It was still dark when she woke up hours later. The storm clouds were so thick that the sun’s rays were unable to penetrate through and light the earth below. It looked more like 9
p.m
. instead of 9
a.m
.
Aimee slept in because she had to work that night. Lindsey tried to do the same, but found herself preoccupied with the storm. She ended up in the living room, a movie playing louder than usual, and a tabloid magazine in hand. She continued to pray for the storm to end quickly, but that afternoon torrential rain was still pelting the windows in waves, sounding like someone was throwing pea gravel at them over and over again. The wind still howled through the trees, spraying the yard with dislodged Spanish moss. Leaves were plastered to everything – cars, porch railings, windows and even the walkway.
Lindsey had no idea how her mother slept through most of it because she was too scared to close her eyes, to submit to unconsciousness for more than a few minutes at a time. Instead, she huddled on the sofa with a blanket drawn all the way up to her chin. Back in Indiana, weather like this meant tornados. At least they had storm cellars back home. Not that a storm cellar would do a bit of good here. With all the water from the ACE Basin just a few hundred yards away, there was a good chance that a cellar would flood and the occupants would either die by drowning or lightning strike.
“Hey, chicca. What do you want to do tonight since fireworks are obviously not an option?” Maddie asked, letting herself in the backdoor.
“Are you nuts? I don’t want to do anything but hide in a closet. There’s a hurricane hitting us out there!”
Maddie laughed as she kicked her rain boots off by the door. She then tossed her rain coat over a kitchen stool and ran her fingers through her wet hair. “Oh, honey. This ain’t a hurricane. This is nothing. Honestly, I’ve seen microbursts worse than this. You’ll get used to it,” she said nonchalantly as she walked over and plopped down on the sofa beside Lindsey.
“Hurricane, tropical storm, whatever. It’s scary as hell is what it is.”
The storm had rendered the satellite TV useless and watching DVDs over and over again had lost its appeal, so the girls pulled a board game out of the cupboard and settled down on the floor. They were half-way through their game when Lindsey’s can of soda slid across the coffee table and onto the floor. Dark brown cola spread across the white throw rug beneath them. The girls looked at each other, their eyebrows so high that they almost reached their hairlines. For a moment the only sound was the fizzle of the carbonated drink that was slowly inching its way across the top of the Scotchgarded rug.
“
What
was
that
?” Maddie squeaked, obviously intrigued.
“See, I told you! I swear that this house is freaking haunted.” Instead of being scared, though, Lindsey was elated. Finally, something had happened in front of someone else.
“Well you know, Daddy told me that the persnickety old lady that owned this place when he was kid actually died in the kitchen of a heart attack or something over her morning oatmeal. He said that people always thought that the place had an ‘odd air’ about it,” Maddie made parentheses marks in the air with her fingers. “And the lady that lived here before you once told my mom that she always felt like she was being watched in here. So maybe that old bat that croaked in the kitchen is still here, watching over her belongings. Maybe she doesn’t like the fact that you’re using her antique coffee table and not bothering to use a coaster.”
“Oh, ha, ha. Very funny. Seriously, something is always up around here. It’s eerie because I’m alone here at night. I know that no one has come in since the alarm is set, but I swear I can hear someone running around down here. And I can put something down in one place and then I find it in another. And the other night, the little bastard twisted strands of my hair into these little tiny braids while I was sleeping! Mom said that it was just you and Michelle playing jokes on me.”
“Us? Why would we do things to intentionally scare you? And how would we get past the alarm?”
“I know, right? That’s why I’m so glad there was a witness this time. Thanks, Fred!”
Maddie’s eyes and mouth opened wide as if she’d had an epiphany. She jumped up and clapped her hands. “Oh, oh, oh! That’s what we can do tonight! We’ll make our own fireworks.”
“Wha –”
“Just give me a second; let me see if Michelle is still at the house.”
Maddie ran to her jacket and pulled her cell phone out of one of the pockets. Lindsey wasn’t sure what Maddie was up to and she didn’t want to snoop, so she got up and cleaned the spilled cola off the floor. When she was done, she rummaged in the cabinets for some chips and dip. She could hear Maddie typing furiously on her cell’s little keyboard.
“Hey, Maddie,” Lindsey sat back down on the floor.
“Um, yeah?” she didn’t look up from her fervid texting.
“You mentioned the lady that lived here before us. Did you, you know, did you know her?”
“Um, not really. She kept to herself. Mom knew her though; they loved to garden and talked a lot about their newest plants and stuff. Michelle and I would see her every once in a while when we were out riding. She always seemed really nice. Why?”
“Oh, I just wondered.”
“She was a relative of yours, right? You mom looks a lot like her.”
“I don’t know. All I know is that Gramma owned this house and left it to my mom in her will. We didn’t even know about the place until she died… I have no idea who was living here before us. All I know is that my mom doesn’t want to talk about it when I bring it up.”
Lindsey heard her mom moving on the landing above.
“Hey, don’t mention any of this to Mom, OK? It’s still sort of a sore spot.”
“No problem. My dad and Aunt Sadie, that’s his older sister, are estranged, so I completely understand family drama.”
Maddie finished her cyber conversation and slid her cell in the back pocket of her jean shorts.
“Damn, damn, damn! I don’t want to drive in this weather.” Aimee loped down the stairs in a pair of sweats.
“You’re going to work like that?”
“I’m not going to wear my scrubs out in this weather! I’ve got them in my gym bag. I’ll change when I get to the hospital.” She picked up her clogs and tossed them into the bag that she’d just dropped on the floor at the foot of the stairs. After she’d tied her sneakers and put on a baseball cap, she walked into the kitchen and kissed Lindsey on top of the head.
“What have you girls got planned for this evening?”
“Oh, the usual,” Lindsey rolled her eyes. “Drugs, boys, and booze.”
Maddie wooted in the background.
“Well, I suppose that’s fine as long as you stay off the roads,” Aimee teased back as she poured herself a bowl of cereal. (Even though it was after six in the evening, it was breakfast time for her.) Lindsey turned back to watch Maddie and to think about the odd events that happened here almost nightly. And the relief that someone else had experienced a Fred-ism.
Now if only something would happen in front of Mom
. She was so lost in thought that she barely noticed her mom holding a glass dish out to her.
“No, thank you,” she muttered.
“I’m not offering you anything, Lindsey. I want to know why you took fruit off of my cake. I made this for work and I know I told you that. There are strawberries in the fridge if you want them. You didn’t have to steal one of mine.”
Lindsey looked down at the cake her mom had made the night before from a recipe she’d cut out of a magazine. It was a basic angel food cake, covered in whipped buttercream frosting, and decorated to look like the American flag with cut strawberries as stripes and plump, round blueberries in the upper left corner. A large berry slice was missing and the frosting smudged around in the very center of the cake.
“Mom, I never touched it!”
“Uh-huh. Let me guess, the
ghost
did it.”
It was obvious that Aimee didn’t believe her. She took the plastic box of berries out of the fridge and jerked a knife from the dishwasher, all the while keeping eye contact with Lindsey. After she’d mended the cake and rewrapped it with plastic wrap, she grabbed her bag and headed to the front door.
Now I’ve got to run, honey. Please, please, please don’t go anywhere tonight in this weather. If you need anything, call me.” And with that she slipped out of the door to head to another overnight shift at the hospital.
Lindsey turned to where Maddie sat. “See! I never touched that cake. Why would I poke my finger in the middle of it like that? Something weird is going on in this house!”
“You think a ghost ate a strawberry?”
“No. I think a ghost is screwing with me!”
“Well, we’re going to find out what’s going on as soon as Michelle gets her slow butt over here. Come on, let’s clean this up.”
The girls put the abandoned game away and waited. Michelle banged on the front door a few moments later. Lindsey gazed worriedly at the puddles forming in the front yard as a nearly drowned Michelle sloshed in. She hoped the downpour would let up before her backyard officially became a part of the ACE Basin.
Lindsey locked the door and the trio tromped up the stairs to her bedroom. Lindsey and Maddie flopped on the bed while Michelle towelled off and put on dry clothes from Lindsey’s closet. Once she was dry, Michelle pulled Lindsey’s hope chest out into the middle of the floor and plunked a red plastic shopping bag in the middle of it. The two other girls joined her on the floor.
Confused, Lindsey stared at the bag. “Well… what are we doing?”
“We are going to contact the other side,” Michelle said mischievously as she pulled several items from the bag: four squat candles which she placed in each corner of their makeshift table, an African necklace full of colorful beads, long animal teeth, and a gold talisman that hung in the very center, a yellow legal pad and ink pen, a cigarette lighter, and an assortment of dried weeds that were tied together with twine. She put the necklace around her own neck and lit the candles and the tip of the bundle. After she tapped down the flame, she passed the smouldering weeds to Maddie. Finally, she pulled out a weathered board from the bottom of the bag and placed it in the middle of the chest lid.
The dark stained wood board was oval with a bevelled edge and about the size of a large serving platter. The alphabet was written around its circumference in chipped, gold paint. In the middle, the numbers zero through nine were painted in a straight line. The word “Yes” was painted above the numbers, the word “No” below. Right above the yes, someone had written “CHRYCE PUHTEK WE” in white paint.
Maddie clapped her hands excitedly. “I’m so glad that you didn’t throw it all out in the trash!”
“Oh, Mom’s certainly not!” When she saw the confused look on Lindsey’s face, she added, “You see, Mom is a little bit superstitious so she had a fit when we brought this stuff home, told me to take daddy’s axe to it and throw it away. I thought that was a bit dramatic so I stashed it in the garage instead. But I told her I had thrown it away, you know, to appease her. When she saw me putting it in the bag a little while ago, though, I thought she was going to have a coronary, said that I was not allowed to bring it back. So I guess you have your own wudu board now, Lindsey."
“A what? That just looks like a homemade Ouija board.” Lindsey wasn’t sure that she wanted that thing in her home either. Seriously, in the movies these things never led to a good end.
“Ouija boards are for parlour tricks, my dear. This is special. It’s an authentic Gullah wudu board. It’s similar to a Ouija, yes, but it’s much more powerful because it’s crafted by and used by a kimbanda. We found it at the Open Air Market down on the peninsula during Spring break. This Gullah lady had a table full of things like this. This board was the neatest thing, though. I got it for ten bucks. Ten freaking bucks. Anyway, she showed us how to use it but warned that we should be careful and always use a ‘root man.’ Mom nearly shit a brick when she saw it.”
Lindsey looked at her like she was nuts. "I've never heard anything good about stuff like this. Isn't this bad luck or something?"
Maddie laughed and Michelle rolled her eyes.
“Good Lord, Lindsey. You watch too many movies. Now, ladies, let us gather around and talk to this spirit that’s tormenting you.” Michelle stuck her tongue out at Lindsey and then pointed at the African necklace. “I will be the kimbanda. That’s the diviner, the person who calls the spirit forth. Maddie, you shall be my protective root man. Keep that sage smudge stick close to the board. Lindsey, you just sit back and concentrate on calling forth the spirit that haunts this house... and you.”
“Uh-huh. You expect me to believe that load of bull?” Lindsey tried to sound brave.
“Oh, we shall see!” Maddie giggled as she took a small, heart-shaped, clear plastic planchette of out the plastic bag and placed it in the center of the board. She wadded the bag up and tossed it on the bed.
Maddie held the smudge stick near the board as Michelle put the first two fingers on each of her hands on the planchette. Lindsey stared at them in disbelief.
“Authentic Gullah, huh? They make that from the ancient plastic tree?”
“We bought this separate, smart ass. Michelle broke the glass one that came with it.”
“Hey! It fell out of the bag onto the pavement.”
“Yeah, because –”
“So, we’re not doing this?” Lindsey interjected.
“Yes, we’re still a-go. Why? You getting cold feet? I mean, you want to know who’s playing tricks on you, right?”
Lindsey was hesitant. She had only heard bad things about these boards and was a little scared that she might find out something she didn’t really want to know. Then again, this thing looked more like an innocuous game than something sinister. She sighed and placed her fingers on the marker like Michelle had done.
What the hell
, she thought.
It’s not like Michelle knows what she’s doing anyway
.
“Greetings, spirits! We are talking only to the spirit or spirits that call Retreat House home. Can you please come forth and speak with us?” Michelle projected loudly to be heard over the churning weather outside.