Chapter 23

Chapter 23 of 56 · 10-minute read

Mid-September

Friday – Full Moon in Pisces

The bonfire crackles in the backyard at a safe distance from the house, barn, and sheds around the farm. Thanks to torrential rains of the past three days, the late summer heat has cooled down. Unfortunately, even at sunset, the weather is still sticky and the whining mosquitoes are swarming. As always during the dog days of summer, the heat is oppressive, but the dog days are ending at last.

Outside the circle, that is. Inside the circle is as crisp as a late autumn evening.

Using his talents at weather magick, Virgil has obviously cast a circle around the fire, whether or not he admits it. A permeable hedge of energy extends about twenty feet from the center of the fire and allows us to move in and out without breaking the circle. The difference in temperature inside the circle is probably thirty degrees.

For now, the bonfire is for grilling hot dogs and marshmallows, but later, as agreed, Virgil and I will transform it into a ritual fire. Our participants aren’t here as part of a sacred circle—just a cookout—but Virgil has certainly prepared the space well. I’m not sure which herbs he used—lemon balm? rosemary?—or if it’s a magickal force field, but I don’t hear the whine of mosquitoes inside the circle.

My mom is happy tonight, though, and that’s what really matters. With a wink or two in my direction, Dix has already moved a rocking chair from the back porch out to our fire circle, along with a couple of throw pillows for my mom to prop against and a cushion under her feet so that she can support her heels on something sturdy. The rocking chair is man-sized, and it dwarfs her now. She looks almost like a toddler in an adult’s chair. Breakable. A shell of the hardworking farm woman she once was.

While Virgil tends the fire, Dix squats in the grass and unwinds a wire clothes hanger from my mom’s closet. Try as he may, he can’t get it straight enough to satisfy himself as a hot dog skewer.

“I tell ya, Miss Emma,” Virgil says as he jabs at the fire logs, “You sure do smell good tonight. Have you been enjoying that body wash I brought you?”

My mom beams and nods at him. She’s used her gift three times already.

Everything here is familiar to her. She’s happy. No pressure. In the moment. As her memories and personality slip away faster every day, her shift to the present has been startling. She’s always lived in the past and in the what if, grieving opportunities missed and dreams failed while fearing the future. But now she is very much in the moment. It’s all she has.

For me, seeing her not obsess about the past or the future is bittersweet. She’s lost. Happy, but lost, or maybe happy because she is lost. It’s only in moments when she regains her clarity that darkness descends on her. The last two days she’s become less insistent that her memory is fine and, if anything, it seems to be dawning on her gradually that her mind is declining. The realization comes in moments, and then disappears, but when it’s present, her energy swerves into desperation and torture. It breaks my heart, not only because I miss who she used to be but also because she hates thinking she’s not the same as she was. To her, this is the fate worse than death because it’s the death of who she is, a little bit more each day, while her body still breathes.

There will be no talking now of Uncle Bobby and what he did and what she didn’t do. The time for her to take responsibility is gone. And the time for me to find closure has disappeared with it.

Pamela pulls up a camp chair next to my mom’s rocking chair, then pats her on the forearm. “After Miss Emma gets her supper, Virgil, I’ll help her get another bath so she can smell good all over again.”

Mama’s bony hand protrudes from the edge of the pink fleece blanket wrapped around her. She covers it quickly with the other hand as her head wags slowly in Pamela’s direction. “That sure would be nice.” She drawls the last word into three syllables.

Virgil stabs at one of the fire logs with an iron poker. “Okay, that’s looking good now. I’ll give it another twenty or thirty minutes, and we can start grilling.” Suddenly, he mumbles under his breath and frowns at me. “I left something back at my house. I made y’all some brownies.” He sighs and shakes his head in dismay, his silver ponytail swishing at his shoulders. “Tell ya what: I’m gonna hoof it back across the field, but I’ll be back before the fire is ready. Y’all gonna be okay?”

Dix, Pamela, and I nod in unison. Mama looks up as if she missed something but nods, too.

“Virgil,” Pamela volunteers, “I’ve got my sneakers on. I can run across the field if you give me your house key.” She looks at his cane, not at him.

Virgil shakes it off. “Nah, I got this.” He plunges his fire poker into the ground next to the fire, wipes his hands on his jeans, and takes off in that awkward run of his.

I take over Virgil’s job as fire tender, though I’m not nearly as good at it. The flames twist and lick at the air around them. I poke at the logs with a long-handled axe and watch the coals catch on fire. Flaming embers leap into the air and explode against the night sky like fireworks. Smoke fills my lungs. The scent of burning wood fills my nose. Even without a breeze, the smoke changes direction and engulfs me. I step to one side, but it follows me.

Laughing, Dixon wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me backward. He explains some totally irrational and unscientific reason smoke always follows the tender, something he read online.

He squeezes me again, sniffs the smoke in my hair, then kisses my neck and spins around with me. My bare feet sail through the air. I can’t help but laugh as well. I rarely laugh these days, not with my mom in the shape she’s in, but when I do laugh? For the silliest reason? I’ll take it.

Dix spreads a blanket, and we sit on the ground between my mom and Pamela and the raging bonfire. My mom can’t remember what year it is, but she does remember her youth, specifically a soldier who never came home. This must be a memory stored in some other part of her brain, not the part meant to recall what day of the week it is or whether she’s already had her medication and at the right time of the day. That’s been a problem recently. I have to administer every dose of over a dozen medications at different times of the day, some with food and some without. Ever since I caught her taking a double dose of her breakfast meds, I’ve not only had to make sure that she doesn’t mete out her pills herself, but that I keep them locked away so that she doesn’t think, once again, that she hasn’t had them and must take them immediately. Just another brick of pressure on my chest!

Dixon wrangles another wire hanger, pressing it into a straight line as I settle my head on his knee and curl up on the blanket beside him. It’s not love I feel for him, but I am fond of the man. I know I’ve said no to him often enough, but he’s starting to grow on me. The attraction still isn’t there the way I’d like for it to be, like it was with Jesse, but it’s Dix’s kindness that counts. He’s an incredible kisser, even more so than in high school. I’m not sure how I could’ve handled my mom’s illness without Dix and Virgil and all their resources they brought to the table. Even without Dixon’s kisses and Virgil’s magick, I am forever grateful for the friendship.

I feel as if I can finally rest. Like I can let my shields down. This is a safe place, and I don’t have to be on guard against every little thing. I’m among friends here. Family, but found family, as much or more so than family origin. I never had this sense of safety with my blood relatives.

Closing my eyes, I nuzzle my cheek against Dixon’s thigh as he works on the makeshift skewers. Snuggling, I let out a loud sigh. At least, in this moment, I can forget about my worries with my mom and watching her every second, the guilt over not being able to be with Rhiannon right now to help her through her pregnancy, or the growing frantic worries over my dwindling passive income and the need to direct some time toward an active income.

I sink into the warmth and lushness of the moment and lose myself, as if every muscle in my body has relaxed. I’m not sure how long I float like this, aimlessly, deliciously. But suddenly, I come down hard to the ground, like feet sliding into boots, like me sliding into my body. Feet in soft dirt, tall grass. I am hurrying. There’s something behind me. Someone? Breath rushes in and out of my lungs. My heart thunders in my chest.

It’s the same feeling I had in my visions of me sitting with my mom, or running from some intruder through a hall lined with that same godawful carpet that I saw outside of Virgil’s office. The same feeling I had in the vision where I was on my way back to my mom’s house.

From within my vision, I can see the farm. The old white farmhouse gleams in the glow up security lights and a huge bonfire along the outer edge of the backyard. It’s a bonfire just like tonight’s, maybe even taller.

I try to shake off my sleep, but the dream still smothers me. It’s surreal, as all my prophetic dreams are. I’m in the moment with it, whether it’s something that happened long ago—this one didn’t—or something happening in the future. Whatever it means, it’s terrifying. I’ve been chased by dark things in the past with mal intent, whether avatars or servitors, but I can sense that this one is human. Someone I don’t know and who doesn’t know me.

I’ve been through this before, yet this feels different somehow. It’s not the same sender as in the past. This darkness feels as though it’s sent not by a witch, but by someone with mundane intentions.

Of murder.

Jerking myself awake, I bolt upright, gasping. I’m not sure how long I’ve been asleep, but I take more than a few seconds to realize where I am.

Dix wraps his arms around me and nestles against me reassuringly. “You okay, baby?” He whispers in my ear, then pecks me on the cheek. “It’s just a nightmare, baby.”

A nightmare.

I glance around quickly to get my bearings. My mom and Pamela are chattering away about the old days and what life was like in the 1950s and 1960s. Four perfectly straight clothes hanger skewers rest on the corner of our blanket next to a bag of giant marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and a couple of dark chocolate bars still in their wrappers. A small folding table a few feet away is the resting place for a package of hot dog wieners and a mismatched number of hot dog buns. Pamela must’ve brought out the other items: a jug of sweet tea, condiments, and a stack of napkins made from paper towels.

I squint beyond the bonfire, across the field, toward a growing figure trudging toward us. Virgil.

No. No, not trudging. Running. The way Virgil runs, I could pick him out of any crowd of sprinters.

My mom seems to sense the tension in the air. She glances around as if she’s lost something. “I need my—” Immediately, the frustration freezes on her face. She presses her forehead into her hands. “I-I can’t think. It’s right on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t reach it. I can see it, but I can’t think of what it’s called.”

The perfect description of hell.

Pamela leans in and gently pats the back of her hands, bringing them unhurriedly away from her face. “This thing that you need, Miss Emma, what is it used for?”

“It’s-it’s to keep bad stuff away.”

“Is it like a spray for mosquitoes or bugs?”

I know what Pamela is doing: helping a dementia patient circle the subject so Mama doesn’t become more flustered or feel lectured.

My mom shakes her head, reclaims her hands, and hides her face in them again.

“Does it make a noise?”

My mom nods as she lifts her head, eyes wide. “Boom!”

“The noise it makes is a boom?”

Mama nods again.

Pamela glances at Dixon and me. She shrugs. “Miss Emma? How do you like that fire? Does that smell good to you?” New tactic: distraction.

Diverted, Mama stares at the fire for a split second and then nods enthusiastically. Whatever her dormant psychic senses are screaming inside her muddled mind, she’s forgotten it already.

But I know exactly what she is feeling and what she thinks she needs—the deer rifle hanging over my brother’s bed in his old room.

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