The Accidental Witch (3 page)

The house was enormous. It was an old Italianate style plantation house in red brick. It had five fireplaces and twenty rooms. There was an old barn in the back and several small cabins lined the property. They were in significant disrepair and had been the slave quarters of the old house. I stepped onto the white porch of my home and the wood groaned in angry protest. It was still light outside. The days were long in the summer. It was hot, and sweat had beaded on my chest just walking between my car and the house.

I opened the door and jumped when I saw that Lawson was still standing on a ladder in the huge foyer. He was the contractor I had hired to renovate the old house. He was installing a new light fixture in the foyer.

“Good Lord, Lawson,” I said. “What are you still doing here at this hour? You scared the crap out of me.”

“Sorry about that, ma’am. I didn’t mean to scare you. Just trying to get caught up. It took me longer than I thought it would to rewire the parlor and den. This place is a real mess,” he said.

I looked around at the peeling wallpaper and chipped banister. The house had once been a work of art. I could see that. It had looked like Tara from
Gone with the Wind
. Those days had long since passed and several fires and shitty patch jobs hadn’t helped any. The once classic façade had been mixed with gingerbread flourishes and modern windows. All of that had gone completely down the toilet when the previous owners had abandoned it twenty years ago.

“I know,” I said. “Why are you here by yourself? Your crew didn’t stay to help you?”

“Nah,” he said with a wink. Lawson had once been a very handsome man, but years of hard drinking and smoking had completely eroded that. He didn’t seem aware of this, however, and he still acted like every woman on earth was just waiting to lie down and spread her legs for him.

“You know I ain’t superstitious,” he said. “But the other fellows don’t like being here at night.”

“It’s still daylight,” I said.

“That don’t matter,” he said. “They heard all the stories, you know?”

“I know,” I said.

I walked through the foyer to the large parlor and turned on the light switch. I practically giggled when it flickered on. I looked up at the light. I had gone to seventeen different antique stores to find all the fixtures for the house. They were all Victorian or older. The light that hung in the middle of the parlor was a red glass converted gaslight and it was stunning. Crystal tear drops dangled from the ends of it. The parlor was perfect. Everything was from that period. I had even managed to hang the wallpaper myself. It was red, too. This was my red room. An old Victorian sofa sat in one corner with two wingback armchairs with tulle print on either side of it. Everything was Eastlake style except the baby grand piano in the corner. I smiled. The parlor was done. Three rooms were done. I set my purse down on the sofa and collapsed into one of the armchairs.

“If you don’t mind me askin’,” Lawson said. “Don’t you care about all those stories? Most ladies would be afraid of stories like that and you’re out here all by yourself.”

“There isn’t anything that died in this house that is scarier than my ex-husband,” I said.

Lawson laughed and climbed down from the ladder. He stood in the middle of the foyer and studied it. He was doing a good job and I could tell by the look on his face that he was proud of his work.

“We didn’t get to the upstairs today,” he said.

“That’s okay. I’ve got plenty of flashlights and that portable AC unit has a really long extension cord,” I said.

I had six portable air conditioners throughout the house. The southern heat was unbearable in the summer. I could live without running water and electricity, but I would have killed myself without the air conditioner. When I first moved in, there’d been no electricity, so I’d bought a generator and the air conditioners and just camped out.

“You got a package today,” Lawson said as he handed me a small box.

“Thanks,” I said as I took it.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Dr. Michaels.”

I gave Lawson a hint of a smile and he grabbed his ladder and walked back to his truck. I sighed deeply and looked at the box in my hands. It was small and wrapped in brown paper and twine. I didn’t know people still wrapped packages like that. There was no return address. I couldn’t imagine anyone who would send me a package. My father had died last year. My step-mother hated me, and my half-sisters and brothers were just too lazy to go to a post office. They wouldn’t even call, or text me, let alone send me anything. My real mom had run out on my dad and me when I was a baby. Everyone else in the family was dead. All my friends in Chicago had sided with my husband in the divorce, so I’d been left alone. Diane was my only friend. I couldn’t imagine who would send me anything.

I carefully pulled the twine and the brown paper fell off. Beneath the paper was a large, leather bound book. It looked like an old journal or recipe book. It was tied together with a red ribbon and the ribbon held numerous pieces of paper. I ran my hands over the smooth leather and read the title of the book. It simply said
Spells
.

I laughed and pulled the red ribbon that held the book together. The book fell open. Inside, it was like a recipe book a mother would pass on to a daughter. There were old typed pages with handwritten notes in the margins. There were pages added with handwritten spells on them and drawings.

“What the hell?” I said as I leafed through the old book. There were potions and summoning spells and candle spells. In-between pages, there were pressed flowers and herbs and some of the pages were stained with old candle wax.

I set the book down and went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. At least the kitchen was done. It looked like any other modern kitchen. It had granite counter tops and marble floors. I’d spared no expense making it look like something that belonged in an old southern mansion. I wanted the house to be perfect and I had Johnny Boy’s money to help me achieve that dream. The lights flickered when I entered. I would have to talk to Lawson about that in the morning. I took a beer out of the fridge and opened it. I had a sip and grabbed a roll of cookie dough. Armed with the cookie dough and beer, I returned to the book. It had fallen off the counter, to the floor, and was opened to a page. I laughed again. The page it had opened to was love spells. That was just what I needed.

I sat down and ate and drank and leafed through the book. I stopped at a page with an interesting picture on it. The spell was an awakening spell. It awakened you to the supernatural world. I hesitated and looked at the script around it.

Something fell upstairs and the lights went out. I fumbled around and found the nearest flashlight and switched it on just as the lights flickered back on.

“Lawson, you asshole,” I said as I turned the flashlight off. “The wiring is done in the parlor, my ass.”

A sudden wave of fatigue washed over me and I picked up my mess and carted my sorry butt upstairs. I climbed into bed with my flashlight. I still had the book of spells. It had been so long since someone had given me something that I had forgotten what it felt like. I knew the book was more than weird. It bordered on creepy. A normal woman would probably burn the damn thing, but I wasn’t a normal woman. I was a lonely divorcée living in a house known to be haunted, but I loved it the way most people love their pets. I was the daughter of a man who had made it clear that he loathed me, with a step-mother who’d bought me toilet paper for Christmas. The creepy book was wonderful to me. It meant that someone out there, even if they were a freak, cared about me, and freak love was better than no love at all.

* * *

I knew something was wrong as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. There were two police cars out front. That was actually pretty standard for our unit. The police had to carry folks to the regional hospital for commitment often enough, but there was a quality about the air that morning that told me something was really wrong. It was hot. Even at 8 a.m. It was so damn hot, my shirt clung to my sweat-covered chest.

I walked into the hospital. We had our own little wing, so the six offices in the front were all the therapists’ and doctors’ offices. I could see the police had one of the night nurses, Shequella, in one of the empty offices. I moved past the office and unlocked my office door. I set my stuff down and turned to lock it again and returned to the psychiatric floor. The CEO was on the floor and she was talking with Amy, the clinical director.

“What happened?” I whispered.

“Kara and Wayne are dead,” Amy said coldly. She was trying hard to hide her anger. “They hatched some kind of scheme together and hung themselves from the bathroom door using each other’s weight as a counter balance.”

The impact of this information was like a punch in the face. I sat down.

“I just had sessions with them yesterday,” I whispered.

“I know,” Amy said

Jenna was the nurse that day and she was the polar opposite of Millie. She was so sweet, she made sugar look bitter. She was the nurse all the patients loved. She went out of her way to talk to everyone and make sure they were all right. She was always ready with a cheerful smile and a word of encouragement. Jenna was crying.

“I just can’t believe it,” Jenna said. “Ms. Kara was doing so much better this time.”

I nodded. I couldn’t believe it, either. I always had faith that Kara would get better. Time would heal her wounds and she would move on. I had spent so many hours sitting in my office with Kara that I couldn’t even count. I had always believed I was helping her. I was healing her, but I hadn’t done anything. I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save Wayne and if I couldn’t even do that, why was I even here?

“We are in a world of trouble,” Amy said. “Wayne’s daughter is here and she is very angry. She’s got a lawyer. Make no mistake, this is a sentinel event. We might all lose our jobs for this.”

“To hell with our jobs,” I said suddenly. “Two people died here and it was our fault. You knew that Shequella played on the Internet all damn night. How many complaints have we had about her? You know she doesn’t do fifteen-minute checks. I’m not even sure she does any checks. She just signs the paperwork, so it looks like she does. She won’t even talk to the patients when they ask for help. You should have fired her years ago.”

“Be quiet!” Amy said. “The nurses’ jobs aren’t any of your business and you can’t say anything like that to anyone again.”

“Or what?”

“If this floor stops making money, Columbia Health Care will shut this wing down. If we get sued or have to hire more expensive staff, that will cost us money. Don’t you get it? We’ll all lose our jobs and the patients will lose the only psychiatric floor in the area. If you really care about the patients, you better realize that money is all that matters, because they’ll close us down the moment they think we cost them a cent more than we are worth.”

I opened my mouth to say something and then shut it. I had lost control. I knew what I thought didn’t matter. My opinion didn’t matter. I was powerless and unimportant and two people had died and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I couldn’t control the nurses or change the administration. I couldn’t make anyone care.

“You’re right,” I said meekly. “You’re right. I just really thought I had gotten through to Kara.”

“Maybe you should take the day off,” Amy said putting her hand on my shoulder. She was acting like she cared, but she really just wanted me and my radical opinions as far away from police and lawyers and administrators as she could get them. I’m not stupid enough to believe she would care one stitch about me if she didn’t see me as dangerous.

I nodded. I needed the day off.

“I’ll call Karen in to cover for you,” Amy said. Karen was a good choice. Karen had no opinions. Karen was all smiles and no brains.

I stepped into my office and grabbed my bag and fled to the car. I cranked the engine up and let the air conditioner blow the heat off me. I wanted to cry. I wanted to sob for them, but it wasn’t in me. I had cried all the tears I had left to cry a long time ago. I put the car into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot. I drove straight home.

Lawson and his crew were hard at work when I got back. He had ten men working with him. He was a general contractor and he had to subcontract out the plumbing, painting, etc. The house was filled with men. The old wallpaper in the foyer had been scraped away and a few men were putting down fresh paint. I turned around and walked away from the bedlam into the wilderness around The Black Magnolia.

There were three cemeteries on my property. The first cemetery was just past the old barn. I walked through the tall grass down a path that used to be a road. An old stone fence marked the remains of cotton fields and animal enclosures. I stepped into the first cemetery. It was the nicest. A stone angel guarded over the tombstones of all the plantation owners and their families. The tombstones were gray and covered with moss. They were large and lovely. They represented all the wealth and glory that the owners of the house had possessed.

I passed by these large, beautiful stones, and continued down a small trail, and over a wooden bridge. The woods grew thicker as I walked. Nature had reclaimed what had once been rich farmland. There were no signs of the old cotton fields. They’d all faded away. I kept walking deeper into the woods until I came to a ring of decaying wooden shacks. Just to the left of the shacks was the old slave cemetery. There were no epic stones or gothic angels in this tiny graveyard. In fact, the small hand-carved stones were hardly visible above the kudzu. I walked into the cemetery and cleared the kudzu away, exposing the stones. A cloud passed over the sun and a bird sang out in the distance. I shivered. I had one of my landscapers lug a stone bench out to the cemetery. He had looked at me like I was as crazy as a shit house rat. Maybe I was, but this place called to me. I had even cleared out the old slave cabins. I swept the wooden floors and pulled the weeds out of the spaces in-between the floorboards. I raked the ground and planted little yellow flowers in front of them.