She opened her eyes and exhaled deeply. “Did that work, you think?” I asked sheepishly. “I mean, do you think you got rid of whatever that…was?”
She nodded. “The closin’ prayer always shuts out whatever crossed over. The candle also protected us.”
“Even though it went out?” I asked, sounding unconvinced. I looked around the room but didn’t notice anything unusual, although I wasn’t really sure what I was expecting to see: Blood dripping down the walls, thousands of flies in the corners of the windows, an upside-down cross on the wall? Linda Blair sitting in the middle of a bed with her head spinning all the way around?
She just nodded but somehow I wasn’t sure if she was wholly convinced herself. She stood up and immediately started putting the board and the planchette away, as if she wanted nothing more than to leave the house. I couldn’t say I blamed her. I grabbed the bottle of wine and the two glasses and was right on her tail when she started for the door. Neither of us said anything as we hurried down the staircase and out the front door.
“Aren’t you goin’ to lock it?” she reminded me when I forgot. I just nodded and pulled the key from my pocket, my hand shaking as I fitted it in the lock and turned it. Then we both hightailed it for the Scout and only once we’d pulled away from my house and were well on our way to the French Quarter did Trina interrupt the silence.
“How did you know what the board was sayin’ before it finished?” she asked, her voice sounding strained.
I exhaled and remembered the line I’d read in one of my newspaper articles. “Mrs. Maggio is going to sit up tonight just like Mrs. Toney,” I repeated from memory, the words feeling like molasses dripping out of my mouth.
“What does that mean?”
I shrugged because I didn’t really understand what it meant. “It was scribbled in chalk on the sidewalk back in 1919,” I started. “The police thought it was a message left by the Axeman.”
“The who?” Trina began, leaning forward. I could see the fear in her eyes but I was sure there was more in mine. I couldn’t even begin to understand what had just happened to me, to us.
I took a deep breath and wondered if my heartbeat would ever regulate itself. “Joseph Maggio, Charles Cortimiglia, Louis Besumer, Anna Lowe…they were all victims of the Axeman.”
“Who was the Axeman?” Trina repeated, sounding exasperated and scared.
So I told her. I told her everything I’d discovered about the Axeman from my articles as well as the research I’d done on the Internet. The only thing I didn’t mention was my dream about Drake Montague because I still wasn’t convinced it was legitimate. A simple dream was a far cry from what had just occurred with the Ouija board. Furthermore, the Ouija board hadn’t mentioned Drake the entire time so maybe he was simply a figment of my imagination.
I didn’t know why but I sincerely hoped that was not the case.
8
I couldn’t sleep all night. My mind wouldn’t stop thinking about everything that happened with the Ouija board. Last night, in the span of ten or so minutes, everything I thought I knew and believed in had simply crumbled away in front of me, until I had no certainty anymore, just questions. And the more I racked my brain, trying to understand what had happened, the more I couldn’t comprehend how the board knew what it did. I was left with only one conclusion—that there was much more to this world than I’d previously imagined.
Once I decided I was okay with the idea that spirits, haunts, shades, ghosts, specters, whatever you wanted to call them, were real, my next line of thinking was, who in the hell contacted Trina and me? Did we somehow communicate with the spirits of all the Axeman’s victims? Or was it more sinister than that? Was it possible that we actually made contact with the Axeman himself? I shuddered at the thought and forced it out of my mind, choosing to focus on the insulation I was supposed to be cramming between the two-by-fours of my bathroom wall.
“Someone’s mind isn’t on the job today,” Ryan scolded me as he paused from stapling the insulation to the framework and arched a brow in my direction, giving me a knowing look.
Glancing over at him, I frowned and removed my breathing mask, deciding to come clean and admit he was right, my mind wasn’t on the job. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he responded as he turned his enormous shoulders in my direction. I shook my head, in awe that mortal men could possibly be so large.
“If they ever make a movie about Thor or Hercules, you should try out for the part,” I suggested, sounding less than thrilled about it.
“I think they already did,” Ryan chuckled. “On both accounts. But, thanks…I think?”
“Welcome,” I grumbled with a yawn, remembering at the last minute to cover my mouth. I was loath to get another lecture from Ryan about my manners or lack thereof.
“Peyton, you look beyond tired. Did you manage to get any sleep last night?”
“Um, no,” I answered matter-of-factly, stifling another yawn.
He nodded as if he understood my pain. “Still thinkin’ about what happened?”
I cleared my throat and nodded, zoning out on the dull metal sheen of the pipes, which stuck out of the bathroom wall across from me.
After I’d dropped Trina off at her apartment in the French Quarter and returned to my room at the Omni hotel, Ryan had called me. Apparently, Trina had told him all about our Ouija board experience, and to say he was concerned was an understatement. He read me the riot act about using Ouija boards in general, apparently the same lecture he’d given Trina. Once his sermon was over, he returned to the caring, consoling Ryan I liked so much.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” I admitted. I took a deep breath as I stared at my open palms and flexed my fingers until my hands looked like starfish.
He shrugged and placed his massive hand on my shoulder, squeezing it tightly as if to let me know he was there for me. His touch felt so good, I wanted to close my eyes and melt. It felt like it had been so long since a man had held me, since I’d felt the warmth and safety of a man’s chest. And as to my ex, Jonathon? He didn’t count, seeing as how we very rarely, if ever, cuddled. Yep, as far as Jonathon was concerned, I considered him the Antichrist.
“Gotta be careful about messin’ with things you don’t understand, Peyton,” Ryan said as he pulled his hand away.
“I know, I know,” I replied grumpily before facing him with a snide expression. “I already got an earful on that exact subject last night!”
Ryan chuckled and, with a big smile, resumed his job of filling the walls with the pink fibrous insulation. Even though I hadn’t done much in the way of work so far this morning, I decided to take a breather. I sat down in the corner of the bathroom, pulling my knees into my chest as I huffed out my exhaustion. I watched Ryan pause in his routine to study me.
“You wanna talk about it?” he asked.
I bit my lip and shook my head, but the words were already on their way out. “I just don’t understand who we could have contacted with that board. I mean, how could some inanimate piece of wood know the names and other details of all those murdered victims, especially when it happened such a long time ago?”
Ryan shrugged. “Who’s to say? That sort of stuff remains beyond our ability to understand, which is why any talk about the afterlife is better left unsaid.” He stopped stuffing the walls and faced me, his expression serious. “Just promise me you won’t get yourself into any more trouble?”