Cockatrice: Pale Snake
Part Two of Three - Paranormal/Suspense
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This is Part Two of a three-part story called Cockatrice.
Read Part One here!
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Stevie yawned and poured herself a cup of coffee from the ancient, stained, spitting coffeemaker. Winter sun slithered in through the kitchen window and coiled in the corners, the curtains, the rising coffee-steam.
It promised to be a clear-cold, frost-rimed day. Despite that, Stevie took her coffee out onto the front porch, sucking in a surprised breath at how cold it was as soon as she opened the front door. She closed the front door behind her and sat on the top step, pulling her cigarettes out of her coat pocket.
She was only two sips into the coffee when she realized there was a sound in the yard, persistent and faint.
The shrilling sound and the vision of the toad from the night before had obviously been a dream. But this was different. A subtle muttering sound, like a group of people was milling nearby, chatting among themselves.
It reminded Stevie of a flock of milling chickens. She had always loved that sound. In the summers she had enjoyed sitting quiet and listening to Irma’s forty-plus chickens mull and murmur as they scratched in the dirt and grass. That hen-mutter sound had always felt like home.
But the chickens weren’t here anymore. They were sold and gone.
Stevie looked out over the yard, stood to walk out along the path to the driveway. The sound never seemed to get any closer or nearer, as if she should be able to look down and see hens around her feet. But there was nothing to see. No hens, no people. Not even a flock of wild birds in the unseen hedges could be blamed. Just a fluttery tide of sound on the edge of hearing.
It had to be some kind of auditory trick, the wind coming from the right direction to carry voices along with it from another property. Nevermind that there didn’t seem to be any wind.
The mirrors on the house glimmered in the winter light, rimed with branches of frost.
Stevie decided to take her coffee back inside.
*******
The first order of business—before dealing with the vermin in the crawlspace, before figuring out the mirrors, before taking on necessary repairs and closing out some of Grandma Irma’s outstanding affairs—was filling the cupboards. It was the adult thing to do.
For the last few years, Stevie’s contributions to groceries had always been simply slipping a few dollars from busking into the kitty when she could and letting her more responsible friends handle the particulars. As such, she had never written out a real grocery list before.
Coffee, she wrote at the top of a piece of notepaper from an old, faded souvenir pad with a logo on it from the Seavend General Store that was sitting on the kitchen counter. Then she wrote Vegetables and crossed it out, feeling stupid.
What kind of vegetables, dummy? Carrots? Tomatoes?
Stevie sighed. Come on. Be an adult. Think meals.
She looked around the kitchen, thinking.
Bread. Eggs. Cheese. Butter. Peanut butter. Jam. Pasta. Pasta sauce. Salad stuff.
Not too bad. Getting there.
After a moment’s consideration, she added, Wine to the list.
She looked at the list again and nodded. That was better. There was at least the potential for an actual meal hiding in there somewhere.
Feeling thus armed, she left the house—ignoring the muttering voices still filling the edges of the yard—and headed up the highway to the nearest store, in Seavend.
The village of Seavend sat on the downward slope of a hill at the island’s northeast corner, a tumble of houses and summer homes overlooking the glowering sea. In the summer it was always busy with boaters and the seasonal cabin set, but here in the middle of winter it was quiet and still, rooftops white with frost. Half of the homes appeared deserted, windows dark and gardens brown, while the others were warm with chimneys spouting thin tendrils of smoke, worried into nothing by the steady sea breeze.
Stevie drove over the hill and down to the marina, where the Seavend General Store sat crouched on the shoreline above the little harbor. The place had gotten a makeover since she last saw it in her childhood: new shingles, fresh paint job, better landscaping. The little outbuilding behind it was now a cottage, and the pathways were swept clear of debris and seagull droppings.
She parked and entered the high-ceilinged old building, the floorboards creaking under her feet. On the right hand side was a long counter where the ice cream still waited in big tubs. There was also a nice espresso machine and a doorway through to an unseen kitchen where the smell of soup and pie lingered. Ahead, wooden booths and tables lined the harbor-side wall against a big bank of windows that looked out to the water. These were mostly empty on this winter weekday except for a young mother and her children, a pair of older folks holding hands across the table while they waited for their meal, and one blond, bearded man in the corner booth who had the look of a sailor about him, nursing a cup of coffee and a slice of pie.
The left-hand side of the building was all grocery shelving and refrigerator cases, and this is where Stevie headed.
She gathered the items from her list and took them up to the counter. As if on cue, a woman who appeared to be in her late thirties emerged from the kitchen, tight black curls pulled away from her face and brown arms lightly dusted with flour where her sweater sleeves were rolled up. She wiped her hands on her apron—she had clearly just washed them—and gave Stevie a smile.
“Hey there,” she said. “All set?”
Stevie nodded as the woman began to ring up the items.
“Got an ID for the wine?”
Stevie pulled it out of her wallet and handed it to her. The woman looked closely at her birthday—freshly twenty-one—but then did a quick, subtle double-take and handed it back, continuing to ring up the items. Finally, she said, “Stoat, huh? You’re not related to Irma by any chance, are you?”
Stevie hadn’t anticipated being recognized by anyone out here. She startled slightly. “Oh. Yes, I’m Irma’s granddaughter. Stevie.”
The woman smiled kindly. “Should have guessed. You’ve got her eyes.”
She held out her hand and Stevie shook it, awkwardly.
“Cora Phelan,” the woman said, “I’m the owner here.”
She paused, then added with deep sincerity, “I’m so sorry for your loss. Irma was one of a kind. The best kind.”
Stevie didn’t know what to say to that. She had never met a stranger who knew her grandmother, and it hadn’t occurred to her that her grandmother might have been a fixture in her community. “Did you know her?”
“She came in every week,” Cora replied. “Met with her friends for coffee or lunch. Led a book club here for a while. She was always chatting with the regulars, and always had a kind word to say and a joke to share. We even bought eggs from her for a time. A truly wonderful lady.”
Stevie thought about the way her parents had always talked about Irma, about the dark looks and rolled eyes and pursed lips. How they stopped visiting at some point in Stevie’s preteen years. Stevie had always felt that estrangement like a grief, even though she didn’t know how to explain that to her parents. She hadn’t known that her final summer at Irma’s was going to be the last time seeing her grandmother alive. After that, the connnection was only maintained with phone calls a few times a year, and those had lapsed completely while Stevie was couch-surfing in Portland.
The idea of meeting someone who had known her grandmother outside of that house was a strange sensation. Intoxicating.
Stevie thought about how to phrase her next question. “Did she ever seem…um…odd, to you?”
Cora tilted her head, thoughtfully. “How do you mean?”
“Did she say or do strange things, I guess.”
Cora lifted her eyebrows and let out an uncertain chuckle, glancing at the corner booth and then back to Stevie. “You’re…going to have to be more specific. Ferris Island is pretty strange at baseline. Most people move here because they’ve got a little strange in ‘em. Irma wasn’t any crazier than any of her neighbors.”
But when Stevie didn’t laugh, Cora looked her in the eye with a bit more of a search in her gaze. “You’re talking about the mirrors. Aren’t you.”
Stevie’s heart fluttered. She nodded.
Cora said, “I heard about that.”
She paused to think, then said, “Here’s what I know. People out here do whatever they need to do to live right with this place. If they don’t, they tend not to last long.”
She winced at the dark implications in her own words, rephrased. “What I mean is that living on this island is more…relationship than ownership. Irma never told me the whys and wherefores, but if your grandmother covered her house in mirrors, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there was not only a reason, but a good reason for her to do it.”
Stevie wasn’t sure how to take any of that. But there was something in Cora’s look and manner that assured her that the woman wasn’t pulling her leg, at least on purpose.
And Stevie couldn’t deny it, either, deep down. Isn’t that why she said yes to this inheritance in the first place? Didn’t she know the island’s strangeness firsthand, memories of childhood that she struggled to remember but couldn’t quite forget? Woods and waves, mirrors reflecting summer sunlight, voices in the shivering twilight, and her grandmother’s stories.
Uninvited, all of a sudden, she thought about the shrilling sound from the night before, the black shape on the rooftop with its round throat and golden eyes staring down at her before vanishing…
Just a dream. Just a dream.
Stevie cleared her throat against a wave of emotion, tamping it down fast.
“The house is mine now,” she said, and suddenly realized how small her voice sounded in the high-ceilinged old building, like it was listening. “And I’m not sure…how to…take care of it.”
Even though she hadn’t said much, she felt she had said more than she meant to. Admitted to something she had hoped to keep hidden. Running away at eighteen had been, she thought, the gesture of an adult seeking freedom. But now she wasn’t so sure.
She hated feeling like this, like a lost kid wearing grown-up clothes.
Cora gave Stevie a compassionate smile, bagged up the groceries, and slid them across the counter. Then she pulled the receipt out of the register and wrote something on it with a pen sitting on the counter.
“I can’t tell you what to do,” she said, as she scribbled. “But if it was me, I’d take your grandma’s quirks at face value. She was a sharp lady. She knew what she was doing.”
Cora handed the receipt to Stevie. On the back she had written her name and phone number.
“Nothing is too strange,” Cora said, insistent, “and you’re not going to shock me. If you need help, call. Don’t go it alone. Okay?”
Mute with a swirl of questions, Stevie took the receipt and put it in her pocket. She wanted to say What the hell is happening?
Or I’m an adult, I don’t need help.
Or even Screw this, I’m packing my shit and leaving tomorrow. Let this island take the house and keep it for itself. Let it all fall apart.
I don’t care. I can’t care.
But instead, she just said, in a tiny voice, “Thanks.”
As she left, carefully settling the bags into the passenger seat of the Taurus, Stevie looked back to see Cora standing at the corner booth with the blond, bearded man, deep in conversation.
The two of them turned and watched her with compassionate interest as she got into her car and pulled out of the parking lot.
*******
The whole way back to the house, Stevie considered Cora’s words about Irma.
She knew what she was doing.
These words disturbed her more than anything else. An entire family mythology had been built on her grandmother’s weakness and vulnerability, her fading faculties. If Irma was capable—sharp, as Cora had said—then that meant the mirrors weren’t the display of a disordered mind, but had a real purpose to them.
This was worrying on levels Stevie hadn’t considered, before.
Suddenly, she saw it from further down the two-lane highway and slowed the car down to a crawl, brow furrowing as she neared the driveway. Her driveway.
There was a sandwich-board sign at the turn-off that read FREE EGGS.
Stevie stared as she neared it. It was the old sign, the one Grandma Irma used to put out to attract passers-by with the promise of her beautiful, quality eggs.
Stevie took the turn and let the Taurus idle in the driveway entrance as she climbed out. She inspected the sign. It was old and faded—Grandpa Ed had made it a long time ago out of some scrap wood, reused hinges, and stenciled spray paint—but it had been set up here with intention, and it definitely wasn’t there when Stevie left for the store.
Peering around, looking for the practical joker along the empty highway and seeing none, Stevie folded up the sign and wrangled it into the backseat.
As she pulled up to the house, she opened the door of the car and the quiet muttering sound immediately filled her ears again, low to the ground and spread across the yard as if it was full of phantom hens.
She had been half-hoping it would go away while she was gone, a futile hope.
Determined not to cry from sheer frustration, she pulled the FREE EGGS sign out of the car and set it against the house, then pulled the grocery bags out and brought them inside, shutting the door hard against the insistent muttering.
Grandma Irma’s letter sat on the empty floor of the cleaned-out fireplace where Stevie had left it. As she unpacked the groceries she tried her best to ignore it, but she could feel it watching her. Waiting for her.
Finally, bags emptied, Stevie took the letter out of the fireplace and set it on the coffee table. She sat on the couch and stared at it.
But she didn’t open it. She couldn’t.
She wanted a cigarette, but the idea of smoking on the porch surrounded by that muttering sound made her skin itch.
Instead, she made another pot of coffee. She tapped her fingers against the cup. She paced. She bit her nails to the quick.
Finally, before she could change her mind, she crossed to the coffee table, picked up the envelope, ripped it open, and looked at the letter again.
My dear Stevie, my sweet Silver Spring,
Welcome home, honey-girl. It’s right that you’re here. It’s right that this is your house now. Only a Stoat can do what you’re about to do. It’s a big job, but I know you’re ready.
Main thing is to watch the mirrors. Make sure they don’t break. Keep them clean and polished, replace them right away if they crack.
It’s important because if he’s allowed to get out he’ll seek vengeance, and you’ll be the first one he’ll go for. He’s a spiteful bastard. Good news is you’ll know it if he’s out: voice of a toad, cunning of a snake, strength of a spur-legged rooster. There’ll be signs.
Best not to let it get to that point. But you’ll know what to do.
Keep your head. I have every faith in you.
All my love,
Irma
It was a real challenge to read the letter through the eyes of truth, of a “sharp lady” who knew what she was doing. It read like the manifesto of a woman without sanity. Words jumped out at Stevie like venomous creatures, sank their fangs into her hand:
Toad. Snake. Rooster.
Vengeance.
There’ll be signs.
But perhaps the worst of all, the sentence that throbbed and throbbed on the page like a scar:
You’ll know what to do.
She never had. And somehow she knew she never would. And that her grandmother would misunderstand her so terribly, be so wrong about her on a soul-level, hurt worse than anything else in that crazed letter.
Stevie didn’t throw the letter back into the fireplace, though she wanted to. Instead, she dropped it back on the coffee table, sank into the couch, and buried her face in her hands.
*******
It might have been a dream.
Stevie didn’t remember getting up from the bed, or leaving the house. She only knew the walk across the gray yard under a swelling moon, surrounded by muttering voices forming words she could not understand. Low to the ground. And she could feel them against her legs, soft like feathers, separating like a tide as she walked through the grass and gravel in her socks, the mirrors on the house unnaturally dark like staring soulless eyes.
“Stevie.”
There was a soft, flat voice calling for her. A gentle voice, toneless.
“Stevie, come here. Come look.”
It was coming from the chicken coop.
Stevie entered the fenced place where the coop sat like a ruined castle in miniature. The mirror above its door was shattered into glittering pieces all over the gravel and mud below.
“Come closer.”
She walked up to the coop, stood on tiptoe to look through the meshed ventilation window just under the sloped roof.
Sickly, glistening moonlight fell on white scales yellowed from disease, the color of rotten corn. Thick living coils filled the coop, moving against each other like a suffocating embrace, and above it all in the far corner were two golden eyes, wide enough apart to imply a dinner-plate-sized head in the gloom. The eyes blinked.
“You are not strong, little Stoat,” said the voice, and a guttering flicker slipped out of the shadow and then back in, a thin tongue. “Would you like to be strong?”
Stevie nodded, even though she didn’t want to.
“Open the door, then,” said the voice. The golden eyes blinked, slow. “Look, and see, and let me strengthen you. Make you heard. Make you wise.”
Stevie, in a daze, moved to open the locked clasp on the coop door, her hand feeling like a separate entity from her wrist, her arm, her body, her brain.
Behind her in the yard the muttering voices modulated, sliding, and began to scream in terror, a keening. It was a deafening roar, and Stevie threw her hands over her ears and backed up, backed up away from the coop, sock feet on gravel and mud.
She looked down, and under her feet what she had taken for gravel was not stones at all, but bone.
Pieces of bone, ground and ground into pebbles in the mud.
Stevie’s scream slid into place among the rest before she woke.
*******
In the morning, Stevie sat on the front porch with her coffee and her cigarette, listening to the quiet muttering in the yard, which had not faded. In her hand was the receipt with Cora’s phone number. Her eyes were bleary from lack of sleep.
You are not strong, the thing had said in what she had assumed was a dream. Would you like to be strong?
She cast a sidelong glance at the coop. It was the first thing she checked when she got up, but as she suspected, the coop was deserted and empty, swept of old hay and smelling faintly of chicken dung. Nothing weird. No scales or golden eyes. No pieces of bone on the ground.
Just a dream, sure. But how many weird dreams were enough?
Besides, the muttering wasn’t a dream, unless she was fully losing it.
Maybe I’m losing it.
Stevie groaned, sipped the coffee. The mirrors tapped lightly against the house in a stirred wind. Her cigarette trembled in her fingers.
Nothing is too strange, and you’re not going to shock me.
If you need help, call.
Don’t go it alone.
Cora’s insistent face, her genuine concern. This whole thing was crazy. Impossible. Probably not even worth the trouble. She should just pack up and go…somewhere. Anywhere.
Where?
And that was it. The real question. Where was home? This house of mirrors wasn’t much, but it was the only home Stevie could claim, at least for now. If there was even a chance Cora could help…wasn’t that a chance worth taking?
Mind made up, Stevie pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, heaved a deep nicotine-scented sigh, and dialed Cora’s number.
The vibes of this are SO good and eerie. That cracked mirror on the porch is nagging at me like a loose tooth -- replace, it, Stevie!
I'm loving the fact that I've been around here long enough now to start seeing characters and places coming back!