Dark Inspiration Read online

  She checked the wall clock. Her students were back from Music in ten minutes. She pulled a napkin from a dispenser and blotted her watery eyes.

  The hell with Patrice, she thought. The hell with all of them. She was there to teach the kids. She would do what needed to get done to make that happen. If it made the other teachers look lazy, too damn bad. Maybe she would only spend one semester here. But she would make sure the kids were more than one semester smarter for it.

  She held her planning book across her chest like a knight’s shield and set out for her room.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  That night, the earthy spiced scent of homemade chili rolled over Laura as she opened the front door of the house. She sighed and smiled. She’d had one long day. After her encounter with Patrice, she’d had a frustrating TCAP tutoring session. Several kids, the ones most in need, of course, were not making every session and their lack of progress was frustrating. One of her favorite dinners would be just what the doctor ordered. It was as if Doug had read her mind.

  She dropped her bags at the door as if they weighed a ton and went into the kitchen. Two pots simmered on the stove. Doug stirred one with a wooden spoon. He had an odd, concentrated look on his face.

  “¿Una comida buena?” Laura asked.

  Doug jerked as if awakened from a dream. The spoon flew out of his hand and onto the stovetop. Droplets of red chili splattered the stove backsplash.

  “Jesus!” Doug said. “You startled me. I didn’t hear you come in.” He spun to put himself between Laura and the pot he’d been tending. He gave her a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek.

  “Was that some new Zen cooking method?” she said.

  “No, just a bit distracted.”

  “Plotting out the novel in your head?”

  Doug gave his head an affirmative shake that seemed relieved. “Yep, tying up loose ends. Dinner’s ready.” He tried to lead her out of the kitchen. “Have a seat before I burn it.”

  She looked over his shoulder to the stove. “What’s with the second pot?”

  A guilty little look flashed across Doug’s face. “One with meat, one without.”

  “Meat? You never used to put meat in the chili.”

  “Because back then we couldn’t afford it,” Doug said.

  “And because I wouldn’t eat it.”

  “That too. Hence, two pots a simmering.”

  Laura pushed by him and scooped up some of the chili in the second pot. Stringy hunks of gray meat swam around with the beans. They smelled gamey. “Ugh, what is in here?”

  “Chicken,” Doug said. He pulled the spoon from her hand and dropped a lid on the pot.

  “Chicken doesn’t look like that,” Laura said, he nose wrinkled up in revulsion.

  “And what do you know about chicken, Vegetarian Girl?” Doug said. He gave her a gentle push out of the kitchen. “No one’s asking you to eat it.”

  “One strand of that nasty stuff hits my plate and you will be wearing it,” Laura said with a smile.

  “One more complaint from you and I won’t just cook chickens,” Doug said. “I’ll start raising them.”

  Laura sat at the table and Doug brought in two steaming bowls of chili. It was delicious and she enjoyed every tear-inducing mouthful. Laura filled Doug in on her encounter with Patrice and her tutoring frustrations, but Doug nodded and swallowed more than he spoke. He finished his chili before she was half done.

  “Hungry, dear?” Laura said as Doug scraped the bottom of his bowl.

  “Famished,” Doug said. “Must be the country air.” He flashed his empty bowl at her. “Sure you don’t want to try my version?”

  “Keep your poultry to yourself, Colonel Sanders.”

  “Don’t say I never offered,” Doug said. He got up and tossed his bowl in the sink. “I’m going to go up and finish some writing. okay?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” Laura said. “I’ve got a test to prep for tomorrow anyway.”

  Doug smiled an odd little smirk of a smile. He bent down and kissed Laura on the cheek. The smell of the greasy chili on his breath made Laura shudder. Doug bounded up the stairs behind her.

  Laura felt completely out of sorts. A waiting dinner was a happy surprise, but Doug’s actions were a shade past bizarre. Chicken chili? And he was in a hurry to get away from the dinner table. He had some of the normal lighthearted banter…but still there was an undercurrent she didn’t like, something like…

  Black water under silver ice.

  She wondered where that image came from. The twins. She’d been thinking about the spirits of those two poor girls most of the day. Time to get cracking. She had an internet-inspired experiment to conduct.

  She wadded up her napkin and tossed it in the trash under the kitchen sink. The cupboard door slammed shut, and in the darkness, the napkin came to rest next to an empty can of tomato sauce and a few stray tufts of rabbit fur.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  She couldn’t complain about Doug writing tonight. Dinner had given her a slight case of the creeps, and besides, she wanted some time to talk with the girls alone. She didn’t want to clue in Doug on her plan. He’d just dismiss it as her imagination again. That was exactly the reason she hadn’t told Doug anything about the girls’ visitation the night he was in Nashville. She didn’t want to hear some explanation about two women with fertile imaginations.

  Laura pulled open her bag at the desk in the nursery. She took out her planning book and the math test she had to grade. At the bottom of her bag lay the digital recorder, small as a pack of cigarettes. She took it out, pressed Record and a tiny red light blinked on. She set the recorder on the corner of her desk. It had two hours’ worth of recording time. She hoped she wouldn’t need that much.

  She turned on the clock radio and set the volume low. An ad for Moultrie Ford told her she could get a great deal leasing an F-150. If the ghost website was right, this little power source might help the girls manifest. She wondered if electrical appliances attracted them like moths to a light.

  As she graded the papers, Laura kept losing her place, distracted by the subconscious ear she had tuned to her Student Sixth Sense. But half an hour later her math papers were finally graded with no sign of the twins. She shook her head in disappointment and cracked open her English book to the section on adverbs. She began to write out a study exercise.

  She felt a tingle near the top her spine. The hairs on the back of her neck went to attention. She caught her breath as her SSS kicked in. The radio warbled and the digital display faded to black. Laura checked the red LED on the recorder. Still rolling.

  Laura smiled and spun in her chair. She could feel the girls in the room, sense a warming inside her, a lighting of the flame your heart burns around family. She wished so much that she could see them.

  “Constance?” Laura said. “Elizabeth? Are you here?”

  A floorboard creaked near the nursery window.

  “I know you’re here, girls,” Laura said. “Talk to me.”

  A short hushed little noise responded, soft as the rustle of leaves in a breeze.

  A floorboard creaked near Laura’s chair. Laura had a charm around her neck, a cheery silver sunburst she picked up in the city years ago. The charm rose off her chest and floated.

  “Do you like that?” Laura said.

  The charm bobbed once and then sank back against her blouse. Tiny fingertips traced a path down her breastbone and disappeared.

  Laura sensed the girls were still there. She had to reach out to them. “What do you need?” she asked. There was a minute of silence. “What can I do for you?”

  Then they were gone, like their presence had been vacuumed out of the room.

  Adrenaline surged as Laura spun around to the recorder. She rewound the last few minutes and hit Play.

  She heard her own voice say “I know you’re here, girls. Talk to me.” Did she really sound that nasal?

  The reply was ethereal, soft and high pitched. It faded loud and so
ft as if the speakers were bouncing from one corner of the room to another, but it was unmistakable. Two little girls spoke in unison. “Hello.”

  Laura’s skin prickled into goose bumps.

  “Do you like that?” Laura said on the recording. She remembered the charm floating off her chest.

  The girls’ voices returned, tinged with a sense of wonder. “Sooo pretty.” The first word was drawn out like a piece of stretched taffy. The last word seemed to fade off into the distance.

  Once more Laura spoke. “What do you need?” No answer. “What can I do for you?”

  The answer came back as a mournful dirge, a cry etched with the raw emotion only children display without dilution.

  “We’ve lost our mother.”

  Laura’s heart shattered. Waves of anguish washed over her as she imagined the loss of her own mother and relived the loss of her unborn daughters. These poor spirits didn’t know they were dead, only that they were no longer with their mother.

  She hit Stop.

  In her wildest expectations, she never imagined contact like this. So personal, so moving, so undeniably real.

  She couldn’t wait to tell Theresa tomorrow. The idea of telling Doug didn’t even occur to her.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The next morning dawned crisp and clear in downtown Moultrie. The sun turned a slight frost into steam on the roof of Theresa’s little box of a house several blocks from the town square. Theresa had Dustin packed and ready for school. They were headed for the car when she froze in the doorway.

  “Damn it,” Theresa cursed under her breath. Her adrenal glands kicked into gear. This was not how she wanted to start her day.

  Bastard Bobby’s black primer Dodge Ram sat at the end of her driveway. The tailgate was open and sat low on the sagging rear springs. Chunks of brown mud arced along the sides behind the wheel wells.

  Bobby Grissom, ex-husband and current parasite, sat behind the wheel, staring into space. He was a stocky guy with a head like a block of wood. His black hair was shaved to stubble. His arm stuck out the open window, a lit cigarette pinched between his first two fingers. Two spent filters lay on the curb under his hand.

  “What’s the matter, Mom?” Dustin asked from behind her.

  “It’s nothing,” Theresa answered.

  Dustin stuck his head out the door. “Hey, that’s Daddy’s truck.” Dustin scowled. “He’s not supposed to be here.”

  The restraining order was crystal clear. One thousand feet from the house and on weekends only Bobby’s parents picked Dustin up. Even the boy knew the rules.

  “Stay inside,” Theresa said. Dustin gave a series of rapid, serious nods.

  She stepped outside and closed the door behind her. She pulled her phone out of her purse and flipped it open. What the hell was he doing here? A restraining order was a restraining order, damn it. Anxiety churned in her stomach.

  All she had to do was call to the cops then go back inside and wait. She’d give them twenty minutes to sweep that loser off her street, and then get Dustin to school. She punched in the sheriff’s department number to her phone.

  Theresa paused before hitting send. The cops would take too long. She was sick of living like this, physically free of her husband but still mentally enslaved. Had she fought through divorce and custody hearings to live like this? No way. She was sick of his crap. And he was going to hear about it.

  Theresa clutched her phone in her right hand. She strode across the yard. She could smell the stink of burning tobacco wafting from the truck and remembered the dark days when the stench permeated their house. She stopped a few yards from the truck.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.

  Bobby’s head rolled over in her direction. His black eyes were rimmed red from who knew what. He pointed his smoldering cigarette at Theresa. “You mean what am I doing at my own house?”

  “Look, you aren’t supposed to be here and you know it,” Theresa said. She flashed her cell phone at him. “Get out. Or do I need to call the sheriff?”

  “I have a right to see what my child support is paying for,” Bobby said. “See that my boy has proper clothes and such.”

  Theresa saw red. “When the hell was the last time you made a child support payment? Where do you get off acting like a parent? You didn’t even show up at your parents’ house on your last scheduled weekend with Dustin.”

  “I was working,” Bobby said.

  “Working your right arm down at Slim’s Place, maybe,” Theresa said. “But I know for a fact that the mill was down all weekend.”

  Bobby gritted his teeth and his eyes narrowed. “Listen here, I don’t need this shit from you.” He popped open the door to his truck.

  Theresa flipped open her phone. The sheriff’s department number was still programmed in. Her thumb hovered over the Send button. “One foot touches ground and I’ll have every deputy in the county here.”

  “You bitch,” Bobby hissed. He swung the truck door full open.

  “C’mon,” Theresa said. “Give me an excuse. No, give them an excuse. There’s a few of those boys still looking for a reason to get rough with you after your drunk and disorderly a few months back.”

  Bobby bit his lower lip. His hand trembled as he gripped the armrest of the truck door. Fury burned in his eyes. Then he swung around and slammed the door shut. Theresa took one step closer, thumb still poised over the keypad to call in the cavalry.

  “Now get out of here,” she said. “If I so much as see your truck within a mile of here, I swear to God you’ll be back in county jail.”

  Bobby gave his cigarette nub a defiant flick onto the front lawn. His truck barked to life. Bobby’s eyes never left Theresa’s.

  “It ain’t over,” he said. “Only so much shit a man can take.”

  “If only you were a man,” Theresa said.

  Bobby slammed it into drive. It chirped the tires and squealed away with a belch of black smoke.

  Theresa felt her knees grow weak as the combat rush of the moment receded. She’d done it. Toe to toe with Bastard Bobby and she came out on top. She realized she was still holding the cell phone in front of her like some futuristic weapon. She snapped the cover closed and headed for the house.

  The front door was open. Dustin stood in the doorway, face blank, school backpack at his feet. Theresa ran to him.

  “Are you all right, honey?” Theresa said.

  “Yeah, Mom,” Dustin said. He reached out and squeezed her hand. “Way to go.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The stuffed rabbit didn’t look half bad in the late-morning light.

  Of course, Doug might have been enamored of his own work, but he could honestly say that the bunny looked good. The stitches were hidden, the fur groomed, the body contours were correct. Even the little glass eyes looked lifelike. It sat on the trunk of the attic, nose permanently sniffing for fresh clover.

  The positive results weren’t a surprise. As soon as Doug had started working on this little project, he’d felt infused with the skills to do it. Back in New York, Laura had once talked him into a tennis date with a friend from work and her husband. Doug hadn’t played since high school, but as soon as his feet hit the clay, it all came back to him—how to serve, how to backhand. It was like his old friend Tennis Skills had dropped in for a visit. Mounting the rabbit was just like that.

  Except that Doug didn’t know Mr. Rabbit Skills. He had read Methods in the Art of Taxidermy cover to cover a half-dozen times, so he rationalized that was why he was so comfortable. But deep down he knew that was crap. He’d picked up tools before he knew he needed them, stitched a seam pattern he hadn’t even selected yet. It felt like someone else had put on Doug’s hands like a pair of gloves and went to work.

  Good as the little mammal looked, something was missing, some kind of icing on the cake that the other animals in the attic had. Whatever it was, Methods in the Art of Taxidermy didn’t cover it. But Doug hadn’t skipped a step.
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  He moved the rabbit to the floor and opened the chest. Maybe there was another, more advanced text in there with an answer. He removed the top tray and the wrapped set of tools. He pulled everything out, all the books, all the old taxidermy supplies. Nothing new.

  Then he noticed the trunk seemed too shallow. He held it on end and sure enough, there was at least an inch between the floor of the trunk and its external bottom. The sides and the top had no such insulation.

  He dropped the trunk back down. He pressed on the bottom. A loud click sounded and he felt the bottom recess a fraction of an inch. He released it and the bottom popped up on one edge. His pulse quickened and he pried the open edge up.

  Inside, coated in dust, lay a book. The binding was of mahogany-colored leather, riven with deep cracks. The edges of the thick pages were rough and uneven, a telltale sign that this ancient edition hadn’t been mass produced. On the front, in gold leaf was a line of Egyptian hieroglyphs. There were several different bird images and a bunch of geometric shapes.

  Doug opened the book and the binding wailed in creaking protest. Inside, the text was in Arabic, hand copied in quill-delivered ink. Perhaps this book couldn’t be trusted to a publisher. Or couldn’t be published.

  The title page had one line of Arabic text. Underneath, in crooked block print pencil letters it said The Book of the Dead.

  Doug had seen every film in the Mummy franchise. If he remembered right, this was the Egyptian cook book for how to send spirits to the afterlife as well as how to hold them back. There was no copyright, no author, no publisher’s imprint. The book was obviously older than the house, even older than every house in the county. From the looks of it, Doug wouldn’t be surprised if the book was older than anything in the nation.

  He flashed back to the story on the old newspaper he read in the library. There was that Egyptian trainer who worked for the family, the one the welcoming townsfolk had threatened to ride out on a rail, tarred and feathered. This book must have been his.

  He turned to the next page. It was a broadside of Arabic. The page after was the same. This little discovery wasn’t going to be worth much if he had to learn Arabic to read it.