by Mary Bowers
I’ve kept a journal all my life, but when I realized the end date had been set, I became more introspective, and naturally, I wrote more. I’ll print out my journal for the last seven months and leave it on my desk at home. An examination of my computer by an expert will (I hope) show the creation date of the document and the dates of the successive entries. I’m not an expert in such things, and at this point, I don’t really care, except that people will not believe, no matter how I have proven myself over the years, and I can offer that as my only proof that I knew what was going to happen long before it came to pass.
Naturally, anyone who has decided on suicide can predict their own death. I can only affirm to you that I didn’t decide on suicide. I don’t want to die. I was instructed to die, and the countdown began seven months ago, when I first came under the influence of the cup.
Not that the cup itself has any powers. It doesn’t. It is only a vessel. The vessel has been opened and inhabited by a supreme will. I’ll call it the Entity – it’s ridiculous to keep calling it a teacup. Being a Sensitive, I was open to the Entity, and it began to control me the moment it became aware of me. I was caught – that’s the only way I can describe it.
My only hope is the woman Taylor. She may yet free me. At the time I write this and must deliver it to you, I don’t know yet. If I am still within the power of the Entity when I pass over, I face eternal slavery on the Other Side. Either way, I am a dead woman, even now. The Entity has decided upon my death, and if I explain to the police that I am not a murderer – and tell them why – it will only land me in a prison or an insane asylum.
I suppose you could call this a confession, but really, it’s just a description of what happened to me. The word confession suggests decisions made and action taken. I lost those abilities long ago. I am commanded, and I serve. I don’t make choices. From an early age, before I realized what the consequences would be, I opened myself to the forces that have gradually stripped me of my will. I do as I am commanded, though these last seven months have been a horror to me. I am not sorry to end my term of service here. What I face in the next world depends on what happens now. Arielle has called for my help, since the people with the reality show have failed. I go now to Arielle’s lodging house, to face the Entity. Arielle has feeble powers, but the woman Taylor – I can only wait and hope.
If you choose to include anything from these first pages, you may. Edit it, if you like. It’s really just a preamble. The rest is a true and accurate record of the murders by the Entity, and I ask that you publish it exactly as I’ve written it down. I have told it in the first person, as if I wanted to do all these things, but please make it clear to your readers that I had no choice.
Here is your article:
I can never explain what makes me different from so many of you, because this is the way I have always been. To me, it’s normal. I can only describe the events as they happened to me, beginning with the death of my old friend, Ferdie Stoffel. As those who also loved him will remember, he passed over just before last year’s hurricane. He was the first victim of the Entity, though my senses tell me that it has also trapped Lydia Stoffel, Ferdie’s cousin.
When I entered Ferdie’s house on the day of his death, he was still alive and well. He had been due to consult with me that evening, and when he didn’t appear for his appointment, I was worried. I went to his house.
His front door was unlocked, as it always was, and after knocking I opened the door and called to him. He called back and said he was in the bedroom tending to a minor household problem and he’d simply lost track of the time. He was agitated, frustrated over what he was doing, and he apologized for missing his appointment. Then he said he was almost done and that I should come on in and wait for him, he wouldn’t be long.
That was when it happened. As I walked through the house, I saw the teacup on the kitchen counter and I knew it for what it was: a vessel. For those who don’t have the sight, I can only describe it as a glow – not a light, a miasma. I know it when I see it, and it was there within the teacup, as alive as any insect or mouse that might have crawled into it.
Having eyes that can see, I looked upon the Entity and, fascinated, I stared too long. It knew me, knew my power, and I was held in place, unable to even turn my head, as the Entity began to probe me, and finally, to tighten its web around me. I realized that Ferdie hadn’t forgotten his appointment at all. The Entity had held him in his house and summoned me to come.
Thus, I became helpless, and what followed was beyond my power to stop. I liked Ferdie. I would have saved him if I could.
The ladder was so very tall, and he stood on the top of it, looking like something looming in the sky. When he fell, it was like watching a heavenly creature wafting down, and it took so long – he seemed to fall forever. My hands were welded to the ladder, and it was long minutes before the Entity released me. I went down on my knees to Ferdie, and he was badly hurt.
What hurt the most to me – the anguish fills me still – was they way he looked at me and asked me why. He’ll understand when I see him again, but at the time he didn’t, and there was no way I could make him understand.
I can hardly bear thinking about it, and for the most part, I don’t. So I pass on to Marnie Carnahan. That was so much easier. She was filled with a sour spirit, and I wasn’t required to actually do anything. Or rather, having been directed to go there by the Entity, I was only required to bear witness, to know, to say nothing and to endure.
Her eyes were as pleading as Ferdie’s had been, but not so terrible to see. Her voice was there, too, begging for help, I suppose, but I listened not. I heard the command of the Entity, and I obeyed.
And the Entity knew. It said she would die, and so she did. Needless to say, I was relieved when the ordeal was over. Sour she might have been, but to witness suffering is a terrible thing.
And then, Maryellen. Smug, stupid, mocking Maryellen. When she first came to me wanting me to “vet” her books, I was actually flattered. But for some time now, I have known that she was only using me, and I was not surprised when the cup was passed to her. I dreaded the completion of this assignment – Maryellen is clever, and might be hard to defeat. But of course, it was made easy for me. Even changing out of my conspicuous clothes – it was all planned ahead of time – but not by me. I found Maryellen waiting above the water and I knew it was time. Our other friends were made to leave her, other people milling around were made to look away. A little nudge and she was gone. I didn’t even need to look over and see her in the water. The Entity was merciful that time.
My last ordeal will be Oswald. He has been the necromancer, the creature of the Entity, and he has passed it to those who must have it so that I could see my duty. I have questioned the Entity about the man Ed, who took the cup from Maryellen, but I know that the necromancer has been strong in saying that he should NOT have the cup. So he is not among the chosen. The list is complete; that much knowledge has been given to me.
And so, our work is done, my own and the necromancer’s. The Entity calls us to itself. One more task, and I may rest. As I knew where Marnie hid her house key, under that ugly ceramic frog, I know that Oswald keeps one in a magnetic case stuck to the underside of his outdoor light timer. If it is not there, I will know the Entity has further use for the necromancer, and I will prepare myself to cross over alone.
There. It was all much simpler than I thought it would be to explain, and now you understand. Don’t feel sorry for me. I am content. I have lived a life fuller than most, occupying multiple dimensions. I have seen things none of you have seen. Wonderful things. Terrible things. I would not change it now, even if I could.
End of article.
And now, goodbye Professor. You were very unfair to me, and I have tried to forgive you but I can’t. It has been in my mind that if the teacup were passed to you, I would not be sorry. But you were spared. Now you can tell my story, and for that I am grateful.
Tell the woman Taylor tha
t I knew exactly what she was doing when she invaded my mind. I felt her light shining into me as she touched me, that night in Mallory Square. We reached for the edge of the table at the same time, and she put her hand against mine. Clever woman. She claimed that I scratched her, but I knew. She had touched me deliberately, and now she knew everything.
And so my time was coming, I realized, but my tasks weren’t finished. I hurried to complete them, and Maryellen was put into my path.
The eyes of the Entity are upon the woman Taylor now. May she be as powerful as I hope. If not, may she be as obedient and strong as I have been.
Chapter 31
In the end, The Professor decided not to publish Camille’s last article. The police asked him not to, but he had already decided not to by then. He told me later in an e-mail that he hated losing this opportunity to fight for the freedom of the press, but he couldn’t in good conscience spread Camille’s message. It might actually resonate with some people. It’s a strange world.
In fact, he was so shaken by what had happened that he decided to put The Keyster on hiatus for a while. Like any intellectual, he overthought himself, even wondering if he’d been to blame somehow, for publishing the prediction that had damaged Camille’s reputation as a psychic so much. I pointed out to him that she had tipped Ferdie off his ladder before the hurricane, when for all anybody knew, her prediction was going to be correct. He seemed to feel better about it then.
He was still curious about it, though, and seemed to think that I had all the answers. Since he knew that Michael and I would be leaving the very next morning, he came to The Sailor’s Rest at breakfast time and joined us on the patio. By then most of the people staying at the B&B had read Camille’s typescript, since Ed had requested and gotten a photocopy for his files. For the sake of completeness.
When we got up that morning we discovered that Teddy had packed himself up and driven off with Porter in his little Austin-Healy sometime during the night. He left a note for Lily, but she didn’t let us read it. She just told us, “He’s reached the self-righteous stage – you know, the man falsely accused but rising above it all like the class act that he is. It’d only gag you.”
Although The Professor still had the typescript when Michael and I got there, he had already called the police and told them there was a possible suicide and they needed to act quickly. But it had been hours since Camille had returned to her house, after our late-night séance at the B&B, and she’d been dead for almost as many hours by the time they got there. She had arranged herself with flowers, dressed in her fortuneteller dress, carefully made up and coifed.
On her kitchen countertop, they found whatever it was she brewed up for herself. From the appearance of her pupils, they suspected at least one of the ingredients had been belladonna. She had cultivated deadly nightshade in her yard. The M.E. said that her concoction had been more complicated than that, though, because belladonna causes convulsions, and she had been found lying in a peaceful pose. She had just gone off to sleep, unlike her victims.
While it was just The Professor, Ed, Lily, Arielle, Michael and me, we got into a discussion as to the reality or unreality of Camille’s Entity. Most of us didn’t believe in it, but The Professor, surprisingly, took the opposing viewpoint. After his show of cold logic the day we first met him, he now decided that the Entity was real.
“Why else would she have gone to Marnie’s house?” he asked. “They weren’t close friends, although they certainly knew one another.”
“She knew Marnie well enough to know where she hid her house key,” I pointed out.
The Professor waved his hand. “Everybody knew that.”
“And there had been talk that Marnie hadn’t been seen in a few days,” I said. “Camille lived a couple of blocks away, near Maryellen’s house, but she knew Marnie just like all the old-time Conchs in the neighborhood did. She’d lived in Key West all her life, and when the rooster got killed, everybody heard about it.”
“And everybody agreed with me that Marnie acted badly afterwards,” The Professor said. “Nobody was making social calls on her. Sailor is very popular in my neighborhood. People were on my side. So why did she go there? I don’t think she’d visited Marnie in years. Marnie’s key was found in Camille’s house, by the way. For whatever reason, she kept it.”
I gave it some thought. “Taking it away from the house would have prevented any neighbors who wanted to go in and check on Marnie from getting in easily. With no key under the frog, they might just have said the heck with it and walked away. Breaking into somebody’s house doesn’t come naturally to most people. They’d think twice about it.”
“Maybe. The police found it in a tray on her dresser, mixed in with a lot of junk jewelry. Oswald’s key was there, too.”
“She was making the rounds,” I said. “I noticed when Helena came into Maryellen’s house that morning, she was surprised to see Camille there. She wasn’t a regular for morning coffee. Maryellen had called her and told her another psychic was coming that morning. Which was just like Maryellen, now that I think of it. She wanted to get the two psychics together and see what happened.”
“Camille probably came because she wanted to see if you had any real powers,” Ed speculated. “Obviously, she decided that you did. By the end, when she was facing death, she even seems to have placed some hope in you. But initially, I believe she thought that you were here to expose her, and so she accelerated the killings – and incidentally, her own end. Actually, Taylor, the fact that I called you into the investigation when I did just may have put an end to the murders, since Camille believed in you and thought you had read her mind. Lives were probably saved when Maryellen invited her to come and meet you that morning.”
“The Entity,” The Professor said stubbornly, “commanded her to come. Maryellen had the cup. You just proved my point. She too was being controlled by the Entity. Maryellen was a very stubborn woman. She saw herself as having an incisive, superior mind. She would have scoffed at paranormal influences, possibly making her even more vulnerable to them. I believe it was the Entity’s influence that caused her to invite Camille to meet you, so that through her, you would become known to the Entity.”
“Maryellen did seem to have a touch of clairvoyance,” I said grudgingly. “And she would have been the last one to admit it. She was talking about her books coming to her out of the blue, as if somebody else were telling them to her, but then she scoffed at the idea that that’s exactly what was happening. But,” I said pointedly, “Maryellen didn’t have the cup anymore when Camille killed her. Camille didn’t know that, but a supernatural Entity should have.”
Trying another line of attack, The Professor said, “If Camille was committing murder for purposes of her own, which could only have been to recover her reputation, why wasn’t she predicting that those people would die before she went ahead and killed them?”
“She was. She did predict that Maryellen would die.”
That put a cork in The Professor, but not for long. “The final proof, Taylor-me-dear, is that you saw the Entity yourself. I, for one, am willing to admit that what I saw that day has changed my thinking. I saw it, Ed saw it, and so did you.”
“Quite true,” Ed said. “Unless, of course, Camille was correct in her speculation that the Entity had trapped Lydia in the teacup, and it was her eyes that we saw. I should do a final check, just to be sure. Arielle, where do you have the cup now?”
“I don’t have it. Taylor told me to give it back to my uncle, and I brought it to him this morning when I went over to sit with him.”
“How is Oswald?” Michael asked.
“Fine, just fine,” Arielle told us. “Darrien’s taken over the shop so Oswald can rest, and I would have been with him now, watching over him, but ten minutes after Darrien left for the shop, Uncle Oswald got up, got himself dressed and followed him. There’s a big sale in the works, and Uncle Oswald didn’t want Darrien messing it up. It’s a big statue.”
“The Sabine Women?” I asked, dropping the r word from the title. Ugly word.
“That’s the one. The purchaser is taking it to Miami Beach.”
“Good place for it,” I said.
The Professor waxed philosophical. “And so Key West loses another piece of Lydia Stoffel. All her pretty things, big and small.”
“By the way,” Arielle said, “Uncle Oswald and Darrien want to see you before you go, Taylor. Drop by the shop later. Michael too, and of course, Ed. You can bring your instruments and go over the teacup then if you like. Uncle Oswald probably has it locked up again, but I told him it was harmless now, so I think he’ll let you handle it.”
Lily had obviously been waiting to redirect the conversation, and before the group could break up, she turned to Arielle. “So you really are a witch?” she said.
“A white witch,” Arielle said. “Not the kind you’re thinking of, and not the kind with a b instead of a w.”
“So what was it you were doing in the kitchen that night?” Lily said, homing in. “I saw test tubes and stuff.”
Arielle looked stumped, stared at Lily a moment, then burst out laughing. “I was making lip balm. What you saw was a rack for holding the tubes while I poured out the balm. You’ve probably all picked up on the fact that I’m not exactly breaking even with the B&B. But I’ve always been a good potions-maker and I’ve always made my own cosmetics and creams. I’ve been giving them away to my friends for years, and they’ve been encouraging me to make a business out of it. I’m developing a line of cruelty-free, vegan, all-natural make-up, and that night I was making lip balm. Test tubes! Silly girl.”
Lily was smiling painfully and not enjoying being laughed at. “Well, it didn’t smell all that good. I’m not sure I’d be interested in buying it.”
“Oh, that batch,” Arielle said, remembering. “I’d ordered a flavoring over the Internet, and it turned out to be awful. I had to throw the whole batch out.”