The Witch of Belladonna Bay

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “Oh, Mama,” I said before turning and walking down the long, cool hall to her rooms. I had to go there. Those rooms were the keepers of my past, and I knew, deep in my heart, that if I was to unravel the knots of the present, I had to face her. I had to tell her I was sorry.

  * * *

  I don’t know what I expected to find. Perhaps there would be layers of dust like the rooms of Miss. Havisham or maybe her rooms would be empty. I think I wanted to see all three of us, me and Mama and Paddy, together again having a proper tea party at the table by the window.

  “It’s only a set of walls and windows,” I said out loud as I pulled on the doors. They were locked.

  I smiled a little and went back to the portrait. Right on top of the frame there were keys. I could reach them now on tiptoes. When we were little, Paddy and I had to wrestle his toy box from his room and then a rocking horse, too, so that one of us could teeter, precariously, to reach them.

  I went back and unlocked the double doors, swinging them wide open.

  It was just how she’d left it. Minerva must have kept it that way. Three rooms connected by large, white pocket doors. A sitting room, a bedroom, and a small library overstuffed with books. There was a massive bathroom off the bedroom area, completely tiled in white, with a deep claw-foot tub. The windows were open, the sheer curtains blew in the breeze, and the pocket doors were open too, so I could see the whole expanse of Naomi’s world. The air hung heavy with the scent of roses, lavender, and still lingering there, dense, with no shame … the sweet smell of opium smoke.

  “How can it still smell like you?” I asked, walking to the bed and touching her soft down comforter. A wave of sight, so strong, passed through me and sent me back in time. I felt dizzy and went to the window for air.

  “Are you all right?” asked a small voice from the shadows. Byrd emerged into the dusty light, holding Dolores by the collar.

  I found myself struggling to figure out how she’d gotten back inside the house, let alone this room, before me, but remembered this was her place now, not mine. Her wonderland. And she knew the secret passageways and shortcuts just as well as I did when I was her age. Maybe even better. I could tell that no one ever stopped this little girl from exploring.

  “You were remembering your mama, right? Well, not her, exactly … the things all around her.”

  “I was,” I said.

  “She’s right behind you, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Your mama. She’s right there behind you.”

  I stared at my niece, trying to figure out whether she was trying to fool me. She wasn’t. Her strange ways were stronger than any I was accustomed to, so I was mighty upset by what that little girl was trying to say.

  “I ain’t the foolin’ type.” She glared.

  “And you can read my mind, too.”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” she said. “So far, that is.”

  “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “If she’s behind me, what’s she doing, Byrd?” I asked, not really wanting the answer.

  “Standin’ there, hovering, reaching out to you,” said Byrd, and then she looked down at the floor and placed her hands on Dolores’s head, scratching the dog behind her ears. “You don’t have to believe me. I know you’re new here,” she said.

  New here.

  “Is Naomi talking to you?” I asked.

  “No, it’s the most doggone frustratin’ thing. All the other spirits go on and on. I can’t get them to shut up. But Naomi stays quiet.”

  “Other spirits?”

  Now magic, witchcraft, sight, strange ways, shine—whatever you want to call the skill set of my mother’s people—that’s one thing. But no one, not Mama or Minerva ever said one damn thing about seeing spirits.

  Byrd rolled her eyes. “You have no idea. They’re so aggravatin’ sometimes.” She looked up at me again. “I don’t normally do this, but I can prove it. I can prove she’s there.”

  “How, honey?

  She walked over to the side of Naomi’s bed and pulled the nightstand away from the wall. Rubbing on the wallpaper a bit, she found a seam and pulled back the corner, before putting her finger inside a small hole in the plaster beneath.

  She pulled out a ring. Grant’s senior class ring. He’d given it to me a few months before my mother died.

  That ring. It went missing the day after he gave it to me, and I spent weeks searching for it. It broke my heart, losing that ring.

  “I don’t know the story ’cause she can’t talk, but it seems to me, your mama took this from you and she wanted you to have it back. So she showed me where it was.”

  She handed it to me. I moved it from one palm to the other, feeling its weight. Then slipped it on my right ring finger, where it had been the night he gave it to me.

  “Well now, I guess she is here,” I said.

  I watched a light spark up into Byrd’s green eyes, the beginning of trust.

  I tried to keep calm, but I could practically feel my mother’s hands on my shoulders.

  “What’s she doing now, Byrd?”

  “She’s hugging you.”

  I stepped forward quickly, out of the invisible embrace, and started shaking.

  I went to the window and said, “I can’t stay here. I can’t. How can I stay here? This it too much. I wasn’t expecting this. I think … I think—” I’d never had a panic attack, but I knew I was on the verge of one. And then, there she was. Byrd. Standing between me and the window that I was seriously contemplating jumping from.

  “Don’t worry, I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay here. I’ve made other arrangements. Come with me.” She held out her tiny hand.

  “Where are we goin’, Byrd?”

  “Shh,” she said, turning and smiling, her black hair falling across her face. “It’s a surprise.”

  I reached out to take that little hand of hers, and when I did, I knew my life was forever changed.

  8

  Naomi

  She’s come home. Look at her. All grown up. My baby. See how she touches my picture? Maybe she doesn’t hate me so much after all. I never did like the way hate and love walk hand in hand on the earthly plane.

  It’s such a sad, sour, confusing thing to be a living, breathing person, all cooped up in your body. Never able to break free and see the other side of things. Now that I’m on the dead side, I see a lot of things that I couldn’t before. Things I wish I could block out. Who wants to see the way they failed? Not me. But I guess I have to, because I’m still here.

  I’ve never been afraid of death. At all. Things might have been different if I was.

  The Big House, though lovely, wasn’t really my home. I hail from a town off the coast of a northern version of Belladonna Bay. Fairview, Massachusetts. No matter how much I complain about it, I’ll admit there are some perks to growing up in a place like that.

  Like not being afraid to die.

  And watching your hands glow with moonlight when you get excited, fall in love, or need to do some kind of magic. That is, if you’re born into a family like mine, or any of the others that share all these “talents.” Here they just call them “strange ways.” Where I come from, we’re called witches.

  Fairview is a carnival-like community of the freak show variety. It’s filled to the brim with weirdos, psychics, witches, caretakers, and some even say … mermaids. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t. Not for me.

  When I was born, my mother wasn’t ready for a baby like me. So she left. Connie was her name. She was Minerva’s sister. Only ever since I was a baby, Minerva’s been my Caretaker more than my aunt. She even has the necklace that matches the ring I was given at my birth. So, I always questioned her love. Was it duty? Or was it family? Here on the dead side, I realize those two things were the same. What a waste of worry.

  In Fairview we have more than our fair share of legends. And my family, the Greens, figure prominently at the center of all the mystery. Some say it’s been that way forever. That
we’re part of something bigger. But some say it’s because Coveview, the Green family home, is too close to the island of Fortunes Cove.

  The trouble started the second I took my first breath. Minerva says that I simply glowed. I was born with a shroud. Some call it a veil. A bit of skin covering my face. This isn’t unusual in our family. Bronwyn was born with one. Byrd, too. Not Paddy, though. What was unusual was that before I could even speak, I was affecting people. My sight was strong, and it scared everyone around me. How can a little girl scare a whole family? A whole community?

  History. That’s how.

  Because of who I was, or who everyone thought I’d grow up to become, no one wanted me—except for Minerva.

  When I was sixteen, my gran, Catherine, threw me into a mental asylum. It was convenient, as we have one right there in Fairview. One of the last operating ones to this day, I think.

  Minerva had to fight to get me out, and then she had to leave Coveview and rent a building in town. We lived there together, she and I. Sort of happily, I guess. We lived in the upstairs apartment and used the downstairs storefront to sell books. I love books. Old ones and new ones. So, I was content, even if no one talked to me.

  I think that’s why I fell so young, so hard … so fast for Jackson.

  I married Jackson Whalen to run away from the mad nothingness that surrounded me. I spent hours wandering the perfect, cobblestone streets of Fairview, the place my family and ancestors called home. A place can dazzle you with its beauty, and still, you can grow to hate it. It happens that way with people too. No matter how good-looking a person is on the outside, if they have an evil hiding underneath, it seeps out, until all anyone sees is the ugly.

  I wanted to love my life, my home, my family. But they didn’t let me, so I found every imperfection buried under its quaint beauty and began to hate it.

  Except for the sea. I could never hate the sea.

  Minerva used to say, “You’d be quite beautiful if you weren’t so sullen, Naomi.”

  I don’t know about the beauty part. But I was restless. Trapped in a world where I was transparent to everything around me. Some of the kids even said if you looked at me, you’d turn to stone.

  No one dared to look.

  It’s so funny, isn’t it? I spent my early years invisible, yearning to be seen, and then spent my later years trying to make myself disappear. And now? Well, you don’t get more invisible than being a spirit, do you?

  But Jackson saw me. I felt his eyes take me in. He wasn’t afraid. He made me feel alive.

  I was working at our bookstore when he found me.

  Sweet, handsome Jackson Whalen, a young man with a whole lot of old lumber money, was a bibliophile. He told me his entire story right there over the counter in the dim bookstore. He leaned in close, and I could smell the forest on him. He put his hand over mine, and I could see our future together. I saw the biggest tree I’d ever seen, full of flowers that seemed almost prehistoric. The tree, Esther, came through and asked me to be kind to him. Asked me to follow him home. Trees are wise. Who was I to question her?

  He told me he’d loved books all his life. He told me he loved the binding, the smell, the pages. And then he told me how as he grew older and traveled, he began collecting books from everywhere he went. That once he started collecting a certain sort of book, he couldn’t stop until he’d found the set.

  It was this compulsion that brought him from Magnolia Creek, Alabama, to the Rockwell-esque town of Fairview, Massachusetts.

  Jackson was collecting witches’ books of shadows, handwritten accounts of midwives and witches from the fifteenth to eighteenth century.

  “So,” he said, smiling at me. “Do you have one?”

  I did, and it was special to me, so I didn’t really want to let it go.

  Trusting my instinct, and believing that Jackson was supposed to find me … that my magic drew him to Fairview to save me, I decided to show it to him.

  I reached down behind my chair and brought the book out from where I kept it, safely tucked away under a stack of books on the lower shelf.

  “I’m sort of … adding things to it,” I said.

  “All the better.” He smiled.

  He wasn’t afraid of me.

  “Want to get out of here and take a walk? Are you allowed?” he asked.

  I laughed then. The sound shocked me. I couldn’t remember laughing, not once.

  “My aunt owns the place. No one comes in here anyway. Tourists. That’s about it.” I got off my stool and came out from around the counter, acutely aware that my long hair was tangled, and my sundress, once bright green, had faded to a really soft sage. He’ll think I’m homeless, I thought. And then realized it didn’t matter, because I was.

  We closed the shop and I turned the BACK—WHEN I CHOOSE TO COME BACK—AS IF IT MATTERS sign over on the door.

  “You’ve got some moxie in ya, girl. Now, show me around.”

  And boy, did I give him a tour.

  As we walked he told me how he’d “stumbled” on the town while looking for that book. He drove right into Fairview without a second thought. Which is odd, because there’s that behemoth of an asylum that actually blocks the entire town.

  You have to drive around it, in a rotary to see Fairview’s beauty. But he wasn’t daunted by the ominous building. Not Jackson.

  We walked together along those cobblestone streets, and I watched as he gazed in amazement at the picturesque surroundings. It’s nice to see something familiar through someone else’s eyes.

  He marveled at the things I showed him. Things that made him wonder if those books he was collecting didn’t have a little bit of truth to them after all. By the end of the day, he was a true believer.

  “I’ve met a witch! A real live witch,” he said.

  The rooftops of Fairview stretched out across narrow streets, circling toward larger cliffs, and all the homes, especially the large Queen Anne Victorian down by the shore—Coveview, my old home—seemed to shimmer. And the flowers, zinnias of all colors, were enormous.

  “It’s beautiful here, magical,” he said.

  “I guess,” I responded softly.

  “It’s all a matter of perspective, right?” he asked.

  I just looked at him. And wanted him to take me away.

  Was it love? For Jackson there was no question. He told me that mine was the voice he’d heard in the wind but never understood until he met me. He said I filled a longing in him he never thought would be filled.

  I don’t think I was able to live up to that description.

  Besides Minerva, I’d never known love. So I didn’t think about it much. When we were settled in Alabama, I felt it. It hurts, love. I wish I’d known.

  So while we sat on a large rock overlooking the waters between Fairview and Fortunes Cove, I said, “Take me away from here.”

  “Why would you want to leave such a place?” he asked.

  “Prisons come in all shapes and sizes. I can’t breathe here. How’s the air in Alabama?”

  “Well, it smells like fish after it rains sometimes.”

  “I don’t care what it smells like. If I don’t leave soon, I’m sure I’ll get sent back there.” I pointed in the direction of the asylum. “Or over there,” I said, pointing to the island of Fortunes Cove.

  He didn’t even mention the asylum. How brave he was. Or maybe love is crazy.

  “What’s over there?” he asked instead, following my gaze across the channel to Fortunes Cove.

  “No one knows. A strange island full of strange people. I suppose I belong there, only it feels … I don’t know. Wrong. Don’t you feel it when you look over there?”

  “Well, I hate to tell you, but I have a misty island, too.”

  “You have an island?”

  “Well, yes. It’s part of our land. No one lives there though. Not now, anyway. Not for as long as anyone can remember. It’s behind the Big House and across the creek. That’s what we call my house, original, huh?”


  “What’s it like?”

  “The Big House?”

  “No, the island?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  “Ain’t never been there.”

  “But it’s behind your house!”

  “Sure is. Have you ever been over to your island?”

  I laughed again and shook my head.

  “See? It’s probably better for both of us that we haven’t had the pleasure of those adventures. Bad things happen to people who visit that type of land.”

  “And still … you ventured here,” I said.

  “Yes. The way I figure, it’s all about instinct. And fate. Thank God I came. Because I found you.” He asked, “Marry me?” as night fell and mermaids swam all around us. Or so Jackson liked to say when he told the tale. It made the story finer, somehow. Besides, Bronwyn and Patrick always wanted to hear more about mermaids.

  So that’s it. My own personal love story. And as Jackson used to say, “It’s a hell of a yarn.”

  Minerva came with me to Alabama. Bless her. I’d have died a lot sooner if she hadn’t.

  The bond between us was strong. Family or caretaker, or both. My ring was a blue crescent with a ruby tucked in beside it like a dangling fiery star. And she wore her matching necklace as a sign that we were bound together. For life.

  When I got to Magnolia Creek, I wanted, more than anything, to be normal. So I took off my ring, and I made Minerva put her necklace away, even though I knew it hurt her to do so. I wanted no reminders of my old life. I wanted to believe that Minerva was there with me out of love, not some magical duty.

  There’s so much to explain.

  I get tired, flitting in and out of reality like this. It’s not a bone tired (ghosts don’t have bones), just tired like a wind that dies down suddenly. Out of breath.

  I tried to hide the ways of my people from my beautiful babies when they were growing up, but they saw things, felt things. And Bronwyn had a touch of magic in her, so I had to answer their questions or lie. And I’ve never been fond of liars, especially after I became one.