Witches of Palmetto Point Series Boxset Books 1 - 3: Haunting Charlie, Wayward Spirits and Devil's Snare

by Wendy Wang

  “I don't know that I want to be marketed Daphne,” Charlie said. “I have more than just myself to think about. I have Evan and I don't know if my conservative banking employer would like it if I'm out ghost busting.”

  “Why would they care? It's not like you're doing it on their time.”

  “No she's right. It's all about reputation. It may be better if you keep this sort of thing on the down low,” Lisa said.

  “I'm still gonna film it,” Daphne said defiantly. “It's up to you whether you want to put it on your website or not. But I think it would be a great opportunity.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said. “So you’ve been there Lisa, has it always been haunted?”

  “I don’t know about haunted, but it definitely has a bad vibe to it. She should just donate it to the state if you ask me. Let them turn it into a historic site or better yet bulldoze it and develop the land. With the view, it’s prime real estate,” Lisa said.

  “You would think that,” Daphne muttered, rolling her eyes. She turned her attention back to Charlie. “Actually, she didn't seem to have any problems until they started doing some construction and updating the wiring.”

  “That sounds about right. Spirits can get restless when construction starts on a place they’re haunting,” Charlie said. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  “Only that she is the sweetest lady you'll ever meet and I really just want to help her. That's all,” Daphne said.

  “All right,” Charlie said. “I'll meet with her. On one condition.”

  Daphne clapped her hands together and bounced in her seat. “Anything.”

  “You have to go with me for the initial consultation.”

  “Sure. Of course. We should also take Lisa,” Daphne said

  “Me? Why me?” Lisa said.

  “No, she’s right,” Charlie said. “Of all of us, you’re the most logical and the one who immediately sees through any kind of bullshit.”

  Lisa thought it over for a moment before finally nodding. “Okay, I'll go.”

  “Yay Lisa.” Daphne gave her cousin an exaggerated grin. “I’ll take care of all the arrangements. You won't be sorry, I promise.”

  Lisa glared at her younger cousin and feigned a scowl. “Don't make me tell you that I already am.”

  Chapter 4

  “A hair emergency? You have got to be kidding me!” Charlie’s voice rose half-an octave. It had all happened quickly. Daphne had called Susan and arranged for them to meet her on Sunday at one. It was perfect. Short of some sort of world-ending emergency, none of them had to work.

  “Dammit Daphne. You promised.” Charlie drove along highway 17, heading out of West Ashley, toward Talmadge Island. “How on earth do you have a hair emergency on a Sunday?”

  “I make myself available to some of my best clients on my days off on a case-by-case basis. You know, just in case,” Daphne said.

  “Just in case what?”

  “Things come up. I get twice my fee on a Sunday. My client’s daughter tried to dye her own hair blonde. She has brown hair. Let's just say she could give Ronald McDonald a run for his money. Prom is next weekend and I have to make sure it’s perfect before then.” Daphne sounded as if she were about to perform brain surgery, and Charlie didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

  “That is insane,” Charlie muttered.

  “Why? Lisa’s still going. You don’t have to do it by yourself. And anyway, trust me, Susan is the nicest lady.”

  “Lisa is not gonna be happy that you're flaking.”

  “Oh, she'll get over it. My client’s here. I gotta go.”

  “Daphne?” The line went dead and Charlie cursed under her breath. She dialed Lisa’s cell and told her about Daphne.

  Lisa laughed, but there was a bitter undertone. “Absolutely figures. Her client and we get stuck with it.”

  “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not gonna abandon you. And anyway, I’m already half-way there.”

  “If you’re sure,” Charlie said, more grateful than she could express.

  “I am. I’ll see you there.” Lisa ended the call.

  Charlie turned onto Talmadge Island Road and wound her way through the heart of the island. Her uncle Jack, Lisa and Jen’s father, had a house on the other side of the island, overlooking the Stono River and she loved to go out there and have supper sometimes, but going all the way out to Talmadge House was quite a haul.

  There was something beautiful and haunting about the island’s landscape. Golden marsh grass and shady back roads guarded by tall graceful live oaks draped in swaths of gray moss surrounded her. Charlie opened the sunroof of her Honda Civic. Dappled light filtered through the canopy of trees and the sulfurous odor of thick, black pluff mud from the nearby marsh wafted into the car’s interior. The bursts of pink and white azaleas coloring the landscape were already starting to fade in the late April heat. Sometimes when she came out to these old islands, she would catch spirits from the corner of her eye reliving some moment of their lives. The land out here was charged with the blood and sweat of those who had worked it. While she found these little glimpses of history fascinating her heart ached that some part of their souls was left behind to relive things over and over again.

  She followed the directions Daphne had given her, and after what seemed like forever she found the road leading to the house. Passing beneath the great oaks lining the avenue was like stepping back in time, and she almost expected to see a horse-drawn carriage on the lane. The house rose on an expanse of lush, green lawn and faced the river. Its four white pillars stretched from the wide, front porch to the roofline and the white paint was cracked and peeling in places. A scaffold stood on the north end of the house, a reminder of the large-scale construction needed to restore it to its former glory. Behind the house were woods thick with tall pines and hardwoods. Her gaze scanned the tree line, drawn to the darkness beneath the thick canopy. Her heart beat a path to her throat when she saw them, one by one, step from the shadows. The apparitions shimmered. Gossamer and silvery, they waited — for what she didn’t know yet, but she could feel them and their allure frightened her.

  Charlie pulled into the semi-circular driveway in front of the house and parked. She sat, gripping the steering wheel. The dark energy emanating from the house and woods behind it sent a wave of nausea through her. No wonder Susan Tate had been frazzled enough to reach out to Daphne.

  A knock on her window almost made her jump out of her skin and she put her hand over her heart. She glared at her cousin through the glass.

  “You all right?” Lisa asked.

  Charlie nodded and took her keys out of the ignition, emerging from her car. The heavy scent of early blooming jasmine coated the back of her throat.

  “You sure?” Lisa sounded concerned. “You look a little pale.”

  Charlie focused on her cousin's freckled face. “I'm fine. Do you feel that?”

  “I'm not the empath here, remember?” Lisa shrugged and scanned the front of the house. “That may work in your favor though.” She slipped her hand inside the buttery leather of her expensive handbag and pulled out a velvet box. She pushed it into Charlie's hand. “This is from Jen. She said to wear it no matter what.”

  Charlie flipped open the top of the jewelry box. A rough, cylindrical, black stone flanked by four polished beads dangled from a silver chain, which she recognized as hematite and tiger’s eye. Charlie shifted her gaze from the necklace to her cousin’s face, questioning.

  “It's for protection.” Lisa said. She pulled an identical one hidden inside her blouse to show Charlie.

  “For protection?”

  “Oh yeah,” Lisa said. “If she could have bathed us in sage, she would have.”

  “Well, thank God for Jen. Based on what I’m feeling from this house, we may just need it.” Charlie fastened the long silver chain around her neck and slipped it inside her navy t-shirt, letting it fall between her breasts
. “Let's do this.”

  They walked up the steps to the brick front porch and Charlie reached for the tarnished brass knocker. She paused before lifting the heavy ring. “What year did Aldus Talmadge die?”

  Lisa pulled out her phone to do a quick Internet search. “Dammit.”

  “What?”

  Lisa frowned. “There's no service out here.”

  “You still want to do this?” Charlie asked.

  The heavy black door opened wide, startling them both. A woman with a round face and kind brown eyes emerged from the house. Her dark hair was cut in a stylish, wavy bob that made her look younger than she really was. Dressed in white seersucker, she looked more like she was going to the country club to sip wine and gossip with her girlfriends than to deal with powerful forces gathered around her house.

  “You must be Charlie,” she said in a drawl that didn’t sound like someone from the South Carolina low country. She flashed a wide smile of perfectly white teeth. “I’m Susan Tate.”

  Susan took hold of Charlie’s hand and shook it vigorously. Flashes of a man filled Charlie’s head. Most of the time when she met someone with a spirit attached to them, just a touch would force the spirit to materialize before her. But this man emanated darkness and Charlie got the distinct feeling he didn’t want to show himself. All she could sense of him was his shape. He was tall and broad across the shoulders. A gold chain hung from his waistcoat with a fob tucked inside one of the pockets but there was no face to go with spirit.

  “Yes, I am.” Charlie said, gently pulling her hand out of the woman’s grip. She balled her fingers into a fist and held it close to her side. Lisa gave her a sideways glance, her hazel eyes narrowing, watching her cousin’s every move.

  “It is so nice to meet you. You look exactly the way Daphne said you would,” Susan said.

  Charlie exchanged a look with her cousin. Lisa’s mouth twisted, suppressing the grin threatening to break across her lips and her eyebrows lifted in a glad-it’s-you-and-not-me expression.

  “Good old Daphne,” Lisa said.

  “I thought she was joining us. Should we wait?” Susan’s gaze drifted toward the road leading to the house.

  “She couldn’t make it today. Hair emergency,” Lisa said. Charlie threw a dirty look in her cousin’s direction. Lisa was enjoying this way too much.

  “Oh dear.” Susan kept smiling in that way that Southern women often did when they heard news that didn't exactly please them. “I hope it's not serious.”

  “Oh no,” Lisa said. “Nothing that a buzz cut or a box of red hair color couldn't cure.”

  Susan laughed politely. “Oh my goodness. That sounds awful.”

  “I'm sure it will be fine. Daphne lives for that sort of thing,” Lisa said.

  “Alright-y then, why don’t y’all come inside and have some lemonade. We can get to know each other a little better.” Susan’s cheerful demeanor gave away none of the anxiety Daphne had warned them about. In typical southern fashion, she treated them as if they had just dropped by for a nice long visit and not to evaluate the forces haunting her house.

  Susan led them into the foyer, a grand room with a staircase to match. The stairs curved up to a landing that split into pair of shorter stairs, leading to different wings of the house. Light filtered in from French doors on the left side of the room and it pushed the gloom into the corners, casting shadows over the stacks of boxes lining the right side of the room and down the wide hallway. Despite the dinginess of the walls and the layers of dust on the old oil paintings, the faded opulence intimidated Charlie. Gold leafing, which had once covered the crown molding, flaked in long strips in places. Even with all this damage, it was hard denying what a magnificent site it must have been.

  “You have a beautiful house. Do you have a lot of work to do to get it ready?” Charlie’s eyes swept over the grand staircase to the top of the middle landing. A thick black cloth hung over the frame of what Charlie assumed was a painting.

  “I’m afraid so,” Susan said. “My Uncle Butch did the best he could, but you know he lived all by himself, and this place is huge. The whole inside is going to have to be remodeled I’m afraid, and my son and I are still going through all his stuff. I can’t tell you how many trips we’ve already made to the dump.”

  Susan gestured toward the parlor on the right. Charlie stepped forward and a burst of cold air surrounded her, shimmying its way down her back. The skin on her bare arms broke into goosebumps and she shivered.

  The parlor was in better shape. The walls and large carved mantle over the fireplace smelled of fresh paint and the wood floor, though scratched and worn, looked clean. Two elegant but contemporary cream-colored sofas flanked the mantel and Susan invited them to sit. Two large oil paintings hung on either side of the fireplace, a man and a woman, and their eyes followed her into the room.

  “Who are they?” Charlie asked, pointing to the paintings.

  “The gentleman is my ancestor, Willet Talmadge, and the lady is his wife, Eleanor Talmadge. They actually enlarged this house and made it grander in a time when most people had either lost their houses during the war or after because they couldn’t afford to keep them any longer.”

  “How did he manage that?” Lisa sat next to Charlie and crossed her legs. She leaned forward, with her hands folded in her lap. Susan took a seat on the sofa facing them.

  “Well, I’m not a historian or anything, but he had a large shipping company and allegedly he was a blockade runner during the war, which made him a fortune.” Susan’s hands fluttered around like birds caught in a trap and her eyes looked anywhere but at them.

  “What about Aldus Talmadge?” Charlie kept her voice steady and calm, the same tone she would use when talking to an anxious customer. “Do you know much about him?”

  Susan fidgeted and clasped her hands together, intertwining her fingers. “Just what everybody knows — that he was rumored to have raped and killed at least four girls — sharecropper’s daughters who helped work the land owned by his father.”

  Another blast of cold air swirled around Charlie’s shoulders and from the corner of her eye, she caught movement in the foyer. Charlie’s hands broke into a sweat and her heart sped up. Slowly she shifted her head just enough to see legs swinging back and forth, twisting. Her mouth tasted like ash.

  “They hanged him? They hanged him in the house?” Charlie asked, her voice crescendoing. Lisa placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “I — I don’t think so,” Susan said. She straightened her back and jutted her chin. Certain in her stance. “No. No absolutely not.”

  “Charlie?” Lisa said softly. “You see something?”

  Charlie closed her eyes for a few seconds and when she reopened them, the legs were gone. She blew out a soft breath and shook her head.

  “No. I — I thought I saw something, but it’s gone now. It could be the house playing tricks.” Charlie glanced toward Susan, offering a reassuring smile. Susan’s face blanched and her dark brown eyes widened. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  A nervous titter escaped Susan but her smile was only halfhearted. “You didn’t. Trust me, I’ve experienced a lot of scares in this house already.”

  Charlie nodded and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Can you tell me about the things that you’ve experienced?”

  Susan cast her gaze to the floor and rubbed the back of her neck, pinching it hard with her bony fingers. “Well, of course there’s been inexplicable creaking noises, footsteps on the stairs. Things moving around in the attic. I had some papers go missing. And sometimes if I’m outside on the back porch, say around twilight, you know when things get dusky, I—” She stopped unable to finish. Charlie exchanged a glance with Lisa and rose from her seat, moving to sit next to Susan.

  Susan’s nails dug into her palms and she whimpered softly. Charlie placed her hand on top of Susan’s, trying to get her to relax her tight grip and an image flashed through her head. Susan standing in the cool
night air, her arms wrapped around her waist, unable to look away from the dozen silvery orbs floating along the edge of the trees.

  “It’s all right Susan.” Charlie said softly. “I’m going to help you.”

  “My son thinks I’m crazy,” Susan said, her voice shaking. “He even threatened to take me to MUSC to have me evaluated. He doesn’t believe in any of this. He keeps telling me it’s all in my head.”

  “It’s always easy for someone to say when they don’t have to live with it. Has he stayed here with you one night?”

  “Oh no, course not. He’s too busy with his career.”

  “What does he do?” Lisa asked.

  “He’s a deputy sheriff.”

  “From my experience, the spirits don’t really care whether he believes in them or not,” Charlie said.

  “We need to take a look around,” Lisa said. “Will you be all right here by yourself?”

  Susan glanced around the room. “Yes I should be fine. Thank you. Thank you so much for believing in me. I seriously was beginning to think I was going crazy.”

  Charlie patted her on the shoulder. “No. Not crazy. There is definitely something going on with this property.”

  “Would it be weird for me to say thank God for that?” Susan said.

  Lisa grinned. “Nope. Not at all.”

  Charlie walked around the exterior of the large house ignoring the eyes from the woods trained on the back of her head. She knew at some point she would have to head over there and talk to them, find out who they were, what they wanted and how they had come to be in this place. Even though Lisa was certain they were Aldus Talmadge’s victims, Charlie was not quite so sure. They all looked to be dressed in clothes from different time periods. Maybe she would research missing girls over the past seventy or eighty years to see what came up.

  As she made her way back around the corner of the house, a black Dodge Charger came barreling up the driveway spitting gravel and dust in its wake. It came to an abrupt halt right behind Lisa's BMW. A man got out of the car wearing a pair of khaki pants and a black polo with an embroidered insignia over his left breast pocket.