Witches of The Wood

by Skylar Finn

  The odd effect was difficult to reconcile between the fog and the camera, not aimed at their feet but directly on their faces. Margo’s voice was piercing, the intensity in her face—especially her eyes—reflecting a whole new level of wrath. The back-up chanting was faster and louder, rhythmic and terrifying, but no one in the clearing seemed to notice.

  Pandora was fixed and riveted, thrilled with the scene taking place before her. Abe was motionless, glued to his camera. Timothy had disappeared, along with Les. I looked over at Cameron and his eyes were closed in bliss, a small yet rapturous smile on his face.

  As they moved closer to the camera, their voices picked up in speed. I felt alarmed in a way I couldn’t explain, and powerless to stop them. I wouldn’t know how, I thought, and I didn’t even know what I’d be trying to stop.

  I was glued to the monitor, filming it with my phone. I watched their faces. They didn’t look like themselves anymore. Their pupils were dilated, so large their eyes looked black. Their mouths were open and distended, as if in one drawn-out, collective scream.

  As Margo reached the end of the verse, she raised the book in her hands high over her head. I felt electricity gather in the air and smelled something like burning. A single bolt of lightning split the sky. It lit the clearing like daylight and seemed to crackle all around Margo, illuminating her in its silvery light.

  I was frozen, unable to move. I stood paralyzed next to the monitor, unsure of what I was seeing but knowing that whatever it was, it was bad. I looked down at the screen and froze. I was yards away from the trio in the clearing, but the camera was tight on their faces.

  The faces I saw on the screen were not Margo, Kimmy, and Bridget. The faces in the monitor were ancient, wizened, and terrible; their eyes bottomless and black, their lips pulled back in identical frenzied grins. The foremost face was the worst of them all, a twisted, ruined mess: evil beyond imagining, and burned beyond all recognition.

  27

  Common Denominator, Samantha Hale

  “Cut!” yelled Pandora. “Ye gods! That was electrifying! This is the best work of my career!” She strode into the clearing in her knee-high Wellington boots, waving fog away from her face.

  I looked around the set, bewildered. Hadn’t anyone else seen what I had? The answer was clearly no. Margo, Kimmy, and Bridget had lowered their hoods and were smiling, their witch-faces of a moment ago now back to their ordinary faces.

  I wondered if I had even seen what I thought I had. Then I remembered I’d recorded it with my phone and that I could play it back later. It was becoming quickly apparent to me that I needed to get out of here and go somewhere I could review my evidence: the recording, and the black book from the library.

  Cameron was giving Margo water, Pandora and her crew were setting up for the next shot, going over blocking with Kimmy and Bridget; and Les was nowhere to be seen. With everyone distracted, it seemed like the ideal time to slip away.

  I ran into Les in the kitchen, fixing himself a scotch on the rocks and gulping it down like Robitussin. He looked up guiltily when I came in, which was pretty much the only way he looked at me nowadays.

  “I’m going to go post this behind-the-scenes footage,” I said. “Later.”

  “Wait!” he said, setting his glass down on the counter. “Where are you going?”

  “Burger,” I said, my hand on the swinging door.

  “Can I come?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, and disappeared through the door.

  Whenever I needed to think, as Les knew (and whatever our current relationship status, he knew me well) I’d find the nearest place to have a cheeseburger and fries. This helped me think more than anything else.

  There was no particular rule about what kind of cheeseburger it had to be—it could be a fast food burger or a diner burger, or anything in between. But the establishment in question had to serve Coke, not Pepsi. There was no point in having a cheeseburger without Coke.

  In Mount Hazel, my options were limited, and I drove up and down Main Street three times looking for a place to buy a cheeseburger. I was still kind of pissed that all I had been able to do so far was talk to ghosts, and I thought maybe if I used the magical number to traverse Main Street, a cheeseburger restaurant would appear. As it transpired, I was right.

  While Main Street failed to yield anything but a coffee shop, pizza place, beauty parlor, and hardware store no matter how many times I drove up and down it, I discovered a place to buy cheeseburgers inside of the pizza place.

  I was hopeful they might have cheeseburgers, even though they sold pizza. Not only did they have burgers, but they had a whole separate counter for them—kind of like when you go into a gas station and there’s a Subway in the corner.

  Ye Olde Cheeseburger Shoppe blinked in pink neon letters over the counter in the corner of PJ’s Pizza. I could hardly believe my good luck. A spotty-faced kid in a paper hat took my order.

  “What’s with the Old English?” I asked.

  “We serve meade,” he said.

  “But why, though?” I asked.

  “It’s very popular around here,” he said. “Would you like a flagon?”

  “Yeah, but I still want my Coke,” I said.

  A mere five minutes later, I had all my food and beverages at a booth in the corner. The fries were the curly, seasoned kind and deeply satisfying. As curious as I was to read the evil diary hidden in my jacket, I didn’t want to get grease on it.

  I ended up being glad I hadn’t taken it out, because who should appear in the booth across from me but Peter, who had a habit of sliding into whatever table I was sitting at unannounced. I didn’t know what was in the diary, but I did know I wasn’t ready to share it with Peter.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I eat lunch here every Friday,” he said. “I could ask the same of you.”

  “I wanted a cheeseburger,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, looking at the neon sign. “It seems you’ve come to the right place.”

  “How is it that you always seem to know where I’m going to be?” I asked.

  “Maybe you’re predictable,” he said.

  “What kind of cheeseburger did you get?” I asked.

  “Pizza,” he said.

  “Disappointing choice,” I said.

  “There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to define himself,” said Peter. “For me, it’s pizza.”

  “So is this like a date?” I asked. “Or what?” I’d finished my first flagon of meade and was getting a little belligerent.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Do you want it to be?” he asked.

  “I asked you first,” I said.

  “Juvenile,” he said.

  “I can see that you’re not going to answer me,” I said. “So I’m just going to assume that it is.”

  “Okay,” he said. “In that case, shouldn’t we be getting to know each other?”

  “Okay.” I bit back a mild and unfeminine belch, swaying slightly in my seat. “Why’d you come back here after school?”

  “The bar,” he said. “My dad. My inability to get a job at the Inquirer straight out of grad school, and my pressing need to start paying on my student loans. Why didn’t you come back here after school?”

  It was a touchy subject, but I was really very drunk.

  “I’ve never come back here,” I said. “I never felt like I had a choice.”

  “What changed?” he asked.

  “Curiosity,” I said. “I guess.”

  “What did you find out?” He looked at me intently. Ordinarily, I could discern between Peter’s reporter-gaze and his Dirty Dancing visage, but I was rapidly losing my barometer to distinguish between the two.

  “More than I cared to,” I said, emptying my flagon. I still had a lot of Coke left, so I started chewing on my straw. It was kind of like an appetizer. “Not as much as I would have liked.”

  “Cryptic,” he said. “I like how enigma
tic you are.”

  “I’m an enigma wrapped in a question mark,” I said. Quoting Margo, reciting cliches.

  “So what was this ‘more’ that you discovered?” queried Peter.

  Beneath my layers of meade, I felt wary. “What’s it to you, Peter?” I asked. “You’re awfully curious all of a sudden.”

  “I want to get to know you,” he said. “The real you.”

  “As opposed to?” Was there a fake me?

  “This ice castle façade you put up,” he said. “That armor you’re always wearing to conceal what you’re really thinking and how you really feel.”

  “I have an ice castle?” I said, surprised. Then paused. That sounded wrong for some reason. “Façade?” I added finally.

  “I wouldn’t want to play poker with you,” said Peter. “That’s all I’m saying.” He looked at my empty flagon. “Is that all you’re having?”

  “Are you trying to get me drunk?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t want to drink alone.”

  “I can’t drink another one of these,” I said, looking at the flagon. “I’ll die.”

  “I don’t share flagons,” said Peter. “Maybe we live too long, anyway.”

  Whether it was the stress of the manor, numerous instances of witchcraft, ghosts, or just generally being really behind at my job, Peter barely had to twist my arm. I thought the grease of my cheeseburger and copious fries would soak up much of the first meade, so I logically concluded that a second one would be like having only one in the first place.

  Peter dropped the flagons on the table in front of us. I hadn’t even seen him get up, let alone return. He slid one of them in front of me. Reaching across the table, he grasped the hand I’d left lying there unattended. He smiled and his eyes crinkled at the corners.

  Peter, I thought (the last clear thought I remembered having), is a dangerous man.

  “So Sam,” he said, tracing the center of my palm with his thumb in slow, concentric circles. “Tell me all about yourself.”

  I woke up with my mouth feeling like cotton and my head pounding with an unfriendly day-drunk hangover, the worst kind. There’s virtually no way to cure a hangover at dinner time. I looked around, squinting. I wasn’t at the manor, or Ye Olde Cheeseburger. I wasn’t at the coven’s house, or the bed and breakfast. I wasn’t anywhere I recognized at all. Judging by the hardwood floors, black leather décor, badly chosen throw rugs, and journalism awards on the shelf, I was at Peter’s apartment over the bar.

  My first thought was to look for my clothes, which were still on my body, which was a relief. It wasn’t that I thought Peter would take advantage of me; it was more that if he ever did, I would prefer to remember it in explicit detail.

  My jacket was folded neatly over a chair in the corner, which I almost certainly had not done, and my shoes were aligned neatly at the foot of the black leather couch I was sprawled on under a black fleece blanket. None of this seemed like my handiwork, and I cursed myself for putting myself in a position where Peter could be kind or chivalrous, which made me like him more, which made it even more difficult to distrust him.

  Why distrust Peter? Hadn’t he treated me with nothing but kindness? I wanted to trust Peter, but there was something about him I couldn’t shake—the way he looked at me in the coffee shop that day, a look I found shrewd and calculating. His pervasive curiosity that seemed less like a friendly passing interest and more like his rat terrier-like tenacity about getting to the bottom of things.

  Had I told him something that I shouldn’t have?

  I felt a wave of dread wash over me. My memory tapered off at some point after flagon number two. It was interspersed with clips of me walking next to Peter down a sidewalk, laughing hysterically after I punched a child’s snowman in the face; walking through the park; and asking if we could order a pizza while we waited for an Uber, the only one on the map.

  “Where would we have it delivered?” asked Peter, who was also drunk.

  “This bus shelter,” I said.

  “This is a bandshell,” he said.

  In my pre-Les days, i.e. undergrad, I partnered with a dumb-as-rocks frat boy in a Sunday case race at an apartment off-campus. All I remember from that day is that he kept saying the same thing, over and over: “You wanna go to Blackout City? We’re going to Blackout City, y’all.”

  “Is that on Delaware Avenue?” I asked. I thought it was a club.

  “It’s not a place,” he said. “It’s a state of mind.”

  I hadn’t returned to Blackout City since the days of my youth, when case racing was an acceptable activity for a Sunday afternoon. One I would now equate with alcoholism. It wasn’t anywhere I wanted to be, let alone with a man I wanted to think highly of me even as I kept him at a distance.

  I rolled myself off the couch and landed on the hardwood floor with an unpleasant thump. From my new vantage point on the floor, I glanced around for any sign of Peter. Down the hallway, I could hear the sound of water running and deflecting off of someone’s body (presumably Peter’s, who I was now trying, and failing, not to picture in the shower) intercut with whistling. Who whistled in the shower?

  There was a bottle of water at eye level a few feet away, and I dragged myself toward it like James Caan in Misery. My plan was as follows: I would drink the water. I would stumble to my feet, thank Peter for a lovely afternoon (assuming he was out of the shower and at least partially clothed), and stumble home. Maybe Mount Hazel’s sole ride share was in the neighborhood.

  After I chugged the water, I noticed Peter’s pants were lying on the floor outside the bathroom. The thought of him taking them off mere feet away made me blush, even though I’d been unconscious. I was definitely in over my head with Peter.

  I caught a glimpse of a steno pad protruding from his back pocket. Curiously, I slid it from his pants. Unlike Kathy Bates’s penguin, it seemed easy enough to replace without him detecting that I’d moved it. I turned my face and listened for the water of the shower, which continued to run unabated.

  I rolled over on my back and flipped the pad open. I wanted to know what Peter had on Martha Hope, which was bound to be more than I had. And if I was being honest, I wanted to hold his words in my hands; I wanted to read his thoughts and ideas without magic. In the immortal words of Mazzy Star, I wanted to hold the hand inside him.

  “Fade into you,” I sang from the floor. I guess I was still kind of drunk. “Strange you never knew—what the hell?”

  Instead of endless pages of thoughtful, erudite observations, the first page I opened to was headed with the words WITCHES OF MAIN STREET? Interview with Mr. Hope—mentioned reference in Martha’s journal to apothecary. Possible connection? Margo Metal: arrival coincides w/first disappearance, Colin Hayes.

  At the bottom of the current page, in perfect block letters that seemed both coldly methodical and accusatory, he had written:

  Common denominator: Samantha Hale.

  28

  Duplicity

  The water in the bathroom abruptly shut off. The building was old and the pipes were loud. The sound was unmistakable. Peter, still whistling, got out of the shower. I could hear his wet feet slapping against the tile floor.

  I shoved the notebook back in his pocket. I was on my feet and in my shoes in five seconds flat, my pounding headache temporarily forgotten. Like every woman on the planet, I’d long ago become a Zen master at the fast escape. I slid into my coat like greased lightning and was out the door before Peter could emerge in a cloud of stream, probably dripping wet and wearing nothing but a towel. I set aside this visual due to the fact that he was a traitorous, back-stabbing liar.

  As I ran down the stairs, I re-played every moment that we’d shared since my arrival in town a week ago, kicking myself for my stupidity. His easy manipulations at the bar, where he’d honed the fine art of charming drunk girls for an extra five. Appearing at my table in the coffee shop, staring into my eyes. Pretending to defend me against Les. “Getting to k
now me” in the car driving Tamsin home; “getting to know me” in the pizza place. He played me like a fiddle from start to finish: all so he could get information for his investigation, so he could get out of Mount Hazel and move onto bigger and better things. I was his ticket to the Inquirer, and how conveniently gullible I was. Maybe you’re just predictable.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” I cursed myself as I hit the street and practically ran down the sidewalk. I didn’t actually run, because the sidewalks were icy and I was having a bad enough day as it was without breaking my tailbone on top of it.

  Behind me, I heard a window slide open. I glanced over my shoulder to see Peter, leaning halfway out of the window over the bar. Shirtless, naturally. I guess I was also clairvoyant in addition to being telepathic. (And if I was so psychic, why hadn’t I seen that Peter was a liar?)

  “Samantha!” he yelled. “Wait!”

  I turned the corner, out of sight. It was so cold that the tears froze on my cheeks before they ever hit the ground.

  Friday 10:15 PM

  I’m beginning to feel as though I’ve done something wrong

  ?

  Obviously you read my notebook

  …

  Can I trust you?

  Of course.

  Have you been investigating me/my family?

  …

  Yes.

  Why?

  I can’t tell you that.

  Then I can’t trust you.

  I rolled over and turned my phone off. I was buried in my duvet upstairs while the wrap party for Margo’s video raged in the ballroom below. Champagne corks were popping. People were wearing antlers. As Margo had put it, it was definitely a scream.

  And where was I? Alone in my room, feeling sorry for myself. No champagne for Sam. Of course, the fact that these people were all either ruthless philanderers or possible witches conjuring dark forces for their own gain should have deterred me from the wrap party in the first place, technically speaking.