The Siren and the Specter

by Jonathan Janz

  No point in pretending he didn’t understand. “I saw the woman in this painting the first night I was here.”

  She gave his hands a tug. “That’s not enough. You have to admit you believe.”

  He took a breath, let it out. “I believe.”

  Her eyes roved over his face for several seconds. She smiled, her dimples reappearing. “I’m gonna show you something that’ll scare the hell out of you.”

  * * *

  Orderly and smelling of bay leaves, the interior of Jessica’s house was predominantly gray and ivory, with hints of yellow and an occasional splash of blue. The living room received a healthy dose of daylight from a large picture window. There were a couch and a loveseat, both yellow, which popped on the gray background. The gray walls weren’t dreary, but instead sophisticated, like something from a magazine.

  “What do you call this style,” he asked, “shabby chic?”

  She chuckled. “Mid-Century Modern. Come on.”

  He followed her down a hallway to the last door on the right. Jessica’s bedroom.

  Like the living room, this one featured a broad picture window overlooking the backyard. The bed was made, the comforter gray and yellow and ivory. He remarked that she favored those colors.

  She lowered her nose. “It’s not yellow; it’s chartreuse. And yes, I find those colors attractive.”

  He looked around. “You do all your painting outside?”

  “When the weather’s nice. The other bedrooms…one is my art room, the other’s my library.”

  A flurry of movement and a loud thump drew his attention.

  “Sebastian,” she explained, going over to the dog. “He still thinks he can jump up onto the bed.” She hoisted Sebastian onto the comforter, where he immediately turned to David, apparently wanting him to be impressed that he had achieved such a height, even if it had been accomplished with help.

  David glanced at Jessica, realized she was looking at him closely. “I say something wrong?”

  She folded her arms. “I’m just trying to decide how I feel about you being in my bedroom.”

  He didn’t trust himself to answer.

  “Am I betraying Anna?” she asked. “Or would she understand?”

  David waited.

  Apparently deciding something, Jessica went to her nightstand and opened a drawer. For a crazy instant he was afraid she was going to pull out a gun and shoot him, but then he saw the faded green book, and his alarm melted into bemusement.

  “No one knows I have this,” she said, “and if you tell anybody…or try to steal it….”

  David came closer. “Why would I— Hold on, that isn’t—”

  “John Weir’s diary,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “You’re the one who purchased it?”

  “The owner was sympathetic to my plight.” She pulled the diary away. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t sleep with him or anything.”

  “You wouldn’t have to,” he said. “Just being you is persuasion enough.”

  She made a scoffing sound. “I’m not some temptress, Davey.”

  “Can I see it?”

  She started to hand it over but hesitated. “Your eyes are shining like Gollum’s.”

  “Can you blame me? That diary is the holy grail of ghost hunters and skeptics the world over.”

  She patted the comforter beside her. He sat and she handed him the diary.

  It was lighter than he expected and well-preserved. Roughly the dimensions of a mass-market paperback, he estimated it to be a hundred and fifty pages, though they were unnumbered. He noted without surprise that the last twenty pages or so were blank. Weir had not, however, ceased writing in mid-sentence or left some jagged scrawl at the end as if he’d been dragged away screaming to some hellish fate.

  “Incredible,” he murmured.

  “Do me a favor?” she said, watching him closely.

  He riffled through the pages, spellbound. “What?”

  “Look at a passage for me.”

  “I’d like to read the whole damned thing.” Though it pained him, he allowed her to take it back.

  “You will,” she said, “as long as you’re good.”

  She flipped through the diary and paused halfway through. She ran a forefinger over a page, turned it over, scoured the text again. Then she gave him the diary, and with a finger still on the page, said, “Here.”

  David read….

  When Lula returned to her family’s farm, jubilation ensued. The only daughter in a family of boys, Lula’s parents showered her with affection and gifts. Her brothers, who had previously displayed only the nominal warmth accorded by boys to their sisters, became more protective and even ceased teasing the child. For a time, all was felicitous in the Anderson homestead. Their only daughter and sister had returned. Life was good.

  At some point, however, the dynamic at the Anderson farm altered. Despite her young age – Lula was seven at the time of her disappearance – she soon exerted a more than natural influence over her family’s daily life. If she wanted her father to take her into Lancaster, he abandoned his current project and obliged her. If Lula demanded a certain dish be prepared for dinner, her mother acquiesced, no matter how inconvenient the request was. Her brothers, likewise, lived in superstitious fear of incurring their baby sister’s ire. So intent on doing her bidding were the boys that they took to vying with one another to win Lula’s favor.

  Soon came the day Lula instructed her brothers to harm a schoolyard rival who had once mocked Lula’s hair.

  David paused, glanced at Jessica. “Lula was abducted and came back changed.”

  When Jessica didn’t answer, he said, “You think this relates to Ivy.”

  “Identical scenarios.”

  “Ivy wasn’t abducted.”

  She gave him a look.

  “Well, she wasn’t,” he persisted. “According to Honey’s dad—”

  “He’s rotten and you know it. Why would you take his word for it?”

  “But Ivy said—”

  “All we know is she disappeared and showed up again. There are a hundred possibilities.”

  He glanced at the book. “Jessica….”

  “Sheriff Harkless told me about the accusations,” she said.

  Hell, he thought. He’d somehow managed to not think about the heinous things the mayor had said.

  Jessica turned on the bed, folded a leg so she could face him. “Do you believe Ivy – the real Ivy – would say those things about you?”

  When he didn’t answer, she reached down, flipped the page, tapped a paragraph. “It says here that Lula Anderson was a sweet, unassuming little girl before she was taken. But afterward she was like a…a vengeful goddess. She made people do bad things.” Jessica paused. “She had her brothers kill someone.”

  David stared at her, appalled. “The bully on the playground?”

  Jessica shook her head. “Lula’s teacher.”

  His flesh gathering into tight nodes, he turned back to the book.

  But Jessica lifted it out of his hands, placed it on the nightstand. “I’ll let you read it on a couple conditions.”

  “You put conditions on everything?”

  She took a steadying breath, brought her other foot onto the bed to sit cross-legged. “Our beliefs are so different, it’s like we exist in alternate realities.”

  “I’m coming around,” he said, smiling wanly.

  “Not fast enough,” she said. “What I need from you is open-mindedness. Actual, authentic open-mindedness, not that condescending humoring attitude you usually have.”

  He drew back. “Damn.”

  “The time for politeness is over, David. Something terrible is happening, and I need you to face it.”

  “I’m doing my best.”

>   She seized his hand. “You’ve got to do better. Frankly, your best has sucked. I need you to consider the possibility that you’ve been wrong about everything.”

  He liked the feel of her hand in his. The sensation wasn’t erotic. Not exactly. But it was edifying.

  “Pay attention,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze.

  He met her gaze.

  “The painting you saw out there,” she said, nodding toward the backyard. “The ghost it depicts is real. You saw her with your own eyes. If you can’t accept that, we can’t accomplish anything.”

  He chewed the inside of his mouth, sighed. “I can’t see any way around it. It had to be real.”

  She began to shake her head, but he cut her off. “I’m agreeing with you, okay? It’s just difficult for someone as hardheaded as me to accept.”

  “But you do accept it.”

  He mulled it over. “I do.”

  She scrutinized him for a full ten seconds; then, evidently convinced by what she saw, she exhaled and withdrew her hand. He tried not to show his disappointment.

  “Judson Alexander,” she said, “was a monster.”

  “He was a violent criminal.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “If all you’ve read of him comes from The Last Haunting, you don’t understand.”

  “Cramming dirt into an unconscious slave’s throat?” he said. “Murdering his own baby sister?”

  “Unspeakable atrocities,” Jessica agreed.

  “Then what—”

  “The understanding I’m alluding to,” she broke in, “is of the scope of what he did. The longevity of his reign.” She leaned forward. “Do you realize that Judson didn’t die until he was in his sixties? Have you ever considered how isolated the peninsula is?”

  He grunted ruefully. “I consider it every day. I don’t even get a cell signal out there.”

  “Judson’s reign lasted more than four decades, David. His father, that wretch Zacharias, purchased the house, the peninsula, and most of the surrounding land in order to quarantine his son. The problem was, Judson wouldn’t stay put. When he’d get…I don’t know, hungry? He’d ride his black mare into Lancaster and people would scatter. No one ever got close enough to measure him, but some estimated he was well over six and a half feet tall, and likely closer to six eight. He was bald on top, but he had these thick black eyebrows that never whitened, even as the years progressed. The eyes themselves were coal-black.”

  Jessica resituated herself on the bed, drew up her knees and cupped them with her palms. “Judson would lumber down the chief thoroughfare and denigrate anyone who deigned to look at him. He’d sneer and call women raunchy names, use racial epithets, embarrass men in front of their wives and children. On one occasion a local barrister by the name of Lockett stood up to Judson. It cost him his life. The story goes that Judson insulted Lockett’s wife, Lockett demanded an apology, and Judson beat him to death in the street. Some called for Judson to stand trial, but ultimately nothing came of it.

  “He picked up the nickname ‘Governor.’ He had no job, no real position, but because of his family’s importance and because people were terrified of him, he was utterly untouchable. Though he was undoubtedly insane, he was also of above average intelligence. He was well-read, eloquent even. He’d hold court in the Lancaster pubs, often treating the patrons to drinks. In the next breath, he’d humiliate or physically abuse one of them. The town lived in fear.”

  Jessica’s phone rang. A landline.

  “I’ll let the machine get it,” she said. “Anyway, the disappearances started some time later, after Judson had lived on the peninsula for a year or two. The victims were families who lived near his territory, but he was never investigated. At least not seriously. And here’s one of the most important parts: when it was an adult who went missing, he or she was never seen again.” She leaned forward. “But when it was a child, the disappearance was almost always short-term. The boys and girls came back, but they came back changed.”

  “Oh man.”

  “Oh man is right. The children, even the ones who’d been kindhearted before, became cruel. Ruthless. Sadistic, in some cases. Again, no one confronted Judson about it. The authorities, such as they were, had seen what happened to those who messed with the Alexander family, and they weren’t about to put themselves in Zacharias’s crosshairs.”

  “Or Judson’s.”

  “Exactly. By the time Judson had resided on the peninsula for five or six years, everyone was cowering in terror, but no one was willing to do anything about it. A few families moved, but you know what a difficulty that is. Even now, it’s hard to uproot a family. Think about how harrowing it must have been back then.”

  David scowled. “Still hard to believe no one stood up to him.”

  “A few did.” She tapped the diary. “Weir gives a few accounts of citizens trying to take back their self-respect. In one case, a new constable tried to haul Judson in for questioning, but his horse was later found roaming free across a tobacco field.”

  “No one found the constable?”

  She shook her head. “Some months later, a group of five stout men journeyed to the peninsula. It appears that Judson hunted them one by one and left their eviscerated bodies for the animals. Then someone got a ghastly idea. It was two-fold, a means of containing Judson.”

  “Appeasing him.”

  “People can be cowards,” she said. “Especially when they’re protecting their families.”

  “What was the solution?”

  “The first part was building a house for one of Zacharias’s most trusted employees. You remember Mr. Jennings?”

  “The supervisor.”

  She nodded. “He was advancing in years by that time, but Zacharias trusted him, and more importantly, Zacharias knew he wouldn’t harm Judson.”

  “Did Judson kill Jennings?”

  Her face went grim. “No, but he raped Jennings’s granddaughter.”

  “Christ.”

  “Jennings did nothing. Likely pretended it was consensual. Pretty soon, the girl, who couldn’t have been more than fourteen, was Judson’s personal plaything. Whenever he got the urge, he’d go over and….”

  “Oh, man. Don’t tell me…the Shelby house?”

  “On that plot of land,” Jessica agreed. “When Honey inherited the lot, she and her husband – on Daddy’s coin, I’m sure – built a nice new home. They’re situated where Jennings and his family lived. If you could call what they did living.”

  David blew out a disgusted breath. “That’s how they dealt with Judson?”

  “That was half of it. The other half was sending unsuspecting travelers down Governor’s Road.”

  “Offering them up.”

  “Exactly. Whenever folks would pass through town, they were sent on a detour.”

  David stared at her. “The whole town was in on this.”

  “The whole area.”

  He started to shake his head, but she broke in, “It didn’t have to be everyone. I imagine most of Lancaster kept silent. That’s what people typically do, isn’t it? When an injustice is happening?”

  “This was more than an injustice.”

  Jessica nodded. “It worked, though. For a time.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means—” She broke off as her landline rang again. “I better see who it is.”

  David watched her leave the room. He was reading a passage near the end of the diary when Jessica reentered, smiling.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Alicia Templeton,” she said. “You must’ve made an impression on her.”

  At his quizzical look, she sat and explained, “She ordered you a bulk package of Dots and is planning to drop it off at your house.”

  He laughed, but Jessica’s eyes had narrowed to slits. “Wha
t?” he asked.

  “You’re not planning on reciprocating, are you?”

  “You mean, buy her some Junior Mints?”

  She whacked him on the shoulder.

  “Hey!” he said.

  “I know what an operator you are.”

  “I’m not— Listen, Harkless said it herself, Alicia’s half my age.”

  “And smart and funny and ravishing.”

  “You lobbying for her?”

  “I’m trying to protect her.”

  He drew away slightly. “How do you know each other, anyway?”

  Jessica sobered. “After I moved here, I started investigating what happened to Anna. I talked to Alicia’s dad, since he was the only one who’d gone in or out of the house for ages.” She shrugged. “Alicia and I became friends.”

  “Co-conspirators.”

  “You never answered my question.”

  He put his hands up. “I don’t have designs on Alicia, okay? She seems terrific, but…the age difference. And I suspect if I did ask her out, her dad might shoot me.”

  “Or Harkless would.”

  David glanced out the window at the easel. “Can I see more of your work?”

  Jessica bit her bottom lip. “Sure. If you don’t mind nightmares.”

  * * *

  He came through the door that Jessica had opened and stopped, awestruck. The bedroom was larger than he’d anticipated, roughly eighteen by eighteen. There were various works-in-progress leaning on easels, a desktop Mac, and a desk strewn with sketchpads and pencils.

  The walls were crammed with paintings of Anna.

  Only most of them weren’t Anna as he’d known her, the smartass-yet-sincere young woman who’d beguiled him as a younger man and whose memory haunted him still. No, most of the paintings – some oil, some acrylic – featured a phantasmal version of Anna, sometimes achingly beautiful, at others bestial and terrifying. In the latter category her eyes were pupilless whites. The teeth were elongated: hooklike canines, jagged molars, the incisors sharpened to feral points.

  In the bestial depictions, the Anna-thing was leering maniacally.

  It knocked his wind out. “Shit,” he whispered.