Irene and the Witch

by Terri Bruce

  She sat there in the dark, empty and numb. Eventually, thoughts and emotions began filtering back through the fog of shock. Groans and sighs from the ghosts around her, the scraping, scratching noise of bodies changing position, and the far off distant sound of birds screeching in the trees outside. The darkness seemed impenetrable and endless; the bird sounds reminded her that thin wooden walls were all that separated her from freedom.

  Another sniffle from the boy drew her attention. She looked in his direction and realized she could see him clearly—it was no longer pitch black. She blinked and looked around, searching for the source of the feeble, bluish light.

  It was the old man in the cage across the room. He was still lying on the floor, but the bluish “ghost aura” around him had intensified and brightened, burning incandescently like a bulb.

  Irene’s eyes widened. She let go of her knees and scooted across the rough dirt floor to the edge of her cage. “How are you doing that?” she whispered.

  The old man was facing her, and in the dim light, she saw him smile. “With great practice.”

  The boy whimpered again. Now that there was light, Irene could see that he was about eight years old. He was sitting with his knees up, arms around his legs, his posture mirroring Irene’s previous position. He stared at her, his eyes wide in fear.

  Irene waved and tried to give him a reassuring smile. The boy gave out a small yelp of surprise and buried his head in his arms.

  “I don’t bite,” Irene said.

  From off to her left, beyond the empty cage next to hers, someone she couldn’t see from this angle said, “You are a farang, like the witch.”

  “Farang?”

  “An outsider,” said the young woman in the cage to Irene’s right. She was draped in endless yards of deep red fabric embroidered with gold threat and wore an enormous and ornate headdress of gold. She sat cross-legged, eyes closed in meditative stillness, and spoke without opening her eyes.

  “Outsider?” Irene craned her neck as she looked as far down the row of cages as she could in both directions. In a moment, the meaning of the word became apparent: she was the only non-Asian present.

  “Where are we?” she asked cautiously. “I mean...what country?”

  The old man laughed. “How can you not know what country you died in? We’re in Siam.”

  “Siam?” Irene echoed. “Where the hell is...” Vaguely, she thought she remembered that Siam was the former name of Thailand. Zara hadn’t lied about that, at least. “What year is it?”

  This was met with silence from around the room. Irene studied the occupants of the other cages that she could see, noting the many different styles of clothes from a multitude of time periods.

  “Where did you all come from?” Irene asked. “Did you come from the other side—the land of the dead, I mean?”

  Someone out of sight shifted, their feet scraping against the cold, hard ground accompanied by a grunt of exertion or possibly pain. “We all come from various places. Some here, some there.”

  “You mean different planes?” Irene asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean by planes,” the old man said, struggling into a sitting position, “but different places in the afterlife, yes. Did you come from one of those?”

  Different places, but they all had their ghost bodies still, or they wouldn’t have been able to exist on this plane. Most likely that meant they went to lower planes—places she’d already passed through.

  “Yeah,” Irene said. “What about you?”

  The old man shook his head. “Among us, only Boonsri has come from beyond. There were others, before. Now, all the rest of us are from here.” Irene didn’t know who or what Boonsri was.

  “What does she want with us?” Irene asked.

  A whimper sounded from the boy at this question. Irene looked at him and then noticed that he wasn’t alone in his cage—drifting near him, low to the ground, was a small, smoke-like mound. He looked at it in terror.

  Irene stared in horror at the formless lump in the boy’s cage. She’d seen that before, in the land of the living. An Ugly—the shapeless, formless clouds of gray smoke of ghosts who had degraded to the point where they were no longer human. They attacked other ghosts, able to kill with a touch. She’d been chased by them a couple of times—she still bore the scar on her thigh from where one had grabbed her.

  “Oh my God,” Irene cried. She looked around wildly, looking for something to drive the Ugly off, away from the boy. “It’s an Ugly! Someone help... we’ve got to get him away from it!”

  “That was his mother.”

  Irene turned to the speaker, the young woman in the cage beside her. Her eyes were still closed, and she still maintained her restful pose. She spoke with a deep, elegant, cultured voice, careful and unhurried.

  “What do you mean?” Irene asked.

  “The witch. She is a soul eater. She takes our power for her own.”

  In shock, Irene looked back at the boy’s cage and stared at what remained of the his mother. It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. She’d watched Zara drink from the cut on the boy’s arm. Only, it wasn’t blood she was drinking, as Irene had first thought, it was energy—a ghost’s life force. And what remained of the boy’s mother was what happened when the witch took it all.

  It seemed the boy’s mother still had enough of her essence that she was solid, though formless, and had enough presence of mind to not attack the rest of them. If Zara took much more from her, though, she’d loose even that, and become nothing more than formless smoke—and a mindless menace that would be a danger to all of them. Did Zara know that? Was that why she’d left the woman in that state rather than finishing her off?

  “I’m Sanit,” said the old man. He shifted position slightly, wincing as if in pain; Irene suspected the witch had made quite a few meals of him as well. He nodded toward the boy. “He is Ukrit, his mother Hathai.”

  “I’m Irene.” She turned to the young woman to her right, waiting for an introduction, but the woman didn’t open her eyes.

  “She is Boonsri,” said the old man.

  Ah. So, she was the one who had come from the land of the dead. Irene studied Boonsri for a moment, trying to determine if there was anything different about her than the other ghosts, anyway to tell that she was from a higher plane than the others, but she seemed the same to Irene. Solid enough to Irene’s ghost eyes, as if she wasn’t dead, with only a faint blue aura to indicate she was a spirit. If her outfit was any indication, however, she was much older than any of the other ghosts—her robe and headdress looked like something people would have worn long ago. Given the woman’s haughty manner and refined speaking voice, Irene assumed she had probably been rich—a noblewoman of some sort.

  From the cages she couldn’t see, several other names rang out—not enough to account for all the bodies she’d seen when she first entered. She suspected the rest were incapacitated, too weak to answer, somewhere between Sanit and Hathai’s state.

  Irene turned back to Sanit. “Is there anything that can be done to reverse the effects of Zara’s feedings?”

  The old man shrugged. “If our energy could be returned to us... maybe.”

  That didn’t sound hopeful. So basically, once the witch started feeding on you, you were done for. If you were lucky, you ended up an Ugly.

  Irene’s heart pinched as she looked at the boy, forced to share a cage with the remains of his mother. Anger at the cruelty of it bubbled up inside her, and her hands clenched.

  “Has anyone ever gotten out of here?” she asked.

  There was silence. Boonsri opened one eye, arched an eyebrow at Irene and then, with great deliberation, closed her eyes and resumed her meditative posture.

  So that was a no.

  That was the last question she got to ask. In the next instance, both of her sleeves burst into flame. Irene cried out and threw herself on the ground, trying to stifle the flames. Her efforts achieved nothing. In a moment, the flames winke
d out, leaving Irene’s jacket a smoking ruin. Irene shook like a leaf as she struggled up into a sitting position without using her singed arms. The respite didn’t last long. Her skirt burst into flames a moment later.

  Apparently, the witch intended to spend another night torturing her.

  Irene gritted her teeth against the pain, but it was too much. She screamed—and went on screaming for a long time.

  Five

  Sunlight streamed in the open door, blinding Irene. She put up a arm to block the glare, blinking hard to erase the black spots dancing before her eyes. Zara stood framed in the doorway.

  During the night, Irene had gotten the full story about Zara from the other ghosts in between burnings. Whenever the flames had retreated and Irene lay curled in a ball, wrung out with pain, the other ghosts talked to her, distracting and soothing her. Zara was an American; she’d been diagnosed with cancer a number of years ago. When western medicine had failed her, she’d come to Thailand seeking alternatives.

  “Our people have a different relationship with their dead than you fardang,” Sanit had said with a shake of his head. “Our dead stay here, helping the living. And the living welcome us. Surely you saw the houses outside?”

  It had taken a moment for Irene to understand he meant the birdhouses in the yard.

  Even Ukrit had laughed at that. “Not houses for birds!” he said with a giggle, his face splitting into a wide grin. “For spirits.”

  It had taken some explaining, but finally she had understood. The living built “spirit houses,” filling them with food and treats to lure benevolent ghosts to take up residence. In exchange, the ghost provided protection and “blessings” to their benefactor, such as using small amounts of their essence to cure the sick.

  When Zara had come to Thailand seeking a cure for her cancer, she’d studied with a medicine woman who shared these secrets, and, at first, Zara had abided peacefully with the local ghosts who had willingly come to dwell in her spirit houses and worked to heal her. But then, Zara had grown greedy. She’d trapped the spirits and drained them of their essence, using it to cure not only her cancer but any small ailments or aches she experienced. Even that, however, wasn’t enough for her. She’d lured in other spirits, including Hathai, Ukrit, and Sanit, and enslaved them, forcing them to serve her—to exact petty revenge for perceived slights or to steal for her, or she bled them, using their essence to make charms and potions she sold to people all over the world. Ah, the power of an e-store and international shipping.

  The other ghosts didn’t know how many spirits Zara had killed—they had lost count over the years.

  “Ready to be reasonable?” Zara asked, coming to a stop in front of Irene’s cage.

  Irene glared balefully up at Zara, wishing she could snap the other woman’s neck. Her singed dress was barely more than a few tattered threads and her body was a patchwork of grotesque burns. Pain lanced through her with the slightest movement, but she gritted her teeth and dragged herself into a sitting position anyway, so she could look Zara full in the face when she spoke. “Fuck you.”

  It might be petty, but it was all she could manage at the moment.

  Irene didn’t see any point in pretending to go along with Zara to buy time. Zara was smart and she’d been doing this a long time. It wasn’t likely she could outsmart Zara when so many others had failed. And Irene certainly wasn’t going to round up any ghosts and bring them here just to save her own hide, that was for sure. So, all she’d be doing by pretending to help Zara would be to set herself up for an even worse punishment when she came back empty-handed. It was doubtful that enduring the resulting punishment would be worth the incredibly short window of time Zara would give her out of her cage.

  Irene could see that her response had enraged Zara, though the other woman did a good job of hiding it. A muscle in the witch’s cheek twitched, however, belying her otherwise stony façade.

  “Have it your own way,” Zara said.

  “You’re going to have to kill me,” Irene replied, “because I am never going to help you.”

  Zara laughed then, a deep, full-bellied laugh. “Kill you? Don’t be stupid. I’m not going to kill you.”

  She held up the paper doll in one hand and the lighter in the other. She flicked the lighter to life and slowly moved the flame closer to the doll.

  Irene tried to steel herself for the pain, but panic engulfed her. Her blood thrummed in her ears and she couldn’t breathe. She bit her lip to keep from crying out in fear, to keep from begging the witch to stop.

  Zara’s eyes never left Irene’s as she held the flame to the doll’s shoulder. Irene turned her face away from the flames, gritting her teeth against the heat cutting like a laser into her. “Fuck you,” she managed to grind out before a gasp of pain was wrenched from her. The gasp turned into an agonized scream.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Zara said, her words cutting through Irene’s screams. “I can’t kill you with this. All I can do is burn you—over and over and over and over.”

  Flames erupted all over Irene’s body, a thousand super novas exploding at once. Irene collapsed into a heap on the floor, writhing in pain. Her jacket, her dress, her hair, her shoes all burned.

  The flames disappeared. Irene lay dazed and panting on the floor. Silent tears tracked down her face and dripped o the floor, mixing with the dirt below. Dimly, as if far, far away, she heard sobbing. Zara looked to her right, her faced twisted in a sneer. “Oh, don’t like that? Want to take her place?”

  Ukrit was crying.

  Zara turned away from Irene’s cage and moved as if to stalk to Ukrit’s cage. Irene gathered the last of her strength. She latched on to the cage bars, gritting her teeth against the surge of electricity hitting her like a taser and hauled herself upright.

  “Stop!” she said. “Leave him alone.”

  Irene had learned one other important tidbit during the night; Boonsri, it seemed, was a feather in Zara’s cap, as she was the only spirit, prior to Irene, she’d managed to lure from one of the higher planes back to the land of the living. It seemed that spirits from the land of the dead were closer to pure energy than ghosts from the land of the living, making their essence stronger and more concentrated.

  Boonsri had shared her story haughtily, her chin held high as she stared straight ahead. “I was separated from my lover by death. I waited for him in the heavenly garden. One day, I found a pool in the garden. When I looked in, a woman looked back. She told me she was a water spirit and that she could re-unite me with my lover, that he waited for me in her realm. Foolishly, I believed her and stepped into the pool.” Irene could extrapolate the rest—no doubt it went pretty much the way her own experience had.

  Boonsri had moved aside the fabric draped over her shoulders, revealing a fine mesh of scars that went all the way up both arms. The witch had been feeding on Boonsri for a very long time, making her last. It was likely Zara planned to kill Irene in the same way—very, very slowly. She’d torture Irene for a while, see if she could break her. If not, she’d simply feed on Irene, slowly draining her essence as she had the other ghosts. It wasn’t much of a choice—being immolated over and over for eternity or having her life force slowly drained. However, it meant that Irene was valuable—Zara wouldn’t kill her outright—which gave her something to bargain with.

  Irene yanked up what little remained of the sleeve of her jacket and thrust her charred and ruined arm through the bars of the cage. She gritted her teeth as the ghost repellent charms gnawed at her like a thousand angry bees. “Cut me, instead,” she said.

  Zara stared down at Irene and shook her head in disbelief, but a smile of amusement touched her lips. She crossed back to the workbench and picked up the knife, returning in an instant. She grabbed Irene’s arm and held it like a vice. She stared at Irene a moment, as if looking for a trick of some kind. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she used the tip of the knife to push up Irene’s jacket sleeve. She brought the knife down and across, slashing Irene
’s arm. It hurt and Irene gasped as the knife split a line down her arm. Zara smiled as a trickle of ghostly blood oozed from the wound. She leaned over, bringing the cut on Irene’s arm to her mouth and began to suckle.

  Irene shuddered at the feel of Zara’s wet, greedy mouth on her skin, and her stomach clenched violently. She turned her face away, squeezing her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to see the woman feeding on her. She could feel the effects of the bleeding, could feel her life force draining from her like a fast-moving river flowing up to her arm and out the wound. She wanted to grab onto the current, pull it back into herself, or build a damn to stop it from flowing out of her. A wave of dizziness washed over her and her knees grew weak. She had to use all of her willpower to not grab onto the bars of the cage with her free hand to support herself.

  Zara released her, thrusting Irene’s arm from her, and stepped back, wiping a hand across her mouth. Her eyes glowed with a faint, ghostly blue for a moment and then returned to their regular steely brown.

  Without Zara to support her, Irene sank down to the ground, half sitting, half lying. She felt weak, like her body had been robbed of bones. She could hardly keep her head up, but she forced herself to meet Zara’s eyes so the other woman wouldn’t see how weak she was.

  Zara sneered at her a moment. “Why don’t you clean yourself up?” she said, her lip curling in disgust. “Have a little pride.” Then she crossed the room, tossing the knife on the workbench as she passed, and headed for the exit. The door thudded shut behind her, plunging them all into darkness. Sanit waited until they heard the lock click into place, followed by several minutes of silence, before igniting his ghost aura, bathing the room in a ghostly blue glow.

  Irene gingerly flopped down on the floor, laying in the fetal position, residual spasms of pain washing over her. Something small and hard was under her hip. She adjusted position, feeling beneath her and realized it was something in her coat pocket.