The rest of the guys headed over to some black spots at the edge of the water, and I heard some hushed conversation as they took care of their bladders. I walked in the opposite direction and stood near what used to be a cabin or the kitchen or something. There was a decent-size pine that had pushed through the rotted roof and looked like the mast of a tall ship. At first I’d thought this little clearing in the swamp was the worst spot to finally talk about all that shit ten years ago, but now I realized it was the only place to tell it. It was my own personal exorcism.
When I got back the men had spread out their sleeping bags and formed a tighter circle without the old campfire pit between us. I could see the rifles lying within reach of each guy and remembered we were out here to catch Trey, not Elizabeth or the white owl. Foster patted the open spot between him and Sam, and I pulled part of a sleeping bag over my lap. Foster put his hand on my shoulder and from the other side Sam did the same. Foster whispered, “I know this hasn’t been easy telling us all of this, Chief. If you want to wait, Jason, if you want to tell the rest of it when we’re back in...civilization, that’s okay.”
“I know, but I think the spell or curse or whatever is over with. Maybe it just wore off over time. But anyway here it goes, the rest of the story.” I heard a few glugs from bottles and smelled some weed burning. Somebody passed me the joint and I kept the glowing end cupped in my hand as I inhaled.
“I paced my room that night, and was about as far away from sleep as I’ve ever been. Every once in awhile I’d peek out through the windows. I didn’t expect to see...anything, I was pretty fuckin’ sure they all had better places to be.
“When the sun began to rise I couldn’t take it any longer, the not knowin’ overcame my fear of seeing what had happened at Ty’s and Elizabeth’s—not Rose’s anymore—twisted place. I snuck downstairs and through the kitchen and walked out to my car. It was already fifty degrees outside and I knew by noon it would be a warm day. As I went over the causeway somethin’ in my brain ordered me to calm down, the situation had...resolved itself overnight. It told me that all the debts, all the anguish, had been settled up. But my heart ached for what this would cost Ty and Rose, two innocent people who were payin’ a huge price for things that started centuries ago.
“I paused at the front of town hall and willed myself to get out of the car, to face Bucky man to man when I asked for help. I stared at my phone and thought about just calling him and sitting in my car until he came down the steps. I pictured him comin’ down to me and looking like the most badass sheriff in the Wild West, and saving everybody. I shook my head and got out of the car and went inside. He was sitting at his desk with his legs sprawled over it. The newspaper was restin’ on his chest and he blinked a few times before he said anything. My tears had started halfway up the steps, and to Bucky I must have looked like a little kid who was lost. ‘What’s happened?’ He asked the question in a flat voice, and I wiped my eyes and my nose and just hung my head. ‘Have you been there?’ I shook my head. ‘Did he call you?’ I whispered no. ‘Did Rose call you?’ I coughed out one sob and tried to tell him with my eyes. ‘Okay, Jason. Okay, we’ll go on over there, we’ll...see things together.’
“I sat up front with him in that huge Suburban with my feet barely touchin’ the floor. When we pulled up to the house he motioned for me to stay in the car. He didn’t have to do that, my ass was frozen to that seat and there was no way I was goin’ in that fuckin’ place. I sat there waiting, and waiting. I tried to picture Ty and Rose stepping out of the front door, smilin’ and holding hands. My brain said Don’t even try, Jason. That’s at the bottom of the list of possible endin’ for this story. That ending, it’s vanished, it’s light years away in deep space. But my heart still tried to drown out my brain when the door began to open.
“Bucky was holding Ty’s elbow and he led him down the walk. Ty looked...I hate to say it but he looked like a homeless old man, someone broken. He had on old sweatpants and a sweatshirt that were stained and hangin’ off his frame. His hair and the stubble on his face had turned ghost white, and you could just about see his teeth through his cheeks. When I realized Bucky was about to open a back door and put him in here, with me, for a split second I looked for the power lock switch to keep him out. Bucky opened the door and helped him into the back seat. The cool wind that blew through the car with Ty almost immediately turned sour, and smelled like old damp basement air. Bucky went to the back of the Suburban and rummaged around and then slammed the gate shut. When he walked past the front of the truck he had some clear bags in his hand and he was talking into the mike on his shoulder.
“I moaned as Bucky closed the door to the house behind him and I grabbed the door handle. I felt a tug on my seatbelt and Ty said, ‘He’s safe, Jason. There isn’t anything...other than a normal house in there.’ A wave of pure alcohol, and maybe some puke, hit me and I gagged a little. ‘When he comes back out there’ll be a letter in one of the bags, and he’ll want to take us for a ride. If you want to hop out of here and walk away I’ll understand. There are going to be lies told today, and things are going to be hard to watch unfold. But you don’t have to be involved in it, I’ll understand. A good kid like you should have never been pulled into this thing, this disaster.’ ”
The Witch
“I stayed right where I was and Ty reached forward and squeezed my shoulder. We sat there and listened to sirens wailin’ closer, and then watched the red lights of the EMS and the blue lights of the state police spin around on the front of the house. I couldn’t handle Ty’s smell anymore and I rolled my window down. I heard one of the state troopers talking on a phone. ‘The body’s not in there, the local guy’s going to take us to the scene. Yeah, have the K9 unit, and the…’ he looked our way, ‘and the divers on standby. Right, I’ll let you know as soon as we get...wherever.’
“Bucky came out with a letter in one of those bags, just like Ty said he would. In his other hand he had somethin’ blue stuffed into another bag. ‘It’s an old t shirt of mine that Rose would wear to bed. It’s for the dogs to get...her scent.’ Bucky’s jaw was set so tight, and his hands were gripping the wheel so hard that it scared me. He slammed the truck into drive and made a U-turn, tearing paths in the neighbors’ yards and he never slowed down through downtown Parker’s Bluff. We hit the causeway doin’ about eighty and just kept going faster. We went over the bridge risin’ over Indian Creek and my stomach made a curving arc as we lost a little gravity heading back down it.
“We went a little further and as we approached the mainland I could see a single set of blue lights flashin’ in the parking lot at the edge of the swamp. Rose’s little car was parked about ten feet away from it, right by the start of the nature trail. ‘Dammit,’ Bucky groaned, ‘Jed must have heard the radio chatter.’
“When Bucky got to the turnoff to the parking lot he veered left so hard I was sure we were gonna to roll right over. We slid down the gravel and shells and didn’t come to a full stop until the front tires made little ripples at the edge of the water.”
“Mystery solved.” Sam tried to put some humor in his voice. “Now we know who you got your driving skills from.”
“Right, Sam. That’s really what this story’s all about. So anyway, Bucky jumps out of the driver’s seat and immediately gets into a territorial pissin’ contest with Jed. It took a couple of troopers to separate them. After a group discussion Jed got back in his car and backed up next to the driveway, but he didn’t leave. I guess as the sheriff of the county he had a right to be there, but he was shut out from the whole investigation.
“Bucky walked back to us and I rolled my window down. He stuck his head in and I could smell the sweat on him, see the red blushes on his neck and his cheeks. ‘You two, you just stay right here, okay? There are officers, good people, who’re here to help you. We’ll all do our jobs and you two just sit tight. I promise I’ll be right here if there’s anybody...anything found. Or, if you want, I can get a trooper to run you
back to the station, anywhere you want. You don’t have to be here.’ He looked over his shoulder at the swamp.
“I told Bucky we’d be right here until things were done and over with. Ty nodded and Bucky walked away. He went over to an SUV as a uniformed guy let a dog out of the back. The handler let the hound dog sniff the open bag and then he was pulled by the dog’s leash to the nature trail entrance.
“We watched as the lot filled up with rows of marked cars that seemed to have come from every county in a hundred-mile radius. Loudspeakers squelched and crackled bits of radio chatter and officers blocked off the entrance to the park, the opening of the trail, and then they wrapped bright yellow tape, crime scene tape, around Rose’s car.
“Ty was staring forward and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I wondered if he’d actually died of a broken heart right in the middle of all the commotion. When he started talking I was relieved, but only for a minute or so. ‘I knew things were going to be bad up there—with her, and I shouldn’t have had as much to drink or smoke as I did. When she knocked on the door to the study and told me it was time, she would wait for me to come to her room, I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to climb those mossy steps.’
“Ty told me the rest of it, in bits and pieces and in between tears and high-pitched giggles that made my skin crawl, he told me what he remembered. He said he focused on a flutterin’ glow at the top of the steps and tried to stumble his way to it. He got to the second floor, stood upright, and very politely knocked on the guest room door. She told him to come in and he opened the door, and then his feet went on strike. Based on what his eyes were seeing his feet just said No thanks, we are just fuckin’ fine right here, thank you very much.
“In the room, he told me, it was like a Disney movie from hell. She was seated at a vanity and staring into a mirror that was in three parts, two angled sides and the large one facin’ her that she was focused on. There were at least a hundred candles sitting on flat surfaces around the room. But she wasn’t the princess in a cartoon, and this scene would never be shown on the big screen to innocent children. The animals keepin’ her company weren’t bunnies or singing birds, or anything happy like that. They were dark and shadowy, and all of them had glowing eyes and gleaming-white teeth. There was a jet-black panther stretched across the bed and purring. Gators tilted their heads from under the bed to watch her, and snakes hung from the little cut glass chandelier. In the corners of the ceiling there were slick black webs crawling with amazing little critters—cartoon-orange caterpillars, red-globed spiders, silver shimmering cockroaches. ‘Is my Rose here, is part of her still in you?’
“She shook her head, told him she was gone, she’d thought about letting Rose out for just a minute, sending her down to his study to say goodbye. But when she tried to tell Rose she was gone, nowhere in the space they had been sharing, evidently she had decided to check out early. Ty watched as Elizabeth applied powder and she carefully painted her lips. From where he stood by the door he could see she was naked, he was looking at her back and could see her breasts in the mirror. He began to walk to her, but realized the carpet was covered in coiled water moccasins and hissing cobras.”
“There couldn’t possibly have been cobras in Parker’s Bluff, ‘specially not in November,” Billy argued.
“And that’s what bothers you about this story, Billy?” Sam sounded a little irritated. “The cobras? An ancient witch who had taken control of Ty’s wife—or her body, whatever, is putting on makeup while a purring panther curled up on her bed watches her. And a cobra in the room makes you call bullshit on the story. Really?”
“Well, Billy may be right, maybe Ty didn’t see any cobras—he admitted himself he was drunk and stoned. But,” I said, “even if he only saw half the shit he claimed to see it still wasn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy place to be. So Ty freezes again and she tells him not to worry, all the animals were part of the ceremony and wouldn’t bother to kill him on such a happy night. He began walkin’ to her and stopped when he was right behind her, so that he could meet her eyes in the mirror as she started brushing her hair. Occasionally her face would begin rotating ‘round the mirrors, and her features would change just a bit—he could see his wife, he could see Elizabeth, he could see glimpses of other women who were each just a bit different than the others. He asked her to show him the real her, the one under the makeup. She shook her head and told him that her agreement with Rose included Ty never seeing that, and that he would never have to look into the white owl’s eyes. Either one of those things, she told Ty, would make him beyond insane, there wasn’t enough liquor to ever dull that terror. Rose caught a few glimpses of the true hag, Elizabeth told him, but she was a strong woman and pushed Elizabeth away in her mind before any real damage could be done.
“Ty realized he couldn’t stand up too much longer, he was so wasted one way or the other he was on a collision course with the floor. He almost reached out for Elizabeth’s shoulders for balance, but a giant black and glossy-green spider descended from the ceilin’ and landed just where his hand was about to touch her. He backed up instead and sat down on the edge of the bed with a grunt. The panther that was lying beside him yawned and put its head in his lap. He wasn’t sure if it was cuddling or keeping him prisoner. ‘I figured,’ he told me, ‘that the odds were fifty-fifty on that, and either way I had time to get some answers from her.’
“She must have read his mind because she told him she really didn’t have time to answer a lot of questions, and that some of those answers he just wasn’t equipped to handle. She stood up, and without any hint of modesty casually walked into the bathroom and out of view. He stroked the panther’s head and it started that rumbling purring, and somewhere in his mind he wondered if she’d let him keep the cat as a consolation prize. ‘If you could see how much that thing eats you wouldn’t want it, and it’s not leashed trained. I doubt your neighbors would like it roaming around.’ She laughed and added, ‘Especially if they have small children.’ She asked him, ‘Wouldn’t you rather have a little gator or maybe just adopt a kitten instead?’
“She stepped back out of the bathroom and he gasped and shivered. She was standing in the gown I’d seen her buy, but she had made...alterations. Along the neckline, the sleeves, the waist, were elaborate gold ribbons decorated with tiny red roses and white, wispy, down feathers that softly glowed in the candlelight. The ribbons were attached to the gown with enormous pins sparklin’ with precious gems and the colors—the white diamonds, the red rubies, other gems Ty couldn’t recognize, all of them seemed to grow brighter and brighter. She stood in front of the mirror and simply said, ‘Zip me up.’
“He said he stood up and stumbled to her, pulling the zipper up her back and shivering at the touch of her skin. ‘Is she safe, is she happy, Elizabeth? Will I ever see her again? I’m begging you, Elizabeth, tell me you and that owl have let her go. That the two of you aren’t going to torture her, make her pay for any of this.’
“She sat back down on the bench to finish her makeup. She told him to look at the mirror, at her reflection—but quickly. He did and he somehow saw that Rose was safely gone, that it was only Elizabeth in the mirror. ‘The Owl was furious with her, and the brave, for tricking us the night we went to see your little elf friend. I was amused by his...display, but until we saw the brave make himself visible we didn’t realize Rose had kept a secret from me about Jason’s…desires. But, now that White Owl has me to himself, has all of me—he’s waited ever since that dagger pierced my heart, then he won’t bother the Rumpholt imp, or your constable, or the ancient hag with the bad makeup who guards the town’s secrets and vaults, not anyone else. Just like I used Rose’s knowledge to drive the car, she stole a few skills from me. She couldn’t force a soul out of its body or anything so grand as that, she could only do a few basic things. She strolled right into my cookbook, I guess you’d say. She was a beginner but she managed to create a room in Jason’s mind, a vault where all of these things he’s seen can
be safely kept away from him. He won’t completely forget about all of this, but he’ll keep it in that room until he’s strong enough to unlock it. The damage is probably already done to you, Ty, there’s no spell she could have given you. But when you do see Rose again you’ll be healed, trust that.’ She stood up and pulled Ty closer to her. She gave him a soft kiss on the lips and whispered to him. ‘I care about you, Ty. Rose showed me your soul. I owe you one more thing. What,’ she asked as she stared into his eyes, ‘what would you like me to do with this body?’ ”
“Wow,” Billy said softly.
“I’m not sure ‘wow’ really covers it,” John said. “But yeah, wow.”
“The note Bucky found, Ty told me as we stared at two troopers sprintin’ down the nature trail, would be a suicide note, of course. The writing would match Rose’s, and the tone would be soft but final. ‘I’m sure everyone will shake their heads when they learn a psychiatrist’s wife chose to end her own life. That’s fine, I’m not going to defend my skills. It doesn’t matter, now that I know—what happened to Rose, I’m never going to poke around in someone else’s mind. I know now that there really are doors in people’s mind that should never be opened.’
“I was fairly sure Ty wasn’t going to have to turn away any patients. If anyone saw him, or watched him becomin’ an alcoholic, or met his gaze, they’d run from his office like a spooked deer. I tried to console him, ‘There’s no way you could have stopped this, Ty. You deal with mental illness, not ghosts and possessions and exorcisms.’
“He shook his head. ‘A good psychiatrist does deal with ghosts, possessions, and exorcisms. We may not call it that, but it’s in the job description.’
“We waited another hour or so before anything else happened in the parkin’ lot. It was getting warm so I had opened the car windows. I heard a dragging clattering sound and we watched as a gurney was taken down the trail. Bucky came out right after that and walked over to the car, starin’ at the ground and moving slowly. He got to us and met Ty’s eyes and said, ‘The dog led them a little ways down through the swamp, next to the edge of the creek. There was a pair of footprints leadin’ down the bank and into the water. We found her downstream, Ty. I’m truly sorry... I’m just so sorry.’ I watched Bucky’s face as he blinked to keep the tears back.
The Tale of the Swamp and the Rose (Parker's Bluff) Page 8