Compulsion

by Martina Boone

  Barrie closed her eyes and reopened them. The railing dug into her fingers, reminding her that she wasn’t dreaming. The flaking paint crumbled, and the splintered wood pricked her skin. She wasn’t dreaming. She wasn’t.

  So what, then? What was it? Ball lightning? A will-o’-the-wisp? Marsh gas igniting?

  The river was burning.

  Flames blanketed the water from the Watson side to the midpoint between Watson’s Landing and Beaufort Hall, as if an invisible wall kept the fire from burning all the way across. Both the flames and the unseen barrier ran upstream as far as Barrie could see, and downstream almost to the Colesworth dock, where the fire turned inland at the shallow creek and blazed toward the wooden bridge.

  Barrie jumped to her feet. She had to call someone. Alert the fire department. But there was no smoke. No burning smell. No sound of flames crackling in the quiet night. A hallucination, then? Too much excitement?

  Or too much Watson crazy.

  It was beautiful, whatever it was, and it compelled, impelled, Barrie closer. She tiptoed along the balcony. The old wood creaked, the sound impossibly loud in the stillness. Not that a hallucination would pay attention.

  And yet, it did.

  A shadowed figure of a man took shape where no one had been before. Lit by the flames on the river, he stood in three-quarter profile, and the sputtering ember, all that remained of the fireball, was cupped in his hands. A cloak of black feathers covered his back and shoulders, and a matching feathered headdress melded into his long, dark hair.

  He turned suddenly and looked at Barrie—straight into her—with eyes that were only lighter spots in a face painted with a war mask of black and red. Barrie felt the stare. Felt him searching inside her, weighing her the way Eight had weighed her earlier, though that was impossible.

  How could she see eyes, features, from this distance?

  She couldn’t breathe until the figure turned away. Then she blinked and he was gone, leaving only the burning river and the remaining wisps of the sphere hovering in the air.

  Her heart was a drumbeat in her throat, war drums pounding, pounding a retreat. The fire on the water shimmered, flared higher, then surged back toward the shore, converging where the figure had been and spooling itself into a dense, fiery ball. When the sphere was once more as bright and large as it had been when it started, the river was dark except for the drifting moonlight. The fireball hovered for another breathless moment, then floated slowly back into the Watson woods and wove itself between the trees.

  Whatever spell had held Barrie in place released her. She raced to the far end of the balcony, suddenly desperate to keep the fire in sight. But it moved deeper into the woods, illuminating the trees and underbrush, and creating illusions of eerily moving shadows as it passed.

  She rubbed her arms, leaning over the balcony and craning her head to keep the light in view. Eventually she lost sight of it. Or it vanished. Or the flames went out.

  Had it been there at all? Flames on the river. Under the water. Rushes in the marsh that glowed but never burned. A ghostly hallucination that reacted to her—interacted with her.

  She hurried back into her room and latched the door to the balcony behind herself, as if she could lock out the memory of the river on fire, shut out everything that had happened since Mark had made his cancerous announcement. It was all too much. She had to be going crazy. Maybe there was something in the air here that made people hallucinate.

  No wonder Lula had run away.

  Shivering despite the summer heat, she crawled into bed and huddled with the quilt wrapped around her, watching the river, waiting for the water to turn to fire again. The clock chimed one, then two, and the moon and stars cast the only light.

  She dreamed. The river and the marsh were burning, and Lula was screaming, running from the flames, always a few steps out of Barrie’s reach.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Waking up on West Coast time, Barrie’s eyes were gummy, and nightmares had left her brain feeling bruised. Her first thought was about caffeine. She needed coffee. Vats of it.

  Still in her sleep shirt and pajama shorts, she pushed through the swinging door into an empty kitchen. A plate of croissants, a basket of tea bags, a thermos of coffee, and a note from Pru waited on the counter:

  Hope you got some rest! Sorry about last night. I’m out in the garden. Come and find me when you’re ready.

  Barrie poured herself a cup and wandered out the back door. Dipping the croissant into the steaming coffee, she stopped at the railing to look out beyond the lower terrace at the river that had turned to fire at midnight, and at the woods where the flaming sphere had disappeared. The woods where Eight had told her not to go.

  Was that a coincidence?

  Not very likely.

  She searched the garden for her aunt. Spotting Pru by the fountain, she waved, staring with a puzzled frown at the enormous blue ceramic bowl Pru was lugging along. The bowl was so large, Pru had it braced against her hip.

  “Hello, Aunt Pru. Good morning!”

  Looking up, Pru paused. She beckoned for Barrie to come down, then took off the floppy wide-brimmed hat she was wearing and tossed it into the empty bowl.

  Barrie started down the stairs. She heard Eight before she saw him: the slap-slap of his flip-flops, the crunch of the gravel path, the song he whistled softly as he rounded the rosebushes at the corner of the house. There was no time to sprint back up to the kitchen and duck inside. Halfway down the steps, she stopped in all her pajama-clad, barefooted, bed-headed glory, and cringed as he saw her.

  He burst into a grin that made her feel like someone had hit her in the chest, and a returning click went off in her head. She scowled at him, wishing he would go away.

  His smile disappeared. “Hey. Whoa. What did I do?” He broke off a white rose from a bush by the stairs and waved it in the air. “White flag. Truce, all right?”

  “That’s a flower, not a flag.” Barrie glanced over at Pru, but her aunt had gone back to work. Deliberately, Barrie suspected.

  Eight bounded up the stairs and presented the rose with a flourish. “A peace offering, then.”

  No one had ever given Barrie a flower before. She took it gingerly. It smelled like moonlight: enigmatic and full of possibility.

  “What are you doing here so early?” she asked, trying not to stutter.

  “I thought we had a date for lunch.”

  “Yes, lunch.” She waved her croissant at him. “I’m just having breakfast.”

  Eight brushed that aside with a one-shouldered shrug and a grin that had probably given him whatever he wanted since before he’d sprouted teeth. “I thought I’d give you the grand tour of the island. We’re going to need an excuse to go out that Pru won’t question. On the other hand, we could skip seeing Cassie altogether and only do the tour.”

  He turned up the wattage on his grin, blinding Barrie until she almost found herself agreeing. It would be so much easier to agree than to argue. But going into town with Eight without a purpose . . . Going anywhere with Eight. For the first time the enormity of that sank in. It would be hard enough meeting her cousin on her own. The more Barrie thought about meeting Cassie, going into Watson’s Point at all, the more she wanted to lock herself in her bedroom and hide like Lula.

  There were so many ways in which a meeting with her cousin could go wrong. Cassie might hate her for being a Watson. Or just plain hate her. Cassie had grown up here, after all. She had friends here. Eight had said the whole town took sides in the Colesworth-Watson-Beaufort feud. Barrie could already picture walking down the hall on the first day of school while Cassie and her friends whispered together behind her back. And what if Pru found out Barrie had snuck off to meet Cassie on her first day in town? Pru would have every right to send her packing.

  “Of course I still want to go.” Barrie took a sip of cooling coffee to avoid the dissecting look Eight gave her. It reminded her of the way the figure by the river had watched her the night before. The
hallucination. It had to have been a hallucination. In daylight, it was easier to believe her mind had been playing tricks. She glanced up and caught Eight still watching her. “Would you stop looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Like you’re pulling my brain out through my skull.”

  He laughed, but then crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t make everyone happy all the time. You know that, right? And you shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting things of your own, separate from Pru.”

  “Would you stop making pronouncements about what you think I want? What is it with you?” Barrie turned and stomped up the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” he called after her.

  “To change. Do you mind?”

  “A little bit, yes. I’m not actually opposed to what you’re wearing now.”

  The note in his voice made her look back at him, and he ran a slow and pointed survey from her curls down to her bare legs and rainbow-painted toenails. His eyes laughed up at her. “You know what would make that outfit even better? You could add those purple shoes you were wearing yesterday.”

  Barrie’s face heated another ten degrees. “You’re a pig,” she said conversationally. “And just for that, I’ll let you figure out what to tell Pru about this grand tour you’re going to give me.”

  She hurried into the house before he could argue, but halfway up the stairs to the second floor, she tripped on a wobbly step and grabbed the banister before she remembered it was loose. She nearly went flying when it lurched. Her coffee did go flying. She barely saved the cup.

  The house was definitely out to get her.

  Puddles of milk-lightened coffee were slowly widening on the steps. Since no one else was around, she stripped off her pajama shorts to mop the spill. Then she sprinted the rest of the way to her room in her underwear, and put on a halter top, a clean pair of capris, and the shoes she had worn the day before. Her choice of shoes had nothing to do with Eight mentioning them. At all. They just happened to be her favorites.

  On her way out the door, she stopped to get her phone off the charger, but it wasn’t there. Or anywhere on the desk. Thinking maybe she had left it on the bed, Barrie patted down the quilt and then checked her purse, and searched the floor, the drawers, the armoire, the bathroom, and both her empty suitcases.

  She tried concentrating on the phone, picturing it and mentally reaching for it. That had never worked for her very well, but she’d seen Lula do it plenty of times. It didn’t surprise her when she felt nothing. She definitely hadn’t taken the phone downstairs this morning, though, and upstairs she hadn’t been anywhere except her room. Which meant the phone was lost, and if it was lost, and it was anywhere nearby, then she should have already felt the pull.

  That left only Pru. Why would Pru have taken her phone?

  More confused than ever, Barrie pushed the suitcases under the bed and out of sight, and stepped out into the corridor. Small tugs of loss came to her from behind several doors, including Pru’s bedroom at the end of the hall. She opened the door, then hesitated on the threshold, queasy at the idea of invading Pru’s space. On the other hand the room didn’t quite look like it belonged to Pru either, or to anyone. Nothing personal lay scattered on the dressers, no sign of individual taste. From the four-poster bed hung with white lace to the floral paintings on the walls, the bedroom could have been a guest room decorated a hundred years ago, or three hundred years ago.

  Reminding herself that Eight was waiting, she pushed her feet forward and followed a ping of finding pressure to the floor behind the nightstand. She found a gold earring and an aspirin tablet there. Two bobby pins, a ponytail holder, and three different kinds of buttons under Pru’s dresser also whispered for her attention. By themselves, they were all small things, but still it shocked her to find anything lost in Pru’s room.

  How could Pru sleep with loss all around her?

  Shaking her head, Barrie moved on to search the other bedrooms, and found a pen, a bookmark, and a pill bottle filled in 1969, along with a few more buttons. The closer she drew toward the staircase, the more she felt the aching waves emanating from the empty wing. Beads of sweat pricked on her lip. It made no sense that Pru could walk past a loss this powerful, day in and day out, without being compelled to lay it to rest. None of this made sense.

  Much later than she’d intended given that Eight was waiting, Barrie hurried downstairs and back outside. At the top of the terrace steps, she smoothed her shirt and pasted on a smile, ready to fake her way through whatever excuse he had concocted to explain their tour. But as she approached the fountain, she began to suspect her aunt hadn’t fallen for either his story or his charm.

  Pru knelt in a flower bed, decapitating wilted flowers with angry snips of her shears. Standing beside her, Eight was emphasizing whatever point he was making with his hands, his movements short and sharp. Pru shook her finger at him as she retorted. Barrie strained to hear what they were arguing about, but by the time she drew close enough, both Pru and Eight had seen her and fallen silent.

  Pushing back the floppy hat, Pru smiled a bit forlornly. “Eight says you two want to go into town. I had hoped you and I could talk this morning. Wouldn’t you like to stay here with me instead of having him drag you off before you’ve even gotten settled?”

  Barrie’s mouth opened to say, Of course, the way she had agreed to stay a thousand times when Lula had asked. Or ordered. Until this last year Barrie had always stayed. She’d spent her whole life feeling guilty every time she wanted to leave the house.

  That wasn’t the person she wanted to be anymore, and there was no point setting precedents she had no intention of keeping. She was seventeen. She wasn’t going to ask permission to go into town with Eight. Pru was the one who had gone to bed early and left her alone last night, Barrie’s first night at Watson’s Landing. If talking hadn’t been important to Pru then, it couldn’t be that important now.

  Raising her chin, Barrie made herself look Pru in the eye. “It wouldn’t be polite for me not to go when Eight is already here. We can catch up this afternoon, can’t we?”

  Her aunt’s reluctance warred with what Mark had always referred to as Lula’s “Southern upbringing”—but manners eventually won out.

  “I suppose we can,” Pru said. Rising, she dusted soil from knobby knees made vulnerable by the bandages Seven had applied. She stepped closer, intent as if she were going to say something. Instead she reached for the clasp of Barrie’s necklace and pulled it gently around to rest on the nape of Barrie’s neck, where it belonged. “But you be careful of yourself, sugar, and don’t be bothered by anything you hear in town. Folks around here are full of nonsense and superstition.”

  “All right.” Barrie made a mental note to ask Eight what Pru had meant.

  “You see you keep your promise, Eight Beaufort.” Pru spoke to him without taking her eyes from Barrie.

  “I will, Miss Pru.” Eight tugged at Barrie’s wrist, and leaned in to whisper into her ear: “Let’s go quick, before she changes her mind.”

  Barrie had to walk fast to keep up with him. “What did she mean? What promise?” she asked. “Oh, hold on. I forgot to ask her something.”

  “Did you decide to stay after all?” Pru was still standing at the edge of the flower bed when Barrie reached her.

  “You haven’t seen my phone anywhere, have you?” Barrie asked. “I thought I left it in my room, but it isn’t there.”

  Pru lowered the brim of her hat and turned toward the bushes. “No, I haven’t seen it. I’m sure it’s around here somewhere, though.”

  Barrie stood a moment waiting for Pru to say something else, then shrugged and hurried toward the front of the house. She tried to convince herself it was disappointment rather than anger that had strained her aunt’s voice. But clearly, she was going to have to walk a fine line between keeping Pru happy and having no social life. Still.

  Rounding the corner, she found Eight leaning against a sil
ver Mercedes convertible, looking almost as ornamental as the white peacock that was on Pru’s hood again with its tail fanned out. A pair of gray peahens pecking for worms on the lawn nearby seemed to be unimpressed by either male.

  Nerves fluttered in Barrie’s stomach. She climbed into the car. The temperature in full sun was already close to scorching, but the oak lane was cool and dim. Silver-lace tendrils of moss waved overhead as the car passed, as if the trees, like Pru, were reluctant to let Barrie go. It was a disquieting thought. She shifted in her seat to look back at the house.

  Someone—Pru?—had fixed the shutter that had hung crookedly beside the front door when Barrie had arrived the day before, but now a shutter on the other side had fallen off.

  “It’s dying, isn’t it?” Barrie winced at her melodramatic word choice, but it felt all too accurate. The house was beginning to feel like a person to her, a personality. A presence.

  “What’s dying?”

  “Watson’s Landing. I don’t—” She stopped herself mid-sentence.

  “Don’t what?” Eight prompted.

  She had started to say she didn’t understand how money could be a problem for any Watson. Eight wouldn’t understand, though, and she didn’t want to try explaining. He had never been exposed to Lula’s glares, or Mark’s fussing. He didn’t know about the finding gift. As far as Eight knew, Barrie was normal.

  Normal.

  What an exhilarating, freeing thought. Here on Watson Island, Barrie was a blank canvas. She could color in the rest of her life in any way she wanted. When Eight stopped at the end of the lane, she hopped out of the car feeling light enough to float. But dropping back into the passenger seat on the other side of the gate, the strange ache she had felt when she’d first arrived on the island pressed against her temples.

  Eight eased the car out onto the road. “Was the gate unlocked all night?” he asked. “It was open when I got here.”