Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (14 page)

But overall, Simon’s beliefs were happy and hopeful ones. The mystical things Ivy had seen since arriving in Laramie City had only confirmed her suspicions that this town, or the people living here, was an “intersection point” where important spiritual waves all met. Neil was obviously a conductor of these vibrations, what with all the garbage being flung at his head. With three believers and a conductor at the same table, they should be able to rustle up some answers.

So now, at twilight, they all sat around the dining room table. Harley had asked Ivy to clear the table of everything except the tablecloth, notepaper sheets, lead pencils, a couple of lit candles, and a glass of water.

“What’s the glass of water for?” Zeke asked excitedly.

Neil sneered. “So the unseen powers have something to pour on your head.”

“Where’s the whiskey you promised me?” Rodney Shortridge bellowed.

It had been Ivy’s idea to take Shortridge out of lockup in the Union Pacific complex where Neil had his office. After what he’d said about the skull with the earrings, she suspected he might have some powers of his own, even if they were only fueled by bug juice. “Yes, Rodney. It’s right here.” Ivy grabbed the bottle from the sideboard and poured the former cattle rancher a tumbler full.

He chugged it with gusto then looked around bright-eyed, expecting more. “Where are the musicians?”

Neil frowned. “Musicians?”

“Yes,” said Shortridge. “Isn’t this supposed to be some kind of a fandango? Where are the guitar players, the fiddles?”

Harley snorted, taking his place at the head of the table. He reached one hand out to Ivy and one to Shortridge. “Yes, Mr. Shortridge. We let you out of lockup so you could attend a party. Now, everyone join hands.”

Ivy giggled to see the distaste on Neil’s face when compelled to hold hands with both Shortridge and Zeke. “Shouldn’t we turn out the lamps, Harley?”

He shook his head. “There’s no need for darkness. This way, no one accuses anyone of trickery.”

“Yes,” said Ivy. “I’ve heard about those ‘mystics’ who use pulleys and wires.”

Harley’s warm smile heartened her. “No pulleys and wires here. You can check under the table.”

Neil yanked his hand away from Shortridge’s as though it were a turd. “What’s the point of all this spook hunting?”

“You have to hold his hand,” said Harley, “or the circle will be broken.”

With the utmost disgust, Neil touched his fingertips to Shortridge’s again, and Harley continued in a new, resonant voice, rich with British tones, calling out to some unseen spirit.

“We need help. Can we obtain it? The spirit which encourages us to pray now will drive evil far from us and bring close the helpful spirits who may answer our petitions . . .”

Instantly, the table began to vibrate. The surface of the water in the glass rippled with a distant thunder as though a train was approaching. Although the sun had set, the room seemed to become gradually lighter.

At first Ivy thought it might be Neil’s jittery, angry knees wobbling the table. So she looked under the table and saw that Neil was rooted to the spot, immobile, perhaps in fear at what was happening.

“Do you feel that?” Zeke cried. “The spiritual vibrations are moving the table!”

Neil and Shortridge started laughing at Zeke but stopped cold when Zeke shouted in a high wavering tone, “My mother is here! I feel her presence, standing by my side!”

Harley even seemed surprised by this, as Mrs. Vipham was not the spirit they were trying to contact. He shared a quizzical look with Ivy. But the table itself began to elevate, lifting Zeke and Neil’s side a good five inches off the floor. Oddly, the pencils and glass of water didn’t move, as though stuck to the cloth with glue.

Zeke leaped to his feet, crying at the ceiling, “Ma, I can feel you! You are happy on the other side.”

Suddenly a hail of rapping was showered upon the tabletop, as though a dozen tiny fists knocked on the wood. Neil was the first to break the circle, also leaping to his feet and staring down at the offending table. Only Ivy, Harley, and Shortridge continued holding hands as the rapping continued. As the table rose to such a height Ivy could only see Zeke’s and Neil’s bulging eyeballs over the edge of it, now there came an all-encompassing whistling. It engulfed the room, although the shutters didn’t rustle one bit. Ivy wondered if one of those tornadoes she’d heard about was approaching, and she looked fearfully to Harley. Zeke whooped with glee.

“Harley!” said Ivy. “Is this a storm?”

Harley looked a little fearful. “Not unless the storm is Zeke’s mother.”

“How can this be?” Neil shouted. He gripped the edge of the table but couldn’t pull it down from its suspended position. So he tore around to the lower side and bounced his ass on its surface. It didn’t budge an inch. In his intense frustration he even grabbed a carving knife from the sideboard and waved it beneath the upraised table legs to ensure there were no hidden wires.

Meanwhile, a religious fervor came over Zeke’s face as he gestured to the heavens. “I’m so glad you’re happy on the other side, Ma! What? Who is over there with you?” Zeke’s face abruptly fell to one of crushed anger. “Ernest? That greengrocer from Downer’s Grove?” He shot daggers of accusation at Harley. “You half-baked charlatan! Where’s my father? Why is my mother on the other side with a vegetable seller from our hometown?”

Ivy surprised herself by answering for Harley. “Zeke, be quiet and listen to your mother! If she’s trying to tell us something, you’re making it impossible—”

“Ma!” Zeke shook a fist at the ceiling. “How could you do this to me, Ma?”

But things took an even stranger turn then.

The feeble notes of a musical instrument floated over their heads. The table heaved with one last violent motion, tossing Neil to the floor before settling on the ground in the normal manner of a table.

Everyone stared at the motionless table, but Zeke shouted, “Hey! That’s my harmonica!”

Indeed, incredibly enough, a harmonica dipped and bobbed in the air toward them, emitting distant melodic strains. It bounced as though directed by a cosmic puppeteer, and Neil bounded toward it, swishing the carving knife in the air above it to cleave the invisible string that held it.

“Are you familiar with that tune?” Harley asked Zeke.

Zeke shook his head vigorously. “No, can’t say that I—”

It was Shortridge’s turn to leap to his feet and make an ass of himself. “I know this song!” he shrieked. The harmonica came closer, played as though by a tentative child just learning the instrument. “That’s a song my wife used to play! O, Minerva, what are you trying to tell me?”

Harley asked, “Your wife played the harmonica? No, no, don’t try to grab it! Let us see what happens.”

The harmonica glided straight to Shortridge. Shortridge stared at the shiny instrument with bulging eyes, hands shaped into eagle’s claws. “O, Minerva,” he intoned. “What are you telling me from the other side?”

Neil interrupted the intense moment. “This is just magic—all smoke and mirrors!” He pointed accusingly at Harley. “You’ve learned some flapdoodle magic in your travels and are using it to torment this poor man!”

Ivy surprised herself by shouting, “Shut up, Neil! You’ve seen for yourself there are no strings, no mirrors, no smoke! Poor Rodney’s dead wife is trying to communicate with us from beyond the veil, and you’re ruining it all.”

But then Shortridge’s eyeballs started rolling back into his skull. It sounded as though he whispered, “Oh, cinnamon! Where are you going to run to?” before collapsing entirely. He fell like a bag of bones, his chin hitting the table’s edge, his ass missing his chair, winding up as a puddle on the floor.

* * * *

Neil had no intention of leaping to help Shortridge. Shortridge had brought this all on himself by first getting wallpapered and second falling under Captain Park’s spell and believing in this hogwash. No doubt he was hallucinating under the effects of both when he’d started babbling about hiding some cinnamon.

The harmonica, however—that Neil couldn’t explain. The moment Shortridge had swooned the harmonica had gently settled itself onto the table directly in front of his body, ceasing to play its tune. It
was
almost as if whoever had been playing it had left the room. The rapping of tiny fists stopped completely, and an eerie calm entered the room. However, the otherworldly light that had engulfed the dining room continued, oddly vibrating the very air.

Neil couldn’t deny these things, nor could he explain them.

As the other three fussed over the unconscious Shortridge, Neil decided to do something uncustomary. He went to the sideboard to pour himself a whiskey. He wasn’t a drinking man normally, but the scene he’d just witnessed was enough to drive a man to drink.

He had just lifted the tumbler to his lips when he was bashed in the back of the skull with a heavy object. “Great balls of fire!” he sputtered angrily. This was too much! He was going to suffer a brain injury if these items continued to be flung at his head!

Putting the tumbler down without sipping, he scooped up the object, which was, of course, the harmonica. Only now it was mangled beyond recognition, as though melted in a fire.

Slowly, cautiously, Neil turned to face the room. On the table before where Shortridge had sat, of course there was no harmonica, only the glass of water that had managed to remain unspilled. Neil looked down to the twisted object in his hand. It was warm and even wet, perhaps with the saliva of the person who had played it.

An unearthly shudder raced up and down his spine, stiffening his nipples almost erotically against his shirt. This, of course, brought to mind fucking, a subject that could distract Neil even in the worst of times. And the moment the memory of Ivy’s plump, rosy cheekbones softly brushing against his caused his cock to elongate, an unseen hand distinctly squeezed his ass.

Neil’s prick expanded with pleasure. But when he realized the other three conscious people in the room were over by Shortridge shaking and slapping him—and that he would only
want
to be touched by two of those three people—he shuddered with horror instead. He looked over both shoulders—of course, there was no one there. Grabbing the tumbler, he gulped down the whiskey as fast as he could, lest something else interrupt him again.

He closed his eyes and allowed the fiery liquid to burn his virgin stomach.
Ah, that’s better
. Instantly he felt spoony, and he allowed the grogginess to cast a fog over what was happening.
In fact, if I move to join the others, Shortridge might distract me from—

Unseen ghostly lips now moved tenderly along the side of his neck. Neil froze like a statue, feeling the distinct licking of a spirit tongue along his jugular.

“I was strangled before I was thrown into that shit pile,” said the mournful woman into his ear.

Great balls of fire
.

Before Neil could even halfway collect himself, the woman continued. “I come to warn you that even more citizens will be driven back into darkness and ignorance before this is over.” She had a sad lilt to her voice, yet her message seemed to contain hope. Now her tiny feminine hand caressed his chest with thin, insubstantial fingers that prodded him sexually.

Feeling even more absurd, Neil whispered, “Mrs. Vipham? Have you come to tell Zeke something from your place with the greengrocer?”

The spirit mouth now distinctly kissed the side of his neck. A succubus from beyond the grave, trying to seduce him! The thought that it was the ghost of Zeke’s mother should have repelled him, but Neil was perversely aroused. As the hand probed his chest and moved down his abdomen, the sensual siren whispered, “There will be a fire tonight at seven o’clock in the Elks Club building. All will be revealed then.”

“What exactly will be revealed?” Neil inquired.

The hand descended to his crotch and squeezed his prick boldly. Neil gasped, his eyes sliding shut. Then the hand, and the dubious specter it was attached to, vanished. Neil knew this because the light that had drenched the room suddenly dimmed, as though a lamp had been blown out, although none had.

He was dumbfounded. Nothing remotely like this had ever happened to him. He was certain he’d just been carried away by the foolish sham of the entire séance. What was the first thing the succubus had said to him? “I was strangled before I was thrown into that shit pile.” Well, why would Zeke’s mother be talking about a shit pile? Greengrocers might create a sort of compost pile in which they tossed their vegetable peelings, the odds and ends, or rotten produce they couldn’t sell. Perhaps that was it.

Wait
. Rodney’s wife, Minerva. Neil himself, along with Ace Moyer, had discovered her body in a manure pit. She had been shot, so he’d assumed that was the entire story. It was simple enough to assume that the snake they’d discovered coiled around her rifle had unintentionally shot her and then she had somehow stumbled into the manure pit.

The specter who had just been fondling him so erotically was Rodney Shortridge’s dead wife!

Now Neil’s friends were helping Shortridge back into his chair. “Oh, cinnamon!” he was still wailing while Harley brought the entire whiskey bottle to him.

Ivy came to Neil and clutched his arm. “Neil! I know that song Rodney’s dead wife was playing.”

“Cinnamon?” Neil asked groggily.

“That’s what I thought at first, too. But the lyrics actually go ‘O, Sinner Man.’ Someone is telling us the murderer can run but he can’t hide.”