Dirty Secrets

Part 28

Lyla glanced out the window hoping her dad hadn't seen her visitor. Fortunately, he was still in the car. She prayed Clarisse had made her escape without detection. Noticing the telltale wet footprints from the entryway to the back door, she ripped a handful of paper towels from the roll, got down on the kitchen floor, and frantically wiped them up. 

The car lights shut off on the driveway then the car door slammed. She yanked open the cupboard and grabbed a cereal bowl. Inside the pantry, she found the container of salt and bounded up the stairs to her room just as her dad came through the front door.

"What's the big hurry?"

"Gotta take this call." 

She placed the bowl on her dresser and filled it halfway with salt. When she heard her dad climbing the stairs, she shoved the salt container under her bed, then put her phone to her ear pretending to be on a call. She lifted the blue poetry book from her desk and opened it to a random page.

"So wait. We're not doing page twenty-three?" She sat on her bed.

He poked his head into the room and held up a pharmacy bag. "I picked up your prescriptions," he whispered.

She smiled and nodded, turning the pages. "The poem on page forty-six? Okay. Yeah."

He set the bag on her desk.

"Yeah. Got it." She ended her pretend call relieved that apparently, he hadn't noticed the bowl of salt.

"I need to run out to the store and pick up a few things," he said. "You need anything? Something for lunch?"

"Nope. I'm good."

"Text me if you think of anything. I'll order a pizza on my way home."

"Awesome."

She heard the jingle of the car keys on his way down the steps, followed by the sound of the front door closing. Her next impulse was to text Darcy, but before she began thumbing her message she paused. Rational thoughts were no longer hostage to the pink and gray med.

Let's think this through.

Darcy already knew all she needed to know about Clarisse. The crazy psychic woman from her party somehow got the deranged idea in her head that Lyla was in trouble. And she showed up at Lyla's house ranting like an insane person. If Darcy pressed her for deets like she always did, Lyla could say that Clarisse was convinced that she had channeled Keenan's spirit who told her that it didn't want Lyla and Jack to be together. And leave it at that. The ramblings of a crazy person.

"Someone here has caused great pain. Someone here has left you behind." That could be interpreted as Lyla leaving Keenan to be with Jack. Plain and simple. 

"You have unfinished business." What that means is anyone's guess. 

It was infinitely better for Darcy to believe that Lyla's jealous ex was upset about Lyla having a new boyfriend, rather than believing that Keenan's raging spirit had sworn vengeance against Lyla and Jack. Unless Darcy brought up the subject, as far as Lyla was concerned, the Clarisse chapter was closed. 

Lyla leaned back in bed with her Robert Louis Stevenson poetry book. She found his poem, "Requiem." Her mouth went dry as she read.

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me die.

Glad that I lived and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

She turned the page. That was the end of the poem. Where was the part that she read the other day? The part about being full of drink when they took his life?

CLICK.

Not just a loud CLICK. A CLICK with a truncated tone. Like a musical note cut short.

Was that the doorbell?

She slid out of bed, went to her bedroom door, and poked her head out into the hallway.

Quiet.

She started tentatively down the stairs when she heard it again. It was definitely the malfunctioning doorbell.

"Hello?" she called.

No answer.

Had Clarisse returned now that her dad had gone? At the base of the stairs, she peered through the window in the door. No one stood on the porch. She advanced cautiously. 

"Hello?" She repeated a little louder. "Clarisse?"

Silence.

Lyla took a deep breath then cautiously opened the door. No visitor. Gentle rain dripped from the porch roof and pat-pat-patted against the cement driveway. When a draft of cool air brushed Lyla's skin, she shut the door and locked it. She rubbed her arms and headed for the stairs when she was jolted by the sight of a figure in the kitchen.

Leaning against the counter was a desiccated, gray version of Clover. Tears trickled down her sunken painted cheeks. She turned her disconsolate eyes toward Lyla and opened her mouth, her weak voice straining to find its way from her broken windpipe.

"What do you want?" Lyla whispered, her heart hammering.

It sounded through her hoarse grunts as though Clover was saying "Free me."

"I don't know what. I don't understand." 

Clover slowly lifted her withered gray arm.

"No." Lyla shook her head.

Clover opened her white fingers to reveal the serpent ring. "Free me," she strained through tears of despair.

"No!" Lyla repeated as she watched the silver ring drop from Clover's dead hand and roll across the floor toward her.

Clover advanced, turning her head to show the blue serpent tattooed on her neck. Lyla smelled the embalming fluid, the cold stench of death.

"I won't wear that ring." Lyla trembled. "I'll never wear that ring. Not ever."

The corpse dropped to its knees in a sobbing heap.

Lyla scooped the ring from the floor, opened the front door, and flung the piece of cursed jewelry into the night. When she looked down, Clover had vanished.

That ring. Ouroboros. That goddamn ring.