Her Loving Husband's Curse

by Meredith Allard

  Knots twisted James’s jaw. “I’m a professor at Salem State University,” he grumbled.

  “That explains the old stuff. What do you teach?”

  “James is an English professor,” Sarah said.

  “You married an English teacher?” Nick laughed, that loud guffaw that always grated her nerves to Parmesan cheese. “You never could keep your nose out of your books, Sarah. Here I’d be telling her about all the celebrities I met, the exotic locations of the movies I was producing, everything she needed to know about my day, and she didn’t even hear me.”

  Sarah smiled at James, and when he saw her, the devilish amusement in her upturned lips, he nodded. Her years with Nick became a joke suddenly, a romantic comedy with a happy ending, with another man, a beautiful man, the only man she ever loved.

  Nick continued, oblivious to the silent conversation between them. “I don’t have time for books,” he said. “I’m too busy with my movies. Did Sarah tell you I was a producer? Two films up for Academy Awards in the last three years. My latest film will break every box office record ever known. It’s a vampire movie. Vampires are popular now, right? Why not tap into it? My buddy Sam’s finishing up the screenplay as we speak. We should be ready to begin production in January.”

  “What’s the name of your movie?” Sarah asked, casting a wary glance at her husband.

  “‘The Vampire Killers.’ It’s about a ring of vampires who roam the streets searching for vengeance for the wrongs they’ve suffered. They’re a motorcycle gang but they’re also vampires. Since they’re immortal they’ve lived through all these important historical periods like the Trail of Tears, World War II, the fall of the Berlin Wall, you know, olden times.”

  James glared at Nick. “The Trail of Tears?” he said. “What do you know about the Trail of Tears?”

  “Indians are like vampires, Jim—they’re always popular. You know, Cowboys and Indians, feathers and peace pipes, Dances With Wolves. You Lone Ranger, me Tonto. That shit sells.”

  James glowered over Nick, his fists clenched into white balls behind his back, and Sarah worried he might try to drink the smaller man for dinner. Not that she entirely minded the idea.

  “How dare you,” James said, pointing an accusing finger in Nick’s direction, the thunder rumbling his voice. “How dare you make a mockery of the Trail of Tears. You don’t know how they suffered. You can’t fathom how they were ripped from their homes. You didn’t see their faces, hear their cries in the night. You didn’t watch them die.”

  “Are you Indian?” Nick asked.

  “No.”

  “Then what do you care? It’s just a movie, Jim.”

  Sarah stood up, her hands out, a barrier between the men. “I just remembered,” she said. “We need to meet Jennifer and Olivia in an hour. Don’t you remember, James? We need to meet Jennifer and Olivia in an hour.”

  Nick laughed. “All right, I get it. Enough time with the first husband. We don’t want the second husband getting jealous.” Nick opened the door and stopped. “You seem happy, Sarah,” he said. “You were a mess before. Never sleeping. Never happy.”

  “I was having nightmares.”

  “Those nightmares.” Nick threw his hands into the air. “She’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night and scare the living hell out of me. Does she still have those ridiculous dreams? God help you if she does. You were always so weak, Sarah.”

  James’s eyes became squints of black light. He gripped the seventeenth century chair in front of him, and with one squeeze the wood crumpled to the ground. With the chair disintegrated under his grip, he dropped it and took one long step toward the intruder.

  “James!”

  He froze at his wife’s command. He bit his lip, clenched his fists, and disappeared into the bedroom muttering expletives, slamming the door behind him. Nick stared after him, then looked at Sarah with surprised eyes.

  “He has trouble hearing sometimes,” Sarah said.

  “What did he do to that chair?”

  “Like you said—everything in the house is old.”

  She walked Nick out to the rented black Mercedes by the curb. Nick nodded toward James, who was watching them from the bedroom window.

  “He seems kind of angry,” Nick said.

  Sarah smiled. All the love she ever had for James, then and now, filled her and radiated brighter than the white-milk moon shining above. “I’m very happy,” she said. She looked at James, who heard every word, and she spoke for him and him alone. “There’s nothing angry about James. He’s a kind, brilliant, thoughtful, sensitive, affectionate, caring husband. I’m lucky I found him.” For James she whispered, “Again.”

  “You should get his hearing checked.”

  “I will.”

  As Sarah said good night to her ex-husband, she hoped she would never see him again. Back inside, she put her hands on James’s shoulders, trying to rub away the tension Nick’s presence caused. James leaned into her hands, closing his eyes, and Sarah felt his muscles loosen and his skin cool. He sighed, and he turned her face toward him with his hand.

  “What were you thinking, Sarah? How could you marry him?”

  “I’m not sure myself. Maybe I had to experience a bad marriage so I could find my way to you.”

  “I never looked for anyone else. In over three hundred years, I never wanted anyone else.”

  “That’s not fair. I didn’t know about you. If I had known you were waiting for me I would have come running. But I’m here now.” She sat on his lap and pressed her head against his shoulder. As she nestled against her husband, his coolness soothed her agitation.

  “You became so angry when Nick mentioned the Trail of Tears,” she said. “I thought you were going to take a bite out of him.”

  “The thought did occur to me.”

  “I wanted to bite him myself.” Sarah nuzzled her face into James’s neck and gently nibbled his skin with her teeth. “I’m going to bite you instead,” she said. Then she looked into his dark-night eyes. “Did you see the Trail of Tears?”

  “I did.”

  “Will you tell me what happened?”

  “Another time.”

  “You always say another time. When will it be another time? We’re here now. Tell me now.”

  “I’ll tell you, Sarah, but I can see you’re tired. Go take a bubble bath. I promise. Another time.”

  It wasn’t very late, just around nine o’clock, but James was right. She was exhausted. She kissed his lips, his cheeks, his forehead. When she could finally let go of him she went into the bedroom to grab her robe. When she passed the open door she saw James at his desk, staring into the nighttime void. She watched him, loving him. Suddenly, she understood why Nick had shown up unannounced—so she could compare and contrast, then and now, sad and happy, hot and cold. See how far you’ve come, Sarah, she thought. Look at that beautiful man sitting there. He loves you. He has always loved you. Only you. Ever.

  She went back to James and kissed his cool cheek. “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you more.”

  He pressed a stray curl from her cheek, and she brushed some gold strands from his eyes. She kissed his cheek again, then went into the bathroom and turned the dial in the tub, wanting the water as hot as it would go, as though she had to soak away the memories of her ex-husband having ever been in the house. She poured half a bottle of lavender-scented foam under the running water, got undressed, and lowered herself into the tub. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and let the stress of the night disappear with the popping bubbles. When she felt cleansed, she grabbed a towel, dried herself off, wrapped the towel around her, and watched her anxieties whirl down the drain. She pressed her ear against the closed door, and when she heard his shuffle she smiled. She knew James was waiting for her. She thought of his beautiful face, the smile that could brighten any night of the year, his broad shoulders, his muscular arms, his hands that knew everything and everywhere about her, and she left her towel on th
e floor.

  * * * * *

  I am home. I had been drifting, mainly through England, mainly London, though often I went to the Cotswolds, finding comfort in the storybook limestone villages with the potted flowers in the windowsills and the marketplaces and the river valleys and the water meadows. In the 1820s life was not so different in the English countryside than it was in the seventeenth century, and I found continuity there. Occasionally, I left England for France, and sometimes I left France for Italy or Italy for Switzerland, but it was always back to England, mainly London, though sometimes Bath or Kent or Stratford. I spent time in Cambridge at university. Then I needed to go home. I needed to step into our house, sleep in our bed, feel you near me again. I had been numb for oh so very long. But now I am here and you are still gone. I cannot live without you, and yet I cannot die. What do I do? Oh my God, Elizabeth. What do I do?

  The loneliness overwhelms me. My empty arms ache. Everywhere I look in our wooden house, every chair I sit on, every window I look out, all see is you. I must leave this place. I came back to find you and all I have found is a despair I can never recover from. There are too many haunted nights in this place. Even as I am, I fear the phantoms. Only when I sleep, in the shroud of my daily death, the ghosts say good-bye sometimes. I cannot stay.

  Dear Elizabeth…where should I go?

  * * * * *

  I wandered. I journeyed out west into the barren frontier where brave men, women, and children ride their covered wagons to who-knows-where under harsh circumstances for new chances. I remember being like them once, when Father and I left London for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Now I am back to my old haunts in the Smoky Mountains, the hardwood forests, the streaming valleys, the green-covered slopes, the spruce firs at the peaks. My neighbors, the Cherokee, who have lived in this land for over one thousand years, call it “Shaconage” or “Place of blue smoke.”

  A few times I have tried to make conversation with the Cherokee man who is my closest neighbor. He is a strong-looking, broad-chested man, youngish, perhaps the age I was when I was turned. I often see him reading books and newspapers and writing his thoughts into a bound journal. I am drawn to him, I think, because he reminds me of myself, the way he dotes on his pretty wife and two young daughters, the way he is drawn to read and think. They are who we could have been, Lizzie, and I like him for it. I have tried to talk to him, offered to share books, but he does not acknowledge me. I wonder if it is because I am not Cherokee, but he has white friends who come to trade with him so I do not think that is the cause. Do you think he knows what I am?

  Since no one will know me I am left to spend my time as I will. Last night I hammered the last pegs into this one-room, one-window log cabin under the hardwood trees. I can hear the soothing river flowing just yards away, trickling over rocks and edges. I am certain that here, nestled high in this nook in the mountains, that I can kiss the close-looking stars, kiss you, if I stretch hard enough. There is nothing in this cabin but heavy quilts to sleep on, a heavier quilt to block the light, a few books, paper, quills, tips, and ink. So I’m writing, trying to make sense of everything—your life, my life, our lives together. Your death. My death. My life after my death. I am writing to you because you are still all I have to live for.

  CHAPTER 3

  James locked the drawer to the desk in the great room, turning the antique-looking key, snapping the latch. He looked for Sarah, but she was in the kitchen on the phone with Jennifer, paying little attention to him. He would share the contents of that drawer with her soon. But not now. They had only been married three months. There would be plenty of hours over many years when he could share more of everything he had seen. He stopped, listened to Sarah laugh at something Jennifer said, and he smiled. It was still his favorite sound in the world.

  He sat on the sofa, put his feet on the glass coffee table, and turned the television channel to the Boston Celtics game. Sarah thought it was funny that he enjoyed watching sports, turned as he was, but it made perfect sense to him. The battle between the teams. The victor, the vanquished. The struggles, the conquers. The doing, the dying. The winner, the loser. It was like a hunt, he said, and he loved it. Sarah said good-bye to Jennifer and left her cell phone on the table near the hearth. She kissed James’s cheek, then stretched out on the sofa resting her feet on his knees. She picked up her book from the end table, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and started reading while the high-energy cheers from the home crowd in TD Garden filled the room.

  “Why are you reading that?” James asked. “You saw the idiocy of the Puritans first hand. You experienced it yourself. You don’t need a fictional account of it.”

  “Hawthorne was born in Salem and I thought I should brush up on his work. I haven’t read him since college.”

  James nodded. “I should probably read him again too. I was thinking of teaching a Hawthorne seminar next autumn. I wanted to run the idea by Goodwin at the department meeting tomorrow night.” He looked at Sarah’s cell phone on the table. “So what was Jennifer cackling about?”

  “Her new boyfriend.”

  “She’s not talking about getting married again, is she?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Who is he?”

  “You should know. You’re the one who invited him to our wedding.”

  “Who?”

  “Chandresh Mankiller.”

  James started at the name. “I didn’t realize they were dating,” he said.

  “They are.” Sarah paused, her chocolate-brown eyes fixed on him. “He’s like you, isn’t he?”

  “Like me?”

  “The nocturnal type?”

  James laughed. “Yes, he’s the nocturnal type. Along with koalas, aye-ayes, and the red-eyed tree frog.”

  “And vampire bats.”

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly, like a slap against the sound of the cheering basketball crowd, was an unmistakable howl, the kind you hear in horror films when the Wolfman is on his way. Sarah dropped her book to the floor and looked at the window.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Not what. Who. It’s Howard.”

  “Howard?”

  James nodded toward the full-moon sky, and Sarah sucked in her breath. He opened the door and Howard walked in, horizontal, one leg on each corner, yellow eyes, gray fur. Strong, husky, powerful. When Howard saw Sarah he pulled one front leg behind the other, bowing. Sarah backed away, pressing into the wall between the window and the door, sneaking a furtive glance at the moon as though she wanted to turn it crescent at the snap of her fingers, or send it tumbling into the ocean.

  “Sit down, Howard,” James said, gesturing at the sofa. “Sarah? Come sit with us.” She nodded, but instead disappeared into the kitchen. “Excuse me,” James said as he followed Sarah.

  He leaned close to her and waited. Finally, she asked, “Is it safe having him here now?”

  “It’s Howard.”

  “What if he attacks us?”

  “Are you afraid of me?” James asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “If you can trust me, then can’t you trust Howard too? Do you think I’d let him into this house if there were any chance he could hurt you? Don’t forget—Howard is Timothy’s guardian.”

  “A werewolf who crossed party lines to adopt a vampire son.”

  “Exactly. Now come back. He can hear every word we’re saying.”

  Sarah followed James into the great room. She paused by the wall, unsure a moment longer, but she did finally sit next to Howard on the sofa.

  “I’m sorry, Howard,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot about the supernatural world this past year, but sometimes the paranormal part still comes as surprise.”

  “I apologize for coming in my current condition, Sarah,” Howard said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You should have seen your face when I walked in the door!”

  James laughed, Howard laughed, but Sarah stared, marveling at the wolf-man sitting on her
sofa as though he had stopped by for a spot of tea.

  “Humans can’t hear me like this,” Howard said. “It sounds like howls and barks to them.”

  “Howard said he’s sorry he scared you,” James said.

  “It’s all right, Howard.”

  “It’s probably better she can’t hear me,” Howard said. “She’s not going to like what I have to say about Kenneth Hempel.”

  James kept his eyes light, his features easy. He didn’t want Sarah to worry about that annoying little reporter again. He laughed as if Howard told a joke.

  “I heard through a journalism professor at the college that Hempel started a blog where he’s going to share everything he knows. He’s already reposted the article he published in the News.”

  Sarah was staring at Howard, her head tilted to the side as though if she strained hard enough she might understand. James didn’t want her to understand.

  “Hempel’s also self-publishing a book about his vampire hunt. Seems anyone can publish any crap they want these days.” Howard turned to Sarah and spoke to her as if she could understand. “Luckily, no one pays much attention to the indie books,” he said.

  James felt the worry crawl up his spine, rung by rung, until it rested in the smile he wouldn’t drop so Sarah wouldn’t guess something was wrong. He smiled the way a madman in the mental ward smiles, amused by something only he can see.

  “The blog is up, James. I’ve seen it myself.”

  “That’s not good,” James said.

  “What’s not good?” Sarah asked.

  James shook his head, unsure what to say.

  “Tell her this,” Howard said. “Timothy is having a hard time. I need you to talk to him, James. I think he’s depressed.”

  James turned to Sarah. “Howard thinks Timothy is depressed.” He said the words quickly, hoping they flowed to the right cadence, no strange offbeat in his tone.

  “Depressed about what?”

  James relayed Howard’s words: “About looking like he’s fourteen when he’s eighteen now. He had a crush on a girl in one of his classes and she wouldn’t give him the time of day because she thought he was a little boy.”