“Those seeking answers on our side of the veil are not always prepared for the cost of a supernatural truth.”
Beyond and Further Still Sofia Brewer
Sofia, Persi, and Mags settled into their seats. Alice paced around the small room, making minor adjustments before closing the door and leaving the three of them alone in the sound booth.
“Okay, let’s get started. Roll the previously recorded narration for Magnolia. She needs to hear it to get her settled into the story—”
Irritation pricked Mags. That’s all this was to them. A narrative. A money maker. It meant so much more to Mags.
Sofia snapped her fingers, and the tape rolled.
Eight years ago, my life changed drastically. Sofia’s prerecorded voice filled the small booth. I was pregnant, and my husband had been killed in a horrible accident.
Accident. Mags remembered Persi’s doll play from earlier. Had it really been an accident?
I was a famed psychic; how could I truly grieve in a normal way when I’d been telling people their loved ones were still out there?
That, at least, rang true.
I never told anyone, but my abilities, my connection with the spirit world had been lost to me as well.
Wait, what?
But I kept working, thinking I knew enough to fake it. It was a dark time, and I’m not proud of my actions. But I did what I thought I had to, like anyone else would have.
Mags couldn’t help herself; she snorted. “So you’re a fraud,” she added, not backing down.
Sofia licked her lips and gave Mags a scolding look, obviously not appreciating the commentary. “I may be, but she’s not.” Sofia kept her words clipped and tight while gesturing at her daughter.
Mags looked to Persi, who sat with her eyes clenched shut. Had it not been for what she’d experienced with the girl earlier, she would have thought this whole experiment was for show.
“Come on, Persi. You don’t have to do this. They don’t need us for this . . . confessional.” She placed her hand on Persi’s shoulder, and the girl flinched as if she’d been stung.
“Persi stays,” Sofia said.
“You’re paying me to take care of her. Whatever you’ve got going on here is not appropriate for a child.”
Persi’s nails dug into the leather upholstery of the armrest. Her eyelids fluttered, little lashes like moth wings flying too close to a flame.
“It is what it is. This doesn’t work without her.”
“So you’re using her.”
Now it was Sofia’s turn to scoff. “Just listen.” She made a twirling motion with her finger, and her voice emerged from the speakers once more.
A small-town police officer—a fan, really—contacted me through my website. A local teenager had disappeared, the biggest mystery the town had seen in decades.
Mags’s blood ran cold—not Hawthorne’s story.
Now, I’d been hired by the police force before. I’d worked a couple homicides and missing persons across the country. His request wasn’t totally out of the norm. But I was very pregnant and really shouldn’t have been traveling. Then he told me the boy’s last known whereabouts . . .
Yes, Hawthorne’s story. Mags couldn’t breathe.
The castle. Fault Hill Castle. A place with a very dark and storied past.
“That’s not true,” Mags interrupted. “He went to a party. People saw him, and then he just left.”
“And came here.” Sofia handed Mags a piece of paper, a kind of report with hard-to-read, sloppy cursive writing coursing over thin lines.
“What is this?”
“Notes taken from”—Sofia leaned over and tapped the top of the paper; her red lacquered nail gleamed under the fluorescent light—“Detective Shaw.”
“But I’ve never seen this. I don’t think my parents have ever seen this.”
“That’s unlikely. But there’s more.” She made a clicking noise, like one might call a dog with, a little sucking tuh-tick, and the narration came through the speakers once more.
The town was within driving distance from my Indianapolis estate, and I needed the income. I figured I could come and look at the files. At the very least, I could make an educated guess as to what had happened to the missing boy. He had probably run away, and I said as much upon arrival.
Obtaining access to the castle, parts that no one had been able to tour in decades, that was a bonus. It intrigued me. Anyone who grew up within the tri-state area, like I had, knew about Fault Hill. I’m only a little ashamed to say I thought it might help me get my powers back, that being on the grounds might spark something for me. And it did—in its way.
“Th-the police hired you”—Mags’s head felt as if she were underwater—“and you knew whatever you told them wouldn’t be real? That you’d just be guessing?”
“Yes. It was an unfortunate situation,” Sofia confirmed. She took a sip of water, and her lipstick painted the rim of the glass. “I mean, I hoped that wouldn’t be the case. I really did, and still do, want to help. I just—couldn’t. Everything was blocked to me at the time.”
“Why didn’t I know about any of this?”
Sofia shrugged. “I’m sure your parents were made aware. Some people don’t like bringing a psychic into the fold. Maybe they were embarrassed. I don’t know.”
Mags stood and paced the tiny room. She’d only taken a few steps away from the table when she asked, “But the whole town would have known you were here. Someone would have seen you—you’re famous! It would’ve gotten around.”
Sofia sniffed and folded her hands together. “Mags, I really don’t know how you’ve gotten to be this age still believing that there aren’t certain things that can be kept secret or hidden. Money and shame and silence have always gone a long way in this world.”
“What does that mean?”
“This would be cute if you were younger, really. I believe your brother stumbled upon something here, something about the castle’s history, and it took him. Now can we continue? Or are you suddenly not interested in what happened to Hawthorne?”
Mags swallowed her questions and disbelief; she sat back down to listen.
The investigation was at a standstill. They had the young man at the castle before he died, a security camera had picked the detail up, but by all appearances, he’d been alone. Why had he come? What had he found?
I thought it would be easy, that if I came here, toured the building, dug into the history, the answers would come. Instead, as soon as I set foot inside this place, I went into labor. The pain came quick and seared through my whole body. I collapsed in the lobby. It was nothing like what my doctors had prepared me for—hours of being uncomfortable, gradually increasing contractions. No. It was as if something or someone had reached their hand up inside me, gripped, and twisted. The baby’s head was right there, ready to come. Detective Shaw was supposed to have followed me in his car, but he hadn’t yet arrived, and seconds felt like hours in the blurry constraints of the moment.
Mags sat quietly listening. The story of Persimmon’s birth had taken on an unnatural quality, as if the castle itself or whomever/whatever haunted it had ripped Persi from the womb. Mags looked at the girl, who’d calmed in the moments it took to relay this bit of her story.
Eventually, although I have little memory of it, Detective Shaw did come and helped deliver the baby. He called for an ambulance, and that was that. Our lives moved forward. The story of Persimmon’s birth became an afterthought, until she started to talk.
Goosebumps broke out over Mags’s forearms. She felt like she might know what came next. After all, even she’d seen their gaping mouths and black eyes.
She spoke of boys and a bad lady with a mirror. It sounded like a fairy tale. Something she’d picked up in a book. I didn’t take it seriously, thought nothing of it. Until one day, we sat down for breakfast, and she said, “I want to go back to the castle.”
I’d never told her about Fault Hill. I wanted to leave the feeling of her being ripped out of me behind. Pretend it hadn’t really happened that way. But she already knew the truth.
She’s the true psychic now. The narration stopped. Above the door, a small bulb turned on, glowing red; they were recording now.
“And you’re, what? Telling the whole world you’re a fake? Why?”
“I’m securing her future.” Sofia gestured toward her daughter. “She has more potential than I ever did.”
“More potential to make money,” Mags countered.
Sofia rolled her lips together slowly, calculating a response.
Maybe Mags had finally struck a nerve. Nothing about this strange day had felt as though locking in a future career path for Persi was the priority. No, this was a way to extract a resource while it was still under Sofia’s control.
“People will see this for what it really is,” Mags added.
Sofia regained her composure. “Many fans will remain loyal. We’re building a legacy.”
“And what about the castle? The way you tell it, something here tore Persi out of you. You’re messing with some kind of power here. Why would you come back here at all?”
“She told me to.”
Crack, like a branch breaking over a knee, but no, not wood—bone. The sound sickened Mags.
Snap. Crunch.
Mags thought of a mortar and pestle, of seeds and herbs being ground into a pulp. She looked toward the girl, whose complexion had gone waxy. The fingers on her right hand pointed upward and were splayed apart, all at different and impossible angles.
“What’s happening to her?” Mags cried. She stood and crouched near Persi’s chair, unsure of what to do, how to help.
“The cost of doing business with the dead,” Sofia said offhandedly, as if hearing her own daughter’s bones break and twist were commonplace.
Mags watched Persi’s jaw clench and grind; her features, as twisted and strained as her fingers, flushed a deep shade of pink.
“You’re hurting her!” Mags yelled.
“I’m not doing a damn thing,” Sofia said.
“But you are! You’re using her for your own gain!”
“And yours, dear. Or are you giving up on Hawthorne completely?”
The sound of her brother’s name in Sofia’s mouth made Mags woozy with rage, but it also smacked of the truth. She had wanted this, and it seemed they were so close. Mags watched, horrified, as the fingers on Persi’s left hand bent backward—pop.
“Don’t do this! I don’t need to know what happened to him!”
At that, Sofia finally looked up from her script. A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Come on, now. You know as well as I that’s not true.”
Mags looked to Persi, who sat ramrod straight in her chair. Her eyelids began to flutter, exposing the whites of her eyes intermittently.
“It is! I quit! Just stop this!”
Persi’s head fell forward, as if some unseen person had shoved her. The flush that had painted her cheeks earlier had dissipated, leaving her skin a ghastly pale. Her breathing became shallow; the quick pulsing rish-rush of it filled the small room. All the lights went out, and the encompassing dark fell over Mags like a velvet cape.
“Magpie?” The voice was not Hawthorne’s, even though it was the nickname he’d always used for her. “Magpie, are you here?”
Mags reached for the voice that was so clearly not Hawthorne’s. A small, ice-cold hand met her in the span of darkness, the fingers all wrong, all splayed in different directions.
Mags gripped the girl’s forearm. “Persi, you don’t have to do this!”
“Oh Magpie, I can see-ee youuu.”
The words lingered in the air, reading almost like a threat. “Hawthorne?” she whispered and searched for him, but the room was bathed in black. Mags sensed the girl’s face nearby, could feel her breath on her cheek, but her eyes registered nothing but the darkness surrounding them. She was blind here in this place.
“Magpie, it’s cold down here.”
“Hawthorne, what happened to you?” Mags swiped her cheeks, wet with her tears. It was him. Her brother. The only other person in the world who’d understood her as a child, before school, before friends, before influence. He knew who she was at her core.
“There was a party.”
“Yes, but you never came home. Where did you go?”
“There were trees and water . . .”
“Were you in the woods? Did you have an accident?”
“A lady. I was just messing around. Trying to tell the story of the castle. Maybe start a MeTube channel with the footage. But the lady didn’t want that. She had to stay in the dark, Magpie. Everything has to stay in the dark.”
“What does that mean though?”
“She’s coming!” Persi’s voice broke, a squawk of a warning.
Mags felt as though her heart had stopped, the fear was so great. Who was coming?
“Get out, Magpie! Fly!”
Suddenly, the blinding fluorescent tube lighting filled the room. Mags blinked, letting the scene come to her in pieces. She sat bent, nearly under the table. Persi lay on her side nearby, limp and seemingly broken. She swiped the girl’s hair from her face. Persi’s skin felt tacky and had gone an alarming shade of yellow.
“Somebody get in here!” Mags gripped the girl’s hand, checking her fingers. They bent at their normal angles now but were bruised and swollen. “She needs help!”
“Nonsense.”
Mags had almost forgotten Sofia sat there too.
“She’ll be fine.” Sofia pulled a cigarette out of what looked like a coin purse. She clicked a lighter and stuck the cigarette between her pouting lips. The cigarette lit as she inhaled, and then she blew the smoke around the sound room. “I always was.”
“So this is just the cost?”
“Not always. But sometimes.”
“Why do it then? This is horrific.” Mags looked back to the frail girl, who started to stir.
Sofia smirked. “It’s a gift, Magpie.”
Mags’s jaw ticked at the use of her nickname. This was like no gift Mags had ever received or wanted. She realized that now. Whatever had happened to Hawthorne, it wasn’t worth hurting this girl. He was gone, and sometimes that was just how stories ended. There wasn’t always a neat and tidy wrap-up, a sense of closure for everyone, and Mags just had to be okay with that. Because this . . . this power, it was too much, too great, too hurtful for a child to bear alone. Especially while their mother turned it into a hustle.