The Witch House of Persimmon Point

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “Why, Lucy, darling! We have been waiting for you. Come now, don’t keep us waiting, we must get to the beach!”

  Time and light stood still. The earth stopped rotating, trapping the clouds motionless in the sky. The two women and the child all looked up at the same time. She heard their whispers in her mind.

  “Yes, Lucy, we waited and waited and waited.” Lucy blinked. The little girl was no longer a girl but a body shining in the stagnant sun, a prism of melted glass.

  “Lucy!”

  Startled, she turned around to face the back of the Witch House. Anne stood there. The house rising behind her.

  Anne’s hair, a mass of black, whipped around her face and—were those spiders? Dear God, spiders crawled out of her hair, her mouth as she called.

  Anne stretched her arms out to Lucy, and the house wrapped itself around her, warping everything near it and reaching out from Anne’s fingers in an impossible semicircle of gloom.

  Lucy screamed.

  She turned back to the mirage. It was still there. She tried to break sideways to avoid both fates but fell, scraping her palms on gravel left over from a long-forgotten driveway. Tears ran down her cheeks as she gazed at her hands, bleeding as though they bore stigmata. With choking cries, Lucy began to claw at her face and body, pulling at her hair and nightgown.

  She would not remember anything else from that night besides the red ball bouncing toward her.

  * * *

  Anne hadn’t realized how scared Lucy would be. The terror on Lucy’s face as she pulled at the door made Anne stop the creepy mimicking. When Lucy flew down the stairs and left the house, Anne found herself worried that her mother might actually hurt herself. Might fall and break her neck. Which wasn’t the plan. Lucy was supposed to drink the jimson-laced glass of rum, hallucinate just enough for Anne to call the doctor and get Lucy committed. She would never hurt Lucy. Not really. Lucy was her mother, after all.

  But as Anne followed Lucy out into the garden, something felt out of her control. The plan had taken on a life of its own. Anne had never felt guilt before, and she sure as heck didn’t aim to ever feel it.

  “Mama?” she yelled, trying to bring Lucy back to the house. “It would be just like you to pitch yourself over the cliff. Don’t you dare!”

  Lucy didn’t turn around. So Anne tried, “Miss Lucy!”

  And that was when Lucy turned around. And she looked at Anne with such disgust, such horror, that Anne felt the way she had when she was in that bathtub after Jude … and when she found that telegram to Gavin … and right before Lucy pushed her down the stairs. Every horrible, sad, angry, unforgiveable moment crashed into her all at once.

  Anne turned away and went back to the house. She called the doctor and sat in the dark kitchen. Alone.

  * * *

  The arrangements were already made. Everyone had known that though Lucy once held such promise, though she had been well-loved, she would one day succumb to mental illness. No one questioned Anne’s assessment of her. Lucy was crazy; it had been only a matter of time. And time was now up.

  Lucy watched the house recede in the moonlight through the back windows of the ambulance. She was calmer now. Then her breath caught in her throat.

  A black bubble was emerging from the chimney. Lucy tried to sit up on her gurney, straining against the straps. The bubble was narrow at the bottom now, and then, pop! It was free. A black oval floating in the sky, with a long string attached. It followed the ambulance, dancing through the violet clouds. A balloon. The house was celebrating. Lucy opened her mouth in a silent shriek against the night.

  * * *

  With Lucy gone, really, truly gone, Anne thought she would feel some sense of loss. But she didn’t. The guilt lingered, of course, a teeny layer of filth that needed to be washed off, but really, Anne thought, being alone is better than being lonely, and it is much lonelier to be around people who can’t stand you than it is to be alone in a house that loves you, with a family, however ghostly, to keep you company.

  Anne went to her mother’s record player and put on one of Lucy’s favorites, as a tribute: “La Vie en Rose.”

  And then she danced. She spun and danced and touched everything in the Witch House that Lucy had touched or used or called her own, trying to connect with her. To feel a little bit human. To feel the loss she should have felt. While Edith Piaf sang about love, Anne danced around the kitchen. She danced through the gardens. She was free.

  She danced through her mother’s bedroom.

  * * *

  Oh, her mother’s dressing table. So lovely with its frilled fabric skirting. So lovely with its piles of soaps and oils and creams and sweet-smelling things. How amazingly difficult it must have been to remain so lovely. In one great, sad, and wonderful afternoon, Anne began to understand her mother, to forgive her—to become her.

  Anne sat at the kitchen table and made a list.

  How to become my mother:

  1. Curl my hair.

  2. Take medicine.

  3. Smoke cigarettes.

  4. Drink coffee and wine and bourbon.

  5. Play solitaire and laugh and cry all at once.

  6. Be beautiful and interesting and tragic (how?)

  6a. Ask Gwen.

  7. Curse more than usual and be generally hateful.

  8. Go crazy.

  Anne went to bed with her hair pinned up with bobby pins and curlers. In the morning, she sat up and stretched out and looked around. Lucy’s room was like a foreign country to her now. She remembered it from when she was a very little girl, but she had not spent any real time in here for so long. She thought of her mother crying in the meadow. Anne felt a twinge. It passed quickly.

  The sun was filtering in through the curtains, a soft yellow, and a not unpleasant smoky smell mixed with perfume hung in the air.

  It was her mother’s scent. Smoke and Chanel No. 5.

  Today she had important things to do. Important things to be. Anne needed new clothes if she was going to be Lucy. She went to the attic to dig through two old steamer trunks in the back she knew were filled with clothing.

  “Those belonged to me, and Reggie, and Nan.” Gwyneth said, hovering close. She had taken to following Anne almost everywhere lately. Anne liked the attention.

  “And me, too,” said Ava.

  “Yes, my darling girl, and you, too.”

  “Look, Gwen! It all fits, and it’s all pretty!” She twirled in front of the chevalier mirror. There were piles and piles of skirts and blouses, colorful and flowing. None of it looked right on Anne, it looked too forced. And her hair, springy with irregular curls from the pins, mixed with the oversized clothing made Anne look more unstable than usual. But she felt beautiful.

  “Her shoes don’t fit, though. And I have small feet, too. Hers must have been really tiny,” Anne said with a frown.

  “Evolution of the species, my dear,” said Gwyneth.

  Anne shuffled through the men’s clothes and pulled out a pair of black boots. She put them on; they were a little big but comfortable.

  “How about these?”

  “You look fantastic.” Anne thought she heard a placating tone in Gwyneth’s voice. Maybe she was lying? It didn’t matter. Anne thought it was all perfect.

  Anne decided to try out her new look. She took the black silk shawl with the embroidery on it that her mother always wore, wrapped it around her finished outfit, applied some dark red lipstick, and went down the hill to the corner grocery to buy some tobacco and rolling paper.

  She looked in the front hall mirror before she left. A success, she thought. She looked just like Lucy. Except … she didn’t. She was Anne, and she didn’t enjoy the same social standing that Lucy once enjoyed. Society didn’t simply accept Anne as odd. It never had much patience for her.

  When Anne walked down Grand Street Hill, she made her debut, and it did not go well. Everyone was staring at her. The grocer asked her if she was all right. She looked at him and gave him
a smile. “I am absolutely fine,” she said, quickly trying to shove all the tobacco and rolling papers into one of Lucy’s satchel bags. Things kept dropping everywhere, and she was tripping on the shawl.

  By the time she returned to the Witch House—it was obvious to Anne that she wasn’t going to make it as Lucy. She took a pill.

  “You are not alone,” Gwyneth reminded her gently. But she felt alone. She missed Nan. She missed William. Anne took another pill.

  Weeks went by. Anne began to descend into a state of malaise. And no one stopped by to check on her. The house was legally hers. Nan had left everything to Anne in her will. But, house or no house, with what money would she buy food? How would she survive?

  She found the answer on the back porch, waiting for her the next morning in the form of two covered dishes of food with envelopes taped to the top. Anne took the dishes, one stacked on top of the other, inside.

  One dish contained a meat pie, and the other, a whole mess of cookies. Anne ate quickly; she didn’t realize how hungry she had been. Those pills she’d been taking, how did Lucy function on them? Once she was full, she opened the envelopes. Nan would have told her that it was rude to eat the present before opening the card, but Anne did not care. Nope, she did not care one bitty bit.

  But they weren’t cards. They were cash. Each envelope had cash inside. Well, that’ll do, thought Anne.

  And it did. For years, there would be food and money left at Anne’s back door, even after she didn’t need it anymore. There never was a note, only money. When she was saner, when the haze of being Lucy was a memory, when the baby grew strong inside her, Anne would discard the food. But the money was lovely. It gave her freedom. Almost.

  28

  Eleanor in the Library with a Pencil

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2015

  4:00 P.M.

  Maj bounced downstairs, interrupting the narrative, holding a big black book in her arms.

  “What’s that, baby?” asked Eleanor.

  “Something important,” Maj singsonged.

  Eleanor, Byrd, and Maj sat at a table, flipping through the book. It was separated into parts. Some looked like recipes. Some looked like stories and scrapbook pages with photographs. Others were split up among the women. The Book of Nan. The Book of Lucy. The Book of Anne.

  “This would have been a hell of a lot easier than the way I figured it all out. Thanks for a whole lot of nothing. Damn ghosts,” said Byrd, looking up at the ceiling.

  “No,” said Eleanor, reopening it to the first page. “This is different. Let’s look through carefully.”

  “It’s a book of spells. Dark magic, Mama. Deep dark loss magic. It’s a book of loss and shadow and secrets,” said Maj.

  7:30 P.M.

  “You better be taking a bath, Maj!” yelled Eleanor.

  Maj rolled her eyes at Crazy Anne.

  “Did you take out the worst spell before you gave them the book?” asked Anne. Her hair was always moving, as if it were in the wind, only they were inside in Maj’s new room.

  “Yep.”

  “Did you place it in the attic by the candle?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did you take the matches from the kitchen drawer?”

  “Yep.”

  “You should say yes, ma’am.”

  “Nope.”

  Anne’s ghost face flickered for a moment. It’s hard for ghosts to laugh, but she was trying.

  “Before we burn the spell, can we use the Death Life Wither Wander spell one more time?”

  “I told you it was too dangerous. Those fools downstairs would use it, sooner or later. Trust me.”

  “I want to use it. I memorized it. I will use it.”

  “Oh, hell. Fine. Get the dog.”

  “Because she is old!”

  “Yes. But there will be consequence.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Hopefully a dog who never ever ever ever dies.”

  8:00 P.M.

  “The book is interesting, but there’s nothing in it about murderous secrets, sadly,” said Eleanor, braiding Byrd’s hair. It felt good to mother her. It felt right. “Unlike the fact that there’s the body of a monster buried out by the Juniper trees. I guess we found our bones. And, Johnny won’t go all the way back there. He’s more focused on the house, and the foundation of Haven House. So, that’s that. Mystery Solved.”

  “I’m not so sure. I feel like there’s way more to figure out. It’s creepy and sad. The whole tale. I wish I’d known her. My great-grandmother. I wish she’d show herself to me,” said Byrd. She sighed. “That feels good.”

  “It’s impossible to get Maj to put those curls up. But I loved it when my Mimi used to braid my hair. You know what? I was about your age when I really started to know her.”

  “Elly, do you think we’re going to figure this out by tomorrow?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how much we can remove ourselves from these stories. On how far away we can get. It’s all about perspective.”

  “Yeah, I guess.… Do you like it here?” Byrd asked suddenly.

  “I love it here.”

  And Eleanor did. There was something about the way the light fell. About how she could always hear the ocean. It was peaceful.

  “It’s the kind of place that makes you feel like you are the only thing it loves,” Eleanor continued. “And isn’t that what we all want? To feel like one person’s beloved? That’s what the women in our family wanted. That’s all I ever wanted. Actually, speaking of wanting love, whatever ended up happening to Lucy?” asked Eleanor.

  “Oh, man, listen to this one.”

  29

  Lucy in the Mental Ward with a Match

  1960

  SAINT SEBASTIAN HOSPITAL, FAIRVIEW, MASSACHUSETTS

  The hospital wasn’t half bad. Lucy began to feel strong again. Clean. The house and its demons were far away. The medications they were giving her took the haze out of her mind and emboldened her. She felt unafraid for the first time in a very long time.

  Charming Lucy, as they began to call her, soon became a favorite of the staff, the doctors, and her fellow inmates, and soon the favoritism she had enjoyed throughout her years as a schoolgirl became the norm. The staff even did her small favors that weren’t allowed. She was smart and coy, asking only for small creature comforts that were easy to deliver, yet had a big impact … extra baths, nice brushes for her still-beautiful hair, nail polishing sessions with her nurses, and, most important, she was allowed to smoke. Orderlies let her go to the courtyard to smoke, and her doctor let her smoke in their therapy sessions. Yet Lucy knew this was not a wonderful hospital. Terrible things went on around her every day: shock treatments, lobotomies, ice baths, straitjackets. But Lucy avoided all of this. She had a light shining from the inside. She became the person they all believed they could save, so they tried very hard to save her.

  As she thrived on attention, this was a healthy environment for Lucy. She was given the right cocktail of drugs, was treated well, and began to feel like she had a really good handle on what steps she needed to take next in her life. The doctors, nurses, patients, and staff of Saint Sebastian Hospital all took note and patted each other on the back, thinking, “We did it!”

  One of her doctors in particular, Dr. David Crowley, took a special interest in Lucy. It was evident that he found her attractive. Everyone still did. She was beautiful and fragile, vulnerable in her hospital gown. Once after a session with her, he looked down at his notes to find he had written only three words the whole time: A Beautiful Chaos. Dr. Crowley decided to write a book on Lucy, documenting how they took a schizophrenic and were able to cure her. This would put him and his hospital on the map, and the fact was, she was cured. She had come into the hospital bloodied and raving about ghosts and demon houses and how they asked her to hurt herself. Classic symptoms. And now? Nothing. This kind of illness could not be faked, nor could the cure. She was sane again. This would be monumental in the worl
d of psychiatry. It would change the way patients were treated. Dr. Crowley could practically see the future awards on his walls.

  During what would be their last session, Lucy told Dr. Crowley she had a definite and clear plan on how she wanted to proceed. He nodded and smiled, without really listening. Lucy had a habit of twirling her hair as she looked at him, right into his eyes, and he couldn’t help it. He would get lost in his head visualizing fucking her, not with gentle love and kisses, but with animalistic abandon. “Well, Lucy, I guess I can sign the papers and release you to your daughter next week.”

  “Anne?”

  “Well, she has custodial rights.… She is of age, is that a problem?”

  Dr. Crowley immediately wondered if he could get rights and take her home, like a pet he could keep, one he could groom and—

  “No, no, I see, yes, Anne … home,” said Lucy. Keep it together, she thought. Keep it together and stick to the plan.

  “Good!” Dr. Crowley said. “So this is it!”

  As they stood up, he put his hand on her shoulder a little too long, a little too tightly, and she looked at him. Lucy knew all along the secrets to this place, to this life.

  Lucy knew he would love to have his way with her if given the chance. Just as she knew the nurses wanted to become her and the orderlies wanted to marry her. She knew how to work this system, just as she had known how to work the nuns, priests, and other kids back in school. She worked everybody; she was good at it, until Anne. She knew that house had wanted her out. It let her wither there as long as Nan was alive, because—as Lucy now understood, too late—Nan loved her, and the house wouldn’t hurt Nan. Lucy also knew she was, in fact, crazy and probably always had been.

  It was all clear now. There had only been one chance, one chance at happiness, and she lost it. When Vito died, she should have tried harder to keep it together, to be the mother she knew she could be, to have the kind of relationship with her son that she pretended to have.