Page 53 of The Premonition at Withers Farm
“Okay, okay.” Molly managed a laugh. “I’m sorry I asked.”
“No, I don’t think there are lost, incomplete souls wandering the earth, waiting to pop out of the closet at night and beg for help to cross over.” Sid eyed Molly. “Why do you ask?”
“I know people claim to have seen them, that’s all. It seems enough people have talked of having sightings, that it’s ... well, it’s hard to discount as all a ploy or a myth or so many people going cuckoo.”
Sid nodded. “I don’t argue there’s a spiritual world out there.”
“I tend to think—” Molly broke off and waved her hand toward Sid. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just get this stuff up in the attic so we can play with the chickens.”
Sid bent and hoisted the crate in her hands. “Okay, sure. But Icantell you this. I think the line between life and the spiritual world is thin. I think it’s also something that engages our curiosity and could be extremely dangerous if we’re not cautious. Remember King Saul in the Bible? He could conjure the dead spirit of the prophet Samuel, but it wasn’t blessed by God.”
“Why is that?” Molly felt she should know, only she didn’t.
Sid was making her way cautiously up the ladder. “Probably,” she grunted as she hefted the box onto the attic floor, “because we’re not supposed to seek after the dead. What can they do? They’re dead, and they’re not God.”
“But theycanhaunt us?” Molly pressed, regretting it instantly when Sid shot her a confused look. “I mean, if King Saul could conjure a dead prophet, then the deadcanbe communicated with.”
“Molly”—Sid seemed to choose her words carefully—“you can also play with fire, and it can permanently scar you.”
“Or it can follow you like you’re a trail of gasoline and you can’t escape,” Molly challenged, then reapplied her attention to the task at hand, effectively shutting down any further conversation about ghosts, the spirit world, God, or her own personal hauntings.
It was disconcerting to even consider that Sid’s overimaginative assumption that they’d stored some killer’s kit in the chicken coop attic could be true. Molly made her way down the canned food aisle of the grocery store. Each person she passed, she examined. January’s killer hadn’t been caught—they hadn’t even released a suspect or a composite drawing of a potential subject. It was as though the girl in the ditch near the farm was just a name with no one to bring to justice on her behalf. And the worst part was that Molly wanted to forget January. Forget the unexplained visit from Trent’scousin. Forget that she had been killed just a mile from them. Forget that the police had called this morning asking for Trent. Forget that the cloud of suspicion hanging over Trent ruined the thin thread of unity they had rediscovered in the past few days.
Molly reached for a can of baked beans. She liked them. Trent didn’t. She tossed them into the cart, the tin can clanging against the metal side.
“That’s right. Throw it. I always feel better when I throw things.”
Startled, Molly looked to her right, only to lower her eyes as a tiny hunchbacked elderly woman wheeled her cart next to Molly’s.
“Oh.” Molly mustered a smile. “Hello.”
The woman’s white hair was permed—or maybe it had been in rollers—and the curls fell in rows on her head. Her face was wrinkled, friendly, with cheeks that were the soft color of a pink rose. Her hands gripped the cart in front of her, and her shoulders barely rose over it. Cloudy brown eyes smiled at her.
“When I was young like you, I used to throw chicken eggs against the side of my husband’s barn just to annoy him and to get out my frustrations.” The woman laughed, more to herself it seemed. “It did wonders! Although thehoursmy husband spent looking for the neighborhood pranksters who threw eggs...”
Molly realized she was staring at her without saying a word. The lady reached out and patted Molly’s hand.
“It’s okay, dear. This is why I don’t watch the news. Puts me in a tizzy. We can hardly handle life anymore! It’s so tiring.”
Molly nodded. Yes, yes, it was.
“I’m Gladys. And you are?”
“Molly,” she answered, a bit reluctantly.
“Are you a Wasziak? You look like a Wasziak.”
Molly nodded, although she didn’t know what Gladys meant. “I married a Wasziak.”
“Oh yes! That boy—what’s his name? Toby? Tyler?”
“Trent.”
“Trent! Yes. I used to be good friends with his grandmother, Norma. A fine family. The Wasziaks have been upstanding citizens of Kilbourn for decades.”
Molly had heard that often, known it since she’d started dating Trent in high school, and now she bore the name too.
“You know, we don’t live far apart from each other. If you hike across the back field of yours, you’ll run into my daddy’s old fields. I lease them out now, but back in the day, that was all worked by my family. You can probably see the roof peak of my farmhouse. The blue roof?”
