Rebecca shot up.
Good. Finally, she got the—
“Who-who.” Her voice quivered, and when he looked up, her body trembled.
“Are you all right?”
“Who’s Seth…Seth Stevenson?” she asked.
Her asking came out of nowhere. His stomach soured. “What? How do you…” He looked at his journal. “Were you peeking at my—”
“No, no! I swear!” She held her hands out and edged backward. “I know you don’t believe. Believe in me…or…or other things but…” She held her forehead. Her hair stuck out between clenched fingers, and she closed her eyes. “It’s all making—”
“Carolyn told you?”
“Sh!” Her eyes closed in concentration. “No. No. Derek!” Her eyes shot open, revealing traces of red, like burst veins from someone who’d vomited too hard.
“What’s wrong?” He put his journal down. Her white face scared him.
She fell to her knees in front of him and grabbed his hands. The stale scent of cigarettes wafted his way. “Tell me who he is?” she asked. “He hurt you!” Her back straightened as if he’d answered. “And Carolyn!”
For a moment, Michael wondered if some of Carolyn’s acting talents had rubbed off on the girl, but something about her affect—the watery bloodshot eyes, the trembling lip, the clammy hand gripping his—felt genuine. “Yes. He did.” He tilted his head, like a dog trying to understand a command he’d never heard. “Are you sure Carolyn hasn’t told you about him?”
She shook her head slowly, glancing over his shoulder, to the houses they had come from.
Carolyn would barely admit it to herself, he thought. “She wouldn’t have told you,” he mumbled.
“Derek.” She swallowed, eyes still trained behind him.
A hot-and-cold flash swept through Michael. “For the record, you’re kind of freaking me out.”
She lowered farther onto her haunches, and her now-white eyes took him in. “I don’t mean to. I’m sorry. It’s just that…Derek’s been having trouble sleeping. At first, we thought it was his new medication, but last night he kept saying ‘Seth Stevenson.’”
The flickering in Michael’s chest turned cold and a chill raked his body. Derek? “What does he have to do with…with it?”
“I don’t know.” Her honesty clung to him like frigid rain to a metal pole, congealing in an instant.
Staying on Key
Cars exiting Miami sped over the bridge. Horns echoed in the distance. Night came later to the city than it did in New York and even more so than on Summerwind Island. The streetlamps for the long road to Key West had just gone on only a half hour ago, casting rays of light over the dark waters below.
The black limousine carried Carolyn and Rudy in the rear.
Carolyn traced the metal strapping hiding staples that fastened the camel-colored leather to the door. The Waterford crystal glasses in perfectly designed cup holders slopped bourbon, but not enough to slip out from its confines. She took a sip. Rudy liked her to drink, at least now and again.
“Good, huh?” he said to her, keeping his cell phone pressed to his ear with his shoulder. “It’s aged twenty—” His call to Jack Cantor’s office presumably returned; her manager straightened. “Jack?” Silence followed as Rudy, a man of rotund proportions, listened. “No, that’s fine. We’re on our way…should be there in…um.” With a flip of a switch on his armrest, he lowered the padded divider that separated them from the driver. “How much longer till we’re in Key West?”
The driver’s brimmed cap shadowed the chestnut-colored eyes Carolyn had earlier found alluring. “Three hours,” he said in broken English.
“Fuck,” Rudy mumbled and grabbed his Scotch. The ice clinked against the glass’s sides. “Not too much longer,” he said into the phone. “A couple of hours.” He laughed loudly, like he did when he was nervous. “All right, see you then.”
Sandwiches After Hours
The handymen sat in the shadows of a curved bar under construction at the inn. Dave sank back something out of a gray mug that jangled ice. Derek followed suit and quickly chased his shot with a beer. A lightbulb caged with orange mesh hung from a nail on the opened wall. An extension cord traveled into the hallway where Rebecca and Michael stood.
“Done for the night?” Michael asked.
Rebecca was glad he’d broken the silence. She’d been stymied at how to approach the situation—her man being possessed by the evil spirit of someone who’d raped and tortured Carolyn and Michael—and had begun to doubt her abilities. Maybe I am crazy. It all sounded preposterous.
Dave and Derek turned their way. “You bet,” Dave said.
Melanie, Dave’s wife, squeezed past Rebecca and Michael and carried a plate of sandwiches. “Care for one?” she added, looking over her shoulder at them.
“No.” Rebecca glanced at Michael, his face still blanched. “We’re not hungry,” she answered for him.
Michael drew in a shaky breath. “Where’s Terrence?”
“Left for the house a few minutes ago.” Dave took a sandwich from the plate, licked goop from his finger, and bit into the bread.
Derek took one, slid off the stool, and meandered over to them; they had remained by the jamb at the room’s entrance.
Derek took Rebecca’s hand. His hands felt like sandpaper, and as he drew her in, his musk—traces of sandalwood mixed with sweat—floated her way. His warm lips on hers sent a flutter through her core. She closed her eyes. This can’t be wrong. “You’re going to make me cream in my jeans, you’re so hot,” he whispered. The man’s spontaneous orgasms, at one point commonplace, were now something he could joke about.
She felt Michael’s stare and elbowed Derek slightly for him to stop.
“What brings you two here?” Derek leaned against the entranceway—legs crossed at the ankle—and ate his sandwich.
Melanie had taken Derek’s seat and talked with her husband at the bar.
“Nothing.” Rebecca didn’t know what to say.
Derek coughed. His face reddened. “Excuse me.” He pushed Rebecca aside, and she followed him as he left the room. In the foyer, he fell to his knees, in sawdust by the inn’s check in.
Rebecca had seen this happen to him before. She knelt beside him, hands on his back.
“Damn it!” He pounded the floor with his fist. Dust billowed.
Michael’s footsteps neared. “Seth had those.” His voice chilled Rebecca’s core as she helped Derek up.
She furrowed her brow at Michael. “What do you—?”
“Seth had spontaneous orgasms, too.”
Derek spun. Presumably, the stain in his pants didn’t bother him. “What did you say? Seth?” He turned to Rebecca. “What’s with this Seth shit?”
Fishing
Carolyn’s sea legs kept her from swaying too much in the spacious cabin of Jack Cantor’s yacht. She glared at her manager, whose greenish appearance spoke volumes about his aptitude for boats.
“Rudy! Rudy!” yelled Jack Cantor above deck. “Get up here and give us a hand with this thing. It’s a fucking monster!”
“I don’t want to do it,” Carolyn repeated to Rudy. They’d taken to the privacy of the boat’s cabin to discuss the Witches of Salem sequel that Cantor and Jonathan Dodger had been harping on about.
“Think of the money.” Rudy held the back of his hand to his mouth. “God, I think I’m going to vomit.” He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “How can people enjoy being out on the water like this?”
The boat rocked, and he caught himself on the brass railing to the stairs he’d been about to climb.
Not only had the first film’s limited release, shown to select members of the press, been riddled with criticism, she also didn’t want to broach the subject of shooting on Summerwind with the island under construction against the terms of the contract. Fortunately, Rudy hadn’t mentioned the violation to Cantor.
Rudy stepped a foot on a stair and turned around. “This isn’t about your fri
ends back on the island. This is a fucking business, like General Electric or Chrysler.” He spun around and left, scraping his head on the hatch.
“Jesus Christ!” said Jay Evans, the location scout, from above. “This one might be bigger than even Papa Hemingway has seen.”
The boat lurched, and Carolyn fell to the cushioned bench beside her.
“Is she gonna do it, Rudy?” Jack asked. “Did she agree to sign? We’ll give her half a mill, plus an extra percentage point.”
Rudy’s Ralph Lauren shoes—he’d purchased specifically for the occasion—went by the windows on the port of the boat. “It’s a deal. She’ll sign it. Have the papers sent to the New York office.”
Jonathan Dodger’s swollen ankles traipsed past. “Jay, don’t lose that fish!”
Carolyn closed her eyes and dropped her head.
The Grim Reaper
The day after Michael revealed Seth’s embarrassing similarities to Derek, the three installed in the Islesford, the room where Rebecca and Berniece had initially put a spell on Carolyn.
“This place has good energy,” she said, as Michael and Derek sat on the couch. The room had seen little construction, as Michael and Terrence’s renovations focused primarily on the lower level. “Besides,” Rebecca added, “from here, we can see the widow’s walk.” She pulled back the curtain by her former bed. She knew Viola wouldn’t be up there for another couple of hours. “Bernie and I saw the grim reaper from here.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Derek’s work boots made a thud onto the coffee table.
“What you mean?” Rebecca took out the potion she had in the pocket of her sweatshirt. “You’re the one who helped me read the three-way spell Bernie and I performed that—”
“Catapulted Carolyn Sohier’s career,” Derek finished. “About that…”
“What?” A sinking feeling took over Rebecca’s stomach.
“Yeah, what?” Michael turned to face Derek.
Derek bit his lower lip.
“What, Derek!” Rebecca put her hands on her hips.
“I lied about saying my part.” Derek’s face pinched. He extended a hand toward the window, facing the widow’s walk from which he was to have conducted the spell. “I was going to, but Viola was up there, and I didn’t want to bother her.”
“Bother? Then why…” Rebecca fell in the chair beside the couch.
A sly grin grew on Michael’s face. “Then, it didn’t take a witch spell to get Carolyn to sing. She did it herself.”
Rebecca nibbled a fingernail. “Well, maybe the two—”
“No,” Michael said. “You said that only three simultaneous enchantments could coax the magic. She did it on her own.”
“Look.” Derek tugged at the inseam of his jeans as he rose. “Dave could use a hand with the downstairs bathroom. I’m not possessed by some demon.” He looked to Michael. “I’m sorry, man, about what happened to you, but there’s got to be some logical connection. Maybe Carolyn mentioned his name to Becky before…she just doesn’t remember.”
“No.” Rebecca moved to the edge of the chair. “It’s too coincidental to be logical.”
From the floor below, Dave yelled Derek’s name. Rebecca’s plans to conduct a séance with Derek seemed stupid to her now. Maybe I’m a charlatan after—
Michael shot up. “What the fuck is that?” He stared over her shoulder.
Derek’s mouth dropped.
Slowly, Rebecca turned around.
The face of a bat, the size of a small child, peered through the window. It screeched, fluttered, and flew away.
Rebecca reached the window first. Then, the three’s breath steamed the window as they watched the man-like figure fly over the island. It disappeared somewhere over McCall’s Point, the spot where Rebecca would meditate.
The bed springs squeaked as Michael landed on top of it. “It’s him. It’s Seth, the grim reaper.”
“What?” Rebecca didn’t want to take her eyes off the location the flying thing had gone down, but she faced Michael, whose gray hairs and drawn face seemed more prominent.
“Seth’s favorite movies were The Grim Reaper series from the late seventies and early eighties. In fact, he got in a car accident—killed the others who…who molested us—on Halloween night. They were all dressed in grim reaper suits.”
Rebecca held the windowsill. She thought back to just a few weeks ago, when the boys dressed as grim reapers came in Berniece’s shop. Her head started to spin, like she was going to pass out, but her cell phone vibrated in the pair of red corduroys she wore. She flinched and pulled out the phone.
Rebecca ran from the inn and talked on the phone. “What do you mean you saw us?” she said to Berniece in Salem.
“Wait up!” Derek yelled from the inn’s porch. Michael said something, too, but she didn’t care to wait for them.
“Bernie, tell me!” she yelled into the crackling phone.
“You wearing your favorite pair of corduroys,” Berniece said.
“Yeah, what—”
“I had a lucid dream, Becky. I saw the three of you in the Islesford.” Berniece paused. “And the bat man at the window.”
The Billed Fish
The marlin’s bill sliced through the air and water like a fine sword as it struggled to escape. On the deck, Carolyn watched shirtless Jay struggle with the fishing rod. His biceps bulged, while Jack Cantor sipped a cocktail and Rudy—with his color complementing the Gulf’s turquoise waters—held onto the captain’s chair. Jonathan Dodger hung precariously back, watching it all like a director setting the scene.
More than anything, Carolyn wanted to escape—from the boat, from Rudy, these men, from the business. While she adored her fans—their compliments and their respect for her—the demands of pretending to be someone else weighed heavy on her. The Leather Queen. The interview she’d done with Rolling Stone insinuated Carolyn Sohier drank heavily and experimented with drugs—all part of the appearance of a rabble-rousing female songstress Rudy and her record label perpetuated. I’ve become the Rose.
Worse yet, the final cut to Witches of Salem she’d seen deserved the fierce criticism already making rounds before its worldwide release. Now, its sequel threatened to not only get her friends in trouble, but further a baseless career. “Don’t be ungrateful,” she told herself; the chaos onboard Cantor’s Kingly assuredly masked anyone hearing her.
“It’s gotta weigh two hundred pounds.” Jay hoisted the pole, positioned inside a holder at the stern of the yacht.
The fish pirouetted from the water, and the line tugged left. The boat listed.
“Whoa.” Jack Cantor stumbled. His glass fell from his hands and shattered on the deck. “Son of a bitch. That was my good crystal, too.”
“Give me a hand!” Jay yelled. The fish careened to the other side, and the boat righted.
Carolyn opted to help the location scout and put an end to the fish’s misery before the boat capsized from the ineptitude of the drunken trio. She positioned herself between the line and the side of the boat. The billed fish breached, and the fishing wire dug into her thigh, nearly toppling her into the water. She screamed. Blood trickled down her leg where the line pressed against her skin.
“Give me that!” Rudy grabbed the rod from Jay, enough to free Carolyn from the line’s confines.
She hurried toward the captain’s bench that Rudy had abandoned, and Dodger went below deck.
In Flight
When Rebecca reached McCall’s Point, she immediately positioned herself on the nose of the gull-shaped rock and faced southward. The lighthouse’s base, in the distance, took on crashing waves. She closed her eyes, and quickly, the trance-like feeling that she’d grown accustomed to over the last few months took hold.
Like a plane, she raced through the air.
Darkness.
The sound of her clothing fluttered like bed linen out to dry in a windstorm.
The faint sound of music could be heard far away.
&nbs
p; What is that?
Berniece’s whiskey laugh echoed to her right. “Woo! Hoo!” she heard her roommate utter. “I’m lighter than a feather. Hot damn!”
“Bernie?” Rebecca still couldn’t see anything. “Bernie, are you here with me?”
“I’m here, girl! I’m flying! I’m flying wit ya. Like a real witch!”
The music grew louder.
“Is that…?” Rebecca chuckled. “Is that the theme song to Bewitched?”
“Uh-huh.”
A dot of light appeared, like it usually did during these flights, and then expanded. Rebecca squinted from the glare. She could barely make out Berniece in her peripheral vision. The wind stung her eyes. She chuckled at Berniece’s childlike glee, which she sensed. “It’s nice to have you here.” Rebecca’s hair caught in her eye.
“I’m here. I’m here!” She held a broom between her legs, like a child playing on a horse stick. “Where we going?”
“I have no fucking clue.” Rebecca pulled her hair from her face just as the feeling of suspension claimed her.
Berniece floated, legs up, reaching for her broom that drifted by.
Silence.
Then, seagulls cawing.
Below, a yacht rocked in turquoise waters, miles from shore with no one around. A large fish dragged the boat.
“Jay?” As Rebecca neared, she recognized the man who once drove her to Summerwind and near him… “Carolyn?”
“What happened to her?” Berniece pivoted on her broomstick in front of Rebecca. “She’s hurt.” Berniece turned. A drop of blood dripped from her nostrils. “We’s got to save her.”
“Berniece, you’re bleeding.”
Berniece wiped her nose with the back of her hand, pointed her stick toward the boat, and descended.
Michael + Derek
Michael remained beside Derek on the inn’s wraparound porch.
Summerwind Magick: Making Witches of Salem Page 32
