Shadow Child

by Wendy Wang

  "Who would you suggest?" Lisa asked.

  "Maybe Bunny’s available," Daphne said. "I bet she'd be willing to help us."

  "I don't have anything of Bunny’s with me," Lisa said.

  "Technically, we’re something of Bunny’s. Since her blood runs through our veins."

  "Maybe if we get stuck. Summoning spirits gives me the heebie-jeebies," Lisa said. "Let's just see where the vision leads us."

  "Sure. Wait, I almost forgot." Daphne reached into her velvet pouch and pulled out a small brown bottle. “Third eye chakra essential oils. My own blend." Daphne opened it and dabbed the oily liquid to the space between her brows. She handed the bottle to Lisa, who breathed in the heady, earthy aroma of rosemary, angelica root, sandalwood, lavender, and frankincense.

  "This smells awesome," Lisa said. "When we’re done, you need to make me a bottle of that."

  "You got it," Daphne said. “I used rosehip seed oil as the base, so it’s not only mind-expanding but good for your skin too."

  Lisa applied it to the space between her brows and handed the bottle back to Daphne. A moment later they began by gazing across the circle at each other. Lisa rested her hands, palms up, on her knees, letting the crystals rest in the center of her hands. The Herkimer quartz vibrated against her skin.

  "I'll follow your lead," Daphne said.

  Lisa nodded and took a deep breath and then let it out very slowly before she began to speak.

  "Goddess to the north, south, east, and west. Lead us forward in our quest. We call on the power of earth, fire, water, and air. Lead us to this lost child, fair. Keeley Moore. Keeley Moore. Keeley Moore. Her location please make known. And may her abductor reap what he has sown. May his actions come back on him, with the force of ten by ten.”

  The cicada abruptly stopped its song. The campsite fell silent. No birds. No squirrels. No noise except the crackling of the candle flames around them. The space around them became hazy. Lisa could barely make out Jason and Beck in the distant. Her face heated and her body broke into a sweat. The flames on the candles grew long and tall. Smoke billowed from each candle, emitting a different color – red, green, blue and white. The smoke spun clockwise, the colors blending together, stirred by a force they could not see.

  The crystals in her palms began to sing against her skin with a quiet hum. Daphne opened the small heart-shaped box she placed on the tarp next to the doll and threw a white powder into the air. It floated upward, spinning above their heads.

  "Goddess to the north, south, east, and west. Lead us forward in our quest.” They continued to chant the spell. The smoke began to mix with the powder and coagulated above their heads into the form of a girl, the shifting apparition of Keeley Moore. She was alive. A strange light shined down on the girl’s vaporous body, and she looked up to the light.

  "Please don’t do this," a tinny voice echoed. A girl’s voice. The sound reminded Lisa of an old transistor radio that her father used to keep on his boat. "Please? Please, don't leave me here. It’s so dark. Please?"

  A pang of despair flooded Lisa’s chest as she watched the girl beg her invisible captor.

  “Remember who takes care of you first. Then I’ll think about letting you out. Till then you get to think about what you’ve done.”

  A man’s deep voice resounded through Lisa’s head.

  Lisa looked to her cousin to verify that she had not imagined the vision in the cloud. Daphne’s blue eyes glowed with excitement, and she didn’t seem to notice Lisa. They continued their chant, focusing on the girl. Where was the sign they needed? The light above the girl’s head faded, dimming the glow of her form until nothing remained. A howling scream tore through Lisa’s head, and her heart clogged her throat. So much pain in that sound. So much fear. So much despair.

  Lisa's head throbbed with each beat of her heart, and her stomach roiled. The scream swelled. Lisa dropped her crystals and pressed her hands to her ears, trying to stop the sound. But she couldn’t. The sound was coming from inside her.

  "As above, so below. So mote it be." Daphne’s words ran together. She snapped her fingers, and the candle flames blew out.

  The sound died as suddenly as it came, filling Lisa’s head with a high-pitched ringing. She scrambled to her feet and made it to the edge of the canvas just in time to empty the contents of her stomach.

  A moment later, she felt Daphne’s warm hand on her back and the feel of her fingers on her skin as her cousin gently gathered her hair and pulled it away from her face.

  "Did you hear her?" Lisa spit and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Her ears rang as if she’d been standing next to a loudspeaker at a concert. She pressed a finger against one of her ears but it didn’t help.

  "Yeah," Daphne said. "It’s like she’s in a basement or a hole in the ground.”

  “Yep. That’s what I was thinking, too. Which means she’s not being kept around here. The water table’s too high.”

  "Right,” Daphne said. “That’s something, I guess.”

  “It’s not really going to help them, though. It could mean she’s been taken out of the south completely,” Lisa said.

  “Why do you say that?” Daphne asked.

  “For the most part, we don’t have basements in the south. Even if the water table isn’t an issue, there’s always the possibility of a limestone layer.”

  “I thought limestone was soft,” Daphne said.

  “It is, but it’s still rock. Digging through it would add too much to the price of a house to be worth it,” Lisa said.

  “How do you know all this?” Daphne asked.

  Lisa shrugged. “I did a lot of real-estate closings when I first started out. I also dated a builder when I lived in Columbia.”

  “Oh right. Thad Lefevre. I remember him,” Daphne said. “He was kind of stuck-up.”

  Lisa sighed and shifted her gaze to Jason and Beck standing out near the dirt road. “I just wish I had more to offer him.”

  “I was serious about the ‘shrooms,” Daphne said. “We could do a protection spell beforehand to keep you from being so affected.”

  “I know, but I don’t think I’m cut out for this. Doing a tarot reading is one thing, but experiencing this? I don’t know how Charlie does it without losing her mind,” Lisa said.

  Daphne nodded and rubbed her hand up and down Lisa’s arm. “That’s why we have a coven. We don’t all have the same strengths.”

  “I know,” Lisa said.

  “How mad would he be? If you asked Charlie to help without telling him?” Daphne asked.

  “I don’t know. And this is gonna sound awful, but I don’t think I care,” Lisa said.

  “Really?” A surprised grin spread across Daphne’s face.

  “Really. This is so much more important than his pride,” Lisa said. “I don’t know why he doesn’t see that.”

  “What do you want to do about it?” Daphne’s demeanor changed, and Lisa could see her cousin’s rebellious streak shining in her blue eyes. She would never admit it, but it was one of those things she envied about Daphne. It allowed her cousin a freedom that Lisa couldn’t quite bring herself to embrace. There were consequences to everything, and Lisa always considered them where Daphne didn’t. Or if she did, she didn’t let it stand in her way.

  “I want to find that girl, but I can’t do it without Charlie. All of y’all, really,” Lisa said.

  Daphne’s face lit up. “Yes. Screw his ego. Let’s show ‘em what we can do.”

  "Okay, I called the guy, and he's willing to meet us downtown at his aunt's house," Ben said.

  "How did you get him to agree to that?" Charlie asked.

  "I told him I might be interested in the house as is. Evidently, the old lady didn't keep up on the maintenance, and it’s in pretty bad shape. Needs a lot of work. He got very excited when I told him that I specialize in old houses. Restoring them and flipping them," Ben said.

  Charlie looked him up and down. "And he believed that?"

 
; "Sure. He's been left a monstrosity of a house, his word not mine, and he reeks of desperation. My guess is the taxes alone are crazy," Ben said.

  "I hadn’t thought about that," Charlie said.

  "He was the only heir, and she left him everything. He's just a software engineer, and said he didn't really want to have to deal with it," Ben said.

  "It's really kind of sad when you think about it," Charlie said. "Edwina was her only child and she died. So did her granddaughter. And her husband too. She was all alone in the world."

  "Yep," Ben said. "And very old from what I gather. It's kinda shocking that she lived there by herself for as long as she did."

  "How old was she?" Charlie asked.

  "A hundred and six,” Ben said.

  "Wow," Charlie said. "And she lived there alone?"

  "No, the guy said that she had a live-in caretaker the last ten years. He's kind of afraid that she might've robbed the old woman blind."

  "I bet she has stories to tell," Charlie said.

  "I bet she does," Ben said. "He said he could meet us there around noon. Is that okay with you?"

  "Yep," Charlie said. "I don't have any hours scheduled for today."

  "Good," Ben said.

  Chapter 14

  Paul Ruskin led Ben and Charlie up the steps to the old Charleston home.

  "I'm sorry this place is such a wreck," he said of the two-story brick building with stacked piazzas on the left side and a false wall with a front door. Mr. Ruskin unlocked the door letting them onto the lower piazza. Charlie could hear banging and from somewhere in the backyard a saw.

  Charlie stopped and looked at the fenced courtyard. A chill settled around her shoulders. It was the one thing she didn't like about coming downtown to old houses like this, even a beauty like this one. Ghosts were always milling about, trapped in some dreamlike state. In the garden, she spied the specter of a young woman in a long blue dress, wandering among half dead rose bushes. Another ghost, of an elderly gentleman wearing breeches and a long coat, sat on the stone bench with a small leather-bound book in his hands. He removed his pocket watch from his vest and glanced at the time then rose from the seat, walked a few feet down the brick path, and promptly disappeared, and Charlie, despite her long experience with such things, shivered into her coat.

  "I was actually kind of shocked that my aunt left it to me," Paul Ruskin said. "If I didn't think Charleston County would still come after me for the taxes, I swear I would just burn it to the ground. It's in that bad shape. I'm just praying that I’ll make all the money I’m investing in it back once I sell it."

  "I totally get that," Ben said. "Maybe we'll be able to help each other."

  "So you're like a house flipper kind of guy? Like they have on TV?" Paul asked.

  "Something like that," Ben lied. Charlie kept her mouth shut.

  Ben continued with the ruse. "I was at the auction for the furniture for this place last week," he said with a deadpan face. "My wife here is particularly interested in old books and likes to collect letters. Do you have anything like that? I could make it worth your while."

  "Yeah, maybe. My great uncle was a lawyer and an avid book collector. Most of the first editions are gone already. But there's still some good stuff in there. I offered his letters to the Museum of Charleston, but they didn’t really want them. I guess they weren’t historically significant enough. I was gonna see if the Library of Congress wanted them."

  "Would you mind if I took a look at them first?" Charlie asked.

  “Sure, that’d be okay," Paul said. "It's amazing how much paper comes with a lifetime of living. I swear to God, I'll never do this to my daughter. I'm gonna digitize everything."

  "I bet she'll appreciate that," Ben said, a twinkle in his eye.

  They walked into the foyer, and Charlie immediately recognized the place. It was from her dream. A little worse for wear but unmistakably the same. The dark paneled walls of the foyer and the Rosewood banister had lost their luster, and the carpet covering the steps looked worn in the center and frayed at the edges. The mirror she had seen hanging near the bottom of the steps with only shards of glass clinging to the frame had been replaced, but the silver backing was splotched and looked in some places as if fingernails had been dragged across it, or was that her imagination? Charlie’s stomach tied itself into a knot.

  "I’ll bet this place was beautiful in its heyday," Charlie said. "And your aunt never had any children?"

  "She had a daughter, but she died back in the 50s. According to family lore my cousin was not playing with a full deck of cards, if you know what I mean," Paul said. It shocked Charlie how casually he threw his family's crazy up for display.

  "Oh, I know what you mean," Charlie said. “It’s sad.”

  "Yeah, I think it kind of broke my aunt's heart," Paul said. "So what would you like to look at first?"

  "I'd like to see the books and letters if that's okay?" Charlie asked.

  "Yeah, sure." Paul gestured for her to follow him. He took her to an all-too-familiar door. A wave of nausea washed over Charlie as she followed him into the office where she had seen Edwina have her break down. There were still tons of leather-bound books on the shelves, and the mirror where Edwina had smashed her head was now gone, replaced by a painting of a Great Dane in front of an English manor house.

  "These built-in shelves are beautiful," Charlie remarked.

  He pointed to the wall facing the door. “The cabinetry is all built-in too,” he said. She recalled a desk in her dream but not the cabinetry. "They were actually kind of ahead of their time. There are file cabinet drawers behind the doors."

  "Clever," Charlie said.

  “You’ll find a box of the letters on the shelves above the cabinets on the left side.”

  "Great. I'm just gonna look around if that's okay?"

  "Sure. I'm going to finish showing your husband around. Just give me a shout if you need anything,” He jerked his thumb at the door.

  “Sure thing.” Charlie painted on an appreciative smile that faded as soon as he walked away. She moved to the shelf and held out her hand, hoping for some sort of sign — a tingle, a glow, anything that would tell her more about Edwina and Barbara Jean. Charlie closed her eyes and cleared her mind, then pictured Edwina's face and the pain she’d endured.

  Charlie traced her fingers across the spines of the books on the shelves. Her hand almost lit on fire when she got close to the cabinet doors. She carefully opened the first set of doors and pulled out the hidden file cabinet drawers, four of them, and they went far deeper into the wall than she first suspected. She skimmed her fingers over the old file folders inside the first drawer, and when she felt nothing, she moved on to the next drawer. In the fourth drawer her fingers burned again and at the very back, she found a file simply marked Edwina. She pulled it out and sat on the floor in her half lotus position so she could open the file on her lap.

  The first document was an intake form for the South Carolina State Sanitarium. Charlie skimmed over the document. The ancient typewriter used back then had blurred the letters p and s. The words “severe depression” looked almost like a Rorschach inkblot. The rest of the file contained other treatment notes made by Edwina’s doctor and notations by nurses about her meds.

  Charlie’s hand drifted to her mouth when she read the words “Shock Treatment” and “Possible Lobotomy Warranted.”

  “What the hell?” The volume of her voice startled Charlie and she glanced up at the door. Hadn’t they stopped that crap in the fifties? “Bastards,” she muttered.

  All the forms were stamped “Original.” Charlie suspected that because of the family's prominence and money, they were able to keep Edwina’s hospitalization quiet by paying someone off to get the original records. Some part of her knew that if this had been her and Scott sixty years ago, he would've done the same thing. It turned her stomach that Edwina’s family was so afraid of the stigma.

  Charlie closed the file folder. Why wasn't Edwina showi
ng her anything? There had to be something more to this. Something not written in these files. She closed the doors but tucked the file folder into her bag. They'd never miss it, and it would do more good with her than the family. Charlie checked the other set of cabinets but didn't find anything other than old law papers.

  She heard a click and glanced around for the source of the sound. She looked at the corner shelf. Something about it seemed out of place. Her gaze swept across the other shelves, and she realized that the corner shelf was somehow kitty corner now. As if someone had pushed it out from the wall. Slowly, she approached and heard the sound of the air stirring. Or was it breathing? The hair on the back of her neck stood at attention as she reached the shelf.

  A rusty squeal resounded as she pulled the shelf outward and realized it was on a hinge. The dark called to her, beckoning her to move forward to find out where this secret door led. If Jen were here, she would probably have had a flashlight in her bottomless purse. But she wasn't. Charlie reached inside her bag searching for the small pouches of crystals she now carried with her everywhere. Jen had made sure that her tote was well appointed with everything, including black tourmaline, amethyst, and Herkimer quartz. She pulled the small the clear quartz crystal from the bag and placed it in her palm.

  She whispered “Shine clear. Shine bright. Shine so I may see your light,” three times. A few seconds passed, and the crystal began to glow pale yellow at first, then brighter.

  Charlie opened the door wide enough that she could walk into the passageway. The sharp, musty scent of mold and mildew hit her in the face, and she rubbed the tip of her nose to fight back the tickle. And then she sniffed. The crystal in her palm radiated just enough light for her to see a few feet in front of her. Something cold brushed over her shoulders. As if she'd been touched. She stopped and slowly turned her head. Behind her, she found a familiar face.

  "I know you," Charlie said. "You were at the auction. You told me about the spindle bed. It came from this house, didn't it?"