Let's Make A Story! A Collaboration Storymaking. Cabin In The Woods - Chapter 5

A round-robin writing extravaganza started by @blacklux who began this story, followed by @ginnyannette, @riverflows, @sue-stevenson and now me.

Cabin in the Woods, chapter five

Laura's haughty expression was back as she glared around the room. He was almost grateful to see it.

“We need to sage this place of that murder’s energy,” Laura warned him. “Oh, no,” I guess she really isn’t back to her shopping-frenzied, spoiled self, he couldn’t help thinking.

She pulled out a crocheted with golden beads, draw-string bag he remembered his grandmother taking on walks and produced a handful of twigs, stalks and leaves.

“Rip off the rest of those curtains and start sweeping she demanded, we need to clean everything before we smudge!”

Josh was trying to make out what was going on, get used to this new woman who was still his wife, but she grabbed him by the arm and pushed him a bit, just as his grandmother used to, “Hurry up!”

He started there, ripping the disintegrating curtains from their wire cords, found the old broom in the corner where it’d always been and started to sweep the fir floorboards, she with a bucket of muddied water wiping door jams and mantel. Bella ran back and forth barking sensing the excitement and tense dance of focused scrubbing.

Josh felt himself in some sort of liminal state, he was positive he wasn’t hallucinating, but he did feel he was in a waking dream of sorts and there was no question his grandmother’s spirit channeled through his wife with the stew and nicknames and all, here was his wife, normally worried about Jimmy Choo heels strangely possessed to expel by house-drudgery the black energy of Slade before any next move!

Swept up dust, dirtied water and the ball of rotting curtains were thrown into the ravine, Laura pitched the rag too, then back into the house where she took the leaves and twigs, still green and difficult to light and bound them to a Palo Santo, holy stick she’d found in a wooden box carved with astrological signs, Scorpio, a sun and a moon and her initials. How strange that he’d never noticed his wife’s and grandma’s initials were the same and that they were both Scorpio’s—not something he really took any stock in, but in this moment the connection seemed beyond meaningful.

Where’d you find that? Josh asked. She didn’t answer she was busy blowing onto the smudge stick bundle.

“Who would have brought these from South America?” he asked as he turned the faded green box over and read the tiny stamp.

“The town is small, but there’s still a post office and a couple of shops, Josh!” Like Freaky Friday she now seemed annoyed by HIS querying.

Laura took a black crow’s feather out of the back of her hair and started to wave and brush the pungent smoke into every corner, bending low and reaching high and moving methodically from room to room. Josh intuited he should just stay quiet and so he held Bella and followed his focused wife.

After the stick was burned and the cabin windows clean and streaming in light, Laura took a cobalt dish from the cupboard, came back into his grandmother’s hallowed bedroom and again opened the jewelry box and the tangle of necklaces. She pulled at one of the strings, one with amber beads and explained to Josh that she’d seen in a dream that these weren’t just cheap necklaces, but gems she kept on the strings for other purposes. She took an amber bead, dropped it into the shallow dish. She then took out two red-tipped matches using them as tweezers to hold the bead while asking him to light the third to hold under the golden bauble. It took four matches to get it flaming, but the smoke stream started, sweet resin melting as his wife’s lips moved in some silent chant.

The couple then sat down at the cleaned wooden table and ate the rest of the stew Laura had miraculously prepared that morning. Plans were made to go into town and see if the public library was still open because they were the most likely place to have computers with Internet for researching the murder and this Slade character. The squat man, attendant at the bottom-of-the-canyon Chevron, lip bulging with Skoal, had warned him, “Verizon is super shitty service in these parts!”

End of Chapter 5!

I nominate @felt.buzz to write Chapter 6. You have 7 days (but let me know if you don't want to and I will nominate someone else). Here are the rules per @blacklux and previous chapter links are below as well.

Its simple, I will post a pic and start a story. Then I will tag a person to continue the story. After that person writes a new chapter it will nominate another person to continue the story. It will continue like that until we reach 10 chapters.
The nominated person have 7 days to come up with a new chapter for the story, if the nominated person don't write a new chapter then I will nominate another person. All the posts related to the story must have the hashtag #makeastory and tag me on them.
Also you have to add a pic or drawing related to your chapter of the story, if you don't have any you can use the one provided here. Once the ninth person writes the ninth chapter it have to nominate me to write the last chapter. In other words, I will write the first and the last chapter of the story.
The writers can do whatever they want with their part of the story. Whatever their imagination desires, there's no right or wrong in this story. The minimum word count its 100 words. The title must always say: "Let's Make A Story: Cabin In The Woods" and the number of the chapter ej: Let's Make A Story: Cabin In The Woods - Chapter 1. You can name the chapter if you want. And most important: HAVE FUN WHILE CREATING THE STORY!

Chapter 1,
https://steemit.com/writing/@blacklux/let-s-make-a-story-a-collaboration-story-making-cabin-in-the-woods-chapter-1
Chapter 2,
https://steemit.com/writing/@ginnyannette/let-s-make-a-story-cabin-in-the-woods-chapter-2
Chapter 3,
https://steemit.com/letsmakeastory/@riverflows/let-s-make-a-story-cabin-in-the-woods-chapter-3
Chapter 4,
https://steemit.com/makeastory/@sue-stevenson/let-s-make-a-story-a-collaboration-storymaking-cabin-in-the-woods-chapter-4