by Neil Olson
“Those are stories,” she said.
“So it’s not the same?”
“Look, there are things we know, things that are here.” She chose the words carefully, her attention fixed on him again. “Like Toby or Alice. Call them ghosts, shades, whatever. But there are other things too. Not from here.” Will had the strong impression here did not mean Cape Ann. “Things most of us never see, and never should. But sometimes they cross over. Some are powerful. When we encounter them, it’s overwhelming. Our mind can’t take it in. We don’t even remember what we’ve seen, only that feeling of being overwhelmed. And we give them names. Gods. Angels.”
“Demons,” Will said. Her only response was that even stare.
He sat back in the chair. They were awfully far down the rabbit hole. Did he gather the strength to continue, or rush back to the surface? Would he laugh at all of this tomorrow? He might, but he could not laugh right now.
“And that’s what happened that night,” he said finally. “Johnny brought the spell and they tried to summon one of these beings. My mother’s coven.”
“I think so,” she said.
“But something went wrong.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. Her eyes were damp. Will could not remember ever seeing her cry. Was that right? Everyone cried. She gave him a humiliated glance, then stood up and left the room. His legs were numb from too long sitting in the hard chair. Even standing slowly, he became dizzy, and by the time he reached the hall she had vanished. Yet he knew where to find her.
The study was dim. Just a low light from the desk lamp. Except for the windows and four old framed photographs, every patch of wall was covered in bookcases. Dark wood, dark spines, absorbing light and giving little back. Samantha leaned against the desk, her arms folded and back to the door.
“Is it here?” he asked, his words swallowed by wood, leather and paper.
“I’ve looked for it,” she answered. Not needing him to explain that he meant the book. “The last few days. I haven’t been able to find it.”
“You read the summoning spell.” He saw a rain-soaked girl in the lantern light. The symbols drawn in the mud at her feet. “And you performed it that night.”
“I don’t think I understood.” She turned halfway toward him, her face shining in the lamplight. “I mean, what it was for. I knew what I wanted, and I learned all the steps.”
“What did you want?”
“What every child wants,” Samantha replied. “A friend. It was so easy for other people, but I never got the trick of it. Still haven’t. I didn’t notice at first, I thought I had friends. Then I realized that nobody else could see them. They weren’t the same as real friends. So I learned the spell and summoned one. I summoned you. And bound you to me in friendship.” She glanced at him. “Funny, huh?”
It seemed pointless to say again that he had been running in panic. He had, in fact, run into the field. Right to her. And she had scared him in those days. Though not as much as whatever was pursuing him.
“Something came with me, you said.”
“I saw the lightning strike the pine tree,” Sam answered. “I didn’t realize it had jumped to the house. Then I heard the screaming. And I thought...” Her lips shook, then her whole body. He went to her and put his arms around her. She was rigid at first, unused to being held. Then she relaxed into him. “I thought I did it,” she whispered. “My spell. I thought for a long time that I killed Johnny.”
“No,” he murmured, rocking her gently now. “It was a storm. Just a freak thing.”
“Later,” she said, swallowing hard and talking into his dampening shoulder, “I figured out that they were doing it in the house while I was doing it in the field. They messed up. Or I did, I don’t know. But Johnny died. And something arrived. Maybe what they were trying to call, or maybe something else.”
“You saw something,” he said, still rocking her, closing his eyes against whatever came next.
“In the field,” she breathed. “Behind you. Right behind you. Only a shadow. I felt it more than saw it, but I saw it too. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“You stepped inside my circle, and you were safe. It wouldn’t come closer.”
“You spoke words,” he remembered. Commanding words, but he could not recall what they were. She took a long time to answer.
“A protection spell. It shouldn’t have had any effect on a...being like that.”
“Nothing hurt us.”
“No,” she agreed, pulling back slightly and looking straight into his eyes. “But it didn’t go away either. Did it?”
He felt his body get heavy as his head grew light. Felt he might fall. And then it was her holding him instead of the other way, though they had not moved.
“I can’t go back to that house tonight,” he said, dread nearly choking him.
“No, stay here. Stay with me.”
She had lost her serenity. She was vulnerable in a way he had never seen. A weak and frightened human, like him. He thought of her in the field that night, warding off some imaginary monster. Whatever the true cause of their mutual fright, it had been a brave thing for a young girl to do. He felt a keen tenderness for her in this moment. The little girl and the woman both.
“I am your friend,” Will said.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry I forgot.”
“You never forgot,” said Samantha.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
He closed the car door too hard, and a dozen grackles exploded from the maple overhead. Winging up and over the roof of the house. The day was as gray and chill as yesterday had been warm and lovely, but that was autumn in New England. Will opened the trunk as the others got out of the car. Muriel lifted his mother from the passenger seat and Sam came back to help him unfold the wheelchair.
“I am not using that,” Abby protested.
“You are,” he said, wheeling it over to her.
“I don’t need it.”
“Use the chair,” said Muriel.
“That was just to make the nurses happy,” Abigail insisted, attempting to push Muriel aside. “You have to get wheeled out if you want to leave that damn place.”
Then Samantha was in front of her. Small, immovable.
“Sit,” Sam commanded, touching the older woman’s sternum with one finger. Abigail collapsed into the chair, her expression momentarily blank. “And here we go,” Sam continued, swinging behind the chair and pushing before Abby could stand up again. They were all deferring to her as the medical expert.
Will went ahead to open the door while Muriel got Abby’s things from the car. The house seemed to expand again with four people in it. Will could feel the walls pushing back, feel the place breathing. In relief, perhaps, at the return of its mistress. Abigail practically sprang out of the chair once they were inside, and Sam had to steady her. His mother looked around, bewildered.
“What did you do?”
“Vacuumed,” Will answered. “Opened the drapes, so it didn’t feel like a mausoleum.”
“Where’s the couch cover?”
“In the dryer now. It was filthy.”
“Jeez,” said Abby, running her hand over her buzz cut. With the hair around her wound already shaved, she had asked the nurses to finish the job so it could grow back evenly. None of them could get used to it. “You were good to do all that, honey.”
She seemed more uneasy than grateful.
“Will needs to keep busy,” said Muriel protectively. The way she did when he was in trouble, when he had done something wrong.
“I’ll put the dirt back exactly where it was if there’s a problem,” he said.
“No, Willie, don’t—”
“He’s j
ust being funny, Abby.”
“Why don’t we all have a little sit-down?” Sam suggested.
They did. Samantha made another concoction in the teapot. This one more dark and astringent, with a licorice aftertaste. Will put it aside after a few sips, but noted that his mother drank it without hesitation or surprise. Then it occurred to him that Sam had not brought any ingredients, unless they were hidden in her pockets. She had made the brew from whatever she had found in the jars on his mother’s counter. Muriel had a beer, despite it being eleven in the morning.
“This is just like your grandma made it,” Abby said finally, smiling at Sam.
“She’s the one who taught me.”
They all knew her grandmother had died when Samantha was two, so there was no need to say anything. Muriel rolled her eyes and took a particularly large gulp. Five minutes later, Abigail was falling asleep.
“You need to lie down,” said Sam, lifting Abby gently from the sofa. “Why don’t you two get some air.”
Still in compliance mode, they took their jackets and made a circuit of the house.
“You okay with them alone like that?” Muriel asked casually.
“Which one are you worried about?”
“Just asking.”
“I’m fine with it. What does everyone have against Sam?”
“I got nothing against her,” Muriel said, running her hands through the deep green rhododendron leaves. “These look great. Mine are brown and dying.”
“You have to trim them pretty aggressively,” Will said.
“You want to come over and do it?”
“I used to.”
“I remember. And I always underpaid you.”
“Oh, Muriel,” he replied, tone light and teasing, to mask his sincerity. “I could never repay you all that I owe.”
But she saw through the act.
“It’s sweet you feel that way, but it’s not true. Looking out for you was a pleasure, not a burden. I got no kids of my own—you’re as close as I’m going to get.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he took her hand and squeezed. Rough, calloused. She worked for the phone company, but was always doing stuff outdoors. Working on fishing boats in her twenties. Painting houses. Messing with car engines back when you could, before computers ran them. The only girl in a family of men. Her one female cousin, Louise, died of a heart attack at fifty-three. Her oldest brother died of cancer in his forties. The next one drowned alongside Muriel’s boyfriend when their fishing boat sank, twenty-three years ago. There had been assorted men since, all of them drinkers and risk takers. Like her father and brothers. She never married.
Back at the front of the house, Will’s gaze fell on the new properties across the street.
“Does anyone actually live in those places?”
“Sure,” she said. “Most of them. They go for big bucks, way more than I could afford.”
“Somebody’s making money.”
“Same jokers who’ve been leaning on your mom and me to sell.”
“Wait.” He turned to her in surprise. “Who’s leaning on you?”
Her face tensed, and Will could see she was annoyed with herself.
“Leaning is the wrong word. More like a hard sell. I assumed Abby told you.”
“We haven’t been talking much,” he confessed. What else had Abigail been dealing with that his petulance had prevented him from knowing? “Who’s leaning?”
“You know Lucy Larcom?”
“Sure, Danny’s mother. I forgot she sold houses.”
“Buys them too. Pushy broad,” Muriel pronounced. “Anyway, she’s just fronting for this real estate group that’s been building all over Cape Ann. They want to bulldoze all these old places and put up a bunch of McMansions.”
“Christ. Would you think of selling?”
“No. Your mom and I sort of made a pact.” She elbowed him gently. “That is, until they knock the price up another hundred grand.”
Would his mother sell the house? Would that be a bad thing? It was small and cheap. She could use the cash, and she might be happier elsewhere. Will could not deny the pang he felt at the idea. For better or worse, this place was home.
“The thing about Sam,” said Muriel, circling back to the place her mind had never left, “is that she means well. But I don’t have to tell you she’s a little off. She’s got that certainty about things. The way truly crazy people do.”
“Nah, Sam’s all right.”
“I don’t want her making you crazy. She used to do that when you were kids.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“No, but you’re vulnerable right now,” Muriel replied. “And she’s been filling your head with something. Am I wrong?”
She waited him out as they reached the front of the house a second time and started around again. As if encircling it with a protective spell. He wouldn’t speak, at first. Then he couldn’t stop. He did not mention everything. No word of his mother’s so-called coven. But he did speak of his dark dreams, and of many things Samantha had said. The ghost friends of their childhood, the demon in the rain, the fact of his being “haunted.” Before he was done, they had circled the house again, then wandered down the road. Past Muriel’s house, nearly to the lane that led to the farm. She, in turn, was quiet for many moments after he finished.
“You’re going to tell me none of it’s real,” Will declared, without accusation. What else could one say to such fantastical stuff? He was both afraid of her calling it nonsense, and afraid she would not.
“No,” Muriel said. “No, it’s real enough.”
“You think?”
“It’s real, but it’s not in the world. It’s inside you.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
“They’re...what’s the word? Projections. The girl, Alice. Whatever spooky thing you think you’re seeing outside the window. You project them into the world, in a way that’s very convincing. They’re real, but they’re not out there.” She waved her arm toward the damp trees, the dying lawns, the road. Then tapped her chest. “They’re in here.”
“And you know this because...”
“Because I grew up in this town where everyone is haunted by something.”
“Including you?” he pressed.
“Sure. So I’ve read a lot. About why people see these things, and feel these things.”
“You’ve read about that?”
“Yes, I read,” she insisted.
“I know you do,” he agreed. Her house was littered with books on self-realization. He had teased her about them before. She was defensive about her lack of a college degree, and did not take the teasing well. “This is Eastern philosophy, or what?”
“Not so much,” she replied. “Psychology, mostly. But more than that, it’s looking at what people do, listening to what they say. A lot of people think they see things. A lot of people call on powers outside of themselves.”
“Christ, Mure. You want to be more specific?”
“Okay, how about the batshit crazy old biddies in this town?” she said, turning and heading back the way they came. He followed.
“What about them?”
“Charms and potions and ancestor worship,” she spat. “Nothing has any value unless it’s from an old book. Or it was something great-grandmother used to say. It’s sickening.”
“That’s a little harsh,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets nervously.
“You think it’s harmless? It’s not. It encourages helplessness. Looking for signs, listening to ghosts. Instead of figuring it out yourself. It bleeds down through the generations. It messes people up, young people.”
Was she thinking about his generation or her own? Both, no doubt. She certainly intended him to draw a lesson from her words. They were what he needed, weren’t they?
Isn’t this why he had spoken to her? Good old Muriel, with her head screwed on right. She would tell him what was what. Her theory made more sense than the fairy tales Sam was feeding him. So why did the words strike him as bitter and defensive? A woman from the most cursed and downwardly mobile of the seven families. An insider who was made to feel like an outsider, and had embraced the role. Muriel was like him. Solid, dependable, with a cauldron of molten rage at her center. Sam was an outsider too, always had been, but it did not matter to her. She was sufficient unto herself. And her ideas, crazy as they were, sounded more like truth.
Muriel turned to speak. Then grabbed his arm and yanked him toward her fiercely. A strong kinetic force brushed by his opposite side, and only then did Will hear the engine. The car had swerved to avoid him, but maybe not far enough if not for Muriel. The vehicle slowed briefly, then accelerated. Dark red. Possibly a Volvo. A common enough car around here, no reason to make assumptions.
“Jesus, watch where you’re walking,” Muriel scolded him.
“What, I was just—”
“You were halfway into the road. Are you hearing what I’m telling you?”
“Yes,” he said, as convincingly as possible.
“No,” she replied, coming slowly to a halt. “You’re not.”
They were standing in front of her house again. Gray with lavender shutters and a wraparound porch that made it look larger than it was. He had always liked the house, more than his own. But the rhododendrons were indeed in bad shape, and there was mold on the clapboards above the porch. What had happened to house-proud Muriel? Was her mother’s drawn-out decline distracting her, or was it just age and disappointment?
“I hear everything you’re saying,” Will replied, still getting his wits back. His shoulder stung from the hard tug. “And it makes a lot of sense.”
“But you’re not really taking it in,” she said, going up the steps to her door. He followed.
“You’re not coming back to the house?”
“I’ll come by later,” she replied. “When it’s less crowded.”
Meaning when Sam was gone.
“Well. Thanks for being there this morning.”
