by Mary Bowers
Ed, Michael and I walked along Duval Street in the cool, pleasant night, passing bars and bright windows and the occasional store that still had its doors propped open. It was a happy time of night in Key West; nobody had been out long enough to pick a fight with anybody and music throbbed in the air from saloon to saloon, giving a beat to the all-night, every-night party. We nimbly dodged the staggering, dancing inebriates who were still enjoying the happy beginning of the pub crawl. The melancholy of the wee hours, when what-could-have-been would come flooding back, lay ahead of them, but for now they laughed.
When we turned off Duval and began to thread the residential streets, darkness absorbed the music from the bars, and we began to hear the distant wash of the deep waters that surrounded the island.
“By the way, here’s your key,” Michael said as we approached The Sailor’s Rest. “Arielle gave both of them to me.”
Porter greeted us at the door. Nobody had thought to shut him up somewhere, but there didn’t seem to be any wreckage. He’d probably flopped down and started to snore the minute everybody had left.
Ed, still a bit miffed, mumbled perfunctory good-nights and went off to his room, already mentally composing his notes.
When Michael got to our room, he looked in and hesitated, surprised.
“Well, hello there,” he said. “And who are you?”
I looked in and saw a large black cat lifting her head; apparently, she’d been asleep on the bed. She stared at us without surprise and didn’t move.
In my exhausted state, I found myself fascinated by her, and I stood on the threshold as Michael turned a lamp on and closed the door behind me. In the shaded light of the lamp, the room with the cool blue walls seemed to fill with a quiet green light, pellucid and subtly glimmering. Something comforting was in the air – not quite music, not really a sound, but a settled feeling, a feeling that I was someplace very familiar.
Michael went to the cat, who calmly permitted him to lift the I.D. tag from her collar and read it.
“Bella,” he said. The cat didn’t react; in fact, it didn’t seem interested in Michael at all. She was still gazing at me. “Her name is Bella.”
“Bella,” I whispered.
That was when I began to hear the music. It came together as if granules of it had been floating around me, waiting to coalesce. Soft undertones of slow-pulsing music, hypnotic, along with the faint smell of some exotic spice. They came up around me and held me in a cocoon.
I was home.
* * * * *
I don’t think I dreamed of anything that night, but I’m not sure. Michael said I talked in my sleep, but he knew I was overtired and it didn’t seem like I was having a nightmare, so he just let me sleep. He couldn’t understand what I said, except for the occasional, “Yes,” or “I will.”
When he woke me up the next morning with coffee and scones on a tray, I was surprised. I couldn’t remember going to bed the night before, or even getting ready for bed, and my teeth were telling me they hadn’t been brushed. I carefully avoided aiming my breath at Michael as he sat down beside the bed and watched me sip my coffee from the tray.
“I wasn’t drinking,” I said at last, “and I didn’t think I was that tired. Did I pass out?”
“You did something,” he said, looking at me strangely.
“Oh? Like what?”
He didn’t really answer. Instead, he asked me, “Do you remember Bella?”
I withdrew my gaze from his. “Oh, yeah,” I muttered. “The black cat.”
“Pretty, isn’t she? I guess we won’t miss Bastet as much on this trip, since we’ll have Bella for company. Apparently, she likes us.” He chattered on brightly, giving me no time to speak, but his steady gaze never wavered. “Arielle says Bella does that sometimes – just adopts one of her guests. She can never tell who the cat’s going to like, but every now and then – not very often, but sometimes – somebody shows up and Bella seems to see something special in them, even decides to sleep with them. Otherwise, she sleeps with Arielle. I think our landlady was a little bothered that her personal pet has taken a shine to you, though.”
“Arielle and I haven’t exactly taken a shine to one another,” I remarked. “By the way, where is the cat?”
“Arielle’s feeding her now. I would have let you sleep, but you said you were going over to that lady’s house between nine-thirty and ten, and it’s almost nine now.”
“Oh, golly. I’d better get up.”
“Finish your coffee, and at least have a scone. It never takes you long to shower and dress, and I looked on a map; she’s only a block and a half away.”
I looked at Michael guiltily. “Not much of a vacation for you, is it? With me getting all involved in Ed’s project.”
He shrugged and smiled. “I knew what it was all about. Besides, without Ed and his project, it would have been hard to get you here at all. And maybe Ed’s project will turn out to be important, somehow.”
He had a funny look in his eyes, and I set my coffee cup down.
“What’s on your mind?”
He gazed at me for a minute, then he said, “That cat.”
“Oh, yeah. The cat.”
“Something happened to you when you saw the cat. It’s . . . is it her?”
I locked up inside, not wanting Michael to get involved in that quasi-paranormal stuff. He never really had been a direct part of it, and keeping him separate from it seemed like having an anchor, something to keep me hooked onto the real world.
When my cat, Bastet, had first come to me a few years before, something had changed in my life. Before that, I had known Ed only slightly, since I hired him to do special effects for fundraisers every now and then, especially around Halloween. But Bastet had come into my life at a time when strange things were happening, and after that they only got stranger. Ed had decided Bastet wasn’t just a cat, that she was a “familiar,” and that she was inhabited by a soul that was nothing like a cat’s.
A goddess, in fact. Somebody out of ancient Egypt. I had laughed at him at first, and sometimes I still try to laugh about it. Mostly, I try not to think about it.
“Ed pulled you aside after we got here yesterday afternoon and whispered something to you,” I said, suddenly remembering. “While we were still standing out in the street. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. What did he want?”
“He just wanted to thank me. He knew you wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t persuaded you to. He thanked me for bringing you, and for being willing to let him have you for his research when we could have been sightseeing together.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him . . . .” He inhaled sharply. “I basically said you’re welcome and left it at that. I don’t argue with Ed when he’s on his hobbyhorse. He might be onto something here or it may be nothing. But I’ve seen you in action before. There’s something in you, Taylor. Something special. And having a special gift brings responsibilities.” My face must have become stony, because he immediately switched gears. “And like I said, maybe it’s nothing. Either way, we get a tropical vacation together in a fun city, and you get a break from your work at the shelter for a few days. Now don’t look at me like that. Get up. You’ve got a date. And, as it happens, so do I.”
“Oh? With whom?”
“Arielle. She’s taking me to Truman’s Little White House today – where President Truman used to take his vacations while he was president. I figured other attractions, like Hemmingway’s house and Mel Fisher’s Treasure Museum would be more interesting for you, so when she offered to show me the sights, I chose the Truman house. We’ll do the other attractions together, I promise.”
“I want to see the Truman house,” I said in a little voice, though I hadn’t given it a thought before that moment.
“Then I won’t mind seeing it a second time. Now get up, or you’re going to be late.”
Chapter 6
Maryellen’s house was a charming little dollhouse near the corner
of Caroline and Margaret Streets. It was a wooden frame house with a small front porch, and it looked fresh, as if it had been recently painted. It was butter yellow with white trim, and under the roof of the porch overhang, the pretty color known as “Haint Blue” made a cool sky for the porch-sitters.
I knew all about that color from Ed. The “haint” part was a corruption of the word “haunt,” and supposedly the color represented water, over which ghosts could not cross. People who didn’t want to admit to being superstitious said the color discouraged insects, but enough of the overhangs of Key West were painted Haint Blue to make pretty good odds that lots of Conchs believed in ghosts.
I’d always wondered what they thought would happen if the ghost was already inside the house when they painted it? Would it be trapped inside? If Maryellen rubbed me the wrong way, I’d mention it and see how she reacted, but judging from what I’d seen of her the day before, Maryellen was not the jittery type. If she looked vague, it was only because she was observing and recording.
I went up to the front door and knocked. When the door was opened, I found myself facing a woman who was definitely not Maryellen.
Standing in the opening and holding onto the edge of the door, a washed-out woman with loose blond hair and light brown eyes stared at me silently.
“Am I at the wrong house?” I said finally. “I’m looking for Maryellen, um . . . I forgot her last name, but she’s an author.”
“You’ve got the right house,” the woman said, but still she didn’t move.
From the back of the house I heard Maryellen yell, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Camille, stop reading her aura and let her in.”
I saw Maryellen appear at the far end of the house with a tea towel in her hands. I said hello to her, then glanced expectantly at Camille, who was still blocking the doorway. Abruptly, Camille stepped aside and let me walk in. As I passed her, she kept staring at me and nodding. I gave her a wide berth and walked across a living room and towards the back of the house, where I’d seen Maryellen.
“Camille is our friendly local fortuneteller,” Maryellen called from the kitchen. “I thought you two should meet.”
She didn’t look much like a fortuneteller to me, but maybe she was in mufti. Without whatever she wore behind the crystal ball, she looked like a tired housewife. She was wearing a loose cotton batik dress in vibrant, cool colors more suitable for a brunette, and maybe that’s why she looked so washed-out. I figured she was in her mid-fifties, but she might have been younger; it didn’t look as if she had taken any particular trouble over her appearance that morning. The dress was an old one, and she wasn’t wearing any make-up except for patches of blusher, one cheek darker than the other. In fact, she looked as if she had just dashed over to a neighbor’s to borrow a cup of sugar and decided to stay for a quick cup of coffee.
“Sorry, Taylor, I should have warned you there might be other people here when you came,” Maryellen said. She was fussing around a little breakfast table with four chairs, obviously her favorite place for meals. It was set in a window bay overlooking a little backyard and had the usual basic condiments – salt and pepper, napkins in a holder, matching sugar and creamer – centered on the bare wood tabletop. There were four lime-green placemats that obviously stayed there permanently, and a pencil cup and pad of paper next to the placemat that showed the most use.
There were already cups sitting at two of the places, and Camille seated herself behind one of them, still gazing at me. She had moved around me very slowly and intently, as if I might make a sudden move.
Maryellen chattered on. “All my friends know my writing habits, and they know I won’t drop in on them, because when I’m done with morning tea, I go right back to work, and if I go to their house instead . . . well, I just don’t. I’d only sit around all afternoon and gossip. Taylor, this is my neighbor and friend, Camille Waverley. Like I said, she’s psychic, too. When I called her last night and told her about you, she said she already knew you were here. She’d felt you, when you arrived.” She said it smoothly, not turning a hair, but I knew it had been a quick jab at Camille. “Have a seat, Taylor. Coffee or tea?”
“Tea, thanks. I drink both, but I’ve already had coffee this morning. I see you decided not to tempt fate.” When she turned around and looked at me, I said, “Not using the lavender teacup after all.”
She laughed. “Aren’t I terrible? Poor Ozzie. But he understands me. I was only teasing him. It’s over there,” she said, nodding toward the room behind me.
Together with the small kitchen and the area where we were sitting, what was probably meant to be a dining room completed the back of the house. I turned around for a look and saw a long table that was being used as an artist’s worktable at the moment. At the far end of it stood a tall easel, set so that the artist could have a workstation at her right hand. The tabletop was protected by old newspapers, and a covered palette was close to table’s corner, surrounded by tubes of paint and jars of well-worn paintbrushes. On a pretty piecrust table, set so that it caught the light, was the lavender teacup. Maryellen had set it in the middle of a crocheted green doily, all by itself. The canvas in the easel had ghost images where the subject had been sketched with charcoal and wiped away.
By the time I turned back, Maryellen was walking towards the breakfast table carrying a mug with the string and tab of a teabag hanging over the side. As she put it before me and sat down, she said, “Stop staring at her, Camille.”
“You haven’t heard of me,” Camille said to me, ignoring Maryellen, “but I’m aware of you. I had already heard of you, and when I knew you were here I felt the weight of inevitability descending. You were always going to come; I know that now.”
“Knock it off, Camille,” Maryellen said easily. She turned to me. “She takes herself a bit too seriously at times, but she’s all right. She’s just got her swami hat on right now because she’s impressed with your reputation. When she forgets to be mystical, she’s very nice.”
Camille hadn’t looked away from me, and now she said, “Maryellen has her own sense of the world. She accepts that I have a right to my own perceptions, but it’s obvious that where they differ from hers, she finds comfort in ridicule.”
“Au contraire, Camille,” Maryellen said vigorously. “Do I not have you review every book I write if it includes paranormal elements, before I let anyone else see it? She checks them for accuracy, Taylor, and lets me know when I’ve pulled a bloomer. If it weren’t for Camille, my poltergeists would be inhabiting stagnant wells instead of throwing things in the drawing room. I actually did that once. I hated giving up that well, but it had to be done. The letters I would have been getting from my sharp-eyed readers if that had gone into print do not bear imagining.”
“You see,” Camille said to me. “She takes me seriously, but only so far and no farther. She uses me as an authority on arcane subjects, then discounts everything I believe in. Like most people. They all laugh at the occult because they don’t want to be taken for fools, but deep down inside . . . even you, or so I’ve gathered from what I know about you. But then you discovered your talents late in life. I have known the Other World as part of the Everyday World since I was a baby. I recognized that I was surrounded by spirits as I learned to walk and talk. It’s normal for me. I suppose it’s only to be expected that you would react with flat denial.”
I sipped my tea. I didn’t have to look at Maryellen to know that she was enjoying herself. I resented it. I didn’t come to be laughed at, and Camille was getting on my nerves.
Camille had been holding my gaze almost by force, and now I turned my head determinedly and asked Maryellen, “What was it that made Oswald decide that the teacup was bad luck in the first place? Ed’s been a little sketchy about it.”
“Now that’s an interesting story,” Maryellen began, setting her mug of tea down. “Have a cookie, dear.” She put a napkin in front of me, nudged a basket of jelly-filled cookies in my direction and kept on talking. “The first one
was Ferdie Stoffel.”
“The first one was Lydia Stoffel, Ferdie’s cousin,” Camille said.
“The first one was Ferdie,” Maryellen said stubbornly. “Lydia died because she had reached the culmination of the dying process. She had cancer. It was inoperable. It killed her, and she died.”
Camille conceded the point. “But it was Lydia who was initially possessed by the cup.”
“No, it was Lydia who first possessed the cup, not the other way around. Do you mind if I tell this my own way, Camille dear, and afterwards you can go ahead and give Ms. Verone your own unique version? Thank you. Lydia Stoffel,” Maryellen said, turning to me, “was a crazy old lady. Thoroughly, certifiably, Key West-worthy crazy. A spinster. She had inherited very nice things, she was very proud of them, and she didn’t like other people touching them, even her cousin Ferdie. Her house, I might add, was infested from top to bottom with figurines of lop-eared bunnies, puppies and kittens, excruciating children sucking their thumbs, a vast collection of salt-and-pepper shakers, Christmas villages, and some really fine porcelain left to her by her mother. That included the lavender tea set that she methodically broke, piece by piece, until all she had left was the one cup and saucer.”
“She broke them . . . on purpose?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Maryellen said. “She was clumsy. And crazy.”
“I see.” I was trying to hang in there, but Maryellen was in professional storyteller mode now, and that isn’t the way people really talk. It can be hard to separate the metaphors from the plain facts when a word-o-phile gets going.
Ruffling herself up like a hen, she said, “Where was I?” and went on. “So she had her one precious cup with its matching saucer, and she treasured them, guarded them, became hysterical if anybody else even got close to them. And then, of course, she died.