Dead Spell (12 page)

“I hate you.” She threw the picture down the long hallway and it shattered on her mother’s bedroom floor.

Tom shoved her from behind, pushing her down the hall and knocking her to her knees. Glass shards from the broken frame poked through her pants and burrowed into her skin.

 “There you are. Angry, just like I like you.”

She rummaged through the glass and raised the largest piece. A quiet, almost imperceptible laugh surrounded her. Her hands were bleeding and she knew better than to think whatever Tom had planned for her was going to be quick. She waited for him to bury the spike in her leg, but he didn’t. He thrust her hand downward into the photo and scraped back and forth until she broke through the photo paper to the yellowed edge of a newspaper clipping hidden underneath.

The back of the frame was glued shut and she looked for something to smash it.

She grabbed her hardcover journal and bashed the edge of the binding into the frame until it was in pieces.

Inside it, behind the picture, was the rest of the obituary cut from the bound newspaper in the library archives.

She couldn’t believe what it said:
Known to his friends as Tom, Gerald Thomas Shippee died suddenly at his Maple Street home. Beloved husband and father, he is survived by his wife Charity and his daughter, Harmony.

Tom
was her father.

She picked up a half-spent fifth of vodka from the floor, twisted the top off, and took a huge swig. The rank, clear liquid spilled down the bottle’s neck and into the throbbing gash in her hand.

Why
would her father do this?

She tucked the obituary inside her journal and refused to remember. Seventeen years of wondering, of longing, of what ifs consumed and disappointed her, leaving her raw and empty.

“Mom always said you were a ghost.”

She stumbled out into the kitchen with her hand in her mouth. The gushing blood swam in her empty stomach and made her nauseous. She wrapped a wad of paper towel around the cut and reached with her other hand for her mother’s personal pharmacy: partial bottles of morphine, fentanyl, sleeping pills, and codeine that she’d schemed and lied to a dozen doctors to get.

Harmony looked at the tattoo: Summerland.

Her heaven.

She fumbled the lids and poured the pills out in her hand. There were at least twenty and when she tried to take them, Tom flung her hand up, scattering them.

“What’s the matter? Isn’t this what you wanted? It’s what I wanted.”

Crawling around on hands and knees, she gathered what pills she could find. She tossed them into her mouth and ground them between her teeth. Whole pills might not dissolve or worse, might dissolve enough to seize up her kidneys and liver leaving her alive, damaged, with a nasal tube full of activated charcoal and a stomach pumping.

“This is the kind of thing you only fail at once.”

The ground up pills filled the ridges of her teeth with a bitter paste that made her tongue feel numb and thick. She gagged and opened the refrigerator for something to wash them down. All that was in it were a half a bottle of generic ketchup, an expired carton of milk, and a single can of beer. She popped the tab on the beer and took a mouthful, swishing the crushed pill loose and swallowing. The second handful of pills went down easier and, as she finished the beer, they took hold. She was woozy and tired and as she walked out of the kitchen, she tipped off balance and crashed into the dish-filled sink, scattering and breaking two mold-covered milk glasses.

“I hope you’re happy.”

She staggered into her bedroom and pressed her palms and forehead to the cool glass of the mirror. The face staring back at her was ruddy but pale, her makeup blending into funhouse swirls of red and black. She blinked until her pinpoint pupils were clear in her reflection.

“This is what I want.”

She gasped, unable to draw a full breath.

Time was almost up.

20
.

Brea and Jaxon stood under the marquee of the old Summit Theater. They were among an eager horde of horror fans, many in theme costumes, waiting for the doors to open to Shreikfest.

Brea knew she should have been more excited, but worry, anger, and preoccupation prevented it. She looked at her cell phone for the tenth or so time, and seeing no calls from Harmony, slid it back in her pea coat pocket.

Jaxon leaned over and gave her a playful nudge. “She’ll call. You two have fought before, right?” He sounded unconcerned.

“Of course we’ve fought, but she never stays mad this long.” She didn’t tell him what Harmony accused him of and didn’t have the guts to confront him about it. “I left her a message over two hours ago and she isn’t calling back. That’s not like her, not even when we’re fighting.” She took the phone back out and restarted it in case it had a glitch.

“Would you knock it off? You’re going to kill your battery.” He took her phone, shut it off, and put it back in her pocket.

The crowd moved toward the man in the white gloves releasing the crimson rope.

“All ticketholders this way, please. Anyone who needs to purchase a ticket should go to the window to my right. Will-call in the left line only.”

“Ready?” Jaxon wrapped his arm around Brea’s shoulder and the two of them were nearly knocked down by a woman in a Victorian gown with an enormous bustle.

 “I feel a little underdressed.”

 “You look great,” he said. “Let’s try and enjoy this.”

* * * * *

It was after one a.m. by the time Shreikfest let out and going for two when Brea got home.

Her mother was asleep under a blanket on the couch and she made it upstairs without waking her up. When she hung her coat on the back of her desk chair, her cell phone fell out of its pocket.

“Oh, crap.”

She turned it on. Seven messages. She entered her password and listened.

“Brea, it’s Adam. Call me when you get this.”

In the two years he’d been dating Harmony, he’d never once called Brea.

She dialed his number from the missed calls log.

The phone only rang two times, but it felt like a hundred.

 “Brea?”

“Adam, what’s wrong? Where’s Harmony? Is she okay?”

He coughed and sniffled, crying so hard that she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Instinctively, she started crying, too. “What did she do? Where is she? Adam, what happened?”

“She did
it.
She…killed herself.”

“What?” The words were momentarily incomprehensible. “Adam, no. Oh my God, no. When? How?” Guilt stunned her into an emotional vacancy built on denial. “It’s a mistake. It has to be.”

He drew a ragged breath. “It’s not. Charity found her, overdosed.”

Brea couldn’t help but to notice the irony. “Why are you calling me, where’s Charity?”

 “She signed out of the hospital AMA , but the cops brought her back after she found Harmony. They have her up on the BHU.”

BHU.
The Behavioral Health Unit. She remembered when Harmony was locked up there. She had been so sedated that she could barely hold down a conversation.

“What about Harmony?” Brea wiped her tears on her sleeve. “Where is she?”

 “The hospital hasn’t released her yet,” he said.

Brea envisioned Harmony flayed open on a cold autopsy table. Another statistic. A victim of poverty and a broken system. “What do we do now?”

Adam sniffled, a little calmer than he had been. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

Brea stayed on the line a minute or two after he hung up, shocked and feeling, at least in part, to blame.

21
.

It was a cold and rainy morning, apropos for the darkness that was eating Brea from the inside out. She spread a thin layer of foundation over her splotchy red skin, but it hid neither the redness nor the swelling from crying all night. She was angry at herself for fighting with Harmony and looking forward, couldn’t imagine a world without her.

She put on her half of the best friends locket Harmony had given her in kindergarten for the first time since she was eight.

Her mother called her for breakfast. “Brea, come on. I’m going to be late for my meeting.”

Brea dropped the necklace inside her shirt and stuffed a handful of Kleenex in her pocket. “I’m coming.”

The kitchen smelled of lemon cleaner and toast and Brea stared at the bagel and box of cream cheese on the table.

Her mother put on her gray suit jacket and looked up from her paper. “Brea, what happened?” She rushed over to hug her. “Is something wrong? Is it Jaxon?”

Brea didn’t know what else to do but to say it. “Mom, Harmony’s dead.” The words tore her open.

Her mother backed away. “Oh.”

The tears came fast and hard. “Oh? My best friend committed suicide and you say ‘oh’?” Brea shattered a juice glass on the slate tile floor and the kitchen door opened.

“I was knocking out front,” Jaxon said. “You ready to go?”

Joan lowered her head, embarrassed. “Don’t do this now,” she said to Brea through clenched teeth.

“No, of course not. Not now.” Brea kicked over a chair and it narrowly missed Jaxon’s leg. “Not with a precious Winslow in the house.”

“Whoa, what’s going on?” Jaxon tried to calm her. “What did I do?”

“You picked the wrong girl.” Joan stormed out of the kitchen, skirting the pool of juice and glass.

Brea crumpled to the floor alongside the mess.

“Hey, what happened? Brea, talk to me.” Jaxon wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “Are you okay?”

She soaked up the comforting embrace and pulled herself together. “I’ll tell you what happened.” She grabbed her backpack. “Just get me out of here.”

* * * * *

Jaxon parallel parked in front of the well-maintained, sprawling white Victorian that was, for the past hundred and fifty years, O’Connor’s funeral home.