AHMM, November 2007 Read online

  She fell into thinking about her husband, but not for once about his possible adultery. She wondered instead at the always literal lawyer suddenly obsessing about ghosts on the slenderest of evidence. The woman finally finished her call, and Beverly bought four tickets for the tour. Nelson and Willard were staying home to watch the first game of the NBA finals, though they'd volunteered to photograph “any and all ectoplasm."

  At nine that night, Philip and the three women reported to the foot of the fishing pier. A few minutes later, they were joined by a bearded man in shorts and a T-shirt. His dark hair protruded from a faded ball cap that bore an even more faded bulldog logo. His T-shirt read: “The truth is in there."

  "Hi,” he said. “I collect the tickets for the ghost tour."

  "Who conducts it?” Philip asked as he passed them over.

  "I do. But I like to have the tickets in hand before I admit it. My name's Hodge Parish."

  "Don't tell me people are disappointed with you, Mr. Parish,” Heather said, and Beverly wondered if there was such a thing as a flirting gene. Not that the guide was bad material for flirting. Though not tall, he was broad shouldered and without a hint of the belly that Philip currently hid beneath a flowered shirt. His slightly knobbed nose and small, merry eyes reminded Beverly of the actor Tom Hanks.

  "Call me Hodge,” he said. “Some people expect someone older. And maybe spookier."

  "A Southern accent would help too,” Beverly thought. The guide's name had the right ring, but not his voice. It reminded Beverly of a coworker who'd been born in Boston.

  Hodge led them toward the lighthouse, stopping opposite a playground full of night-owl children so he could describe the grounding of the steamer Savannah during the Christmas Eve storm of 1881. The on-again, off-again beach was off now, and small waves splashed on the rocks of the breakwater at the tour guide's sandaled feet. Beverly pictured waves many times higher as Hodge told of the failed attempts to reach the stranded steamer. The rescuers had been encouraged by a sound carried ashore by the wind: the singing of Christmas hymns.

  "There'd been a lull in the storm, but now it blew again even harder. ‘Redoubled its fury,’ one of the old accounts says. By then, the singing had stopped. When the next lull came at daybreak and boats finally reached the Savannah, there was nothing left above water but a few broken timbers. For years afterward, people would swear that, during a storm, they could hear singing carried in by the wind."

  His delivery of the last line was perfect, in Beverly's opinion. Not too dramatic. Or too jaded, which one might have expected from a man who must have told the story scores of times.

  "Have you ever heard the singing?” a wide-eyed Heather asked.

  "No,” Hodge said. Sadly, to Beverly's ear.

  "Bodies from the Savannah washed up for days,” the guide continued after he'd started them along the path again.

  Beverly, from her customary position at the back of the pack, saw that Philip was growing restless. They were headed away from the carriage house and the only story he wanted to hear. She willed him not to take charge and redirect them, spoiling the walk, and for once he seemed receptive to suggestion, allowing Hodge to continue uninterrupted.

  "The victims washed up at the doorstep of the man many people blamed for the stranding, the lighthouse keeper, Captain Mulliner. He'd been drunk on the night of the storm, according to local gossip, and allowed the light to fail."

  Mulliner's old charge was operating now. From high above the canopy of palm trees, it was sending a sweeping beam of light out across the sound, where it challenged and was defeated by the reflections of a brilliant full moon multiplied by countless waves.

  "The islanders petitioned Washington to replace Mulliner, but before the government could act, the lighthouse keeper was found hanging by the neck from a rope tied to the iron railing you can see up there just below the light."

  "Suicide or murder?” Philip asked.

  "Never determined. Of course, the death of a man like that isn't looked into too deeply."

  "Did this Mulliner leave a ghost you've never seen?” Dial asked, giving Beverly an impulse to kick her.

  "Yes. That is, he's occasionally seen hanging by the neck up there. Sometimes he's struggling against the noose, sometimes he's just hanging. The last report was a 911 call made by a spring-break tourist from Connecticut.” As he turned the group inland, he added, “My part of the country. The locals called her ‘a susceptible Yankee.’”

  He stopped at an open gate in a low stone wall. The wall of a cemetery, Beverly saw when she caught up.

  "This is a great place to take pictures during the daytime,” the guide said. “The live oaks are huge, and the Spanish moss may be the best on the island."

  It was impressive enough right then to Beverly. The moonlight was giving the long tendrils of moss a metallic sheen, making them look like tangles of Christmas tinsel.

  She shook herself, thinking, “I'll be hearing ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ any minute."

  The others were already inside the wall, and Hodge was lecturing again.

  "This headstone is one of the oldest in the cemetery. It belongs to a young woman who died in 1834. She was only twenty-two when a fever, probably malaria, took her. In daylight, you can just make out her name on the stone. Annabelle. Annabelle happened to be afraid of the dark. After she died, her husband would come here every night and leave a lighted candle on the stone. That went on for twenty years, but even after he died, people passing this place at night would sometimes see a little tongue of flame above the grave."

  Dial reached out to touch the stone and drew her hand back quickly. “I felt wax."

  Hodge said, “But not ghostly wax. In the last few years, it's become a local tradition to leave a candle for Annabelle. I've done it myself."

  The next scheduled stop was the former site of an old slave cabin and a multiple homicide, but Philip's patience finally gave out.

  "Look,” he said, “the mosquitoes are eating me alive. Could we just cut to the McPherson carriage house?"

  "Excuse me?” Hodge said.

  "We're interested in any ghost connected with the McPherson property."

  "Especially any with excessive compulsive disorder,” Dial said.

  Beverly explained. “That's where we're staying this week."

  "I'm sorry, but I don't know of any hauntings there. That's the old place on Rhett Street, right?"

  "Nothing at all?” Philip demanded, as though he'd been told that every tee time at his club had been taken. “The woman who sold us the tickets assured us that the house was on the tour."

  He looked for confirmation to Beverly, who said, “Actually, I forgot to ask."

  "Have you folks seen something there?"

  "No,” Philip said quickly. “We're just curious."

  "I could make some inquiries."

  "Of whom?” the lawyer asked.

  "Mama Beacon. She lives over in Harmony. That's the district the freed slaves settled. Mama Beacon's the best source for island history. Especially the kind of history that people are afraid to write down."

  "Could you take me to see her?” Philip asked.

  "Sure, I guess. Just you?"

  "I'll go too,” Beverly said.

  She was still wondering why she'd volunteered the next day as she crouched on the backseat of the tour guide's small Ford. Hodge was filling the short drive with personal history, and Beverly was leaning forward to counterbalance Philip's obvious indifference. So far, she'd learned that Hodge was related through his mother to some of the original settlers of Strachan, the Hodges, that he'd vacationed on the island with his family as a boy, that he taught history at Georgia Tech, and that he spent his summers leading tours, kayak tours during the day and ghost walks at night.

  The final approach to Harmony took them past the golf course, where the others now played without them, and several neighborhoods with gated entrances, some of which advertised available lots.

  Hodge sai
d, “The development's finally gotten this far north. Harmony itself is being cut up. Some of the locals wanted the whole district put on the historic register, but too many of the others wanted to sell out. It may be better this way. If you preserve the district and change everything around it, Harmony becomes a museum with living exhibits, a place yuppies from the Midwest ride through on their rented bicycles."

  "No offense taken,” Philip said.

  They turned onto a street that lacked a gate or a stone sign or expensive landscaping. Beverly craned her neck to gaze up at the live oaks, bigger even than the specimens in the cemetery. Some graced the lawns of new homes and others sheltered little frame houses built on pilings of brick. Hodge pulled up in front of one of these. It had a hand-lettered sign in the yard that read, “Don't ask, won't sell."

  They climbed out, Hodge clutching a small object whose bottle shape wasn't disguised by the brown paper sack wrapped tightly around it. “A little present,” he said.

  "Bourbon?” Philip asked.

  "Catalina dressing. Mama B puts it on everything, even corn on the cob."

  That odd habit hadn't made Mama Beacon overweight, Beverly saw a moment later when a small, spare woman emerged from the house. The three visitors were waiting near a concrete picnic table that stood half sunken in the mossy front yard, Hodge having explained that the historian seldom permitted strangers inside her house.

  Their hostess greeted them with a bow of her grizzled head and then smiled broadly when handed the salad dressing. “You're a good boy, Hodge,” she said. “You always remember."

  The guide introduced the Sibleys, and Mama Beacon frowned and shook her head. “Husband and wife?” she asked doubtfully.

  For the time being, Beverly thought.

  Hodge, who seemed to Beverly more taken aback by the question than Philip, hurriedly explained their errand.

  "Sit down, young people, sit down,” the old woman said. “You here by me,” she added to Philip. “You're the one with the questions."

  That left Beverly and Hodge together on the opposite side of the table, the arrangement made intimate by the small size of the fixed bench.

  "Spirits at the McPherson place? That's very likely. It was the old Medley plantation once, of course."

  "Medley's Hundred,” said Beverly, who'd encountered the name in the old typescript she'd found.

  "That's right. Many cruel and horrible things happened there."

  "Anything later than that?” Philip asked. “Something to do with the carriage house?"

  "One thing. A murder, though the law didn't call it that. It happened before I was born, but I remember hearing whispers of it when I was a little girl. A woman was shot there, a rich woman from the North. She and her husband were kin of the McPhersons, down for the winter. Her husband had brought his mistress with him, too, had put her up at the old Medley House Hotel that used to stand where the playground is now. You know the spot, Hodge."

  "Yes,” he said.

  "To get her own back, the wife took up with one of the McPherson grooms. The head groom, I think. Her husband found her in the groom's bed and killed her. Shot her dead."

  "But not the groom?” Beverly asked.

  "Only wounded him. He didn't testify at the inquest, though. Old man McPherson had him shipped north. The husband was never brought to trial, never made to pay for his crimes, the betrayal or the murder."

  Beverly thought that Philip had looked uncomfortable during the discussion of mistresses, but the ending of the story brought back his smile.

  "The husband was never punished,” he said, “and the wife never found peace. Her spirit's still there.” He reached for his wallet. “I'd like to give you something."

  "Good of you,” Mama Beacon said, rising. “I'll take a minute alone with your pretty wife."

  Taking Beverly by the hand, she led her inside the house. The front room was very clean and very spare, with nothing occult, no crystal balls or skulls or even cats. The place reminded Beverly of the Indiana farmhouse where her great grandmother had cooked wonderful things on a wood-burning stove.

  "Is everything right with you, child?” Mama Beacon asked.

  "Yes,” Beverly said. And then, “No. I'm not sure."

  "It's hard to be sure sometimes. And sometimes, hard when you are sure. I want to give you something. Don't think it foolish."

  She opened a cupboard and took out a tiny calico sack tied tightly with twine.

  "What is it?” Beverly asked.

  "A love potion, you might say. Dissolves in water. Has no taste. For you to use when you're sure. Very sure."

  At the front door, the old woman called out her good-byes to Hodge and Philip. To Beverly, she whispered, “Choose well."

  Beverly thought of those parting words on the drive back to Rhett Street, during an awkward but prolonged handshake with Hodge, and while sitting poolside listening to Heather and Dial recount their golf round shot by shot. What had Mama Beacon meant by “choose well?” What was she to choose between? Winning her husband back or not? Or using the potion on Philip or on someone else?

  She had absolutely no expectations regarding the powder, tasteless in more ways than one to her mind. She might have been suggestible in moonlit cemeteries, but not in broad daylight, feet from a glittering pool. But she was sure that the potion had symbolic power, that using it or not using it would constitute a decision on her part, the crossing of a line that couldn't be uncrossed. That was all Mama Beacon had hoped to accomplish by giving her the potion, Beverly told herself. The old woman wanted her to make a decision. Act to save her marriage or give it up and move on.

  That structure of rational thought collapsed when Hodge Parish interrupted the group's after-dinner drinking. He was without his ball cap for once, and his silk shirt and dark shorts were carefully pressed. Philip greeted him like an old friend and offered to show him the haunted bedroom, taking him up there before Beverly had a chance to remove her bathing suit from its hook by the bathroom door. After the tour, Philip offered Hodge a beer. The guide asked instead for a glass of water.

  As Beverly hurried to get it, she reached into the pocket of her shorts and fingered the calico pouch. Then she withdrew her hand as though something had bitten it. She filled a glass with plain tap water and hurried it back to their guest.

  Later, she decided that her failure to act constituted the secret judgment of her heart, and later still, when she went up to bed and saw her husband's glass of water on the nightstand, she felt she should make the thing official. She first checked the bathroom door and heard Philip splashing in the sink. Then she poured the magic powder into his glass. There was only a pinch of it, and it disappeared immediately.

  Beverly disappeared next, shutting herself in the sitting room and searching the history of the property for a mention of a murder in the carriage house. There wasn't one, of course. It wasn't the sort of thing one would include in bedtime reading for tourists. But Beverly considered another possibility. The murder story might have been the invention of the very intuitive Mama Beacon, a cautionary tale on the dangers of paying back an unsatisfactory husband. Beverly thought of Hodge Parish again, thought of the plain water she'd served him, sighed, and went to bed.

  Early the next morning, she got out of bed without disturbing Philip and went for a walk on the beach. She went though she knew that, according to the lore of love potions, Philip would fall madly in love with the first person he saw. It was daylight again, and she was again less indulgent with herself and with fantastic ideas. And she was sad. Her heart had reached a final judgment during the long night, and it wasn't the secret one she'd earlier suspected. She had decided not to save her marriage. Let Philip fall in love with someone, anyone, else. Heather, perhaps. That would serve Nelson Pierce right. Or let him leave her for the unknown woman in Indiana. And good luck to them.

  Though she stretched her walk as long as the disappearing beach would permit, the house was still quiet when she returned. She slowly climbed
the stairs to the master suite, intending to tell Philip of her decision.

  He was still in bed. When she saw the empty glass on the nightstand, she felt a moment's impulse to let him sleep. Instead, she called his name and touched his arm. Its skin was very cold. She shook him, felt for a pulse, and screamed for help.

  * * * *

  Beverly returned twice to Strachan Island. The first time was for her husband's cursory inquest, so cursory that it reminded her of Hodge's remark about a long-dead lighthouse keeper: “The death of a man like that isn't looked into too deeply.” The coroner, whose last name happened to be Hodge, ruled Philip Sibley's death a natural one, from heart failure. He consoled the widow afterward.

  "The arteries of his heart were pretty well fatted up,” said Dr. Hodge, who fit that description himself. “Like the arteries of a lot of men his age, I'm afraid. He'd never had any problems before?"

  "None,” Beverly said. It was obvious to her that the doctor wanted to ask her something else. She decided to take the same line with him that she'd earlier taken with the police: volunteer nothing, lie about nothing. In the first category she'd filed Mama Beacon's love potion.

  "About this ghost,” Dr. Hodge said.

  Ghosts again, Beverly thought. Philip's last obsession was common knowledge, having been mentioned to the police by a nearly hysterical Heather.

  "It's awfully intriguing. That story Mama Beacon told you about a murder in the old days, as far as I can learn, was pure moonshine. But your late husband may have believed it, did believe it, from what you and the others said. So he thought he was sleeping in a room haunted by a woman who'd have good reason to hate any man, especially a married man. Then if a board creaked that last night or the wind moaned, who knows what his heart would have done? Tried to claw its way out of his rib cage, maybe, if you'll pardon the image."