I am enthralled by the pheromones this woman projects: honesty, kindness, love, and good old Mother Earth beauty.
Only the crackle of the fire disturbs the silence as Hope’s mother closes the lid, and her eyes scan the circle of kids. “Okay, I’ll let you get back to your conversation, and I will be back when it’s time to put out the fire.” With a big smile, she cuts through the circle and, as she jogs out of the firelight, her hair dances on her back.
“Hope Ann Harmony, you know your mother just rolled us looking for alcohol, Right?” the brunette with a heart-shaped ass snaps.
“Yeah, and Heather Alexis Stephens, you better tell me there’s none in that cooler,” Hope answers in a hissy whisper.
“You think I want your mother to put a spell on me?” Heather asks.
“She has never spelled anyone!” Hope says, and then snickers. “But you may become the first.”
If I could breathe, I would be holding my breath as I ride the grass and follow the woman I will be wearing home to meet Gaire before the night is over.
Chapter 17
Gracie
Hope’s mother climbs the stairs to the two-story home and I glide behind her, a shadow under a blanket of night. The outside screen creaks as she pulls it open and it smack’s shut before she can close the heavy wooden door on the humid evening. Inside it’s cool, moody and dark. Candles dance under paddle fans circling above.
The house smells of wood, augmented by heat and humidity; the generations of human residents spice the air with memories. Its structure has stretched and retracted over the years, giving the home character. The screen door and wooden floors creak, the front-door sticks, and the walls have small imperfections. All of this gives the home a soul.
There is an underlying damp, moldy smell, almost acrid. It carries an odor of old books and antique furniture stuffed with cotton batting instead of polyester filler.
We move through a great room with a worn fireplace, and then under an arch into a dining room where darkness swallows the candlelight. But the other side of the room draws a soft glow from a kitchen. It is larger than the dining room, cheerful with big windows on the south wall and a smaller one on the west side over a double sink.
Everything in the kitchen is dated, but pleasantly worn. The floor is black and white tile with counters that match. Everything else is wood, except for stainless steel appliances. A vase full of daisies drips petals on the center of a rough, wooden farm table with six straight back chairs tucked underneath.
Hope’s mother crosses to the sink, fills a clear drinking glass with tap water, and takes a long sip. She turns suddenly, glass still touching her lips, and gazes at an old sepia picture mounted on the wall behind the table. Its oval shaped, wood framed, and displays a woman holding two girls by the hand. They look to be about five or six. The woman is round, wearing a pale cotton shift belted around her ample waistline.
“Nan, I think our little Hope has an admirer,” she tells the picture. “Maybe I’ll bring my tarot cards to the cabin and read his future.”
She stares intently at the picture, laughs, and then raises a hand and firmly says, “And before you say, ’Gracie Jean, girl, you better not be spellin’ that boy!’ I’m gonna tell you, I have no inclination to do so.” Gracie laughs again before saying, “Not yet, anyway.”
Shaking her head with a grin on her face, she sighs. “Let’s see if Hope comes around before they graduate. And if not, I may be putting a spell on her.”
I hug the cabinet-trim on the floor and tuck my smoky shadow underneath appliances as I circle the room and make my way closer to Gracie Jean, my next host.
When I ripple over the tile on the floor and up the back of Gracie’s legs, she still stares at the picture of who appears to be her grandmother. I wonder if the girls are Gracie’s mother and aunt.
I circle the flesh on Gracie Jean’s elegant neck, climb over her sloping chin, and cover her mouth with mine. Smoke creeps into her nostrils. She gasps, chokes, and slowly slides to the floor, me attached. When everything that is Gracie fills me, I push it outward, until her flesh covers my smoky body.
I roil and swell as I spread out inside the deflated form that will soon become a carbon copy of the human I just pushed away from me and onto the tiled floor.
As I rise, I try out her voice. “I’m only borrowing her, Nan,” I tell the photograph.
The heavyset woman in the picture sways and tugs the child tethered to her left hand closer.
I spread a grin across Gracie’s lips, and sidle toward the door. The picture on the wall looks like a 3D movie screen as the ghost stretches in my direction. She looks harmless, but still...
“I won’t tell Gaire about you, Nan, not yet,” I tell the apparition bubbling out of wooden frame, “I sure hope you behave yourself!”