Intersections Read online

Keisha felt bile rise in her throat. She started to run toward the bathroom.

  “No,” Brady said. “Do it in the kitchen sink, don’t you dare leave my sight. We’ve got business.”

  She vomited in the sink unable to get those pictures out of her mind. Poor Dick, dead, for falling for her, just like Conrad. Maybe she really was cursed, how else could you explain it?

  “Come on in here when you’re ready,” he said. “And don’t try anything stupid. I want to talk to you. I don’t even want to hurt you.”

  Keisha wiped her mouth on a paper towel, trashed it, and walked into the living room. Brady patted the seat next to him on the couch.

  “First of all. I wanna know how it felt?”

  “How what felt?”

  “This whole week of being ignored by someone you cared about who you thought cared about you? Be honest now. How did it feel?”

  She looked down.

  He slammed a fist down on the coffee table. Keisha jumped.

  “It felt bad,” she said. “Sometimes I couldn’t stop checking my phone and different times I had to force myself to leave or sleep without it because hearing back from him was all I could focus on. And I got so mad at myself for getting worked up and that just made it worse. And then he’d finally text me, although now I know that was you, and I’d feel happy again when I realized that things were just fine. A lot of emotions for a lot of stupid reasons like a teenager all over again. There, are you happy?”

  He smiled.

  “That’s a pretty good start,” he said. “Now I have another question.”

  “What?”

  “Do you really believe that Conrad’s spirit is in that board? Do you really think he’s been guiding you this whole time? Or are you just deluding yourself because you like to be miserable and you get off on making others feel inferior and miserable.”

  She opened her mouth, sobbed. Closed it. Wiped tears from her eyes.

  “I… I don’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t know…?”

  “I don’t. You were here that night. Do you think I flipped the planchette off the board and hit you in the face? I don’t know. I guess maybe I could have, goddamn I wish I would have,” she said.

  “Did you ever use it alone?” He asked.

  She nodded.

  “And what then? Did it always tell you what you wanted to hear? Did it always tell you what you already knew and justified what you already wanted to do… um... I don’t know... because you were moving the fucking thing?”

  “Stop shouting at me.”

  “Answer me.”

  “I already answered you. I don’t know. When I used this thing, it was almost in a meditative state. Maybe Conrad’s spirit guided me; maybe it was my own subconscious. I don’t know. What do you want from me?”

  He didn’t answer her at first.

  “I want to see it work.” He dumped the bottle of ashes onto the board.

  Keisha gasped, unsure what would happen. Conrad already inhabited the board. Would they coexist? Rip each other apart? Would nothing happen?

  “Put your hands on it,” he said.

  She hesitated.

  He gripped a hand full of her hair and jerked.

  “I said put your hands on it.”

  Her hands shook, but she placed them on the planchette. Brady gripped it opposite her.

  “Show me,” Brady said.

  The planchette buzzed with enough energy to bring Brady’s eyes to hers. He nodded.

  “Who… who am I talking to? Who’s here?” she asked.

  The planchette drifted one way then another as if it couldn’t make up its mind. Then it darted to C and then to D. It jolted back and forth growing hotter in their hands until it stopped in the middle of the board.

  Brady’s eyes came alive.

  “Are they both in there?”

  “Looks like it,” Keisha said. “But I haven’t talked to Conrad in a few days. I spilled his ashes on accident.”

  Brady frowned, but she ignored him.

  “Can I just talk to one of you?” she asked. “Just Dick. Sorry Conrad.”

  The planchette went to the word “Yes.”

  “I’m so sorry for what happened,” Keisha said. “I can’t believe this psycho murdered you.”

  Brady stared at her, red-faced, but his face went ghost white when the planchette started moving rapidly, even with his hands on it.

  “Are you moving it?” He gasped.

  “Shut up. Pay attention,” she said.

  It scritched like lightning across the board, spelling a message. Brady mouthed the letters as they came out. The message said: “A.D. Remember what Conrad told you to do?”

  “What does that mean?” Brady asked.

  “Yes,” Keisha said, and jerked the planchette from Brady’s grip.

  She pounced on him like a puma, jamming the pointy end into his eyes, mashing the solid piece of wood down over and over into his face until it started to cave. He gurgled and blood dripped from the planchette as she walked back to the board and set it down.

  Immediately it started moving.

  “Conrad says, he just wishes you would’ve done it sooner. You looked happy with Dick.”

  Keisha’s tears splashed onto the messy board, mixing with the blood and ash. She looked from the heap of Brady to the board containing the spirits of the only two men she’d ever loved.

  “I… I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I’m sorry, for what happened to both of you, but I can’t live like this, and neither should you two. There’s gotta be more for you on the other side than that. But I want to thank you both for everything and I’m not going to ghost you. Right now, I’m saying goodbye.”

  For a long second the planchette didn’t move, and then, as tears poured down her face, it glided to the word “Good Bye” where it stopped forever.

  Her story broke and she got a lot of local and even national attention, but in time she proved her innocence with people across the country lauding her heroism. A lot of that attention came from men who thought she was strong and pretty. She could have her pick. And if one didn’t work out, there were always two more ready to take his place until she got it right.

  On her own.

  Kerry Lipp

  Kerry lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He hates the sun and loves making fun of dead people. His parents started reading his stories and they’ve consequently booted him from their will. Kerry's stories appear in dozens of anthologies and his first solo work, Live Action Hentai, came out in early 2016. He’s a regular on The Wicked Library podcast. He is currently editing his first novel, writing his second, and shopping a bizarro novella. Kerry rarely (but still) blogs at www.HorrorTree.com and will try to launch his own website sometime before he dies. Say hi on Twitter @kerrylipp or come find him on Facebook. And he wants you to remember to always cover the camera on your laptop. You never know who is watching you.

  Find out more:

  @kerrylipp

  kerry.g.lipp

  www.HorrorTree.com

  Blood Born

  Megan Hart

  1

  The baby had been crying for about an hour before Tori found a place where she could pull over to the side of the road. The weeping had begun with tiny, mewling whimpers that sent a warning tingle through Tori’s heavy, aching breasts and had escalated into ear-shattering shrieks, relentless, one after the other. Now the kid was sobbing breathlessly, each small and sighing cry breaking Tori's heart. Her baby was barely over a week old, and already the newborn had stopped believing her mother would always be there to take care of her.

  "Shh, shh, Little Bit, shhh, shh, Mama's trying." Tori eased the car, a hulking Buick station wagon that had been new sometime in the mid-eighties, onto the rural road's narrow shoulder.

  Leaving the behemoth running to combat the frigid mid-January temperatures, she unclicked her seatbelt and twisted to look into the back seat. The baby had calmed at the sound of Tori's voice, but the small snufflings