“What I want more than anything is for this investigation to be over. I think I want to return to the way it was.”
Madame Griselda stood and walked around the room closing the blinds. “Very well place the two objects you brought in the center of the table. I will do my best to take a reading from these objects. You’re going to need to be brave, no telling what we will encounter.”
Madame Griselda sat across from Helena, she reached across the table palms up and indicated with her head for Helena to grab her. The two made a circle around the objects with their clasped hands.
“Spirits one spirits all, I beg you, please come hear my call. I wish you will I wish you might, I wish you come and answer right.”
Helena wasn’t convinced magic even existed. However, the hair began to rise on the back of her neck once the temperature in the room started dropping. Madame Griselda continued.
“Spirits mighty and spirits small, I call you now, I call you now one and all. Come to me come to me now, this is your chance to come and speak.”
Helena could see dark shadows gliding along the walls of the room, she had a hard time focusing on what Griselda said when everything in her body screamed for her to run out of the house.
“I call on you spirits, there is a missing woman, her name is Missy, Missy Whitaker, tell me if she’s alive, tell me where she is. I demand you speak the truth, tell me now.”
The glass globe on the gaslight over their heads shattered, raining shards of glass down. Helena tried to free her hands, but Griselda’s grip had become like a vice. She could feel the blood rushing out of her fingers while Griselda squeezed. Focusing on the words Griselda spoke, she couldn’t help seeing her irises had disappeared.
Helena was about to scream when Griselda started speaking in a most unnatural deep raspy voice coming from the gates of hell, “The girl is alive. She is afraid, terrified she can hear the sound of water, lapping water. She can’t see anything, the room is pitch black, but she can smell the ocean, she can hear water, and there are bars blocking her escape.”
Transfixed on Griselda’s face, it took her a moment to notice the door behind her bowing in like something fought to reach her.
“Did I say anything? I’m never really sure if a reading is going to work before we start,” that was when the wooden door shattered, spraying the two women in a shower of splinters. Both let out a long scream, Griselda’s lasted unnaturally long. Helena didn’t understand how she could go on for so long without breathing, her scream turned into words, “Death comes on white wings!” Griselda continued screaming the words over and over every time she repeated the pitch in her voice grew higher. Helena would’ve covered her ears with her hands if they had been, free instead she did the best she could to hide one ear at a time with her shoulder, closing her eyes in pain. Suddenly at the highest pitch possible every window in the study imploded again covering the pair with glass. The screaming stopped.
The feeling began coming back into her fingers, Helena risked opening her eyes. She had no explanation for what she saw, there were no glass shards on the table in front of her. The door behind Griselda was intact, and as far she could tell the windows behind her remained solid. With no experience dealing with the supernatural, she had no way of knowing if the results had been positive or negative, she did notice Griselda had passed out drool cascading down her chin. At first, she wanted to scoop up her items and run like hell followed on her heels, instead, she grabbed the cork and locket off the table then began cleaning Madame Griselda’s face.
“Madame Griselda please wake up. You must be all right, please wake up, I beg you,” slowly the witch began rolling her head from side to side moaning, attempting to regain her composure.
“Did it work? It must’ve worked I’m getting a terrible headache,” she pushed herself up from the table and made her way over to a fold-down secretary when opened displayed a number of decanters each with a different colored liquor. She poured two hefty portions, ironically Helena could read the label, it proudly announced Christian Brothers. She snickered silently to herself thinking what brother Murphy would think. Madame Griselda handed Helena one of the glasses.
“I hope you got the information you’re looking for I don’t want to do that again. That’s one of the costs of my craft I never remember what I say, and I always have a terrible headache afterward.”
Helena wasn’t sure what to say, but she drank the brandy fast enough. She concluded, if this case went on much longer, she was going to develop a taste for alcohol.
“I think we found out everything you could. Do you remember what you said at the end?”
“Honey I told you I don’t remember anything from a reading. Why, what did I say?”
“You said that death was coming on white wings.”
“That sounds like a spirit forcing its way into your reading. Spirits can be most impolite, at times downright rude. Does it mean anything to you?”
“No, I was told the same thing a few days ago. A patient at Agnew’s grabbed my hand and said the same thing,” she didn’t think it proper to bring up the urination and the flopping around on the ground.
“That’s strange, that means something is trying to communicate using any means possible. Sometimes people are touched, and experience things normal people can’t, even hear things. There are those that are quick to judge people who dance to the
