Donn's Legacy, page 12
I had to look up what I had agreed to become.
According to the internet, it sounded like producers were sort of like the managers I had worked for at previous jobs. They hired crew members, managed schedules, and oversaw the budget. I frowned. I had never really thought about the Soul Searchers budget before. Did Yuri actually expect me to manage the money? I raked our conversation over in my mind. He’d only mentioned the schedule, so I decided to focus on that piece until we could talk about it more.
I knew most of our prior investigations were booked in one of two ways: either someone reached out to us through our ScreamTV website and asked us to come look into suspected paranormal activity, or Kit and Yuri contacted people who owned notoriously haunted locations—like the Grimshaw Library or the Franklin cabin—and made arrangements to film an episode there. If I was going to be scheduling upcoming investigations, I decided I had better start making a list of possibilities to pitch to Yuri.
Down into the rabbit hole of online research I went. My entire day disappeared, sucked into an endless sea of personal blogs, message boards, and social media threads about paranormal activity in and around Driscoll County. If everything I read was true, almost every public building had at least one ghost associated with it. I started a list of the most promising places and kept digging.
It was satisfying to actually find something in my research for once. Funny how casting a wide net let me catch more leads than trying to hunt for an Anson Monroe-shaped needle in the haystack of the entire American population.
My hands froze on the keyboard. When Graham and I had been looking for Anson’s contact information, we’d only been searching for him by name. We had chosen the most specific possible thread to follow. Of course it hadn’t yielded many results.
Tentatively, I typed in a few other search phrases, things I knew Anson specialized in. Between my mother’s letters and the conversations I’d had with Horace, I had way more to go on than just a name.
Astral projection. Spiritual nexuses. Crossing over.
Even in the endless sea of the internet, the resources I found were comparatively thin. It wasn’t as easy to find instructions for astral projection as it was to find a recipe for super chewy chocolate chip cookies. But hunched over my laptop with a bowl of potato chips at my side, I spent hours sifting through what little I could find.
Compared to scouting potential filming locations for the Soul Searchers, this was a slog. A strangely combative argument on a now-dead forum about whether astral projection or transcendental meditation were to blame for the hauntings in Amityville nearly made me give up and snap my laptop shut. But near the bottom, just before the conversation petered out, I read a comment that made me lean forward toward the screen.
If you really want to astral project, you have to disconnect from your body, the poster wrote. You’ll need one of these flying ointments.
I had no idea what a “flying ointment” was, but the idea that the answer to the question my mother had spent so long asking could be found on the internet both saddened and intrigued me. When she died, we didn’t even have a computer in our house. She wouldn’t have been able to resist clicking the link at the bottom of the comment, and neither could I.
It took me to a blog post that was over ten years old. With as much authority as a free website can muster, the author claimed to have unearthed the only genuine flying ointment recipe in the world. It listed a dozen herbs—some I recognized, like ginger and chamomile, and others I didn’t, like hemlock and thorn apple. According to the site, witches as far back as the middle ages would rub the salve on their skin to “facilitate the separation of their spirits from their bodies, which allowed them to fly above the earth and pass freely through walls.”
I frowned. Anson definitely ignored walls when he appeared to me as Horace in places like Elizabeth Monk’s day spa. But the idea of someone’s spirit detaching from their body to literally float around like a cartoon ghost? Even living in Donn’s Hill, where the impossible happened every day, something about that just didn’t sit right with me.
It didn’t sound like astral travel.
It sounded like death.
The first comment at the bottom of the page backed up my suspicions. They emphasized their warning in all-caps: DO NOT USE THIS! These ingredients are dangerous! If you’re lucky, you’ll hallucinate your brains out. If you’re not, you will seriously die.
Another reply agreed. Belladonna? Wolfsbane? You’re kidding, right? That’s literally poison.
The first commenter added, Yup. And you don’t even need an ointment to astral project. You just need to be in a place of power.
“A place of power” sounded like the spiritual nexuses my mother had spent years exploring—places like Donn’s Hill, where the wall separating the living and the dead was thinner than normal. But she hadn’t stayed in Donn’s Hill. She had gone looking for somewhere even more powerful. Had she known about these ointments? Had she tried them?
My stomach turned.
A third poster chimed in, claiming, You can’t just find somewhere powerful enough to cross over. You have to make one.
To that, the original author of the blog replied, You’re all missing the point of the salve. If astral projection was easy, everyone would be doing it. Your mind has to separate from your body completely to pull it off. If you have to be on the edge of death to get there, so be it.
I sat back from my computer, momentarily stunned by the ideas I had just consumed. Where were these people getting their information? Experience? Had the person who wrote the blog actually used the recipe to successfully astral project?
It didn’t feel likely. It seemed too close to something Kit’s girlfriend, Amari, had told me about how to tell if a psychic is real or fake.
“The real ones,” she had said, “don’t advertise.”
If someone had knowledge this powerful, I couldn’t picture them just posting it online. I couldn’t imagine them sharing it at all. How would you even know who you could trust with it? What if you taught someone and they used it for evil?
The question brought a deep frown to my lips. Had Anson Monroe discovered the secret to astral projection on his own, or had he learned it from someone else? I knew my mother had considered him a mentor. She had been convinced he was going to help her do it, so he must have told her he could. Had he ever intended to teach her? Or had it all just been a trick, part of some sadistic plan that ended with her dying alone in the desert?
I didn’t want to imagine it, but the images filled my mind nevertheless. I saw her curled around a jewelry box just like Camila Aster, cold beyond shivering and no longer aware of her surroundings. I wondered if, as the link between her spirit and her body weakened, she was able to astral project at all. Did she realize her dream before she died? How long did it take for her soul to detach completely, leaving her body on the ground for the New Mexico State Police to find?
“No!” I shouted, shoving my laptop away from me. It flew off the countertop and clattered to the floor.
Tears streamed down my face as I fled my apartment. I needed to find Graham, needed to feel his arms around me and hear his voice in my ear. But no matter how fast I ran down the stairs, the vision in my mind followed.
No matter how far I went, I could never escape the past.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I spent the next two nights in Graham’s apartment in the hopes that being in a safe place, somewhere I had never been literally or figuratively haunted by the ghosts of the past, would give me a peaceful night’s sleep. But even there, my nightmares found me. Visions of Anson Monroe’s basement and the endless space of a freezing desert sent me shooting upright every half hour, gasping for breath and clutching the sweat-drenched sheets.
Graham had taken to sleeping on his couch—within earshot if I needed his help but far enough away that I wouldn’t wake him up or kick him with my thrashing legs. I felt guilty for chasing him out of his own bed, but as he drove us up Main Street to Elizabeth Monk’s memorial service, I glanced at his unbagged, not-at-all puffy eyes with envy. He looked handsome and well-rested in a navy blue suit. I knew I looked frumpy in my unironed skirt, but I hadn’t had the energy that morning to do much more than dab concealer under my eyes and wrestle my hair into a black velvet scrunchie.
Elizabeth’s service was held in the same place all respected citizens of Donn’s Hill were eulogized: Hillside Chapel. The gray stone building at the top of the hill for which the town was named marked the end of Main Street and typically seemed a fitting place to mark the end of someone’s life. But unlike the last service I had attended here, which had been formal and structured, Elizabeth’s didn’t take place in the chapel itself.
Instead, mourners were directed down the stairs into a large, surprisingly high-ceilinged basement with a stage at one end and a kitchen at the other. As we entered, we passed through a cloud of incense that someone close to Elizabeth must have chosen. Frankincense oil had been part of the blend she diffused throughout her massage parlor. She told me once that frankincense helped establish rituals, and she believed few things were as important as the ritual of self-care. I inhaled deeply, allowing the earthy scent to relax my stiff shoulders as I prepared myself for another important—but far less pleasant—ritual: saying goodbye to a dear friend.
Her ashes sat atop a black-draped pedestal on the stage in a polished gray urn. It felt more fitting than an ornate casket would have been; she was such a practical woman. But her sensible, down-to-earth nature had clearly attracted many people into her orbit. The hall was packed with mourners, and their voices echoed off the walls, nearly drowning out the strains of “Amazing Grace” from a string quartet in the corner.
The energy down here was nothing like the mournful atmosphere I had expected. There was a joy in the air that I didn’t have to be an Empath to sense. It felt like a wake, a celebration of the life Elizabeth had led, and I added it to a mental list I had never thought to make before: how I would like to be mourned when I died.
Someone had enlarged photos and hung them all around the space: a young Elizabeth in a long bridal gown with an uncomfortable-looking amount of lace; Penelope and Elizabeth posing at the entrance to The Enclave, pre-renovation, with hard hats on their heads and shovels in their hands; a family portrait with a lot of tall people who shared Deputy Wallace’s broad build and dark hair; Elizabeth scowling at the counter of her spa as though she thought getting her photo taken was the silliest idea she’d ever heard.
I took a picture of that one with my phone as a fresh wave of grief squeezed my chest. I wished I could tell her how right the photographer had been to capture her in that moment.
Penelope Bishop, deputy mayor of Donn’s Hill, greeted us at the guest book with a pair of quick, tight hugs. Her honey-blond hair was carefully coiffed into a high bun from which a few delicate strands had “fallen” in strategically flattering places, and she looked a full decade younger than her fifty-five years in her designer pantsuit.
“How are you holding up, Mac?” she asked.
“I’m doing okay,” I fibbed. “How are you?”
“Devastated.” She sighed and shook her head. “Elizabeth and I grew quite close this past year. If she hadn’t volunteered to lead The Enclave’s tenant association, I don’t think we would have been able to fill the spaces so quickly. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”
“I didn’t know she helped with that.”
“She had connections all over the country.” Penelope gazed around the assembled mourners. “I wish she could have seen how many of her friends made the trip to say goodbye.”
It was an impressive amount of people, and I didn’t know very many of them. Of course, I wasn’t the friendly extrovert Graham was and could only name the few dozen people I regularly talked to in the course of my daily life. But I had grown accustomed to the faces in Donn’s Hill, and I recognized few of them here.
The realization that I was surrounded by strangers stiffened my spine. How many of them were truly unknown? Could Anson Monroe disguise himself as effectively in the real world as he could on the astral plane?
No. I couldn’t accept that. As much as psychic abilities sometimes felt like magic, and even as often as psychics had been tried and murdered for being “witches,” I couldn’t believe Anson Monroe could walk around a funeral wearing Horace’s face. I felt safe assuming that if and when we met again, he would look like an older version of the man I had seen two decades before.
Of course, that still wasn’t much to go on. I didn’t have any photos. All I had was a faded memory from a day when he had been the least of my worries. To my eight-year-old mind, he had been an older, gray-haired man. There were many people here who matched that description, and people changed a lot in twenty years.
A number of informal receiving lines had formed throughout the room, each leading to someone with Monk family features. I studied my fellow mourners with a focus so intense that I didn’t notice Stephen Hastain until he jiggled my elbow.
“All right, Mac?” the rune caster asked.
“Fine.” I forced a small smile. “How are you doing?”
“As well as you might expect.” He nodded toward the urn. “We got off to a rocky start, but I’m going to miss her.”
Graham patted his shoulder. “She was a tough lady. It’s hard to believe she’s gone.”
“You looking for someone, Mac?” Stephen asked. “You’re squinting pretty hard there.”
“Oh.” I made an effort to relax my face. “Just looking for anyone familiar.”
“Like him?” Graham spotted someone behind me and waved his arms, raising his voice above the hubbub to call, “Fred!”
I turned around to see Fred Hawkes making his way toward us through the crowd. At his side was the same white-haired woman from the portrait in the Yurt in Luck office. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief; he looked stricken. Exhaustion radiated off them both.
“Graham.” Fred smiled weakly. “Great to see you.”
“I didn’t think you’d make it.”
“We left as soon as we found your note in the drop box. Took us a few days, but we did it.” Fred patted his wife’s hand. “Lucy doesn’t like to drive too many hours a day.”
“Oh, posh.” She frowned at him. “You just hate missing your evening shows.”
“They’re the best part of autumn,” he protested.
“Don’t I know it,” Stephen put in. “Have you seen that new improv show? Hilarious.”
As the men compared notes about their favorite fall programs, Lucy looked at Elizabeth’s urn on the stage and sighed deeply. “I never thought she’d be the first to go. She had so much spirit. She always made us feel younger when she was around.”
I smiled. “You two are pretty youthful and vibrant already.”
“Thank you, dear,” Lucy said. “It’s the desert air that does it. Although, looking at these photos… Well, maybe there’s something in the air here too.”
“You can say that again. I didn’t know Elizabeth was a grandmother. I knew her age, but she still didn’t seem old enough.” I glanced at the line snaking around Deputy Wallace. “Speaking of which, I should go talk to her granddaughter.”
“We’d like to talk to Lizzie’s daughter,” Fred said. “Better get in line now or we won’t get out of here before dark.”
“Where are you staying?” Graham asked.
“Not sure yet. We like to look for vacancy signs, check out a few places.” Fred grinned. “Scope out the competition.”
“We have a lot of cute bed and breakfasts here—” I started to say.
Graham interrupted me. “One of my units will be vacant for the next couple of weeks. It’s fully furnished. Would you like to stay with us?”
“That depends.” Fred’s eyes twinkled roguishly. “Any murals on the walls?”
“I’m afraid not. But there’s a TV, and we have cable.”
Fred grabbed Graham’s hand and shook it. “Sold!”
“Find us when you’re ready to leave,” Graham said. “You can follow us there.”
Our impromptu houseguests moved toward one of the receiving lines, and Stephen led Graham away to talk shop with some of the other local artists who usually exhibited at the Afterlife Festival. Left to my own devices, I meandered over to the buffet tables by the kitchen and filled a small plate with finger foods before taking my place in the line leading to Wallace.
It was strange to see her here, out of uniform and in a boxy black dress. I thought about teasing her about it, then decided it would be inappropriate. Besides, looking at her now, I suddenly realized how many traits she had inherited from Elizabeth. It went beyond the long braid and the tall build. Wallace had always exuded a calming energy, and her features—though stern—were beautiful.
Someone stepped into line behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and stiffened. A pair of men who looked far older than Elizabeth stood shoulder to shoulder in matching black suits. One wore a blue cap with a red letter C embroidered on the front, and the other had yellowish wisps of hair curling out from behind his ears. I didn’t recognize either of them, and I didn’t have Graham beside me to fill in the gaps in my local knowledge. Were they from out of town?
Could one of them be Anson Monroe?
“What’s the matter, missy?” the man in the cap asked in a reedy voice. “You a Redbird?”
I blinked, startled by the strange question. “What?”
“You’re lookin’ at us like we’re the devil,” he said. “Must be a Redbird.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Birds?
“Leave her be, Nicholas.” The second man sighed and turned to me. “Ignore my husband. I told him it wasn’t right to wear a baseball hat to a funeral.”
“Elizabeth would have wanted it this way, William,” Nicholas said loudly. “She loved the Cubs!”
I couldn’t help but smile as I tried to imagine Elizabeth watching a baseball game. I couldn’t see it. And unless Anson Monroe had changed his name, he wasn’t either of the two gentlemen standing in front of me.
