Out of the Darkness Read online

  It took her nearly ten minutes to feel steady enough to drive. Matt called as she arrived home. “We have left Ohio behind us.”

  “It’s good to hear your voice. How’s Pog?”

  “I have to convince him at every gas stop that he’s not the driver and he has to move over, but he still doesn’t believe me.”

  She laughed. Boy, she needed that. “Tell him mom says he’d better behave or it’s bargain basement kibble for him.”

  “You hear that, Pog? Your mommy said you have to listen to me. No, he’s okay. He settles after we get moving.”

  “Where are you stopping?”

  “I’m going to try to make it north of Atlanta. I don’t want to be on the road too late. Once I hit Atlanta tomorrow, it’ll be about eight hours to you.”

  “You’re on I-75?”

  “Yep. We’re halfway between Lexington and Knoxville.”

  “Wow! You’re making good time.”

  “Traffic’s not too bad, weather’s great, so it’s an easy trip. Let me go, just wanted to let you know where we were.”

  “Call me when you stop tonight, okay?”

  “Sure thing.” And he was gone.

  She looked at the phone and realized why she thought Matt had made great time—it was nearly two o’clock. Where had the day gone? The only thing in her stomach was a cup of coffee from that morning, and she was starving.

  The box from Julie Prescott was still locked in the bottom drawer. She fished it out and spread the contents on the kitchen table while she ate. She even included a small instruction booklet detailing how to use the items.

  Two tied bundles of dried herbs—sage, the book explained. An abalone shell and large feather. A satin bag full of sea salt. Four different candles, admittedly very aromatic and not at all fake smelling. A neon-green book of matches with the pink Many Blessings store logo. A small vial of oil, and another of honey. An empty bottle labeled “Milk.”

  Sami supposed she had to add her own.

  A small piece of chalk, a bag of assorted dried herbs, and a short list—“milk” at the top—of common items you supplied yourself.

  “This is silly.” Speaking out loud made it feel less silly.

  She stared at the box, unsure. On the matchbook cover was the number for Many Blessings.

  “Okay, this really is nuts.” Sami walked into the living room when something caught her eye.

  From the banister at the second floor landing, a young man hung from a piece of rope, his head at a grotesque angle, his body slowly twisting. She heard the rope creak as it rubbed against the wood. Sami opened her mouth to scream, and he disappeared.

  She raced to the kitchen and grabbed her phone. The voice on the other end sounded strong and clear, like a fine church bell. “Many Blessings, how may we brighten your day?”

  “Can I speak to Julie, please?” Sami’s terror threatened to break through but she successfully clamped down on it.

  “Sure, please hold.” The hold music was a soothing Native American flute song. Sami was losing herself in it when Julie came on the line.

  “Julie Prescott, how may I help you?”

  “Julie, this is Samantha Corey.”

  “Mrs. Corey! How are you? Did you do your house blessing?”

  How to approach this? Head on. “Well, that’s what I’m calling about…”

  If Julie could have crawled through the phone to join her, Sami imagined she would. Sami told her the bare minimum, hinting there might be something darker going on and she didn’t want to try it alone. They agreed to meet at five, Julie assuring her she would be discreet. Sami hung up feeling very nervous.

  Sami returned to the living room. The banister held nothing more sinister than dust motes.

  * * * *

  Julie drove a kiwi-green Honda Element with pink Many Blessings signs on the doors. She carried a rather large box and mounted the porch steps to the kitchen door. “I wanted to make sure I have everything we’ll need.”

  Sami pointed her to the kitchen table, where she still had the other items spread out. Julie quickly unpacked the box. “I brought some fresh milk. I have a neighbor who’s into organics and milks their own cows.” She handed the small, stoppered glass bottle to Sami, who was surprised to find it still warm. “Fresh from the cow,” Julie explained. “Overkill, I know, but hey, why not?”

  Sami gave up trying to understand what everything was for and allowed Julie to take the lead. Julie held out a small black stone strung from a silk cord and motioned Sami to put it on. “Black onyx. It’ll help protect you.” She indicated a small silk bag on a thin cord around her neck. “I carry what I need in here. Everyone has their favorites.”

  Sami began to wonder if this was such a good idea after all.

  “Let’s see what we’re dealing with,” Julie said, walking into the living room. Sami gave her a quick tour of the house, and they returned to the kitchen. “What’s down there?” She pointed to the basement door.

  “That’s the basement.”

  “Really? Interesting. We need to do it, too.”

  Sami led the way, warning her to be careful on the steps.

  Sami was all the way to the bottom before she realized Julie’s bubbly, nearly nonstop chatter had silenced, and the woman was frozen on the steps about halfway down.

  “Are you o—”

  Julie held up a hand. Even in the poor light, Sami noticed the color had drained from the other woman’s face.

  Julie bolted up the stairs and Sami made it to the kitchen in time to see her retching in the kitchen sink.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologized as Sami handed her a paper towel. “I…wow.” Julie looked at the basement doorway. “That’s rough down there. I had no idea.”

  Sami wasn’t sure what to think.

  Julie sat at the kitchen table. “There’s a lot of energy in this house. Much of it unsettled, and some of it downright dark.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m going to do a cleansing and blessing, but I can’t promise it’s going to cure, or even help things.” She paused. “Depending on how strong they are, you might even see an increase in some activity.”

  “Ghosts?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t like to use that term. There’s different energies out there. Some intelligent, some not. Some are like a DVD on loop, playing over and over and they don’t even know you’re there. There’s other things out there, too. We don’t need to get into that. Yet.”

  “What do you think is here?”

  “From what I’ve heard it’s most likely a loop, replaying what happened. Maybe even some sort of dark genius loci. Spirit of the land, if you will. But there can be a lot of negative energy bound to a place until it’s released. George Simpson was a pretty negative guy. Someone like that, dying the way he did, and his family… Well, that can leave a bad funk for a long time. And my great-grandfather…” She shrugged. “People who are sensitive, they can be negatively impacted by leftover energy in a place.”

  This woman was a Rhodes Scholar? “What do we do about it?”

  “We’ll start with the basics. Can you open all the windows and doors?”

  Sami nodded and set to it. When she returned to the kitchen, Julie had one of the sage sticks smoldering inside the abalone shell. “I know this might seem weird mumbo jumbo,” she said, “but it’s no different than a priest blessing a house, just a different religious path.”

  Sami followed her through the house, starting with the attic. Julie wafted the smoke from the sage stick in every corner, muttering a simplistic prayer. She repeated this in every room, every closet, every doorway.

  If nothing else, the sage smelled good. The house did need a good airing.

  Julie’s clear voice sounded soothing. When they reached Steve’s office, Julie paused. “This is your husband’s study, correct?”

  Sami nodded and supposed it was a lucky guess on Julie’s part. She hadn’t told her it was Boy Genius’s lair.
/>   Julie spent extra time in the room, making sure it was thoroughly saged. When they returned to the kitchen, Julie looked at the basement door and took a deep breath. “Light one of those blue candles and bring it, please.”

  Sami lit it, surprised by its clear, sweet herbal scent. With a hand up to protect the flame, she slowly made her way down the steps ahead of Julie.

  Julie closed her eyes and paused halfway down, but kept going. Her voice trembled slightly, then grew strong and clear again as she walked around the entire room. When she reached the bookcase, she paused. “There’s more.”

  “What?”

  Julie looked around. “There’s more. There’s another room.”

  Sami shook her head. “This is it. There’s the barn—”

  Julie shook her head emphatically. “No. There’s another room somewhere around here. I feel it. It’s where the negative energy is concentrated now. We need to find it.”

  Julie studied the bookcase. Sami placed the candle on the washing machine before walking over to join her. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. If we can’t find it, we won’t be able to fully cleanse the house. It’ll be better, but chances are the energy will come back.” Julie laid the smoldering sage on the washing machine and together they searched for the secret room.

  “What’s behind this bookcase?”

  Sami shrugged. “Wall?”

  Julie pulled books down with Sami’s help. Faced with bare shelves, both admitted there was apparently no way of moving them.

  “They’re attached to the wall,” Sami said. “I don’t see a seam or anything.”

  After a while, Julie finally admitted defeat. “I’ll help you put these back and we can continue.”

  “No, just leave them,” Sami said. “I was going to dust anyway.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Sami nodded. “Absolutely. It’s after six now, and I don’t want to keep you here all night.”

  They finished with the basement and returned upstairs. Julie led Sami outside, handed her the sea salt, and showed her how to protect the house with it.

  “I’m not sure I believe in witchcraft,” Sami admitted.

  “It doesn’t matter what you call it,” she explained. “It’s mostly how you think. Do you want your house to be protected?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you could sprinkle carpet deodorizer or ant bait and it would still work.”

  Sami smiled at the image. “Okay, I can go along with that.”

  There were several more rituals involving marking the windows and doors with oil and herbs, milk and honey, and pouring the remains on a tree as an offering.

  Julie led her in a simple chant of protection, asking all negative energies to release their hold on the house while welcoming all positive forces. She then had Sami ask for peace, love, tranquility, hope, and only positive, nurturing energies to stay in residence.

  Amen. Sami could get behind that no matter how silly she felt doing it.

  They were finished by seven. Julie left her with several candles and another sage stick, along with instructions on using them.

  “To be honest, it wouldn’t hurt to call a priest and have him do his thing, too.”

  “Really?”

  Julie nodded. “The more the merrier. Might not help but certainly wouldn’t hurt. Sometimes, even if someone doesn’t share the same belief system, it’s easier for people to get behind a priest than it is for them to accept a Pagan or Wiccan tradition. The truth is, it’s all in your faith. Whatever you believe, that’s what will work for you.”

  Sami walked Julie to her car then stared at the house in the dusk as Julie’s taillights disappeared into the woods.

  “It does feel a little lighter,” she said to herself. The feeling of dread had disappeared.

  She took a deep breath and went inside.

  No ghostly specters hung from the banister.

  That’s a plus.

  She called the hospital to check on Steve. He sounded groggy. “They put me on something to keep me calm. I think the nurses want to ravish me.” He giggled.

  Yeah, he was on something all right. “Let them ravish you,” she joked. “Just let those antibiotics do their thing so I can bring you home.” She glanced around and realized the curtains were still open. The darkness beyond the safety of the glass wigged her out.

  “They said I might be able to come home tomorrow, because my fever’s gone, but they’d make me have a…” He searched for the word. “I think they called it a port. To keep giving me IV medicine. They asked if you could give me the meds, and I told them you were used to jamming needles in the horses for their shots.” He giggled again.

  She smiled. That sounded like her husband. Albeit filled to the gills with good pharmaceuticals, from the sound of it. She didn’t keep him long, and promised to come back in the morning.

  “Go to sleep, Steve. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “I love you, Sami.”

  Her heart caught in her throat. “I love you, too, Boy Genius.”

  Sami closed the windows, checked the locks, pulled the curtains tight. She realized she hadn’t heard from Matt yet and called him.

  “I just got back from dinner. Mutt Man here got one hell of a doggy bag.”

  “How many pounds have you packed on my pooch anyway?”

  “Not too many,” he promised. “You can still squeeze him through a car door. How are you holding up?”

  “Well, I had a witch come in and do her thing on the house a little while ago.”

  “What?”

  Admitting it, even to Matt, the man she’d lived with for three years and who made tampon runs for her without complaint, felt strange and—

  Well, silly.

  When she finished, she waited for the barrage of laughter but heard only silence.

  “You still there?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Are you waiting for the punch line?”

  “I wasn’t aware there was one.”

  “So say something.”

  “Like what? There’s obviously something going on in that house, and whatever it takes to resolve it, as long as you aren’t sacrificing animals or children, I say do it.”

  She had expected any reaction but that. “You don’t think I’m nuts?”

  “Sam, you are one of the most rational people I know. If you think something weird is going on, I believe you.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed a deep sigh of relief. It was one thing to have a new age shopkeeper believe her. It was entirely another to have the faith of her closest friend, someone she considered very levelheaded. “You’re not saying that so you can have me committed when you get here, are you?”

  “Of course not. What size straightjacket do you take, by the way?” They both laughed. “Sam, I don’t claim to have the answers. There are things out there that can’t be explained, and while I won’t jump onto a bandwagon without some sort of proof, I’m also not going to deny something exists simply because I don’t believe in it.”

  “Thanks, Matt.”

  They said good night. Sami felt relief for the first time in several days.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  She arrived at the hospital shortly after eight and found Steve out of ICU and in a regular room. He was eating a small stack of pancakes and watching SpongeBob SquarePants.

  “Glad to see you’re not letting your mind rot.”

  He grinned. “Gotta keep my sanity somehow. Look.” He held up an arm free of IV tubing, although there was still a connector taped inside his elbow. The pole stood sentry next to his bed, medicine pumps and tubing hanging from it.

  “They said I can go home this afternoon if the doctor thinks it’s okay and my fever stays down. They want this left in so they don’t have to start another one if there’s a problem.”

  “That’s great.” She set her coffee on his bedside tray and unwrapped her bagel.

  “The best part is,” he whisp
ered conspiratorially, “they said I can take a shower.” He winked. “Want to help?”

  She laughed. This was her old Steve. Hopefully for his sake the new and improved 2.0 version, and not a temporary patch model. “I think they’d throw us out of here for that.”

  He flashed her a mock pout. “Not even a sponge bath?”

  “There’s plenty of time for us to play doctor when we get you home.”

  “Promise?”

  Oh yes, this was all Steve, without anyone—or anything—else thrown into his personality. “Promise.”

  Sami’s cell rang. “I’m at the state line,” Matt said when she answered.

  “That’s great. You’re less than three hours away.”

  “Good, because my ass is going numb.”

  Steve reached for the phone, and Sami handed it over. “Matt! Where you at? You’re missing all the fun and hot nurses, dude.”

  Sami imagined what Matt’s end of the conversation was like, because Steve roared with laughter. After a few minutes he bid Matt good-bye and returned the phone to Sami.

  “Call me when you get to Turnpike exit so I’ll have enough time to get there to meet you.” She gave him basic directions to the front gate. “If I’m not there, wait for me at the gatehouse. See you soon.” She put her phone away and turned to Steve.

  His eyes were closed. “See you soon,” he murmured. His voice sounded flat.

  “What?”

  He opened his eyes and glared at her. She was not imagining the red glow in his eyes. She’d swear it on a stack of—well, she’d swear it.

  “I’ll bet you’ll see him soon,” he growled.

  Sami reached across him for the call button. Steve grabbed her right arm, digging his nails painfully into her wrist.

  “I’ll just bet you can’t wait—”

  “Nurse!” she screamed, clawing at his fingers, which were now embedded in her flesh. “Help!”

  Two nurses raced in, one helping Sami free her arm while the other paged a code. They pinned Steve’s shoulders to the bed as he thrashed and knocked over the tray. Steve’s eyes rolled back in his head.