The Harrowing

CHAPTER SIX

The fire blazed in the old stone fireplace.

Lisa, Patrick, and Robin lounged on the floor in front of the hearth, backs propped against the couch and armchair. They passed Robin’s bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a fat joint, all now quite comfortably stoned.

Robin sat in a dreamy haze, melted against the back of an armchair. Flames from the fire burned warm on her face; her body was loose and pleasantly numb. It seemed almost impossible to believe that barely an hour ago she had been in the blackest despair—a step, a swallow away from darkness and oblivion.

She looked around at her companions and felt a powerful affection for all of them. Lisa, with her amazing hair, oceans of curls, the archness now gone from her face. Patrick, sprawled on the floor beside a line of empty beer bottles, his muscular body as relaxed as a big cat’s. Robin felt warm all over from the heat that seemed to roll off him in waves.

Her eyes drifted to the faux-leather couch. The slim young man, who had the interesting and vaguely titillating name of Cain, had not moved since the beginning of the evening, except to reach for the joint.

Aesthetic, she thought. Such a fine face, regal, almost. And sensual, too, the way he was playing with the nap of the carpet with those hands, those hands…

He looked up and met her eyes for a moment. She looked quickly away.

In the back of the room, Martin continued to study, resolutely alone. Somewhere along the line, he’d left the room to find candles, and they flickered now on the table in front of him, washing his face in soft light. Robin was reminded again of a monk in his solitary cell. If he’d just loosen up…just come over and sit down with us….

And then there was…

She turned her head to look, then sat up slightly, frowning around the room. No, of course there were only five of them. Why had she thought there was a sixth?

Across from her, Patrick casually leaned over and picked up Lisa’s wrist, held it provocatively as he examined the knotted red yarn. His husky voice sounded far away, barely awake.

“What’s the string for, Marlowe? One knot for every guy you fucked last night?”

Lisa snatched her hand away. “Kabbalah,” she said loftily. She caressed the string on her wrist.

To Robin’s surprise, Martin snorted from the back table. “The Kabbalah of Madonna,” she heard him mutter.

Lisa didn’t hear, or ignored him. “It’s protection from the evil eye,” she informed Patrick. “And horndog jocks.”

“Damage’s been done, babe.” Patrick leaned back, grinned at her lazily. “Might as well take it off.”

His tone was so suggestive, Robin was almost sick with jealousy.

Lisa stretched languidly. Her raveled sweater rose to just below her breasts. “Keep dreaming, cowboy.”

Patrick took a deep toke of the roach he held, then suddenly turned and put his hand on the back of Robin’s neck and drew her head to his. He put his lips over hers and slowly blew smoke into her mouth. The rush was unbelievably sexy. Robin dissolved, rode waves of dizziness and desire as the smoky kiss went on and on.

Patrick turned her loose and stretched back down on the floor. Robin sat back against the armchair, sinking into the rose carpet again, floating into a daze. The floor beneath her seemed to rock like a boat. Lisa’s eyes gleamed in the dark.

The six of them were silent again.

Robin sat up in confusion, as if jolting awake.

Six.

There were only five of them. Why did she keep thinking six?

She looked around the room, just to be sure.

Five of them, and it seemed almost inevitable that they were here.

As if reading her mind, Patrick suddenly spoke to the ceiling.

“You know why we all are here? ‘Cause we all’ve figured it out. What’s Thanksgiving anyway? You kill a big bird and you stuff it and you eat it and you fight with the fam, and when the blood’s cleaned up and no one’s talkin’ to anyone anymore, you sit around and get wasted and watch the game. So I say, fuck the turkey, stuff the family, and cut to the game.”

Robin gazed at him, riveted, and thought she had never felt so close to anyone in her life.

Cain laughed from the couch. “You are so full of shit.” He took a toke of the joint Lisa had just passed him, gazed around at the rest of them. “We’re all here because it sucks at home.”

A silence fell, thick and hot. All of them dropped their eyes, avoiding one another’s gaze. The fire seemed to roar behind them, flames crackling. Robin felt flushed all over with heat—and shame.

And then Patrick laughed shortly, extended his bottle, and clinked with Cain’s. As their eyes held this time, there was no testing between them, only acknowledgment.

Robin surprised herself by reaching in and touching her own bottle against theirs.

And behind them, Lisa spoke softly. “Hear! Hear!”

Hunched over the table in the back, Martin was still.

Robin felt a sudden wild elation—at the knowing that for the first time in her life she was not alone. Patrick locked eyes with her, a raw, hungry look, almost purely sexual.

Lisa reached across the carpet and grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, lifted it. “Pop quiz. ‘Why It Sucks At Home’—in twenty-five words or less.” She extended the bottle to Patrick with a dangerous smile.

He handed it back to her, mockingly gallant. “Ladies first.”

Lisa sat back on her heels, counted her words off on her fingers. “Bad girl from bad family does bad things with bad people…feels really…bad. Will try anything to feel good.”

There was bright sarcasm in her voice, facetious and facile. But Robin understood she’d spoken the exact truth, and admired her for it.

Lisa drank deeply from the bottle, wiped her mouth suggestively, and thrust the bottle toward Robin, bright manic eyes daring her.

Robin slowly reached and took the bottle, felt the smooth square glass under her hand. Lisa watched her, waiting. Robin half-shrugged, tried to match Lisa’s light tone. “Mom is crazy… Home is crazy…” She stopped, looked down at the stained rose on the carpet. Then she spoke softly, hating the quaver in her voice. “So Dad threw us away and started over.”

She forced her eyes up, looked at the others. “I feel like I’m broken. And I hate everyone who’s whole.”

There was a silence, then Cain suddenly reached from the couch, touched her arm. “Who doesn’t?”

She looked at him, felt tears push at her eyes and throat. She raised the bottle and drank, grateful for the sting of whiskey. Then she looked again at Cain and extended the bottle, meeting his eyes in the darkness.

She could almost feel him pull back, though he didn’t move. Then he took the bottle, spoke flatly. “Mother— dead. Father—unknown.” His lips twisted. “In case you’re wondering, foster care in this country is truly for shit.”

He drank without looking at anyone, then turned to Patrick, holding the bottle out.

Patrick looked at the bottle, slumped deliberately back against the armchair. “Ha. No way, losers.”

Cain and Lisa exploded at him simultaneously.

“You pussy.” Lisa shoved his leg hard.

“Cough it up, wuss.”

Patrick’s eyes darted around, defensive. Robin looked at him with silent reproach.

Patrick grabbed the bottle from Cain. He took a deep toke from his joint, spoke through held breath. “Prominent surgeon Dad commits Mom to mental hospital to get custody of son. Pumps son full of steroids to create ultimate football machine.”

He exhaled smoke, stared at the three of them truculently. There was a stunned silence as the words sunk in.

Cain spoke softly into the void. “And you hate football.”

Patrick smiled thinly. “Got that right, Coach. But it’s all I know.” He chugged whiskey. Behind him, logs snapped and popped in the fireplace.

Martin coughed in the back. They all turned, surprised, as he began to speak, the flickering light from the candles playing over his face. “Orthodox rabbi father’s only wish is for only son to take over rabbinate. Only—son doesn’t believe in God.”

He started to laugh, then stopped abruptly. A silence fell again, a speechless intimacy. Smoke from the joint drifted in the air, burned harsh in Robin’s throat.

Lisa spoke dryly. “Well, that was fun. What the hell do we do next?” She pushed herself up and stood, stretching languidly as she meandered toward the built-in walnut cabinets.

Robin looked at Cain and Patrick, then leaned over for the bottle of whiskey and stood. She walked over to Martin’s table and stopped beside him, extended the bottle.

He looked up at her, startled, blushing. Robin pushed the bottle closer, insistent. Martin reached hesitantly to take it.

In the room behind them, Lisa screamed.

Everyone jumped, twisting toward her. She was half inside the built-in game cupboard by the fireplace, tugging at something.

She pulled back, freeing a long box from beneath a stack of old board games, and turned into the room to display her find.

“Looky looky.”

The rectangular box was brown with age and frayed at the edges, but Robin recognized the graphic on the front instantly. A Ouija board.

Lisa’s face was glowing, energized. She carried the box over to a round table and dragged the table across the carpet, positioned it in front of the fire. “I bet there’re plenty of spirits in this old place.”

Robin got a brief glance of faded handwriting on the inside cover of the box as Lisa took the board out and set it up on the table’s surface.

Robin watched her with a dreamlike sense of unreality. A séance? It was too weird. She’d just been reading about Jung and séances the night before.

On the floor in front of the hearth, Patrick pulled out the Zig-Zag papers and started to roll another joint. “Then we can play Spin the Bottle, and sing ‘Kumbaya’ around the fire.”

Lisa flipped him off and darted back to the study tables in the dark end of the room. She sidestepped Robin and smiled sweetly down at Martin as she snagged one of his candles. She crossed back to the round table, shielding the flame with a cupped hand, and set the candle down, then sat in front of the board and looked around expectantly. “Who’s going to do it with me?”

None of the guys moved.

Lisa looked back at Robin. “Come on, you look sensitive to me.” Her eyes held Robin’s across the long room. There was a challenge in the air, and a charge that was almost erotic. Robin was very aware of all three guys watching them with heightened interest, and she envied Lisa her brash narcissism. She knew how to play a room; it was impossible to ignore her.

Lisa half-smiled, as if reading Robin’s mind. Her eyes flicked to Patrick knowingly. “They really want us to, you know. Guys love to watch.” Her gaze locked back on Robin’s.

All right, then, Robin thought suddenly. I can play, too.

She walked across the room to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down opposite Lisa.

Lisa’s smile broadened. “I’ll be gentle.” She reached to put her fingers, tipped in polish the color of dried blood, on the heart-shaped wooden planchette. After a moment, Robin did, too. It was a familiar feeling, an instant sense memory of childhood. I guess just about everyone’s done it, on a rainy night like this.

Sprawled on the floor, Patrick laughed to himself as he licked the edges of the joint.

“‘Double, double, toil and trouble…’”

“Shut up,” Lisa ordered. She looked across the table at Robin in the firelight, daring her. “Let’s get someone good.” Robin had to admit she made a convincing Gypsy, with her wild hair, lace camisole peeking out of a torn sweater, rings glinting on her slender fingers.

Robin stared down at the board. It was old—yellowed with age, not the faux finish of a modern mass-production. Antiquated letters at the bottom spelled out BALTIMORE TALKING BOARD. The wood was blackened around the edges, almost as if it had been—

Burned.

The realization gave her a shiver of unease.

Lisa raised her voice, addressed the darkness beyond the glowing circle of the fire. “Is there anyone there?” Her eyes shone across the table, knowing as a cat’s.

“Did Alabama score?” Patrick said through an exhalation of green-smelling smoke.

Lisa kicked at him from beneath the table. She spoke to the board and the ceiling at the same time. “Does anyone want to speak to us?”

Robin kept her gaze on the black letters on the board, the wooden indicator beneath her hands. Rain gusted outside, pounding into the pavement. There was no movement at all.

Lisa winked at Robin. “We’d like someone dark…and mysterious…and sexy as hell.”

Cain’s head was tipped back against the armrest of the couch. Smoke drifted toward the ceiling from his cigarette. “There are 900 numbers you can call for this.”

Lisa spoke over him, ignoring him. “Is anyone there?’

They listened to the silence. The logs crackled. The planchette was motionless under their fingers.

Robin felt drowsy from the pot and from the comfortable darkness. The heat from the fire shimmered in the room. She gazed into the shimmering, and again felt the presence that she had noticed before from the house, a sense of curious waiting, of leaning forward

Violent longing stabbed through her—a wish that something would happen, that someone would hear, move, respond, that a door would open and everything, everything, would change.

There was a sort of electric tingling under her fingers….

The planchette suddenly moved to

Robin jumped.

Across the table, Lisa gasped slightly, then looked sharply at Robin. Her green gaze narrowed. “Way to go.”

Robin stared back at her. So that’s the way it’s going to be, she thought. The Lisa show.

Patrick rolled over on the floor, raised himself up on an elbow to make a circular motion with his hand. “Ladies, ladies—momentum.”

Robin jumped again—and saw Lisa flinch, too—as the planchette began to move under their hands, slow, sweeping circles. Robin looked at Lisa. Lisa’s eyes sparkled back at her.

The pointer suddenly took off, racing across the board Robin watched the letters appear under the cutout circle in the middle of the planchette. The pointer spelled quickly, continuously, with slight stops in the neutral center between each word.

Lisa read aloud for the others with exaggerated import. “I… am…”

Patrick made spooky sounds on the floor. Martin glanced over in spite of himself. On the couch, Cain shook his head, flicked his Zippo to light another cigarette. But Robin saw he was smiling.

Lisa’s good, she thought. The movement of the planchette was smooth, credible—no obvious pushing. The pointer felt like it had a life of its own.

Lisa smiled into the darkness flirtatiously. “Well, hello.” She swept her hair back from her face with a ringed hand before she put her fingers back on the planchette.

The pointer instantly moved to

And then it spelled quickly

Lisa read out with the moving indicator and turned away from the table with childlike delight. “Guys, he knows my name.”

Patrick put his hands to his mouth, mock-shuddered. “It must be real.” He was grinning, clearly enjoying himself. He’d stripped down to a tank and now basked bare-armed in the heat of the fire, leaning back on a sofa cushion, watching the girls as if they were his private show. Robin’s eyes traveled up his thighs to the juncture of his legs, remembering the soft thrill of his

lips on hers, his breath hot in her mouth…. Her face flushed, and she was glad for the darkness.

Lisa shook her hair out of her face and raised her voice, addressing the board. “Do you have a name?”

The pointer jerked to life. Lisa read out with it.

The wooden piece hesitated. Robin and Lisa watched it circle aimlessly over the board, as if unsure how to answer.

Patrick chuckled from the floor. “Make it good, Marlowe.”

Then, as if inspired, the pointer spelled out quickly

Robin felt a tingle up her neck, like fingers brushing her hairline. The candlelight flickered, making the black letters seem to pulse.

Lisa’s eyes jumped to Robin’s, a quick, probing look. Then she shrugged, spoke lightly. “Nice to meet you, Zachary.”

“Charmed,” Patrick drawled over the top of another beer, then belched for emphasis.

The pointer responded instantly, smooth circles and a slight pull between letters. Robin found herself both lulled and impatient at the slow-motion conversation; waiting for the letters was like trying to run in a dream.

Lisa finished the sentence triumphantly and looked up from the board. Her eyes were sparkling. “A gentleman.” She glanced sideways at Patrick.

“Those are the ones you wanna watch, hon,” he retorted.

Lisa turned back to the table and beamed at Robin. Robin smiled back, warming to her enthusiasm. So what if it was a game? The fire was blazing, making shadows dance in the corners of the room. The circular swaying of trees through the window, the ebb and flow of the wind, the popping of the fire—all were dreamlike, seductively hypnotic, and Robin decided to play along. What could it hurt?

Lisa was addressing the board again. “Have you come to tell us anything, Zachary?” The two girls watched the board as it spelled out the letters.

Lisa smiled secretively in the flickering candlelight. She turned and informed the rest of the room. “He says, ‘Anything you wish.’”

On the floor, Patrick snorted through a swallow of beer. “Ask him who wins the game.”

Lisa seemed about to retort, but the indicator moved instantly, obliging.

Robin read it out, and Lisa finished the sentence with her.

Patrick sat straight up, pleased. “Can I bet on that, dude?” His voice was warm, hazy from pot.

The pointer moved again. Robin and Lisa watched the letters in a little island of concentration, reading out together.

The girls leaned over the board to watch the last word forming. As Robin realized Lisa’s joke, she smiled, and they called it out together in perfectly matched, stoned accents.

Robin and Lisa broke out in delighted giggling. On the couch, Cain muttered, “Pretty hip ghost.”

Patrick sat up from the floor, laughing heartily. “You should be charging for this, Marlowe.” He nodded to Lisa.

Lisa shook her head, cascading curls caught by the firelight. “I’m not doing it, I swear.” She smiled across the table at Robin.

Robin found herself wondering. Nothing that Lisa said could be trusted, obviously. It was a game, and it was working. Lisa was the center of attention, which apparently she needed to be at all times, and the boys were mildly amused, enough to keep watching. Robin was aware that even Martin was following the action at the board, not with his whole attention, maybe, but as background noise, like having music or the television on.

At the same time, Robin found a strange thing happening.

She’d played Ouija with slightly older cousins as a nine- or ten-year-old, and even though the candlelit bedroom setting and thrill of inclusion by the older girls had given the game an edge of newness and excitement, she’d also known she was the one being played, that Cousin Jeannie had been moving the pointer to spell out slightly racy hints of boys who were madly in love with whoever.

And at first, she’d been quite sure that Lisa was moving the pointer, just as her cousins had. But somewhere along the line, it really felt that Lisa had stopped and something…else…had taken over.

She shivered, and realized that Cain was sitting up on the couch, watching her, a question in his eyes.

Lisa spoke into the darkness with a strange intensity, something more than just playful curiosity. “Who are you, Zachary?”

The question hovered in the air. The planchette was still.

Lisa glanced at Robin, frowned into the silence. “Did you live here in the Hall?”

The planchette abruptly moved under their fingers, and Robin realized she’d been holding her breath. The wooden pointer slid simply to

Robin was startled by a sudden image, very clear in her mind: a young man, pale and dark-eyed, with slightly longish dark hair, slim and tall and, yes, a bit haunted. Hovering at the corners of her imagination, but for a moment quite clear and real.

And then gone. Robin snapped back to the present. The fire beside the table was crackling, almost too hot on her back. Across the table, Lisa was looking at her oddly. Robin realized, mortified, that everyone else was silent, staring at her. Outside, the wind crooned through the trees, a hollow sound between buildings.

Robin leaned forward and addressed the board. “When? When did you live here?”

The planchette jerked and then circled under their hands, as if pondering, a mesmerizing movement.

And then the letters came again, and this time so slowly, almost teasing, that both Lisa and Robin leaned forward and read urgently under their breaths, pushing the letters and guessing each word a little before it was actually completed.

Robin was aware of all three guys leaning forward, too: Cain on the couch, Patrick on the floor, Martin at his table in the back, all riveted, completely captive.

Robin’s breath caught in her throat, and Lisa finished.

The sentence hung in firelit orange and dark.

Robin and Lisa looked at each other, chilled. Scattered around the room, the guys were still.

Lisa cleared her throat slightly and leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the table. “What do you mean, ‘here’?” Her eyes met Robin’s, glanced away. “Where is ‘here’?”

The planchette jerked and then circled, with no response. The moment seemed suspended; the red yarn on Lisa’s wrist trailed across the letters like blood. Robin could feel the others waiting, leaning forward slightly, perhaps not quite breathing. Her entire attention was on the smooth age-yellowed surface of the board, the formal black letters, the scorch marks.

And then, as if some decision had been made, the word came. Strange and unfamiliar, so that both she and Lisa spoke the letters out individually.