The Wynne Witch

by H. P. Bayne

  Sully grinned. “Ned hasn’t lost his touch.”

  He led the way through the main floor toward the entry hall and to the front door. It was slightly ajar, as if someone had left it open as they’d run off, shrieking, into the night. Given the spiritual contents of the house, Dez guessed the image wasn’t far from the truth. He wondered briefly why Ned hadn’t shut the door, but decided the poltergeist probably didn’t mind it when the unsuspecting came calling. What fun would a poltergeist have without people around to terrify?

  Enough reason for Dez to want out of here now.

  He peered through the doorway into the overgrown front garden, seeking out any sign of human presence. Nothing was visible, so he stepped through and made his way into the expansive front yard.

  “What’s the best way to get to the OC’s clubhouse, do you think?”

  When he received no immediate answer, he turned to find Sully standing on the front steps, his gaze locked on the broken windows looking into the main sitting room on the ground floor. At first, Dez thought Sully must be seeing a ghost. Then he remembered.

  “Do you think he’s still there?” Sully asked quietly.

  Dez regained his side and slung an arm around him, a move meant both to comfort and to drag him away. “Maybe. He put himself there. Remember that.”

  More than two years ago, a group of men had trapped Sully here with the intent to kill him. He’d harnessed Ned so he could overpower the men. One had gone through the window and had died there.

  Whether his body remained there, concealed beneath the tall grass and torn drapes, Dez didn’t want to know. He didn’t need Sully knowing either. He hadn’t talked any more about the incident, but Dez sometimes wondered how heavily it and other horrible events weighed on Sully. The haunted expression on his face as Dez pulled him through the garden seemed to answer the question.

  Dez turned and leaned in slightly to speak directly toward his brother’s head. “I’m going to say this one more time. It wasn’t your fault. You got that?”

  Sully nodded, a difficult move given the thick arm Dez still had slung around his neck.

  They paused at the gate leading to Oldwater Road, allowing Dez to hold Sully at arm’s length to study him. “You got your head screwed back on, bro? I’m going to need you out there.”

  Sully met his eye and held it, as if he was gaining strength there. Then he nodded, fortifying the move with a smile. “Yeah. Thanks, D.”

  Dez smiled back and gave Sully a solid pat on the shoulder before turning to the gate. “Any idea how we can best get to the property without getting capped?”

  “There’s a run-down place just east of it. It’s a short walk from here. If we can slip in there and climb the wall between the two properties, I’m hoping we can find somewhere to hide and watch the place.”

  “And no one’s living at the property you’re talking about?”

  Sully headed out the gate and scanned the roadway before stepping farther out. “Doubt it. I checked it out when I first came here a few years back. It was falling apart even then. It’s probably a complete disaster zone now.”

  He was proved right a few minutes later when the two of them slipped through the property’s partially opened gate. Whatever had existed of a house was reduced to rubble. Some of the properties had structurally survived due to their building materials or their higher location on the island. Simple wood constructs at lower levels—such as this one must have been—had been destroyed. Due to water damage and lack of care, Dez imagined many of the wood-built houses even on higher ground were now or would soon be impossible to stay in, even for those who were sadly used to horrendous living conditions.

  Uncertain why it had only occurred to him now, Dez dug out his phone and dialled Lachlan.

  “Hey,” he said once his boss answered. “We’re here and we made it through Ravenwood all right. We’re looking for a good vantage to surveil the OC house.”

  “Watch yourself,” Lachlan said. “And hang up. You keep chattering on, someone’s going to hear you.”

  Lachlan disconnected, and Dez glared down at his phone before replacing it in his pocket. “You’d think he hadn’t ordered me to call him.”

  Sully grinned but said nothing.

  They picked their way through the heavy grass and weeds, Dez tripping once on a concealed garden gnome and just managing to keep his feet.

  “Not the sort of trip gnomes are known for,” Sully had quipped, mind flashing back to the commercials.

  Dez puzzled out the joke a moment, giving Sully a lighthearted shove when he got it.

  Sully led them to the west side of the property, nearest what Dez assumed was the Oldwater Crew flophouse. A stone wall stood this side, and they picked their way quietly through the underbrush until they found a crumbled spot. There, they crouched, taking a moment to watch and listen.

  Dez plucked a bug from the leg of his jeans and crushed it against the wall without looking at it. A bit late for tick season everywhere else, but he wouldn’t put it past them to survive in a place like this. “If the people living in the Forks don’t drop each other, Lyme disease will get them.”

  Sully smirked but said nothing, his gaze not breaking.

  From here, he could just make out the front edge of the house, although his view was obstructed by a wild growth of trees and shrubs the other side of the fence. Each time a breeze came up, one particularly thick branch bobbed up and down, blocking what little he could see.

  “We need to get closer,” he decided.

  Sully nodded, standing from his crouched position, and stepped through the space in the fence. Dez was impressed at the silence to Sully’s movements—silence he himself hadn’t mastered. Asking a man of his stature and build to move stealthily was an order too tall for reality.

  He did his best nonetheless as he slipped into the spot next to Sully and crouched beside him.

  “Stay here for a minute,” Sully said.

  Dez’s first instinct was to put out a hand to stop him just as Sully lifted himself to move off. “Where are you going?”

  Sully turned to him with an eye roll. “Like two steps forward. Holy hell, man.”

  Dez, in fact, counted four steps, but he decided not to argue the point. Sully’s head turned first one way, then the other. A few minutes passed before he made his way back to Dez.

  “They’ve got two guys guarding the front gates, and I can see at least one on the front door. No way to make out the back from here. I saw some movement inside the house through the windows, but not enough to tell whether Callum’s here.”

  Dez cast his own eye once more over what he could see of the house. “I don’t want to go any closer. We’ve got one gun between us, and count on it a lot of the gangbangers in there have one of their own. I’m not Wyatt Earp. I’m not going to win an O.K. Corral gunfight when my Doc Holliday’s not even armed.”

  “There’s a way to solve that.”

  Glancing at Sully to read the expression on his face, Dez couldn’t tell how he was leaning, but it was clear he was torn.

  Dez lent his own indecision to the matter. “I don’t like it either, but at least I’d know you’d have some serious firepower behind you, and you’d be protected.”

  “But you wouldn’t. Not necessarily. If I do it, I’d need you to stay far away.”

  That was a no-go. “Forget it. You’re not going in there alone, not under any conditions.”

  They left it there, at what amounted to an internal stalemate for each of them. Sully was powerful as far as psychics went, but no power was all good. He’d lost himself to it before, and Dez wasn’t keen on watching it happen again.

  “Okay, so we’re not going in, is what I’m hearing,” he said.

  Sully watched the house another long moment, then shook his head. “Not going in.”

  With a nod, Dez settled back into the grass to watch. He could deal with that. “We’ll keep an eye out. If we see Callum and can get him alone, we’ll grab him.”r />
  Sully nodded back. “Okay.”

  And that, unfortunately, seemed the best they could do for now.

  10

  Two hours in and Dez had nothing but leg cramps.

  He shifted, leaning back to stretch. He’d never handled surveillance well, hated just sitting and watching. In his cop days, he’d been Action Man, the guy his partner would send off on foot pursuits, knowing he had the length to catch up quickly and the strength to fight once he got there. Given his size, plenty of suspects had taken him as a challenge. Few had succeeded in so much as a punch before Dez had them proned out on the pavement with a set of cuffs pinching their wrists.

  “How you doing?” Sully’s voice was barely audible, a slight hum next to Dez.

  Dez allowed himself a quick glance at Sully before returning his gaze to the house. “Okay. You?”

  “Okay.”

  With nothing more to be said, they fell back into silence, nothing to hear but the breeze shaking dead leaves from the branches overhead. Dez plucked a leaf from his hair but otherwise didn’t move. The shrubs surrounding them had turned orange with the season, making autumn one of the few times when his red hair didn’t need to be concealed beneath a cap or a hood if trying to go unseen.

  Another cramp seized, and Dez did his best to stretch it out.

  “Okay?” Sully asked.

  “Cramp.”

  Sully grunted his understanding.

  Another half hour passed. Dez found himself wishing he’d thought to bring a snack.

  “What if he’s not even here?” he hissed. “Could be we’re sitting on our asses next to a gang house for no reason. Oh, and by the way, I’ve found three wood ticks crawling on me so far, so we’re going to have to strip the moment we get home and make sure none of those little bastards are making a meal of us.”

  In response, Sully reached down and plucked something off his own leg, then used his utility knife to crush it against a rock. “Makes four for me. And I’m pretty sure he’ll be here.”

  “Where’s that get us if he’s not coming out? And what if he can’t come out? Could be he’s a prisoner in there. Hell, could be he’s dead.”

  Sully shook his head. “If he’s dead, it means someone killed him, and I’m not seeing or feeling anything to suggest a ghost. Let’s wait another hour or two. If we don’t see anything, we’ll reevaluate.”

  “Reevaluate how?”

  Sully shrugged. Same answer Dez came up with. Going in was not an option, not even with Lachlan’s revolver. Dez had played through some scenarios in his brain and didn’t like where any of them took him. Six bullets, even if he was lucky enough to hit his target each time and incapacitate each, would only put six out of commission. He’d need to reload, a process which would be made far more difficult with fingers trembling from adrenaline and tension. It wasn’t as if the still-standing gang members would wait for him. And firearms had become far more plentiful on the streets the past few years, meaning many would likely be armed with magazine-loaded weapons, allowing them to reload fast and keep firing while Dez was busy fumbling with bullets.

  No matter which way he looked at it, he and Sully would be dead inside of two minutes.

  Another leg cramp, this one in his other leg. “I gotta stand up.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  Dez worked it out by fully straightening the leg and leaning forward over it, leaving the watch temporarily in Sully’s hands. He was startled upright seconds later by a tight-sounding, “Dez.”

  Sully’s eyes were fixed on something in the direction of the house, and Dez followed them to see a young man with coal black hair and various piercings emerging, held between two gangsters. He didn’t have the light brown hair of his parents’ memory, but this was most definitely Callum Wynne. From here, it didn’t seem like he was happy to be there.

  “Where are they taking him?” Dez muttered.

  Sully shook his head. “No idea, but it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t want to go.”

  Even worse, Dez suddenly realized they were coming this way.

  “Shit, Sull, we gotta move.”

  Using the shrubs and the light wind to mask their movements and sounds, they crouched low and stepped back over the crumbled section of wall. Then they ran along the edge, sprinting past a bare stretch until they reached the cover of a series of overgrown caraganas. Dez got there first and just had time to tug Sully in behind him before the gangsters came through the spot where the brothers had crossed.

  From here, Dez had a good view of the fallen house. He noticed something else too—a smell. A bad one.

  “Oh, Jesus. You smell that?”

  “I know,” Sully said. “I think the Oldwater Crew are using this as an execution ground.”

  Dez’s eyes widened as he considered this. “Ah, hell. We gotta move. They’re going to kill him.”

  Sully nodded. “But wait a second, until we see where they’re headed.”

  Dez pulled the revolver from his back waistband and double-checked the cylinder. “Ready when you are.”

  He couldn’t see Sully’s face, but knew he’d been studying the men when he next spoke. “One of them for sure has a gun. Looks like a sawed-off job.”

  “Rifle or shotgun?”

  “Barrel doesn’t look wide enough for a shotgun.”

  “Good. Less chance of them hitting us with one slug than a round of pellets.”

  They waited until the men neared the opposite side of the house. Dez cast one more glance toward the stone wall, ensuring no one else was coming, before slipping out of cover and staying low as he jogged toward the fallen house. He could hear Sully padding along behind him until they reached the opposite side.

  More caraganas had grown wild here, allowing Dez and Sully to hide while listening to voices coming from the other side.

  “—told you I’d—”

  “Enough! You don’t want to take the inheritance, that’s too bad. You were given the chance.”

  “They’re my family. I can’t kill them.”

  “You knew the consequences.”

  “Please. Please, don’t.”

  Laughter from two men. “Pathetic,” said one.

  Dez peeked up while Sully peered out from the side of the bushes. Callum was on his knees, facing away from the men, next to the house’s former east wall. The men stood behind him, their backs to Dez and Sully. Even better, only one had a gun—the sawed-off rifle.

  “Move,” Dez whispered.

  The gunman was bearing down on the back of Callum’s head when Dez and Sully reached them. Dez hammered the gunman on the back of the head, one hard punch that drove him forward and down. The other man spun, but Sully was there, knocking him out with a jab to the side of the head. Dez delivered his own second punch to his man’s temple, laying him out cold.

  He shook his hand out, then raised his brows as he eyed the guy Sully had taken down. “Good shot.”

  Sully grinned. “Learned from the best. It’s all about location.”

  Dez held onto the revolver as Sully retrieved the rifle.

  “Callum?” Dez waited for the shaking young man to turn before continuing. “My name’s Dez Braddock. This is my brother, Sully Gray. We’re private investigators working for your dad and stepmom.”

  Callum’s eyes were saucer-wide. “Y-you’re not going to kill me?”

  “Nope, and we’ve got to move, right now.”

  Callum nodded and stood on quaking legs. “They told me I needed to help them with something. I didn’t realize until we got here they were going to kill me. You smell that?”

  Dez stepped closer to the wall. The foundation had crumbled, creating a gap leading into the dark pit of the home’s basement. He allowed himself a moment to shine a light down.

  And instantly regretted it. First glance revealed no fewer than three corpses. He didn’t stop for a second glance.

  “Dez.” He turned at Sully’s voice and caught him ducking his head
from the emptiness of the yard to the ground. His expression revealed the area wasn’t so empty, not for him.

  “How many are there?” Dez asked.

  “A lot.”

  Dez handed Sully the revolver and took the rifle from him. “I’m going to discharge this one time. If it doesn’t go off, everyone at the house will think something went wrong. Once I fire it, we run like hell. Callum, you stay on us, you got it?”

  He nodded quickly. “No problem.”

  Dez aimed the gun toward the ground and fired a single quick shot. He held onto the weapon as he turned and ran for the front gate.

  They made it back to Ravenwood Hall without anyone following.

  Callum eyed the place through wide eyes. “Dude, we can’t go in there. Place is seriously haunted.”

  “Yep,” Dez said. “We know.” He glanced from Callum to Sully. “Anyone following—living or dead?”

  Sully shook his head. “Not yet. I might not know until later about the latter though.”

  Dez hoped not for his brother’s sake. If ghosts of victims murdered by the gang came demanding justice, it would likely prove a job Sully couldn’t tackle. Short of pulling a Die Hard-style hit on the OC’s stronghold, Dez could think of no way to help.

  Sully turned his phone back on to use the flash and entered the house first. “Ned, we’re back. We’ve got someone with us. He’s cool.”

  “Who’s he talking to?” Callum asked. “Someone live here?”

  Dez smirked. “No one you want to know, kid. Let’s go.”

  Ned stayed his hand while Dez, Sully and Callum walked through the main floor and back to the basement, Callum sandwiched between them as they moved. Once back in the passage, Dez shut the door behind them, then wiped the rifle down with his hoodie and laid it on the ground.

  “You’re not taking it?” Callum asked. “What if they come after us?”

  Dez didn’t answer. He just wanted rid of this thing. He could still see the bodies in the basement and suspected this gun had put them there. God only knew how many lives it had claimed.

  “It’ll be safe here,” he said.