The Witch House of Persimmon Point (20 page)

Jude knew a little about monsters. And he didn't know what it was, but his instinct told him that if he wanted to get close to this girl who was so different from all the others—a challenge of sorts—he would have to take a chance.

And Anne, well, she knew a little bit about ghosts. She knew certain people could sense them, could almost smell them, around her. It was funny that he thought they were some sort of danger to her, but she wanted him. So she would have to put the ghosts away and see what happened.

She went to the attic later that night and gathered her ghosts, pushing the thoughts of jars and fireflies out of her mind.

*   *   *

See Anne, so small for her age; see her holding Ava's hand as they walk across the moonlit field to the gardener's cottage. See Gwyneth walking behind her, happy to be out in the night, happy to be outside. Twirling her white dress around in the high grass … touching the overgrown sage flowers that spring up everywhere this time of year, and smelling her ghost hands. Gwyneth missed being alive.

*   *   *

Anne opened the door of the cottage and shoved the ghosts in. “This is your new home! What do you think? Okay, you go to sleep. I will come and visit all the time.”

“Little Anne,” Gwyneth whispered, “Why are you doing this? Why are you putting us away? You promised you wouldn't.”

“I made a friend. I made a friend, and he is afraid of you.” Anne shuffled her feet, looking hard at the floor.

“Maybe,” Gwyneth's voice began in Anne's mind, “Maybe you should be afraid of
him
.…”

“Show. Me. Sleeping!” Anne demanded, with a stomp of her foot to emphasize the word
sleeping
. She stomped it so hard her knee sock fell down. Gwyneth put her hand over Ava's face, turning it into a pale and empty place. Ava was still. Then she waved her hand in front of her own face, leaving a blank void as well.

They were sleeping. Anne left the cottage but wanted to cry. This is why I have to put them away, she thought. I'm too close to them. I miss them all the time and I count on them. I have to learn not to love them. Maybe they aren't even real.

She walked back toward the Witch House chanting quietly, “They aren't even real, they aren't even real. They aren't even real.”

The next Sunday she passed him a note in church.

Dear Jude,

I put them away. I don't even know if they are real.

Anne

Jude had no idea what she meant by “put them away,” but he could already sense a difference in her. She was more vulnerable. And that was just how he wanted her.

The next afternoon, he was at the Kitchen garden gate.

“Hey, can I come in?” Before Anne could answer, the gate was unlatched. He hopped on it, swinging his tall lanky body into the yard. The gate complained on its hinges, as the breeze ruffled his hair. Nan yelled something in Italian out of the back window.

“Hi, Nan! Just wanted Annie here to take me for a walk and show me where those wild raspberries are. My mom wants to make some turnovers for the church bake sale.”

Silence hung in the air for a second. Nan stared at him for a moment. Then she looked at her Anne. Anne was smiling. She had a feeling about this boy. Something in her gut. He'd always made Nan nervous, the way he watched watched watched. But what harm could it really do, he was a big boy, and what would he want with her Anna? She was only eleven years old and looking no older than eight. And besides, she was smiling, such a rare occurrence, it made her look almost pretty.

“Okay, be safe. Tell your mama to let those turnovers sit out overnight. It's the only way to get the raspberry flavor into the crust. You'll tell her?”

“Will do, Nan! Come on, girl, let's go on an adventure. A raspberry adventure!” He held out his large freckled hand and Anne—who touched no one but ghosts on a regular basis—put her small pale hand into his. He had called her Annie.… This must be love. They walked through the backyard and then through the vegetable garden. “They are back there,” she said, “by the juniper pines. It's kind of a long walk.”

“Shoot, I can see the property line from here. Come on, let's run.” And with that, he was off over the fence and through the meadow. Anne hesitated, but only for a moment. She quickly unlatched the garden gate and began to run after him, toward him, toward love, toward feeling, toward freedom. He waited for her on the old foundation. “This place must have been amazing!”

“It was magnificent.” She was a little out of breath. “Our house was built from its pieces.”

“Amazing,” he said, then added, “I guess we get the raspberries now.…”

“I guess so.…”

Jude took her hand in his and began to lead. Then he stopped; he stopped to look at her, he had to look down, so far down. His voice changed, got thick. “You are so beautiful, do you know that?” Anne wanted to swoon—maybe he would kiss her? A part of her wanted him to kiss her, and a part of her was afraid. He was so much older. Jude leaned in, put both hands firmly on her shoulders and pushed her hard onto the ground.

The fall knocked the wind out of her. And Anne knew. She knew what was happening. And she had no way out, no way home, and no one to hear her call out but the ghosts.

She lay there and made her mind go away. This isn't real. Nothing is real. I'm not real.

When it was over she was bleeding, but there were no other marks on her.

“Clean yourself up before you go home,” he ordered. She tried to move but could not. “I am going out that way”—he pointed to the forest—“and I am going to cut around so Nan doesn't see me. You get back to the house quick and tell Nan we got a lot of berries. And no telling or I will kill your Nan, just see if I don't. And I will tell the priest you seduced me. And he will believe me because everyone knows you're crazy.”

In her heart she knew he was right. He looked down at her for a moment with a look that began to scare her in a place deep inside her mind that she was not used to visiting; he was thinking about killing her.

“You should do it,” she said.

“Do what?”

“You should kill me. It would be the smart thing to do. Don't think I don't know you're thinking about it. I won't stop you.”

“I know you won't. Because you're brave. That's why I won't kill you. I only kill the weak ones. But trust me, after time, you may get weak, and when you do? I'll come hunting.”

“Maybe I'm dead already.”

“You know, Anne, I was lying when I told you I wanted to be your friend. But now … well, I'm starting to think it's a swell idea. We should make this a habit,” he said, sneering slightly before he strode away whistling. Anne thought he looked a bit like a deranged Huckleberry Finn. It took a long time for him to reach the tree line where he then disappeared into the pines.

After he was gone, she got up and tucked her clothes under her arm. Everything hurt, but she managed to make it to the cottage where her ghosts waited to comfort her. “Let us out love,” they whispered. “Let us out and we will help you.” Gwyneth and Ava's words echoed in her head as they swirled around her in distress. Anne put her hands over her ears and cried out, “
No!
Maybe he will stop, and maybe he will be my friend. I don't care what he did. He thinks I'm brave, and I want him to be my friend!” And with that she left the cozy safety of the cottage, pulling the door shut tight behind her.

When she made it back to the blue-and-white house, she took a bath. In the tub, she undid her braids. She didn't need them anymore. She tried to comb out her hair, but it was wet and tangled, so she gave up. Anne wouldn't wear braids any longer. Her hair remained matted and hung thick and heavy down her back. A tangled black halo now encircled her head at all times.

But there would not be a friendship with Jude. And he would not hurt her again.

Two days after Fiona MacPhee went missing from the farmers' market after church, an anonymous tip led the police to a warehouse by the river. They found her just barely alive, tied up on a dirty mattress in the basement. The authorities took Jude away and locked him up. That was that. It was over and Jude was gone. Fiona survived but was never quite right. Anne thought about her once in a while and wondered why she couldn't just “get on with it.” Shitty things just happen sometimes.

 

22

William on the Playground with the Truth

1952

What Anne didn't know was that as Jude attacked her, a boy named William was watching. He watched through the trees. He'd been swimming and decided to take a shortcut through the Witch House estate. He kept very quiet. He knew what this was. He lived it, too. So though Anne didn't know it, the moment she lost herself and her body to violence, she gained a soulmate and lifelong friend.

William and Anne were schoolmates but never quite knew each other because they were too busy watching everyone else around them. The only difference was that Anne was watching everyone with distrust and a touch of hate, while William was watching them with distrust and an abundance of love.

One day at the beginning of the new school year during recess, he finally got up the courage to approach her. She was on a swing, and there was one open next to her; it was kismet. They swung next to each other without speaking until he cleared his throat, clenched tight with terror, and said, “I saw you and Jude.”

“So what.” She knew instantly what he meant, and she wouldn't be bullied.

She didn't look up; just kept on swinging slowly and letting her feet drag on the ground.

“You gonna tell?” he asked.

“No, you?”

“No.” There was a long silence between them. They were trying to figure each other out.

“Happens to me all the time,” William said in a nonchalant voice that attempted levity.

They looked at each other then, deeply, knowingly, and a smile broke out across Anne's face. Soon they were falling from the swings and rolling around on the blacktop in their uniforms, laughing until they cried and their sides hurt and Sister Mary Frances had to yell at them to stop.

“Who did it to you?”

“Father Callahan.”

“Does he do it all the time?”

“Nope. Just every once in a while.”

“You should tell. You got a priest, I got a monster. You should tell.”

“I can't. I live here. My family sort of gave me to him. Now, it's better. I have my own room, and I have food to eat. And I don't get beat by my drunk pop anymore.”

Anne thought on that. “So, it's like rent. Kind of.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, William, you must promise me that you will not allow his abuse to ruin the inside of your heart. Your body and your soul are two different things. He can touch your body, but he can't touch your soul unless you let him.” She felt very grown up.

“Deal.”

*   *   *

From that day on, it was Anne and William, William and Anne, everywhere and all the time.

William was what they called Black Irish. Pale skin, black hair, blue eyes. And he wanted nothing more than to take care of Anne. Because her life? It was a great big ball of shit, in his opinion.

William knew he loved her. He loved the way she looked, the way the sun would put freckles on her face. He loved her angles and her deep frowns. He loved her long black mess of hair and her hard sense of humor. He thought she was full of some sort of magic. He would make Anne love him back. It would be his life's work.

They explored the world together. Anne loved broken things and she shared her world with Will. She shared her taste for the old, the cracked, the torn. There was beauty in the memory of what once was.

The factories downtown and along the industrial part of the bay were favorite haunts of Anne's. The ones in use and the ones abandoned—all had the same, dim, cracked misery about them that she loved so much. A bleakness that drew her in again and again to explore, so she might place her hands on the cold brick exteriors, feel the roughness, run her fingers through crumbling mortar lines, and peel the rust spots away from the ironwork staircases. She haunted these buildings so often that the workers in the factories knew her by name. Anne would be outside, leaning her forehead against the brick, when the end-of-day whistle would blow and the men would stream out, nodding at her. “G'night, Anne,” they would say, one after the other.

William and Anne ran rampant through the empty ones turned playtime castles. Inevitably, though, each building would get a new tenant, and they would have to say good-bye. But there would always be a new one. Thank goodness for free enterprise.

Anne taught him everything she knew about Haven Port, about the tides, about plants and when they bloomed and what they were good for. They even had a special way to communicate their affection for each other. They would lie facing one another with their foreheads touching. Then they would enclose their hands together in front of their chests as if they were in prayer, palms touching, hands layered, while pulling up their knees so they touched, too. They had long conversations this way. But sometimes they would just lie silent for hours, as their breathing became one harmony.

*   *   *

See them, see Little Anne and Sweet William; see them like that on the beach late at night with the deep, starry night sky above them and the beach sand in their hair; see them on the grass, on the snow, on the multicolored quilt that Lucy made for Dominic, the one Anne took from the attic and put on the bed in the cottage, see them watch the drawbridge go up and down as Frank, the bridge master, shakes his head and wishes he didn't blame the girl for being born because her existence reminded him that Vito was dead and gone for good.

*   *   *

Anne and William were very best friends. The only place they didn't explore was the Witch House. First, because he hadn't been invited. Second, the place made him feel funny way down in the pit of his belly. He couldn't understand Anne's deep love for this strange place, but who was he to judge?