Death in the Cards

by Sharon Short

  “I’m amazed Ginny would miss this. Isn’t she from here?” Maggie said.

  Sally and I looked at each other, startled. We knew most everyone from around this area, but neither of us had heard of Ginny Proffitt before today.

  “From the Columbus area,” Karen said. “She told me about Serpent Mound, how much she loved coming here as a kid. This was at the Chicago psychic fair, before the fair started and she took so many of Skylar’s potential clients away. If I’d known she was going to do that, I’d never have talked to her. I’ve really got to talk to Damon and Sienna about moving Skylar.”

  “Mo-o-om,” Skylar started.

  “Now, sweetie, your mom is just trying to watch out for you,” Samantha said kindly. “Unfortunately, that is Ginny’s way. She always wants all the attention, all the focus on her, and—” Suddenly Samantha stopped, her soft round face going rigid, as she stared into the trees.

  “Are you okay?” I asked anxiously.

  Maggie swatted me on the arm. “Hush!” she hissed. “She’s tuning in.”

  Sally looked around nervously. “What? What? Don’t tell me there are Fort Ancient spirits you all can see.”

  Maggie pointed at the tree below us. I stared at the tree. Sally stared at the tree. And all we saw was a tree. Even Max and Cherry had moved on from behind it.

  Then, finally, I saw what had snagged Samantha’s attention—a gray squirrel, up on a top branch, sitting up on its hind legs, its front paws dangling. Samantha was perfectly still as she stared at the squirrel. The squirrel was perfectly still as it stared back at her.

  Then, suddenly, Samantha threw her arms up in the air and let out a wail that sounded like “whee-w-w-whree-eee!!”

  The squirrel shot up into the tree as if it had been launched from a cannon, disappearing from our sight.

  Samantha—quivering and shaking—wiped sudden tears from her eyes. Sally, I noted, was quivering, too, and wiping at her own eyes, but I had a feeling it was from a very different emotion than what had motivated Samantha, who was now hollering, “Oh, thank you, dear Xavier!”

  I looked around. “Xavier?” Had I forgotten a psychic?

  Maggie swatted my arm again. “The squirrel. She’s thanking him for the message.”

  I was confused. “Message? I didn’t hear anything.”

  Samantha gave me a look, again surprisingly hard for such a little, soft woman. “He told me,” she said with great dignity, “that all will be avenged for me this weekend.”

  “That was mighty nice of him,” Sally said, barely holding back her laughter. “You leave him any messages?”

  Samantha gave her a look of such seriousness that even Sally quickly sobered. “Xavier had forgotten where he’d left a stash of acorns. I reminded him.”

  With that, she turned and started back down the steps. Karen watched after her, clearly awestruck. She sighed. “I do so admire psychics’ talents.” She patted Skylar’s arm. “Yours are the best, of course, sweetie.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Skylar said, through gritted teeth. They started down the steps, too.

  “Most everyone’s headed back to the van. We need to get back to the motel to finish setting up. You did a great job leading the tour,” Maggie said, turning toward the steps.

  “Wait—what do . . .” I paused, wanting to keep the incredulity out of my voice as I spoke the next words. “What do you know about Samantha’s message from the squirrel—that she’ll be avenged this weekend?”

  Maggie turned back around. “My guess is that Samantha interpreted whatever the squirrel channeled to her”—Maggie said this with complete seriousness—“to mean that Ginny will in some way be humiliated this weekend. Samantha and Ginny were business partners once, and, so I hear, it didn’t end well. Somehow, Ginny ended up with most of the assets, and Samantha basically had to start over.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Poor Samantha. The stress almost destroyed her abilities, but fortunately she met a duck at the park near her house, and after several conversations with him, Samantha was back on track. She moved to Milwaukee and rebuilt her business. She’s probably better off without Ginny, but I don’t think she’s ever quite gotten over it.”

  Sally contained herself until Maggie had gone down the steps, then erupted with laughter.

  “Keep it together,” I snapped, grumpy because I knew I’d also been tempted to laugh. “I need you to help me get everyone back on the van so we can head back to Paradise.”

  “Aww, Josie, can’t Xavier come too?” Sally called after me, as I started down the steps.

  I didn’t let her see it—but her comment made me smile.

  “Thank you for touring with us! On our way back to Paradise, I’ll point out some of the sites we missed on our way over here,” Cherry was saying, fifteen minutes later, as Sally pulled the van out of its parking spot.

  We were all present and accounted for on the van, and, I thought with relief, my duties were over.

  “As we exit, you’ll see on your left a large soybean field where a local man sighted a landing of an alien spaceship.”

  The group behind me gasped. I wasn’t sure if this was in awe at this report, in annoyance that perhaps Cherry was making fun of everyone (which I didn’t think to be the case . . . I thought she was just enjoying being Ms. Tour Guide), or if it was because as she flipped her hair behind her right shoulder and turned to look to the left herself, a largish red mottled hickey was revealed on her neck.

  “Of course, when the man reported it to the local authorities, they pooh-poohed his claims, despite the fact that burn marks in a circular pattern were found in the field that could never be explained. . .”

  As Sally went on, and everyone else craned to look at her hickey, I stared out my window to the right. Tonight, I told myself, I would have a fine, relaxing time with Owen . . .

  Then I saw them. Ginny Proffitt and Dru Purcell. Standing in the parking lot, facing each other. Talking—but, I could tell even behind the window that made their conversation mute to me—in a quiet way. Not the screaming I’d have expected from Dru.

  What was Ginny doing here? Had she finished up her mysterious meeting and come to meet us for the end of the tour?

  That seemed believable . . . but what was Dru doing here? This wasn’t exactly his kind of place. One of his Sunday School teachers at the Paradise Church of Almighty Revelation, so I’d heard, had been so severely reprimanded for suggesting a youth group field trip out here, that she’d become a Lutheran.

  Then, I saw him lift his glasses, wipe his eyes and pull Ginny to him in a tender, gentle embrace.

  The meeting Ginny had rushed to, I knew with startling clarity, had been this—to meet Reverend Dru Purcell at Serpent Mound. As Dru hugged her, Ginny looked over the top of his arm . . . at me. At the bus. And she grinned. And pushed him away enough to give me a wave.

  Then Dru pulled away from her and looked over at our van, at me staring out at them through the window, and a look of fear—then anger—came over his face.

  And Aunt Clara’s saying came drifting through my mind again . . .

  5

  “That there is a devil, there is no doubt. But is he trying to get in, or trying to get out?”

  I clearly recall the first time I heard Aunt Clara’s saying. It was a few months after she and Uncle Horace took me in from the local orphanage, after my mama ran off.

  I was seven, eating my after-school snack of molasses cookies and milk in the kitchen, and trying not to squirm in the hot tweed dress Aunt Clara had sewn for me on her old treadle Singer. It was Indian-summer hot, but to Aunt Clara, October in southern Ohio meant crisp candy-apple weather, and that was that.

  Aunt Clara stared out through the kitchen window at Buster Toadfern—a distant cousin of mine on my daddy’s side (Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace being on my mama’s side). She kept washing her Ball canning jars while muttering and staring and shaking her head.

  Aunt Clara had hired Buster to clear out the tomato vines from the
large vegetable garden that filled half of the backyard of our house on Plum Street. She’d already put up sixty quarts of juicy red tomatoes, but I’d heard her tell Buster that morning to be sure to save all the green tomatoes.

  Some she’d fry in corn meal batter, the rest she’d can as relish. Aunt Clara’s grand plan was to be so frugal that there’d always be money to take care of Guy. To Aunt Clara, green tomatoes were an important part of that plan.

  “What’s a matter, Aunt Clara,” I asked. “Did Cousin Buster throw out the green ’maters?”

  At my question, Aunt Clara went quiet, so fast and hard that her bun quivered in the wake of her sudden stillness.

  Then, keeping her gaze on Buster, she said: “That there is a devil, there is no doubt. But is he trying to get in, or trying to get out?”

  The answer made no sense to me, but even with all my tweed, it sent a shiver creeping over my skin, as if something had crept up behind me and breathed down my neck. Still, I pressed on.

  I wouldn’t get my nickname—Nosey Josie—for another nine years. And what some people call nosey, I call curious. I like to think of my natural curiosity as a gift that I was born with, a gift that lay dormant in me just waiting for the right moment to spring forth. And somehow, when I heard my aunt’s devil saying the first time, it sprang.

  “What’s that mean, Aunt Clara? How can you tell if he’s in or out? The devil, that is? And how can you have no doubts about such a thing? And—”

  Aunt Clara gave me a hard look over her shoulder, her bun still aquiver. “Never you mind, Josie Toadfern. Just never you mind. Finish up and get to your homework . . .”

  I told Owen about this memory that night, after the Serpent Mound trip, on our corn maze date. When I finished my story, Owen repeated the devil saying thoughtfully, mulling it over.

  Somehow, now that he was musing on Aunt Clara’s old adage, I felt better, safer, more relaxed. So relaxed, that I sighed contentedly as I leaned into Owen’s shoulder. I was warm, because of my heavy coat and hat, because of the toasty fire flickering before us, because (best of all) of Owen’s presence. I was sated—we’d dined on roasted weenies, at one of the fire rings in the field by the Crowleys’ corn maze, and from a thermos sipped cups of spiced cider I’d prepared. And now I was also relieved, having told Owen about Aunt Clara’s statement, my first memory of it and how it came back to me when I met Ginny Proffitt, and about having to lead the tour at Serpent Mound, and about seeing Ginny and Dru there, together, embracing.

  What more could a girl want?

  Another s’more, I decided.

  I leaned away from Owen just long enough to pick up the confection, roasted marshmallow and chocolate square sandwiched between graham crackers. Then, I leaned back into him and bit into the s’more. Mmmm. Yummy, gooey, crunchy chocolaty bliss.

  Owen Collins is not only adorably cute—long, blond ponytail, blue eyes, lanky build—he is also extremely bright. And even though he has three PhDs—in religion, philosophy, and psychology—his smarts don’t just come from book learning. (Not that I don’t appreciate his love of books. I love books too. In fact, our shared book mania was part of what drew us to each other.) He has deep-down, peer-into-yoursoul, stay-up-late-and-ask-lots-of-what-if-questions smarts.

  So I knew if there was sense to be made out of my day—and my weird reaction to Ginny—Owen would tap into it.

  “On the one hand,” Owen was saying, “your aunt’s quote is a classical conundrum. Do our downfalls come from our inner demons—metaphorically speaking, of course—or from outer demons, such as temptations?”

  I swallowed and was tempted to take another bite of the s’more without commenting, but overcame my temptation and said, “I’m not sure my aunt was speaking metaphorically. Before becoming a Methodist, she was a member of the nondenominational Paradise Church of Almighty Revelations, a very fundamentalist group.” Then I took another yummy bite of s’more. Some temptations are not meant to be resisted for too long.

  “And what bugs me about that is that Dru Purcell still pastors that church, as he did when Aunt Clara attended,” I went on. “And for the first time in years I remembered my aunt’s saying when I met Ginny Proffitt. And it turns out Ginny Proffitt has some connection to Dru Purcell even though Dru claims to hate Ginny and all the psychics. But before he saw our bus, he was hugging her most tenderly. Then he looked so horrified when he saw us, and she looked so pleased. I think she set him up to be seen with her, that she wanted us to see them together.”

  Owen sighed. “All right. Let’s back up a minute. Do you agree that your aunt’s saying is best interpreted figuratively?”

  I gazed at the lazy tongues of fire lapping up into the night, then into the darkness beyond the fire circle. My gaze swiftly returned to the fire. I snuggled closer to Owen. “That surely is my preference,” I said. I ate the final bite of my s’more and longed for another, but I’d eaten the last one. We were down to just graham crackers. Those, I thought, would make a good snack later with peanut butter.

  “Good,” Owen said. “Some psychologists interpret so-called psychic phenomena as a highly tuned subconscious ability to notice and interpret subtle clues in a person’s mannerisms, tone of voice, and so on. Maybe you just subconsciously picked up on clues that indicate Ginny’s struggling with an inner, or outer, figurative demon, and that’s what brought the saying to your mind.”

  I pulled away and stared at Owen. “Are you sayin’ I’m psychic?”

  A playful grin teased up the corners of his mouth, eroding his studious and serious expression. “Never! Just highly intuitive. And sensitive.” He trailed his fingertips over my brow. “Mmmm, yes, very sensitive, I’d say . . .” Yum. I liked this. S’more, s’more, I thought.

  His grin widened. “Plus . . . you’re nosey.”

  I groaned and gave him a playful punch on the arm, and he laughed. He knows how much I hate my old high school nickname—Nosey Josie. Even when it fits. Which in this case, it surely did. Just what was the connection between Ginny and Dru?

  Suddenly, Owen looked serious again. “But I think there’s something else about Ginny that bothered you. You said she somehow knew about a particular dream you’ve been having. I’m here to listen if you’d like to talk about it, Josie, if that would help.”

  I looked away. Sally had asked me earlier what my dream really was about. I’d been saved from answering by Karen coming up the steps to the observation tower. Now, there was no one nearby. We had this particular fire ring to ourselves. A group of Ranger Girls was at the nearest ring, but they weren’t likely to come over to interrupt us. Ranger Girl–cookie-selling season wasn’t until next spring, after all.

  Here was my chance. I could open up to Owen about something that was, on the one hand, so silly, and yet, on the other, was so disturbing to me, much more than recalling my aunt’s saying upon meeting Ginny. How did she know about my dreams about Mrs. Oglevee? And why did I have those dreams, anyway? I’d sloughed them off as just a bizarre glitch in my subconscious, but now, the fact of them bothered me.

  And I’d been hurt that Owen had held back the truth about his past for so long, even wondering if he’d ever have told me if he hadn’t essentially been forced to by his own slip of the tongue, when he’d told a mutual acquaintance a tale about his past that didn’t fit with the past he’d told me. So, if I expected openness and honesty from him, shouldn’t I give him the same?

  Of course.

  So I opened my mouth to speak. And here’s what came out: “It’s just this silly dream I have about wearing an orange bikini in public.”

  I pressed my eyes shut. Oh crap. That was Cherry’s spin on my previous lie about the dream. I’d said navy one-piece. She’d said orange bikini. And in any case, apparently I couldn’t bring myself to open up to Owen.

  He was silent for a long moment. “I think you’d look great in an orange bikini, Josie,” he said softly.

  It was a compliment, and yet there was something sad in his voice
—as if he knew, somehow—thanks to his own highly tuned subconscious ability to notice and interpret subtle clues in my mannerisms and tone of voice—that I wasn’t telling the truth.

  Our mood, thankfully, lightened once we were inside the corn maze.

  The maze was cut out of an acre of corn, then divided into nine sections, each section marked by plastic ribbon of a different color or design (hot pink, white with blue polka dots, bright green, and so on). At the start of the maze, you got a piece of paper, with a key at the bottom (for example, hot pink equals section one) and a large three-by-three grid, which would form the base of the maze map. In each section was a mailbox, which contained that section’s “map” and rolls of tape. The idea was to tape that section’s map onto the correct spot of the grid. Eventually, you’d have an entire map of the corn maze—the “reward” for the challenge.

  One of the tricks to navigating a corn maze—or, I reckon, any maze, although I’ve never been in a non-corn maze—is to stick to only left-hand or right-hand turns. We’d right-hand-turned our way past a witch, a goblin, a princess, a ghost, and a Dracula, who was really Lenny Longman. He was one of the stars of the East Mason County High School basketball team and the dreamboat of the Paradise Methodist Church youth group.

  Lenny had on an old basketball jersey that had been muddied and cut with slits, rubber bloody fangs, streaks of dirt on his face, and twigs and leaves sticking out of his hair, to signify his rising from his burial site. He was also wearing a huge grin, mostly because several members of the basketball cheerleading squad kept getting “lost” over and over in his section. It didn’t seem to frustrate them, though. They giggled every time they walked past Lenny, who made a big show of lunging at them.

  We’d just gotten our second-to-last map piece from Lenny and were in the next section. For the moment, we had this corner of the maze to ourselves.

  Owen widened his eyes and wiggled his fingers at me. “I vant to suck your blood,” he said in a bad Dracula imitation, “so you can be my cheerleader forever!”