The Cruel Coven

by Isla Jones

“So?” she prompted, bobbing her head. “Why would you bring me here, where there are people that don’t want me poking around? People that would kill me if they suspected I was getting too close?”

  The chestnut irises of his eyes seemed to leak into the pupils. His unreadable gaze considered her, calculated. After a pause, he said, “I didn’t tell you anything then, because I didn’t think you should know. You’d caught on that something was going on in Belle-Vue. But it’s fair to have suspicions, isn’t it? The normal folk in town have their suspicions, too.”

  Puzzled, Blake stared at him. “And?”

  “And I thought you were normal,” he said. “Caught in the middle of our business, maybe. But one of us? No.”

  “One of you? As in one of the Wolves?”

  “Yes.” He smirked, as though he knew a joke that she didn’t, and she was the punchline. “And no,” he added.

  Blake massaged her temples. “You’re not helping my headache. You’re sort of making it worse.”

  “Sheriff Cotton came by last night,” he explained, amused; or at least enjoying her distress a smidgen. “He had a lot of questions about you. Said you tried to make a statement with some bizarre claims, like that you saw a monster at the Prescott manor and that Zeke Prescott dead.”

  Blake stiffened on the stool. She’d told Sheriff Cotton a lot more than that. She’d told him about Hunter at the diner and what she’d seen the Wolves do to Frank, and the threats he’d made. She raised her gaze to his hardened eyes and tensed.

  “But,” he said, their gaze holding. “Cotton also said that Zeke’s still alive and monsters don’t exist. An extra twenty-bucks in his pocket bought me the information about where you were sent off to.”

  Blake crinkled her nose. “You broke me out of an asylum,” she said, “even though you clearly think I’m nuts?” A part of her wondered if he’d brought her there for revenge—punishment for blabbing. The Wolves weren’t above such things. It’s why they lived so close to the swamps, she believed, so they could dispose of bodies without fear of getting caught.

  Hunter didn’t appease her fears; he smirked and jumped up on the edge of the counter, facing her. He clasped his hands together between his spread thighs and hunched over. From beneath his lashes and curls, his calculative gaze swept over her slack features. “You’re not here because you talked. Sheriff Cotton isn’t bothered by what you told him. A quick pay off, and he carries on pretending he knows nothing, like always.” Hunter paused. “Now that I think about it, you owe you fifty bucks for the pay-off and twenty-bucks for the tip.”

  Blake frowned. “If I’m not here because I told the Sheriff, why’d you go to all the trouble to break me out of Harmony?”

  Hunter’s eyes pierced into her anxious gaze. He measured her up, chin to sweaty hair. “Because you’re not crazy, Harper,” he said. “You’ve got the sight.”

  Blake looked at him. Hunter stepped around the bench towards her; her eyes shadowed him the whole way.

  It felt like an hour had passed when she finally shut her eyes and breathed through her nostrils. Then, a lopsided smile tugged at her lips and she opened her eyes.

  “The sight,” she parroted. “How many of those drugs at Harmony did you take before you broke me out?”

  “What you saw at that manor, Harper—it’s the truth,” he said. “But normal people can’t see the truth. They see the veil, the mask.” He swept his hands over his face to illustrate. “They see what the magic shows them, not the monsters beneath.”

  Blake burst into a fit of giggles; her hands pressed against her stomach and her head threw back.

  As she laughed, Hunter watched her. He even smirked a little. Then, his smirk spread into a lopsided grin.

  “C’mon.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and jerked his head at the doorway. “I’ll show you.”

  “Oh, all right,” she said through choked snickers. “Show me the fairies and goblins.” Blake slid off the stool and spread her arms. “Go on then. Where are they? In the basement? The attic?” She flicked his forehead. “In there?”

  “You know,” he said, seemingly thinking aloud. “You’ve seen it for yourself already. One of them attacked you—according to your statement, it tried to kill you. And you act like I’m crazy?”

  Blake sobered. “I don’t know what I saw at the manor.”

  His gaze lowered to her singlet. “I’ll show you, and I’ll tell you everything that I know,” he said. Blake folded her arms over her chest. He touched his gaze back to hers. “After you change,” he added. “You look like an escaped mental patient.”

  *

  The steam from the shower flooded the old bathroom and eroded the wooden walls and floorboards. The ceiling fan twirled above, doing a pitiful job of clearing the vapour. Blake turned the shower tap off and wrapped her dewy body in a towel. She peeled away the slimy curtain and plodded over to the basin. The mirror she faced distorted her features, partly with grime and partly with fog. Splaying her fingers, Blake wiped the mirror. She dropped her hand to her side and stared at herself.

  Greying pale surrounded her eyes in dark circles of weariness; her eyelids drooped, covering the dimming green of her eyes; wet tendrils stuck to her throbbing temples and neck in clumps; and her lips had paled and chapped from her nervous chewing. Hunter was correct—she looked like an escaped mental patient.

  Blake lowered her gaze to the neatly folded sweater to the right of the scummy basin. The black sweater, too small to be Hunter’s, cushioned a fresh toothbrush and black comb. To the left of the basin was her discarded pile of clothes, which she realised she would have to wear still.

  First, she combed her hair into poker-straight strands. They would coil as they dried into limp waves. She brushed her teeth, disliking the orange-flavoured toothpaste available. She much preferred the whitening toothpaste that Abe always bought for her. Once done, she picked through the white clothes on the countertop. They were stale with her sweaty sleep, but she had no other option, other than sauntering around naked. Blake pulled on the sweatpants after her plain underwear, and the singlet. The small sweater covered the translucent singlet, and offered her more comfort and warmth. It was snug on her, if not a little tight around the chest. She assumed it was Spud’s sweater.

  Blake wandered out of the vapoury bathroom to the hallway downstairs. Hunter sat on the bottom step, and looked over his shoulder at her as she neared.

  “Better?” he asked, tossing her white sneakers at her.

  Blake caught them with a fumble and dropped down beside him on the step. “I could be worse,” she admitted and slid her feet into the sneakers. “I’m ready. Where are we going?”

  Hunter smirked at her. “The place of no return.”

  Blake snorted and tied her laces. “That’s the corniest thing you ever said.”

  Hunter shrugged and pushed himself to his feet. “Corny, but true.”

  He led the way outside to the parked motorbike. Unlike when they’d arrived, the swampy village was full of life. Children raced to a line of pickup trucks, backpacks slung over their shoulders, schoolbooks tucked under their arms. Women and men congregated behind houses, swapping bottles of milk for canisters of sugar. Eyes darted to Blake and Hunter as they jumped on the motorcycle. One of the Grey Wolves laughed in the distance and said something to a woman. They both looked over at Hunter and Blake, and the woman wiggled her fingers.

  “What’s that all about?” asked Blake.

  Hunter craned his neck to look back at her. “You’re a good actress,” he said. “They think we’re in a classic teenage relationship of ups and downs.”

  Blake wrapped her arms around his torso for balance as the bike roared to life beneath her. “They can think whatever they want,” she said, “as long as it doesn’t make them want to kill me.”

  Hunter’s shoulders jerked with a laugh that rippled through him. “Ready?” he called out over the growl of the bike. He didn’t give her a chance to respond. Before her lips had even
parted to shout ‘no’, the tyres skidded on the soil, and sped down the dirt path. He veered left before the line of pickup trucks, and sped into the swamplands.

  11

  The Cabin in the Swamps

  Blake was surprised they didn’t get bogged. The soft soil of the swamp sucked at the tyres, but it didn’t catch them. Hunter dodged his way around the bogs and trees in the swamplands as if he’d travelled the route many times before. They had gone deeper into the bayou than Blake had ever been before. She hadn’t known until that day how far the swamps stretched. The loud roar of the bike softened to a purr as they crept through the thinning spread of trees. The soil began to firm after half an hour, and soon after, they stopped. Blake stifled a yawn against his back before she peeked over his shoulder.

  It was a clearing. The soil was coated in a lush spread of grass, shining a brighter green than Blake’s eyes, unlike the boggy dirt that covered the rest of the area. The sun beamed down on the clearing, light dancing over the white petals on the daisy flowers. In the centre of the picturesque field was a log cabin, not unlike those in the bayou village. Though, this one wasn’t surrounded by other wooden cabins, laughing children, or nattering parents. It stood alone, and Blake was reminded of a horror movie she’d once watched with a setting just like it.

  Hunter stopped the bike at the edge of the clearing and turned off the ignition. “Do you see it?”

  Blake roamed her gaze from the back of Hunter’s head, lush with curls, to the cabin, carpeted in moss. A stone chimney cuddled the edge of the structure, reaching higher than the slanted roof. The porch, buried in crisp leaves, led to a decayed sloped door that creaked in the gentle breeze. If it had been dark, with the moonlight flushing over the cabin, Blake would’ve demanded they leave at once.

  “See what?” she asked after a while. Her arms still slung over his hips, her fingers coiled in the fabric of his t-shirt. “The dump?”

  He craned his neck and looked over his shoulder at her, a mischievous glint twinkling in his black eyes. She frowned at him.

  “It’s a lot more than that,” he said. “But you see it.”

  “It’s hard not to.”

  Hunter reached down to his torso and pried her fingers off his t-shirt. She released him and shimmied off the bike. Hunter left the keys in the ignition, swung his leg over the seat, and led the way up the overgrown path. Blake scurried behind him, wandering her bewildered gaze around the landscape.

  “You’re one of the few,” he said as they neared the porch. He stopped at the bottom of the mossy steps. “Most people can’t. They see trees. They walk right through it, as if it isn’t there at all. It’s cloaked in magic—”

  “Don’t,” interrupted Blake.

  Rubbing her hands over her weary face, Blake heaved a groan, muffled by her splayed fingers. He turned to face her as she dropped her hands to her sides.

  Blake sighed. “I get it, ok? It’s funny to mess with the crazy girl. Yay for you. But I want real answers, now. I’m tired. I’ve had a really rough week. Like, think of the worst week ever. That’s been my week. I pretty much lost my job, my friends, my dads, was sent to a bloody asylum for lunatics who talk to walls, and I’m the primary suspect in a list of crimes.” Blake paused and ran her hands over her face. “I just want to know the truth. I don’t want to hear your campfire stories. Just the truth.”

  If Blake didn’t know any better, she’d think a flash of sympathy passed through his cold eyes. Hunter ruffled his tousled hair as he thought. “Remember in class,” he said, “when McAllister was talking about the coven? They were followed into the swamps, but the hunter couldn’t find them. Their tracks just vanished.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” Blake threw up her hands. “It’s the same story they’ve taught us since kindergarten. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “The coven came here,” he said, his assessing gaze roaming her blank face. “This is where it began. All of it. The coven did their sacrifices and worships at this cabin, and no normal person could see it. That’s why they were never found in the swamps. And the children who went missing—they were here.”

  Blake stared at the cabin. She couldn’t deny that it was a spooky building, rotten and ancient. But a headquarters for witchcraft? “Is this some bayou legend?”

  Hunter stepped closer to her. “Tell me about that night at the Prescott manor.”

  Licking her lips, Blake rolled her eyes upwards and exhaled through her flaring nostrils. “I don’t really remember.”

  “Yeah, you do,” he argued, taking another step toward to her.

  She clenched her jaw and met his cold stare. “I wasn’t thinking straight,” she said. “I don’t know what I saw.”

  His eyes matched hers, losing patience, as he took one last step, closing the distance between them. “You knew enough to go to the Sheriff. What’s changed?” Hunter raked his gaze over her watering eyes. “You think because you were sent to Harmony you get to play the victim? That you get to pretend you saw nothing and carry on with your sheltered life? It’s too late for that, Harper. You’re not the victim, and I haven’t got time for your pity party.”

  Dropping her anguished gaze to the grass, Blake remained silent. Her lips puckered as she chewed the inside of her cheeks.

  “Right.” Hunter scoffed. “If that’s how you want to be, I’m done. I didn’t put my ass on the line, break you out of that place, bring you into my home, all so you could run right back to your safe bubble. You want to hide from the truth? So be it. You can make your own way back to Harmony.”

  Hunter’s shoulder slammed into hers as he shoved by her. Blake stumbled, and gazed after him. “You can’t just leave me here,” she said. “I don’t know where I am!”

  Hunter didn’t look back as he stormed toward his bike. “What you so afraid of? You don’t believe in ghost stories, right?”

  “No, but I believe in alligators!”

  He reached the bike and swung his leg over the seat. Blake’s eyes widened as he started the ignition. She balled her hands into fists. “Hunter! Don’t you dare leave me here! Don’t you dare!”

  Hunter glowered at her and reversed the bike as she came stomping down the hill. Each step she took closer was another release he made on the brake.

  Her hitched breaths grew more frightened by the second as he continued to reverse into the trees. Blake feared that he wasn’t playing chicken with her, but was really about to abandon her in the middle of the swamp. “Get back here, you psycho!”

  “Say it!” Hunter idled the bike between the trees. “Tell me what you saw that night, Harper!”

  Blake snivelled and crossed her arms over her chest. “Turn off the bike!”

  Hunter rested his boot-clad foot on the dirt, but didn’t switch off the ignition. He stared at her across the distance between them. “Say it,” he demanded. “Or I’m out of here.”

  Blake released a shrill scream. “Fine! Fine, I’ll tell you! I saw a damn crazed creature!”

  “All of it,” he bellowed.

  “I SAW A MONSTER! I SAW A DEAD MONSTER!” Blake wailed. “IT HAD NO EYES, NO LIPS, A BLACK MOUTH, AND IT BLED TAR! AND I SAW ZEKE—HE WAS DEAD! ALL RIGHT? ARE YOU HAPPY?”

  Hunter revved the engine and drove out of the trees, closer to her. He stopped halfway and idled. “Details. Give me details.”

  Blake’s chest rose and fell as she struggled to see through her watery eyes. Her face twisted into a grimace, her bottom lip catching between her teeth as she all but hyperventilated. “A monster,” she groaned, on the verge of sobbing, “attacked me. It tried to kill me. I stabbed it with the diadem—I found it on the staircase—and it bled a black sludge.”

  Blake paused and crouched over herself, placing her hands on her wobbly knees.

  Hunter urged, “Go on.”

  “I … I hid in Zeke’s room,” she managed to utter, the memories of the night flashing in her mind. “His window had bars on it. I couldn’t get out. I went into the bathroom. I th
ought that maybe I could climb out another window.”

  “And?”

  “And I saw Zeke,” she whispered.

  Hunter, too far away to hear her broken raspy voice, said, “What?”

  “I saw Zeke,” she shouted. “On the floor, covered in blood. He was naked. And there were these lines cut into his skin. Then, that thing came through the other door. It threw me against the window and I hit my head. I was knocked out.”

  “And that’s all you remember?”

  Blake shook her head, resisting the sobs that choked in her throat. Tears rolled down her blotchy cheeks as she looked up at Hunter on the bike. “Before I passed out I saw that dead thing get attacked.”

  “By what?”

  “By a guy,” she said. “Just some guy I know.”

  Hunter’s brows furrowed as he switched off the engine. “What guy?”

  Blake dropped to her bum and wiped her damp cheeks. “Theodore. I don’t know his last name,” she snivelled. “After that, I woke up in my bed at home. I had no cuts or bruises on me. No blood. I was fine.”

  Hunter jumped off the bike and strode toward her. He crouched down between her spread legs and offered her a dirtied rag. As Hunter sat down, Blake snatched the cloth from him and blew her nose into the stained fabric.

  “Zeke tried to tell me something,” she said between snotty blows to the rag. “He sent me a note with a code in it. It said ‘bayou’ and ‘diadem’.”

  “You told me,” he said, resting his forearms on his bent knees. “I think he was scared—trying to warn you. He knew you were getting involved and tried to help you.”

  “I thought you were…I thought he was afraid of you.”

  “That might be true. He knew that I knew, and that we were watching him.”

  Blake swallowed excess saliva that gathered in her mouth. She nodded and fiddled with the cloth. For a while, they sat there on the moist grass, Blake blowing her nose, Hunter watching her. He let it sink in; he gave her time to process and accept what she’d seen, experienced. The pretence that she’d imagined it all dismantled in her mind, replaced by the ghoulish face of the monster. In the shadows of her eyes, the toothless grin mocked her, the pits of nothingness haunted her, but Blake remembered. In fact, she’d never forgotten in the first place, but she’d doubted herself, her truth. But as she sat there, it swallowed her whole, and there was no going back. Hunter had been right. She was sick of acknowledging it, but he’d been right when he’d said they were going to the place of no return.