The Hollybrook Witches

Copyright © 2023 by Richard Gerald

I want to thank Randy for hosting this March 17th event and for inviting me once again. I know it has been a while since I contributed, but I've been working on a novel, and events in my personal life have taken more time. Please feel free to write to me with your comments. I will try to respond. I don't always get to read the public comments.

Darkness is all around me. I'm walking through a great forest on a narrow, treacherous lane. Large trees tightly surround me on all sides. I'm going home, but I can feel sinister specters lurking behind the trees, waiting for me to step off the path. There is no moon to guide me, but I know my way. I've walked this lane hundreds of times.

I come to the meadow. It is lit by a silver-gray light. I look up; the sky is covered by a dense blanket of stars. It is their light I see on the meadow.

Suddenly a figure appears, running. As she comes close, I can see it is a young woman, almost a girl. She is hidden by a long, hooded cloak.

When she pulls back her hood, she reveals her hair. It is black as a raven's wing, darker even than the night. Her oval face holds two perfect green eyes, wide in fright. They blaze like the reflection of fire over ice. I know her.

"Edward," she pleads, "help me, they're coming. Please, Edward, I'm the last of the witches—they're coming!"

I nod and go to put my arm around her. There is a blinding flash of brilliant light.

***

My wife, Lucy, has thrown back the bedroom drapes. The morning sun is all the more brilliant from its reflection off the fresh snow. The flakes began to fall before midnight. By morning, we had a foot of accumulation from the late winter storm.

"Oh! Please," I groused.

"No lying about," she commanded. "Remember, I'm leaving on my Miami trip today."

She was looking out the window at the accumulated snow, but then she turned and saw me.

"Oh! You're shaking."

I was lying in the bed, covers kicked off. The room was chilly, but I could feel the bedsheet damp from my sweat.

"That nightmare again?" she queried.

"Yeah, but it went further this time. She spoke to me."

"Oh, what did the raven-haired woman have to say?"

"I can't quite remember. Something about witches."

I'd had these nightmares for about a year, since we built our new house on the property along Osborn Road that I inherited from my family.

"Figures. It's a nightmare, witches and goblins. But you must get up because I need to get to the office. You need to clear the driveway."

I had my work cut out for me. Fortunately, my wife's Christmas present was a new supercharged snowblower. When I finished cutting us a path to the road, I went down the drainage channel until I reached the walkway to ensure Esmeralda Walcott had a way out if she needed it.

Esmeralda lives across the street from us in what is the oldest house in Hollybrook. It's called Blackthorn Cottage. This is a misnamed ten-thousand-square-foot structure. Her house was built over centuries by adding one room after another as needed.

The land I inherited from my family stops right at Esmeralda's property line. We built our modern house by the old woods my wife, Lucy, fell in love with, right off the lane to avoid the expense of putting in a new road.

It places our modern structure a little over a hundred feet from the front door of Esmeralda's sprawling home.

As my snowplow engine sputtered to a stop, Esmeralda opened her door.

"Very kind of you, Edward," she said.

"The least a neighbor can do," I replied.

Osborn Road is off the grid of Hollybrook Township. It's six miles to the town center, and the road has just a handful of houses. Fortuitously, our house and Esmeralda's are just a few hundred feet up a little street, right where Osborn joins the county highway. The county plows had been working all night. My wife would have no trouble getting to her office and then to Logan Airport in Boston.

"Come in for some hot chocolate," Esmerelda invited.

I took up her invitation, as it would be impolite to refuse. Esmeralda is a woman of considerable age. I have lived in Hollybrook all my life except for my years at school. Even as a young boy, I remember Esmeralda as an old woman. She is a permanent part of the landscape of Hollybrook. Her house reflects her heritage. At its center is an old saltbox design telescoped out on all sides until the original one-room dwelling is now the largest on Osborn Road.

The center of the house is one big, square room with a massive hearth against the back wall. It is a modest room of rough-hewn pine board with a ceiling of round, bare beams. Its modest furnishings would now be deemed valuable antiques.

However, it is the fireplace that dominates the room. Tall and wide enough for several people to walk into at once. It is made from brilliant, black stone and has hand carvings of a quality no longer seen in our automated world. One particular motif of an ouroboros (a snake eating its own tail) is bracketed by two feathery wings with an infant in a fetal position in the center of the circle.

Legend has it that my family, the Goodsons, lived in Blackthorn Cottage in colonial times, all in this one room. However, Esmeralda has dwelt here as long as anyone can remember. The center room is a great vestibule from which the house branches out.

Esmeralda led me to the little sunroom on the far left. It is the smallest and most modern room in the house. Its large, double glass doors connect to Esmeralda's greenhouse. A bit of spring held under glass in the snowy winter.

Esmeralda brought cocoa and biscuits on a tray, which she set on a small table between two wicker chairs.

"Edward, please come and sit with me and gab a while," she invited.

"Okay, but I can't stay long. Lucy is off to Miami today on business."

"Don't worry, I won't keep you. Just long enough to get you warm."

She said this with a little mischievous tone in her voice. She always called me Edward, not Ed or Eddy, and I always said Esmeralda, not Esse or Rela, as most of the town referred to her. She was known for her sense of humor and her open-minded nature. The local clergy was not fond of her views on women's rights and female sexuality. She was the women's health center's principal patron and financial supporter of our local family planning center.

"I must say, the plants in your greenhouse are a welcome sight on this snowy day," I complimented.

"Yes, they are pleasant, but they have been a chore to keep blooming. Still, we need them, don't we," she said and paused, looking into the compact glass structure. "My oleander has been particularly difficult this winter, but the mandrake, henbane, mint, and sage are doing fine."

"It was kind of the Larch brothers to build the greenhouse for you," I reflected.

The Larch twins, Leonard and Chax, were two of the ugliest fellows in Hollybrook, but the ladies seemed to have an affinity for them. They were particularly friendly and helpful to Esmeralda.

"Oh, you know, it's kind of a barter sort of thing I have with them," Esmeralda said with a wink. "But tell me about your family. Lucy is traveling? Poor dear can't seem to stay home. I hope everything is all right with you two."

I assured her everything was fine in our house and kept my doubts to myself. You could not ask for a better wife than Lucy Richards, who was these last seven years Mrs. Edward Goodson. It wasn't just that my Lucy was a beautiful woman (far more lovely than an average guy like me should expect). She was a loving and attentive mother and wife—when she was home. She ran her own business, the financial management firm of Peabody, Goodson, and Meyers, also known as PGM Partners. Lucy was the managing partner now that Silas Peabody had retired.

"Lucy does travel quite a bit," Esmeralda interjected into my thoughts.

"Yes, but it's the nature of the business. They manage small firm benefit plans all along the East Coast. Meeting with the business clients and the beneficiaries involves a lot of travel," I said, suppressing the image in my mind of what I had found in her travel case before her last trip.

"Well, I hope she's not neglecting you," Esmeralda said.

"No, you can't accuse Lucy of that. She keeps all the balls in the air and drops none."

A truer statement I never made. I could not claim neglect. When we first wed, my wife was a tiger in the bedroom, and except for the period before she gave birth to our twin daughters and the two years following, she remained the most active bedmate a man could desire.

"Well, I don't see how a woman keeps house and works full-time myself," Esmeralda wondered.

Esmeralda's thoughts had been in the kitchen while mine were in the bedroom, but now I skillfully deflected her question because Lucy was the principal earner, and I kept the house and did most of the childcare.

Our girls were my greatest burden and most profound joy. As children go, I suspect they fall into the category of difficult. Certainly, my wife could not cope with them, but I could command instant obedience. This only helped if I was in the immediate vicinity. It kept me homebound and appreciative of my flexible employment.

Turning back to Esmeralda, I laughed and said, "You know we don't keep a perfect house. That would be hard with two five-year-olds in the building."

"Nonsense, yours is a beautiful home, and no one expects perfection, just a good effort," she protested, adding, "Living in this old place, I can't be judging others."

Now it was my turn to protest. "Esmeralda, you know very well that yours is the most admired home in Hollybrook."

"Certainly the oldest still standing," she said, "but not the most admired. Only this room is truly comfortable and modern. I built it for someone who liked light and nature," she said in a low and wistful tone. Often, Esmeralda seemed to drift off to another time and place.

I didn't press her on who she had built the room for. I had always suspected that Esmeralda was holding a torch for a lost love. As my mother used to say, "At an advanced age, loss is your most faithful companion."

"Well, I must be going," I declared. "I have a lot to do today."

"Yes, you're a very busy, hardworking man. But then, you always were."

***

Arriving home, I found my two daughters running around ecstatic. There would be no school on this snowy day, and my two little devils meant to take full advantage of it. They had already sent our cat, Beelzebub, into hiding. I would need to coax it out for its morning feed.

The cat had appeared about three years ago, around when the shape of my marriage and life changed. After the birth of our daughters, Lucy went into a prolonged funk, but then she returned to work. It was at my instigation. It made sense. I was then a part-time instructor at the local community college. We could use the money, and I had the time to provide the childcare and patience with our daughters that my wife lacked.

Lucy's return to work was a good move for us, and not just financially. A few months after she started working, our sex life came roaring back. It was almost overnight. It was zero to one-eighty—nothing to nearly having to fight her off. I've heard other husbands complain about having to press for sex. In my case, I need the occasional day off. Lucy's traveling gives me a respite. Or it did until the doubt started.

At first, it was no more than an uneasy feeling that I was missing something. Perhaps it was only distrust in good fortune. We New Englanders expect hard times. We're suspicious of an easy life and fully expect disaster around the next corner and the devil lurking in the shadows.

I had no reason to suspect my wife. Her traveling had increased over time, but so had the expansion of her business. Her work had always involved some travel. Her remaining partner, Todd Meyers, was a wheelchair-bound accountant with an affinity for high tech. Lucy found new clients and kept the old ones happy. Since the retirement of Silas Peabody, she has managed investment strategies.

Despite her busy work schedule, she had been there for me. She was never irritable or short with me. I thought her hard on the girls, but then she tried to be the disciplinarian. Dad, the soft touch, fared better with the obstinate twins. There were times when I saw my wife tired and worn-out, but she always had a smile and a hug for me.

Returning late from a long day at the office, she would help me get our girls to bed, denying their entreaties for just one more bedtime story.

"Time for young ladies to go to bed," she would scold, "and old ones as well," she would add with a wink.

Alone she would ask, "How's the best man in New England?" She would press her tired body into mine for a hug.

"What can his overworked wife do for him?" she would ask with a wicked smile and a rub of her leg against my crotch.

Off to bed we would go, although I knew she wanted nothing more than sleep. Her slumber would wait until she had disposed of the arousal she had so easily instilled in me.

No, my life was perfect; so it was no wonder my puritan soul was suspicious. It might have gone on as only vague apprehension, but the devil came to tempt me with a lost bag.

It had been six weeks before that snowy morning, during my midwinter break. I was now a full-time professor on a tenure track. I was beginning to relax and feel secure. My wife had traveled to New York over New Year's. It was a longer-than-normal trip coming right after Christmas. She had taken the New York-Boston air shuttle out of Logan Airport because of the dismal Amtrak train service between the two cities.

Lucy typically packed a carryon, but the longer trip required a larger bag. She took my rarely used garment bag.

Lucy arrived home without her bag. An overzealous boarding agent in New York required the bag to be checked. Two days later, home alone since my daughters were at school and Lucy was back at her Medford office, I answered the door late morning for a private delivery firm returning the lost bag on behalf of Delta Airlines.

I hung the bag on the door of the hall closet. There was no reason I should look in that bag. It would invade my wife's privacy, and for no reason. Surely it should contain only dirty clothing in need of a wash, or a business suit needing a dry cleaner.

During the morning, I went past the bag several times and began debating with myself.

It was my bag, wasn't it?

Lucy borrowed my bag. Why shouldn't I look in it?

But it wouldn't be right.

Finally, I thought, If I find nothing, which I will, it will ease my mind.

It was almost time for the girls to be dropped off by the school bus when I gave in to my doubt and searched the bag. Laying it on the dining room table, I zipped open the main compartment. If I expected a business suit, I was mistaken. There was a green evening dress that looked expensive, and notably, I had never seen it before.

I told myself the dress proved nothing. So there was a holiday party for the business associates. She was gone over New Year's, after all. But—she had said nothing about a party, or even an evening out.

At the bottom of the bag was a pair of green stilettos that matched the color of the dress. Five-inch heels make a statement; only what was being said? My wife is five foot ten. I'm a little under six feet. She would never wear those shoes while out with me.

I should have stopped there, but I went further, as if some irresistible force was controlling me. Flipping the bag over, I looked at her dirty underwear in the deep back pocket. Yet another surprise—or a series of them. Very expensive and sexy garments of the kind she didn't wear about our house, and finally, deep in the bag, a piece of silvery-white silk. A teddy of a type I had never seen my wife wear; but someone had worn this one. It was stained in the crotch by something. I refused to let myself think what.

I heard a car in the driveway. Someone was coming. I raced to get everything back in the bag. I couldn't reach the closet before I heard the front door open, so I threw the bag over a dining room chair back and rushed into the kitchen.

Lucy came in. I could hear her looking around. First in the hall, then the living room, and finally in the dining room, where she found the bag.

I had grabbed some potatoes from the cupboard and was washing them in the sink as she entered the kitchen.

"My husband is hard at work, I see," she said to my back.

I was trying to process what I had found. I knew I had to keep that secret for the moment. I didn't have anything definitive, and my snooping was wrong. However, my doubt was turning into belief.

I had to look her in the face. I turned and said, "You're home early. Is something wrong?"

"Oh no, I was just missing my husband," she said, coming to hug me.

Then, oh so casually, she added, "I see they found the missing bag." She said this as if it was a surprise—and then it hit me. The delivery firm notifies the airline when they return a bag. The airline then notifies the passenger. When Lucy got that notice, she raced home. Yet more proof of guilt. But I said nothing.

"I do miss you so very much when I'm gone," she said as she gave me a deep and passionate kiss. I knew where she was going, but wasn't sure I could go there with her just then. Thinking quickly, I said, "Your daughters will be home from school any minute."

Mercifully, as I finished speaking, the school bus horn sounded, and I extricated myself to collect our girls.

That was six weeks ago, and Lucy is off to Miami today. However, now I have a plan, and things will be settled one way or the other in the next few days.

***

Doubt was eating at me like a cancer. I had suspicion, but no actual proof. Certainly, my wife was not being totally honest with me. Still, it is a long jump from her having the wrong type of clothing in her bag to an allegation of infidelity. For such a charge, you need proof.

I told myself that not knowing was worse than knowing the hard truth. I needed to do something. I decided to find out what was going on when she was away. Her next trip was to Miami. It is a big city full of diverse and transient people. It's easier to hide in a generic crowd of strangers. I decided my best alternative was to follow her to Miami and see if I could catch a glimpse of what, if anything, she was up to.

I had nearly six weeks to plan between Lucy's trips. I decided to follow her one step behind on the Miami trip and began planning for that. This involved some complications. Lucy, the professional financial manager, handled all our finances. I had access to the bank accounts and credit cards, but they were all joint accounts. I couldn't travel without her knowing.

My first step was to set up secret accounts in my name only. I planned to follow her as much as possible while she was in Miami. This would not be easy, and I might be discovered before I learned anything. However, I needed to do something, if only to mitigate my doubt.

I would need time off from work and a plausible excuse for leaving the girls with their grandparents, Lucy's parents. I planned to be gone only three days from the day after Lucy left to the day before she returned from her Monday-to-Friday trip. Work was no problem. I had a great department chair, and we worked out shifting some of my classes and having several covered by him.

It all came together when I discovered that Boston College was hiring for a position in my area of expertise, post-Civil War History from Reconstruction to the Spanish-American War. I had no chance at the job, but since I was a full professor, they would certainly give me an interview for form's sake. Lucy knew little about the academic profession. I felt confident I could spin the interview process into a three-day affair. When I told her of the job opening, she was enthusiastic.