A Quarrel Called: Stewards Of The Plane Book 1 (5 page)

10. SAM

I held the door open for Melody as we exited Smitty’s. The
morning was already too warm to see the steam from her coffee in the air;
summer was definitely here. “I can't believe I am sticking up for her,” I said,
feeling like a traitor to myself, “But you should probably get over it already
and forgive her.”

“Sam, she brought a Spirit Board into my brother's room and
conjured up some dark entity that smashed up his picture.” I should have
trusted my gut.

“It's not your brother's room, and it hasn't been for a long
time. You know that. And besides, none of us actually thought it would
work,
least of all Tara -- you know how she is about that
stuff.” I was torn between wanting to hug her,
which
she would not like, and wanting to snap at her for being so stubborn. “You're
ruining our ‘three musketeers’ thing over something stupid.”

Melody was a tempest brewing; thunder and lightning
threatened our walk. “Sometimes you’re really an asshole. Fine, then. If it's not
her fault then it's yours.”

Shit. Even I had considered that possibility. I waited a
moment before responding. What was the right thing to say here?
The truth, with Melody, always the truth.
“Maybe it is,” I
admitted softly. “Maybe that crazy weird-ass
dream
I
had brought it through.
Orla.
What the hell does that
even mean?”

“I don't know,” Melody said
,
her
head of steam finally run out. She looped her arm in mine as we walked. “But if
you have any more crazy-ass dreams late at night like that? You'd better call,
not text.”

I nodded. I hoped I never had another dream like that again.

11. MELODY

Three days of silence from Tara and I was convinced I was
right. A week of silence from Tara and I knew Sam was right -- I was being
stupid. I knocked on the door to her house and stood there, uncertainly, on the
porch. Maybe she was still mad at me? Did I deserve it?

The door swung open. “Mel! Hey!” Tara stood there grinning
like a dolt.

“Uh, hey Tara.
I just wanted to say
I was sorry...”

“Oh forget it,
I’m
sorry. You have every right to be upset. I mean, I never thought it would
actually, you know, work. Much less bring your brother through. Who knew stupid
parlor tricks weren't stupid?”

“Wait, what?” I asked, suddenly feeling off-center. My
stomach fell. Could Tara really be that insensitive?

“Oh, no!
I mean, here, come in, and
I'll just show you. Then you can see for yourself.” Tara pulled the door open
the rest of the way. Her Mom shouted from the interior of the house, clearly
annoyed.

“In or out, Tara.
The AC is on.”

“Okay, Mom! It's just Melody.”

“Oh, Hi, Mel.
Soda's in the
fridge.”

Tara grinned nervously at me as she slammed the door and
dashed upstairs to her room. “Come ON, Mel. You are not going to believe this.”

Seated on her bed, her laptop between us, Tara brought up
first one web page, then another.

“See here on this one, they talk about photos falling over,
like it's a sign from a loved one beyond. Sometimes they just find them lying
flat on the table or something, but then this other page here says that if they
fall over while you are in the room, it’s a message from your loved one that
you are supposed to pay attention to.” She paused, meaningfully, and looked
into my eyes. “And then this forum post over here, by this lady named
WizCat325, says that if it falls over and breaks, then the message is urgent.
Urgent
, Mel.
It
was Matthew, trying to communicate with you, trying to tell you something
really important.”

I leaned back against her headboard, stopped to adjust the
pillows, and closed my eyes. Could it be true, or was this just more new age
crap? I saw the planchette move with my own eyes. I was practically next to the
picture when it fell off the wall. Both Sam and I knew there was something
about Orla, whoever that was -- a dream and what happened with the Spirit Board
game seemed too strong to be coincidence. I exhaled through my nose, opened my
eyes and said. “It's convincing but... how do you know the message is from
Matthew and not some spirit named Orla?”

“Because I haven't shown you everything
yet.
And I can't, not until G. gets off work.”

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but it's better if we wait.
We can call Sam to come over too, and then G. and I can show you both at the
same time.”

Aargh.
“Fine.
But you're killing me, you know.”

Tara nodded, suddenly serious. “I know, but I really think
it's important. And it will be worth the wait, I promise.”

Both Sam and G. got off of work around the same time, so we
decided to watch a movie while we waited. It only took about an hour for things
to feel normal between us, and before long, Tara had practically abandoned the
movie watching to fill me in on everything G.-related.
G.
this, G. that, G. said.
It was kind of a relief actually, to hear about
a guy she was actually almost dating (they had held hands, but not kissed yet)
instead of her droning on and on about Sam, stoic Sam, if only Sam, yadda
yadda
yadda
.

By the time the boys arrived, we had finished
Practical Magic
and were halfway through
The Craft
. I had asked Tara why the
sudden spate of witchy movies, and she had just shrugged and said she thought
they were appropriate. I was glad she hadn't decided to put on
The Conjuring
, because that would have
appropriated me right out of the house after last weekend's events.

Tara's house didn't have a basement or game room, so we
moved to her Dad's den. It was dark and smoky smelling from all the cigars he
smoked whenever he watched sports on TV, but it was also out of the way and
quiet. No worries about getting interrupted in the middle of whatever Tara and
G. were about to reveal.

We settled on the overstuffed couch and loveseat, and Tara
closed the door to the den until it was barely cracked. Her dad had a rule: no
being in rooms with boys with the door shut; I guess she figured that
almost
shut was just bending the rules a
little bit. “Did you bring it?” she asked, looking at G.

He nodded and pulled his phone from his pocket and handed it
to Tara.

Tara hooked the phone up to her laptop and opened the media
player. She let G. thumb through the screens to find the right media file to
play, and when he pressed the green arrow, the screen to the laptop lit up with
a scene from the interior of the clubhouse.

I recognized everyone in the room; it was a replay of the
other night, from the point of view of the window ledge over the tiny kitchen
sink. I could barely see the corner where Colton was messing with us, and as
soon as Shelby rushed across to turn on the lights, the room stopped being
fuzzy and I could clearly see the boys laughing, and the rest of us taking a
moment to realize we weren't going to die. The screams and ensuing laughter
sounded slightly tinny and staticky coming from the laptop's speakers. My eyes
were glued to the coffee table where the Spirit Board sat. When the planchette
started moving on its own, I felt myself get shaky all over again.

Sam reached over to hold my hand, and for once, I didn't
think about how weird it would be to touch him and threaded my fingers in his
and held tight. I was holding my breath, waiting for the photo to fall from the
wall, and when it did, I jumped practically out of my skin. It had really
happened. It wasn't my imagination—it was real.

“There, did you see it?” Tara said, pointing at the upper
right corner of the screen.

“See what?” asked Sam.
“The photo?
How could we miss it?”

“No,” said G. slow and full of meaning, “the smudge.”

Smudge?

“Where?
Show me.” I leaned in
toward the screen and G. replayed the last few seconds. Sure enough, there was
a sort of smudge in front of the photo just before it fell.

“Holy shit,” Sam said.

“And that's not all,” Tara said. She turned the laptop
toward her and started digging through the menus on the screen. “I contacted
that WizCat325 lady, and she told me to try running the footage through this
software to see what else we get. There,” she said, turning the laptop toward
us again. She clicked the volume icon to turn the speakers up to max, and then
clicked some other little checkbox that said “isolate” next to it. “Close your
eyes maybe—I think that helps—and listen again.”

My heart was thumping in my chest, my hand sweaty in Sam’s
firm grip. Flashes of Matthew's blood all over the garage and his tools dumped
on the floor swam behind my eyes, and my throat felt closed and dry. I tried to
swallow. I heard Tara click the play button.

The typical sounds from the scene played out again, but this
time they were muted, as if I were listening to them from far away, or through
a thick wall. Instead I heard sharp crackles and pops of static come out over
the top. It reminded me of a really dry day, walking across Gram's wool rug in
the foyer. On a day like that, everything I touched made the same dry,
crackling sound.

And then suddenly there was no static at all. “Melody,” said
a gravelly, faint voice. “Melody,” said Matthew.

“Oh my God!”
I opened my eyes and
threw my hands out in front of me as I tried to push away from the rest of the
group. I had let go of Sam's hand but he was trying to grab me and keep me from
scrambling away to the other end of the couch. My heart was pounding, ready to
burst from my chest. And then I began to cry.

12. SAM

I sat there on my bed, staring at my phone. I had the EVP
recorder app pulled up and stared at the recording I had taken that night in
the clubhouse. I had completely forgotten about it until Tara and G. had shown
us the video from G.’s phone. I didn’t bring it up then, not with Melody crying
hysterically, but one thing was for certain, there was no way I was going to
play that recording now, by myself, in the dark. It could wait until morning. I
had my DJ rig set up on my
desk,
surely I could scrub
the audio with my primo software and get something…

Yeah I could, in the
morning
.
I put the phone on my bedside table and kicked off my shoes and lay back. The
moon just visible at the edge of my bedroom window wasn’t as full as it had
been a week before, but that cat was out walking the neighborhood again. He
stopped and marked Thompson’s car, and then he walked over and sniffed
Thompson’s front door. He marked it, too. Somehow the audacity of the cat made
me feel better. Until a shadow moved past my window and I nearly fell out of my
bed scrambling for the meager light of my phone.

The hoot of an owl wafted hauntingly over the air and I
decided that maybe I’d sleep with my closet light on tonight. No one else had
to know.

Only, please, don’t let me dream.

13. MELODY

Matthew and I are lost. Tall trees block out the sun as the
chirp and buzz of forest sounds go silent with every step we take deeper into
the woods. It is impossibly deep and dark and the trees are twisted into arcane
shapes. I’ve never been this far before, but Matthew looks over his shoulder
and smiles at me and waves me onward. I try to call out to him, but as my mouth
opens and closes, the words get stuck. My stomach begins to churn. Snap!
Branches break to my right; the sound makes me jump. When I look to Matthew
again, I can barely see him in front of me, his dim shape trudging ever deeper
into the forest. I run to catch up, but he is too far ahead.

The tickle of foreign fingers creeps up my spine; something
is behind me. A wave of cold washes through my body and my blood pounds as I
plunge head first into the darkness, Matthew’s beckoning hand only a memory. I
trip over a branch and plow into the forest floor, bits of leaves and moss
flying into my face. As I roll over to face my pursuer, a shadow beast leaps
forward, landing on my chest. It leans in close, only darkness and teeth,
putrid breath steaming in my face. The pressure on my chest grows, the ground
opening up beneath me, threatening to swallow me even as the shadow beast looms
overhead. My fear fades, and my vision with it, as I sink, down, down, down
into the earth, the pressure on my chest inescapable.

I jerked awake, suddenly aware that the pressure on my chest
was not just a dream, but a physical sensation.

Something.
Is.
Here.

I strained to see in the darkness. I could not move
,
the weight was so great. But there was a smell, a faint
odor of rotten meat left over from my dream and it felt hot and moist and
in my face
. My cellphone lit up from a
notification and suddenly I could see: the shadow creature was perched on my
chest, its eyes like black beads, recessed in their sockets, only the barest
flicker of intelligence.
Teeth mere inches from my face.

Heart pounding, adrenaline rushing through my veins, I
struggled against the shadow, the nightmare in my face, but I was paralyzed.
Helpless.
My throat closed tight. I couldn’t scream. I
couldn’t even look away.

A thump sounded at my window. The thing on my chest glanced
up. When it did, I suddenly had the ability to move. My limbs felt heavy and I
couldn’t muster the coordination to thrust the creature away from me, though I
did manage to shove it to the side and off the bed.

The thump from my window turned into a feral growl. I
looked.
Another one?
No, it was a cat, backlit from
the streetlights beyond. Its back was arched, and it had the creature in its
sights. It issued yet another feral caterwaul and I covered my ears; the sound
was like an ice pick in my ear and made every hair on my body raise up to
attention.

The creature did not care for the sound either. After a hiss
at me and a growl at the cat, it slinked away into the darkness at the far
corner of the bedroom. I watched it lurking there, waiting for the cat to go
away.

My cellphone rang, and I knew now that this was what had
woken me the first time. It was Sam. Grateful for the light of the LCD, I
thumbed the screen to answer and almost sobbed in relief. “Sam?”

“Melody.
Are you okay? I just had
the worst dream about you,” he said, his voice tight. “When you didn’t answer,
I—”

“Oh my God, Sam.
There is something
here.” I clutched the phone to my ear and leaned out to turn on the bedside
lamp. The cat in the window yowled at me and leapt down from the sill, but I
was watching the corner. The darkness hunched there. My heart in my throat, I
watched the light reach that corner of the room and was stunned that all I saw
there was my chair with an armload of folded laundry.

“It was right there,” I said, disbelieving and utterly
relieved at the same time. “It was there, I know it was.”

“I believe you.”

He stayed on the phone with me until dawn. We didn’t talk
much, but neither of us could sleep. He confessed that he had left his closet
light on, and I decided that might not be a bad idea for me from now on,
either.

When the rosy light started filtering in through the
windows, we finally hung up, him to snatch a couple of hours of sleep before
work, and me to get dressed.

#

I didn’t have a summer job, but it felt like I did
sometimes. There were a lot of chores to be done, like weeding the herb garden,
dead heading the rose bushes, general house cleaning, lawn mowing, etc. And
with Matthew gone and Gramps ill, the chores fell to me and Gram.
Mostly to me.

Manual labor helped take my mind off of things, and the
smell of fresh basil and tarragon soothed my terrified soul. By the time I was
done with the weeds, I still had time to shower and have some toast. I felt
much better, having distance and daylight between me and the events of last
night.

When I got out of the shower, the telltale scent of sage was
in the air. I ducked around the corner, wrapped in my robe, and was caught by
Gram in the hall.

“Hold still,” she said, reaching toward me with the burning
bundle of sage leaves. “There’s something in the air, and I mean to get rid of
it.
Woke up with a terrible headache and a case of the
heebie-jeebies.”

I groaned to hide my sudden anxiety over the thought of the
creature in my room. “Hurry up, Gram. I have to meet Sam for coffee and I only
have a few minutes.”

She passed the smoke in front of me, wafting with her hand
and directed me to hold up one arm, and then the other, so that she could pass
the bundle underneath. When she finished, I obediently turned around, trying
not to be impatient while she wafted smoke up and down my back.

“You’ve got plenty of time, child,” she said and smiled,
brushing past me to sage my room. “That Sam’s a nice boy. And he sure likes
you.”

Sigh. “I know, Gram. But we’re just friends. He
understands.”

She arched one artfully plucked eyebrow. “Does
he
, now.” She took a few steps into the room and wafted the
smoke around. She turned to her right, saw the chair with the bundle of clothes,
and paused for a moment, frowning. Then she wafted the smoke over the chair as
well. “Be a dear and open your closet for me, so that I can get in there, too.”

I obliged, while mulling over the fact that she had paused
in front of the chair. I had always taken the
saging
of the house as some sort of silly ritual we all put up with to make Gram feel
better, but now I had to wonder if perhaps there was something more to it, or
more to the point, something more
to Gram
.