by Amity Green
Book Description
Savannah Caleman’s family has been coming apart since the early 1920’s. The pain of a horrific suicide, loss of the family ranch, and the stigma of insanity track them to their new home. It’s a property the locals call “The Witcher Place,” and the troubles the Calemans bring with them only deepen the troubles already there….
The Witcher Place becomes a focus for insanity and the manifestation of ghosts and shape shifters, bringing Savannah to the brink of madness. Horror abounds, and Savannah turns to distant relatives for answers, fearing the insanity is real and has spread throughout her family. She is forced to face her own inner-demons and the manifestations of horror that inhabit her new home. The Witcher Chime.
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Smashwords Edition
A Petrichor Press Publication Copyright © 2016 Amity Green
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover artwork Copyright ©2014-2016 Liliana Sanches
ISBN: 0692705856
ISBN-13: 978-0692705858
PETRICHOR PRESS
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Contents
Book Description
Title Page
Preamble
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
If You Liked …
About the Author
Preamble
“That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.”
Genesis 6:2
***
Prologue
The Witcher Place, Victor, Colorado
June 6, 1988, 7 p.m.
Savannah Caleman stepped onto the porch planks, dropping a round gas can beside the door with a derisive, metallic clank. Everything she touched was coated, fuming, and combustible. Muted sunlight tumbled through foggy dusk. A warm, afternoon wind blasted last winter’s leaves from the aspen grove across the yard, scattering streaks of burnished gold in contrast to a bruised sky. The wind chimes danced with uneven low harmony, claiming the peace. The screen door smacked shut, bounced from the jamb and came to a whining stop. Cool chain links grated in her clammy grip as she sat on the porch swing for the last time and started a gentle pace in an easy to-and-fro. Darkness poured from inside the house, the divided-light panes contrasting Mother’s sun-yellowed sheers pulled back at the sides. The entire thing was tinder.
A reluctant, sad smile tugged at Savannah’s dimples. Soon, the whole damned house would burn, the ashes a tribute to the ruin of her life, carried away by black smoke spiraling into the night sky. The minutes ticked by with the creaking of the swing as she fought the urge to get it over with, to strike a spark of life into looming death. Timing was everything. Oblivion was her reward for waiting it out.
A mountain lion screamed in the distance. Finally. Savannah pulled a crushed box of matches from a dampened pocket, fingering the strike pad as the wind quieted. The family’s horses trotted through the yard, experimenting with freedom. A fresh sob caught in her throat when her mare stopped at the porch steps and nickered to her. Savannah closed her eyes, tears cascading. So much hate fractured her heart. The bastard that drove her to such an extreme belonged in hell and after what he’d done to her family, it was her pleasure to escort him through the flaming gates.
“Go! Yah!” she yelled, flipping an arm. The horses snorted and took off at a sprint toward the hay field.
The chimes slowed as the wind calmed and eerie silence took over. She didn’t react, just waited it out, watching her fuel-splattered cowboy boots swing above the painted porch floor. Tears dried, salty in the corners of her mouth. Strands of hair stuck to her cheek, but she left it that way. She’d assigned her lot. She was simply bait. A worm on a hook. A snared rabbit with a predator following her screams.
The heavy scent of decay bounded from the trees, tumbling toward her on an invisible fog. For the first time she wasn’t terrified when the death-scent thickened until it was the only tint on the air. Nausea rumbled in her gut and she swallowed hard.
Mother had left three sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet and Savannah had taken them to mute the sting. They’d done a little more than that, and she was dizzy as hell, but the time had come. She wiped her face on her shirt and slid from the swing, pulling the screen door wide enough to touch the side of the house as she hurried through to the stairs. Aged wood creaked beneath footsteps behind her, and to no surprise, the screen didn’t slam, instead being caught and held open.
A fist of adrenaline clenched inside her chest as she fought the urge to sprint up the stairs on wobbly legs. One careful step leading another, Savannah ascended to her bedroom through a growing haze, closed the door, and dropped onto her bed. Wet linen clung to her t-shirt and skin as she backed against the headboard, feeling tendrils of her long hair clinging to accelerant dripping from splashes on the wall.
A small line of saliva plummeted from her bottom lip, chilling her chin. She wiped it away with a wrist, amazed at just how screwed up she was after taking a few little pills. An empty stomach likely amplified the drug, which battled adrenaline in her system. The jarring thrash of beats against her sternum faltered, and she hoped her heart would soon give in to sedation. Tears mixed with cold sweat as she forced herself to concentrate on good thoughts and wait for the right second. She couldn’t jump the gun and spring the trap too early.
Savannah closed her eyes and focused on memories of her siblings. Chaz and Molly danced with her in the kitchen, red balloons tethered to their little wrists with strings, bouncing in rhythm as they giggled, singing along with “Monster Mash.” A weight anchored around her ribcage, pulling her against the mattress with soothing, cool waves of calm.
When the doorknob wiggled once and began to twist, she readied a match against the pad on the carton, grasping hard to avoid dropping it with her sloppy grip. The door swung, wedging slowly to reveal a rectangle of darkness.
“Here kitty, kitty,” she crooned.
***
Chapter 1
The Cresson Mine, Cripple Creek, Colorado
June, 1922
“The bloody thing’s lost its wits.”
Four men huddled beneath a pitiful light bulb, encircling a brass birdcage, watching a canary flit about. Feathers puffed from within the small area, knocked free when the bird launched itself one last time against the bars. One wing continued to pump at the cage floor, where the small bird landed, tiny head cocked at an impossible angle and chest heaving.
The wings stopped and the miner holding the cage at eye level deposited the untimely little tomb onto the uneven, cut-rock floor. The men continued to stare, wide-eyed and gathering closer in the meager halo. Machinery chugged softly from far above, steel wheels screeching along tracks.
&n
bsp; “The air’s tainted, then,” a miner stated with a tremble that rivaled any common stutter.
“They don’t do that. They just kick over. And this’uns still breathin’,” another said. “It ain’t the gas.”
“What the hell’s wrong with it, then?” the man asked, nudging the cage a bit with the toe of a boot. “’Suppose it don’t matter no way. We get topside or we’re dead men.”
The smallest of the men crept to the farthest reach of the light, wet eyes even wider than his normal, scattered look. “Somethin’s wrong in here,” he said with a quaky voice. “Animals sense things us men can’t see.”
“Spare us, Nelson. We don’t need none of your woo-woo shit down here,” one gruff voice warned.
Nelson shook his head, pointing a shaky finger at the cage. “If that bird’s tryin’ that hard to get outta here, we should be, too.”
“One went out on us at the Independence last year, before those poor bastards rode the cage to the bottom,” the first said, approaching for a better look. “Faint-hearted, these little ones.”
No one spoke as fresh memories circulated. Vignettes of terror played as each man’s mind recapped a version of the accident. Fifteen miners were literally broken to bits when the cable frayed loose, sending the lift plummeting over fourteen-hundred feet to a miner’s version of a sump-soaked hell.
“Poor bastards,” he said, again his low voice breaking dense silence. His breath laced into steam in the dim paths of light. They took turns huffing clouds of vapor in disbelief.
“That’s a day, then.” Nelson paced free of the group, snatching gear and tossing it onto a half-full ore cart. “The damned bird’s given up the ghost and the temp dropped somethin’ mighty.”
“It’s no’ upta you. What ya reckon, Charlie?” one man asked, gesturing to the crew foreman with a nod.
Charlie Caleman, a shifter who’d built years of confidence as a lead, didn’t make snap decisions. He nodded calmly. The big man stood half a foot over the tallest, searching the faces of his crew and returned his gaze to the first one who’d spoken up— his brother, Paul. He considered quickly. Three lives depended on his judgment. The first instinct was to keep the calm and get them out. They were low, nearly seven hundred feet deep at the bottom of the shaft and had made decent ground that day, cutting a new room into the mountain. The ceiling was right at seven feet, and they’d hollowed out enough flat ground that the men walked easily from cart to shaft under a new line of electric light. Going got real rough for the last hour and some, but fluorite and dusty quartz ran thick in purple veins, pointing to pay dirt that would still be there at the top of a new day. He gestured toward the path out.
Nerves spiked in his stomach. A bird kickin’off was one thing. The life of a miner was another. He tilted his timepiece to the light, steeling himself. There was less than an hour left before he and his men would head topside for the night anyway. He clasped the watch closed, sending a metallic snap ricocheting from wall to wall in the chiseled-out cave.
“Pack it in,” he said, low and calm. “Get yourselves out. Nelson,” he said, holding the flighty miner’s gaze, “calm the hell down so you don’t get one of us hurt.”
No one argued against their shifter, or superstition, both of which were known to keep miners alive. The men hastily turned to retrieve various diggers and canteens.
Nelson jerked his pick free from where he’d lodged it into the rock wall. The crackle of splitting granite rent the dim room. The men stopped their hustle for an instant when the light flickered. Air hissed somewhere, filling the space with the smell of a hundred corpses. A lone splinter of stone slashed free, tumbling and clacking from above, coming to rest inside their meager line of light.
“Aw Jesus!” Nelson screamed, breaking into a flailing sprint for his life.
“She’s comin’ down—” one crew-member yelled, the last of his words cut off when a slab of rock slammed down from above. His helmet shot against a wall as bone crushed with wet snaps, and frothy gurgles of air released from organs. The mountain screamed as gasses pushed free, busting cracks in every direction. Fissures slashed through stone fast as lightning cutting the night sky.
Charlie Caleman didn’t know why, but he dodged a blast of gravel, grabbed the bird cage and lunged toward the stope leading to safety as a wall of fluorite-veined granite sloughed, crushing his crew and brother behind him so fast he only heard one tortured scream from inside.
* * *
Three months after the death of her husband Paul, Rebecca Caleman refused to wait for the bank to claim her house in Victor, Colorado. She let defeat slide off her shoulders and silently released the property in hopes of retaining the last shreds of her dignity. In the days shortly after the mining accident that claimed her husband, the cellar stocks ran empty so she picked up and moved her four daughters and one son a few miles south to the Caleman family ranch on the Shelf Road. Her husband had worked hard to afford a nice home for them, away from the drudgery of ranch life. Rebecca was grateful her in-laws maintained the Caleman property and offered them a portion of the monstrous house.
Paul had been a good husband, and his brother Charlie remained one of the most kind-hearted. Although he was a gruff shift boss at the mine, losing his brother just weeks before had taken a toll on Charlie, leaving his face creased with grief and diminishing his easy smile. Rebecca cycled, trying to hate Charlie for being the one that survived. Certainly, it was chaos in that shaft when the mountain came down, but wasn’t there one thing he could have done to save his brother? Why save a dead bird? Why wouldn’t he die trying to rescue her husband?
Charlie didn’t speak of the accident and she couldn’t bring herself to pry any further. She’d been told what happened. It was an accident, plain and simple. Miners accepted the risk to make the good money. Paul chose to put himself in danger to provide a good life for his family. Charlie accepted larger responsibilities, being the boss. He was responsible for the safety of his crew. There were but a handful of lives with him, and Charlie chose to save a damned birdcage. God gave her strength to forgive. That didn’t stop her from wishing she could hate him.
But he was just too good. Caleman men were chiseled from the block that way, apparently. Charlie offered to take them all in the day of the funeral service for Paul, but Rebecca waited, searching for enough work to cover her bank note. She finally conceded, but at least she’d tried.
Resilient to the point they earned a healthy dose of jealousy from Rebecca, the children meshed well with their cousins on the ranch, splitting the morning milking, stall mucking, and hay stacking duties up nine ways between them. Rebecca was guilt-ridden at first, bringing on more mouths to feed, but seeing how her children rose to the responsibilities of ranch life made her proud, lessening her remorse.
“It’s just another glass of milk and baked potato,” Charlie said, patting her shoulder. “We’re family.” His thin, forced smile was lost behind his coffee cup. “And besides, now that all your young ‘uns are here, I haven’t touched a shovel in weeks.”
Rebecca nodded and smiled as best she could.
She did what she could do, keeping house with her sister-in-law, mending and sewing, cooking, and sketching free hand pictures to sell in town, earning a little money to help the family.
Not only did her art keep her hands busy, it helped when her mind began to race and she thought about the horrid death her husband suffered, his big, strong body torn apart, and her heart threatened to break all over again. It was during those times when she was most productive, creating beauty on plain parched, lifeless paper. Adding color like splashes of vibrant life, again jealous even of her own work, because the thing she gave to her work was the very essence she felt she lacked. She was a shell. An empty vessel, cold and echoing. A plain, white canvas, lacking vibrancy and lust for life. Depth of soul.
At first, she sketched things that comforted her. Sunshine on her husband’s face in the morning. One of his eyes with a pool of color so deep she s
aw herself looking back, and heard him telling her, “You’ve got my heart, girl,” like he did countless times to make her smile. She sketched his hands, strong when he provided for his family, soft as the fur of a cottontail when he touched her.
Gradually, she moved on to the beauty provided by the vast, mountainous acreage at the ranch. A doe and a fawn in a glade. A family of skunks with lively kittens wrestling by a stump at twilight. She’d walk for hours, watching the sun to keep her bearings, thrilling in her ability to see God in the scenes she found. Each span of beauty was a gift from above. All color in a sunrise was painted by angels; the same ones that kept their brushes nimble and moist, awaiting a clean palate for sunset.
One bright morning the most beautiful, enormous cougar was laid out on a ledge across a crag. The mountain lion’s gaze was locked on her, so it appeared to have been watching as she meandered the wilderness, one big paw bent at the wrist and dangling from the slab. From her vantage, she guessed it to be much larger than she, outweighing her by over fifty pounds. If the thing got a hair, it could likely clear the chasm separating them, but it reclined, instead watching her every step with tawny-gold eyes.
She’d never considered the color of a wild cat’s eyes before. They stood out beautifully in the fawn-colored face, contrasting, soft white blending at the jaw and continuing along the cat’s underneath. Its belly rose and fell, and she fancied she heard the deep rumbling purr as it blinked, basking, and watching. The massive tail twitched, the only agitated part of the animal, like a house cat cornered by an ornery toddler. It seemed caged then, perhaps stuck there on the ledge, trapped by its own cunning. She backed away with their eyes locked on each other, finally turning to run once the cat was out of sight.
The trip back to the ranch house was a quick one. Rebecca’s heart pounded as she pulled a long canvas from behind the headboard in her bedroom and flattened in on the pad. She’d concentrated hard during the hike back, memorizing the subtleties along with the strengths of the picture in her mind’s eye. When the canvas stared back at her, taunting with a question of blank lifelessness, she answered by laying out the sketch at a quick pace. It was her only large canvas, left over from months ago. The big ones were terribly expensive, but Rebecca knew it would soon be a painting, deeper and beautiful beyond anything she’d ever done. She created for hours, barely eating or sleeping between cycles of the sun.