Page 9 of The Sister's Curse
And I wasn’t sure what to think about that uneasiness. Something wasn’t right. Maybe my imagination had been sparked by the green flash that had opened a memory from my childhood. Maybe.
I walked down to the pond to convince myself that it was just an ordinary pond, the site of a tragic accident. It sure looked like it, full of cattails and algae. The frogs had found their voices again.
I looked past the pond, at the forest, orienting myself. Beyond, there was marshland, dried out from the drought we’d been having this summer, and there was a little creek, Warsaw Creek, which was a tributary of the Copperhead River. Evidently it wasn’t picturesque enough on its own, necessitating a pond. This place was only a half mile down the road from the meth bust. That’s the way it was in rural places: there were strict socioeconomic divisions via property lines. But the dark forest and the creek connected the upper crust and those who lived in the shadows of society.
I turned back toward the house. Something moved behind the trash cans, barely illuminated by the patio light.
What the hell wasthat?
I advanced on it. It twisted in the breeze, like a trash bag.
I captured it before it loosened free of the trash cans and skidded across the yard. It was fabric. It was some kind of a costume—a black hooded cape. The material was the kind I’d expect for a Halloween costume: cheap, filmy velvet. As I examined it, I saw a strand of long brunette hair inside.
It was probably nothing, blown in from the road. But I bagged it anyway, because it was weird and it had creeped me the fuck out.
On the way out, I paused at the end of the driveway. The rural mailbox was embedded in a stone pedestal—certain to keep mailbox smashers at bay. The mailbox’s door was slightly open, and I squinted at it. The letter carrier would close it from force of habit. So would most homeowners—no one wanted rain to seep in and make an electric bill soggy.
With a pen, I opened the box all the way and shone my flashlight inside.
A skull stared back at me.
It wasn’t human. Looked like a white-tailed deer skull. A doe’s—no nubbins of antlers that wouldn’t fit in the mailbox.
On its bleached forehead was the number ten. And a symbol.
I leaned close, peering at the symbol roughly drawn in black paint.
It was round, the outline looking like a snake. The snake’s jaws clutched its tail in a perfect circle.
I wasn’t sure what it was. But it sure looked like a threat.
3
Familiar Spirits
It was almost three a.m. by the time I’d bagged the skull for evidence and left for home. I’d lifted from the mailbox some messy fingerprints that I wanted to preserve before weather got to them. I wasn’t expecting much, but I’d compare those prints to the mail carrier’s and the Sumners’. I had higher hopes for the skull itself, and would happily surrender it to Forensics to thoroughly comb over. The deer skull sat in a plastic bag on the back seat behind me, staring at me with missing eyes. Every so often, I’d glance in my rearview mirror to meet her black gaze. Gibby wouldn’t look at her at all.
The crickets had quieted, and I drove with the windows down, relishing the cool darkness. The moon was setting, tangled in tree branches. I kept the radio on at low volume on a top-forty station, mostly because I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts. Gibby leaned his head out the window, eyes closed in bliss. I wondered if he imagined he was flying.
As I dipped into a valley on the two-lane road, I lost the stationfor a moment. Static crackled, and then a woman sang, eerily distant.
As I ascended the next rise, the radio station stabilized, and I was listening to a weather report on the drought afflicting Bayern County. No rain in sight.
I frowned. I was tired. I should go home, to bed.
Gravel crunched under my SUV’s tires as I wound down my driveway to my house in the woods. No lights were on inside the bungalow or on the porch. The house was small by most standards—only one story, and one bedroom—but it was my little piece of silence away from the rest of the world.
I shut off the engine, listening to it tick in the dark. I didn’t like how things had gone down this evening. I hadn’t heard anything more about Mason. I pressed my head to the steering wheel. I wasn’t the praying type, but I sure hoped the boy was going to be okay.
I opened the door, and Gibby scrambled over me and out to do his business beside a maple tree.
I drifted around the small area of grass that I bothered to mow. Behind the house, my boyfriend, Nick, had started a garden. He intended gardening to be an outdoorsy activity we could do together, growing orderly rows of potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers. They looked wilted, so I turned on the hose to give them a splash.
In one corner of the garden, where he’d planted marigolds, he’d placed a flat, vaguely heart-shaped stone he’d found in the woods. I asked him about it. He said that this little spot was in memory of his mother. I watered the flowers dutifully, but I did my damnedest not to look at the stone, and to swallow the lump in my throat that rose when I did.
When I was satisfied that the garden wasn’t going to die, I wentback to the car, grabbed the skull, trudged up the squeaky wooden porch steps, and unlocked the front door. I didn’t bother to turn the lights on for myself, but I’d been trying to remember to do so for Gibby’s benefit, and for Nick’s.
My house always smelled a bit mossy. Maybe I just really needed to clean the gutters, but it was a pleasant smell. It mingled with lemon-scented polish on secondhand furniture and the bowl of foraged black raspberries on the kitchen counter. I crossed scarred wooden floors through the kitchen to the living room, dropping my bags on the green velvet couch. Found treasures surrounded me, stones and feathers captured in jars and vases. The mantel was full of commendations and pictures of me in uniform—reminders of who I really was. Overseeing it all was a mounted deer head I’d picked up at a garage sale. Gazing serenely at my little kingdom, he cast his antlered shadow over me, thick and silent. He was different from the skull I’d found tonight. He was peaceful, protective. She was…dark. Chaotic. I put her on top of the refrigerator, away from Gibby’s sight.
