Rocks & Gravel (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 3) (22 page)

First thing I needed to do was find out what was hidden in my lost memories.

* * *

D
espite the early hour
, the temperature was already in the nineties, the humidity skyrocketing the heat index into triple digits. The chore of getting my keys out of the Nova and closing its door plus the hundred-yard walk out to the barn left me tacky with sweat. It tickled its way down my scalp, dripped into my eyes, and stung. Mosquitos lit on my bare arms for a taste of my blood. Trying to ignore the discomfort, I unlocked the sliding door and rolled it open. A cloud of musty, baked air rolled out, and I stepped aside to let it pass.

Inside the barn, I flipped on the overhead lights. They hummed to life but did little to light the nooks and crannies. I placed the two battery powered lanterns I’d wagged out there on top of an old refrigerator and an old dresser and stood with my hand on my hips. If the spell was hidden in something I had when I my father died, it was either out here or gone forever, possibly thrown away by Barbie. I moved my childhood stuff to the barn at the onset of teenage coolness and still remembered where most of it was. All I needed to do was remember what I’d loved. Easy as quantum physics.

I tore open a box labeled “Decorations from Peri Jean’s Room” and regarded a collection of dusty stuffed animals. I didn’t remember any specific connection to any of them and set them aside. Another box revealed clothes I’d never wear again unless someone used a shrinking spell on me. The way my life was going, a shrinking spell might really come into play later.
Better keep them
. I grabbed another box with my name on it and looked for a place to sit.

Being awake for the better part of twenty-four hours had whipped my ass. I could barely concentrate on the junk in front of me, much less remember something I valued more than a quarter century ago. My body begged for permission to go back in the house and rest. My eyes drooped, and I swayed on my feet.

“Wake up.” I pinched my own arm as hard as I could. The jerk who spelled Julie almost got me last night. One more try might be enough to kill me. I halfheartedly looked through two more boxes, these containing children’s books and a scattering of well-used toys. I tried to remember myself playing with them, and fatigue rolled through me again. I dropped the box. It bounced off my legs and hit a sheet-covered object lying on the floor. I couldn’t remember what it was and stooped to pull off the sheet.

“My dollhouse. I forgot all about this old thing.” I’d seen a show or read a book about a little girl who had one, and Memaw scoured the garage sales until she found this one. Because each piece was sold separately, I never had much store-bought stuff for it. I’d sort of cobbled stuff together. Like the tiny chair Memaw helped me make out of cardboard and a scrap of felt. Or the hot tub I made out of plastic tubing and a butter container. My dolls consisted of several
Star Wars
action figures and a few ratty Glamour Gals, both found at yet another garage sale.

I sat down on the dirt floor and pulled the dollhouse closer, examining it more carefully. If there had been anything I loved as a little girl, it was this dollhouse, but there was no way the forgetting spell was hidden in here. I got the dollhouse after I moved in with Memaw, when I was eight-years-old. My father was murdered when I was four. Then something glinted inside the dollhouse, and I leaned closer, pulling out my keychain and turning on the flashlight attached to it.

I reached inside the dollhouse, not even thinking about black widow spiders and asps, and pulled out something I’d loved ever since I could remember loving anything. The cheap gold plating on the compact had worn off in spots, but the cloisonné black and blue butterfly on the front still looked as beautiful as I remembered. I turned it over and looked at the engraving as I had so many times as a kid.

To Barbie on her 16th. Love Mom and Dad.

I’d always pretended my mother passed down her compact to me. The truth was, I kept playing with the thing, even after she told me not to, and dented it. She’d come to me screaming and raving and threw the thing in my face, the metal cutting my chin. I remembered how ragged and full of grief her voice sounded when she hollered I could just have the fucking thing since I’d fucked it up. I rubbed the scar left by Barbie’s tantrum until I realized what I was doing and touched the cool metal to my hot cheek, the way I always had as a child, trying to let it comfort me. Yes, I’d loved this thing no matter how much pain it represented.

The compact started out with a mirror, but it went missing somewhere along the way. By the time I put it in my dollhouse for my dolls to use as a floor-length mirror, I’d glued a cheap mirror pried off a plastic throwaway compact into the place where the original mirror once was. As an adult, I saw my makeshift repair left much to be desired. For one thing, the mirror was crooked. I’d used the compact’s powder puff for a throw pillow on the dollhouse’s bed, leaving the spot for the powder cake open.

For the first time, I noticed a tiny indention on one side of it. Holding my keychain flashlight in my mouth, I examined the thing more closely. The gold frame could be raised and removed for the powder cake to be placed in the well. The frame would then be popped back down to hold the cake in place. The manufacturer’s instructions, smudged beyond reading, sat at the bottom of the well, protected by filthy netting.

The fog lifted from my brain fast as a fart stinks up a car.
Could this be it? Could the forgetting spell be hidden underneath those instructions?
By the time I was four, this compact already belonged to me. My pulse raced, and I used a game piece from an old set of pickup sticks to pry up the frame.
This won’t be it. It’s too simple.
I lifted out the manufacturer’s instructions and sucked in a surprised breath. My luck was in, for once. Sitting there was a folded slip of paper with dirt on the creases.

The black opal tingled on my chest, signaling the paper had magic in it. I reached for it, hesitating as I wondered if touching someone else’s spell against me could somehow hurt me. I could go inside the house for a pair of tweezers.
Nah.
My curiosity held the driver’s wheel right then. I pinched the paper between my thumb and forefinger, pulled it out of the compact, and unfolded it. On it was the weirdest scrawl I’d ever seen. The words, if they were words, were written in a type of lettering unfamiliar to me.

Julie said she’d destroyed the paper she found in her perfume bottle and her memory came right back. I took out my cigarette lighter and lit the corner of the paper. It caught fire faster than I expected, stinking worse than any other burning paper I’d ever smelled. The black opal heated fast on my chest, as though it somehow absorbed the fire, or perhaps responded to something I couldn’t see. Smoke drifted up from the burning paper, and the odor of rot filled my senses. I grunted and tossed the paper on the dirt floor, standing close so I could stomp it if the tiny fire got out of hand. The paper curled in on itself, the flames turning green and sparkling, and finally blackened until it was nothing but flakes.

I waited for my memory to come back, holding on to a support beam in case the force of it threw me off balance. Nothing happened. After several minutes, I got bored and gathered the ashes from the paper into my cupped hand and took them outside and buried them. Then I brought the rake back inside the barn and turned the packed earth on the place where I’d allowed the paper to burn. By my estimation, thirty minutes had passed, and still no recovered memory.

A strong gust of wind hit the barn, rattling the rolling door on its track. I went to the opening, scanning the sky for a coming storm. The sky, white with heat and humidity, looked hot but not stormy. Another gust of wind came, rippling my clothes and caressing my skin like the fabric had come to life. The black opal sent painful jolts into my skin, maybe warning me. I was too ignorant of its power to know for sure.

I scanned the world around me and still saw nothing out of the ordinary. The black opal flooded me with a painful tide of energy, rocking me on my feet. Refusing to learn the black opal’s signals hadn’t helped me stay normal any at all. I’d still lost everything—Dean, my business, Memaw. I thought of Mysti, Brad, and Wade, so comfortable with what they could do and so confident in doing what needed to be done.

What if I learned how to really use the black opal, faced what I am without apology?
I’d lose any hope of normalcy. Drama and negative consequences from supernatural shit would taint everything. Keeping the weird stuff on the outskirts of my life left me a little hope of a happy, normal life doing mundane things.

Another gust of wind blew into the barn, making the junk behind me clatter. A sheet or piece of fabric beat against whatever it covered with the intensity of the wind. I stepped outside the barn, expecting to feel a few stray drops of rain against my upturned face. The air hung still and humid, but there was no rain. I turned back to the barn and peered inside. Had the wind been only inside the barn? I debated the merits of going back inside to investigate and had pretty much talked myself out of it when I heard my car start.

What on earth?
I ran across the huge yard to the carport and found my car sitting empty, running on its own. I grabbed an old hoe off the pegs sticking out of the wall, found a bare space and pressed my back against it so nobody could sneak up behind me.

“Who’s here? I’ll whup your ass you don’t quit messing with me. See this hoe? I’ll use it.”

Nobody answered, but another hot wind raged across me, chilling the sweat covering my body. I listened as hard as I could but heard nothing. No birds singing, no frogs hollering, no crickets fiddling. Muscles tensed and ready to fight, I began to shake, trying to hold the fear back and stay alert enough to defend myself. The black opal quivered against my skin.
I wish I knew how to use it, wish I knew the limits of my powers.
Fuck being normal.
When shit like this kept happening, normal was beyond my reach anyway.

The driver door to my car swung open. The dirt next to it indented with the weight of an invisible foot. I pressed my back harder against the corrugated tin wall, gaze darting madly for an escape route. Footsteps crunched closer and closer to me. I could climb over the hood of my car and then scoot through the narrow gap between my car and the opposite wall, but I’d have to act fast if I planned to run.

The scrape of a foot against the floor spurred me into action. I clambered over the car, slamming into a stack of plastic buckets and sending them flying. There was barely any room between the car and the wall, but I knew I could squeeze through. I raced forward, heart slamming hard enough to jar my vision. I saw the passenger door of my car opening and knew it was too late to stop but tried anyway and slammed into the door with my side and hip, the hoe digging into my shin.

The collision knocked my own breath out, and I hunched forward, jabbing the wooden hoe handle into my eye, and falling backward. I hit the ground hard but gave myself no time to recover, scrambling to my knees and slapping my hands against the car, groping for anything I could use to pull myself back to a standing position. Icy arms closed around my middle and dragged me to my feet, staying at my back.

“You shoulda stayed outta this. I can’t help you.” The almost familiar voice came from within my head, part of me but not part of me, and the black opal vibrated with its timbre. The last time I’d heard this voice was at the prison when I visited Jesse, but this wasn’t Jesse. It was my father.

My skin tightened against his touch, and a shudder ran through me. I jerked away from him and spun to face him, breathing hard. I saw he held Priscilla Herrera’s curse box in one translucent hand. I reached for it, but when my fingers made contact, it shocked me, and I ended up back on the ground, looking up at my father’s ghost.

“You can’t ignore this. Time to fight or die…like me.”

“Who’s doing this to you? Tell me, and I’ll…” I didn’t know what I’d do. Kill someone? Maybe. This person had indirectly killed my grandmother, tried to kill me.

My father’s mouth opened to speak, and garbled noise came out. He squeezed his eyes shut, straining against the force controlling, him. His words, when they came, shook the air so hard the hair on my arms moved.

“Memory…of the day…I died.” Another strong wind whipped through the carport, making the old tools hanging from the walls sway with its force. My father blew away with it like a stray piece of paper, tilting and whirling in its grips until he disappeared from my sight.

I stumbled to the front porch and sat down on the steps. All my effort the last few days, everything I lost, had been for nothing. The curse box was gone, and the asshole had it. If I did nothing, they’d use it to remove the curse from the Mace Treasure and destroy us all while trying to steal the treasure.

Steal it?
Those words sounded an awful lot like I thought there was something to steal. If there was, I didn’t want the asshole to have it any more than I wanted Priscilla Herrera’s spiritual minions to level Gaslight City. Yeah, I hated a lot of people here, but letting them die when I could stop it was not the way Memaw taught me.