by Skylar Finn
“What are you doing out here?” He found his voice and tried to sound stern. “You should be at home in bed, with your families. Do your parents know you’re here?”
Their laughter was like bells ringing in the darkness.
“Do your parents know you’re here?” one mocked him.
“I don’t think anyone knows you’re here,” said another.
“I’m going back to the inn,” he said. He was angry. How dare these children mock him? “And you’re coming with me.”
They fairly screamed with laughter. They wept with it.
“Try it,” one of them suggested.
He took a step towards the circle and found that his feet were bound to the forest floor as if nailed.
“What have you done?” he demanded. “What devilry is this?”
The innkeeper’s daughter stepped into the circle. She had one hand behind her back. She faced him and smiled, saying nothing.
“You,” he said. “What have you been doing in these woods?”
“That’s not for you to know,” she said. She withdrew her hand from behind her back and he saw then that she held a knife whose blade glinted in the moonlight. “I require a gift for my master. And here you are.”
“What are you doing?” He reached for his axe, but his hand grasped only air. He hadn’t thought to bring it. They were only children.
“You heard what they said,” she said, almost apologetically, it seemed. “No one knows that you’re here. And that means no one will miss you.”
She advanced on the hunter, who found that his limbs were paralyzed like his feet. The only thing that worked was his voice. His screams cut through the night, frightening all the birds from the trees.
One by one, travelers went missing from the inn. People checked in, but they never checked out. The only ones who remained were the innkeeper’s daughter and the daughters of the travelers, none over the age of twenty. At night, they disappeared in the woods.
The innkeeper had grown blind from his sickness, then gradually deaf, and finally died. At least, this was the town doctor’s diagnosis. Whether or not he would have remained ill had his daughter never ventured into the woods alone remains unseen.
One person made it out of both the inn and the woods alive: the hunter. He had no memory of how he escaped the innkeeper’s daughter, but stumbled out of the forest by the bridge three days later, half mad and babbling about the witches of the wood. He sought asylum in the town’s sole church, built in the square that consisted of only a bar, the church, and the smithy. The pastor could scarcely make heads or tails of the man’s story, but it seemed that there was something strange happening at the inn on the hill, and perhaps he should pay them a visit.
When he arrived at the inn, he found no one but the innkeeper’s daughter. The other girls the hunter had claimed to see were nowhere to be seen.
The innkeeper’s daughter, who had grown quite lovely since he’d seen her last, was sweet as could be. She had buried her father in the yard, she said. She ran the inn as he taught her and kept it going to survive and to honor his memory. She had no guests now, but she did enough business to stay afloat. Would he like a tart? She just made some, fresh from the oven.
The pastor thought perhaps the hunter had eaten some berry or poisonous mushroom in the woods that had driven him to insanity, as this seemed like a perfectly sweet and innocent girl. He went away with his tart satisfied that there was no bad business at the inn.
So thoroughly had the girl deceived him that he did not walk around the property and see that the recently dug up earth had not one burial mound, but dozens.
One other person heard the hunter’s story, and that was the blacksmith’s daughter. Her father no longer attended Sunday service since the death of his wife had made an atheist of him, but his daughter kept the faith and she liked the silence of the church; the hushed solemnity of the pastor’s voice. It made her feel closer to something without knowing what that something was.
There were many forms of magic in those days. All were unseen. The blacksmith never questioned his girl’s ability to mold metal to her will. It was not a woman’s work, let alone a girl’s, but there were so few people in Mount Hazel, even those who might have objected looked the other way when he taught his daughter the ways of his trade. She was a strange girl, watchful and silent, and he assumed she’d never marry. What else would she do?
And in truth, when the girl was hardly twelve, she had already surpassed him in skill. He watched her closely, but he could not see how she did it. Sometimes in a shower of sparks or a trick of the light, she seemed to do things that were not humanly possible, but he blinked, and all seemed normal again. So he dismissed such notions.
The blacksmith’s daughter asked the pastor about the hunter’s story after the pastor returned from the inn. He told her he had seen no sign of wrongdoing, but she felt something was amiss, although she couldn’t explain why. She decided to investigate.
Late that night, when her father was sleeping, she ventured out of bed. She took an axe she forged herself and went up the road toward the steep hill where the inn sat, to see what she could see.
Now that they had taken the inn, they no longer felt the need to venture all the way down into the deep, dark wood to conceal their actions. Soon they would take the whole town. And then what? Perhaps the whole world.
They lit the fireplace in the dining room and formed their circles there. They summoned the shadows of the wood and spoke to them, agreeing to bring them whoever they wanted. The hunter had gotten away, for they had been new at this then, but no one had escaped since. Although they were running out of travelers.
The shadows suggested that it was time to move on, to a larger town, or even a city, where there would be plenty more for their dark coven and more town dwellers to feast on. The shadows said they could take any form they wanted, including the form of the girls. If they invoked an ancient magic and became one with the shadows, they could move through the world together as an unstoppable force.
The girls were excited: an unstoppable force! They would no longer need to summon the shadows, because they would be within them always. The girls agreed, as the shadows knew they would, and so they set the stage for their ritual.
The blacksmith’s daughter watched through the window, clutching her axe. She knew she was witnessing something unspeakable. Should she get the pastor? They’d never make it back in time. And what could he do? There were so many of them. What could she even do?
Whatever it was, it must be done quickly. If they performed this ritual, whatever it was, and those things inhabited them—she couldn’t see them any more than the hunter had, but there appeared to be shadows on the wall at the corners of her vision that flickered and dissipated when she turned her head, and she could hear voices in the room though none of them moved their mouths or appeared to speak. Strange, hissing voices, and the girls’ answers in return.
She ran to the trees and cut down a few long branches with her axe. She used the sturdy branches to barricade the doors. Then she snuck into the kitchen, where the door was left unlocked. They had nothing to fear, for they were fear, so it never occurred to them to lock any of the doors.
A fire warmed their stew. She did not want to know what it was made of. She dipped a branch into the fire and used it to light the beams of the inn. It is not an easy thing to light a building on fire with no fuel other than the building itself, but she didn’t need one.
The fire did her bidding, just as it had when she forged the iron in her father’s shop. The place was aflame in no time, and she ran to the tree line to conceal herself while she watched it burn.
Inside the inn, the dark coven initially mistook the flames as part of the ritual, and they continued their chanting and the shadows swirled around them. But then the heat became unbearable. They used their magic to extinguish the flames, but they were not prepared for the severity and size of the fire.
Many of them perished before the
fire was out. The shadows were caught between their world in ours, with no vessels to inhabit, so they remained trapped by their own dark rites inside the walls of the inn.
The innkeeper’s daughter survived, but she was burnt beyond recognition. She and her five remaining followers abandoned the inn and retreated to the woods where their dark god awaited them. They are said to remain there to this day.
The images Aurora cast over the table faded. The fire had grown low in the fireplace. The room was silent and still.
“Was that like, an allegory? Like a fable, or a fairy tale?” I finally asked. I was being optimistic.
“Of course not, dummy,” said Tamsin. “It was real. It really happened.”
“Some feel that it’s better to be free in Hell than to serve in Heaven,” said my grandmother, closing her eyes as if she was tired. I later learned that the amount of magic she had just performed would have severely incapacitated anyone with less power than she had. “In this coven, we don’t believe in either. We exist in the space between.”
“What happened to the blacksmith’s daughter?” I asked.
“Her father was wrong.” My grandmother shrugged. “She married the barkeep’s son, and with him had a daughter.” She eyed me levelly. “And that, Samantha Black, was your great-great grandmother.”
25
An Unexpected Guest
Every time I went to dinner at my family’s house, I went home with an existential crisis.
Last night’s dinner was no exception.
As the result of this particular dinner, I now had to contend with the fact that there were probably evil spirits in the manor. The surrounding woods were possibly haunted by immortal evil witches with third-degree burns. And apparently, I had the ancestral equivalent of Arthur-meets-Bewitched, which made getting out of all this look less and less likely a prospect.
The bed and breakfast, on the other hand, was looking better and better.
Realistically speaking, I knew there was no bed and breakfast in my future. I felt now, more than ever, that I was part of something much larger than myself and that whatever came next might be inevitable. In a way, I felt resigned to it.
My family was worried about me going back to the manor, for obvious reasons, so I told them I would drive to the Briar Rose in Mount Lenore to stay with the rest of the crew, where I could safely discern what Margo was up to from a distance. It was agreed upon that we needed to know, because if Margo was harnessing the forces of the manor, it could spell danger not only for Mount Hazel but for everyone who came into contact with her—and in the case of a pop star with millions of fans, that could quickly become an international incident.
I had no intention of going to the Briar Rose. I had a room at the manor and nobody there knew what I knew, if that made any sense. I had a ringside seat to solving this mystery, and I had every intention of getting to the bottom of it.
I wished more than anything that I had someone to confide all of this in, and I thought about that as I got up and got ready the next morning. Someone who wasn’t wielding magical powers and therefore a little blasé about all this for my liking.
I wished I could talk to someone like Peter. Someone objective and outside of it all. But I knew that it was absolutely forbidden to tell anyone outside the coven. He would have thought I was insane, anyway. I barely thought I was sane, most days.
Margo was filming a music video in the woods for her first single and everyone was showing up at the manor for it: her entourage, Les, and the crew making the video. I planned to shoot behind-the-scenes footage of the production, ostensibly for generating early social media hype. But in actuality, it was just so I could analyze what I shot for any dark hint of what Margo truly was. The camera doesn’t lie.
I was finishing my morning cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. I heard the bright and chipper voice of Bridget, greeting an unseen party. This was followed by a veritable parade that streamed down the hallway past me in the kitchen, onto the patio, and into the yard: people carrying cameras, lights, and one very intense-looking lady with dyed black asymmetrical hair that matched her black frame glasses. I assumed this was the director.
I went to the ballroom to check on Margo and found her seated next to Kimmy as Cameron applied finishing touches to their make-up and hair. There was a third seat open, and this was quickly filled by Bridget, who turned to me excitedly as she sat down.
“Margo asked me to be in the video, too,” she said. “Isn’t that exciting?” Her eyes sparkled as Cameron descended on her platinum hair like a bee on a flower and began styling it.
“I just think three is a preferable number, visually,” Margo said. “And in general.”
I remembered what Aurora said about the rule of three and could no longer chalk this up to coincidence.
I kept my expression neutral as I sat on Cameron’s closed make-up case, which was the size of a steamer trunk and looked like it was being used to smuggle plutonium. It was black with about a dozen silver latches on its side and at least three keyholes and an open padlock. I glanced down at my makeshift seat.
“This is some pretty serious artillery you have here,” I said.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, applying glitter to Bridget’s already-glittery lid, “how many skanks will gank your brushes. I’ve paid literally hundreds of dollars for these. I’m like Picasso. I keep it locked down.”
It sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation, although I couldn’t fully wrap my head around the concept of buying a small arms case to transport one’s glitter eyeshadow.
The front door opened. I saw Les walk past the ballroom. He glanced in briefly, saw who was in it, flinched, then continued down the hallway. I thought I heard his footsteps pick up speed, but it might have been my imagination. I took my phone out to shoot Margo while Cameron prepped her.
“So, Margo,” I said, zooming in on her face. “Tell me a little bit about the video you’re filming today.”
“Les was pushing to use my ballad as the first single, to showcase the brand new me, but everyone knows you don’t drop a slow song as a first single,” said Margo. “I’m looking to flaunt convention, not destroy it. And, in the process, myself.”
“So what will you be performing today?” I asked.
“I wrote it just last night,” she said. “I’ve already been working on the vocals with Kimmy. It’s called Fury.”
“What’s the song about?” I asked.
“Kimmy?” Margo turned to look at her as Cameron volumized her hair. “Would you like to back me up?”
“Yeah, girl.” Kimmy spat her gum into the palm of her hand and flung it into the nearby trashcan. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“My brightness was extinguished, when would I ever learn?” Margo sang.
“Hell hath no fury, hell hath no fury,” Kimmy chanted in the background.
“A woman scorned is a woman burned. My light is extinguished, to the darkness I turned…”
“Hell hath no fury, hell hath no fury,” chanted Kimmy and Bridget in unison.
“Okay, that’s good,” I said hastily, cutting the recording. Something about their chanting was really freaking me out.
Margo smirked.
“It’s gonna be a scream,” she said.
I went out to the woods where the crew was setting up their equipment. Les was talking to the director, but when he saw me, he broke away.
“Hey,” he said in a weird, strangled voice. He tried to smile. He looked like he was having a stroke.
“Hey,” I said, bored. “Quite the set-up.”
“I know!” He lit up for a moment before the light inside him died again. “Pandora and her crew are very in demand,” he continued in a more subdued tone. “They shot the Temptation video for Ferrari.”
“Spared no expense,” I said.
Les studied me to see if I was messing with him. I smiled blandly and turned away to film the set-up.
“Ahhhh, something bit me!” cried a kid
carrying a light.
“Don’t drop the light!” shrieked Pandora as he bumbled around with it, stumbling back and forth. “Put it down. You idiot!”
“But something bit me!”
“That’s an Arri Alexa Skypanel, it’s worth more than your life, and we have no insurance! I don’t care if it slithered up your leg and strangled you!”
The camera guy put his tripod down and ran over the kid, grabbing the large and expensive-looking light out of his hands. “What bit you?”
“I don’t know, I think it was a snake or something,” he panted, hopping around on one foot. “Why are we shooting out here?”
“Realism,” said Pandora. “Abe, I think there’s a first aid kit in the van, if you don’t mind.”
“Why didn’t we get insurance?” asked the camera guy, presumably Abe.
“Someone,” said Pandora, shooting a glance at Les, “is having budgetary concerns.”
Abe went back to the house while the snake-bit kid rubbed his ankle and moaned.
“But what if it’s poisonous?” he whined.
“Walk it off,” said Pandora.
I didn’t want to post someone getting attacked by wildlife on the set of Margo’s video, so I stopped recording and went back to the patio door to film Margo’s entrance. I didn’t have long to wait as Cameron stepped through the sliding glass door and pulled it wide open behind them.
What I saw next nearly made me drop my phone: Margo, Kimmy, and Bridget exited the kitchen in a single-file line, outfitted in the same blood-red robes as the mysterious figures I’d seen from my window, disappearing into the woods.
I filmed them as they entered the clearing. Pandora studied them, taking it in.
“I like what you’re doing with this,” she said. “This robe thing. I’m getting a ritualistic, medieval vibe here. Let’s get a couple of test shots in this clearing. I’d like to work with what natural light we have since someone—” she shot a dirty look at Snake Bite—“is clearly incompetent. Abe? Where’s Abe?”