The Witch House of Persimmon Point (19 page)

It seemed like a lifetime, but the door opened, and Fiona couldn't quite believe her eyes. It was Lucy. It had to be! All the kids would be amazed that she'd even met the elusive legend Lucy Amore! And though she was terrified, there was a part of her yelling
“Bonus!”
deep inside.

Lucy was as stunning as the stories, but her eyes were wild. She wore a silky white bathrobe and a fancy black shawl strewn across her shoulders. One armed was cocked out with a lit cigarette, and she smelled like alcohol. Fiona knew the smell too well. Her father owned a pub.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” asked Lucy, blowing out a cloud of smoke as she spoke.

“I … I lost Anne. I lost Anne and I can't find her and I can't get out!”

Lucy, remembering that she had been a nurturer once upon a time, decided to practice the art of kindness again. She beckoned the girl toward her. Lucy stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray. There were ashtrays everywhere.

She leaned down to face Fiona and said, “I know. This house can be difficult. It won't let me out either.”

Lucy stood up and put her hand on Fiona's shoulder. “Okay, Red, let's look for her together. How about that?”

“Yes, thank you,” whispered Fiona.

Lucy put pressure on Fiona's shoulder and guided her through the house.

“Let's see. She isn't in here. And she wouldn't be in my room.” The room made Fiona afraid. The door was ajar, and everything looked somehow rotted. The vines on the wallpaper seemed to shift and writhe.
No, don't be silly, Fiona, they can't be.

Lucy took the girl downstairs.

“Nope, not here either…” Now they were back across the dining room in the kitchen. “Hold on,” said Lucy, holding up a finger to her lips in an amused hush. “Let's go back upstairs. We need to check the bathroom. Sometimes she hides in the tub and waits for me. She just stands there for hours. She wants to kill me. The house. Nan. Anne. They are trying to kill me.
Shhhhhh
 … Don't tell her I know.”

“Nope,” she said, pushing past Fiona. “I need a drink.”

“Miss Lucy?” asked Fiona.

“Ahhh … she knows my name. Do they all know my name? Still … I suppose it is a good thing.… Still fancy after all these years.…”

“Miss Lucy,” Fiona persisted.

“Yes?”

“I need to find Anne … or to leave. Can you show me?”

“Oh, right. Look, Red, see that door? That door leads to the attic. Try there. I don't go up there. No one goes up there. But be my guest, sweetheart.”

Fiona went into the attic. She didn't want to, but she had nowhere else to go. It was huge, running the length of the house. It was set up like a bedroom with colorful quilts and pillows everywhere. It seemed a comfortable place, and yet, there was a dryness to the air that hurt her throat.

Something moved in the corner under the eave. She heard a muffled laugh.

“Anne? Come on, Anne, this isn't funny.”

The tightness in her throat increased. She started coughing. She couldn't breathe. Choking, Fiona ran from the attic and back to the hall. Lucy leaned against her bedroom door swirling a glass of whiskey.

“Do you want a sip? It is imported. From France,” she said, taking a drink. She didn't seem to notice Fiona's hands clawing at her little, pale throat … or the silent
ackkk
coming from her open mouth.

Fiona fell to the floor. She thought she was dying. And then it stopped. The strangling feeling was gone as fast as it came.

She got up from the floor, shaky.

“Please?” she pleaded. “Please let me go home.…”

Lucy stared at her. The emptiness Fiona saw in her eyes was something she never wanted to see again.

“I know where she is,” Lucy said, flatly. “Follow me.”

Lucy, very drunk now, staggered and swayed down the hallway, then stopped. She pointed at a closet door in front of them.

“You open it. I won't.”

Fiona opened the door.

She began her screaming on the up arc. It was immediate and relentless. She turned in a circle, unsure of which way to go. She ran and slid down the front hall stairs to the front doors. She yanked on them with all her strength, and they opened with an unexpected and oily ease that threw her whole body backward. She scrambled back up and ran out the door, still screaming, all the way under the poplar canopy to the main road.

Lucy stood looking at her daughter. Anne was in her special place. A linen closet turned into a clubhouse of sorts. The shelves were removed, and the walls were a collage of all things dead. Magazine pictures of awfulness clipped from
National Geographic
and vile photos ripped from newspapers overlapping with prayer cards and religious pictures. The pope peeked out from under a lion eating the inside of a zebra. Hanging from the slanted ceiling were dolls' heads whose lips were smeared with lipstick, creating jagged grins across porcelain faces.

Anne was hanging, too. Swaying back and forth.

“Really, Anne, come on now. That is
no
way to make a friend.”

*   *   *

Anne opened her eyes. She unhung herself and felt warm inside. Her mother had said something motherly. Then she got mad at herself. Why did she care?

Anne retreated to the attic. The ghosts were not there. They were supposed to be there when she needed them. This has to stop, she told herself. She would have to write some rules. If the ghosts were all she had, the ghosts must listen to her. That was that. She went to an old book of nursery rhymes Gwyneth used to read to her and tore out a blank page. She found a pen and called her ghosts. They didn't come. She called again, and still she was alone. She waited, and eventually they floated up the stairs.

“I am making rules,” Anne stated. “Everyone needs rules. It is
very
important. You will both follow them.”

“Anne, where did you get that paper?” Gwyneth asked.

“I tore it from a book.”

“That isn't the way we treat books is it?”

“
See?
Rules are
very
important. But these are for you, not for
me
,” Anne continued.

Anne knelt on the attic floorboards. She liked being close to the floor. It smelled like toast.

She read the rules aloud as she wrote them.

“Ghost Rules: by Anne,” she began. Her old-fashioned pen scratched across the paper.

“Rule number one: Ghosts cannot go through an unopened door. If a door is closed, they cannot open it.

“Rule number two: Ghosts will never travel outside of the parameters of Witch House property.” She stopped.

“Gwen? Is it perimeters or parameters?”

Gwyneth was annoyed. “In this context? In this context I would say either,” she grumbled.

“Okay … and rule number three: Ghosts will always come when I call, so I know where they are.”

“Little Anne?” asked Gwyneth.

“What?”

“How can we come when you call if you shut the door when you leave?”

Anne tapped her pen on her chin, thinking.

“Well, I won't need to call you if I know where you are.”

“I see,” Gwen said quietly.

“I don't want to be locked up anywhere, Anne. It's not fair,” whined Ava.

“Fine. I'll cross out number one. But if I need you and I call you and you don't come, I get to re-in … re-in…”

“Reinstate,” said Gwen.

“Reinstate, yes … I get to reinstate it.”

“Agreed.”

Anne sealed the document with a dramatic flair. She took a pin from a nearby dress form and pricked her finger, blotting each rule with her blood.

Finally satisfied, a tired Anne climbed into the cupola to survey her kingdom as the sun set. It had been a busy day. She had gained and lost a friend, created a set of rules that would contain the friends who remained, and even heard kind words from Lucy.

From the cupola, she had a 360-degree view of everything. She spread out her arms and spun slowly, taking in the view. Persimmon Point, the ocean, the Haven House ruins, the ponies. All of it bathed in sun shadows as the night caught up with the day and tried to keep it hostage in pink clouds. But the sunshine slipped away, as it always does, and Anne remembered that the night was lovely, too.

Fall would slip by, winter wouldn't last long, and summer would come early as it always seemed to do. Then the fireflies … To Anne, they were stars that fell from the sky. She would go outside at night and run with them. Jumping and chasing, but never truly trying to catch them. Gwyneth once suggested she put them in a jar. Anne was horrified.
Cage them? They were stars! Magic from the sky
. She could never do such a thing. That realization was like a message: Gwyneth and Ava shouldn't be caged either. They were her stars in her very own sky. She'd have to apologize for even thinking of it.

Summer was Anne's magic time. She felt her strongest, and yet her most fragile, during the summer. She felt human. She especially loved late summer and always would, even when the smells of the high grasses and overripe fruit, bursting tomatoes, and overgrown herbs made her remember the day she began to hate the world.

 

21

Jude in the Ruins with Himself

1952

It happened slowly, the love she fell into. She hadn't paid much attention to Jude. He'd played with her a little bit when he first came home, but then got new friends. It didn't matter that he was her cousin. She tried not to think of Aunt Lavinia or that bungalow at all, because then she thought of her father—she didn't like to do that. It hurt something inside her, made her throat tight.

Besides, he was older, after all. Which is why she was surprised when he called out to her from his window in the spring following what Anne now called “The Fiona Fiasco.”

“Anyone ever tell you you're pretty, Anne?” he asked.

Then he started walking her back and forth to school.

When school let out for the summer, he'd walk her to and from town.'

“Don't want any more of that ‘Crazy Anne' nonsense.”

There wasn't any taunting when Jude was with her, because he scared people. And she liked that.

She felt something deep and visceral when he looked at her. No one else paid any attention to her. Dominic had left for school, Lucy was in a constant state of oblivion, and Nan, well, Nan was just plain busy. Busy with the garden, busy with cooking and cleaning and church functions and never forgetting her all-encompassing worry over Lucy. She spent hours saying novenas for her mentally ill and godless child. So Anne felt privileged that Jude—a teenage boy!—would single her out. And his face! Everyone agreed he was beautiful. All the girls in Haven Port had crushes on him until they realized he had no interest in them whatsoever, which could have,
should
have, been the first warning sign.

He'd hang on the kitchen garden gate looking like some kind of Roman god, chiseled and illuminated from within. So light and fair, with blond hair, blue eyes, freckles. So easy to look at. Easy like the sun. Anne forgave him for being related to Gavin.

Jude began to sit behind her at church, saying funny things just to make her laugh. He left her presents, little trinkets of affection, things he noticed she liked. And once again, Anne couldn't believe that someone had noticed her in that way. She had suddenly become visible.

One day in late summer he walked by the wall while she was reading up in her pine tree. He startled her, which startled her all the more because she was always the one sneaking up on people. “Can I come up there?” he asked.

“Do what you want,” said Anne. He came in through the gate and was perched next to her in no time at all. “What are you, a monkey?” she laughed.

He grinned. “No. Last time I looked, I was a Jude. You want some of my apple?”

“No, thanks,” said Anne.

“Suit yourself.… Anyway, I know we're cousins, Anne. But, I want you to know, I like you. And I'd like to spend more time with you. Like, go on adventures and things like that. Friends. Good friends.”

“You like me?”

“Does that surprise you?” Jude asked.

Anne put her book in her lap and looked at this teenage boy sitting across from her. She squinted her eyes; she was suspicious, but intrigued. “Well, I am younger than you. I'm sure there are a lot of older girls who'd like to be your friend.”

“Well, I
did
think of that, but I have done a lot of watching, Anne, and I have decided that you are more interesting than any other girl in the whole wide world.”

“You are watching me?”

“I watch people.” He shrugged.

“Me, too.”

“So, do you want to spend more time together?” He very gently looped his finger between her turned-down ankle sock and her skin. Anne was again startled.

“I guess?”

“Well then…” He paused, pulling on one of her braids and then curling the end in his fingers. “You have to do me a favor.” He threw the apple core on the ground. Anne wondered if he would pick it up or leave it there. Maybe a tree would grow and she could call it Jude.

“Hey, you!” He pulled her braid again. “You dreamin'? I said you have to do me a favor.”

“Okay … what?”

“Well, this might sound strange, but I think you'll know what I am talking about. I feel something around you, Annie, something fearful. It scares me. You might say I have a special gift … the gift of sight … and I see you are in great danger.” He looked deeply at her. His pretended seriousness made her want to laugh, but in case he really was serious, she didn't.

“Anyway, I don't know what it is, but there
is
something about you that draws me to you, and something that pushes me away. Can you understand that? You to need to figure that out, and when you do…” He dropped his body in one graceful swoop down to the ground. He looked back up at her, shielding the sun from his eyes, “you let me know. Then, we can have an adventure.”