Pall in the Family

by Dawn Eastman

  “Here she is!” My mother gestured toward the door as if I were entering royalty.

  I gave a small wave to the gang and sat across from my father. They had broken into the whiskey, and I helped myself to a small glass.

  “Tell us everything. Don’t leave anything out,” Aunt Vi said.

  I took a deep breath. “I went over to Tish’s to talk to her. I felt bad about what happened yesterday.” I gave Vi an icy glare she pretended not to notice. “She had her sign up saying to wait. I waited for a few minutes, but I didn’t feel right. . . .”

  “What do you mean?” Mom leaned forward. “Did you sense something?”

  “I don’t know that I sensed anything. I just felt cold and not-right. I knocked, and when she didn’t answer I got the key and unlocked the door.”

  “Oh, Clyde, you could have been hurt, too!” Diana said, and grabbed my hand.

  I glanced quickly her way but didn’t want the shaking and crying to start up again, so I gently pulled my hand away and continued.

  “As soon as the key was in the lock, I heard a gunshot. By the time I unlocked the front door, the back door slammed, and I went in and found Tish.”

  “Why would you just go in after a 10-72?” Dad said. His eyes were red and wet. He must have had a scary afternoon, wondering if I was safe.

  “I didn’t just barge in. I went in quietly. I was worried about Tish, and after I heard the door slam, I figured there was no one in the house.” Listening to my own story, I realized how ridiculous it sounded. No trained police officer would ever enter a scene like that without a real weapon and some sort of backup. But at that moment I wasn’t a police officer. I was just Tish’s friend, and I wanted to help her.

  “Did you see anything at all?” Alex asked. His eyes were red, his face haggard.

  “No. Whoever did this was gone before I got to the kitchen. I didn’t see a car or anyone running away. . . .”

  “They could have been hiding in the back,” Seth said from the floor.

  A cold chill skittered down my spine as I realized he was right. I hadn’t searched the yard or locked the door while focused on Tish. All my training had disappeared when faced with Tish’s attack. I put my head down on my arms.

  “Well, we need to organize a memorial service for her,” my mother said with a shaky voice.

  “She doesn’t have any family.” Vi shook her head.

  “I’ll really miss her,” said Diana. She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes.

  Sniffles and muffled coughs made their way around the table. Baxter moaned. I was focused on who might have done this. My mother could worry about the memorial; I wanted the murderer caught and punished. Gary was a very real possibility. He was out of jail, had just been fighting with her, and because she had talked Alison into reneging on her alibi, Tish was partly responsible for his arrest in the first place. Maybe she’d known something she hadn’t yet told the police. Maybe she’d talked Alison into changing her statement because she’d known Gary had done it and he knew she suspected him.

  “I’ll bet it was Milo Stark,” Vi said.

  “What?” Alex said, as Mom nodded and Diana raised her eyebrows.

  “Now, don’t start that again, Violet.” My father poured himself another shot of whiskey.

  “He’s the best suspect. He killed that girl years ago, left town in a shower of scandal, then returned and within a month—two more murders!” She pounded the table to make her point. “I’d like to find out where he’s been living and see what their murder rate has been.”

  “What is she talking about?” Seth asked, looking from me to Diana to Mom.

  I glanced at Diana to gain some courage, and then began the story of Milo Stark/Jones. As a senior in high school he had dated Julia Wyatt. She was beautiful, a cheerleader, on the debate team, straight A’s, the whole package. Her family was not psychic, and they ran the hotel in town and owned the marina. This lack of psychic ability put them on a lower social rung, according to Vi, but Milo’s family was also not psychic. They owned the restaurant. Everyone expected Milo and Julia to end up married, but, just before graduation, Julia disappeared. Some of her clothes were found in the woods near the highway. The clothes had bloodstains, and Milo was the main suspect in a possible murder. Her body was never found. Without a body the authorities couldn’t arrest him, but the town did a good job of trying and convicting him anyway. Just about every psychic in town had a crack at locating her body, but no one was successful and she hadn’t been seen since. Her father had been distraught and had ranted about the incompetence of the police force right up until he’d died a year ago. It was Crystal Haven’s terrible unsolved mystery.

  “Humph,” said Vi when I finished.

  “What does that mean?” I said, turning toward her.

  “It means you still think Milo is innocent,” she said, her eyebrows accusing.

  “I think there has to be evidence before concluding he’s guilty,” I said.

  “Well, I can tell you, even though no one could locate the body, there were plenty of people who thought she was dead and that he had killed her.” Vi waggled her finger at all of us.

  “Now, Vi, let’s not get worked up over Milo,” my mother said. “That was a long time ago. No one has ever contacted Julia in life or in Spirit.” She patted Vi’s hand into submission.

  “Something is wrong with that Milo,” Vi grumbled. “I’m telling you, he’s never been right. Takes after his mother. I’m sure Joe regrets ever taking on the whole mess after Mike died.”

  I sensed my parents go very still.

  “What? Mike who?” Alex asked. Diana and I shrugged and looked to Vi.

  Vi kept her gaze on the table, but said, “Mike Jones was Milo’s biological father. Joe Stark adopted him. Cecile was pregnant with Milo when she married Joe, which was right after Mike died.”

  My father was glaring at Vi across the table. She looked up, possibly sensing the waves of irritation directed at her.

  “What?” she said. “Everyone knows.” She put her arms out to encompass the room.

  “Now they do. Cecile and Joe made it clear they wanted it to remain quiet for the boy’s sake,” Dad said.

  “Well clearly ‘the boy’ found out, or he wouldn’t have changed his name,” Vi said.

  My mother started nervously dishing up chili. She had a tendency to flit about when my father and Vi argued.

  “Frank, Vi, please. It all happened a long time ago. Let’s just leave it alone, okay?” she said.

  “How did Mike Jones die?” I ignored my mother’s pained look.

  “Hunting,” said my father.

  “What do you mean, ‘hunting’?”

  “He and Joe were out hunting, and he got hit by a stray bullet.” My father had become interested in the pattern on the tablecloth.

  “They never found out who shot him, the gun was never found, and the hunter never came forward. Cecile was devastated.” My mother wiped a tear and glanced at Vi, who had become very still.

  I had a sudden feeling that there was much more to this story than they were telling. The fact that I had never heard it before was curious in itself, but Vi now looked paler than when she heard Tish had died.

  “I think I’ll go lie down for a little while,” Vi said, and stood quickly. Her hands shook as she pushed the chair back under the table.

  We all watched her go, and it felt as if the room itself held its breath for a few moments after she left.

  “Okay, spill it,” I said, glaring at my mother and then my father.

  “What are you talking about?” My mother had assumed a confused expression that I knew from long experience was fake.

  “What’s up with Vi?”

  “There’s nothing ‘up.’ She’s just been under a lot of strain trying to get information out of the only witnesses to the murders of tw
o of our closest friends.” She passed out the chili-filled bowls and didn’t look at me. “I would think even you would understand that, Clyde.”

  I focused my glare on my father.

  He glanced at Mom, who refused to look up, and then back at me. Cringing away from my pointed stare, he sighed heavily.

  “Vi and Mike were a couple. They were supposed to be married, and then Cecile came along and, well, that was it. Violet never met another guy like Mike.” My father hung his head.

  “Vi has been carrying a torch for a dead guy all these years?” I said, looking from one parent to the other.

  “Shhh! She’ll hear you. And I don’t appreciate your tone, Clytemnestra,” my mother said. “It was a tragedy the way he died. I felt terrible for Cecile, but it changed your aunt as well. There was a lot of bad feeling between Mike and Vi back then. Vi never had a chance to work through it.”

  “What happened?” Diana asked.

  My mother looked at Seth, who was listening intently. She and my father exchanged a look.

  “Joe Stark and Mike Jones were business partners. They owned the restaurant together, but Mike had a larger stake.” Mom hesitated and glanced at Seth but continued. “Vi claimed Cecile was a gold digger. Her father owned the auto repair shop on the outside of town, and she always felt she could do better. She wanted to be respected here in Crystal Haven even if she didn’t have any psychic abilities. When things fell apart with Vi and Mike, Cecile ended up pregnant. Cecile and Mike got married. It wasn’t long after that he was dead.”

  “Wow, I never knew any of this,” Alex said.

  “It was a long time ago. But sometimes, for Vi, I think it’s still happening,” my mother said. She crossed her arms and gestured at us to eat.

  * * *

  After my mother’s revelations, and a few bites of dinner, the group scattered. Dad went off to listen to his police scanner, and Seth shuffled to his room with the dogs. Mom took her cards and the pendulum to Vi’s apartment. Alex and Diana had their own plans and unfortunately they involved me. It reminded me of when my grandmother had died. After the first shock of the death had passed, each person had his or her own way of coping.

  “C’mon, Clyde. You need this,” Diana said as she took my hand and dragged me out of my chair.

  Alex helped her push me toward the stairs, and I noticed he snagged the whiskey bottle on his way. At least they had their priorities straight.

  Diana led the way up to my room. She and Alex had spent a lot of time there in high school discussing music, movies, parents, and our future plans. Her large tote bag bulged and clanked as she took each step. I had a lot of experience with that Mary Poppins bag, and not all of it was good. I looked to Alex for help but all he did was shrug and hold up the bottle.

  My room hadn’t changed much since high school. I’d left everything behind when I moved to Ann Arbor. The color scheme was sky blue and dark brown, very trendy at the time. The bedspread was a swirly floral thing in brown and blue that I had loved when mom brought it home. Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie still dominated the bookcase. My shelves were cluttered with the combination of my current life and my previous one. My holster shared space with stuffed animals. Softball trophies had been pushed aside to accommodate my laptop and printer. The desk faced the large window that looked over the backyard and was cluttered with phone chargers, dog treats, and extra leashes. Alex and I sat on the bed while Diana set up her items on the desk.

  “I should have done this after you found Sara’s body, but now the situation is out of control. We need to do a few different rituals, but they’re all simple. Don’t worry.” She fished around in the bag and pulled out a small glass jar, a package of needles, a package of razor blades, a paper bag, and a drinking glass.

  I had seen this setup before.

  “I don’t want to do this one,” I said as she put the glass in the bag and smashed it with the base of a trophy from the desk.

  “What are you doing, Diana?” Alex wiped his mouth and passed the bottle to me.

  “I’m making a very strong protective spell for Clyde if she’ll stop whining and just do what I say.” She dumped the broken shards, the needles, and the razor blades into the glass jar.

  “No, forget it. That’s disgusting.” I held up my hand to ward off her offering of the jar filled with sharp objects.

  “It works, Clyde. You’ve been close to murder twice in the last couple of days. You need protection, and this is one of the simplest spells I know that you can do for yourself.”

  “Then let’s do a complicated one.”

  “What does she have to do, put her hand in there?” Alex asked, taking the jar and peering inside.

  “She wants me to fill it with urine,” I said.

  Alex made a face and shoved it back at Diana.

  “Wiccans are sick!” he said.

  Diana rolled her eyes at both of us.

  “Okay, fine. But this protection lasts at least a year, maybe longer. As long as no one digs it up, you’re good.”

  “You have to bury it?”

  “Yes, you say the spell and you bury it and then you are protected, but you need the urine of the person you are trying to protect, and that person is not cooperating.”

  “Okay, moving on. What else did you bring?” I said.

  Diana took a moment to glare at both of us.

  “I expected this. We can do a short spell to try to control the situation and then another one to help clear your mind and focus on solving Tish’s murder.”

  Alex started giggling. He had no tolerance for alcohol, and was not always on board with Diana’s magickal approach to life.

  “Shut up, Ferguson,” Diana said.

  Diana groped in her bag and pulled out a brown candle, a piece of paper, and a small bottle of oil. She wrote on the paper, and then turned to us.

  “The current situation is that Sara and Tish have been killed. What should we ask for as an outcome?”

  “That we figure out who did it?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but we have to be really specific. Do we just want the person caught, or do you want to be the one who figures it out, or do you want the police to catch them?”

  “Oh, come on. If that worked, I’d be burning brown candles every day asking to win the lottery,” Alex said.

  Diana sighed. “You can’t ask for something like that. And you need to know the spell.”

  “I don’t really care how the murderer is caught, as long as they pay for what they did,” I said.

  “Okay. I’ll write that we want the murderer brought to justice.”

  She wrote on the paper, slipped it under the candle, put a few drops of oil near the wick, and then began to talk quietly to it. Alex leaned forward to try to hear what she was saying, but other than the lilting cadence, we couldn’t make out the words. Diana lit the candle and said, “So mote it be.”

  Alex leaned over and whispered to me. “What’s a mote?” He typically avoided Diana’s spell-casting if he could.

  “It’s like saying ‘must’ or ‘may,’ but it’s very old.”

  “That’s it then? Can we all have a drink now?” Alex asked.

  “I think we should do one more thing—a banishing spell. I used it after my parents died, and it helped a lot.” Diana thrust her hand back into her bag.

  “What do we do?” I sighed, resigned to a night of Wicca and whiskey.

  Diana pulled a small velvet bag out of her tote and tipped it onto my palm. A black stone landed in my hand. She set a bowl on my bedside table and poured water into it, then stirred in some sea salt.

  “Hold the stone in your right hand and close your eyes. Visualize your grief for Tish moving into the stone.” Diana’s voice was quiet and soothing. Even Alex was paying attention.

  I held the stone and felt it begin to warm up in my hand. I imagined it
taking on all the pain I felt today after Tish died and added all the sadness I had been carrying around for Sara and Jadyn. When I was done, the stone felt quite warm. She handed me a piece of paper and indicated that I should read it.

  “Banishing stone, take my grief as your own. Banishing stone, set me free, so mote it be,” I read.

  She pointed to the bowl and I dropped the stone into the water.

  “Okay, stir it three times. Then we can take it outside and you have to throw it as far as you can away from the house.”

  The stone was still warm when I took it out of the water, and I started to feel like maybe just the ritual of throwing my sorrow away would help. We trooped quietly through the house and out the back door. I threw it as hard as I had ever thrown anything. The stone arced high in the air and caught a glint of moonlight as it flew. I never heard it land.

  20

  The woods feel damp and close. My chest is tight and I gasp for breath but keep moving. The darkness makes the familiar woods threatening. Twigs and roots grab at my feet and legs. My hand flies up to block the branches as they slap past my face and shoulders. I am holding a leash and it is pulling me forward, but I know I will be too late.

  My feet crunch over the fallen leaves and suddenly I am in a small clearing. All I can hear is my heart pounding in my ears. I stop to catch my breath. It comes ragged and harsh. I see Baxter up ahead as moonlight bursts into the clearing. Mac is there, shouting something. I run toward his outstretched arms, his eyes warm and inviting. I feel, rather than hear, an explosion. Mac looks surprised just before I fall. When I stand up again, Mac is gone and my hands are covered in blood. Baxter starts to howl and, as I wake up screaming, “Nooo!” I realize I am the one howling.

  My room felt like an alien place as I awoke. I looked around for any lurking threat, but it was all just as I had left it. My laptop sat closed on the desk. Diana’s bottle of sharp objects sat next to it, patiently waiting for me to change my mind about the protective spell. The curtains were drawn, but sunlight leaked through the cracks. The dream left me feeling disoriented and confused. My T-shirt was damp and my heart was thumping, but I began to calm down once I realized I was home and safe. That had been one of “those” dreams. The kind I wished to banish; a dream that warned of disasters to come. I went through it again in my mind—Mac, the blood, and me running toward him through the woods. It could only mean one thing: being with me would put Mac in danger. Even though I had never had success in altering the outcome of these dreams, I thought that, if I avoided Mac, I could keep him safe. I would have to figure out a way to maintain my distance.