by Jane Heller
“Sounds like your friend Jeremy hasn’t had a very positive effect on our condo sales,” Suzanne said to me later over coffee. “Has your brother spoken to him?”
“Yes. Ben said he spent a night in jail on a charge of reckless mischief or something like that. Basically, he paid a fine and promised never to do it again. Of course, Dubin and Company have threatened him with a lawsuit, saying he’s responsible for damaging the building and their reputation as developers.”
“How about his father? Somebody said he had a heart attack during the storm.”
“He did, but Ben says he’s doing okay. He’s in the hospital but stable.”
I felt awful knowing the truth about Mike Cook; that the devil had caused his heart attack, just to punish Jeremy. I also felt burdened by the knowledge that the River Princess had been Satan’s “pet project.” Not that I fully understood what that meant. Only David would be able to explain it to me and David wasn’t David anymore. He was Danny Bettinstein, the orthodontist who didn’t remember being a darksider.
“Hey, tell me about this Danny Bettinstein,” Suzanne said suddenly. “The guy we were talking to after the storm.”
“What do you want to know?” I asked, feeling guilty that I would have to lie to her about him.
“For starters, I thought you said the name of the person who was buying the Nowak house was David Bettinger.”
“Oh, that.” How was I going to explain? “I think Danny uses the name David Bettinger for business. You know, like actors have stage names and writers have pseudonyms.” Well, why not?
“You mean, Danny Bettinstein and David Bettinger are the same person?”
“That’s right.”
“Then Danny’s the guy you went out with. The one you said had a dark side.”
“In hindsight, it wasn’t that dark,” I said. I didn’t want to ruin Danny for Suzanne. She seemed to like him and now that he was tailless, why not encourage a friendship between them? She was single, he was single. She liked to eat, he liked to cook. She wanted a man with a profession, he straightened teeth for a living. They were perfect for each other, I thought, and I told Suzanne so.
“But he’s bald,” she whined.
“So? At least he won’t shed.”
Speaking of shedders, Pete had a new hairdo. When I’d come home after the party at the River Princess, damp and depressed, I’d walked in the door, reached down to pet my loyal and trusty canine, and discovered that the white patch on his chest—the lone albino fur amid all that satiny black—had grown, expanded, spread! Now, the patch, once the size of my fist, covered almost the entire width of his chest. He looked as if he’d just had a lobster dinner and forgotten to take off his bib.
Is this normal? I wondered. Are dogs more like humans than I thought? Does their hair get whiter as they get older, just like ours does?
I considered my own hair and that of the members of my family. We’d all turned gray practically overnight, and while we didn’t jump for joy about it, we didn’t consider it especially bizarre.
But Pete was something else again. His chest had grown whiter in a matter of hours. While I was at a party. While my back was turned. And then there were all the other things about him that I didn’t understand. I couldn’t help wondering: was he somehow part of the devil’s plan for me? Had Satan placed him on my doorstep to deceive me in some way? To distract me? If so, why? From what?
There was only one way to find out: by getting the devil out of town and waiting to see if Pete went with him.
How would I find Satan without any help from David or Danny or whatever the hell his name was?
I had an idea—and I planned to follow it up the very next evening.
Constance Terry lived alone in a small, Victorian-style house well outside of town, about ten miles from Benjamin’s cabin. It was the type of house I expected a psychic to live in—isolated, slightly run-down, brimming with character. It gave me the creeps and so did the mourning doves who greeted me with their haunting “Hoooo hoooo hoooo” as I walked up to the front door. I looked for a bell or buzzer to press. There was none. Just wind chimes, which announced my arrival without my having to.
“I remember you now,” Constance said, motioning for me to enter the house. “You were the one who interrupted the séance and disturbed the energy in the room.”
“Yes,” I said. “I didn’t know Ben had company.”
She nodded and led me into the dusty, windowless, claustrophobically small den, which, she explained, was where she conducted her readings. She gestured toward the ottoman. I sat down on it.
“You’ll want to take off that jacket,” she said, referring to the beige linen blazer I’d worn over my short-sleeved dress.
“Why? Will that help me get in touch with the spirits?” I asked.
“No, it will help you stay cool. The house isn’t air conditioned.”
I nodded and removed the blazer.
“I don’t believe in air conditioning,” she went on, settling into a slipcovered wing chair. “It chases entities out, all that cooling and churning and stirring up. They’re not comfortable in a space unless the air is still, calm.”
“I see,” I said, seeing only that the woman sitting in the room with me was alarmingly pale, her skin tone nearly the same color as her long white hair, both of which were in stark contrast to her all-black dress—the same dress she’d worn the night of the séance at Ben’s. Her black-and-whiteness reminded me of Pete.
“Shall we get started?” she said.
It wasn’t a question. She placed her hands on her lap, tilted her head up toward the ceiling and closed her eyes.
Obviously, she was dispensing with the chitchat and getting right down to business. I liked that. When I had telephoned her and said I wanted to book an hour of her time, she’d explained that she charged eighty-five dollars. The figure had sounded a little steep, but she’d assured me that the time would be well spent. I certainly hoped so.
“Should I close my eyes, too?” I asked.
“Shhhh,” she whispered. “I’m dialing into the vibrations.”
I wondered if she was an AT&T customer.
“MCI,” she said, her eyes still closed.
So much for my doubts about Constance’s ability to read minds.
“I feel a dark entity in the room with us,” she said. “A foul, rotten odor.”
“Oh, that’s probably me,” I said, a little embarrassed. I reached into my purse for the BreathAssure.
“No.” Constance shook her head. “It’s someone hovering around you, someone who wants you to do something you don’t want to do.”
“Yes!” I said excitedly, thinking of the devil and his refusal to let me out of our bargain. I felt optimistic for the first time since this nightmare started. “That’s why I’m here, Constance. So you can tell me who that person is. I happen to know that there’s a very negative entity here in Banyan Beach, the most negative of all entities, the darkest of forces. Can you see him? Can you see whose body he’s hiding in?”
She held her hands out in front of her, palms up, a supplicant. And then her eyelids began to flutter.
“I feel a…”
“Yes, Constance?” I urged. “What do you feel?”
“I…I feel that it’s an older man who wants you to do this thing you don’t want to do. Yes, an older man. In his seventies, possibly.”
“An older man in his seventies,” I said.
“Yes, with a foreign accent. A German accent.”
“A German accent.” The devil was hiding inside the body of a seventy-year-old man with a German accent?
“Yes. I’m getting a name.”
“Really?” God, this was going to be easier than I thought.
“I’m getting the initial ‘G.’”
“For the first or last name?”
“‘G,’” she repeated, ignoring me. “Greg. Glenn. Garth. George.”
“Those names don’t ring a bell,” I said, trying not to
get discouraged.
“Gerald. Gilbert. Gordon. Gus,” she went on.
“Gus!” I said. “I know a seventy-year-old man with a German accent named Gus. Gus Liederman. The guy who owns the bagel place on Center Street. I stop there practically every morning on my way to work.”
Constance nodded. “Yes, this is the man who wants you to do something you don’t want to do.”
“Gus?”
I frowned and was glad Constance’s eyes were closed so she couldn’t see the disappointment on my face. Gus Liederman wasn’t the devil’s cover in Banyan Beach. He was a nice Jewish baker who was always reinventing the bagel. Actually, Constance was right about him. He did want me to do something I didn’t want to do: he wanted me to try his latest creation—the pepperoni bagel. I kept telling him that poppy seed bagels were about as out-there as I wanted my bagels to get and that he should stop badgering me or I’d start going to Dunkin’ Donuts.
“I don’t think Gus Liederman is the dark force I’m looking for,” I told Constance. “Perhaps you could pick up someone else’s vibration.”
“Shhhhh,” she quieted me. “I am picking up someone else’s vibration.”
“You are?” I said eagerly.
“Yes. I’m seeing her clearly now.”
“Her?” I waited. Constance’s eyelids were fluttering again.
“She’s coming to me as a gray-haired woman,” said Constance. “An older woman.”
It’s probably Gus Liederman’s wife, I guessed. She worked in the bagel place with him.
“Does this woman work on Center Street?” I asked.
“No. She’s coming to me from the other side.”
“The other side? You mean she’s dead?”
“She’s in the spirit world. I’m a medium. I connect with those who’ve passed on.”
“I remember,” I said, hoping this gray-haired woman Constance had connected with wasn’t Denise and Janice’s grandmother. I liked meat loaf as much as the next person, but I had more important business here.
“She’s calling your name,” said Constance. “‘Barbara. Barbara. Barbara,’ she’s saying.”
“Is she saying anything else?” I asked. We could be talking about my mother, my Aunt Sadie, my Grandma Natalie, anyone. I had a lot of dead female relatives with gray hair.
“Yes,” said Constance. “She’s saying, ‘Barbara. Barbara. Barbara. What have you done to yourself? You look like a cadaver.’”
The scary thing was that Constance had not only connected with my mother, she had spoken in her exact voice. It was as if Estelle Greenberg were right there in the room with me.
“Do you know this woman?” Constance asked me.
“Yes. She’s my mother. I haven’t spoken to her in years and the first words out of her mouth are, ‘You look like a cadaver.’ She should talk, huh?”
“Would you like to speak to her?”
I considered the question. When my mother was alive, I tried to avoid speaking to her. But now, what did I have to lose? She was just a spirit, a dead person. Besides, I had learned how to stand up for myself. Maybe even to her.
“Yes, I would like to speak to her.”
“What is her name?”
“Estelle.”
Constance held her hands out once again, palms up, eyes closed tightly.
“Estelle,” she called out. “Your daughter would like to communicate with you.”
After a few moments of silence, Constance opened her eyes and nodded at me.
“She’s waiting,” she said.
I swallowed hard. “Mom?”
Constance nodded again, encouraging me to continue.
“I…I’m sorry you think I look too thin,” I said, then stopped myself. “No, cancel that. I’m not sorry. This is how I look now that I’ve lost weight. I don’t give a shit if you don’t like it.”
The lights flickered in Constance’s little room.
“Your mother says, ‘Watch your mouth,’” Constance reported.
“Tell her to watch hers,” I said. “She’s the one who can’t control herself. All she does is criticize. Once a nag, always a nag, I guess.”
The lights flickered again.
Constance translated. “Your mother says, ‘I only want what’s best for my daughter.’”
“Tell her what’s best for her daughter is a mother who supports her; who builds her up instead of tears her down; who accepts her for who she is; who tells her she loves her.”
The lights flickered, then went out altogether.
I looked over at Constance. “Don’t tell me she’s at a loss for words.”
The lights came back on.
“Well?” I asked my medium.
“Your mother is crying,” said Constance. “She’s attempting to communicate something but I can’t understand her.”
“Maybe she’s speaking in tongues,” I said.
Constance shook her head. “Wait. I’m tuning into her now. She’s saying, ‘Tell Barbara I love her. More than I ever showed her.’”
“My mother said that?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t have a clue whether Constance’s communications with the dead were on the level or a terrific con, but I let my mother’s supposed expression of love hang in the air for a few minutes. It never feels bad to hear an “I love you.” Even when you hear it secondhand.
Eventually, I was able to steer Constance back to the reason I had come to see her. I asked her to get in touch with her vibrations or energies or whatever they were and tell me who in Banyan Beach was harboring the force of evil. She tried, but couldn’t come up with anybody. Which is not to say she didn’t make any psychic predictions. She predicted that I would receive a wedding invitation in the mail from a college friend named Diane (my roommate’s name was Diana, which was close enough, I thought); that Mitchell would call to tell me he and Chrissy wanted the house on Seacrest Way (he already had); and that I would feel anger toward a tall dark-haired woman with a run in her pantyhose (it happened later that night, at the supermarket, where a woman fitting that description cut in front of me in the checkout line).
As my hour with Constance drew to a close, I began to feel disheartened, defeated, frustrated by her inability to tell me what I needed to know, and I didn’t have any idea what my next move should be.
And then Constance said something that pointed me in the right direction. As I was fumbling in my purse for my credit cards (she had informed me that she took Visa or MasterCard, but not American Express), she said, “Who’s the fisherman in your life?”
I looked at her. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Who’s the fisherman?’ I’m picking up a man with red hair and a red beard who likes to fish.”
“That must be Jeremy,” I said. “Jeremy Cook. He’s a friend of my brother’s.”
Constance shook her head. “He’s a friend of yours,” she said. “Make no mistake about that. He’s going to help you.”
“With what?” I asked.
“With the evil that’s come into your life,” she said. “He’s going to help you get rid of it.”
I found this little tidbit quite interesting, obviously.
“But he must be persuaded to help you,” she continued. “You must use your power to persuade him. Do you understand?”
“I…I think so. It’s just that Jeremy and I don’t get along that well, and I can’t imagine that he would—”
“Does he sing?” Constance cut me off.
“Yes,” I said.
“He will sing a song for you,” she said. “Especially for you.”
And on that note, she told me our time was up.
Chapter 21
Who’s the fisherman? He’s going to help you. With the evil that’s come into your life. He’s going to help you get rid of it.
Constance’s words haunted me all night long. She’d been amazingly accurate in so many of her predictions, but was she right about Jeremy? About his helping me get the devil ou
t of town? Should I tell him about the bargain I’d made with Satan? Would he believe me? Of all the people I knew, he was the most likely to take a risk. But risking a night in jail to protest pollution and risking his soul to cast out the devil were two different things, weren’t they?
I debated these questions throughout the night and by 4:00 a.m. I finally came to a conclusion: I would tell Jeremy everything and ask for his help. What else could I do? I wasn’t exactly full of options.
So I didn’t go to the office the next morning. I left the house early and drove down to Eddie’s Marina, hoping to catch Jeremy before he went out on the Devil-May-Care. Fortunately, I not only found him at “C” dock, slip 14—I found him alone. He was standing next to the Hatteras but not doing much of anything, as far as I could tell. He was just hanging out, drinking coffee, and surveying the scene, looking every bit the Irish seaman in his blue jeans, Kelly green T-shirt, and rusty red hair and beard.
I stopped short of the slip, remained slightly out of his view, and watched him for a minute or two. He had such an easy way about him, a thoroughly unmannered body language that suggested that he didn’t concern himself with what people thought of him, with whether or not they liked him. For the second time in a week, I envied him.
“Hey, look who’s back at Eddie’s Marina. I must be dreamin’,” he called out when he caught a glimpse of me. He smiled and raised his Styrofoam cup in a gesture of greeting.
Jeremy smiled a lot, I realized, unlike Mitchell, who wore a perpetually harried expression, as if he were always being sued. In this case, it was Jeremy who was being sued, by the River Princess’s developers, but you’d never know it. He looked as happy and carefree as I wished I felt.
“You’re not dreaming,” I said as I approached him. “I came here to talk to you.”
He groaned. “If this ‘talk’ is gonna be anything like the last one, I think I’ll pass, BS.”
“I want to apologize for that,” I said. “I was totally out of line that day.”
“Hey, forget it,” said Jeremy. “Ben said you’ve been havin’ a rough time lately.”
“Ben doesn’t know the half of it.”