The Siren and the Specter

by Jonathan Janz

  The nurse scurried away.

  Templeton said, “Hey, Sheriff….”

  She shot him a look. “The only reason I’m not on you too is what happened to Alicia.” She blinked, softened her tone. “I’m so sorry, Charles.”

  Templeton turned away.

  Harkless’s eyes narrowed as they latched onto David. “And you—” she jabbed him in the chest, “—do you have any idea how thoughtless it was of you to barge back in there the same night….” Harkless glanced at Templeton, lowered her voice. “And dragging Ralph up there with you? What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I was—”

  “—being a dumbass,” Harkless finished. “Uh-huh. I see that. And that poor old man suffered a heart attack because of you.”

  “Doc said he’d be okay in a couple days,” Templeton ventured.

  “Sure,” Harkless answered. “No harm done, huh?”

  Harkless’s eyes shifted to something behind David. He turned and discovered Jessica, attired in baggy gray sweatpants and a green-and-gold William & Mary T-shirt. Her hair was tied up in the kind of topknot he associated with undergrads burning the midnight oil during finals week. He recognized the familiar clenching of his guts at the sight of her and realized why.

  She looked eerily like Anna.

  Like the apparition in the window.

  David fled from the thought.

  “How is he?” Jessica asked.

  “Not great,” Harkless said. “But alive is better than dead, right?”

  Jessica blew out a relieved breath.

  Templeton frowned at Jessica. “How did you—”

  “I called her,” Harkless explained. She nodded at David. “For reasons I can’t fathom, Jessica seems to have feelings for this dipshit.”

  David winced.

  “I still don’t know how you went from wanting to shoot this guy to helping him carry Ralph down the stairs,” Harkless said to Templeton.

  Templeton gave David a rueful look. “I’m not sure either. It’s all so crazy.”

  “Crazy,” David said, “is becoming the normal state of things.”

  Harkless squinted at him. “Do me a favor and shut up.”

  Jessica glanced at David, wide-eyed. He shrugged.

  “You were saying?” Harkless prompted Templeton.

  Templeton shook his head wearily. “I was going to shoot Mr. Caine. I really was.”

  “I wouldn’t have blamed you,” Harkless said.

  Templeton sighed. “It was the Siren.”

  Harkless lowered her chin, her eyes widening. “Siren? As in Odysseus and an island covered with bones?”

  Jessica watched Harkless fixedly. “You’ve heard the legend.”

  Harkless agitated a hand at her. “Course I’ve heard the legend. I’ve also heard of the Loch Ness Monster and the Easter Bunny, but that doesn’t mean I believe in ’em.”

  David glanced from one face to another. “Why haven’t I—”

  “A couple reasons,” Harkless said. “For one, we’ve got a nice ghoulish legend already. Why waste time on a variation of an arcane Greek story when there’s Judson Alexander to keep us entertained?”

  Cool air misted over his skin. “What are you talking about?”

  “Our nation is young,” Harkless said, “but this country is old. Do you even know where the river got its name?”

  “The Rappahannock tribe,” David said with some heat. “They met Captain John Smith in 1607.”

  “The Rappahannocks were around a hell of a lot longer than that,” Harkless said. “And when the white men came, the natives warned them to stay off the island.”

  David glanced at Jessica. “The island across from your house?”

  “You’re pretty damned slow for a professor,” Harkless said.

  “Men are curious creatures,” Jessica said. “The Siren uses that to lure them to the island.”

  “Not that they need much luring,” Harkless put in.

  “And they’re never seen again?” David said, unable to suppress a smirk.

  “The story,” Jessica said, “is that a Native American woman…someone hundreds of years before John Smith…this woman’s husband strayed. He left her with several mouths to feed and no way of taking care of them.”

  David asked, “Did the other men…?”

  “No. But the chieftain, who was smitten with the woman, he forbade the other members of the tribe to help her unless she’d accept him as her new master.” Jessica paused. “She took her children to the island, where they lived until the winter.”

  “And then?” David asked.

  “They starved,” Harkless said.

  David glanced at the sheriff, whose sour expression was leavened with what might have been pity.

  “Since then,” Jessica resumed, “she’s haunted the island, drawing wayward men to a clearing, where she seduces them and dines on their flesh.” She peered at Templeton. “You saw her?”

  Templeton nodded.

  “I did too,” David said.

  They all looked at him.

  He shrugged helplessly. “No point in pretending I didn’t. The problem is…”

  …the Siren looked like Anna, he thought but didn’t say. Jessica was watching him closely, but he couldn’t meet her gaze.

  “Well, shit,” Harkless said. “No wonder poor Ralph’s heart gave out. That’d put a scare into anybody.”

  There was a dour silence. Into it, Templeton said, “You have any idea who did this to my girl?”

  “I don’t,” Harkless said. “Not yet. But I’ll find him. Alicia was the best person I knew.”

  “Is the best person,” Templeton corrected, his voice hoarse. “Is the best person. She’s not gone. Not forever. She still lives in here.” He tapped his chest. He nodded heavenward. “And up there.”

  No one contradicted him.

  * * *

  Jessica suggested David come to her house to get some sleep. It wasn’t until he was driving Ralph’s truck back to Ralph’s house, with Jessica following, that he realized how displaced he was. He couldn’t enter the Alexander House. Harkless had nearly suffered an aneurism when he’d asked her if he could go inside to gather some of his things. He had no clean clothes, no toothbrush, no anything save some books and his iPhone.

  After dropping off Ralph’s truck, he walked down to the Alexander House with Jessica idling in the lane behind him. It was nine a.m. and already sunny, but the sight of the many dormers and the glare of the eastern sunlight on the side of the house lent the structure a cruel, pitiless aura. David was reminded of Judson Alexander striding through Lancaster and hurling insults at everyone he met. They said that married couples began to look alike after living together for a long time.

  Why not a house and its owner?

  Tall, pale, ruthless, the Alexander House stood ready to unleash destruction.

  David finally reached his Camry, opened the door, but hesitated, a forearm on the roof, his eyes fixed on the third-floor dormer.

  The others could say all they wanted about Native American women and wayward husbands, but David knew what he had seen – twice – and he knew whom the Siren resembled. David got in, his eyes on the dormer.

  He thought, Maybe the Siren looks different to everyone.

  But that wasn’t right either. Jessica’s paintings verified the kinship between Anna and the Siren, and he was certain that if Templeton or Ralph were asked to compare the wraith with the paintings Jessica had crafted, they’d come to the same conclusion.

  Something tapped on the driver’s side window.

  David cried out, a hand clutching his chest. He peered up at Jessica, who watched him amusedly.

  He opened his door. “You have any idea how much you scared me?”

  She smiled an apology. “I thought you w
ere in a trance.”

  He laughed softly, rubbed an eye with the heel of his hand. “God, am I tired.”

  She reached down and touched his cheek. “Come on. You can have my bed for the day.”

  He looked at her.

  “My bed,” she clarified. “Not me.”

  His cheeks burned.

  * * *

  He was dubious about his ability to sleep, but within minutes of drawing Jessica’s covers over his shoulders, he was out. Once, he opened his eyes and glimpsed Jessica crossing toward the master bathroom. She was lathered with sweat, clad only in a sports bra and spandex shorts. Dimly, he heard the sound of the shower and soon felt the subtle kiss of warm mist on his skin. He was tempted to turn and peer through the doorway, which was partially open, but decided if she wanted him to see her nude, she’d make it clear in her own time.

  He drifted back to sleep.

  When he awoke and checked his iPhone he was flabbergasted to discover it was late afternoon. He pushed back the covers, shambled into the bathroom, and voided his bladder. He yearned for a shower, but even more pressingly, he needed to brush his teeth. On the nightstand he discovered a menagerie of toiletries. A travel-sized tube of toothpaste, a similarly small bottle of mouthwash. Next to that a toothbrush, a razor, and a can of shaving cream.

  “Incredible,” he murmured.

  He brushed his teeth, showered, shaved, and got his clothes on. When he came out, he was promptly beset by Sebastian, who whimpered and heaved himself against David’s shins. David bent, scratched the dog’s back. Sebastian flopped over and offered up his belly. David obliged him by scratching him until his legs began to kick.

  “He’s been whining to get into the bedroom all day,” Jessica explained.

  “I didn’t hear him,” David said, getting to his feet. Going over to where she sat on the couch, he recognized the book in her hands as one of his: Road to Damnation: The Legend of Moody Lane.

  “Are you skimming?” he asked, sitting beside her.

  “It’s fine so far.”

  He grimaced. “Fine?”

  “I’m thirty pages in.”

  He shook his head. “Fine.”

  “I never pegged you as a sensitive artist.”

  He stretched. “Thanks for letting me sleep. The thing is…I want to find Alicia’s killer.”

  “As it happens,” she said, placing the book on the ivory coffee table, “I’ve got our night plotted out.”

  “Does it involve you showering with the door open?”

  She blushed. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was.”

  “Wait, you didn’t see….”

  “No, but I wish I had.”

  She smiled, swatted his shoulder with a backhand. “Pig.”

  “What’s the plan?” he asked her.

  “I’m taking Charlie Templeton dinner,” she said, “and you’re going to stay with Ralph.”

  “Oh.” He lowered his eyes. He’d forgotten about Ralph.

  For the first time since they’d seen the apparition floating in the window of the long bedroom, David remembered what Ralph had said: He made me promise to send him people every now and then.

  Was it possible? David wondered. Could Ralph have really had something to do with Alicia’s murder?

  Jessica was going on. “That should take us till well after sundown. Then we cross the river.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “In kayaks,” she explained. “I want to know what’s happening in the Shelby house. Somehow, I think that’s the key.”

  “What makes you—”

  “Remember Jennings?”

  “The guy who offered up his granddaughter for Judson’s gratification.”

  “The Shelby property has been linked to Judson from the beginning. And now there’s this weirdness with Ivy….” She shook her head. “Don’t you think there’s a correlation?”

  David considered. “There could be. But I’m not keen on getting caught again.”

  “Caught doing what? Kayaking? The river is state property. We’re perfectly within our rights.”

  “Am I a bad person for being interested in you?”

  She grew very still. He felt the blood rise to his cheeks, wondered if he’d overstepped a boundary, and if he had, how egregiously. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she’d thrown him out. Or condemned him for what happened to Anna.

  Instead, she said in a subdued voice, “Not half as bad as me.”

  Before he could answer, she pushed to her feet, said, “Come on. Charlie needs to eat, and Ralph needs watching over.”

  “Wait.”

  “David, I can’t think about this right now.”

  “It’s not about us.”

  She looked at him.

  “It’s about the Alexander House,” he said.

  Her face darkened. “What about it?”

  “Maybe we should burn it down.”

  Unexpectedly, she favored him with a wry smile.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “Weir was the only one to dig up all the history, and almost no one has seen his diary. I suppose it’s part of why he was killed. You know, revealing all Judson’s secrets.”

  “Would you just—”

  “The townspeople – the ones with consciences, anyway – they eventually rose up. After four decades of permitting Judson to degrade or butcher anyone he desired, a group of maybe thirty citizens formed a lynch mob. They journeyed to the peninsula and split into two groups. One branched off toward the Jennings house, the other went to Judson’s. They burned the Jennings place. By that time there were several…I don’t know, concubines? They were corrupted by Judson and savagely loyal to him. There was gunfire from both directions. The people living in the Jennings house barricaded themselves in.”

  “The villagers burned it?”

  “It went up like a bonfire. It’s said that the spirits of Judson’s concubines still reside in the long bedroom, where he often bedded them, one after the other.”

  My God, David thought. The leering thing.

  He shook his head, the stomach acid rising in his throat. “But why would they fight for him?”

  “Why does anyone support a tyrant?” Jessica asked. “They’re brainwashed. Or fearful of their master. It comes to the same thing.”

  David tried to stifle the chill her words brought on but made a poor job of it. “So they burned down the Jennings house, and everyone inside it died.”

  “Or was shot trying to escape.”

  “These were Lancaster’s decent people?”

  “I didn’t say ‘decent,’” she corrected. “I said they had consciences.”

  He grunted.

  She went on. “I’m not saying they were justified, but we’re talking more than forty years of horror, David. Dozens of people slaughtered or…warped by Judson. Maybe hundreds. No one knows for sure. The town kept his secrets.”

  “Why’d they do it then? Why when he was in his sixties?”

  “Even though he was older, he wasn’t really aging. He’d gone bald, but that had happened long before. I think the reason they finally went out there was that Judson seemed to be growing stronger. Feeding on his own Luciferian acts.”

  David studied her face. “You don’t believe that.”

  “I do. There are too many bizarre facets of the case for me to get hung up on a man growing more virile as he aged.”

  He decided to let it go. “The other group,” he prompted. “The one that went to Judson’s….”

  She took a deep drag of air. “They found Judson watching them from the third story. You know the highest dormer?”

  David nodded.

  “He didn’t offer any resistance. He didn’t have to. No matter what the mob did, they couldn’t burn the house.
Couldn’t even get inside.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “No crazier than the rest of the story. The house…it’s like a citadel. Judson’s bastion. The torches they lobbed at the windows deflected off. When they attempted to set it aflame, the fire refused to spread. Like it had the ability to choke out the flames, deprive them of oxygen.”

  “Jessica.”

  “You want to read the diary? This all comes from Weir.”

  David looked away. “Maybe Weir was going senile. And those passages could be forged.”

  “You know it wasn’t forged. You’ve seen the handwriting.”

  “Houses don’t just become fireproof, Jessica. If they wanted in, they could get in.”

  “They did,” she agreed. “Eventually. But it was well into the next day that the house’s defenses started to break down. Maybe because Judson allowed them to.”

  “Come on….”

  “They crept inside, their weapons ready. The house was like ice. Several members of the party refused to go up the stairs, but a few brave people did. They found Judson dangling from the third-floor rafter. He’d hanged himself.”

  David stared at her. Outside the window, a night bird unleashed a plangent cry.

  “Providing all this is true,” David said slowly, “why would Judson commit suicide? You’ve made him out to be some kind of colonial-era supervillain. If he had nothing to fear….”

  “I think he understood he couldn’t hold out forever. And maybe he believed he’d done enough to prepare for death.”

  David raised his eyebrows. “Prepare for death?”

  “Survival is the most basic human urge. Judson had all that time out there by himself. He was a voracious reader. He was particularly interested in the occult. Who knows what secrets he discovered?”

  David had nothing to say to that. He was relieved when Jessica said, “You need to check on Ralph.”

  Five minutes later he was in his Camry motoring toward the hospital. More than once he glanced over his shoulder to make sure there was no one in the backseat.

  * * *

  When David was allowed in to see Ralph, the man’s appearance shocked him. David knew a heart attack could be fatal, so he figured Ralph would show some strain from last night’s incident, but the figure awaiting him on the bed looked like something featured in a wake. Ralph’s cheekbones protruded from a tarp of papery skin. Yesterday Ralph could’ve passed for a man in his early sixties. Tonight he looked like a resident in a full-service nursing home, the kind who didn’t recognize his own children.