Fatal Charm (12 page)

“Come on,” he urged.

My fingers met his and our hands fit like they’d been molded together; his were large and callused, mine were smaller but strong, too. Purple-gold energy sizzled from our joined hands.

Then I was being lifted up and half-carried over the points of the gate, landing feet first, safely in the graveyard. Among the dead, alongside Dominic, I’d never felt so wonderfully alive.

“Do you think Agnes is here?” I asked him.

“Not anymore.”

“But she was.” I spoke in a whisper like I’d walked into a library. A library and graveyard were similar—places of peace and memories, filled with stories. While libraries nurture true and imagined stories, a graveyard was the caretaker for stories at their end. Some people fear graveyards, spooking easily at ghost stories, but there was nothing frightening here, only footsteps of memory.

“Do you see any ghosts?” Dominic asked, smiling.

“No ghosts or spirits.” I pointed to a gravestone which read Myrtle Mae Fredericks, Beloved Daughter and Sister, 1895–1899. “She died too young.”

“Even if she’d lived a long life, she’d be dead now.”

“It’s still sad.”

“Look for Agnes’s grave. She could be buried here.”

“Along with her remedy,” I added, hope rising.

The cemetery wasn’t huge, but it took nearly an hour to read every tombstone, especially the crumbling headstones with names too faint to decipher. A few times a name would trigger my sixth sense. I’d get a mental image of a face: a laughing girl with blond ringlets, a baby crawling on a braided rug, or a wrinkled man hunched over a cane. So many lives lived and gone. But none of them related to me.

“The only Agnes I can find has the wrong last name—Hoggleworth. Have you noticed how strange the names used to be? Euphelia Tredeway, Docile Wagonwheel, Hibram Bridgeman.”

Dominic chuckled. “And this one here, Katherine Trout.”

“Trout?” I walked over to the grave. There were no angel statues or fancy inscriptions, and the faded, square tombstone had deteriorated so I couldn’t make out the date, although the first two numbers looked like a one and an eight.

“Are you getting a vision?” he asked.

“No. An idea.”

“What?”

“Fish is Trout. And what’s a nickname for Katherine?”

He shrugged. “Kate? Kathy?”

“Or Kat.” I pulled out the cat charm and dangled it in front of his face.

“Cat!” His blue eyes lit up. “Cat plus fish equals Katherine Trout.”

“Exactly,” I said with rising excitement.

“That means all four charms—”

“—lead to this grave,” I finished.

“The horseshoe, house, cat, and fish. You found it.”

“We both did.”

“Yeah, partner.” His grin went to my heart.

Suddenly hot all over, I glanced away and pointed to Katherine Trout’s rock–and weed–splotched grave. “The remedy book has to be buried here.”

“So we start digging,” Dominic said.

Easier said than done, we both discovered. We searched for a shovel, but the closest we found was a metal rake. Dominic improvised with a metal bowl he found in his truck and the rake. Using leverage, we worked together to pry off the headstone. Then Dominic did the dirty work and I paced impatiently, brushing off light falling snow from my face.

“See anything yet?” I must have asked a dozen times, and his answer was always no. He’d dug about two feet now without even finding a casket (which was actually a relief). I mean, talking to the dead was okay when they looked almost alive, but I didn’t want to see their yellowed bones.

The sky had darkened and chilly wind whipped like icy ropes across my skin. I kept my spirits up by thinking how happy Nona would be when we found the remedy. We were so close now …

I heard a sound behind me. Before I could turn, something pointed jabbed my back. “Don’t move,” a gravely voice ordered.

With a choked cry, I froze. The sharp object jabbed deeper, painfully, between my shoulder blades, and I knew what it was.

A gun.

My attacker ordered Dominic to stop digging.

“Okay. Don’t do anything dumb.” Dominic froze in his kneeled position; his back was to me so he couldn’t see much. He tensed, seemed to think it over, then slowly lifted his arms in surrender. His makeshift shovel rolled away from his snow-crusted boots.

“We did what you said.” I tried to sound calm.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Dominic added.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Put the gun down.”

“Gun? Where’d you get that fool notion?”

The pressure on my back vanished.

I risked a look over my shoulder and saw a stout elderly man with a fuzzy black beard, and he wore a thick black jacket that made him resemble a bear. But the wrinkles around his eyes and smile took away the edge of danger. I looked for a gun … and saw a fishing pole.

“I didn’t catch any fish today, but caught a pair of vandals. Aren’t you too old for childish pranks?” the man demanded.

“We’re not vandals.” Dominic wiped dirt from his palms on his jeans.

“And this isn’t a prank,” I added.

“What do you call digging up a grave?”

“A rescue mission,” I told him. “We’re trying to save my grandmother.”

The old guy peered into the open grave, scratching his beard. “Katherine Trout was your grandmother? I hate to break it to you, but not even CPR can save her now.”

“Not Katherine Trout,” I explained, turning away from the gaping hole with a shudder. “We’re here to save my grandmother Nona. She’s ill, and my great-great-great grandmother hid the only remedy a long time ago. It’s a long story.”

“Long stories are the best kind.” The man’s voice spit out like gravel, and I guessed he was around eighty. “But only fools and penguins stand out in this weather. Come on inside for a hot cup of tea.”

A hot drink sounded great—and much better than being stabbed with a fishing pole or arrested for trespassing. This grizzly man had a right to be suspicious, yet his golden and blue aura showed no malice.

The old man led us out of the graveyard, up rickety stairs, and through a back door, where we went down a narrow hall, past several closed doors with engraved labels reading “Library,” “Artifacts,” and “Records.” We entered a living room with a comfy brown leather couch, coffee table, TV, and wood-burning stove. While we sipped tea, the man started a fire in the stove, which gave the room a cozy glow.

“The name’s Niles Farthingtower,” the old man said as he settled into the recliner and reached for his steaming teacup.

After Dominic and I introduced ourselves, we explained about my grandmother’s failing health and how our only hope was to find my ancestor’s remedy book. “All we had for clues were four charms.” I pulled them from my pocket and showed Niles.

“Beautiful antiques,” Niles said. “May I examine them?”

There was an appreciation in his tone that impressed me. I handed the charms over and he held them as if they were precious diamonds. “Exquisite! Look at the artistry and color. I have some silver pieces, but not of this quality. What do you want for them?”

“They aren’t for sale,” I said quickly. “They’re clues from my great-great-great-grandmother.”

“The horseshoe led us here,” Dominic added. “The building is your museum, and cat and fish means Katherine Trout. We’re sure the remedy book is buried here.”

“A book could never survive that long.”

“I think it’s in a metal box of some kind,” I explained, remembering my vision of Agnes. “So can we finish digging?”

Niles rubbed his beard. A soft patter of snow slapped against the windows and warm flames crackled from the fireplace. “I can’t allow digging in the cemetery.”

“But we have to!” I was ready to get down on my knees and beg; anything to save Nona. “Please let us dig.”

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “There’s nothing under that grave—not after the flood.”

A fire
and
a flood? Horseshoe had to be the unluckiest town in history. If anyone tried to put it on a map, a hurricane would whip through and blow it off again.

“The flood came when I just started working here,” Niles explained with a faraway expression. “Heavy rains overfilled creeks and caused a flashflood. Water came up to the porch, took out some trees, and unearthed dozens of caskets. It was quite a sight—caskets floating around, some ripped apart with bones hanging out. A skull stuck on a log and we never did find the rest of the body. We salvaged what we could, but had to guess where to bury some of the bodies.”

“Katherine Trout?” I almost whispered.

“We found her casket about a mile away. No one could remember the exact location of the original grave, so we picked one at random. Nothing’s buried there—well, except for Katherine. When the water receded, we searched through piles of debris for personal items since some folks were buried with jewelry and other mementos. We matched what we could with the proper remains, but most went into storage in case relatives ever turned up. You’re welcome to take a look.”

We’d found the right grave but in the wrong place. How messed up was that?

Niles invited us up into the artifact room. Holding the door open, he gestured toward wall shelves and display cases. “Those three boxes are what you want. Take your time. I’ll be in the kitchen preparing bass burgers. You’re welcome to stay for dinner.”

Bass burgers? No, thank you.

I politely declined, explaining we still had a long drive home.

“You’d better hurry. The weather report says it’ll storm by night. They’ll close the roads, and no one will get over the pass.”

“I know back roads,” Dominic said.

Dominic didn’t sound worried, but I felt a chill of apprehension. A few hours ago everything seemed so hopeful, we had the clues and a destination, but now bad news kept getting worse. Even the weather seemed against us.

Niles left the room, and Dominic and I tackled the boxes.

My first box was crammed with odd objects: a spoon shaped like a boat, a black shoe with a broken heel, a hairbrush, a yellowy set of false teeth, and a toy rattle. The rattle must have come from the grave of a baby. This grim reality sobered me and I realized the rusted bits of jewelry, water-stained photographs, and other mementos were all that was left of real people.

“No metal containers or books,” I said with discouragement as I closed the box.

“Not here either.”

“Going through these things feels … I don’t know … wrong.”

“Are any ghosts complaining?”

“No, but there’s a heaviness in the air.”

“This room is just stuffy.”

Like a tomb, I thought uncomfortably. Not haunted by ghosts or spirits, but by imprints of long-ago people. Strong emotions left imprints on object or places. The empty room felt crowded, claustrophobic. I had to get away. So I left Dominic with the last box and excused myself to go to the restroom.

I wandered out of the artifact room, wrinkling my nose at the strong fish odor coming from the kitchen. Not a savory fried fish aroma, but more like stinky socks and dead fish. If the smell was an example of Niles’s culinary skills, I’d choose take-out any day.

On the way back from the restroom, I was surprised to see the library door open. I was sure it had been closed before. Curiously, I took a look and saw book heaven—the afterlife of books whose owners have died. At least that’s what it seemed like because there were so many antique books. Most were crammed onto wall shelves while others, I guessed the most valuable, were locked inside glass display cases.

I wished Agnes’s book could have been protected under glass.

My eyes blurred and I blinked back tears. We couldn’t find something that didn’t exist anymore. Why hadn’t Agnes simply mailed the remedy to her daughters instead of leaving cryptic clues? Her descendents would have passed on the remedy to each generation and lives would have been saved. At the first sign of Nona’s memory loss, she would have whipped up the remedy and felt great.

Instead my grandmother was deteriorating fast. Agnes’s lifesaving remedies had died with her. If only the séance had worked. But it had been so disastrous no one would even consider trying again.

I wandered around the room. The lighting was dim, only a single bulb dangling from the ceiling. I glanced down at a glassed case, not really interested in the old coins, jewelry, buttons, and books on display. The books were brittle and faded, so they appeared to have no color. I had to squint through the glass to read the titles: books on Western lore, hunting, fishing, Nevada history, silver mines, and cooking.

One entire case held cookbooks. On a cookbook called
Varmint Vittles
there was a sketch of a squirrel and an opossum. I wondered if this was where Niles got his fish burger recipe.

When I was around ten, I’d asked Mom to teach me how to cook. Her answer was to sign me up for a cooking class where I’d learned 101 ways to cook an egg—which could come in handy if I was ever stranded on a chicken farm. Fortunately Nona had stepped up and taught me some recipes. She’d offered to teach more, but with school and friends and everything, I put her off for another time … as if we had all the time in the world.

“Recipes never age, only the cooks,” Nona had quoted once.

Did she even remember that quote? Or was that piece of her memory gone? And what about her specialty recipes she’d never written down? Her spicy avocado dip and double delicious “Double Dip Chocolate Chip” cookies. Were these recipes already gone from her memory? Or did we still have time to save them … and Nona?

I won’t give up, I vowed, even if it means digging up an entire cemetery in a snowstorm.

There was a gentle touch on my shoulder.

“Dominic?” I turned, but no one was there.

The room was empty, except for an unusual aroma—a soft, flowery scent like lavender. Goose bumps rose on my arms. I wasn’t alone. The pressure of a hand on my shoulder remained. Not Opal, I could tell although I saw no one.

Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply to concentrate and see beyond. A shape appeared, a misty cloud of a woman with a dark streak running through pale hair. Hair like mine! I realized with shock. She wasn’t much older than me either, and I recognized her face from the old photograph treasured among my great-great-great-grandmother’s possessions.

“Agnes?” I called, hopefully.

It was hard to keep her image in my head the way I could with Opal. Shadows and light danced, shifted, and faded away. Still I could sense her presence; energy rippled like waves in the air, tingling through me.

“Agnes, it is you.” I wasn’t asking, I knew. “You came to help me?”

I sensed her nod.

The pressure from my shoulder vanished and moved to my hand. Her unseen fingers clasped mine, holding tight across centuries. The pressure increased and pulled me forward. I followed, moving across the room until I stopped at a glassed case with a plaque: Ledgers, Journals, and Diaries. Glancing down, I saw very old leather- and clothbound books.

I bent closer, studying the dozen or so odd-sized books. There was a thin black leather ledger dated 1898, cloth journals with uneven stitching on the spines, and a row of very old diaries.

Unseen fingers grabbed my hand and I watched in uneasy fascination as my second finger pointed to a plain, dark-brown diary, bound in soft, lined leather. There was tiny gold printing on the cover, and I bent low and squinted to read:

Belonging to Agnes Jane Walker.

Ohmygod! I’d found it!

The remedy book.