Witches of The Wood

by Skylar Finn

  Les’s eyes slid into focus. He seemed to recognize me. “Sam?” he said weakly. He pulled a sheet from the shelf and wrapped himself up in it. “What’s going on?” He peered out of the closet up and down the hall. “Are they here?” he whispered.

  “Who?” I asked, staring at him. I’d known Les to jump out of planes, drive a hundred and twenty miles an hour, and free base an unknown substance on nothing but the word of a friend who claimed to be a shaman. Never had I seen him curled in a ball, whimpering in a closet.

  “Them,” he whispered. “The witches.”

  Tamsin looked concerned at the word witches. “Who are the witches?” she asked as gently as possible. Les looked on the brink of running through a wall like a cartoon and never looking back.

  “Well, they looked like witches, anyway,” mumbled Les, crawling out of the closet. He arranged the sheet around him like a toga. “I drank some iowaska tea with Manny before I came out to the house last night, so I suppose it could have been a manifestation of my subconscious. My therapist says I have problems with women.”

  “Does she?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “I mean, I don’t necessarily believe her,” he said hastily. “How can anybody who loves women as much as I do have a problem with them?” He bit his lip, as if remembering something. “I don’t know what’s in iowaska, but it’s like I was being confronted with every woman of my past, like they were all on the brink of sacrificing me; chanting, wearing robes.” He sighed. “As far as hallucinations go, it was pretty blatant. I think I have a lot of guilt over the way I’ve treated the women in my life. Like if I knew how they really felt, I’d feel their collective rage, their desire to sacrifice me to a hungry god in order to be free of me.” He looked depressed. “Imagine having so many relationship problems that you see something like that when you try to have a revelatory hallucinogenic experience.”

  Tamsin watched him, disgusted. Is he so self-involved he thinks everything that happened last night is the byproduct of his imagination? she asked silently.

  I felt like this was fairly a given. If there was any known fact about Les, it was that no matter what the scenario, he could somehow find a way to make it entirely about him.

  “I think everyone’s gone now, Les,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it’s safe.”

  “Are you sure?” He glanced furtively up and down the hallway again before crawling out and getting to his feet. He looked at me with an expression of apologetic sorrow. “I feel like I treated you the worst of all, Sammy.”

  “Why?” I asked mildly. I’d thought so little of Les the last few days that his chagrin, though it was at one time all I ever wanted, seemed to matter very little now in the grand scheme of things.

  “I treated everyone badly,” he admitted. “But you’re not callous like the other girls. You’re sensitive and intelligent. I feel like I hurt you the most.”

  To my utter surprise, he leaned forward and very carefully, ensuring no part of his body but his arms touched mine, gave me a hug. I wrinkled my nose. He smelled awful.

  “It might not mean much to you, Sam,” he said seriously. “I can understand why, now. After my vision. But I want you to know, I’ll never hurt you again.”

  “Great,” said Tamsin impatiently. “Can we get out of here now?”

  He turned to her, surprised. “Oh, hello,” he said, like an amnesiac mental patient only recently released. “Who are you?”

  “Does no one remember meeting me?” Tamsin grabbed my suitcase and, rolling her eyes, wheeled it down the hallway toward the stairs.

  “That’s nice of you to say, Les,” I said. “But I think we need to leave now.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking around the house. “Before they come back.” He paused, as if confused. “The strange women in the woods that I saw. Not that they were real. I think I might be having a flashback. Can you drive? I probably shouldn’t.”

  The door on the other side of the linen closet opened. Cameron emerged with a leopard-print messenger bag slung over one shoulder, sunglasses on, rolling his big black trunk behind him. He paused when he saw Les.

  “What happened to you?” He took in his toga. “Is this a new thing we’re doing? Grecian by way of Mount Nowhere? I have to say, Les, it’s not really working for you.”

  “Can you drive the van?” I asked Cameron.

  “Ugh, that dreadful thing.” I couldn’t see his eyes, but I was certain he was rolling them. “I suppose.”

  I helped Les down the stairs, Cameron bumping his black trunk down the steps behind us. Tamsin was already out front with my suitcase. She looked like she would just as soon toss Les in the bushes as help him into the van, but she grudgingly moved out of the way after Cameron clicked the remote lock and opened the sliding door. He loaded his black trunk in. Tamsin handed off my suitcase to him. I handed off Les.

  “I don’t know what happened to you, guy, but I’ll be sure to turn the heat up,” said Cameron, buckling Les securely in the backseat like a child.

  “I’m not sure what happened to me, either,” said Les, staring out the window. He slumped against the door, where he’d remain for the next three hours, eyes glazed.

  Tamsin climbed into the front seat with me, having refused to sit next to Les. I turned to Cameron.

  “We need to pick up Margo,” I said.

  “Margo?” he said, starting the van. “My goodness, what happened to that girl? I blacked out after bottle of wine number two, but the last thing I remember was her dancing around in a red robe singing about global domination. Which is pretty regular for Margo, but, you know.” He shrugged, thinking. “Actually,” he added, turning to me, “the last last thing I remember was you crawling out of a closet with Lover Boy.” He chuckled. “Good for you.” Cameron put the van into drive and backed down the hill.

  If he didn’t remember anything after he’d run into Peter and me in Margo’s room, that meant there was a good ten hours of his memory unaccounted for. I thought of him the previous evening, robing and crowning everyone by candle light and our strange conversation at dawn. How long had he been inhabited by the spirit of the forest? Was it just last night, or all along? It seemed like one of those questions I might never know the answer to. I didn’t think I wanted to.

  “Cameron!” Tamsin squealed as we pulled onto the main road into town. Cameron slammed on the brakes. We were thrown against our seatbelts. Tamsin, in the middle, had only a lap belt on, and I threw my arm up to protect her. Cameron was only going about ten miles an hour. Les, however, had wiggled out of his seatbelt and flew forward into the back of my seat with a loud, startled “oof!”

  We watched through the windshield as the largest deer I’d ever seen, with impossibly long legs and ten-point antlers, bounded off the hood of the van, its massive hooves leaving a significant dent in the black metal. It glanced briefly through the windshield, and I thought for the most fleeting of instances that its eyes met mine. They glowed orange with a strange inner light.

  Then the moment passed, and it bounded across the road. We stared as it disappeared into the trees, and vanished from sight.

  Cameron sighed, a hand to his heart. He gently put his foot to the accelerator, cautiously gaining speed.

  “Ye gawds, I cannot wait to get out of this deranged hallow of death,” he said.

  In the apothecary, Margo was swaddled in blankets, seated behind the register. She was drinking a mug of something that looked like herbal tea. Cameron came in with us so he could take her out to the van.

  “Goodness, you look like you have the mother of all hangovers,” he said, coming around the counter and helping her stand. “What in heaven’s name happened to you?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” mumbled Margo. “I’m working it out within my mind.” Even without being possessed, she still sounded like a bit of an oddball.

  Cameron ushered Margo out to the car, the bell over the door ringing as they disappeared. Minerva and my mother stood with mugs of their own, their f
aces hovering over the steam. Aurora was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s Grandma?” I said, offended she wasn’t there to tell me good-bye.

  “She had to lie down,” my mother explained. I felt like a jerk. She smiled at me reassuringly. I knew she hadn’t read my mind, but seen it written on my face. “She says she knows you’ll be back.”

  This struck me as a little presumptuous on her part, but it made me feel better about not seeing her before I left town.

  “Will you?” my mother said, looking me in the eyes.

  “I will,” I said.

  She hugged me tightly. “I never want to lose you again,” she whispered.

  “Ditto,” I said.

  Minerva hugged me next. “Thank you for saving Tamsin,” she said. “I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

  “Hey!” protested Tamsin. “I did some pretty fancy magic once I came out of that weird coma or whatever.”

  She hugged me after Minerva. “I definitely owe you one for waking me up, cuz. Although I’m still on the fence about dragging Margo out of the river. It heightens the chance we might have to listen to her terrible music in the future.”

  “Tamsin!” Minerva scolded her.

  “Well, it does,” she said.

  When I went back to the van to climb in the passenger seat, I was surprised to find that I was crying. I’d hugged everyone a second time and promised to keep in touch. I felt perfectly fine as I was walking out the door, but it seemed that my family had grown an even more powerful hold on me in this short time than I’d realized.

  Part of me would always belong to Mount Hazel.

  My father studied me over his glass of cabernet. I’d been quiet for most of lunch, venturing little about my job (fine) and my life (okay).

  “What’s the matter?” he said finally, setting down his class. “You’re occasionally reticent when you’re overworked, but you seem like you’re on another planet right now.”

  I drained my glass. I felt sure I would need it.

  “I don’t think you should have kept me from Mom,” I said.

  His eyes widened. We’d never once, in all these years, discussed it.

  “I went to Mount Hazel last week,” I said. “I saw her again. I don’t think she’s crazy. I don’t think that was for you to decide.”

  My father put down his glass, looking consternated. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  “I assumed you’d try to stop me,” I said truthfully. “I’m an adult now, and frankly I didn’t see where it was any of your business.”

  He looked sadder than I’d ever seen him look. “I never wanted you to feel as though you had to hide things from me,” he said slowly, apparently deep in thought as he spoke. “Or that you couldn’t see your mother. I truly thought I was doing what was best for you when we left Mount Hazel. I couldn’t bear the thought that you might grow up infected by that…strangeness.”

  I felt a flash of anger. “What do you mean by ‘strangeness,’ Dad?”

  He looked frustrated, as if he couldn’t find the words for what he wanted to say.

  “They thought I didn’t know what was going on,” he said finally. “It’s like they thought I was foolish, or blind. They were up to their eyeballs in some sort of spiritual practice that seemed dangerous and unstable. Your mother refused to explain it. She kept insisting that I was imagining things. She tried to gaslight me. That, more than anything, made me angry and afraid. If what she was doing was so benign, then why lie about it? It was the lies that I couldn’t stand, Sam. I didn’t want her lying to you as you grew up. I didn’t want you to be influenced by a person who would lie to their own family.”

  He raised his glass again and drained it. “I know I haven’t always been the most attentive father. I know that I’m not always there. I know a girl needs her mother. But I am an honest man. And I wanted to raise you honestly, and to teach you the value of the truth.” He looked at me sorrowfully. “Just once, I wish she would have confided in me,” he said. “I couldn’t stand it.”

  I stared at him, astonished. It wasn’t that he thought she was crazy and delusional, but the fact that she had lied?

  “Relationships are built on trust,” he explained. “She didn’t trust me. It made me feel like I couldn’t trust her. She would disappear with you for days on end and refuse to tell me where she’d gone with you. I was afraid she’d disappear one day and never come back.”

  I thought of my memory on the banks of the river, running with her through a field. I thought of my struggles with Peter: how I hated lying to him, and how frustrated he was by it. How he knew that I was lying and how upset it made him that I didn’t trust him.

  I still didn’t think my father would have accepted my mother’s true explanation, and I wasn’t sure that Peter would, either. But in some way, it validated my indignation that the coven insisted we lie to the men in our lives about who we truly were.

  “Sam?” My father regarded me, looking worried. “Say something, please.”

  “I didn’t want to lie to you,” I said. “I also didn’t want to go another minute without knowing my mom.”

  “I’m so sorry that you felt that way,” he said, still looking sad. “If there was any way I could have taken that sadness away from you, I would. Custody battles are ugly things. It’s unlikely that your mother and I will never speak again. But I shouldn’t have allowed that fact to affect you all these years, and neither should she.” He sat in silence for a moment. “Maybe things can be different, moving forward,” he said. “I’d like nothing more for you than that.”

  “I would, too,” I said.

  47

  No Ordinary Girl

  It had been six months since my time in Mount Hazel. Spring bloomed, blossoms bursting from the trees. The parks turned green again. People shed their scarves and heavy jackets, emerging from hibernation. Joggers ran through the streets with their dogs and strollers. Café owners set up chairs and tables on the sidewalks.

  I no longer worked for Coco. Margo Metal had been my final client. I’d worried the project was a total failure, my instincts wrong (for reasons admittedly well out of my control), but she slept in the backseat next to Les the whole ride home and disappeared wordlessly into her Rittenhouse Square penthouse, where she had written two albums worth of material.

  She no longer had the voice of an angel, but she did resume her collaboration with Ferrari and Tapia. Their super group’s hit single was produced by DJ Swann. It resurrected his career, along with his work on Kimmy’s tape mix, which became explosively popular after its release. Her first single, This Ass Got Class, played everywhere I went.

  Coco was so pleased with the results that she offered me Zsa Zsa’s old job as partner in her firm. I told her I was taking a leave of absence to re-think my career and maybe go back to school.

  “But you went to school for eons!” she said, appalled. “Sammy, you already have so many degrees. What do you need another for?”

  “I think I need to figure out what I want, this time,” I said. “Not what my dad wants.”

  “Well, I do hear where you’re coming from there,” she said knowingly. “Otherwise, you’ll end up marrying your father. Not literally, of course, but some facsimile of him in an unsuccessful attempt to indirectly win his approval. That’s usually Husband One or Two. Then the third time’s a charm.”

  “I would rather it was the first,” I said.

  I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted to do. I was, however, adamant that it would not be in the field of public relations.

  Les Rodney was a changed man. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, not if he lived a million years and somehow became cursed by an evil genie in a lamp who forced him to reconsider his nefarious ways. But I guess the events at the manor had been enough to sober him in every conceivable fashion.

  He sold his label to DJ Swann and opened a three-story Self-Healing Center with a food co-op on the first floor, a yoga studio on the second, and a
n organic urban garden on the roof. I’d never seen anything like it, at least not where Les was concerned. It was close to my rowhome and I went there for produce. Bridget taught in the yoga studio. They seemed very happy together. After Mount Hazel, I thought he would get back together with Margo, but I was wrong.

  “We brought out the worst in each other,” he told me seriously over oolong tea one afternoon in the food co-op. He insisted on making me a pot when I stopped by for fruit.

  “I wish her all the best,” he said. “I really do. But I think we can both be happier now, apart rather than together.” Les was now prone to these sort of un-Les-like aphorisms. He’d disappeared to an ashram in Nepal for several months after the events at the manor, which I suspected was also responsible for the drastic changes in him.

  Margo seemed happier on her own. I saw her at the grand opening of Cameron’s boutique on South Street. She put up the money to help him get it off the ground, and now he sold a combination of vintage thrift and his own designs.

  Paulina occasionally appeared as a live mannequin, having become fond of Cameron when he styled her for her appearance in the super group’s first video. Her Instagram followers descended on the shop in hordes each time she showed up at the boutique.

  On those days, I could barely move through the crush of bodies in the shop. But Cameron always had something special set aside for me. On this particular Friday, he pulled a white zippered bag from underneath the counter.

  “Wear this,” he said. “You’re meeting up with your cousin tonight, right? Stepping out on the town? Trust. This is just the outfit that you need.”

  “Thanks, Cameron,” I said. “How’s business?”

  “Booming,” he said with pleasure. “My assistant days are definitely numbered. No small thanks to Margo, of course.”

  “I think it’s mostly you,” I said, stepping behind the red velvet curtain of the dressing room. “Aside from your initial start-up capital, I mean.”