Page 8 of Haunted Ever After

Cassie fell into an easy routine for the rest of the week. Work at the breakfast nook during the day, then unpacking boxes in the evening. With each box she emptied, the more the cottage started to feel like hers. Her mugs, her plates in the cabinets. The prints she’d bought at local art shows unwrapped and ready to hang in the living room. In the evenings she switched on the lamps and tried not to think about the picture Buster had painted of the house being empty and abandoned. They had each other now. Maybe that would be enough.

By Friday evening she’d had enough of work and unpacking. As dusk darkened the sky, Cassie took a glass of red wine upstairs to the balcony off her bedroom. It faced the street, but there wasn’t any traffic. No smell of hot blacktop and exhaust from busy Orlando roads, no bumper-to-bumper commutes out to the suburbs. Here in Boneyard Key, the sound of the ocean meeting the shore was a calming, rolling sound, punctuated by the early-evening breeze ruffling the Spanish moss that hung from the live oaks that lined the quiet downtown street.

That breeze did nothing to cool things off. Cassie plucked at her shirt, unsticking it from her back, where a film of sweat had already coated her skin. Florida was damp, no way around that. She took a good deep breath—this close to the ocean, it was mostly a lungful of salt air and humidity.

Had she made a mistake, buying this badly flipped house on the other side of the state? She’d made the decision in a weak moment. Several weak moments, in fact. One too many “big announcements” in the group text, followed by a photo of an engagement ring or one of those sonograms that was supposedly of a baby but just looked like a grainy potato.

Cassie never had any big announcements to share. Perpetually single and not pregnant, those texts, with the strings of squees and “welcome to the club” responses, just made Cassie feel more and more like she wasn’t in the same club as her friends. Like all of her friends had moved on to a different one, and she was all alone.

Then her landlord had decided to sell her house. The market was crazy, he wanted to sell, and he’d dropped that bomb on her right when it was time to renew her lease. The news sparked a homebuying frenzy of her own; she put down offer after offer on houses, biting her nails while interest rates soared and fell like a roller coaster. One by one, her offers were rejected in favor of real estate investors with seemingly bottomless pockets.

The culmination of those weak moments, where she felt like she was being pushed not only out of her friend group but out of her cute College Park bungalow, was when she’d widened her house search from the Orlando area. Sure, her mom had complained; she was used to her only child living practically in her backyard. But Cassie was ready for a change, and there was nothing really keeping her there. Her copywriting job at a big advertising firm had been remote for a while now, since the first lockdown. She’d proven that she could work anywhere, so it stood to reason that she could also live anywhere. Maybe it was all a sign. She needed a new start.

When a quaint, recently renovated beachside cottage came on the market, she’d jumped on it almost automatically. She hadn’t expected to get it. It was a pattern by now: see a house, fall in love. Offer, get rejected. Mourn, then move on to the next. When her real estate agent had called to tell her she’d gotten the house, Cassie had barely believed it. Suddenly she was in uncharted waters, under contract on a house she’d only seen on a video walk-through.

Now three months, a couple inspections, and about four thousand signatures later, she was a homeowner. Wanting something new, she’d ended up with something old instead, in this weird-ass tourist town.

Cassie picked up her phone and fired off a text to the group chat. Hope y’all are having a great Friday night! Can you believe I moved somewhere without DoorDash? She glanced at the time before putting her phone down. Would anyone answer? What would she be doing right now if she were back home in Orlando? Probably wrapping up happy hour, easily two margaritas in by now, debating whether to hit the Thai place around the corner or find a Tijuana Flats and load up on flautas and at least three selections from the hot sauce bar. Either one was a solid solution.

The sudden sense memory of biting into a crispy cheese roll at her favorite Thai place, the melty cheese and brittle egg roll wrapper shattering under her teeth, brought tears to her eyes. She missed those nights out. She missed her friends.

Of course, that was all B.K.—Before Kids. Their solid group of six had dwindled one by one until Cassie was the only one unattached and ready to go on a Friday night. The other five would have to ask their husbands before going out—the hell?—or would be too busy with kids at home. Cassie missed those nights out, but truth be told, those nights had been over for a while now.

It was one thing to feel left out of the friend group, but to have left a big city like Orlando, with its many nightlife options, in favor of a tiny tourist town in the offseason…what had she been thinking coming to Boneyard Key? Making new friends as an adult in a new town, without the easy in of things like church or children, was all but impossible.

Her phone rattled on the side table, and she scooped it up, eager—and maybe a little desperate—for human contact. New messages in the group chat! She pulled it up: a photo of Monika and Christine, taken at the exact Thai restaurant whose crispy cheese rolls she’d been craving. Mamas Night Out! Hope you ladies can make it next time!

Cassie read the message a second time to let the words really sink in, each one a little dart to the chest. “Mamas.” “Make it next time.” There was nothing about that text that was meant for Cassie. Meanwhile, her earlier message was just sitting there, read and unacknowledged. She may as well be invisible. She’d been missing them, and they didn’t even notice she was gone.

She tossed the phone back to the table. Screw it. Maybe a change of scenery was good for her after all. Sure, Boneyard Key didn’t have a Thai place. Or a taco place. But maybe soon she’d have the nerve to try out that seedy-looking oyster bar on the other side of the historic district, and she’d seen a pizza joint around here somewhere. And of course there was Hallowed Grounds—and its very hot, only slightly grouchy barista—though it was just a breakfast and lunch place that closed at two. But it wasn’t tourist season yet; it made sense to roll up the sidewalks in the late afternoon.

Cassie leaned back in her bistro chair, moodily sipping her wine as night fell. From behind the house, the Gulf lapped against the seawall like her own personal meditation app. The sound of the waves lulled her into a dreamy half sleep that had only a little to do with the large glass of wine in her hand.

Then the silence of the night was broken by a lilting feminine voice from across the street.

“And our next stop…This is the Hawkins House.”

The voice was directly below her. Cassie straightened up in her chair and peered down. The sun had fully set while she’d been out here brooding, and the darkened balcony gave her a tactical advantage. She could see them, but they couldn’t see her. A group of people stood on the sidewalk in front of her house—though “group” was being generous. Handful. A handful of people formed a rough semicircle, looking up at her house. Looking up at her. One person stood in front of them, with her back to the front door, a tour guide lecturing her audience.

“The Hawkins House was built in 1899 by William Donnelly, shortly after Boneyard Key was established here after the Great Storm of 1897.” The lilting voice belonged to the tour guide. Who did a sightseeing tour at night? The sights were significantly harder to see. “The house was later acquired by C.S. Hawkins, who lived here with his wife, Sarah, from the time they were married in 1904 until his death in 1911.”

Then it clicked. Walking tour at night, history of a house…this was a ghost tour. Cassie should have guessed; it went with the rest of the ghost schtick in this town. She knew about ghost tours. Just about every tourist town had one, and it was a fun way to spend a couple hours. She had yet to see one that was actually spooky or told any stories that weren’t just a spin on the classics. The sad girl hitchhiking on the side of the road, brought home to sadder parents mourning her death from years ago. Sometimes there was a twist where the driver of the car loaned her a jacket that turned up draped over a headstone placed conveniently in the backyard. Historic ghost stories usually involved a forbidden love between a rich wife and a pirate, because who didn’t love a pirate?

Cassie found herself leaning forward a little more, as though those extra six inches would help her hear the tour guide better. What story was she telling about this house? Would it be the hitchhiking ghost? Or maybe the pirate, since they were by the ocean? It would be pretty neat to have a pirate ghost around.

But the tour guide didn’t veer off into generic ghost story territory. “And that’s when Mrs. Hawkins became…” The woman dropped her voice a couple of octaves, sounding less like a tour guide and more like someone telling stories around a campfire. Preferably about someone with a hook for a hand. “Mean Mrs. Hawkins.”

“What did she do?” one of the tourists asked. “She off her husband?” Everyone else in the group laughed. But Cassie didn’t. Because she had to sleep in this house tonight. And she would prefer that this house not contain a murderer, thank you.

Thankfully, the tour guide shook her head. “There was speculation. He was much, much older than she was. C.S. Hawkins was known as a pillar of the community, while Sarah was a relative newcomer, here from up north. His death left a hole for sure. But Mrs. Hawkins, she didn’t care about being part of the town anymore. As the years went by, her place became that house, you know?”

A couple people in the crowd didn’t even glance up from their phones, their faces bathed in light emanating from their palms, while the rest looked up toward the house in trepidation. “That house?” one of them asked.

A chill swept up Cassie’s arms, cooling the sweat on her skin and making her shiver. She wasn’t sure how much more of this she wanted to hear, but the tour guide was deep into the spooky storytelling now. “Some said she’d chase kids out of her garden with sticks because she didn’t like anyone too close to her house. Before long this was the house the kids skipped when trick-or-treating on Halloween. No Girl Scouts dropped by to sell cookies.

“Some would say that from down on the beach you could see her on her back balcony, staring out into the water. But other than that, no one saw her. She never had friends going in and out. No relatives. She was a recluse here in Boneyard Key, and she didn’t want company. So she lived here alone until she died, sometime in the 1940s. Since she didn’t have children, the ownership of the house went to the city. They’ve tried to sell it over the years, but something—or someone—always caused the sale to fall through. So the house has been sitting here, vacant, for decades. If you ask me, that’s thanks to Mean Mrs. Hawkins. Still here, not wanting anyone else in her home.”

“Sophie,” one of the tourists called out. “There’s a shadow moving! Up there!” He pointed up to the balcony, and Cassie jerked back into the shadows so fast she nearly toppled her chair over. She scrabbled at the wall for support while clapping her other hand over her mouth to hold back a maniacal giggle. She’d been leaning forward, listening intently, and had made herself part of the show. Whoops.

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