Spirit

by J. P. Hightman

  Malgore.

  Tobias felt his body dragged away from her and rolled into the church entry, and Sattler was pulled in beside him. As he saw the witch approaching in an unhurried, arrogant stride, Tobias realized the protective mist was building up around the doorway, and Wilhem’s barely visible fingers were now collapsing the icy entryway. Malgore could not enter.

  The spirit had saved him again.

  Malgore leaped and scaled the top of the ice church in an angry rush.

  The creature pondered its next move from the rooftop.

  Beyond the guarding ice scarecrows—their arms stretched out in icy crucifixion—the witch considered how to enter…or whether it was even necessary….

  Inside the ice church, Tobias and Sattler awoke in a hallway.

  Very little light entered from either direction. There was no way to know which way was out. Heading down the hall, they passed a few flickering lanterns, frozen into the ground. It was too much effort to break one loose.

  Silently they walked on, deeper into a blackness so richly devoid of light Tobias felt himself near despair as it stretched on.

  “Are you there?” Sattler called.

  “Stay with me,” Tobias answered. “I’m right up ahead of you.”

  “Tobias…?”

  “Keep coming.”

  They made slow progress. Then Tobias stopped in fear. He felt as if a man were breathing upon him mere inches ahead, a sour exhale coming out of the darkness. Tobias could feel it on his eyelashes, his skin…sickly breath, and anger in it, somehow. Tobias didn’t move, waiting. But the man did not lash out, did not speak, and Tobias’s muscles relaxed. He wondered if it was his imagination. Or the spirit of Wilhelm, now angering?

  The feeling quickly faded, and Tobias kept going, groping forward, hands out, a sadly feeble defense.

  Then they could see just the tiniest strands of light, and emerged into a narrow ice hallway dimly lit with lamps. They continued on into a chamber, where several beautiful six-foot ice angels surrounded a large ice fountain, with frozen water forming arches from the spouts. Champagne glasses waited at the base of the fountain.

  Carved into the ice at the entryway a sign said: WHERE OLD MAN WINTER PREYS.

  It must have seemed amusing at one time.

  Tobias and Sattler crossed past it, into the dark hallway beyond.

  It was twilight now.

  Tess led the trail of children, all clasping hands, through the snow.

  “Hurry, hurry, come now,” Tess urged the boys.

  They entered the smaller house, but Tess could not stomach the sight of the dead doctor inside, with his ice-burned, sickly colored face. She immediately turned to leave again, when the rustling of pages stopped her.

  A small book lying in the center of the room was being paged through, rustling from an invisible force. And then the doctor’s dead hands were tugged by an azurelike mist as if he were reaching, as if to indicate the tattered volume.

  Tess went to it quickly. She was surprised to realize it was the witch-hunter’s journal, left behind by Wilder in his scuffle with the doctor, and her eyes fell to the handwritten words over an illustration of Old Widow Malgore, apparently torn from another volume and pasted here.

  Tess read the writing carefully, “Many ways of…killing…Assured of death…”

  “What is it?” asked one of the boys, standing fearfully at the door with the others.

  Tess kept her eyes on the book, whispering more to herself than him. “It changed over the years…”

  “What did?”

  “The rhyme,” said Tess, reading Josiah Jurey’s notes. “Not ‘dance upon the grave…’ It was once ‘Old Widow Malgore, never had a grave.’ ‘…Old Widow Malgore, her heart is made of wicker, Old Widow Malgore, it must be burned to flicker…’”

  The nursery rhyme held a message, distorted over the years.

  It was a method for killing the witch.

  Unnerved by the quiet, Tobias continued with Sattler. Finally they emerged in the circular main chamber of the ice church, where dozens of men stared back at them in welcome.

  For a moment, Tobias was taken aback. But then he realized they did not blink. They were gathered, pressed together on one side of the icy room, just standing, staring.

  Dead.

  Tobias could feel the sadness of their lost lives, like half-remembered music, and he knew that he would no longer see human emotion as a plaything. He let his eyes track over to the large center of the round room, where three old men dressed in suits, perhaps the town fathers, were standing there, spaced apart, near an altar covered in frost. At the altar knelt a bearded man made of ice, near an icy placard that read OLD MAN WINTER.

  Tobias saw something more alarming and strange, like no experience he’d ever had with the spirit world.

  The image of Father Winter shaped into the ice was unnervingly familiar.

  His father’s face lay before him in ice, sculpted to look exactly as it had in the séance in New York—but, then, slowly Tobias’s eyes began to make out the sculpture’s true appearance. He gazed upon a fanciful incarnation of Winter itself, and nothing more. His heart beat furiously. Some cruel magic it was, or some sad twist in his psychology.

  Deeper into the room he could now dimly see women lying dead, like broken toys. Tobias pondered all of this in horror.

  Sattler whispered, stunned. “She killed them all.”

  Tobias turned to him. “Why…? Why this hate?” And how could she have created this figure to taunt him, weaken him? Just as she had summoned the elk here from the north for sustenance, could her potency reach beyond any boundaries?

  The room grew misty with a fullness like smoke. He heard his father moaning from the emptiness. “Good-for-nothing,” said the voice. “Left me for dead. Dead like you always wanted. Bloodsucking little vermin.”

  The face of Winter remained eerily placid.

  Tobias took a few steps back and felt tears sting his eyes. The passing illusion was overwhelmingly strong, a cherished voice from childhood, warped here into something vicious.

  He had no time to make sense of it. A glance at Sattler proved it was all in Tobias’s mind, for his companion seemed to have seen and heard nothing. He wondered what trickery Sattler was enduring within his own head.

  Sattler remained staring at the sight of the killings, shaking, and Tobias had to take his satchel from him.

  “The spirit wants what is his…,” said Tobias, and he placed the box of Puritan possessions—the rings, the dress pieces, all that Wilhelm and Abigail left behind—into the ice near the altar, burying it hurriedly.

  “It has protected us…,” Tobias said, in bitter prayer. “It shall again…”

  But ice chips were raining down from the ceiling. It was breaking up. A loud, brutish drumming resounded from above.

  “That Thing is coming for us,” Sattler said. “We came here for nothing. We left the women…behind…”

  Tobias whispered in a broken voice, “It has meant nothing.” Sattler looked vacantly at him. Nothing emerged from the buried box. No magic came from it, and Tobias stood in disbelief. The spirit was not going to help them. The icy structure was quaking, splintering….

  And suddenly part of the ceiling shattered, and breaking through from the hole, Malgore fell upon Tobias, knocking him to the ground, his face pushed into the ice.

  Sattler slammed his torch onto her head, and Malgore spun, charging him to the wall.

  Tobias weakly rose, grabbing the long crescent dagger from his pocket, and began jabbing at the Thing’s back, hard, quickly, again and again.

  Malgore screamed and pulled away, falling back into the arms of the Old Man Winter sculpture.

  In that moment, the spirit of Wilhelm took shape vaguely, and began to drive the entire sculpture back, bashing the witch’s head against the wall. The spirit was here. Tobias stabbed the dagger a last time into Malgore’s heart, and those animal eyes locked onto his, stunned, fixated….


  In the doctor’s house, Tess read from Josiah’s book feverishly, voraciously. “Burn the body, burn the body…”

  She looked up, absorbing the words.

  Old Widow Malgore, her heart must burn…to flicker.

  It was fire. Fire would kill the witch.

  But the creature called Malgore was already dead.

  Tobias and Sattler looked exhaustedly at their work. The witch—a spindly albino form, a skeletal figure—lay splayed against the statue of ice.

  The spirit’s misty coils knocked over a lamp, starting a meager fire.

  But Tobias turned and kicked snow over it. “Get the other lantern. Let’s get out of here.”

  They moved to leave—but the witch was disentangling itself behind them, rising to come after them, though they did not yet know it. It had disguised its emotion, and Tobias felt nothing, walking on, as the wretch closed in on them.

  “Tess will think the worst…,” Tobias started to say—but suddenly Sattler was yanked backward, his neck breaking as the witch-creature threw him against the ice sculpture.

  Horror filled Tobias. Furious, Malgore lifted the entire sculpture of Old Man Winter, and crushed it down on Tobias with great force. He fell like a doll, as Malgore screeched, pushing down upon the statue.

  The pressure created a crater in the ground, where Tobias lay motionless beneath the ice carving. His eyes fluttered shut.

  Malgore regarded her work, and screeched again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Tess watched as the indefinite form of the Puritan girl lifted Josiah Jurey’s book and soared from the room, heading outside, leading Tess and the children to the large main house.

  An instant later the bolted doors there rattled open.

  “What is this…?” one child asked, as they entered.

  It was hard for Tess to know how to answer; the spirit had lost its energy, and was out of sight completely.

  It was a weary shelter at best. The windows were gone, and the cold wind howled inside. Tess dropped one of the blind boy’s hands, and he fumbled for hers, terrified. “Don’t, don’t let go.”

  “I’m sorry.” She took it again, and they all stood together for a long moment, out of breath and out of courage.

  “Did you hear that?” one of the boys said.

  Tess stiffened in fear, having heard nothing. Were their sensitive ears picking up more than she could?

  “It’s above us,” said another boy.

  She looked up. “There’s nothing.”

  “I heard it. Something’s here. Something’s right above us,” said the first boy, pulling back from Tess.

  “Stop, stop. There’s nothing there. I’ll prove it to you,” said Tess, alarming them more. She dropped the boy’s hand again, and moved toward the stairs, trying to believe the gentle spirit was the cause of the noise.

  “Stay here,” she said, steeling herself.

  The boys’ faces clearly showed their terror, but they had few choices. They might have to be here for a time, and Tess wanted to know it was safe. She went up the wide staircase cautiously, her head cocked, listening.

  Finally she began to hear something, a distant calling, as she rose. She was close to finding the source; it was like a melody being played just beyond several closed doors. She climbed to the upstairs hallway in darkness.

  Then she stopped in sudden terror, able to go no farther.

  She turned to run back—but she was sucked up ten feet into the darkness. Taken.

  Tobias awoke and clawed his way out of the crater inside the ice church, frantic.

  He believed the witch was gone. Left him for dead.

  Sattler’s body lay broken beside him.

  As his eyes fell upon the young man, he felt a profound and terrible guilt. Tobias could have been more careful. He knew more about the threat in these woods. He should have been the one to die.

  He was trapped. He looked up at the hole Malgore had created in the ceiling, and, with difficulty, climbed to it by scaling the sculpture and the ragged wall, pulling his body up with all his strength into the colder world outside.

  Twilight was fading. In the upstairs bedroom, Tess stood, her body tense. In the dim light, she could see small animals—dead goats and other creatures—hanging from hooks, strange writing scrawled on the walls, and carved on the floors, and as she leaned forward…

  A pit. It was built into the floor and led into a red-black throat of fire. It was deeper than seemed possible, ringed with human bones, torn spines, dried flesh.

  Tess pulled at a long metal meat hook that clung to the pit, and, trembling, realized it had blood on it.

  She had learned exactly what this meant from Josiah’s book: She held the weapon that could kill the wretch. If the body was then burned, the witch would be destroyed. A simple arithmetic arranged itself in Tess’s mind.

  She felt old desiccated feelings running into her arm from the hook, the emotions of the tortured now muted by time, and in the room around her, pain and misery from far too many deaths. She was in Widow Malgore’s den. Its horrors would stay with her forever. She pocketed the vile hook and stood up, shaking.

  And then her eyes met another’s.

  In the empty, burned room, a female figure stood before her.

  Tess whispered tearfully, “Abigail.”

  The ghost was only partially lit, her face veined and pale. Her features began to dissolve, the flesh around her eyes drooping, the bones of her cheeks falling, her countenance altering itself bit by bit until the woman that stood before Tess was a flickering, magic-lantern version of her own mother.

  “Tess,” the figure whispered. “Why do you stand there staring like a doll?”

  It was her mother’s voice, but not her style of speaking.

  “Knew you’d abandon me. You lived up to every fear I ever had.”

  “Mother?”

  “Every fear I ever had. What’s the song? ‘Lock her up in London Tower, lock her up’?”

  The vision turned partially incorporeal, as if fighting to appear human, its fading voice whispery and weakening, barely understandable. “Always damaged goods. Always afraid of your own shadow,” she murmured. “Never locked you up, did I? You made that choice.”

  Why was Abigail bringing this vision to her? Was she allowing her mother to speak through her, beyond the grave? Could Abigail do this?

  “Daughter of mine…”

  Then her mother’s face vanished. Abigail returned. In a slow, steady pace she approached, broke apart into frost and mist, and fell inside Tess. She strained to hear Abigail’s voice inside her, but the voice could not be heard; witchery had silenced it, even in death.

  The spirit had grown desperate, her message swallowed before it could be learned. They could not communicate.

  Instead Tess felt emotion vanish, until she was no longer taking in the pain and suffering around her. The spirit was giving her strength. Strength to face the unstoppable.

  Tobias stumbled out into the evening as the fog flew in a violent wind around him. He ran, driven on by Wilhelm’s power, past the house that Michael was in. The door lay open. Tobias stared in disgust. Malgore had killed them all.

  He turned, rushing into the street.

  The air cleared ahead, to reveal a desperate, tethered horse at the stable.

  Salvation.

  Tess shivered as ice entered her veins. The ghostly Abigail had told her all that she could, half whispers that had floated into her from the world of death. There was a threat in what she felt and heard: Kill the wretch, or we shall kill you.

  Had the vision of her mother been some kind of angry warning?

  There was no more time to think. The ghost’s voice announced clearly, “She is here.”

  Tess was looking at darkness. There was nothing there at all. Her blood warmed. Abigail had lost the strength to remain with her.

  A shape moved behind Tess, approaching, she was aware of it though she didn’t see it. Oldness washed over her, a smell of ro
t and sense of ancient resentment, a hollowness that she had come to recognize as the witch. It was coming.

  Tess stared straight ahead into the dim room but could not see Malgore at all.

  Instead, she saw Abigail, still struggling to appear, trying to warn her. Then Tess heard something behind her.

  She tried to move, but was suddenly forced to her knees by an unseen magic. Lightning crackling upon her skin, she crawled, moving under an invisible weight, as behind her the mist spread and rushed the hallway, making a milky dust of the blue evening light.

  Ahead of Tess through a hallway window came the silhouette of the new arrival. She watched the figure slip in, the shockingly lithe and supernaturally thin creature. Widow Malgore had returned home.

  The witch rushed toward Tess and screeched maniacally, grabbing hold of the smoke-blue mist, as if it could be crushed.

  But the mist had life, and thickness in her hand. It fought to free itself….

  And Tess knew she was seeing two kinds of forces in battle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Malgore’s face contorted, fangs springing forth, a screeching let loose from her throat. Desperately Tess crawled away to get downstairs, as the mist obscured any glimmer of evening light from outside.

  Tess screamed, as Malgore tore apart the blue, mistlike gossamer strings, and then continued, relentless, after Tess.

  Malgore crept downstairs almost like a spider, bestial, with long spindly arms and legs. The thorns that were her teeth gnashed repeatedly.

  The witch shoved Tess farther down the stairs. But suddenly—the mist-spirit rushed at Malgore, washing her aside, toppling her off the stairway. The room was suddenly in darkness.

  Tobias rode from Blackthorne on horseback. He stared straight ahead, intent on not looking back, not thinking anything but move, move, move….

  Moonlight struggled in. Tess fought to awaken. She had fallen at the middle of the stairway, and had stayed there, unconscious. Exhausted to its core, her body still wanted sleep. But she heard the boys calling to her; they needed her, there was no one else.