Page 76 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
“It was so ... surreal, Perliett.” She slid into a chair at the kitchen table, resting her teacup on the table. “I looked up and there she was. Beside my bed.”
The lantern cast a warm glow through the kitchen. Perliett noted that the back door was shut, but Maribeth had left the window open over the washbasin. She would need to close that before they retired. George’s warnings—the memory of Millie’s corpse half floating in the river...
“She just stood there. Staring down at me.” Maribeth took another sip of tea, her eyes fixed on the distant wall as if she were being transported back to the night before when in her bed and she was awakened by an apparition.
“Eunice visited you?” Perliett took the chair opposite her mother. Her heavy curtain of dark hair fell over her shoulder and her nightdress. They were preparing for bed, but Maribeth was apprehensive about going. She’d asked her daughter to join her for tea. They needed to talk, she’d said. Perliettexpected her mother to ask questions regarding the shocking afternoon. About Millie. Instead, she was elaborating on her own experience from the night before.
Maribeth nodded, her black hair pulled into a thick braid. “Eunice. She was so pale. Ethereal, really.” Maribeth raised her eyes to meet Perliett’s, and Perliett saw in their reflection a sort of awe and fear swirling together. “Her eyes were—they were empty. I could see through Eunice as if she were a mist.”
“She spoke to you?” Perliett couldn’t deny the way her throat tightened and her breaths shortened. It was one thing to know her mother summoned communication with the spirits in their study, but it was entirely different to learn they roamed the house. Shifting through walls and observing them in their sleep. The sacred aloneness of one’s room at night, curled beneath the covers, was violated when a spirit lurking in the corner became a reality.
Maribeth nodded. “She did. A strangled whisper. Her hand—so white—kept grasping at her throat. Her windpipe seemed as if it had been mangled beneath the hands of her killer.” Wide eyes made Maribeth look almost creepy herself. The hot tea passed through her lips with a cooling sip, making a bubbling sound that reminded Perliett of the woman she’d sat with last year, who had taken her last gasping breaths of life.
“But Eunice wasn’t strangled, Mother.” Perliett’s correction brought an awareness into Maribeth’s expression.
“Are you certain?” Maribeth asked.
“Yes. I helped clean her body.” Perliett wished her mother hadn’t raised this topic tonight. She desperately needed a good night’s rest. An opportunity to gather her wits after a shocking day. Now she couldn’t help but cast wary glances into the corners of the room. Was Eunice there? Was she listening to them discuss her demise?
“Regardless,” Maribeth said, brushing aside Perliett’scorrection as to how Eunice had died, “she’s trying to tell me something, and I can’t ... I can’t interpret what it is!” Perliett noticed her mother’s hand shook as she set the teacup back on the table. “I need to make a connection again.” Maribeth pushed off the table.
“Now?” Perliett drew back.
“Yes. Come with me.” Maribeth motioned for Perliett to follow her as she passed, leaving the familiar aroma of rosemary wafting behind her.
Perliett ignored the twist in her stomach. Her bare feet padded along the carpet runner as she followed Maribeth to the study. It wasn’t lost on her that Maribeth was intent on contacting Eunice but had never shown the same urgency to connect with PaPa. Dare she ask? Could her mother attempt to summon more than one spirit tonight?
After today’s events, Perliett ached for the steady presence of PaPa. He wouldn’t have been so oblivious as her mother was or even preoccupied by the murdered instead of giving his attention to the living. To Perliett. Whose life was supposedly in danger, according to Mrs. Withers, Detective Poll, George, and even the killer himself, if the dead robin was any indicator.
She cast a nervous glance at the windows in the study. The one that had shattered was still boarded up. Was it secure enough? Would it keep out the Cornfield Ripper if he tried to enter? If he and his cackling nighttime chuckle of mockery hunted her inside her own home?
Maribeth lit three candles in the middle of the table, blowing out the match so that a tendril of smoke drifted in a curling dance toward the ceiling. She went to the shelf at the edge of the room—PaPa’s shelf—and lifted a heavy crystal rock. Tucking it in her left arm, she selected a pencil from a cup and retrieved a piece of stationery.
“What are you doing?” Perliett hadn’t seen her mother with pencil and paper before, not during a summoning.
“Shhh.” Maribeth rested the crystal near the candles and laid the stationery and pencil in front of her. The flickering of the candles made the crystal almost glow. “Sit.” Maribeth waved at a chair as she brushed her hand behind her to smooth her nightgown as she sat.
Perliett obeyed. It was difficult to swallow. To breathe. An oppressive air—not unfamiliar—settled in the room. She watched in silence as her mother closed her eyes and drew in a deep, steadying breath. Then Maribeth opened her eyes, focusing on the crystal. She lifted the pencil with her right hand, but instead of gripping it with her fingers, she balanced it against her knuckles.
The room fell into a dark silence. Perliett could hear the steady breaths of her mother. A clock on the wall ticked its seconds.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
Maribeth fixated on the crystal. Perliett watched as her mother’s eyes seemed to glaze over, her blinking slowed.
Perliett opened her mouth to ask her mother if she was all right, then realized Maribeth was falling into a trance. Her breaths came slowly, a deep and silent intake and then a drawn-out release. The exhaling through her nose made the candle flames dance.
Grasping the material of her nightgown, Perliett clenched it in her fingers below the table. Her hands were trembling. Why something so powerful, so miraculous as connecting with the afterlife would feel so unnerving and dangerous, Perliett couldn’t explain.
The pencil moved.
Perliett’s gaze flew to Maribeth’s hand, which moved along the paper, the pencil lead leaving a light trail behind it. Words were forming on the page, although Perliett couldn’t read them from her seat across the table. It was strange how the pencil stayed balanced against her mother’s knuckles, how her wrist moved so gracefully and so quickly. The wordsseemed to come almost faster than Maribeth could write. Maribeth kept her focus on the crystal and not the paper. Her breaths came faster now, louder. Perliett leaned in, watching her mother’s face for signs of distress.
Something was wrong. Maribeth hadn’t blinked for over a minute. She was still in a deep trance as the pencil in her hand continued working its way across the page. The candle flames flickered faster, and Perliett sensed cold air creeping up her nightgown, wrapping itself around her legs. Her throat constricted as the sensation of hands clamping down on her neck became very real.
Maribeth’s eyes widened, her stare shifting to just above Perliett’s shoulder. Her mouth moved but remained wordless. Perliett tried to twist in her chair, even as she drew her hands up to her throat to fight off the stranglehold that didn’t exist.
A low moan gurgled in Maribeth’s throat, rising with insistence.
