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by Barbara Lien-Cooper
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“You look troubled,” I said to Roger. “And you’ve hardly eaten your food. It seems silly to bring me to one of the most lovely restaurants in Bangor and then not touch a bite of your food…”
“Ah, well, you’re far lovelier than this place, my dear…” said Roger.
I smiled at him. Roger might not have been other women’s romantic ideal; he was balding, and his countenance often seemed grim. But he had a fine mind, and he’d always been every bit the gentleman, especially to me. I’d known him for almost five years. We’d met soon after his first wife, Laura, had died under mysterious circumstances; he’d come to Bangor on business. He always seemed to have a lot of financial reasons to visit Bangor, something to do with his family’s business ties… He wasn’t the owner of whatever company or companies his family owned—his sister Elizabeth seemed to have the lion’s share of the stock in the concern, and he just managed things. I once asked Roger about the family’s financial arrangements… he told me quite honestly that he’d spent his money on having fun. Since he didn’t like talking about it, I was never sure quite what the family business was—something to do with lumber, or canneries, or perhaps both… “I appreciate the comment, Roger, but it concerns me that you’re not eating.”
“Family troubles again,” said Roger.
“When is it anything else? Is it David again?”
“No, not my son, not this time…”
David was a sensitive boy, one who’d apparently always been full of high spirits. Roger always felt sad that the two of them never formed a close bond. Roger had once said to me that it might have been the boy’s love for his late mother that contributed to that fact.
Or maybe it was because Roger sometimes wondered if the child was even his. Laura, I took it, was not exactly the ideal wife.
Then, a few years back, David almost died, which gave Roger an excuse to at least try to warm up to the boy.
…In fact, it had sounded as if David actually had died for a little while, but then rose up, perfectly well again, before the final funeral arrangements were scheduled to take place.
Roger said that it was all “his English cousin’s” doing. I could never get him to tell me more than that. I wondered if this occasion would be the same, but I tried anyway: “What family troubles do you mean, then?”
“You wouldn’t want to know,” he said.
Roger loved me; I knew that. So when he married his second wife, Cassandra, instead of me, I couldn’t figure it out. It was like she’d cast a spell on him. I’d told him that since he had chosen to marry again, that I couldn’t see him anymore. He’d told me that in his opinion, I was better off without him. I’d cried when he said that, but I’d insisted that I couldn’t see him any longer, as long as he was married.
But Cassandra proved to be as unfaithful as Laura had been. She had several affairs, then she, too, died under mysterious circumstances.
Now, if I were the suspicious sort, I might have wondered if Roger had something to do with the deaths. But I knew Roger. He was not a murderer. Plus, just as important, I knew that he’d never risk disgracing the family name by murdering anyone. For that matter, I knew that he’d never upset his sister Liz that way.
Liz was an enigma to me—Roger said that wasn’t surprising, because he also found her to be rather hard to read. Eventually, he let slip that she’d actually been an agoraphobic for several years, refusing to leave the house after her husband disappeared. But eventually, she stopped being that way, too. Again, Roger never did tell me why…
“I really would like to know, Roger… Please, what current family troubles are worrying you?”
“Oh, it’s my niece, Carolyn. She’s always been a rebellious creature…”
“What’s she done now?”
“She wants to marry an itinerant photographer,” said Roger. “Totally unsuitable. It would disgrace the family name. But Liz says that after Carolyn’s father died under such mysterious circumstances, the marriage might be good for her.”
“…Happy marriages don’t seem to run in your family.” Roger gave me a sad smile. “Maybe you and I… could have broken that sad cycle,” I added.
“It’s too late for that,” he said.
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I know I married hastily, Roger… but you’d married Cassandra. You turned your back on me…”
“Do you know why I did that; why I hurt the only woman I have truly been happy with?”
“No.”
“…My family is cursed.”
“…Well… I imagine that every old, rich New England family has its share of skeletons in its closet…”
“No, my dear, I am not talking about the specter of scandal, I am talking about a real, legitimate, supernatural curse, something that draws tragedy to the family every two or three generations—and when it strikes, it keeps striking over, and over… Sometimes, I think… well, never mind what I think.”
“No, tell me.”
“…I sometimes think that—my British cousin brought it all upon us.”
The cousin again. The cousin who looked just like the portrait hanging in the front hall of Roger’s home, the portrait of a man who’d disappeared more than 175 years ago. “Really? I’m surprised to hear you say that.” I said this partially because despite Roger’s dark, downright ominous feelings about his English cousin, he nonetheless seemed to speak of the man with respect, sometimes even fondness, most of the time.
“Bah. You’re right, of course… it was foolish for me to say—nonsense, truly.”
“Nonsense? Roger, you’re not the type to imagine things.”
“Well… I felt cursed… but it wasn’t his fault that Laura was what she was.”
“What was she? A bitch?”
Roger smiled a little smile, and then it disappeared. “She was an accursed being.”
“What sort of—”
“—You’d never believe me if I told you,” said Roger. “…No, he wasn’t responsible for her, and he certainly wasn’t responsible for my marriage to Cassandra. He didn’t make me look at the portrait of the lovely young woman… the one who had died so many years before. If I hadn’t seen that portrait, I never would have married her, I swear…”
“Another family resemblance? She was… some ancestor of yours…?”
“Mm, by marriage, or some such… If I cared enough, I’d look it up again in the family history… But the point is, it was my cousin who said I shouldn’t have married her.”
“Well, I agree with him on that. It was very—”
“—You married, too.”
“…You hurt me, Roger.”
Roger looked stricken. “I’m truly sorry about that, my dear. Truly sorry.”
“Why wouldn’t you marry me, Roger? Just tell me…”
“The curse.”
“What sort of curse?”
“…It’s very complicated…”
“Then start from the beginning.”
“Laura… was a supernatural being. Cassandra probably was too…”
“What sort of a supernatural being?”
“Cassandra? A witch.”
“Ah.”
“And then there’s—my cousin.”
“Always back to him.”
“After he arrived, harlots by the local bar began to be attacked. They often died.”
“Died? How?”
“Strangled, mostly. But there were always strange bite marks on their necks…”
“And you think—”
“—Nothing like that happened before my cousin came to stay in the Old House. Some other things did, but—that was—” He gave a little shudder. Of fear? Knowing Roger, perhaps it was just disgust.
“Roger, you have to tell the police that your cousin may be… mad…”
“N-no, I don’t believe he’s mad.”
“Then what is he?”
“A supernatural being.”
“You can’t tell me that a small New England town could be filled with so many… supernatural beings.” But I didn’t laugh. We were both deadly serious.
“Oh, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. I have another cousin—”
“—Not another one! Roger, how many cousins do you have?”
“Just the two. But, dear Lord, such beings. They… frighten me.”
“What’s your other cousin like?”
“He’s a handsome, loveable rogue. Some might say a bit of a cad, but only in the most old-fashioned, romanticized way. I’m glad you haven’t seen him; you might fall hopelessly in love with him.”
“Roger, looks have never mattered to me. It’s the person inside that counts—”
“—And heaven help you if you did fall for him. He’s… a beast.”
“Many handsome rogues are.”
“I meant that I’ve seen—he just… I’ve seldom seen a man who seems more inherently dangerous—well, never, outside my own family. He hasn’t been here very long, really, but… oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to blame them as a way to, to easily explain everything that can’t be so easily explained. We certainly had strange things happening in our town, in our house, before… disappearances, deaths, the wolf-like attacks—”
“Wolf attacks? In Maine? They’re very endangered—!”
“I didn’t say wolf attacks, my dear, I said wolf-like. There’s a difference.”
“…You can’t honestly think that you have two cousins that are responsible for…”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it. We’ve had so many strange occurrences. Ghosts—séances—magic. Don’t look at me as if I’ve gone crazy, Beth. I am sane—too sane. Too sane to hide my head in the sand like my sister Liz does. Too sane to take refuge in brandy and denial.”
I’d never known Roger to be this frank with me. He was always so closed-up concerning his troubles; now I was starting to understand why. And, no, I didn’t think he was insane. Past curiosity had led me to subscribe to his town’s local newspaper… and I’d read just enough that what he said gave me pause. “So, the reason you won’t marry me—even if my husband would agree to a divorce, which I sincerely doubt—is because you fear for my safety.”
“It’s more than that, Beth. It’s the… the karmic trap that concerns me most.”
“‘Karmic?’ I know the word karma, but—”
“—After my cousin came over from England—if that’s indeed where he comes from… none of my British friends have even heard of him—I started having disturbing dreams.”
“What sort of disturbing dreams?”
“Dreams about the past.”
“Well, you’ve had a traumatic life, Roger…”
“No, dear, I’m talking about other lifetimes. They’re dreams that are so vivid that I am convinced that I have lived other lives.”
“Reincarnation? Is that even possible?”
“I believe it is. But what is so strange about them is that I am always in the same town, in the same house, with the same last name. And so is David, and Liz… Carolyn’s often there too, but sometimes she has a different last name… The point is, I am convinced that my family is caught in a kind of karmic… loop, like a road that goes in circles… We live, we die… and we come back to the same town, the same house, and our very personalities are often very similar…”
“And are your cousins there too?”
“The British one is. The charming rogue, not always. It’s as if he was pulled into the, the web of karma, later on, as other people have been…”
“Other people?”
“A woman who currently owns the local antique shop, for instance. I know that I’ve seen her in my dreams… In them, she was quite insane… and because of that, I just can’t bring myself to trust her, in this lifetime… And I hate that Carolyn’s working at that shop. It just seems so wrong… and yet so inevitable…”
“Are you saying… that you’re afraid that if we were to marry, and I were to return with you to your family…”
“You’d be caught in the karmic trap of reincarnation, too.”
“Then why don’t you just leave?”
“I’ve thought about it. I used to say that I couldn’t leave because Liz needs me. And Carolyn needs some sort of stable father figure, and David needs as stable a family as I can give him… But that’s not the real reason.”
“What is the real reason?”
“The karmic loop won’t let me leave.” Now we both grew quite grim. “That’s why I need these trips to Bangor. That’s why I need to see you. You keep me sane. You keep me happy. You make my life bearable. Here, I can be Roger Collins, a bit of a pompous ass, but a decent enough man—and nothing more.”
“Roger, you’re not—”
“And I can sit with my lovely friend, Beth Chavez, and dream of a life I can never have.”
It was strange to hear my maiden name just tossed out that way. I never used it in my current life. “…Then, that’s how things will be, Roger. Always. We will always be the closest of friends. And I will always be here for you.”
“Thank you.” He reached out and touched my cheek. “…You know, I think I can try and eat now,” Roger said, his mood changing back to something more like normal.
As Roger cut his steak and began to eat, I thought to myself how Roger, in turn, was saving me. As long as I could see him, I could stand living with my husband.
After dinner, I would return home. I would make up a little lie to my husband about meeting up with a female friend. He’d believe me. He’s never suspected a thing. Not that there was anything wrong with just being a friend to Roger. I just knew that Adam would never understand.
I thought about Adam; I thought of his slow, almost unearthly way of speaking and those scars that marred an otherwise-handsome face. I thought of his anger. And of his kind, almost childlike ways of seeing the world, almost as if everything was new to him.
As long as I had Roger, I could stand it.
And at least I had escaped the Collins family curse.