An Ancient Gift (Short Story)

The house crouched in sullen silence as the storm clouds grumbled and quarreled among themselves in the west. Anna paused in the arched entrance to the living room. A thin gray film of dust carpeted the bare oak floorboards. Her gaze swept the mantle, the brick fireplace. Then she turned to me.

“Are you sure we didn’t forget anything?”

I shrugged. “You’re the psychic.”

“I know. And I feel something calling me.”

Whispers and echoes of holidays past called to my mind, conjuring images of Christmas trees decked with shiny tinsel, my grandparents watching the old black and white television set, Grandma making applesauce from the apples plucked from the tree that grew alongside the driveway.

“There’s nothing to forget,” I said. “You’re always getting these feelings. Half the time they don’t pan out and when they do, you go around telling people you’re psychic. We’ve been over every inch of the house. There’s nothing left except dust.”

“I have the family gift,” Anna said, gliding towards the stairs. She paused, one hand on the banister. Outside, lightning flashed in the west and the first patter of rain tapped against the windows.

“Family gift, my foot,” I muttered, hoping my voice was too low for her to hear, but Anna’s hearing was better than a mouse’s. She turned to me. I could barely make out her figure standing in the entry hallway.

“Dad could tell you what cards you picked when you played poker with him,” she said. “Remember that time he knew you’d bombed the biology test? How about Grandma knowing when Aunt Cathy was pregnant with cousin Jennifer, even before Cathy knew? Or the time when I found your diamond tennis bracelet behind the radiator?”

“Coincidences.” My hand found the switch among the faded flocked wallpaper and clean, modern light flooded the empty hallway. Anna blinked.

“Right,” she said. “Tell me about coincidences. They happen to you more than anyone else in this family and you always dismiss them.”

“I don’t believe in all that psychic mumbo-jumbo stuff.”

“The problem is, Amy,” Anna said, “it believes in you.”

Anna’s always getting these feelings. I stuffed my keys back into my pocketbook and stepped across the oak floors back to the staircase. Anna finds lost objects for people and knows what cards you’ve picked when you play poker with her. My father was able to do that, too. I can’t. There’s nothing psychic about me and nothing mystical in my life, and I like it that way. My life consists of data entry and billing for Mr. Sebastiano at the law office, my aerobics class on Saturdays, and dates with Brad on the weekends. Even though Anna and I are sisters and only eighteen months apart, the psychic chromosome that seems to run through my father’s side of the family skipped over me. Even my brother can tell who’s on the other end of the phone as soon as it jingles, and he loves guessing the answers to Jeopardy – he’s often right, even though he has no idea what he’s saying, particularly history and science questions.

Now Anna was gliding in her slow, careful way towards the stairs. She paused, one hand on the banister rail, and looked up into the gloom. The dim light from the dusty crystal chandelier created pools and whorls of darkness that seemed to breathe. When we were small and stayed overnight at Grandma’s, we were always too scared to climb the stairs to the second floor. Neither of us could say why, but the shadows were darker, the air, thicker up there, particularly in my father’s old bedroom. When we asked him about it, he just shrugged. Neither of my grandparents questioned why we insisted holding their hands we mounted the stairs, and why we preferred the guest bedroom rather than my father’s old room on the left.

“I feel a presence,” Anna said.

“Oh no, here it comes no,” I muttered.

“Amy, come up with me. It wants you, not me.”

“It?” I stepped aside to let her pass and lead the way. “Who wants me?”

Anna merely repeated, “It wants you. There’s a gift for you here.”

She walked up three steps, slowly, carefully, as if feeling that the treads were solid before stepping onto them. Her golden hair glittered under the dusky light.

“Come on Anna, knock it off,” I snapped, following her upstairs. “We’ve been through this place, top to bottom. Let’s lock up and go home, take a shower, and get ready for our dates. Brad and Pete await. Tomorrow’s the closing and those nice Greek people get the keys and we walk away with big, fat checks.” Not the most tactful thing to say, but it had taken us more than a year to sell our grandparent’s house.

“Wait, Amy! There’s something we’ve forgotten—" All caution forgotten, Anna dashed up the stairs, her footsteps clattering against the oak floor.

I glanced at my watch. Well, we’d only be fifteen minutes late if we hurried. I just had to drag Anna out of the house and make her forget all this nonsense about feelings and something wanting me upstairs.

I climbed the stairs slowly, and turned to the right to enter the guest bedroom, but Anna waved to me from the left – my father’s old room. It was cold and empty of all furniture. Not even a rug or curtains remained. We hadn’t checked the room thoroughly, just a cursory glance in the closet and a brief sweep to get the place broom clean, as it said on our contract

Anna was standing in the center of the room staring at the small closet. “In there,” she pointed.

Something tingled along the back of my neck, but I chalked it up to the continual growl of thunder and the electrically charged air from the storm. Why couldn’t Anna just lock up the house and leave like a normal person? Why did she always have to find something mystical? And why did she always have to drag me into it if I was around here?

“What is it Anna?” I whispered. “A monster in the closet? Oooh…spooky!” I laughed, but Anna ignored me.

She strode to the closet and flung the door open wide. Three metal coat hangers clanged on the metal rod. The closet was empty. The single white-painted shelf above the clothes bar remained empty.

“Anna…” I wanted desperately to get out of the room. My head ached. Sweat began to trickle down my forehead, beneath my breasts. It was as if the room was too stuffy, too hot and then suddenly too cold, as if a freezer door opened.

“It’s in here,” Anna repeated. She held out her right hand, pointing her fingers at the empty closet. “Oh spirit, guide my hand…” she whispered. I glanced around out of habit, like I always did back when we were in grade school and she did something crazy like that. But who was I expecting to see?

“Come on. There’s nothing but dust and spiders in there.” My voice came out a harsh croak. The air grew thicker and colder.

“Amy? What’s that line on the side here?”

I came over, expecting to see a simple scrape in the paint. Instead, on the left side of the closet near the floorboards I could make out a faint gray rectangle. “I think it’s a patch. You know, when someone takes out a bit of wallboard, they patch it up. It never looks quite right.”

“We need to get in there.”

“Anna, we can’t go around knocking out walls. Not with the closing tomorrow!”

“I don’t think we have to knock out the wall, Amy, just pry off the wallboard a bit. We can push it back into place. We never noticed it before. Maybe the new owners won’t either. Do you have that metal nail file you always carry?”

Now I was curious despite myself. It was probably just a patch from fixing something contained in the wall, like a leaky pipe or faulty wiring, but what if it wasn’t? I rummaged around my beige designer knock-off bag, coming up with the nail file. It had a sharp point and doubled as a weapon when I walked to my car late at night by myself. Anna took the file from me and felt around the gray rectangle. Her fingers found a niche. She took the nail file and using the tip of the diamond-edge, pried the wall board off. The rectangle popped off easily. She reached into the gap.

“Watch it Amy…spiders…”

She withdrew a cloth wrapped bundle triumphantly. “Nothing here, eh?”

The white cloth appeared to be silk, but so grimy the ivory color had now faded to a dismal gray. Anna backed out of the closet, pushing the rectangle of wallboard back into place. It fit smugly, and once again, the thin gray line was barely discernible.

“What is it?”

She placed the object on the floor of my father’s old bedroom. The silk was fastened with a brittle rubber band that crumbled into pieces when she touched it. She unwrapped the object.

We were staring at a peculiar deck of cards. Not the standard bridge deck, but a deck of antique tarot cards. The card on top was the Empress; her crimson gown glowed in the gloomy light cast by the storm. The cards appeared hand painted on thick ivory colored paper, slightly worn around the edges but otherwise in excellent shape.

“These must have been Dad’s,” Anna said, puzzled. “But why did he hide them here?”

I shook my head. “He hated tarot cards. He never used them.”

“That’s right,” Anna nodded. “They look valuable. I wonder why he hid them here?”

The more I thought about it, the less it made sense. Even if he chose not to read the cards, why hide them in the wall? I picked up the Empress. Especially something like this…hand painted, antique, probably worth money to a collector. I handed the Empress to Anna, who reverently slid the card back into the deck.

The next card revealed the Magician. His glaring blue eyes burned up at us from the card. He held the wand and the cup, symbols of his power. The symbol for eternity, a figure eight turned on its side, glowed with an intense, clear golden light.

“Wow,” Anna breathed. “Look at this one. This has to be an antique.”

Something about the Magician repelled me. I held out my hand, and she placed the card in my palm. I stared him down. His face was twisted into a grimace of power and malevolence. Quickly I handed the card back to Anna.

“He looks a little like Grandpa. Or Daddy. Look at the nose.” She pointed to the card.

“Time to go, Anna.” I stood and brushed off my pants.

“Why didn’t Dad take these with him?” Anna insisted. “Something this valuable shouldn’t have been left behind. Think of the power in this deck, Amy.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking of it,” I muttered. My hand ached with cold where I’d held the Magician. Why was my body burning with heat but my hand numb with cold? “Come on Anna, time to go.”

“You should use these, Amy,” Anna said. “I feel as if they’re meant for you.”

“They’re not meant for me! I don’t want them!”

The thunder growled menacingly, followed by a whip crack of lightning that illuminated those hateful cards. I felt the glare of the Magician in the white-hot light.

“Amy, you could tap into those powers of yours anytime you want to,”Anna said quietly. “Don’t try to fool yourself any more. I was there, remember? I saw you and Dad, in the backyard, under the full moon. You were helping him, remember?”

“I wasn’t there! I don’t remember anything! I never had any powers, never!”

“What happened, Amy, that made you so afraid? What made you deny your gift?”

Another brilliant flash of summer lightning lit the western sky.

“Dad had a lot more power than I’ll ever have,” Anna said, flipping through the deck reverently. I saw the cards, suits of wands cups, pentacles and swords, all decorated with brilliant colors and symbols inked into the margins. How did I know the names of the suits? I shook my head. Ann replaced the cards in the center of the silk, folding it carefully as it had been folded all these years.

“We need to sell them,” I said harshly. She handed me the deck so she could stand. We left my father’s old bedroom and headed back downstairs, to the warm friendly rooms that held so many good memories. More lightning flashed, and thunder shook the house. The chandelier flickered. By unspoken agreement, we headed for the kitchen, where the scent of cinnamon and cloves reminded us our grandmother’s spicy oatmeal cookies.

“We can’t sell them. They’re yours.”

“Stop it, will you? I don’t want this gift. Keep it.”

“I can’t. It’s meant for you. Deal out the cards, Amy. I’ll show you.”

“You’re nuts, you know what?”

The silk rustled aside from the cards for a moment as Anna placed them on the counter. The Magician's blue eyes glared up at us.

“He wasn’t on top before,” Anna said, staring at the card. “It was the Knave of Pentacles.”

“I don’t care if it was the Joker’s Wild. Let’s go.”

"Want me to prove these cards are special?" Anna asked. " I'll tell our fortunes."

"Anna, you know you have to sleep with the deck under your pillow for a week before you can use it," I snapped. "You've got to become attuned to the deck, and it with you."

"Thought you didn't believe in any of this?" she asked.

"I don't. I learned it from Gram," I shot back. "Anyway, I don't think this is such a good idea."

"Well, are you chicken? Come here and let me tell your fortune."

We were already late for our dates. Let them wait a little while longer. Neither of us wants to part with the old house, and the last memories of my grandparents and my father. We're just prolonging our good-byes. Anna spread the silk on the yellow formica and took up the delicate cards in her hands. She shuffled them and their clicking was like old bones rattling in a tomb.

"Go ahead," she urged, "think your question. Sshh--don't tell me! Put your hand on the deck, think it, and shuffle."

"Anna, are you sure we have to do this?"

"Don't be a baby. Put your right hand on the pack and think your question."

A thousand questions tumbled through my mind, and when they settled, I was left thinking of only one.

Anna's hands trembled with excitement as she laid out the cards, past, present and future.

Past: Death. He stared at us from the depths of hollow eye sockets, his black horse prancing beneath him, skeletal hand holding the reins.

Present: the Fool. The young dandy skipped off the cliff, grinning at us over his shoulder, his red rose pointing to the past, the path that led to his destruction.

Future: the Tower. Worst card in the whole deck. The tower struck by lightning. Man's foolish pride and curiosity struck down by the gods. The card of death and destruction.

"Wow, what did you ask?" Anna breathed.

“Not yet,” I said softly. “Keep going.”

Slowly, she began turning over the seven cards of the pack that influenced the formation. The Tower. The Magician. The Fool. Wait a second...there shouldn't be more than one of each card in the deck. Hey! Maybe that's why Dad didn't take these cards with him. Maybe the deck was screwed up.

A chill seemed to pass through me. I clutched at the yellow formica counter where Grandma used to make Thanksgiving feast as if it could save me from whatever lurked behind those cards. "It's a fake deck," I said, regaining some composure. "Something' wrong with it. It's got repeat cards."

"I flipped through it in front of you when we were in the bedroom," Anna said, shaking. "They were all different." I knew she was right. My heart was pounding. That ice cold feeling descended on me again as if someone opened a freezer. Or a tomb, my mind whispered, and I told it to shut up and behave.

"Well, deal again! And this time, look at them carefully!"

The clock ticked. Our dates were probably at the restaurant already. The Skipper had the finest Macao steaks on Long Island. I could taste the melting butter, the glass of white wine, the lobster bisque. Anna always made us late for everything. This time, I thought a different question while thunder growled outside, low and deep.

I turned from the counter as she dealt the last formation.

Past: Death

Present: the Fool

Future: the Tower

All seven cards showed the grinning face of Death. He rode his black horse across the rolling sea, grinning at us from antiquity.

"What did you ask?" Anna whispered.

"Nothing! Let's go."

"You're white as a –“ She stopped herself before finishing the sentence. Anna swallowed. “You asked it something about us, didn't you? About...me?"

"Stop," I said. The storm broke and rain lashed the windows. I could feel the air pressure dropping, the cold dew forming on the windows, crawling across my skin. I scooped up all the cards and flung them onto the silk. The colors swirled like a watercolor, and suddenly I was looking at all different cards, suits of wands, pentacles, and cups. I knew if I shuffled through them I would not find eight cards of Death, but one, as it should be. I wrapped the silk sloppily around the deck and stuffed it into my purse.

"You forgot one," Anna said.

Somehow, the Magician had fluttered onto the floor. I stuffed him into my pocket. "Let's get going."

We locked the house and jumped into Anna's white Mustang and roared to the parkway. The wipers chattered and swooped on the windshield as the cascades of rain slowed to a steady patter. The sky was a bright, turtle green, lit by flashes of lightning as we sped onto the entrance ramp of the Southern State Parkway.

"What did you ask--?" Anna asked quietly.

"You don't need to know," I said.

Suddenly, headlights cut into our eyes, coming the wrong way up the entrance ramp. Anna screamed and jammed on the brake, and the car fishtailed right, left. Without thinking, I leaned over and grabbed the wheel, and the car slammed into the concrete on the right. The oncoming car hit us with a sickening thud, catching the left front fender. Everything in the car, including my purse containing the tarot deck, shot forward.

When everything had settled, Anna turned to me. "Amy." She was cut and bleeding from the glass that had hailed on us.

"What good is it?" Shock made me babble. Words flowed like blood and water.

What good is it if you don't know when, or exactly what… like Daddy, that night in the yard …he saw his death, that's why he needed me… the purity of a child, to prevent a death foretold, gain the assistance of a child, that's what the spell says…and I couldn't do anything, we knew it was coming and I couldn't do anything…well, what good was it?" I wept, not for myself, but for my father, and this cursed deck of cards that spoke the truth but eliminated wisdom.

We cracked open the driver's side door and scrambled out. My purse had tumbled out, and the cards scattered from their silk wrapping all over the wet pavement and broken glass. Sirens wailed at a distance. The other driver or a bystander must have dialed 911.

I began gathering up the cards. Something wasn’t right.

“Amy,” Anna said. “The cards have changed.”

She was right. It was a plain bridge deck now. Hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades instead of pentacles, swords, cups and wands. Queens, kings, jokers and aces instead of the Empress, the Chariot, and our old friend Death.

Then I remembered the Magician's card, still stuffed in my pocket.

I pulled it out. There, on the card, was my father's face instead of the Magician's. His mouth moved. His lips formed words. I slowly moved the card closer.

"Remember, Anna," he whispered. Hands holding the magician's wand reached out from the card as if handing me something precious. Quickly I stuffed the last card back into the deck.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to see to the other driver.”

My purse felt strangely heavy.

Thanks for reading my short story. My previously published fiction stories appeared in The Primordial Eye, a magazine of fantasy and horror writing. This story is copyright 2011 by Jeanne Grunert. All rights reserved. No portion may be copied in whole or in part without the permission of the author.