Intersections Read online

  "You should go help your brothers, Luka. If there's another storm coming, we need to make sure we have enough wood to keep warm. The power will certainly go out," Mother said calmly. She'd put her hands on the planchette again, like a smoker who couldn't be without a cig for more than the time it took to light the next one after crushing out the first. "Perhaps for days."

  With a nod and a glance at Tori, Luka left the dining room. The weight of the baby in Tori's arms shifted as Rose sank into the boneless heaviness of sleep. Tori watched as Luka came out of the house and headed toward his brothers. He paused, gesturing, pointing back toward the house. Then the four of them turned and went back into the woods.

  Tori let the curtain fall back over the window and faced the old woman. "I need to use your phone to call my dad. He's been waiting for us. He'll be worried."

  NO

  Mother cocked her head as the planchette drifted around the board. "Of course, my dear. You can leave the child with me while you make the call. It's been a long time since I bounced a baby on my knee."

  "Look," Tori said with narrowed eyes and a gritted jaw, "I'm not sure what, exactly, is going on here. But there's no way I'm letting you hold my baby."

  "I won't drop her."

  Tori frowned. "I'm not afraid you'll drop her."

  "And we've been so kind to you," Mother said as though Tori had deeply wounded her. "How very rude."

  "I'm sorry. I need the phone."

  Mother smiled serenely. "It's in the kitchen. We only have the one."

  YES

  Tori glanced at the board on the table. "I never believed those worked."

  "Oh, it works. Very well. I have lived a good portion of my life being advised by this very board. I acquired it when I was a young woman, without direction or inspiration. Full of desperate choices and bad decisions. It will surprise you to learn that I was much like you, when I was your age."

  YES

  Tori cupped the back of Rose's skull, holding the baby close to her. "And then what happened?"

  "I was given this board as a gift from an admirer. A paramour," the old woman said with a grin and a wink so disturbingly lascivious it set Tori back a step or two. "He encouraged me to embrace the intersection between this world and the next. To connect with the world beyond."

  Tori's nose wrinkled. "Uh huh. Like what. Ghosts?"

  "Spirits," the old woman said. "One spirit, in particular."

  "Maybe it's a demon," Tori replied flatly, not believing it and well aware that yanking Mother's chain was not her smartest idea, but unable to help herself. "Watch out, you'll get possessed."

  Mother smiled, a wide grin that bared her teeth. "When you stand at an intersection, how do you decide which direction to go?"

  "It depends on where I want to end up."

  "And how do you decide where you want to end up?" The smile had become a grimace.

  "Well, I don't do it by asking a spirit or a demon or whatever, I can tell you that much."

  Mother gave the baby a pointed, lingering glance and Tori another of those curl-lipped smiles. "And look where it got you so far."

  "If you ask me," Tori said, "depending on the advice of a Ouija board to tell you what to do doesn't exactly sound to me like you're making any better choices."

  NO

  YES

  "Believing in the board, listening to the board, has shown me the best and most important things inside of myself. The pieces of me I would never have otherwise known." Mother's fingers twitched on the planchette before she lifted them and gestured at Tori. "Come here and try it for yourself. You'll see."

  Tori didn't particularly want to use the Ouija board, but that dark thing inside her moved her toward it, if for no other reason than she intended to prove Mother wrong. Ignoring the old woman's outstretched arms and silent request to take the child, Tori placed the fingertips of one hand lightly on the planchette. It tipped for a second or so before settling firmly back onto the board.

  It began to move at once, urged on by the subtle twitching of Tori's fingers as she deliberately moved it. One letter at a time, she spelled out a message while Mother looked eagerly on. Tori held herself back from laughing only by biting her tongue, glancing from the corner of her eye at Mother's intent expression.

  E V E R Y T H I N G

  I S

  B

  Her fingers slipped a little as the planchette circled.

  B

  Mother looked at her. "You have to open yourself up to what's inside you."

  B

  B L

  Again, her fingers skidded on the plastic. The arm holding the sleeping baby was getting tired. Tori frowned.

  B L A

  "Bullshit," she muttered. "Everything is --"

  B L A C K

  She took her fingers off the planchette and stepped back. She shifted Rose to her other arm to ease the stiffness in her muscles and gave Mother a lift of her chin. A defiant look.

  "It’s all bullshit," she repeated.

  Mother was no longer smiling. Her eyes had narrowed. Her mouth pursed. She hesitantly hovered her hands over the plastic triangle, but didn't touch it. She shook her head.

  "Apparently there’s nothing inside you." She looked up with an expression Tori couldn't interpret. She might have said it was fear, if that had made any kind of sense.

  "If you say so. I'm going to use the phone." Tori paused, looking the old woman over. Her fingertips felt oily from touching the planchette, although there hadn't seemed to be anything greasy on it. "You know, it's not that I'm not grateful for the help."

  "Go make your phone call."

  In the kitchen, Tori shifted the baby to one arm again and found the phone, an old-fashioned rotary, hung on the wall near the equally vintage fridge. She no longer had the crumpled scrap of notebook paper, but she'd memorized the number. She'd stared at it often enough over the years, never reaching out but holding onto the idea that she could if she needed to.

  She had never actually used a phone like this and had to try several times to figure out how to dial it. She wasn't graceful, and doing it one-handed made her even less so, but she managed. After a moment or so, the phone blurted a series of grunting rumbles she didn't recognize at first as an indication that the line was busy. She hung up. Shifted the baby to the other arm. Tried again. Another busy signal. Still, she wasn't about to give up. On the third try, there was silence and then a discordant jangling that sounded very far away.

  Finally, a woman's voice. "Yeah? Hello?"

  "Hi, I'm...This is Tori...I'm trying to reach ummm...." She coughed, her throat closing with emotion. "George? I'm trying to reach George."

  "Who is this?"

  "Tori. His daughter."

  The sharp bark of a laugh ripped through the phone. "Right. You know it's illegal for debt collectors not to identify themselves, right?"

  "I'm not a debt collector. I'm Tori, his daughter. He never spoke about me?" Despair made her eyes itch.

  The woman's laugh was no less harsh the second time. "Honey, if George ever procreated, either he never knew about it, or he made damn sure he'd blocked it out. Believe me, there were a couple years in the beginning that I thought maybe we might try for a kid. Thank God he was so dead set against it, or else I'd be up shit's creek right about now, in a boat springing a leak. If you know what I mean."

  "I don't!" Tori cried. "I don't know what you mean!"

  "I mean that George is dead. He died a little over a year ago. He left me saddled with a shitload of debt and not much else." The woman paused before adding, "if you're looking to cash in on something, there's nothing for you. You can try, but it all went to pay off what he owed."

  Tori shook her head, even though the woman couldn't see her. Her dad had told her he would be there if she needed him, and she’d been stupid enough to believe him, so much that she hadn’t even tried to call him before heading for his house. If she’d done that, she wouldn’t be here now.

  "I don't want money fro