“I am making rules,” Anne stated. “Everyone needs rules. It is very important. You will both follow them.”
“Anne, where did you get that paper?” Gwyneth asked.
“I tore it from a book.”
“That isn’t the way we treat books is it?”
“See? Rules are very important. But these are for you, not for me,” Anne continued.
Anne knelt on the attic floorboards. She liked being close to the floor. It smelled like toast.
She read the rules aloud as she wrote them.
“Ghost Rules: by Anne,” she began. Her old-fashioned pen scratched across the paper.
“Rule number one: Ghosts cannot go through an unopened door. If a door is closed, they cannot open it.
“Rule number two: Ghosts will never travel outside of the parameters of Witch House property.” She stopped.
“Gwen? Is it perimeters or parameters?”
Gwyneth was annoyed. “In this context? In this context I would say either,” she grumbled.
“Okay … and rule number three: Ghosts will always come when I call, so I know where they are.”
“Little Anne?” asked Gwyneth.
“What?”
“How can we come when you call if you shut the door when you leave?”
Anne tapped her pen on her chin, thinking.
“Well, I won’t need to call you if I know where you are.”
“I see,” Gwen said quietly.
“I don’t want to be locked up anywhere, Anne. It’s not fair,” whined Ava.
“Fine. I’ll cross out number one. But if I need you and I call you and you don’t come, I get to re-in … re-in…”
“Reinstate,” said Gwen.
“Reinstate, yes … I get to reinstate it.”
“Agreed.”
Anne sealed the document with a dramatic flair. She took a pin from a nearby dress form and pricked her finger, blotting each rule with her blood.
Finally satisfied, a tired Anne climbed into the cupola to survey her kingdom as the sun set. It had been a busy day. She had gained and lost a friend, created a set of rules that would contain the friends who remained, and even heard kind words from Lucy.
From the cupola, she had a 360-degree view of everything. She spread out her arms and spun slowly, taking in the view. Persimmon Point, the ocean, the Haven House ruins, the ponies. All of it bathed in sun shadows as the night caught up with the day and tried to keep it hostage in pink clouds. But the sunshine slipped away, as it always does, and Anne remembered that the night was lovely, too.
Fall would slip by, winter wouldn’t last long, and summer would come early as it always seemed to do. Then the fireflies … To Anne, they were stars that fell from the sky. She would go outside at night and run with them. Jumping and chasing, but never truly trying to catch them. Gwyneth once suggested she put them in a jar. Anne was horrified. Cage them? They were stars! Magic from the sky. She could never do such a thing. That realization was like a message: Gwyneth and Ava shouldn’t be caged either. They were her stars in her very own sky. She’d have to apologize for even thinking of it.
Summer was Anne’s magic time. She felt her strongest, and yet her most fragile, during the summer. She felt human. She especially loved late summer and always would, even when the smells of the high grasses and overripe fruit, bursting tomatoes, and overgrown herbs made her remember the day she began to hate the world.
21
Jude in the Ruins with Himself
1952
It happened slowly, the love she fell into. She hadn’t paid much attention to Jude. He’d played with her a little bit when he first came home, but then got new friends. It didn’t matter that he was her cousin. She tried not to think of Aunt Lavinia or that bungalow at all, because then she thought of her father—she didn’t like to do that. It hurt something inside her, made her throat tight.
Besides, he was older, after all. Which is why she was surprised when he called out to her from his window in the spring following what Anne now called “The Fiona Fiasco.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re pretty, Anne?” he asked.
Then he started walking her back and forth to school.
When school let out for the summer, he’d walk her to and from town.’
“Don’t want any more of that ‘Crazy Anne’ nonsense.”
There wasn’t any taunting when Jude was with her, because he scared people. And she liked that.
She felt something deep and visceral when he looked at her. No one else paid any attention to her. Dominic had left for school, Lucy was in a constant state of oblivion, and Nan, well, Nan was just plain busy. Busy with the garden, busy with cooking and cleaning and church functions and never forgetting her all-encompassing worry over Lucy. She spent hours saying novenas for her mentally ill and godless child. So Anne felt privileged that Jude—a teenage boy!—would single her out. And his face! Everyone agreed he was beautiful. All the girls in Haven Port had crushes on him until they realized he had no interest in them whatsoever, which could have, should have, been the first warning sign.
He’d hang on the kitchen garden gate looking like some kind of Roman god, chiseled and illuminated from within. So light and fair, with blond hair, blue eyes, freckles. So easy to look at. Easy like the sun. Anne forgave him for being related to Gavin.
Jude began to sit behind her at church, saying funny things just to make her laugh. He left her presents, little trinkets of affection, things he noticed she liked. And once again, Anne couldn’t believe that someone had noticed her in that way. She had suddenly become visible.
One day in late summer he walked by the wall while she was reading up in her pine tree. He startled her, which startled her all the more because she was always the one sneaking up on people. “Can I come up there?” he asked.
“Do what you want,” said Anne. He came in through the gate and was perched next to her in no time at all. “What are you, a monkey?” she laughed.
He grinned. “No. Last time I looked, I was a Jude. You want some of my apple?”
“No, thanks,” said Anne.
“Suit yourself.… Anyway, I know we’re cousins, Anne. But, I want you to know, I like you. And I’d like to spend more time with you. Like, go on adventures and things like that. Friends. Good friends.”
“You like me?”
“Does that surprise you?” Jude asked.
Anne put her book in her lap and looked at this teenage boy sitting across from her. She squinted her eyes; she was suspicious, but intrigued. “Well, I am younger than you. I’m sure there are a lot of older girls who’d like to be your friend.”
“Well, I did think of that, but I have done a lot of watching, Anne, and I have decided that you are more interesting than any other girl in the whole wide world.”
“You are watching me?”
“I watch people.” He shrugged.
“Me, too.”
“So, do you want to spend more time together?” He very gently looped his finger between her turned-down ankle sock and her skin. Anne was again startled.
“I guess?”
“Well then…” He paused, pulling on one of her braids and then curling the end in his fingers. “You have to do me a favor.” He threw the apple core on the ground. Anne wondered if he would pick it up or leave it there. Maybe a tree would grow and she could call it Jude.
“Hey, you!” He pulled her braid again. “You dreamin’? I said you have to do me a favor.”
“Okay … what?”
“Well, this might sound strange, but I think you’ll know what I am talking about. I feel something around you, Annie, something fearful. It scares me. You might say I have a special gift … the gift of sight … and I see you are in great danger.” He looked deeply at her. His pretended seriousness made her want to laugh, but in case he really was serious, she didn’t.
“Anyway, I don’t know what it is, but there is something about you that draws me to you, and something that pus
hes me away. Can you understand that? You to need to figure that out, and when you do…” He dropped his body in one graceful swoop down to the ground. He looked back up at her, shielding the sun from his eyes, “you let me know. Then, we can have an adventure.”
Jude knew a little about monsters. And he didn’t know what it was, but his instinct told him that if he wanted to get close to this girl who was so different from all the others—a challenge of sorts—he would have to take a chance.
And Anne, well, she knew a little bit about ghosts. She knew certain people could sense them, could almost smell them, around her. It was funny that he thought they were some sort of danger to her, but she wanted him. So she would have to put the ghosts away and see what happened.
She went to the attic later that night and gathered her ghosts, pushing the thoughts of jars and fireflies out of her mind.
* * *
See Anne, so small for her age; see her holding Ava’s hand as they walk across the moonlit field to the gardener’s cottage. See Gwyneth walking behind her, happy to be out in the night, happy to be outside. Twirling her white dress around in the high grass … touching the overgrown sage flowers that spring up everywhere this time of year, and smelling her ghost hands. Gwyneth missed being alive.
* * *
Anne opened the door of the cottage and shoved the ghosts in. “This is your new home! What do you think? Okay, you go to sleep. I will come and visit all the time.”
“Little Anne,” Gwyneth whispered, “Why are you doing this? Why are you putting us away? You promised you wouldn’t.”
“I made a friend. I made a friend, and he is afraid of you.” Anne shuffled her feet, looking hard at the floor.
“Maybe,” Gwyneth’s voice began in Anne’s mind, “Maybe you should be afraid of him.…”
“Show. Me. Sleeping!” Anne demanded, with a stomp of her foot to emphasize the word sleeping. She stomped it so hard her knee sock fell down. Gwyneth put her hand over Ava’s face, turning it into a pale and empty place. Ava was still. Then she waved her hand in front of her own face, leaving a blank void as well.
They were sleeping. Anne left the cottage but wanted to cry. This is why I have to put them away, she thought. I’m too close to them. I miss them all the time and I count on them. I have to learn not to love them. Maybe they aren’t even real.
She walked back toward the Witch House chanting quietly, “They aren’t even real, they aren’t even real. They aren’t even real.”
The next Sunday she passed him a note in church.
Dear Jude,
I put them away. I don’t even know if they are real.
Anne
Jude had no idea what she meant by “put them away,” but he could already sense a difference in her. She was more vulnerable. And that was just how he wanted her.
The next afternoon, he was at the Kitchen garden gate.
“Hey, can I come in?” Before Anne could answer, the gate was unlatched. He hopped on it, swinging his tall lanky body into the yard. The gate complained on its hinges, as the breeze ruffled his hair. Nan yelled something in Italian out of the back window.
“Hi, Nan! Just wanted Annie here to take me for a walk and show me where those wild raspberries are. My mom wants to make some turnovers for the church bake sale.”
Silence hung in the air for a second. Nan stared at him for a moment. Then she looked at her Anne. Anne was smiling. She had a feeling about this boy. Something in her gut. He’d always made Nan nervous, the way he watched watched watched. But what harm could it really do, he was a big boy, and what would he want with her Anna? She was only eleven years old and looking no older than eight. And besides, she was smiling, such a rare occurrence, it made her look almost pretty.
“Okay, be safe. Tell your mama to let those turnovers sit out overnight. It’s the only way to get the raspberry flavor into the crust. You’ll tell her?”
“Will do, Nan! Come on, girl, let’s go on an adventure. A raspberry adventure!” He held out his large freckled hand and Anne—who touched no one but ghosts on a regular basis—put her small pale hand into his. He had called her Annie.… This must be love. They walked through the backyard and then through the vegetable garden. “They are back there,” she said, “by the juniper pines. It’s kind of a long walk.”
“Shoot, I can see the property line from here. Come on, let’s run.” And with that, he was off over the fence and through the meadow. Anne hesitated, but only for a moment. She quickly unlatched the garden gate and began to run after him, toward him, toward love, toward feeling, toward freedom. He waited for her on the old foundation. “This place must have been amazing!”
“It was magnificent.” She was a little out of breath. “Our house was built from its pieces.”
“Amazing,” he said, then added, “I guess we get the raspberries now.…”
“I guess so.…”
Jude took her hand in his and began to lead. Then he stopped; he stopped to look at her, he had to look down, so far down. His voice changed, got thick. “You are so beautiful, do you know that?” Anne wanted to swoon—maybe he would kiss her? A part of her wanted him to kiss her, and a part of her was afraid. He was so much older. Jude leaned in, put both hands firmly on her shoulders and pushed her hard onto the ground.
The fall knocked the wind out of her. And Anne knew. She knew what was happening. And she had no way out, no way home, and no one to hear her call out but the ghosts.
She lay there and made her mind go away. This isn’t real. Nothing is real. I’m not real.
When it was over she was bleeding, but there were no other marks on her.
“Clean yourself up before you go home,” he ordered. She tried to move but could not. “I am going out that way”—he pointed to the forest—“and I am going to cut around so Nan doesn’t see me. You get back to the house quick and tell Nan we got a lot of berries. And no telling or I will kill your Nan, just see if I don’t. And I will tell the priest you seduced me. And he will believe me because everyone knows you’re crazy.”
In her heart she knew he was right. He looked down at her for a moment with a look that began to scare her in a place deep inside her mind that she was not used to visiting; he was thinking about killing her.
“You should do it,” she said.
“Do what?”
“You should kill me. It would be the smart thing to do. Don’t think I don’t know you’re thinking about it. I won’t stop you.”
“I know you won’t. Because you’re brave. That’s why I won’t kill you. I only kill the weak ones. But trust me, after time, you may get weak, and when you do? I’ll come hunting.”
“Maybe I’m dead already.”
“You know, Anne, I was lying when I told you I wanted to be your friend. But now … well, I’m starting to think it’s a swell idea. We should make this a habit,” he said, sneering slightly before he strode away whistling. Anne thought he looked a bit like a deranged Huckleberry Finn. It took a long time for him to reach the tree line where he then disappeared into the pines.
After he was gone, she got up and tucked her clothes under her arm. Everything hurt, but she managed to make it to the cottage where her ghosts waited to comfort her. “Let us out love,” they whispered. “Let us out and we will help you.” Gwyneth and Ava’s words echoed in her head as they swirled around her in distress. Anne put her hands over her ears and cried out, “No! Maybe he will stop, and maybe he will be my friend. I don’t care what he did. He thinks I’m brave, and I want him to be my friend!” And with that she left the cozy safety of the cottage, pulling the door shut tight behind her.
When she made it back to the blue-and-white house, she took a bath. In the tub, she undid her braids. She didn’t need them anymore. She tried to comb out her hair, but it was wet and tangled, so she gave up. Anne wouldn’t wear braids any longer. Her hair remained matted and hung thick and heavy down her back. A tangled black halo now encircled her head at all times.
But there
would not be a friendship with Jude. And he would not hurt her again.
Two days after Fiona MacPhee went missing from the farmers’ market after church, an anonymous tip led the police to a warehouse by the river. They found her just barely alive, tied up on a dirty mattress in the basement. The authorities took Jude away and locked him up. That was that. It was over and Jude was gone. Fiona survived but was never quite right. Anne thought about her once in a while and wondered why she couldn’t just “get on with it.” Shitty things just happen sometimes.
22
William on the Playground with the Truth
1952
What Anne didn’t know was that as Jude attacked her, a boy named William was watching. He watched through the trees. He’d been swimming and decided to take a shortcut through the Witch House estate. He kept very quiet. He knew what this was. He lived it, too. So though Anne didn’t know it, the moment she lost herself and her body to violence, she gained a soulmate and lifelong friend.
William and Anne were schoolmates but never quite knew each other because they were too busy watching everyone else around them. The only difference was that Anne was watching everyone with distrust and a touch of hate, while William was watching them with distrust and an abundance of love.
One day at the beginning of the new school year during recess, he finally got up the courage to approach her. She was on a swing, and there was one open next to her; it was kismet. They swung next to each other without speaking until he cleared his throat, clenched tight with terror, and said, “I saw you and Jude.”
“So what.” She knew instantly what he meant, and she wouldn’t be bullied.
She didn’t look up; just kept on swinging slowly and letting her feet drag on the ground.
“You gonna tell?” he asked.
“No, you?”
“No.” There was a long silence between them. They were trying to figure each other out.
“Happens to me all the time,” William said in a nonchalant voice that attempted levity.
They looked at each other then, deeply, knowingly, and a smile broke out across Anne’s face. Soon they were falling from the swings and rolling around on the blacktop in their uniforms, laughing until they cried and their sides hurt and Sister Mary Frances had to yell at them to stop.
The Witch House of Persimmon Point Page 15