In the First Early Days of My Death (5 page)

“He called you before he called 911?”

“Well, yes,” said Noni. “He was distraught.”

Felix found this suspicious. “Why didn't you call an ambulance immediately, Mr. Li?”

Alika merely moaned.

There was an ominous silence in the front hall. Felix rose to investigate. He saw the paramedics still crouched low beside Wendy. They had placed an oxygen mask over her face and were lifting her onto a stretcher.

“What's happening?” Felix asked.

“We've got a pulse,” the medic said. “We're taking her in.” She closed the parka over Wendy's naked breasts. She brushed a lock of hair from her forehead, and Felix remembered how Wendy had made this gesture herself, just yesterday, smearing a streak of grey mud across her hairline, into her eyebrows.

Finally, Evelyn gave up on sleep. She slid from her bed and performed her morning rituals, showering quickly and blow-drying her hair. Then she sat at the chair in front of her dresser and looked at the framed photograph she kept beside her bed while she brushed her hair. She was disciplined in her rituals, one hundred strokes every morning and the repetition of the spell.

“I travel beneath the earth to the pool where desire boils in the deep waters,” she whispered. “I dip my cup and let him drink.” She paused for a minute, as the brush became caught in her hair, and untangled the knot with her fingers. Then she continued. “Without me, he cannot eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor breathe.”

She reached out to caress the picture of Alika gently with her thumb. “May desire flow through his veins and seep into his bones until he thirsts for me.”

Evelyn knew the words by heart. They had become automatic, like the Bible verses she'd had to memorize at St. Bernadette's School for Girls, verses she could recite without the slightest understanding of their meaning. Today, though, she thought carefully about the words, considered their significance as she spoke, enunciated clearly.

Evelyn had found the boiling desire spell where she found all her spells and potions, on the Internet at the library. She first came across them while she was surfing the Net, seeking advice about how to manage the problem of her spectral brother. She'd been surprised to find so many sites devoted to the supernatural. There were thousands of pages offering magic spells, especially love spells, and Evelyn had been practising them diligently ever since Alika met Wendy last summer. None of them had ever worked, though. The Internet sites all promised surefire results, and many featured true-life testimonials from women who were now happily married. But in Evelyn's case, the spells seemed to have the opposite effect. The harder she tried to control the course of events, the worse things got. Last August, when she tried out the love spell with the vial of onyx oil that cost her thirty-two dollars, Alika bought Wendy a diamond ring. In October, when Evelyn pricked her finger and used her own blood in a potion, Wendy married him. All winter long, just before every full moon, Evelyn had attempted a different ritual, hoping to perfect her technique, but when spring came, there was Wendy, still living in the house that should have belonged to Evelyn, planting a garden that must have been bewitched. Evelyn would crouch in that garden some evenings, watching Alika and Wendy through the kitchen window. After they ate their dinner and cleared the table, they'd play cards or, worse, the two of them would simply sit and talk together, and Evelyn could hear them laughing. She suspected they were laughing about her.

This morning, however, Evelyn's spell would be infused with new power. After last night, her chances had surely increased. She felt a sharp spurt of exultation in her heart.

Noni wanted to pray, if only she could remember how. Was Alika praying? He sat in the waiting room with his head bent low, but he didn't say a word.

When Noni and Alika were children, they had rarely prayed. Their dad had been raised by Hawaiian parents, who practised an extremely relaxed form of Buddhism, and Rosa had been raised by a Catholic French-Canadian mother and an Italian socialist father who was a staunch atheist, so their religious education, though never dull, had been confusing. Noni snorted involuntarily when she recalled Detective Felix Delano and his desire to discover their ethnic identity. When you find out, she thought, let me know. As for Wendy, it was anybody's guess. Whoever Wendy's parents were, they hadn't bothered to pass along that information.

Nor had they passed along any medical information, which was what Noni told the surgeon who wanted her history. Was there any diabetes in the family, heart disease, epilepsy? No one knew. Whatever had caused Wendy's fall remained a mystery.

Wendy was in surgery now, and Noni tried not to think about what was happening to her. All she knew was that Wendy had a serious head wound. She wanted to wait for a progress report before she called her mother, but by noon there was still no news, and she couldn't put it off any longer.

“I'm going to call Mum,” she told her brother. He nodded — the first sign that he'd heard anything she'd said all day.

Rosa took the news calmly. “Don't worry,” she told her daughter on the phone. “Everything is going to be all right. I'll come down right away. I'll bring some — what do you need?”

“Nothing.”

“Have you eaten yet? You haven't had breakfast, have you?”

“Not yet, we — ”

“Go to the cafeteria. Get yourself something nourishing. Then go straight to the hospital chapel. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

Noni hung up. Her stomach growled. Rosa was right. She had to eat if she was going to get through this — whatever this turned out to be. Coffee and Aspirins would not sustain her. She needed food, something full of sugar.

Most people don't believe in ghosts. I found that out the hard way. When I sat down beside Noni in the hospital cafeteria, she looked right at me, but when I reached out to touch her, she shied away. She turned red, as if ashamed to be seen with me, and hurried away without finishing her pudding. It looked like very good pudding, too, chocolate, with whipped cream on top, and I realized I was hungry. I hadn't eaten a thing since yesterday. I followed Noni down the hall to the waiting room, trying to tell her what had happened to me, but she wouldn't listen. She put her hands up over her ears, to blot out my voice, and started to cry, so I left her alone.

I had figured out what had happened, though. I'd been confused at first, but now it was all starting to make sense. While I was lying there on that stretcher, staring at the ceiling of the ambulance, I remembered everything. Well, almost everything — it was impossible to concentrate. The ambulance was speeding and the sirens were blaring, a hideous noise. Then the emergency ward, alarm and dismay and shouting and terrible mess all around me. I put up with it for a while, but when they laid me out on that operating table, I knew I'd reached my limit. I never could stand the sight of blood.

So I'd come out into the corridors, looking for my family.

“Get anything else out of the husband?” Paul asked Felix. The detectives were standing at the top of Wendy's stairs, examining the scene, trying to concoct a theory of how she had fallen.

“Nothing,” Felix said. “What do you make of him?”

Paul shrugged. “In shock, I guess.” He ran his hand over the carpet, checking for a lump, a loose thread, anything that might have caused her to trip. “Think he pushed her?”

“I don't know.” Felix looked into the open door of the hall closet. He saw shoes and boots, a broken kite, camping equipment. Winter clothing hung from hooks along the inner wall. “This is where she got the parka,” he said. “Look.”

Down below, they heard a pounding on the door.

“Maybe someone knocked on the door?” Paul suggested. “She was in the nude — sleeping, or in the shower, and she grabbed the parka.”

“But it was so hot last night — even with the rain,” Felix said. “Why a parka? There's plenty of summer clothing in her room. If she was trying to cover up, she was in a big hurry.” He headed down the stairs to answer the door. On his way, he tested the railing. Solid.

“Larry's Locks,” said the man at the door. “Sorry I'm late.” He was wearing a blue uniform and carried a toolbox. “You had a break-in, right?”

“Come in,” Felix said. He pulled the man gently by his sleeve. “We need to talk.” He glanced outside. A couple of nosy neighbours still remained on the street, reporting the news to those who had missed the excitement. He could never get used to the way people gathered and gawked at the scenes of accidents or crimes. He was always disgusted by these hangers-on, these ungrateful fools. It was almost as if they were hoping for some kind of tragedy to make their day. A movement in the lilacs beside the house caught Felix's eye. Jesus. One of them was right in the yard. Felix decided to throw a scare into him. “Wait here a minute,” he said to the locksmith.

He walked down the path. “Who's there?”

A short, slim man, about twenty-two years old, emerged from behind the bush.

“What are you doing there?” Felix demanded.

“Just, um, curious. I saw the ambulance and all and —”

“You live around here?” Felix asked him.

“Just passing through. On my way to the swimming pool, you know, to — ”

Felix looked at him sternly. “Yeah, well, what's your name?”

“Marty Smith.”

“You got any identification on you?”

“Sure.” Marty Smith fumbled with his wallet and produced a birth certificate and social insurance card. Felix took note of them and told the man to be on his way.

“Is she all right?” Marty called, as Felix returned to the house.

Felix wheeled around. “Who?”

“The — the girl. You know. I saw them take her away in the ambulance. Is she all right?”

“We don't know yet,” Felix said. He slammed the door on his way in.

When Noni returned to the waiting room, she saw a doctor in a green gown speaking to her brother. She couldn't see the doctor's face. He was sitting beside Alika, leaning forward earnestly, with his hand on Alika's arm. It was bad, then. Noni slowed her footsteps. She wasn't ready. A line from the Bible ran through her head.
I will fear no evil
. But she did fear it.