A halo of silver ringlets hung loosely around her blank face and framed her vacant eyes. She stared past the porch banister to the forest beyond the walls of Peyton Manor. Beside her, the front door creaked as it opened. But her guest, Ian, garnered none of June's attention.
“That generator on the south side of the house doesn't sound healthy,” the retired doctor announced as he stepped on the porch. “You can hear it chugging and gasping from every room. It sounds like it's about to jump through the walls. When was the last time you had someone check it for you, Missy?” he asked, smiling. She ignored him.
“The little weather gal on TV this morning says power is still out up and down the coast,” he explained. “If that generator goes, there's no telling how long we'll be stuck,” he told her, the hiss of the dying generator echoing in the still air.
Her knuckles swollen with arthritic flares, June clutched tightly, almost desperately, to a golden locket dangling around her neck. Inside the oval chamber, there was a small photo of Alexandra. In the picture, her five-year-old cheeks were bursting with a huge smile. June chanted to herself:
Alex. Young Alex. Strong Alex. Forgive me.
“June, look at me,” her oldest, dearest friend said. Ian eased down into the rocking chair next to her. He pried her bony hand away from her chest. Holding her palm, he felt for the pulse in her wrist.
Thump. Thump. Hard and fast, the blood ran through June's veins. The retired doctor clasped her palm inside his own. June felt the pressure of Ian's touch, but the comforting assurance of flesh upon flesh evaded her senses. Fear dulled her sharp mind; reality slipped from her grasp. A single face floated in front of her tired green eyes: Alex. In June's vision of Alex, freckles danced across the top of Alexandra's milky-white, dimpled cheeks, and a blush of pink glowed beneath her dewy skin. June saw Alexandra winking, her emerald-green eyes twinkling with anticipation. Alexandra waved as her legs carried her far away. June pondered the image:
Was Alex swimming up, or flying with wings?
A spasm of fear, shock, and pain rumbled through June's core. She felt it rising from the tips of her toes, which grazed the porch, to the ends of the silver ringlets surrounding her pale, stoic face.
Ian, who was sitting beside her, felt her arms trembling. He could sense waves of terror quaking through her. He felt her fingers twitch as he held her hands, her fingers entwined with his own.
“June,” he whispered urgently. But the catatonic stare upon her graceful face was unrelenting to his calls. “June,” he repeated. “Look at me, June.” Ian hung his head and dropped her hands gently to her lap. Cupping his palms against her cheeks, he wished he could peel back the skin and bone and crawl inside her mind. He wished she could tell him how to help.
With his thumbs, he wiped the tears from her damp, green eyes. In the trees beyond the porch, a warm morning breeze swelled. The tops of the scattered pines swayed in the briny ocean air. June hissed at the same time that a wild cackle ricocheted against the walls of Peyton Manor. The silent figures on the whitewashed porch took in the hellish cry.
Ian knew it was the call of the witch in the woods. His body shielded June from the disembodied howl still clinging to the warm air.
In her rocker, June's toes beat faster against the porch, her thoughts matching the motion of her chair:
Soaring. Rising above the clouds. The moon and stars. Alex. Splendid, magnificent wings. Alex will be here soon.
A sharp ring jolted Ian from his perch on the rocking chair beside June. “I'll be back, my dear,” he promised, rising slowly to his feet. Steadying his rickety, eighty-year-old frame against his empty rocking chair, he pulled himself up, his knees shaking beneath his striped, seersucker pants' legs.
The words “I know” escaped from June's tight lips. Ian shook his head, pondering if she had actually said anything. Patting her delicately on the top of her silky-white head, he glanced at the silent trees behind him and stepped inside the house. Annoyed but thankful for the ringing phone, he shuffled through the front door and to the study. The study was a wood-paneled chamber tucked off the grand entrance foyer. It was currently strewn with leather-bound books.
A screeching voice hastened Ian's steps. Inside the study, a television set blared loudly. A bubbly, doe-eyed blonde spewed news from a nearby stretch of beach. A desk lamp flickered, its bulb dying. Ian searched for the television's power button.
“A hurricane? Well, you don't say!” Ian said sarcastically back at the bright pixels on the screen as his thumb thumped a black button. The wide-eyed blonde disappeared, the hum of her squealing voice ricocheting against the paneled walls. Hurricane Emily had roared ashore from the Atlantic Ocean thirty-six hours before. She had spared the roof and the walls of Peyton Manor, but her winds and rain had left the aging house without power or phone service for nearly two days. Only the dying generator offered a tenuous link to the outside world.
The cotton-white strands on his pink scalp bristled at the high-pitched ringing of the telephone. The silver, cordless phone beckoned incessantly for an answer. It was perched on the edge of an antique oak deskâthe very desk upon which June's father had plotted his successful shipping empire. Ian snatched the telephone and shouted. “Hello!” He was panting from exertion and eager to hear a human voice from beyond the gates of Peyton Manor. “Hello!” he repeated.
But only the sound of deep breathing answered his cries on the other end of the line.
“Bloody idiot,” Ian huffed and puffed. His London accent surged as distinctly through the wires as if he had disembarked from the Queen Mary days ago, rather than a half century ago.
“Hello?” a small voice finally replied. “Mr. Ian, is that you, sir? This is Patrick,” the shaky voice pleaded into the old doctor's ear. It was Patrick Gallagher, who took care of many things at Peyton Manor. For many years, he had been the chef, handyman, and groundskeeper of the secluded estate. As a widowed, single father, he had sought a job there at the age of thirty-eight. By fifty-eight, his sanctuary behind the iron-gate on Black Hall Trailâthe quiet refuge that was Peyton Manorâ was slipping into madness. June slept very little, ate even less, and wandered the grounds of her beachside estate in her robe at all hours of the day and night. He watched, day by day, as the vibrant woman who had hired him shrank into a frantic skeleton of agitated bones. He had heard cackles shifting through the trees and chants riding on the wind.
“Yes, Patrick, it's Ian,” the doctor answered, his head turning to a mirror propped above the fireplace mantel in the study. He ran his fingers across the top of his head. He could see that his mane of white hair still bore streaks of silvery blond. His eyes studied the rumpled seersucker suit that he had been wearing for days and he knew that he looked like a mess.
“Thank goodness!” Patrick sighed into the telephone. “By some miracle this morning, we just got the power back on. I guess the generator there is still holding out? Tell me that Miss June is okay.”
“The generator,” Ian said, “needs as much help as June does.” Ian slumped into the leather chair behind the oak desk. “What day is it, Patrick?”
Standing in the backyard of his son's home, thirty miles inland, Patrick sucked in a deep breath. A toppled swing set and shredded patio furniture littered the grass. “Today is Wednesday.”
“Oh,” Ian muttered, fatigue dragging him deeper into the chair. “And the storm was Monday night?”
“Aye,” Patrick acknowledged, hearing the exhaustion in Ian's voice.
“Miss June wandered outside during the storm. She hurt her leg, which bled.” He stopped himself.
Do I tell him that a witch lives in the woods? That the witch can talk to the dead?
Ian laid his cheek down on the desk, balancing the telephone against his face. “The driveway gate is blocked. We can't get out.”
“I'll try to get there as soon as I can,” Patrick told him. His fingers trembled, but he said, “Don't worry, Ian.” The name
Jasmine
abruptly came into Patrick's mind. He asked Ian, “What was Miss June doing outside in the middle of a hurricane?”
Ian closed his eyes. He replayed the scene in his mindâ how June ran in front of the headlights of his Cadillac in her bathrobe. That was Monday night, in the soaking rain of the storm. But Ian merely said to Patrick, “She said she needed to talk to Joseph.”
When Patrick heard Ian's reply, his knees swiftly buckled beneath him. Patrick knelt to the muddy grass in the sunny, littered backyard, his left hand steadying himself against an upturned ceramic plant pot. “Jasmine!” he whispered urgently.
“You know?” Ian asked, raising his head from the desk.
“Yes,” Patrick snarled. “I know the witch lives in the trees. I'll burn her shack to the ground,” he threatened into the phone, his voice shaking. “I swear I will.”
There was a low growl at Ian's feet. Ian jerked his head to the floor where a puff of mud-stained cotton whimpered. “Dixie!” Ian cooed, rubbing the dog's back, her chest rippling as she barked loudly in his ear.
Patrick could hear the poor pooch. “Dixie will need to go out. Don't let her get out of your sight.”
The rocking chair on the front porch slowed and then stopped, the creaking of the wooden planks growing silent. June placed her bare feet flat against the whitewashed beams. Bracing her frail body against the armrests, she squeezed the chair beneath her fingers. On the porch railing, a crow was resting, a squirming string dropping from its beak.
Rising from the rocking chair, June bent over the bird's released treasure. The writhing, pencil-thin, lime-green snake slithered through her fingers. She took hold of it. Closing her green eyes, she hugged the reptile to her chest. Its tongue tasted the cold sweat on her skin. As she grasped it, June began to melt through the porch slats and to the driveway. She thought:
Free. Run faster.
At first she oozed across the ground. Then she flew loose and wild over mud, stone, and grass. Leaves and rock scraped lightly against her smooth belly, while her tongue licked the air and smelled rotten flesh.
The scent assaulted her. She was consumed by the foul stench, which drew her over the weeds, pebbles, twigs, and mud. Above her head, she could see the sun, a ball of orange that burned through the towering treetops. The grass clearing that she sought came closer. Tall, smooth rocks thrust from the ground. June knew these:
Headstones. Dead.
A smoldering fire burned in a dirt pit in the center of the Peyton family cemetery. In the grass, a scrap of mottled brown fur was still, its neck broken and twisted to the side. Her slithering came to a stop, her black eyes locked on the dead rabbit.
But the snake was not alone. Jasmine, hiking her faded skirt from her bare brown legs, bent to the ground and yanked the dead animal from its resting place. The rabbit's crooked, broken neck dangled in her grip. Winking at the green snake hiding beneath the pine needles, Jasmine waved the rabbit around in the air. Drops of blood splattered on the ground, slapping the snake's face. The witch smiled, her eyes dropping to the rustling grass. She hissed at the retreating snake. A tree branch sheltered the thin, writhing body from Jasmine's gaze until her brown legs stepped closer.
Higher ground. Lost!
June thought.
The snake wriggled in the brown woman's grasp, the cool assurance of the earth no longer beneath its smooth belly. Up to the sky the snake climbed. Then it flew, the witch on the ground cackling as she threw the creature toward the sun. Dizzyingly high from the solid ground, the snake licked the air and closed her eyes. The smell of the dead rabbit was stifling and thick in her nose. Soon gravity regained its hold upon the delicate serpent. The snake did not know that a crow was approaching until a piercing strike dug deep within her scale-cloaked muscle and tissue. The impact of his nails shot pain through her body.
The snake hung limp in the crow's feet, while the bird climbed higher into the cloudless blue sky. Wind whipped the creature's thin, dangling body wildly back and forth. Spitting her forked tongue into the air, the snake tasted salt from the sea. The ocean's horizon was visible in the distance. Below the crow's tail, she could see a black roof. Her winged taxi was headed toward that target of civilization.
The bird descended rapidly, remembering the scraps of bread that the giant featherless creatures always left scattered for her on the grass. When the crow lowered swiftly, the snake swung violently back and forth in the wind, her body taken by the whim of the winged animal.
Stop. Breathe. Free
, thought June as she opened her eyes and dropped the snake to the porch.
“Thank you,” she said to the serpent who had shown her the witch in the woods.
The bird held the snake firmly, his toes dug into the porch railing.
June watched in silence as eventually the crow dropped the snake. Bending down, June rubbed her thumb across the snake's head.
In the study, Ian fumbled with the wide, slatted plantation blinds. He glanced out to the porch, the phone resting between his shoulder and ear. He saw June cupping the coiled body of the snake in her palms, the forked tongue of the wild creature tasting the air. Warm, shallow breaths escaped from June's throat, lulling the snake into a drowsy stupor.
“June!” Ian shouted at the closed window. “June!” he exclaimed, dropping the phone to the pine floor.
“Mr. Ian?” Patrick's voice echoed from the abandoned cordless receiver. The doctor's running footsteps pounded in his ear. Patrick prayed for God to help June from her madness. He strained his ear, yearning for Ian's answer. Then the call dropped. Patrick stiffened because the hum sounded just like the unrelenting buzz of a flat line on a heartbeat monitor. “The generator!” he surmised, knowing that the heap of frayed wires and rusty bolts must have finally collapsed.