The Raven Mocker (9 page)

“
What the hell am
I
thinking?? It should be what the hell are
you
thinking!!” David’s fury rose quickly and the flames in the fireplace behind him grew strong again, as if responding to his ire. “Some pretty weird shit’s going on here, and it’s not like we’ve got all night to wait for an appropriate time to talk to Sara about it! Hell, even she stated the entity is a male—and you didn’t blow a gasket over that, did you?”

Miriam had no immediate answer. Once Christopher allowed her to gather him in her arms, she stroked his hair. Perhaps the thing she needed for a better perspective. She looked back at David, nodding her agreement with his point. He sullenly returned his attention to the fire.

Their parents’ tiff for the most part over, Jillian and Tyler sighed in relief, as did Janice. Ruth looked on, thoughtful. As for Sara, her attention remained riveted to the light fixture and its slow-turning fan. She rose from her seat next to Janice, approaching the room’s center.

When she stood directly below the circling fan blades a strange noise began to emanate. The warbling sound vacillated between high and low pitches. She stared upward in silence, as if enchanted. The warbling increased in speed and shrillness, causing Sadie to launch a series of angry barks while Jillian and Christopher implored their dad to make the noise stop.

Sara suddenly fainted, and David ran to catch her before she collapsed. Meanwhile, the warbling ceased, abrupt. The floor above creaked, and as he paused to listen, heavy shuffling footsteps moved across the upstairs landing.

“
I’ll be right back—everyone stay here,” he said, quietly, right after bringing Sara over to the loveseat, where he gently set her down. Her face ghastly pale, she awoke, whispering for him to wait for her. But the heavy creaks across the upstairs’ floorboards urged him to act now.
“Who in the hell’s up there?!”
he demanded.

No verbal reply, but the footsteps paused. Cautious, he crept up the staircase, grimacing when several stairs announced his progress. He peered guardedly down either side of the long hallway when he reached the second floor. Aside from the distinct feeling of being studied intently, the floor was empty. He briefly considered grabbing the jewels from Ruth’s room, but decided to wait for Sara to join him.

“
I feel better now,” she assured him once he returned to the living room. She had the loveseat to herself, as Janice joined Miriam on the floor in front of the hearth. He and his wife exchanged forgiving looks. “I brought some new toys with me tonight, including an infrared camera that should help us obtain some better evidence to work with. I also have my personal ritual book with me.... But after what everyone has told me, and what just happened, it seems prudent to wait on any spells for now.”

“
Well, can we help you set your equipment up?” offered Janice, glancing around the living room for potential placement spots.

“
Perhaps,” she said, following Janice’s gaze. “However, I’d rather start my investigation upstairs.”

“
Did you want us to come along?” asked Miriam, reaching for her shoes next to the fireplace.

“
Only David...I’d like just him to join me for now,” she advised. “There’s something up there that the spirit is highly interested in…something related to him.”

Sara removed her new infrared device from the leather carrier, along with the digital voice recorder David recognized from her earlier visit to the house. After removing a small EMF detector he also remembered seeing before, she handed the recorder to him and motioned for him to follow her upstairs.

Other than the unfriendly chilliness, their ascent to the second floor was uneventful. But a deep resonating moan greeted them once they reached the landing. They stood at the top of the stairs, listening, and neither one willing to venture further. The moan rhythmic, David imagined something very large made the sound, strong enough to travel through the landing’s wooden railing.

The moan emanated from Ruth’s room. The door closed, it had been wide open a short while ago. Fearing he might lose his nerve at any moment, David led Sara over to the door...he touched the doorknob. The moaning ceased.

“
Are you two all right up there?” whispered Janice, her voice timid, from the stairway’s base.

“
We’re fi—“

“
Sh-h-h-h!!” Sara interrupted him, drawing his attention to the air around them. Unnaturally still, except for a slight popping sound that reminded him of the electric cattle fences on his grandfather’s Ringgold farm when he was a young boy. A similar current oozed through the air around them now—almost imperceptible and yet enough to send tingling sensations across the exposed skin of his face and hands.
Sara pointed to her EMF detector, where the readout jumped wildly from zero to double digits.

“
David? Sara?? What’s going on up there??”

This time Miriam called to them from the base of the stairs, and the kids’ hushed voices echoed their mom’s edgy tone. She started to come upstairs with someone else—likely Janice.

“
Don’t come up here—
please
stay where you are for now!” said Sara, harshly.

She motioned for David to open the door, pointing her infrared camera inside the doorway. Surprised when he met resistance from an invisible source within the darkened guestroom, like pushing against a door in a powerful windstorm, he allowed her to move in front of him.

Sara turned the overhead light on. It flickered and died, as if the spirit wrapped its hand tightly around the electric wires running through the attic above. In the dimness a thick ink-like shadow began to fill the room, obscuring the dresser.

“
We come in peace,” she said quietly, her velvet voice tense. She backed into David, who was unwilling to venture into the room. “We’re here to retrieve some items belonging to the owner of this home’s aunt, and then we’ll be on our way.”

David looked at her, frowning, since what he wanted apparently wasn’t what she wanted. Yes, he desired the precious stones and trust papers from the room, left in haste earlier that day. But he assumed they came up here to find some way to remove the entity—to force the unfriendly pest out of this house, once and for all.

An ominous chuckle emanated from the depths of the room, and the door partially closed behind them.

“
What do we do now?
” he whispered to her, unsure how to proceed but one hundred percent certain their plans to explore the room had just been nixed.

This time it did seem like their thoughts were aligned. She led him out of the guestroom, capturing as much video as she could from her infrared. Just as he joined her in the hallway, the bedroom light came on. To their surprise the door swung open.

Does this asshole really think we’re going to step back inside the room again??

But he did approach the doorway, tentative, with Sara right behind him. When he stepped through the threshold the door crept open a little more—perhaps from a slight breeze caused by his movement…perhaps not. Maybe the spirit wanted to further intimidate them, as a worse feeling of being watched from all angles hit him full force. Sara’s fearful eyes scanned the room while snapping several photographs using a small standard camera she brought with her. Grotesque shadowed shapes crept across the walls like bloated giant insects with each flash.

While she seemed to grow increasingly nervous, his fear began to shrink. Rage swelled within him, fueled by all that had happened as of late. Seething with fury he moved about the room, focusing his heated thoughts toward the coldest and creepiest sections of the room. He pictured the spirit’s presence contained in these spots, and not surprised when the iciness moved out of his way.

“
What’s wrong, you fucking coward?” he hissed, amazed at the level of contempt beneath his anger.

Sara had also been moving about the room, but now stopped, looking at him in horror.

“
That’s right, you sick son of a bitch…
Get
the HELL out of my house!!”
he roared, stomping around the bed, feeling exhilarated by the surge of energy brought on by his sudden bravado.

From what he knew previously about a malevolent ghost’s power and resolve, his brazen actions were a death wish. And when his rational mind regained the upper hand on his lower instincts, he worried about the response that would surely come.

The arctic grip that embraced the room began to recede, and the overhead lights in the room and hallway steadily regained their normal luminance. Sara smiled, still uneasy but giggling like a young girl.

“
I believe the entity just left, David!” she marveled, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it! I would’ve
never
thought this was all it would take, and Lord knows it might still return. But for now… I feel it’s truly
gone!”

She moved over to the dresser where the gemstones were still aligned in the curious snake-like symbol. She carefully scooped them up and placed the gems inside the front left pocket of her jeans, and advised David to gather the trust papers from where Miriam left them earlier. Miriam and Janice met them in the hallway.

“
Is everything all right?” asked Miriam, moving to David’s side, her eyes worried for his welfare. “We heard you shouting from downstairs. Everyone else is waiting in the foyer.”

The air around them had already begun to get warmer, the heater’s efforts no longer hindered. Nonetheless she shivered. He pulled her close.

Sara repeated her belief that the entity had taken flight from the Hobbs’ beleaguered home, and they all returned downstairs. David glanced over his shoulder a few more times, but once they reached the main floor without further incident, he began to relax for the first time in over a week.

***

“
I’d rather ya’ll just put the damned things in a safety deposit box—at least until you can get ‘em insured!” said Ruth, visibly irritated at David for insisting the best thing to do in regard to the diamonds and sapphires was let this stranger—this ‘medicine woman’ named Sara Palmer—take them with her. “It’s not like they can easily be replaced if something happens….”

He could tell the deluge of tears dammed up behind her genteel façade might burst through at any moment. Miriam sat beside her on the sofa with arms wrapped around her shoulders, telling her gently everything would be okay, that Sara was trustworthy. She added how she’d entrust the very lives of her children—the most precious things in her world, along with David—in Sara’s hands.

“
Auntie…I swear on my very life that I’ll never let anything bad happen to our inheritance,” he said soothingly, stepping over to Ruth’s other side, where Janice was seated. For the moment the kids sat in the loveseat, Christopher practically sitting on Tyler’s lap. It appeared Jillian shared her great aunt’s viewpoint.

Sara sat in David’s recliner awaiting the outcome of this discussion, stroking Sadie’s neck while the dog lay on her lap. She smiled compassionately at Ruth, nodding empathetic to let her know she appreciated her concerns. She didn’t join the conversation until Miriam and David had convinced his aunt that the precious heirlooms would be safe in her possession.

“
I promise to not let them out of my sight, and only allow my trusted friend, Dr. William Fuller, from the University of Denver see them,” she advised. “He’s one of the top parapsychologists in the country, and an expert in demonology.”

“
Demonology?”

David’s brow furrowed while he sought to understand what expelling a pesky spirit had to do with ‘devils’ and such. It brought images of poor makeup and costumes from late night, B-rated horror movies. He snickered until he noticed the grave expression on Sara’s face.

“
Yes, Demonology. Though it appears the mischievous spirit is no longer here, based on our previous experiences it’s imperative we proceed with utmost caution,” she explained. “The jewels seem to have formed a catalyst for the entity’s aggression today.”

David and Miriam nodded, thoughtful, while everyone else looked on. Sara’s somber words affected them all.

“
Well, it’s getting late, and I still need to finish my Christmas shopping in the morning.” She got up from the recliner and reclaimed her coat and cap from the foyer’s hall tree. When she returned to the living room, she offered one last reassurance that everything would work out favorable to David and Miriam, and especially to Ruth. Janice walked her out to her pickup truck parked in the driveway.

“
Don’t worry, Auntie,” said David, after watching Sara drive away through a window next to the Christmas tree. He moved over to where Ruth sat on the sofa. “Everything’s going to be fine. By tomorrow morning, the memory of what happened today will be behind us. It’ll be Christmas Eve—the start of a fantastic holiday together!”

He offered a warm smile and gave her a big bear hug, squeezing her tight enough to draw a surprised squeal like the one from yesterday. When he drew away, she gazed into his face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. To most it might appear he’d deeply touched her just now. But he suspected some other reason. Yes, he could tell she was grateful for the newfound bond with him. But there was something deeper in her eyes…something obvious once he thought about it later, though hard to immediately define.