The Honey Witch (A Tale of Supernatural Suspense)

by Thayer Berlyn

  I stared at him, silenced by his implication.

  He limped a step forward. “Aye, I’ve wasted in these hills for the love of an Evangeline, and you’re lookin’ at the only man who ever lived t’tell of it, ‘cept now for you.”

  My nerves erupted into a tremor so severe, I seriously feared the onset of some form of seizure. The threat to wail like a child, from the strain of exhaustion, nearly overtook my self-possession.

  “And you outta thank old Dulcy out there, too,” said Fitch, “for savin’ your skin.”

  “Oh God…” I groaned, leaning my head back, “none of this is happening.”

  “It weren’t God what come to your salvation on this night, Yank,” Fitch remarked without humor, “but Lily Ann come back in the flesh of old Dulcy there. She, who drowned her own self in the Cutler and come back.”

  “Fuck,” I sputtered miserably, leaning forward with a threatened nausea.

  “I’m gonna give ya a chance,” said Fitch, “a chance to git away once and for all. If I can do one thing, I can do this.”

  I stared at him spiritlessly. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell them? Tell the outside what the hell exists up here?”

  “Pffft,” Fitch chortled dubiously. “You got the curse of lovin’ that woman. You ain’t willin’ t’risk her refuge for nothin’.”

  “Then I’ve got to find her,” I insisted morosely. “I’ve got to see if she’s all right. As impossible as all this is, I can’t just abandon her.”

  “Don’t see as ya got much say in the matter, Yank,” observed Fitch. “You leavin’ alive or you leavin’ dead, but one way or t’other, you gonna be leavin’ by mornin’. So, you jus’ drink a little more whiskey and sleep it off.”

  Jesse Lee again handed over the jug of whiskey and lit a Camel cigarette. “Best do it, Doc,” he advised, closing his lighter and nodding toward Fitch. “Ya don’t want to end up like that old buzzard, do ya?”

  “No,” I agreed dismally, allowing the burn of 100 proof to course down my esophagus, and through the map of my veins until I was absolutely insensate . “No, I do not.”

  “Now, don’t get no ideas, Yank,” Fitch warned, patting the rifle in the crook of his arm. “Me an’ ol’ Dulcy, here, gonna be right outside this door.”

  I held up the jug in a gesture of salutation and took a bitter swallow.

  ~*~

  Chapter XXIV

  Throughout the random, often horrific images plaguing the whiskey-coated fits of sleep, I, in the same senseless gloom, was dimly aware of a presence shadowing the bedside windowpane. Whether moon, phantom-eyed opossum or vigilant Fitch, the presence attended the night from the moment of intoxicated collapse, to the moment of morning light.

  When some semblance of focus filtered through the blur of waking consciousness, I found Sheriff Roland Jones straddling the back turned chair not three feet from the bedside.

  “Mornin’, Broughton,” Roland Jones greeted rather sardonically, rolling a toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Bit chilly out. You’ll need your jacket. Jackson, bring this man his jacket.”

  From out of the kitchen, a tall and expressionless trooper sporting brown tinted sunglasses tossed the requested item toward the bed. I expertly caught the jacket, despite the pounding inside my skull and the ache in my left ribcage.

  My senses were dulled from so many layers of exhaustion, it was a struggle to speak.

  “Am I under arrest or something?” I pressed my fingers against my forehead in a futile attempt to stop the relentless pressure. “What are you doing here?”

  “Appears you had quite a night of it,” replied the sheriff dryly.

  You have no idea this side of hell, I thought bleakly, stumbling out of bed. I reached for the china pitcher set on the paint chipped chest of drawers, and poured the water into the accompanying bowl, splashing the cool liquid on my face. On the side table next to the bed, stood a half-empty bottle of flat Coca-Cola. I didn’t care. I popped the loose cap and drank it.

  “Best get your jacket on,” Roland Jones instructed, rising from the chair and pushing it aside. The sound of wood sliding against wood grated in my ears.

  “Look,” I said, grabbing my jacket from the bed, “whatever it is, I’ll talk to you in a minute. I’ve got to get some air.”

  Sheriff Jones gestured a satirical, Be my guest, as I passed wordlessly through the door.

  The air outside the door was, indeed, chilled and did not help the searing throb inside my head. I slipped my jacket on and stepped to the back side of the cabin, wondering vaguely if I had an audience should I scheme to make a run for it. It wasn’t going to happen. I could scarcely make it to where I stood.

  Returning inside, I found Jones waiting with two state troopers and one other.

  “Hey,” greeted Aaron soberly. I nodded reservedly and noticed my travel cases were set near the doorway.

  “Am I under arrest or what?” I inquired again, still fighting for coherency. How intensely I wished for one of Pennock’s hot mugs of rich, black coffee.

  Without warning, I found myself forcefully pressed against the wall, my wrists cuffed with equal aggression at my back. The voice of Roland Jones rasped inside my ear.

  “You ever come back here, ever,” he warned, “and I will guarantee more than an arrest. Do I make myself very clear, Dr. Broughton?”

  “On what cause, precisely?” I asked deliberately. I couldn’t quite decipher whether I was actually trying to be difficult or, if I simply could not decode my way through the murkiness between Jones’ threat, and the fractures of a whiskey-coated hangover.

  I felt the goad of his fist against my left kidney, which caused the ache in my rib to pierce through my entire chest wall. I held my breath against the jarring spasm.

  “What cause would you prefer, Yank?” he asked menacingly. “I think I could come up with one or two. Do I need to be more clear?”

  “Oh, I think you’ve made your point very clear,” I replied temperately.

  “Then we understand each other,” he said, apparently satisfied with my response. He took hold of my arm and swung me around. Pressing my shoulder against the wall, he instructed: “Now, we are going to leave quietly and take an uneventful drive to Knoxville, where you will get on a plane and forget you ever heard of Porringer Hill and maybe even the state of Tennessee.”

  He gripped my forearm, but was delayed in leading me through the doorway at Aaron’s request.

  Jones nodded sedately and waited with his two henchmen outside the door.

  “It’s the only way,” explained Aaron.

  “Is she all right?” I asked. “What did you tell him?”

  “Yes, she’s all right,” he assured me. “Clem and Merilee will stay with her for awhile...and Jolene. I told Jones nothing. Just said we had a little trouble. Sorry about all this. It’s the only way to assure you get out of here without incident.”

  “I’m too exhausted to argue any of this right now,” I responded truthfully. “I suppose if there is any measure of regard to be weighed, it is that I leave while I still have breath in my body.”

  “There’s a ticket at the airport,” said Aaron. “It’s a serious situation. I made you look a little psychotic, I’m afraid. You can never return, under any circumstance. Put this all behind you.”

  “Put this all behind me?" I responded acridly. "Go to hell, Westmore.”

  His mouth stretched into a thin, I thought rather resigned, line. He nodded toward the waiting officers and said quietly: “I never considered the complications. I never thought you would come to care for her.”

  “No,” I countered disdainfully. “You didn't think I'd live long enough for you to worry. But then you had second thoughts. A wicked collusion is one thing, but bloody sacrifice quite another. If you’re looking now for absolution, look elsewhere.”

  Sheriff Roland Jones took hold of my arm and led me behind the two silent officers, who each carried my traveling gear ahead. Passing the mercanti
le, I spied Jesse Lee sitting on the railing; Grammy Nana on the rocking chair; Clara with her carriage; Sam Pennock behind the screen door with his matronly wife, Adelaide, and the salient Jolene Parker sitting on the steps next to Jemmy and Coobie.

  Jemmy stood up and raced in our direction. “Whatcha doin’, Yankee Doctor?” he asked with an anxious excitement. “Why you goin’ with the sheriff? You goin’ away, Yankee Doctor? Where ya goin’? I thought you was stayin’ here with Possum. Why ya goin’?”

  “It’s ok, Jemmy,” I replied patiently. “Go sit with the others now.”

  I then heard the last haunting lilt I was ever to hear of Jemmy Isaak’s voice: “When ya comin’ back? Don’tcha like us here no more, Yankee Doctor? When ya comin' back?”

  “Jemmy Joseph, come stand by your daddy now,” I heard Jolene command the child. “Time for Mr. Boston to go back to his own, is all.”

  I heard the scramble of Jemmy’s feet ascend the worn steps of Pennock’s porch. I glanced toward Jesse Lee, who nodded a silent acknowledgment in return. I caught the swaggering swing of Jolene Parker’s crossed legs, as she leaned back against the top step, with a noncommittal gaze in my direction.

  At the back of the renovated church, I was unceremoniously deposited in the backseat of the county’s official Suburban. Jones sat behind the driver’s wheel and drove the vehicle toward the Cutler, following the shallow creek down to the dry road, passed Bernie Lloyd’s, who waved his hat from inside his pen of piglets. We turned opposite from Halstead Mill and entered the interstate on the silent drive toward Knoxville.

  ~*~

  Chapter XXV

  Landing at Boston Logan, I immediately secured a train ticket to Baltimore, and took a cab to my sister, Nina’s, from the station.

  “You look a shamble,” Nina informed me, spreading out her Rider-Waite deck in precise order across the Formica table, eager to read one’s journey whether one desired the information or not.

  I have always found my sister’s kitchen an oddly comforting place, with all the charm of post World War II collectible nostalgia.

  “When was the last time you shaved?” she wanted to know. “And you smell like a tramp. Go and shower.”

  She is a pretty woman, my sister, Nina, in a folksy sort of way, with wide brown eyes and long sandy blond hair, which tends to lighten under the summer sun. She likes to read the Tarot and listen to jazz with her rather philosophic husband, Devlin, at a neighborhood bar not far from their brick townhouse.

  “Thanks,’ I said. “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  “And throw those filthy clothes out!” she called from the kitchen.

  “I didn’t have time to change!” I yelled back. “I left rather abruptly.”

  And with extreme prejudice.

  “What happened to you anyway?” she wanted to know.

  “I can’t hear you!” I shouted, turning on the shower. “I’m running the water now!”

  The hot water stung against the cut on my chest, a reminder that the night before had not been, in all its parts, some mere illusionist’s trick.

  Don’t think of it. Don’t think of it. Put it away. Put it away or you will lose your mind.

  In a fit of attempting to deny how truly wretched I felt, I quickly dried my skin with a machine dried towel, noting only momentarily how soft it felt, yet aware of an absence of sun and air in the weave.

  I inspected the blackening discoloration beneath my right chest wall with cautious fingers. Perhaps I had only bruised the area and not cracked a rib in one of the several mishaps that occurred during the last 48 hours.

  My jeans were stained with mud, my shirt torn and bloodied. I would toss them, as Nina advised. Changing into clean clothes, I flushed the remaining tranquilizers into the Baltimore septic system. I wrapped the empty prescription bottles in wads of tissue and stuffed it in the rose printed garbage canister. Looking in the mirror, I faced the full evidence of aftermath: bleary, bloodshot eyes and unshaven, pale fatigue. I brushed my teeth and used a good swish of the spearmint mouthwash from Nina’s cabinet. I helped myself to four aspirin tablets.

  “Well, it’s an improvement anyway,” remarked Nina when I returned to the kitchen and sat down wearily at the table. “You’re not thinking about growing some kind of beard, are you?’

  “I’m not planning to, no,” I told her, drinking in the sensory lull of the amaretto she poured into a coffee cup. “I’ll shave when I get back to Boston.”

  “Are you returning to Prague, then?” she asked.

  I leaned my chin in my hand. “In a week or two, maybe.”

  “Where did you get the scratch over your eye?” she wanted to know, her eyes remaining on her cards.

  “I don’t recall,” I said. “A missed tree branch, I suppose.”

  She glanced up at me and laid down another card. “You don’t look well. Tired.”

  “I am tired,” I agreed. “You still have the package I sent you?”

  “On the side door of the freezer,” she affirmed. “What’s in it?”

  “Just some random specimens,” I replied. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Curious, perhaps. I want Alan Hughes to take a look.”

  “There is a woman,” said Nina, tapping her finger on the Empress card. “She appears three times.” Nina indicated the High Priestess and the Queen of Swords.

  “And see the Moon card?”

  “What about it,” I stated with a sigh.

  “What happened while you were away?” she asked, holding up the card of the Hanged Man.

  “Not a whole lot,” I lied.

  “Did you find anything of note?” Nina then inquired.

  “Not really,” I said. The amaretto tasted good, not strong, but good. “I did find an unusual root, though, and want Alan to look at it.”

  “Why do you want Alan to look at it?” she asked. “Why don’t you look at it yourself?”

  “Because, Nina, I want him to and because I’m tired,” I told her. “No great mystery.”

  “No matter where you go, Ethan,” Nina said insistently, “you will never detach from whatever it is you won’t say.”

  “I think your cards are a little off today,” I responded. “I have to go lay down. I really don’t feel well, as you say, and I want to catch a train back to Boston tomorrow morning.”

  “Why don’t you stay a couple of days?” Nina offered. “We hardly see you anymore.”

  “I want to get that package to Alan,” I said, “but I’ll see how I feel, ok?”

  “Who is she?” Nina asked again. “She must have had a strong effect on you or you would talk about it. It’s me, remember? We’ve always told each other everything.”

  “Not everything, Nina, surely,” I replied. “And I’m telling you, there is no woman. I didn’t have some clandestine affair, if that is what you’re getting at. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I’ve been on these brief sabbaticals countless times, some more interesting, some less, and this one was no different.”

  “Some secrets are carried at great cost, Ethan,” said Nina earnestly. “The cards tell much.”

  “Give it up, Nina,” I complained. “I need to go lay down. When is Devlin coming home?”

  “After six,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll try to be up by then.”

  “Mother sent some down covers from Denmark,” she informed me. “I put them in the spare room. They’re real soft.”

  “That’s great, Nina,” I acknowledged exhaustively, finding the door to the spare room and falling face down on the plush Danish bedding.

  “In the morning,” she called out, “We can all go out to breakfast.”

  I was confident in my trust that Nina would fulfill my simple request in refrigerating the package sent to her unopened. After all, we had always been confidants, but not in everything. We have always trusted each other, but some things were unutterable. I would carry my secrets alone, despite oracles and disquieting intuitions.

  But in my dreams, m
y subconscious mind replayed scenes of hidden groves and mystical filaments in dramatic, lucid display.

  With a sensation of being restrained, I fought against the dark soil and the creatures tunneling there, until I awoke to find Nina and Devlin shaking me into consciousness.

  “Ethan, it’s all right,” I heard Nina’s voice speak through the haze of images. “Ethan, wake up!”

  I sat up straight, aggressively disoriented until my vision settled on the soft amber glow of a painted chimney lamp on the bedside table and the comfort of familial surroundings.

  “What time is it?” I blurted out.

  “Almost eight,” said Devlin, peering over his lowered reading glasses and who, like all aspiring academicians, favors the serious stance.

  “Ethan,” Nina pleaded, sitting at the edge of the bed, “what happened to you while you were away? Who is Ana? Who is she?”

  I felt an electrical sensation slide up my spine. “What?”

  “You repeated the name, Ana, quite a few times,” explained Devlin curiously.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking off the residue of the dream images that mercifully faded with full consciousness. I fell back against the soft down comforter again.

  “Is she the woman you won’t talk about?” asked Nina.

  “It’s just dream babble, Nina,” I dismissed dully.

  Although appearing doubtful, Nina smiled and said: “Devlin is opening a bottle of wine. We saved a late dinner.”

  ~*~

  Chapter XXVI

  My parent’s brownstone in Boston is vacant for most of the year, and it was with some relief that I entered the foyer to complete silence and a feeling of refuge. Here, there would be neither curious inquiries nor unconcealed reproach over any objection to answer.

  I dropped off my travel luggage and took a cab to the university biology lab, leaving the unspecified blue poke specimen with Alan Hughes, who, not unlike my sister, Nina, questioned my appearance. I engaged in the obligations of civilization: balancing bank funds and securing flight schedules, making phone calls, hailing cabs and dodging street traffic.