“My chosen one.”
Regardless of the rumor of heresy, mother ran her business--a bookshop in the heart of town. Summer was a lucrative time, when tourists arrived and found delightful historical accounts of the haunted estate that stood near the lighthouse known as Byrne’s Keep. The stories recounted a tragic family history of mysterious deaths, an age-old curse, and over exaggerated the existence of several ghosts that were said to walk the stormy cliff at nightfall. Between the profits from mother’s shop and the life insurance left to them after her father’s passing, Olivia had gone to college, securing a degree in art history. Now she was home again with a certificate in hand and a broken heart in her chest. Uncertain as to what she would do with her future, she was content to spend summer with her family, to heal, and think and dream, tend a newly planted garden, walk the beach, and collect shells, as she had done as a girl.
“Closer.”
A peculiar sensation of arousal filtered through her gut. Merely seconds, and then the heat washed away. Memories. Her body was reminding her that the little girl was gone. “Even witches who are cursed need to be held,” she said.
“Yes.”
Olivia lifted her gaze from the shore to study the abandoned home high on the cliff. Byrne’s Keep. Built mostly of stone it resembled the Bavarian castle it was meant to imitate. Even a turret on one side with slit windows stood guard over the steepest side of the rocky crag. Once there had been stained glass windows brought from Europe, crafted by people who believed the mythological images could protect the inhabitants from the fury of evil spells. In the hundred or so years it had remained empty, venturesome children had dared each other to sneak close and throw rocks through the innocent panes, an act that reduced hours of passionate labor and beauty into shredded pieces of colored glass. Despite the desecration the building clung to its nobility as firmly as it clung to the earth beneath its foundations.
Sometimes, when Gran was feeling particularly reminiscent, she would share stories of the home’s history, and Olivia would hang onto every word for these stories excited her imagination and sense of romance; the two seemed intricately interlocked as far as Olivia was concerned. Gran didn’t often talk about the Keep because she said it was soulless, and that hinted mystery without romance faded in shadows. Regardless, when Gran did feel the need to talk, Olivia listened, barely even breathing so immense was her attention.
“Born for me.”
It had been her great-great grandfather, Henry Byrne, who saw the first stone erected. A retired English sea captain, he started the home for his German bride, Anna Von Der Weilde. It was their only son, Horace, who saw its completion in 1864. Tragedy seemed to follow these men of the sea. Henry was said to die of a broken heart when his wife fell fatally into the hands of fever on her fortieth birthday. Horace was swept into the ocean and drowned on a summer’s night by a wave that appeared out of nowhere, like liquid fingers dragging him into a deep watery grave. The legend of the family curse was born of these tragic events, crystallizing in the minds of the locals in Beacon’s Bay when Jonathan Byrne, intent on building ships rather than mastering them on the waves like his father and grandfather, returned to England to work for the then prestigious White Star Line. He was meant to return on the company’s crowning glory, Titanic. April 1912 saw another Byrne bride a widow. Mythical creatures on delicately stained glass seemed impotent against what fate deemed for those who chose to live within such cold hard walls. The few times Gran spoke of the Keep, she would pull her chair closer to the fire and blink grief from misty eyes. Perhaps it was soulless after all.
The stately home held no such sorrow for Olivia. Romance and intrigue wove a gold thread through its historical tapestry, a thread she now felt oddly compelled to begin unraveling. Providence was urging her on.
Olivia had promised Gran she would never explore the empty rooms. Often, as a girl, Olivia’s curiosity would lure her close, but she honored her promise and never ventured inside. Gran believed in the fierceness of a curse because of the evil within the heart that issued it. And the curse, she said, breathed as they breathed and must never be roused from sleep. Nothing pleased her more than to see the building remain empty. “If no soul enters,” she told Olivia once, “then no soul can be harmed.”
The motive of such fanciful tales, Olivia believed, was to keep her more from physical harm than for want of losing her soul. No longer a child she could certainly explore the inside, discriminating which floorboard was safe, or which stone was preparing to crumble. The concession didn’t take long to convince her to climb through the shrubs on the one slanting hill that led to the estate. Before long she was on the edge of the slope, the very place which once had felt the wheels of carriages and vibrated with drumming hooves of the noble steeds that pulled them.
“Yes. Come to me--now. Hurry!”
A rose garden gone wild from seasons of negligence had snuck through cracks in broken stone steps. The enforced wooden doors held tight to hinges that creaked protest as Olivia guardedly pressed the brass handle and regardless of how carefully she stepped, her presence echoed through the cheerless foyer. Void of life, the memory of an era long gone dotted the entrance--broken picture frame, shattered blue Oriental vase and a coat rack that held nothing but a tattered drapery of silver cobwebs. As Olivia sunk deeper inside the grand hallway, she was delightfully surprised to find the interior amazingly intact. Dry leaves carpeted the stone floor, blown in by the sea air, but the blocks were strong and the bare walls free from decay.
Sunlight streamed through into the rooms to her left where once her ancestors would sit to watch the day end over the sea beyond the cliff. She wondered if Byrne women would take their places here and sew, waiting for the return of men who chose to challenge the ocean with bold creations and then weep upon learning that arrogance had a price to be paid. A long bench beneath one casement held one stitched cushion, damp and moldy from intrusive salt spray. As Olivia peered from the glassless window, she saw the fishing boat finally glide from sight around the curve toward the town’s sheltered bay.
Shadows prevented her from inspecting the darkened rooms on the right. Instead she climbed the wide staircase, pausing on the landing to glance warily over one shoulder. A chill had fluttered down her back, as though unfaltering eyes secretly watched her exploration. Nothing stirred. She wrapped her shawl tightly around her arms and proceeded to the next floor.
The line of wooden doors was locked with the exception of one, what she assumed must have been the master bedroom within the turret. The rounded inside wall contained thin windows that overlooked the sharpest precipice, and she smiled to the imaginative image of medieval knights pulling their arrows in defense of the fortress. A grate stood guard against a cold fireplace. Its mantle was carved with openmouthed cherubs, each writhing to escape the impending claws of golden birds of prey, frozen within the moment of capture. An oval oak table, the center leg branching out at the bottom, three feet, its talons embedded into the wood stood against one wall. On the nicked surface was one candlestick, colored wax over the rim the only evidence of use. Olivia paused to wonder why vandals hadn’t long since taken such a treasure. Certainly a collector would pay much for such a beautiful piece of antiquity. But then, Olivia mused, a building could have a soul and this one still whispered a prevailing essence. “You know me, don’t you?” she said to the walls. “You know I am one of your own.”
“My own.”
The frame of a four-poster bed lay in ruins. It failed to stand up against the elements of nature that had crept with time through the window, or perhaps hands had torn it asunder to light a fire. Yet a trunk, solid and firm, sat unmolested in one corner. A beam of light from the quickly setting sun cast a direct glow on its brass enforcements and Olivia knelt, certain the blackened lock would hold fast. Her heart beat double time when the top succumbed to her tug. She gasped aloud with delight upon finding the contents.
A gown laid neatly folded, white now yellow. She dared n
ot lift it, thinking any movement might cause it to instantly disintegrate. A Bible with leather binding peeked out from beneath the material. One pearl earring was partially hidden by the curled paper that lined the trunk. And another book with no title seemed to call for her attention. She scooped it up and sat on the floor, turning the cover with tender care.
“Amelia Anne Byrne. The year of our Lord, 1912.”
The pages of the diary were surprisingly sturdy. Olivia took exceptional care in turning the pages, however, as the corners were brown with age. Each page began with a date and a short Biblical quote.
“February 12th. God is good. Jonathan has been gone only three days and the loneliness of this place fills me with unspeakable sadness. I have only now stopped weeping, praying my fears are unwarranted. Such selfishness! For his joy in returning to the Old Country radiated throughout these rooms as brilliantly as the beam from any lighthouse. Yet I cannot but fear for his safety in voyage. Soon he approaches his fortieth year and my soul darkens to the prospect. I have no other choice than to believe in the power of my prayers over that of a malicious birthmark. Arthur, bless him, is a comfort to me. He is well and a happy boy. Tomorrow we celebrate his twelve years of life. I must remember God’s blessings, not dwell on the evil of this curse that courses through our blood.”
Olivia paused, taking a deep breath. Arthur Byrne was the grandfather she never knew. He died on February 13, 1940,as a result of a car accident. She felt her brow furrow. It seemed that the hallmark of fortieth birthdays was a difficult hurdle for certain members of the family--an odd coincidence that Gran had alluded to as a curse. Usually Olivia would shirk off the assessment of curses with an apathetic shrug, but sitting here in this quiet room that once echoed with the sounds of life and dedicated foreboding, she shivered. The authoress of this small book certainly believed in curses.
Turning the pages of web-like handwriting she found the page that congealed belief in evil. “April 13th. He is the Light of the world. My prayers have been cried in vain. Jonathan is lost to a watery grave with hundreds of other innocent souls. The Great Ship is gone and it took my beloved away from me.”
Olivia shut the small diary through shock alone. “It can’t be true,” she whispered. Her fingers trembled with the evidence within her hand. Henry Byrne’s wife died of fever at forty, Horace drowned at forty, Jonathan aboard Titanic at forty, her grandfather at forty behind the wheel of a car. It had to be a cruel coincidence. The peculiar deaths had stopped there, hadn’t they? Gran was in her seventies and mother had recently turned forty-three. True, her father had died too soon, but he was nearing fifty when cancer battled supreme within his body. She clasped the diary to her breast and blinked, realizing the shadows within the room were lengthening and that she was growing weary.
“I must go,” she said to no one except the walls, and prepared to stand.
“Olivia. Please stay.”
The voice was firm. Clear.
Instinctively Olivia crouched, darting quick penetrating glances between the door and the window. “Who’s there?” she called out, despite the constricting dry knot in her in throat. Her only answer was a short high pierced whistle--one diminutive gust of wind attempting thoroughfare in a shattered flue.
The wind. It had been teasing her all afternoon. Perhaps that was all she had heard now, nature’s lips accidentally forming syllables she mistakenly understood as language. Her senses had been keenly heightened by this nonsense of curses, and oddities within these bleak rooms had taken vitality only because her flare for imagination was overactive. But what if it wasn’t? What if a spirit, stirred by her beating heart, had risen from the cold to seek out her existence? Unwittingly she had trapped herself--the cliff and ocean beneath the window, and dark blue holes of nothingness along the home’s long passageways--one means of escape seemed as fatal as the other.
“Who’s there?” she repeated, bravely this time. Slowly she had risen and found that without commanding them her feet moved, carrying her trembling frame toward the bedroom door.
The hall was still, and by far blacker than when she had arrived. A dim hue on the landing was the light she aimed for, and with a gulp of torpid air she dashed, narrowly averting disaster, gripping the railing to foil a trip over one heel. Her wrist twisted, and she stopped momentarily at the bottom step to nurse her pride while scolding irrational fears. “Now look what you’ve done to yourself, foolish girl,” she chided. Regardless, urgency continued to demand she head for the main entrance and leave without apology for haste.
“Oh,” she sighed, adding stupidity to her list of self-abomination. “The diary!” She had left the book on the floor, beside the trunk. She wanted to keep that diary and argued fiercely with her fears about returning to the upstairs chamber to retrieve it. After all, she had spent a lifetime shrugging off stories veiled in nonsense--“curses indeed!”--and here she was, fleeing from what she had continually announced as inscrutable.
Stiffening her shoulders she walked calmly back up the stairway. Clinging to defiance, she shot icy glares into the shadows, almost daring what lingered there to step forth and present itself. Nothing did. Even so, her confidence was fragile. Nervous tremors beyond her control shivered fine hairs on her arms to attention.
“I shall not be outdone,” she said, finding assurance in brave words spoken with poise. To conquer this misgiving would certainly reflect bravery to those challenges that awaited her in the future, whatever form they took. Suddenly, retrieving the diary had become a sincere mission in cementing self-confidence. To reinstate her resolve she actually slowed her step.
“There now,” she exclaimed, reaching the top step. “Nothing to fear but fear itself.” But as she circled to the bedroom a movement outside the window caused her to shriek.
She clasped her thrashing breast, weakening in the knees. Then she smiled in embarrassment. An owl shifted its weight from one leg to the other on the window railing, bobbing its head, huge eyes seemingly wondering why it had startled her so badly. And as Olivia collected her dented senses, it continued to study her.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “I wasn’t expecting your company.”
It nodded and shifted again, long claws wrapped around the metal railing. She expected it to spread wide wings and flap away, but when it stayed, she felt she needed to explain. “The diary belonged to my great-grandmother,” she said. Odd, how the presence of another beating heart soothed her trepidation in this lonely place. Odder still how the majestic creature swiveled its head to gaze exactly to where the book lay on the floor. A warm flood of communion washed through Olivia’s chest. Obviously a coincidence, but she continued to speak to the feathered acquaintance as though it could comprehend her every word. As though in return it might offer empathy.
She moved quietly along the edge of the room, not wanting to frighten the owl. “Seems there is a history in my family of broken hearts. I’m certain that the diary will illuminate a few dark secrets.” She smiled at this. Not only was it silly to be admitting the possibility of a blight on her family tree, but she was also revealing such secrets to a bird.
Olivia knelt and picked up the diary, holding it against her breast under folded arms. The owl waited and watched. They looked at each other for a moment. It leaned forward and, so certain was she it was preparing to speak, she too leaned with expectancy. A ruffling of feathers was the only communication.
Suddenly she was acutely aware of her femininity. Internal muscles constricted, her nipples became tender, and a short bolt of ecstasy ricocheted throughout her body, lessening in intensity as it dulled. She clasped the diary, feeling confused, embarrassed.
“You are truly a noble and handsome creature,” she said, an urgency to leave now. “I must go. Time for me to be getting home.” She started off abruptly, thinking this might cause the bird to do the same, but it stayed. She felt the saucer-wide eyes continue to stare, not only at her, but also through her. Reaching the door she turned. “Thank you,” she said
without knowing why.
As her steps faded away and the heavy door clanked shut, the owl shifted once more. Expanded wings narrowed and grew long, talons stretched and molded into feet beneath heavy legs, and the wide eyes narrowed, forming lids over brown pupils. Feathers manifested into heavy black hair that flowed over shoulders of flesh and muscle and bone. “Olivia,” the now human lips whispered as the massive bulk of the man stood erect in the empty room. “Olivia, my own,” he whispered. “This is your home.”
Chapter Two
“I’m late,” Mother issued as she tipped her breakfast plate and coffee mug into the kitchen sink. She whirled round to Olivia. “Ollie, would you check on Gran? She had a restless night I’m afraid, and I don’t have time to take her tea.”
“She’s not sick, is she?” Olivia asked with concern. There had been incidents that had worried mother. Gran had become wobbly on her feet, falling for no apparent reason, dark bruises forming on her thin arm or fragile hip as a result. Worse still she had become forgetful--leaving a tap running, or losing a thought in the middle of a sentence--troubling mother when she was at the shop. More than once she said it was a relief to know Olivia would be close by to keep a watchful eye.
“No,” Mother sighed. “Not sick--upset. It’s my fault, I suppose. Word has it that the Keep has been sold and Gran’s not happy about the prospect.”
“Sold?” Olivia blinked. “Who in their right mind would buy the Keep?”
Mother picked up her purse and pressed a kiss into Olivia’s forehead. “Anyone who is grotesquely rich doesn’t have to be in their right mind.”
“But....” She faltered, trying to come to grips with what fate might hold for the treasured old building. It had become a landmark and part of its mystique was that it remained hollow. For someone to buy the property meant change--renovation--or even worse, demolition. “But ... why?”
The Sorcerers Mark Page 2