The Curse of Dark Root: Part Two (Daughters of Dark Root Book 4) (7 page)

“I miss my baby,” I said as we slowed down.

“If you don't get some adventure in your life, you're going to end up like Aunt Dora.”

“This whole year has been an adventure,” I reminded her. Still, I tried to imagine myself forty years older, wearing a checkered apron and baking pies. “Aunt Dora's life doesn't seem so bad. She's got her garden and the TV.”

“And bad knees and bursitis.”

“That's because she's old, not because she led a boring life. I'll bet she was a wild woman in her day.”

Ruth Anne, shrugged. “It's hard to say. We don't know much about her history.” She paused, slowly licking lips. “Except that she isn't our biological aunt, but I love her as if she is.”

I sucked in my breath. Ruth Anne knew about Aunt Dora. It made sense. She probably remembered the Council's final years. What else did she know?

Before I could quiz her, she slammed on the breaks, launching me violently forward. I lurched against my belt. “What the hell?” I demanded.

“Sorry 'bout that,” she said, backing the vehicle up. “I was expecting the arrow, but not one so small.”

“Arrow?” I looked around. There was nothing but trees. “Where?”

She pulled to the side of the road and motioned to a stumpy pine. A small white arrow had been crudely painted on it, indicating a concealed path into the woods. “Honey, we're home.”

We climbed out and unloaded several items of gear, which Ruth Anne stuffed inside her backpack. She handed me two bottles of water. “Here, Eeyore, take these.”

“I wish everyone would stop referencing my sadness,” I said, taking the water. “No one understands.”

Ruth Anne lowered her eyes and slammed the car door. “Some of us do, Mags. You're not the only who has suffered in life.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, leaping over a puddle to catch up.

She followed the path, which led to another arrow, which opened into an even narrower path between a clump of trees. Her hands gripped the straps of her backpack as she expertly dodged the twisted limbs and undergrowth.

“Hey! Don't ignore me. I said I was sorry.” I grabbed her arm. “You know me––I open my mouth without thinking.”

“You're right about that.”

“It's just so hard, Ruth Anne. I've never had to do anything like this. And now I have a baby to take care of––which is great––but all I really want to do is to crawl into a dark cave and burrow there forever.”

She took off her glasses, her brown eyes misting. “I do know how you feel, but we can't give up. If we want to honor the dead, we need to keep living. If not for ourselves, then for them.”

I grabbed her and hugged her.

“It's alright.” She returned her glasses to her face as she pulled away. “I know you didn't mean anything by it. And it's not like I talk about it, much.”

“Or ever.”

“Or ever,” she agreed.

We finished our walk in silence, trekking along the overgrown road, following sporadic arrows like a map through Wonderland. Ruth Anne's back bowed, and it wasn't because of her heavy backpack.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked as our steps aligned, walking on leaves too wet to crunch beneath our feet.

“You really want to talk about me?” she asked, missing a step and nearly stumbling on a stone.

“Yes. Please.”

Ruth Anne wiped her nose with the back of her arm, grumbled about catching a cold. “What do you want to know?”

“Her name?”

The tightness of her expression dissolved and the corners of her mouth turned up in a secret smile. “Violet. Her name was Violet.” Ruth Anne contemplated the line of the trees ahead of us, her body present but her mind somewhere else. “She was beautiful. Dark skin. Dark eyes. Black and silver hair that looked like nighttime in the desert.”

“How did you meet her?”

She leaned against a tree, setting her pack by her feet. “My car broke down somewhere outside of Jackson, Mississippi. I was cursing and kicking my tire when a beautiful woman in a beat-up pickup offers me a ride, and takes me to her town.” Ruth Anne let out a hearty laugh as she reminisced. “The 'town' turned out to be a village in the swamplands, a mostly black community where everybody seemed to be related to everyone else. They had the strangest dialects, and they shared everything: Food, shelter, men.

“I was fascinated by this place, maybe because I missed home. By this time, my dad had died and I was on my own. So I stayed the night, and then the next. A couple of days turned into weeks and then months. I was there nearly a year. They didn't have calendars––they didn't have much of anything, honestly. But they had each other.”

Ruth Anne paused, taking a moment to find the next arrow. I pointed to one partially covered with brush. She grabbed her backpack and followed it, with me tagging along behind. The hike left me unusually winded and light headed, but I was determined to keep up.

“They were witches,” she continued. “But different from Sasha and the Council. They practiced ritual magick for health and luck, and there were rumors of conjuring and summoning, too.” She shook her head. “Violet's mother was the leader and Violet was studying to replace her. Because she made trips to town for supplies and could read, she'd learned a few things. Healing mostly. Before Violet introduced them to Band-Aids and antibiotics, they'd relied solely on herbs, chicken bones, and leeches for their cures. But Violet convinced her mother there was a place for the present as well as the past in their community. My girl was a maverick and everyone loved her.”

“I wish I had met her.”

“Me too. In many ways, it all seemed very familiar to me. Different witches, different geography, same story. For a long time, I told myself that was the reason I stayed. And then one day, I realized I loved her.”

“Did she love you back?”

“I think so. She said it once. And I felt it…” She pounded her chest with her closed fist. “Here.”

We reached a spot in the woods, where the trees circled a large old house, now covered in lichen and vines. The windows were missing, boarded up, or broken. A wide porch on the front of the house showcased where grand double doors once stood. Decaying pillars held up the remains of a decaying balcony. The home seemed straight out of the Antebellum South, only smaller.

“So, what happened?”

Ruth Anne studied the house as her fingers jingled the car keys in her pocket. “Violet died in a fire, trying to save a child from possession. The exorcism took, but not without cost.” She bit her lip, not making eye contact. “The house was a lot like this one, actually. Violet was trapped upstairs when the entity took hold of her, keeping her there while the place burned down around her. The child got out at least.”

“Oh, Ruth Anne! I can't imagine!”

She shook her head. “I should have gone with her, but I didn't. We were arguing. I wanted to bring her to Dark Root and she wanted to stay in her village.” She picked up a rock and threw it at one of the trees, knocking a chunk of bark from the trunk. “My last words to her were not kind. I regret it every day.”

I felt my sister's pain, and the horror of what she suffered. And the grief and guilt that came with not being able to say a proper goodbye.

“I understand,” I said, touching her shoulder.

She sucked in a deep breath and exhaled. “Thanks. I don't like to talk about it, for obvious reasons, but now you know.” She dug the toe of her hiking boot into the wet earth. “But we had nine months, Maggie. That's more than most people get. I wouldn't change one moment of it, except for the very end. Those were the best days of my life.”

My sister stepped in closer, whispering, which was odd because we were alone in the woods––the rustling of the wind through the leaves the only sound. Even the birds had abandoned this place. Her eyes flashed and she got that strange crooked smile again. “You'll think I'm crazy, but I was hoping she'd haunt me. That's how I got into the ghost hunting biz. I thought maybe she'd throw me a sign sometime.”

“Has she?”

“Not yet. Still, I hope. Isn't that wrong?”

“So wrong,” I said, a smile cracking my face. “But I know the feeling.”

With that, we both knew the conversation had ended and we turned our full attention to the house.

“So, this is the place?” I asked.

“Yep. Quaint, huh?”

“In a spooky, dystopian kind of way. It could use a paint job.”

“And the rain gutters need cleaning.”

“Maybe a door.”

“I'll send my contractor over.”

I crossed my arms. “What the hell is this place, anyway? And how did you find it?”

“It's Sycamore Manor. Built in the late 1800s by a man who'd lost his wife in a fire, coincidentally, back in Tennessee. He rebuilt a miniature version of his house here, wanting to live out his days alone.”

“A romantic, huh?”

“Yes. And rich. Legend says the original house belonged to his dead wife, and he rebuilt it to honor her. He even built an altar somewhere in the house, with a flame that always burned, hoping to call her spirit back. I'm not sure if he ever made contact with his dead wife, but his own body was found by a furrier in the early 1920s, dead as a doornail, sitting on the front porch.”

“So you think it’s haunted?”

“People who've stumbled across this place swear they've seen shapes, moving mists, creeping shadows, or unexplained sounds coming from the house.”

“So, is it his ghost haunting the place, or did he actually call her spirit?”

Ruth Anne winked and walked towards the entrance, motioning for me to join her. “No idea. But I personally like to think they finally found each other, and now roam this house together. If they couldn't be together in life, maybe there's hope in death, right?”

This wasn't just Ruth Anne's hobby––it was her personal quest to understand death, in the hope she'd also find life.

“I like that idea a lot,” I admitted. “Now let's go find some ghosts.”

I followed her inside through the web-covered doorway, into a dank, dark, vacuous room.

“That a girl,” Ruth Anne said as she handed me my wand from her backpack. “This beats the hell out of watching Matlock with Aunt Dora, doesn't it?”

FIVE

Break On Through (To the Other Side)

AS WE MADE our way inside Sycamore Manor, the gem at the end of my wand blinked like the first star in the night sky. The trees encroaching into the yard endeavored to block out the sun. The house was a quiet mausoleum––cold and stale and stone––and I found it hard to believe even a ghost would want to live here. Beyond the cold, there was an unsettling energy that hung in the air, and my first inclination was to run back outside.

“Feels like a meat locker in here,” Ruth Anne said as she rummaged through her pack. “Whatever's in here must be sucking off all the heat.”

My wand had stopped blinking, the gem now permanently aglow. We weren't alone.

I hugged my chest, wishing I had thought to bring a sweater. One thing I had learned was that when spirits were present, it was usually cold, no matter the season.

Ruth Anne drew out a flashlight and cast it into the gloom of the abandoned estate. Shadows revealed themselves, then disappeared into the cracks and crevices of the walls. Something slithered near our feet and I jumped back, clutching my wand as I suppressed a squeal. My sister seemed undisturbed as she went about hooking up her recording devices and cameras.