Irene and the Witch

by Terri Bruce

  She looked down at herself and contemplated the dried blood on her legs and the shredded and charred skirt of her dress. She couldn’t control what the witch doing to her, and she couldn’t get out of here. However, in theory, she could control the way she looked. If she could counteract Zara’s effect on her appearance, then she’d at least show she wasn’t going to be cowed quite that easily.

  She frowned in concentration, sifting through her assorted feelings and ghost senses, trying to figure out how it was done. The lore said that ghosts project how they think they appear. The problem was, at the moment, she looked how she felt—beaten, terrorized, defeated.

  She took a deep, steadying breath. She emptied her mind, pushing aside the growing despair that gnawed at her and focused, instead, on the feelings of powerfulness and self-assurance she conjured whenever she felt unsure.

  She focused first on her arm. She stared at the burnt patch, willing the burn to go away. She stared and stared, straining every muscle, until her eyes watered.

  Nothing happened.

  She pursed her lips in annoyance as she tried to think of an alternative approach. She took a deep breath and tried again, this time trying to picture the skin as clear and smooth. She focused on that image in her mind’s eye, projecting it over the disgusting charred mess. Still, nothing changed.

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and winced as the slight movement sent up a jolt of pain from her various injuries. She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the pain. She needed to focus. She forced her mind to relax, to be empty and still, and then she reached deep down within herself, going to that place inside her head where she went when she employed her ghost senses—neither present in the physical word nor fully withdrawn from it, but somewhere in between. She called up the memory of how she’d looked when she’d made one final check in the mirror before setting out for her final night on earth: silky red hair pulled up in a French twist, sexy red dress—clean and perfect, her skin flawless. She let how she felt—confident, beautiful, sexy—fill her, washing over her like a gentle rain, not an idea in her head but a state of being.

  She kept that feeling fixed in her mind, then slowly opened her eyes and looked down. The blood on her legs was gone. So were the cuts. The skirt of her dress looked like it was fresh off the store rack. She yanked up the now unripped and unburnt sleeve of her jacket and gazed at the smooth skin below. A triumphant smile spread slowly across her face.

  “Fuck you,” she whispered, her words directed at Zara. I win. If she could master this, she could master anything—including getting out of here. She’d find a way. It was only a matter of time.

  “Oh good, you’re up.”

  Irene whirled around. She hadn’t heard the door open, but the witch was crossing the room. She looked well rested and freshly showered. Somehow, Irene had half expected her to sweep into the room wearing a cape and pointed hat, but she was dressed much the same as the previous day, in an innocuous button-down shirt and dress slacks. How could someone so evil look so ordinary?

  “Ready to be more reasonable?” Zara eyed her critically. “My, don’t you look pretty, now that you’re all cleaned up?”

  “Look,” Irene said wearily, “what is it that you want from me?”

  “I’m so glad you asked.” Zara smiled coldly. “For starters, I want that boy.”

  “For what?”

  Zara’s face turned to stone. She her hands had been down by her sides and now she held them up; they contained the doll and lighter.

  “Hang on!” Irene cried. “Can’t we talk about this? I think it’s reasonable for me to want to know—” The hem of her skirt burst into flames.

  The pain was intense. An agonized scream was wrenched from her as she beat at the tongues of fire licking her legs. The flames winked out. Her knees buckled, and it took all her will to keep from falling. She shook like a leaf as she looked at Zara, her bravado replaced with panic that she couldn’t keep from her eyes.

  “You don’t get to ask questions,” Zara said. “You get to do as you’re told.”

  “Okay, okay!” Irene held up her hands in surrender. “You win. I’ll go get him.”

  Zara stared at her for a moment, as if assessing the truthfulness of Irene’s acquiescence. Irene tried lowering her eyes slightly, trying to look contrite and pliable. Zara frowned, but crossed to the work table and picked up the piece of mirror she’d used to let Irene out from the circle around the tea table. She thrust the mirror into the circle of ghost charms and, as before, angled it so that it broke the circle. With her free hand, she gestured for Irene to step free.

  Irene’s first instinct was to run for the door, but during the night she’d had plenty of time to study the ghost repellent charms burned into this side of the door—as well as the one painted on the window. The witch had done a good job of sealing all the exits.

  That only left one other option: overpower Zara. Irene wasn’t much of a fighter, but she was taller than Zara and maybe if she rushed her...

  The witch smirked as if she could read Irene’s thoughts. She reached up to the collar of her shirt and pulled it down, revealing a circle of ghost charms inked into her skin like a necklace. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said smugly. “You can’t touch me.”

  Irene gritted her teeth as she bit back a retort. The bitch seemed to have thought of everything. “You’ve done this before,” Irene said.

  Zara’s smirk widened. “There is no shortage of stupid ghosts. But, I have to admit, you’re the first ghost I’ve ever managed to snag from that particular realm. Most ghosts of your level can’t exist on this plane.”

  Irene smarted at the reminder of her own stupidity—on so many levels. The witch wasn’t wrong—she shouldn’t still have her ghost body. The only reason she did was her stubborn insistence on not giving it up. She’d been dead set on returning to the land of the living no matter what. If she’d shed her ghost body back in Tartarus, like she was meant to, she wouldn’t be here now.

  Zara motioned for Irene to proceed her out of the room. Once they were at the front door, Zara pointed to the charm etched on it. “See this?”

  “I’m familiar,” said Irene, not sure she could stomach more gloating.

  “They’re etched on every entrance. You can’t leave—or enter—without my permission. So don’t get any cute ideas about sneaking back in and trying to surprise me. I’ll let you out the front door and you will proceed down to the street to the market. You’ll get the boy, through any means necessary, and then you return here and ring the bell to be let back in. It should take you ten minutes—at most—to accomplish this task. At eleven minutes after your departure, if you’re not back, I set you on fire—and let you burn.” The witch’s expression made it clear she was deadly serious. “Don’t mess with me, sister—for your own sake. It won’t end well, trust me.”

  Irene didn’t need to be told twice. “Aye, aye, captain,” she said. She desperately wanted to punctuate the words with a sarcastic salute but decided not to press her luck.

  Zara’s face twisted into a sneer. “That’s the spirit.” She opened the door and swept her arm forward, indicating Irene should exit. “Ten minutes,” she said. Then she slammed the door shut as soon as Irene was over the threshold.

  “Shit.” Irene pulled her jacket tighter around herself and chewed on her thumbnail, thinking hard. She needed a way to escape, but ten minutes hardly seemed enough time to come up with a plan. There were still so many unknowns, such as how far the doll’s range was. Could the effects reach across afterlife planes? If she managed to get back to the other side, would she be safe? She had no way of knowing, which meant she needed to get the doll from Zara before she made her escape back through the crystal ball.

  A small flame erupted on her sleeve. Irene gasped with surprise and shook her arm frantically. The flame disappeared. Apparently, she’d been standing here too long for Zara’s taste.

  “God damn it,” she muttered between clenched teeth
as she set off down the stairs. She toyed with going to the left this time, just to see what was down there, but knew Zara was watching. Reluctantly, she turned to the right and set off toward the market at a brisk pace. As soon as she was out of sight of Zara’s house, she slowed down.

  Was there anyone she could ask for help, anything she could use against the witch? She hadn’t seen anything obvious on her last visit to the market, but then, she hadn’t really been looking. She had no intention of taking the boy to Zara, that wasn’t even a consideration, but maybe he could help her. Maybe he could find some other ghosts or a psychic.

  It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  Irene wasn’t much of a runner, but in this case, she ran. She skidded to a stop before the market shanty, out of breath. Her heart sank; the shop appeared to be closed. A piece of sheet metal leaned across the front of the hut, and the watermelon carts had disappeared, most likely pulled inside. The boy and his father were nowhere to be seen.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  She walked up to the lean-to and moved the metal “door” covering the front. The inside was empty save the fruit carts. She seriously doubted that the melons would have much effect on Zara, even if Irene threw several of them at Zara’s head.

  What was she going to do now?

  Right on cue, a small orange flame burst to life on Irene’s sleeve. She gritted her teeth against the pain and tried to ignored it. Could she leave a message? Maybe carve a note into the dirt floor? She’d tried that way of communicating with the living before without much luck, but maybe this time it would be different. She looked around for a stick or something pointed.

  The flame on her sleeve winked out. Ten seconds later, it erupted again, burned for a second, and disappeared.

  Apparently, this was the signal to return.

  “Shit,” she said again. She dropped to her knees and began scratching with her bare fingers into the dirt. She hesitated when she realized she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have Zara’s address and all the houses looked similar from the outside. She settled for, “Send help. Go right, center hut.”

  The flame erupted on her sleeve again. The witch was burning the same spot over and over and the fabric was starting to char from the repeated burning.

  “Yeah, okay,” Irene muttered angrily. This was stupid. She was stupid. She was back in the land of the living, but it was all wrong. And now, it seemed like her stay was going to be a short one, because without something to appease Zara when she returned empty-handed, the punishment was going to be swift—and severe. Irene’s stomach knotted at the thought.

  The flame on her arm burned steadily now and her skin was beginning to blister. Irene jumped to her feet and ran for Zara’s house. She pelted up the steps two at a time, and, forgetting about the ghost repellent carved into the wood, banged on the door. She was instantly seared with a vicious jolt of electricity. She cried out and snatched back her hand, cradling it to her chest.

  The flames on her arm winked out. Then the door opened.

  Zara looked past her for a moment, then her mouth turned down. Irene went cold at the look in Zara’s eyes.

  “Get in here,” Zara said, standing back.

  Irene thought about running, very nearly did, but she knew it wouldn’t do her much good. Zara could burn her no matter where she went. She had no choice, but to obey. Woodenly, her feet weighted like lead, she shuffled into the house. She was shaking, and there was a stone in her chest, making it difficult to breath.

  Zara shut the door and the sound of the latch clicking into place sounded unnaturally loud in the heavy silence. Zara moved around Irene to stand in front of her. She crossed her arms and stared at Irene. Irene had never seen someone whose face was so cold, so devoid of human emotion. Finally, Zara motioned for Irene to proceed her back through the house. Irene assumed they were going back to the cage of ghost charms in the tea room, but instead, they crossed to the room with the coffee table and then out a door on the right that Irene hadn’t noticed before. This led outside, to a fenced-in yard, in which stood a large, windowless garden shed about twenty-five feet square. Zara pushed past Irene and headed to the shed. She grabbed the padlock on the door, reached under her shirt collar to pull out a key on a chain around her neck, and used the key to unlock the shed. Irene barely had time to notice that the wooden fence around the yard was inscribed with ghost charms, as were the door and walls of the shed, before Zara grabbed her arm and dragged her inside the shed.

  Irene blinked in the sudden dark. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light slanting through the door. She was still seeing black spots as her eyes adjusted when Zara yanked her forward. Irene stumbled and then bumped into something hard that burned with cold where it touched her. She jumped back, blinking hard to see in the dim light.

  It was a square, metal cage, four feet tall and just about as big across. In the bottom lay an elderly man, tiny and wizened, curled into a ball. His dark eyes, faded but alert, looked up at Irene. He had the familiar blue glow of a ghost.

  Irene yelped in surprise and jumped back. Then she saw that there was another cage beside it—this one housing a middle-aged ghost woman. And then another cage beyond that. And another. Altogether, Irene counted twelve cages in two rows; ten of the cages each held a ghost. The door to one of the empty cages ominously stood open. Irene spun back around to face Zara, terror swelling within her.

  “No!” she said, skirting away from the witch. “Oh no, please... no...” She tried to dive past Zara and run for the door.

  Her dress burst into flames. Searing pain scorched her as her skin bubbled and shriveled. Irene screamed and fell to the ground, beating at the flames, choking on the smoke and smell of scorched flesh.

  The flames extinguished, leaving Irene curled into a whimpering ball as pain like knives sliced through her. The witch loomed over her.

  “Get in the cage,” she said, coldly, matter-of-factly.

  Irene weakly shook her head, not sure she had the strength to crawl to the cage, let alone walk to it.

  The witch held up the lighter. “Get in the cage,” she repeated.

  Irene had no defiance left, only blinding terror and pain.

  I’m going to die here, she thought. Really, truly die.

  Somehow, she found the strength to drag herself to a sitting position, every moment agony. Tears of humiliation and pain slipped down her face. She managed to climb to her feet and hobble, painfully, the short distance to the cage. She made the mistake of grabbing onto the bars for support. Electricity sizzled through her, and she yelped in pain as she jerked her hand away. Too late, she saw that every bar was etched with ghost repelling charms.

  “Get in,” Zara said harshly, making it clear there wouldn’t be a fourth request.

  Gingerly, avoiding touching any of part of the cage, Irene dropped to all fours and crawled inside. The door clanged shut behind her and the chilling sound of a metal chain sliding though the bars followed. In the small space, Irene managed to turn around just in time to see Zara fastening a padlock on the chain holding the cage door shut.

  “Comfy?” Zara asked. Without waiting for an answer, she moved away from Irene’s cage. She crossed to another cage, this one holding a young boy, a little older than the one from the market, who whimpered and scooted backwards away from Zara.

  “Give me your arm,” the witch said to the boy.

  Irene crawled forward to the edge of her cage. “What you are doing?” she managed to croak out, her throat sore from screaming.

  The boy whimpered and shook his head. Zara held up a paper doll; this one with short black hair. Across the room, on a work table, Irene could see a row of similar dolls all laid out. Her stomach dropped.

  “No!” Irene said, her own pain and fear fleeing in the face of what was coming next. “Leave him alone!” She tried to climb to her feet and bumped her head on the top of the cage. Electricity sizzled through her, forcing her back to her knees.

  The w
itch showed the doll to the boy. He whimpered again, his eyes filling with tears. Slowly, he came forward and thrust his arm through the bars, grimacing in pain. Irene had no doubt he was getting zapped by the ghost charms as he held his arm out to the witch.

  Zara took her time, leaving the boy in pain as she moved back to the table, set the doll down and picked up a large kitchen knife. She was making a point: she was in control, and she could do as she liked. She moved back to the boy’s cage, paused for a moment to look at Irene—no doubt, to make sure Irene was watching—and then put the knife to the boy’s arm, cutting a long, thin line there. Irene gasped.

  The boy whimpered, but didn’t cry out. A thin trickle of ghostly blood oozed out of the wound. Zara leaned down, putting her mouth to it. Irene’s stomach heaved as she watched the witch suck on the wound. After a moment, she raised her head. The boy yanked his arm back into the cage and fell back, pale and shaking. It seemed to Irene he appeared dimmer, less solid, than he had a moment before.

  Zara wiped a hand across her mouth and then moved back to stand before Irene’s cage. She looked down at Irene, her eyes hard as steel. “You can get cut or you can follow orders, but either way, you’re gonna make yourself useful. Understand?”

  Mutely, Irene stared at Zara. Her head felt heavy and numb, her body distant. The parts of her body didn’t seem connected, like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She gave a weak nod; that was all she could manage.

  “Good.” Zara turned on heel and stalked back to the workbench where she dropped the knife, then exited the shed. The door closed behind her, plunging the room into complete darkness. Dimly, Irene heard the sound of the padlock clicking into place.

  Irene remained kneeling in her cage, numb from head to toes. This couldn’t be happening. Nothing seemed real.

  Off to left, she heard the boy sniffle, and that one, small sound, broke her. She began to shake. She fell back into a sitting position, wrapped her arms around her knees, and rocked back and forth.