Cursed be the Wicked (20 page)

I don’t dwell too much on the details of my status. I’m just glad to be breathing in and out a little easier. It’s always like that with Finn. And who knows, maybe she’ll be able to understand some of Mom’s chicken scratch.

After we clean up the kitchen, Geneva waits for a moment that Finn’s not paying too much attention to us and tells me quietly, “You’re a good man, Cooper Shaw.”

I’m uncomfortable but that doesn’t seem to matter to Geneva because before I can make a quick getaway, she adds, “I see it. Finn sees it. You should see it too.”

Finn’s grandmother smiles and leaves me just in time for Finn to show up again.

“Ready?”

I hide my awkwardness and clear my throat.

“Yeah.”

I smile and we head out. Before we go to Mom’s, I make a pit stop at the B&B to grab the journals I left there.

Surprisingly, I’m more relaxed than I thought I would be. I’m sure it’s because Finn is here with me.

“Go on inside,” I tell her. “I’m just gonna check around the outside real quick.”

“For?” she asks. I try to blow it off.

“Just want to make sure there aren’t any broken windows or, you know, kids skipping school.”

She nods and presses her lips together. It looks to me as though she’s trying not to laugh.

“I see, well, I’ll be upstairs then,” she says before heading inside. I make a sweep of the property and to my slight disappointment, find nothing broken. And no kids around the neighboring yards.

When I join Finn upstairs, I find her sitting on my mother’s old bed. She’s gently handling a few journals that are spread out in front of her and hesitates when I walk in.

“Go ahead, check it out,” I tell her. “You’ll see what I mean when you start reading.”

She flips through one of the books. As she does it, I watch her carefully. I should probably find it disturbing that someone other than me is reading through Mom’s private thoughts. At a point in time, not too long ago, this wouldn’t be happening. But Finn is different. She’s the exception.

She’s solace. Temporary as that might be.

I watch as her index finger moves through the page. Her brow dips. Her lips twist.

She flips forward a few pages and then back to the current one. She opens another book and then goes back to the first journal.

She looks between the two journals and smiles.

“Genius.”

And now
my
brow is the one that’s dipping. So much so that I think I’m getting a headache.

“Genius?” I snort. “Seriously?” she nods.

I laugh. “Come on.”

“Come here,” she tells me, waving a hand and patting the bed next to where she sits. “I’ll show you.”

I do as she says, then she begins to point a few things out to me that I’m not sure I would have ever picked up on, no matter how many times I read through the entries.

“See how she uses this symbol here?” she points, then opens the other book. “And here too?”

“Okay, so she liked drawing weird faces.”

Finn shakes her head. “It’s more than that.” She opens another book and leafs through it until she finds what she’s looking for. “This is one intricately coded journal, Coop.”

She points to the same animal type symbol Mom used in previous journals but I still don’t get it. And I’m frustrated.

“Maybe it
is
code or something, Finn, but what does it mean? It’s not like she wrote me a decoder.”

She thinks it over for a few minutes.

“Maybe she never planned on you seeing these until later.”

“Right,” I tell her. “Then why not clue me in when she decided to give them to me?”

Finn shrugs. “Maybe she didn’t have time,” she tells me, then adds, “Or access to them. Or access to you, for that matter.”

I’m thinking over what she’s suggesting when Finn voices her awe of my mother. “No wonder she hid these from him,” she mumbles, following references I never would have known were references of any kind. “She didn’t want to give away her game plan.”

Finn babbles some more and I let her until I can’t take it anymore.

“Finn.”

She looks over at me. “Mmm?”

“Maybe you could clue me in as to what the fuck you’re talking about at some point?”

She eyes the words in my mother’s journal again.

“They’re spells of some sort, it looks like,” she informs me. Then begins to list a few she recognizes. “Protection. Forgetfulness, healing . . . forgiveness, even.”

“Like witchcraft.”

Her mouth turns up a little. “Or as simple as magic.”

“
Magic
?”

Simple?

“I don’t see why not. Everything that has to do with the paranormal
or
supernatural has
something
to do with magic.”

She says it like this is completely logical but what she’s insinuating is definitely not.

“What if I don’t believe in magic, Finn.”

She gives me a serious look. “Well that’s stupid. How can you not believe in magic, Coop? It’s everywhere.”

Everywhere, she says. I can think of several places magic most definitely does not exist.

First and foremost, my life.

“So you
do
believe in all of this.” My hand flies and I want to say ‘garbage’ but I stop myself, choosing rather to just let the words hang out there with nowhere to go.

Plus, I’m trying to keep that open mind I told myself I’d have. Luckily, Finn lets me slide this time.

“I believe in magic more than witchcraft, most of the time.”

I let out a laugh I wasn’t expecting. “And why’s that?”

“Because,” she says, “Look at the term itself—
witch—
society insinuates the person is delving into something bad, or evil.” She gets slightly animated. “It’s such a negative term. And it’s not about that. It’s about doing something good. Something that’s laced with love. For or from someone you care about.”

Love?

“My mother supposedly cursed my father. And killed him.
That’s
bad isn’t it?
Evil.
”

“You don’t know
what
she did,” Finn insists.

She’s defending my mother and even though I’m having my own doubts about what might have happened between and her and Dad, the thought of Finn being so matter of fact about it all throws me into an unexpected outburst.

“That’s true, Finn,” I tell her rigidly. “I
don’t
know. Do you know why I don’t know? Because all I
know
is what she was willing to tell the authorities because she didn’t give me the time of fucking day before
or
after her trial. What the hell am I
supposed
to think?”

Finn’s eyes are soft, despite my tirade.

“Maybe it’s not about thinking so much as it is about listening.”

“Listening,” I blurt out, hysterically.

“Listen to
what
?” I ask her, desperate for an answer. “What is there to listen to other than what comes out of her own mouth?”

My chest aches. It’s going to explode any minute now, until Finn places her palm against where my heart lives and looks into my soul.

“Your heart,” she whispers.

That’s all she says and I don’t question her words. I know them for what they are.

The truth.

Chapter 13

Burying the Hatchet

The afternoon turns into evening as Finn and I browse through my mother’s old journals. Evening turns into night. I’m cold and hungry and stuck on one passage in particular that talks about Ben Shaw being ‘the one’. She says he’ll mostly likely solve her problem and there’s at least a hundred question marks following her proclamation. Afterwards, she asks herself, “Are you sure?”

I rub my eyes. I pinch my nose. Then I tell Finn I’m heading out to grab us some quality fast food.

She offers to take me back to Geneva’s for dinner but I know I won’t return to Mom’s tonight if I get comfortable on that couch with Finn again.

“They call it fast food for a reason, Finn. I’ll be right back.”

She laughs, then pulls her sweater around her tightly and shivers. I crank the heat up on my way out, hoping it will warm her up soon enough. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. The cold kind of snuck up on me, much like Finn has.

As I drive through the neighborhood, I smile thinking about her. When I see that everyone has already begun putting out their Halloween decorations, I think about how Mom’s house isn’t much different from when I was younger in that aspect. We never decorated. Mom always said it was an insult to celebrate with colored lights and cheesy signs on the night people were attempting to contact their loved ones that have passed away.

A Taco Bell enters my line of vision and I make a beeline, thankful I didn’t have to drive much further. When I pull up to pay for my order, though, I kind of wish I’d have just kept going.

“Cooper? Cooper Shaw?” the girl screeches from behind her sliding glass window when she takes my credit card. “I thought you were dead!”

I’m surprised she seems so excited to see me. It’s not like we were friends back in the day, but people tend to forget how they treated people when they were kids, the older they get, I suppose.

I let out a sigh I hope she doesn’t hear as I grin.

“It’s me,” I say, trying to remember her name. I see her name tag and it all clicks.

Michelle Langley. She dated Danny back in high school. This should be fun.

“Hey, Michelle, how’ve you been?” I ask. She proudly reveals the nametag I’ve already spotted.

“Manager since four years ago, loving life, you know?”

I nod. “That’s
great
.”

She finishes packing up my food and hands me the bag, along with my receipt and credit card.

“Danny’s gonna flip when he sees you, wait ‘til I tell him you’re back,” she says.

Clearly she doesn’t hang out with Danny anymore. I’m one hundred percent sure he would have blabbed to her by now that I was in town if they did. I imagine he dumped her shortly after his obsession with Finn began. Even though it was eons ago, maybe she still cares about him. Maybe she sees telling him I’m in town as a way back into his life.

I play along despite the fact that I want to tell her there’s no way in hell it’s ever going to happen.

“Sure thing,” I say, then I punch the gas pedal before she can get a commitment out of me.

As I drive back to the house, I think about how, as awkward as the run in with Michelle was at first, I find I’m not as distressed over it as I thought I would be.

I’m greeted with warm air when I step back inside my old home. It’s almost welcoming except for the dark hallway and cobwebs that still hang from the ceiling.

“What’d I miss?” I ask Finn when I get upstairs. She seems overjoyed that I’ve brought her tacos and grabs the bag with a gleeful squeak.

“I didn’t realize how starving I was,” she tells me and I wait for her to answer my question while she wolfs down the taco I brought her like it’s her first meal in days.

I sit and pick up the journal Finn’s been reading. The page where she’s left off is covered with descriptions of herbs and spices. It seems my mother became somewhat obsessed with roots. She also rhymed like a maniac.

At one point in the night, I’m not sure I’m reading the words right or that she’s indeed quoting lyrics to some old song I used to know. The words are familiar but I can’t get my brain to work and tell me what they’re from.

“Do you recognize this?” I ask Finn. She stares at the poem for a few minutes but finally, shakes her head.

“I’ve never heard that one before.”

I put the book down. I’m tired and confused and my eyes are killing me. I lay my head down for one second and the next thing I know, it’s morning.

As I come out of my coma, my mother’s voice is swimming inside my head.

Do what she says, Cooper. Listen with your heart.

My eyes blink open and I stare at the ceiling. It feels bizarre, waking up in this house after so many years. It’s almost as though I never left. I suppose now that I think about it, I never really did.

I rub at my eyes until the sand is all gone. Then I realize I’ve still got one of the journals splayed across my chest and I move it.

I’m sore and my muscles are tight. I’m sure I’ll be moving slowly today. The pages I read last night are still spinning in my mind. The only thing I have come to realize for sure is that my mother is an enigma. And I’m coming to understand that she has been for quite some time, even to the people that were supposedly closest to her.

I stretch out my arms, reaching across an empty bed. Finn’s absence is disheartening. I agonize over being in this house without her and I’m not sure I want to be here anymore. Not until Finn comes back. However, the longer I lay here, the more I recognize nothing is happening. Nothing bad, that is. So I force myself to stand. I twist my body and crack some joints. Then I head out into the hallway to explore the house before I get back to reading.

I walk down the hallway, toward the back stairway that leads to the kitchen. I pass my old bedroom and peek in. I’m not interested in venturing into these memories yet, so I keep on walking. Another bedroom is on the left. It was always a guest room and is still completely empty.

I take the stairs, two at a time. At the bottom, I eye the door that blew open the day before. It’s quiet now. Closed up tight. I pass through the dining room and when I get to the front entryway, I notice a note stuck to the front door.

Hope you slept well. I’m helping Gran with a few things today.

The next line gives me pause.

They’re burying your mom today. You should be there.

I want to laugh. I want to blow it off. I want the pangs inside my chest to stop and the lumps in my throat to go away.

I can’t go to my mother’s funeral. It’ll be a circus and besides that, I said my goodbye a long time ago. I don’t need to do it again.

Right?

I crumple the note and shove it into my pocket as I tour the rest of the downstairs. I find myself inspecting walls and floors, furniture and doorways. Anything to take my mind off of the event taking place later on. There are quite a few things in desperate need of repair so I rummage around the kitchen until I find some paper and a pen, then I start a list.

I trek upstairs again and write some notes to myself about what needs to be done to get the house into shape for selling. Outside my old room, I stare in and see my old baseball bat across from me, sitting in the corner by my window as though no one has touched it since the day I left.

I stare at it and find myself taking a step toward it. A somber memory of my first and only season playing baseball comes back for a moment. I pick it up and weigh it in my hands. I swing it a few times and although no one is in the house with me, I hear an argument beginning downstairs from a long time ago.

The voices belong to my parents and they grow louder and louder as they travel up the stairs. Soon enough, they’re right outside my bedroom.

Mom is screaming incessantly. I can’t understand everything she’s saying but I do hear, clear as day, my father telling her she’s insane.

There’s pounding on my door now, and I’m relieved that I locked it this time.

“Leave him out of this!” Dad says.

The banging against my door is so loud and hard that I think it’s going to break into a million pieces. I’m terrified of what might happen if my mom gets in.

As real as the memory is to me, I can see the door is open now, of course, and there’s no one there. That doesn’t stop the harsh beating inside my chest. It’s quiet in my room as the bat dangles from my fingers.

I swallow hard against the memory but remember Finn’s words from the night before.

Listen with your heart.

I think about the tattoo on her wrist that reminds her to breathe and I close my eyes. Then I breathe. After a few moments, I relax. I hear it again. The same argument between my parents, only it’s different this time.

“Open the damn door, Coop!” my father yells. He’s drunk.

“Don’t you dare open the door, Cooper!” Mom screams after him.

A crash.

“What are you, insane?” Dad yells. She threw something at him. “That almost hit my head!”

“I won’t let you hurt him,” Mom tells him, calmer this time.

“Don’t worry, Maggie,” he says sarcastically. “I’m not gonna hurt him. Much.”

My eyes fly open and I let their voices fade. My chest heaves, heavy with the words from my father lingering. My heart is pumping. I’m dazed a little. I always thought it had been Dad who was protecting me from Mom but now, I remember with clarity, it was her protecting me from him.

How could I have gotten that wrong all these years? Or am I getting it wrong now? Do I just
want
to remember it differently?

I drop the bat and sit on my old bed. I drag my hand through my hair and pull.

“You’re losin’ it, Coop,” I tell myself. “Completely and utterly losing your shit.”

I’m not denying it, I know there’s a distinct possibility that my mother’s mental illness may have been passed down to me. I’m quite possibly losing touch with reality. That perhaps I remember things the way I’d
rather
they had been as opposed to how they were. Still, I can’t help but sit here and think . . . what if?

The sounds of glass breaking snaps me out of my thoughts and jump up, listening for it again. I try and decide where the noise came from. I head toward my parents’ room, sure it came from in there. But just like last time, nothing is broken. I look out the window, into the backyard, as far as I can see but nobody is there.

I’ve definitely lost my mind.

“It’s gonna be fine, Coop,” I tell myself. “Just relax.”

I take a seat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes. I look down at my mother’s journals, sprawled around the room. I need to get out of the house for a while. Things are getting jumbled inside my mind and I need to clear it all out before I can start reading again.

I grab my keys and jacket and head over to the B&B. I get a shower, I change, and then I drive to the nearest Walmart to grab some cleaning supplies.

The streets are crowded; traffic is bumper to bumper. I know where everyone is headed.
My mother’s funeral.
I want to laugh at the irony of not being able to distance myself from her no matter what I do or where I go, but I can’t.

When I think about the funeral, I think about the article I’m supposed to be here writing and I let my head fall back against the car’s headrest while I sit at a stoplight.

“Dammit.”

I had a plan when I got to Salem. So far, I’ve truly sucked at sticking to that plan. What sucks even more so is that there’s no turning back now. I can’t forget what I’ve read, or things I’m remembering.

Or who I’ve met.

Finn, as always, invades my thoughts and I’m not as stressed as I was two seconds ago because now I’m thinking about the possibility of seeing her later on. I almost believe I have a fighting chance at forgetting about my mother and the twisted story her life was. Except every aisle I turn down, I’m met with people discussing Maggie Shaw and debating whether or not she was a hero or a psychopath.

Two girls in particular intrigue me with their conversation.

“I hear she used to torture him with a voodoo doll,” a blonde haired teen says to her brunette friend.

“Deserved it from what I’ve read,” the brunette replies, searching the shelves for something.

“Nobody deserves that, Trisha.”

I peek over as Trisha shrugs.

“I beg to differ,” She says.

“Oh my god, are you still on that? He cheated on you, you dumped him, move on.”

Yeah, Trisha, move on.

For the love of God.

“I’m just saying?” she pauses and I nearly laugh at how she’s making a statement and asking a question at the same time.

“Maybe Maggie had good reason to pluck his eyeballs out with tweezers.”

I snort out loud this time and they both look over at me. The expression on their faces reflects shock and awe at the older dude staring them down in a grocery store and I clear my throat then look away immediately. I’m too late though, they’re shuffling down the aisle at a fast pace. I have officially become the creepy guy in the retail store.

Awesome.

Lucky for me, there are plenty of people talking it up about the crazy witch lady who killed her husband around the next corner I turn.

By the time I can’t take it anymore and I’m finally rung up, I’ve purchased a couple hundred dollars worth of cleaning supplies. There’s also some candle I grabbed off of the shelf so I didn’t look like I was trying to listen in on some old couple whose theories about hoodoo gone bad were just too compelling for me to ignore.