CHAPTER 13
LUCY
“There’s no way I’m letting you go out to the Stoddard place alone,” Daniel said. I was helping him lock up the canoes for the night, even though I was off the clock. His voice had taken on a bossy tone that got under my skin. I’d actually wanted him to come with me, but I didn’t like that he was suddenly telling me what I could and couldn’t do. It made me want to do the opposite of everything he said. I wasn’t scared to go see Doris Stoddard by myself, despite the guys who sometimes hung around her trailer. Most of them knew who I was and knew my uncle Crete, and that was enough to keep them from bothering me. They either thought I was witchy or that Crete would beat the crap out of them.
“I thought this was something we were doing together. And don’t you need a ride?” Daniel prodded. “You’ve got that big box to carry.”
“I could call Bess.”
“How’ll Bess protect you if something happens?”
“I don’t need protection. I’m going to visit my friend’s mom. Simple as that.”
“Your murdered friend’s mom. To get rid of a ghost. You’re right, pretty simple.”
I hated how he made me smile when I was mad. “What would you do to protect me? Blind the bad guys with your pretty smile?”
Within the space of a breath, he grabbed my arms and pinned them behind my back, pressing me against the boat shed so I could feel the tensed muscles of his chest. He looked down at me with an impish grin. “District wrestling champ, junior year.” He released me just as quickly, the phantom of his touch lingering on my skin. My insides were giddy with wanting things I shouldn’t have.
“Show-off,” I said.
“Sorry.” He stepped back. “I only resort to force when necessary. Usually the pretty smile’s enough.”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Fine,” I said. “You can come.”
It was dusk when we reached the trailer. Doris let us in, wearing the same housecoat she’d had on the last time we saw her. A cigarette trembled between her fingers. “You bring it?” she asked.
I held up the box. “It’s all here.” I’d read Sarah’s lengthy instructions, and while I wasn’t sure what we were about to do would cleanse the trailer of spirits, it might be enough to convince Doris. I’d asked Daniel whether he believed in this stuff, and he’d shrugged, saying it couldn’t hurt.
We began by holding hands in a circle, the three of us, as I recited Sarah’s blessing word for word. Then I lit a bundle of sage and walked through the trailer, cleansing each room with smoke and prayers. Cheri’s room was stale and dusty, the lightbulb burned out and the mattress on the floor stripped bare. As we left each room, I placed wrinkled green hedge apples in the four corners. I seemed to remember Birdie telling me hedge apples kept away spiders, not ghosts, but maybe they worked for all kinds of pests.
When I finished with the sage, we were supposed to feel a sense of lightness as the spirits left us, set free, but I didn’t feel any lifting of the heavy air in the trailer. Sarah’s instructions didn’t say what to do if I thought it wasn’t working, so I retrieved the jar of salt and crumbled leaves and continued. This part of the ritual was meant to keep spirits from returning once they’d been released. They would no longer recognize their earthly home; it would be repellent and unfamiliar and no longer pull them back from the light. It was sad, and cruel, if you believed it, that you could so easily unmoor a being from all it had ever known. We walked the borders of the property, pouring the salt mixture into the earth and repeating the earlier blessing. We lit candles at the end and walked the path in reverse, dripping wax over the salt, circling back to the front of the trailer, where we blew out our flames.
Daniel and I followed Doris back inside, where a lilting breeze lifted the curtains and dissipated the haze of sage smoke. “You feel that?” she said, holding her hands out and looking around. “I can breathe.”
I didn’t feel anything, but I nodded, packing the remaining supplies back in the box. Doris sank into a recliner, and I perched on the edge of a shredded sofa that I assumed, from the fur and the smell, was the dog’s bed. Daniel leaned against the wall. “There’s one more thing we have to do, to make sure it sticks,” he said. “We’ll finish when you’ve told Lucy what she needs to know.”
“Cheri,” I said. “Was she hanging around anybody new before she disappeared?”
Doris snorted. “What, you think she got some other friend ’sides you?”
“I thought, maybe, one of the men …?”
Her eyes narrowed and she hunched forward in her seat. The housecoat gapped open between the snaps, revealing glimpses of flesh. “Look. I know you’re sitting there blaming me. But you ain’t got no idea. She’s the one fucked everything up. I was doing what I could. Had three kids to look after, plus one my sister dumped here when she got sent up to Chillicothe on a five-year stretch. I was stitching uniforms at the factory in Mountain Home all day and cleaning the old folks’ home at night. I didn’t always have somebody to watch the kids. My oldest, Joey, he was real responsible. Had to leave him in charge some of the time, and he did real good. One night he was boiling macaroni for dinner, and Cheri—couldn’t get nothing through that kid’s thick skull, you tell her the stove’s hot, and she’d stick her hand right on it—she grabbed the handle and pulled the boiling water down all over Joey. Burned him pretty good. He’d pushed her outta the way, and she was fine, not a spot on her. I salved the burns when I got home, but they wouldn’t heal up, and after a while they started looking worse. Took him to the medicine woman on my day off, and she sent me straightaway to the doctor. I did just like she said, went to the doctor in town, and they still come and took my kids from me. Stuck ’em in foster care, like they get treated any better in there. Well, wouldn’t you know they brought Cheri back. The one that caused the whole mess. Said she had special needs, she was still so little and wouldn’t stop crying for her mama. And surely I could do better, taking care of just one. I tell you why they brought her back: couldn’t handle her. Asking the same dumb questions over and over, doing the same stupid things, pissing her pants and walking around like nothing happened.
“I had to start working from home to watch her; nobody else wanted to do it after what happened, they knew she was trouble. Gave up rights on my other kids, knew I couldn’t support ’em no more. Curtis, he got adopted, he was still cute enough, but Joey, all them scars. Nobody took him. Used to write me these letters wanting to come back home, but he don’t write no more. Don’t know where he is.” Doris rubbed her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, but she didn’t seem to hear me and went on with her story.
“Cheri was always getting in my way when I was trying to work. Walking in at the wrong time, staring. Grew them big tits when she was ten, that weren’t normal. Didn’t have sense to wear a bra. She brought it on herself, all that attention. She liked it, too, lemme tell you. Crawl up in their laps while they’s waiting, show ’em the pictures she’s drawing, retarded little stick things.”
I thought of Mr. Girardi, how Cheri’s face had glowed when he’d helped her in class, taken her artwork seriously. She’d been starved for any kind of attention, good or bad.
“Was there anyone in particular she talked about, maybe? Anyone she might’ve wanted to leave with?” I asked.
“Hard to tell. She jabbered all the time, ’specially about that art teacher at school. That’s what I told the cops.”
“What didn’t you tell them?” Daniel asked. I had practically forgotten he was there.
“I ain’t ratting nobody out. I ain’t got proof of nothing.”
“My mother has other spells,” Daniel said. “To summon ghosts. Maybe Cheri needs some company.”
Doris’s face hardened as she looked at him, but there was fear in her eyes. She’d had a taste of what she felt was freedom from Cheri, and she wanted to hold on to it.
“There’s one guy,” she said, turning back to me. “Prick to do business with, but he was nice to her. He’d make a point of coming by when she was getting home from school. But he never tried nothing on her. They just sat on the steps and talked. Then I got to thinking that’s what was strange about him—he didn’t try nothing.”
“What’s his name?”
She laughed. “I don’t know his real name. Ain’t from here. Drives a van, that’s all I know.”
“Was he here the other day, right before we stopped by?” Daniel asked.
She looked down at her lap. “Might of been.”
Daniel and I exchanged glances. She didn’t want to tell us too much, just enough to ensure that the ghost wouldn’t come back. She didn’t say anything more, so I stood to go. “Thank you,” I said.
“Finish up whatever you have to do to keep her away, and then get out of here,” she said. “Just let me be.”
“Poor Cheri,” Daniel said when we were back in the truck. “Growing up with a mother like that.”
“Worse than not having one at all,” I said. “So what’s the last thing we were supposed to do? I didn’t see anything else in Sarah’s instructions.”
He shrugged. “If you think you’re haunted, you’re haunted. And vice versa. Doesn’t matter what we do so long as she believes it.”