Read Online Dead Sleeping Shaman by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli - Free Book Online

Crystalline’s face twisted into a slit-eyed hate mask. I had gotten an idea what Crystalline was like before Marjory came into her life. She took a couple of deep breaths, closed and opened her eyes, gathered herself back together, then smiled sweetly, and went on.
    “Never was easy for Marjory to talk about her past. Then the next thing we know—she’s gone. Called from that motel where I’m staying now and said she was up here and would come back when she’d settled things that had to be settled. There was something about having to help somebody, but she never said who.”
    I’d asked her then if there was anything else she could remember about Marjory’s life in Leetsville. She thought awhile. “Only other thing I knew,” she said, “was that she, and her brothers, Arnold and Paul, lived with her Aunt Cecily and Uncle Ralph for her teen years ’cause there was nobody else. Otises they were. Brother to Marjory’s father. Aunt Cecily, who didn’t have any kids of her own, didn’t want anybody else’s kids, and took care of them only until they turned eighteen when she kicked them out of the house. She might have liked the oldest, Arnold, a little more than the others. It wasn’t long after he left the house Marjory heard he was in a junior college down in Flint. You probably heard of Arnold. He’s running for state senator here in Michigan. Big deal—Arnold. He almost never contacted Marjory. She said he didn’t want people knowing his sister was a shaman. It could hurt him in the upcoming election.”
    Crystalline pursed her lips, took a deep breath, and poked one red-tipped finger into her pile of hair.
    “She told you she was coming to help somebody? Did she say who? Or what kind of help she could give?” Dolly asked. “Maybe it had something to do with healing, or something with this Shamanism stuff.”
    Crystalline frowned. “She didn’t tell me who it was. I got the idea it had to do with her brother. I know one thing, it had nothing at all to do with our beliefs. She would have said. I mean, that’s what we all do, we share stories, so we’re always learning. You know, able to help people better.”
    “Even when she called to say where she’d gotten to she didn’t mention this person she came to help?” Dolly pressed.
    Crystalline shook her head. “I asked her but she said she’d tell me everything when she got back to Toledo. She was interested in a Reverend Esau Fritch. You heard of him? I don’t know why but she was looking him up online and reading about some kind of stuff. I remember her sitting there in this little office the four of us rent for healings and readings and classes. I remember she was shaking her head and saying somebody was going to have to do something about the whole thing but she didn’t say which ‘thing.’ That’s what she said—do something about ‘the whole thing.’ I hear the guy’s here, saying the world’s about to end. Maybe that’s what she came for.”
    “Could be one of them’s got something to do with her murder. Could be that preacher. Could be her brother. Maybe both,” Dolly said, and settled her small, round head—hatless for once—down into her shoulders. She got very quiet.
    Crystalline looked sad. “Marjory’s was a history of being left and leaving—people and places. But all she ever said to me about Leetsville was that she hoped never to come back here again—until she did. I know one thing, that ghost town gave her the creeps—like all the family trouble started there and the relatives weren’t smart enough to know it wasn’t pride they should be showing—about being early settlers—but fear.”
    Before I’d gotten out of the car, the three of us agreed to go hear the Reverend Fritch’s evening revival. I wanted a story on the end of the world, the preacher, and his followers. Dolly said not to forget we were investigating a murder and his name had been brought into the investigation. Crystalline wanted to come