cardboard in front of her. “She’s been talking to me all day.”
“I know, child.”
Caroleen stepped forward and leaned down to peer at the cardboard, and saw that the girl had written the letters of the alphabet in an arc across it.
“It’s one of those things people use to talk to ghosts,” Amber explained with evident pride. “I’m using the rock crystal to point to the letters. Some people are scared of these things, but it’s one of the good kinds of crystals.”
“A Ouija board.”
“That’s it! She made me dream of one over and over again just before the sun came up, because this is her birthday. Well, yours, too, I guess. At first I thought it was a hopscotch pattern, but she made me look closer till I got it.” She pursed her lips. “I wrote it by reciting the rhyme, and I accidentally did
“Can I see? I, uh, want this to work out.”
“Yeah. She won’t be gone. She’ll be in me, did she tell you?” She held out the paper. “I drew in lines to break the words up.”
“Yes. She told me.” Caroleen slowly reached out to take the paper from Amber, and then held it up close enough to read the penciled lines:
“That should be B-A-N-
Not trusting herself to speak, Caroleen nodded and handed the paper back to her, wondering if her own face was red or pale. She felt invisible and repudiated. BeeVee could have approached her own twin for this, but her twin was too old; and if she did manage to occupy the body of this girl-a more intimate sort of twinhood! — she would certainly not go on living with Caroleen. And she had eaten all the Vicodins and Darvocets.
Caroleen picked up the rock. It was some sort of quartz crystal.
“When…” she began in a croak. She cleared her throat and went on more steadily, “When did you get that second-to-last message? About the bank accounts and the hairbrush?”
“That one? Uh, just a minute before I knocked on your door.”
Caroleen nodded, wondering bleakly if BeeVee had even known that she was leaving
She put the crystal back down on the cardboard and picked up the hairbrush. Amber opened her mouth as if to object, then subsided.
There were indeed a number of white hairs tangled in the bristles.
Caroleen tucked the brush into her purse.
“I need that,” said Amber quickly, leaning forward across the board. “She says I need it.”
“Oh, of course, I’m sorry.” Caroleen forced what must have been a ghastly smile, and then pulled her own hairbrush instead out of the purse and handed it to the girl. It was identical to BeeVee’s, right down to the white hairs.
Amber took it and glanced at it, then laid it on the pillow, out of Caroleen’s reach.
“I don’t want,” said Caroleen, “to interrupt…you two.” She sighed, emptying her lungs, and dug the car keys out of her purse. “Here,” she said, tossing them onto the bed. “I’ll be next door if you…need any help.”
“Fine, okay.” Amber seemed relieved at the prospect of her leaving.
CAROLEEN WAS AWAKENED THE next morning by the pain of her sore right hand flexing, but she rolled over and slept for ten more minutes before the telephone by her head conclusively jarred her out of the monotonous dream that had occupied her mind for the last hour or so.
She sat up, wrinkling her nose at the scorched smell from the fireplace and wishing she had a cup of coffee, and still half-saw the Ouija board she’d been dreaming about.
She picked up the phone, wincing. “Hello?”
“Caroleen,” said Amber’s voice, “nothing happened at the cemetery last night, and BeeVee isn’t answering my questions. She spelled stuff out, but it’s not for what I’m writing to her. All she’s written so far this morning is- just a sec-she wrote, uh,
Caroleen glanced toward the fireplace, where last night she had burned-or charred, at least-BeeVee’s toothbrush, razor, dentures, curlers, and several other things, including the hairbrush. And today she would call the headstone company and cancel the order. BeeVee ought not to have an easily locatable grave.
“Me?” Caroleen made a painful fist of her right hand. “Why would she talk to me?”
“You’re her twin sister, she might be-”
“BeeVee is dead, Amber, she died nine weeks ago.”
“But she’s coming back. She’s going to make me beautiful! She said-”
“She can’t do anything, child. We’re better off without her.”
Amber was talking then, protesting, but Caroleen’s thoughts were of the brothers she couldn’t even picture anymore, the nieces she’d never met and who probably had children of their own somewhere, and her mother who was almost certainly dead by now. And there was everybody else, too, and not a lot of time.
Caroleen was resolved to learn to write with her left hand, and, even though it would hurt, she hoped her right hand would go on and on writing uselessly in the air.
At last she stood up, still holding the phone, and she interrupted Amber: “Could you bring back my car keys? I have some errands to do.”
Al Sarrantonio. THE CULT OF THE NOSE
FIRST MENTION OF THE CULT in the literature is found in a tract of the Germanic heretic Jacobus Mesmus,
