The Witch House of Persimmon Point (23 page)

“No, Anne! No!”

Anne didn't think she'd ever stop hearing their own screams.

“It's over,” she said when she reached him. “Everything is over. It's over. It's over. It's all dead. Everything is dead now.”

Lucy looked out the window and screamed with them.

The house screamed, too.

Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic.

 

24

Cupid in the Garden with a Hatchet

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2015

10:00 A.M.

Eleanor was in the kitchen on the phone with Anthony. Maj and Byrd were told to leave, but they hid in the hallway, listening on the other phone.

Eleanor: “Are you planning on hanging up on me again?”

Anthony: “You used to do it to me all the time.”

Eleanor: “Yeah, but you said I was crazy. So unless you've become just like crazy ol' me, you need to be the one that doesn't do it. Right?”

Anthony: “You sound different.”

Eleanor: “I am different. I think. Well, I feel good. There's a teenage girl here, a cousin. She's like Maj. I'm home.”

Anthony: “I was thinking I'd come for a visit. Now I'm sure I will.”

Eleanor: “Why?”

Anthony: “I don't know.… To see my kid? To see you? To figure out if I have any place in your new ‘
home
'? To meet a strange girl living with you? God, Elly.… Why do you need to make this hard? I'm telling you I miss you. It's been two days, and I miss you. I want to see you. Isn't that what you want from me? Some epic love song? This is it. Take it or leave it.”

Eleanor: “Are you bringing Josephine? I need to know how many vacuum bags to buy. It's easy here, laid-back. You'd hate it. And here's a piece of news:
I can live wherever I want
. You have no say at all. She's not even yours, remember? You have no claim.”

Click, dial tone. He'd hung up on her again. Like always. But this time, Eleanor didn't try to call him back.

“Mama?” asked Maj from the hall, still holding the receiver in her hand. Byrd's eyes were full of regret.

“I didn't know,” said Byrd. “I wouldn't have helped her listen in if I knew you'd go all truthtastic.”

Maj ran upstairs.

“Should I go after her?” asked Byrd.

Eleanor wanted to run after Maj, too. But she was too damned angry. Angry with herself, angry with Anthony. Angry with decisions.

Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic.

“I don't know. How would you like to be treated after a damaging secret is revealed? She's like you. More like you than me. I need a drink.”

“Then leave her. She probably already knew. She'll come down, and you can tell her the whole story.”

“There's more to it, you know.”

“I figured.”

“She may have known, heard, sensed that Anthony wasn't her real father. But as far as I know, she has no idea that her real father was a borderline sociopath who tried to kill us.”

“Damn.”

“Love is evil, Byrd,” Eleanor said, furiously buttering toast.

“You may not believe me, as I sure do love myself some evil … but I don't agree. Love is love. It's its own damn menace, but it isn't evil.” Byrd shrugged.

“And what exactly would
you
call something that made you do things you would never do? Act how you would never act? What would you call something that could make a peaceful person rage or a well person sick? A natural disaster is what it is. Like being caught under a mudslide suffocating while in the last stages of rabies. And here's the kicker.… When someone offers you a way out, you smile and tell them to fuck off. That's love,” Eleanor said.

“Well, when you put it that way,” laughed Byrd.

Maj came back into the kitchen, and without a word, Eleanor picked her up and walked outside.

They were quiet with one another.

“I know all the things, Mama. I just am scared I'm like him. I've always been scared of that. But then we moved here and Byrd was here and I'm like her. And you, too. So I'm not scared now.”

“Are you angry?”

“No. I was more surprised. Then, I went upstairs and Anne told me a secret.”

“What did she say?”

“It's a secret.” Maj smiled.

The phone rang again. Maj popped up and ran back inside the kitchen to grab it. “Hello, the Witch House residence, Your Majesty speaking. Yes, okay, hold on.… Mama, some man named Amazing Andy says he needs directions. He can talk to ghosts.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Eleanor said, walking back into the kitchen. Her step was lighter than it had been for years. She'd not realized how much that secret had weighted her down. And just like that … it was all out in the open and cleaned up. No fuss, no muss.

“Ah, that would be for me,” said Byrd. After a short exchange she hung up, turned to Eleanor and said, “Our psychic is lost. I just can't stand it when interesting things turn alarming. And they just always do that, you ever notice? I mean, whoever heard of a lost psychic? I SWEAR.”

11:30 A.M.

Eleanor sat on the bottom step of the porch with Byrd, watching Maj try to play with Delores (who was old and tired and slept the days away under the Willow tree) while waiting for the lost psychic.

“Byrd, so far Anne's story is sitting right in my throat like a scream,” said Eleanor.

“It's hard to hear. And I'm a lot like her, which is hard to say,” said Byrd.

“I just keep thinking about it, then looking at Maj. Then thinking about it. It makes me think maybe the decisions I made weren't so bad. Nothing like that happened to you, did it, honey? Like what happened to Anne?”

“Things happen to everyone.”

“Bad things?”

“The way I figure it is this: I had to have the bad things happen for the good things to happen. History is history, as far as I'm concerned. This is a new start.”

“Byrd, do you trust me?”

“I think I do.”

“I think I trust you, too.”

“There's some kind of sissy words comin' next. I can feel 'em.”

“Well, these women sure knew how to avoid their feelings. Got to be honest with the ones you love.”

“Oh, sure, one slip of the tongue and an entirely too forgiving red-headed daughter and now you're the queen bee of honesty.”

“Very funny, Miss Byrd. Very funny.”

1:00 P.MM

Amazing Andy toured the house. He walked up and down the stairs, into each room and out—and he did it all walking like he'd been born on a horse. Afterward, he met Byrd and Eleanor in the library.

“So?” asked Byrd.

“Well, y'all, I'm afraid what we have here isn't a haunting. It's a hostage situation,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you got spirits here that can't move on. The house won't let them go. Usually we got to rid the house of the ghosts. In this instance we got to rid the ghosts of the house.”

“And I thought this would be easy,” sighed Byrd.

“So what's the next step, where do we go from here?” Eleanor asked.

“Where do you go from here.… That's tricky. Truth is, this thing scares me. And there's too much to lose. Death is a sort of occupational hazard.”

“Ghosts can kill you?”

“No, nothing like that. I mean high blood pressure, embolism, heart attack, demonic possession. You know, your garden variety ailments.”

“Oh, I see,” Eleanor said seriously, trying not to break out into hysterical laughter. This guy, wow, she thought.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but any kind of energy can cause all sorts of things in a body. Ain't you never heard of people fryin' themselves to death in a tub just 'cause they wanted to listen to music at the same time? Or say they had an angry relative wantin' to toss a hair dryer in with them? The point is, I'm always prepared for death, because I'm sure of the peaceful nature of what lies beyond. Death doesn't scare me.

“But this house? This house traps the dead.”

“And it seems that it traps the women who live here, even as it kills or sickens or drives mad the men who're foolhardy enough to decide to love them.

“So I'd rather not get too attached to this house or its ghosts or even to you purty young fillies.
Comprende
?”

“Are you from Texas?” asked Byrd.

“No, why do you ask?”

“Just, you … there's a cowboy thing. Never mind.”

“I was a cowboy in my last life.”

“I see.”

“And I'll be damned if I let this Frankenstein house trap me here and rob me of my next reincarnation into what could be untold wealth.

“My advice to you both: run.”

1:45 P.M.

“Are you sure you're all done? Shouldn't you walk the extended property, check out the gatehouse?” asked Byrd while Eleanor wrote him a check.

The color drained from Amazing Andy's face. “You … you mean that house at the front of the drive?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I, uh, I didn't feel much at all as I went by in the car. I'm sure it's fine. And really, I'm late for another appointment.” He grabbed the check from Eleanor as she was signing and ran, leaving a line of ink in his wake.

2:00 P.M.

Eleanor slapped some cheese between slices of bread—cooking was always her Mimi's specialty, not hers—while Maj and Byrd sat at the kitchen table trying hard not to laugh.

“So, do you think he was downright strange or what?” asked Byrd.

“I think he was stupid. Not strange. And I'm a little aggravated that he couldn't tell us more. No. Scratch that, forget that reincarnated old cowboy, I'm mad that we can't pool together
our
resources, our magic, and figure this whole thing out quicker. We're almost out of time. Really, are there no happy people in our family? Not one single solitary happy ending? This isn't very promising for either of us. Or Maj,” Eleanor said, glancing at her daughter.

“Mama, I can just draw my own ending. I have all the colors,” Maj said, taking a big bite of her sandwich.

“Anyway,” Byrd said. “All good stories have interesting beginnings. And we might not be able to find a happy ending, but damn, we got the interesting beginnings down pat. And even though a lot of bad things happened to those who came before us, there's got to be a happy ending. I think. Because that's what you're missing.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

“What happens after any ordinary happy ending?”

“More beginnings. And more endings. Oh, I see what you're getting at. Because the only ending would be death, and in our case, that isn't actually an end.” Eleanor sighed. “Oh, Byrd, I don't know which way is up anymore.”

“It just all depends on how you look at it, Elly. I mean, we're all dyin' every day. Some days it worries me, and some days it don't. I'm just going to come back and haunt you all anyway.”

Eleanor smiled. “Maybe it's time you finish telling me Anne's story. Maj, why don't you go play? But no wandering off to high clifftops this time.”

“Okay, Mama. I'm gonna go to the attic to finish my new drawing with Anne.”

“Love you, baby girl.” Eleanor brought Maj in for a quick squeeze before letting her skip away. She briefly wondered what picture Maj was working on but let the thought get lost as she turned to Byrd. “So, Nan is dead, and Anne just lost whatever chance she had at her own happy ending. What happens next?”

“Nan's funeral was a disaster, evidently. There was Lucy having relations with the funeral director, and Anne catching them in the act. And then there was the fact that Anne had avoided William since she got out of the hospital. He wanted to talk to her, you know … kiss and make up. Talk about the baby they lost. Things like that. But she wasn't having it. So the night of Nan's funeral, she decided to kill herself.”

“Well, she obviously didn't do it. You're here after all.”

“Cousin Eleanor, there are many ways to die.”

Eleanor raised an eyebrow. “How dramatic, young Cousin Byrd.”

Byrd ignored her and continued. “As you hear the rest of this story, I dare you not to believe that a big huge chunk of Anne, my crazy great-grandma, died in that fall. Because as strange as she was before, as downright evil as people thought she was, she got exponentially crazier after that terrible day.”

 

25

Anne in the Garden with a Train Ticket

1957

Anne sat on the beach, staring at the waves.

Just three hours earlier, Nan had been buried at that shit show of a funeral. She shivered and raked her hands through the shell-peppered sand. Periwinkles, moon snails, coquina clam, oysters.

A storm must be off the coast, she thought. A man-made stone pier stretched out into the mist on her right, most of its rocks already submerged. The waves slapped angrily against them. In the fading light, everything had become gray, the sea and sky one. But dark clouds had rolled in, breaking everything into a living, breathing, undulating black-and-white photograph. Anne was awestruck by its intensity. She often felt a want, a deep longing, to be inside of nature, part of the actual process, to feel the whole thing. She felt it in the fall when the leaves would change. She wanted to be able to experience the whole vivid display of reds and oranges and yellows all at once instead of one or two trees at a time. She wanted it all to crash over her, through her. It seemed to her that human eyes had a very limited existence. There was so much more to see and not enough windows in the body.

Anne took off her shoes and walked thought the sand, cutting a sharp diagonal to the left to walk on the rocks. She was going to walk out to sea. If she was going to kill herself, it had better be cinematic.