Spirits Read online

  Back in their Orange Crush, sunshine days, Dad would pull her by the hand through Harrington’s Liquors. Its floors had been slippery with sand from hundreds of flip-flop-clad folks padding in and out searching for beach day beers or nighttime piña colada rum. Burglar bars covered the windows and obscured the red and blue neon beer signs. A couple smiled and held Newports at the entrance. They were apparently alive with pleasure. That and nicotine.

  Dad would drag her past the brown bottles of liquor to the humming coolers in the back. He’d clutch a 24-pack of Bud, tuck it under one arm, and escort Tori to the checkout counter where he’d say, “Go on, honey. Pick out something for yourself.” It was usually a Zero bar, but sometimes she’d choose a Payday. It was a ritual that took place at least twice over their weeklong stay.

  Was Harrington’s even around anymore? It was north of the beach, so she pulled away from the curb and drove ahead.

  The landscape of North Cape May had morphed into a suburban oasis of Wal-Marts, chain restaurants, and supermarkets. Harrington’s was still there all right, but it was tucked into a strip mall between a nail salon and a ShopRite.

  She pulled into the rutted lot and parked. An electric bing-bong announced her entry to the store. A gray-haired, bearded man sat behind the counter, puffed eyes glancing over the newspaper. He barely looked up when she walked in.

  Bottles lined the shelves. Coolers housed the beer in the back. If her memory served, the layout hadn’t changed at all. A green sign told her the gin was down the same aisle as the vodka and the whiskey. A bottle of Bombay would’ve held her for a week back home. The shiver in the shoulders made her grab a second bottle and a bottle of Maker’s Mark to boot.

  The old man at the counter robotically scanned the bottles, stuffing them in brown paper sacks.

  “That’ll be seventy-three twenty-four,” he droned.

  She spied the tiny airplane bottles by the register and plucked up four nips of Malibu rum, a couple of Stoli oranges, and three Fireballs.

  He ran the mini bottles over the scanner and said, “Ninety-six forty-seven.”

  She passed him her debit card and tapped her foot against the linoleum. He swiped it, handed back her card, and said, “Have a good one,” before going back to his paper.

  She hefted the large paper sack to the parking lot and picked out one of the Stolis. Under the liquor store’s red awning, she twisted the cap and sucked down the bland orange liquor. The alcohol burned her nostrils as the warmth spread across her. The shakes dissipated. She stood in the darkness for a moment, feeling more human. A man in a torn, oil-stained sweatshirt ambled up and smiled at her, the void where his two front teeth should be, gaping into an undulating darkness inside his mouth.

  “Getting it done, am I right, sweetheart?”

  Pink and silver tendrils slithered out between his lips and slid down his dirty shirt and onto the cracked concrete. A snake wormed its way toward Tori’s feet, and she screamed. Fear paralyzed her to the spot even as the snake wriggled closer. Her legs felt numb, as if the tiny bottle of alcohol had incapacitated her. It all looked like a grainy Technicolor film she was watching from behind a glass. It seemed fake until the snake nipped at her shoe, the oxblood T-strap heel. She felt a fang pierce the leather and poke into the flesh of her big toe.

  The grubby man laughed, and Tori watched as slithering serpents dropped, one by one, from his mouth.

  She tore off for the Volvo, the bottles rattling and shaking against her body. She shoved herself behind the wheel and watched the man wave at her. If the snakes were still there, she couldn’t see them. Cold sweat dripped down her back. She licked her dry lips and took a breath so deep, it made her yawn. Had it really happened?

  The ride back to the Seaside was a flight from that thing. Her knee jumped at a traffic light, and her hip muscle itched to smash the accelerator and blow through it. A film of hot moisture clung to her trousers. She checked the rearview, and a shockwave worked its way from her shoulder blades down to her pelvis at the thought that a cop could pull her over. She wasn’t drunk, but there wasn’t any hope at all that she could collect herself. She’d just seen snakes come out of a guy’s mouth. If that wasn’t grounds for being locked up in the looney bin, she didn’t know what was.

  She drew in a slow, shuddery breath, held it for a moment, and let it blow between her lips. She turned her attention back to the road and two more right turns brought her to the front of the Seaside.

  She threw open the door and flung her legs out. The blood-colored shoe caught her eye, and she shoved her knee up to her chest. The leather was smooth where the snake had bitten her. Her toe still throbbed, but there was no evidence she’d been bitten.

  There was no delicate maneuvering back into the house. The ordeal rattled every part of her, and Amelia catching her with a stash of liquor was the least of her worries.

  Amelia watched as Tori shuffled the bag against her body and huffed up the steps. The awkward eye contact made her move a little faster to the stairs.

  Behind the solid wooden safety of her suite door, she clunked the paper sack down on the small writing desk and clutched the bottle of Bombay. She twisted the cap, and it snapped open. The fumes from the gin burned her nostrils. There were no glasses in sight, so she tipped the bottle back and gulped down her medicine. It scorched her throat.

  There was a steady breeze coming in through the window. Tori clutched the bottle and plopped herself down on the bed. The mattress was lumpy, but it would do. Another slug of liquor quieted her thundering heartbeat. She blew out a booze-scented breath and watched the white, gauzy curtains flutter against the black sky. Outside, the ocean roared.

  She leaned against the plush pillows piled up behind her and realized she was drained. Her fitful sleep the night before had given her a dull, constant headache. The stress of, well, whatever she’d experienced at the liquor store depleted her of any spare energy.

  The bright white behind her eyelids gave way to red. It spread in all directions, and she couldn’t fight it. The face was there again. The curve of a soft, youthful cheek pressed against clumps of asphalt. Something drained onto the roadway. An eye, deep brown and sinister, flipped open, and the curve of the cheek deepened into a smile. The girl got up, slick black slime dripping from the gaping wound at her temple. She trudged on broken feet to the bed and laughed. The rotten stench of death flowed from her. A movement at the back of the girl’s mouth held Tori’s attention. It jutted from the throat and inched up between the girl’s shiny, straight, young teeth. A snake, pink and silver, rubbed between her lips and fell, wriggling and seductive, at the foot of the bed. Tori struggled to move, but she could only stare as the snake wrapped itself around her leg and slinked up to her face. It reared back for a moment, as if it was going to strike. Instead, Tori opened her mouth and felt the leathery skin slide smoothly inside and work its way down into the depths of her guts.

  Something black choked its way up from the girl’s mouth. She smiled and breathed, “It’s all yours now.”

  You can wake up, a voice echoed in Tori’s head. Her feet kicked, so sure was she that some venomous thing had taken up residence in her sheets.

  The curtains waved, the suggestion of ghostly smiles and blackened death’s eyes shrouded in the folds and twists of the cloth. A face emerged from the abstract canvas. Was it the girl? No. The resemblance was there. The cheek curved in the same way. But worry lines furrowed the forehead and lines crinkled at the eye sockets. An older relative. Could it have been her mother, the woman who assailed Tori?

  There was a term for the mind seeing faces where there were no faces. She searched the memory of her Vassar psych classes for it. Matrixing? Was that it? It didn’t sound right.

  Logically, she knew there was no face staring at her. Its cheeks were not lifted in a grin that threatened to turn into a ravenous mouth gnawing at her skin. There were no burning eyes, begging for Tori’s painful, excruciating demise. It was all in her head.

 
Pareidolia. The word sprung up from her memory banks.

  All that education, all those years of pulling ideas together and learning the ropes of marketing and making a name for herself, none of it changed the fact that a woman was glaring at her from the window. The expression was a mixture of absolute hatred and mischief.

  None of her education and experience could explain away the fact that a ghost was staring her down.

  CHAPTER 7

  Amelia Warren knew drunks, and she could tell she had one on her hands. The smell, sweaty and sour, clung to Tori. She wasn’t unclean necessarily. Showers, perfume, breath mints were all well and good, but nothing scrubbed away that smell. Amelia would never forget that stench, even if she lived to be a hundred.

  Her husband, Bill, hadn’t died of cancer. She’d spent his last days at his bedside, but instead of wasting away from tumors eating at his vital organs, his body, bloated and yellow, polluted itself until he was poisoned. His liver failed first, then his kidneys. It might as well have been cancer. It was a slow, painful process that depleted her of all her sanity.

  She told everyone who asked that it had been cancer to save face––not only for herself, but for her late husband. His drinking problem embarrassed her, something she never would’ve said to his face. But the heat of guilt flushed her cheeks when confronted with it, and it was just easier to call it cancer and change the subject. She’d been a great enabler. Instead of fighting him or nagging him, she’d allowed him to drink any time of day, and supplied it to him when he shook so violently, the whole bed rattled.

  Perhaps it was fate that brought Tori to her. Maybe this would be her redemption. This time, she could actually save someone trapped in Hell.

  It was already bad. That much she knew. Those convulsions she’d witnessed when she showed Tori to her room meant her addiction was raging. She wondered if her drinking led her to lose her job. How had she put it? She was at her liberty? Amelia thought the terminology was charming, but that was the thing about drunks. They could be endlessly charming until you gave every last ounce of yourself to get them their poison.

  The deal she’d struck would probably hurt the bottom line. Tourists still trickled in, even in the offseason, but she knew she probably wouldn’t be able to rent out the honeymoon suite until spring. There might be a stray Christmas wedding, but those were rare, especially for the beachside towns. Still, she felt lonely, even in the height of the season when the No Vacancy sign burned constantly.

  The serendipity of it all confounded her. Last September, Bill gave up and succumbed to his demons. And here was a woman, seemingly haunted by the same demons––and maybe more. How much could she spare of herself to save this woman, if it came to that? And would she even be able to? If she’d learned one thing from Bill’s slow crawl to the grave, it was that not everyone wants to be saved.

  Clunking from the stairs made her snap to attention, as if Tori’d heard her thoughts and was stomping down to confront her. The woman stood in the shadows of the landing wearing the same stained pantsuit from the night before, hair tangled into a fawn-colored mass atop her head. Bags puffed beneath her eyes. A large scratch jagged down her cheek.

  “Morning. My goodness, did you hurt yourself?”

  Tori blinked and floated blankly from the landing to Amelia’s desk. She absently put a palm to her cheek, as if she hadn’t noticed before.

  “It was stinging when I woke up. Probably just scratched myself in my sleep.”

  Her voice rumbled like gravel.

  Tori’s eyes widened a moment, and she said, “Is there some place I can get a cup of coffee?”

  Amelia smirked.

  “Sure. Why don’t we go over to Zoë’s? I could use a cup myself. It’s just a block away.”

  Tori looked herself over as if noticing for the first time that she was disheveled.

  “Let me go change. I’ll be right down.”

  As Tori whirled around, that smell fluttered up from beneath her clothes, and Amelia scrunched her nose.

  She pulled her quilted jacket from the antique coatrack by the door and gathered up her purse. The thought crossed her mind that she should get into the habit of locking it up in the bottom desk drawer. She pulled the strap over her shoulder and leaned against the edge of the desk, arms crossed over her chest, until she heard Tori thudding back down the stairs. Gooseflesh rose on Amelia’s arms as the woman approached, looking somewhat more refreshed in a red cable knit sweater and a pair of distressed white jeans. Her hair looked tamer. But there was something off about her. Amelia shivered and shook her head. She’d already established an opinion of the woman, colored in no small part by her own experiences. She decided she was projecting, and she should knock it off.

  The two walked into the cold sunshine. The ocean groaned and breathed. A couple of joggers bopped up and down on the boardwalk. It was cold enough that Amelia pulled the collar of her jacket up to warm the numbing flesh of her ears. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and hunched against the gale. Tori didn’t seem to be bothered by the chill. She walked upright, hands at her sides. A terse smile seemed incongruous to the sullen, pensive expression in her eyes.

  “So, where’d you come in from?” Amelia asked, perturbed by the quiet.

  “Montclair.”

  “Nice town. My nephew went to Montclair State for a while. Transferred to Rutgers later on.”

  The smile fell, and Tori just looked impatient, as if this trip was keeping her from something else she’d rather be doing.

  They arrived at Zoë’s and walked up to the counter.

  “I’d like two large coffees,” Amelia said before turning to Tori. “Anything to eat?”

  Tori shrugged. The ponytailed woman behind the counter had a pen and notepad at the ready.

  “I guess a bagel.”

  “Two bagels, cream cheese on the side,” Amelia said.

  “It’ll be just a few minutes. Sit anywhere you like.”

  The tables looked out onto Beach. Summer alfresco breakfasts were popular, but the thought sent an involuntary shiver down Amelia’s back. They picked the table next to the space heater. The radiant heat gave off the illusion that it was August.

  The waitress balanced two coffee mugs and two plates and set them down.

  Tori went for the bagel like she hadn’t eaten in days. She ripped a chunk with her fingers and crammed it into her mouth. Amelia turned away and sipped her coffee.

  “Any big plans for the day?” she asked.

  Tori chomped the lump of bagel and licked a dollop of cream cheese from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were bloodshot.

  “Not really. Just going to finish unpacking, maybe check out the town.”

  “You’re pretty late in the season. Some places pack it in after Labor Day.”

  “Well, where do the locals go? For fun, for necessities?”

  “There are a few places. There’s a Wal-Mart and a ShopRite up north, off of Route 9. You’ll find more of the restaurants that cater to locals farther north. There’s the Rusty Nail on Beach, but …”

  She sealed up her lips the moment she mentioned the place. It had flown out of her mouth on instinct, and she regretted it immediately.

  “I think I saw that place when I pulled into town,” Tori answered. “Local dive?”

  Amelia nodded and said, “Some people run on the boardwalk in the mornings. If it’s not too cold, I get out there myself. It’s a little bracing some days, but the sweat is good for you, right?”

  Tori lifted an eyebrow at the topic change.

  The two finished up their food. The walk back to the Seaside was uneventful, and Tori seemed to be more alert and less distant. Amelia briefly regretted renting to her and considered locking up a few priceless heirlooms along with her purse. When things got bad enough, Bill had sold some jewelry her mother had passed down. It seemed like it would be nice to have a friend in the house on those lonely winter nights, but Tori Garrett just might be more trouble than she was worth. Better
to be safe than sorry, wasn’t that what Mom always said?

  Tori studied Amelia between the railing slats on the second-floor landing. The woman flitted about downstairs like a butterfly, busying herself with a dozen little tasks that mattered to absolutely no one but her. The urge bubbled up in her to run downstairs and ask for help.

  Something happened overnight. The dream––had it been a dream?––of swallowing that snake had been the start of it. It wormed through her body even now. It told her things she didn’t want to hear. She tried to block it out. It taunted her. Drink! It dared her to gulp down the contents of those bottles tucked away in her room. Suck it all down. It said something else, too. Something that froze her blood and made the roof of her mouth sticky. A hushed voice, grim and tinny, said, Kill her.

  The room upstairs scared her. The thing that spoke to her was angry. Its voice sizzled like electricity. A terror, like approaching the top of a roller coaster, seized her at the thought of going back to her room and listening, alone, to the voice encourage her to drink herself to death or stab her hostess with a carving knife.

  Instead, she waited until Amelia flitted to another room and descended the steps. She went back into the bracing cold and headed down Beach toward the gazebo. The cold soothed an ache that throbbed just behind her eye socket. Her hands trembled again, but she couldn’t be sure if it was the chill or the palsy that never quite went away.

  She crossed Beach and climbed a short set of stairs to the boardwalk. Sand grit settled on her face. The wind played with her hair. Something writhed inside her, just beneath the surface of her skin. It felt like her blood was alive. As she approached the gazebo and the foam sprayed up from the rocks below, the thing seemed to crawl up into her throat.

  Get out of here! Walk away now!

  Was it afraid of the water? Her head felt like someone clobbered it with a hammer, but a smile lifted at the corners of her mouth. Anger roiled beneath the surface of her skin, and that made her happy. She pressed on toward the structure and heard the jangling of a telephone. It was the grimy payphone at the end of the road. The sound rattled around inside her sinuses. She pulled open the sliding door and walked inside. The booth blocked the wind, but she could hear the dim howl just outside. Hearts proclaiming SC+AK and GE+CS and a dozen other initials of couples that had probably broken up eons ago surrounded her. The clatter of the phone grew more insistent. Tori picked up the black plastic receiver and put it to her ear. It felt cold.