The Pandora Effect Read online

  The Pandora Effect

  By

  Olivia Darnell

  The Pandora Effect was previously released as

  The Misguided Souls of Magnolia Springs.

  This book is the sole property of Olivia Rose Darnell and no part may be copied or reproduced for any use without the consent of the author.

  Copyright 2009

  The Pandora Effect is dedicated to my husband who has put up with me for all these years;

  All those wonderful people in my home town who, for better or worse, helped in bringing me up;

  My mom and dad and sister for all they did for me;

  And finally,

  My best friend forever, Lori, who never gave up on me through good, bad and/or ugly.

  The Pandora Effect is based loosely on my hometown as I remember it from the long dead years of my childhood. All characters are the product of imagination and fiction and any resemblance to real persons alive or otherwise inclined is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One:.

  “You are a hateful bitch, Mary McDaniels. From now on, when I see you in town, I’m going to cross the street to keep from speaking to you!”

  A loud clunk indicated that the conversation, if it could be called that, had ended. The hum of the dial tone affirmed the fact. Mary Catherine McDaniels had never been so insulted in her entire life. She held the heavy, black receiver out in front of her, frowning at it as if the instrument itself had turned on her. She gently placed the offending item on the cradle of the antiquated phone, pushed her gold-rimmed glasses up a long nose and raised both white brows in consternation.

  “Hmmmph!” She grumped and pursed her puckered, pink lips and drew in a deep breath, placing one hand over her rapidly beating heart.

  “Who was that?” her nephew, Tyler McDaniels, asked from his perch on the edge of her green Formica dinette table. He had just finished pouring up two cups of steaming water from a white porcelain teakettle.

  Aunt Mary took on her favorite long-suffering expression as she perused his face momentarily before answering.

  “Mildred Morris,” she spoke the name as if it would cause her to have to soak her dentures an extra hour just for having said it aloud.

  “Again?” Tyler asked and turned to begin unwrapping the Earl Grey tea bags. He placed one in each cup, dunking them until they sank to the bottom amid brown swirls.

  “Again!” Mary nodded.

  “Same old story, huh?” Tyler asked and pushed one of the cups across the table in front of her as she lowered her fragile body into one of the heavy chrome chairs.

  “The very same.” She toyed with the little paper tag on the tea bag, raising and lowering the tea leaves in the hot water absently as she stared out the window. She deposited the bag on the saucer and leaned to smell the aroma of the Earl Grey. Her glasses steamed momentarily and she closed her eyes.

  “Maybe you should consider giving in.”

  Tyler sat down across from her. His eyes strayed to the window where the imposing structure of what, at first glance, appeared to be a Victorian Manor house. It obstructed the view completely on the south side of his aunt’s little yellow cottage. He knew that if he turned and looked the other way, he would see the parking lot associated with the big house. The stately manor was not a mansion, but a funeral parlor. An establishment owned by none other than Mildred Morris. His aunt’s home lay between the main building and its expanded parking lot on a sedate quarter acre where it had been her home for over fifty years. He could see Mildred’s handyman, Glenn Winfree, digging in the flowerbeds lining the sidewalks.

  “Never!” Aunt Mary said adamantly as she drew herself up in her chair. Her blue eyes popped in their sockets sending angry darts to scold him for his ludicrous suggestion. “Mistress Mildred Morris will never own this property! Not now, not ever. If she wants to expand her parking lot, she can buy that property across the street. It’s for sale over there. This is my home! It’s not for sale at any price. She can tear down that decrepit junk store and do the town some real good. Why does she think she has to have my property, Tyler? I’ve lived right here for over fifty years and I intend to die right here and if you and your family won’t move in after I’m gone, then I’ll find someone who will...”

  “Now, now, Aunt Mary.”

  Tyler reached across to pat her wrinkled, liver-spotted arm, which ended in delicately painted pink nails. “Don’t go gettin’ all worked up about Mildred Morris. I’m sure she’ll eventually give up and see the light. After all, it’s been seven years since she started tryin’ to buy you out. Surely some day she’ll...”

  “Exactly my point!” Mary said angrily and extracted her arm from his solicitous attentions then picked up her teacup. She hated being patted like a child and Tyler was always forgetting that. “Seven years she’s been after me to sell and seven years I’ve been saying no, but these calls are really getting out of hand. Why... did you know... she actually called me the B-word just now?”

  “Really? The B-word?” Tyler asked, repressing a smile, but was duly shocked. It was hard to imagine these two elderly, small-town matriarchs going at each other like two cats over a fish head. He could hardly believe his aunt, but then she was not one given to telling lies or even fibs, as she called them. She had always been a champion of truth, no matter what the consequences or whose feelings she hurt. Truth and honesty. Fair play and justice. All those fine words had been pounded into his head by Aunt Mary ever since he could remember.

  “Yes, sir! The B-word!” Aunt Mary reiterated as her eyebrows shot up again. “And she promised never to speak to me again. I could only hope it would be so. What a blessing that truly would be.” She sniffed and looked up at the ceiling as if looking for God's attention.

  “I suppose it would,” Tyler agreed and dropped a third sugar cube in his cup. He just could not drink the stuff without a little boost.

  Mary frowned disapprovingly at his small vice. Ruins the flavor, she always said.

  “Ruins the flavor,” she said looking over the top of her glasses at him with a bird-like expression on her face. “Sugar! It’s bad for your teeth, too. Someday when yours are all gone, rotted away, you’ll regret it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tyler said and smiled at her with his perfect teeth.

  “Go ahead and laugh at your old aunt, Tyler,” she said and narrowed her eyes at him before smiling good-naturedly. “You wouldn’t have that pretty smile if I hadn’t paid dearly to have it preserved for you. Why, you would have been able to eat corn on the cob through a picket fence by now. And where would all the girls have gone looking for a beau? Girls don’t like buck-toothed men, Tyler McDaniels. And men don’t like big-nosed women.”

  “That’s not necessarily true, Aunt Mary,” he objected. “Look at Barbara Streisand.”

  “I try not to,” his aunt said smugly. “I do enjoy her singing though, but the last time I saw her, she hardly had anything decent on to cover her body and at her age! I swear, I think she wears those things to try to keep people from noticing her nose.”

  Tyler raised one eyebrow to think about that. He did not ever remember seeing Barbara Streisand dressed like Madonna, but then who was he to argue with Aunt Mary?

  “How much did she offer you this time?” he asked, trying to bring the conversation back to Mildred Morris.

  “A hundred and fifty thousand,” Aunt Mary snorted delicately.

  Tyler choked on his sugar cookie and almost spilled his tea.

  “A hundred and fifty! That’s twenty thousand more than last time!” He exclaimed.

  “I don’t care. She can offer a million. She’s not getting her chubby little fingers on my place. Not at any price. Besides it’s not worth more than eighty-two
thousand. Young Ben Milam of Milam Realty told me so last week.”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” Tyler commented quietly. “Why, you could build your own rest home with that much.”

  “Rest home!” His aunt said in disgust. “Why would I want a rest home? I am not tired!”

  “Of course not,” Tyler agreed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “What would I do with all that money?” She continued. “I live perfectly well on your Uncle Vernon’s railroad retirement and my social security. And let’s not forget my stocks and bonds.”

  Tyler sighed and sipped his tea thoughtfully. He really did not want to see his aunt sell her place. He could not remember when Aunt Mary’s house had not stood on the shady lot next to the town’s funeral parlor at the intersection of Catherine and Main. All those childhood visits and all those chocolate chip cookies she was famous for. They always brought the highest bids and won prizes at the fair and no bake sale was complete without them. Maybe it had something to do with the colorful little ribbons she tied on each bundle and the white paper doily at the bottom of every plate. Whatever it was, they were one of his fondest memories from childhood and his motto was ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ But a hundred and fifty thousand dollars sure made one think.

  “Maybe you should change your phone number,” he offered another suggestion. “You could get one of those unlisted numbers. I can do it for you right now, if you’d like me to. It won’t cost a thing.”

  “That is a dead-beat tactic, Tyler,” she shook her head. “I’ve had the same phone number for fifty-seven years. My phone number used to be much prettier. Evergreen 53302. And before that, you just picked up the phone and the operator would ask whom you wanted to talk to. You didn’t even have to dial. Things were much more pleasant then. I hate numbers, Tyler and I hate memorizing strings of numbers. No, I will not change my number just because of her. Why, I have so many numbers now, it’s just awful. Driver’s license, savings account, charge numbers. Even my trash cans have numbers. One of these days, Tyler McDaniels, the Devil, himself, is going to walk right up and stamp a number on your forehead and look out! It’ll be all over then.”

  “It’s just because there’s so many people in the world now.”

  He shrugged. Thinking about numbers reminded him that he had to check his Lotto tickets to see if he’d won anything. He might be sitting there drinking tea when he could be a millionaire somewhere. He wasn’t in the mood for one of his aunt’s tirades about the coming of the end times.

  “The beast is coming, Tyler,” she continued as expected. “And I’ll be right here in my house waiting for him with my eyes wide open unless God takes me home before it happens and I pray that He does. Mark my words, he’s already in the big cities... Houston, Dallas, Ft. Worth. Even Carrollton. I read the news. I watch my television at night. I see what’s happening. Mildred Morris is just the tip of the iceberg. Pretty soon we’ll look up and the Devil.. he'll be right here.”

  “Aunt Mary, I hardly think that Millie Morris is a harbinger of the Devil,” Tyler objected halfheartedly to his aunt’s melodramatic predictions of doom and gloom. Magnolia Springs was hardly a place full of crime and corruption. The Devil would probably not even be interested in the town. Nothing ever happened of great consequence in Magnolia Springs, Texas. An occasional burglary or two would cause everyone to lock their doors and windows for a few days. The culprits were usually apprehended right away by their diligent little police department and would invariably be some itinerant hitchhiker or bum from a passing train at the switching yard. Homeless men from exotic dens of iniquity such as Galveston or New Mexico.

  “I never said she was such a thing,” Aunt Mary said suddenly interrupting his thoughts. “I think she’s just coming down with Alzheimer’s Disease that’s all.”

  “Why do you think that?” Tyler asked abstractedly. “Is she gettin’ to be forgetful? Maybe she’ll just forget your phone number.”

  “She probably gets that no account son of hers or her maid to dial it for her.” Aunt Mary wrinkled her nose. “But she can’t seem to remember that I’ve said no a hundred times before and nothing has changed. You’d think she could remember something that simple.”

  “Millie is just a hard-nosed businesswoman. She thinks everybody has their price.”

  “Well, everybody doesn’t.”

  Aunt Mary clunked her cup in her saucer and leaned forward to look at him closely. “I have my principles. God forgive me, Tyler, but sometimes I wish that funeral parlor would just go up in flames.”

  As if God were truly displeased with her wish, the overhead light bulb went out with a bright flash and a loud pop just at that moment. The unexpected event caused the woman to let out an involuntary shriek and Tyler jumped as if he’d been shot.

  Aunt Mary crossed herself quickly. “Bless me! I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Tyler got up and pulled the chair across the room to place it under the fixture. He stood in the seat and removed the milk glass cover while his aunt went to get a new bulb.

  “You get what you pay for, Aunt Mary,” he told her knowing full well that she bought her bulbs at the Dime and Dollar General Mercantile.

  “Do be careful up there,” she said as she returned with one of the cheap bulbs to stand below him. “I do believe that they don’t make light bulbs like they used to. But three bulbs in one week... why I could go into debt just trying to keep the lights on. Did you know that a three-way bulb costs almost seven dollars? You’ll not see Mary McDaniels paying that much for one bulb.”

  “Here’s the trouble,” Tyler said as he inspected the antique porcelain fixture. “It’s all full of cobwebs in there. Hand me a spoon or something to get them out.”

  “You be careful now,” she said again as she rummaged through her perfectly arranged spoon drawer to find a teaspoon with daisies on the handle. “Those old wires were installed by Moses.”

  “I know what I’m doin’,” he assured her. He took the spoon and began to poke at the spider webs. Dust and cobwebs filtered down to the floor. “You just got to know where to poke and not poke.”

  “Oh, dear,” Aunt Mary muttered as she watched the mess accumulating on the floor. “Let me get my broom.”

  She started for the broom closet when the front door bell rang. Glancing back at Tyler, she headed for the front room wondering who might be using the front door. No one ever came to her front door, but strangers and salesmen.

  She smoothed out her pleated blue skirt and pressed the sides of her silky, white hair before opening the door.

  Tyler watched her go, then shook his head. He wondered where she was going with the light bulb. He had not heard the doorbell. He tried to lean around to see what was happening and, as a result, poked the spoon where he ought not to. A bright blue arc shot out of the fixture down the length of his arm and into his shoulder. It was the last thing he saw or heard before he went flying across the room into the wall where he slumped to the floor, his lifeless eyes frozen in a look of wide-opened surprise.

  Aunt Mary stood holding the glass paneled door open, looking through the screen at the stranger standing on her stoop. He was tall, slender with very light blonde hair trimmed neatly over his ears. His face was the most disturbingly handsome she had seen in a long, long while. And his eyes were a very deep shade of violet. Unsettling. She had seen eyes like that only once or twice in her life and never in such a nice face. She forgot her manners and stood staring at him in silence.

  “Mrs. McDaniels?” He asked in a voice like melted butter that perfectly matched his looks. “I’m Perry Aliger. I’ve come to introduce myself. I hope I’m not imposing... you won’t mind. I’ve brought you something. A sort of get-acquainted gift.” He held up a red and gold box of imported tea tied with a red ribbon.

  Aunt Mary’s eyes narrowed. She was not accustomed to receiving strangers bearing gifts on her front stoop, unannounced and unexpected. And such a striking man
at that. She was at once suspicious of him.

  “I’m sorry...” she said hesitantly glancing at the latch on the screen. It was securely in place. “I’m having tea with my nephew and we really are very busy. Perhaps...” She meant to say that some other time would be better for whatever he was selling, but instead she said “you would like to come in?”

  “Tea, of course,” he said as she unhooked the latch. “That would be your nephew, Tyler. Your great nephew I believe? I would very much like to meet him. He works for the Power Company, doesn’t he? You see, I... that is, my wife and I are trying to meet all of our new neighbors.” He pulled open the screen and stepped inside. “We just bought the old trinket shop across the street.”

  “Oh, really?” Mary asked and backed up to allow him inside. “Come on out to the kitchen then. I’m sure he will be glad to meet you.”

  “And perhaps we could try some of this tea?” He suggested and followed her into the hall. “Remember, love thy neighbor, all that sort of thing.”

  “Yes, well...”

  She led him down the hall thinking how strange it had been that Tyler and she had just been talking about the junk shop being for sale. The long gray building across the street had been deserted for quite some time. Perhaps this bright young gentleman would do something with it. Its plate glass windows were smudged and cluttered with unidentifiable junk accumulated by its previous owner. The walls were peeling and covered with green algae. The stairs leading up to the second floor living quarters were dilapidated with rusty handrails. She was about to turn to comment on the state of disrepair of the building he had purchased when he suddenly passed her up and hurried into the kitchen. With a growing sense of apprehension, she followed after him.

  By the time she entered the kitchen, the stranger was already kneeling next to her nephew who was slumped against the wall, holding up his limp wrist and checking for a pulse. Aunt Mary put one hand over her heart and leaned against the table. She knew instantly what had happened. Tyler’s hair stood on end and his eyes stared into space. The green chair he had been standing on lay on its side.