The fire roared in that unnatural light.
Purple, marigold, red, and blue.
Sarah Blackwell, according to this soul, then brandished a small doll-like figure made out of chalk and fashioned with fistfuls of her own fiery red hair. And into its hollow belly she stuck the black seed of a thorn tree.
And uttered forked speech.
Of a decidedly foreign tongue.
Before tossing the wicked incarnation.
Into the leaping tongues of flame.”
His voice had risen to a crescendo.
Only now to fall back to a whispery hush.
As if suddenly afraid of being overheard.
“The next morning Sarah fell under the sleeping spell. And there she lay for days and nights on end. When she finally did awake--
She was suddenly with child.
Her hollow womb no longer hollow.”
Caleb paused dramatically here like he might be finished, leaning back heavily in his chair and taking a sip of his brandy-coffee. Droplets of blood-like copper on his dry lips and foaming briefly in his thick gray mustache. His rheumy eyes staring out balefully at his audience as if judging their worthiness for him to continue.
The room around him quiet.
But for that large crackling fire.
Oliver peered over at the girls.
They appeared enraptured.
As did Abby, her pale fingers blindly working strawberry hair, her touch gentle and light, natural and wistful. Oliver observed also the melancholy contained in her smile as the young girl leaned back snugly against Abby’s knees, her head nearly in Abby’s lap.
Caleb eventually continued his tale:
His whispery voice full of dread:
“There accompanied the pregnancy a terrible cold spell of disease and ruined crop and the town became suspicious of what Sarah had done.
It wasn’t long before the girl was accused of sorcerie and taken to Witches Hill in St. Johns and placed inside a wooden barrel with iron spikes inserted ‘round the barrel interior. After-which, Sarah was then rolled down that steep hill while the townsfolk listened to her awful, tormented screams.”
“My heavens,” Abby breathed.
“At the bottom of that steep hill when the barrel was opened and she was found to still be alive, Sarah Blackwell was then judged a witch and forthwith sentenced to burn at the stake that very sundown. At sundown, the townsfolk then did watch her burn with the unborn child still in her womb.
A damnation. That unborn child.
A most cursed thing, surely.
A walking stick was used to push Sarah Blackwell’s flailing limbs back into the ravenous flames, and then that stick was burned, too.”
Caleb paused again here.
Allowing the image to sink in.
The wretchedness of it.
“She was then buried in the manner of a witch where nothing would ever grow again save that of a thorn tree. ‘Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,’ they said over her. ‘Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,’ the townsfolk said.”
Caleb fell silent yet again.
It would seem his tale finally complete.
Rheumy eyes more baleful than ever.
Again passing over his small audience
Sitting there in the firelight shadows.
Before finally settling on Oliver.
He then found his voice once more.
And in a hushed tone revealed:
“But it has been said she can still be seen out wandering the nearby hills and woods. ‘A beautiful young temptress who casts spell over the hollow hearts of lovesick admirers, offering to them their gravest desires,’ so it has been said,” Caleb hushed grimly. “With lips of rosy hue, dipp’d five times over in ambrosial dew, she leads them toward destruction,’ so it has been said.”
Oliver began to feel a bit too warm.
The lightheadedness washing over him once more.
He blamed the brandy. The fire.
Wiped perspiration from his brow.
As Caleb continued staring at him.
Staring with those rheumy baleful eyes.
His pupils like large dark moons.
“Thus it became ordained,” he harangued in a stern voice, leaning forward now in his chair, hands clenched into tight bloodless fists, “that women on foot should henceforth follow men. If by chance a woman is seen walking before a man, whomever sees her must shout out instantly--"
The strawberry twins, having heard this dark fable many times before, quickly screamed the rejoinder in high-pitched unison:
“Tehi!! Tegi!!”
“Tehi!! Tegi!!”
Their unexpected outburst badly startled Oliver and Abby. After all, it was the first time they’d made any sound all night. Oliver pretended to keel over, playfully placing a hand to his chest.
Fay cackled good-naturedly.
And the strawberry twins giggled.
Hollow twittering little noises.
Oliver still felt the weight of that stiff jolt to the heart on the short drive back to the cottage later that evening with Abby.
They shared a glance in the darkness.
A soft glimmer flashed in her eyes.
And they found themselves laughing.
It felt good to laugh with his wife.
It felt good to share something.
It had felt too much recently like they were drifting from each other with their own terrible dark gray fog between them. Promising they might become lost to each other in such a fog. Their voices drifting, too, turning to echo, then to nothing at all until there was no hope they might find their way back to each other again.
But not tonight. Not tonight.
Tonight there was laughter.
10.
THE NAKED BULB hanging from the low ceiling rafters tilting downward above that old rickety staircase buzzed to life, throwing off its too-dim light that continued to struggle to push back the inky darkness inhabiting below. Oliver slowly descended down into the cellar, making certain he found each warped step beneath him to avoid any nasty tumbles as he lugged unpacked moving boxes under each arm Sunday morning, the thick cardboard boxes broken down and flattened, but still awkward and heavy. He approached the strange stone column against the far wall, hesitating in the darkness before the radius of the black boiler’s flickering red glow. Stood there and contemplated the faded runes and the moon depicted in its four stages cresting that giant thorn tree.
“Kooky, indeed,” he finally said, repeating Abby’s exasperated characterization of these Manx folks upon finding the Rowan cross on the double stable doors after removing the horseshoes.
With a grunt, he stacked the flattened cardboard boxes against the stone column, concealing the carvings on its stone blocks, hiding them from obvious view. Out of sight, out of mind.
Or so he wished to believe.
11.
ABBY BELIEVED SHE could just make out the pale outline of the sun beyond the blanket of fog Monday morning as she dolefully malingered in the bed long after Oliver had left for school. She found herself leaning toward what she believed to be that pale outline of sun as if she might still be able to seek out its coveted warmth through the intervening cold and wet. As if she might still be able to feel a subdued heat on her cool cheeks. But, in the end, she felt no such thing and grievously decided maybe it was not the sun at all -- but only a clever shadow having a game of her. A clever shadow producing only more cold and more wet.
Or maybe only a ghost moon.
Only a ghost moon at that.
She gradually rose from the bed, the mattress whining beneath her as if already lonely for her absence and the warped floorboards creaking beneath her bare feet, her bare feet managing to somehow locate each dimple and rumple and buckle and tiny raised nail head. She found herself thinking again of Brighton and that long pier and its own highway of thick wooden planks dimpled and rumpled and buckled by the corrosive salty sea air, long rusted nails pulling free of that rotti
ng and splintered wood, and one such rascally little nail catching at her stray shoelace and nearly sending her in a mad tumble over the railing and into the cold dark water below.
Oliver catching her arm.
His grip strong and sure.
Abby finding her feet once more.
A stick of cotton candy in her hand.
Its pink cloud still listing toward that railing.
Still listing toward that cold dark water.
Still tumbling off its long papery stick.
As if her very balance were still at risk.
As if she’d not actually been saved at all.
But, in fact, was still tumbling herself.
The cold dark water inevitable.
She drew in a deep breath. Collected her robe and slippers and warily proceeded toward the narrow staircase, ever-mindful of the ill-behaved tiny nail heads poking from the uneven floorboards.
She entered the short hall without incident, shuffling along the shadowed landing above the falling stairs. As she quietly considered the steeply descending rumpled risers with their own fiendish medley of tiny dislodging nail heads that might just very well attempt to reach out and grab at the dragging hemline of her robe, she passed by the spare bedroom doorway and briefly caught in the corner of her eye a rather lurid reflection in the large antique mirror.
A boy crouching in the corner.
The far corner of the empty bedroom.
Thin knees pushed to his chin.
A long muddy shirt and trousers.
Mud-caked hair hanging in his face.
Over large sunken black eyes.
Abby froze at the edge of the stairs.
Her breath wheezing out her lungs.
As if she’d been slugged in the gut.
Leaving her lungs dry sunken sacks.
If certain what she had just seen in that cold flat mirror glass inside that ornate silver frame featuring all those angelic cherubs on all those fluffy white clouds could only be a product of the warped glass itself and the resident bedroom shadows playfully preying on her overwrought imagination. Having a game of her, too.
Only that and nothing more.
Nothing crouching in that corner.
Muddy knees pushed to its chin.
Most silently watching her.
With large sunken black eyes.
And so, very slowly, each step an excruciating test of reluctant will, her starved lungs still deflated and suddenly very heavy, burning softly inside her narrow chest, she backed-up to that spare bedroom doorway and, enduring a palpitating tremor of horrible chills while forcing down a swallow of cold air into her flattened lungs, causing her head to swim, managed to compel herself to--
Peek past the bedroom threshold.
Only to find the far corner empty.
Most gratefully and gloriously empty.
Still, she forced herself back another step.
To better consider the antique mirror itself.
Its warped glass still black at this severe angle.
Black and once again unholily infinite.
But perhaps not empty. Perhaps not that.
Perhaps hiding something there after all.
Something grim. Something ancient.
She shook her head with the thought.
Kept moving. Defying her folly.
One final excruciating step back and the small bedroom finally swam into view inside the mirror glass. Lopsided. But still empty.
Still most gratefully and gloriously empty.
The mysterious muddy boy absent.
Relieved, if disconcerted, Abby pulled the bedroom door shut. Only to notice an old dusty brass key above the door jam.
She locked the bedroom door.
A loud clacking sound in the quiet.
A sound that seemed to echo forever.
Echo forever in the old bones of the cottage.
Later that night, Oliver sat at the kitchen table grading student papers after supper while Abby finished the dinner dishes. She was quiet again tonight and soon thereafter retired upstairs to bed. Oliver finished with the student papers. Then prepared the cottage for the night. Turning off the lights and whatnot. Tending to the fire in the wood stove. Before finally peeking at the cellar door. Attempting to do so ever so casually. It was closed and quiet tonight.
Sighing, he brushed his teeth and did his business at the toilet, then hiked up the stairs for bed only to pause on the landing.
The spare bedroom door was shut.
Or what Abby was calling the spare bedroom.
He found himself staring at it dumbly.
It had never been shut before.
Not that he could recall, anyway.
He blinked. Attempted to open it.
Only to discover it locked. That door.
He turned to the master bedroom.
Abby was burrowed in the bedsheets
“Why is this door locked?” he said.
“It’s rather a silly thing really,” she mumbled softly, eyes shut, pretending to already be half-asleep, feigning confusion. At least he suspected she was feigning it. “A draft, I suppose, from downstairs. While I was airing out the house earlier this morning.”
“It locked itself, then.”
“Hm. I’m still looking for the key.”
He climbed into the bed beside her and flicked off the bedside lamp, casting the room in complete darkness. Closed his eyes. Abby, meanwhile, opened her own eyes in the darkness and lay awake for a spell afterward and found herself staring silently past Oliver at that locked spare bedroom door across the short hall. Abby found herself staring at that locked door once again the following afternoon after thinking about it all morning while trying not to think about it at all. Sitting on the very edge of the bed, having finally just made it, the old brass key peeking out of her apron pocket.
Her right hand trembling ever so slightly, the disquieting sight of which caused her heart to flutter softly in her chest, she opened the nightstand drawer next to the bed -- revealing the murky brown prescription bottle. It sat beside a jewelry box and antacids.
She considered the brown bottle.
Filled with all those small orange pills.
Then shoved the drawer closed again.
It made an unexpected banging noise.
That drawer. Causing her to jump.
The bed moaning beneath her.
With determination, she rose and marched into the short hall. She fingered the key in her apron pocket before kneeling down and peering through the small keyhole in the spare bedroom door. But spied only dormant late afternoon shadows, nothing more, and was just about to rise again, relieved, frankly, when a shadowy shape suddenly scurried past her narrow field of vision, badly frightening her.
She fell backward with a humpf.
Fell hard onto her behind.
She sat there a beat.
Blinking rather furiously.
Breath coming in ragged bursts.
Head swimming once more.
The old stone cottage silent around her but for maybe the distant pounding of that sea surf against that jagged cliff.
She grimaced. Quite angrily.
Quite furious at herself certainly.
At her endlessly frayed nerves.
Her endless overactive imagination.
“Get a hold of yourself, you doltish halfwit,” she scolded herself. “Just a mouse, or maybe a wee person or two,” she said.
And forced herself to smile.
To smile at her own foolishness.
But could not bring herself to laugh.
That she found she could not do.
Instead, she stood and obstinately dug that old brass key from her apron pocket only to then struggle to fit the darn thing into the keyhole. The brass key and the keyhole seemingly in-cahoots, resisting her efforts as if quite unwilling to allow her to unlock the stupid door. She furiously pressed on and after several failed attempts the door lock finally disengaged with that loud clack
ing sound.
The door then swung open.
As if it were simply giving up.
Its hinges pitted with rust griping.
She quickly entered the spare bedroom and its long afternoon shadows before she might change her mind. Rather like one might just leap into a frigid body of water rather than inching in bit-by-bit and being forced to turn back by the deepening cold.
And it was cold, Abby thought.
Colder in this room than in the hall.
But maybe that wasn’t so mysterious.
Closed off from the heat of the wood stove.
The radiator perhaps a bit wonky in here.
Regardless, the room appeared empty.
But for all those latent shadows.
Still, standing in the middle of the bedroom, she found herself turning three hundred and eighty degrees to insure she was truly all alone, inspecting each dark corner and crevice before being terribly startled by her own reflection in the large idiotic mirror.
“For shit sakes, Abby!” she said.
Scolding herself a second time.
Those angelic-inspired, if, in the end, creepy-ass little cherubs on all those fluffy white clouds seemed to grin harder at her. As if mocking her while the cruel misshapen dark glass seemed to distort her reflection once more, causing that roundness of her belly.
Her pale hands fell there again now.
As if there were something there.
Something there to protect.
And she thought she could just hear that brethren of creepy-ass little cherubs laughing at her. Their small little eyes turned dark and their rosy little cheeks waxen as their small little mouths opened in derisive little jeers, exposing tiny sharp dagger-like teeth.
Or so she found herself imagining.
In that shadowed empty little bedroom.
Reflected in that ugly antique mirror.
With a cold rustle of wind gusting outside.
A cold rustle of wind that sounded--
Just a little too much like laughter in the end.
Or rather, giggles. Soft tittering giggles.
Abby took a deep breath. Exhaled slowly.
And gratefully heard that cold rustle of wind die out, revealed in that dirt-streaked double-hung window falling still. Appreciating it had been trembling ever so slightly with the sudden gust.
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