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| Eliza Goode in her cabin |
A morning fog chocked the sound of the waves washing on the small beach of the small satellite island on the southern edge of Welshport Island.
On Goode Island, as the locals called it; named after its one inhabitant: Mary Goode’s mysterious hermit mother Eliza was pacing back and forth in her small cottage causing a creaking back and forth sound on the old wooden panels that covered her floor. The warmth of a fire beamed a blanket of air that circulated within the damp cool of the morning light inside the house.
Eliza was boiling a tea of chamomile and jasmine to calm anxious body her but had yet to sip any. She only stared down at the steaming mug; her mind in so many places at once.
She was worried about what had happened at the wedding. She was worried about what her own book of spells and hexes was telling her. She was worried about the future, and most of all how her daughter Mary was the cause of so much of the tension the universe was sending, tangled up in the web of Jacob Lord's creation.
Then suddenly a frantic knock on her door. Eliza jumped in her skin and turned violently towards the noise spilling her tea in the process. The scolding hot tea burned her hand, the skin began to form a welt but then Eliza covered it with her free hand and when she removed it… the welt was gone.
Eliza’s breathing shallowed as her hand magically healed and warn and hallow face tensed as the knocking turned to pounding.
“Mother!!!!” Mary’s voice screamed from the other side.
Eliza broke from her frozen stance and dashed to the wooden door lifting the long beam lock that dropped across it and pulled open the door where her daughter was standing completely a mess from a long night hiding in the Western Woods of Welshport Island from authorities who were chasing her with dogs all through the night once she vanished from Tirymôr house.
“I’ve done something horrible, and—and, dear god mother, what I saw!! What I saw, you will never believe me!” Mary screamed hysterically. “Charlotte! I saw Charlotte, I think it was Charlotte that I saw! I don’t know what I saw!” Mary said bursting into her mother’s home not making any sense.
“Mary! Mary! Calm down, just calm down, I was sensing something awful had happened. The energy in the air warmed me. I could feel it, just calm yourself and tell me what’s happened? Are you hurt? Is Charlotte ok?” Eliza asked sitting her frantic daughter down.
“It was a mistake. I don’t know why I believed him. He always does this, he draws me in with promises of our daughter and makes me do stupid things mother. Stupid things that I end up regretting and what I have done now is unforgivable.” Mary half explained.
“What? What did you do? And who drew you in? What happened!?!” The hermit woman of Goode island said demanding more information.
“Jacob. He told me he’d finally give me more access to our daughter if I….” Mary paused, it was as if her lips and tongues could not form the words of the horror she unleashed on Tirymôr house at the wedding.
But Eliza was no fool. She could sense something awful and she could tell, in Mary’s disheveled appearance that she had been in hiding all night from something, something horrible.
“Please tell me no one got hurt because of something Jacob made you do Mary, please tell me!” Eliza begged hoping the page of her book she saw open to everlasting life was only a coincidence.
“I killed him. I’m so sorry! I .. I must of been out of my mind and he was dangling Charlotte in front of me like a carrot on a stick. I was out of my mind!!!” Mary screamed.
“Oh my god, you killed Jacob??” Eliza asked misunderstanding.
“No… no … he lives. Jacob had me...” Mary paused unable to say what she did.
“Mary, you need to tell me what you did. Speak girl!” Eliza said shaking her distraught daughter.
Mary’s eyes filled with tears as she slowly pulled out Jacob’s revolver from inside a hidden pocket of her dirt and mud stained dress.
Eliza gasped and quickly grabbed the gun rushing it to a drawer in a side table in the kitchen and slammed it shut, her heart racing with panic.
“Jacob had me kill Sebastian Lord at the wedding. Mother. I was supposed to do the same to Evie, his new wife, but I missed. I... I am a murderer!!!” Mary explained breaking down completely and burying her face in her mother’s chest sobbing into the delicate lace.
As the two Goode women discussed the murder, Constable Christian Evans and his friend Filipe Braga who would often act as Deputy, rowed their small boat up to Goode Island’s shore and tied off the rope around a wooden stake carefully making sure it was snug in its slip.
Filipe turned to see the thick wilderness of the tiny island and noticed the Smokey trail in the air from Eliza’s chimney swirling up into the sky.
“How does she live here all alone?” Filipe wondered.
“It’s quiet. It’s just her. No one from mainland Maine or Welshport come out to bother her. It’s almost perfect. I can see the appeal.” Christian said as he tied the knot on the boat’s rope.
“Perfect for hiding people.” Filipe noticed.
“Exactly.” Christian agreed.
The fog began to settle lower on the small island causing the green of the trees to turn gray and cold. Filipe turned to the sea and saw the larger island of Welshport in the distance also dressed in a its foggy cloak only breaking his concentration as a murder of crows began flight from inside forest like a gaggle of banshee screaming into the sky.
“Look.” Filipe said, noticing a small boat tied to a dock just on shore. Christian nodded, they both knew it had to be Mary's boat.
As the two got on to shore they lifted their eyes to the sky and saw a billowing pile of white fluff rising up from a thicket of trees in the distance. “Follow the smoke.” Christian said as he pointed to Eliza’s house. “Mary has got to be there.”
Back in the cottage Eliza tried as best she could to console her daughter Mary, but the young manipulated woman was too far gone. Then, as the tea cooled in their mugs on a small table in the front room, Christian and Filipe knocked on the cabin door. Mary and Eliza jumped.
“Shh.” Eliza said hushing her trembling daughter.
“Eliza Goode! Open the door this is Constable Evans of Welshport. We need to speak with you.” Christian said at the door as Filipe tried to look through the windows that were too obscured by trees and brush.
“Quickly!” Eliza said in a hushed voice as she pulled her daughter over to a large rug in the floor that she pulled up revealed a small secret passage under the cottage. She quietly lifted the passage lid and pulled Mary’s hand leading her down into the hidden bunker. Eliza put her finger to her lips telling Mary to keep quiet, closed the lid replaced the rug and composed herself as Christian’s knocking got louder.
“Constable. What is it?” Eliza asked when she opened the door, fluffing her long grey hair.
“Can we come in?” Christian asked.
Eliza looked over and saw Filipe too.
“I’m a very private person sir. Whatever you need I think we could handle this at the door, please.” Eliza requested crossing her arms.
“We need to come in. We have reason to believe that your daughter Mary is here and we need to talk to her.” Christian asserted.
“Mary? Mary lives on the big island she doesn’t stay here. I haven’t seen in her a very long time. Who’d want to live here now at days?” Eliza lied.
“Can I check to be sure? I’d like to report back to the Lord family that indeed she’s not here.” Christian said.
“The Lord family? What would they have to do with Mary? What is this?”
Christian wasn’t sure if he should tell Eliza what Mary was suspected of doing but it came out anyway. “We think she killed someone, Sebastian Lord.”
“Think?” Eliza asked.
“Well as the law goes madam, innocent until proven guilty, but I saw her with my own eyes.” Christian replied.
Eliza had to play dumb, she gasped and held her chest. She shook her head and even managed to cry one solid tear. Her performance was perfect.
“I’ll need to check.” Christian said again.
“Fine but just you.” She said.
Christian turned to Filipe who nodded back agreeing to wait outside. Christian entered the small home and looked towards the back room. He walked back into the front room where the fire was raging warming both their bodies. He scanned for any sign of Mary all the while she waited under the house as the thuds of Christian’s footsteps pounded in unison with the beating of her terrified heart.
As Christian was about to leave he noticed two mugs of tea on the table. He turned around to look at Eliza who suddenly opened the palm of her hand and blew a dusty substance in his face. She grabbed the mug and hid it, when Christian shook off the dust that was blown into his face, he had this strange feeling coming over him. Like warm water flowing over his whole body.
“Uhhh…” Christian said, unsure what he was about to say.
“Yes?” Eliza prodded hoping the dust she blew worked.
“Uhh……I, I wanted to…. Ms. Goode, If you see Mary please tell her to come back to the big island. It’s for her own good.” Christian said, never noticing he had forgotten about the second mug and the dust that had bewitched him.
Christian took one more look at the front room and then left leaving Eliza breathing heavily, and relieved.
Filipe was surprised when Christian came out of the cottage without Mary in a headlock, he believed Mary was there hiding.
Now free from her secret passage, Mary hugged her mother tightly.
“What do I do? What can I do??” She asked.
“This was a death that was brought on by pure evil and manipulated words, you were coerced my child, and my book warned me of what was to come.” Eliza said reaching for the open book on a back table.
“What do you mean?.” Mary asked.
“Look there…When you threw the book of spells the other day when you were angry at me it fell open on this page. ‘Life Everlasting’. It was a sign, Mary. Something that I was being warned of.” Eliza explained.
“Then…” Mary paused letting it all sink in slowly, “mother are telling me what I think you’re telling me? You can bring back Sebastian with this? Reverse the horror I’ve caused?” Mary asked.
Eliza paused before answering. She knew that the spell in the book was powerful and that there eventually would be consequences for it, for this spell was not meant to bring back human life. But it might work in the right hands.
“I’ll try.” Eliza said.
The older woman went over to a small coop just beyond the kitchen door with two chickens she had roosting. She opened the hutch and removed one of the chickens that wiggled and scratched in her hands.
Mary watched.
Eliza then went to an open area in front of the fire place in the front room and fell to her knees. She reached into the fire with one hand and the chicken tucked under her arm and pulled out charcoal where she proceeded to draw a circle on her wooden floors. She placed Mary’s empty mug of tea that she had hidden from Christian in the center of the draw circle and closed her eyes.
Mary watched as her mother, kneeling in the glowing red and yellow light of the fire began to hum in Latin. The humming grew louder and louder, Eliza then removed the squirming chicken from under her arm and lifted it with both hands over the mug. Then suddenly, with quick motion Eliza turned the chicken on its side and bit it’s head off allowing the blood to flow into the mug like a running stream of red.
Mary gasped in horror, never seeing her mother do such a thing.
A cold wind blew into the cabin as Eliza lifted the chicken’s body and head up into the emptiness of the air and began to chant in Latin again over and over until a wild wind burst through the kitchen window ripping through the shutters and blowing into Eliza’s white hair.
She chanted:
“Vitam eternam. sanguinis et carnis. Redde nunc nobis cum fluxu sanguinis ad vitam.”
Mary began crying, her heart sinking into her stomach with fright.
Eliza, wind in her hair, chanted her Latin spell as chicken blood oozed down her arm. Finally she opened eyes and the wind miraculously stopped.
“It’s done.” She said.
“Mother, what was …” Mary began to ask through a choked voice before being interrupted by her sorceress mother.
“Go. Go to Sebastian’s grave. Quickly. Bring his body back here.” She ordered.
“His body????” Mary asked shocked at the request.
“GO MARY! He will need us now.” Eliza replied in a ferver. But Mary was frozen in her stance. Eliza got up, chicken blood dribbling from her lips and screamed at her daughter “GO!!!!”
Mary turned and ran for the door frantically with her instructions ready to bring back Sebastian’s body to Goode Island as what had just happened quickly filtered into her brain. She knew not what she would find once his grave was open, but now she hoped her mother’s spell worked and prayed all the way to Saint Thomas’ cemetery that Sebastian was alive.
****
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| The Séance & Sabrina’s ghost |
That evening as the boats in Frenchman's Bay all came home to dock after roaming the seas searching for large bounties of tuna through foggy New England seascapes, Rebecca sat in her room with the drapes drawn and her maid Georgina at her side pouring a glass of red wine. The wine swirled in the glass goblet with a golden rim as Rebecca lifted it to smell and savor the fruitiness of the grape that made it.
"They should be here soon ma'am." Georgina said.
Just as the maid lowered the jar of wine, the bedroom door opened and in walked Evie, Jacob and Gaspar.
Evie looked around, her eyes readjusting to the darkness of the room. Gaspar smiled as he stepped aside allowing Jacob and Evie to enter in further. Evie curtsied and Jacob lowed his head to his mother Rebecca who stood up.
"You wanted to see us?" Jacob asked.
"Please come in, all of you." Rebecca said as she moved from her soft chair to one of 4 other chairs that were placed around a circle table with a black velvet cloth covering it. "Please sit." She added.
Evie looked over at Jacob and he shrugged his shoulders. The pair went and sat across from each other, and Rebecca sat across the empty chair that Gaspar would occupy. Then Gaspar lit two candles in the center of the table allowing the dim light to sparkle in their eyes.
"What is this?" Evie asked.
"Since our dear Sebastian's death, I have not been able so sleep. I have not been able to keep food in my stomach and I have not been able to get the image of his body being lowered into that coffin out of my mind. I have trusted so much of my spirituality into understanding that things, awful and good, happen. But not this. Sebastian was stolen from us, and my advisor Gaspar has told me he can contact him." Rebecca explained.
"Contact him?" Evie asked confused. "You don't mean Sebastian?" She added.
"I do." Rebecca said as Jacob looked over at Gaspar surprised she was still taking his phony psychic abilities seriously. The two men continued to conspire against Rebecca who's superstitious ways took over any suspicions and doubts she had of him.
"Mrs. Lord,” Evie began, “I have to unfortunately object to this. My husband's spirit should not be disturbed this way. Even if this were to actually work, I cannot allow it." Evie said standing up.
"Mother really. I have to agree with Evie here. This has gone too far, after all that our family has suffered over the years and especially since Sebastian’s death I think we should finally lay to rest all of this hocus pocus you are so drawn to." Jacob replied annoying his mother.
"All of this 'hocus pocus' has gotten me through some of the darkest moments in my life. It is where I turn when I need guidance and peace and closure. Gaspar understands. He is the one who helps me reach the places I need when I need." Rebecca sternly explained to Jacob who knew Gaspar's psychic abilities were all a farce devised by Jacob to keep his mother's mind occupied while he attempted his many betrayals.
Gaspar turned and looked at Jacob who turned and looked at Gaspar.
"Maybe that is our problem. Maybe we have allowed our matriarch to wade in the waters of the dead instead of staying in the world of living. Perhaps that is why our family has suffered so much grief. When we play with fire mother we get burned, when we play with the dead....we die." Jacob said cryptically.
Rebecca scoffed and rolled her eyes at her son who was attempting to blame Rebecca's superstitious lifestyle on all the horrible things that had happened to the Lord family, but she was as steadfast as anyone could be in her beliefs.
"Honestly Mrs. Lord, I cannot participate in any of this." Evie said changing the subject.
"Evangeline, I am not asking your permission to do this, I might have not been clear. This séance is for our family to find peace within the death of or believed Sebastian. I need this. …You need this. Please stay. " Rebecca said.
Evie took a breath. She could see in Rebecca the need for this, the need to try and see whatever could come from her attempt at reaching their beloved Sebastian no matter how odd or dark it was.
Georgina, nervous from all of the ghostly talk, shook in her shoes as she made eye contact with Gaspar who had only recently almost made her jump from a window to her death as he demonstrated a dangerous session of hypnotherapy on her.
Gaspar remembering this smiled at her grimly and Georgian turned away.
"Mrs. Lord, please... you are an educated woman of great stature here... you cannot really believe that we will some how contact my husband. And if we do, what do we need from the poor soul. I would assume you would want him to Rest In Peace. I just can't do this." Evie said.
"If nothing comes of it, nothing comes of it, Evangeline and if nothing happy we will not speak of this again. However, Gaspar assures me Sebastian will come." Rebecca insisted then turned to Gaspar and coldly said “He owes me for the debacle of the cards on the wedding day.” Rebecca added showing now she did not forget he did not see Sebastian’s death exactly as it happened in his tarot reading.
"It's not like you have to get back to your art books, do you?" Jacob replied sarcastically, showing his acquiescence to his mother's desire.
"Please miss." Gaspar said.
Outnumbered now, Evie looked around the table and could not believe what she was being asked to do. She was a woman who had education and understood the world around her more than people gave her credit for. She came to the island a bride, a woman who's job it was to marry a man because it would help her family back in England but she didn't want to feel as if she were a fool without a brain. The bizarre request to take part in a séance to reach her dead husband just felt ridiculous especially just 3 days since his funeral. But, Rebecca was insistent. She was the matriarch of the family. She wanted this séance.
Evie nodded her head in agreement and sat back down at the table.
"Please, Georgina will you step outside it’s important they only those closest to Sebastian are here in this room." Gaspar asked of Rebecca's maid who looked to her mistress for permission. Rebecca nodded for her to leave and she did so happily.
As they prepared the table on a quick aside Jacob asked Gaspar in a whisper: “How’d you manage her not questioning why you didn’t see Sebastian’s death—specifically?”
“You’re as dense as they say. She believes in me Jacob. All my readings have been vague for a reason. I said something was coming, something awful and low. I had no idea my guess would work so well. Prophecy complete.” Gaspar whispered back smugly before reading into a large black leather bag to pull out a stunning crystal ball to put into the center of the table in between the glowing candles. Gaspar then turned back to the others. “Thank you all! Now let us all join hands and close our eyes."
As all eight of their eyes closed. Rebecca pulled out the lock of hair tied with a ribbon that she had cut from Sebastian's head when he lay in his coffin and clasped it between her hand and Evie. Evie could feel the tickle of the tiny hairs. She cracked eye open and looked at her hand, Rebecca smiled and twisted her hand out from Evie's and showed her the lock.
Evie smiled uncomfortably.
The door to Rebecca's room was left a crack open by Georgina as she left, then it opened slowly. A little face appeared in the shadow of the open door; a little face that had blue eyes and bright blond hair. The face of Charlotte who peeked in as the séance began.
The candles’ flame began to flicker as a light coldness blew into the room. The minuscule gust of ice air lifted the tiny hairs in Evie’s neck. It new against Rebecca’s eyelashes and cooled Jacob’s lips. Gaspar’s crystal ball began to reflect the light of the cables and he spoke: "To the world under us and the world below us. To the spirits among us who speak to me only in my mind's eyes and where the future is known and the past forgotten, I ask you to bring fourth the spirit of Sebastian Lord."
As Gaspar spoke in his fake French accent, Charlotte slowly made her way around the bedroom and hid by the bed.
The flame of the candle in the center of the table began to sway in a nonexistent breeze. Rebecca opened her eyes. "CLOSE your eyes Madame!!" Gaspar barked.
Evie felt uncomfortable. Her heart was beating faster and faster as suddenly a cold wind of air brushed against the back of her neck that reached around and blew out the candle.
"Sebastian Lord, are you there? Please...please let us see or hear you or know you are with us." Gaspar asked.
"I feel him, I feel something!" Rebecca said, feeling the same wind Evie did.
But the ghost in the room was not Sebastian. It was the ghost of Sabrina Lord, the drowned mother of Sebastian that was dwelling in the body of little Charlotte. She was in the room, she was the cold air, she was the unseen spirit that they were all feeling. She was there to show herself in a way that they had never expected.
The sprit of Sabrina, now out of Charlotte, floated like a blue light with Sabrina's face over the floor. Everyone's eyes were closed but the cold air was in the room, so cold, they could see their own breaths.
"Cold." Jacob said, feeling a bit unsettled.
"I want to stop! I WANT TO STOP!" Evie yelled unable to release her hands from Rebecca and Gaspar's equal grasp.
Circling the group, Sabrina's glowing body created a vortex of cold air. her aura was cooling their bodies like an ice cold wind of the Atlantic that was meant to freeze all it touched. A sound of a ghosty wind began to be audible, they could her it in their ears, feel the cool air on their skin. It was like they were outside preforming the séance.
Gaspar was frightened, he had no idea it was going to happen, at most he thought he'd bump the table with his knee but to his surprise something ghostly did appear, but on its own not with his fake powers.
"Sebastian, tell us, tell us if you're well, tell us if you need us to do something and how we should avenge your death. Tell us, please, show us in our minds...." Gaspar said as he began to speak to the ghost.
But the ghost, Sabrina, was not amused. She was furious with the man who murdered her, furious with the woman who turned a blind eye to him and furious with the man mocking the dead. With a giant gust of power Sabrina swirled one more time around the group, cowering in the corner Charlotte watched and then when she knew it would happen she put her head in her lap and Sabrina's ghost drove itself into Gaspar knocking him out of his chair and clear across the room and entered Charlotte again.
The table flipped the candle hit the floor and went out, allowing the melting wax pool and quickly harden in the cold air.
Rebecca screamed, Evie gasped in dear and quickly stood up, Jacob too, jumped out of his chair and rushed over to the disoriented Gaspar.
Charlotte, now possessed again by Sabrina quickly left the room before being noticed.
"He was here. He was here!!!" Rebecca said, lighting the room with two lames in the corner.
"It can't be. Its impossible." Evie said, standing back from the group as if they had some kind of disease that she wanted to know part of.
"You witnessed it yourself my dear, Sebastian was here." Rebecca replied.
"But what was his message? What the devil did he want us to know with that??" Jacob wondered, as he helped Gaspar up from the ground.
"He is angry. He is wanting to cause any kind of chaos because of his own death. That is the way of the spirit world. He will lash out until he can finally come to terms with his murder." Gaspar said.
"I want nothing to do with this. I'm going back to my room." Evie said before being pulled by the hand by Rebecca.
"My darling you must come to terms with this death just as we have. This will not be the last time we try to contact him, and we need you to be here when we try again. You must." Rebecca said.
"Why can't you see that this is all just... it's not right. Whatever happened here whatever we felt was not Sebastian. It couldn't be. He...he wouldn't do this, hurt one of us. I just can't believe that." Evie said. The logical side of her brain trying to make sense of what she felt. The sensation of coldness and the sensation that indeed there was something there with them, something from a different world that her own brain and her own senses seemed to try ad betray her beliefs in logic and common sense.
Rebecca could see how disturbed by the whole event Evie was. It was understandable after all, it was her first séance. She grabbed her hand, and changed from holding it tight to keep her in the room to bundling it in between her two hands to comfort her.
"Clearly he is trying to tell us we've done something wrong. We need to atone. We need to make it right for our dear boy." Rebecca said.
"I don't understand, I don't know what I felt. I just...I want to go back to my room now." Evie demanded.
"Ill walk you back to your room." Rebecca said, realizing perhaps it was too much too soon.
Now alone, Gaspar straightened his coat and looked at Jacob dead in the eyes. His face was pale and his skin clammy and slick with sweat.
"How did that happen?" Gaspar asked, again switching to his natural British accent from his fake French one.
"What do you mean?" Jacob wondered.
"Do you think I could shoot myself out of my chair and across the bloody room? Jacob, what was that? That wasn't me!" Gaspar shouted.
Jacob stood there in silence but said not a single word while realizing there was something truly dark that came into that room for that split second. "Help me straighten up." Jacob said leaving Gaspar shaking in his shoes and looking around wondering just what in the world had they opened.
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| Gaspar’s Crystal ball |
****
A deep white fog roamed the streets of the village like a lonely sailor searching for his lost love. The gas lamps of the town glowed in with halos around their glass lampshades while sleepless seagulls swirled above a full shipyard and marina.
Through the cobblestone streets passed the various late night pubs and bars was a small cottage filled with quaint furniture where Celeste and Filipe lived. It was late and Celeste sat back in a chair after a day of baking. She sipped from a glass of brandy just as Filipe stepped into the room after a warm bath. His golden skin still glistening in the light of the room.
He walked over to her, and knelt down, kissing her lips as she smiled. She kissed him back.
"What was that for?" Celeste asked.
"It's been a long day." Filipe said as he put on a fresh pair of clothes.
"You're getting dressed?" Celeste then asked confused that he wasn't putting on his regular night clothes but day clothes.
"I went with Christian to Goode Island today to search for Mary. Her mother kind of gave us the run-around, she seemed off to me but Christian believes Mary isn't really there." Filipe explained buttoning up his white shirt and attaching his suspenders to his trousers.
"So? Where do you think she is?" Celeste asked after another sip.
"Goode Island." he replied.
"I'm confused, you just said that Eliza told you she wasn't there. Has anyone checked her apartment above the flower shop here in town?" Celeste wondered.
"We did. But Eliza wasn't telling the truth. There's no way in hell Mary Goode is here on the big island. We've searched everywhere and we haven't found one bit of evidence that she's here. Her mother is hiding her." Filipe said.
"I still don't understand why you're getting dressed." Celeste stated.
"Sebastian used to be one of my best friends. We were so close. I can't just let his murderer go free like this. I'm going back to Goode Island and I'm going to find Mary and bring her to Christian." Filipe said as he tied his last shoe.
"Filipe! Are you going mad? You can't go there alone. We all have heard of the strange things that have happened out there. Eliza is....there is something strange about that woman. You saw her, you saw where she lives. Tell me you didn't feel a bit off when setting foot on her little haven?! It's too dangerous." Celeste shouted.
"I'm going, and Ill be fine. Trust me, please." Filipe said holding his partner by the shoulders as he leaned down and kissed her again.
Celeste warmed instantly to his touch but quickly cooled once his lips lifted hers.
"I can't just sit here and let you put yourself in danger like this. I'm going with you." She said as she reached for her coat that was hanging on a coat hanger near the door.
"Absolutely not. Stay here. I need you to be here and let Christian know where Ive gone if something does happen to me, do you understand?" He asked.
Celeste replaced her coat. She knew he was right but she still didn't feel good about it.
He kissed her again, grabbed his hat, gloves and coat and left.
Filipe rowed his small boat to shore on Goode island through calm ocean waters that kissed the bow and stern softly. There was a slow current now that all the other larger ships had docked near the mainland. His was the only boat now at sea guided by the large light house over at Lighthouse Point.
With each flash of light from the southern tip of land off the big island of Welshport, Filipe made his way to Goode Island, just as if his journey was second nature to him. Upon his arrival, Filipe tied the boat to the same stump he and Christian had earlier that day and slowly made his way from the beach to the woods that would direct him to The Goode family cottage.
The woods that surrounded the small and only house on the island were thick and wild. Filipe could barley see where he was going but the light of the lighthouse from Welshport could still flash his way about a half way into the forest. He carefully took steps through the thick brush and tried to remember directions to the small house from earlier that day when they used the smoke of the chimney for directions but on this night, there was no smoke.
There were sounds that frightened Filipe. Strange rustles in the leaves and shadows in the branches of the trees. A wolf howled off in the distance as he growled without showing itself. He turned to see only smoke-like fog wafting up from the cool ground of the forest.
Soon, the light of the lighthouse was gone and he could only depends on the dim light of the moon to light his way. And finally, he came to the cottage as he could see the little house lit up in the distance with a small glow of candle light shining through a tiny front window.
Filipe made his way to the cottage quiet as it was, he could sense a strangeness all around him. The wolf again, back in the distance howled. A chill ran up Filipe's back and she crept around the small cottage hoping to gain access and catch Mary and Eliza in their lie.
As he did so, he came across a strange large cage in the back of the cottage just off the back porch feet from the kitchen. The cage was laid with bars from the top of the ceiling to the floor. Was it a chicken coop? He looked inside and saw just straw on strewn across the floor, a large empty pail and a silver metal fashioned dish tossed in the corner.
Filipe carefully inspected the oddly large cage when suddenly, he turned to find Eliza standing before him, all in white, with drips of blood going down the font of her nightgown. Her face frozen with anger and her eyes piercing Filipe with a death stare that startled him so much he yelped like a child.
She lifted her hands that were covered in chicken blood and clasped around the handle of an iron skillet that she then brought down on Filipe's head knocking him unconscious.
Hours passed and Filipe awoke to a bubbling sound from Eliza's stove. He rubbed a small bump on his head and tried to open his eyes, when he did he saw himself locked up in the same cage at the back of the cottage. Filipe leapt to his feet, dizzying himself in the process, and shook bars that were as tall as he was.
The small area he was trapped in filled with straw on the floor was about the size of a normal sized closet, the bars were made of iron formed in a lattice style cage. He shook the bars to free himself but he was trapped.
Then entered Eliza, her eyes smoky and dark.
"You come to scavenge like a pig for truffles you'll be treated like a pig." Eliza said from behind her kitchen window that faced the pen. "What do you want?" She growled as she came out of the side door with a bowl of warm blood she has been stirring in the open stove.
Filipe looked deep into her eyes and felt his heart skip a beat. There was truly much more evil on this little island than he ever had imagined.
Than anyone had ever imagined.
