Gretchel was digging through the fire safe, looking for the documents she and her kids would need to start a new life. The shotgun was at her feet.
Before Gretchel even realized that Troy was behind her, he grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm behind her back.
He’s oot his face!
Keep the heid! Keep the heid!
Kill him! the Woman in Wool screeched.
“Nobody else is going to love you like me, Gretch. Nobody else is going to be able to look at your disgusting body, your burns and your scars. I’m the best you’re ever going to get, so let’s just go to bed and pretend nothing ever happened.” His voice was hot in her ear, and she could smell the Scotch on his breath. He would never change. Had she ever really believed that he would change?
Gretchel shifted her hips to the left, and used all the strength she had to drive her free right fist backward into Troy’s testicles. His grasp on her arm weakened, Gretchel flung his arm away and reached for the shotgun.
Troy, curled up on the floor, raised his hands in defeat. “Gretch, I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I can’t lose you. I’d do anything for you. You know I would. You can’t leave me. I’ll break it off with Michelle, I’ll find another job, we can move, whatever you—”
She leveled the gun to his chest. “I want the tape, Troy.”
“It’s gone!”
“Bullshit. Where is it?”
“I swear to you, it’s gone.”
“You’re lying. Where’s the tape, Troy?”
“I destroyed it. I did it for you! I love you. I’ve always loved you. We can fix this. Just put down the gun.”
Gretchel drew back the hammer.
Kill him! The Woman in Wool screamed again. Kill him!
Gretchel stared at her husband over the barrel of the shotgun. “All right, Troy. I believe you.”
He sagged with relief.
“But there’s still something I want from you, Troy. Can you do something for me, Troy?”
“Anything, Gretchel. Anything!”
“I want you to get that goddamn trash bag out of the goddamn tree. That’s what I want from you, Troy.”
Gretchel left her husband cringing at the bottom of the stairs.
She knocked on Ame’s door, and waited for her daughter to let her in. She tucked the covers around her daughter, and, after giving Ame a kiss on the forehead, Gretchel settled herself into the rocking chair facing the door, the shotgun across her knees.
It was several hours before Gretchel let herself fall asleep, but, when she did, she slipped into a dream almost immediately. She was in a clearing. She was cradled in warm water. Women danced around her, chanting in low voices. She felt the gun in her hands, and shot the first man she saw.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Irvine, 2010s
Gretchel woke to the sound of a shotgun being fired.
When she opened her eyes, she saw her daughter’s room. She saw her daughter, asleep in her bed. The gunshot had been in her dreams. Gretchel shuddered, remembering the events of the night before.
Ame stirred and turned to Gretchel.
“Happy New Year’s, Mom. You were screaming in your sleep. Nightmare?”
“Yeah, I guess it was a nightmare. How are you?”
“I feel a little sore. Did I get my ass kicked last night?” Gretchel couldn’t suppress a wry smile. Only Ame could be this diabolically sarcastic. “Really, Mom, I think that this could be a good year for us, but only if we make a move. Holly had a premonition. She saw a funeral. We need to get out of here before dad kills one of us—or you kill him.”
“Your grand mama told me about Holly’s vision. She thinks that it’s Miss Poni who’s about to die. But, look, Ame, Holly’s visions are never clear. There’s no need to panic.”
“No need to panic? You were here last night, weren’t you?”
Gretchel heard the tears in her daughter’s voice. She rose from the rocking chair and put her arms around her girl.
As she held Ame, Gretchel looked out the window. There was movement in the front yard. She saw Troy climbing a ladder, while Zach and Ben held it steady at the bottom.
Ame followed her mother’s gaze. “Look at him. He’s trying to get that stupid trash bag out of the tree,” she said with a mirthless laugh.
“I asked him to get it down,” Gretchel said, wondering why she had been so fixated on that stupid bag. Last night, she could have asked Troy for anything. Why hadn’t she made a wiser choice? Why hadn’t she ever made a wiser choice?
“What an idiot,” Ame chuckled. “He can’t reach it. He’s going to crawl across that branch. I’ve got to get a picture with my phone.”
Gretchel laughed too. Troy did look like an idiot trying to crawl across a very thin branch, very high up in a very tall tree, to reach a plastic bag.
”Look,” Ame said. “I think the branch is cracking.”
Gretchel watched flittering sparkles of sun dance around the bag and the branch. In the blink of an eye, the branch snapped, and Troy fell to the snowy ground below.
Part Two
Scotland, 1970s
Summer Solstice, just before dawn in the lowlands of Scotland. The boundary between light and dark was obscured, but one thing was clear: Diana Stewart’s acid trip was starting to get interesting. She watched, rapt, as the sky stretched its arms and yawned a dirty white cloud into the black morning. She watched as the cloud disappeared. She watched the sky go back to sleep. Diana had watched this happen over and over again for an intense half hour.
Then she felt a shift in her awareness. She sensed movement all around her. She felt something tug at her long brown hair. The tug turned into a yank, and Diana felt herself being assaulted by a flurry of tiny hands. She flailed, swatted, and swore as minuscule fingers twisted her hair into knots. Almost by accident, she caught one of her tormentors snared in its own handiwork. She plucked it from the tangled mess of her hair and held it in front of her face.
It was a diminutive thing, faintly luminescent, with shimmering wings. A fairy. This, Diana thought to herself, is what happens when a folklorist drops acid on midsummer morn. Although I would have thought that a tripping folklorist might come up with something a little more authentic than wee Victorian vermin. She gave the fairy one more glance before she flicked the nasty creature away from her with a sneer of disgust.
“All right, you filthy little things. You asked for it.” She grabbed another and flipped the diaphanous nuisance toward the forest.
Confronted with this fearsome counterattack, the fairies disengaged from Diana’s head, regrouped, and flew in formation toward the forest. Diana watched them go until just one remained.
This lone fairy flitted and darted just outside of Diana’s reach. “I’m Claire,” she piped. “Follow me.”
As Diana looked at Claire, she felt a shift in her awareness again. Where, just seconds before, a tiny winged being had been hovering, now there was a young woman dressed in a gown that would have been in vogue during the Regency. Diana found it hard to focus on this dress—it seemed to be simultaneously there and not quite there. Sometimes it looked as if it had just been delivered from the dressmaker’s shop; sometimes it looked like a frail construction of cobwebs and dead leaves. But there was nothing ambiguous about Claire’s face. It was captivating, and her hair—which fell about her pale shoulders—was a deep, sumptuous black. Diana’s irritation with the earlier assault was replaced by a growing sense of uneasiness. This, she thought, is a proper fairy. Best watch my step, even if she is just a hallucination.
“Follow me,” Claire repeated, holding out her hand.
Diana remained wary. “Why would I want to do that?”
Claire didn’t reply. She just shrugged gracefully, and then turned to join her troop.
Diana looked around her parents’ lush estate. It had been in her family for centuries, as had the wealth that accompanied it. Diana had been raised in the States, but she spent her summers at Castle Belshire, and she knew t
he forest that surrounded it like the back of her hand. Still, she was apprehensive as she looked toward its threshold.
The landscape seemed still. Diana’s mind was not. As the midsummer sun crested the horizon, she made her choice.
Diana had just finished her final year of college, where she had studied religion and mythology along with psychology. She was a privileged young woman. She had no need to work, and yet she was drawn to the field of psychology—just like her parents, her grandfather, and her great grandfather had been. Her father and mother, Charles and Miranda Stewart, had become pioneers in the field of transpersonal psychology. They had made amazing progress with psychedelic psychotherapy until the use of LSD had been outlawed.
The ban hadn’t stopped Diana. The acid she was on was from her mother’s lab. She knew she was being irresponsible. Taking a trip in an uncontrolled environment was not wise, nor was it approved of by her parents. But she had felt so compelled to take the hit. As soon as she awoke in the wee hours of the Summer Solstice, she immediately slipped it onto her tongue.
Diana had come to Scotland with her lover. She was taking a break before plunging into graduate school. He… Well, it was best for him to be out of the States for a little while. Diana had hoped that they could both take it easy for a couple months, but relaxation just wasn’t one of Diana’s greatest strengths. She was driven like her parents. She couldn’t relax when she tried.
Just the day before, she had been perusing the castle library in search of a novel to help her unwind—something in the way of Emily Brontë or Jane Austen, perhaps. Instead a large, dusty book sitting alone on a mahogany table caught her attention. Ever the scholar, Diana opened the book where it had been marked. It was a volume of Scottish folklore, and the chapter to which she turned was called “The Solstice Twins.” One twin, it seemed, had been tried and executed for the crime of witchcraft. The other drowned thirteen years later.
Diana was intrigued by this fragment of history—in fact, she was captivated, compelled. It wasn’t just the uncanny synchronicity of discovering the Solstice Twins the day before midsummer, although that was part of it. She also sensed that something had gone horribly wrong all those centuries ago. Innocence had been punished. Justice had been perverted—she felt an instinctual need to uncover the truth and an irrational pull to undo a karmic perversion. Diana was hardly the type to act on instinct—this was one of the many differences between her and her lover—but the pull she felt toward the Solstice Twins was irresistible, and their story was swirling in the back of Diana’s drugged-up mind as she followed a fairy named Claire out of the early-morning glow of the Summer Solstice and into the thick, wet dark of the forest.
Diana kept walking until she came to a small clearing surrounded by trees. She hesitated. She didn’t like this spot. Never had. As a young girl she had been chased through the forest by a fierce creature with brindled fur and barred teeth. When she told her parents that it was a wolf, they assured her that Scotland’s last wolf had died centuries before. But Diana knew that the beast she’d encountered was no mere dog. The animal’s pursuit had ended here, in this very clearing. Diana had fallen, breaking her leg, and, suddenly, the wolf was nowhere to be seen. Now, Diana paused among the trees, trembling. After a taking a few moments to banish this bad memory, she took a reluctant step into the gloomy clearing.
Diana could see fairies flitting through the dark, dense leaves above. Other than that, she seemed to be alone. Claire had either rejoined her flying friends or she had disappeared. Diana was about to get extremely frustrated with herself for trusting a fairy when she heard the sounds of movement—the rustle of dry leaves, the snap of a twig—nearby. The hair on her arms stood on end as she backed into a gigantic oak.
The old woman had come out of nowhere. Diana clutched her chest and sucked in a frightened breath. She could hear the thumping of her heart in her ears. Then she remembered, I’m tripping. And I know an archetype when I see one. Crone. Wise woman. Symbol of intuitive wisdom.
“I've been waiting a long time for you, child.”
“Just who the hell are you calling a child?” Diana pulled herself up to her full height—all four feet, eleven inches. Her hand was on her hip, and a scowl on her face. She was willing to see what this trip might have to teach her, but she wasn’t about to let a hallucination condescend to her. “I’ll have you know that this child just defended a groundbreaking thesis on…”
“Quiet!” the crone squawked.
Diana bit her tongue, and really looked at the woman before her. Her hair was long and gray, her face wrinkled and worn, her eyes white and ghostly. She gripped a weathered cane with one hand, and held something concealed in the other.
“I’m sorry,” Diana said. “You frightened me.” Diana gave the crone another long look. “Do I know you?”
“Aye, girl,” the old woman grumbled, “At least you should. Have you no gratitude for the one who gives you what you seek?”
What I seek, Diana thought, What do I seek? She eyed the hag suspiciously, and decided to let the LSD—and her thesis-fatigued brain—do their thing. “Forgive me. I’m very pleased to meet you, and I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.”
Diana probed her mind. She did know the crone. She had seen this woman many times in her dreams. In her dreams, Diana knew that there were questions she needed to ask her, people only the crone could help her find, but she never knew what questions to ask, could never identify the people she needed to find. Now, with the crone from her dreams standing right before her, Diana still found herself utterly mystified.
The old woman came closer. “You must take the amulet. The time is approaching.”
The crone opened her clenched hand and reached toward Diana, who took what the old woman offered. It was a necklace. A surge of energy crossed between them. Diana could see a silvery light spread through her fingers and sink into her palm. She felt it journey up her arm and dissipate into her body.
Diana shuddered, and then looked at the amulet. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. She let her thumb roll over the center gem. It was a deep purple amethyst surrounded by tiny diamonds. “Shall I put it on?”
“It’s not for you. Your son will know to whom it belongs.”
Diana was trying to be polite to this archetype, but she couldn’t stop the incredulous snigger that slipped out of her throat. She had just graduated college. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted children, wasn’t even sure if she liked them. She didn’t have time for a child. She had a career to build. “My son?”
“Aye! The one you carry now.”
Struck dumb, Diana just stared. This trip was taking a very weird turn.
“You’re unaware?” the crone asked, bewildered. She, too, seemed to sense that this encounter wasn’t quite going as planned. She grabbed the necklace back from Diana and shook it in front of her face. “This amulet offers great protection to one who will wear it, a descendant of the Solstice Twins. It is a gift from her ancestors, to safeguard the one we wait for.”
“The Solstice Twins?” Diana gasped.
“Aye,” the crone replied. “It’s time to break the cycle.”
“Cycle?”
“The cycle that began when another young lass was run through these woods and hunted to her death. She was innocent. It was her sister who set this wheel turning. It was her sister who was a victim of the predator. Her instincts were muddled. She blames herself for things out of her control, and haunts our descendants to their death as a result. She must be stopped.”
Diana listened closely. Part of her was captivated by the crone’s story, and part of her couldn't wait to report the peculiar happenings of this acid trip to her lover.
“Was this girl one of the Solstice Twins?”
Suddenly a great wind swirled in the clearing, lifting leaves and dust. The trees bent and the ground rumbled. Diana’s long, knotted hair whipped about, and she cowered against a tree, holding on for her life.
She was still in the same pla
ce, but she could tell—somehow—that she was in a different time. She saw a young girl lying on the ground sobbing uncontrollably. Diana’s heart ached. As intellectually driven as she was, her emotions were getting the best of her. She wanted to comfort the girl. Wanted to apologize for whatever had happened. She was being pulled toward her when the very wolf that had chased Diana before appeared and forced her back.
Then the crone stepped forward, arms outstretched as if she were in control of this tempest. All was still again. The wolf and the girl were gone.
“It’s time for you to go hunting, child. It is your fate... your work... and your purpose. You have been schooled in the ways that heal for a reason.”
“But I don’t understand,” Diana pleaded.
The crone held the amulet in front of Diana’s face again. “Amethyst is the key and must be protected. The predator and the victim return in the mind of every descendant, but there is one we are waiting for, one who has the power to end it all.”
The hag closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they glowed red. She spoke:
The wheel will turn, and turn, and turn.
Violence and shame will be the fate of their descendants,
generation after generation.
The water will take them under.
It will take their daughters,
and they will not be redeemed.
Even when the water takes them,
they will not be redeemed.
Then the huntress will have a son,
and her son will have two loves.
The first will be a girl with hair as dark as blood
and scars that go deep beneath the surface.
He will give her the stone that saves her,
and she will give him despair.
When he finds the stone again,
He will find his heart,
The Wicked Garden Page 7