“Here we are,” he said, reaching across to open her door, then walking around the car to meet her.
He led her down a steep stairway, past a large house on the left. The stairs continued downward, steeper as they descended. He took her arm.
“What is this place?”
“Hammond Castle,” he said.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, she glanced to her right, catching her first glimpse of the Gothic structure. She stopped short. It was an image she’d seen for years in a recurring dream. She knew what was beyond the doors: the great hall with its rose window and the huge organ that echoed so loudly it made her cry. She’d always assumed the vision had originated in the fairy tales Rose read to her each night, stories of gods and goddesses and kings and battles.
She dropped Paul’s arm.
“Callie? Is something wrong?”
“I’ve been here,” she whispered.
“Oh,” he said, sounding disappointed. “Well, we can go back. The castle is closed for the season anyway. It won’t open for tourists again until April.”
“I’m confused,” she said. “Why are we here?”
“I didn’t actually bring you here to see the castle. I brought you here to see something else. But if you’ve already been—”
“We don’t have to leave,” Callie said to him. “I’m just having déjà vu.” She smiled, regaining her composure. “Show me what you brought me here to see.”
Paul turned left, away from the castle, leading her down into a courtyard with tall stone archways, each framing a stunning expanse of ocean. He took her arm again and turned right, directing her down more steps until they were on the lawn in front of the great house. It was the same green patch she’d envisioned earlier on Emily’s liver, the same brown spot as well, which she now recognized as a dry patch in the middle of the sloping lawn. Beyond it lay the shadowy object she’d tried so hard to focus on in her treatment of Emily, something she now realized was a small island of rocks a few hundred feet out.
“That’s Norman’s Woe,” Paul said, pointing to the rocks. “Where twenty died on a schooner called Favorite, when it ran aground in a terrible storm with a woman lashed to a piece of the wreckage.”
“ ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus,’ ” she said, relieved. “You mentioned it the other night.” The lines of the Longfellow poem that Rose had recited so often came back to her. She flattened her palms against each other in front of her waist, left hand fingers facing right and right hand fingers facing left, one up and one down, just as Rose had taught her to do, and began to recite, with old-fashioned pauses and inflections:
“The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe.”
“I didn’t know you were an elocutionist as well as a ventriloquist,” Paul said, amused.
“I told you I was talented,” she said, offering a little curtsy as Rose always insisted she do after a recitation.
“Very polished. Any other talents I don’t know about?” He grinned.
“You’ll just have to wait and see,” she replied and smiled back.
She took a long look at the rock that had become so famous. “It’s smaller than I imagined,” she admitted. Once, on a day when she particularly missed her mother and Rose, Callie had looked up the poem. She’d discovered that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had taken some liberties with the victim, changing her from an older woman to the captain’s beautiful young daughter. She had been tied to the mast of the ship in an effort to keep her from drowning, but her ending had been even more tragic. When the girl was found, she was frozen to death and still tethered. “It’s difficult to imagine a ship running aground there,” Callie said.
“Don’t be fooled. It’s treacherous. The reef is submerged. At least twenty ships have run aground on these rocks, going all the way back to 1630. One of the first Puritan ships went down there, which is an epic story in itself. And then there are the suicides.”
“Suicides?”
“A number of them. Marta Hathorne’s father, among others. Jumped right into the churn.”
“Marta Hathorne’s father—” The way Paul had put it sounded a bit cold.
“You’ve got to see this,” he said, changing the subject and hurrying her to the other side of the castle, across the great lawn and onto a granite ledge. They climbed out as far as they could, then sat down on the rocks. She realized it was the same perspective on the view she had seen during her meditation with Emily. She felt relieved at being able to place it. Things often happened to her this way, occurring out of time sequence. It wasn’t just things that people were about to say, it was images, too; she saw things in visions before they happened in real time. She thought of it as a kind of reverse déjà vu. Over the years, she’d become fairly accustomed to this oddity.
They sat on the rocks for a long time. The sun was hypnotic. Callie watched for a while, then, still unable to see the treacherous reef below the surface, she looked at the sky, watching the tiny puffs of clouds moving slowly from west to east, letting the warmth settle in. She could feel herself beginning to doze, and she didn’t fight it.
“And who might you be, little girl?” A woman in red was standing over her, leaning down. She wore a beaded mask.
Callie was standing in the middle of the castle’s ballroom. Organ music reverberated from the adjoining hall, and the high ceiling echoed the sound, giving the room a churchlike ambience that stood in stark contrast to the masked and costumed partiers who filled the room. “I’m Alice in Wonderland,” Callie said.
“Do you know who I am?” The woman’s hair was multicolored: gold, blue, and several shades of red. “I know you,” she said.
“The Queen of Hearts?” Callie asked, hoping she was wrong. That was who Leah was planning to dress as, and she wouldn’t be happy to see her costume taken by someone else. Callie looked around. Leah was nowhere in sight.
“No, not the Queen of Hearts, but that’s a very good guess. Come closer and I’ll give you a hint.” The red woman pulled a hand mirror out of her bag. “Mirror, mirror on the wall…Can you finish that one?”
“Who’s the fairest of them all?”
“That’s right. Now you know who I am.”
“The Wicked Queen,” Callie said.
“I have another name,” the Wicked Queen said. “Can you guess it?”
“You’re not nice,” Callie said, remembering all the renditions of “Snow White” that Rose had read to her, from Grimm to the original Celtic version, called “Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree.” The fairy tale never ended well for the Wicked Queen. Why would anyone choose to be her?
“I can be nice.” The Wicked Queen laughed. “As long as you’re not Snow White.”
“I’m not Snow White! I told you already, I’m Alice!”
“So you are,” the Wicked Queen said, leaning down and offering a sniff from her chalice. It smelled like licorice, Callie’s favorite candy.
Callie sniffed. “Is it poison?” she asked, remembering the poisoned apple.
“Of a sort.” The Wicked Queen laughed. “But it’s a good poison. It’s called the Green Fairy.”
“I like fairies,” Callie said. Rose sometimes told her stories of fairies in Ireland. Callie leaned in, trying to take a sip, but the Wicked Queen pulled the chalice away.
“She’s five years old, for God’s sake!” said her mother, rushing over to grab the chalice as Callie reached for it.
“I could repeat that right back to you, Olivia,” the Wicked Queen said. “What are you thinking, bringing your child to a party like this?”
“We’re leaving,” Olivia said.
“Not yet,” said Cheryl the Dormouse, who seem
ed to simply appear. She spoke quietly so the Wicked Queen wouldn’t hear. “We have to meet him first. And I have the car.”
“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date,” Susan, the March Hare, sang with excitement. She, too, just seemed to appear out of nowhere.
The Wicked Queen shot her a disapproving look.
“We’re late to meet Rose,” Olivia reminded her friends.
“Rose can wait,” Cheryl said. “This won’t take all night.”
“It might,” Susan said, loudly, knowing the Queen was listening. She giggled. “I mean, if he’s anything like last time.”
“It has to be all of us together,” Olivia said. “And Leah isn’t here.”
“Just because Leah did something stupid doesn’t mean we all have to suffer.”
“There are rules,” the Dormouse said. “And Leah broke them first.”
“Rose told us to stop.”
“Well, Rose isn’t here, either,” the Dormouse said. “And she’s kicking us out of her house tomorrow, so she no longer has any say in the matter. She’s not our mother.”
The Dormouse started upstairs and the March Hare followed, calling over her shoulder to the Wicked Queen, “Maybe you’d like to join us?” And then she said, “Oh no, I forgot, that would never work. Dad just wants us.”
“Don’t do this,” the Wicked Queen said. “Think about the child for a change.”
The two disappeared, and Olivia lifted Callie and took her into an adjoining but empty hall. She placed her on a chair that felt like a throne. “Stay here,” she ordered, “and don’t move. Don’t talk to anyone. And for God’s sake, don’t drink anything!”
Before Callie had a chance to speak, Olivia disappeared up the stairs to find the others.
Callie stared through the glass door to the front lawn, where a group of guests had gathered. It was a moonless night, and Callie couldn’t tell land from sea. The chair was hard and hurt her back. Someone began to play chords on an organ. The sounds were ugly and too loud. They hurt her ears. Tears came to her eyes, but she sat mute and obedient, her hands over her ears. Had her mother left her? The chair seemed larger now and growing taller. The organ had eyes and an enormous scowling mouth. Its pipes had become teeth.
Callie climbed down from the chair and started for the stairway, passing other guests as she moved. As she entered the great room once more, she saw the Wicked Queen talking to another woman in a similar red costume. Leah was crying, and ranting, and choking on tears. The Wicked Queen was trying to comfort her.
The Wicked Queen spotted Callie. Leah did, too.
Her eyes were wild. “Where are they?” Leah demanded. She was angrier than anyone Callie had ever seen. “Tell me where they went!”
Callie pointed to the stairs.
Leah started up the stairs and Callie made to follow.
“Stay down here with me,” the Wicked Queen said, smiling sweetly. Callie shook her head and followed Leah.
The stairs were steep, and Callie had to move slowly. When she finally reached the landing, the corridor was long and dark and every door was closed. She walked slowly, pausing to listen. At the last door, she heard their raised voices crying and Leah shouting accusations. It was scary out in the hallway. She could hear the Wicked Queen and her friends’ voices echoing up the stairs.
She pushed open the door, and the shouting rushed into the hallway.
“You betrayed me!” Leah yelled at the girls. They were all there: Cheryl, Susan, and Olivia. In the center of the room was a bed surrounded by red velvet curtains. The man on the bed was trying to calm Leah, who had stopped yelling and was now sobbing. “Dad,” Leah begged. “Dad, please.” She went silent when she saw Callie, then fled the room, revealing the full profile of the man on the bed. Callie stared at him: She had never seen a naked man. Then she looked past him and saw Susan, who was naked as well, the White Rabbit costume at her feet, her pale skin sparkling in the candlelight. The man stared at Callie, freezing her in place.
Then, slowly, wickedly, he smiled.
The blood started slowly, dripping down the walls in thin ribbons of scarlet. It thickened, surrounding everyone, and the ribbons turned to waves, spreading across the room, pooling at the feet of the White Rabbit. The only one untouched was the man on the bed. Cheryl tried in vain to cast a circle, spinning clockwise and pointing with her index finger, quickly pulling Callie inside its protective barrier. But it didn’t stop what was happening, and the blood kept coming.
“What are you doing?” Olivia demanded.
“Binding,” Cheryl said. “For protection.”
“It’s too late for that now,” Olivia said.
The blood rose higher and higher, and still the man kept smiling his Cheshire cat grin. Callie tried to run, but his blue eyes held her in place. She recognized them immediately. They were Paul Whiting’s eyes.
Callie screamed and jolted back to consciousness.
Paul was leaning over her. She gasped, scrambling out from under him.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I think you were having a nightmare.”
It was no mistake. His eyes were the same eyes she’d seen in her dream.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said again, now alarmed. “Your eyes were open. I couldn’t tell if you were awake or asleep.”
She stood up, willing herself to let go of the horrible images, but they were impossible to shake. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she said, backing away from him.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, confused.
Try as she might to think of a rational explanation, she was at a loss. All she wanted was to get away from him as quickly as possible. She was both frightened and embarrassed. There was no way to hide it.
They didn’t speak as they hurried back to his car.
“I’m sorry I brought you here,” he said as they drove away. “It was Ann’s idea. She told me there was something that she thought you needed to see.”
“Excuse me?”
“Last night. Ann said she’d had a vision. That I needed to bring you to see Norman’s Woe.”
Callie didn’t reply. She wasn’t scared anymore. Now she was angry.
They drove back to Pride’s Heart in silence. Callie was out of the car and heading for the butler’s pantry door before Paul turned off the engine. As she was reaching for the door handle, she saw Marta at the sink, holding one of the crystal glasses from yesterday’s dinner and looking at it curiously, then, as if deciding something, she smashed it on the side of the sink, jumping back as it shattered, as if immediately regretting her impulsivity. She pulled a small splinter of glass from her palm, and a tiny trickle of red ran down her fingers.
Blood. Callie forced her eyes shut against the image she’d seen on the wall of the castle, an image that was now forming on the pantry wall. When she opened her eyes, the image was gone.
“What was that?” Finn’s voice echoed from the kitchen.
“I broke one of Emily’s glasses.” Marta seemed at once surprised and worried.
Finn came into the room. “Are you okay?” He looked at the shattered pieces first, then examined her hands. “You’ve cut yourself.”
“I’m okay,” she answered, pulling her hands back, then turning to see Callie framed by the doorway, not moving, her face pale. “But she’s not…Callie, what’s the matter?”
Callie looked around. “Did Towner come back?”
“They’re not coming back,” Marta said. “Has something happened? Where’s Paul?”
“I’m right here,” Paul said, catching up.
“What’s going on?” Finn asked his son.
“I have to get back to Salem,” Callie said. “Does anyone know when the next train runs?”
Finn looked at Paul, waiting for him to offer. When Paul said nothing, he said, “My son, of course, will drive you.” He was looking at Paul curiously. “Won’t you, Paul?”
“Of course,” Paul answered flatly.
&
nbsp; It was the last thing either of them wanted. But Callie had already made a scene. She went upstairs and gathered her belongings, her hands shaking as she quickly stuffed everything into the overnight bag. At the last moment she looked around the room for the packet of herbs, wondering if she had really thrown them into the fire or if that, too, was part of this nightmare she seemed to have been experiencing since she arrived. It was nowhere to be found.
She carried her bag down the stairs, and Paul put it in the trunk. This time he didn’t go around to open the door for her, nor did he reach across to help with the seat belt. They sat in the driveway in strained silence for a long time before he started the engine.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
Paul turned the radio on, raising the volume and erasing any possibility of further conversation. John Hammond’s cover of Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen” was playing. She closed her eyes, letting the music consume her, as they sped south. The air was cooling. She tried to relax, to let go of the earlier memory, but it was impossible.
Leah. She hadn’t known the answer when Rafferty asked the question, but she knew it now…Leah had definitely been in deep with whatever her mother and the two other goddesses were doing.
She remembered the red dress Leah was wearing as the Queen of Hearts, part of the Alice story they were all playing out that night. Callie shivered as she remembered the last view of her mother, Susan, and Cheryl, lying at the bottom of the crevasse, those same fanciful costumes soaked with blood. She’d spotted her mother’s Mad Hatter top hat first, then she’d seen the bodies.
Callie forced herself to breathe, feeling the chill of the deep blue waters of Salem Sound reaching ever eastward in the icy Atlantic.
That there is a Devil is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influences of the Devil.
—COTTON MATHER, On Witchcraft
Rafferty pulled the cruiser into his driveway and parked. The graffiti that had been sprayed on the oak tree was still visible, bleeding through the paint Towner had used to cover it. He got out of the car feeling as if he’d worked a double.
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