Carol Shenold - Tali Cates 02 - Bloody Murder (16 page)

“If it’s a cellar, I’m not going to be trapped inside a death trap.”

“Oh, don’t be a baby. It’s just a pantry but it should protect us.”

She pulled back. “But it’s dark and old and there’s no telling how many critters are in there. Besides, how do you know it’s a pantry?”

I shrugged and pulled open the door, then looked around for light. In the middle of the pentagram on the floor stood a large candle. Plucking that from its resting place might not be good but it was better than being in the dark. I grabbed it, attempting to ignore the energy washing through me.

We barreled through the pantry door and closed it. Now we were in the pitch dark with an unlit candle.

“It’s noon in October, not late afternoon in May,” I shouted. “We shouldn’t be having this strong a thunderstorm.”

“Did you tell that to the weather gods? I don’t think they’re playing by the rules,” Cherilyn yelled back. “How about some light?”

“Do you have a lighter or something?” An abrupt flare of light blinded me as the wick of the candle I held burst into flame. I barely managed to hold onto the wax when I jumped. Thank God I’d dropped the sack of grass at the last thunderclap or I’d have a bag of flame.

“Okay. That was just plain weird. I know you have some gifts, but lighting things with your mind?”

“It wasn’t me. Not on purpose.”

Shelves held the usual things for an abandoned house—dust, cobwebs, more dust, spiders, a discarded, dented can of corn. The hail, wind, and rain had stopped, or else we simply couldn’t hear them, which made no sense. Was this the eye of the storm? I didn’t remember that tornados had an eye; they came and went so fast.

The pantry was enormous, as were Cherilyn’s eyes. She wasn’t looking at me, but above my head somewhere.

“What? What’s wrong?”

She pointed to the wall behind me. “Look.”

I turned. Symbols covered the wall. Most pantries had shelves on at least three walls but this one was as large as a living room, and one wall was covered with hundreds of drawings crammed together, one on top of each other. They glowed with a light of their own—or took the light from the candle. I moved closer to try to identify the drawings but an immediate chill shot through me.

My hands shook, my entire body trembled, sending the candle flame jumping like a demented firefly, throwing shadows in odd shapes all over the wall. I swore the shadows moved on their own. More than anything in the world, I didn’t want to see the things that made those shadows. Fear also moved on its own, pushed into me, froze my blood, stopping all movement, including my heart. Unreasonable fear that made me want to claw my way out of the room took over.

Chapter Sixteen

I gasped for air. It worked. I took another breath.

I looked at Cher’s panicked face. “Cherilyn, breathe. It’s okay. We’ll be all right.” A clap of thunder vibrated through the room.

She took a breath. “Is it over? What was that?”

“I don’t know if the storm outside is over but maybe the one inside is. Let’s get out of this room. I’ll take my chances in the rest of the house.”

We opened the door. It looked lighter, a little, in spite of the continuing rain. Maybe the storm would calm down and we could at least make it to the car to have our lunch, although I wasn’t sure either one of us was hungry.

Cherilyn was out the pantry door as fast as I was and slammed it shut as if she were being pursued by the devil. Maybe we were.

“What the hell was that? I never felt or saw anything like it and certainly don’t want to ever again. What did you get us into? Is there something about this house you didn’t tell me?”

“All I know about it is what I told you earlier. Oh, the usual stories that circulate when a house has been empty for along time. You know, lights at the window, strange shadows.” I looked down at the candle still in my hand. “Maybe they weren’t stories after all.”

Cherilyn looked at me with one eyebrow raised. She did that sardonic thing so well. “You think?”

“Yeah, I think.” I loosened my death grip and set down the candle. Weakness flooded my body. I must have been really tense. I bet I’d clenched every muscle. “I’d better talk to Mumsie and see what she knows and hasn’t bothered to tell me. And where are all her spirit warnings when you need them?”

“Spirit warnings?”

“Never mind, there are things about Mumsie you don’t want to look at too close.” I pointed out the window. “Hey, the sun peeked out. Let’s get out of here.”

Cherilyn pulled out her cell. “Wait a second, I want a picture of the circle and pentagram and that wall we saw.”

I stared at her. “Okay, I can see a quick picture of the stuff on the floor, but do you really want to go in that room again?”

She paused mid-shot, then finished. “Nooo. But I have to get the shot.”

“All right, but I’m not touching that candle again.”

“It’s okay, the camera will flash. I don’t need extra light. Open the door and I’ll take the shot from the doorway.”

She got her shot. The flash blinded me so I couldn’t see the wall at all. I looked at my watch. It had only been an hour since we got here. It wasn’t one in the afternoon yet. It felt as if hours had passed. I grabbed the sack of grass and we left.

As we drove, Cherilyn chatted away about the storm, the pantry—a reaction to what had happened, or not happened. I felt stunned. I went over it in my head and still made no sense out of it. The candle lighting itself, the runes on the wall glowing, shadows moving from nothing, the fear—it had been like a nightmare. Maybe it was hysterical hallucinations we shared. I didn’t really believe that but I couldn’t explain what had happened.

“Let’s have lunch,” Cherilyn said, much too brightly. “Let’s fucking eat lunch and forget all the shit that happened, okay?” She screeched to a halt and pulled off to the side before she burst into tears.

“Cher, honey, I’m so sorry. I should never have taken you there.”

“Don’t be silly. I know you didn’t know anything about the place. I don’t know why I got so scared. I think I’m a wuss. I don’t know how you deal with the bodies, and visions, and ghosts. Obviously I’m not cut out for this and all I saw were a few scribbles on a wall.”

“It was more than that and we know it, even if we aren’t sure what it was.”

Cherilyn stared at her phone while we talked.

“What?’

“Look.”

I looked. There was nothing there. The pantry wall was blank, as if it had been whitewashed.

We stared at each other. “Well, shit.” I flipped through the other pictures. At least the circle and pentagram showed up good and clear. I should never have touched the candle. It’s what started it. I’d have to go back and get it later, but I wouldn’t involve Cher in that, for sure.

I touched Cherilyn on the arm. “How about if we go back to my house, have lunch, and forget this mess. I wonder if we had any hail damage at home. Speaking of, what did it do to your car? I didn’t pay attention.”

She laughed. “Like there were no distractions.”

“Well yeah.”

“I did manage to park under a tree that blocked a lot of the hail. It should be easy to fix.”

We pulled up in front of the house as Mumsie ran out. “Tali, I was so worried. You were gone and the storm came, and hail. The boys were really worried.”

“Sean and Rusty? I told Sean to work in the yard and stay away from Rusty for the day.”

“No, silly. Amen Ka and Chung Po. They kept going on about witchcraft and runes and such. I don’t know what they were so agitated about. Do you?”

“Did we get any hail damage?”

“We lucked out. Just missed us. But did anything happen you need to tell me about? I sent Sean over to Rusty’s since he couldn’t work in the yard like you wanted. You and I can do a better job anyway.”

“Let’s eat lunch with Cher, and later I’ll tell you all about it.”

She caught the hint and went to the kitchen to make tea and cut some French bread. Definitely better than crackers.

By the time we finished lunch, it was as clear outside as if there had never been a storm. Gotta love Texas weather. No matter what time of year it was, if you didn’t like the weather, you only had to wait a minute or two for it to change. Except, that is, when you were ready for the July triple digits to go away. Then it was hot for the rest of your life.

Cherilyn said her goodbyes without saying anything more about the incident at the house. I wasn’t sure if she was still frightened, wanted to pretend nothing had happened, or was keeping her cards close to the vest in case there was a juicy story there.

I couldn’t wait to pick Mumsie’s brain regarding the Rayburn house. Something must have happened there and I bet she knew what. She always knew tidbits she failed to share, not maliciously, but just because her brain was so full of info at all times. She was interested in everything and knew bits and pieces about most of the families in Love county.

I went out to the shed to drag out the rakes. It was windy but not impossible. I found a basket for the pecans “I found gloves for us both,” Mumsie yelled from the deck.

“Gloves? It’s not cold.”

“Tali, work gloves, you idiot, unless you want pecan stain under your nails and scratches all over your fingers along with splinters from those old rake handles.”

“Oh.” I didn’t always think to do the Southern-lady-protecting-her-skin thing like I should.

Mumsie walked up with two straw hats and a couple of pairs of old gloves. “Here you go. This will keep your hair out of your eyes.”

“I could accomplish that with one of my baseball caps, you know.”

“I hate baseball caps on women, especially when they turn them backward. They look like poorly dressed adolescent boys. Men too, for that matter.”

“You are becoming old-fashioned in your old age.”

She jammed one of the straw hats on her head, tied the ribbons she’d sewn into the crown under her chin, and pulled on gloves. “Bite your tongue, young lady. You are the stick-in-the-mud around here, not me. You were old before you were ten.”

Pecans littered the ground under the large tree in the back yard so we began there. Someone was burning leaves, I could smell it in the air. I loved this time of year, especially when the air had cooled off from summer and the first hints of a freeze began to be felt. It could get cold by Halloween, or at least crisp.

We bent over, our heads touching as we picked up the brown nuts to put in the basket. “What do you know about that abandoned house out on seventy-six, the one with the grasses behind it? Didn’t it used to belong to the Rayburn’s?”

Mumsie straightened up so fast, she cracked me under the jaw with her head. I rocked back, grabbing hold of my chin, wiggling it to make sure it wasn’t broken.

“Oh, honey,” she laughed. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I snapped. “It’s not funny.”

“I know it isn’t, but the expression on your face was priceless. Sorry.”

“Why did you jump like that when I mentioned the house?”

“It was strange. I dreamt about that house this morning after I returned to bed. You know, after I was roused so rudely.”

“Okay. I said I was sorry. I didn’t sleep well either. A lot of dreams I couldn’t remember, panic when I woke up. Anyway, what about the house?”

“That house belonged to the Rayburn’s all right, but not the ones with money who were in the legislature and owned half the county at one time. This was another branch altogether. They always had gossip going around about them, marriage trouble, boyfriend difficulty. Abuses of all kinds were rumored to have gone on in that house. There were stories of ghosts, and about the practice of witchcraft, even as late as the thirties and forties. You wouldn’t think about those as suspicious times but with the depression, money troubles, drought, it wasn’t a great time, at least that’s what my mother said.”

“Did Grandma know any of them personally?”

“Her best friend was one of the cousins, Blessy, and that was who filled her in about everything. Could have simply been over-imagination, but she never struck me as the type. She moved out of the county before you were born. I heard she had children and grandchildren.”

We stood under the pecan tree, hats pushed back, leaning on our rakes like gossiping farmers.

I told her what had happened during the storm, what I had seen, and Cherilyn’s reaction. “What do you think could be going on? Wouldn’t we have heard if some witchcraft thing was going on? You know how people love to build that up and spread it around.” The expression on Mumsie’s face stopped me cold. “What?”

“That’s what I dreamed.”

“Really. The whole thing?”

“It was happening to me and I couldn’t leave the pantry because the witch was on the other side of the door.”

“
Twilight Zone
time. I knew the pantry was a pantry before we leaped into it for protection.”

Mumsie shifted her position and began to rake again. “I don’t know, Tali. Something’s out of control here. Too many things happening that no one can explain.”

“What can we do about it? How do we figure it out? Could the magic be somehow connected to the deaths? Could Aiden be involved?”

“There may not be anything we can do about any of this. It could be darker than we’re ready or capable of handling.”

I followed after her, forgetting to rake while I talked. “Meaning what? We’re helpless to find out what’s really happening? I won’t accept that. Could one of the family have moved back?”

Mumsie stopped raking and turned around to face me, her face a mask. “I don’t want to talk about this any more or get any more involved than we are already. If you want to keep the kids safe, forget what you saw or thought you saw and leave it alone. Leave me alone. I have work to do and if you can’t help, go away.”

She turned around and I stared at her back for a few minutes before I continued raking and picking up pecans.
Could my life get any more complicated?
Oops. I looked around. Did I say that out loud? Did anyone hear me? If no one hears, does it count?

Chapter Seventeen