This is part V of a serialized story, see part I, part II , part III and part IV.
“They’re letting me out this afternoon.” The skin on Tim’s toes was damaged by the cold, but his hypothermia wasn’t severe, and after holding him one night in the hospital the doctor cleared Tim’s release.
“That’s great honey, we should go visit Margo- she’s been such a help with Elsie.” Fiona had spent the night on the couch in her husband’s room.
“What about your medicine?”
“Oh, yes, I forgot all about it,” Fiona felt a sweet moment of relief when she realized that she’d made it through her husband’s ordeal without it. It might just be the adrenaline, she thought and resolved to pick up the pills after dropping Tim off at his aunt’s house.
“I don’t think I want to visit, Fi. Let’s just go home,” the thought of talking filled him with dread: all the questions about his accident and blackout; his aunt’s natural flakiness; the advice she’d try to give him… The effort would drain him.
“It’s important Tim. I know you don’t want to, but it’s important to me.”
Tim looked over at his wife. She was tired and haggard-looking. Could he do this one last thing to put her mind at ease?
“Alright, but for no more than an hour, please.”
“Okay, just an hour.”
***
Tim sat at the oak table in his aunt’s farmhouse kitchen. He traced burn marks on the wooden tabletop with his finger; they had a smooth oily feel. Dry bunches of flowers hung from the kitchen ceiling; the stove sat in a brick-lined recession, which met the ceiling under a Normanesque arch. That arch was originally part of a fireplace, and when Tim was a child, he imagined a cauldron of Aunt Margo’s herbs bubbling over the bricks.
But now, a teakettle bubbled on the range. His aunt poured him a cup.
“German chamomile,” she said, “Collected from the old gravel way in the pasture. Do you remember playing in that pasture, Tim?”
He did, but not clearly. Tim wasn’t sure if the memory had faded, or if he was just too tired to think. Fiona had left for their home after dropping him off at Margo’s; she would be back to get him in an hour. Elsie was asleep in the adjacent room. Tim took in a breath full of warm, moist, pasture-flower. It’s round sent relaxed his neck and dissolved some of the tension behind his eyes.
“I’m just so tired, Marge. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“That’s why it’s important you don’t.”
“What?” Tim had an uneasy feeling that Aunt Margo was about to pull him into something; something that he didn’t want to be pulled into again.
The incident happened after Margo’s husband died. Margo met Byron Davies, the brother of Tim’s father, while working as his accountant in the 1960s. She was one of the few women in town with a degree, and continued to work even after she and Byron married. This gave her a cosmopolitan edge, and she was invited to the bank and school boards– Margo was a force in the community.
Then Byron died and Margo quit working. She didn’t have to work anymore: they owned their home; had no children and Byron’s insurance policies were enough to keep Margo comfortably for the rest of her life. At first, people thought that the shock of losing her husband so young had knocked Margo off-balance; even the strongest, most level-headed of people are crushed after losing a spouse.
The thing is, Margo didn’t show any signs of despair. She hardly ever went out, but when she did, she seemed genuinely happy. Rumors circulated: Did she kill Byron? Was it for the money? No one really believed any of that though, Margo loved her husband, she didn’t need cash and even if she did, Margo enjoyed working. Things didn’t become clear until one day when Margo stopped in for pie at the Counter Cafe.
“Hello, Marge. How are you today?” Margo and the waitress, Priscilla, went to high school together.
“Oh, great, Pris. The garden’s really coming in well.” Margo was almost giddy.
“You know, Marge, I admire your resilience, after everything that happened. I don’t think I could be that strong.”
Margo just giggled when she heard that. Priscilla’s husband had left her several years ago; Pris was a very resilient person.
Priscilla stopped pouring her coffee. Is Margo mocking me? Priscilla studied her high-school friend for a few minutes, weighing her up. She always did think she was superior.
Margo saw the look in her friends eyes and giggled again: “No, no. It’s not like that at all. You see, he hasn’t really left me.”
“What?” Margo is crazy, Pris thought and suddenly felt guilty for thinking ill of her.
“He’s still around Pris. I talk to him on the ouija board that I bought for Tim.”
Pris remembered how those had been popular last Christmas; how all the fashionable couples bought them for their children. She always thought that they were a strange gift to give a child.
“Maybe now isn’t the right time to play with that stuff, Marge. I mean, it’s just a game.”
“But it isn’t, Priscilla, it isn’t.”
‘Byron’ would tell things to Aunt Margo. Things that would sometimes come true; things that never came true; and some things that only came true if you looked at them a certain way. But the ouija board was right often enough that Aunt Margo developed a small following of women in the town, women like Priscilla, who were desperate for a little bit of hope.
Margo never charged for the ouija’s services, so when things went wrong, people weren’t inclined to think ill of her, but only to shake their heads and say: “Should’ve never dabbled in that stuff.”
Talking to Byron through the ouija had certain side effects. Things would disappear in Margo’s house, then reappear in unlikely places, for instance, one morning she found her china neatly stacked in the bathtub. There would also be messages, or as Aunt Margo called them, ‘misplaced messages': notes were found behind picture frames or under tiles. These short letters were written in unfamiliar handwriting and addressed to people Margo didn’t know.
“The milk went sour, so I burned it,” read one.
“Not today, Tabitha,” read another.
These little happenings were innocuous, until that special day when Tim visited his Aunt. He was about six years old.
“What are you doing Tim?” Aunt Margo put her ear to the bathroom door, which was locked. She heard the faucet running full blast, and could feel steam leaking out through the cracks around the door. Tim liked to make potions out of her face cream and makeup.
“Just playing.”
“Then can I come in? I need to get my brush.”
“No. He doesn’t want you to.”
“Who?”
“The elf I’m playing with.”
“Now come on Tim, open the door. I’ve got visitors coming in a few minutes and my hair is a mess.”
“No.”
Margo was indulgent with her nephew, to the point of spoiling him, but she wasn’t in the mood for this today. She fetched the spare key from her bedroom, then unlocked the bathroom door. A burst of steam clouded her vision. As the hot air escaped the room, she saw writing in the condensation on the bathroom mirror. The message disappeared as she read it, they were pleas of some sort, she caught the word ‘poisoning’ and was suddenly afraid. Tim began to howl and put his hands over his ears.
“Timothy! Timothy! Listen to me!” Tim was crying uncontrollably. He was also bleeding from his ears.
Margo bundled her nephew out of the room and into her car; Tim didn’t stop crying until they were in the emergency room. The doctor there said Tim had a mild ear infection and gave him a course of antibiotics.
After the bathroom incident, Margo put the ouija board away. She stopped talking to Byron and her fans went elsewhere for spiritual solace. Nothing unusual happened in the house after that, Tim and Margo never talked about the incident, and soon the event faded in Tim’s memory so that he wasn’t even scared to visit his aunt. Margo was very thankful for that.
***
First Haunt flub- I’ve changed things so that Elsie can talk now, which I guess makes her about nine months older than I originally intended! Oh, well…
