Witches of The Wood

by Skylar Finn

  “I talked to one of my contacts at the police department and it’s pretty much an open and shut case on Paul Danforth, the vocal coach,” said Peter. “But I’m not convinced. The crime rate in Mount Hazel is virtually nil. I’ve had nothing to do since I went to work at the paper. I know every act of petty vandalism, DUI, and drug possession that’s occurred in the last two years. For there to be two disappearances within two weeks is virtually unheard of. And I do think that Colin disappeared, and that something happened to him. And I believe these disappearances are connected. Paul Danforth had motive and opportunity to murder Martha Hope, but he had zero connection to Colin. Both disappearances coincided with the arrival of Margo Metal and her entourage.”

  Peter, who had no magic at his disposal or coven to inform him that his job was haunted and possibly possessed, who had been investigating all of this externally with nothing but his connections and brain, had somehow arrived at the same conclusion that I had. And that was without bearing witness to it on a daily basis. I was still wary of him, but I couldn’t deny how impressed I was by his intelligence, diligence, and determination.

  “You think Margo had something to do with this?” I asked.

  “I can’t imagine why she would,” he said, frustrated. “She had no more connection to Martha than Paul Danforth did to Colin. That’s what doesn’t add up. There are people in and out of that house all day, and it’s possible that any of them—outsiders, probably not vetted by anyone hiring on Margo’s behalf—could have done something to a local, knowing they’d leave town after. But why kill someone on the inside, like Colin?”

  “You think he’s dead?” I asked, thinking of Colin’s ghost, glumly trapped in the parlor, unable to read any of the books.

  “People don’t just abandon their lives, Sam,” he said. “Not people with every reason to live them. If he’s nowhere to be found, it stands to reason that it’s because he was taken. But what’s the connection between Martha and Colin?”

  “Maybe they found out something someone didn’t want them to know,” I said.

  “Like what?” He looked at me intently.

  What was I supposed to say? Maybe a dead witch over two hundred years old used black magic to kill a a virginal college student and young girl in exchange for her voice? The thought gave me pause. Colin had made a big deal about being a virgin. I hadn’t thought about it in Martha’s case because she was young and every aspect of her life had been tightly controlled, so I supposed from that perspective it seemed like a given. But wasn’t there a thing with evil people and virgin sacrifices?

  “I’m not sure,” I said honestly.

  “Sam,” he said, taking my hand again. “Do you know something you’re not telling me?”

  I looked down at his hand over mine.

  “I’m not trying to manipulate you,” he said. “I’m asking you because I care. I’m asking because I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I want to keep you safe. If there’s something going on at that house, then you’re right in the middle of it. If somebody’s covering something up, and they did something to someone who used to work there, what’s to prevent them from doing the same thing to you?”

  I didn’t think Peter would consider “magic” an acceptable response. I wasn’t even sure that I did. I didn’t know if Margo was actually a witch yet or just trying to be one, but I was pretty sure Gwyneth was still out there. And not only was she extremely powerful, she was also old. Was she dead? Or was she immortal? Was that the gift the deer in the woods—or whatever it was—had given her?

  It was frustrating not to be able to vocalize any of this to Peter, but I remembered what my grandmother had said about keeping our secret. She hadn’t told my grandfather in forty years of marriage. I wasn’t about to compromise my family’s safety for a man I met a week ago. Even if it was Peter.

  “I don’t know what’s going on in that house,” I said. “Something is, but I don’t know what. I don’t know how these things are connected, but I’m trying to figure it out.”

  “Let me help you,” he said. “Let’s help each other. I mean, has anyone ever helped you before? I’m sure that degenerate freebasing psychopath never did, but I would. I will. If you’ll let me.”

  “How are you going to help me, Peter?” I asked. “Like it or not, I have a job to do. I can’t just abandon it in the middle based on an unconfirmed set of suspicions.”

  “I admire your work ethic, I really do,” he said. “But would you consider not staying there? Could you maybe stay with your family?”

  “That’s a little complicated,” I said, thinking of the powers emanating from the cuckoo clock house. He nodded. He didn’t press the issue.

  “Could you maybe stay with me?” he asked.

  I raised my eyebrows. He sighed, exasperated. “Not like that,” he said. “Sam. I am not Les Rodney, okay? I can’t sleep knowing you’re over there with god knows what happening in the background.” I thought of the pentagram room and found that I was unable to contradict him.

  “Just for the night,” he said. “Please.”

  I wasn’t worried for my safety. I thought of Margo, coming to my door the night before. I thought of Gwyneth’s conversation with the deer, and Martha’s exchange with Gwyneth in the woods. I was beginning to detect a pattern, and I thought whatever the forces around me wanted, it probably wasn’t my life. But it might have been something more powerful.

  I’d already lied to my family about leaving the house for my own safety. I still wasn’t that worried about protecting myself. It just didn’t seem necessary, for some reason I couldn’t fully explain. But something about the idea of letting Peter keep me safe, in his mind, was more temptation than I was prepared to resist.

  Les took me on vacations and to parties I never would have been invited to. He sped down back roads at reckless and ill-advised speeds in his endless series of sports cars. He gave me excitement and danger and a feeling of being above it all. But never in all of that time, for all the money he had and the power to do pretty much whatever he felt like doing, had he ever offered me peace of mind.

  “Okay, Peter,” I said. “I’ll stay with you.”

  Peter looked more relieved than a turkey at vegan Thanksgiving. He got to his feet. He reached for my hand again, and this time I didn’t pull away.

  32

  The Other End of the Earth

  “I used to have some of my ex-girlfriend’s clothes, but I finally had to donate them.” Peter stood in the doorway of his room, looking awkward and apologetic. “She kept blowing off coming by to get them, and eventually, I couldn’t stand to look at them anymore.” I thought of Les’s suit in the back of my closet.

  He offered me the soft t-shirt and pajamas he held in his hand. “Sorry, they’re probably kind of big,” he said.

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  He smiled and pulled the door closed. He had already insisted that I sleep in his room, pulling out the futon in the living room for himself. What was it that Tamsin had said? Peter just loves being chivalrous.

  I pulled out my phone to call Tamsin. Again. I’d been calling her and texting her intermittently since I saw that the shop was closed. It seemed weird that she wasn’t answering. I didn’t know what she was like as a texter or a phone person; half our conversations had taken place inside my mind. I, for one, was terrible about it and would sometimes take days to respond to a simple text as if it was a letter delivered by the Pony Express. I was always busy and unless it was Coco, it usually seemed like it could wait.

  But Tamsin didn’t have to go to school and the apothecary was closed. As a teenaged girl, by all rights her phone should be virtually glued to her hand. What was going on?

  Part of me secretly feared that the coven had decided to shut me out; that I was a threat to their order and they were better off without me. What if my mom decided she didn’t want to see me anymore? What if none of them did? What if they told Tamsin not to talk to me?

  Looking over to
make sure the door was still closed, I lifted Peter’s shirt to my face and inhaled. It smelled like dryer sheets and cologne. It hit me right in the amygdala with a rush of endorphins.

  Wearing Peter’s clothes in his bedroom alone with the door shut and the knowledge he was in the next room, separated from me by nothing more than a single thin wall, was driving me insane. I could hear the futon creak every time he shifted in his sleep. I stared at the ceiling, my unanswered questions repeating on an endless loop.

  Had Margo knowingly gone to the dark side, or was she being influenced by forces beyond her control? What were Gwyneth’s plans for the soul of Martha Hope? What did she and her followers going corporeal mean? What happened to Colin? Why was my family ignoring me?

  After an especially loud creak from the living room, I sat bolt upright in Peter’s bed. I couldn’t take it anymore. I threw the door open and went down the hallway. Peter was sprawled across the futon on the diagonal, his head buried under a pillow. At the sight of Peter shirtless in bed, I took a hard right at the kitchen. What was I doing? I was being crazy. My face was bright red with embarrassment and I felt like my head would explode.

  I filled a jam jar next to the sink with tap water, swallowed it with one gulp, then filled it again. I crept through the living room past Peter, trying not to wake up him.

  “Sam?” He removed the pillow from over his face. “What are you doing?”

  “I was getting a glass of water,” I said quickly. Too quickly. “What are you doing?” It was probably the stupidest question I’d asked all year. Sleeping. Obviously.

  “Not sleeping,” he said. “I can’t sleep.”

  “Oh, really?” I said. “Why not?” And then, “I can’t sleep, either.” Nor could I seem to stop talking, or making an idiot of myself.

  “Why can’t you sleep?” He smiled up at me, his teeth white in the dark.

  “I have a lot on my mind,” I said, shifting from foot to foot.

  He choked back a laugh. “You look like an anxious twelve-year-old at a YMCA dance,” he said. He shifted to the other side of the futon and pulled his blanket back. “Come here.”

  It took a lifetime of accumulated restraint not to leap the entire six feet from the kitchen doorway onto the futon beside him. Instead, I pretended to hesitate before shuffling casually across the room like, no big deal. I lay next to him, propping my hand behind my head, perpetuating my blasé act.

  The entire futon was shaking with laughter, and I knew that Peter knew my act was a total front, so I rolled with it.

  “Do you come here often?” I asked, turning to look at him.

  “My futon? Do I come to my futon often?” he said. “No, this is actually my first time. Sleeping on my own couch.”

  “It’s surprisingly comfortable, right?” I said. “I noticed that yesterday.”

  “It doesn’t have that bar that normally jabs you in the middle of the back,” he said. “I paid extra for that.”

  “So why can’t you sleep?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, leaning over my ear. I remembered his breath on the back of my neck in the hallway before dinner. I closed my eyes. “You see, the thing is, there was this incredibly beautiful girl asleep in my bed in the next room. And it was all I could think about. So I stayed awake, tossing and turning, and wishing she would appear. And then she did.”

  “What happened next?” My eyes were shut and a ridiculously, stupidly large grin had spread across my face.

  He wrapped his arms around me from behind and buried his face in my hair.

  “Her hair smelled like apples,” he said. “And he thought, I wish I could keep you here. Just like this.”

  I realized then that I hadn’t smiled once in the last week, at least not sincerely. Maybe not for the last year. I felt completely relaxed for the first time, possibly since I was born. My father once told me I came into the world with clenched fists and closed eyes, my mouth open in a silent scream. Sometimes I felt like the feeling had never left.

  Except for now.

  In the sanctuary of Peter’s arms, I fell into a deep sleep, so deep that I felt like I was in an elevator whose doors didn’t open until it reached the other end of the earth. When they did, I was in the woods again.

  Something was different. Again, there was a fire, with the same group as before gathered around it. But far from celebrating, they were now silent, riveted, their faces upturned towards Margo.

  “Sisters of the night!” Margo’s face was lit with an unholy glow, the light of the fire reflected in her dark eyes. “The world was ours once, and can be ours again. The time has come.”

  The others swayed from side to side, echoing, “The time has come, the time has come.”

  “The first ritual has passed. The second ritual has passed. And now is the time for the third to commence. By the light of the blood moon, on the night of the lunar eclipse, we will perform the final ritual. The blood of a powerful witch will make the sacrifice complete. And we have one in our midst.”

  “One in our midst, one in our midst!” they chanted.

  “We will find her and bring her here,” she said. “Her power will become our power. Our bodies will merge with the unholy spirits of the woods, and the forgotten rites of yesteryear will be brought back to life!”

  “Brought back to life, brought back to life!” they shouted.

  They laughed and screamed at the moon, and I rushed upward out of my sleep as if pulled by a tether, yanked from the bottom of the ocean. I woke up in a panic, drenched in sweat, terrified. A powerful witch in their midst. That meant me. They were going to sacrifice me.

  “Sam? What is it?” Peter pulled me closer and I grabbed his arm, hyperventilating. The darkness I saw in the woods lingered in my mind. I was overwhelmed with fear.

  Sam? Can you hear me?

  I closed my eyes. Who was it? Was it my mother?

  Sam, it’s me. Do you know where she is?

  Who? I thought, thinking for sure that this time maybe I’d gone insane, once and for all.

  It’s Tamsin, said my mother’s voice within my mind. She’s missing.

  33

  Margo Moves In

  Margo Metal lowered her heart-shaped sunglasses to regard the rambling old house on the hill as Les Rodney pulled into the driveway.

  “This is it?” she said dubiously. “This is where you plan to keep me hidden from view? So you can divorce yourself from your past crimes against my humanity?”

  “Isn’t it gorgeous?” Les admired the house as if he himself had built it. “And baby, I don’t want to hide you, I want to give you a place to work. A place to start making music again. I feel like it’s my fault you’ve been sequestering yourself for so long.”

  “That’s because it is, Les.” Margo pushed her sunglasses back up her nose. “Everything wrong with my life at present is basically your fault. I don’t see how buying me a haunted house in the middle of nowhere is going to change that.”

  “Well, technically, it’s rented,” Les said. “But the inside, it’s crazy! I have a feeling you’re going to get a lot of amazing work done here.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Margo said, kicking open the door of Les’s latest ostentatious purchase, a mint condition Shelby Cobra valued at more than this gingerbread monstrosity and its surrounding land.

  The inside of the place was just as wretched as the outside. Dark, gloomy, and covered in dust. Although it did have a certain appeal. Margo could see where it was a reflection of her current mental state and mood. It would look great on social media.

  Maybe she could record something that would finally be taken seriously by the public at large. Something mysterious and enigmatic, like her. Then maybe people would stop referring to her as a sub-par Ferrari Xmas.

  Margo pushed open the heavy front door. Her tiny boots clicked down the marble hallway. She peeked into a vast and sweeping ballroom. The grandeur of it did appeal to her. She could get used to this.

  The next room dow
n was ornamented with a positively hideous set of ghoulish-looking door handles. Margo stared at them in fascination. Were those goblin heads? It was like being in a haunted house. Or a funhouse. Or both.

  This house could be her muse.

  “Why don’t you explore?” called Les. “I’m just gonna make sure the water and electric are on. You know, man stuff.”

  Margo didn’t see what was particularly masculine about flipping a few light switches and turning on the sink, but Les liked to think of himself as testosterone personified. Whatever floated his boat.

  The goblin room, as Margo thought of it, was a cozy little parlor with a fireplace and comfortable-looking chairs. She ran a finger over the spines of the books on the built-in shelves, all of which were incredibly old and spooky. What if she did an entire concept album based on Halloween? Or the work of Edgar Allen Poe? She pictured herself on the cover in a ruffled white shirt with a raven on her shoulder. Ferrari and Tapia would never think of such a thing.

  The books all had dark and creepy titles, like they were written by witches or ghosts. Or skeletons! What if she dressed like a skeleton for the first single’s video? Although Tapia might think she was calling out her eating disorder. Margo would get flamed on social media for the next eternity-and-a-half over something like that.

  One of the books wasn’t labeled at all. It was plain and black. Margo pulled it off the shelf. She felt a small but distinct vibration pass through the wall and glanced up. Everything was still.

  Margo took the book over to the armchair in front of the fireplace. The leather was so old it was soft as cashmere. She opened the book delicately so it wouldn’t fall apart it in her hand, the aged and yellow pages crackling beneath her fingertips.

  The handwriting was positively ancient, spiked and tilting cursive. It would have taken about nine years and a magnifying glass to read. Margo squinted at the words, which looked like spiders crawling across the page. She could just make out a date at the top. Was it a diary? She lifted the book to the single shaft of light that streamed through the room’s sole window, set high in the wall.