Chapter 3 Familiar Spirits
Familiar Spirits
It was almost three a.m. by the time I’d bagged the skull for evidence and left for home.
I’d lifted from the mailbox some messy fingerprints that I wanted to preserve before weather got to them.
I wasn’t expecting much, but I’d compare those prints to the mail carrier’s and the Sumners’.
I had higher hopes for the skull itself, and would happily surrender it to Forensics to thoroughly comb over.
The deer skull sat in a plastic bag on the back seat behind me, staring at me with missing eyes.
Every so often, I’d glance in my rearview mirror to meet her black gaze. Gibby wouldn’t look at her at all.
The crickets had quieted, and I drove with the windows down, relishing the cool darkness.
The moon was setting, tangled in tree branches.
I kept the radio on at low volume on a top-forty station, mostly because I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts.
Gibby leaned his head out the window, eyes closed in bliss.
I wondered if he imagined he was flying.
As I dipped into a valley on the two-lane road, I lost the station for a moment. Static crackled, and then a woman sang, eerily distant.
As I ascended the next rise, the radio station stabilized, and I was listening to a weather report on the drought afflicting Bayern County. No rain in sight.
I frowned. I was tired. I should go home, to bed.
Gravel crunched under my SUV’s tires as I wound down my driveway to my house in the woods. No lights were on inside the bungalow or on the porch. The house was small by most standards—only one story, and one bedroom—but it was my little piece of silence away from the rest of the world.
I shut off the engine, listening to it tick in the dark. I didn’t like how things had gone down this evening. I hadn’t heard anything more about Mason. I pressed my head to the steering wheel. I wasn’t the praying type, but I sure hoped the boy was going to be okay.
I opened the door, and Gibby scrambled over me and out to do his business beside a maple tree.
I drifted around the small area of grass that I bothered to mow.
Behind the house, my boyfriend, Nick, had started a garden.
He intended gardening to be an outdoorsy activity we could do together, growing orderly rows of potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers.
They looked wilted, so I turned on the hose to give them a splash.
In one corner of the garden, where he’d planted marigolds, he’d placed a flat, vaguely heart-shaped stone he’d found in the woods.
I asked him about it. He said that this little spot was in memory of his mother.
I watered the flowers dutifully, but I did my damnedest not to look at the stone, and to swallow the lump in my throat that rose when I did.
When I was satisfied that the garden wasn’t going to die, I went back to the car, grabbed the skull, trudged up the squeaky wooden porch steps, and unlocked the front door.
I didn’t bother to turn the lights on for myself, but I’d been trying to remember to do so for Gibby’s benefit, and for Nick’s.
My house always smelled a bit mossy. Maybe I just really needed to clean the gutters, but it was a pleasant smell.
It mingled with lemon-scented polish on secondhand furniture and the bowl of foraged black raspberries on the kitchen counter.
I crossed scarred wooden floors through the kitchen to the living room, dropping my bags on the green velvet couch.
Found treasures surrounded me, stones and feathers captured in jars and vases.
The mantel was full of commendations and pictures of me in uniform—reminders of who I really was.
Overseeing it all was a mounted deer head I’d picked up at a garage sale.
Gazing serenely at my little kingdom, he cast his antlered shadow over me, thick and silent.
He was different from the skull I’d found tonight.
He was peaceful, protective. She was…dark.
Chaotic. I put her on top of the refrigerator, away from Gibby’s sight.
Gibby trotted inside, trailing a couple of moths, and buried his muzzle in his water dish.
I opened a can of dog food, which he devoured greedily.
He was still very food insecure—he’d eat anything put in front of him, and try to steal more.
But his ribs were now encased in a nice layer of fat, and his speckled fur was glossy. Progress.
Gibby stayed with me, not with Nick. Nick enjoyed having a dog, but his shiny bachelor-pad condo wasn’t exactly conducive to having one.
Here, Gibby’s nails could scratch up the floor; he could dig for stinky things in the yard and get bathed in my cast-iron bathtub.
There was little fragile enough for him to break here, though, if I left him alone, I could anticipate the loss of a pair of shoes.
I showered off the scummy pond water. My fingers hesitated on scars crossing my ribs.
I’d been shot once upon a time. The guy who shot me survived to see prison.
My hand slipped up to soap my arms, where tiny scars from bird shot speckled my skin.
Shot twice upon a time. That guy was dead; I had killed him outright.
I’d gone back to work after the first time, the second time.
I wondered if that was enough, if there would be a third.
Gibby poked his head around the shower curtain. I invited him in, dumped some shampoo on him, lathered, then rinsed. I toweled us both off, though Gibby shook himself all over the bathroom.
I dressed in a tank top and yoga pants, then climbed into bed. I glanced at Nick’s vacant spot beside me. I thought of myself as someone who could keep her own company, but I missed him this evening.
Missing someone was strange for me. I’d let Nick into my life fully, into my present and my past. He’d accepted both.
And with that, there was a kind of yearning that felt foreign, a worry.
I’d let my guard down to reach for him, and I hoped he wouldn’t disappear.
I feared losing him, feared that he’d pull away.
That he would get into an accident on the way home from work. It felt…anxious. Unfamiliar.
I checked my texts, finding one of his classically terse missives:
Bad case. Be there when I can.
I knew Mason was in the best hands.
Nick had a key. He would come when he could.
I rolled over in bed, shoving my pillow under my neck. Gibby crawled into bed, sighing deeply. I didn’t care about a wet dog in bed. I reached down to stroke his back. Gibby and I were alike in a way, killers who’d been redeemed. Hopefully.
When I closed my eyes, I saw the symbol carved on the skull’s forehead, the snake eating its own tail. I had seen that somewhere before…
I reached for my cell phone. A few minutes of googling yielded the answer. The snake eating its own tail was the ouroboros, a symbol of infinity; of life, death, and rebirth; of the transmigration of souls.
I drifted into a muzzy sleep, my mind chewing at the case. Someone had been at the Sumner house. Someone was threatening that family. And maybe they’d made good on that threat.
The darkness on the top of the refrigerator was still. Some part of me wondered what malevolence I’d invited into my house.
—
A green flash washed over my vision, then receded, leaving me steeped in memory.
My mom had rinsed me off and sent me to bed.
She’d closed my bedroom door, then turned the lights off in the rest of the house.
I could hear her moving around in the kitchen, the touch of her bare feet on the linoleum and the clink of a spoon against a cup.
I had no idea what she was doing, but I certainly wasn’t going to get out of bed to ask.
I slept. Then woke.
I didn’t know what time it was, but I saw the gray predawn light. I crept out of bed, pushed open my door, and padded to the bathroom to get a glass of water.
I didn’t turn on the lights. I felt for the tap and my plastic cup. Water flowed out, and it smelled sweet—artificially sweet, like something I might find in the candy aisle at the store. I wrinkled my nose.
I smelled sweetness, but also something warm and coppery…blood.
“Don’t drink that. It’s poisoned.”
I started, stumbling back against the wall and fumbling for the light switch.
Mom, wrapped in towels, sat in the avocado green bathtub. The towels were bloody. She was pale, with circles under her eyes. There was an ashtray on the edge of the tub, and her shaking fingers reached for a cigarette.
I stood frozen. “Mom, are you okay?”
She lit the cigarette and inhaled. “I’ll be okay.”
“What…what happened?” I squeaked.
“I lost the baby.” She said it quietly.
I didn’t know there was a baby. I had no idea that she’d been pregnant at all.
“It was a girl. Your sister.”
My brain boggled at the idea of having a sibling…a sister. How could she tell it was a girl, with all that blood?
I took a step toward her. “I can call the doctor…”
“No.” She shook her head and blew out a plume of smoke. “It’s done.”
I struggled with question after question, and settled on: “How?”
She grimaced. “It’s that water. We’ve been drinking it for weeks.”
“What? The water…the water killed your baby?”
She stared straight ahead, unemotional. “There’s orange juice in the fridge. Drink that instead. And turn out the light.”
“What happened to the water?” I asked quietly, turning the light off and retreating to the doorway.
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t see her eyes in the dark, just her long, pale fingers spread by her nearly empty pack of cigarettes. “But I mean to find out.”
—
I awoke to a key scraping in the lock. I sat upright in bed, and turned on the bedside light. Gibby rushed to the door. I glanced at the clock. Almost five.