Cursed be the Wicked (6 page)

Chapter 4

Circle of Salt

Mom’s humming in the kitchen to a song I don’t recognize. It’s slow and sad and reminds me of my father’s wake. There was no funeral because they never found the body.

The only thing odd is, he’s not dead. He’s alive and well, standing in the doorway that leads out back, just past the threshold. His eyes are on Mom. I wonder why he hasn’t noticed me. He never notices me.

He looks as though he wants to cross over into the house, but he can’t. Or maybe he won’t. He just waits patiently.

Mom grabs some herbs and liquids and starts mixing them in a bowl, then mumbles to herself. The more she mumbles, the more uncomfortable Dad seems. He fidgets, paces. I watch the muscles in the side of his neck flex as he watches her.

A flash of light appears and a loud boom sounds. I jump backwards as Dad
finally
crosses the threshold. He immediately starts toward Mom and I leap out of my hiding spot to yell, “Stop!”

Mom is surprised when she sees me. When she turns back to Dad, her eyes grow dark and she mutters words under her breath, louder now. More determined. Her skin turns deep green and she cackles, loudly. She screeches at me as she waves her mixing spoon around.

“Go to your room!”

And just like that, I’m there, in my room. I’m scared and I’m tired but I can’t sleep. Monsters surround me. I can’t see them but I can hear them and they’re clawing at my bed. I want to run, hide. Then I hear Mom instructing with a soft, cool voice.

“Stay to the middle. They can’t reach you there.”

I move like she says, but one monster has long tentacles, and just as it’s about to grab my neck with his gritty claws, it and every last one of the others scatter when my door flies open and the true monster enters my room.

My own scream awakens me. Cold sweat clings to my skin and I struggle to catch my breath. I sit up. I’m shaking. I’m scared. And choking. I look around the room and find I’m alone.

“You’re too old for nightmares, Coop,” I tell myself as I swallow down that last bit of nervous energy from the dream. It’s been a very long time since I’ve dreamt of my mother.

A very long time since I’ve dreamt at all.

It’s over.

I kick the blanket off me and swing my legs around to sit on the edge of the bed. I let my head fall side to side and stretch the tension out of my neck.

The bed in this B&B is okay, but it’s not home.

Nowhere is.

I hadn’t planned on coming back to the B&B last night but after the odd conversation I had with Geneva yesterday, I wasn’t feeling up for the possibility of running into someone that might recognize me over in Salem.

I couldn’t think of anywhere else to stay and didn’t feel like Googling, so here I am.

Throughout my shower, I try to replay what happened in my dream. The longer I try, though, the less I remember.

The only thing I can’t
seem to get out of my head is the hatred reflected in my mother’s eyes. The way she glared at me from the kitchen sink. It was the same look she’d given me in the courtroom during her trial. I remember it like it just happened.

She never spoke a word throughout the whole thing. Not during the one supervised visit I had with her. Not after I’d given testimony, under oath, on her behalf, despite our differences. Not even as they took her away.

As I sit there, I find myself wanting to remember something good about her. All I can recall though, is her unstable personality and how completely insane she’d become in the few years just before my father died. How much she had distanced herself from everyone then. Even her own sister.

I lose track of how long I’m sitting there but decide that I’m spending entirely too much time thinking about things that happened so long ago. I need to busy my mind and get past all this negative energy. So after I dry off, I start up my laptop and connect my digital recorder to the USB port. I find the interview I recorded with Ms. Bishop the day before and copy it over to my hard drive. I dress while it’s uploading. When it’s done, I stretch my fingers out and then I sit down and press play.

It begins in the middle of Geneva’s speech and I let out a chuckle because, not too far into the recording, I can hear Finn arguing with me.

I don’t fast forward because this is too much fun.

Her thoughts on apologizing make me laugh out loud, and if I think her ramblings are funny, I’m about to lose it when I hear myself trying to apologize over and over to her. Something I rarely do for anyone.
And
I’ve managed to sound like a complete buffoon.

“How does she do that?”

I don’t know how long I’m listening when I finally realize that all I’m doing is rewinding so I can hear this woman talk over and over, instead of what I’m actually supposed to be doing. So I sit up straight and clear my head of all things Finnley Pierce, then try to pony up with my professional persona.

Three hours and six or seven paragraphs later, I push myself away from the desk to stare at the words I’ve written. I guzzle the Diet Coke I’ve allowed myself for breakfast and try to see if I have the least
bit of information to work with.

I’m surprised I’ve opened with the death of my mother, but it’s as good a place to start as any. It’s a
good hook
, as Bill would say
. The last witch of Salem dies.

I use phrases to describe her that I know will draw the reader in, like “unexplained phenomenon” and “modern day witch”. The one that bothers me though, the one that she became famous for, jumps out at me and makes my stomach sink.

Crazy Maggie Shaw.

I think about the fights I got into after the trial, when kids would call that name out to me on the bus ride home from school. I think about how my aunt wouldn’t want to hear my reasons for those fights when she got a call from my principal the next day.

I stare at the words as the cursor blinks on my laptop. I drum my fingers against the keyboard. Then I delete the letters, one by one, hoping the pangs inside my chest will disintegrate along with them.

When they don’t, I head downstairs to get some fresh air, outside, as thoughts of visiting Aunt Liz float around inside my mind again. Maybe if I just go ahead and get this part of the trip over with, get it out my head, maybe then I can find some momentum for writing the article.

As I pass by the now familiar front desk, I’m hounded about joining the rest of the guests in the dining room for breakfast but I pass on that and head outside.

Before I’m out the door, without even thinking about it, I take a peek to see if Finn is here today. She’s not. I can’t say I know why I find myself wanting additional interaction with her but then again, I do know, don’t I?

I walk to the car, thinking about her short temper, and the way she knows more than she lets on. How she turns mama-bear if you insult her grandmother. Her passion about anything she’s talking about, her smile, the way her hand felt on top of mine.

It’s simple really.

She’s interesting.

And I haven’t had interesting in my life for a very long time.

On the way over to Salem, I pass my old high school.

My thoughts turn toward the day I graduated.

I’d walked across the stage when they called my name. I ignored judgmental looks from the crowd. I shook hands with the Dean of Students, and then I took my diploma from some other random staff member. When I got to the edge of the stage, I opened up the scroll I’d been given, only to find out, it was blank.

That’s when I realized, I didn’t have to stay and take anymore B.S. from anyone. I could leave. Start over. Like a blank page.

I never made it back to my chair that morning. I ran all the way to my aunt’s house, packed a bag and that was that.

Without so much as a goodbye, I left. Not even a note. I didn’t see the need for one. She wouldn’t be hearing from me again, and she hadn’t. Until now.

I blink and realize I’ve pulled the car over at some point. I’m alarmed at how much time I’ve lost, getting sucked into memories that haven’t surfaced since I was eighteen.

I take a deep breath and let it out as I contemplate my next move.

Do I really want to open this can of worms? And even if I do, does my aunt want to see me?

And why me, while I’m on the subject?

I mean, I get why Mom would have left everything in Liz’s hands. Next of kin and all, but why
me
? Why leave me anything? She hated me. Why not just give it all to Liz? Or the state, for that matter.

Curiosity ends up getting the best of me. I slide the gear into drive, push the gas pedal and finish the trip to my aunt’s home over on Mooney Road.

When I arrive, I tell myself to just keep putting one foot in front of the other as I walk up to the door. I will my hand to ball into a fist as I stand in front of the entryway, then knock.

No one answers.

It’s a sign.

I laugh at myself. “It’s not a sign, Coop.”

I push a hand through my hair, shake out the willies and knock again but still no one answers. So out of curiosity, I try the doorknob and it’s unlocked.

My breath stills as I open the door slowly and listen for creaks in the old frame. When the opening is wide enough to step through, I lean over the threshold, then peek around to see if anyone is in there. She is older now, after all. Maybe she’s hurt.

Or maybe she just can’t hear you.

“Helloooooo . . .”

Nothing.

“Aunt—” I stop myself from sounding like the young kid I suddenly feel like. “Liz? You home?”

Someone is. I hear music coming from the kitchen and can smell something cooking in the oven, but I get zero response, so I go in.

It’s strange. I remember this house. I can almost see my mother sitting in the rocker in the living room as I pass by and I recall her sitting there talking to my aunt on several occasions when I was very little.

When I get to the dining room, I search the table for anything that looks like official paperwork but don’t see what I’m looking for so I keep moving. Lightly treading through the cramped space, I try not to trip over the knick knacks she has laying all over the floor, but it’s tricky, like a minefield of roaming gnomes.

It’s not until I step into the kitchen and start to look around that I feel a small panic attack coming on. Technically, I’m breaking and entering. Legally, she could shoot me dead if she finds me here.

A strong urge to leave fills me. My mind is telling me it’s no big deal, but my feet have a mind of their own. I turn to leave and nearly have a heart attack when I run smack into her and almost knock the old woman right on her ass.

Shit.

“Looking for me?”

My aunt, older and tired looking, and rather agitated, is regaining her balance while glaring at me. She looks as though she might clock me upside the head at any moment with the baseball bat nestled in her hand.

I’m frozen. In fact, the only thing moving is my heart that’s racing at a million beats per minute.

“It’s about time you got here,” she says, setting the bat down. She pushes past me to go check on whatever is baking in her oven. She obviously recognizes me and I breathe a little easier, knowing I won’t be getting arrested for trespassing today.

“I, um . . .” I choke on the dryness in my mouth. “I knocked.”

You knocked.

Seriously?

“Didn’t hear you.”

I clear my throat, about to apologize, only I stop myself because all I can hear in my head is Finnley Pierce telling me how apologizing is overrated. The thought makes me want to laugh but I don’t. Instead, I try to engage my aunt in small talk of all things.

“How are you, Liz?”

This is so awkward.

She pulls a rack of chicken out and bastes it, then pushes it back into the center of the oven and slams the door shut.

“Oh you care now,” she says. The resentment in her voice should sting but it doesn’t. We both know she didn’t really give a crap about me even when I lived with her for four years.

I go to say something. To maybe give her an empty apology, but she waves me off. “I’m fine, Cooper. Just fine,” she mumbles. “Weather’s changing.”

I want to agree with her, for lack of anything better to say but as it turns out, I don’t have to.

“Where’d they find you, anyway?” she demands.

“What?” I’m thrown for a few seconds before I remember, the lawyers. “Right, um, I’m in Florida these days.”

“Florida, huh? Well then, you wouldn’t know anything
about
weather changing, would you? Not down there in sunny Florida.”

“Well I—”

“Should be against the law, not having a change of seasons. It’s not normal.”

I huff in what I’ll call amusement for now. “Liz, the weather patterns don’t exactly have a choice in the matter, they—”

“I know how it works, Cooper, I’m not stupid.”

“Oh,” I mumble, and I’m starting to remember now, why I was never able to bond with this woman.

“Guess you’re here for the papers,” she says. Her near black eyes meet mine, and my blood goes cold. I see the result of years of resentment in them. I know I’m to blame for that, at least in some part.