The Sea Witch - Part 3

A serialized short story.

Welcome to Part 3 of “The Sea Witch.” If you’re looking for the beginning, you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

"How, though? How can you do that? Talk to ghosts, get them to do things for you?"

She grinds out her smoldering filter on the bench beside her. "Not ghosts. Spirits. And it works the same as when regular people come out here and work with me. I do things for them. I take them seriously. I've built up a relationship of trust with them. Not to mention I'm bloody charming." She smiles. "They're people too, they're just… what's the word? Incorporeal. Consciousness without a body. And that lets them pull the levers that you and I can't see."

She glances up toward the road. Framed against the deepening clouds above the garden, a dusty red hatchback pulls slowly onto the shoulder, crunching gravel beneath its tires, and stops beside Brian's bike.

Fucking Saturday.

Sighing, she reaches out and flips over the hand-painted wooden sign hanging on the door—from the side reading "Please Knock" to the one that reads "Do Not Disturb." 

"We'll have to leave it there, Brian. This looks like my next patient. Say hi to your mum from me, and keep an eye out for those ravens. Off you pop."

---

"So this is the witch's lair," says the owner of the hatchback. She shrugs out of her chore coat and pushes it onto the peg beside the door, struggling to fit it over the weatherproof jacket already hung there, nervously brushing her dark hair back from her slender face.

Evangeline extends her open hands to encompass the space. "Be it ever so humble." She turns to face the woman. "Janet, was it? Not sure we've met before."

"You'll know Patrick, probably. My husband. Works down at the pub."

Evangeline nods. "Big beard? I think I've seen him once or twice. Only been here a few years myself. And I don't get out much."

"That's right. Renting it from… what's his name? The American? Josh?"

The spectacular prick. She nods. "Josh."

Janet looks around the cottage's interior. "I expected more skulls, somehow."

"Buried 'em out back. Couldn't sleep with them nattering on." 

Janet looks shocked, then gives an uncertain, tinkling laugh. 

Evangeline smiles. "Coffee? Tea?"

"Coffee would be grand."

"It's instant. Hope that's alright."

"Tea will be lovely. Thank you."

"Certainly. I'll put the kettle on. Make yourself comfortable."

Janet pulls out a chair and sits at the old wooden table. Evangeline sets the kettle on the stove to boil, then ducks behind the bed nook's curtain. "Forgive me a moment," she calls from behind the curtain. "I lost track of the days and didn't dress for company. Broiling in my outdoor kit."

"Of course," says Janet. "You know, this place is quite charming, actually. It doesn't at all live up to its reputation down in the village. I'd been hearing all the stories for years about how it was haunted."

Evangeline emerges in an oversized flannel workshirt, patterned in green and black plaid. "It was." She crosses over to the countertop and grabs a pair of mismatched mugs from beside the blasted radio. "No cream, I'm afraid. Haven't made it to the dairy farm yet. Busy morning. Sugar?"

"No, thank you. I saw the mess in your coop on the way down from the road. I'm so sorry."

Evangeline shrugs. "It never rains but it pours."

"Literally, it seems like. With the storm. People down in the village are acting like it's the End Times, stocking up on food and candles. Worst storm in a century, they're saying on TV. And you're awfully exposed out here on the cliff. Will you be alright?"

I'm going to turn the bastard. "Pretty snug here. This place was built for rough living." She carries two steaming mugs back to the table and sits across from Janet. "Enough about my woes. You came for a reading."

Janet clasps her hands. "I don't really believe in this sort of thing. Usually. To be honest."

Evangeline takes a sip of her coffee. "Me neither."

Janet's eyes widen. "Really? But you—"

"I believe I'm the most beautiful woman on the island. Excluding present company, of course. And people get locked up for believing they're Napoleon when they're not. Belief is a matter of opinion. Or delusion." She sets down her mug. "Now, on the other hand, I'm not entirely sure I believe in fire. Seems improbable. A ball of pure, stable energy that you can conjure out of thin air to light your birthday candles? Come on. I wouldn't want to be the first caveman trying to sell that to his friends.” She lets out a rueful chuckle. “There's history's first witch trial right there: Fred Flintstone making a campfire and getting his melon cracked open for scaring the absolute shit out of everyone else. Summoning a source of power that nobody else understood, or knew how to control.” She shrugs. “And now it lives in my stove and boils my kettle every morning. I wouldn't say I believe in it. But I don't have to. There it is. It doesn't care whether I believe in it or not." Reaching over to the counter behind her, she grabs a deck of cards and places it in the center of the table, beside an unlit red-wax taper and a small silver bell with a wooden handle. "Same with this sort of thing, whatever you want to call it. I recognize that it works and go from there."

Janet looks uncertainly at the deck on the table.

"We can call it 'unlicensed psychotherapy with dramatic flair,' if that helps," says Evangeline, smiling.

"Is that at all it is, then?"

"No." Evangeline sips her coffee. "Definitely not. But if that's all you need it to be, then that's what we can call it. Won't hurt anything's feelings."

Janet nods.

"We can try to bill your insurance."

"Right, of course. How much do you charge for this?"

"Fifty pounds, ordinarily. We'll make it forty pounds for today, since this is your first time. Credit card machine's broken"—she grins—"so it'll have to be cash on the barrel, if you please."

Smiling, Janet reaches into her leather handbag and passes the money across the table.

"Thank you very much," says Evangeline. "Now then—"

"I'm thinking of leaving my husband."

Evangeline raises her eyebrows. "Not bad for an opener."

"I think that's the first time I've actually said it out loud. To anyone."

"Well, give us a moment here, love. You'll need the orientation first." Evangeline pulls the deck from its ragged box: simple playing cards with fading ink, edges softened by several lifetimes of shuffling. "I don't start off reading picture cards for clients anymore. Every so often the Death card comes up, and the screaming hurts my head. These work just as well in the right hands. We can pull out the Tarot deck if we need a more detailed reading. But since this is your first time, we'll keep it simple, so you can get your sea legs." She spreads a rectangle of black silk across the table, sets the deck on it, and lights the candle. "Now then. Are we trying to find out what will happen if you leave… Patrick, was it?"

"Yes. Pat. We got married young. He's from here originally, but I came from the mainland. Just after university. I got swept up in the romance of the place, and Pat was there… I came to do some writing, and ended up with a husband and two kids."

Evangeline waits patiently as Janet sips from her mug.

"I love him. I do. And the kids are my whole world. But he's perfectly happy standing behind the bar at the pub, serving the people who have known his family for their entire lives. Watching the sun set every night through the same window. And eventually, I guess, getting buried in the same churchyard as his parents and his grandparents and his great-grandparents. With me alongside him. It's beautiful, in a way, and I'm happy he has that here, but"—she exhales sharply—"I'm still young. Or at least younger than I will be." She gives a short laugh. "You know what I mean. And I'm just not sure I'm ready to spend the next... god, how many decades? Just down at the pub. Sweeping the floors. Watching the kids get older." She takes another sip of tea. "He barely wants to go on vacation. I try to get him to go somewhere new, take the ferry across to the mainland and see something. But he's always too tired. Or it's too expensive. Or 'who wants to see all that tourist crap, anyway.'" She sits back with her arms folded across her chest, looking at the candle and the cards. "I can't live like this forever."

Evangeline carefully sets her mug down on the table, away from the silk rectangle. "Fair enough. So let's see if we can put this to the cards. Do you want to know what the outcome will be if you leave Pat and go off on your own?"

Janet gives a slight nod.

"Off we go." Evangeline strikes a match, lights the candle, closes her eyes and rings the bell. She begins to shuffle the deck. In the quiet room, the riffling of the cards merges with the faint sound of crashing waves, of the wind blowing through beach grass along the cliff. The surviving chickens cluck in their coop.

The cards stop in Evangeline's hands. She sits with her head turned slightly to one side, a look of patient focus on her face. Still with her eyes closed, she carefully lays out a grid of cards on the black silk—three rows and three columns.

Janet peers eagerly at the spread as Evangeline's eyes open.

"Well," says Evangeline. "Can't ask for much better than that."

"Really?"

"Queen of Hearts, front and center." She taps the card in the center of the spread. "Captain of her ship. See here." She points to another card. "This column here is the future. Nine of Diamonds, Eight of Hearts, King of Hearts. Money and love."

"Is the King of Hearts a person? Is that Pat?"

"It is a person, but not him. This is if you leave him. That's somebody else." Evangeline shoots her a meaningful look before turning back to the cards. "There's hard work here—see these high Clubs, in the past, behind the Queen—but the work gets easier, and looks like it's rewarded. Maybe your writing?"

Janet clasps her hands in front of her and nods. "Go on."

"These cards down at the bottom. The Spades. Sharpness, conflict. They're low numbers, so they aren't anything too dramatic. In the past, in the present—the present of this scenario—but not in the future. This bottom row would also be your subconscious. Could be negative energy that you're still carrying with you. Maybe guilt, maybe resentment. But it doesn't seem to affect all this sunshine up here, ahead of the Queen."

Janet presses her still-clasped hands to her lips and stares at the cards. "Okay," she says from behind her hands, nodding. "Okay."

A gust of wind whistles in the chimney.

Evangeline places her hands on either side of the spread. "Should we ask the same question for Patrick?"

"Yes."

Janet flinches as Evangeline picks up the cards and gathers them back into the deck—as if the future they represent is being swept up with them.

Evangeline's eyes close. The bell rings. The cards interlace as the deck rustles and reforms. Distant waves crash. Janet tries to take a sip of tea before realizing that her mug is empty; she sets it back down on the table with a clink.

Evangeline's hands fold around the deck. One by one, the cards slide onto the table, back into their familiar grid. A different future now.

Her eyes open. "Ah," she says.

Janet leans forward. "Yes?"

"No King in this spread. The man himself seems to be absent. Here in the center we've got the Two of Spades, which means conflict. Like a swordfight. And here"—she taps a card with her finger—"down in the subconscious is the Ten of Spades, a weight pulling down the future."

Janet reaches out and points at another card. "Who's this up here?"

"Queen of Diamonds? A woman. Fair-skinned, probably blonde. She—"

"Ashley. The tart. I knew it. She and Pat used to date in high school, and—"

Evangeline holds her hands up, palms out. "Alright, now. Steady on. This column represents the past, remember. Whoever this is would be behind him. And up in his head as well. She might be a memory or a what-if, maybe even somebody trying to influence his life. But she's not his future."

"So they don't—"

"I wouldn't think so."

"Oh." Janet chews on her bottom lip. "And the Jack of Clubs, here?"

"A young person. Probably a child. Or children. Up in the future, above the day-to-day reality in the middle row… I'd say this is what keeps him going. He'd need something, too, with all these Spade cards. A couple of low Diamonds—a little bit of money—but a lot of hardship."

The wind blows.

Evangeline clears her throat. "Reading straight from the textbook, I'd say this is the spread of an unhappy man who's not in control of his life, dealing with a lot of troubles, nothing much to look forward to, except his devotion to his child. Or children."

Janet covers her face with her hands as she pushes her bangs back. When she looks up, her eyes are dry. "So what do I do?"

Evangeline looks out the window. "The trouble with fortunes is that they don't tell you what to do. At the end of the day, these are just playing cards. Somebody probably picked them up from a gift shop for a few pence, back before they found their way to me. And I'm just a madwoman living next to the ocean, shouting at the wind. You can take this same question and go ask ten of your friends what they think will happen. They'll give you advice all day and all night—probably ten different versions of it. And you still won't know what to do." She turns her attention back to Janet. "Now. That said. I'm of the mind that whatever is talking to me through these cards knows more than your ten friends—can see farther and clearer past the bend of time than they can. This pack of cards has made my hair stand on end, how much it knows sometimes. But it can't live my life for me. Nor yours."

Janet stares at the cards on the table—stares through them, trying to see what they see.

"I can't tell you what to decide," says Evangeline, her voice gentle. "But I can give you some advice on how to decide."

Janet looks up at her. "What's that?"

"In these situations, we're told to trust our judgment. Failing that, we're told to listen to our hearts, whatever that fucking means. And if neither of those work, we're told to listen to Oprah, long may she reign." 

Janet lets out a laugh. 

Evangeline smiles, then continues. "But Oprah lives in a fuck-off big mansion. Her problems are mostly to do with covering things in pure gold and trying to live forever, so what does she really know. And if your head and your heart don't agree, then you're at war with yourself, with no way out. You have to step outside that. This is my advice: even if you don't believe in this sort of thing, pretend that the world is full of helpers who want what's best for you. Ask a tree what to do. Ask your dead relatives. Ask a bird, or some old bones. Ask the sea. For something like this, if you truly don't know what to do, what's the harm? Let something outside yourself lend a voice to your intuition and see where that leads you. At the very least, you'll—"

"Evangeline?" A voice calls from outside the front door. "You home? It's Josh."

"Oh fuck it all to hell," she shouts, slapping the table with both palms.

Janet jumps.

Evangeline presses her fingers to her temples, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. "Janet, I'm so sorry," she says. "It's been that sort of morning."