Page 11 of Rattling Bone (OutFoxing the Paranormal #2)
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I guess Mrs. Simpson didn’t know about the letters,” Oscar said the next day, as he steered the van around a winding curve. They weren’t quite on the mountainside, but were certainly at its foot and climbing fast.
Nigel sat in the passenger seat, gloved hands loose in his lap. “I don’t like that Julie died away from the distillery.”
“She was close, though,” Tina offered from the back. “On the property, or at least, I imagine the distillery owned some of the acreage around it.”
Oscar didn’t answer. As far as he was concerned, Nigel’s conversation with Julie’s widower confirmed his every fear. Dad was in danger if they couldn’t put a stop to this.
Which was, hopefully, where Mamaw’s old friend Sharon would come in.
As predicted by Mrs. Simpson, Sharon Griffith’s name and address was in the phone book Mom and Dad kept by their landline. A quick call confirmed she still lived there and was more than happy to talk to them.
The house they pulled up to was made of brick, probably from the 1950s. It sat just a few yards from a nearly identical house on one side, and a much older farmhouse on the other. Likely all three houses belonged to the Griffith family, built back in a time when young folk stayed in Marrow instead of leaving for better prospects.
Just beside the front walk stood a weathered pole with a number of dowels set into it at upward angles. Cobalt blue bottles had been placed on each dowel.
“A bottle tree,” Nigel said, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose and peering at it. “Meant to trap ghosts and other spirits. They’re usually seen in the low country, though of course people move around and bring their traditions with them.”
“Do they work?” Chris asked skeptically. “I mean, do ghosts actually get stuck in the bottles?”
“I have no idea,” Nigel said. “I wouldn’t think so, based on what we know about spirits and energy, but they’ve never been subjected to any scientific tests that I’m aware of.”
“We’ll give them a try when we have more time,” Oscar said, opening the door to the van. “For now, let’s concentrate on why we’re here.”
The door opened as they approached the porch, followed by the screen door. An old woman with pure white hair and the stooped posture of someone who worked hard all her life, stepped out to greet them.
“Little Oscar Fox!” she exclaimed, beaming. “Come in; come in. I’ve been expecting you for years.”
* * *
“Ms. Griffith, what did you mean, when you said you’ve been expecting me?” Oscar asked a short time later.
They sat in the small, somewhat dingy, living room. Since the old folks were never without ice tea, no matter the season, she’d poured them each a tall glass. Oscar took a sip, and the strong, sweet flavor took him straight back to his childhood.
“Don’t be so formal, Miss Sharon is fine,” she chided him. She shuffled slowly around to an armchair set near the wood-burning stove and lowered herself into it carefully. “As for why I expected you—well, you come from a line of gifted people, even if your daddy wants to pretend otherwise. I thought you might end up with at least a touch of it. Am I wrong?”
“No ma’am, you aren’t.” Oscar’s pulse quickened slightly— a line of gifted people . A heritage he’d never known about. He had a sudden vision of a chain of shadowy figures, stretching back unbroken into some distant past. “You knew my mamaw.”
“Barb was my best friend, God rest her soul.” Miss Sharon glanced up at the cross hanging on the wall. “I knew her mamaw as well—Miss Virginia was a real mountain granny, the old kind.”
“How so?” Nigel asked.
“She’d help bring babies into this world nice and safe, help those folks on their way out go as easy as possible, and everything in between. And if those who’d passed on got stubborn about hanging around, she had some tricks to make them move along.” Miss Sharon’s eyes grew unfocused. “She knew how to turn the evil eye, summon your true love with a silver knife in the moonlight, set a broken leg, and cure a cough.” Her gaze sharpened and she looked at Oscar. “Back when she was a young woman, it wasn’t so easy to go to the doctor or the hospital, even if folks could afford it, which most couldn’t.”
A hollow ache of regret opened up in Oscar’s chest, for all the knowledge lost. “She sounds amazing.”
“I was a bit scared of her, truth be told.” Miss Sharon chuckled. “Not for any real reason, you know, just because I was young and she was a fierce old woman. And oh how some people talked about her!” She shook her head, laughing. “This won’t be much of a scandal to you young folks, but no one ever knew who fathered Miss Virginia’s daughter. She took that secret to the grave—though I suppose these days, you could do a test and go to one of those genealogy sites and figure it out.”
“That would be my great-grandmother? The daughter, I mean?”
“Millie was her name—I think it was short for Millicent, though I never heard anyone call her anything other than Millie. Yes. She learned a lot at Miss Virginia’s knee, but she was more interested in boys. Not that I blame her, lord knows I was the same when I was young.” She smiled wistfully. “According to Barb, Millie and Miss Virginia had a falling out over Millie’s choice of husband.”
Oscar swallowed. “Because she was marrying a Corbett, and the family is cursed.”
Miss Sharon’s eyes sharpened. “So that’s what brings you here. I thought it might be.”
Oscar took a deep breath, but there was no way to soften his words—and he didn’t think she’d appreciate the attempt anyway. “We found the film you took that day at the distillery.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, the lids thin and crinkly with age. Then she looked over to the cross again, as if asking for strength. “The worst day of my life. Sometimes I wonder…if I’d tried to talk her out of it…”
“Something would have happened anyway.” Nigel leaned forward. “There’s a twenty-five year cycle, which hasn’t been broken since the distillery was built. Someone in the family dies at the end of each one. Barbara was the only exception, though of course she was…injured.”
Miss Sharon looked startled, then glanced worriedly at Oscar. “It’s this year,” he replied to the unspoken question in her eyes. “Which ends tomorrow, so we’re in a bit of a hurry here. If there’s anything you can tell us, anything at all, it could help.”
“First, tell me: do you have the gift?”
It felt strangely like bragging about something he hadn’t earned. “Yes.” Oscar quickly gestured at the others. “We, uh, we go into old buildings and look for ghosts. Until recently I thought I might be crazy, seeing things that weren’t there…”
He trailed off at her scowl. “That’ll be your daddy’s doing,” she said with surprising venom. “He turned his back on his family, on Miss Virginia and Barb.”
“That’s not fair,” Oscar protested. “He was just a kid at the time. He didn’t know about his mother’s gift, about any of it. Just that she was taken away from him.”
She didn’t seem mollified, but said, “It was wrong of me to talk bad about your daddy to your face. My mama, God love her, would tan my hide if she was still with us.”
“It’s okay, I just need to know what happened.” He leaned forward. “I have some training—I’m still pretty new to things, but unfortunately we don’t have time for me to get any more experienced.”
“Needs must when the devil drives,” she agreed. “As for what happened, I’m not sure what I can tell you that wasn’t on the film. Barb knew there was a curse on her daddy’s family, though she didn’t know what or why. I think she hoped it wasn’t a real curse, you know—just trapped ghosts.” She sighed and took a swallow of her ice tea. “She—we—underestimated Miss Virginia there. That woman knew curses.”
Nigel looked uncomfortable; curses and the evil eye were far afield from an academic study of survival after death. Oscar sympathized, but at this point he was ready to try anything. “How do you remove a curse?”
“The first step is knowing who cast it. Then you have to either get them to lift it, or do something to turn it back on them.”
“That won’t be easy, since whoever cast it will be long dead,” Nigel said, a bit testily.
Miss Sharon held up a finger. “Exactly.” She swiveled in her recliner and pointed the finger at Oscar. “So I hope your gift is strong, because you’re looking for a ghost.”