…
I have heard some stupid ass things in my life, but this guy wanted to play the lottery with a magic book?
I looked at the painting again. The figure was gone.
Did that mean it was here? In the house?
“Why do you keep looking at the picture?” He looked from me to the painting. “What? Do you think it’s behind the painting?”
Behind it? Huh. I never thought to look there.
Rhonda gasped. I looked at him and then past him and caught sight of something shadowy in the doorway just behind him. I could see through it as it slowly came closer.
“Well it’s not there. You know why I know that? Because I put that wall there. I know what’s behind that wall and the book isn’t there!” He did a double take of the picture. “What’s wrong with my painting? Why is it winter? And why isn’t she there?” He pointed at the painting. “Why isn’t she in the painting?”
I looked at the painting again. That’s when I spotted the gold initials in the right lower corner. JKG. “Did you paint it?”
“Yes. I did it for her. I wanted to give her something so she’d give me that book.” His face sobered and the gun wavered. “But did you know she told me no? Yeah, my own grandmother. She told me I wasn’t gifted enough to understand it. That I didn’t deserveit.”
Rhonda stepped to my left. “Jack—what happened to your grandmother?”
“That’s my secret, and that’s not one I’m going to tell either of you.” He aimed the gun at us.
The shadow in the doorway was clearer now. A woman, dressed in a long house-coat. Sort of like the one mom wore in the winter. She disappeared and then reappeared in front of Rhonda and me.
Jack hesitated and started firing, but we’d ducked down hit the floor.
Then he fired at the painting over and over until it was little more than shreds of cloth. The wall behind it was damaged and the sheet rock cracked.
Thunder proceeded a crowd of workers charging into the room. They’d heard the gunfire and came running. Several of them grabbed Jack and wrestled him to the ground as another one helped Rhonda to her feet and led her out of the room.
I stayed incorporeal and remained in the background. Once they were gone and I heard the police sirens I pulled out my watch and gasped when I saw a full two hours gone. That wasn’t right—I hadn’t been in this house that long.
Unless—was it possible my going corporeal ate into that time?
I hadn’t thought about that.
“You’re not dead.”
The voice made me squeak and I nearly dropped the watch.
I wasn’t alone in the room. The woman I’d seen coming closer to the house now occupied the room’s center. “No, I’m not.”
“What are you?”
“I call myself a Traveler.”
“Sad,” she said and looked that way. “I had hoped you were an angel sent to rid me of my bond to this place.”
“You’re bound here? By what?”
“I hoped it was my body, but now that it will be found I feel no release. So I have to assume it is because of my folly.”
Rhonda came bounding back into the study at that moment, a blanket over her shoulders. “They want me to give my statement to the police on how he threatened—” she stopped when she saw the ghost. “Oh…hell…”
The woman looked at Rhonda. “Use it wisely. And never for harm. It possesses the same strength of will as that of an athame. If you accept it, then it will be your bane as much as it is mine.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. But Rhonda seemed to. She nodded to the spectre. “I promise.”
Something clicked in the room and I turned to see one of the larger plaques pop out from the wall. It swung open on a hinge.
Rhonda went to it and opened it wider. Behind the plaque was a small vertical hole in the wall cut in the exact shape as the book she pulled out. It was a big book, thick and bound in something brown and leathery.
“Is that it?” I pointed to it.
“Yes,” the ghost answered. “Do you accept it?”
“Yes, yes I do,” Rhonda said.
“Think carefully, little one. And remember there is nothing evil in this world, but thinking—”
Rhonda opened the book.
The ghost vanished.
I stood there for a few minutes before I felt the first tremor under my feet and an overwhelming dread press down on my shoulder. “We need to go…now.”
• • •
The house fell.
I mean it literally fell on its foundation. No one living was hurt. The gross part was it revealed three bodies buried inside the house walls. None of them was the lady we’d seen. Her body was found in the woods, buried under a now collapsed gazebo by a long dried-up lake. Mariana Durgan, the matriarch and I assumed the woman who spoke to us. She’d been killed by a blow to the head. Her grandson Jack Grayson confessed to the crime and buried her ten years ago. He’d had the gazebo added six months later to cover the grave.
Jack was arrested and sentenced a year later on drug related charges and recently been released from prison before contacting me.
The other two sets of remains were sent to the crime lab.
No idea who they were.
Mom and Rhonda were glued to that book for days afterward. I filed Jack Grayson’s case as closed and kept his retainer for services rendered. I was in the botanica, curled up on my old papasan chair with my laptop on my knees. I’d been trying to compose my report to Maharba for over an hour. I wanted that other 50K. But I didn’t know what to tell them. And I discovered that mom hadn’t told Rhonda about this person’s or people’s interest in her.
Mom came in with a cup of hot chocolate and sat on the couch beside me. “Still trying to figure out what to say?”
“Yeah. You done with the Big Book of Everything in there?”
She nodded. “It’s Rhonda’s responsibility now.”
I scratched at my cheek. I didn’t care for the thing and was happy enough to core dump it for now. “I’m a little weirded out that someone’s that interested in her. Why?”
“Oh who knows. I would give you a suggestion though.” Mom leaned in. “Tell them she’s not a witch.”
“But that’s lying.”
Tim appeared next to mom then and sat on top of the coffee table. “I don’t like her.”
“That was kind of random,” I frowned at him.
“Tim’s just mad because I’ve offered Rhonda a job to help me here. That way I can train her properly and get a bit of help. Maybe take her on as my apprentice.”
“Bad idea,” Tim said but didn’t utter another word.
I didn’t care one way or the other. Rhonda and I got along pretty well, and it was nice having someone I could talk to about all this. And I loved my watch. “So, you think I should just say she’s not that gifted?”
“Tell Maharba that Rhonda Orly is not a witch. You won’t be lying.”
“Mom, I saw her light that candle without even touching it. And what about what she did with my new watch?”
“That doesn’t make her a witch.”
“Then what is she?”
Mom looked dubious. “I don’t know. But do what I said. Get the money. And have no more to do with them.”
I typed up a to-the-point report and hit send. After I set the laptop aside I picked up my own hot chocolate even though it was more like warm cocoa now. “Mom, that ghost started to tell Rhonda something before she left. But she didn’t finish it.”
“What was it?”
I repeated what I heard.
“That’s Shakespeare, Zoë. Hamlet. The full quote is,” she shifted and took a deep breath. “Why then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.”
I stared at her. “What the hell does that mean? And why would she want to tell Rhonda that?”
“I’m assuming she wanted Rhonda to understand that the inform
ation in the book—and it is more of a dictionary than a spell book—should be used in the most noble of fashion.”
“And if she uses it in an not-noble fashion?”
My email pinged so I grabbed at the laptop again and looked. A reply from Maharba.
Dear Miss Martinique,
We do appreciate your insight into this matter and your information is invaluable. We also concur on your assessment and have made recommendations concerning issues that have made themselves known within the last twenty-four hours.
The balance of your payment has been credited to your account and we look forward to working with you very soon.
All the best,
Maharba.
What the hell did that mean?
“You get your payment?”
I shut the laptop without checking. “Yep. You were saying?”
“My answer is to both of you Zoë,” mom set her chocolate on the coffee table. “If you think of evil when you use your power, then that intent will permeate what you do. But if you choose to use it for good, the same is also true.” She reached out and tucked a strand of hair from my face behind my ear. “Always keep your intent true, Zoëtrope. Always be a good little girl.”
She’d called me that since I was small. Her good little girl. But this time when she said it I felt a shiver cross over my shoulders and I looked away
Copyright © 2012 Phaedra Weldon
Published by Caldwell Press
Dead Corse Page 4