The Cursed BY Heather Graham
To Key West—
one of the very special and unique places
that make my home state of Florida so special.
And for Stuart and Teresa Davant and days at the Banyan; Shayne, Chynna, Bryee, Jason and Derek for many trips to the island; Kathleen Pickering, Mary Stella, Connie Perry, Debbie Richardson, Aleka Nakis, Frazier Nivens, Clint Bullard, and so many more friends who make every trip down to Mile Marker 1 a little more amazing.
Prologue
Ghost Stories
“The children screamed in the night as they felt the fire surround them, as they felt the ash...as they breathed in a smell like bad fried chicken that drifted on the air—a smell that must have been the victims’ burning flesh!”
As he emerged from the bathroom, Stuart Bell waved his arms over his head in a ridiculously—he hoped—spooky way. He was trying to be funny. Not that the event had been funny. A dozen children and adults had once been killed in a fire here at their bed-and-breakfast. But that had been a long time ago.
Still, he was apparently not funny at all.
He could see that Shelly was genuinely scared—she had been since they’d embarked on the Key West ghost tour earlier that night.
The friends who’d taken the tour with them had all shaken off anything even remotely scary at their last stop, the haunted Hard Rock Cafe, where they’d imbibed a few island specialties and discussed some of the stories their guide had been telling them—despite having been told that a member of the Curry family had committed suicide in the ladies’ room. Everyone was having a great time—except for Shelly. Judy and Pete Atkinson, married grad students, were living it up away from kids, school and responsibilities. Mark Riordan and Yerby Catalano had kept up, matching them drink for drink. Shelly, however, had sipped at one blue, flowery beverage all night but left most of it behind.
The others had talked about the past and even laughed at the spooky melodramas their guide had recounted.
But Shelly took such stories to heart. She was still nervous.
He and Shelly Nicholson had been a couple since their junior year at the University of Miami, and they both believed they would stay together once they graduated; she was even looking for a graphic art job in the same city, Plantation, where he already had something lined up.
Stuart loved Shelly. He didn’t like to see her genuinely frightened.
She offered him a weak smile. She’d already changed into a pair of Disney pajamas—pretty obvious he wasn’t getting through those cute characters tonight. He didn’t care; he just wanted her to feel better. “I know you’re trying to help,” she said.
He caught her by the shoulders and urged her down on the luxurious bed. “They’re just stories,” he told her. “Sad memories of someone else’s past.”
“Yes, but...I can feel the stories. Does that make sense?” she asked.
In a way, yes, he thought, given where they were staying. The owner of the Siren of the Sea bed-and-breakfast—Hannah O’Brien—believed in doing it up right. The house had been built in 1839, and the care it had received over the years was extraordinary.
He had, he thought, done exceptionally well in choosing a place to stay for their trip down to the southernmost city in the United States.
But Shelly whispered, “If only we hadn’t stayed here.”
Of course. Their tour that night had started out from their bed-and-breakfast. Hannah herself, a lovely young woman not much older than they were, had been their tour guide, and she’d started with the tale of the B and B’s own ghosts.
There were several, supposedly. The most often seen was Melody Chandler, who paced the widow’s walk atop the roof, eternally waiting for her lover, Hagen Dundee, to return from the sea. He had died saving lives rather than cargo when her father’s ship Wind and the Sea had floundered just minutes after striking out from Key West, dashed to pieces on the reef by the sudden rise of a summer storm. There had been rumors of violent fighting with another salvager in the midst of the wicked storm—rumors that suggested Dundee had actually been murdered.
Melody had been convinced he wasn’t dead, that she would have felt it had he perished. Two weeks later, in the midst of another storm, she saw lights on the water and believed her lover had somehow survived in the ocean and been helped by a passing boat that was returning him to shore. She had raced down to what was now Smathers Beach, only to be swept away herself in the raging gale.
Now, Melody was sometimes seen on the beach when the sun set and night came on, while at other times she paced the roof of the Siren of the Sea. Occasionally she was even observed in the backyard, where what had once been a pond was now a small swimming pool surrounded by tiled paths, lush greenery and beautiful flowers.