Just then, the front door opened, and Mary peered out. “Aren’t you coming in?” she asked.
I was so surprised and relieved to see her that I forgot about the absolute strangeness of the house reappearing out of nothing. From the corner of my eye, I saw Henry freeze. “Who’s that?” he whispered.
“That’s Mary.”
Henry did not find this reassuring, because he grabbed my hand, as if to pull me back.
Mary was still in the doorway. “Come on,” she said, sounding impatient. “Don’t you want to see it again?”
I was torn. I wanted to follow her inside, but I didn’t want to leave Henry. I could tell that he was having a hard time with this. After all, I’d spent the day hoping to see Mary; he’d never seen her before, let alone believed that she existed, but I trusted Mary and my curiosity was too great.“Let’s go in,” I said. “It’ll be okay.”
“In there?” He was aghast. “But it’s not…real.”
This time, Mary spoke directly to Henry. “Sure it is. You can see it, can’t you? Don’t tell me you’re scared.”
Henry swallowed hard, not wanting to let anyone challenge his bravery like that.
I stepped up on the first stair. It held my weight.
“Helen, we should go.”
“It’ll be okay,” I reassured him, even though I had no idea what was about to happen. I pulled Henry up onto the first step with me and began to mount the next.
The door opened wider, and we could see Mary standing in our old hallway, on the floral carpet from Almy’s that Mother had treasured as if it were a family heirloom. I don’t know why I wasn’t more afraid, but I thought that as long as Mary was there, everything would be all right. It never occurred to me to be afraid of Mary. She was my friend.
We followed Mary into the house. Now, it truly was weird. Everything we had owned was back in its place, just as it had been before the fire. Even the furniture and pictures that we had been able to save from the fire, and which I knew were now in place at the apartment across town, were here in their usual spots.
Mary smiled. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
I wasn’t sure if I fully agreed with her. Henry clutched my hand and moved closer to me.
“And your doll is just where you left it.” I hadn’t played with that doll in over a year, well before the fire, but I had taken to placing it up against the pillows each morning after making my bed and drawing up the coverlet. The doll had been there when the fire struck, and I hadn’t been able to rescue it. “Don’t you want to see her again?”
I was curious. Even though we were standing in the hallway that hadn’t been there in months, surrounded by belongings that had either burned or were in their new home in another part of town, I was intrigued to see what had happened to my old room. I looked at the staircase on which Mary was now standing, the one that rose up to the second floor. “Is it safe?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’d never let anything happen to you. Just make sure that you keep holding hands, and you’ll both be fine.”
I could tell that Henry was about to pull away from me, but I didn’t want him to leave. I grabbed his hand even tighter. “Don’t let go,” I warned.
Henry nodded grimly, apparently too afraid to doubt my trust in Mary, and the three of us started up the stairs. Each step felt as solid as it had four months before. When we got to the top landing, I saw Henry look back down over the railing to the carpeted hallway below. I followed his gaze and forgot for a moment where we were, or when we were. It all seemed so real, as though we’d traveled back in time to before the fire, to when we’d lived in a nice house, not a cramped apartment, and Father had a good job, and we had money for pumpkins and Hallowe’en decorations.
Mary was now at my bedroom door; she turned the knob and opened it. Bringing Henry along with me, I approached and looked inside. My room was just as it had been, with the coverlet arranged smoothly over the bed, and the doll with the big blue eyes sitting up against the pillows.
“She’s missed you so much,” Mary said, picking up the doll and holding her out to me.
Henry gripped my hand tighter and placed his other hand on my arm. “We should go.” His voice sounded high and pinched, as if he wasn’t getting enough air. “We shouldn’t be here.”
Mary was smiling sadly, her arms stretched out for me to take the doll from her. “We’ve both missed you.”
With my free hand, I reached toward the doll, my fingers just touching the pink satin skirt with the lace trim. I leaned in farther.
At that moment, Mary laughed and threw the doll at me. Instinctively, I let go of Henry’s hand to catch the doll in my arms. When I realized what I’d done, I turned back to look at Henry. His face was contorted in fear, and he was looking down.
The floor below us had changed. My feet were still firmly in place and I could see the well-trod wooden planks, but they were shimmering as if transparent, and through them I could see the hallway below. Even worse, I could see that Henry’s feet were no longer on the same plane as mine. It was as if the transparent floor had become too insubstantial to hold Henry’s weight. He was floating slightly below it, as if the floor weren’t there at all.
Then, he dropped and was gone, down through the stairs and the carpeted hallway below, right to the ground with a heavy thud.
“What have you done?” I shouted at Mary.
She shrugged. “You’re the one that let go. Besides, he deserved it for teasing us like that.”
I was horrified. For all the teasing that Henry had done to me, he was my brother. Now he was lying on the ground, clutching his arm and moaning.
“Isn’t this better? Now it’s just us, and we can be together, just like before.”
“I can’t stay here with you!”
“Sure you can.” Mary stepped past me toward the back staircase. “He’ll be fine. Let’s go up to the attic. The view is so much better from up there. You can see the whole town.”
I looked down to Henry and then up to the ceiling. What if I could see the whole town from up there, with our old neighborhood recreated out of the ashes of the fire, just as our house had been? Wouldn’t that be a sight! I began to follow Mary to the back stairs.
Just then, I heard Henry cry out. I looked down and could see him through the transparent floors, his arm sticking out at an odd angle. I looked back at Mary. I had missed her so much, and I did want to be with her, but this was wrong.
“Come on, Helen. I’ve been so lonely here without you. Don’t you want to stay with me?”
I’d never realized it before, but Mary had a kind of power over me, protective and possessive. She was my friend and I’d missed her, but I was now a little afraid of her. “I can’t. I have to go.”
She frowned. “You’re just going to leave me here?”
I realized then that she was the only thing holding me safe on the now-transparent wooden planks of the second floor. I couldn’t afford to make her mad or I would end up on the ground with a broken arm like Henry, or worse. I inched towards the stairs that led down to the carpeted hallway. “No, of course not. Just let me see to Henry and then we can go up to the attic together.”
Mary shook her head. “You’re lying. I thought you wanted to see me again.”
I stepped onto the first stair, my eyes on Mary the whole time. “I did want to see you again. I’ve missed you.”
“I don’t believe you. You know I can’t go with you, I have to stay here.”
I took another step down. “I know. That’s why I came to see you tonight.”
“Then stay.” She sounded distraught.
Another step down. Just a few more and I’d probably be okay, even if the house disappeared from under me. I held out the doll to her. “Can you hold this while I see to Henry?”
Mary came forward to take the doll from me, wanting to believe that I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. As she approached the top of the stairs, I tossed the doll to her and ran down as fast as I could. Whe
n I got near the bottom, I jumped, hoping to land on the first floor, but the steps and the hallway began to dematerialize, and I landed hard on the ground next to Henry.
The house was gone.
I was shaking as I helped Henry to his feet. He was pale and held his arm tightly to his chest to prevent any jostling, but he seemed okay.
Just before we stepped onto the sidewalk, I felt a cold hand on my wrist. “I’ll see you next Hallowe’en.”
I pulled away from her grasp and walked Henry home. On the way, we decided to tell our parents that Henry had fallen trying to climb over a garden gate and broken his arm. My parents looked at us doubtfully when we got home, but they didn’t ask too many questions.
Henry and I never spoke again of that night, and I never went back to visit our old house.
But I still miss Mary.
1991
the witch who blew in on the storm
R.C. Mulhare
The door to the Salem Police Department’s downtown precinct on Central Street opened, a gust of wind carrying in a rush of rain and a figure in a yellow slicker, much larger than the small man inside it, a rain hat lashed to his rain-slicked brown hair. He hefted the waterproof camera case from his shoulder and set it on the floor near the front desk.
Arlene Jones, the desk sergeant on duty, looked up from the Anne Rice paperback she was reading. “Hey there, Tilly, decided to dress as a yellow rubber duck for Halloween?”
He peeled off the hat. “Very funny, and don’t call me Tilly. Carton or Tillinghast will do.”
“Must be a rough night: you’re snappier than usual.”
“Just came from the Hawthorne Hotel: the masquerade ball was impressive, but you can only stay there so long. And they postponed the closing events for Haunted Happenings. No chance for any shots of the crowds.”
“The chief and the mayor decided it was the best plan.”
“I don’t blame them: the crowd is virtually non-existent, and I can only take so many shots of blown around debris before Halsey tells me to stop wasting film.”
“They sent you out on a night like this?”
“It was either work or go along with my brother in law and his kids attempting to trick or treat,” Carton said.
“Were they serious? It’s not the kind of night anyone with sense would spend walking around the streets,” Arlene said.
“I told them they could put on rain hats and yellow slickers and hip boots.”
“What, like the Gorton’s Fisherman? That’s a bit close, since there’s a swordfish crew gone missing on the sea.”
“I was thinking greenhouse worker.”
“Right, you’re from East Manuxet.”
“Former carnation capital of Massachusetts. Mike works in Woburn, growing plants for Spence Farms.”
“Care for some coffee?”
He leaned one hip against the front desk. “At this point, I’ll drink anything warm to get my blood circulating again.”
She got up and went to the coffee maker behind the desk, pouring a Styrofoam cup full and handing it across to him, which he accepted, taking a grateful sip. The contents weren’t Dunkins’, but it warmed him up.
The door to the squad room opened and the 11 to 7 shift emerged, talking and joking among themselves. Bill Abbot looked in Carton’s direction with a grin and stepped out of the pack.
“Hey, Tilly-Don’t-Call-Me-That, storm blow you in here?”
Carton glared up at him, but managed a smirk. “Something like that.”
“Looking for a story? I got the short straw: they’re sending me down to Derby Street, near the Maritime Site, in case any idiots try going down by the wharf, make sure they don’t get blown out to sea.”
“Sounds like a plan. Better than photographing flying trash on Essex Street.”
“Maybe a boat’ll blow into port, give you a big scoop on the crew’s dramatic journey.”
Ten minutes later, they sat in the relative warmth of Abbot’s Crown Victoria, Carton in the shotgun seat, both of them nursing cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, calls from other patrols quacking on the radio. Rain lashed against the windows and the wipers swinging every few seconds to clear the windshield barely cleared the glass before another wave of rain washed it out. Waves crashed against the old pier, almost as high as the lighthouse at the far end. They parked on the street, well above the pier, in front of a line of sawhorses and highway hazard barrels framing a “Road Closed” sign set up to block the street and warn people away from the water. On Halloween, once the bars started to empty out, some jokers would likely venture down by the waterfront, attracted by the thrill of the storm.
“So were you over by the Witch History Museum Sunday afternoon?” Bill asked.
“No, got stuck covering a family costume parade at the Salem Willows. Why?” Carton asked over the rim of his cardboard cup.
“You missed some excitement in front of the Roger Conant Statue.”
“The one the tourists always think is a witch?”
“Yeah, shows you who’s a townie and who ain’t. Funny he chose that spot, but one of those fire-and-brimstone-Rapture-is-coming types parked himself there, waving a King James in one hand and yelling into a bullhorn in the other.”
“Minus the bullhorn, he’s about three hundred years late.”
“Tricentennial’s next year: hope it’s better weather at Halloween. Anyway, he’s yelling at the crowd that most of ‘em will be burning in hell by the year 2000, and the rest will be infected with AIDS or enslaved by the Russians.”
“Someone missed the memo. And aren’t bullhorns verboten?”
“Damn straight. We keep telling the ghost tour types to drop them, which they do, soon as they spot us coming. So I tells him he has to put down the bullhorn, there’s been a noise complaint, which there had been. Starts yawping—through the bullhorn, mind you—that an agent of Satan bearing the mark of the witch,” Bill glanced at the patch on his sleeve, “was trying to ‘silence the Good Spell of the Lord’.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Wish I was.”
A bolt of lightning lit up the waterfront, silvering the houses to their left, the National Maritime Site, the buildings on Pickering Wharf, and the masts of the Friendship moored away from the dock to keep her from slamming into it. Carton looked to the sky, seeing a black shape like a human figure against the glare.
“My god, there’s someone flying,” he gasped.
“What? There something in your coffee?” Bill asked.
“I’m serious, I saw someone flying.”
“Like Flying Nun-flying?”
“Not quite, but they’re airborne.” Carton shrugged into his rain slicker and dug the waterproof Agfa out of his camera case in the floorboards at his feet before opening his door and stepping into the rain. The wind caught the door, nearly ripping it off. Bill got out on his side, switching on the floodlight and canting it upward. The rain caught in the beam, creating a searchlight effect as he played the light over the clouds.
The floodlight caught on a figure overhead, a female form in a wind-torn cloak, eddying about like a giant, errant bat or a tattered umbrella. Except this isn’t Mary Poppins, Carton thought, focusing the camera and hitting the shutter, glad he’d thought to load fast film in case of something like this.
Bill grabbed the handset from the dashboard. “Car 12 calling to base, I got an airborne person near the Maritime Historical Site. Gonna need medical, over.”
The radio crackled. “Car 7, copy that, I’m close by on Hawthorne Boulevard.”
The black form eddied overhead, fighting the wind before it swooped, aiming for the grassy expanse, then crashed to the sodden ground with a squelch that tightened Carton’s stomach. Slinging his camera behind his head, he ran to the spot, Abbot at his side carrying a flashlight, the beam slicing through the rain.
In the middle of the grassy lot, the black-clad figure lay huddled around a smaller form. Abbot’s light revealed a woman in her ear
ly thirties, red hair plastered across her face, clothes tattered by the wind. In her arms, she clasped a girl about seven years old, dark-haired and with olive skin.
“Miss? Can you hear me?” Abbot called over the shrieking wind.
Carton felt at the woman’s throat for a pulse, then the girl’s. Both felt as cold as ice, but he felt a flutter at the girl’s neck, then the woman’s, erratic, but recovering strength.
“I got a pulse,” he said.
Abbot let out a whuff. “Thank God. Thought I was going to need to call the meat wagon and not a bus.”
The woman’s eyes flickered open. Still holding the girl, she turned from her side to her back, looking up at the two of them. “Who are you?” she said. Somehow, the shriek of the wind pulled away, though the rain still beat down on the four of them and the sodden ground.
“I’m Officer Bill Abbot, this is my friend Carton Tillinghast. We’re here to help you. Were you blown off a pier, miss?”
The woman looked from one to the other, saying nothing, pulling the girl closer.
“They’re both scared to death,” Carton said, knowing he’d stated the obvious.
“Are either of you hurt? Do you have any pain?” Abbot asked. The woman made no reply, her eyes glazing in a thousand yard stare.
“I think she’s going into shock,” Carton said.
“The hell is Car 7?” Abbot said, reaching for the walkie-talkie at his belt. “Car 7, I’m gonna need a bus.”
The woman tried to sit up, her right leg buckling under her, the ground sluicing under her. “My ankle…” she muttered.
“Let us get you to a hospital. You’ll catch your death of this rain,” Carton said.
“All right. But no questions,” she said, looking at them sideways. “I’m not under arrest, am I?”
“Not unless getting blown across a harbor is a crime,” Abbot said, with a laugh.
Red and blue and white lights flashed off the house fronts across the street. A police car followed by an ambulance pulled up behind Abbot’s car. Two medics in orange high-vis vests approached, carrying a stretcher.
One Night in Salem Page 9
