Sisters of Misery

by Megan Kelley Hall

  “Tess really missed you when you were gone,” Maddie offered. “But she was happy for you at the same time. She wanted you to get out of this town, wants all of us to get out, actually.”

  Rebecca nodded slowly, started to say something, paused, and then said, “Just be careful that—” and before she could finish, Cordelia burst through the door, her arms filled with fresh flowers, completely drenched from the rainstorm that had kicked up outside.

  “Can I get some help here?” She said laughing, shaking her head like a dog, with strands of red hair sticking across her cheeks and mouth.

  Rebecca jumped off the counter and ran over to help her daughter. “You didn’t have to pick these up today! I would have helped you once it stopped raining.”

  “S’okay,” she said, looking back and forth between them. “Did I miss anything?”

  Rebecca and Maddie looked at each other for a moment. Maddie could tell from the arch of Rebecca’s eyebrow that she wasn’t to mention the fight she had walked in on earlier.

  “Not a thing,” Maddie said. And for the rest of the afternoon, they mixed various infusions and unpacked big crates of crystals and amulets in anticipation of the spillover crowds from Salem’s October Haunted Happenings. The entire city of Salem was flooded with tourists, and many were anxious to venture into the smaller quaint town of Hawthorne. Rebecca’s Closet was the perfect place for them to get their fix of authentic witchcraft and Wiccan items, ones that didn’t have the tacky “Witch City” stamp all over them.

  As Maddie stood in front of Rebecca for the first time in months, she realized her aunt never finished her warning to her. “Just be careful that…” she had said, but she’d forgotten to ask her, Of what?

  Dot quickly excused herself to tend to a disruption at the far end of the hallway, leaving Maddie alone with her aunt—a woman who seemed like a complete stranger. Rebecca sat at the far end of the room, gazing at the ivy-choked windows. Her blue eyes seemed paler than Maddie remembered, as though the life had been siphoned out of them. She had the look of someone who had accepted her ever-present grief as inevitable. Rebecca seemed to have chosen the peace of mind that cutting all ties with reality afforded her.

  Rebecca’s once vibrant sheath of red hair had faded to a dull rust color, cut short and ragged. It was as though Rebecca’s image had faded and bleached from the sun that soaked through the dirt-streaked windows.

  “Rebecca, I’m here to help you get ready for your move. We’re going to be taking you to a new place. You’re going to like it much better, I promise.”

  “She don’t talk to strangers,” a voice came from the doorway. A spindly woman was closely inspecting the wood paneling around the doorframe, carefully avoiding eye contact with Maddie. “You’re not her friend. I am. I’m her friend, and she can’t leave. We have to be together. She likes it if she talks to me, but she’s not gonna talk to you. No way.”

  The small woman rambled on and on incoherently in a little girl’s singsong voice.

  “I’m her niece, Madeline,” she offered hesitantly. “I’m happy to hear that Rebecca has some friends here.”

  The woman shot her a harsh look before quickly returning her attention to chipping plaster off the wall. “She don’t got no family no more. They’re all gone, you know. They’re down in the ground and in the sky. She’s got nobody but me, Rosie.”

  “Well, Rosie, it’s nice to meet you,” Maddie said, noticing that Rebecca hadn’t acknowledged anyone in the room, but instead, she had started playing with something in her frail hands. Click clack click clack. “Are you going to be moving to the new hospital, as well?”

  “Oh no,” she said, vigorously shaking her white hair. “Becca and I are staying right here. Becca has to stay in her garden. How will her little girl know where to find her if she leaves? No, we have to stay here until Cordelia comes home.”

  Maddie felt a spark of hope. Maybe Rebecca could actually communicate. “Did Rebecca tell you about what happened to her daughter?” Maddie asked Rosie, noticing that the clacking sound got louder. Turning her attention back to Rebecca, she saw a few small, smooth stones in her hands. She flicked them around and around quickly like meditation balls.

  “Oh, yes.” Rosie had come all the way into the room at this point and flopped down on Rebecca’s bed. “We love spending time with Cordelia, don’t we, Becca? We like to go outside and sit under the trees and have tea parties. I always wanted my own little girl, but now I have Cordelia. Rebecca lets me share.”

  The clicking grew faster and more furious. At that point, Maddie wasn’t entirely sure what felt more disturbing: Rosie’s tale of spending time with her missing cousin, or the constant clacking of the stones in Rebecca’s hands.

  “Rosie!” Dot scolded, suddenly reappearing in the doorway. “You know that we only visit with friends at certain times of the day. You can’t just sneak out of your room like that. We’ve all been going crazy looking for you.”

  “Don’t let this lady take my friend away! She’s my friend, and I don’t want her to go away.” Rosie pouted, and then she hissed, “You’re a bad girl. I know about you. You don’t think anyone knows, but I know. I know what you did. I know!”

  “Rosie!” Dot scolded, sharp as a blade. The large woman cleared her throat when she realized that she had everyone’s attention—everyone but Rebecca. “Now it’s time to say good-bye, Rosie.” Dot grabbed Rosie’s arm, hauling her from the room.

  As if out of a comedy routine, Rosie yelped, “Good-bye, Rosie!”

  “Excuse me, Dot?” Maddie managed to catch the nurse’s attention before the two women exited the room. “Does my aunt spend a lot of time with Rosie?”

  Dot sighed. “Well, yes, I suppose they do spend a good amount of time together. But I think that’s due to Miss Rosie, the social butterfly here. Rebecca keeps to herself. I haven’t heard a word out of your aunt in all the time I’ve worked at Ravenswood. She hasn’t made a peep in front of anyone else on the staff either, as far as I know.”

  Rosie pushed back into the room. “She talks to me all the time, don’t you, Becca? All the time we talk and talk, talk and talk. I know everything that happened. All about her little girl. She tells me everything.”

  Dot snorted. “I’ll bet she talks your ear off, Rosie,” she said to Rosie, but then she turned to Maddie, shaking her head and mouthing the word, No. “Come on, Really Rosie. Let’s get moving.”

  The women then moved back down the corridor, Rosie’s incessant chattering becoming fainter and fainter until silence fell upon the room once again—even the clacking had ceased.

  Maddie edged closer to Rebecca and gently pulled one of the stones from her hand. The smooth, dark stone had a symbol carved into it. A Celtic rune stone just like the ones Cordelia and Rebecca used to sell in the store.

  “Rebecca,” Maddie said, falling to her knees in front of her aunt, searching her vacant eyes for signs of life, of recognition. Rebecca never took her eyes away from the window. She had that distant, wistful gaze that Tess got at times when staring out at the ocean. Rebecca looked like she was waiting, watching for Cordelia’s return. “Please talk to me, tell me something, anything.”

  Her hands were cold; her eyes, glazed over. It was like talking to one of the wax figures in the Salem Witch Museum. “I’m sorry,” Maddie whispered. “I wish I knew where to find Cordelia. I wish I could have stopped…” She let that last word hang between them.

  Rebecca had no idea about their night out on Misery, and Maddie wasn’t about to tell her and risk making her retreat further into herself. She continued, “I wish I could bring her home. But I don’t know where to look. Everyone thinks she’s run away, but I just don’t believe it. I can’t believe she would do that to us—to you. If only…”

  Maddie looked down at the rune stone in her hand to hide her tears, not that Rebecca had even acknowledged her presence. She thought of Rebecca’s stories of being able to see the future with these stones.

  Bet you ne
ver saw any of this coming.

  “I’m going to visit you more often at Fairview, Rebecca. I promise,” she murmured, touching her aunt’s arm and placing the rune back into her upturned hand. Maddie headed for the door and then turned to add, “Maybe I’ll even bring my mother with me.”

  Maddie waited a moment for some kind of response, but Rebecca sat as if cast in stone, facing the window. She turned toward the exit, and just as Maddie was about to step through the doorframe, the rune stone whizzed past like a comet, coming within inches of her head before slamming hard against the wall, leaving an angry gash where it struck. The sound ricocheted and echoed down the corridor. Maddie spun quickly around, but Rebecca’s position hadn’t changed in the slightest bit. She sat facing the window, spinning the remaining stones in her hand.

  Click clack click clack.

  “I am so sorry about that, Ms. Crane. She’s never done anything even remotely like that before,” Dot said, leading her back to the entrance of Ravenswood. “We only let her have those stones because we thought they would relax her. We never dreamed she’d throw them or try to hurt anyone.”

  “Relax her?” Maddie asked. “Why does she need relaxing?”

  “Well, you saw that room,” Dot laughed nervously. “The woman never sleeps! All she ever does is add to the paintings on her walls. When we decided to let the patients express themselves artistically, we thought it would be a nice peaceful activity for them. Boy, were we wrong when it came to Rebecca. Night and day she’d be painting and drawing and creating that jungle of flowers in there.”

  “Rebecca owned a flower shop when my cousin disappeared. She threw herself into flower arranging as a way to keep herself occupied during that whole ordeal.”

  “Well, it’s important for our patients to rest,” explained Dot. “Sometimes we have to restrain her at night so she’ll get some sleep. Other times, we use hydrotherapy and put her in one of our continuous baths. Not the freezing cold baths that hospitals got in trouble for in the fifties, mind you. We fix up nice, warm spalike baths for her. Well, your aunt is a regular Houdini. She finds ways out of her restraints at night, and she escapes the baths.”

  “Runs in the family,” Maddie added dryly under her breath. Her hands were still shaking as she filled out the paperwork to have Rebecca transferred to the new facility outside of town. Then she said to Dot, “Well, now that everything is squared away, I hope that the move will be smooth.”

  “Don’t worry, Ms. Crane,” Dot squeezed her arm gently, a feeble attempt at kindness. “We’ll take care of everything. Your aunt is in good hands.”

  As Maddie drove away from Ravenswood, a sudden lightness and release came over her. The air within those rooms, corridors, and hallways was so heavy and everywhere Maddie looked she sensed such despair that she promised never to take anything for granted again. For the first time in a long while, Maddie felt like one of the lucky ones.

  As she maneuvered the car away from Ravenswood, driving along the road that ran between the ocean and Potter’s Grove, Maddie wondered if she could pick out the tree that Rosie and Rebecca had supposedly picnicked under with Cordelia. The place was so darkly Gothic—like something straight out of medieval times—that Maddie could picture Cordelia sitting under one of the massive pines, a wreath of wildflowers on her head like a fairy crown, her long red hair ablaze under the slants of light streaking across the early evening sky. If she let her imagination take over, Maddie could envision Cordelia waving to her as she drove past.

  See you soon, Maddie. I’ll be waiting…

  Chapter 18

  TIWAZ

  BRAVERY AND COMMITMENT

  Bravery, Honor, and Steadfastness in the Face of

  Adversity; Justice, Fair Law

  APRIL

  The ocean swirled dark and cool around her ankles as Maddie waded deeper into the water. The sand back on shore still retained some of its warmth from the unseasonably warm early April afternoon. On this particular night, the stars seemed brighter in the inky sky than they usually were during humid summer nights.

  Maddie walked barefoot down to the beach at the end of Mariner’s Way after Tess and Abigail had gone to bed. Although it wasn’t quite ten o’clock, all of the neighboring houses were dark, and Maddie was engulfed by the blackness. A hush lay like a thick quilt over Hawthorne that evening.

  Maddie sat for a long time, looking out at the black water, watching the moonlight stream and slip among the waves. Finally, she walked down to the water’s edge and slipped her feet into the surf. The night was unusually warm, but the ocean was still frigid. After looking around to make sure she was completely alone, Maddie stripped down to her underwear, plunging headfirst into the chilly, moonlit waves. Tess had once told her that swimming in the ocean at this time of year brought clarity, something she definitely needed. The shock of the cold water on her bare skin sucked the breath from deep inside of her.

  She broke the surface, hair slicked back like a seal. As her body trembled from the cold, Maddie thought of how she and Cordelia used to sneak down to Crescent Hollow Cove in the middle of the night the summer before Cordelia started Hawthorne Academy. Maddie never would have done it on her own, but Cordelia convinced her that the sense of complete freedom and release would be worth any punishment if they got caught. They never did.

  Maddie stretched her legs out behind her, kicking strongly in order to warm her body before flipping underwater like a dolphin and heading back to shore. She rode the waves into the sandy beach and ran over to the blanket she had brought with her to the beach. Maddie flopped backward, sending droplets of water flying, her body shivering as she quickly pulled on her fleece top and sweatpants. The stars blinked down at her; she caught a glimpse of a falling star. Make a wish, Maddie thought. Usually, her wishes involved health and happiness, her family, falling in love—a truly, madly, head-over-heels romance. But tonight, her wish was different.

  To know the truth.

  To remember.

  A sound to her left made her jump. Maddie looked over her shoulder, but couldn’t see anyone. She half-expected Cordelia to come bounding down the beach in an attempt to frighten her. But that would have been too good to be true. Maddie scanned the dark, deserted beach for any sign of life. Quickly, she rose to her feet and gathered her belongings. What was she thinking going out there by herself?

  Her heart started pounding so loudly in her chest that it drowned out the surf. It was then that Maddie saw the dark outline of a man standing on top of the large rocks that jutted out into the Atlantic, causing her to have an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Someone had been watching her the whole time. She sprinted away from the water, sure that she heard movement behind her. Maddie ran and ran and didn’t stop until she was safely in her house, the front door locked behind her. What was happening? Had she become a target? Was she next?

  After catching her breath and allowing her heart to return to its normal pace, Maddie peeked out the window, but the street was deserted. She was safe for now. But for how long?

  Maddie woke up crying. In her dream, she saw Cordelia tied to a tree. They were running around her in circles.

  Sitting straight up in bed, her hair stiff from her late night swim, Maddie felt compelled to write down her dream, trying to recapture the fragmented vision in detail, before it slipped away. Grabbing her dream journal from her bedside, she scratched out a few fragments of her latest nightmare.

  Bloodied and blindfolded

  Red hair in clumps on the sand

  Cordelia’s body, limp, lifeless

  Laughter

  Wine as red as blood

  Wind whipping through hair

  Scratches and burns

  Witch!

  Maddie heard a shuffling outside her bedroom door, and shook the last tendrils of the dream from her mind. It was followed by an odd sound. Not quite a whisper but more like a strangled hush. Maddie willed her fears away, convincing herself that it was just the groans of the old house or the loud sle
eping sounds coming from her mother or grandmother. Maddie tried not to think about the incident at the beach, banishing the nagging questions that were racing through her mind: Did he follow me home? Is he in the house?

  Maddie forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down. She was safe at home. She replayed the scene in her mind from earlier down at the water’s edge. The feeling of being watched, the sense of déjà vu, visions and dreams of that night on Misery Island. All of it seemed to lead her to the same conclusion: she was finally coming into her gift. The one that everyone in her family except for Abigail seemed to welcome. The ability to know certain things. It wasn’t anything concrete like an actual vision, a movie reel playing in one’s head. Instead, it was more of a…a feeling. A kind of knowing.

  Rebecca and Cordelia embraced this gift, allowing it to become a natural part of their lives, whereas Abigail denied it. If it was, in fact, a type of witchcraft, it was the benign, beautiful form of the craft—the way it was intended to be. It included the herbal remedies concocted in Rebecca’s Closet, a respect and relationship with natural elements. It consisted of the rituals of swimming in the night sea, bathed in moonlight, searching for fairy circles, or listening to the whisperings in the trees. It was having your decisions guided by crystals and tea leaves and rune stones. If this meant she was a witch, then Maddie would no longer resist.

  Maybe somewhere deep down inside, on some unconscious level, Maddie really did know what happened to Cordelia. If she only knew how to channel that energy, focus her thoughts, force structure into the bits and pieces, then maybe she could remember more of that night.