Witches of The Wood

by Skylar Finn

  Gwyneth lies, I thought. I pulled the pouch from my jacket and tugged at the drawstring with my teeth. I had no idea what was inside of it. I trusted my family and believed whatever it was would save me.

  My fingers closed around something with the consistency of crushed chalk. It was some kind of powder. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it, so I did the only thing I could think of: I threw it at Gwyneth the shadow. I didn’t know any spells, so I just closed my eyes and willed her to vanish with every fiber of my being.

  The shadow screeched hatefully as it disintegrated around me. Maybe there were no spells, I thought, rushing up the basement steps. Maybe it was just my will and my will alone.

  Tamsin was in an enchanted sleep somewhere, but where? I had to find her. If she was sleeping, I couldn’t reach out to her with my mind. She wouldn’t hear me. I could think of only one other place in the house she could be, and that was in the secret room behind the fireplace.

  I crept through the back door of the kitchen. From down the hallway, I could hear the sounds of delighted laughter. It seemed that Peter’s effect on women was universal. It also seemed reasonable to assume that he could keep them distracted for the time it would take me to sneak into the fireplace room.

  I hurried down the hallway and slipped through the goblin doors. When Colin told me how to get into the room, he showed me which book to pull from the shelf. It was on the end, and I went to the shelf to look for it.

  The book was gone.

  In the ballroom, Peter was surrounded on all sides by Margo, Tapia, and Ferrari as he recorded them with his phone. I felt afraid for him. They took turns, leaning over the phone’s speakers to speak, cutting each other off in their excitement.

  “For too long, pop stars haven’t been taken seriously,” said Margo. “It’s time that finally changed.”

  “When we release this single, it will change the way pop stars are perceived until the end of time,” said Tapia.

  “It will change America,” said Ferrari. “It will change the world.”

  If I hadn’t known they were all on the brink of being permanently possessed by dark witches of the woods, their statements would have been laughable at best. But what were they planning to do? If Gwyneth and her coven could take over the souls of six unsuspecting women, what was to prevent her from doing the same thing to every woman in the world?

  Peter saw me and put his phone away. “Thank you so much for this,” he said. “You’ve given me some amazing material to work with, but I’m afraid I have a lunch date.”

  The circle of pop stars parted with a flurry of awwww and how cute. Peter was practically running by the time he reached the hallway. He waited until we were outside to say anything.

  “Did you find Tamsin?” he asked.

  “She’s not there,” I said with despair. “I can only think of one other place she might be, but I don’t know how to get to it.”

  I told him about the room behind the fireplace, but not how I found it in the first place (when it was shown to me by a ghost). I was getting better, I thought grimly, at telling the truth only selectively.

  “There has to be another way in there,” he said. “We need to find the original floor plan for the inn. It’s a historically registered property. There might be a record of it at the historical society.”

  We got into his truck and he backed down the driveway. “What did they say to you? In the ballroom?” I asked.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, fearful wonder in his voice. “It’s the most intense example of collective psychosis I’ve ever seen. They believe that by unifying, they can achieve some kind of global domination. When you combine that with the prospect of ritualistic sacrifice, which I can only assume they believe will grant them the power they desire, and the level of influence they have over a nation of young girls…” He shook his head. “They need to be stopped, obviously. But I still have no hard evidence other than my own speculation. Paul Danforth is being arraigned tomorrow for the kidnapping and murder of Martha Hope. They’ll want a quick trial and resolution to what they’ll view as an ugly story in our otherwise peaceful community. I can just see the headline now. They’ll write Colin off as a disappearance. They could really get away with this.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” I said.

  39

  The Curse of the Dark Horse Inn

  The historical society was dark and quiet like a tomb. Peter spoke in a hushed whisper when he asked the elderly woman at the desk for everything pertaining to the Dark Horse Inn. He seemed to know her, and I figured he was a regular here.

  She showed us to a back room lined with boxes on the shelves. She took one down and put it on a long conference table lined with reading lamps. She pulled several books from the shelves and deposited it next to the box.

  The box was filled with papers, folders, and long scrolls. I opened one of the large heavy books on the table to a series of newspaper clippings about the building that had once served as the inn.

  The series dated back to the early 20s and seemed to be an endless cycle of wealthy out-of-town buyers purchasing the place and vowing to fix it up into a bed and breakfast or boutique hotel and creating jobs in Mount Hazel, then ultimately selling at half what they paid. One enterprising buyer during the 80s had tried to turn it into a nightclub. This alternated with families of renters, imagining they were getting a weekend retreat or summer escape from the city for an oddly low price, only to move out abruptly. The Gazette’s human interest writer concluded by the early 90s that the place was cursed.

  “I found something,” said Peter in a hushed voice. He was hunched over one of the scrolls, rolled out flat onto the table.

  I leaned over to see the sheet better in the pool of light cast by the desk lamp. It looked like a floor plan of the inn. There was an accompanying transparency and Peter laid it over the sheet.

  “Looks like somebody was going to renovate the place and got pretty detailed specs for their plan,” he said. “Why they’d dump it all at the historical society is beyond me. It looks like they shoved it in a box and left it on the stoop. Whoever it was obviously left in a hurry.”

  Peter removed the transparency. I pointed to a narrow alcove near the fireplace in the parlor.“What is that?” I asked.

  He leaned over, squinting. “It looks like a servant staircase,” he said.

  “Servant staircase?” I said. “Seriously? Sounds classist.”

  “They didn’t know what that was back then,” he said. “For them, it was just a way for the help to discreetly serve all the rooms of the house without making their presence known. With any luck, it might have an entrance directly into this room you’ve told me about, assuming they haven’t blocked it. They might not even know that it’s there.”

  “With any luck,” I echoed. Not finding Tamsin in the cellar had been a harsh blow, and I felt drained of hope and optimism.

  “You can’t give up,” he said, reaching out and taking my hand. “That room wasn’t always whatever they’re using it for. It was built when the inn was built. It’s possible that the owner put it there for the servants—all the cooks and maids and so forth—so he could keep them out of his sight and out of sight of the guests. He wouldn’t have wanted to rent them rooms in the actual inn if he was, as you put it, classist.”

  I remembered the story Aurora had told at the kitchen table. The owner of the inn, Gwyneth’s father, had run her ragged doing the work of ten people. Had he fallen on hard times and had to fire his staff? If so, was it possible he’d once kept them here?

  “After the party,” I said. “After everyone is drunk and passed out, we’ll look for the staircase.”

  Peter squeezed my hand. I realized in that moment why he’d been unattached when I got to Mount Hazel. First, there was the strong likelihood that settling in Mount Hazel and raising a family with one of the other townies while he ran his father’s bar and wrote for the Gazette for the rest of his life
was a horrifying prospect to him. Second, there was the obvious fact that Peter lived for adventure, and to him, this was the chance to chase down the story of a lifetime.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. My entire life was on the line, mine and that of my family’s. I was glad for Peter’s help, but something about his enthusiasm, which seemed equally parts protective and thrilled with the adrenaline rush, was troubling to me.

  I told myself nobody was perfect, and it wasn’t fair to find fault with him so early in whatever this was between us. I didn’t mention it when we went to the truck, and resolved to push it from my mind.

  In the truck on the way back, I thought of what I’d seen in the cellar. Gwyneth was almost certainly lying to try and control me, but what if even part of what I’d seen had been the truth? What was my family keeping from me? How was I supposed to trust them if they weren’t being honest with me?

  It brought back my earlier reluctance to allow myself to become even more deeply enmeshed in my family and Mount Hazel. I had a place in the city that felt like home, a family I’d always known, and a career I’d only recently questioned since coming here. I’d only known the other half of my family for a week, and I’d just met this man a week ago.

  I needed to be careful, I thought, about making any radical decisions on the basis of what happened in the last seven days alone. I’d experienced life-changing things, but that didn’t mean I needed to throw away my old life or put it on hold.

  In my mind, another list formed: Get Tamsin back. Stop Margo. Go back to the city. Never think about any of this again.

  Just thinking about it felt like a physical weight was leaving my shoulders. I could still have my old life back. I could.

  “What are you thinking about?” Peter asked.

  I stared out the window as the bare trees rolled past.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  The scene at the house when we got back had completely shifted. Someone had picked up a copious amount of alcohol. Cases and bottles lined the kitchen counter. Another ambitious person (likely Bridget, I imagined) had gotten bags upon bags of take-out, piling them onto the kitchen table. The house was dark, the ballroom lit by candles. Torches flickered in the backyard. The kitchen lights had been dimmed and the whole setting filled me with a sense of unease.

  “This is insane,” said Peter, taking it all in. He pulled one of the many liquor bottles from the closest box, studying the label. “At this rate, we won’t even have to wait for them to pass out. Assuming they don’t burn the house down.”

  Bridget skipped into the kitchen, coming in through the patio from outside.

  “Sammy! You’re here!” She came over and kissed me on the cheek. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to party with us.”

  “Where is everybody?” I asked.

  “In the clearing in the woods,” she said. “Of course.”

  Of course, I thought. Peter shot me a meaningful glance. I didn’t have to read his mind to know he considered this the perfect opportunity to search the house for the servant staircase that might lead us to the room behind the fireplace, and to Tamsin.

  “And this time, you have to come with us,” she said. “No discussion! We’re going to be out there all night.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” I said. “We’ll be out in a little bit. We just need to go upstairs for a while.”

  Bridget snickered behind her hand. “Of course you do,” she said. She grabbed a bottle of wine from the nearest carton and stumbled through the sliding glass door.

  “Should you have been that forthcoming?” asked Peter, joining my side to watch her through the kitchen window over the sink as she weaved uncertainly into the woods.

  “Obviously,” I said. “Bridget’s mind occupies two major spaces: Instagram and the gutter. She’ll never question what we’re doing upstairs. She’ll probably even make sure the others don’t interrupt us.”

  “Have you considered a career as an investigative journalist?” asked Peter.

  “No,” I said truthfully. “Should we start with Margo’s room?”

  “Is that the master bedroom?” he asked.

  “I would assume so,” I said. “I mean, it used to be an inn. There are a lot of bedrooms. To be honest with you, I never counted them.”

  “There are ten,” he said. “I memorized the floor plan while we were at the historical society. Five on the left and five on the right. There’s a room off the kitchen downstairs that could have either been an extra bedroom or the servants’ quarters. Not exactly large, but I have a feeling they weren’t doing big business back then. If Mount Hazel is in the middle of nowhere now, it was almost certainly in the wilderness back then.”

  At the top of the staircase, he glanced in either direction. “I’ll take the left and you take the right,” he said.

  “Why are we splitting up?” I asked. “We don’t know what we’re going to find. And it kind of puts a hole in our alibi if we get caught nosing in completely different rooms.”

  He considered this, like he wanted to find fault with my argument, but was ultimately unable to see any loopholes. I felt a flash of irritation and reminded myself that Peter, like me, was used to working alone.

  “Good point,” he said. “We’ll stick together. Which room is Margo’s?”

  I wasn’t sure. In my time at the manor, I’d never been to her room or even asked which one it was. I assumed it was close to the bathroom where she took her baths, so I pointed at the one to its immediate right.

  Peter set off down the hallway purposefully as I glanced over my shoulder, paranoid. He might have been used to this, but I wasn’t. I kept waiting for somebody to pop out of a closet and demand what we were doing.

  He’d pushed the bedroom door open and, upon seeing what was inside, immediately crossed the threshold. I followed.

  Blood-red drapes, black pillows and covers, skull-shaped candleholders lining the windowsill: it was definitely Margo’s room. Peter was already stretched out on the floor, peering under the bed.

  “I don’t think a staircase would fit under her bed,” I said.

  “No, but a body would,” he said. He straightened up and saw the look of horror on my face.

  “I meant Colin,” he said hastily.

  I shook my head and went to the closet. I opened the door and pulled the chain overhead. A single naked bulb illuminated the space. The closet seemed to go back a ways, and I pushed Margo’s endless wardrobe aside until I was confronted with a towering shelf of shoes. I struggled to turn it to one side, revealing a blank wall. I rapped the wall with my fist. It was hollow.

  “Peter!” I called softly. “I think I found it.”

  Peter wrestled his way through Margo’s clothing, joining me in front of the wall. He gave it a light kick and it echoed hollowly.

  I bit my lip. “We’d need a sledgehammer,” I said.

  Peter shook his head and kicked the wall as hard as he could. His boot put a hole in the wall and he held my shoulder while he regained his balance and pulled it out.

  “Cheap dry wall,” he explained. “None of the people who tried to renovate this place were exactly on the up-and-up. If we move the shelf of shoes back in front of it, she probably won’t notice.”

  “Probably?” I imagined Margo discovering the giant hole in the back of her closet and turning us into frogs.

  “How many shoes do you have?” he asked, studying the hole. He kicked the wall under it, widening it further.

  I pictured my closet at home: sneakers, flip-flops, heels, flats, moccasins, espadrilles, boots, wedges, slides, loafers, mules, brogues. The basics.

  “I don’t know, ten or twelve?” I said.

  “How many of them do you wear on a regular basis?” he asked, punching the wall with his fist. It was kind of turning me on.

  “Seasonally?” I asked, distracted.

  “No, I mean like more like weekly,” he said.

  “Ummm, I dunno, like two or three?” I said. “Usually I have a ma
in pair that I wear throughout the week. Depending on what time of year it is, of course.”

  “Exactly.” Peter, panting, pulled his arm out of the jagged hole of dry wall he’d opened up. “It’s a universal truth of all women. You, my ex-girlfriend, Margo—it’s inevitable. You all own four times the shoes you actually wear.”

  I shot him a look when he compared me to his ex-girlfriend: a seriously? look.

  “Sorry,” he said hastily. “It’s just a statistical probability. Nothing personal.”

  “Whatever,” I said, still offended. I peered into the gloom. I could only see about a foot into the space, but could just make out what looked like the top step of a flight of stairs. I stepped through the opening ahead of Peter, eager to get away from him and his statistical probabilities. I took out my phone, shining the light ahead of me. The staircase was narrow with a low ceiling and curved abruptly so I couldn’t see what was ahead.

  Behind me, Peter closed the door to the closet and pulled the overhead chain on the light, effectively sealing us in darkness. He turned the light on his phone and followed close behind me.

  After the first sharp curve, the staircase went straight down, ending in a narrow landing. I put my hand ahead of me, afraid. What if the door had been sealed over here, too? We couldn’t just go crashing through the wall in every room.

  I extended my hand into the darkness, running my hand along the wall in front of me. I was startled, then relieved, when it closed around what felt like a doorknob. I turned it, and the door creaked slowly inward. I peered out of the opening and saw nothing but red. I poked my head out, baffled.

  “What do you see?” whispered Peter behind me.

  “I’m not sure.” I reached out and pawed at the redness. It was some kind of fuzzy material. “I think we’re behind a tapestry.”

  I climbed carefully out of the staircase, Peter following behind me. He eased the door shut as quietly as possible. I felt my way along the fabric until I reached its edge. I peered out from behind it.