Summerwind Magick: Making Witches of Salem

by Rick Bettencourt

  “Here, here!” Rebecca said to Food.

  “I know!” The man’s fear was palpable, and his voice wavered. “You think she’s dead?”

  “I hope not,” Carolyn and Rebecca said and caught each other’s eye.

  The house’s porch surrounded the house on three sides. As they ran up the steps to the ornate front door, Derek came out from the woods at the side of the Nesbitt home. “Everything all right?” he asked and jogged toward the trio, like he’d sensed their concern. “I heard Food tearing down Wisteria.”

  “No,” Carolyn said. “We need to get inside. Do you have a key?”

  Rebecca pushed the door, and the hinge creaked. “It’s open.”

  Food looked to Carolyn. “No one locks their doors on Summerwind.”

  “It’s certainly not New York,” Carolyn muttered, as they all tore in.

  “Josefina!” Rebecca yelled. “Josefina!” She ran for the stairs.

  “Guys?” Carolyn watched the men go in opposite directions around the center staircase. Fear came over her.

  “I’ll take the basement,” Food said.

  “Kitchen here,” Derek replied.

  They disappeared.

  “Josefina?” The floorboards creaked as Carolyn walked toward the stairs.

  “Motherfucker!” Josefina’s voice echoed. “Get me the fuck out of here. No me jodas, dumbwaiter!”

  “Hold on.” Rebecca’s voice sounded as if she’d already made it to the third floor.

  Carolyn ran up the stairs. “Don’t leave me alone.” She looked behind her, expecting to see the bogeyman chasing her, like she’d envisioned as a child. When she got to the third floor, a deep-throated scream rang out from the depths of the dumbwaiter.

  “Is no me!” Josefina echoed from the chamber. “Is no me who scream.”

  Rebecca’s head popped out from the dumbwaiter’s opening. “It’s Food. Something’s wrong downstairs.”

  “What?” Carolyn asked, but the witch bolted back down the stairs. Carolyn went to the dumbwaiter’s opening. “Josefina? You okay?”

  The woman had grease smeared on her face. A spot of blood stained her white nylons. “Do I look okay, numb nuts? I be in this hellhole for over two hours, and nobody hear me yell.”

  “Ah!” Food yelled again.

  Josefina’s head pivoted in the direction of the sound, and the dumbwaiter began to lower. “No! Is de fucking monster again!” She grabbed the moving cable, hoisted herself to her feet, and looked to Carolyn as she descended—panic struck her face.

  “Josefina!” Carolyn pressed a fist to her mouth. “Hold on. Hold on.” She looked to the control panel. Up. Down. “The basement—there’s got to be a shutoff.” She glanced back down the shaft, but it was too dark to see Josefina. “We’ll get you. Don’t worry.” She darted down the stairs. When she got to the landing on the second floor, she took the good morning stairs.

  In the kitchen, her cell phone rang, and the house’s landline did, too. “Jesus, not now.”

  “Carolyn!” Rebecca yelled from below. “Get a knife! Or scissors!”

  Panicked, Carolyn went to the kitchen’s center island. “What for?” Her intonation was too low to carry into the basement.

  Ring. Ring.

  The phones unnerved her. “A knife?” She ransacked a drawer of towels.

  Ring.

  She plucked her cell phone out from the back of her jeans while continuing to search. “Hello?” She tossed a box of Ziploc bags aside.

  “Is she okay?” Michael said on the line.

  “I need a knife.” Carolyn happened on an assortment of spoons and forks. “Ah, a butter knife.”

  “What do you need a knife for?”

  “I-I don’t know,” she stammered.

  “There’s a knife block by the stove.”

  Carolyn eyed the set, hurried over to it, and slid out the largest of the bunch. Her hand shook. “I’ll call you back.” She dropped her phone on the counter and ran for the basement door behind her.

  “Hold on!” Derek yelled from below. “Stay still.”

  Food whimpered.

  Carolyn slid down a couple of steps but caught herself midway. “I’ve got it.” She skipped over the last step.

  Spanish expletives echoed.

  When Carolyn reached the back of the basement where the voices had derived, Derek raised an axe.

  Rebecca stood beside him.

  Prostrate by the lift’s opening, Food screamed. Blood splattered his face.

  “Oh my God!” Carolyn yelled. “No!”

  Derek looked to her with the axe over his head. “You’ve got it.” The axe fell to the floor, and he came to Carolyn.

  Carolyn held up the knife to him and backed away. “What are you doing?”

  He raised his hands and continued his approach. “Give me the knife. We’re try—”

  “No!” A vision of the high school quarterback, that night in the theater, came to her. “No! Leave me…us…alone.” She floundered backward.

  “Carolyn!” Rebecca yelled. “Give it to him.”

  Carolyn’s hand shook violently. Seth Stevenson? The images that plagued her dreams, from when he’d warned them to not say anything, felt real: his sneer, the smell of whisky. Carolyn stepped back. The urge to stab the man before her raked her core. “I won’t keep quiet anymore!”

  “Give it to him,” Food said. “Please.”

  The knife cut through the air, and Derek jumped back.

  “Carolyn!” Rebecca cried. “We need to cut Food out.”

  Rebecca touched Carolyn, and the actress calmed.

  A loud metallic crunch. A whir. “Shit, I’m going back up now!” Josefina yelled.

  By the dumbwaiter’s door, Food’s hand left a bloodied print on the mechanism’s buttons.

  “It’s okay.” Rebecca put a hand on Carolyn’s shoulder. “Food’s hair is caught around the pulley inside.” She put her hand out. “We need the knife to cut him free.”

  Relieved, Carolyn exhaled and gave Rebecca the blade.

  Derek stared at her with his hands up. “I-I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

  Carolyn felt foolish and placed a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop it!” Josefina’s call grew distant.

  Rebecca held a clump of Food’s hair, and the man stumbled away from the contraption with a hand to his head. “We got to kill it”—Rebecca dropped the knife with a loud clang to the cement floor—“before it reaches the roof.”

  “It’ll squish her.” Derek slammed an open palm to the control panel.

  From upstairs, Viola’s indistinguishable voice croaked, “Hello? Where is everybody?” Her footsteps squeaked floorboards.

  “Up here!” Josefina cried. “Save me. I to be a fucking pancake!”

  Derek bolted. “I’ll get Josefina from upstairs.”

  Food leaned against the house’s oil tank—a large black cistern below a set of windows. Blood drizzled from his head and into his mouth. He spat on the floor.

  “Viola!” Derek could be heard upstairs. “We need to get Josefina. She’s stuck…” His voice faded as the rumble of footsteps on stairs developed.

  Rebecca climbed a pile of rocks beside the oil tank.

  “Rebecca? What…?” Carolyn stopped when she saw the girl reach for a plug adjacent to the dumbwaiter’s box.

  Rebecca yanked the black cord. The rocks on which she stood shifted, and she fell to the basement’s floor.

  “Rebecca!” Food said.

  Carolyn went to her.

  Lying on her back, the lift’s connection dangled by her side.

  The elevator whirred to a stop, and a commotion of voices rang out from upstairs.

  Rebecca coughed through a cloud of dust billowing about. She flicked the plug off her hand—clinging by a piece of electrician’s tape. Her cough intensified, and she rolled over.

  Carolyn crouched beside her.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine.” Rebecca crawled. “Food?”
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  “I’ll live.” The man wiped blood off his hands and onto the leg of his grease-stained jeans.

  Carolyn touched Rebecca on the side to assist her, and the witch cringed.

  “My back.” Rebecca crept through rock, and more fell.

  “Easy.” Carolyn rose with an outstretched hand.

  “Wait!” Rebecca dug through the piles of sand. A gold-gilt pattern glistened through the powdery particles. “It can’t be.”

  “What?” Carolyn asked, and Food neared.

  Rebecca uncovered what appeared to be a book. “It’s…it’s another…another book…of shadows?” She exhumed it fully. “It is.”

  “Oh.” Food caught Carolyn’s eye and shrugged.

  “It’s a journal of spell—” Rebecca stopped when a doll’s arm rolled down the heap, landed by her knees, and a smattering of sand tumbled out from its hollowed core.

  L.L. Bean

  Carolyn brought in The Bar Harbor Times from the front porch of the Nesbitt house. A couple of days had passed since the dumbwaiter incident, and she wanted to check in on Josefina again.

  In his silk pajamas, Terrence greeted Carolyn. “Good morning.”

  “Hi, love.” She stepped in and kissed him on the cheek. “How’s the patient?”

  “The same.”

  “Cantankerous as always?” Carolyn smirked.

  “You got it. Come in.” Terrence closed the door.

  Carolyn moved to the center of the room—an opened foyer and living area. “Hey, Rebecca’s leaving for Salem.” She handed Terrence the newspaper. “Do you think you could give her a ride to the station?”

  “Of course. Is everything—”

  Michael walked out from the kitchen carrying a breakfast tray with a steaming plate and a yellow chrysanthemum in a vase. “Hey, sweet cheeks. I thought I heard you.” He tilted his head her way for the customary peck, and she obliged.

  The smell of eggs and bacon made Carolyn’s stomach growl. “I was just asking Terrence if he’d give Becky a lift into town.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “I told her I would,” Terrence said.

  “Great, we can go shopping at the outlets.” Michael headed for the stairs. “I’ll tell Josefina. That’ll get her ass out of bed.”

  Terrence held out the Times. “Here’s the paper for her.”

  “Bring it up.” Michael stood on the bifurcating landing.

  Carolyn followed the couple up the stairs and down a hall.

  “Josefina, guests.” Michael entered the housekeeper’s quarters. Terrence and Carolyn accompanied him.

  Josefina drew silk sheets and an oversized duvet to her chin. “I no gonna do you laundry no more.” Her voice struck as dramatic and weak, and the back of her hair was compressed, like she’d been in bed too long.

  “She’s been playing woe-is-me ever since,” Michael said to Carolyn and placed the tray on a nightstand adjacent to the bed.

  “What you say about me?”

  Terrence handed her the newspaper. “We’re saying that we’re taking a trip into town. Carolyn and Michael want to go shopping at L.L. Bean and—”

  Josefina flung back the bed linen. “You no gonna go without me!” She pointed a finger at Michael and scooched off the bed. “Give me two minute.” She headed for the quarter’s attached bathroom.

  “What about your breakfast?” Michael asked.

  “Wrap it up.” The faucet turned on and the door shut.

  Terrence picked a slice of bacon off her plate. “Why’s Rebecca leaving?”

  Carolyn shook her head. “She needs to help Berniece for a few days with the store or something. I’m not sure, really.” She took a slice of toast from Michael’s offering.

  After leaving Rebecca at Hannaford in downtown Bar Harbor—for the shuttle to the Bangor Transportation Center—Terrence drove Michael, Carolyn, and Josefina into Ellsworth for some shopping.

  “I’ll get money at the ATM.” Michael shut the door to the Mercedes. “I’ll meet you inside.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Carolyn said. “I’m low on cash.”

  “Get lots of twenties,” Josefina said, “because this beautiful Guatemalan lady deserves a new coat.”

  Terrence alarmed the car and it beeped.

  “I’ll be sure he does,” Carolyn said.

  Josefina put her arm through Terrence’s, and they entered L.L. Bean.

  “C’mon.” Michael stood by the crosswalk at the edge of the parking lot. “I want to get a hot chocolate at Dunkin’ Donuts.”

  “I thought we were getting money.”

  “We will. I got enough for some pastries and drinks.”

  Carolyn jaunted over to him, and they crossed the street.

  “Muffin?” Michael asked of Carolyn as they stood in front of the cashier, a small-boned woman with wisps of brown hair that matched her saw-like teeth.

  “I’m good.” Carolyn shoved her hands in her parka.

  “Two blueberry,” he said to the cashier.

  Carolyn stepped closer. “I said I didn’t—”

  “I’m hungry.” Michael turned back to the thin creature. “And four small hot chocolates. Those aren’t all for me.”

  A few minutes later, Carolyn balanced the tray of drinks while Michael slid his bank card into the door of the KeyBank across the street. “We should’ve got the money first,” she said. The door buzzed, and they went inside.

  “Nonsense,” Michael mumbled through the bag of muffins clenched in his teeth. He took it out. “We can handle it.”

  Carolyn placed the tray on a small table strewn with deposits slips. A roped pen cap dangled off the counter.

  Michael went to the ATM, placed the bag of muffins onto the lip of the machine’s encasement, and held the bag in place with his thigh. “Don’t look at my PIN. I don’t want you to steal all my money.”

  “1-9-7-9,” she said.

  Michael leered. “How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess.” Carolyn knew he used the year they’d met for lots of things. “Same code for your answering machine.”

  Michael punched buttons on the ATM. “You know everything about me.”

  She chuckled. “Well, we have been through a lot.”

  He glanced her way. The machine clacked busily, and wads of cash spit out from it.

  “God, how much are you getting?”

  “Josefina’s expensive.” He collected the money as more bills flitted out.

  “They don’t sell mink coats at L.L. Bean.”

  He snickered.

  “You know,” she said, “I don’t think we need to be quiet anymore.”

  Michael furrowed his brow as he shoved cash into his wallet. “About?”

  “Seth Stevenson.”

  The bag of muffins slipped from the edge of the ATM and fell to the floor. She knew he would be surprised when she brought it up—for she never did.

  “The other day,” Carolyn confided, “when Josefina was stuck in the dumbwaiter?”

  “Yeah.” He took his receipt.

  She went over. “I thought I saw Seth…in Derek.” She picked the bag off the floor and threw it to him.

  He caught it. “What?” His face scrunched in confusion.

  “I wanted to stab him.”

  “Carolyn.”

  “I know. That’s why…no more.” She fumbled through her purse for her wallet and ATM card. “I’m done. I could’ve killed the poor guy. He was just trying to help get Food out from that stupid lift. Why the heck do you…or the Nesbitts, rather, have that thing anyway?”

  He waved her off. “But what about the…”

  She knew what he meant. They’d never spoken of it since it happened. “The threat? The haunting?”

  Michael winced.

  Years ago, after it all went down, the high school quarterback threatened them never to tell.

  “We’re grown-ups now.” She took her wallet out. “You still believe that just because he took his life, he’s going to come back
and haunt us if we…talk about it?” She couldn’t believe she was even mentioning it. Her hands trembled as she tried to pull out the card.

  “Seth? In Derek?”

  “The situation…the confusion…it all—”

  “What if Derek is him? Reincarnated.”

  Carolyn shoved her card in the machine. “Don’t be silly.”

  “But he told us, that if we ever told, he’d—”

  “What he told us…what he did to us…was wrong! Illegal.” She stared at the machine’s keypad. “I almost killed a man over it. I’m done. Plus, Derek’s too old to have been reincarnated as…it’s just silly.”

  “You’re right. But the statute of limitations is over.”

  “We’re not going to sue. There’s no one to sue.” Her card spit out for waiting too long. She removed it and slid it back in. “I just need to heal.”

  The bag of muffins crinkled.

  “Don’t look.” She smirked over her shoulder. “I don’t want you to get my PIN.”

  “1-9-7-9?” he asked.

  She punched in the year they’d met.

  “Don’t worry.” Michael peeled the muffin’s wrapper. “I don’t need your money.”

  Homely Boy

  In 1980, Bette Midler was up for Best Actress for her role from the prior year’s film The Rose. Michael and Carolyn wrote for the Entertainment section of the junior high school’s newspaper, The Higgins Tribune, and reviewed movies—even the lesser-known awards for contenders such as The Muppet Movie, The Concorde (Airport ’79), The Jerk, and Amityville Horror. Ms. Bowditch, the blonde social studies teacher with a Farrah Fawcett-Majors hairstyle—that Carolyn desperately tried to replicate—got them free movie passes.

  Michael and Carolyn loved The Rose. They’d seen it eighteen times.

  “But do you think Jane Fonda might get it?” Michael asked, trudging alongside Carolyn between periods through the school’s B-house. He wore a velour V-neck, jeans, and Nikes.

  “China Syndrome was good.” Carolyn flipped her hair back with a snap to her head and hugged a stack of books close to her chest.

  “Bette Midler! Bette Midler!” Michael chanted.

  “Rose. Rose. Rose,” Carolyn mumbled, mimicking the cheering audience from the movie. She looked over her shoulder. Despite being in the drama club and voted Most Talented for the yearbook, she didn’t like drawing attention to herself, the facet expressed in her bland beige K-mart apparel.