“Fifteen years ago,” Breslow said. “That’s around the time that Regina Porter died.”
“Wanna know when Scoffland began submitting invoices?” Gil sang.
“Let me guess,” said Heath. “Nineteen seventy-one.”
“Ding, ding, ding!” said Gil. “We have a winner! And by winner I mean that in August of nineteen seventy-one there was an invoice for six hundred dollars, which was promptly paid, and about a week later, there was a second invoice for twenty thousand dollars, and that was also promptly paid.”
I gasped. “He was the worker who covered up the door to the playroom!”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Gil said. “He must’ve figured out that Everett was behind the door he sealed over at Porter Manor on the day that Everett disappeared, and he blackmailed Mr. and Mrs. Porter for years.”
“So what was the purpose of going to the house the night he was murdered?” I asked. “If he was going to try to blackmail Glenn, then why would he uncover the door, open it up, put the planchette there, and cover it back up?”
“That’s for you fools to figure out,” said Gilley. “But hold off on that until I tell you what else I found.”
“What?” we all said in unison.
“Well, I looked into anything spooky that might’ve been going on in Valdosta which could explain the Sandman’s presence—”
“We don’t need that anymore, Gil,” I interrupted. Heath eyed me curiously and I explained, “The planchette was destroyed back in ’seventy-one. Sarah said Mama destroyed it. . . .” My voice trailed off as I realized what I’d just said.
“Destroyed it?” Gil said. “Then how did it show up in the playroom?”
“Hold on,” I said, quickly tapping my screen to get back to my photos. After pulling up the one of the planchette, I said, “This is either the same planchette or a copy good enough to call the Sandman up.”
“Oh, it’s an original,” Gil said. “Remember, I showed it to my historian buddy, and we were able to see the faint outline of Padesco’s signature carved into the silver. If it weren’t for the dents around the rim of the crystal, the thing would’ve been in mint condition.”
I used my fingers to expand the image and do a close-up of the planchette. Sure enough there were small nicks and a few dents to the silver near where the crystal was. “So, maybe Mama destroyed the crystal, but not the planchette, and that was good enough to lock away the Sandman,” I said.
“It would’ve been,” Gil said. “According to Padesco’s journal, which I’ve had a great time reading through, it takes a perfectly unflawed crystal with fairly soft vibrations to be able to create a window big enough for something as powerful as the Sandman. The original crystal would have been amethyst, no less than sixteen or seventeen carats, and it would have had to have been absolutely flawless, which is a seriously rare find.”
“So someone duplicated the gem,” I said.
“Yeah, but who?” Heath said.
“Don’t know,” Gilley said. “But I know who it’s not.”
“Who is it not?” the three of us said in unison.
“Sarah Porter.”
I wanted to say “Of course,” but I was curious about Gilley’s reasoning, so I said, “Why do you say that?”
“About eight months ago a maid who worked for her started posting videos to her Facebook page showing objects being tossed around Sarah’s house of their own free will. In one of the videos, you can even see Sarah Porter huddling under her piano, crying hysterically. Shortly after that, the maid quit, saying the house had suddenly become haunted and she wanted no part. A little while after that, Sarah began checking herself into the mental clinic for long weekends. At one point her house was even listed for sale, but no one wanted it, so it came back off the market. Oh, and I also found a power of attorney for Sarah held by her brother, so if you guys think he’s trying to hurt her with the Sandman, I’d make sure she’s got some protection until you can shut that thing down.”
The three of us looked back toward the hospital. Sarah hadn’t mentioned anything about that, at least not with me and Heath in the room. “Did she say anything about the Sandman coming back to you, Beau?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head and looking a little shocked.
“That son of a bitch Porter,” Heath hissed, a flash of anger returning to his eyes.
But then the most random thought came into my head about an e-mail Linda had sent me a year earlier when she was struggling so much to deal with her husband’s affair and the divorce. There was a line in that e-mail that played across my mind’s eye, and it changed all of my thinking. “What?” Heath asked me, and I realized I’d been staring down the street as so much began to come together.
“Gil,” I said, already heading toward Beau’s car.
“Yeah?”
“We’ll have to call you back.” With that, I hung up and motioned for the boys to get in without any further explanation because I needed to work through the sequence of events on my own. I pointed in the direction I wanted to go and Beau pulled out of the space. It took us only two minutes to get to the destination and I got out of the car, shrugging out of my fishing vest, and tossing it on the seat. I didn’t feel like I needed it for what I was about to do. I then stood for a moment looking up at the giant elm tree that I swore I’d stood under just a few days earlier. “Where are we?” Heath asked as he came up next to me. I noticed he’d taken off his vest too.
“My grandparents’ house.”
“Looks empty,” he told me.
“It’s owned by a nice couple. He’s an administrator at the hospital and she works there as a nurse.” I turned slightly and saw the giant building we’d just come from just over the trees to my right. “I met them the last time I was home and missing Mama. Behind here there’s a trail that leads down to the river, and she and I used to take long walks together there.”
I didn’t explain more than that; I simply headed up the side of the house to where the yard met the woods and the trail. The three of us walked in silence and for the second time since I’d been home, I felt the spirit of my mother come close to me and wrap me in the most comforting, loving quilt of energy.
I spoke to her in my mind as I walked, telling her how sorry I was for all that she’d been through as a little girl. How proud I was of how brave she’d been. How amazed and blessed I felt to have had her as a mother. The whole time I thought she did nothing but listen and love me, and for just a moment, for just a tiny second, I forgot that she had crossed over, and believed that she was there with me, walking to a place we used to often visit.
At last we arrived at a large boulder that butted up next to a giant elm. I climbed up the boulder just as I’d watched my mother do every time we came here. “What’s in here?” she’d say, leaning in toward a hollowed-out section of the tree’s trunk. I’d laugh and take wild guesses. “A bunny! A plate of cookies! A magic carpet!”
Mama would lean her head in the large hole and pretend to look around, and then she’d pull it out and say, “Why, no, love dumplin’! It’s not any of that!” She’d then put her hand in really far, which told me the hollow was fairly deep, and then she’d pull her fist out, open her palm, and there would be all sorts of individually wrapped candies. “All I found in there were these!”
I loved coming here with her. She always made each moment with her feel magical.
“Hey, now,” Heath said with a bit of alarm. “Deputy, you see that? Is that blood?”
I closed my eyes on top of that boulder, the memory of my mother atop it fading as I thought about poor Linda. I knew she’d come here. I knew Mama had told her all about what’d happened that day, how she’d hidden the planchette in this hollowed-out tree, but she’d kept that sugar dish on her vanity to remind her of what she’d done. Of the life she’d taken. Of the pe
nance she’d have to pay one day.
It made me remember something else. Something a bit out of context that now made total sense to me. Not long into Mama’s illness I’d overheard Daddy yelling at her. He almost never raised his voice to her, so it was particularly startling to me. He’d yelled, “Goddammit, Madelyn! Why don’t you fight? You’re just giving up, and I can’t lose you! I can’t! So fight!”
He’d yelled that last part so loud at her, his anger fueled by his desperation to keep her with us. But even from the early days of her diagnosis, she’d seemed resigned to the fact that she was dying. That there was little hope. I’d never acknowledged that because it was too painful to consider, but now I knew that it was true.
My mother had died of cancer, but it was the guilt that’d killed her. Guilt over an act of self-defense that she could never forgive herself for.
For a moment I ignored Heath and Breslow, who were busy examining the drops of blood littering the trail, and instead I poked my head into the hollow and saw something catch a small ray of sunlight that was peeking in behind me. Reaching down, I lifted out several pieces of the smashed crystal and the wooden cigar box my mother had kept the planchette in. Inside the box were a dozen small refrigerator magnets in the shape of fruit. A pineapple, a banana, an apple. I remembered what I’d told little DeeDee about getting some magnets, and I wondered if in some strange and almost magical way our two worlds really had met between two planes of existence where the laws of time and space didn’t apply, but words spoken between two souls would have weight and measure and meaning when we went back to our separate realities.
Had DeeDee taken my advice and covered the broken planchette with them, ensuring that the Sandman would remain locked down? There was a part of me that truly hoped it’d gone that way.
I set the cigar box with the magnets back inside the hollow. Then I examined the pieces of the smashed crystal, which were beautiful, and it was hard to imagine something once so perfect had been part of such a terrible instrument.
“Look at this,” Heath said, pointing to a large stick with blood on it.
“Linda was attacked here,” Breslow said.
“You think Glenn Porter could’ve done it?” Heath suggested, not noticing that I was shaking my head.
Breslow too shook his head. “No, couldn’t have been him, Heath. We were in his office at the time she was attacked.”
“Well, then who?”
I cleared my throat and Heath looked up at me.
“Whoa,” he said, seeing the fragmented gem in my hand. “What’cha got there, babe?”
“The original crystal from the planchette. Mama hid it here and told only one person in the whole world what it was and where it was hidden.”
“Who?”
I jumped down from the boulder and said, “I’ll tell you, but first we need to head over to Glenn Porter’s office before it’s too late.”
Breslow insisted that he call in the scene of Linda’s crime to one of his other deputies before we ran back to the car. I knew he didn’t like to leave all that evidence out in the open, but I felt a sense of urgency that made me push him to heed me.
He drove quite fast through the streets, which I was grateful for, and still it took us a bit to reach Porter’s office, which further cemented my theory that Breslow was right and Glenn couldn’t have been the one to attack Linda. She was attacked probably right before or even during the time we were interviewing him, and Wells was alerted to the scene while we were on our way to Sarah’s house. Porter couldn’t have attacked Linda and gotten back to his office in time for us to interview him, and he certainly couldn’t have left his office and attacked her before we reached Sarah’s house. When we were nearly to Porter’s office, Gilley called. “I hacked into Scoffland’s bank records. There’s a deposit to his account for ten thousand dollars the day before he was murdered. I don’t have the corresponding invoice yet, but I’m working on it.”
“Don’t sweat it,” I told him. “I already know who paid him.”
“Are you going to fill me in?” he asked.
“Yes. Tonight, when I bring you that ice-cream cone.”
“Don’t forget the sprinkles!”
“Okay, Gil, gotta go.” I hung up as we had just arrived at Porter’s office, and no sooner were we out of the car and dashing up the first set of stairs than the police radio in Beau’s car crackled with noise. He hurried back to the car and listened through the open window, then took the mic, yelled into it before throwing it down, and took off running up the steps at a much more urgent speed. He passed Heath and me without even pausing and we chased after him, hampered slightly by the rush to put on our vests. “What’s going on?” I yelled at the deputy’s back.
“Dispatch just got a nine-one-one call from inside this building!” he yelled back.
I stopped in my tracks. I had an inkling what was going on inside and realized how unprepared we were. “Breslow, stop!” I shouted.
Heath eyed me over his shoulder, saw the look of panic on my face, and moved faster up the stairs to grab the deputy by the shoulder. “Let go!” Breslow yelled.
Heath tightened his grip and said, “Wait!” Then he turned to me expectantly.
“We need spikes!” I called, turning back toward the car. “Heath, don’t let him go in there without me!”
While Heath held tight to Beau, I raced to the car and grabbed the duffel from the backseat. It was insanely heavy, but I had no time to open it and grab as many stakes as we might need, so I just threw it over my shoulder, dug deep, and began to power my way back up the many stairs. As I was about midway to Heath and Breslow, who was still trying to tug out of Heath’s grasp, there was a terrified scream from inside.
Breslow shoved Heath aside and dashed up the remaining steps, pausing only a moment to kick the door in and dart inside.
Heath came down the stairs to me, grabbed the duffel, and pulled me along up the remaining steps.
Just as we crested the last stair before the ones leading to the front porch, something came whizzing out of the house straight at us. We ducked in the nick of time, but Heath didn’t dive quite fast enough. A planchette struck him just above his right eye and he lost his balance and fell to the side, landing hard on the stakes. There was a sickening crunch and he cried out in pain.
Unfortunately, he was still gripping my hand and effectively pulled me with him, and I landed on him. I scrambled to my feet and put my hands on his side because he was moaning and curling his knees up in pain. “Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Heath! Heath!”
His eyes were squeezed shut and he was hissing through his teeth, but he managed to roll off the duffel, shove it weakly toward me, and gasp, “Help . . . Breslow. . . .”
I shook my head; how could I leave him? But then the front door to the office slammed shut before it opened and slammed, then opened and slammed, and soon it was joined by a dozen other doors.
The Sandman had come for another visit.
Chapter 15
“Go!” Heath said, his shaking hands trying to pull on the zipper to the duffel.
I slid mine under his and unzipped the bag. Grabbing four or five spikes with each hand, I said, “I’ll be right back.”
Heath wheezed and tried to get to his feet, and I realized he hadn’t meant to send me alone inside; he was going to try to come with me, even though he’d clearly broken a few ribs and was having a hard time breathing. “Stay here!” I yelled at him, giving him the fiercest look I could muster.
Still, he shook his head but I simply got up and ran to the remaining stairs. I crouched low near the door, watching it open and slam, open and slam, and counted the beats, trying to time my decision to rush it.
It opened and I was just about to duck through when another planchette came whizzing out with all the force of a ninja star. I pulled my head back just i
n time, and then clenched my jaw, determined to get my ass inside.
I counted four more beats, then made my move. Launching myself through the door, I ducked and rolled to the side, nearly crashing right into Breslow’s unconscious body.
Over my head planchettes were whizzing past us and striking the walls. Under the desk I saw Chloe, her eyes wide as saucers as she trembled and hugged her knees. She looked at me with such fear, and I motioned to her to stay put.
Turning away from her, I reached for the leg of a chair and pulled it down on the ground. I then pulled it in front of Breslow to give him a shield against the onslaught of planchettes, and then I turned my focus to the office near the end of the hall. There seemed to be a great deal of shouting going on in there and I knew that things were about to reach a point of no return.
Gripping the stakes, I pulled myself on my elbows down the hallway. Planchettes were zipping out of the room, and periodically there was the sound of one making a striking sound and a loud cry right after, along with the thundering noise of the slamming doors and objects striking the walls.
Inside there were horrific screams, some high-pitched, others a little lower, but all of them terrible. I paused midway down the hallway and pulled a metal planchette from the wall where it’d struck. It had an empty loop that was just big enough for the largest piece of the broken amethyst I’d pulled out of the hollow. With trembling fingers, I set down my spikes before taking out the broken-off piece of crystal and placed the piece in the middle of the planchette. Next, I held it there with my fingers and extended my arms fully away from my body so that the planchette wouldn’t be hovering over the magnets. After taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and allowed all the fear, anger, and anguish I’d had to deal with over the past few days course through my energy until I practically pulsed with emotion. I then gathered all that emotion and channeled it straight down through my arms all the way to my fingertips and into the planchette. My fingers and the improvised planchette vibrated with energy, while I simply waited for the Sandman to notice.