J. G. Passarella - Wendy Ward 01

by Wither

  She looked up at him, concerned. “I don’t remember,” she said finally, finding it easier to lie. For in fact she did remember, if not the name then certainly the face. The particulars had evaporated in daylight, but the man’s hard, flinty face remained, seared like a phosphor-flash afterimage on her retinas…

  Her accuser.

  “Let me guess,” Art speculated later that evening, as he and Karen and his brother Paul lingered over coffee on the front porch of 131 Lore. “You’re teaching Seven Gables again. Couple that with ”new parent anxiety.“ What you have is a recipe for a nightmare in the shape of seventeenth-century Windale.” The sun had just slipped beyond the western rim of the world, setting ablaze the century-old textile mills that loomed there in stark relief against the smoldering sky. Night was coming on from the east, bringing with its first scatter of stars an early rumor of winter. If Halloween had a smell-and it did, to those inclined to remember it—then tonight smelled prematurely of that holiday, still a long month away.

  “I hope that’s all it is,” Karen murmured absently.

  Paul lit a cigarette and aimed his smoke out at the night, away from the porch. “So what are you gonna do now that they rejected your dissertation?” he asked Art.

  “I don’t know. I’m appealing the board’s decision, but it’s probably a lost cause.”

  Paul nodded once. “You could always come work with me?”

  A beat of surprise, and Art gave an involuntary laugh. “Working for you, you mean—”

  “Hear me out, I’ve been giving this some thought,” Paul said, raising a hand. “With you on board, we could go after some of the choice historic renovation projects in Essex County. You’ve been researching this town’s history for the past fourteen years, Art. Right now I’m just Paul Leeson, General Contractor. We team up, suddenly we’re Leeson Brothers, Preservationists.”

  Art smiled, touched. Even as a kid Paul had always tried to remedy any and all family disharmony. “We’d be more convincing if I had my PhD,” Art said, which was the only way that occurred to him at the moment to sidestep his brother’s offer without hurting his feelings.

  Karen said, “Why don’t you come up with a new dissertation topic? One that salvages as much of your existing research as possible, but gives it a sexier spin?”

  “Sexier how?”

  She gave Art a pitying look. “You’re really clueless about academia, aren’t you?” He flashed her a helpless look, and she gave him a crash course: “Okay. Who chairs the history department? Leigh Himes. She’s pretty well known in her field, actually—Danfield’s lucky to have gotten her. She’s published pioneering social histories of women during the Industrial Revolution and the Second World War. Now take a look at the faculty who’ve been granted tenure since she took over as chair,” Karen said and began ticking them off on her fingers: “Weber, Getty, Olsen. What do they have in common?”

  “They’re all women…,” Art said.

  “Wait a minute,” Paul said, looking surprised. “Is that legal?”

  Karen shot him an amused look and said simply, “We’ve come a long way, baby.” She turned back to Art. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting Leigh Himes has been denying any male faculty advancement solely on the basis of gender. After all, she hired two new adjunct professors this year, and approved tenure for a third-all men. But it’s naive to ignore the fact that Danfield’s history department has become a feminist enclave. If you think that’s unfair, you can go apply to another program with a bias more to your liking. Or, you can put a spin on your research that will appeal to the current Powers That Be.”

  “You mean like, ”Women of the Textile Mills of Essex County“?”

  Karen stood, began gathering their empty coffee mugs^and dessert dishes. “I would think you could recycle whole chapters of your old dissertation.”

  Art was getting excited now. “Christ, it’s all there already! I’d have to do a little more research, of course, and probably a year’s worth of writing, but…”

  “You’re welcome,” Karen said, opening the screen door with her elbow and carrying the ceramic mugs inside.

  “Let me help you with those,” Art said, following Karen through the screen door. He gestured for his brother to stay. “Finish your cigarette. I’ll help with the dishes.”

  Inside, Art joined Karen at the kitchen sink, drying the dishes she handed him. He talked excitedly for the next ten minutes about how he could recast his dissertation. He realized she was only half-listening. She’d slipped away again into her own dark thoughts and was washing each dish mechanically, scrubbing it long past clean. Lost in the rush of the tap, the slosh of water.

  Art watched her furtively, taking advantage of her inattention. She was wearing a light wool cardigan, and each time her sweatered shoulder brushed against his he experienced an almost static electric charge. Their soapy hands touched as they exchanged a plate. He knew Karen was aware of his “crush” on her, which had first bloomed in high school, and he was pretty sure she was flattered. That’s what had kept it innocent all these years, and somehow permissible. It was a secret they maintained together, like a balloon kept sweetly aloft on the thermals of mutual affection. Only in Art’s blackest periods, and in close quarters moments like this, did it become nearly unbearable.

  “Do you want to talk about these dreams you’re having?” Art said now, paying special care not to drop the porcelain creamer he was attempting to dry.

  “It’s okay, Art,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. You know, just random neurons firing. Or some side effect of all the hormones you’ve got sloshing through your—”

  He noticed then that she was crying, silently. He stood helpless, drying his hands so he could put an arm around her shaking shoulder. The tears stopped coming, but he still felt a tremor shiver through her as she pressed herself against the edge of the sink.

  “I’m afraid, Art,” she said, her voice blurry with tears. She was trying to be quiet, so Paul wouldn’t hear. “Something’s wrong… with the baby… I don’t know what exactly…”

  “Have you talked to your doctor? What does Paul say?”

  “They think I’m paranoid. That I’m just stressing because I’m having a baby at thirty-eight”

  “Are you?” he asked gently.

  “No. Not any more than any pushing-forty mother-to-be would. And all the early tests show the baby is normal.” She nodded in the direction of the ultrasound stuck by a magnet to the refrigerator door. She snatched a paper towel from the dispenser over the sink, blotted her eyes. “I just have this terrible feeling, like a sixth sense.” She wadded the paper towel into a ball, angry at herself for crying.

  Art’s arm was still around her. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt that he was here with his arm around Karen while Paul was outside, but that was quickly replaced by a deeper satisfaction that he could somehow provide a comfort his brother could not.

  Karen was looking at the windows above the sink, which had darkened to the point that they’d become mirrors of the kitchen. They reflected back at her the haunted image of her own face, missing its eyes.

  “Something’s wrong,” Karen said, as much to herself as Art. “Something’s wrong with my baby, and my dreams are trying to tell me.”

  Night. The woods rustled quietly, the trees whispering to one another as if afraid to wake the child sleeping in their midst Sleeping sweetly upon a bed of moss and composted leaves, with a gravestone for her headboard. Abby dreamed…

  She is Sarah Hutchins and stands across a long table from her husband.

  Roland Hutchins is much older, but powerfully built through his shoulder and arms. He is eating meat off a wooden trencher with his hands. He struggles to get comfortable in his banister-back chair, but it creaks beneath him with each movement. He curses, stands, and kicks the chair across the room. “Useless!” he shouts, then glares at her, and it is apparent he’s not commenting on just the chair.<
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  Sarah says nothing. Instead she looks down to avoid his angry eyes.

  He sits at the long bench, moving his meal and tankard of beer with him. He chews his last piece of meat lustily, then wipes his hands on a linen napkin. “More meat” he says, breaking off a hunk of bread from a loaf in the middle of the table. “Too hard? he mutters with a disgusted shake of his head. He washes down the bread with a mouthful of beer. ”You are a failure as a wife. Wheres my meat, woman?“

  She hurries to the stew pot in the center of the table, attempts to ladle more meat onto the trencher, but her hand is trembling. His eyes glare into her, and she shudders, splashing hot gravy on his hand. His face goes white in an instant. Her hand recoils from her mistake … and the back of her hand spills the tankard of beer across the table.

  She gasps, hands pressed to her face, fingers splayed across her mouth. “I beg… I beg forgiveness, husband.”

  “Can you do NOTHING right!”

  He is rising from the bench, shaking hot gravy from his large hand. She stands on the other side of the table, unable to move. “I pray forgiveness…”

  He comes slowly around the table, his face a leering mask. As he flashes a wicked smile, she drops the ladle at her feet. He enjoys her fear as much as his power over her. “I am done forgiving” he says, “fourteen years old and never learn the simplest of lessons.”

  She wants to run, to hide, to huddle in a corner. Her legs tremble, but her feet seem glued to the floor. She cannot move.

  He is now on her side of the table, towering over her, the stink of his sweat an overpowering odor. He shows her the gravy on his hand. “See that?” he asks her. She gulps, nods quickly, acknowledging her mistake, but it will do no good. There will be no clemency. His arm is a blur as he backhands her across the face with his soiled hand. She crumples to the floor, her hand clamping over her cheek, now smeared with his gravy and the blood from her split lip.

  He reaches down, clamps his hand around her upper arm and lifts her to her feet. Too unsteady to stand on her own, she merely sags against him, silent tears trickling down her face, if she sobs it will be worse, much worse.

  (Asleep on the grave, Abby whimpers softly, pulling her arm from an invisible grip.)

  He shakes his head again, looking at her coldly. “Perhaps a good beating will remind you of your duties!” he bellows.

  Just then, a knock. Three quick raps on the keeping room door.

  “Who comes at this hour-”“ Roland asks, his voice uncertain. He stands and faces the door and the dark he knows waits beyond. Behind him, Sarah scrambles to her feet, brushing at her petticoat.

  The flames in the wall sconces gutter. An unseen hand moves the door latch and the door swings inward. She stands there, cloaked in shadows, but her face is pale and her eyes reflect the candlelight and blaze toward him.

  “I would speak with your kind wife.”

  Roland stands slack-jawed before her, the fire of his rage snuffed out Sarah notices his hands twitch slightly as he says, “G-good evening, Widow Wither.”

  Wither says…

  “… Good evening,” Wendy said, snapping awake from her sitting position on the floor. Disoriented. She looked around, realized she had been leaning against the wall of New Age wisdom, the concentric swirls of the mandalas above looking like a hypnotist’s tools. The Crystal Path, of course. She had been, ahem, working.

  “Who are you talking to?” Alissa asked, standing over her with a curious smile.

  “I think I zoned out there for a minute.” Wendy rubbed her face, sighed heavily. She stood, listened to her joints creaking and cracking in protest.

  “Zoned out?” Alissa asked with a knowing smile.

  “All right, busted,” Wendy said with a sheepish grin. “I dozed off for a minute or two. Honestly, I don’t know why you even bother to pay me at the end of the week.”

  Alissa massaged her shoulders. “You’re still adjusting to your new schedule: college life, employment, and piles of homework. Give yourself time to adjust. But you must get your sleep, Gwendolyn. Sleep is essential.”

  “I do sleep,” Wendy said. She looked down. Somehow she had managed to shelve all the new books before nodding off. “But when I sleep I dream and …” She shuddered. “I have these nightmares.” She walked toward the front of the store, subconsciously walking away from her problems perhaps, or at least the discussion of them.

  Alissa followed, relentless as usual. “What sort of dreams? Showing up in class naked? Taking a test you forgot to study for? Being chased, but you’re legs won’t move fast enough?”

  “It’s a little more involved than that,” Wendy said.

  “Those are anxiety dreams. Consciously you’re worrying about something while, behind the scenes, your mind is trying to work it out.”

  “I’m always worried about something,” Wendy said with a quirk of her lips. “These dreams aren’t even about me, they’re about some other person, like I’m looking through her eyes…”

  The door chimes tinkled and a curly blond strolled into the store, taking in the inventory with one wide sweeping gaze.

  “Frankie, what are you doing here?” Wendy asked.

  “I never forget a promise,” Frankie said. “And I promised to look this place up some night so that I could torment you at your place of employment.”

  “I think our dear Gwendolyn has quite enough tormenting her,” Alissa said, looking at Wendy. She missed Frankie mouthing “Gwendolyn?” with her eyebrows arched impressively high. “I’m Alissa,” Wendy’s boss said.

  “Pleasure to meet you—cool store!” Frankie replied.

  “Thank you,” Alissa said, then turned back to Wendy. “So let’s hear about these dreams.”

  “Um, it’s always about the late seventeenth century, I think,” Wendy said. “Puritans.”

  Frankie looked knowingly at Alissa, “You see, it figures. Talk about male-dominated oppression of women. You go back a few centuries and forget about it! We’re talking about that now in my Founding Mothers class.”

  Ignoring Frankie’s commentary for the most part, Wendy sat down on the stool behind the cash register. “It feels like I’m dreaming about events that really happened back then,” Wendy said. “In Windale.”

  “This town certainly has a long history,” Alissa said. “Maybe your college studies are filtering into your subconscious and giving you historical nightmares. What’s happening in the dreams?”

  Wendy frowned at her and said, “Sometimes I’m flying over Windale, how it must have looked back then, houses made of squared timbers, a commons where livestock graze, a meeting house and church.”

  “Flying dreams?” Frankie said, “You’re talking sexual repression there, sister.” Alissa frowned at her and Frankie closed her mouth abruptly, making a key and lock gesture in front of her mouth.

  “And … there’s this feeling of darkness and… fear in the town. I feel like I’m watching over it, but I’m not afraid. I’m just watching and there’s this sense of… purpose, of manipulation, like I might be the cause of the fear. I don’t know. Does that make any sense?”

  Frankie and Alissa were staring at her, but she just shook her head, unwilling to say more. Alissa spoke first. “I still think these are anxiety dreams, Wendy. In Windale, an interest in witchcraft, in white magic, isn’t all that unusual, considering our town’s heritage. But now that you are in college, you may be feeling the pressure of being different a little more strongly now.”

  “Maybe,” Wendy conceded.

  “One bit of advice,” Alissa added. “No meditation. When you’re dealing with negativity and self-image problems, avoid meditation. It has a way of concentrating the bad stuff. What you need is action, a way to work out those feelings without dwelling upon them. Or, you might consider aromatherapy. I can give you the card of a good aromatherapist. She’s a sweet little lady, and a good aromatherapy massage might be just the thing.”

  “Thanks,” Wendy said. “I’ll think about it
.” But already Wendy was thinking along other lines.

  “Anyway, I’ll go in back and leave you two alone,” Alissa said, padding softly toward the back of the store, her skirt the merest whisper of fabric.

  Wendy grabbed the duster and came out from behind the cash register. “Follow me,” Wendy said. “Nothing looks sadder than dusty crystal balls.”

  Frankie looked around conspiratorially “So, Wendy are you still planning on doing your… ceremony thing, out in the woods.”

  “Why not?” Wendy asked defensively.

  “I don’t know,” Frankie said. “I’d be creeped out, after having those dreams, that’s all. I mean, sitting bare-ass naked out in the woods, alone at night.” She shivered.

  “That’s a very small part of it, actually,” Wendy said. “Just how did you get into this…wicca stuff, anyway?”

  “Being born and raised in Windale can do strange things to an impressionable young girl. But what really hooked me was this time in high school…”

  A field trip. It was a science experiment where you made a ring out of a wire clothes hanger and tossed it like a Frisbee. You walked to where it landed and sketched whatever fell inside the boundaries of the ring. The idea was to identify whatever you happened to find by chance. But Wendy was getting bored with the plain old grass and rocks she kept finding within her ring. So she ventured far from the main group, deep into the surrounding woods, and found a small clearing that had an air of mystery about it. Wendy’s hanger ricocheted off an ash tree, landing within a clump of red and white toadstools.

  She noted the tree and made her sketches. Later, her teacher identified the toadstools she’d drawn as fly agaric and told her that witches were said to use the hallucinogenic toadstools as an ingredient in the body grease that enabled them to fly. The hallucinogenic property might explain a lot of the myths. From her later reading, Wendy discovered that these witches made their broomsticks from the wood of ash trees.

  “And that led me to Alissa and this store, where I’ve since spent entirely too much money. I became an employee for the discounts, otherwise I’d be penniless.”