Summerwind Magick: Making Witches of Salem

by Rick Bettencourt

  “She must’ve been all of sixteen,” Carolyn continued her monologue, “and her friend…I’d say…about the same. She had a piercing on her lower lip, and he had a tattoo over his right eye. She was a big…big girl. And he, he was, well…my gaydar told me he wasn’t her boyfriend, if you will.”

  The audience chuckled. Carolyn looked to the wings. She winked at Michael.

  “Good friends,” Carolyn continued. “And I thought to myself, God, I hope Nordstrom isn’t kicking them out. You know, they’re not really their targeted clientele.” She groaned.

  A horn blew behind the curtain.

  “Oops, someone’s getting antsy,” Carolyn said.

  In the wings, Viola and Rebecca smiled.

  The audience snickered.

  “Anyway,” Carolyn continued, “they come running out— ‘Aren’t you Carolyn Sohier? You’re Carolyn Sohier.’” Carolyn settled on the stool. “I was aghast. I didn’t expect to be recognized without my leather. So, I said, ‘Yes…why yes, I am Carolyn Sohier.’” She held her hand to her chest. “And they said…they said, ‘We love you.’” She cleared her throat and wiped a tear from her eye. “‘You inspire us…’ they went on. And I looked down at them. They were shorter than me, of course.”

  The audience laughed.

  Michael smiled in the wings.

  “I signed something for them…gave them my autograph. I think it was their report card or something. And then they said, ‘You went to our school. You went to our high school.’ I was taken aback. You see, my hometown isn’t all that popular. Up until recently, I didn’t even think it existed anymore. ‘We’re in the same drama club that you were in,’ they said to me. ‘Really?’ I said, and then I reached out and held her chubby little face in my hand.” She parroted the motion to show the audience. “You go get ’em!” Carolyn stared into the stage lights, thinking back to the real-life situation she retold. The incident had occurred shortly after Berniece’s service, when she and Michael went to Father Twomey, their old drama club instructor, in a nursing home nearby.

  The audience was quiet, as if sensing her seriousness.

  “‘But we’re just geeks in the glee club,’ she said to me.” Carolyn wiped another tear from her eye. She couldn’t help them from forming. She hadn’t planned on telling the story. It just came out. “I held her chin. ‘You go learn all you can about your art,’ I told her. ‘But most of all…’ and I pointed my hand at her just like this.” Carolyn mimicked her motions. “‘Don’t forget to believe in you.’”

  The audience remained still. And she felt as if she were still standing at the North Shore Mall addressing the teenager, just like a few weeks back. “‘Believing in yourself—that’s what’s most important. You need to tell yourself how good you are, not just about your art, but about you. You need to fill your head, every goddamn day, with good thoughts about who you are and what you do. Be your own best friend.’” She looked out into the audience. The houselights dimmed.

  She looked back at Michael, and he wrapped an arm around Terrence.

  Carolyn stroked her arm. “And then I went to her friend, her little boy…gay…friend…I tapped him on the head. ‘And you, too. You tell yourself every day…’” She looked to Michael. “‘You tell yourself every friggin’ day that you’re good. That you’re a good man.’” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “‘A good friend.’ And then I looked to them both. ‘You tell yourself that and all you ever need…all you ever want will come to you.’”

  A cough popped from the back of the hall.

  Carolyn sniffed and, with the back of her hands, wiped the tears from her eyes. Her mascara had run. She didn’t care. It was time. She sent out the cue: “Papa, can you hear me?”

  The rise of the curtain lifting behind her, revealing the orchestra, swooshed.

  Cheers of delight drummed. “Cool!” and “Shit, man!” An orchestra at a rock concert wasn’t common.

  The house applauded, and she began the a cappella lead-in to the finale from Yentl. Rudy had never let her sing it before, but Rudy didn’t exist, and neither did the Leather Queen.

  Through the song, the fans screamed and cheered, at times even louder than the orchestra.

  With a smile and tears of joy, she took the affection from her fans and swept into the chorus.

  The song’s catharsis tore through the tragedies she’d endured—Seth, Rudy, and her father. With outstretched arms, and the symphonic thunder of the ensemble behind her, she sang. A repeat of the chorus, and Carolyn belted out the final note that she had learned to hold, full-voiced, for nearly thirty seconds. The audience’s feedback fueled her. She trembled with excitement. Her head swam from the reverberation of her pitch.

  When she finished, she pushed back from the microphone. “Papa, I do have a voice now.”

  The orchestra finished their resounding ending, a thunderous clap to the kettledrum, the finesse of many violins, and the delicate cadence of a harp.

  A vociferous roar from the audience followed.

  The curtain closed. “Ladies and gentleman, that will conclude…” The announcer’s voice trailed off as Carolyn ran into the wings. She jumped into Michael’s arms. She was shaking, smiling, and crying all at the same time.

  “They love you! Don’t cry!” Michael shouted over the pandemonium of the audience and stagehands. “They love you!”

  In the front row, security guards lined up to prevent people from climbing on stage.

  Carolyn couldn’t help but cry and sobbed in Michael’s arms.

  “Shh. Shh. It’s okay.” He brushed back damp hair from her sweaty brow. “Carolyn, you did fabulously! They want more.”

  “I-I don’t know if I can,” she said.

  Her mother kissed her on the forehead. “You were fabulous. And your hair looked stunning. You’ve been using those protein packs I sent you, haven’t you?”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  A security guard, in a black uniform with biceps bulging at the hem of his sleeves, came over and relayed fears of a riot to the house manager.

  Carolyn broke their conversation. “All right, one more.”

  The crowd’s hollering intensified when she meandered back onto the stage. Front and center, she stared out into the audience and curtsied playfully. “One more. We’ll give you one more.”

  A brusque beam of heat came from the spotlight, and a haze clouded her eyes.

  Things slowed down. Time appeared to stop. She caught Rebecca’s grimace in the wings.

  Silence?

  The audience’s voiceless hoots and muted applause struck Carolyn as weird. She felt woozy and stepped back from the microphone.

  A girl with braces in the third row cupped her hands to her mouth. “We love you.” Carolyn could tell what she was shouting, despite not being able to hear.

  Her surroundings grew dim.

  Blinking seemed as if it took minutes.

  Next, behind the girl with braces, there he was—her father, looking just as handsome as he had in the photograph she used to keep on her nightstand as a child.

  He smiled at her and clapped along with the audience, yet out of time and slower than those around him. “That’s my girl.” His voice was loud and clear. “You’ve made me proud.”

  She wobbled a bit and gazed into his eyes. He was so close she could see the black flecks in his blue eyes.

  She extended out a hand. “I did it for you.”

  Jim Sohier shook his head. “You didn’t have to. All of this”—his outstretched arms cast a golden light about him and the tableau audience, frozen at his side—“you did it all. No potions. No hocus-pocus or witchcraft required. You made your own magic. You didn’t need to do this for me. You did it for you.” He pointed to her.

  The power from his gesture rocked her core and she stumbled.

  “Now go do what you love.” He vanished, leaving sprinkles of gold dust in his wake.

  A sudden rush, as if someone turned up the volume, and the audience’s deafening o
utburst returned.

  On stage, Michael stood by her side, presumably afraid she was going to take ill.

  Carolyn kissed him on the cheek. “I’m okay. I’m all right.”

  The crowd shouted, “Sohier! Sohier! Sohier!”

  “Magic,” she said into the microphone. “Could it be magic?”

  In the audience’s ovation, she sang her encore.

  Once the show finished, Michael whisked Carolyn out back. Cradled in his hold, they burst through the backstage door.

  A black stretch waited in the alley.

  Even outside, they could still hear the audience’s uproar.

  “Listen to them,” Michael said. “They still want more.”

  She’d lost her shoes in the frenzy. “I’m done.” The cold and wet grids of the stairs bit the soles of her feet as she hurried down the wrought-iron steps.

  “C’mon,” Michael held out his hand at the bottom, “before they rush the car.”

  She stopped and breathed in the cool air. The smell of ozone weighed heavily. The alley’s brick walls glistened with remnants of a rain shower. “Michael?” She took a deep breath. “Let’s skip the party.”

  “We can’t. Everyone’s waiting.”

  She took his hand. “Let’s go rent Norma Rae.”

  They ran through puddles in the cobblestoned alley toward the car.

  Somewhere Over the Tulip

  Several days after Carolyn’s concert, Rebecca moved into her new apartment on Summerwind Island. The Tulip Café needed help preparing for the upcoming season, and she’d agreed to work there for free room and board.

  Rebecca exhaled and went deeper into her meditation. She found the familiar landscape in her mind soothing. The ragged shoreline, cloudy sky, and white-capped seas comforted her. Little about Summerwind’s Wisteria Beach was foreign to her. She downshifted her mind once more and found herself descending the beach’s stairs. Odd remnants of a former life not fully realized washed over her, and she was no longer on Summerwind.

  Huh? She didn’t want to break her concentration, so she went with it. A woman wore a gray wool dress—itchy and tight. Several buttons lined the front and a white collar dug at her neck. She tossed a cigarette into the cranberry bog, walked away, and smoke plumed. “The Great of Fire of ’47. That’s not Viola?” Rebecca recalled pictures of the woman from the time period, much younger than the one in her vision.

  An abrupt tug at her feet—sepia tones and swimwear from the past, blood black instead of red—and she swallowed water and gasped in a frightened flutter. She tried to awake, but the sensation, so real, pulled her down.

  Drowning. Like Viola’s daughter.

  “Viola?” she asked, watching the old woman ankle-deep on Wisteria Beach trying to pull something out—her—from the shoreline. “What is she doing?”

  Confusion mixed with a reality so profound it knocked Rebecca senseless, and her nubby nails clutched the floorboards of the apartment on Summerwind Island.

  Next, she envisioned herself rolling onto the shore, covered in sand, as Viola’s daughter—young, tender, and frightened. She looked up, and Viola hugged her. A dog—a pudgy and grayed version of Sam—yipped at their feet.

  Rebecca’s eyes slammed open, and she rose from her lotus position. “Good God!” Sand fell from her lap onto the floor. “What the—?”

  “Becky?” Derek’s voice echoed from the café below.

  “Hold on.” She brushed the sea dust away.

  “Are you coming?” Derek came by for their morning stroll on the beach.

  “Where is this coming from?”

  “You okay?” he hollered.

  “I’m fine! Just give me a few minutes.” She headed toward the bathroom and out of the corner of her eye caught the Felix-the-Cat figurine on her nightstand. She stopped and walked back a step. “Bernie?” The cat’s head had been turned the right way when she started her meditation. She picked up the toy, with its tail forward. “I didn’t do that.”

  “What?” Derek yelled from downstairs.

  “Nothing,” she said over her shoulder and then muttered, “And everything.” Rebecca battled with whether she’d been Viola’s child or the lady dressed in wool who started the fire.

  “Becky?” Derek stood, with his piercingly handsome eyes and backward baseball cap. He raised an arm against the jamb. “You making a sandcastle or something?”

  She looked to the floor. “Umm.”

  “C’mon, the sun’s rising. It’s a new day.”

  2001 Again

  Across the way, Carolyn nestled in the bed of Viola’s guest room. The old lady had been kind enough to put her up while the house she’d commissioned to be built on the northern edge of the island could get underway. Carolyn relished the morning’s simplicity and tugged the blankets to her chin. A ray of light shone through the window she’d left open, and the sweet aroma of the ocean made its way in. Seagulls cawed and boats in the harbor clinked against moorings.

  She flipped on her side, to rest another fifteen or twenty minutes, when she heard a moan coming from the direction of Viola’s room.

  Another sound like crying occurred.

  “Viola?” Carolyn sat up. Panic raced through her, and she tore out of bed. “Viola?” God, I hope she’s not—

  “Carolyn!” Viola yelled. “Carolyn, you’ll never guess what!”

  Carolyn threw on her robe, hurried into the hallway, and opened the partially closed door to Viola’s room.

  Sam leapt off the bed, howled a yawn, and stretched while Viola fumbled out from the bed linen.

  “Oh, Carolyn.” Viola scooted up. “Carolyn…I got her.” Viola’s voice choked. “I got her. I saved my Becky. In my dream.”

  “What?”

  Sam skittered down the stairs.

  “In my dream, I finally saved her.” The old woman’s feet reached for slippers on the floor, and Carolyn went to assist. “It was her,” Viola continued.

  “You mean, you saved your daughter from drowning?” Carolyn recalled the woman’s recurring dream about her real-life daughter being swept away at Wisteria Beach. A flash of déjà vu occurred, but Carolyn whisked it aside.

  “I saved her. I saved my Becky. I held her again.” Viola took a deep breath, eyes closed. “I could even smell the ocean in her hair.” When she faced Carolyn, the woman’s clouded cataracts glistened with tears. “All this time…all these years of recurring, frustrating dreams.”

  Their hands met along the quilt. “I knew you would save her.” Carolyn leaned into her, shoulder-to-shoulder.

  “And another thing”—Viola rose and grabbed a robe from the rocking chair beside her bed—“I now know who lit the Great Fire of ’47. My vision was clear as a bell.”

  Carolyn helped her put an arm through the wrap. “Really? You mean it wasn’t you?” Carolyn never suspected Viola had started the fire, and they chuckled.

  “It was Minnie Nesbitt. I knew it! She used to walk over the bridge to Bar Harbor and smoke cigarettes.” Viola stopped midway across the room. “She’d wear this itchy wool suit with big black buttons running up the front.” Viola threw out a hand. “She thought she was the cat’s meow.”

  They ambled toward the hall.

  “Who’s Minnie Nesbitt?” An odd recognition flickered. Carolyn couldn’t quite hold it in her consciousness.

  “You know, the Nesbitt house that Terrence and Michael rented…she’s from that family.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “She was an old witch if I ever saw one. Rumor had it she’d cast spells with…with dolls that she stole from little girls. Don’t know how true it was. Anyway…enough about her.” Viola hugged Carolyn’s side. “I want to tell you all about Becky!”

  The excitement in her voice warmed Carolyn, and she embraced the woman.

  Viola’s slippers scuffed the wide pine floor boards. “What say we get us some tea? We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  “Good idea.” Carolyn held the door back for Viola to step through. “
It looks like another beautiful morning on Summerwind.” Out the window, Carolyn caught Rebecca exiting the café and putting her arm through Derek’s. Their giggling drifted in the open bedroom window. “There goes Becky and—” Carolyn opted not to use the girl’s nickname under the circumstances—smacking of Viola’s deceased daughter. “I mean Rebecca and Derek, the two lovebirds out for their stroll.”

  “Becky?” Viola shuffled over to the window and leaned on the sill. “Becky.”

  Carolyn put her arm around the woman. “We’ve got the whole day for you to tell me all about your dream.”

  Viola took Carolyn’s hand. “Yes, yes we do. Isn’t it splendid to think so?”

  Then, descending the stairs, they walked by photographs of Viola’s past lining the wall, and before them, beckoning a new future, the comfort of home on Summerwind.

  “You know.” Carolyn stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “I’ve come to realize…the simple things…the little things in life are sometimes the biggest and most important of all.”

  “Indeed, Carolyn. Indeed.”

  After making a pot of tea, the pair carried forth on the front porch. A cold front advanced, and forecasts predicted the Category 1 hurricane would miss Bar Harbor. The radio beside the table squawked about it being a perfect late summer day. “Thank the Lord,” Viola said. “The last thing we need is a hurricane fouling up our nice little community.” Viola shut the transistor off.

  Carolyn poured Viola some tea.

  “I’m not a witch, Carolyn.”

  “A witch? Why in the world would I think that?” She poured her own.

  “I mean a real witch.”

  Carolyn furrowed her brow.

  Viola’s head bobbed slightly. “Rebecca…I know she is. Perhaps her friend Berniece was too. God rest her soul. I recognized it from my John Arthur and his aunt. They had…how do you say it? Magical abilities.”

  Carolyn recalled Rebecca’s communication with Seth at Red Vanilla. “I’ve seen her do some pretty unexplainable things.”