The Witch House of Persimmon Point

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “Who did it to you?”

  “Father Callahan.”

  “Does he do it all the time?”

  “Nope. Just every once in a while.”

  “You should tell. You got a priest, I got a monster. You should tell.”

  “I can’t. I live here. My family sort of gave me to him. Now, it’s better. I have my own room, and I have food to eat. And I don’t get beat by my drunk pop anymore.”

  Anne thought on that. “So, it’s like rent. Kind of.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, William, you must promise me that you will not allow his abuse to ruin the inside of your heart. Your body and your soul are two different things. He can touch your body, but he can’t touch your soul unless you let him.” She felt very grown up.

  “Deal.”

  * * *

  From that day on, it was Anne and William, William and Anne, everywhere and all the time.

  William was what they called Black Irish. Pale skin, black hair, blue eyes. And he wanted nothing more than to take care of Anne. Because her life? It was a great big ball of shit, in his opinion.

  William knew he loved her. He loved the way she looked, the way the sun would put freckles on her face. He loved her angles and her deep frowns. He loved her long black mess of hair and her hard sense of humor. He thought she was full of some sort of magic. He would make Anne love him back. It would be his life’s work.

  They explored the world together. Anne loved broken things and she shared her world with Will. She shared her taste for the old, the cracked, the torn. There was beauty in the memory of what once was.

  The factories downtown and along the industrial part of the bay were favorite haunts of Anne’s. The ones in use and the ones abandoned—all had the same, dim, cracked misery about them that she loved so much. A bleakness that drew her in again and again to explore, so she might place her hands on the cold brick exteriors, feel the roughness, run her fingers through crumbling mortar lines, and peel the rust spots away from the ironwork staircases. She haunted these buildings so often that the workers in the factories knew her by name. Anne would be outside, leaning her forehead against the brick, when the end-of-day whistle would blow and the men would stream out, nodding at her. “G’night, Anne,” they would say, one after the other.

  William and Anne ran rampant through the empty ones turned playtime castles. Inevitably, though, each building would get a new tenant, and they would have to say good-bye. But there would always be a new one. Thank goodness for free enterprise.

  Anne taught him everything she knew about Haven Port, about the tides, about plants and when they bloomed and what they were good for. They even had a special way to communicate their affection for each other. They would lie facing one another with their foreheads touching. Then they would enclose their hands together in front of their chests as if they were in prayer, palms touching, hands layered, while pulling up their knees so they touched, too. They had long conversations this way. But sometimes they would just lie silent for hours, as their breathing became one harmony.

  * * *

  See them, see Little Anne and Sweet William; see them like that on the beach late at night with the deep, starry night sky above them and the beach sand in their hair; see them on the grass, on the snow, on the multicolored quilt that Lucy made for Dominic, the one Anne took from the attic and put on the bed in the cottage, see them watch the drawbridge go up and down as Frank, the bridge master, shakes his head and wishes he didn’t blame the girl for being born because her existence reminded him that Vito was dead and gone for good.

  * * *

  Anne and William were very best friends. The only place they didn’t explore was the Witch House. First, because he hadn’t been invited. Second, the place made him feel funny way down in the pit of his belly. He couldn’t understand Anne’s deep love for this strange place, but who was he to judge?

  All he wanted was a life with Anne; a full and robust life with the girl that won his heart and his mind, the girl whom he needed to save.

  * * *

  Anne told him her secret on Palm Sunday.

  “I have ghosts.”

  “We all do, I guess,” said William, feeling highly philosophical.

  “No, I have real ones, Will.”

  “What do you mean?” He was interested now.

  “I keep them in the gardener’s cottage.” Anne took a key out of the pocket of her pinafore. (William loved that her clothes were so old-fashioned. Nan made all of them, and Anne was never insecure about it, she just wore what was there. He loved that about her.) She fit the key in the lock and gave the door a shove. “It’s me, Anne…” she called out.

  “Come on, Anne, quit kidding…” William trailed off, nervous now.

  He didn’t see anyone but Anne inside the dimly lit space.

  “You fooled me, Anne,” he laughed. “For a minute I thought you were serious!”

  “I am drop-down-dead serious, Will.”

  And then she spoke into the air. “Show him!”

  The air shifted in the cottage, and William’s vision blurred. He felt dizzy. He rubbed his eyes, closing them and then opening them again and then …

  Nothing.

  “You don’t see them?” Anne whispered with a pleading in her voice, a desperation that made William think perhaps he should lie. He didn’t want to hurt her. She looked defeated. He went to her, and in an awkward gesture that became graceful, he put his arms around her and drew her into a hug.

  “Anne,” he said softly, “just because I can’t see them doesn’t mean they are not there.” He pulled her to the floor to sit with him. “Tell me about them.”

  And Anne erupted, letting loose mouthful after mouthful of information about Gwen and Ava dead and alive.

  * * *

  “So you see them?” William asked when she was done.

  “Yes, I see them just like I see you, only when they are mad or upset, they change. They get ugly.”

  “And they can do stuff?”

  “Yeah, but there are a lot of rules … even though they break them.…”

  “They break them?”

  “Yes, they do,” she said pointedly to where her ghosts were clearly listening in. “They are naughty.” She laughed before growing serious again. “They are my family, Will. Do you think you can understand that?”

  “Sure I can.” William looked around the house, curious once again and a bit eager to change the subject. “This place is pretty cool. We could make it a swell hangout if it didn’t have such a good view of the place where he hurt you from the window.”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t really there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I made myself go away, sort of.…”

  “How?”

  Anne decided to tell William a very private thing. A thing she hadn’t even told the ghosts. But they would hear it now, too.

  “When it was happening, I closed my eyes and … I saw Jesus.” Anne waited for him to laugh. He didn’t. “Like, I am on the ground, but Jude isn’t on me. And the sun is in my eyes so I can’t look up, but I see Jesus’s feet. He had sandals on. Then I look up and see his white robes and the rope around his waist, and when I finally look up to find his face, I can’t see it because the sun is making a halo around his head. And I felt totally at peace. And when I came back, Jude was done.”

  William’s eyes were as big as saucers.

  “Anne, maybe the ghosts aren’t really ghosts at all. Maybe they’re saints and you are seeing Jesus, and saints … which would make you a saint!”

  Anne laughed.

  “No, Will, the ghosts are not saints. They belong to me and to this place somehow. They are just as real to me as you are. I told you, they can do stuff.”

  “Jesus can do stuff,” said William.

  “Oh, yeah? Then why didn’t he pull Jude off me when I saw him, huh?” Anne asked, half joking.

  “Well, he sort of did. Didn’t he, Anne? I mean … you though
t about him and what Jude was doing just … just went away?”

  They were both very quiet; but in that moment, they both began to believe in God. Anne would waver throughout her life, but William wouldn’t. William would devote his life to God, or Anne, whichever would have him first.

  “Share everything with me, Anne,” he said. “I will never leave you.”

  “Do you want to come over tomorrow? Into the Witch House?”

  “I thought you’d never ask!”

  * * *

  “What are you doing?” asked Nan. She had woken in the night to hear ripping noises and climbed the stairs to find Anne in the attic, her feet shuffling around in torn paper and kicking aside doll heads.

  “I am cleaning out the attic, sort of. I’ve invited Will over.”

  Nan frowned, then walked away. Anne watched her go before continuing to rip and scrape at the walls.

  “Anna?” Nan was back.

  “What?” Anne asked.

  “Here.”

  Nan held out a bucket full of warm soapy water and a large bag to put the garbage in.

  “Do you want me to help you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Nan watched her for a moment, and then went back to bed.

  The next day Anne practically dragged William back to the Witch House after school.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Wait and see! Wait and see!” Anne said.

  When they got to the house, she ran in the front door. William couldn’t help but stop to put his hands on the massive doors to feel the ornate carvings.

  “Ouch!”

  “What happened, Will?”

  “Just a splinter.” William put his finger in his mouth.

  They went upstairs to the attic, Anne hurrying him the whole way.

  “Come on!”

  It was very clean.

  “What was it you wanted to show me?”

  “This…”

  She walked him up to the cupola.

  “Oh, Anne, it’s beautiful!” Outside he could see the day was getting stormy.

  Anne took down a massive rectangular book from a shelf.

  The scrapbook was leather bound and contained thick black pages filled and overlapping with newspaper articles and photographs.

  “This is my Nan’s Black Book, a sort of memory book.”

  “Does she know you have it?”

  “Of course. She gave it to me.”

  Anne placed the book between them and opened it. The pages and binding groaned, always the prelude to a good read.

  “See?” Anne said, putting her finger on the first photo. “That’s Haven House.”

  “Wow. Look how big.… It really was the most beautiful house.” William couldn’t believe it. It looked as if it had come right out of a fairy tale. There was no angle that wasn’t covered in fancy woodwork, and the corners turned into rounded rooms and then straight back up again into pointy towers. It looked impossible.

  “I know … I wish I could have lived there,” Anne said, wistfully.

  “You do, sort of.”

  “I guess…” Anne positioned herself on her stomach and put her legs in the air behind her, crossed at the ankles. She liked to get as close to the book as possible. The rain was coming down outside now, but it only made it cozier in the attic.

  Anne turned the page. “These are the Greens. Archibald and Isabelle. They are drawings because they are so old. These particular Greens built Haven House. It was the very first house of its kind. Before it was built, this whole area was a small fishing village called Dragon.”

  “That’s a funny name,” William laughed.

  “The Native American tribe that lived here before the settlers came called it Dragon because of the sounds the sea lions made mating on the riverbanks. I guess they called to one another and sounded like dragons.” Anne paused.

  “Actually, Haven House took up the entire area of land that was the old village. That is how big it all is! Anyway, Archibald and Isabelle had six children. They all died, William, all of them. And then they had one more, Gwyneth, and she lived.” Anne turned the page. “Everyone said that Archibald sold his soul to the devil in order to have a child. And his punishment was crazy Gwen. But she’s not crazy at all. She’s lovely. But I think that most rumors have some truth hiding inside, don’t you?”

  William nodded.

  “I think Archibald did bad things. When Gwen was small, she was naughty. She used to sneak out into the gardens at night and find Archibald in the gatehouse in all sorts of compromising positions. Very odd.”

  “How do you know all of this stuff?”

  “I just know. And also, Ava, and Gwen, too … Here she is! This is the wedding portrait of Gwyneth and Reginald Green,” she proclaimed proudly. “They were so lovely. If I ever get married, I want a dress like that. Reginald was her cousin. Can you believe it? Gwen didn’t have to change her name or anything.”

  They lingered on this photo. Even though there were only two people in it, they made you forget everything else. She was very fair with thin features and a frantic look that danced behind the still picture. He was her opposite, dark and dapper. Black hair and a black mustache. And deep, inset eyes. He was almost handsome.

  “They had so many babies—six or seven, I think—but they all died, too, just like Archibald and Isabelle’s babies. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Gwen hired someone to take pictures of them.”

  “Of course they did,” said William. “That’s what people do. They take pictures of their babies.”

  “Oh, yeah? How about pictures of them dead?”

  “What?”

  “Yep, she had pictures taken of them when they were dead. She kept them in frames in—” Anne returned to the first page she showed him, putting her finger on the rounded turret of the west side of the house. “—this room. The turret room. You can’t tell, because the picture is black and white, but see those windows? Those windows were all different colors of stained glass. It was Gwen’s collection room.

  “They weren’t very nice people. Especially Reggie. He was very mean. Everyone in town was afraid of him. Before Nan came, he locked himself up in the east wing of Haven House and hardly ever came out.”

  Anne flipped to a series of photographs of Nan and Reginald, Gwyneth and Ava. “Wasn’t my Nan pretty?”

  “Very. I can hardly tell it’s her.”

  William looked at the pictures; they made an odd sort of family. Gwyneth sitting on the lawn on a blanket, her arms stretched out to Nan, Nan on her way to the embrace, Reginald looking on with a contented smile, Ava playing with a jump rope in the background.

  Anne began humming something, a soft yet familiar melody, while they looked at a picture, blurred in action of Reginald spinning Nan around in what looked like an impromptu dance.

  William began to sing the words.

  “‘Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love, with, you!’ I know that song.”

  “It was Reggie’s favorite. He sang it to Nan and Gwen all the time.”

  “I thought he wasn’t nice?”

  “He wasn’t … but he was nice to them. After Nan came, anyway.…” Anne trailed off and turned to the last pages in the book, tore out a newspaper clipping from the back, and ran for the door. The storm was over and the sun was peeping out from behind the clouds.

  “Come on, Will, this next part I want to show you! It’s better that way.”

  He followed her down the stairs and then outside and onto the old foundation. The air was fresh and earthy. William inhaled deeply and blinked as the world began to blur. He grew dizzy. He shook his head and looked up. Anne was standing on a two-foot wall of crumbling rock and pointing up.

  “That is where she was when Gwen lit the lighter. The turret room. The stained-glass windows exploded in, and the next morning they found her.” Anne held out the newspaper clipping that captured the grotesque image.

  “What is that?”
/>
  “Ava.”

  “Jeeze, what happened to her?”

  “The room exploded and the heat from the fire melted the glass onto her. It encased her! It was amazing! No wonder Gwen and Ava are still earthbound. That’s what Father Callahan calls ghosts … earthbound spirits who have sinned or who were sinned against.”

  Will was a little horrified, but Anne was right, it was amazing.

  “What do you want to do now?” asked Anne.

  “Everything,” said William. And he meant it.

  He did anything she wanted him to do, all the time, and all too soon, their trying yet adventurous childhood was behind them.

  23

  William on the Beach with Coppertone and a Kiss

  1957

  The summer after they graduated from high school, Anne and William’s relationship took a turn for the romantic.

  He’d gotten a job working at Bodine’s Apothecary in town and was living in a rented room above the store. Meanwhile, Anne was spending all her time reading on the beach, learning as much as she could about her family’s dark ways and flat out ignoring Nan’s protests to leave all of that be.

  * * *

  “But really, what’s stopping us from just getting married?” William asked after another endless day at the beach in late June.

  “We haven’t even kissed. Married people have sex. Really, Will, be practical,” Anne replied, without looking up from her black book.

  “It’s not like we can’t kiss. You’re just being stubborn. I can tell you’d like to kiss me.”

  Anne snorted out a dismissive laugh.

  “I’m serious.…”

  “Okay, fine,” she said, closing her book and flopping down on her back. “Where would we live? What would we do? Tell me, Will, really … what would a life like that look like? I’m not exactly June Cleaver.”

  * * *

  “We could live in the gatehouse. Your aunt Lavinia’s moved closer to the prison, and Nan hasn’t rented it out yet, right? She wouldn’t mind. She loves me. And Lucy would be happy to get you out of the house altogether.”