"Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I," cackled Martha from the front porch as she dumped more candy corn into the bushel basket for trick-or-treaters.
"I kinda think that's enough," Jonathan observed, leaning over the spoils.
"Not of my singing," the housekeeper smiled. "I'm wild again, beguiled again, a simpering, whimpering child again, bewitched, bothered –"
"And interrupted," Carolyn suggested reasonably as she turned up the collar of her pea coat. Jonathan shrugged.
"No, I mean enough candy - not Candy-Candy – just candy. Brian and David say nobody comes up here on Halloween anyways." He looked sideways at his shivering mother. "Well, we're not haunted s'actly, right, Mom? But everyone in town sure is afraid of Captain Gregg. We'll have to eat all of the leftovers –"
"That's why we need to go out of our way to prove we're the friendliest new neighbors in town and there's nothing up here that would scare anyone except my singing." Martha tossed a caramel at her young charge. "At any rate, if your friends are too afraid to come up here because of some silly old ghost story, I'll eat the candy-candy myself! Candy-corn hash. Imagine that!"
"Don't say I didn't warn you," Jonathan frowned, but his grip tightened around Martha's hand as they headed for the kitchen. "Can you really make candy-corn hash?"
Outside, Carolyn stooped to light the jack-o-lanterns but was pleasantly surprised when all three of them snapped to flaming life of their own avail.
"Thank you, Captain." She ran her hands up and down her arms, shivering. "Now you can either prove or disprove that town theory about ghosts by standing to my right and blocking that nippy little breeze."
Pleased, Captain Gregg moved closer. "I can do better than that, Madame."
The wind warmed considerably, but just around Carolyn. Early frost draped the rest of the porch, otherwise resplendent with decorative remnants of the lingering Indian summer. Corn stalks rustled pleasantly, and the candles inside the pumpkins flickered bravely, warmly, against the elements. The moon, as forecast, arose, flaming red, on the horizon. Clouds scudded furiously across its surface. Idly, Carolyn wondered if she'd been wrong about witches, too all these years.
"Does all of Schooner Bay believe the silly, ridiculous story about the big, scary ghost of Gull Cottage?" Carolyn smiled, but her eyes danced. "Maybe I'd better get started on the M n Ms."
"Fearsome, perhaps, is the better word. Scary is for ninny television spirits," the ghost replied, seating himself in the wrought iron chair. "And yes, I believe they do believe and respect my prowess as a force of supernatural nature, if you please. No one is foolish enough to come up here on what is more precisely the feast of the Great Goddess. Samhein. We shall have a splendid evening all to ourselves while Martha does tricks and treats with the children."
Nonchalantly, he materialized two mugs of steaming hot chocolate onto the table between them, then pulled a flask out of the inside of his jacket. The silver glinted in the moonlight.
"Looks pretty corporeal to me, Captain." She picked a marshmallow out of the brew.
"Nonsense. Just because I can touch a bottle doesn't mean I'm corporeal. How insulting, Madame."
"Insulting? I think I have a right to know! It's not like I'm a school girl or at all bothered by the possibility of your tangibility."
The Captain merely smiled.
"I guess we're back to spirit or illusion, then, Captain." Carolyn cocked her head as he tipped the whiskey into her mug, determined nonetheless to continue the issue. "Poltergeist, perhaps?"
"Despite your penchance for alliteration, mere words fail to adequately describe my characteristics, nay, talents to the fullest, m'dear," he answered companionably. "However, I believe incorporeal best suits us both at the moment."
Carolyn flushed. Ambivalence was not what she'd expected. She leant back into the Adirondack and sighed, gingerly sipping the hot chocolate and pretending to stare at the cliffs in the distance. The door burst suddenly open, and an overexcited ballerina and slightly swaggering pirate with a milk moustache rushed out the door to hug her goodbye.
"Don't be stingy with the candy, Mom!" Jonathan ordered.
"Yeah, all the kids will talk about us at school tomorrow if you don't give them enough M n Ms," Candy warned. Martha swooshed them on down the steps and out into the blustery October night.
"Keep the lights on, Mrs. Muir!" Martha buttoned up her coat and wrapped a wool scarf tightly around her head. "Did I –" she muttered, glancing at the two mugs of hot chocolate and shaking her head.
"Bewitched, bothered, but mostly bewildered, am I," she harrumphed, shepherding her young charges down the walk and into the car.
Carolyn glanced at the Captain before toasting her belatedly with the cup of hot chocolate. "Me too, Martha!"
"Madame, what is that silly little ditty she's been singing all day? Bewitched, bothered and bewildered? Why in my day, a song about witches would stir up more trouble than an actual witches' brew!"
"It's actually a love song, Daniel, sung by a woman who's bewitched, bothered and bewildered by a silly man. It's not about a witch at all."
The Captain smiled smugly. "Ahh, that explains the lyrics about the simpering, whimpering woman. Bewildered, you say? You did affirm your bewilderment to Martha, did you not?"
"Bewildered by a ghost? Who wouldn't be, Captain. It's taken me almost five months to get used to co-habitating –"
"Sharing a room with? –"
"Blast! You know what I mean. And I am not a whimpering child."
"Nay, Madame. You are delightfully ambivalent female, confused and confounded over the nature of our cohabitation. In all other respects, you are a womanly woman, a mother in full command of her household. Bewitched by me, but otherwise competent."
Carolyn stared, angry yet aroused at the same time by his utterly entrancing profile and the width of his shoulders. Seldom did they sit like this, side by side, where she could take full measure of splendid sea captain she wished she could enchant, fully.
"You flatter yourself," she snorted. "I'm neither bothered nor bewitched by you!
She was confused but heartened by the look in his eyes. "I've never simpered over any man and I don't intend to start now, in my dotage."
"Actually, witches don't simper," he continued, as if she'd said nothing at all. "They zap you!" Her eyes widened, and he laughed. "At least that's what they do to Casper, on morning cartoons, as the children call them."
Carolyn stared. "Are you suggesting I'm a witch? Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I'll go inside and leave you to haunt yourself."
But the Captain was elsewhere, rematerializing at the end of the pavestones by the gate. Odd, but the wind seemed to pick up only out of the south, not the north. Leaves scuttled dryly across his path. Something was in the air, something very odd.
Carolyn stared at him, and then went inside without another word. Enough of Halloween, she thought. Hardly mysterious or at all spooky when you have your own personal ghost to ruin the holiday for you.
"Boo to you, too Captain Gregg!"
The witch landed right where the old Monkey Puzzle Tree once stood, almost crushing the small sapling that replaced it.
"I thought something was about to blow in –"
"And blow asunder your comfortable little afterlife with humans?" The witch cackled exactly like Martha. "Hardly."
Not for the first time, Daniel wondered why witches didn't have – or chose not to reveal – their names.
"It's because nobody thinks to name hapless old women who cure idiot villagers with their herbs and save their children with ancient medicinal skills. They just burn us at the stake when it suits them."
The witch stared at the ghost, running her eyes up and down his form as though appraising a horse. "We're not as amenable to village life as handsome, haunted seamen. Mrs. Muir is a women's libber. A feminist. Get her to explain it to you. Before -"
"Oh no," the Captain rose. "She's just become accustomed to my existence. Please don't confuse her with the full dimensions, the connectedness of the true supernatural world. I wouldn't want to alarm Mrs. Muir about –"
"Alarm me with this dear, charming little girl?" Carolyn peered at the child huddled against the wind. "Why Capt – I mean, child, there really isn't such a thing as ghosts. Just witches." She glared over the girl's head at the Captain, who stood behind the witch pinching his nose. "Don't scare her!" she mouthed, furious that he would allow a human child to see him.
"What ghost?" The little witch's eyes widened. "Trick or treat, Mrs. Muir! Jonathan promised there aren't any ghosts here, and there's not!" The child scampered up to the basket Mrs. Muir proffered, and peered inside. "Do you have any M n M's?"
For a moment, Carolyn was taken aback by the girl's makeup. It really was good.
"Do you like my mask?" The girl pulled away before Carolyn had time to process her long, yellow fingernails. She giggled. "I put a spell on him!"
Carolyn raised her eyebrows convivially. "Oh, he's already bewitched, bothered and bewildered, as the song says!"
The girl shrieked, a little too authentically. Carolyn shuddered. Evidently the kids of Schooner Bay were not as innocent as she'd thought. Peering over the child's head, she stared at the darkness, trying to ascertain whether the entire high school class was having a laugh at her expense – or just this woman-child.
"Not any more! He won't be bewitched, bothered or bewildered after I'm through with him!" the costumed witch laughed, placing the broom firmly between her thighs. "He's done for. Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – bubble, bubble, toil and trouble -no more!"
With a loud wooosh, the child vanished into the night air. Carolyn peered into the darkness. Remarkable. They'd really thought this trick through, whoever 'they' was. No cars in sight. No lights. Just the red, red moon above.
"Madame," he said at last. "Madame. You must go in. I shall explain."
"What does the 'no more' part mean? Are you leaving us?" Carolyn was alarmed.
"Boo to you too! Mrs. Muir," he answered. "Nay, Madame. Now that is impossible in any realm."
He wondered what the silly witch had spelled him with. It wasn't like any of them to do anything nice or even seemly. With witches, everything had a catch. Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – no more? No flying creature could strip him of his growing desire for Carolyn. Haunted and handsome, she'd called him. Haunted and handsome…no more?
Daniel Gregg virtually preened.
"I believe your ahem – trick or treater you call them? – has seen fit to curse me with, shall we say, a long-term solution to our situation here?"
He reached as if to touch her. Carolyn retreated, hand on the doorknob.
"If that's true, supposing that sweet little girl really were a witch, then you should be dancing a merry jig at the very thought of –"
"Both this trick and implicit treat?"
Above, the old witch dangled in the sky, fully silhouetted by the now yellowish full moon behind her.
"Aye, but we'll see what happens when he learns this ship never sails from port," she chortled to herself. "Salty old dog. Be careful what you wish for. Mischief! I must be off, and away!
"Anon!" she screamed to the cats below.
Back in the parlor, Carolyn gaped as the Captain removed his jacket and took the poker by hand, inducing the flames to greater warmth.
"Silly old witch," he thought to himself. "Curse indeed. This ship is headed straight for eternity, with Carolyn aboard. The only thing shoving off is the witch."
"Trick or treat, my dear?"
"Treat, I suppose," Carolyn said cautiously, as he edged towards her on the divan.
"Daniel?"