Dealing with Demons

Since Mom already had a house lined up in the next county, she and Aunt Grace took the breakables to the new place at first light. A shallow trunk and a short back seat didn’t leave room for much else for the initial load. But that was okay. We’d learned over the years that the breakables had a better chance of survival on their own in the car.

To save gas and time, we wouldn’t use the car to move everything, though. One of Aunt Grace’s co-workers, who owned a pickup and trailer, would stop by the old place after lunch for the bigger pieces.

Because of the short distance, we should be able to move everything in one day. We had talked about possibly moving farther away, but the cost of gas and Mom and Aunt Grace’s current jobs just didn’t make it feasible. And, finding another employer wanting to hire two people at a comparable pay was out of the question.

While they were gone, Gran and I kept working. We packed up my bedroom. Then I focused on taking apart the beds. Mattresses lined the living room by lunchtime.

Lacking anywhere to sit comfortably for a break, I took my sandwich out to the porch. My breath fogged the air as I sat in Gran’s chair and took in the dormant landscape. I’d been looking forward to seeing what this house would be like blanketed in white at Christmas, which was only a few weeks away. If only the snow hadn’t stubbornly refused to fall yet.

I watched the frozen branches sway and ate my sandwich. Chewing still sent little twinges of pain into my cheek, but it wasn’t enough to stop me from eating. The subtle ache was enough of a reminder, though, for me to almost choke on my bite of sandwich when Clavin’s shiny, cherry red car turned onto our drive.

Fear slithered down my spine. Who was really driving? Clavin or what possessed him yesterday?

Through the windshield, Clavin watched me before glancing at the house. The change in his attention was a good sign. No burning fixation that I’d noticed during a possession.

While I was terrified of the thing that had hurt Clavin, I also wisely acknowledged Clavin was a danger to me, too. My face still vibrantly displayed a reminder of how far he could go.

I set my sandwich aside and stood. The sooner I dealt with Clavin, the sooner he could leave before that thing returned.

As he parked, I studied him for any sign of aggression. The last time I’d made him mad, he’d been flushed with anger. He didn’t appear flushed now, just pale. Despite his apparent calm, I still hoped Gran wouldn’t notice his arrival. I didn’t want her hurt.

He opened the car door and used the frame to attempt to leverage himself from the seat. It took several tries before he managed to pull himself upright. He paused for a moment and rubbed his forehead tiredly, which called attention to his tousled hair. It stood out in different directions with the strands in front sticking up from the bandage at his hairline.

With an awkward hobble, he got out of the way to close the door then kept a hand on the hood to make his way toward me. As he rounded the front of the car, the reason for his struggling progress became clear. A cast covered his leg from toe to mid-thigh.

The memory of the car hitting him changed my self-concern to pity.

“Are you supposed to be walking around on that leg?” I asked.

He stopped his approach, his fingertips on the hood for balance, to glance down at his leg.

“No, but I had to come.”

When he met my gaze again, I saw panic in his eyes.

“I think I’m going crazy, Tessa. When I woke up this morning, there was a note by my bed. It looked like I wrote it, but I don’t remember doing it.”

A chill ran through me, and it had nothing to do with the cold.

“What did the note say?”

“It was about you, but I don’t understand it.” His voice quavered. Balancing against the hood, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, and offered it to me.

Hoping I wasn’t making a huge mistake, I left the porch and grabbed the note.

“You need to sit down.” I helped him over to the bottom step. By the time he was sitting, he looked like he was about to throw up.

Giving him a moment, I skimmed the page.

Go to her. Apologize. Without her forgiveness, your other leg is next.

I sat heavily next to Clavin and met his watery gaze.

He cleared his throat and swallowed hard.

“When I came to at the hospital, they told me I walked right in front of the car. The doctor said I was lucky the car wasn’t going faster. Brian was there. He said he called my name as soon as I walked out the doors, but I didn’t even look at him. I don’t remember any of it.”

Clavin looked down at his hands, and I saw a tear fall onto his sleeve.

“At school, the rumor is that you can see the future.”

I flinched a little.

“Do you know what’s going on?” he asked, his words laced with desperation.

My stomach flipped with relief. For a moment, I’d thought he would accuse me of controlling the thing, or maybe even him, and causing his accident.

“I wish I did know,” I said, looking toward the trees to give him a minute to wipe his face.

I grew up knowing that I was different. My weird family history made it marginally easier to deal with the possibility that something was out there possessing people. However, poor Clavin had to be going crazy with fear.

“I forgive you, Clavin. Whether what happened was an accident or a malicious plan, I forgive you.” I hoped that speaking the words would spare him any further involvement.

Clavin’s tears started falling in earnest. He nodded then awkwardly pulled himself to his feet. Without saying anything further, he limped back to his car.

As I watched him struggle, I didn’t ask if he was okay to drive or if he wanted to stay. Forgiving him didn’t mean I liked him. I sat on the step until he pulled onto the road then went back to Gran’s chair and my sandwich, thankful she hadn’t come outside. The turkey and cheese didn’t appeal to me anymore, but I still munched on it while staring at the note I’d kept.

When the thing had used Mr. Jameson, it had wanted to know who hurt me; and when it found out, it had hurt the person back. Was that protective or possessive? I needed to figure out what the thing was and what it wanted.

Popping the last bite into my mouth, I stood and tucked the folded paper into my pocket.

Mom and Aunt Grace returned just a few minutes later, and their friend arrived not long afterward. We loaded as much as we could on the trailer and more into our car since they would follow him to the new place.

I waved as they left then went back into the house. Looking at the piles of belongings that remained, I estimated we would need another two trips with the truck, which meant they would make it back from the last trip just before dark. The house would be empty of everything but cleaning supplies, sleeping bags, a few blankets, and Aunt Danielle’s chair. The chair always went last.

The prospect of a night in an empty house unsettled me because now I knew what waited out there in the dark. Somehow, the furniture and our things made the house feel safer.

By the time we finished stacking the final load onto the trailer, every muscle ached, especially in my legs. I’d overused them in the last few days, and they were letting me know, loud and clear, that they wouldn’t put up with anything tomorrow. That meant finishing the bathroom today.

Kneeling on the floor to scrub around the toilet would probably send my legs into a state of mutiny. I could picture my legs detaching themselves in a cartoonish way and walking off without me.

Smiling at the possibility, I went back to work.

“Tessa, honey, you look exhausted,” Mom said a long while later. “I think you should get ready for bed now.”

Glancing up from the dustpan I held, I nodded and wondered when they’d returned. Too tired to ask, I finished sweeping the corners of the last vacant room and joined Aunt Grace in the living room. Without furnishings, the house echoed loudly, and chilly drafts drifted along the floor where she’d made everyone blanket beds. Though I wouldn’t notice any of the discomfort once they knocked me out, I wondered what the rest of my family would do.

I collapsed onto my blanket and listened to them move around as they closed up the house for the night.

Finally, the lights clicked off, leaving only the glow of the candle that burned near Aunt Danielle. I blinked my eyes slowly as the flickering light played tricks with me. For a second, I thought I saw the outline of the chair handle through her hand.

Everyone gathered around me, and the familiar words filled the space. Comforting. My eyes drifted shut before their first touch.

The next day, my legs stayed attached even though they hurt. By nine, we all piled in the car. I sat in front with Mom while Aunt Grace, Aunt Danielle, and Gran rode in the back. Everything we’d kept with us, including Aunt Danielle’s chair, fit into the twine-tied trunk.

Unable to help myself, I looked back as we pulled away. Something told me that moving wouldn’t be enough this time.

It took about forty-five minutes to reach our new home. The updated ranch, with a paved driveway and a garage, was located in a quiet neighborhood of a small town. The light grey siding and professional landscaping looked established. The dark grey shutters on the windows appeared new though. The house was a definite upgrade for us, and I sent my mom a puzzled look.

“My boss,” she said by way of explanation. “When I told him why I needed a few days off and what happened at school, he offered this place. I couldn’t say no. The rent is reasonable, and it’s still close to work. Plus, being in town will be an advantage. You can walk places easily and won’t have to spend so much time on the bus.”

“And the shutters?”

“A special request that he didn’t mind. I said it was a religious thing.”

Aunt Grace took me on a tour of the house while Mom and Gran helped Aunt Danielle inside.

No old planks covered the floors in this house. We’d been upgraded to tiles in the kitchen and carpet in the living room. It continued down the hall to the left of the kitchen and in all three bedrooms.

The master suite, which Mom and Grace would claim, had its own bathroom. Gran, Aunt Danielle, and I would share the one in the hall. While the rest were sharing bedrooms, I’d get my own. They always made sure I had a room to myself.

In every room, light, welcoming colors coated the walls.

Even in an obvious state of disarray with boxes everywhere, the place felt homey.

Wasting no time, we began unpacking. The pile of empty boxes on the curb began to grow by lunch.

Over lunch, Mom and I debated whether I should go to school that afternoon.

“I have enough going against me. Do I need to add a bad first impression to the list?”

She eyed my purple cheek and grudgingly agreed.

We used the weekend to finish settling in, and by the third day in the new house, everything was back to business as usual, except for school. Though I appreciated the decreased swelling around my eye, the coloring remained so vivid in one small area that concealer did nothing to hide it.

With nothing better to do, I lay on the couch with one of my legs hooked over the arm and studied Belinda’s book. It worried me that the creature seemed to have taken an interest in me, and I hoped I might find a clue somewhere in the worn pages.

However, the familiar words didn’t tell me anything new, so I started studying the book as a whole. On the first page, scrawled in shaky penmanship, Belinda wrote the date August 17, 1798. The penmanship varied in several areas of the book, but none of it was dated as the original pages had been. Obviously, Belinda’s descendants had added to it at some point.

Despite its age and all the evidence of its use, the book had held together remarkably well with only a few signs of repair.

The list of descendants in the back of the book didn’t note any dates of births or deaths. That missing information, along with no last names, made doing research very difficult. All the moving around everyone had done didn’t help either.

The book never said, “Don’t write a last name,” or, “Don’t enter any dates,” so why didn’t we put them in there? My thoughts went to the possibility of someone reading it. Given the odd rules and ambiguous reasons for them, who would take any of it seriously? Even if they did take it seriously, who would be able to gain any information from it to track down any of us?

Studying the family tree, I noticed a pattern. I knew we only bore daughters and that not all daughters branched out.

Now, I noticed that only one daughter out of each generation went on to have children. If Aunt Danielle had a baby, that child’s name had never been entered. And, I knew from talking to Aunt Grace that she’d purposely chosen a match where there wouldn’t be children. Was that what had been happening for over two hundred years? I counted generations. I was the fifteenth. I cringed at how young some of the women had to have been when they gave birth.

“If you keep frowning at that book, it’ll burst into flames,” Gran said as she walked into the living room.

“I can’t believe there’s so little information to go by. If it weren’t for the chant and me sleeping until sunup every day, I’d think this whole thing a fake.”

Gran made an agreeing noise.

“You should go for a walk. It’s not bad outside, and the fresh air will clear your head.”

“Our ideas of cold are very different,” I said, already going to bundle up.

Armed with a button-up grey woolen coat, thick cream-colored mittens, and a cute knit earflap hat with a tassel, I stepped outside. The bright sun fought to warm my face, despite the chill. Gran, as usual, was right. It wasn’t bad out.

I mentally let go of Belinda’s puzzle and just enjoyed my freedom as I walked toward the downtown area.

A little coffee shop set in the lower half of a narrow, two-story brick building caught my eye. The door and two picture windows took up the front of the shop. The right window sported a white, painted outline of an old-fashioned coffee cup complete with wisps of steam. Above the cup, the words “Coffee Shop” clearly identified the type of establishment within.

A handwritten sign was taped to the inside of the window. In black marker, it stated, “Weekend Help Needed.” Normally, I wouldn’t pay attention to a job posting, but the hours held my attention. Seven-thirty in the morning until one.

The bell above the door jingled as I let myself in, and coffee-scented heat enveloped me. Pulling off my hat and mittens, I closed my eyes in bliss. The taste of coffee didn’t do much for me without a lot of cream and sugar, but I loved the smell of it. I exhaled slowly and looked around.

Seven small, glass-topped tables crowded the dining area. The top half of the interior walls matched the brick outside while taupe paneling capped with a chair rail covered the bottom half. Someone had managed to hang a few pictures and decorations in the mortar. The space felt cozy and welcomed people to sit and read a paper while they drank.

The L-shaped service counter quartered off the back of the room. On the longer stretch of the L sat a register along with a variety of coffee-making equipment.

At the sound of the bell, a middle-aged woman leaned against the counter. She wore a printed t-shirt tucked into jeans and had a fluff of orange hair that haloed her head.

“You can order up here and sit anywhere you like,” she said with a friendly smile.

Thankful for the change in my pocket, I ordered then asked about the sign while I watched her make my drink. She explained she just needed help during the weekends because that was when she served sandwiches. While the food was delicious, making it slowed her down. So she needed someone to take orders at the counter and deliver them to the tables.

“I have to be honest. The pay will suck. It’d be server wages because of the tables and tips. I’ve had a few kids try it, but they usually leave for something that pays minimum wage.” She handed me the application. “Bring it back if you’re interested.”

I smiled my thanks and took the sheet and my coffee.

“I’m Mona, by the way,” she said, introducing herself.

I offered my hand.

“Tessa.”

“I have to ask. What happened to your eye?”

“I’m probably one of the few people that can honestly say I ran into a door.”

“Clumsy?” she asked, her gaze flicking to the application.

I laughed.

“Not usually.” Hiring a clumsy person in a coffee shop wouldn’t do much for the already slow business. “If I can borrow a pen, I’ll fill this out now.”

Thankfully, the simple form didn’t ask for any prior employment references. When I handed it back to her along with my empty cup, she looked over the application.

“First job?” she asked.

“Yeah. I don’t own a car, and you’re within walking distance from my house.”

She nodded while reading.

“This looks good. If you’re up for it, let’s give it a try this Saturday. Be here by seven-thirty. Wear comfortable shoes, jeans, and a t-shirt. Nothing freaky. We’ll see how that goes.”

I agreed, said goodbye, and left with a smile. Mom would flip and probably not in a good way. Outside, a bus drove past, and I realized I’d stayed longer than I thought. I set out at a brisk pace and made it home in seven minutes.

Gran was quietly talking to Aunt Danielle when I opened the front door. The book lay in Gran’s hands. When they saw me, Gran smiled widely and stood.

“You look much better. Happy. What happened?” She took my hat and mittens and put them in the hanging basket under my coat hook.

“I got a job,” I said with a small smile as I hung my jacket.

I moved to the fridge and started to pull out dinner ingredients. The growing silence wasn’t unexpected.

Spontaneity wasn’t our thing. We were careful people. We talked, planned, and then decided together if the plan would work.

Setting everything on the counter, I grinned at Gran.

“Seriously. It was as if it was meant to be. It’s only on the weekends from seven-thirty until one. The owner, Mona, admitted the pay sucks, but it seems like it’d be a good first job. And it sounds like a few kids left the job already, so if it doesn’t work out, I doubt she’ll be surprised if I quit.”

Gran nodded and helped me put a salad together for dinner. When Mom came home, she wasn’t as surprised about the job as I’d thought. She smiled and said she knew moving was the right thing.

My bruise had faded enough by the next morning that I could hide its remnants with the heavy concealer. Having done my fair share of first days, I wasn’t nervous. Since Mom had already stopped by the school to get me registered, I walked through the doors with my schedule in hand, ready to try again.

The main entrance opened to a modest lobby that smelled like wet sneakers. Two primary hallways branched from the lobby. I spotted the office to the right and went to check in.

Another student dressed in a red, black, and grey plaid, pleated skirt and solid grey sweater layered over a white collared button-up already stood in the office. She leaned comfortably against the counter as she talked to the secretary. I wondered if this school encouraged uniforms.

The secretary looked up at me, and I gave my name. She smiled in welcome, asked the girl to give me a brief tour, and handed us both late slips. Popping a tutti-frutti scented bubble between her teeth, the girl nodded her mostly blonde head and motioned for me to follow. The pink and purple dyed strips of her hair contrasted her otherwise school-girl look.

With a welcoming smile, she introduced herself as Beatriz. After showing me my locker, we went down my list of scheduled classes, finding each room in relation to my locker.

Beatriz’s relaxed manner and easy monologue about the school had me wishing for a friend. Oh, I knew how to make friends. I just knew that I couldn’t keep them. Friends eventually wanted to come over or go out at night. They also eventually asked hard questions I couldn’t answer. At least, not without sounding crazy.

So, when she concluded the tour, I smiled and thanked her but didn’t start up any additional conversation. Instead, I turned and began to put my things into my locker. The tactic usually drove people away from me. Not Beatriz.

“You know, I’m going to like you,” she said from just behind me.

I glanced over my shoulder at her, trying to figure out why she was still there.

“Simple things. Nothing pretentious.” She nodded at the stuff in my locker.

I studied my school supplies. Cheap and bought in bulk, the supplies hadn’t ever warranted much thought. I did my homework with them and moved on to other things. There and gone again.

“You can tell a lot about a person by their locker,” she said. “I’m taking a guess here, but you keep to yourself and don’t really care what people think about you.” She didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Come on. We have first hour together. We can catch the last few minutes.”

It turned out that we had several classes together. Beatriz talked to me in the hall when she had a chance and introduced me to a few other students. Overall, it easily ranked as the best first day ever. I didn’t have to touch a boy once.

That night when my mom got home, she asked if I met anyone interesting. I mentioned Beatriz even though I knew she meant boys. She gave me a level look and told me I needed to put more effort into choosing a boy. I didn’t need the reminder. I knew my seventeenth birthday loomed on the horizon, making my time left to decide short.

I nodded in agreement while I wondered again what would happen to me if I just didn’t choose.