Chapter 9
NINE
SALEM, PRESENT DAY
Morana dragged herself from her bed. She had endured almost a full night of the worst nightmares.
They had all been about her mom. She barely remembered what she looked like, and in some ways it didn’t matter, as what she remembered was how it felt to be abandoned as a child at the time when she needed her mom more than anything. That feeling had filled her nightmare.
Then there had been other nightmares. Those of a life she did not remember; living with a woman who was not her mom, a flamboyant man that came to visit her, riding the most beautiful dapple-grey horse, his smile wide.
He looked familiar, yet she had never seen him before in her life.
He left her, too, riding away into the sunset leaving a crushing feeling of loss inside of her chest. She’d screamed after him, but he’d never looked back.
She was just a child trying to chase after his horse.
Even in her dreams everyone she knew and loved left her.
The bad dreams had only stopped when the sun began to rise and its rays filtered through the crack in her blinds.
Who was that guy and why had she dreamed about him?
He looked as if he belonged in a travelling show from hundreds of years ago.
It wasn’t as if she’d watched any movies lately, no historical ones; in fact, she preferred classic slasher flicks to anything remotely educational.
She peered at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and grimaced. Those dark bluish circles under her eyes had not been there yesterday morning. Sticking out her tongue it was off-colour.
‘Am I ill?’ she said out loud, and her reflection shrugged back at her.
Splashing icy water onto her eyes and cheeks to wake herself up, she hoped she wasn’t coming down with the flu.
It was a busy season, and she didn’t have the time to be sick.
Her apartment was still cooler than usual which made her check the AC again.
Maybe it was broken too. It was on the setting she’d changed it to in the middle of the night.
Morana stared at the spell book on the table and decided to take it back to the shop with her.
She didn’t want it in her home a moment longer if it had caused her nightmares and her rotten mood.
She would tell Kim that if a weird woman came into the shop to give her the book back.
That thought made her feel better, and the fizzing in her stomach calmed enough that she could eat half a buttered bagel.
As ready as she was going to be for the day ahead of her, she scooped the book back into the brown paper bag, tucking it inside of her purse.
Then she did the same with the planchette necklace, unsure which of the two items had caused her all this grief.
She was giving them both back, and even though her shift didn’t start for another hour, she needed to get them out of her apartment.
* * *
Morana stepped out into the crisp, chill autumn air and sucked in a huge breath.
She could smell the salt from the sea and for a moment she thought about heading down to the House of the Seven Gables to go sit in the gardens and try to clear her head.
It wasn’t open yet, so that was a no, but it was one of her favourite places in Salem, the mansion had such a lovely history to it and had been a favourite place of the great Gothic author Nathaniel Hawthorne who had been born in a house on Union Street in Salem on the fourth of July in 1804 that had been moved onto the beautiful campus of the mansion.
She headed towards Charter Street to see if the nodding crow was there this morning.
After the past twenty-four hours she wouldn’t be surprised to hear it talk.
Her earbuds in, she listened to one of her favourite podcasts, Salem the Pod.
Sarah and Jeffrey were tour guides in the city and talked a lot about the history surrounding not just the witch trials, but the maritime and other snippets in time.
Her shoulders relaxed a little at their laughter and chatter, that was until she walked past the gloomy building of the Charter Street Cemetery Welcome Centre, otherwise known at the Samuel Pickman House.
A chill ran down her spine as she stared up at the diamond-leaded window on the first floor.
Its faded red frame looked a little unloved.
She saw movement in the window and felt her jaw drop; it was closed this early.
She had been inside once to the tiny museum and gift shop, which had the creepiest wooden staircase that was out of bounds to anyone but employees.
The Peabody Essex Museum owned the building, she knew that.
She also knew that nobody lived there and wondered maybe if someone was in there cleaning up.
About to turn away, she saw the same white figure staring at her out of another window.
Morana lifted a hand and waved, then watched as the eyes on the face grew into two huge black holes before the figure vanished into thin air.
It didn’t step to the side; there was no movement.
One moment it was there, the next it wasn’t.
Sufficiently creeped out, all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck standing on edge, she turned away and hurried past the cemetery.
With only a cursory glance up at the old oak tree, she saw the crow was watching her, and she slowed down to watch it back.
She stood in between the Pickman House and the Grimshaw House and felt more scared than she’d ever been, especially after the nightmares last night.
‘Hey.’ She stared at the bird, daring it to fly away. It tilted its head to one side and ignored her. Shaking her head she turned away. She was as crazy if not crazier than the woman who brought the book to her yesterday.
‘Hey.’ The voice was raspy; she turned back to see if there was someone behind her. Morana was the only person around. Her gaze fell onto the bird that had finished preening itself and was watching her.
‘Did you talk?’
It didn’t answer her. It took off from the oak tree cawing loudly and flapping its wings as it soared high above her.
She watched until it was a black speck in the sky.
Her life was off the scale. Shaking her head, she hurried away, putting some distance between herself, the old burying ground and the two historic, most definitely haunted, houses that she had the misfortune to walk past.
The shop was closed, and she almost fell in through the door as she unlocked it, relieved to be somewhere that was and always had felt like a safe space for her.
Opening her purse, she took out the necklace, and grabbing the key from behind the counter, she put it back into the cabinet, feeling a wave of relief wash over her when she locked it back inside.
Now all she had to do was put the book back in the shop, but when she opened her purse wide it wasn’t there.
A deep-seated fear filled her veins so fast she could feel the pulse of the blood as her heart raced to pump it around her body.
Where was that damn book? She had put it into her bag, she put that in first and then the necklace.
Cold beads of perspiration were forming along her hairline, this wasn’t right, she couldn’t have lost it on the way here.
She would have heard the thud as it hit the ground.
Unless it fell onto the grass inside the outer fence of the cemetery and landed on the grass?
But surely the necklace would have fallen out too.
Morana found it hard to swallow, her throat was so dry.
How did it happen? Why had it happened? She had no choice but to go back and see if it was there, by some unknown miracle.
How had the book fallen out of her purse, which at no point had tipped up enough to allow it to?
She felt as if she was losing her grip on reality, losing her mind just like the woman who gave the book to her yesterday.
Was this how it had made her act so weird?
She needed to find the book, because how could she get rid of it if she didn’t know where it was?
As she hurried along Front Street, crossing the intersection to get back to Charter Street, she wondered what she was going to do if the book wasn’t there: feel relieved or even worse than she did now?