Beyond Your Touch (8 page)

“Excuse me,” the nurse called after us.

I glanced back. “Yeah?”

She waved at the gift bag I'd mistakenly left on the counter. “If you want, I could give her this.”

In an instant, I made up my mind and rushed back to the reception counter. “I know I'm not allowed to visit with her,” I said, “but could I at least give that to her myself? I'll act like I don't know her, like I'm a new volunteer here or a nurse, instead of family. I might never get another chance to see her. Please. Promise, I won't say who I am.”

The nurse clasped her hands together, twisting them one way and then the other, like she was making up her mind. Her shoulders squared, then they relaxed and she exhaled. “All right. But just for a moment.”

“Thank you, thank you so much,” I said, lunging for the French doors before she changed her mind or her supervisor appeared.

I went out and jogged up to Chase's mom. Though I suspected she was only in her forties, her face was heavily lined. Dark hollows crescented her eyes. But her hair was rich and long, and her slender fingers worked the knitting needles with grace and speed.

She set her knitting on her lap and looked up at me, puzzled. “Can I help you?”

“My name's Annie,” I said, sliding down on the bench next to her. “I've brought you a gift from a friend of ours.”

She took the bag and glanced inside, her chin trembling and tears glinting in her eyes, as she pulled out the skeins of nubby yarn. Blue and green in the exact same shades she'd always reserved for one purpose, for Chase's Christmas mittens.

CHAPTER 7

 

—Persistence Freemont, “The Art of Divination.”
In
Compendium of Psychic Sciences
, Volume 3.
Boston, Massachusetts: Coryphacus Press, 1982

 

 

“D
id you talk to her?” Chase asked.

“I gave her the yarn,” I said, getting into the driver's seat. I pulled the seatbelt across my chest, pausing to untwist and adjust it, buying myself time to think. I'd given his mother the yarn and told her Chase had escaped and was fine. I'd asked how she was. The conversation had been ordinary until she'd set the yarn on her lap and took my hands in hers.

“
What do you fear?
” she'd asked, her voice hushed.

I licked my lips and turned toward Chase. “She was happy to know you're safe, but she didn't say much else.” The voice of guilt reverberated inside me.
Liar. Liar.
I shoved it back and gave him a quick grimace. “I'm sorry.”

I'd been frustrated when Chase had walked out without talking to her, but now I realized he'd made the wiser choice. My brief visit with her hadn't cleared my mind. It had disturbed me, and that was the last thing he needed. Once we found Lotli and got my mom back, I'd tell him about the conversation. Until then, I had to forget the visit and stash the rest of her unsettling words away until they wouldn't do more harm than good.

Selena sighed. “That stinks.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Chase's eye. “But we saw her and she's okay. That's what's important, right?”

“I guess. It was strange, but good.” His gaze left mine and he leaned back against the seat, his hands resting in his lap as if the visit had indeed eased his mind. “Can we get going now?”

I turned toward Selena. “So which way?”

“South,” she said. “We should go a few miles, then I'll scry again.”

The road was narrow and twisty, and crowded with traffic and bicycles. But the drive was gorgeous, woods and fields with glimpses of ponds and inlets.

After a few miles, I pulled into an overlook with a view of a calm, sun-spangled bay. Selena opened her compact and poured cola on its mirror. I kept the car running with the windows up and the air-conditioning on high to keep us cool and block out the noise outside the car. Still, I was surprised Selena could get into the zone with people walking by and us watching her.

The feather moved, and she came out of her trance. “Keep going straight,” she said.

“Why don't you try doing it while I drive?” I suggested. “It probably wouldn't spill if you used less soda.”

“I guess it's worth a try.” She patted off some of the cola with a tissue.

Like a GPS, the road and the feather's pointing coincided perfectly as I drove south along the west side of Mt. Desert Isle. Except for once, when I gazed too long in the rearview to take in a tantalizing glimpse of Chase's abdomen as he took off his hoodie and pulled down his T-shirt. That distraction almost made me rear-end a farm tractor. Fortunately, I looked back at the road in time to see the tractor's backside looming in front of us. I jammed on the brakes, tires squealing and my heart in my throat as we avoided smashing into it by mere inches.

“Shit,” Selena screeched. “I spilled soda all over my shorts. It looks like I wet myself.”

I glanced at her and frowned. In reality, there were maybe two drops of soda on her leg.

Chase leaned over the seat. “You want me to drive?”

“No. Just sit back there and don't do anything,” I said. Maybe cooling our relationship was going to help him, but no way was it making me less distracted.

The tractor turned off and the road continued to wind steadily southward. There wasn't much on either side of it, scraggly evergreen trees and shrubs, a few clapboard houses, rundown farms. Little hills up. Little hills down. Little curves one way, then the other.

Selena groaned. “This is making me carsick. Pull over. Now!”

I winged the car off the edge of the road and into a sandy spot in front of a deserted house with broken windows and junk tires stacked along one side.

“Roll down your window and get some air,” Chase suggested.

She set the compact on the dash, opened the door, then swung her legs out and began breathing deeply. “I can't scry anymore. I'm going to barf for sure.”

I turned away, looking out my side window toward the house. If she was really going to puke, I didn't want to see it.

Next to the house and junk tires, a grassy camp road jutted into a dark tangle of balsam trees and thick brush. A few yards up it, a bunch of long and narrow things dangled down from the overhanging branches, glinting in the sunlight. Pieces of mirror? Knife blades? White bones? They twisted and swayed in the breeze, like a disjointed corpse swinging from a hangman's noose.

Rolling down the window, I blocked out the sound of Selena's groaning, and I heard the low, slow gong of bells.

I opened my door and got out. “I don't think you're sick, Selena,” I said. “I think we're just really close to Lotli.” I nodded at the trees.

Before I could take two steps, Chase bolted out of the Land Rover and sprinted up the camp road toward the dangling things, his hand sliding out a knife from his waistline.

“Wait,” Selena shouted. “I've got to get my sneakers on.”

I jogged to where Chase stood. Above him hung massive wind chimes, as large as a corpse and created from all the things I'd suspected. Knives and cleavers dangled from a crosspiece made out of a cow leg—I was sure of this because some hair and the hoof were still attached. Saw blades. Dead birds. Broken mirror pieces the size of my hand reflected light in all directions, spotlighting rusted bells and webs of fishing line.

Selena panted up behind me. “Whoa. This is creepy.”

Chase put his knife away and crouched down, studying fresh tire tracks. “They're wide enough to belong to a bread truck. What do you think? Should we check it out?”

Sweat dampened my underarms. “I don't think we have a choice, do you?”

Selena shuddered but followed as we started up the rutted drive, through an open wooden gate with a no-trespassing sign nailed to it. Ahead, the balsam limbs hung so low and dense they would have raked the sides of any car that tried to pass.

Chase lifted his hand. “You hear that?”

Cocking my head, I caught the faintest
ting-ting
sound, barely audible above the rusted bells' slow gong. “More wind chimes?”

“It's coming from up there,” Selena said, pointing to something—or more correctly a lot of small somethings—dangling about twenty feet up in a tree ahead.

I held my hand over my eyes, shading them against the sun so I could get a clearer look. This time it was a bunch of dismembered dolls: bodies with heads or arms and legs ripped off, hanging upside down or by one limb, mixed in with driftwood and clusters of clinking copper pipes.

Selena laughed nervously. “Maybe this is Stephen King's driveway.”

“Or someone's Halloween fun house exploded,” I said.

She put her hand on my arm. “Wait a minute.” She raised her eyes to the sky and murmured, “Hecate, Protector of the Gateways, watch over us, protect us on this journey.”

Chase strode forward. “Come on. I smell a campfire, and steam, hot canvas—seaweed.”

“Canvas and seaweed?” I said. I hooked arms with Selena, snugging her close as we rounded a slight curve in the road.

A few yards later, the thick evergreens opened into an overgrown field. Just ahead was a dilapidated bread truck. Crystals and tassels curtained an open doorway in the side of the truck. Behind it and only partly visible from our angle was a tent with a blue tarp for a canopy and purple cloth curtaining its sides. Campfire smoke trailed up from somewhere behind it. I could smell the wet seaweed and canvas Chase had mentioned and something else, the strong musky odor of incense. That raised the hair on my arms and my mind went back to when the priest had performed the exorcism on Dad. This smell was identical to what I'd noticed back then.

One slow step at a time, we approached the truck's door. “Hello?” I called out. “Anybody home?”

Selena shifted even closer to me. “How can she live here? Her and her grandfather in this tiny truck. Where do you think they go to the bath—?”

“Selena.” Chase raised his hand to silence her. A heartbeat later, Lotli appeared in the truck doorway.

To say she was clothed would be a misnomer. She had a sarong on, but the sheer leaf-green cloth left nothing to the imagination. Her layers of necklaces and arm cuffs covered more skin than the entire dress. She was shorter and smaller than I'd thought yesterday. She also wasn't as pretty as I remembered. Her nose was large for the size of her face, her dark eyes too intense, and her hair too long and dense to look purposely tousled. But the birdlike tilt of her head as she studied us, the swoop of her fingers, and the swish of her steps as she descended from the camper left a blatant trail of sensuality. She reminded me of a dancer Dad and I had met in Belize when we'd toured a Mayan temple.

Tiny bells on her slave bracelet jingled as she pressed a finger to her lip and then pointed it at Chase. “We saw
you
yesterday at the park.”

Her voice had a strange cadence to it, a musical lilt. And, as her eyes lingered on his face, an uncomfortable feeling writhed in my stomach. “We noticed you, too,” I said.

Her head swung toward Selena and me, like a black egret about to spear its favorite snack. “Did you not see the no-trespassing sign? He does not allow uninvited guests.”

Pulling my shoulders back, I stepped toward her. “We saw it.”

Her hands slithered onto her hips. “How did you find him?”

Him? She had to be referring to her grandfather. I mirrored her stance. “We're not looking for him. It's you we wanted to talk to. You're Lotli, right?” Despite how weird everything was, I figured there was no reason not to tell the truth. “We found you by using the feather you gave Chase.” I tilted my head in his direction.

She looked back at him, lowering her eyes demurely. “Ah, yes. Chase.”

My jaw clenched and I was glad Selena took that moment to step forward. “I used the feather to scry. We want—” She glanced toward the smoke, then at me. “You might as well just tell her.”

“When we were listening to you yesterday, we noticed that the smoke from the fire responded to your playing. We came to see you because we wanted to know about that.” My voice sounded calm, but I felt like poking her eyes out for the way she was scanning Chase.

“Interesting.” She peeled her gaze off him. “We'll ask if we may speak with you.” She bowed, then turned away from us and swished around the tent toward the smoke.

I leaned into Selena and whispered, “Did you get any bad vibes off her?”

“No. But it's freaky that she's asking her grandfather if she can speak with us—and the whole
we
thing is really weird.”

“You're right there,” I said.

Chase frowned. “Come on. Let's get a closer look.”

He strode in the same direction as Lotli had, and Selena and I jogged after him.

We'd just reached the tent when Lotli whisked back around the corner.

She dipped her head. “He is eating and is sorry we did not prepare enough food for guests, but you are welcome to speak to us while he eats.”

Though I hated it, I felt a pang of sympathy for her. I couldn't imagine my grandfather ever expecting me to bow and ask permission for silly things, or him putting up with me speaking the way she did, for that matter.

We followed Lotli to the other side of the tent. The smoke, as it turned out, was rising from a smoldering pit not much larger than a garbage can. Damp seaweed circled its edge and a canvas was stowed nearby, sure signs that someone had recently steamed clams or lobsters, or something similar.

Lotli pulled aside a tent flap and tied it open, then motioned for us to follow her. It was dark inside, the only light coming from the open flap and a dozen white jar candles sitting in the middle of the tent on barnacle-crusted boards. The scent of incense weighed heavy in the air.

“Sit.” Lotli motioned to the ground near the candles.

It was only after we'd done as she'd said that I spotted the old man sitting cross-legged on the ground, just beyond the candle flames. In front of him on a smaller board were several torn-apart lobsters. He was naked—or if he had anything on it was a loincloth. He also looked too old to be her grandfather, great-grandfather, maybe. He was
that
shriveled and wrinkled, more closely resembling a pile of twisted roots than a man. If he was sickly, like the storyteller had said, he wasn't going to get well in this place or with that diet.

Lotli sat down next to him and introduced him with a jut of her chin. “This is Zea.”

Though he didn't acknowledge our presence in any way, I politely introduced the three of us to him. I stuck to first names like she had. The less they knew about us the better, at least for now.

“You are curious about the flute music?” she said.

I decided to get right to the point. “We wanted to know if it can do things other than make smoke move, like can it open the veil between realms.”

For a moment, Lotli toyed with one of her cuff bracelets. The old man picked up a sloppy hunk of lobster body and yanked off one of its littlest legs. Clutching the body, he sucked on the leg as if it were a straw, juice dribbling down his chest over a couple of withered tattoos and onto his belly.