Ashes to Ashes

INSTEAD OF GOING STRAIGHT HOME AFTER LEAVING Lillia’s, I drive to Mary’s house.

As I get out of my car and walk up the path, I almost can’t believe the state of it. Mary’s house is rotting at warp speed. Strangely, it looks way worse than the last time Lillia and I came here to look for her, which was only three months ago.

The grass in the yard is overgrown. There are mushy leaves everywhere, and it gives the whole front lawn that decaying smell. Every window in the house is dark. The mail slot in the front door is stuffed full, and the overflow is in a messy pile on the front step, waterlogged and brown and pulpy. The biggest tree in the yard must have fallen in a storm or something. It’s gone. Only a stump is left, but the perimeter bushes where it fell are crushed and aren’t growing back. I watch a bird fly from a telephone wire into a small hole in the attic vent.

I guess I get why Mary’s mom was cool with giving the house away. There isn’t much left to save.

It looks like that old Volvo was towed away. And in its place the Preservation Society has parked two big Dumpsters, and they are full of Mary’s family’s stuff. A floral armchair, a couch, some paintings. I’m looking for a recent photograph of Mary, but they’re all of when she was younger, when I didn’t know her. I lift up an old curtain and find a huge stack of books underneath. Weird old books with cloth covers.

The first one is titled The Sleeping Mind: The Power of Dreams and Semiconsciousness.

Hells yeah, that’s my jam. Underneath that are other ones, occult-type shit, spirits and whatnot. Some aren’t even in English. Real Wicca-type stuff, the kinds of books you can’t find in a regular bookstore. Bet I could make a killing off them on eBay.

After checking over both my shoulders, I lift a couple of them out, the ones that haven’t been rained on and ruined. I put them into my trunk.