Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (10 page)

“Oh, not that again.”

“Yes, again. You can’t be an architect with only two and half years of undergraduate work. They just won’t let you.”

“And I won’t let my mother slide into the abyss with those who think it’s perfectly okay to conjure up talking ghosts. Not if I can stop it.”

“And if you can’t?”

Tally was quiet. Then, “Look, Denise. Just to get inside that place, I’ve taken their classes, sat in on their séances, and heard the shrieking babble of people you wouldn’t dream of bringing home for dinner. But there’s even more that goes on late at night, things I don’t think they want their daytime guests to encounter. That’s why I have to go back and spy. They’re about to suck the soul right out of my mom if I don’t do something.” She paused. “I’m not going anywhere until she’s either free of them or dead. On second thought, though, even if she were dead, they’d still try to drag her back for a little chat at one of their spook shows.”

“Tally!”

“Tell you what. You go back there with me tomorrow night and I’ll prove a few things to you.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“I do. It’s the only way you’ll ever understand why I had to leave college and come home.”

“Well, maybe it would …”

“That’s good enough. Be here by dark. And uh … better wear running shoes.”

T
hat Friday found the Bower household in a frenzy of preparations for Liesl and Cade’s departure. They had gathered with Ian, Ava, and Henry the night before at their favorite Folly Beach crab shack, where the tables were covered with newspapers and the marsh waters lapped at the door. Friends of the owner, who was an avid fan of Liesl’s, the little group had huddled over their salty feast in a private back room that teetered precariously on stilts driven into the creek bed. The well-fed evening had ended early.

At the kitchen table that morning, Ian said, “Hey look, when you get to Tel Aviv, tell that young Max fella that next time he needs a concert from someone in this household, well, I’ve been brushing up on my fiddle.”

“Yeah, Pop,” Cade answered, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Would you consider some time besides the crack of dawn to practice?”

Ian glanced between Liesl and Cade, who were downing a bagel-and-cream-cheese breakfast. “You two lovebirds need some special kind of quiet at that hour?” he asked, barely containing a grin.

“No, but Mrs. Fowler next door does.” Cade winced at his own unintended implication, but Ian gave him no time to correct it.

“Well, I hardly think a ninety-year-old widow needs the same kind of quiet you’re talking about.”

Over Liesl’s giggling, Cade protested, knowing it was futile. “I wasn’t talking about it. You were. Now listen to me. You may think your, uh, version of bluegrass is the ideal way for everyone on this block to start their day. But Mrs. Fowler doesn’t. Neither does Henry.”

“Henry said that?” Ian looked genuinely hurt and Cade regretted the whole conversation. “I thought Henry liked my fiddling.”

“We all do, Ian,” Liesl jumped in. “Maybe you could just wait until a little later in the day to play for us.”

“Well, now that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask.” Ian turned to Cade. “You should take a lesson in diplomacy from your wife.”

“You’re absolutely right, Pop. I apologize for the clumsy handling of my request.”

Ian frowned. “What request was that?”

Cade moaned a sigh of surrender. “I forgot.”

“That’s okay, son. Happens to me all the time. But I’m glad we had this little talk. I’ve still got something to say, though. This is the serious part.” He put down his coffee cup and focused intently on them. “It’s about this trip. Now, I’m not much good at protecting anybody anymore, but God is. And me and him have had a talk. He’s going with you to Israel and Germany, then back home to this old place that you think is safe from foreign-speaking hoodlums, even though recent history proves otherwise.”

Cade knew his grandfather had been bitterly opposed to their traveling so soon after the Volynski ordeal in New York, though he hadn’t voiced the full extent of those objections.

“Now God can do a respectable job of just about anything,” Ian said. “But if you resist what he tells you to do, if you stand up when he tells you to lie down, or ignore any other warnings he gives you, you’re going to get hurt. And if you don’t survive, folks here will have to bury me right alongside you.” Ian had to pause in a moment of emotion Cade had rarely seen.

Clearing his throat and swallowing hard, Ian continued. “I’m going to pray you through every moment. You listen for God to answer and do exactly what he tells you, you hear?”

Liesl wiped her eyes and reached across the table to grip Ian’s hand. Cade logged his grandfather’s advice but was eager to dispel the somber mood. “But if you’re in your grave, how can you play the fiddle over ours?”

T
ally waited for Denise on the front porch, dressed in sneakers, long cargo pants, and a plain black T-shirt. The black hooded shell was tied around her waist. At dusk, Denise came bounding up the drive toward the front porch. Tally looked down the steps at her delicately framed friend with the silky blond hair tucked behind her ears. Hanging from one shoulder was a small tote bag in a bright pink plaid. “What’s in the cute little bag?” Tally asked as Denise approached.

“Fruits and peanuts.”

Tally squinted as if for a closer look at her friend. “We’re not going to the zoo, Denise.”

“They’re for us. I thought we might want a snack.”

“While running for our lives?” Tally teased, though there was sufficient reason to question what those who’d pursued her the night before might have done if they’d caught her.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re just going to spy a little. Aren’t we?”

“Grow up, Denise. You’re a junior in college. You should be committed to expanding your knowledge of the universe … at the esteemed University of the Spirit.” Tally issued the name with a bitter flourish. “Give me that bag.” Denise reluctantly handed it over and Tally dropped it inside the front hall, closed the door, and headed down the steps.

“Aren’t you going to lock the door?” Denise asked, following her friend across the yard.

“With crazy mirrors and Turkish evil eyes hanging all over the place, who would want to break in?”

Tally grabbed Denise’s arm and pulled her along the sidewalk. “Let’s hurry. It’s almost time.”

“For what?”

Tally didn’t answer.

Fifteen minutes later, they entered the woods that surrounded the fenced camp. Though the wide, drive-through gate to the Anhinga Bay Spiritualist Camp was usually open, a guardhouse there was manned most of the time. So a few years ago, Tally had used wire cutters to open her own private access to the grounds.

The girls hurried down the fence line along one side of the camp, picking their way through the underbrush. At one point, Denise was about to speak when Tally raised a hand for quiet, then whispered for her to stay put. Tally inched from under the cover of the trees toward a span of chain-link fence. Even in the dark, she had no trouble finding the loose flap of metal lattice she’d so cleverly disguised. She’d found a roll of pliable wire the gauge and color of the fence wire. When wound in the same pattern of the fence, the passageway was undetectable to a swiftly scanning eye. Closer scrutiny might uncover the entry, but not since Tally had fashioned it. It was always as she’d left it the time before.

Now, starting at the corner anchor post, she stepped off five strides and stopped. After a few minutes of unwinding the wire, she pulled back the flap and motioned for a hesitant Denise to hurry through. When both girls had passed through, Tally secured the flap again and they ran low and straight toward the maintenance shed that had become Tally’s rallying point. In all her intrusions to the camp, she’d waited in the crook of the L-shaped metal building for the sense of an all clear before beginning her surveillance of this bizarre enclave. At first, her after-dark exploration had sprung from both curiosity and a bit of careless thrill.

But lately, as her mother became more entrenched—brainwashed, Tally believed—in the metaphysical order imposed behind the fence, Tally had, herself, become possessed by a desperate need to uncover and expose that world for what it was. “A bunch of theatrical fakes!” she’d once declared to her mother. “Why do you keep going back to those people?” she’d persisted.

Her mother’s answer still stung. “Because nothing else matters. They’re all I need.”

Even so, Tally had tried to patch over that wound and listen for what she hadn’t heard. Was it a silent scream? Tally believed it was, and so she’d pushed off into the dark of her mother’s desperate obsession. If Mona Greyson didn’t care for or need her daughter anymore, her daughter had to know why.

Now, with their backs pushed against the metal side of the shed, Denise was finally allowed to speak. Even in the lee of the shadows, away from the spotlight near the front of the building, Tally could see the bulging fright in Denise’s eyes. “I want to go back,” she whispered.

“We just got here and I haven’t shown you anything yet.”

“I don’t want to see.”

“Well, you’ve got to. So quit being such a baby and come on.”

Before Denise could object again, Tally pulled her up and told her to be quiet and stay close. Only a twinge of regret crept over Tally as she crouched low at the corner of the shed and looked back at her nervous friend. She turned and laid a hand on Denise’s shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry to be so rough. But I’ve discovered things about this place that you have to know. All you good Christian people think it’s just hocus-pocus silliness going on in here. But I finally stumbled on some things I wasn’t prepared for, things that made me realize there just might be something real about what they—at least some of them—do in here.” Tally peeked around the corner. “Nobody’s out there. Come on.”

The camp covered nearly four hundred acres, vastly expanded since its founding days in the late 1800s. The oldest phase was a horseshoe-shaped colony of small bungalows fronting on a broad green with a small amphitheater in the center. At the head of the horseshoe, opposite the main gate, was the hotel. Tally and Denise now hid in a palm thicket just behind it. “So this is the famous hotel,” Denise said.

“Yep. People from all over the world have been coming here for centuries. You’ve lived here longer than I have and never laid eyes on it? You need to get out more, Denise.”

“I was always afraid of this place. Besides, my parents wouldn’t let me anywhere near it. So what’s so special about it?”

Tally looked at her irritably, a demeanor that surfaced too often lately. “Don’t you know where you are?”

Denise shrugged her shoulders but remained fixed on Tally.

“There’s only a couple other places like this in the whole country. According to my freshman history professor and the Internet, the psychics who live here are supposedly the best there are. All kinds of famous people come here to meet with these mediums.” Tally waved a hand toward the rest of the compound. They all live in those little houses with shingles hanging outside that say what they’re good at. You know, telling your future, or summoning an ancestor who’ll tell you secrets from the other side. They talk through the mediums from places called the etheric planes. I don’t think it’s like heaven, not the Jesus kind, anyway. But I’m not sure.”

“Have you seen the kinds of people who come here?” Denise asked wide-eyed.

“You mean besides my crazy mother?”

“Don’t talk about your mom that way, Tally.”

Tally eyed her solemnly. “You don’t know her. She’s changed into someone I don’t even know.” Tally looked down and wanted to cry, but wouldn’t dare. She raised her head. “But to answer your question, people who look real normal come here all the time and stay in the hotel. And sometimes, Hollywood celebrities sneak in here like they don’t want anybody to know. Mom says there’s been a few congressmen, too. Now that’s scary, don’t you think?”

“Everything about this place is scary.”

“You don’t know anything yet. Come on.” They slipped from the trees and made a dash for the closest bungalow, skirting around to the back. From there, Tally led the way to a house three doors up, pausing long enough to point toward the car parked at the front curb, then heading toward a large tree behind the house, Denise fast on her heels.

“That was your mom’s car,” Denise whispered when she caught up.

Tally nodded, then held a finger to her mouth, gesturing toward an open window where, drawing closer, they could hear the murmuring of voices inside. Stepping cautiously behind a large live oak tree whose limbs spread above the house, they hid themselves and listened, neither one moving. Two sets of eyes locked on the two people inside seated in high-backed chairs, facing each other, the room hushed in a yellow glow from unseen lamps. Mona Greyson sat like a porcelain doll clothed loosely in a pale blue sundress and yellow wrap slung haphazardly around her bare shoulders. Before her was an older woman dressed in a plain shirtwaist dress, as if she’d just returned from grocery shopping. No gypsy fortuneteller stereotypes here. In all her secret forays into the compound, Tally had never seen anyone who fit that description. They all looked so normal.

Just then, normal ended. Mona Greyson suddenly cried, “Daddy, don’t!”

Tally flinched as she watched her mother’s arms fly up from her sides as if shielding her body. “Don’t do it again,” she wailed, then slumped forward, the other woman catching her and rocking her gently.

Denise gripped Tally’s arm, digging her nails into the flesh. Refusing to tear her eyes from her mother, Tally released her friend’s fingers and patted her hand reassuringly. Tally had witnessed something similar another night, from another client of this particular medium who was rumored to be the matriarch of the colony. Tally hadn’t known her mother would be the client this night.

The girls watched as Lesandra Bernardo calmed Mona, speaking softly, cooing over her. She made Mona lean back against the chair and rest. Then, Mrs. Bernardo resumed her straight-back position in her own chair and fell silent. Waiting. For something. After a moment, the slightest movement began in her torso, which rotated slowly, steadily, then stopped. The woman grabbed the arms of her chair and her head jerked upward. A man’s bass voice erupted from inside her, coursing through her open mouth. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” it said.