until it was gone. She’d kill it so it couldn’t hurt anyone else. She’d kill herself before she let this madness continue.

  Your fault.

  Her arm trembled as she lifted it upward, that file pointed at her own face.

  All your fault.

  She shimmied sideways, just enough to see the curve of her shoulder, the slope of her neck.

  You did this.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and exhaled a muffled mew. She didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to see it sitting there, leering like a snake.

  “I’m sorry!” She screamed the words as her eyes shot open and she took in her reflection—an apology to her sister, to her mother, her dad. Hell, to the thing that she’d just seen, singed and smoldering. I’m sorry that I brought you into this world. I’m sorry that I didn’t know how to put you back. But it was gone, nothing but the reflection of a wild-eyed girl left in its wake. She hardly recognized herself—a woman on the brink of mania, clutching a weapon, ready to kill herself, to fight an invisible foe.

  Had Maggie scared that spiderlike creature off, or was it merely hiding, lying in wait? No. That smoky scent was only growing stronger. Maggie coughed, twisted around again, searching the corners of Brynn’s room for what felt like the thousandth time, only to be left gasping at a new discovery.

  The bottom hem of Brynn’s drapes was starting to smolder. A few of the candles she’d toppled were still alight, sending curlicues of smoke up from burning velvet. She fell to her hands and knees, grabbing a handful of white sheet from the floor, and began to choke the flames. But her attention snagged on what she’d uncovered: a massive stain the color of rust, so much bigger than she had imagined it to be. It was the spot where Brynn had stood and bled, broken glass cutting into the palm of her hand, wounds weeping blood from the damage she’d done to her face and neck—a result of what she’d undeniably seen in the single mirror that had been left exposed.

  Brynn had seen that burnt figure.

  It’s why she’d covered all of those mirrors up.

  It’s why she had stabbed herself.

  She had seen it, poised there upon her neck.

  And now, Maggie was seeing it as well—not on her shoulders, but in the corner of the room. It hadn’t rushed out to hide. Rather, it was curled up between a bedside table and a wall of framed baroque art, as though transfixed by the growing fire licking up the drapes and the wall.

  It was afraid.

  Her mom lit the sheets on fire and left her there, screaming . . .

  Maggie found herself nearly choking, either on the smoke or on the sudden onset of realization. Because Brynn’s story, however impossible, had been true.

  I came here by myself yesterday and she threatened me, so I made her a promise.

  Brynn and Maggie in Friendship Park. Brynn shoving Maggie toward that tomb.

  I promised her that I’d bring her a friend, so she’d never be lonely again.

  “Oh God,” Maggie whispered, her gaze snapping to the board just shy of her sister’s blood.

  Why won’t you come back, Mags? How many times do I have to ask?

  “It used you to get me to come home.”

  That thing . . . Brynn’s death had been by design. It had killed her, knowing that Maggie would rush home for the funeral. It had scared her to death, sure that the Olsen sister it really wanted would return.

  Rage. It wasn’t a spark but an explosion, right there in the center of Maggie’s chest. All of this had been a test. A game. Maggie left to go to the beach; her father was taken from her. Maggie left to go to school; her mother was pushed to the brink. Maggie left Savannah again, refusing to let tragedy cement her in place, and the force she had released had decided the game had lasted long enough. Checkmate. Brynn had been its sacrificial queen.

  “You son of a bitch.” Maggie gritted her teeth, her eyes fixed on the board on the floor. “You think you’re going to win this?” It was then that she grabbed a blazing candle in one hand and a fallen can of Brynn’s hair spray in the other. If this thing was afraid of fire, she’d either scare it out of the house or burn the damn place to the ground.

  With a flick of her thumb, she popped the top off the can. Her finger on the trigger, she glared at that goddamn ghost. “This is for my sister,” she hissed through her teeth, and pressed down, releasing a rope of flame through the air. It ignited the board and the carpet around it within a blink. The cowering figure in the corner screeched as Maggie pointed her makeshift flamethrower its way. It dodged, leaving a fresh scar of soot across Brynn’s wallpaper. A moment later, Brynn’s four-poster bed was engulfed in flame.

  Brynn had known all along: there was something wrong with this house. It’s why she had stayed—not because she wanted to live in Savannah, not because she had some inexplicable connection to the place they had grown up, but to protect her nieces and nephew. But Arlen would never leave voluntarily, which was why it had to be destroyed.

  “Fuck this place,” Maggie murmured, tossing the can of hair spray to the floor.

  This would leave her remaining sister with no choice. The Olsens would have to leave.

  The flames were high, now, halfway to the ceiling. The heat was burning Maggie’s cheeks, threatening to ignite her hair. Satisfied that there was far too much fire for Howie to extinguish in a bold attempt to save the place, she raced out of the room and down the hall.

  Why isn’t the fire alarm going off?

  Because this was its last attempt.

  It wanted them all.

  If they all burned together, the Olsen family line would be no more.

  Maggie banged on the walls as she flew down the hall, then threw open the master bedroom door and yelled, “Wake up! Fire! We have to go!” She found the entire family holed up in Arlen and Howie’s bed. The adults scrambled to sit upright. And, as if seeing the shadow standing directly behind her aunt, Hayden’s eyes went wide. A second later, she pealed out a scream.

  . . .

  In the time it took them all to get onto the front lawn, half the second floor had been consumed. Windows exploded one after the other, just like Maggie imagined they had at Gram and Gramps’s place so many years ago. Harry looked on, dumbfounded, as fire trucks rolled onto the property. Hayden wailed for her favorite stuffed bear, which had been abandoned inside her parents’ room. Arlen cried right along with her while Howie held them both, trying to comfort them during one final misfortune. Florence had no mercy. The wind continued to blow, fanning the flames, setting nearby trees alight, tossing fiery debris onto the rain-soaked lawn.

  Hope stood motionless, staring at the burning monolith before her. Eventually, she turned to Maggie, and taking her aunt’s hand in her own, she leaned in and whispered into Maggie’s ear, “I’m scared, Auntie Magdalene. But at least you’re here.”

  NINETEEN

  * * *

  BRYNN’S CAMRY SURVIVED the fire, having been parked along the curb.

  Maggie sat in silence in the backseat as the car rolled toward the funeral home. It had been too late to postpone.

  Howie drove while Arlen sat next to him with Hayden in her lap. Dazed and exhausted, they looked like a grouping of lunatics, everyone in their pajamas but Maggie, who was wearing the same thing she’d worn the day before. Aunt CeeCee would meet them in the parking lot with clothes bought at Target. Arlen hadn’t argued. They had nothing left, so there hadn’t been a point.

  Sitting in the front seat, Arlen looked just as their mother had after their father had died. Her expression was blank, her eyes glazed over, a zombie personified. Howie directed the car without a word, more than likely stunned at the cruel irony that, not more than a handful of hours after losing it all, they were expected to mourn something different. But there was no avoiding it. Interments weren’t events that could be easily put off. Brynn was waiting, and Florence wou
ld not be attending. The storm was over. It had left them behind.

  And yet, despite the somberness of the morning and the joylessness that would follow them throughout the day, Maggie couldn’t help but feel hopeful. For the first time during her visit, little Hayden wasn’t screaming. With no car seat, she was fast asleep in Arlen’s arms, as though sensing that the thing she’d grown up with had finally been expunged.

  “Auntie Magdalene?” Hope now placed her small hand upon Maggie’s own as they sat together in the backseat. Harrison pressed himself against the door, staring out the window, not speaking or listening, in his own world.

  “Yeah, kid?” Maggie gave her niece a thoughtful glance.

  “Does this mean that you aren’t going to live with us after all, because the house is gone?”

  Maggie frowned at Hope’s expression. The little girl looked positively wrecked, as though the thought of losing her aunt was far worse than losing all of her things. “I’ll stay for a little while,” Maggie told her, drawing her close. “At least until everything gets sorted out, until you guys have a new place to go.” Until she was sure it was over, that it was finally safe.

  Hope nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer. She went quiet for a bit, studying Maggie’s hands before speaking again. “Don’t you think that Auntie Bee should be burned instead of buried?” There was an audible intake of breath from both of Hope’s parents. Maggie found herself stammering, unsure of how to respond. “It just seems like she should be burned,” Hope said, either unaware of the sudden tension she’d created or simply not caring that she had. “Like the house. Like the girl in the graveyard,” she said, looking to Maggie for approval.

  “The girl . . . ?” Maggie suddenly felt sick. She needed to get out. She needed air.