The Witch House of Persimmon Point

by Suzanne Palmieri

  Nothing remained but the sound of a clock. Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic. Until one day, her great-granddaughter found her way home, turned the golden doorknob, and reclaimed the ghosts.

  Cornflower Blue or The Book of the Beautiful Bones

  37

  In the Cellar with the Psychopath

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2015

  MIDNIGHT

  They were in the library.

  “That’s it. That’s where the story ends and, in my opinion, it’s too damn sad,” said Byrd. “I’ll never get over it. The fact that I lost great-grandma Crazy Anne before I ever got to have her. I swear, there’s a patent unfairness to the world that I wish I wasn’t smart enough to see sometimes.” Byrd wiped away her tears.

  Eleanor pulled her into a hug. “Shhh now, Miss Byrd. It’s okay. Really. You and me and Maj? We’ll be just fine. No matter what happens with this television show.”

  Byrd wailed louder. “That’s today! We didn’t do it. Elly, I swear I thought we’d figure it out. I believed it!”

  “Byrd. Calm down. Let’s go to sleep and maybe … just maybe…”

  “Maybe what? What else is there?”

  “Maybe this can help?” asked Maj from the doorway, making them both jump.

  “What on earth are you doing up, sweetheart?” Eleanor asked, picking her up to cover her with kisses.

  “Someone had to figure it out,” said Maj. “Byrd, look at my picture.”

  Byrd took the rolled-up picture and placed it on the massive desk, holding it down with an ashtray on one side and a book on the other.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said. “We’ve been telling and retelling stories of madness and sorrow while Maj colored us the truth. It’s the gatehouse. It’s always been the gatehouse. I mean, think about it. How much did we hear about Gavin and Lavinia and Jude? Not too much. But they are direct relations to me. Everything we heard pointed to that place. Even Amazing Andy didn’t want to go there. You could tell when he said he felt nothing coming from it.”

  “You didn’t search it?”

  “It’s the strangest thing.… I don’t feel anything when we walk or drive by. Not even curiosity, which is very, very strange. Because I’m damn curious,” said Byrd.

  Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic.

  “Do you hear that, Mama?”

  “I do. I’ve heard it, felt it, like my own heartbeat since we got here. Do you hear it, Byrd?”

  “We all hear it, Mama. And the gatehouse was hiding from you. There are secrets there that weren’t in the stories. Our Witch House is ashamed of them.”

  “We have to go over there,” said Byrd.

  “No. Not now. Not in the dark. We’ll go first thing in the morning. Together.”

  7:30 A.M.

  Around the gatehouse, the grasses and vines had grown up over and through the porch, and the doors and windows were boarded up tight, so Eleanor and Byrd decided to try the back door.

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY I CAN’T COME OVER THERE!’’ Maj yelled as loud as she could from where she was sitting on the lawn of the Witch House eating pie for breakfast (again).

  “You stay right there, baby! We’ll be out in a second.”

  “YOU WOULDN’T EVEN KNOW WITHOUT MY DRAWING, MAMA!”

  “Just stay there and you can have more pie when we get back as a reward!”

  “BUT YOU WOULD GIVE ME THE PIE ANYWAY, MAMA!”

  Eleanor made a face at Maj and shook her head. “Kids,” she said, turning back to Byrd.

  Byrd laughed. “Well, she’s not wrong. I just hope she’s right about this, too.”

  A small, peeling, and half-falling-down entry gate stood between them and the backyard of the gatehouse. Byrd kicked it, tearing away vines and old pain. And when it flew open, they understood.

  There were red geraniums everywhere. Potted and cracked and large and small. An entire expanse of the fenced-in yard simply swimming with red geraniums.

  “Did we ever determine if it would be politically incorrect to call ourselves special needs psychics?” asked Byrd.

  “I believe you voted for backwards psychics. I can’t believe it’s been right in front of us the whole time! Geez.”

  They opened up the back door, jingling Nan’s old key ring full of keys and stepping over the thick overgrown geranium leaves and stalks, and entered the dim, hollow kitchen.

  “It’s too quiet,” Eleanor whispered.

  “I know,” said Byrd.

  “I don’t hear the clock.”

  “What?”

  “The clock, Tic tock tic tock tic tock. Tic. You know. I hear it on the grounds, I hear it in the house, by the pool, halfway up the drive, but I don’t hear it now. At first it drove me crazy, but now I’m almost sick without it.”

  “Elly, you just figured it out. Let’s investigate here, and then I want to show you something back at the house in the big black book.”

  * * *

  They found the tables in the basement. The cage. The chains. Instruments of pain hidden behind a furnace much too large for such a small house. A house that wasn’t built with a basement in the first place.

  Jude’s torture chamber.

  Eleanor felt sick, like if she didn’t get out now, she never would. She rushed out, with Byrd swiftly behind her.

  “It must have been built for evil. Terrible intentions are the worst sort of energy,” said Byrd, as they emerged back outside like a couple of deep-sea divers, gasping for air.

  “Why is all that stuff still there? Don’t people take those things for evidence or something?” asked Eleanor.

  “I bet no one wanted to touch it. I bet they were all too afraid, so they closed it up.”

  “They must have known, you know,” said Eleanor.

  “Who?”

  “Nan, Anne, Lucy … well, maybe not Lucy. But Nan and Anne had to know about this cellar. They used it for drying things and bottling wine.”

  “That doesn’t matter. We are not normal folk, hasn’t that sunk in yet? And I don’t want to be. And you came all the way here so you wouldn’t have to be. The question is, What are we going to do? Johnny Colder is clear on his way!”

  “It’s time to tell you the secret,” said Maj from the staircase, her shadow tall and reaching into the cellar. Byrd and Eleanor jumped.

  “Dig there in the floor for bones. And dig outside in the fenced garden for bones. There are generations of the lost and dead under our feet. They will be everywhere.

  “All over the yard, under those red geraniums. There are women, children, and even babies.”

  As she rushed up the stairs to scoop up Maj and to hurry Byrd out as well, a clarity descended on Eleanor, “It wasn’t just Jude. It was Archibald. Who knows what he was experimenting with in his attempts to get, or grow, or tame the magic of the Haven Port Greens? And I imagine Reginald was anything but innocent, too. Who knows what he did before Nan? Those stories, our heritage, they are colored by the women who told them. Nan was in love. Monsters are not monsters when you are in love.”

  * * *

  “Are you okay, Byrd?” asked Eleanor, concerned. The girl’s whole demeanor had changed since Maj’s revelation.

  “I’ve been wrong about everything. Let’s go back to the main house. I need to get away from here. I need to show you something,” Byrd said quietly.

  Eleanor thought of making a joke about all the things they’d just discovered, and how one more thing might tip the balance out of their favor, but when she saw Byrd’s face, she thought better of it. No sass there at all, just an open wound. So instead she led both girls to the porch of the main house and sat them down.

  “This is the letter from the library,” Byrd spoke up after a few moments of strained silence. “The one for me. What … what do you think of it?”

  Eleanor took it with the same reverence she knew Byrd felt and began to read.

  Dear Byrd,

  The sun shines bright here. And though I know I’ve craved this moment of tran
quil gardens and peaceful, quiet days filled with light, I’m homesick. Which is not the way I intended to tell you this story, our story, at all. I intended to fill it with all the gloom and despair I could muster, so that you wouldn’t be curious about your history. I wanted to frighten you. Yet here I am, confident I made the right choice, and wishing I could run away home and end my days safe inside the toxic embrace of the Witch House. Only I don’t run. Instead I sit here under this magnificent southern magnolia, knowing my time on earth is short.

  I live a life I know is not my own. I build it for you, so that it will be yours without question. The story I’m about to tell you, one of aching, dark resilience, remains the comfort of my soul. Because no matter how starless a night sky may seem, those stars are still there, promising their light, if you listen.

  Inside the Big House they are laughing. I’m always so impressed by their ability to laugh through the sorrow. But I shouldn’t be. It isn’t like we never laughed. All families must examine their broken pieces and laugh from time to time. But here, here it’s different. Here they laugh and the ghosts seem to laugh with them. Back home, our ghosts take offense.

  I feel, for a moment, as if I’m a ghost as well. I hear someone calling me, they are so warm here, these people.

  “Stella, honey, come on inside for supper.”

  I walk, slowly, through my garden. The one they allow me to have, the one that reminds me so much of home. If I closed my eyes, I could be standing in the house my great-great-grandmother Nan saved, on the land she inherited from her lover.

  They are ghosts and I am caught here, in an unknown place. Not dead, not fully alive. Stella under glass.

  My grandmother, my mother … the story doesn’t even start here, in the country. It begins in Italy.

  There are so many tales told about the immigrant waves to the land of opportunity. Story after story about Mafia and tenements and finding their way.

  The stories I heard were different. Not at all the same.

  No gangsters (well, one), no hard work toiling away in dress shops. No city tenements. No, ours was a story captured in time.

  And because we are who we are, each story comes from the women who raised me, the ghosts that haunted them, and the house itself. Our house. Every corner, every rafter, beam, and windowpane told me stories for as long as I can remember, reaching back far before I was born.

  I belong there, in that house, on that land. I belong to the women who came before me and the ghosts they left behind. That is my life. The only one I ever knew, so I belong to it, and it to me. Which is why I left. My wish for you, sweet child, is that you will not know the ease of pain, or come to expect loss as other children expect gifts. You will not seek out the shadows, hoping to find a tragic secret. You will be as much the sunshine as I have been the night sky. It is time for our family to break free of the persistent nightfall we’ve come to not only know, but crave. So, I will tell you of the dark and the light, and I will hope it appeases any sort of curiosity. Because if you decide to return, even for a glimpse, the history will cast its net wide, and draw you back in.

  I suppose I already know you will go there someday. And when you do, perhaps you can use this history to save yourself. And if that doesn’t work, at least you’ll know there is a richness there, another layer that exists between what we know and what we feel, that is inexorably linked to life. If you choose to stay here, in the sun, your life will be filled with all the pain and joy a life deserves. And if you choose to return to the darkness, you will struggle against the peculiar delicacy of loss that, in our upside-down lineage, is mother’s milk.

  Remember that, baby girl. Remember it well. And know, I love you more than all the stars you can or cannot see.

  Love,

  Your mama, Stella

  “It’s a lovely letter is what I think,” Eleanor said, clearing her throat, suddenly missing Mimi.

  “This changes everything.”

  “It doesn’t change anything, honey. Calm down.”

  “Amazing Andy was right. We are hostages. Ava and Anne and all the rest. Can’t you see? You were happy once, but now you’re the proud owner of a burial ground that was populated by the evil hands of our relatives. And you’re here, and Anthony is there. And, well, you kind of inherited me, too. Only, I don’t have to stay if you don’t want me. Not that I don’t feel wantable. And look here what my mama says about loss.… See, that sounds about right. Doomed. We’re doomed. We’ll live here all alone forever and we’ll continue to do the strange bad things that make this family all colors of awkward. It’s like … we’ve been poisoned. Like Amazing Andy said. And if that’s true, we have to leave. And you will leave me, and I will go back to Alabama and I don’t want to go. Don’t leave me.” Byrd wilted in defeat.

  “Do we have to leave?” asked Maj. “I don’t want to leave.”

  “We do not have to leave.”

  “What if it’s cast a spell on us? What if we can’t see it for what it really is?” Byrd was crying.

  “Byrd. If we feel happy here, doesn’t that make it a good thing? Loss or not?” Eleanor grabbed Byrd’s hands between her own and squeezed. “You need to breathe. You’re having an anxiety attack, which is totally fine, but hear me: I’m not leaving you. I can’t be with Anthony right now. I have always defined myself by what those around me wanted. Damaged, pretty, magical … or weak, strong, damsel in distress for Anthony. Well, that’s complicated. He wanted me to seem weak so he could feel good about himself, but be strong inside so if he failed, I’d be okay.…”

  “Maybe it’s simpler than all that,” said Maj stopping the torrent of her mother’s words.

  “How do you figure?” asked Byrd.

  “Crazy Anne told me something else. She said I’d know when to say it. She said we can trust ourselves. She said Stella was going to die in childbirth no matter what. That it was a fate you didn’t want to control. She said when we try to manage life and death that it makes a hole in the universe. She said not to let your fear tell you lies. ‘Every coward I’ve ever met thinks they’re fearless. Heroes, on the other hand, are accidental,’ Anne said. She told me that no spirit is trapped here, that they make their way to the other side when they’re good and ready. And…”

  “What, Maj?”

  “She said Mr. Colder can’t go in the house. Because of Nan’s spell. Come look in the book, I’ll show you.”

  * * *

  Back in the kitchen, Maj helped Byrd find what she needed.

  “Right here, the Book of Nan. Nan’s last act of magic. She buries Reggie’s watch in the basement,” Maj said, finishing her second piece of pie.

  “It’s about intent. She probably wasn’t even thinking about the gatehouse. She was protecting the old house. She was protecting us,” Byrd said, smiling.

  “See, Byrd?” said Maj. “It’s a good place. A safe place.”

  “Let’s go see Johnny,” said Byrd, closing the book.

  “Where do you suppose he’s staying? He could be anywhere, really.” Eleanor frowned.

  “He’s here,” said Maj, holding up her drawing of the Stardust Motel on Grand Street, right by the highway. “Now, Mama, how’s about a third piece of pie?”

  “But how will we keep his sorry ass self at the gatehouse, instead of coming up to the Witch House?” asked Byrd.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, Byrd,” Eleanor said. “We ban him and the crew for their safety, or for our sanity, it doesn’t matter. We’ll sacrifice what we found at the gatehouse. All of it. Johnny Colder can have his evidence. It’s the easiest option.”

  8:30 A.M.

  Johnny Colder sat in his crap motel going over the last sound edits before the live show. He was tired of Haven Port and its ass-hat coffee. Christ, he couldn’t wait to leave.

  At least he was finally hitting the big time.

  But even he had to admit that, though he thought the whole thing was a bunch of hooey, the interview he was reviewing was fascinating. He hit pl
ay again.

  “There is, perhaps, no finer example of the devastating supernatural effects ‘the Witch House’ has on all those who dare step foot on its cursed land than that of Matthew Makepeace. A local carpenter and devoted family man, Mr. Makepeace was, by all accounts, just your average, upstanding man, before his curiosity got the better of him. At the time of his encounter, he was twenty-five years old with a thriving construction company he built from the bottom up. Looking for new and interesting ways to recycle older building materials into newer homes, he decided to ignore the local folklore, not to mention his own childhood fears, and take a look around the house and the grounds. His ex-wife, Carly, stated:

  “‘Matthew walked in one person, and came out someone else. Some say he died in there—or a piece of him did, at least. Others say he was born. I guess that depends on whether or not you like a large helping of mean with your man. I didn’t, so I divorced his ass.’

  “That Carly is a feisty one, folks! But either way, everyone agrees Mr. Makepeace will never be the same.

  “After learning all I could about the history of Haven House, this supposed ‘Witch House,’ it was the documented, drastic change in Matthew’s mannerisms and temperament that interested me the most. Others have gone there with little or no effect. So, before I took the leap and investigated on my own, I interviewed Mr. Makepeace himself. The following is a recording of that interview where Matthew states, in his own words, what happened the day his life was forever changed.”

  [Static sounds and a thud as a mic is dropped.]

  Johnny: “Sorry. Damn outdated shit, I swear, hold on. [High-pitched feedback.] There, good. Okay. First, thank you to the Virginia State Department of Corrections for allowing me this interview. I’m sitting here with Matthew Makepeace, whom many know as the Tangier Island Firebug. Matthew, you are currently serving a twenty-year sentence for setting fires to multiple historic buildings. Now, you claim that it was some sort of possession you picked up at Haven House that compelled you to set the fires. Do you stand by that?”