I don’t think life prepares a person for meeting the devil. Or even for being just one person away from Old Scratch.
On the drive back to Cole Creek with Jackie, I knew that what I really wanted to do was hide in my room and disassociate myself from all of it. No one can explain how a writer feels when he/she has a great idea for a book, then the world steps in and won’t let you write. I think it was Eudora Welty who said something like, “If you look outside and think, ‘Oh, damn! It’s a beautiful day so now people will come visit me,’ then you’re a real writer.”
But you know what was odd? For the first time in years, I didn’t think of Pat. I didn’t think of how this wouldn’t have happened if she’d lived.
Yeah, I wished I’d never started the whole thing about the devil story, but I certainly didn’t wish I’d never met Jackie. And I didn’t wish I’d not moved to Cole Creek. Sure, the house was creaky and it needed constant work, but I didn’t mind it anymore. Jackie had replaced nearly all the wallpaper so there were no more thorns looming over me. I’d even come to enjoy one or two of the little porches. What she’d done in the garden was great, and—
And there was what she’d done with my family. Maybe I’d never feel about them the same way I’d felt about Pat’s family, but, through Jackie, I’d been reconnected with my relatives.
All in all, I was happy with my life for the first time in years. And I figured that, maybe, eventually, Jackie and I would get around to my little fantasy with the olives. I knew she thought she was torn between me and some other man, but I didn’t see it. I hadn’t seen her sitting by the phone waiting for this Russell Dunne to call, and since that first meeting, she hadn’t talked about the man in a way that made me think she was pining for him. In fact, at the party when she’d sneaked outside the gate to see him, she’d returned looking more angry than anything else. She certainly hadn’t looked like a woman who’d just seen the love of her life. Maybe it was my own ego, but I was beginning to come to the conclusion that her real interest in Russell Dunne was in trying to make me jealous.
Of course I deduced all this before I found out the man couldn’t be seen and was the devil.
How I wanted to ask Jackie questions! I wanted her to describe his looks in detail. I wanted her to repeat every word he’d said. I racked my brain to remember what she’d told me about him. He’d had a bag so full of things she’d said it was like “magic.” He’d made a printer that wasn’t battery powered work while they were in the forest. Had he bought the printer? What credit card did the devil use? Or did he pay in cash? Maybe he paid with gold. Doubloons, maybe.
I told myself to stop thinking like a writer and start thinking like…Well, think like a what? A ghost-buster? A psychic researcher? A devil hunter?
When I glanced at Jackie, I could see that she’d been pretty shaken up by all this, and I knew that there was only one thing we could do to end it all: find out the truth. We needed to find out what had happened back in 1979, so we could figure out how to break the spell. Or could we? Could the spell be broken?
And then there was Jackie’s last vision, the one that showed Rebecca burning down the town. When would she strike her first match? Where?
By the time we got back to the house, I had the beginning of a plan in my head. I tried to pep Jackie up because she was looking as forlorn as an abandoned puppy, then I ran into the house to enlist Noble’s help. He and I had a few moments of a rather loud discussion because he was scared out of his mind by all of it. Noble would have taken on twelve lumberjacks in a barroom brawl by himself, but the mention of anything supernatural made him turn coward.
I pointed out some facts of life to Noble. He wanted to settle down in Cole Creek, but he couldn’t with the devil running around and making people set fire to the town. When that had no effect, I wondered out loud if the devil would be kissing Allie next. The idea of any man, even the devil, touching “his” woman put steel in Noble’s spine.
I called Dessie and asked her if she knew where Rebecca was. Dessie said Rebecca hadn’t been to work in two days, which wasn’t unusual, as she usually stayed at home to do her benders. But Dessie had been to Rebecca’s house twice and she wasn’t there, nor was she anywhere that Dessie had searched. “This time I’m worried about her.”
I remembered the photo in Dessie’s studio of the two high school girls together. They’d been friends for a long time, and I hoped they lived long enough to continue being friends.
I asked Dessie who in town knew the most about the devil’s spell over Cole Creek.
When there was a long pause, I told her I didn’t have time to play games. I needed to know now!
“Miss Essie Lee,” came the answer, an answer I should have known.
After I hung up, I told Noble to get Tessa and to sit down with Jackie to go over every second of her vision, searching for details concerning places and times.
After I got them settled, Dad and I went to see Miss Essie Lee at her home.
Her house was a perfect little English chocolate-box cottage. I don’t think it had started out that way but she’d made it so. In lieu of a thatched roof—who could find thatchers in the U.S.?—she had vines growing across the roof. The walls were white plaster, with inset, mullioned windows. The acre around the house was a perfect cottage garden, with vegetables and flowers all mixed up.
As we approached the door, down a quaint little stone path heavy with moss, pink flower petals fluttered down around us. While we waited for an answer to our knock (a lady’s hand in brass) I looked at my father against the backdrop of that house and garden. They suited each other perfectly.
On impulse, I kissed my dad’s forehead. Instinctively, I knew that he would soon move out of my house and into this one.
Miss Essie Lee opened the door, and in the seconds while Dad and she stared at each other in frozen rapture, I looked at her. Her at home attire was as perfect as the house. She wore a cotton dress that had to be from the forties, and on her feet were pink, high-heeled mules with marabou feathers on the open toes. Some fifties bombshell would have worn those.
Without a question, Miss Essie Lee opened the door wider and we went inside.
If I looked hard, I could see that the place had once been a tract house, but Miss Essie Lee had transformed it into a movie set of an English cottage. The walls were plastered, the ceiling had beams cleverly painted to make them look ancient, and the furniture was all soft and comfortable-looking, covered with that English mixture of a dozen patterns that somehow looked good together.
Oh, yes, I thought, my father would be living here. In fact, he looked like the perfect accessory for the house. It was as though Miss Essie Lee had said, “Now all I need to complete the decor is a funny-looking little man,” and then ordered him off the Internet.
Or conjured him. And that thought reminded me of why we were there.
But before I could speak, my father did.
“Jackie talks to the devil,” he said.
When Miss Essie Lee looked at me in question, I nodded.
“I’ll change,” she said. “There’s no time to waste.”
Minutes later she returned to the living room dressed in a suit from the 1930s, and black, stout shoes. I wanted to ask her if she too couldn’t go past fifty miles outside Cole Creek.
I also wanted to ask her about all the people who had been crushed in various ways following the pressing.
But we didn’t have time for that. Right now Rebecca might be striking matches.
As I pulled into my driveway, I said to Miss Essie Lee, “Jackie’s name is Jacquelane.”
The face she turned to me was one of shock. Then the next second she was crying. I was so surprised I couldn’t move.
My dad jumped out of the backseat, flung open the front door, pulled Miss Essie Lee into his arms—and proceeded to bawl me out. According to him, I had a real talent for making women cry. And if being as smart as I was meant making women miserable, then he was glad he was stupid.
My dad said more, but I didn’t have time to listen. As I ran into the house to find Jackie, my father’s voice followed me. I didn’t have time to stop and contemplate why I or anyone else hungered for a family.
Jackie was in the kitchen eating chocolate cream pie. Out of the pan. With her fingers. And the table was littered with empty cartons, bottles, and boxes: ice cream, cookies, maraschino cherries. The word “chocolate” was everywhere.
“Hi,” she said cheerfully, with a lot of energy.
If I’d had a syringe full of a sedative, I would have given it to her.
Quietly, cautiously, I removed the nearly empty pie plate from in front of her.
“Mmmmm,” she said, sucking chocolate from her fingers while reaching for the pie plate.
I half picked her up by her elbows and directed her toward the living room where I hoped Miss Essie Lee had calmed down by now. Jackie grabbed a box of chocolate covered doughnuts—which I hadn’t seen—on the way out of the kitchen.
Miss Essie Lee was resting her head on my father’s shoulder. Considering that she was half a foot taller than he was and half his weight, this was an odd sight.
Plopping down on the couch, Jackie began eating the doughnuts.
When Miss Essie Lee looked up and saw Jackie, she moved to a chair across from her. “I should have seen it,” she said. “I should have seen the resemblance. You look a lot like your father, you know.”
“Thanks,” Jackie said brightly, grinning, her mouth full.
I took the doughnut box away from her, and reached inside for one, but she’d eaten all of them.
Incongruously, I thought, I’ll be damned if I’m going to live with a woman who I have to fight for the doughnuts!! If for no other reason, we have to get this thing solved.
“Orchids,” Miss Essie Lee said. “Did you meet him at a place with wild orchids?”
“Yes,” Jackie said, grinning and looking at me. “You saw the photo of the roses. There were orchids there, too.”
“Yes,” I said, “I did see them.” I didn’t like Jackie’s perky attitude. I would have felt better if she were crying. Which reminded me. Why had Miss Essie Lee burst into tears when I’d told her Jackie’s name?
“Can you walk?” Miss Essie Lee asked, looking me up and down.
So maybe I wasn’t devilishly thin—every pun intended—but I wasn’t past walking.
An hour later, I wished we’d had time to stop and buy a Jeep. Miss Essie Lee and Jackie, my father on their heels, were hotfooting it down an old trail that was all rocks and plants that I was sure were poisonous.
Jackie, leading the pack, was chattering away at ninety miles an hour about the time she and I had gone hiking together and, according to her, I’d complained “incessantly” about the cobwebs across the trail. I would have defended my honor, but I was too busy defending my life against tree branches, loose rocks, and a couple of kamikaze insects that looked lethal.
Every now and then, Miss Essie Lee asked Jackie a quiet question about her father and what she remembered about her mother. Jackie answered with a carefree air that made me want to give her pills to knock her out. Her attitude was proof that no one on earth should give up sugar. You needed to build up a tolerance so that when you did have it, you wouldn’t go into some insulin shock and start acting like a toy with a broken wind-up spring as Jackie was doing.
After a long time we came to a clearing in the woods. It was a ghastly place. There was a rotting bench under a wall of dense trees, and a falling-down fence nearby. Few plants were growing, as though there was something wrong with the earth. Radiation, maybe. It was dark and gloomy inside the circle of tall, dark trees, but when I looked up, there wasn’t a cloud. Behind me, I could see sunlight, but this place, open as it was, had none.
The worst thing was that it felt creepy. It was like the forest Hansel and Gretel had been lost in. It was like all the forests in all the scary movies. As I looked around, I expected big gray birds with long talons to swoop down out of the trees.
Miss Essie Lee, my brave father, and Jackie walked to the middle of the desolate spot. I stayed on the trail. There was light there and air.
“What do you see, dear?” Miss Essie Lee asked softly. Behind her back, she was holding my father’s hand.
Jackie whirled around like Cinderella wearing a ball gown. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The roses…” Closing her eyes, she inhaled. “Can you smell them?”
“Why don’t you pick some?” Miss Essie Lee said, and it was the voice of a psychiatrist to a crazy, and probably violent, patient.
“Oh, yes,” Jackie said as she sprinted over to the rotting old fence and began to break off bits of dying vine. When she had her arms full, she buried her face in the ugly mess. “Aren’t they divine?” she said. “I’ve never smelled roses like these before.”
When we were kids we used to catch bugs in jars, screw the lids on tight, and leave them there for days to turn into black juice. This place smelled almost exactly like that bug juice.
“What’s on the ground?” Miss Essie Lee asked, and I saw my father step closer to her. He was as creeped out by the place as I was.
“Orchids,” Jackie said. “Wild orchids. Lady’s slippers. They’re everywhere. Oh! I wish I had my camera.”
“And when do lady’s slippers bloom?”
“June,” Jackie said, smiling, looking around the place, clutching her “roses” to her.
“And what month is this?”
“It’s August,” Jackie said, then she raised her head from the vines. “It’s August,” she repeated quietly.
I wish I could say that this bit of logic made Jackie see the place as it truly was, but it didn’t. Slowly, she walked over to the old bench and put the vines down, treating them as though they were precious.
Miss Essie Lee went to the bench, my father attached to her, and put her hand on Jackie’s arm. She nodded toward the trees behind the bench, which were as dense as a rock wall. “Your grandmother lives in the house up there. She’s been waiting for you for a long time.” She smiled at Jackie. “When you played in this garden when you were a child, it looked as you see it now.”
I saw Miss Essie Lee’s hand tighten on Jackie’s arm. “I hope you can forgive us.”
This last sentence seemed to catch in her throat, and she turned away to the comfort of my father’s arms.
Jackie looked up the hill and, for a moment, seemed to consider whether or not she wanted to visit this newly-found grandmother.
Personally, I wanted to get the hell out of there. If Jackie was seeing dying vines as fragrant roses, what was she going to see in her grandmother? Was the woman the witch from every fairy tale? Or was she the devil’s handmaiden? Was she even alive?
I looked at Miss Essie Lee in question. “I can’t go,” she said softly. “Jacquelane must go alone.”
Alone, I thought and looked at Jackie. She seemed to have made a decision because she took two steps toward the wall of trees.
Alone, hell! I thought.
By the third step, I was by her side. I slipped her arm into mine, and even though I wasn’t Catholic, I crossed myself, and we started walking up the hill together.