The message on them read, 285th REUNION EVENING – THIS SATURDAY.
Three days away.
And I felt my heart sink even further. They were trying it yet again.
Face it, the whole ludicrous hoopla of Reunion Eve was no more than a dumb, pointless tradition these days. Something the town felt obliged to go through every year. There is no record of who first began it – maybe one of Raine’s ancestors. But on the self-same date, for centuries, anyone who practiced even a little magic gathered here. And, under the direction of the mayor, took part in a mystic ceremony, trying to return the Landing to the normal world.
Regan’s Curse again, in other words. Even when the most powerful adepts had joined in, they had not managed to lift it.
I could still remember my grandfather telling me the story when I’d been much younger.
“Most of the Salem witches fitted right in. Kept their heads down, at first. Kept their magic hidden. They behaved like regular citizens – which, of course, they weren’t – at least until they’d borne children or sired them, and become established into the community.”
The orange light from the log fire played across his features, which were solid even at that age. He rolled a cigarette and lit it.
“Regan Farrow, though? She was another kettle of fish. Proud of what she was, afraid of no one. She openly put spells on other women’s husbands, took them to her bed.”
“To sleep, grandpa?”
I was wide eyed.
“No,” he chuckled, “not to sleep. And anyone she didn’t like, she’d turn the water in their well to bitter poison.”
“Did it kill anyone?”
“There’s no record of that. Might have, though. However, in good time, the ordinary townsfolk plain got sick of it. Got pretty scared, in fact, and mad. They came for her one night, like in that movie, ‘Frankenstein.’”
“Did they have pitchforks?”
“Yup, I guess they did. They knocked down her front door, and they came marching in. And Regan? She started to plead with them.
“’I’ll go away,’ she told them, ‘and never come back. You’ll never hear of me again.’
“They wouldn’t listen, though. They grabbed her and they bore her up, and they carried her all the way to the village Common, where Union Square is now. And all the while she’s begging of them, ‘Let me leave, there’s no need to do this’.
“They,” he sighed, “bound her to a stake. Piled it all around with big bundles of hay and such. And then they set light to it.”
“They burned her?” I yelped, horrified.
My grandpa just frowned gently and his gaze went sad. He had always been a decent and humane man, and he hated thinking about anyone in pain.
“That’s what they did to witches in those days. They were meaner times. And so, the flames were getting higher. They were scorching at her petticoats. And Regan Farrow, knowing she was going to die and already hurting, stared down defiantly at the town’s inhabitants. Her eyes blazed and her face contorted. And a few seconds before the fire engulfed her, she yelled these words out.
“‘If I cannot leave, then none of you ever shall. And you shall dwell alone here.’
“That’s her curse on this town, kiddo. That’s how it’s been ever since.”
And how it was today. Nothing had changed, in all the passing decades.
Other folks, outsiders, could come here and go away again. But if you had the bad luck to be born inside Raine’s Landing …
There can’t be many of us who haven’t tried to leave at least a dozen times. By car or on foot, the outcome is always the same. As soon as you cross the municipal limits, everything around you seems to slow down, then stop moving. The leaves don’t shake in the trees anymore. There’s no stirring in the grass around you, and no birds fly overhead. Not even an insect buzzes. The world becomes deathly quiet, and bled a little of its color too, as though the sun has looked away.
You head down the road, but never reach an intersection. The horizon gets no closer. And no other buildings come in sight.
After a while, evening falls, and you’re forced to head back.
It’s a good part of the reason why our town is such a large one. No one ever leaves. And yes, these days we have to be careful about certain stuff. Who marries whom, for instance. There’s an awful lot of cousins around these parts. But otherwise, we get on mostly fine. At least, as well as a community like ours can manage. The rest of the world sends stuff in, we send it out. How could we survive otherwise? But that apart, we’re cut adrift from it.
And – part of the curse too – the outside world gives us a wide berth, or else plain ignores us.
So as Raine had said last night, we’re stuck.
Reunion Evening hadn’t shown a sign of working, on any occasion it had been attempted. I saw no reason to expect it would be any different this time.
But then, I can be too downbeat sometimes – I acknowledge that. And so …
Best of luck this year, folks.
Something else caught my attention, going past the big, dark statue of Theodore Raine. Standing by its bronze plinth, stock still, was a raggedy old man I’d never seen before. He was stood straight as a ramrod and was about as tall as I am, maybe slightly taller. Wore a shabby brown raincoat that reached right down past his knees, and had a shapeless, broad brimmed hat planted firmly on his shaggy silver head. A beard of the same color hid most of his face. He didn’t even seem to notice I was there.
There were a few derelicts in the Landing and – to put it mildly – a few eccentrics too. He didn’t fit onto the list of ones I knew about. But then, people’s circumstances change all the time. He could have become newly homeless. Or he might just dress like that.
Beside him was a flabby, rather mangy looking dog. A bulldog, pretty oversized for its breed, fast asleep. And the fellow had a placard draped across his chest.
Repent, it read. The end of the world is nigh.
The Landing’s always throwing up some weird new character. He had probably just wandered in from one of the outer suburbs, drawn toward the center of town as though by a magnet. So I gave him a sideways glance, satisfied myself he was not misbehaving, then continued on.
“The hour of Doom is at hand!” he yelled suddenly at my retreating back.
Oh yeah? What else was new?
SIX
At twenty before eight, the big red truck pulled off the turnpike. It slowed down, wheezing, as it reached the off-ramp – which was totally unmarked – then gathered impetus again. Before long, it was speeding down a narrow two-lane blacktop, the dense New England woodlands flashing by its cab.
Don Kozinsky, at the steering wheel, was sweating. God, he hated this part of his week. He’d been doing this run for two years, and he still hadn’t gotten used to it.
The goods he was delivering slid around a little in the back. Big brown crates filled up with canned goods, any kind that you could think of. Beets, clams, tuna, creamed corn – name it, it was there. This was all he did, come rain or shine. Deliver the stuff to the grocery stores throughout the area. And he was usually happy with his lot. Not now, though. Not at all.
A bend forced him to slow down. But then he was gunning the big diesel motor once again. Quickly in and quickly out. That was the way he preferred it.
You’d think there’d be at least one signpost for the place, a town that size. But he’d never seen one, except that ratty, ancient ‘welcome’ one on the town limits. You couldn’t even find it on most maps. In fact, the only time he’d ever seen it on a map was in the window of an antiques store in Falmouth.
He’d lived in this region all his life – he was currently a resident of Palmer. And most folks in these parts had never even heard of Raine’s Landing.
Not that he ever mentioned his trips here. Why was that? He never talked about the place, once that he was out of it. He was pretty certain other truckers dropped freight off here too. The place looked prosperous enough. And he’d,
on occasion, passed a rig speeding back the other way. But at the stops he frequented, the talk was about sport and chicks and other towns. But never once about Raine’s Landing.
He considered going even faster – on a road like this; how dangerous might that be? But it was hard to fight the temptation. Because by this stage of the trip, the heebie-geebies were beginning to set in.
Again, he wasn’t sure what caused them. But he’d felt them his first visit here and on every occasion since. He’d been following the instructions that his boss had handed him, scribbled on a sheet of paper. No maps available, remember?
He only had to get within a mile of the town’s outskirts when the voices seemed to start up, deep inside his head. ‘Stay away.’ ‘You don’t want to come here.’ ‘Turn around – go back, go back.’
Oddly, they were not his own. They mostly sounded female, a few deeper ones far in the background. And … the first time it had happened, he’d been forced to pull the rig over, almost putting its wheels in a ditch. He was that badly shaken up.
They had to be just his imagination, he’d decided. But they still had a strange, powerful effect on him.
Every fiber of his being seemed to pull at him, the opposite direction to the one that he was going. Every sinew, every muscle, was attempting to rear back. His instincts screamed at him to hit the brakes and get no closer. This was not a place where he belonged.
But he’d been a trucker for twenty years. And always delivered his consignments. So Don gritted his teeth, peered fiercely through the windshield and continued on.
The woods finally parted and the town came into view. It looked no different than a lot of places around here. A typical Massachusetts township, larger than a lot of them, but unremarkable in any other way. So why was his heart beating so? Why did he keep glancing down at his own dashboard, finding it hard to even look at the place for an extended period?
Concentrate on your job, man, he told himself. He had six stores to deliver to.
He took them one after another, as though he were training for some newly-created sporting event. Just dropped off the crates and got the manager to sign for them. Jumped back in his cab and headed for the next address. The streets passed by him in a blur.
The people that he had to deal with were all polite enough, even attempting to be friendly in some cases. But he simply mumbled at them, keeping his eyes lowered, his expression fixed like stone. He couldn’t look at anything directly, not even a face, it seemed.
Within an hour, he was done. Thank the Lord – relief washed over him. He was heading back toward the turnpike like a man possessed.
Strangely, however, once that he was passing through the trees again – the town lost from sight – his memory began to fail him. All of the anxiety that he’d felt earlier … what had it really been about?
He blinked, and found he couldn’t recall precisely what Raine’s Landing had looked like when he’d first approached it. Nor the layout of the streets he’d hurried down.
After a while, even the name of the place had begun dissolving from his thoughts.
He was back onto the turnpike before too much longer. And couldn’t seem to quite remember why he’d ever left it.
Don’s face creased with a gentle smile. He leaned across and turned his radio on. It was promising to be a pleasant, sunny day, and all of his anxiety was behind him now, forgotten. He was already thinking about his next port of call. Frank’s Roadside Tavern, and a big, cooked, greasy breakfast.
SEVEN
I climbed the stairs, going up past the signs for accountants and dentists, till I reached my office door. The lettering on the frosted glass pane still looked reasonably fresh.
DEVRIES & MACDONALD – SECURITY CONSULTANTS
There’s no MacDonald. I simply thought that two guys sounded more secure than one. Cass only came in later, learning what I was all about and deciding to help. And ‘security consultant’ in the Landing is rather more involved a business than a matter of fitting burglar alarms. But then, you’ve already figured that out.
Maybe it’s the plain fact, once again, that I have never dabbled in magic. It gives me an outsider’s perspective on the subject. I can see things clearly where a mind filled with arcana cannot. And what happened to my wife and children drives me too. It drives me constantly, in fact. I seem to be able to solve problems other people can’t even get close to.
I could still recall – as I unlocked the door and then went in – those faintly colored flashes from the loft window next door. That was Goad, starting to practice genuine wizardry, then sharp-honing his skills. He’d bought all the books and implements he needed here, you see. They are freely available in town, and it’s the way most people who don’t have it in their heritage learn.
I’d done a little research on him, by then. I had no computer, there were none at the department. We’re, as you might imagine, a very inward-looking community round this neck of the woods. And few of our messages – part of the curse as well – ever seem to reach the outside world.
But the central public library had one. I found him on a cheaply put together little website. He’d had a magician’s act in Vegas. Apparently, not a successful one.
Here’s the other thing you have to understand about Raine’s Landing. It’s not simply that people practice sorcery round here. It’s more that, ever since the witches came, the whole place has become imbued with magic. It has dripped down through the soil, and soaked into the walls around us. The insects hum with it. The night winds breathe it. The whole place simply lends itself to woven spells and sudden transformations. And in coming here, Goad had found what he had always really wanted. The ability to change things that he previously could not.
That creeping feeling on the back of my neck had become a regular sensation, a month after he first moved in. And it wasn’t only the spells. There were even worse things than that.
I’d never actually caught him at it, but was sure that he was spying on my family whenever they were out in the backyard. And on Alicia especially. I spotted his curtains twitch when she was sunbathing one time, and insisted that she come indoors.
“Ross, you’re being paranoid!”
Except I wasn’t. Not at all. Later events would bear that out.
My office was just one medium-sized room, not recently-decorated that you’d notice. The white paint had gone rather dull and specks of it had peeled away. Last year’s calendar hung on the wall. The filing cabinets had come with the place – I barely ever used them. But there was an alcove to one side, with a washbasin and towel. I went to it, splashed some cold water on my face. Then, drying myself, gazed at my own reflection.
I’d always been on the narrow side, but these days I looked downright gaunt. My gray eyes didn’t have the sparkle that they used to. And my wavy, pale hair – a couple of inches longer than I’d worn it as a cop – looked thinner at the front. I pinched it with my finger and thumb and a couple of strands came away. A curse escaped my lips.
The door banged open. It was Cass. Who else? She was still wearing the same jeans and boots as yesterday, but a cream-colored T-shirt instead. The Kevlar vest was gone. Her lucky charm bracelet was rattling at her wrist. She doesn’t use magic any more than I do, but she can be superstitious occasionally. It’s just part of the way she is.
She looked rather squinty, as if she had had a restless night as well. And rather ticked off. I wondered who had managed to annoy her.
“Who’s that old guy by the statue?”
I shrugged. “Never seen him before. Why?”
“He told me that the world was going to end. And then he called me a harlot.” She peered across inquiringly. “What’d I ever do to him?”
I pulled another face at her. Cass, to put it mildly, is quite capable of defending her honor if she needs to.
A residue of sadness still remained in her dark eyes. But, like me, she was trying to keep the lid on it by staying busy. She ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair, t
hen sat down on the corner of my desk.
And announced, “Got something.”
Nobody was ever going to hire her as a speechwriter, let’s face it. I peered at her, interested.
“Why didn’t you call me yesterday?”
“I tried – you weren’t home. And your cell phone was dead. Still hobnobbing with the upper crust, I take it.”
I had switched it off before I’d gone into the Manor. Woodard Raine, among other things, doesn’t like new technology.
Cassie, for her part, doesn’t like the people up on Sycamore Hill, and never has. She’s pure Raine’s Landing working-class – her father was a warehouseman and her mother a waitress. They both died in a road accident when she was seventeen – she’d had to make it on her own since then. I knew that she’d gone off the rails the first couple of years, although she’d never told me many details. But eventually, she’d sorted herself out. And there was nothing that she had in common with the self-styled aristocracy on Plymouth Drive. The wry twist to her mouth, the dryness of her gaze, reflected that.
Which slightly missed the point. I couldn’t get things done at all if I didn’t have dealings with the adepts. And besides, I was still waiting. What exactly had she turned up?
“Cassie?”
“Right. A few people came back to Cray’s Lane, later in the evening. As you can imagine, they were in a pretty bad way when they found out what had happened.”
I wondered what that had to be like. Going out for dinner or a movie. Ambling back after a pleasant evening, only to discover all your loved ones were gone. At least I’d been around when …
I moved away from that thought, trying to force it from my mind.
“Most of them weren’t in any state to talk.” Her voice was tight, but she shook her head and got past it. “The few who were knew nothing. They were totally bewildered. But you were right about one thing. Someone did see what was going on.”
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