Teddy is anxious to swim, so he eats only half a sandwich and says he’s not hungry anymore. And Adrian knows I’m ready to get started, so he eats quickly, then uses a single arm to scoop Teddy off the ground.
“Are you ready, Mr. T?”
Teddy shrieks and screams with delight.
Now for the tricky part:
“Teddy, would you mind if Adrian watched you for a little while? I need to do something in my cottage.”
As I expected, Teddy goes totally bananas. He runs to the far end of the pool deck, waving his arms like a maniac, absolutely thrilled that Adrian—Adrian!!—is going to babysit.
“Please watch him carefully. You can’t let him out of your sight. Not for a second. If anything happens to him—”
“We’ll be fine,” Adrian promises. “It’s you that I’m worried about. Is this your first time using a Ouija board?”
“First time since middle school.”
“Be careful, okay? Yell if you need anything.”
I shake my head. “Don’t come anywhere near the cottage. Even if you hear us screaming. I don’t want Teddy to know what we’re doing. If he tells his parents, they’ll flip out.”
“But what if there’s a problem?”
“Mitzi says she’s done a hundred of these things. She says they’re totally safe.”
“What if Mitzi’s wrong?”
I assure him everything’s going to be okay but I’m not sure I sound very confident. Mitzi has already called my cell phone six times today, alerting me to important precautions and restrictions. She’s forbidden me from wearing any jewelry or perfume. No makeup, no hats or scarves, no open-toed shoes. She’s sounded more and more manic with every conversation. She explained that she uses THC to “unblock” her neural pathways, and I worry all the cannabis has made her paranoid.
Teddy comes running back in our direction and slams into Adrian’s knees, nearly knocking him into the pool. “Are you ready yet? Can we swim now?”
“You guys have fun,” I tell them. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”
* * *
By the time I reach the cottage, Mitzi has finished her preparations. There’s a stack of reference books on my kitchen counter and she’s hung heavy black fabric over the windows to blot out all the sunlight. When I open the front door, blinking my eyes to adjust to the gloom, I catch her peeking outside and watching Adrian pull off his T-shirt. “Oh my my my. Where did you find this handsome Scarlet Knight?”
She doesn’t seem to recognize Adrian without his landscaping gear, doesn’t realize he’s the same man she profiled as a rapist just a few weeks earlier.
“He lives down the street.”
“And you trust him to watch the child? We won’t be disturbed?”
“We’ll be fine.”
I close the door, and it’s like sealing myself inside a tomb. The air is thick with the woodsy smell of burning sage; Mitzi explains this will reduce interference from unfriendly spirits. She’s placed a half dozen votive candles around the room, giving us just enough light to work by. There’s a black cloth draped over my kitchen table and the wooden spirit board sits in the middle, surrounded by a ring of tiny granular crystals. “Sea salt,” Mitzi explains. “Kind of an excess precaution, but since it’s your first time I’m not taking any chances.”
Before we start, Mitzi asks if she can review all the drawings I’ve received. At this point I’ve amassed quite a collection; earlier that morning, I’d awakened to find three new ones on the floor of my cottage, as if they’d been slipped under the front door.
Mitzi seems particularly troubled by the last drawing, by the profile of the woman’s face. She points to the silhouette on the horizon. “Who’s this person walking toward her?”
“I think she’s walking away from her.”
Mitzi shudders, struck by a chill, then shakes it off. “I guess we’ll just have to ask. Are you ready?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have to go to the bathroom?”
“No.”
“Is your cell phone turned off?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re ready.”
We take seats on opposite ends of the table. There’s a third chair between us—left empty for Anya. In the darkness of the cottage, it feels like I’ve left Spring Brook behind. Or rather, it feels like I’m in and out of Spring Brook at the same time. The air is different; it’s thicker, harder to breathe. I can still hear Teddy laughing and Adrian shouting “Cannonball!” and water splashing in the swimming pool but all these sounds are slightly distorted, like I’m hearing them over a bad phone connection.