Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385)

by Jerome, Celia

  She grabbed the flowers and bobbed her head. “That’s what I get for trying to be nice to some people.”

  She got the flowers; I got Deni knowing where I lived. Damn.

  I tried to explain that I didn’t want to encourage strangers to call at my door or annoy my neighbors, but Mrs. Abbottini didn’t hear me. She didn’t try to. She stepped closer and peered at my face.

  “What’s that on your lip? You’re too young to grow a mustache.”

  A mustache? I ran to the mirror over Mrs. Abbottini’s couch, figuring I hadn’t wiped all the dried blood away. No blood, but little red raised blisters. I rubbed the area, then realized I had the same spots on my itchy fingers.

  “I’ve been scrubbing at that spot to mop up the nosebleed, that’s all, and scouring my hands. My skin is irritated, I guess, like diaper rash.”

  She backed away. “I never heard of a bloody nose causing any kind of rash. Could be desert fever.”

  “I don’t have a fever, haven’t been near a desert, and never heard of such a thing.”

  “Well, I saw it on the news. Those poor soldiers coming back with scrambled brains and dramatic syndromes and desert flu. And no jobs.”

  “That’s from bombs and traumatic stress and the economy.”

  “Could be a virus.”

  Mrs. Abbottini tottered away to get antibacterial soap, spray germ killer, and alcohol to wipe the doorknob. “Can’t afford the flu at my age.”

  “I don’t have the flu. And I am not contagious.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Auto impunity, I bet, when your body turns on itself.”

  “It’s nothing! Go back to your ball game. Enjoy the flowers.”

  “I’ll make chicken soup. You’ll feel better.”

  How could I feel better when I had the printout of my butchered drawing and the worry that Deni’d be waiting at my front door every time I went out?

  “No, we can’t go for a walk,” I told Little Red, back in my own apartment. “Use your papers. It’s raining and you don’t like it out there anyway.”

  Little Red didn’t like much, including the carrier I had to use to sneak him in and out of the apartment, the noise and traffic of the streets, the other dogs we passed everywhere, being left alone, or lied to. My shoes didn’t smell of rain, my jeans weren’t wet. So he raised his leg on the portfolio I put down.

  “Bad dog!”

  The Pomeranian could be as selectively deaf as my neighbor. He went back to the couch and curled into a furry red ball with his plume of a tail wrapped around his nose like a squirrel, content he’d made his point.

  We had to work on his attitude.

  When I got the paper towels and disinfectant spray, I noticed the answering machine light flashing. If that little bitch called once more, I’d—

  The phone rang before I could check the messages. I stomped over to it, ready to do battle. “Hello,” I snarled.

  “Uh, this is Sandy, from DCP. We wanted to know if you were all right.”

  That deflated my anger. “I’m fine, thanks. Just a nosebleed. They say once you get one, they come in clusters. Weakened blood vessels or something. It’s real nice of you to care, though.”

  “Well, Don worried you wouldn’t be able to add the mermaid to the cover.”

  I should have known. “Tell him the cover is fine the way it is. There is no mermaid in the book and there’s not going to be one on the front. You ask him if he wants to be sued for false advertising, bait and switch tactics, or bad taste. I’m going to put my head back now so I don’t get another bloody nose. Thanks for calling.”

  The first message was from my father. “I really need to talk to you about my friend, but Lucille and I are going to a cooking class before dinner, so I won’t be home long after golf. Tomorrow, okay? Oh, and watch out for that singer. I heard him again this morning. Love you.”

  The second message was also from Dad. “I forgot. Watch out for mustangs too.”

  Mustangs? My horse-whisperer friend, Ty Farrington, rescued wild horses, but he hadn’t called in weeks, and not many mustangs ran around Manhattan. Or Paumanok Harbor . . . yet. Ty and his foundation were working to establish a horse ranch on the old Bayview property there, but they hadn’t moved any animals in so far. Ty would never be a danger to me, either.

  And I doubt many singing cowboys had Irish accents.

  I filed the warnings away for when I had less on my mind, like adult acne, stressed skin, or Deni on my doorstep.

  She had to be stopped. I went to my laptop, signed on, deleted her from my Friends list, blocked her IMs, and sent a short email. YOU HAVE GONE BEYOND THE LINE. MY PERSONAL LIFE IS PRIVATE. MY ARTWORK IS LEGALLY PROTECTED. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM CONTACTING ME IN THE FUTURE.

  So there.

  Next I sent a message to Matt. I knew he’d still be at the vet clinic, so I didn’t want to call or text his cell. Besides, I didn’t want to hear him make some lame excuse for not coming into the city this weekend again. Cat scratch fever, my ass. If he could claim that, I could say I had the desert flu. And too much work.

  So there.

  What I had was a rash I didn’t want anyone to see. I signed off with love and misses, which were true.

  No sooner had I sent off the email to Matt than the new message dinger dang. BITCH. I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS. YOU’LL BE SORRY.

  I already was.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I had a rash and a rabid reader. Hysteria hadn’t set in yet, but panic was close, even with the laptop shut down. I checked the door locks, again, put some cortisone on my lip and hand, left over from when I had chiggers. The stuff hadn’t worked then, but I had nothing to lose now. I made hot chocolate and found the Oreos I’d been saving for a rainy day. Fear counted, didn’t it?

  I sat at my drawing table, but no ideas came except Deni creeping up the three flights of stairs to my apartment, next to a redheaded, freckled guy with a shillelagh and a good voice. Irrational, but better than imagining her with a gun in her hand. Or a knife or a baseball bat or—

  No, there was work to be done, hard work I’d been struggling with for days. Work could get my mind off the rest. I hoped.

  More frustration. The professor whose book I was under contract to illustrate described his magical creatures for me to paint, but how do you draw beings who were more spirit than solid? Hard enough to get the colors right when I knew they were phosphorescent, scintillating, swirling rainbows that changed continuously. I’d been working with glitter pens and sparkle dust, even gold leaf, mixing styles to fit my usual cartoon efforts. Despite the hard work, I’d been having a wonderful time experimenting with watercolors, gouaches, and metallic paints on the usual fairies, elves, piskies, and selkies. The latest phantasms stumped me.

  I reread Dr. Harmon’s notes about the Andanstans. Their actions were amusing, how the tiny hominids kept stealing from each other, stealthily absconding with their sworn enemies’ hoards of treasures, only to have the booty stolen back the next dark night or high tide. I knew what they did, how they used magnetics, telekinetics, and the strength of their numbers to shift whole piles of loot. I did not know how they looked. Jimmie Harmon was a dear man, the grandfather I wish I had, but his memories of what he’d written so many years ago had faded. If I asked too many times, in person or on the phone, his voice wavered and his eyes moistened. He did not need any more reminders of what had slipped away from him.

  No way could I hassle the true gentleman who’d put his own life on the line to save hundreds of people on a sinking ship. He did it again, to save Paumanok Harbor.

  Maybe I could paint the Andanstans as sentient water, gathering molecules at will to form arms and legs and—that stank. And they looked like wee leprechauns. Yeck. For sure Jimmie would have remembered if they were green. I tore the page off my sketch pad
and turned the computer back on. I had to check on desert fever, didn’t I? And cat scratch fever too, while I was at it.

  Both of them really did exist. The health info site said cat scratch fever, Bartonella, was a bacterial infection caused by contact with an infected cat, which made sense in Matt’s case. Vets must get scratched all the time. Symptoms were blisters at the site, fever, swelling of lymph nodes, fatigue, and malaise. No wonder he didn’t want to schlep into Manhattan.

  I felt terrible for doubting him. I should have jumped on the bus to the Hamptons and brought him chicken soup, if they sold it at the deli in town.

  Desert fever didn’t fit my symptoms so well. A bacteria from mold, it caused lung infections, not bloody noses and rashes. Most references were to miners in California and the American West, though I suppose it could exist in any desert, infecting the soldiers fighting there, but not with a flu-like bug.

  They’d think I was crazy if I went to the doc-in-a-box at the big drugstore on Third Avenue. I’ve never been wandering in a desert, and I didn’t have any of the chest pains, swelling in extremities, or coughing the references described.

  And the police would think I was crazy if I went to them with my problems with Deni. Another email from Denidenis lurked in my inbox. Open it or not? How could I know if she apologized or threatened me if I didn’t read it? I watched the new mail list like an idiot, the way you’d watch a grizzly, wondering what the bear would do next and if you could outrun it. The list looked just as lethal, harboring malice at the drop of a mouse button. Open it to check for hate mail? Ignore it and hope Deni found another hobby, another victim?

  You could not outrun a grizzly bear.

  Curiosity won over dread. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now I couldn’t convince myself Deni was just some maladjusted kid I’d disillusioned. She was a frigging sociopath. The email was another cartoon, a collage of my characters from four of my books, scanned or traced, copied, then photoshopped so their heads rolled at their feet. The message read: YOU ARE NEXT, BITCH.

  No U R NXT, which I would have expected, as if Deni were a different person now, as if disappointment and rage made her more mature, more careful, studied almost, in her furious communications. Maybe I was prejudiced, but I felt a person who could spell posed more danger than some slapdash, corner-cutting, hasty tweeter.

  Not wanting to touch it, but knowing I had to, I printed out a copy, and one of Deni’s previous menacing email messages. Then I called my friend Van on his cell and left a callback number for him.

  Officer Donovan Gregory had interviewed me when the troll came to town, although he had no idea of Fafhrd’s existence, only the chaos the trespasser from Unity caused. Van and I became friends. We had dinner once and spent a day together when he came out to Montauk with some cop buddies and their families. Maybe more could have come from it, but then Grant came on the scene, the British agent from DUE that I almost got engaged to. Van disappeared from the case and from my thoughts, but I knew he’d still give me advice.

  He sounded glad to hear from me when he called back ten minutes later. Until I explained the situation.

  “What are you, a lodestone for trouble?”

  “This one wasn’t my fault.”

  “That’s what they all say. Funny how all that trouble with the runaway truck we never found on your block and the broken toilets at the hospital where you took your cousin and the fallen crane across from the publisher’s office you visited all stopped when you left town for the Hamptons.”

  When the troll followed me to continue his mayhem there. “Yeah, but this is a kid, and my books.”

  He told me to forward the emails, so I did and waited. I heard him whistle when he saw the hacked-off heads. “Nasty stuff.”

  “And my drawings got ruined, too.”

  I thought I heard a smile when he said, “That’s the least of our worries.”

  I liked the “our.” Van was on my side.

  “The problem is,” he continued, “there’s not enough to charge anyone, even if we could find the sender. You say you don’t know her name?”

  “She uses a screen name, which could be fake altogether. And her phone number shows up as unknown.”

  “A throwaway cell phone. You can get one anywhere. We can trace where the call came from, maybe where the phone was bought, but most times people pay cash at those no-name stores. No credit card receipt we can get the ID from. Our cyber guys can track down an Internet address, but we’d need to work with her server, and I just don’t think there’s enough evidence for them to kick it up so far. I mean, it’s not like this is some kind of terrorism. Without that, they’re all afraid of being sued on a freedom of speech charge or invasion of privacy.”

  “So they won’t look until she cuts off my head?”

  “I’m not saying that, Willy. I know a couple of the guys who work Internet crimes, and I’ll ask one of them to take a look, see if he can come up with a name we can cross-reference. If there’s a prior, then we can move in. Or if the threats escalate.”

  Now that was something to look forward to.

  “Do you think I have anything to be afraid of?”

  “Honestly? Most times it’s all bluff and bluster, but I think you need to be careful. If she knows where you live, maybe you ought to stay with a friend for a couple of days, see if things settle down.”

  “I have a dog and my work. Neither travels well.”

  “Then have someone stay with you. You still seeing the Brit?”

  “No, he was at the space station last I heard.”

  “You putting me on?”

  “No. He was chasing Abominable Snowmen in the Himalayas before that.”

  “Man, and I only get to chase pimps and gangbangers.”

  “You get to help me.”

  “We live to serve. Want to have dinner tonight?”

  “Um, I have . . .” I couldn’t come out and say I had an ugly rash on my lip.

  “I understand. You’re seeing someone. Good. Ask him to stay with you.”

  Matt was a better excuse than desert fever. “He’s not in town right now. He’s from Paumanok Harbor, actually.”

  “Then why don’t you go out there? I doubt a kid will follow you, or know where you are.”

  She’d guess if she read my mother’s website again. Mom listed the Harbor phone number there, too; a lot of her wealthy clients traveled to the Hamptons for the summer. They called the house all the time, looking for help with their unruly trophy dogs.

  “Maybe I will go in a couple of days. I’ll think about it. What do you think I should do in the meantime?”

  “Monitor your calls, keep a tape of the messages, save all emails and notes if they come to your door, but do not answer. That’s important, Willy. What you do not want is a confrontation with a nut job. No telling what they’re capable of. You’ll only throw fuel on the fire if you sound scared or angry. They feed on that. Sometimes these cranks just want to vent. They find another target when they don’t get a response. “

  And sometimes, I figured, they got madder when they got ignored. I thanked Van, wrote down all the contact numbers he gave me, and promised to forward any more emails to him.

  “Don’t worry. It’s probably nothing. But I’ll ask the guys to drive by your building a couple of times extra. Okay?”

  “You’re a prince, Officer.”

  “So put me in one of your books.”

  I laughed and told him I would. And I drew an Andanstan as a tiny, well-muscled, handsome Black man. Van Andanstan.

  Nope, I couldn’t see Officer Gregory stealing anything. I threw that page out, too. Then I retrieved it and filed the sketch for another time. You never knew when you were going to need a new hero.

  Speaking of heroes, Matt called during office hours, he was so worried about me.

/>   “It’s only a nosebleed and a stupid kid.”

  “What nosebleed? What kid?”

  “If you didn’t know about the nosebleed or the kid, why did you worry?”

  “I got a bad feeling.”

  God, was he getting to be like my father, sensing doom for his loved ones? Now that Matt had been touched by the beings from Unity, no one knew what talents or powers he had. I knew he could sometimes see the Others now, the way I did. Maybe he became a telepath or an empath or a precog, too. For sure, he knew what I needed him to say:

  “And I miss you.”

  Ah. “I miss you, too. And worry about you. I looked up cat scratch fever and it sounds terrible.”

  “Antibiotics can fix it. But the medical clinic in Amagansett sent a blood sample out. It’s not Bartonella, or anything else they could find. Just a rash where the cat scratched me. I guess he knew I was going to neuter him. They don’t think it’s contagious. I was afraid of giving you something.”

  “That’s weird, I have a rash, too. That’s why I didn’t want to come out.” I did not admit I worried more about letting him see me this way than letting him catch whatever I had. Now it seemed he had it, too, whatever it was.

  I could hear him let out a long breath. “I thought you were giving up on us.”

  “I thought you were, too.”

  “Never.”

  Did the sun just come out? Or had that one word warmed the chill in my heart? We had issues, but we could work on fixing them. I didn’t know how, but I’d try, if he would.

  Then Matt wanted to know about Deni. Then he got pissed that I called a cop friend instead of him. Then I told him I hadn’t wanted to bother him, that I thought I could handle it on my own. That it was a city problem, not a psychic one.

  Silence. Then: “I thought we were partners.”

  When it came to facing sea serpents and saving Newfoundland puppies, we did fine together. Guarding a metamorphing sea creature and its symbiotic fireflies, no problem. Bridging that distance between Manhattan and the East End of Long Island? The gap didn’t get any narrower, no matter our good intentions. I sighed.