The empty black sockets of a dozen human skulls stared up at them from the bottom of the drawer. They were piled one on top of another, jawbones open and full of yellowed teeth. They were stripped of flesh but clearly real, dusky white with mottled yellow and gray.
“If you get them out of here, I’ll find you a bigger pot,” Kirstin promised.
“I could probably cook a few less potatoes,” Jenn answered.
Kirstin pushed the drawer shut, and they both stepped away. Her brow slanted as she looked at Jenn and asked, “Who keeps skulls in their kitchen?”
“I guess . . . my aunt?” Jenn shrugged. She tried to lighten the mood by adding, “Maybe they make good seasoning for stew.”
Kirstin punched her in the shoulder. “Gross!”
“So I shouldn’t try it out tonight?”
“No!” Kirstin yelled. “I don’t even want to eat anything that’s been cooked in here.”
“Gimme a break.” Jenn laughed and reached to pull the entire drawer out. It squealed open, and loose bits of teeth or vertebrae rattled in the bottom. The skulls leered up at her, but she gave the drawer a good hard tug and the whole thing came free to rest in her hands. She stumbled at the sudden weight.
“Get the door,” she said, and Kirstin quickly cleared the way to the backyard.
Jennica walked the drawer outside and down the four steps of the back porch to the yard, where she set it down in a flower bed. Then she went back inside.
“Um, what about the drawer?” Kirstin asked. “And should we call the police or something?”
Something inside of Jenn’s chest clenched, and an invisible voice in her head hissed, “No.”
She forced a laugh. “No, we’re not calling the police. I don’t think my aunt was murdering people and then boiling their heads. You can get real skulls through science catalogs. Maybe she ordered some that way. Don’t you remember? Matt Johnson in the science lab had a couple of them.”
In her heart, Jenn wondered if she was doing the right thing, but a part of her felt it would be disastrous to involve anyone else in whatever had gone on here. And whatever it was, it was long over now. Meredith had been dead for months.
“Anyway,” she said, “we’re not doing anything about the drawer right now. I’ve got dinner to finish. Eventually . . . well, I think we probably should bury them.” Yes. They were real skulls. She’d always thought it kind of sad, the ones on display in science lab. They deserved to be buried.
Kirstin grimaced. “I hate bones,” she said. “Especially skulls. They creep me out.”
“Well,” Jenn suggested sweetly, “why don’t you start cutting up some onions for the roast? That’ll take your mind off it.”
“I hate onions almost as much as skulls,” Kirstin complained. “They make my eyes puffy! Plus, I need to get ready. I’m not wearing
Jenn rolled her eyes and finished the dinner herself—as she had always known she would.
The knock at the door came an hour later. Kirstin answered, now clad in a tight-fitting pink half shirt that complemented her tan and managed to reveal cleavage on top and a belly button ring below. Low-riding jeans accentuated the effect.
Nick and Brian were waiting on the porch. Brian gave a whistle when he saw her.
“It’s nice to see you again, too.” She laughed as they both stepped inside and held out bottles of wine.
Jenn walked in. She’d not tried to compete with her roommate for tease appeal; she wore a loose orange T- shirt with the University of Illinois Chief Illiniwek Indian in a feathered headdress logo, and dark jeans. Where Kirstin wore thin-strapped leather sandals, Jenn wore white socks. Her philosophy was simple: take me as I am or move on!
“We’ve got chardonnay from Napa and a zin from Sonoma,” Brian announced. “We weren’t sure what you were cooking, so . . . there are a couple more choices in the car!”
“Maybe we can just drink them all,” Kirstin suggested.
Jenn laughed. “We’re having my dad’s favorite sherry-and’shrooms pot roast with mashed potatoes and —”
“Skulls!” Kirstin blurted.
Jenn slapped her shoulder as the guys looked confused. She explained their macabre discovery.
Brian grinned. “We should use one as our dinner table centerpiece.”
“Um, no,” Kirstin said.
They set the wine in the kitchen and took a quick tour of the house. Jenn let Kirstin lead and do most of the talking. She was focused on the warm feeling of Nick’s hand in hers. He hadn’t said much, but he’d given her a hug along with the bottle of wine, and she’d felt butterflies; she was oddly more nervous seeing him this way than she’d been standing naked in the water with him on the beach. Maybe that was because last weekend had been crazy and spur of the moment and this was a planned, adult date. What if he found on the second time around that he really didn’t like her that much?
“And here’s Jenn’s room,” Kirstin was saying. “Notice the very stylish granny squares bedspread—”
“That was my aunt’s!” Jenn protested, feeling her butterflies vanish.
“—and the locked door to the basement Jenn won’t go down into.”
“As if you would?” Jenn hissed.
“A locked basement, huh?” Brian said. “Maybe the skeletons that match the skulls are down there.”
“Nice,” Nick said under his breath. “Freak them out even more.”
“Maybe we can check it out after dinner. That’ll make everyone feel better,” Brian suggested.
A beeping noise began in the kitchen. Jenn excused herself, saying, “Well, dinner is just about ready!”
Nick followed, wanting to help. She tasked him with lighting the centerpiece candles and setting out the potatoes, while she moved the roast to a platter and poured gravy into an antique-looking red gravy boat. They were soon all seated around the kitchen table draped in a red tablecloth Jenn had found in a closet and set with yellowing china edged in a red vine design.
“Well, this looks very grown-up,” Brian commented.
Jenn smiled. “We figured if you were driving all this way . . .”
“That we’d be hungry?” Brian nodded. “Yup!” He slopped a heavy helping of meat on his plate and pronounced, “Let’s eat!”
After the food was put away and the dinner dishes dropped in the sink, they brought the wine to the front room to sit and talk more comfortably on the couches. Brian knelt down in front of the fireplace and opened the blackened glass doors.
“Let’s start a fire,” he said.
“Is it safe?” Nick asked.
“Seems to be,” said Jenn. “We tried it last week. There’s some wood stacked on the side of the house.”
“Let’s give it a shot!” Brian said.
He and Nick went outside and brought back twigs for kindling and a few large hunks of chopped wood, and they stacked some atop a wrought-iron stand on the hearth. They set the rest to the side of the mantel. Then Brian grabbed the stone on the edge of the opening and levered himself to duck his head and shoulders inside. He reached up with one hand, and there was an echoing rasp of metal on metal.
“Flue’s open,” he pronounced. “Anyone got matches and some newspaper?”
Orange flames soon began to flicker up from a bunch of balled newspaper and through the stacked wood, and Brian leaned back on his haunches to watch the blaze. After a couple minutes of shifting sticks, he closed the fire screen and grabbed the edge of the mantel to hoist himself up. The rock he grabbed, however, moved, just as it had previously for Jenn.
“What the heck?” He put both hands on the rock. It shifted easily, and he pulled it out of its place.
“Oh,
Brian set the stone down and reached a hand into the hole. He pulled out the Ouija board and gave his second whistle of the night. “Nice.”
He turned the witchboard around and nodded. “I know you said your aunt was a witch,” he said to Jenn. “But
