Dead to Her(99)

She slammed the door in Marcie’s face, leaving her alone with the rain, her unanswered questions, and the creepy doll.



The emptying clouds were so thick that although it was still afternoon the sky was almost black, lit up with crackles and flashes of lightning. Zelda had only opened the side gate for her and by the time Marcie ran back to her car, parked around the corner, she was soaked to the skin. Inside, she locked the doors, shivering against the seat and glancing around, paranoid that there were people watching her.

The sidewalks under the heavy canopies of trees were silent. Somehow that made her nervousness worse. It’s just bullshit, Savannah, she told herself, her old name clawing up from where she’d buried it. There are no such things as voodoo curses and magic. Whatever’s being done to you, there’s a flesh-and-blood person doing it, for flesh-and-blood reasons.

Still, she jumped when her cell phone rang.

It was Detective Anderson.

“So,” the officer started, in that laconic drawl that made Marcie want to carve her eyes out with a spoon. “Seems we’ve got some news on your mysterious yearbook. Guess who the email requesting it came from?”

“You’re the detective,” Marcie said, her jaw tight, in no mood for any more games. “You tell me.”

“Well, here’s the thing. It came from you.”

“What?” Marcie sat up straighter. That couldn’t be right. “It didn’t. I didn’t email them.”

“The request came from a Gmail account in the name of Savannah Cassidy.”

“I don’t care where it came from, I didn’t send it.”

“I’m sure. But we’ll soon know. We’re checking the computers taken from your house and Jason’s office to see if there’s a history of any of them accessing that account. You know a funny thing though?”

Marcie was sure it was going to be hysterical. “What?”

“The office secretary remembers a woman coming in to collect it. A couple of months back. A blond woman, not too tall. That’s what she remembers.”

Marcie thought of Jason’s father, and as her own lungs constricted in fear, she figured she knew how he’d felt, dangling on the rope, his life being taken from him.

“If it was me then why would I have even told you about the email to the school? That a woman had asked for the yearbook? Why would I draw attention to myself that way? Why would I report it?” With her free hand she tugged at the roots of her hair, something she hadn’t done in years. Her life was unraveling again. No—someone was unraveling it. For a long moment all she could hear was the rain on the car roof and Anderson breathing in her ear.

“You tell me, Marcie,” Anderson said eventually. “You tell me.” And then she hung up.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Marcie banged the phone hard against the steering wheel as she cursed loudly in the empty car as rain slashed against her windshield. The email would trace back to her somehow, she knew it. She beat the phone against the wheel again, three times more, and as she did, lightning blew up the sky, and a tall figure appeared from nowhere in front of her car.

It was her.

Marcie shrieked, shocked. The old black woman with hair the color of autumn fire. In the flash of light, she beat her cane against the metal hood three times, and even though the storm was starting to rage outside and the woman’s lips didn’t move, Marcie was sure she heard her call “Faith! Hope! Charity!”

Marcie flinched, and when she looked up again, the street ahead was empty. Breathless, she spun around in her seat. Where was she? Where? More lightning cut the sky and in the bright beam, the woman was standing behind the trunk, cane raised. She brought it down three times again. “Dansé Calinda!” she shouted to the skies, her voice filled with joy. She beat the trunk again, “You hear me in there! Make them dance! Li Grande Zombi!”

“Hey!” Marcie shouted, her frantic fingers struggling to lift the lock on her door. She was here, the woman was here, and now that Marcie’s heart had stopped racing in panic she just wanted some answers. “Hey wait!” Finally she got the door open and stumbled out into the storm. The old woman was walking away, immune to the elements as if out strolling on a summer’s day.

“Hey!” Marcie called out again. She picked up her pace, the fat woman ahead somehow moving fast, although she seemed to be only shuffling. “Wait!” Marcie repeated. In reply, the woman raised her cane to the sky and shook it, shouting words Marcie couldn’t hear, and then lightning cracked like a gunshot into a tree behind Marcie and she couldn’t help but duck and spin around, huddling behind her car, as a splinter of tree shot across the pavement. When she turned again, the rain suddenly easing as if even the storm was shocked by the lightning’s attack, the old woman was gone.

Marcie got to her feet and leaned against the car trunk, watching the smoke from the burned tree drifting into the rain. She was frustrated and angry and more than a little afraid. Where had the old woman come from? How did she know where Marcie was going to be? Was someone following her? What did she mean with her sayings and her chants? Marcie looked down, the black-gray of the clouds above letting cracks of calm blue in as the storm marched relentlessly onward. The old woman had been shouting at something in the trunk. “You hear me in there? Make them dance!” Marcie’s fingers trembled as she reached for the catch and the sleek metal lifted silently. Flies, hundreds of them, buzzed loudly as they rushed past in a swarm, and she swatted around her head, disgusted, until the air was clear. She looked down, half-expecting to see a rotting corpse tied up against the carpet, a gift to Anderson and a final nail in Marcie’s coffin, but there was no such body, and at first the trunk seemed empty.