Chapter Five
“What’s with the crazy names?” Michael asked as he drove.
“You’ve lived in Lehi as long as you can remember,” Hiram said. “You’re only asking this now?”
“I had to ask about the even crazier things first,” Michael said. “I’ve worked my way down to names. What was Mrs. Whittle’s name again…Cherapple?”
“Cherellen,” Hiram said. “I think cherapple is a flavor of soda.”
“And Bobette? As in, female Bob, I guess?”
“I guess when you live in a big empty place like Utah, you look for ways to entertain yourself,” Hiram said. “For some folks, that must mean giving your kids invented names. Be grateful I named you ‘Michael.’”
Michael snorted. At his pap’s direction, he pulled over in front of a small bungalow. Michael set the hand brake, to the left and under the steering wheel.
The vegetable garden in front of the bungalow was leafy and full, and the cottonwood beside the street front wept white fuzz. Michael didn’t have his father’s skill with the dowsing rod, but he could smell running water—there must be a creek or a river nearby.
A path led down the side of the house. A small hand-written sign, nailed to a fence post, pointed to the back. On it was the name of the widow they were there to see, Diana Artemis. The name might be pure P.T. Barnum, but she was sticking to it. Surrounding the name were various symbols: an eye, a cross, an “H” with bowed sides, a crescent moon, and a five-pointed star.
Michael squinted in the harsh sunlight. “So, those symbols, it’s kind of generic occult, don’t you think? I mean, other than the crosses, it’s not like on our lamens. It looks…fake as can be.”
Fake as her fakey fake name. With this much obvious flimflam, could she possibly have any real magical lore?
“It’s just advertising,” Pap said quietly. “She needs customers. First rule of business is give the customer what he wants. Or what he thinks he wants, I suppose. Besides, a person who knows important things sometimes conceals them.”
“You mean, like trade secrets?”
Hiram frowned. “No, I mean that some kinds of knowledge are progressive. You learn the first thing, and before the second thing will be told to you, you have to prove that you’re using the earlier knowledge responsibly. That you’re keeping secret things secret, that you’re acting appropriately on your knowledge.”
“That sounds like…is that…is that magic you’re talking about, Pap, or God?”
Hiram nodded and stepped out of the truck. Michael banged out of the Double-A after him in time to see his pap’s hand go to the chi-rho amulet under his heavy work shirt.
Michael had seen his father make that same gesture, thousands of times. For most of his life, he’d figured his father had some sort of nervous tic, or a lingering rash on his sternum. Now, he knew better. The chi-rho amulet supposedly had powerful protection magic.
According to his pap, the amulet that Michael wore was the reason he had survived their tussle with the coal-mine demon in Helper.
“You don’t expect trouble, do you?” Michael managed to avoid touching his own chi-rho medallion.
Hiram shrugged. “I didn’t expect Gus Dollar to be a witch. Here we have someone making sure people think she’s one.”
Michael felt a prickle at the back of his neck at the mere mention of the old shopkeeper. “You have your heliotropius in case she’s lying, right?”
Another nod. “Probably ought to get you a stone, too.” Hiram walked along the crushed gravel path and Michael followed, down a narrow passageway between the house and the neighbor’s fence. The bungalow’s tiny backyard had flowers and a path that connected the house to a privy and a second little house in the rear.
The sight of the outhouse made Michael feel immediate sympathy for Diana Artemis. Back on their farm in Lehi, the Woolleys had electricity, but no water closet yet. Hiram thought it was too much of a luxury and didn’t like the idea spending that much money in a time where a lot of families couldn’t eat. He might be right. So Michael suffered in solidarity with the poor, freezing his buttocks raw in the winter and choking on the thick stench in summertime.
Up brick stairs, next to the lace-filled windows of the door, hung another sign proclaiming the occupant to be Diana Artemis, though this sign didn’t have any of the symbols. A string dangled behind the sign, connected to a bell.
Pap pulled the cord.
Michael stood behind him.
The door opened promptly, and in the doorway stood the most beautiful woman Michael had ever seen.
He couldn’t look away. Pale skin, a perfect nose, and red lips. No hat covered her raven-dark hair, which tumbled down to the shoulders of her black dress, patterned with red roses. Her emerald-colored eyes were accentuated by the smoky make-up she wore. If all witches looked like her, Michael decided he would embrace the occult whole-heartedly.
Diana Artemis smiled. “Hello. Can I help you?”
Hiram Woolley whipped off his hat. Suddenly, Michael wished he’d bathed that morning, and wondered what his hair looked like; probably a mess, dusty, if not greasy. He felt like a backwoods hick standing in this woman’s presence.
Pap wasn’t saying anything. At the best of times, Hiram Woolley didn’t say much—Michael drove for his father, and often talked for him as well. Like Moses talked for Elijah, as Hiram himself might say. Or whoever it was that did that in the Bible. But the thing that really knocked all the words out of Hiram Woolley’s head was women. Michael would have to take it upon himself.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m Michael Woolley and this is my father, Hiram. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Pap muttered something, nodding.
Diana stood in her doorway. Hiram was on the first step, Michael below him, and she was eye-level to them. She couldn’t be more than five feet tall, and yet, she seemed to tower over them both.
Michael forced himself to look away.
Diana’s laughter sounded like singing. “Questions? From two handsome men? Well, today has suddenly become far more interesting.”
Michael laughed. Hiram said nothing.
Diana stepped back. “Please, come inside. The heat is getting worse, and I have an electric fan. We can talk. And I can answer your questions.”
Hiram shuffled inside and Michael followed.
The room had furnishings that would have rendered it comfortable, if it had been twice the size. As it was, the round table, the wooden stools, the overstuffed easy chair, and the wide sofa were crammed inside, butting up against an overflowing bookcase. A fan with the General Electric logo on the front sat in the window, spinning. A silver wind-up clock sat beside the books on a shelf.
When the woman turned, Michael’s eyes dropped to her shapely backside and the silk stockings she wore. Her shoes clacked across the wood until they found the plush carpet under her table. She walked with a limp. Something was wrong with her right leg.
She turned on it, pivoting with a bit of wobble in her balance. In another woman, that wobble might have looked ungainly. On the widow Artemis, it was a very gainly wobble indeed. Michael again had to look away. He hoped she hadn’t caught him staring.
She sat in the easy chair. “Please, pull up a chair, or there’s the sofa.” Michael caught a slight accent in the word sofa, something European maybe, but when she spoke again, she sounded like any other American. “I must say, I am dying of curiosity.”
Michael nudged his pap to take the sofa. He grabbed a stool and sat down on it. “Mrs. Artemis, me and my father were in town to help Lloyd Preece and his friend Gudmund Gudmundson dig a well for the Whittles up in Spanish Valley. We heard the local gossip, at least some of it, anyway, and there’s the matter of a ghost.”
“I know Lloyd,” the widow said, “and the bishop. What’s the gossip you heard?”
“Falling sickness.” Hiram’s face was pale. “I suffer from the falling sickness. Mr. Preece said you might be able to help.”
The woman’s eyes went from Hiram to Michael and back. “I’ve heard about you, Mr. Woolley. I could have helped Rex Whittle find his well, so you’ve cost me a nice little piece of business. It’s hard to beat free.”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” Hiram murmured. “I didn’t know.”
She waved a hand. “That’s not really my line of work. I appreciate the stars and planets more than the dirt and what men do in it.”
“You write horoscopes?” Hiram asked.
“I cast them, yes. For all the best men in town, I assure you. Erasmus Green, the banker, Lloyd Preece, the rancher.”
“Bishop Gudmundson?”
She shook her head. “He’s a little too church-y, I fear. But I do have some charms that might help with your epilepsy. They won’t be free, and I might have to charge a bit extra, to make up for my…lost business.” She fueled those final words with a slow smile and a glint in her eye.
“Not sure it’s epilepsy.” Hiram coughed and looked at the floor. What was going on with him? Was he sick?
Was he going to have a fainting spell right now, in front of the widow, just to prove that he could?
“How are you treating it now?” she asked.
“I…pray, mostly,” Hiram said. “It’s a charm I know.” He then recited: “I conjure me by the sun and the moon, and by the gospel of this day delivered to Rupert, Giles, Cornelius, and John, that I rise and fall no more.”
Michael found himself wincing in embarrassment. How could anyone take any of this seriously? Then again, who was he to cast stones? He sat in a fortune teller’s little parlor, seeking information on a ghost.
Only he didn’t really believe it.
Did he?
Diana’s lips curled upward and she breathed out a little laugh. “It’s a very sweet little spell, Mr. Woolley. Has it been helpful?”
“Some,” he said. “I wouldn’t call it a spell, exactly.”
She stood. “Let me find something in the other room.”
“Can I look at your books?” Michael asked. “I really like books.”
“Help yourself.” She limped out of the room.
Michael stood and perused the titles on the shelves. The Elements of Astrology by Luke Broughton was stuck in the middle of a dozen books with swooping characters that Michael guessed might be Sanskrit. Another book in English was called Shatpanchashika, and then he saw Christian Astrology (Three Volumes Combined).
“Read out the titles,” Hiram said. “Let’s see if I recognize any. Look for The Picatrix, or The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Or anything by Henry Cornelius Agrippa.”
“Nothing like that,” Michael said.
Hiram frowned.
Diana returned and took a seat. She held a cigar box, the word LA-ZENDA painted on the wood inside a red border. She opened up the box and retrieved a little silver cross. On it, etched in the metal, was a circle with a dot inside it and an arrow emerging from the circle, pointing upward. “Keep this with you, Mr. Woolley. Uranus is the planet that governs electricity, and this should stabilize your body. I see you have a Saturn ring. I would imagine your dreams are very vivid.”
Michael reached for the cross and Diana pulled it away. “Sorry, my friend, but if you touch it, you might disrupt the energies. This is for your father. Foster father, I think.”
“I guess technically he’s my foster father, but I’ve been with him since I was a tot. He’s the only dad I’ve ever known.” Michael returned to the stool. “No points for guessing that one, though, since I have a pleasant nutmeg-like complexion, and my pap is the color of the sugar beets he grows and loves so much.”
“I adopted him.” Hiram stood, reached across the table for the cross, and sat back down, gripping the charm in his fist. “His father died in the Great War. He was my friend. Yas Yazzie.”
“I recognize the name as Navajo.” Diana smiled at Michael. “You have beautiful hair, and such nice brown eyes. So intelligent.”
When had Michael’s insides become oatmeal? He found he had no words. So this was what Pap felt…apparently, any time he saw a woman.
Michael remembered his manners. “Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Artemis.”
“‘Diana’ is fine.” She relaxed into her chair. “Can I get you something to drink? Tea, perhaps? I might have a beer.”
“Pap’s Mormon, and I’m…okay for now.” Michael glanced at his father.
His pap had been staring at the woman, but now he dropped his eyes. “No, thank you. And thank you for the charm. If you have some…lore, maybe you know something about the ghost up on the Monument?”
“Lore?” Diana grinned. “Most people call it witchcraft.”
“You’re not a witch, I don’t think,” Pap said firmly. “I’ve dealt with witches. They’re cruel. You don’t seem like that kind of person.” He cleared his throat, a bit too loudly.
“I can little afford to be cruel,” Diana replied. “As a widow, a stranger in Moab, my standing is a bit precarious, and cruelty would only make my lot harder. As for witchcraft, well, there are some believers still, in the old ways, and I thank God there are. Does Mormonism have room for the old ways? We Catholics manage, but Catholics have always been keen on ritual and sacrifice.”
Michael found himself intensely interested in the answer to that question.
His pap shrugged. “Some Mormons do. Fewer than once did, and fewer and fewer all the time. That’s the way of the world; it changes. Do you know anything about the ghost?”
That answer was a disappointment. Leave it to Pap to stay on track.
The widow leaned forward. Her dress leaned with her, showing a sudden fertile valley of cleavage. Michael knew better than to ogle. He stared at the spinning fan and wondered whether there was a setting to make it oscillate.
“The ghost in the new Arches Monument?” Diana asked. “My craft suggests…that is to say, I believe…it’s poor Jimmy Udall. I have felt things, when I was up there…it’s a spiritually powerful place. I find the Ute paintings especially fascinating. They’re by the Turnbow Ranch, near the very fine arch up there. Have you been?”
Michael shifted his gaze from the fan, forcing himself to look at the widow’s face. “We have. You’re talking about…” He couldn’t bring himself to say Pants Crotch. “The Bloomers. I guess the Turnbow Ranch was once the Wolfe Ranch?”
“It was,” Diana affirmed. “The Turnbows moved in after Wolfe moved out. The stars suggest that it might have been a wolf that killed poor Jimmy. Have you heard of old Three Toe?”
Hiram looked over at Michael. “We have.” Better Pap looked at him than keep on staring at the widow. Suddenly, her name seemed more than appropriate. She was a hunting goddess, all right. Times two.
Diana sighed. “Three Toe was a big wolf, pestering the ranchers, and taking more than his fair share of their livestock. Supposedly he was caught a dozen years ago, but who knows, really? He, or some other wolf, could have killed Jimmy, just like the stars told me. And without a proper burial, poor Jimmy could be strolling across the sandstone, alone and lost.”
The widow had lost her smile. Tears shone in her eyes.
“I saw bite marks,” Hiram said.
Diana Artemis nodded.
“Who is Jimmy Udall?” Michael asked. “Or, I guess, who is his family? Where can we find them to talk to them? Do they live somewhere in Moab?”
Diana nodded. “They’re not well known in town, because his family squats on the Monument, so they only come in to shop. They live in a little dugout up there. I haven’t seen it, but the stars tell me it’s quite near the Bloomers.”
“The stars sure tell you a lot,” he blurted out.
Her laughter returned. “You’re not wrong, Michael. May I call you Michael?”
“Michael is fine. Hiram for my pap.” He wanted to ask if she really believed in all this mumbo jumbo, and in the things the stars told her, but he couldn’t think of a polite way to put the question.
“You know,” Diana said. “There are rumors of lost silver out in the desert. The bank was robbed in 1923, and supposedly, four bags of silver were taken, but only two returned. Jimmy might’ve stumbled on the treasure and gotten killed for it. Then his ghost would be restless, wanting his story to be known. Ghosts are like that.”
“I thought the stars told you it was wolves,” Michael said.
“I’m suggesting other possibilities.” She smiled sweetly at him. “In case I am mistaken in my reading of the stars.”
Hiram cleared his throat. “Did the Udalls ever come to see you?”
The widow nodded. “They were concerned about their missing son.”
“And you told them wolves had killed him and left him a ghost in the desert?”
Diana Artemis shook her head slowly. “I lied to them. I said little Jimmy had died in a fall, and was in heaven. Tell me, Hiram, did I do wrong in giving them peace by telling a little lie?”
Hiram shook his head slowly. “I can’t say you did wrong. It would have been better still if you could have given peace to the boy, too.”
“Perhaps I don’t have all your craft, Mr. Woolley. Anyway, I gave them more peace than they could get from that dugout church they attend.”
“Dugout church?” Michael asked.
She nodded. “The Udalls have been spending Sundays with our local John the Baptist, Earl Bill Clay. He’s an itinerant preacher, a wild-eyed zealot, you know the type.” She grimaced. “Some call him Preacher Bill. I understand he calls himself the Reverend Majestic.”
Michael thought for a moment. “But you don’t think…the Udalls have found the missing silver?”
“That seems like…a really big stretch,” Pap murmured.
And it didn’t jibe with what the ghost had told them through the lantern.
“If the Udalls have become suddenly rich,” Diana said, “they don’t act like it.” She turned and read the clock. “I do have an appointment. I apologize for cutting this conversation short. Hiram, if the charm doesn’t help with your falling sickness, perhaps I can work your charts and see if I can find the cause of your malady, so we can attempt another approach. Maybe start by telling me your birthdate?”
“October 7, 1890,” Hiram stared at his hat.
The woman nodded. “I can check if Saturn was in Libra at that time. It might be that, or it might be Mercury, which would explain everything.”
Michael didn’t know how a planet could be in a constellation. This whole astrology thing baffled him, and yet, ancient astronomers had an expertise he couldn’t deny. Modern astronomy had come out of people’s love of the heavens. Grandma Hettie had been a great one for reading the almanac, even if Hiram claimed he couldn’t follow the charts.
Michael considered asking to borrow one of her books, to begin unraveling the mysteries of astrology, then thought against it. She wasn’t running a lending library.
Diana gazed on Hiram, her face softening. “Saturn, the father, deliberate, but limited. Jupiter’s energy is expansive, but not Saturn’s. It confines, and yet, it’s intensely practical. Saturn knows we are only limited creatures, bound by space and time.”
Before Michael could give her his birthday, she rose. “The cross itself is five dollars. For my craft, I’ll tack on a sawbuck. Is fifteen dollars acceptable to you, Hiram?”
Pap was up in his feet in seconds, reaching for his wallet in his back pocket. “Yes, Mrs. Artemis, that is fine. Just fine.”
Fifteen dollars was steep, Michael knew it, but he also knew neither of them was going to dicker with the woman.
Pap paid her, and they left, hurrying back to the Double-A. Sitting in the truck, Michael leaned back and sighed. “She’s too old for me, Pap, but she liked you.”
“She’s far too young for me.” The wistful note in Hiram’s voice suggested that he hoped it wasn’t true.