CHAPTER 1
My phone rang, the ringtone a repetition of the mournful hymn: ‘In Sin I Wander’d Sore and Sad.’ I swung around, irritated. Mum had changed my ringtone again when I wasn’t looking. For somebody who barely knew how to turn on a computer, she could sure do tech when she was motivated.
Her voice blared down the phone. “Laurel, I have Irish ancestors! Ian showed me how to work the ancestor website.”
“Hello, Mum. Well, that’s good news. I’m glad I have Irish ancestors.”
Mum huffed. “You don’t have Irish ancestors, Laurel. I do.”
I wasn’t about to explain it to her. I pulled a face, both at her comment and at the mention of Ian, Mum’s particularly irksome and much younger church friend. I was about to hang up, when she added, “Come here right now. Remember I rented a room to that nice man, Dylan Jackson? He just called to say he’d be a day early. Come over and help me get his room ready.”
“Okay.” I hung up. The so-called nice man, Dylan Jackson, was well known around town. He had an eye for the ladies and liked to party hard. He now lived in Sydney, but people in this town still spoke about him, so great was his infamy. In fact, his brother had refused to allow him to stay with him, which is why Dylan was renting a room from Mum for the duration of his visit.
I jumped at the loud thunderclap. I pushed the pile of papers across my desk and walked to look out the window at the two sheep grazing happily in the paddock opposite my office. The grass was dry and parched. I hoped the thunderstorm would bring some decent rain.
I grabbed an umbrella and had only taken a single step out of the front door of the funeral home when I heard the screech of tyres on gravel. The sound was coming from Mum’s house. I turned in that direction, but before I had gone five paces, Ian’s car sped past me. Even from the distance, I could see Ian’s face was deathly white and his jaw was hanging open.
I shook my head and headed for Mum’s house which, unfortunately for me, adjoined my property. When I moved back to Witch Woods, I had lived in my old bedroom but was soon able to finish the apartment above the funeral home and move in there. Still, it wasn’t far enough away from my mother.
I put up the umbrella to ward off the faint raindrops and jumped when another thunderclap reverberated close by. When I reached the house, Mum was nowhere to be seen, but her front door was wide open. I thought it strange that Ian hadn’t even bothered to shut it. I walked into the living room and saw Ian’s phone on the floor.
As I crossed over to pick it up, I could hear Mum’s voice. I looked at the phone and nearly dropped it in shock.
“Mum, your phone is on Facetime!” I said in disbelief.
She did not respond to that but simply asked, “Where’s Ian?”
“He’s driven away. What happened?” Even as I spoke the words, it dawned on me.
Mum was still talking. “Ian and I were quoting our favourite scriptures about sinners to one another, as we like to do, when I needed a bathroom break.”
“Mum, your phone’s on Facetime!” I said again in horror before having the presence of mind to flip it off.
“Stop repeating yourself, Laurel!” she said. “That’s got nothing to do with it. I asked you where Ian is.”
“That has everything to do with it,” I told her. “While you and Ian were quoting scriptures to each other on your phones, you accidentally flipped your phone to Facetime and Ian could see everything.” I shut my eyes tightly and then added, “Everything.”
I heard my mother’s sharp intake of breath. She hung up. I didn’t want to wait around to be the object of her wrath so dropped Ian’s phone back on the coffee table and hurried to the door. I almost felt sorry for Ian, as much as I disliked him. When the ghost of a punk rocker had recently possessed Mum, she—or rather, the ghost—had flashed a murderer in an attempt to distract him, and Ian had come through the door at the wrong time.
That, coupled with what Ian had just seen, was probably enough to keep him in a terrible state for a long time.
I was only half way back to the funeral home when I heard Mum’s screeching tones. “Laurel! Laurel!”
I sighed and turned. I figured I might as well go back and get the earful I was expecting. Before I reached her, I heard a car behind me. Surely Ian wouldn’t come back so soon for his phone? He was probably halfway to Sydney by now.
The car pulled up, and a man got out. I summed him up quickly: looked as though he was out of the eighties: thick gold chain around his neck, white shirt open to the waist, denim jacket, too-tight jeans, a bushy, Magnum-style moustache.
He sauntered over to me and seized my hand just as Mum arrived upon the scene. “You must be Laurel,” he said, smiling widely and looking me up and down. “What a shame we never met.” I snatched my hand from him. He turned to Mum. “And you must be Laurel’s sister? Where’s Thelma?”
She smiled from ear to ear. “Actually, I’m Thelma.”
The man gasped. “Impossible! You must have been married very young.” He turned to me. “I’m Dylan Jackson. Your mother has told me all about you over the phone. Maybe we could have dinner?” He winked.
Another crack of thunder prevented my reply.
The man clutched at his stomach. “I haven’t been feeling well all day.” He leant back against his car.
My mother hurried over to him. “I will pray for you.” Before I could stop her, she grabbed the man by his shoulders. “Out, foul spirit of sickness!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
He jumped away from her in terror. A gust of wind lifted my umbrella out of my hands. I turned to run after it and presently retrieved it from Mum’s garden bed. When I looked back at the car park, Mum was still gripping the man’s arm. “Out, foul demon of sickness!” she screeched again.
The man clutched his stomach and bent over.
“The demon is leaving him and his sickness is going,” Mum called to me in a triumphant tone. “If he doesn’t watch Masterchef or listen to anything but gospel music, he should remain demon-free.”
I stood there, not knowing what to do. I figured I should try to do something, but when she was on a roll, there was no stopping her. “Mum…” I began a tentative tone, when a flash of lightning boomed overhead at precisely the same time as a deafening crack of thunder. It must have struck something near me. The umbrella blew over my face as the smell of burning hit me.
I pulled the umbrella off my head, but Mum and Dylan Jackson were no longer standing where they had been seconds earlier.
That’s when I saw them both lying on the ground, and they both looked dead.
