After Obsession Part 11

"No problem," I tell her. "Aimee's pretty worried about you."

"I should call her," Courtney says.

"Later," Aunt Lisa tells her. "You can call her later."

"Hey, listen, the truck cost quite a bit less than I expected," I say. "I have money left over. How about if I take us all out for supper? No lobster, though. That's just gross."

Aunt Lisa puts up a mild protest, but I wave it away. Finally she turns to Courtney and asks, "Are you up for it?"

"Sure," Courtney answers. "I want onion rings."

I send Aunt Lisa and Mom downstairs, promising we'll be right after them. I turn back to Courtney. "You really okay?" I ask.

"Yes," she says. I study her face. There's no sarcasm. No meanness. She looks like a normal girl. Well, a normal girl with a st.i.tched-up gash on her forehead and some bad acne, but at least the sores aren't raw and leaking like they were earlier.

Carl's Cone Corner is kind of an old-fas.h.i.+oned place. Like something you see in movies from the 1950s. They have a big jukebox in the dining room and the waitresses-two of whom I recognize from school-bring the food on roller skates and wear pink uniforms with short skirts. The food is really good, and no dead lobster eyes stare up at me while I eat.

Conversation about the framed pictures of celebrities on the wall dies down after a bit and there's a long pause. Courtney is sitting across from me, next to her mom.

"Do you go to church?" I blurt out. Nice. I meant to be subtle about it. I'm not real good at subtle.

Courtney actually seems to shrink away from the question. It's her mom who answers. "No, we haven't been in ... I don't know. A long time. Why?"

"Alan?" Mom warns beside me. She holds a french fry just outside her mouth and the two syllables of my name start low and end higher, threatening.

"I was just asking," I say. "Do most people go to church up here?"

"Quite a few do." Aunt Lisa looks suspiciously at Mom. "Do you guys go?"

"No," Mom says, nudging me with her elbow so I'll be quiet. Aunt Lisa sees it.

"If Alan wants to go to church, we can find him one. What kind of church are you interested in?" she asks me.

"He's not," Mom says. "Not like you think. Alan follows the Indian G.o.ds." She puts air quotes around "Indian G.o.ds."

Courtney sits quietly, staring at her food.

"One G.o.d," I correct her. "Manifested in several forms. But that's not why I'm asking."

"Why are you asking?" Aunt Lisa asks. She's stirring her drink with her straw, uncomfortable. I know I have to kill this subject.

"I was just wondering."

"No, you have a reason." Aunt Lisa won't let it go. She is like her sister in a lot of ways, I guess.

"I was just thinking of the noises we've been hearing. You know, the scratching?" I poke a fry into my mouth like what I said is no big deal.

"The mice?" she asks.

"Yeah. Sort of. I mean, what if it isn't mice?"

"What do you think it is?" Her fingers are still pinching the top of her straw, but now she's not stirring. She's looking me in the face.

Mom wipes ketchup from her lips and slaps her napkin onto the table near my hand.

"I'm not sure," I say. And I'm not.

We get home around eight. There are no shapes silhouetted against the light of Courtney's bedroom. I almost start to wonder if I imagined it before. Aunt Lisa kills the engine and I start to open my back door.

"Just a minute," Mom says. I stop, my hand on the door handle, looking at her while she looks at Aunt Lisa. "We might as well tell them now."

Aunt Lisa twists around to look at me and Courtney in the backseat. "The mill is adding a s.h.i.+ft," she says. "They asked for volunteers to work half the new s.h.i.+ft until they hire new people. We agreed to do it."

"It'll be a lot of overtime," Mom adds. "Extra money."

"Okay," I say.

"We won't be home until nine tomorrow night and for a while," Aunt Lisa says.

"You won't be home?" Courtney squeaks.

Aunt Lisa runs her hands through her hair and her fingers get stuck in a tangle. She pulls at it distractedly. "Maybe I shouldn't do this. Not now."

She looks to Mom, who looks back at me. I know what she wants. We've never had much money. It took all Mom's savings to move us up here.

"It'll be okay," I say. "Me and Court can handle it. I've got the truck in case we need to go anywhere. We'll be fine."

"Court, you think so?" Aunt Lisa asks.

Courtney shrugs. It's a motion so small it would be easy to miss it. "I guess," she says. "I know we need the money."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," she says, but her voice lacks conviction.

"I'll take care of her," I promise, and pat her knee. Aimee would say that's condescending. I smile because I've already learned that about her. But at the moment, it seems appropriate, and Courtney doesn't object. Nothing else is said, and after a minute we all get out of the Tahoe and go to the porch, where Aunt Lisa unlocks the door.

The smell of decay rolls out at us like a fist when the front door swings open. We all back away gagging, except Courtney, who stands completely motionless in the doorway. I cover my mouth with one hand and throw the other arm around her shoulders and pull her away.

"What is that?" Aunt Lisa asks between coughs.

"Maybe your mice died." It's mean of me to say it, at least to say it as sarcastically as I do, but it just pops out that way.

Aunt Lisa nods with her whole upper body. "That's probably it. I put out some traps and poison this morning. I bet we got one."

"A dozen, based on the smell," Mom corrects.

I bet we never find a single dead mouse.

"I'll start opening windows." Aunt Lisa keeps her mouth covered and runs inside like a kid running toward the end of the high diving board. Mom goes after her.

"I don't want to go back in there," Courtney whispers. "He's there."

"Who is it, Court? Tell me."

She turns her pale face up to me and I see a deep sadness in her eyes, like she's just completely hollow behind her eyes.

"Not Daddy," she says.

I shake my head. "No," I agree. "Who is it? Do you know?"

"Not Daddy."

I hug her shoulders against me. "No, it's not your dad. But we'll be okay," I promise. "I've got some stuff in my room that'll help."

The house gets pretty cold with all the windows open. The smell goes away really fast, though. Too fast. It isn't natural. Aunt Lisa checks traps and cabinets where she left poison, but doesn't find any dead mice.

"They must have eaten the poison and died in the walls or something," she says. Mom agrees with her. I keep quiet, but stay close to Courtney.

"The smell's gone," Aunt Lisa observes. We start closing windows.

"Come on, Court, let's go upstairs and close those windows." I motion her toward the stairs. She follows meekly as I go room to room, closing windows. We do my room last. "Stay in here for a while, okay?"

She nods and sits on the bed. I go to a stack of cardboard boxes and start rummaging through them. One of the first things I find is an old University of Oklahoma cap I've had for years. The crimson has faded to near pink and the white OU st.i.tching is frayed. And it stinks of old sweat.

"Here ya go," I say, stepping over and dropping it onto Courtney's head. "A little souvenir from my home state." I go back to my boxes, but from the corner of my eyes I see her take the cap off, look it over, sniff it and wrinkle her nose, but then she puts it back on her head, pus.h.i.+ng her hair behind her ears once the cap is in place.

In the third box down I find my old nylon-and-leather backpack from junior high. I take it out and open the main pouch. It smells like a garden despite the fact I have everything wrapped in plastic bags. I take out a few and toss them on the bed beside Courtney.

"Is that pot?" she asks.

"No. I wouldn't bring that into your house." I look at the bag she's studying. It holds a thick braid of dried gra.s.s looped around itself a couple of times. "It's sweetgra.s.s. You burn it, but don't smoke it."

"An Indian thing?"

"Yeah."

The scratching begins beneath us. I swear I can feel my skin rippling over my skeleton when it starts. Courtney sits up very straight, a terrified look on her face. I can't help but feel sorry for her.

"It'll be okay," I say. "Give me just a minute here."

In the bottom of the backpack I find Baggies of incense cones and a little bra.s.s burner. I find the bag I labeled SAGE in big black letters and put a cone in the burner, then put the burner on my dresser. There are four or five plastic lighters in a side pocket of the backpack. I take one out and light the sage cone. The smoke drifts lazily from the bra.s.s. The smell is kind of like turkey dressing and pot.

"That smells ... good," Courtney says. She hasn't really relaxed.

I nod and put all the unused stuff back into the backpack, keeping the sage cones on top. "It's sage," I tell her. "It's used to ... to purify places."

The scratching gets louder, faster under the floorboards.

"Courtney? Alan? Are you two okay?" Aunt Lisa calls from downstairs.

"We're fine," I yell back. "We're in my room."

"Stomp on the floor and see if those d.a.m.n mice will stop."

I stomp a few times. The scratching does not stop.

"I'll have to call an exterminator," I hear Aunt Lisa say. "That'll take care of a lot of that overtime."

"Courtney," I say, going to her and taking her by the shoulders, making her look me in the face. "Courtney, listen to me. If something is bothering you, hara.s.sing you, something evil, like a spirit, would you want it to go away?"

The scratching gets worse, like it's going to burst through the floorboards and come after us. Courtney trembles in my grip. Her eyes try to stray away from me, toward the floor. I shake her a little and she looks back at me, but I'm not sure she's seeing me.

"Do you want it to go away?" I ask.

She nods.

"Say it," I tell her. "Tell it to go away. Say it and mean it."

"G-g-go ... away," she whispers.

"Louder!"

"Go away!" she screams. "GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY!"

"Keep saying it," I tell her, hoping it's the right thing to do. I carefully lift the bra.s.s burner off the dresser and walk around the room with it, fanning the smoke and aroma around the room.

"Go away go away go away go away. Leave me alone," Courtney says, and now she's almost sobbing.

Beneath us, the scratching stops suddenly. It's replaced by a long, drawn-out groaning sound, like someone bending wood and holding it just before the breaking point. I can hear Mom and Aunt Lisa pounding up the stairs. They'll be here in a second. Mom will freak out on me.

"Onawa, help me," I whisper. "Great Spirit, help me."

The groaning stops as if cut off at the head.

"Go away go away go away ...," Courtney is still chanting.

I get to her just as Mom and Aunt Lisa appear in the doorway. I put my hand on Courtney's shoulder, and she stops. She looks up at me, her eyes still wide, but less scared than they were a minute ago.

"What was that?" Aunt Lisa demands. "Was Courtney screaming?"

"What's that smell?" Mom asks.

"The noise?" I ask, turning to face the women. "I don't know. The smell is incense. I thought it'd help get rid of the other smell. Is that okay?" I ask Aunt Lisa. Her face is all scrunched up with worry.

"It wasn't you?" She looks at the little bra.s.s pot smoking in my hand. "That's just incense?"

"Yeah. Sage," I say.