The Circle
Nicolette Dennis carefully packed up the personal belongings she had accumulated during her seven years of employment with Mikel Corp, said goodbye to her fellow workers and forever closed the door on a chapter of her life. Her associates at Mikel were sorry to see her go, but the cancer that was devouring her body was at last defeating all attempts of modern medicine to contain it. The prognosis was that Nicolette had roughly three months to live, and while her doctors offered no hope for recovery, they would do their best, they assured her, to make her last days comfortable.
When she left her office in New York, she headed north on I-95 along the Eastern Seaboard to New England. Three and a half hours later she arrived in the small Massachusetts village of Maple Grove. She took the exit off the interstate and then followed a succession of state and local roads that eventually led to a small saltbox that was to be her home for the next three months, or as long as she lived.
The lights were on in the old house. Mrs. Heloise Ware, the housekeeper Nicolette had hired to help her during her final days, was there waiting for her.
"Welcome home, Miss Dennis," the woman said warmly. "I thought you might be hungry after your long drive, so I made a pot of homemade vegetable soup."
"Thank you. That was very considerate of you, Mrs. Ware. I see the movers have arranged all the furniture."
"Yes, they were here yesterday afternoon. I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of unpacking your clothes and household items."
Nicolette smiled with relief.
"I don't mind at all. I'm grateful to you, in fact. I was actually dreading the prospect of having to come up here and face stacks of boxes."
"Don't you fret," the housekeeper assured her. "I'll take care of everything. You just relax and concentrate on getting better."
Nicolette wearily turned away and headed toward the kitchen. Mrs. Ware was an optimist, or perhaps she was just trying to offer her employer a few words of encouragement to cheer her up. However, there was no hope of her ever getting better.
* * *
Nicolette quickly settled into a new routine. She no longer had to contend with conference calls, lunch meetings or long hours of overtime. Now she could sleep until eight instead of rising at five. She could eat her breakfast in bed, even though she often had no appetite.
Mrs. Ware took care of all the household chores with an efficiency that amazed her employer. There was therefore little for Nicolette to do except relax. She would usually read during the morning, take a nap after lunch, go for a short walk before dinner and then watch television until it was time to go to bed. She might actually have enjoyed the slow pace—at least for a short time—if it were not for the strong painkillers that drained what little strength the disease had left her.
A week passed and then two. Wanda Calloway, a visiting nurse who checked in on Nicolette twice a week, told her patient that she had lost five pounds since arriving in Maple Grove.
"There was a time when such news would have made me very happy," Nicolette said sadly.
"It's no wonder you're losing weight," Mrs. Ware noted cheerfully. "You eat like a bird. I'm going to make lasagna for supper. That will put a little meat on your bones."
Nicolette didn't argue with the woman. In the short time she'd known the housekeeper, Nicolette came to care for her a good deal. Mrs. Ware was more of a friend than an employee.
When the nurse left, Nicolette decided to go for her walk earlier than usual. As much as she enjoyed Mrs. Ware's company, she wanted to be alone, to give in to her fear and anger and have a good cry.
Living on a hill in a heavily wooded area, Nicolette had few places where she could safely or comfortably walk, so every day for the past two weeks she strolled down the half-mile-long unpaved driveway and back again. Feeling the need for a change of scenery, she gingerly stepped toward the back of the house, careful not to twist her ankle on a rock or a fallen branch.
"Trees, trees and more trees," she said. "Nothing else to see except for an occasional boulder."
She walked a short distance from the house, sat down on a large rock and let her tears fall. After several minutes, she took a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her eyes. Finally, she stood and glanced toward the sun that was making its way toward the western horizon.
It was then that she saw the clearing in the woods. Nicolette walked closer to examine the spot. It was circular in shape, roughly fifteen feet in diameter. Someone not only removed the trees and undergrowth, but he also cleared the ground of grass, leaves and rocks. Several large stones framed the circumference of the circle.
The real estate agent told Nicolette the house had been empty for two years before she, Nicolette, purchased it.
Who cleared that patch of land then, she wondered, and, more importantly, why?
* * *
When Nicolette went back into the house, she saw Mrs. Ware in the kitchen, making homemade sauce for her lasagna.
"That smells good," Nicolette said. "I hope you won't be offended if I can't eat too much. I just don't have much of an appetite anymore."
"No need to worry, dear. Food will never go to waste."
"Mrs. Ware, were you planning on putting a garden in the backyard?" Nicolette asked offhandedly.
The housekeeper abruptly stopped stirring the sauce in the Dutch oven.
"No, why do you ask?"
"Someone made a clearing in the woods."
"A clearing? I'm afraid I don't know anything about it."
"It's quite a large area. Someone must have spent a great deal of time pulling up seedlings and ferns, not to mention removing rocks."
"As I said," Mrs. Ware repeated, "I know nothing of this matter."
"It must have been kids," Nicolette suggested with an unconvincing laugh. "Perhaps they wanted to have a place to party up here in the woods. I'll bet my moving in put a damper on things."
"Yes, that must be what it is," the housekeeper said as she commenced stirring again.
Why do I get the feeling she's lying? her employer thought.
* * *
Three days later Nicolette returned to the clearing in the backyard. What she saw stunned her. On her previous visit, there had been only four or five large rocks lining the circumference of the circle. Now there were ten.
"These rocks must weigh several hundred pounds each," she mused. "Who could have moved them? Surely not teenagers, not unless they hired a backhoe to do so."
If any heavy machinery had recently been used in the backyard, however, surely she would have heard it. She considered questioning Mrs. Ware again, but Nicolette doubted it would do any good. The housekeeper seemed reluctant to discuss the matter with her.
The movement of the rocks continued to mystify her over the next several days, but she was too tired to investigate the matter further. Nicolette had entered the homestretch in her battle with cancer, and the disease had pulled ahead and was now racing for the finish line. She estimated that she had only a couple of weeks left.
* * *
The visiting nurse took a bottle of pills—a stronger prescription than Nicolette had previously been taking—from her medical bag and left it on the night table.
"These should help ease the pain," Wanda announced, trying to maintain a professional air; then she asked, "When was the last time you got some exercise?"
Nicolette rolled her eyes and turned her head toward the bedroom window.
"I haven't left the house in over a week. I haven't even had the energy to get out of bed these past three days."
"Come on then," the nurse said cheerfully. "Get up. It's a beautiful day, and you should be outside in the fresh air."
"I'm sorry but I can't," Nicolette apologized. "I'm too weak to stand."
"Mrs. Ware and I will help you."
Supported by the visiting nurse on one side and the housekeeper on the other, Nicolette slowly walked across the room, through the house, out the front door and into the yard. As the two women led the sick woman toward the driveway, she pulled in the opposite direction.
"No, I want to go in the back yard," she said weakly.
"That's not a good idea," Mrs. Ware quickly interjected. "There are a lot of rocks, sticks and tree roots that you can trip on."
"I want to see the circle," the dying woman insisted.
"What circle?" Wanda asked.
"A clearing in the woods," Nicolette explained. "It's in the shape of a circle."
"You'll break a leg out back," Mrs. Ware persisted as she tried to get her employer to walk down the driveway.
"No. I want to see if there are any more rocks around the circle."
The nurse sided with her patient.
"Let's go to the back—at least part way."
As the two women helped Nicolette avoid the obstacles in her path, they heard her sudden intake of breath.
"What's wrong?" the nurse asked.
"Look at the rocks. There weren't half as many the last time I was out here."
"Who created this circle?" Wanda asked.
"I don't know, but he or she has obviously been working very hard recently. Have you heard anything, Mrs. Ware?"
"Not a thing," the housekeeper declared.
The nurse examined the surrounding area.
"That's odd," she noted. "There are no tire tracks, yet someone had to have used machinery to create this—whatever it is."
"There were no machines up here," Nicolette cried. "If there had been, I would have heard them. I don't see how ...."
The sick woman suddenly swooned and would have fallen had the housekeeper not moved quickly and caught her.
"Let's get her back inside," Wanda said.
* * *
Over the next two weeks, Nicolette relied more heavily on painkillers. Her days passed by in a haze of deep sleep, dream-like states of half-wakefulness and—mercifully—only short periods of severe pain.
With her employer virtually bedridden, Mrs. Ware abandoned her role of housekeeper and adopted one of a nurse. She faithfully fed, dressed and washed the dying woman every day.
"The end is almost near," Wanda confided to the housekeeper gravely. "I think it's time to put the poor woman in the hospital."
"To die?"
"I'm afraid so. Surely you know her condition is terminal."
"I know no such thing. Nicolette is still a young woman—not even thirty yet. She has got her whole life ahead of her: husband, children, grandchildren .... No, she's not going to die. I believe that as long as she is breathing and her heart is beating, there is hope."
"Keep praying then, and perhaps God will hear you. For it will take a miracle for Miss Dennis to last out the week."
"I believe in miracles," Mrs. Ware said with a cryptic smile on her face.
The nurse left another bottle of painkillers with the housekeeper and took her leave, convinced that her patient would not need her services much longer. As Wanda walked toward her Subaru Forester, she suddenly remembered the strange clearing in the backyard of the saltbox. She went around the house and saw that the circle was almost complete. Two or three more stones would entirely enclose the clearing. Yet there were still no tire tracks, broken branches or trampled underbrush.
"It's getting curiouser and curiouser," Wanda said, paraphrasing Alice in Wonderland.
As intrigued as she was by the unusual landscaping, however, the nurse had other patients to see that afternoon, so she got into her car, drove away and put the mystery behind her.
* * *
Nicolette felt herself drifting back to reality, reluctantly leaving behind the serenity of her dream world. The pain, at first only a dull, nagging ache, soon became unbearable. It was nighttime, and the light of the full moon shined through the bedroom window. She looked at the clock on her night table; it was after 11:30. Where was Mrs. Ware? She was usually close by whenever Nicolette woke up, ready to give her more medication.
"Mrs. Ware," the dying woman called out. "I need my pills."
There was no answer. Slowly, Nicolette inched her agonized body toward the night table where her painkillers were waiting, like Tantalus' grapes, just out of reach. She stretched her arm toward the amber-colored plastic bottle, but a stabbing pain stilled her movement. Moments later the sound of the front door closing brought welcome relief.
"Thank God you're here," she moaned as Mrs. Ware walked into the dark bedroom without turning on the light. "That is you, isn't it?"
"Yes, Miss Dennis. It's me."
The housekeeper walked up to the bed, and Nicolette was shocked to see her wearing a long, dark robe. Her graying red hair, usually pulled back in a bun, was cascading down past her shoulders. Her head was crowned by a circlet woven from branches and oak leaves.
"I thought your bathrobe was blue," Nicolette said illogically, trying to make sense of the strange vision before her.
"It's time," the housekeeper announced, pulling the blanket off the bed.
"Time? Time for what?"
Nicolette feared for her life.
How ridiculous, she thought. I won't last out the week anyway.
It suddenly occurred to the sick woman how foolish she had been to take a strange woman into her house. After all, what did she know about Mrs. Ware? Nicolette had never met her; she hired Mrs. Ware sight unseen when she answered the ad the New Yorker had placed in the local paper.
"Come on, let me help you," the housekeeper said, lifting the dying woman off the bed.
"Where are we going?"
"To the clearing. The circle is now complete."
Mrs. Ware was not a large woman, yet she had little difficulty carrying Nicolette, who was frail and wasted from the cancer. As she approached the clearing, Mrs. Ware stepped over the ring of stones and into the center of the circle.
"What are you going to do to me?"
"You'll see," Mrs. Ware replied gently.
The housekeeper laid her employer on the ground at her feet. Then she raised her hands high and, at the stroke of midnight, under the light of the full moon, beseeched her goddess to restore health to the dying young woman. When Mrs. Ware finished her entreaty, beams of silvery light shot out from the stones bordering the circle, forming the illusion of the spokes of a wheel. At the hub of the spokes—the focal point of the beams—was the limp form of Nicolette Dennis.
Warm energy bathed the dying woman's body, like rays of sun on a warm summer day. In a matter of moments, the lights dimmed and winked out. Nicolette, who was still under the euphoric spell of the mystical beams, felt young and healthy once again. She stood up, running her hands over her pain-free body. Then she lifted her head to face the woman who had saved her life, but there was nothing there except an empty robe that fell to the ground when Nicolette touched it.
* * *
Although all traces of cancer were gone from Nicolette's body, she did not return to Manhattan or to the hectic life of a corporate executive. Instead, she remained in her saltbox in Maple Grove and developed and maintained an online support group for people suffering from terminal illnesses. Wanda Calloway, the former visiting nurse, became her partner and best friend.
Neither woman knew what strange magic the housekeeper had worked, for she never returned after the night of the full moon. When Nicolette asked about her in the village, she discovered that no one in Maple Grove had ever seen or even heard of Mrs. Heloise Ware.
Within a year, Nicolette met Jamison Ford, a mystery writer who lived in town. The two fell in love and were subsequently married. After the ceremony, a dinner party was held in the groom's mother's house in the historic McIntire district of Salem. While the bride was walking through the rooms of the grand old house, meeting the groom's family and friends, Wanda, her maid of honor, called her attention to a group of framed photographs hanging on the wall above the main staircase.
"Look at this woman," Wanda said, pointing with excitement.
Nicolette stared at the sepia-toned photograph. Except for the old-fashioned clothing and hairstyle, the woman in the picture could have been Heloise Ware, her mysterious housekeeper.
"It looks just like her," the bride declared.
"I see you've discovered the Ford family's rogue's gallery," her new husband laughed when he spotted the two women on the staircase.
"Who is this?" Nicolette asked, indicating the red-haired woman in the old photograph.
"Ah! She's the most scandalous of us all," he laughed.
"That was my mother," Mrs. Claudia Ford, the young bride's mother-in-law, informed them.
"People around here thought she was some kind of witch," Jamison said theatrically. "But then this is Salem, so accusations like that come with the territory."
"Shame on you, Jamie!" his mother affectionately scolded her handsome son. "Heloise Ware was your grandmother."
"And a better woman never lived," Jamison confessed with genuine fondness. "I cried for weeks when she died."
"She doted on you," Claudia reminisced. "I only wish she were here to see you getting married to such a fine young woman. I'm sure she would have approved."
Nicolette turned to her maid of honor and smiled. There was a silent agreement between the two friends not to mention their suspicions that not only had Mrs. Ware approved of her grandson's wife, but that she had also returned from the grave to keep the young woman alive so that the two could meet and marry.
Salem, you don't really expect anyone to believe that you created a version of Stonehenge in our back yard, do you?
