Forever and Always

  As I smiled back at Darci I wondered what it must be like to live in a world of ghosts and other things “normal” people couldn’t see. But then, maybe if you’d seen ghosts all your life, they wouldn’t be any more strange to you than the next-door neighbor’s kid.

  “Let’s go get the files,” I said, and Darci and I headed toward the crypt. “How many are here now?” I couldn’t help asking as we walked.

  “All of them,” she said. “Lots of them.”

  I didn’t work her as hard as I had the night before, but last night I’d felt sure that if we left the files in the room, by morning they’d be gone. In the crypt I felt they were safe—except from rats, creeping mildew, and dead people, that is.

  I gave Darci a pile of folders to carry, loaded the big garden cart, and took them the short distance to the long building that was the slave quarters. Cheap, I thought. Instead of the expense of separate buildings, the original builder had made three very long houses, put in interior walls and lots of front doors. Row houses. At least he’d gone to the added expense of putting a deep porch along the fronts.

  When we found that all the doors were locked, Darci looked defeated. “I can’t open locks without any tools,” she said, “and I don’t think you should break the door open.”

  I took a guess, got the key to my front door, and tried it. When I opened the door, I said, “It’s cheaper to make all the locks use the same key.”

  Inside the little room were furnishings more sparse than mine. “I didn’t know they gave me the presidential suite,” I said, and Darci laughed.

  She dumped her folders on the old stained mattress that had cotton ticking protruding from it. “Think this is original to the house?”

  Darci again laughed, making me feel like a comedian.

  “My husband couldn’t make jokes,” she said. “He tried, but they always fell flat. His sister laughed at them but then Bo had had a very unusual childhood.” Her tone was so wistful that I was almost jealous. Alanna said she loved me more than life itself—but she didn’t seem to love me more than she loved playing opposite Denzel Washington.

  I looked down at Darci as she picked up an old folder. I wanted to ask her to tell me more about her husband’s family. I knew her sister-in-law had been raised by a witch—one of the evil kind. Ever since we did a show about a cult of witches that had killed a couple of people as “sacrifices,” I’d been careful to distinguish between good and bad witches. We’d received letters full of rage telling us we hadn’t done our research, that there were witches who didn’t do evil, only good. Ralph had said, “Witches want control. For good or bad, they want control and in my book, control is bad.” The director had said, “Next time we’ll call them tooth fairies. Somebody check the Internet and see if there are any tooth fairy cults.” As for me, I thought those complainers should get a life: Those who do, do. Those who can’t, complain about everybody else’s work.

  I sat down on the other side of the bed, the folders between us. “Now what do we do?” The folders looked much newer than the papers and I wondered when file folders had been invented, and who had sorted the bills of sale.

  “Martha Jefferson,” Darci read, then her voice lowered.

  “This is a bill of sale for her three children.”

  When she looked into empty space I knew what she was seeing. I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t keep the words out of my mouth. “What is it?”

  “A light,” Darci whispered. “The spirits are usually just vague outlines of people. I feel them more than see them, but now there’s a light and—” She paused for a moment.

  “Are you Martha? Do you want to know where your children were sent?”

  I guess I should have been afraid but, instead, the idea of helping my ancestors, or just “my people” as Moses called them, gave me a feeling of elation that I’d never had before. It was a high. Like a drug. I snatched the paper out of Darci’s hand, scanned it and said loud and clear, “Fairway Plantation, Jackson, Mississippi, to a Mr. Neville MacBride.”

  I couldn’t see “them,” so I watched Darci’s face. Her eyes widened for a moment, then she broke into a smile so bright that for a moment there was no sadness in her eyes. She looked at me in wonder. “She left. The woman heard the name and she left. Get another paper, read another name!” Darci said, grabbing the file on top, and when she did her fingers touched mine. “Me too,” she said. “That’s how I feel, too.”

  I knew what she meant. I’d never done anything that made me feel as good as doing this did.

  For the next three hours we went through folders, scanning names and reading them as fast as we could. I knew Darci felt as I did, that we couldn’t stop to think about what we were reading or we’d both start bawling. She would think about her daughter and niece being taken from her and I would think about being put on an auction block and sold.

  Not long ago I’d seen a special on TV about some archaeologists who’d dug up a slave cemetery and analyzed what they’d found. Not surprising, but still horrible, they’d found that the slaves had, basically, been worked to death. Extreme manual labor had worn them out so that few of them lived to middle age.

  What I’d seen on TV was in my head as I speeded up reading the old bills of sale. It didn’t seem to matter that Darci and I were talking over the top of each other or that we were going so fast we could hardly understand ourselves. It seemed that the ghosts could hear us and understand us and that’s what mattered.

  “Uh oh,” Darci said after I read one woman’s name. The slave called “Vesuvius,” I’d read. No last name. Vesuvius, the volcano in Italy. “She’s one of your four. Sure you want to let her go?”

  I hesitated, as though I were considering. “Is she sure she wants to let me go?”

  “The light around her just got stronger. Boy! Is she pretty. I wonder what happened to her after her child was sold? Oh my.”

  “What?”

  “She was—” Darci looked back at the pile of folders.

  “She was branded on her cheek with an R for runaway.”

  I quickly read the name of the place in Alabama her son had been sold to. “Gone?” I asked Darci moments later.

  “Gone.”

  I sighed because I’d miss my midnight companions.

  “So I guess now you’ll have to take her place.” I said this as though it was something Darci had to do.

  “With a houseful of women wanting you? I’d never have a chance. You know, with all these spirits gone, maybe the women in the Big House will be able to visit you at night.”

  “That does it, I’m outta here,” I said, and we laughed. I grabbed another folder and read the names. Even to my unpsychic mind the room felt lighter, less as though it was packed full of centuries of tragedy.

  By midnight we had finished them all. I wanted to burn the evil documents but Darci said no, that they might be needed for something later.

  We went back to my bedroom and I showed her what I’d bought, a fat bottle of Grand Marnier, the wonderful orange liqueur, plus a big chocolate orange.

  We turned out the lights in the room and went to the porch to sit and look at the moonlight. Never in my life had I felt better. It was the first time I’d ever done something so altruistic, something so much for others.

  As we sipped our liqueur out of water glasses, the only kind I had, I turned to Darci. “Do you do this kind of thing often?”

  “Not just like this, but I help…people find things.”

  I knew she wasn’t telling me everything, but then I was starring in a TV series called Missing. Since I’d met her I’d thought how real life missing people could use her talents. Of course, someone like Darci—not that there was anyone else like her on earth—would have put us all out of work.

  “Police?” I asked.

  “Not hardly. People don’t believe anyone can have any ability that they don’t have. If a person can’t see a spirit, then he knows for sure there are no spirits.”

  Why did I th
ink her little speech was meant to distract me? The next minute I felt a tiny pain in the back of my neck so I figured she was trying to redirect my thoughts. “FBI,” I said and the pain stopped.

  “You help the FBI?” I asked. “No, don’t look at me like you’re going to make me fall asleep. I don’t tell what I know.”

  “That’s for sure. You want to tell me about your father and why you know nothing about your grandfather?”

  “Not in the least,” I said, smiling and holding out the box of chocolate orange to her. “What kinds of things have you seen? Maybe I can get a show out of what you know.”

  When she smiled I knew I’d loosened her up. She reached for the chocolate and purposely touched my fingertips. I jerked back but it was too late.

  Sucking on the slice of chocolate, she leaned back in the rocker and looked out at the moonlight. In the distance, to the right was the big old house, silent, dark, ominous.

  “I don’t know where the child is, Linc,” she said, knowing it was the question I’d been leading up to. I wanted to shout, Why can’t you find my kid, but I didn’t. Not yet. Tonight we’d found the spirits of children of some long-dead people, but why hadn’t my child been found?

  “Do you remember when I said ‘holy saints’ when you told me your grandfather was a faith healer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Last night in my dream, only it wasn’t a dream, someone was trying to tell me something. The man we saw in the basement—”

  “The Shape-Changer, Devlin.”

  “Yes. Him. He showed me your son and I felt great power in the child.”

  I looked at her sharply. Was the kid some kind of freak? If Darci “heard” me, she didn’t let on.

  “It seemed to be a specific power, rather like my daughter’s and her cousin’s. They are telekinetics.”

  I looked at her in question.

  “They make things move. They’re young now and it’s only teddy bears and balls, but someday…”

  I turned away so Darci wouldn’t see me cross myself. Here again was something that did not exist.

  “Anyway, I think your son has some specific power. Devlin changed from being your son to being…or showing me a 3D picture of a man in Biblical times. He was walking among crippled and sick people. I didn’t understand it then but when you said your grandfather was a healer…”

  She trailed off, wanting me to understand what she was saying.

  “You think my son may have inherited the gift of healing?”

  “Perhaps.”

  I looked out at the night for a while and thought how a gift like that would tear the kid’s life apart. If he kept his ability a secret he’d feel as though what he could do was something bad and dirty, something that needed to be hidden. If he let people know what he could do, the other children would shun him. No baseball for the kid because the other kids’ parents wouldn’t want someone weird like my son near them.

  Then there’d be the skeptics and the hangers-on. There’d be people who’d want to test him, and people who’d want to use him to make money.

  “You know what I think?” Darci said after a while. “I think the child doesn’t want to be found. I think he knows people want him so they can exploit him, so I think he’s with his mother and hiding somewhere. He’s near here, I can feel it, but I don’t know where exactly.”

  I finished the liqueur and thought about what she was saying. “Could he be as far away as two hundred miles? In East Mesopotamia?”

  “No. He’s much closer than that. My thought is that if your grandfather shares the same talent as your son, then maybe your grandfather could give us an idea where your son might hide.”

  “Could Delphia be holding my son here in this house? Do you think he could be that close? On Thursday they have someone special coming. Do you think it could be—?”

  “A little boy who heals people? No, I don’t think so. I feel that the child is in a sort of prison, but I don’t know if he’s in a prison he’s made or someone else has. Let’s go to bed.”

  “Yes!” I said enthusiastically, making Darci laugh.

  It was late and when I stood up, I realized I was more tired than I thought. We spoke for a few minutes about arranging to rent a car for tomorrow and what she’d tell Delphia and Narcissa, then we said good night. I stood on the porch for a while and watched Darci walk back to the house. This time she’d taped a door latch and the alarm system so she could get back inside easily.

  Smiling, I went back to my bedroom. I felt good, as though I’d made a second Emancipation Proclamation, but at the same time I felt bad about my son. As I climbed into bed, I again wondered what I’d find when I met my grandfather. As I closed my eyes and settled into sleep, I realized I missed my four slave ladies. They were all gone and the emptiness of the room seemed to echo around me. Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I’d call Alanna.

  Darci

  Chapter Eleven

  THE NEXT MORNING, I LAY IN BED FOR A WHILE AND thought. I was beginning to like Linc a lot. He pretended to be cowardly and afraid of things, but as far as I could tell, he wasn’t afraid of anything.

  And he was a good sport, ready to try anything new. He made me laugh with his repeated flirtations with me. I was sure he’d be willing to go to bed with me and have a good time, but I knew there could never be a lasting relationship between us. He was too in awe of me. When I touched him I felt his wondering what I could do. Could I get him a role that would win him an Oscar? Could I put a spell on a movie that would make it sell magnificently?

  No, I was too much of a freak to Linc for there ever to be anything but friendship between us. My husband, Adam, was the only person who knew what I could do yet never so much as thought about using my abilities for personal gain. Adam loved me for myself; what I could do with my mind was of no more importance than if I could speak another language. As a man might say, “My wife speaks French,” my husband could say, “My wife can kill people with her mind.”

  In the precious time Adam and I were together, I used to tease him that I was like Samantha on the old TV show. Her husband did everything to get his wife to be “normal.” “And it always backfired,” Adam said once, kissing me on the nose.

  Adam never tried to exploit my abilities. One of our few fights had been when one of his investments had failed and I’d asked him if he’d like for me to see if I could change it. Adam had become angry and it took me a while to understand why. The witch who’d kidnapped him when he was a child, the woman I’d killed, had used the mirror to foresee about the stock market so she could make money. Adam was angered at the idea of using supernatural power to make money.

  He viewed what I did with the FBI as a proper way to use my abilities and stayed with me as I went through the files. He was always there to hold me when I saw a vision of something too horrible to bear. There were times when I saw things that had been done to a child that so upset me that Adam would carry me to bed and make me rest. If I was too upset, he’d make love to me until the images of horror were gone.

  After breakfast, Linc and I got into the car we’d rented; it was raining outside, and I couldn’t stop thinking about my husband. I closed my eyes to keep the tears from running down my cheeks.

  “Like to talk to me?” Linc asked softly.

  His concern and his perception made me smile. “How about if you tell me all about your childhood,” I said, then began projecting that thought into his head.

  “How about if I tell you all about your mother?” he shot back.

  That thought so disconcerted me that I let up on my True Persuasion of him. “Okay,” I said. “You win. Let’s compromise. Tell me about your show. I’ve never been on a TV set before.”

  When Linc turned into an actor and started entertaining me, I realized that both of us had escaped having to tell anything about our true selves.

  This morning I’d told Narcissa that there was an emergency in my family so I had to be away for a day, and of course I’d have to take Lin
c with me.

  Narcissa was in a tizzy, very nervous. “That’s all right, dear,” she said. “I don’t know what we’ll do today because someone has broken into the house.”

  I must have looked as shocked as I felt because Narcissa patted my hand.

  “It’s all right. There’s no danger, but we do need to be cautious. Delphi has men coming today to put bars on the basement windows.”

  It was at that point that I realized she meant what Linc and I had done. I wasn’t an actor but I tried to keep my expression of worry. “Did someone steal something?”

  “Oh yes,” Narcissa said, looking as though she might cry. “Our family records. We had a locked room full of the history of our family, of our forefathers and their contributions to our great country.”

  It wasn’t easy to not pull back in revulsion at what she was saying. This place had been built with money earned by breeding and selling human beings. Ghosts were still crying over the horror of what had been done to them over a hundred years ago, but this woman was talking about the glory of her ancestors.

  Narcissa was so upset that she didn’t seem to notice the way I pulled back from her.

  “Just be sure and be here tomorrow, dear. We have a little surprise for our guests.”

  I wanted to get away from her so I didn’t ask who or what the surprise was. I wanted to get into the car with Linc and drive very far away from that dreadful house.

  When Linc and I were alone, I found him to be good company. He was full of funny stories of things that had happened on the set of Missing and, okay, I was curious about my mother. All my life I’d been scared to death of the woman. When I was growing up, she used to dump me on one family in town after another, as though I were an orphan. By all rights, I guess I should hate her. But I don’t. In my life she was always a remote goddess on an ice mountain who came and went as she pleased, did with me as she pleased.

  I guess the real reason I didn’t hate her is because where she put me had been so very interesting. She’d say, “You’ll be staying with the Holdens,” and five minutes later a car would show up. Always, without exception, the family she put me with would be in a mess. There were wife beatings, a case of incest, masses of adultery, and children who were abused or neglected. Putnam was small but it ran the gamut of human behavior and emotion.