The Witch's Throne (Thea Drake Mystery Book 1) (Thea Drake Mysteries) Read online

  My mother is behind me. “We’re only telling you so you can stay as far away from her as possible. Keep the girls as far away from her as possible. This woman just wants attention. Ignore her, and she’ll go away. That’s my advice.”

  By the time I dig out the laptop, clear a space to sit at the table, and open the browser, my dad has joined her. I search for George Drake Beverly Donneville video. They both watch over my shoulder.

  The first link is to a video on the Donnevilles’ website: Beverly Donneville Speaks to the Spirit of George Drake.

  “Is this it?”

  Mom tsks.

  “Thea, don’t,” says Dad.

  I click on the link.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A man’s voice narrates an aerial shot panning acres of dense green forest before finally settling on a small grid of streets dotted by grey-roofed buildings.

  “Southwest from Medford on Highway 199, the tiny town of Portico lies hidden deep in old-growth forest near the border of Oregon and California.”

  I recognize the voice. It’s Charles Donneville, Beverly’s husband and the author of seventeen books on demonology and occultism.

  “Portico is an isolated community, a once-booming lumber town that has struggled since the last local mill closed in 1978. Since then, Portico’s economy has survived on tourism. In addition to its annual All Hallows’ Eve Festival, Portico attracts hundreds of occultists, witches, and paranormal enthusiasts year-round to…”

  The camera cuts to the hulking remains of an enormous oak tree, a dark and petrified stump the size of a car, its branches reaching up from the back and sides so that it resembles the seat of some evil ruler.

  “...The Witch’s Throne.”

  I lean back, distancing myself from the screen. I never thought I would have to set eyes on that thing again.

  From the first moment I saw the Witch’s Throne, it terrified me. After George and I followed a winding forest road for an hour, lost, irritated, exhausted, we had emerged into a clearing by the creek, and suddenly there it was. Like opening your closet and discovering a monster. I wanted to turn around, run, pretend I never saw it.

  “The legend goes,” says the voiceover as the camera stays on the dead tree, “that any who sit upon the Witch’s Throne will die within three days. According to the source, the curse is responsible for up to fourteen deaths over the past century.”

  Fourteen? George found evidence of six, tops. And that included poor Randle Garrety’s just weeks before we arrived.

  “Thea?” Dad places a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s a promotional video,” I say, “for their book.”

  “Go forward to minute four,” says Mom.

  “I thought you only watched a few minutes.”

  “Exactly! That’s when she starts spouting her nonsense and we turned it off.”

  I move the video forward to the 4:10 mark. When I start it again, Beverly Donneville is standing alone, away from the camera, facing the Witch’s Throne. Her long, layered skirt blows in the wind. The sky is gray and overcast with slow-drifting clouds.

  Cut to Beverly in profile. She opens her eyes, lifts her chin.

  “Yes,” she says to the empty air. “I am here.”

  Charles Donneville’s commanding voice now relates his and his wife’s past achievements in third-person—Charles’s bestselling books, Beverly’s service to unnamed celebrities—as the camera holds on Beverly’s profile.

  Then he segues into George’s involvement.

  “...their greatest challenger, George Drake. It was Drake who confronted the Donnevilles’ theories about the mysterious deaths in 1952 of two young girls in Fort Charles, Illinois, in an incident known at the Demon Cabin Murders. Drake set an elaborate trap, some say calling into question Beverly’s psychic ability, by luring Beverly into making statements that later contradicted information contrived by Drake. Drake then profited from this deception by publishing a first-person account explaining how he had supposedly discredited the Donnevilles.”

  In other words, George caught Beverly Donneville in a lie. It made him famous, proving that she was a fraud. Celebrated by skeptics, despised by believers.

  “Since then, George Drake, a self-proclaimed professional skeptic, has built a career on questioning the practices of several mediums, psychics, and other paranormal investigators, and is the author of several skeptic books, including The Widow’s Revenge and The Demon Cabin.”

  Here a split screen shows the cover of The Widow’s Revenge on the right with a photo of George on the left, the first professional author photo he had taken when the book was published. In it, he’s clean-shaven with his hair slicked back in waves.

  “Drake died last June while conducting his own investigation into the Throne. After arriving in Portico, Drake sat on the Throne himself and was, in fact, the first person to ever record this act on video. Three days later, he was dead.”

  The book cover falls away, and George’s photo fills the screen. All color fades until the image is black and white, then bursts into shades of red.

  My mother tsks again. “Shameful.”

  “Details of Drake’s death remain mysterious,” says Charles. “There is no evidence of any other person in the cemetery with Drake that night. He was found holding his phone but had not made or received any calls. Had he tried to call for help?”

  “Thea,” says Dad, “maybe we should stop. You’ve seen enough, haven’t you?”

  “Also discovered, and much discussed over the past four months, was evidence of witchcraft being practiced at the site. These totems—”

  Cut to a ground shot of scattered figures—some crosses, others human-like with stick arms and legs—bound with twine. I recoil, push back from the table.

  Dad puts two strong hands on my shoulders.

  “—are crafted from the bones of dead animals believed to be birds, rabbits, and squirrels.” The camera cuts to a shot of loose, fragile bones on the ground.

  “Official cause of death states that Drake fell, hitting his head on a hard root of the tree, but some speculate that the damage to Drake’s skull was greater than what would be caused by an ordinary fall.”

  My hands slowly ball into tight fists.

  “Missing from the scene were items Drake would have carried with him on an investigation, such as a flashlight, laptop and camera. Drake was found wearing only jeans—no shirt, no jacket or umbrella, items he had with him during the rainy week, and most mysteriously of all, no boots or socks, which were found in his car.

  “Drake’s death was the second this year blamed on the curse. The first was eighteen-year-old Randle Garrety. It was after Garrety’s death in May that Beverly Donneville was asked to perform a cleansing of the site. Shortly after the Donnevilles’ arrival, Drake followed with intentions of again discrediting the psychic. But in this, he was unsuccessful.”

  The camera switches to a close-up of Beverly. Her eyes fly open wide.

  “George,” she gasps.

  Her eyelids sink closed again, then she snaps out of her trance. Her eyes flutter, then open. Her chin lowers to a normal position, and her body seems to unlock. She wraps her shawl around her middle, and as she turns, the camera moves to show that she has an audience present, a crowd watching. She turns to them.

  “I have contacted the spirit of George Drake.”

  A sharp pain erupts in my palms, and I realize my nails are cutting into them. I force myself to relax my hands, place them flat on the table.

  “He is beyond. He is safe, but he is unable to rest. I’m hearing...a word. A single word.”

  The crowd is eerily silent, waiting.

  “I’m hearing…” Beverly blinks slowly, “...the word ‘Allerton’. George wants me to communicate...yes, Allerton. He is a believer. Allerton, he says, is proof.”

  The camera retracts to a wide shot of Beverly with the Throne behind her, her audience gathered.

  Mom stops the video. “What’s Allerton?”

>   “I have no idea.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Marion.” Dad’s heavy, warm hands squeeze my shoulders. “She doesn’t have to be involved with these people anymore, these things George used to do. He’s gone now.”

  “You’re absolutely right about that. Ignore it, honey. This woman wants attention, that’s all.”

  “We’re going to let Thea get on with her day, Marion,” says Dad. He takes Mom by the elbow and says to me, “We just wanted to check on you, hon, make sure you didn’t come across this video without warning.”

  “Come for dinner,” says Mom. “You don’t have a decent thing to eat in this house.

  “We’re out of here.” Dad drags Mom through the kitchen, shoves her out the door, and leans back in. “Hang in there, hon,” he says with a wink. “I know you’ll be fine.”

  I go to the door and watch them get in the car. Mom’s behind the wheel, of course. She rolls down the window and waves as she backs down the lane. “I’m bringing my slow cooker over tomorrow morning!”

  I close the kitchen door and turn the deadbolt with a satisfying click.

  I find the number for George’s literary agent in my contacts. Michelle Andrews. I had spoken to her maybe twice in the years she’d worked with George.

  “Thea, how are you?” she answers promptly after her assistant transfers me. “I’ve been meaning to call.”

  I tell her about the video.

  “Hold on...I’m clicking the link.” I wait, hearing the clacking of Michelle’s keyboard, then the voiceover narration. “Oh, for God’s sake. This woman. Okay...here. Damn. She posts a disclaimer. The one about ‘for entertainment purposes only’ that protects her.”

  “Is this going to hurt his sales?”

  She exhales loudly into the phone. “Honestly, I’m not sure. She has a lot of people listening to her, though. We could refute it. We could publish right away, anything George had, any evidence he had against her...”

  I clear my throat. “He hadn’t written anything.”

  “He must have had some notes. He was working on that case for weeks before you went to Oregon. Check his office. Anything he had written that we can publish right away. We can use it.”

  I press my fingertips to my temples. “He never wrote anything down. He kept voice-recorded notes. On his phone.”

  “Great! Email them to me now. I’ll have Phillip type them up.”

  “The voice notes, they’re just ramblings, George thinking out loud. It’s how he worked, how he figured out the way people were doing these things. They won’t make sense. You won’t be able to use them.”

  “He sent me a draft of the prologue.”

  “Yeah. I wrote that.”

  Silence. I hear her take several deep breaths, calming herself. “You could release a statement. You must remember something, anything. An explanation of how George died that night.”

  “He fell and hit his head.”

  “In the middle of the night at a place rumored to be cursed by a witch, for God’s sake. Her followers love this stuff. They don’t want an explanation, they want a story, and Beverly Donneville is sure as shit giving it to them.”

  “There’s no story. It was a stupid, random accident. I wasn’t with him when he died. I don’t know what happened.”

  I wasn’t with him. I was back at The Apple Inn. Angry. Livid. Packing my bags. We did not say goodbye that night. He’d left the inn so quickly, storming out after we argued, after I said—

  No, I won’t think about that.

  “His notes, then. You’ll send them to me? We’ll find something to use.”

  George’s office. I haven’t been in that room since...

  I focus on my breathing. In, out. In, out.

  The silence stretches thin.

  “Thea?”

  “Okay, yes. I’ll look for them now.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Upstairs, the landing at the tower steps is dark, the shades pulled tightly closed. My mother must have done so. She was in the house constantly in those first weeks after George’s death. God only knows what she arranged, organized, added, or removed. I haven’t been past the second-floor bedrooms since it happened.

  At the door to George’s office, I hesitate. The last time these doors were open, George had opened them. I place a hand on the brass knob. The metal is inexplicably warm.

  Heartsickness swells within me. I miss his overwhelming presence in the world. How could he so suddenly be gone? How can the world keep turning without him? Is he somewhere still? Is his after-energy still fueling this current existence?

  Stop.

  Breathe.

  I recognize these questions as the start of a well-worn path to hiding under the covers for the rest of the day. More questions are not what I need right now. I need to find George’s phone, see if he had anything on Beverly, something that we can use to shut her up. I know he was keeping his voice-recorded notes, even if he wasn’t writing. I saw him talking into it every day of those two weeks in Portico.

  I saw him every day.

  I close my eyes, keep them shut tight until I’m focused again, and when I open them, I’m sure that I can do this. I can go in George’s office.

  I open the door. It swings open smoothly, silently, and I enter the cold office.

  Bookshelves line three-quarters of the curved walls. A tall window looks out to the front lawn. Here, the blinds are open. Warm morning sunlight streams on the dusty wood floor, the faded furniture, the clutter on George’s desk.

  My heart pounds, but the pills have had enough time now to coat my nerves. I even feel a bit drowsy. I step into the office and cross the room. Facing the doorway, beneath the window, is the cheap desk George bought and assembled in college. He had talked about buying a new desk after The Widow’s Revenge became a bestseller, but then changed his mind.

  “This one’s lucky, I think,” he argued when I pointed out the wobbly front leg and the broken drawer. He stroked the scarred and stained desktop. “She and I have been through a lot together. Besides, I don’t think we’ll fit a bigger one up those spiral steps.”

  No phone on his desk. His laptop sits closed and flat. Cold. I run my fingertips over it. Another object memorialized because it was last held by him, but now turned ordinary by my touch. Day by day, I erase his presence every time I brush my hand over a light switch, a doorknob, a kitchen knife.

  When the girls and I came home after it happened, I remember unlocking the back door, then being unable to enter. George had been the last to leave our house the morning we left for Oregon. While the girls and I loaded the car, he had turned off the lights, locked the back door. The ghosts of his steps still covered the floor. I stood frozen at the back door, unable to enter the house, because I surely and suddenly felt that the moment I entered, with every step I took and every placement of my touch, I would be erasing his presence. He wasn’t there any longer to leave his own traces.

  All summer, we kept mostly to our bedrooms, the living room, and the kitchen. When the girls went back to school in August, for the first few weeks I stood in doorways to the dining room, the front parlor, the downstairs bath, savoring those parts of the house in which we had not yet tracked our new life.

  Now I am in his office, wiping away his footsteps with my own, pressing my fingerprints over the surface of his desk.

  Next to the desk is the shelf where George displays his prized possessions: copies of his published books, a signed photo of him and James Randi, the framed note of gratitude from Carol Merrit for discrediting Beverly Donneville and clearing the name of her son Robert, rumored to be the Demon Cabin murderer.

  Next to these sits our wedding photo from the summer after our college graduation. The ceremony took place in my parents’ backyard on a windy March afternoon. My white veil billows out behind me, and George’s thick curls are wild about his face. We’re looking not at the camera but each other. His arms are around my waist, pulling me to him, bending me slightly backward, moments befo
re kissing me.

  No phone on the shelves.

  I turn back to the desk.

  Beside his laptop in a turtle shell ashtray rests a carved-bone pipe. Elk bone, George said, sent to him by a fan. The scent of the tobacco he sometimes smoked drifts to my nose. An ache swells in my throat. I inhale the scent, wanting to absorb it, consume it, digest it.

  The tobacco scent, the photos, his possessions surrounding me, the very air he exhaled…it all overwhelms me. It is nothing less than a visitation. I am sure of it now. George Drake is in this room with me.

  Suddenly, I’m exhausted. I shouldn’t have taken so many pills. I sink into George’s desk chair, and it feels warm, as if he has risen from it moments ago.

  He never smoked around me. On our first date, I waited for him outside my dorm and watched him turn the corner, dragging a cooler on wheels behind him. When he saw me, he flicked his cigarette away and waved.

  “Ready?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

  He didn’t light another cigarette all night.

  We walked to the lake on campus and picked a spot under the largest tree, close to the water. It was mid-November, but the afternoon temperature had reached the high sixties. George took two beers from the cooler, twisted the cap from one and handed it to me. He sat down, leaned back against the tree, and patted the space next to him.

  I sat down, and we watched the sun set over the lake for a few minutes, sipping our beers.

  “Ever had a psychic reading?” he asked.

  In the few days I’d known him, the main thing I’d learned about George Drake was that he had no filter. He could—and would—discuss any subject.

  I was drawn to him, though I barely knew him. I liked the way he spoke whatever was on his mind, spoke it out loud to anyone who happened to be nearby. He was, at that time in my life, the most genuine person I’d ever met. Plus, he was attractive in a way I hadn’t considered in boys before that day. He was short, stocky, and what I can best describe as “shaggy”: wavy brown hair that fell over his ears and eyes, a beard he liked to scratch. He wore sweatshirts with shorts and flip-flops, even in the winter, and he smelled primarily of laundry detergent, although as I got to know him better, I found out his skin always had that warm, outdoor smell after spending a day in the sun. He carried an extra twenty pounds well. When he walked, he wandered, surveying the scenery as if on a tour group, even on the same quarter mile stretch to class every single morning. As if he were seeing it all for the first time.