Sacrifice Page 15

  Bob stared out the open window at the farmhouse. “No one else needs to know she comes here.”

  There were reasons none of the Half Dozen ever went into Bob’s house, reasons that the few times he’d seen Bob’s mother she had on the same frayed vintage 1960 housecoat, reasons the blinds were always drawn. Bob didn’t talk about them, so no one asked. Maybe they respected that privacy. Maybe they didn’t want to know, didn’t want to open a door to problems they could not fix. Ken wasn’t sure about the reason, but he supported the result.

  “Never heard a word of it,” Ken said.

  Bob nodded and tossed the butt of his cigarette out the window.

  The previous owners would never have recognized the inside of their former farmhouse. The parlor and foyer were now one large room. An antique, stained glass chandelier hung from the ceiling. Strands of thick beads had replaced the doors to the rest of the house. Silk fabric with muted psychedelic designs hung on all the walls like the interior of a carnival tent. Candles burned in each corner, and the room smelled like melted wax and head shop incense.

  Madame Calabria entered through a curtain of clacking beads. She was middle aged and stout, with long black hair that fell in loose curls onto her shoulders. A bright red bandana covered her head and trailed down her back. Large, gold hoop earrings dangled at her ears, and her copious eye makeup looked like something from a Whitman High theater production. Ken had to stifle a groan. This faker was straight from a B-movie.

  As she made her entrance, she held her head high. Her eyes had a faraway look that was supposed to pass for mystic. When she saw the two boys in the doorway, the well-practiced look vanished.

  “What can I do for you?” she said. She sounded like a thick Italian imitation of the Great and Powerful Oz.

  “My ma comes to see you,” Bob started. “Wilma Armstrong.”

  Madame Calabria thought a moment and then nodded. “She comes by for readings. One of you needs your horoscope read?”

  Ken couldn’t contain a dismissive sigh.

  “If you aren’t believers then go,” she said. She tried to shoo them out the door like chickens. “I’ve had more than enough smart-ass kids in here.”

  “Hey,” Bob said. “I don’t know what I believe. But I know my ma believes. We have something we can’t explain, and we’ll pay the price of a reading to see if you can.”

  She gave the boys a once-over, then jerked her head toward a round table in the center of the parlor. “$6.36. Take a seat.” The boys sat. Bob laid $7.00 on the table. Madame Calabria lit a wide candle at the center of the table.

  “I don’t know where to start,” Bob said.

  “I do,” Madame Calabria said. “Give me your hands.”

  Bob and Ken reached out across the table. She took their hands in hers and closed her eyes.

  Suddenly she gripped their hands so hard she made Ken wince. Her eyes snapped open. She dropped their hands like she had been holding snakes. Her chair slid back from the table.

  “What the hell have you two been into?” she said. Most of her accent disappeared, all theatricality vanished. Her eyes were wide, her pupils narrowed.

  “We’ve seen something we can’t explain,” Ken said. “Something dangerous.”

  “No shit,” she said. She pulled off her bandana. The long black hair came with it and revealed a short, thick head of graying hair. “You two have the profumo dei morti, the “scent of the dead,” and it is on you thick. What have you been into?”

  Bob and Ken took turns explaining what had been going on starting with the death of Josie Mulfetta and ending with their encounters with the Woodsman. Madame Calabria nodded throughout with an increasingly grave look on her face. When the boys were done, the three sat in silence for a moment.

  “My mother brought me over from Sicily when I was four,” Madame Calabria said. “Over there, my mother was the village spiritualist, something respected and understood. She taught me everything she knew, not that I thought I’d ever need it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ken said.

  “Look,” she said. “There are two kinds of spirits that don’t pass from this world to the next. Some just get lost along the way. These are confused souls. They are half in this world, half in the next. We see them as repeating phantasms, the ghosts people see in old houses that walk across a room at midnight every Thursday, or rearrange the furniture at night. They do no harm. They can’t interact with the living because to them, we don’t exist.

  “The second kind did not pass over because they did not want to. For whatever reason, they could not let go of this world. There is unfinished business they need to complete. It takes a lot of energy to resist the impulse to pass over, and negative energy is the strongest. Nine out of ten of these spirits are evil. They stay for revenge.

  “You two have been near one of these evil spirits. It’s like walking past a skunk. The smell just stays with you for days. The profumo dei morti is that psychic smell, and you two reek.”

  While this was in no way good news, Ken felt relief. Someone outside the Half Dozen had confirmed what they all thought was true.

  “This thing surfaces until it kills enough to satisfy its bloodlust,” Ken said. “We need to stop it before that happens. How do we kill it?”

  “The soul of the spirit, the residual life force, is bound to the remains of the mortal body, even if time has reduced it to bones. The further a spirit strays from it, the weaker its power. That’s why graveyards are such frequent haunts. There is only one way to force the spirit to pass over. There is a ritual.”

  She pushed her chair away from the table a bit and shook her head.

  “It’s dangerous,” she said. “I’ve seen it done once when I was a kid. The participants got scared, their will faltered, the spirit lashed out…”

  “We aren’t scared,” Bob said.

  “You should be,” Madame Calabria said. She traced a circle on the tabletop with her finger.

  “Place the bones at the center of a ring of fire. Everyone there must sit around the edge. Around the ring you burn five talismans: a mammal, a bird, a fish, a shell and iron. Then douse the bones with holy water and lye. Doing it on a granite surface tends to focus the spiritual energy of the entity. Chant the Prayer of Saint Severinus of Tours while you melt the bones. They’ll melt pretty fast. The melting releases the spirit, and the burning symbols of the world will direct the spirit to cross over. Be sure that every bit of the bones is gone. Leave a piece, and it’s a doorway for the spirit to return.”

  “You can help us with this?” Bob said.

  Madame Calabria practically leapt away from the table. “Hell, no! I’m not getting involved. And neither should you. This thing will kill you.”

  “But more kids will die,” Ken said.

  “And you say they’ve been dying for decades,” Madame Calabria said. “You can’t beat this.”

  “But with your skill…” Bob said.

  “My skills won’t matter,” Madame Calabria said. “My mother’s skills were ten times mine. When sand spirits swept through our village, could she stop them? Could she even protect my father when he was caught in the fields? No. He died and we left for America two steps ahead of a lynch mob. And it wasn’t because she wasn’t good. It was because no one is strong enough to counteract the supernatural.”

  She waved the boys to the front door. “That’s it. That’s all I’m doing for you. I’ve told you what to do. When you do something else and get killed, it’s not my fault.”

  “And what are you going to do?” Bob said.

  “The same thing I’ve been doing,” she said. “Simple readings and astrology charts. Safe little placebos for the general public.”

  Ken was the first one out the door. Before he left, Bob turned back to Madame Calabria.

  “My mother won’t be spending another dime here,” he said.

  “Your mother hasn’t spent any money here for years,” she said. She pulled the bandana/wig back on and adju
sted it. “She needs a favorable horoscope more than I need her seven bucks. She also needs you. Don’t get yourself killed for nothing.”

  Bob slammed the door behind him as he left.

  “Wait!” Madame Calabria shouted from the front door. She went back into the house and then reappeared. She approached Bob and handed him a folded sheet of old, yellowed paper. One edge was ragged like it had been torn from a book. “If you’re going to do it, you’ll need this.”

  Bob opened the paper. Latin in an old, uneven font filled the page. At the top it read ORA EX SEVERINUS SANCTUS.

  “Read it properly, just as written,” she said. “And may God be with you.”

  Back in the car, he and Ken sat silent for a minute. Then Bob fired up the engine. Bob Seger starting singing about those night moves again.

  “So,” Ken said. “The plan?”

  “The plan?” Bob said. He shoved the ancient prayer against Ken’s chest. “We’re gonna kill a fucking ghost. That’s the plan.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Ken and Bob rejoined the rest of the Half Dozen at the bleachers behind Whitman High. Ken gave them the rundown of the procedure Madame Calabria had outlined.

  Everyone volunteered to get the talismans needed for the ritual. Dave had the feather, Marc the fur, Ken the shells, Jeff the iron, Bob the lye and fish and Catholic Paul the holy water.

  “Silas’ bones are no doubt still buried beneath the mill,” Ken said. “The story said the villagers buried his body, and implied he was buried where the crime took place. It would have been convenient to stuff him in the pre-dug pit in the mill basement. The map Marc made did put the mill at the epicenter of the murders. The granite bed stone would be a perfect location for the ceremony.”

  “We’ll just tell the Village Council we need to use the mill,” Dave said, voice dripping with the usual sarcasm. “I’m sure they won’t mind.”

  “They might not,” Marc said. He told them his theory about the silver amulets and his conversation with Veronica. “They might want us to kill this thing.”

  “Except they are protected,” Jeff said. “They feed the peasant children to the wolf.” He gave Marc an apologetic look. “Oh, sorry man, no offense.”

  Marc flipped Jeff the finger.

  “And do you think they will admit to what’s been going on here for two hundred years?” Ken said. “No way in hell. We’re on our own.”

  “Then we need to go in at night,” Jeff said.

  “Worked out well at the museum,” Dave said.

  The Half Dozen went silent.

  “We’ll go on a busy night,” Ken said. “Tomorrow night. It’s Friday night and prom night. Every cop in the county will be at DUI checkpoints around the school gym and on the roads heading to the South Shore.”

  “Plus we can’t live at each other’s houses forever,” Bob said. “We’ll say we’re going to an anti-prom party.”

  Jeff looked distressed. “Some of us are going to the prom.” He looked to Paul for support. Paul shrugged.

  “Deirdre is just a junior,” he said. “She’s still got her own prom next year.”

  “Katy doesn’t,” Jeff said.

  The other five stared at him.

  “The ritual needs all of us,” Ken said.

  Jeff’s face sagged. “I’ll tell her.”

  With a plan in place, they split into protective teams, Paul and Bob, Jeff and Ken, and Marc to do his familial duty with Albert. Dave headed for home, but had one stop to make along the way.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Katy stood at the cash register by the restaurant entrance. She had just finished rolling the last set of silverware for the night when the front door of the Venetian opened. A customer at this natural break between lunch and dinner was a surprise. Having it be one of the Half Dozen was an even bigger surprise.

  “Dave?” she said.

  “Hey, Katy.” He looked nervous as a cat walking into a kennel. “Got a minute?”

  She surveyed the empty restaurant. “I can spare one.”

  Dave gave his hair an anxious brush back from his forehead. “There’s something you ought to know. The Half Dozen are doing something tomorrow night. An after finals thing. Jeff’s going to cancel out of the prom.”

  Katy’s stomach dropped. “Not funny, Dave. Not at all.”

  “No joke. I think it’s scummy. You deserve better. Way better.”

  Katy felt the world swim a bit. She planted both hand on the sides of the register to keep upright.

  “I don’t know when he’s going to tell you,” Dave said. “But I’d guess he’s going to put it off until tomorrow. I just thought you deserved to know before that.”

  Katy could feel her world crash around her. All she’d done to prepare for the prom had been a waste of time. How could Jeff do this to her?

  Dave reached out and rested his hands on Katy’s. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine anyone doing this to someone like you.”

  He stood there for an awkward moment. Then he left the Venetian.

  Katy’s bewilderment mushroomed into rage. She ticked off a mental list of all her prom preparations. The dress, the flower choices, the extra hours of tips to pay for it all. All because Jeff needed to put his friends before her.

  She slammed her hand on the side of the register. How could she have been so stupid? How many times had she taken a back seat to those five pinheads? Too often she had been the only girl when the Half Dozen decided to go bowling or hang out on the green. With the limited free time she had from the Venetian, wouldn’t Jeff want to spend it with her alone?

  She thought about college and she really boiled over. She was heading to SUNY Albany to be with him. Her grades were better than his, and she could have gone to a better private college. Her father was willing to make the investment and was angry when she declined the offer. Now it was the end of June, and she’d declined the other acceptance offers colleges had sent. She was stuck in Albany, NY with the jackass. God, she hoped the campus was big enough to lose him.

  Katy revved up to full-blown fury. She was mad at Jeff but she was even madder at herself. How could she put so many eggs in his crummy basket? How could she ignore the signs that she couldn’t rely on him? How could she think there was a future with a guy who still played with walkie-talkies? And out of the whole bunch, only Dave had the decency to warn her about what was coming. The rest probably didn’t even care.

  She picked up the house phone, sacrosanct as only for business calls. She was too livid to worry about her father’s wrath. She dialed. The phone dial seemed to take forever to return after each pull. The line rang through and a young female voice answered.

  “Olivia?” Katy said. “You want to hear some real crap Jeff’s about to pull?”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Bob and Paul arrived at Paul’s house. His bedroom looked about how Bob had imagined it. Jock trophies on the dresser. Farrah Fawcett poster on the wall. Sports equipment piled in corners. A picture of his father in an NYPD uniform hung over the dresser beside a small crucifix. A twin bed sat against the far wall, and a tattered lounge chair filled out the room’s list of furnishings.

  Bob dropped into the lounge chair. Paul flopped onto the bed and kicked off his sneakers.

  “So, honey,” Paul said in a falsetto. “How was your day at work?”

  “Bite me sideways. Whose idea was this anyhow?”

  “We gotta do it,” Paul said. “You know how real the son of a bitch can look.”

  Bob did. He could not tell the real Mr. P from the fake, even now. Of course, how did he know this was the real Paul, come to think of it?

  “What was the name of our third-grade teacher?” Bob asked.

  “Mr. Crespo,” Paul said. “Why?’

  “Just making sure you’re you,” Bob said. “The Woodsman might have been watching us and learned a few things, but he wouldn’t know that.”

  Paul’s face turned concerned. “OK, then how do I know you’re you showing up
at my front door?”

  Bob scooped a catcher’s mitt up from the floor beside the chair and nailed Paul in the head. “Because I drove here in the fucking Duster, idiot. You think the Woodsman’s going to steal my car just to put one over on you?”

  “No, I guess not,” Paul said. “Even the dead wouldn’t be caught in that heap.” He gave the catcher’s mitt a playful toss back at Bob.

  Bob had to smile. It was the first time all day.

  “We can really pull off this ritual?” Paul said.

  “Piece of cake,” Bob said. “We break into the mill, shovel Silas out of the cellar and torch him. In the morning no one will even know we’ve been there.”

  Paul gave a dubious look and opted to stare at the ceiling.

  Bob looked around the room.

  “No TV in here?”

  “My brother and sister are downstairs watching a Disney movie on the Betamax if you’re interested, but we’re supposed to be studying.”

  Bob sagged back into the chair. Sitting still wasn’t his strong suit, and a metabolism primed on caffeine and nicotine didn’t help matters at all. This was going to be a long night.

  “We could actually study,” Paul offered.

  “Three words,” Bob said. He extended a finger as he recited each one. “Bite…me…side—“

  “Seriously, man,” Paul said. “It ain’t gonna hurt us.”

  Bob took a long look at Paul. The guy who was willing to swim though jellyfish, the guy who had faced defensemen on the gridiron half again his size, the guy who once passed two cars up the middle of Route 347, was scared. But it wasn’t just the Woodsman, though that was cause enough. He was scared of finals. Bob didn’t give a shit about them. While Paul affected his usual easygoing pose towards their last exams, Paul was no Bob.

  Bob didn’t worry because he’d pass out of school with something above an F and grab the last diploma he would ever see. But Paul needed at least a middle-of-the-pack GPA. He had ideas about a stint in the Air Force Search and Rescue or applying to the NY Police Academy. Both of those options needed halfway decent grades. A poor showing this week meant neither would happen.