Southern Charm (15 page)

"Melinda!" Howard's voice cracked as he yelled for her.

"Come on," Melinda said with an exasperated huff. "I'm glad I wasn't around when he was in his prime. The man has been insufferable since he got to work on the painting."

They followed Melinda into Howard's studio. The photographs they had taken earlier were pinned on cork boards surrounding the canvas. Most of the painting had been completed and Max had to admire the man's work.

It looked exactly as he recalled the original looked. Not just the obvious details — the dark figure in the doorway, the strong brush strokes, the eerie quality of the painting's mood — but also the smaller details — the thickness of the paint in certain areas, so thick it formed a hill on the canvas; the delicate blending of color; the distressed chipping of poorly made paints dried and abused over years. All of it had been recaptured by Howard Corkille's talented hands.

"Remarkable work," Max said.

Howard beamed. "If for nothing else, I want to thank you for giving me an excuse to break out my paints again. It's felt wonderful to be in front of the canvas once more."

Melinda hugged Howard's shoulders and kissed the top of his head. "Have you found what we need?"

"Sit," Howard said, waving everybody to find a stool or chair. Even Drummond settled on a worktable. Max caught Sandra's eye and grinned. Sandra kept a stoic face.

"I swear, the two of you are hopeless," Drummond said.

Before Sandra or Max could react, Howard cleared his throat and spoke. "You all know that magic is real. One look at me will tell you that much. What you may not know is that magic is quite active and quite common. Those who practice at it use spells and curses all the time. It happened more long ago because more people understood about these kinds of things. One of those people was a man named Edward Teach. Do you know that name?"

"It sounds familiar," Max said. He could picture a page in a history text but nothing more.

"He was born in England sometime around 1680. He became fond of the sea and worked for awhile as a seaman in Jamaica. Most of this man's life is shadowed in unconfirmed reports, and his surname of Teach isn't even accurate. It's just a name historians chose to give him because men in his line of work often went by numerous fictitious names. They had to call him something and I suppose they had some source that named him such, so they went with it."

"What line of work was he in?" Sandra asked.

Howard rocked his hands on his knees. "He was a pirate. A very successful one. Took the French ship
Concord
as a prize and converted her into a pirate ship of his own design. He called her
Queen Anne's Revenge
and his name was —"

"Blackbeard," Max said, his eyes wide. He examined the dark figure in the painting again. "That's Blackbeard?"

"Yes. Sort of. See back when Blackbeard was Edward Teach, his success had been more of the failure kind. At one point, it is thought he considered giving the whole notion up. But on a drunken night in Jamaica he met with a voodoo priestess and he struck a deal. Nobody knows, of course, what exactly happened, but Blackbeard was born that night — that much is certain.

"He had always been a big man, but when he left Jamaica, he had become huge. And he had built an image with a great, black beard that he braided into pigtails and tied off with colorful ribbons. He strapped numerous weapons to his clothing, and, most notoriously, he weaved cannon cord into his hair so that he could light it and appear that much more menacing to his adversaries.

"But it was more than that." The group listened to Howard like captivated children around a teacher. "The lighting of his hair was part of the magic spell that had been conjured for him. Without it, he would've just been Edward Teach. Now, two things happened to him that matter to us. The first is that in 1718, King George I sent Captain Rogers to govern New Providence, where Blackbeard had been based. Rogers was the kind of man who would cause Blackbeard trouble, so Blackbeard picked up and moved his entire operation to North Carolina. It's a perfect location — close to the Gulf Stream, excellent places to exploit like Cape Fear, and a ready market in Bath Town for his gains. Not only that but he sold directly at the market and cut out the middle men.

"The second thing of importance to us is that Blackbeard had a soft spot for women. Even fell in love and married quite a few. Several at the same time. But the one true love in his life was the one woman who had any real power over him."

"The voodoo priestess," Max said.

"Exactly. The legend is that when she learned of all his infidelity to her, she traveled to North Carolina and took him to bed. When he awoke, she was gone — and so was his famed burning hair. Not long after this, his career as a pirate and his life came to an end."

Sandra gestured to the painting. "So this is Blackbeard in the doorway watching while his priestess performs a spell on the floor?"

"Sort of," Howard said. "I'll get to the painting in a moment, but it doesn't come into the story just yet."

"Have a little patience," Melinda said. Sandra ignored her.

"Now," Howard went on, "what we are interested in here is those strands of Blackbeard's hair, the ones imbued with magic. You see, there's only one way to really keep a secret. Do you know it?"

Max nodded. "Don't tell anyone."

"Old Blackbeard never was good at secrets. Many people knew of his magic burning hair, and after the priestess reclaimed it, many of these unsavory types sought her out. Because this kind of magic doesn't die until the object is destroyed."

"Like a binding curse," Drummond said.

"Afraid for her life, and rightfully so, the priestess hid the hairs with the thought that she would reclaim its magic once the world stopped trying to find her. She had many lovers and one of them, a young artist living on the beaches, became the recipient of a beautiful new paintbrush with the finest bristles made of the strangest hairs."

"You're joking," Max said. "That's what this is about? A paintbrush?"

"That paintbrush has fallen into many different hands and crossed many oceans over the years but it always manages to get back here. Twice in my life, I've had the opportunity to get hold of it and use its magic to break my curse. Twice it slipped away."

"This painting here, this one depicting the spell's creation, you think it can show us where the brush is?"

"I know it can."

"Then stop telling us stories and show us where."

"I'm well aware of your urgency. I think mine is greater. But without knowing the full background, you'd waste more time with tons of questions that would just have made me tell it all anyway. And so, I have one more thing to explain, and that is this painting."

All eyes took in the painting once more. Knowing what the painting actually depicted did little to ease Max's tensions over the entire case. With only a year under his belt since extricating himself from the horrible situation with the Hull family, he hated the idea that he was tied up with them once more. But this time it appeared that all roads led to them. Even a road that began with Blackbeard the pirate. Just thinking that churned Max's stomach.

And yet — he had to admit that he kind of liked the whole experience. A little. He didn't like being shot at, nobody would like that, but at the same time, he got a sense of why some soldiers can't leave the wars they fight. More than just an adrenaline rush, being shot at, being caught in a dangerous situation, being the target of a powerful family — it all filled Max with a sense of life. As if his heart could only beat under the pressure of these horrible tensions.

He glanced at Drummond and saw it on the old ghost's face. That's why Drummond stuck around. With the binding curse broken, Drummond could easily move on to wherever he truly belonged, but he didn't want to go. He wanted that same high that Max felt. And the fact that a ghost could feel it too proved that it wasn't just adrenaline. After all, a ghost doesn't have adrenaline.

Howard pointed out several brush strokes on the canvas, cleared his throat, and said, "This painting of Blackbeard's cursed deal is unique for many reasons. First off, there are no real pictures of the man. We don't know what he looked like. He loved for his women to be the subject of a portrait but always managed to stay off of the painter's canvas."

"Is that why he's a shadowy figure here? The artist had no idea what he looked like," Sandra said.

"Yes. But these brush strokes tell me a lot more. Earlier I told Max that this painting was a map. Well, the brush strokes are the key. They tell me that the artist who created this was a man named Jules Korner and he lived about thirty minutes north of here in Kernersville. I know these strokes so well because I'm the one who taught Jules how to do it."

Max had to will his foot to ease off the gas. He didn't want to be pulled over and given a ticket just because his body felt the urgency to get to the Korner home as fast as possible. Sandra sat next to him and placed one hand on his shoulder.

Howard had given them the basic idea. In the 1870s, Jules Korner ran an interior decorating business to augment his painting career. He became most famous for two things — first, he painted the Bull Durham bulls all across the South. These bulls, the symbol for Durham tobacco, were painted on barns and walls all over. Each time, Korner made them anatomically correct, if not exaggerated. He then contacted local papers and, posing as a concerned citizen, complained about the lewd image. Soon enough, everyone knew the Durham bull.

Korner's second claim was his home, dubbed "Korner's Folly." Completed in 1880, the house served both as a showcase and a home. No two doors, no two fireplaces (there were fifteen), no two rooms, were alike. Also, the entire attic had been converted into America's first private little theater. As Max took the on-ramp to Business 40 East, he wondered if the home could live up to its title as "The Strangest House in the World" or if this was just another one of Korner's publicity stunts.

Before they had left, Howard said, "Jules was an eccentric man but he was smart. He was crazy enough to paint this and yet smart enough to cover it up. You'll see when you go to his house. I'm sure that somewhere in there is either that paintbrush or a clue to finding it."

Max didn't know how much faith to put into Howard's idea, but he saw few options at the moment. He did have the sense to send Drummond out searching for Jules Korner's ghost. Perhaps the man would be willing to help.

"It's coming up," Sandra said, pointing to Exit 14 for Kernersville.

Melinda had opted to stay with Howard, and Max felt grateful he didn't have to find some excuse to leave her behind. Though he had managed to avoid Melinda's advances, he knew Sandra sensed something wrong, and a surge of guilt had struck him. It wasn't enough to just be faithful. He had to make sure Sandra knew in her heart how much he loved her.

"When this is over," he said, "you and I are taking a vacation."

Sandra nodded. "We can't afford one, but the thought is nice."

They couldn't miss the house. Its rust-colored, pointy roof cut high into the air. Numerous chimneys poked up from the structure, while the stone- and brick-work drew the eye down to the enormous body of the house. A wide field off to the side with a gravel drive served as the parking area.

"It looks like a haunted house from an old black-and-white fright movie," Max said. "I love it."

They paid for tickets and walked to the front of the house. The porch wrapped around, mostly lined in beautiful brick designs, and the flooring had been done with little mosaic tiles. Near the entrance, Sandra pointed to a small, cauldron-shaped pot nestled underneath a brick shelving. In front of the pot, the tiling read WITCHES CORNER — though the T had been chipped off.

"Not what you're thinking," Max said. "A 'Witches Corner' is an old European tradition. Whenever you were going in or out of the house, you were supposed to put coins in the pot so that any evil spirits nearby would be distracted. That way you could enter or exit in peace. It's not real. Not like Dr. Connor."

"You sure about that?"

Max took a long look at the rusting pot. Then he dug out a quarter and tossed it in. Sandra patted his arm as they walked inside.

The foyer was a small, cluttered space with four doors, all different heights, shapes, and styles. Through a small opening off to the right, Max saw a narrow staircase — connecting to nothing, as far as he could tell. Korner's self-portrait hung to the side of one doorway — an eerie-looking man in a dark suit with the strangest expression on his face as if he could see all these people coming in and counted them all as fools. The ceiling had a painting of two cherubs. It was like walking into the Mad Hatter's home as designed by M. C. Escher.

"Welcome to Korner's Folly," a middle-aged woman said. "May I have your tickets, please?"

As the lady collected the tickets and launched into her introduction speech, Max glanced through the glass on the doorway behind her. He saw a long room with huge, black furniture and a ceiling taller than in the foyer — and on that ceiling, he saw a painting.

"Excuse me," he said and ignored the flustered scowl of the lady. "Are there paintings on every ceiling?"

"Not all. But most. The ceilings are quite interesting, actually. Some of the ceilings are as high as twenty-five feet, and some, like in the children's rooms, are just under six feet. This space was originally used for horses and —"