A Haunting Is Brewing: A Haunted Home Renovation and a Witchcraft Mystery Novella (5 page)

“My boss, Lily, can sometimes ‘read’ clothes.”

“Read them how?”

“She senses their vibrations.”

“This is a witch thing?”

“Like I said, I don’t ask too many questions, but I was thinking—”

Maya stopped short as we heard a loud thumping overhead. We both froze and rolled our eyes upward.

Footsteps. In the attic. The formerly unoccupied attic.

“At the risk of repeating myself,” whispered Maya, “that’s . . . creepy.”

I nodded.

“We’re the only ones here, aren’t we?”

I nodded again. We were the only humans here. The only
live
humans.

Maya held my gaze.

“I think it might be time to call in a witch.”

Maya’s boss met up with us an hour later in front of the Spooner Mansion.

Lily Ivory, the proprietor of Aunt Cora’s Closet, struck me as . . . odd. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was about her that seemed so different, and at first I tried to put it down to the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about Samantha from old
Bewitched
reruns. I was pretty sure I had never encountered a natural-born witch before.

Her long dark hair was swept up in a ponytail, and she wore a retro striped sundress topped by a cardigan and periwinkle blue Keds. There was something otherworldly about her, and she had a serious air.

But then she smiled and spoke, and I relaxed.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Mel,” she said with warmth, her deep voice softened by a slight Texas drawl. “Maya told me about this project, and I’m excited to see the house. But first, I hear you’ve got things going bump in the night.”

“And during the day,” said Maya.

“Most importantly,” I said, “a young man was found here a couple of days ago, dead.”

“Yes, Maya told me about that as well. I’m so very sorry. What a shock.”

“Yes.”

Our gaze held. After a long moment, Lily nodded and said, “I know how that is.”

“Lily comes across . . . death . . . more than the average person,” explained Maya.

“You and me both,” I said.

“So you’re saying we’re like the Typhoid Marys of San Francisco?”

“I guess so,” I said with a reluctant smile, which she mirrored.

“May I enter?”

“Of course.” I stood back and let her walk up the porch to open the front door.

Lily paused in the doorway, warm brown eyes taking in her surroundings. I noticed one hand sneaking over to a small leather pouch that hung from a belt of braided silk strands.

In response I reached up to touch the wedding ring I wore on a chain around my neck. This had been handed down to me by my mother, who had inherited it from her own mother. I always thought of my need to touch it before facing ghosts as superstition, not witchcraft. But perhaps there was something to such talismans, as a manner of grounding oneself in the here and now . . .

Maya and I hung back and let Lily enter. She walked into the center of the entry foyer, her hands held palm up at her side, as though inviting sensation. She paused when she was standing right in front of the spot where we found Adam’s body, and turned in a slow, full circle.

Finally, Lily turned back to face me. “Maya says you can communicate with ghosts?”

“Sometimes.”

“I take it you weren’t able to learn what happened from the departed soul?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t really work that way.”

“But you can talk to him? I sense someone. Someone . . . new to the spirit world.”

I realized then that Adam was sitting on the third step, watching us in silence.

“Yes . . . I’ve been able to communicate with him,” I said.

Adam let out a rude snort and rolled his eyes.

Lily took a turn about the foyer, then headed for the stairs. I was about to tell her to wait when she paused, foot held in the air over the first step.

“He’s here?” she asked.

“Yes. Right there.”

“Sorry.” She stepped back with a sheepish shrug.

Adam glared at her. His earlier sadness seemed to have morphed into peevishness. “What’s she
doing
here? Who
is
she? What’s going
on
?”

“I . . .” I felt awkward speaking to Adam in front of Lily and Maya, but I didn’t want to be rude.
Rude to a ghost
. My life was so bizarre. “Adam, you knew Maya from before, remember? This is her boss, Lily Ivory. Lily’s a . . . She has special skills. I was hoping she could help us figure out what happened.”

“I don’t like people walking into this house like they own the place.”

Uh-oh, that didn’t bode well for the Haunted Halloween Ball.

“He’s on the stairs, isn’t he?” Lily asked.

I nodded.

“Okaaaay,” said Maya, backing toward the front door. “I tell you what, guys, I’m going to wait out in the garden. Be sure to let me know if I can help with anything. Anything . . . outside. Run for coffee, whatever you’d like.”

The door banged closed behind her.

“She’s a smart one,” I muttered.

“That she is,” said Lily with a smile.

“So, I thought you couldn’t see ghosts. But you see Adam sitting there?”

“I can’t see ghosts,” said Lily. “But . . . I can feel them. And I think they can feel me as well.”

“
Feel
her? I should say so,” said Adam, bristling. “She gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

I felt like a reluctant translator. “Let her pass, Adam. I want to show her the attic.”

He gave me a suspicious look. “Why?”

“The dolls are up there. It’s possible there’s something odd with their clothing. . . .”

He looked skeptical.

“Just
move
,” I said, losing my patience. “Or she’ll walk right through you.”

He went to stand by the window, looking out. I led the way up the stairs, pointing things out to Lily and feeling like a surreal tour guide.

“That’s the light fixture where Reginald Spooner was found hanging, long ago. And also Adam . . . I mean, apparently he was hung there, though the sash slipped and he fell to the foyer below.”

She looked over the rail to the first floor. “Poor fellow. No wonder he’s confused—that must have been quite a shock.”

I nodded and continued up the steep stairs to the attic. The Spooner family dolls were in the same position I’d left them last. But the pieces of torn newspaper now peppered the floor.

Possibly from errant currents of air, as Maya had mentioned. Or not.

Lily seemed to take it all in. “I recognize that brown dress; it was one of mine.”

“You remember all the clothes that pass through your hands?”

“Not all. But . . . a lot of them. A vintage clothes dealer spends a great deal of time with her clothes: finding them, buying them, repairing and laundering them. This was a special one.”

“What’s so special about this dress?” I said, wondering if it was pertinent.

“It has some lovely vibrations. Very girly and hopeful. Maya told me she was wondering if some of the clothes might have caused . . . oh I don’t know, if they were homicidal or something. But not this one, that’s for sure. I think it might have been a wedding dress.”

“A brown wedding dress?”

“Back in the day, wedding dresses were just nice dresses. White didn’t become traditional until well after the turn of the twentieth century. Few people had the luxury of a dress they used only for a single day, so they would have worn it to other special events, and as their Sunday best, that sort of thing.”

“Wow. I guess I never thought much about the history of clothes. It’s fascinating, isn’t it?”

“I couldn’t help but notice your outfit.”

“It’s not vintage—my friend Stephen is a frustrated clothing designer. I started wearing his stuff to encourage him but sort of got stuck on sequins. Inappropriate in all ways, I know.”

She grinned. “I like it. You’d love Aunt Cora’s Closet—we’ve got more sequins than you can shake a stick at. Crinolines and taffeta, too. We have a blast.”

“So Maya tells me. I work with men, just about all day, every day. I love them, but boy, what a different world. I doubt most of them would know the difference between taffeta and sequins.”

She smiled, then became serious as she approached the mannequins, crouching down. Slowly, cautiously, she seemed to tune out the rest of the world, concentrating solely on them. One at a time, she looked into their eyes. Finally, she reached out and placed her hands on Thaddeus.

She jumped back.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Lily said. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the dolls, but her hand was back on the little bag around her waist. “Huh.”

“What does ‘huh’ mean?”

“Just . . .
huh
. I think . . . Let’s go outside.”

She made the suggestion in the same tone with which one would ask a friend for a cup of tea, but there was an undercurrent of urgency. She didn’t have to ask twice.

We hurried down the steep attic stairs, along the stair landing, down the curved stairway. Both of us kept our eyes on the chandelier from which Adam had been suspended. And before him, Reginald Spooner.

***

We sat on the porch steps, allowing the sun to warm our faces. Late-blooming brugmansia, honeysuckle, and roses sent their heavenly scents through the air.

“Something’s clearly going on in that house,” Lily announced.

“I’m glad you felt it. Makes me feel a little less crazy. But, I have to ask: Why are you doing this?”

She looked startled at my question, then smiled. “My friends say I’m a meddler.”

“Well, since I asked for your help I would hardly accuse you of that.”

“You know, Mel, there aren’t all that many people who can deal with this sort of thing. Plus, a young person died. As they say back in Texas, that’s sad enough to bring a tear to a glass eye. It really snaps my garters. Also, Maya mentioned you were pretty upset.”

“Adam is—
was
—so young. He asked me to get a message to his mom, tell her that he loved her.”

We sat in silence for a long, companionable moment.

“I understand that spirits can become highly possessive of the buildings they inhabit,” Lily said. “They hate renovation, and that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, I’ve come across that a time or two in my . . . line of work.”

“Of course you have, what am I thinking? Like bringing oil to Texas.” She admonished herself with a shake of her head.

We shared a laugh, but I thought I heard a nervous edge to it.

“Are you suggesting spirits had something to do with Adam’s death?” I asked.

“No, not really. I mean, I doubt it . . . I’m just saying that with all the goings-on lately, the spirits might be restless. There’s something about those mannequins. . . .”

I nodded.

“I don’t think they’re ordinary dolls.”

“Maya mentioned maybe they were acting as . . . magical poppets?”

She looked thoughtful. “What do you know about the family that lived here?”

“Thaddeus and Miriam Spooner, their children Charity, Betsy, and Reginald, and Thaddeus’s sister and her husband. Thaddeus inherited money from his father’s copper mines and became a well-known doll maker—he was the one who made the replicas of the family members. His son Reginald was a magician. The way I heard it, Reginald hung himself after the rest of his family died in a flu epidemic, though a couple of the students suggested the possibility that Reginald was involved in their deaths.”

“Really.” It was more a statement than a question. “I only saw six dolls.”

“Reginald’s is missing.”

“Really,”
she repeated. “And the father’s sister and her husband were the two dolls on the end, do you know?”

“We think so. We took a family portrait up there and compared them. Why?”

“They aren’t all active. One male, one female are empty.”

“Empty?”

“I mean, just not . . . occupied.”

“Occupied?” I was feeling a little green around the gills.

She slapped me lightly on the knee. “Let’s take a field trip.”

“Okay.” At the moment I was willing to do anything to get away from this house—and the “occupied” dolls.

“I think we need to do a little research. We need to find out any facts we can about the family history, separate fact from gossip. And then we should talk to a voodoo specialist; I’m not great with poppets.”

“Sorry, I can help piece together more of the family history, but I’ll have to leave the voodoo to you.”

“No problem. I’ve got a voodoo guy.”

A few years ago my life was entirely normal. I was bitter and resentful over my divorce, grief stricken over the sudden death of my mother, and generally out of sorts over having been roped into running my father’s high-end construction company. So I was grumpy and miserable, but ordinary.

Then I started seeing ghosts. The past year or so had been full of psychics, séances, and spirits, and now, apparently, I was learning about witches and voodoo guys. “Live and learn” had taken on a whole new meaning for me.

“It’s right there,” said Lily, pointing to a storefront on Valencia near 19th. We had already gone by the California Historical Society to look up the Spooners’ story, and now we were on our second stop: the shop belonging to Lily’s voodoo friend. The window display included dozens of bottles of different sizes and a long piece of gray driftwood from which were hung brightly decorated metal representations of body parts: arms, legs, hearts. “Park anywhere you can.”

Parking is easier said than done in the Mission District. This formerly down-at-the-heels, working-class immigrant neighborhood had been discovered by young techies with deep pockets. Their adoption of the area had resulted in an upsurge in trendy bars, nightclubs, and restaurants, as well as the concomitant swelling of rents. As a result, every time I was here I spotted fewer Spanish speakers and more young people with interesting facial hair, fashionable eyewear, and skinny jeans. The kind who looked like fashion-conscious geeky students but in reality took the Google Bus every morning to their jobs that brought in easily four times what mine did.

I was on my third circle around the block, about to check out a tiny one-way residential street, when Lily mentioned it was too bad she had left her parking charm in her car.

“Good one,” I said. “I could use a parking charm right now.”

“I only use it in extreme need, though. It’s not ethical to dissipate power by using it on a whim.”

“You’re . . . serious?”

“I’m sorry, I thought Maya told you I’m a, um . . .”

“Witch. Yes, she did mention something about that.”

Lily smiled. “But you’re not sure what that means.”

“Not so much, no.” I finally found an impossibly small space near a row of town houses. Years spent working in the city meant I was no slouch at parallel parking. I cranked the wheel as far as I could and focused on the rearview mirror. “How does that work, exactly?”

“It’s a little hard to describe. But with the right charms and spells, I can focus intently enough to influence reality.”

I liked Lily; really, I did. And Maya, whose feet seemed well planted on the ground, had vouched for her. Still, part of me wasn’t sure she was all that tightly bound to reality at the moment.

“You think I’m nuts, right?”

“I wouldn’t say nuts, exactly.”

“A few pickles short of a barrel?”

I laughed, while hooting in triumph as my Scion slipped into the allotted space.

“
Niiiice
,” said Lily. “You must be a native.”

“I am, thanks.” I switched off the engine and turned to her. “Listen . . . not so long ago I started not only seeing, but talking to, ghosts. So I’m not one to judge. But this is unfamiliar territory for me.”

“I understand. I was born this way, so it’s normal for me. But I know I’m a bit of a freak,” she said as she climbed out of the car.

“I didn’t mean it like that—”

She cut me off with a smile and a wave of her hand. “Frankly, I’m happy to own up to being a freak of nature so long as nobody tries to burn me at the stake.”

“Well,” I said as I shut my door and locked the car, “I can promise you this: You won’t see
me
lighting any bonfires.”

We walked back to Valencia, crossed the busy boulevard, and entered Madame Decotier’s Voodoo Supply shop, where a handsome man stood behind the counter. He had the thick, muscled build of a rugby player, but his strong cheekbones and broad brow made him seem far too regal for that rough sport. His skin was so dark it gleamed in the sunlight streaming in through the shop window.

“Lily,”
he said. His voice was deep and sonorous, and he spoke with a Caribbean lilt. “So nice to see you. What brings you to my domain today?”

“We have a few questions that we hoped you could help us with. Herve, this is a new friend of mine, Mel Turner. Mel’s a ghost gal. And Mel, this is Herve LeMansec. My voodoo guy.”

“Nice to meet you, voodoo guy,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m the ghost gal.”

“The pleasure is all mine. Any friend of Lily’s . . .” he said as we shook hands. I liked him immediately.

“Seems quiet today?” Lily said, looking around the empty shop. “Are you alone?”

He nodded. “It’s a warm, sunny day. People are out enjoying. They’ll be by this evening. That’s why we stay open late.”

“Mind if we talk? We have some questions for you.”

“Of course.”

“By the way, Mel’s a friend, so you can drop the accent,” Lily said to Herve, then turned to me. “He does it to impress people.”

“It helps with the illusion of the exotic,” said Herve with a shrug and a grin.

“Oh,” I said, disappointed to hear a standard California accent.

“What can I help you with?” Herve asked.

“We’re here about poppets,” said Lily.

“Looking to buy?”

“No, we need information. Could you give Mel here the rundown on how they work, exactly?”

He shook his head and
tsked
. “Lily, you really should get over your inordinate fear of poppets. You could use them in your magical system just as well as in mine.”

“I’ll tackle that another day,” she said. “Right now, I’ll let you corner that market.”

“A poppet is a doll made with something that retains energy from the target: hair, fingernails, an item of clothing that has been worn and not washed. Usually this doll is made with wax, but wood or even straw can be used. With the proper incantations and focused intention, the poppet can then share a part of the spirit of the intended victim; therefore, what good or harm befalls the poppet befalls the target.”

I felt a chill run up my spine. I studied Herve’s face, then Lily’s. Lily’s expression didn’t register the dismay that I’m sure was clear on mine. These people were for real.

We were talking voodoo dolls, now? Seriously?

“You still with us, Mel?” Herve asked, humor in his voice.

I cleared my throat. “Sure, you bet. Go on.”

“Powerful practitioners can use any figure approximating a human, but the more the poppet looks like the target, the more effective the spell casting. May I ask why you are interested?”

Lily waited for me to answer.

“We have some life-sized replicas of a family made by a doll maker a century ago,” I told him.

“And you think they’re charged with spirits?”

“I felt something,” said Lily. “Not sure what. That’s why I suggested we come to you.”

“You could stick a pin in one, see if someone reacts.”

“Very funny,” said Lily. “Actually, the reason I’m stumped in this case is that the people these poppets represented have long since passed. Here’s my question: Could spirits be trapped in these poppets after the death of the targets?”

Herve thought for a moment. “I would assume so.”

“You’re not as much help as I’d hoped,” said Lily.

Herve laughed, a resonant sound that filled the shop. “If you would like to bring the dolls to me, I could do some tests, see what we’re dealing with. But you don’t need me, Lily; you’re plenty strong enough to determine this. If you’re feeling something from them, they’re holding energy. This would mean, of course, that the souls of the departed are fractured, which isn’t good. Anything else unusual about the family?”

“Depending on who you believe, they were either wiped out in a flu epidemic or their deaths were hastened by one surviving son, who later killed himself.”

“Was he a practitioner?”

“No, he was a stage magician,” I said.

Herve’s eyebrows rose. “There you go. He’s your prime suspect.”

“He made rabbits disappear, so he’s a suspect in charging poppets?”

“Back in the early days of magic, there was a great deal of overlap between stage magicians and the kind of magic Lily here practices. Have you heard of Harry Houdini’s interest in the beyond? Séances at the Winchester Mystery House, that sort of thing?”

“I guess I never really thought about it.”

“In the last century there was a great deal of interest in spiritualism, in trying to bend the laws of the natural world and peek beyond the veil. Today stage magic is mostly about visual tricks, but back then it was a different story.”

“What do you think Reginald did with the poppets?” Lily asked.

“Since they already had the appearance of the family, part of the work was done for him. It is possible they are charged with some of the energy of the family members.”

“You mean their spirits are somehow trapped in the dolls?” I asked.

“It’s not that straightforward—it’s not as though the dolls are harboring the actual souls, or
animas
. But Reginald might have succeeded in charging them—so while they aren’t the family members per se, they do retain a part of them.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, unconvinced.

“I think the pertinent point here,” said Lily in a gentle voice, “is that if the dolls are even partially charged with the spirits of the Spooner family, their spirits would be unable to rest.”

“Tell me more about the dolls,” Herve said. “Might they be wearing the clothes of the actual family members? Or perhaps have been made with some part of them?”

“Part of them?”

“Back in the day, folks were fond of gifting one another with locks of their hair, for example,” said Herve. “This was considered an act of devotion but also of trust, for hair is a part of a person.”

I remembered the family photo in which even the men had long hair.
“Thaddeus insisted they grow their hair long so he could use it for the dolls.”

“Just imagine how distraught Reginald must have been, fearing his entire family was about to be wiped out by an epidemic,” Lily said. “According to the newspaper articles we read, his aunt Hazel said he sent the servants away and tended to them himself. . . . It’s possible he was fooling around with something, perhaps something he didn’t understand, and went too far.”

“And then he couldn’t work it back, and finally wound up living in that house with his strange doll family substituting for the real one, and eventually . . .” Herve trailed off with a shrug.

“. . . killed himself,” I finished the thought.

***

“So,” I said to Lily after we bid farewell to Herve. I was rattled by what he had told us and knew it would take a while to wrap my mind around it. “What’s next?”

Lily nodded thoughtfully. “The next step is very important.”

“And that is . . . ?” I asked, afraid of the answer. We were, after all, standing right outside a voodoo supply store. “Are we talking live chickens, or . . . ?”

“More like
roast
chicken. I’m starving. Lunch?”

I laughed. “Lily Ivory, you are a woman after my own heart.”

“Tacos? That way we don’t have to park again; there are a million places around here.”

“True, but I was thinking. . . . The students had dinner at El Toro on Haight on the night before Adam died. He mentioned he’d had too many margaritas. I’ve never eaten there, so I’m not sure it holds a candle to anything here in the Mission, but it’s close to Spooner Mansion.”

“
Vamanos
. Let’s go.”

El Toro’s was a small, rustic place with a dining room jammed with tables, and one thing I presumed crucial to its success: a well-stocked bar.

We snagged a table near the front window and ordered tacos. After a few pointed questions, we tracked down Janella, a young waitress who had worked that night. Her dark hair, deep red lipstick, and exaggerated eyeliner gave her a retro vibe.

“Did you notice anything unusual about the group?” I asked her when she joined us at the table.

She shook her head. “The police came by, and I told them everything I could think of. It was a bunch of college kids and one older guy.”

“How big was the group?”

“It was a six-top.”

“The five students, and probably Adam’s uncle Preston,” I said. “Was the older guy blond, kind of good-looking?”

She nodded. “Preston Wyzek was the name on the credit card. Left a big tip.”

“And they drank a lot?”

“They ordered two pitchers of margaritas, but not everyone in the party was drinking. The older guy, the one with the credit card, ordered a Diet Coke, and so did one of the girls. The real pretty girl drank margaritas with the other guys.”

“So two pitchers between four drinkers?”

“The older guy said he was driving, so I was like, whatever.”

“Did you notice anything unusual, overhear something, maybe . . . ?”

“We were kind of slammed that night, so I didn’t pay that much attention to them. They seemed pretty mellow. Except . . . wait, that’s right.”

“What?” Lily asked.

“One of the guys kept making my pen disappear.”

“Excuse me?”

“He was fooling around with the napkin, making stuff disappear or whatever. Then it would come out behind someone’s ear. My granddad used to do that with silver dollars; I hate that sort of crap, especially when it’s busy.”

“Which guy was this?”

“Not the old guy, one of the others.” She shrugged and glanced toward the kitchen. “Your order’s up, and I gotta get back to work before I get in trouble.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for talking to us.”

Lily and I were quiet, each lost to our thoughts as we dug into our food. After polishing off her first taco, Lily said, “This is good, but not like the truck at Yosemite and Jennings.”

“I like the one at the Goodwill parking lot in Oakland. Great
carnitas
.”

“I used to love
carnitas
, but I don’t eat them anymore because of my pet pig. So, what do you think of this Preston fellow?” Lily asked.

“He’s always struck me as kind of . . . off. But maybe it’s just that I find it a little strange that he’s hanging around young college students. He’s at least thirty. Doesn’t seem to have a job . . .”