Harbinger in the Mist (Arms of Serendipity) (10 page)

Nothing.

“We come in peace; we do not wish to harm you. We would just like to know why you are lingering here.”

Nothing.

“See. This is stupid. We should – ” Lindsey started. But the planchette under their fingers began to glide around the board slowly, making a slow figure eight. Her fingertips tingled as if an electrical impulse was radiating from the plastic under them.

“Alright. Ha, ha. Why are you moving it?” Lindsey asked, her voice quivering.

“Lindsey, I’m barely touching it!” Michelle whispered, obviously shocked as much as Lindsey was.

“Look! It’s spelling something! Quick, Maddie! Write this down! S – A – M – B – O… Sambo? Your name is Sambo?”

The planchette slowly slid to the word “Yes.”

“How old are you, Sambo?”

The planchette stopped over the number four.

“You’re four? Really?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anyone else here?”

“Yes,” the board said.

“Who?”

The planchette moved in a figure-eight pattern again before spelling out the name Tom. Their fingers were moved swiftly around the board as Sambo told the girls that he and Tom, his younger brother, had died in the house “a long time ago” when their momma hurt them to save them from the “angry masser man.” Sambo said that the man had hurt his momma, too. Everything was better now, he reassured them, because their momma was there with them in the house and that the mean man was finally gone. He said that they liked to play with Lindsey by moving her stuff and jumping on her bed. They weren’t trying to scare her, they had been lonely in the house for a long time so it was nice to have someone else around again. Lindsey asked why they had never done anything to Aimee.

“We did, but she ignored us,” he answered.

“Yeah, that sounds like Mom. She thinks in the concrete, so she had an explanation.”

The girls asked if the old lady who died in the kitchen was still there, but Sambo said she wasn't, that she went “into the light” when it shone down on her. He said she never paid them much attention, though, so he was glad that she wasn't there with them now.  The other lady, he said, was nice and acknowledged them at least, but she wasn’t there either. Lindsey assumed they were talking about Angela. After this, the planchette moved in a figure eight several times and stopped.

“Wow, it’s really chilly in here all of a sudden,” Lindsey rubbed her forearms where goose bumps had popped up.

The girls waited a couple of moments, but when it was obvious that Sambo wasn't going to talk anymore, Maddie said, “See, it’s just a couple of kids. They don’t mean to scare you. It’s like you have your own little Caspers!”

“Thank you, Sambo. We will now leave you and Tom in peace. Good – ” Michelle was saying when the windows slammed open and wind gusted through the room, blowing out the candles. A bolt of lightning forked violently across the sky as the curtains danced on the wet air. The house shook with fury, like a small earthquake had hit the area.

The girls screamed and jumped back from their seats. Their sudden movement rocked the heavy chest, flipping the board and the planchette to the floor with a dull thump. The candles, extinguished by their own pools of wax, rolled in different directions. The sage stick lay by the foot of the bed, spirals of smoke rising above it.

“I thought that they were harmless!” Lindsey yelled as she ran to turn on the overhead light. The twins closed the windows. Lindsey gathered the candles and placed them on the dresser after making sure the flames were completely out.

Michelle jerked the necklace off and stuffed it in her back pocket. “That was weird. Maybe it was their mom and she’s mad that he was talking to you. She probably doesn't trust white people.”

“White people? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Didn't you pay attention? Sambo said something about a ‘masser’ man. This place was built by a slave owner. He meant to say ‘master.’ You know those little houses out back?”

“Yeah,” Lindsey said, remembering the first time she and her mom visited the place. “The lawyer said that they were old slave houses.”

“Exactly. A dead slave and her kids still live here!”

“That’s sad … and a little creepy.” Lindsey sat down on her bed and stared at the floor. “I can’t believe that we did that, though. What if we pissed the mom off? I’m not going to be able to sleep for nights now!”

As if on cue, the hairbrush lying on the dresser flew off across the room and the bedroom door flew open.

“Oh my God, did we make her THAT angry?!” Maddie asked as she waved the sage roll in front of her as if to smoke out the spirit.

“We are sorry, ma’am! We really are! We just wanted to talk to your sons. We mean y’all no harm!” Michelle said to the center of the room in an attempt to calm the spirit.

The house shuddered and a deep, rumbling growl, more frightening than the worst of the thunder outside, echoed down the hall. The girls screamed.

“OH MY GOD, DID WE DO SOMETHING HORRIBLY WRONG?” Lindsey cried as she and the twins fled the room and ran down the stairs.  Lindsey grabbed her bag and keys off the credenza as they headed for the door. 

Before the echo of the front door slam had dissipated, the planchette had moved across Lindsey’s bedroom floor and onto the wudu board. It stopped over the word “Yes.”

Seven

The girls ran out into the storm, rain drops stinging every piece of their exposed flesh. The unyielding wind whipped their clothing around their bodies and attempted to blow them off their intended path. Lindsey didn't know if it was just the storm or this newly angered spirit trying to prevent them from fleeing, trying to pull them back to the house. But they trudged through the impeding gusts until they reached Lindsey’s Honda.

Once they were in the car, Lindsey locked all of the doors and sat looking back at the peaceful face of Retreat House.  Her hands were shaking so badly that she barely managed to get her key in the ignition, but once she did she cranked the car and jerked it into reverse. Their heavy breaths fogged up the windshield; Maddie cranked up the defogger as Lindsey whipped the car around in the drive way and headed away from Retreat House. The car began to fill with an earthy smelling smoke.

“Oh, for cripes sake, Maddie! You brought the sage stick with you?”

“Damn. I forgot I was carrying the thing!” Maddie opened her door and tossed the smudge stick out into the flooded driveway.

“Where should we go? Can we go to your house?” Lindsey wasn’t sure where to go. They had been intent on getting away from Retreat House, but they hadn’t thought about where they would go once they were away from the terror.

“NO! What if she’s following us? Just freaking drive! Go into town!” Maddie screamed.

“But if she’s following us, she could cause us to wreck!”

“Lindsey, I don’t want that ghost at my house!” Michelle shrieked at the same time Maddie yelled, “Go, just go!”

There was only one place to which Lindsey could think to go, especially in this weather. She turned right onto the main road. Rain thudded against the windshield like heavy rocks, splattered, and streaked sadly back and over the windows like tear drops. The wipers beat back and forth but did very little to clear the water away. The wind caused the car to veer several times and it tossed the fronds of the Palmetto trees that lined the road in several places to-and-fro like limp rags. The roadways were littered with dislodged fronds and Spanish moss that had been blown out of the protective arms of the large live oaks.

The storm seemed to be getting worse. The wind was howling and the rain unrelenting. Tropical Storm Felicity was like a scorned lover – screaming, crying, and violent.

“Should we stop and take cover?” Lindsey asked after the car had nearly been blown in front of an oncoming logging truck. She had swerved and skidded to a halt just inches from the tree line on the side of the road.  Her slowing heart beat revved back into full throttle.

“You drive in snow that’s ass-deep to a horse but you worry about a thunderstorm? Just take a breath, calm down, and drive.” Michelle was exasperated.

“Hey, it was a storm that carried Dorothy over the rainbow, not a blizzard.”

“I’ll panic when I see a funnel cloud, but for now please get us away from here,” Maddie interjected.

A few minutes later, the girls pulled into the astonishingly empty parking lot of Colleton Medical Center. They parked, counted to three, and jumped out. They darted into the hospital through puddles and debris. The hospital was chilly; the air conditioning was churning out cold air, oblivious to the fact that the weather outside wasn’t hot and sunny. Soaked, dripping, and shaking from cold and fright, they rode the elevator to the maternity floor. Lindsey had warned them not to mention the wudu board to her mom. Aimee wasn’t particularly religious, but Lindsey didn’t know how she’d react to them doing something like they’d just done in the house, especially when she wasn’t home.

Darby was sitting at the nurse’s station knitting a sky-blue baby blanket when they rounded the corner.

Michelle leaned in and whispered, “Does she ever go home?”

Darby glanced up when they reached the desk. “Well, I declare! What are you girls doing here?”

“I haaaaave to ttttttalk to mmmmmy Mmmmmom.” Lindsey’s teeth chattered, but she got the sentence out nonetheless.

“She’ll be out here soon, I suspect. Not a lot happening tonight. She went to heat up a cup a tea. You girls need towels?”

“No mmmmmma’am, I jjjjjjust need to see mmmmmy mmmmmom.”

“Good Lord, child. Y’all come here and sit by my space heater for a moment.”

The three girls rounded the counter and sat in front of the little foot heater. Darby put her knitting in a sweet grass basket and grabbed towels for them from a hall closet. It didn’t take long for them to warm up as they sat there on the floor with the warm air from the space heater blowing on them.

“What are you making?” Michelle was peeking into Darby’s knitting basket.

“I volunteer here a couple of days each week. In the old days we were called ‘candy stripers.’ At my age, though, I’d be more of a ‘dried up lozenge.’ But anyhow, I am a member of the hospital’s knitting guild. We make blankets, hats, and booties for the newborns. Right now I’m making some blankets and extra small hats for the preemies in the NICU. It helps me pass time, you know. You girls know how to knit?”

Aimee came out of a door marked “Staff Only” soon after, holding a steaming Styrofoam cup and a bagel. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the three of them sitting there on the floor, towels over their heads, and dripping water onto the carpet.

“Is everything OK?” She asked Lindsey, panic written all over her face. “Did something happen at the house? Did the storm –”

“Well, um…” Lindsey wasn’t sure that Aimee would appreciate any mention of spirits or ghosts at her place of employment so she glanced at Darby nervously. The old woman seemed to take a hint and shuffled to the waiting area where she busied herself by straightening the chairs and stacking magazines. Lindsey was fairly certain that she was within earshot so she chose her words carefully.

“Well, something
did
happen at the house, Mom, but it wasn’t the storm. It was, well, you know that thing I keep telling you about?”

“Not this ghost bullshit again, Lindsey!”

“Ms. Foster, she’s right – ”

“It flung the door wide open –”

“It growled at us –”

“The windows flew open –”

All three girls jumped up and began talking excitedly at once; it was imperative that Aimee listen and believe them. Instead, she put her bagel and tea down on the ledge at the nurse’s station and turned on them, her hands up in the air.

“I have absolutely had it! This is a hospital and I am at work. You three got in the car and drove here in dangerous weather just to rant and rave about something that exists only in overactive imaginations fueled by the very real effects of the tropical storm hammering us right now.” She turned her glare on Lindsey full blast, “The very storm that you were told to stay out of. I’m disappointed in you, Lindsey. I want you to listen to me and I want you to listen good, all three of you. A house cannot hurt you but you can certainly hurt yourselves by letting your imaginations run amok. You could’ve been killed driving in this mess. Or you could have killed someone else. I swear!”

Defeated, they stood there and let Aimee rant. Darby was watching them with her weathered hand over her mouth. Aimee seemed to relax a little when they didn’t respond.

“You three probably watched a scary movie or were telling stories and the storm got to all three of you. It’s an old house and old houses make noise. Mix in the atmosphere this storm has created and you’ve got a spooky setting.  But you girls are old enough to know the difference between reality and fiction.”

“Mom, whatever it was shook the house! If it can do that, don’t tell me that it isn’t real or that it can’t hurt me!”

“Lindsey, it was either the thunder or the rain shaking the house. The winds are whipping around at 50 miles per hour out there. For the love of all that is holy! Now I want the three of you to march your soaked asses back down to whatever you drove here in and go straight home. If I have not heard from you in 20 minutes to let me know that you got home safe, I will send the entire police force of Walterboro your way. And so help you God if I have to do that and you’re not in a ditch somewhere. We’ll talk about this later, Lindsey.” She turned, picked up her snack, and walked into the second hospital room to the left without looking back.