The Witch House of Persimmon Point

 

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About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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Dedicated to Fay Barile

1917–2015

My very own “Mimi”

This one's for you, Gram. I sure hope you're dancing.

 

Author's Note

Dear Reader,

It's raining as I write this, which is fitting. I love the rain. My children and I call rainy days “Brontë” days. I feel as if I'm walking with Jane Eyre through misty fields of heather. Or exploring hidden hallways with Mary Lennox from
The Secret Garden
(it rained throughout her saga, too).

Anyway, without giving away too much of the story, I need to share something that's been weighing on my mind. A warning, if you will.

This book may not be for you. I wrote this book for me. An exorcism of my own demons. My own experiences placed inside a fictional landscape that is safe. For
me.
But maybe not so safe for
you,
my dearests.

In life we all have our triggers.

I've always held the belief that writers should write what they
must
write. That being said, I also believe that if a novel contains trigger material, it is the responsibility of the author to let a reader know.

To those of you who have read my other novels, rest assured this book delivers the things you have come to expect. There are gardens and ghosts and family secrets galore. And magic. Always magic.

However, this is my most deeply personal narrative. Some parts are the closest to memoir I may ever get; though just as many parts are deeply entrenched in make-believe. However, for those parts that may cut right at your soul, I wanted to give you notice. I also wanted to give you a place to call if you need to talk.

If you experience trouble, please call 1-800-656-HOPE to contact RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the nation's largest antisexual violence organization.

And please know, whatever your difficult journey might be, I travel with you.

Yours,

The Lost Witch,

Suzy

 

Permanent Geranium Lake

 

1

Journal Entry on the Night of the Biggest Doom

Byrd Whalen

MONDAY, JULY 14, 2025

HAVEN PORT, VIRGINIA

There's a portrait of a woman hanging on the second-floor landing of the Witch House, holding court over the sweeping staircase and crooked, bloated foyer. Her piercing green eyes span the darkness, waiting. When I first cracked open the heavy front door the day I arrived, sweeping back the expected cobwebs, hers was the first face I saw.

And goddamn, I knew I was home.

At first, I thought the house was having some fun at my expense, painting a picture of a future me as some kind of welcome present. A psychic gag gift or what have you. But then, I was fourteen and self-absorbed (as most fourteen-year-olds are wont to be). It didn't take too long for me to figure out she was the lady I was looking for though, dead or not. The keeper of the secrets. Crazy Anne Amore.

My great-grandmother.

We share black hair that's a beast to tame, stubborn chins, and big eyes. I swear until I saw it, I'd never seen another person who wore the same “Do what you want, but cross me and die” look that I wear. And inside that gaze, if you look real close, you can see the real message. “Don't get close to me because I'll love you, and when you leave me, and you will, I swear it, it
will
destroy me. And then I'll have to destroy you, because … fair is fair.”

She's painted sitting on a window seat with her elbow resting on the sill, not looking out the window, but looking straight ahead with a purpose I'm still trying to understand. The colors melt together in greens and golds and garnets, but it's the lighting in the painting that invokes a little fear.

See, I've always been obsessed with light. Especially the way it falls in late afternoon. Like thick, honey-colored hope. And that's the kind of light in the painting. It obscures half her face with shadows and the reflection of the windowpane makes a blurry glass tattoo of the other side.

You can't hardly figure out where the darkness ends and her figure begins. From what I've learned about her, the painter's perspective suited her perfectly.

So there she hangs, staring straight down the stairs at the wide front door.

Because there was no way in hell anything could stop Anne Amore from guarding her Witch House.

Not even death.

I swear, her gaze follows me each time I walk by—like something out of a Sunday matinee haunted-house movie, shifty eyes and all that mess—but especially when I'm on my way to the third floor. After all these years, I still can't tell if she likes that I took her room or not. And I still can
NOT
stand how she won't actually come right out and haunt the place. Sometimes I want to yell, “Show yourself, old woman!” but I don't. Because even though I never met her, and even though she won't visit me proper, I know I'm her favorite and that she has her reasons.

But if there ever were a time for her to show herself plain, today would be the day. Because today is the day I die. I could use some advice, really. What good are supportive, loving family ghost witches if they can't come save you when you're about to give up the good fight?

I'm so tired.

I spent the first half of today searching for my mother's wedding dress. I bought the black dye at the Woolworth last Sunday and thought, “PERFECT
.
I'll dye that fancy frock a deep shade of black and wear it.”

I spent the afternoon dyeing it. I don't care that it's not an even sort of color. I don't like anything even, really. Not even numbers, or even lengths of things. Evenness has always seemed like some sort of lie. If I had the chance to give a little girl one piece of advice, it would be, “Don't trust a person who likes things even. Only trust the people who thrive in chaos.”

I'm not sure I fully believe that. But it sounds good.

Now I'm sitting here, in my room on the third floor of this terrible, wonderful house, and I'm waiting for the damn dress to dry properly so I can prepare myself for the execution. I'm sure I'll have to wear it damp. But I don't mind.

Can a person call this type of situation an execution? Probably not. Still, I like the idea of taking my final walk through the moonlit garden with the satisfying flurry of satin and tulle all around me.

It's all very dramatic.

I've always loved this room. The cheery wallpaper and wide windows facing the idyllic shoreline of Persimmon Point don't even really hint that a madwoman planned murders here while she brushed her long black hair. The pillowcases she rested her head on after digging that grave out by the juniper trees don't give up her dreams. The sunlight playing across the wide, uneven wooden floors don't echo many tears.

I don't think there's anything more comforting than sunlight on wood floors. And the more I think about it, the more I think that this room, and maybe even the whole house, is hardwired for human comfort.

Which makes sense in ordinary circumstances … I mean, a house is supposed to be like that, right? Well, this house is a whole other ball of wax. I'm sure its feelings are hurt as I write this. It fancies itself a horror house. Home of witches and murderesses. Of death and decay and destruction. And here I am, calling it
comforting
.

Because, see …

There always seems to be a soft breeze weaving through its salt-marsh-and-juniper-scented rooms, which some poet somewhere should have likened to the way a woman's hair smells when she's in love.

Maybe I should have been a poet. Avoided this whole mess. Poets make livings on unhappy, un-endings. Granddad would say, “Sugar, you missed your calling!”

I'm of the mind that we should expect more unhappy endings than we do. Sure, we say we do. But we don't.

I don't care what anyone says about us, that's something this monstrous family of mine did right. We expected the bad. We created it. We embraced it. Hell, we imagined it and then gave birth to it.

I'm an unhappy ending myself. A whole embodied, unhappy ending of my own mother's life.

But I won't dwell on that. Not today.

My fate is my own. And I own my fate.

So I'm going to sit here and tell this goddamn story while my goddamn dress dries.

I left Magnolia Creek, Alabama, for Haven Port, Virginia, in the summer of 2015. It wasn't an even-numbered year, so I figured it was safe.

When my aunt Wyn tells the story, she says I ran away from home and wove a web of lies so thick no one even knew what was happening until I was good and safe and settled. She was secretly proud of my fourteen-year-old machinations, I suspect. Only I wasn't running away, I was simply moving.

I don't run away from anything.

And God knows I probably should. Like right this very moment, but that's beside the point.

Growing up in Magnolia Creek I always felt like a stranger in a strange land.

I was loved, I can't argue with that, but as I grew older, things changed. Sometimes knowing people love you but also knowing they don't really
know
you is downright lonely.

So, I focused on this house. This side of my family I never knew, from a place I'd never been. One I'd been warned about. My mother's home. My mother's people.

“Stop mooning over those crazy women. You aren't a lick like 'em. At least, not much,” my granddad Jackson always grumbled.

“No, Byrd, we can't go there and visit. They're all dead. And don't go on and on about how you can visit with them anyway, because there's no guarantee they haven't gone on to the other side. Besides, I want you to live here in Alabama in the sunshine. I don't want you surrounding yourself with so much darkness, sweet girl. Promise me you'll let that all rest. It's what your mama wanted,” pleaded my aunt Wyn who had “strange ways” of her own, but that fact never seemed to stop her from wanting to not let me enjoy them a little.