Haunted Heirlooms by Manalo Anna Maria

Author:Manalo, Anna Maria [Manalo, Anna Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beyond The Fray Publishing
Published: 2022-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 33

W e climbed an internal stair to the turret. There, Erica pulled a frame off the wall and proceeded to remove a print from the frame. I noticed the frame was double glazed. Thick glass.

I handed her back the lithograph.

“I have holy water,” I offered.

“I have one too. Blessed from Jerusalem.”

From a nearby bookshelf, she reached for a small bottle and uncapped it.

She turned the print over on a table, the scene downwards.

Four sides she blessed and then the center with the mark of a cross.

The double-glazed frame fitted perfectly like it was meant for it.

Then she positioned the frame and hung it. “It needed a home, but not one where it’s visible to anyone who may not be ready for it.”

“I see.”

“Your friends were not ready for it, and neither were you. I think you were fascinated to own something so unusual, to say the least, so you couldn’t let go. It’s Middle Eastern, so perhaps your friends thought you were a fit, as your ancestry… ”

“My birth parents were from Damascus.”

Erica gave me a knowing look. “Have you ever heard of a djinn? It can play with your mind and manipulate your emotions. Very dangerous.”

I surveyed the turret. “But up here…”

“Up here someone has to climb up on purpose to view it. I would be the only one at this point who may see the past in it as you have.”

“At an obscure location where children…”

“Or other adults would not be able to see it.”

“Will you let me know if anything happens?”

“I will keep in touch. But as long as the glass holds and it’s blessed, we should be good.”

It’s now 2020. I have not heard from Erica since then. Months later, Alice and I did a final tag sale on my parents’ summer house. I sprinkled the holy water from Lourdes around the house before I finally sold it, convinced that the lithograph had finally found a home.

Since then we’ve sold several antiques of every imaginable sort and expanded to a larger store. Alice remained friends with Mel, though it’s now casual. My associate Dan laid low until one summer when he offered me an antique chest to see if it could be sold in my new store. I declined, now reluctant to take anything from him.

I never went back to the Bar Harbor area or to Erica’s town, where her home with a turret houses a print that was mine. When I look back and recall the scene in that lithograph, I now realize that the girl on the swing looked a lot like Erica, as much as the castle in the foreground looked a lot like her home.

It all came into focus.

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