CHAPTER 17
After Aunt Ibby left, Pete and I finished off the pot of coffee, put the cartons into the recycling bin, and loaded the dishwasher.
“That was fun,” he said. “I love spending time with you like this. You and your cat and your aunt too. It’s so . . . easy, you know?”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “Easy is the right word.”
“We’re good together.” He pulled me close.
“Yes,” I said, “we are.”
O’Ryan chose that moment to interrupt with a long bit of cat dialogue—something like “mow-mow-mow-mow” while repeatedly slipping in and out of his door.
“What’s up with him?” Pete still held me but seemed fascinated with the cat antics going on across the room.
“I know what he’s doing.” I sighed. “He wants us to go upstairs and get the clothes for Aunt Ibby’s scarecrow.”
“Oh, yeah.” He kissed my forehead and stepped away. “Let’s get it over with.”
I knew I was right about O’Ryan’s intention. We followed him out of the kitchen and down the carpeted hall to the door leading to the attic. I paused, closed my eyes for a moment, and grasped Pete’s hand. “Thank you for coming up there with me. I still dread this place. I know it’s crazy after all this time, but . . .”
“No. Not crazy at all. You damn near lost your life up there. When I think of how I almost lost you, I feel sick.”
“Well, anyway here we go on a scarecrow suit hunt.” I managed a smile, pulled the door open, flipped on the light switch, and together we started up the stairs. O’Ryan lay down beside the door, not making a move to join us. He doesn’t like the attic either. The smell of smoke and scorched wood had long ago been replaced with the pleasant smell of pine floorboards and fresh paint. The hodgepodge of odds and ends of old furniture, trunks, and boxes and bags of miscellany spanning generations were all gone. Nothing could have survived the heat and flames of that Halloween night.
Nothing.
Except Bridget Bishop’s spell book.
I shivered and Pete put his arm around my shoulders. “You’re cold. Want to do this some other time?”
“No. Let’s get it over with. It shouldn’t take long. Look at all these racks and bureaus.” The attic was much more orderly now, well lit, with clothes in neat plastic garment bags on rolling clothes racks and a row of identical bureaus, each with eight drawers. A long metal cart like the ones they use in airports held an assortment of suitcases, briefcases, and backpacks. Some of the bureau drawers were even marked with labels indicating their contents. “Here. This one says, ‘Hats.’ We can start dressing our guy from the top down.”
Pete pulled the drawer open and we selected a bright yellow wide-brimmed straw hat I remembered Aunt Ibby wearing on a trip to the Florida Keys. “A little effeminate for a scarecrow, I guess, but it’ll flop nicely in the breeze.” I agreed and we moved on to one of the racks. The next few minutes produced a man’s suit in navy blue polyester. What was my maiden aunt doing with it? Don’t know and will never ask, but we decided it would look fine stuffed with straw. A red silk ascot tie provided a jaunty touch.
“Do scarecrows wear shoes?” Pete asked, holding up a pair of black-and-white wing tips.
“I don’t think so, but take them anyway. Let’s get out of here.”
Pete rolled the clothes up and tucked them under his arm along with the shoes, and plunked the yellow hat onto my head. “Job well done. He’ll be the coolest scarecrow on the block.”
“Hope he does his job and scares them all away.” We started down the stairs with Pete in the lead.
“If he doesn’t, I have a few cherry bombs left over from last Fourth of July,” he offered, “and a couple of giant sparklers.”
“Might take you up on that,” I said, turning off the light switch and firmly closing the door. O’Ryan stood, stretched, and trotted down the hall ahead of us. “Especially the sparklers. They’re so pretty.”
“Not supposed to be pretty. Supposed to be scary. Remember? We’re trying to scare crows, not entertain them,” he teased.
Bridget Bishop was pretty yet she really frightened people. Why else would they have killed her?
Back in the comfort of the apartment, surrounded by familiar things, I began to relax. We put the suit, scarf, and shoes into a paper bag, topped off with the yellow hat. I put the whole thing next to the living room door with a reminder to Pete to drop it off in the downstairs hall when he left for work in the morning.
“You want to tell me about the gazebo at the Dumas place now?” he asked. “I guess your aunt didn’t want to hear about it.”
“There’s really nothing to tell,” I said. “I haven’t actually seen it yet. Maybe it isn’t the same one. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that there’s a gazebo at the site of Shannon’s wedding. Maybe it’s a coincidence that guests are going to be wearing black and the dead man in the vision is in a black tux. I don’t know. I’m too tired to even think about it anymore.”
“I’m beat too,” Pete said. “It’s probably all a big coincidence.”
He doesn’t believe in coincidences. And this time I don’t’t either.
I looked at the Kit-Kat clock. “Time for the late news. We can watch my promo from bed.”
“Works for me.”
The quince tree–stripping sequence was even creepier than I’d thought it would be. Marty had sped up the action so it appeared as though that poor tree had been denuded in seconds. I looked all right and sounded as though I knew what I was talking about. It was, I thought, a darn good thirty-second promo for my debut as an investigative reporter.
Pete agreed enthusiastically. We turned off the TV without watching the rest of the news and I fell happily, safely, confidently asleep in strong, loving arms, where no crows, no witches, no visions could touch me.
* * *
Wednesday morning was quite another matter. At first, everything seemed normal enough. Pete was the first one up and started the coffee. He makes it better than I do anyway. I grabbed my robe and went downstairs to my old bathroom on the second floor to shower while Pete used the one in the apartment. O’Ryan passed me on the stairway on his way down to Aunt Ibby’s, where he preferred the breakfast menu. It wasn’t until I was back in my own kitchen that I noticed the silence.
The coffeemaker gurgled, the Kit-Kat clock’s tail tick-tocked back and forth. Otherwise, the room was still. I opened the window. No cawing or cackling. Not even a peep. Where were the birds? I lifted the screen, stuck my head out over the fire escape, and looked toward Oliver Street and our maple tree, where a crowd of crows had gathered the night before. Green leaves ruffled by a slight breeze. No crows. Had the city fathers—and mothers—learned how to make them go away so soon? How? I’d have to figure it out before my broadcast, that was for sure.
I closed the screen and went back to the bedroom to dress for the day—for Megan’s town hall service. Maybe I’d watch the early news while I decided what to wear. I pulled my old standby little black dress from the closet, held it up in front of me, and studied my reflection in the mirror. I really dislike black, so the LBD is the only black item in my wardrobe.
Maybe with a gold belt and a blue silk scarf. Megan liked blue....
The swirling colors and sparkling lights began immediately. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched the vision come into focus.
It was Megan. But such a different Megan! The bent and wizened body was upright and supple, and the thinning hair, now a snowy white nimbus, framed an unlined, fine-boned face. Bright violet eyes sparkled where dull unseeing ones had been. She stretched a smooth, unblemished right hand toward me, and a crow, wings fluttering, alighted on her wrist. She moved her hand back slowly until the bird sat on her shoulder, where she stroked shining black feathers. Her smile was kind, benevolent, as it had always been.
With her left hand, she made a graceful motion toward the bird. Instantly, it disappeared. Didn’t fly away or fade away. It simply disappeared. She looked straight at me and winked one of those startling violet eyes.