Natalie's Legacy [sequel to Natalie's Diary]

[9] Fault

[9] FAULT

Jane

Massachusetts rolled by outside the window, mist rising out of ravines and off standing water. In the rustle of leaves in the trees. I read somewhere that the human brain was hardwired to find familiar shapes out of nothing. Something psychological tried to find faces in the fog.

I glanced into the rear view mirror, watching Bia scroll through her phone in the backseat. She brushed back the loose waves of hair that fell into her eyes.

Under the hum of the radio, we were quiet. Every once in awhile, Rhys reached over to flip through the radio stations even occasionally turning it off to listen to the hum of the Datsun's engine, but he said nothing. Neither did I. I just turned over details from Rhys' journal over and over again.

"So, I have learned several things," Bia announced, breaking the silence as she leaned forward against her seatbelt.

"About?" I asked.

"About Salem. For one, no hotel that I could find has any vacancy. You know, with the whole it being Hallowe'en thing in witch city and all. Two, Psychic Fair is on all month, so you'll feel right at home, Rhys." Bia patted his shoulder.

"I am so thrilled." His hands tightened around the steering wheel.

"What does a Psychic Fair entail, exactly?" I pressed, ignoring the sarcasm in the driver's seat.

"In this case, taking over Essex Street to put up booths for every kind of future reading you can think of. Maybe it would be a good idea to hit up the visitor's center first and get some event maps. A lot of roads are closed."

"I forgot how good you are at roadtrip organizing," I mused.

"You should've come on the post-grad trip to New York. I was on fire." Bia nodded.

I would've, if I wasn't busy trying too many different kinds of medication and dealing with other Cullfield fallout. Shopping at Macy's and drowning out the drip drip drip in the back of my head with New York City noise could've been such good medicine.

"The Fair's on Essex?" Rhys asked.

"Yes. All along it. Most of the official historic sites are within walking distance from there." Bia nodded.

Essex Street, full of psychics. That wasn't ominous at all.

For a Friday morning, the MA-128 traffic slowed quite a bit approaching Salem city limits, a lot of cars following the same path we did toward the little town.

Salem, est. 1662 flashed by. Founded back when people believed in witchcraft so thoroughly, they murdered people over it. Thank God that was no longer common practice. Unlike Cullfield, Salem didn't hide a sordid past. It embraced it. That became all the clearer the deeper we got.

I rubbed my arms. Was there something to the accusations Salem's history was built on? It was easy to poke fun at dark magic, but I sat next to a psychic who seemed to get tenser and tenser the more traffic inched into town. How much of a stretch was it to believe in all manner of unsettling things: ghosts, demons, and spirits invited back for All Hallow's Eve?

"Take Gardner, then Margin to the visitor's center," Bia piped up from the back, still looking at her phone.

Like Cullfield and Boston, the buildings reflected many, many established years, full of beautiful architecture borrowed from Europe. The current decade was more than reflected in people and cars. And it came in elaborate decorations.