The Witches of Bay Ridge
Halloween is coming and something weird is going on in New York City.
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Two hands with light skin and a black manicure grabbed the black cat before it could cross Frank Reagan's path as he exited the café behind his security detail.
"Watch it, Commissioner," the woman attached to the hands said as she cuddled the cat. Her face was framed in a mass of shoulder length dark curls that were streaked with strands dyed red. She wore black from head to toe and had the most striking blue eyes that Frank had ever seen. "A black cat crossing your path is bad luck, you know," she went on. "Your luck has been bad enough lately."
"I don't really believe black cats are bad luck," Frank said.
"I wouldn't discount such things so quickly," she replied.
She turned to gesture to a man at the top of a ladder some feet away, painting the frames of a window. Below him, a young man, intent on his phone and not paying attention to his path, walked under the ladder in time for the painter to knock the paint can off the ledge where it sat. It fell onto the young man's head, getting paint everywhere, especially the phone he had been paying attention to.
Frank turned to tell the woman it was just a coincidence but she was gone.
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Jamie and Eddie cut through the park on the way to their favorite diner for their lunch break, arguing as they went. "I don't think it will be necessary to have a cake that big," Jamie said.
"But you only get married once and I love their cakes," Eddie told him. "And twelve layers is the smallest they will make."
A squeal behind them made both stop and look to see a child running after a ball. When they turned back around, a woman with short black hair streaked with white wearing billowy clothing was standing directly in their path, startling them. Her eyes were such a pale blue that they looked almost white and her gaze was almost hypnotic. She smiled without saying a word and beckoned them to follow. Suspicious and careful, Jamie and Eddie pushed through the bushes to find a man hanging upside down from a tree. The woman flowed past them as they stepped forward to help the guy.
"Hello officers," he said. "Can I help you?"
"I think the real question," Jamie said. "Is can we help you?"
"Uh, Jamie," Eddie said and pointed to the piles of swirling leaves on the ground under where he hung. The mass parted with the breeze and they saw the glint of a gun through the vegetation.
"Huh," Jamie said. "Can you explain this ma'am?" he looked around to find the woman gone. "Where'd she go?"
Eddie looked around. "She was just here."
"Who?" the hanging man asked. "Could you please get me down? The blood is really rushing to my head."
"That your gun, sir?" Jamie asked as Eddie carefully picked up the gun.
"No, not my gun," the man said a little too fast. Jamie eyed the empty holster at his hip. "Well, OK maybe it is," he went on as Jamie looked at him. "You know, I think I can get myself untied…" he bent up to try and reach the rope and it broke, causing him to fall to the ground in a heap.
"I'm under arrest aren't I?" the man said as he looked up at Jamie and Eddie as they stood over him.
"I'd say so," Eddie replied.
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"So the guy that Jamie and Janko arrested during their lunch break is wanted on three homicides and one attempted," Sid told Frank and Garrett.
"You're kidding?" Garrett said as Frank looked up at him with surprise.
"No," Sid went on. "Turns out, he's a hit man. He was in the park looking for his mark."
"And he admitted this?" Frank asked.
"Yeah," Sid replied. "He had no idea how he ended up upside down like that, but he said there was some girl wandering around before he was suddenly upside down."
"Jamie said something about a girl pointing in the direction of our guy," Frank said as he went through the report that Sid had handed him. "Did he give you a description?"
"He said her most distinctive feature were these eyes that were so blue…"
"They could pierce your soul," Frank read from the report. He looked up thoughtfully. "Dark curly shoulder length hair with red streaks?"
"Naw," Sid said. "Short black hair with a white streak. Why?"
"I saw a woman with eyes like that this morning," Frank replied. "With dark, curly, shoulder length hair with red streaks through it. How often do you think there would be a woman with like that?"
"Maybe they're sisters," Garrett suggested.
"Or she was wearing a wig," Sid put in.
"Either could be true," Frank nodded. "But something weird is going on."
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Erin was starting to get sleepy and she yawned. The day had been extremely long and she was tired. She took a sip of her coffee and set it on top of her car as she dug out her keys. "Hello, Erin," came a voice close behind her.
Erin turned, jumping when she saw the woman so close behind her. The woman had a mass of sparkly golden curls, bright billowy clothing and the most piercing blue eyes she had ever seen. "I think you dropped this," she went on as she handed a photograph to Erin.
Erin took the photo and looked at it. It was dated and time stamped for the time and date of the robbery she was trying, but the man with the gun was not her suspect. It clearly showed the real suspect had a bald head and no facial hair. The one she was trying had a full head of short dark hair and a goatee. She was trying to wrong man.
"Where did you…," she began as she looked up to find the woman gone. "…find this?" She looked around the empty parking garage. "And how did you know my name?"
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Danny was running late to pick up his sons at Henry and Frank's house. It had been raining but was getting dark so he was trying to hurry. He'd promised the boys that he would be there to make dinner, but he had been detained and was now a half hour late and driving in the dark and the rain. When his headlight flashed on a figure in the stretch of road ahead of him, he swerved and almost slid into a ditch.
Getting out, he looked around, trying to locate the person to make sure they were unhurt. He found her on the corner of the intersection he had been about to go through. "Ma'am," he called to her. "Are you OK?"
She had short dark hair and piercing blue eyes. He wondered if it were the same woman that Jamie had seen earlier in the day. As he moved closer to her, he spoke again. "Can I give you a ride home?" he asked then jumped back as a car slid on the wet pavement of the cross road through the stop sign and into a tree. Danny looked back to make sure the car hadn't hit the woman to find that she had disappeared.
The car suddenly burst into flames and Danny ran toward it. He tried to open the door only to find it jammed. The driver, a small woman, was unconscious so he got out his gun and smashed the window carefully. He cut his hand as he cleared as much glass as possible out of the window area. He reached across to unbuckle her then pulled her out and away from the car as it became fully engulfed in flames. Around him, he heard sirens and people from the nearby houses coming out to assist.
Someone stood over him with an umbrella while someone else wrapped him, still holding the woman, in a huge blanket. A third person tended to his hand. Danny slowly began to realize that if he hadn't stopped for the woman in the road, the other car would have hit him, and quite possibly killed him and the woman still unconscious in his arms.
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"He's fine," the doctor said as Frank stalked in. "And from the sound of the accident, he's lucky to be alive." She turned to walk him to the room where Danny was. "He cut his right hand pretty bad," she went on. "Twelve stitches."
"Do you know what happened?" Frank asked.
"I don't know," the doctor replied. "His story was so strange that I had him checked for a concussion, too. He doesn't have one but he is in shock."
Frank nodded. "And I can see him now?"
She nodded and gestured into the room. "He's waiting for you."
Frank stepped in the room and pushed aside the curtain to see Danny sitting on the edge of the bed, cradling his bandaged right hand in his left one. He was quiet and reserved, an uncommon occurrence for this particular son. "You OK?" Frank asked him.
"Yeah," Danny replied quietly.
"What happened?"
"I was on the way to get the boys at your place," Danny told his father. "This woman stepped out in the road and I almost hit her." He rubbed his eyes with his good hand. "When I got out of the car to see if she was hurt, she disappeared."
Frank's eyes narrowed. "What did she look like?" he asked.
"She had short black hair," Danny began. "And her eyes…"
"Light blue?"
"I think she might have been the same woman Jamie saw," Danny finished.
"I think there is more to it than that," Frank said then told him about the contact that he and Erin had with similar women.
"Maybe sisters?" Danny said.
Frank shrugged. "Maybe. But what do they want from our family?"
Danny shrugged back. "I don't think they want anything bad," he said. "Everything they've done has been positive."
"True," Frank said. "It still begs the question…what do they want with our family?"
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"Halloween is only two days away," Henry heard as he planted the crocus bulbs at the edge of the driveway. The tulips there had stopped blooming for some reason and he thought the crocuses would make a nice addition to the flowers already there.
He looked up to see a woman standing nearby, a black cat in her arms. The mass of brown curls framing her face were streaked with red and made her pale skin look even paler. The most distinctive things about her were her eyes. The blue of them was so light they looked almost white and they seemed to pierce his soul.
"Can I do something for you?" Henry asked her.
"No," she replied as she cuddled the cat. "Remind your son that Halloween is coming. The veil between the living and the dead opens on this night and family can hear you better when you speak to them." She leaned in almost conspirativly. "And sometimes, you can hear them, too."
"I'm not so sure about that," Henry began as he looked down to swipe his hands together and clean off some of the dirt. When he looked back up, the woman was gone.
He blinked in confusion as he looked up and down the street.
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After Henry's sighting two days before, no one in the family had seen any of the strange women since. Halloween night, Frank was invited to a charity costume party and the host had been pretty insistent that he come. So he wore the same costume he had worn at the last such party he had gone to. He dressed as the former president and New York police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt.
As Abigail Baker helped him into his jacket, he remembered what his father had said about the message the woman had given when she came to him. And the message she had given Frank. "Are you superstitious?" he asked her.
"I think everyone is superstitious," she said as she dusted what looked like cat hair from his sleeve. "To a point." She stopped and looked up at him. "Does this have to do with the blue eyed women your family has been seeing?"
"Yes," Frank admitted.
"Not everything can be explained," Abigail said. "At least, not logically. That's why we have superstitions."
Frank nodded. "How do I look?"
"About the same as you did last time," she replied with a smile.
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For the first half hour at the party, Frank was fine. He spoke to several other party goers and was beginning to feel drained when he saw her. The girl from the street was in a witches costume and a tall pointy hat with a wide brim and a red ribbon around it. The black cat was riding on her shoulder and she held an old-fashioned straw broom.
She turned to look at him and smiled and started walking away. Frank excused himself from the conversation to follow, but she disappeared. He looked around, trying to find her to no avail.
He turned back to the party only to see a second woman with those same hauntingly blue eyes and dressed, as the first woman had been, as a witch. Her short hair poked from beneath her tall pointy hat decorated with a white ribbon. He got within arm's length of her and he grasped her arm to turn her toward him.
"Is there something I can do for you commissioner?" the young Tammy Macy, dressed like a witch with a yellow hat band, asked.
"I'm sorry, Tammy," Frank said. "I thought you were someone else."
"Oh, well, I hope you're having a good time," she said. At Frank's nod, she went off.
Frank removed his prop glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Are you OK sir?" Jim Nucifero asked him.
Frank shook his head. "I think I'm ready to go," he said.
"Very good sir," Jim replied and followed as Frank turned to do just that.
"Leaving so soon?" a voice asked and Frank turned to see a golden haired woman with the piercing blue eyes that the others had. Her witch's costume was black but sparkled like the night sky and her hat was decorated with a shiny gold ribbon. In addition, her skin sparkled like she had been dusted with gold and glitter and she smiled broadly. This woman and the other two he could almost mistake for the same woman, they looked so much alike.
"Sir?" Jim asked, distracting him and he looked over at his security man. When Frank looked back, she was gone.
He took a deep breath and turned back to Jim. "I am definitely ready to go," he said.
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Frank came out of his bathroom and stepped to the dresser where he dropped his watch, pin and police ring into the tray. He fingered the wedding band, missing his wife, Mary, but not as much as he once had. He debated whether it was time to take off the band and let it join Mary's in the box nearby. Finally, he opted not to.
"The veil is open," a voice lilted in the room. "You only need look through."
Frank looked up at his reflection to see the three women from the party and the last few days behind him in the mirror. The blonde was immediately behind him at his right shoulder, the short-haired brunette to his left on this side of the bed and the brown haired one on the other side of his bed. He jumped and turned, only to find them not behind him. Turning back to the mirror, he found they were no longer there either.
As he looked at his reflection, he noticed a cloud of moisture come out of his nose when he breathed and he felt a distinct chill in the air. He rubbed his eyes.
"Frank," a familiar voice began. "You can take it off if you want to."
He looked back up into the mirror to see Mary standing at his shoulder. "Don't look away," she said. He could almost feel the hand on his shoulder so he did as she told him, unbelieving. "In the morning, you will think this was a dream," she told him. "But right now, I'm here."
Frank kept his eyes on her, willing her to stay. "You know I can't, Frank," she said. "I miss you so I know you miss me." Her hand moved in the reflection from his shoulder to his hand. "If you ever stopped missing me, I would know that you didn't really love me." Frank wanted to turn and see her there so badly, but he didn't turn, didn't let his eyes leave hers in the mirror.
"You're unhappy," Mary went on. "It's because you are alone here. If you keep turning down socialization, you'll only be alone. I want you to find someone to spend the rest of your life with." When he started to protest, she held up her hand. "We promised till death do us part," she went on. "Death has parted us and I look forward to being with you again. But that is a long way off," she told him. "And I don't want you to be alone for so long."
Frank finally found the words to speak. "I love you," he said simply.
"I know," she said. "I love you, too. Hearts are big powerful things. They just keep making love and make as much as you need and more."
"Find someone to give yours to," she went on. "Someone who needs it and will return it. When you join me here, I will welcome her with open arms when she joins us."
Without looking away, Frank fiddled with his wedding band. "You can take it off love," she said. "But you do not have to because if she's really the one, she will understand…"
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Frank woke the next morning as the threads from the unusual dream wove in the room. He thought he could smell lilacs, but November 1st was the wrong time of year for them to bloom. As he pulled himself from the bed, he began to smell coffee brewing overtake it. He looked up at the mirror then stood and walked forward to it. There, in the tray was his watch, pin and his police ring. In the center under the trio of items he wore every day was something else peeking through and he picked it up. It was Mary's wedding band.
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"In honor of Halloween," Jack said as the family sat together for the next Sunday dinner. "My history teacher told the class a really weird legend she found when she was researching the history of New York. It's obscure, but interesting."
"In the spirit of the holiday," Frank began.
"And the weirdness of this particular one," Danny put in.
"Go ahead and tell it," Frank said.
"There were three sisters who lived in the Bay Ridge area in the 1600s," he began. "They lived off by themselves because they had a distinctive feature that made everyone certain they were witches."
"What feature?" Henry asked.
"Their eyes," Jack said. "Their eyes were such a light blue that they…"
"Looked almost white," Danny put in.
"And could almost pierce your soul," Eddie added.
"Yeah," Jack said. "Have you heard this legend?"
Nobody moved, so Jack went on. "Nothing bad happened in the community so the town just let them be. Then the middle girl was, well the teacher said taken, but I think that means she was raped or assaulted or something like that. She was rescued by a tall man who returned her to her sisters." Jack paused for effect. "It seems the man fell in love with the oldest sister and they married and had a child. A few years later, some kind of sickness took the man and he died, and his wife could only despair. She cut her hair very short in mourning and never spoke another word." He stopped and looked at the mesmerized adults around him.
"Go on," Nikki said. "This is getting interesting."
"The women were known for helping people," Jack said. "One saved a drowning child while another pulled a pregnant woman away when a tree fell, just missing her. The townspeople were afraid of them, but not so afraid to do anything to hurt them. They only seemed to bring the town good. When their house caught fire, they even tried to save them, but they could only save the child."
"They say," Jack went on. "That they come back every fifty years around Halloween to help their neighbors and open the veil between the here and the hereafter." He stopped to take a drink of water. "They help lost loves to speak to those still in the land of the living."
He looked around at his mesmerized family around the table. He snorted. "That was pretty much our reaction, too," he said, breaking the spell.
"Did they have names?" Frank asked as the family returned to their eating.
"Yeah," Jack said. "The oldest was named Moon, the youngest, Star while the middle was named Sun."
"What about Moon's child?" Nikki asked.
"Her name was Skye," Jack replied. "She grew up and married and had children and grand-children."
"That true?" Sean asked.
"Don't know," Jack replied. "But it sure makes a cool story."
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Frank walked into the diner where he hoped to have a leisurely breakfast before he went to his early meeting. Inside, the room was crowded and the waitress, Evelyn, noticed and came up beside him. "I'm sorry we're so busy, Frank,"
"It OK, Evelyn," he said.
"I could shoo someone out?" she said as she looked around the room. Before she could her eyes fell on an empty seat across from a single woman. "Or you could sit with her."
She pointed and Frank looked over. Briefly, the woman looked like one of the three blue eyed women from the week before, then he blinked and she was gone. In her place was a woman with straight brown hair that sparkled copper, looking at the menu before her.
"If she doesn't mind," Frank said. "Then I don't either."
Evelyn went over and spoke to her then waved Frank over. She handed him another menu and left him standing next to the table.
"You're sure you don't mind?" Frank asked as the woman perused the menu.
She looked up and he could see her blue eyes were rimmed with red. "No, I don't mind," she said.
Frank sat in the booth across the table from her. "Are you OK?"
She smiled and swiped at her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "I must look like an idiot."
Frank noticed the ring on her left ring finger as she went on. "Today is the tenth anniversary of my marriage."
"Seems like it should be a happy occasion," Frank said.
"He died three years ago," she said as she twisted the wedding band on her left hand. "In the line of duty."
"Cop?" Frank asked and she nodded. "I'm sorry to hear that," Frank said. "My wife has been gone thirteen years."
"Does anyone ever ask why you still wear your ring?" she asked with a gesture to the band he still wore on his left ring finger.
"Now and then," he told her.
"Do you ever get tempted to take it off?"
"Yes," he said, remembering the dream he had had on Halloween.
"I must seem like I'm asking a lot of questions," she said. "I don't mean to."
"That's OK," he said.
"Do you ever stop missing them?" She fiddled with the cross pendant she wore.
"No," Frank said honestly. "If you ever stop, it means your love wasn't real in the first place."
"So missing them is good?"
Frank nodded. "By the way, my name is Frank," he said and held out his hand to shake hers.
She placed her hand in his and gave him a firm handshake. "I know who you are, Commissioner Reagan," she said. "My name is Skye Collins."
Frank smiled, surprised and the coincidence. "It's nice to meet you Skye."