With cotton gloves on her hands, Shawn solemnly laid the items on the wobbly wooden table: a dusty old book, and a beautiful silver knife. I eyed them suspiciously. Where did she find this stuff? Her job at the history museum led her down some weird paths. Not to mention her obsession with the occult. I cut my eyes to Shawn, who was wandering the small, dusty room like a kid in a candy store.
"Tell me again why we're here?"
Shawn turned and grinned at me. I rolled my eyes. Only Shawn could have pulled me into this. I should be home; I had to organize my clothes, my schedule, for the weekend. Shawn's long, red-blonde curls bounced around her shoulders as she flopped into a decrepit purple velvet armchair. The dust that poofed up around her was positively ghastly.
"Clara! Isn't this just amazing! It's like from a movie or something!"
I wrinkled my nose and looked around the room. More like a third rate community theater production of some gothic horror piece of nonsense. I mean, god, with the colorful scarves draped over every light source, the dusty velvet wall hangings and furniture, were we supposed to forget we had just walked in from the sad parking lot of a dingy strip mall? I looked around for the omnipresent "crystal ball." It had to be here somewhere. I peered closely at a crooked shelf that hung precariously from the wall. There were glass jars lined up on it that seemed ready slide off together down one end. There was a sickly green liquid in each one and ... were those eyeballs?
"This is so fake. It's like the sad little sideshow fortune-teller you go to at the town carnival."
Shawn threw her head back in the chair, and let out a frustrated noise. "Ugh! Clara! Will you stop and at least try to have a little faith for once? Believe in something besides your schedule and your lists? Sometimes it's ok to just let go and let something interesting happen."
Shawn was giving me that look again. That one that would turn to pity in a few more seconds. A shimmer of tears would appear in her wide green eyes and she would throw herself at me, hugging me tight. I would be assaulted by the intoxicating lavender spice scent of Shawn's curly hair, I would feel the press of Shawn's soft round breasts against my own, much smaller ones.
All of Shawn was so much softer than I was. Sometimes I couldn't stop myself from staring at my best friend, noting the deep V of cleavage that I could never achieve even with the best push-up bra, her pointed pixie face surrounded by the corkscrew-curled red-blonde hair.
I moved out of reach before Shawn could launch herself at me. "Just ... tell me again what this woman told you."
Shawn pushed herself out of the dusty purple chair with a swirl of her multi-layered cotton skirt. "She's a powerful medium. She can sense when someone else has the gift. She knew right away that I'm an empath, and that my sensitivity to earth's vibrations is a strong indicator that I could have the natural ability to be a medium, too, with the right training."
I sighed in frustration. This was my best friend. PhD. Museum curator. And naive beyond belief. "So what, you want to quit your dream job at the museum and take up fortune-telling?"
"I want to be a medium, Clara. It's totally different," Shawn huffed, the "duh" obvious in her voice. "I'm going to get my bag from the car. Oh! And remember, don't touch anything." Shawn flounced out of the room, the scent of lavender trailing behind her.
"A medium, of course, how could I be so stupid." I muttered.
I drifted around the room, inspecting the oddities and dime-store, carny fortune teller feel of the place. My eyes glanced over a skull on a corner table that was so real looking it obviously wasn't. The threadbare red velvet curtains that obscured the windows of the storefront. The gauzy scarves that hung over cheap lamps I had seen on sale at Target, like, last season. The dusty, overstuffed purple velvet furniture, the chintzy oriental rug on the floor. It all just screamed: "I am a fake and the passionate and gullible will give me their money anyway. The passionate and gullible . . . like Shawn.
The only stretch of wall that wasn't obscured by the velvet drapery was the one I had been standing near before, with the crooked shelves inexpertly screwed into it. I clasped my hands behind my back and inspected each jar.
The first one had some fetal animal in it, which could be real, I supposed. The next one had a "severed hand" of some sort. It looked like a plastic monkey's paw, like something you would win at the carnival. Put it on a key chain and freak out your friends.
The last jar on the shelf held the fake eyeballs. I took a step closer. The eye balls were multi-colored, and looked perfectly round, not at all realistic. More like bouncing balls or marbles made to look like eyes. I counted them, and noted the colors of the irises. There was a brown one, a bright blue one, a green one just like Shawn's, and grey-blue one very much like mine. I was thinking how weird that was, when the brown one rotated to "look" right at me. And then tapped itself against the inside of the jar. Tap tap tap.
"Gahhh!" I yelped and took a hurried three steps back. My scuffling feet tripped me up and I pitched backwards, only just catching myself on the edge of the round wood table in the center of the room. The jostled table tipped and Shawn's items tumbled off and onto the floor.
"Ah, shit!" I steadied the table and caught my breath. What was wrong with me? I would not let the desperate ambiance of this faux creepy, dingy room get to me.
I looked at the objects scattered on the floor. The small, ancient leather-bound journal was lying open. I could see the slanted, cramped writing that covered every single one of its pages. The knife glinted dully in the poor light.
Shawn had warned me numerous times about touching these things. Even Shawn, who had collected them over the course of the last year, only touched them with gloves. At first I thought it was because they were very old, and Shawn was handling them as she would handle other artifacts she acquired for her job at the museum. But then Shawn had confided the nature of these objects. How they had all belonged to the same man, some mysterious "psychic" from the 1800s who had died mysteriously. I had only half listened. She believed he had known secrets of other worlds that no one else knew. Of life after death. Shawn believed a lot of crap.
Including that if this meeting with the "fortune teller" was to be successful, no one could touch these objects with bare hands until tonight. But there they were, on the floor, and I had no gloves. I looked around. I could use one of those rotting scarves, ew, or ... leave them on the floor until Shawn got back. But I didn't want to give Shawn the satisfaction of knowing I was spooked.
"It's fine. I'll just ..." I bent and pincered the book cover between my thumb and forefinger. I quickly tossed it back onto the table and closed it using just two fingers. The knife I had to hold onto more securely, though I was loathe to. I didn't want to smudge its glinting silver hilt with my fingers. Damn it, why were my hands so sweaty?
The knife was heavier than I expected. It rolled into my palm. I didn't mean to hold it so tightly but it felt so comfortable there. The silver handle was surprisingly warm to the touch and I could feel the pattern that was etched into it tickling the skin of my palm. I suddenly felt dreamy and dull. My eyes fluttered closed, just for a moment.
I thought I heard someone whispering my name. A tickle of breath against my ear.
"Claraaaa ... "
I swayed lethargically. My limbs felt loose, not quite my own.
The tinkle of a bell snapped me to attention. I heard voices. Shawn. Another woman. With a strange feeling of reluctance, I quickly placed the knife back onto the table and threw myself into the purple velvet arm chair. I crossed my legs and feigned indifference. I only had a moment to wonder what the hell had just happened when Shawn pushed through the drapes at the front of the room. A tall, incredibly gorgeous blonde woman followed her.
"Clara, I want you to meet someone." Shawn was breathless and sparkly eyed as she ushered the woman into what was, to my understanding, her own storefront fortune telling business.
