J. Horn - The Line

“Maisie’s phone went straight to voice mail when we called,” Aunt Iris replied. “That means she’s out with that boy, and she isn’t going to be picking up. And I don’t begin to guess where Ellen spent the night, but she’s probably still passed out or too hungover to be of any service. We need to do this now.” She paused, as if weighing her options and then called out to me. “Mercy, honey, you come on back in.”

“Ah, hell no,” Connor began to object.

“It’s now or never!” Iris cut him short. “We don’t have time to hunt anyone down, and I have even less time for nonsense from you.” She took a breath and composed herself. “Come on Mercy, I’m gonna walk you through this.” The porch swing sang out like a Greek chorus as I stood. Iris sensed my hesitation. “Don’t be afraid.”

I went back in, averting my eyes from the body on the floor. The perspiration that had formed between my shoulder blades turned cold and trickled down my spine.

“Now I know you have never been shown any of this before, sugar, but you are gonna do just fine.”

“All right,” I replied, but my knees felt like they were going to buckle at any moment, and the scent of decay in the room was making me light-headed. “What do I do?”

“Remember when you girls were little, and you’d play Red Rover with Peter and his friends?” She smiled a little, her own recollection of watching us momentarily taking her away from the horror at her feet. “What we’re gonna do is very much like that. I’m going to call out for a certain energy, but once I open myself up, there may be other forces that try to beat their way in. I just need you to stand here and hold hands with me and Connor. Your strength, your inner light, it’ll help keep anything bad from breaking through.” I stood next to her and took her small, cold hand. Connor stepped forward and swiped up my other hand into his meaty paw. “Okay. Good.” She smiled reassuringly at me and then closed her eyes. “You may see some things. Don’t let them frighten you. They’re only shadows. Keep your mind focused on something real. Something you love. Something that makes you feel safe.”

My mind began to reel like a roulette wheel, clicking past people, places, and things, but not settling on anything that gave me the level of comfort I suspected I would need. My mama had died before I could know her. I had no idea who my daddy was. Aunt Iris had tried to raise us as best she could, but Connor had tainted our relationship. Uncle Oliver, he was great for swooping in with presents and recounting colorful stories, but he spent as little time in Savannah as possible, and he didn’t spell home to me. Aunt Ellen shared what she could with me, but her beauty pageant makeup secrets and the stories of her old romantic conquests were always whispered through the whiskey on her breath. There was Peter, but I was too confused about our relationship to take any comfort from him, and Jackson just made me feel guilty. In the end, there was only Maisie. Despite our differences, and the jealousy I had always felt toward her, she was the one person in this world who made me feel safe and loved.

“Have you found what you need?” Aunt Iris asked.

“Yes’m,” I replied breathlessly.

“Good. Now you focus on that. You keep it in the front of your mind and your heart. Let your heart and mind focus in equal measure.” She knelt down, placing her free hand on Ginny’s body. Her grip on my hand tightened, and suddenly it seemed like I was looking at the room through a strange fisheye lens, the objects closest to me looming largest in my vision while the rest of the room retreated to the edges. Shadows began to form and darken in my peripheral vision, inching menacingly toward us. “Focus, Mercy,” Aunt Iris commanded, and I tried. I stared straight ahead and thought of Maisie. But as her face rose to my mind’s eye, a flash of blue lightning hit the room and then everything went black.

Part of me wanted to keep my eyes shut, as if everything that had happened might go away if I chose not to face it. I could feel something sticking into my arm, and I could tell that the bed I was lying in was not my own. These two things alone were enough to tell me that I was in a hospital. I lay still for a few moments, trying to put the pieces back together, but all I could come up with was blood, a blue flash, then blackness. I heard tapping near me. Not random tapping, but a sound that spoke of someone’s well-honed skill of typing on a cell phone keypad. There was only one person on earth I knew who could work a phone like that.

“Uncle Oliver,” I said. I noticed that my mouth was very dry.

“Hey there, my little Gingersnap,” he said using his long-standing pet name for me. “You getting ready to join us again?” As I opened my eyes, he came forward and pressed the nurse call button.

I blinked against the light that was streaming in through the window. I guessed it was afternoon, but I couldn’t be sure of the day. It would have taken Oliver about a day to get from San Francisco to Savannah. From the few words he had spoken, I could tell that his southern accent had started creeping back into his voice. When he was on the West Coast, he had no accent. After a week in Savannah he went full-fledged Uncle Remus. He was early on in the process, so my guess was that I’d been out for a couple of days.

“Three days, as a matter of fact,” he stated flatly, reading my mind. I hated that he could do that with me. It didn’t work with the rest of my family, just with us non-witch types. The youngest of my mother’s siblings, Oliver was strongest when it came to telepathy, but his real fortes were glamour and persuasion, getting a person to see what he wanted them to see, believe what he wanted them to believe, and feel what he wanted them to feel. No wonder he made such a killing working in public relations. No wonder he has broken so many hearts. “And I resent the tar baby reference,” he said. “You could have said Ashley Wilkes.”

“I didn’t actually say a thing,” I said. I tried to sit up, but gave up after realizing how weak I was.

“You take it easy there,” he said. A nurse bounced in and out like a yo-yo, telling us she’d be right back with the doctor. “Bring us the young blond one who fills out those drawstring pants so nicely,” Uncle Oliver called out after her. In spite of myself, in spite of a three-day coma, I blushed. My uncle squinted. “You are beet red,” he said. At first he seemed concerned that there might be something medically wrong with me, but he must have scanned my thoughts because he laughed after a moment. “My dear, you are still a virgin. So much for the stories of your hard living Iris has been writing me about.”

I felt myself rocket from embarrassment to anger. “Stop reading me and start explaining what happened.”

He smiled at me and brushed his fingers through my hair. The anger evaporated, and I relaxed instantly. I knew he was charming me, but I was too tired to fight it. Too tired to even want to fight it.

I stared up at his smooth, serene face. I knew he was nearing forty, but the man standing next to me could not be over twenty-five, not really that much older than me. I wondered how much of what I was seeing was real, and how much was magic. What must it feel like to have a choice about whether to show the world the person time has made of you? Another wave of comfort hit me as Uncle Oliver tried to derail me from that train of thought.

“What happened?” he echoed my question thoughtfully. “Well, Gingersnap. You know how during a storm you sometimes get a power surge, and it causes one of the switches in your breaker box to switch off?”

I nodded.

“Well, you, my dear, were the switch that got flipped.” Irritation—no, outright anger—washed across his face for a moment. “Iris and Connor are idiots. They should never have tried using you as a ground. It’s like putting a child in a cockpit and telling her to land the plane. Not that you are a child,” he added, searching my thoughts for any feelings of offense, ready to soothe them away if he found them.