by J. Z. Foster
Richard held the bowl in two hands and watched as Ted and Beth dashed toward the van. He stood frozen in place, his feet molded to the ground. He pulled his head back to stare into the storm and let the rain beat against his face. He never said it out loud before, never had to, but he didn’t actually believe in witches, though he wished at times that they were real. He wished he were a hunter, a man to hunt the wicked in a world of black and white, wished for fantasy that would make sense to him, not the real world that played angles with him and left him confused. He wished they were real, but he’d never seen anything that could get him to believe it. He only joined the group to have something to do on Friday and Saturday nights, some people to hang out with.
He stared into the storm as the wind blew against him and the rain soaked his clothes. As if to answer, a shadow moved behind the clouds and caught beneath the moon’s light, he saw a wraith that existed for only a single blink.
Or was it all just the rain in his eyes?
The blade was steady, still pointing in the same direction. “What?” he asked it. Another loud clash of thunder snapped Richard out of his daze.
“Richard!” Beth waved him forward from the van. “Richard! Come on!”
“Yeah, I’m coming!” He snatched his satchel from the ground. He turned and took a few short steps toward the van as he stared down at the blade in the bowl. The rain dripped down from his hat, but he wasn’t concerned. Only one thought crept into his mind.
What just happened?
Chapter 3
“How you doing there, Mr. Fitcher?” A man with deep, aged grooves in his face sat across from Richard. He had a thin, graying beard that covered layers of neck fat and he wore a tan suit that complemented a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. “I’m Jeff Minges, your defense attorney.” His words slipped out with a quickness that blended with a southern drawl. He extended an open hand toward Richard with equal speed. “You ain’t told them nothing you shouldn’t have, right? Sons of bitches will squeeze sap from a twig if they get the time.”
Richard had been sitting with his face flat on the table. The night and the weight of the detectives’ words had torn from him what little energy he had remaining when the detectives left only a few minutes earlier.
He slowly blinked and looked up to see Jeff’s hand still lingering, waiting to be shaken. He leaned up to take it; the other man shook hard. “I’ve just been telling them what happened, you know? Nothing bad. I didn’t do anything.” He took a few deep breaths. “They said I killed her though, that I killed Beth. Is that true? Is she really dead?”
“Well, let’s be straight on one thing, Mr. Fitcher. They have a video of you doing your best lumberjack impression on that reporter’s skull.” He was clearly a man who didn’t mince words. “I’ve seen the video. Bloody stuff. How many whacks? Two, three? That was enough to put her down. The other five must have just been for fun.”
“Oh my God!” Richard’s arms turned to jelly, the strength drained from them, and his head rolled back on his neck. “I didn’t do it! It was the witch! Oh God, I didn’t believe it before. I didn’t know any of it was real. You’ve got to believe me!” Fat tears oozed from his eyes and dripped down from his chin.
“Calm down, calm down.” The lawyer pulled out a tissue and handed it to him. “Listen, I’ve got it all worked out, yeah? We’re gonna get you a deal that smells pretty damn sweet, son. I’m thinking we should plead insanity. You go up there, you talk about all that witching and ghouling, and we’ve got ourselves a case!” He rubbed his thick hands together, the coarse skin scratching together like sandpaper. “Hell, we could easily deal for life in prison.”
“Life in prison!” Like a rat breaking from a fire, a moan started a hasty climb up his throat. He choked it back. “I don’t even remember any of that stuff on the video! I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’m not like that.” The thought of the axe made his skin crawl and his body shake.
“Easy there, son. Maybe we can play another angle? I got the report on the way in. I have a few contacts here in the PD.” His wet tongue clicked between his teeth, and he gave a hard wink that shook his cheek. “You just go on ahead and tell ‘em all about this witching stuff. Tell them all about that cult you were in, give ‘em the names of all your buddies and they’ll cut you a deal, I’m sure. No chair or lethal injection, and that’s the Minges guarantee!”
“I can’t do it, I just can’t! I can’t go to prison!” Richard shook his head and clenched his eyes so tight they hurt. “There’s a witch out there. You gotta believe me!” His voice broke into sharp jagged edges, cracking like fine glass. “He... he killed my friends.”
He must have. I couldn’t do that.
Minges sighed and reached up to pull off his hat and rub his pink, balding head. He rested an elbow on the table and fixed Richard with a tired stare through blue-gray eyes. “Now let me be clear here, son. It don’t get no prettier for the DA than a video of some slobby city boy smashing some pretty girl’s head open with an axe.” He puckered his lips to whistle through his two front teeth. “They’d just love to sell you in the media. Bet you didn’t even know how much you worship Satan, did you? How you been thinking ’bout killing her for weeks? That’s what they gonna say. Some crazy psycho axe-murderer, people love that kind of story. You’ll be famous. They’ll be lining up to see them stick that needle in your arm.”
“But you believe me, don’t you?” Richard felt the weakness in his own voice, but could do nothing to stop it. “I didn’t kill her.”
Minges rolled his eyes. “Sure, ‘course I do. I believe everything you say. That’s my job, ain’t it? But my job’s also to play damage control here, son. Know what I mean? This ain’t a courtroom. It’s an operation table. Sometimes you gotta cut off a hand to save the arm. Just so happens for you, it’s a whole leg, and that leg is a life sentence, so we’re cutting off the, uh, well hell I’m no good with metaphors. What I mean is, son…,” he grinned and raised his eyebrows, “you ain’t walking out of here.”
Richard shut his eyes tight and pulled his head back. It was all he could do to not burst into a blubbering mess. “Just kill me now.”
“Come on now, son, we’re here to beat the system! Course, they’re gonna want to get you the death penalty for caving in that pretty girl’s head, but we ain’t gonna let them, are we? Hell no, I say!” He leaned across the table and stretched his short arm out to pat Richard on the shoulder. “Let me hear something I can work with sweetie, okay? Let me hear the story.”
“Okay, okay. I was telling the detective about how I was able to locate the—”
“No, no, no. I got all that! Like I said, got a contact here that likes to sing. I heard all about your goofy ass waddling around in the graveyard. What happened next?”
“Here?”
The knife had led them to an old dirt road surrounded by trees. Their bare branches reached out in a horrid gesture, inviting the brave and the foolish farther in.
“Guys, this—”
“Holy shit, man!” Ted flipped on the van’s high beams and illuminated the old dirt road. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I feel like some dude in a gas mask is going to jump out with an axe.” Ted blurted out a laugh and glanced back at Richard through the rearview mirror. “Richard, did you set this up? Seriously, this is creepy.” He whistled an eerie tune.
“Yeah. This isn’t so bad, I think.” Beth rubbed the fog from the window and stared out. “To be completely honest, I’m not sure if we’re allowed to be out here. Is this a private road?”
“Guys…,” Richard tried to speak, but it came out more as a squeak.
“Oh hell, Beth!” Ted cut in again. “This story finally starts to pick up and you start asking questions like that? I thought you wanted to be in Syria getting into the shit, and now you’re worried about a private road? This will air the week of Halloween, right? People will eat it up.”
Richard stared down at the knife and then up at them. “Guys…”
�
��I’m not saying we drop it, okay? I’m just saying we need to be careful. We need to be—”
“Guys!” Richard took a deep breath, and tried to pour out the words before someone else spoke. “I’ve never seen it do this before. I mean it.” His hands trembled beneath the bowl, but the blade stayed steady. Richard shook his head in disbelief. “It usually kinda, you know, just floats there and I play it up and talk about the mystic winds pointing out the land of the damned or something.”
Richard heard a snort from the front seat. “Come on man,” said Ted. “Save it for the camera, all right? We’ve done this before. But like you said, this is all about giving a good show, isn’t it? That’s all we’re here for, a good five-minute break in between the riots and depressing key notes on our economy.”
Richard tried to protest, tried to say something, anything to get them to understand. This time, he could feel it. There was something dark here, something moving just beneath the surface. Something wicked that both scared him and whispered at him to keep going.
“Don’t worry, Richard.” Beth’s voice was calm and soothing. “Ted’s right. We’ll get our story, and get out. No harm no foul, right?”
Richard tried to latch onto something. “What if there’s a wild animal or something though? Out here in the woods, I remember all kinds of reports…”
“Relax, man.” Ted let out a laugh that seemed to be at Richard’s expense and sent a nervous shiver down Richard’s spine. “I’m armed. Got a Glock. Been carrying for a while now, nothing to be concerned about. I’m licensed.”
“Armed?” Richard felt incredibly nervous about the idea of a gun. He reached out for something else. “But you said it was private property, right?”
Ted let out a long, annoyed sigh. “Maybe it is. Our producer would tell us just to go at it. They’ll pay the fines if we hit any. You’re making too much out of it man, come on. I haven’t seen any ‘No Trespassing’ signs, have you?”
Richard’s gaze fell one last time to the bowl and that knife. The edge still pointed cleanly forward, shifting ever so slightly with the turns in the road to keep pointed in one direction. “It’s just that—”
“Dammit!” Ted thumped the dashboard. “Listen man, we drove an hour and a half to get your story. If you were going to turn into a baby after doing what you told us to do, then why the hell are we even here? No one likes a coward, Richard.”
Richard fell silent as his back turned into jelly, and suddenly he was that ten-year-old on the playground, the fourteen-year-old at the school dance, and that seventeen-year-old at the butt of the joke. Ted was a fair deal bigger than him, and his anger cowed Richard.
Richard finally nodded and then spoke, though meekly, “Okay. Let’s go.” He then pretended to turn around and organize the contents of his bag.
What’s the worst that could happen?
From the corner of his eye, he could see Beth nudge Ted and whisper: “You didn’t have to do that.”
Rain peppered the windshield of the van as they followed the dirt road down to an old two-story farmhouse that had not aged well. Old and bleached, blue paint peeled from the sides while large patches were completely devoid of color. Rot was consuming the house; part of the roof had collapsed in on itself while another portion seemed next to give in. Tall, uncut grass sprouted up all around, save for the gravel driveway that held only small patches here and there. A dilapidated shed stood nearby, its door chewed away and swinging loosely in the wind on one hinge, threatening to give even that up at any moment.
Fear washed over Richard, finding root in the part of his brain that told him to be afraid of it, to be afraid of everything—a sensation he was intimately familiar with. He rubbed the sanctified necklace, hoping to find some strength in it, as if the crucifix could swallow his fear. He idly traced the metal cross with his finger; it felt strangely warm. He pulled it up to inspect it closely, but it was just the same small crucifix he’d had for years. He finally looked up to watch through the windshield as they approached the shambles of a once-beautiful home.
Something shifted in the air; Richard could feel it. A strange numbness spread up from his toes and shook him as it stretched through his body. The heat from the cross, still in his grasp, burned for a moment, and the numbness was gone. Richard shivered and looked up to see Ted bring the van to a rough and sudden stop. Both he and Beth silently opened their doors and almost mechanically stepped out into the rain, completely uncaring as it beat down across their faces.
“Guys?” Richard said beneath his breath. There was a twisting in his guts—something he might have called instinct—that told him to be cautious, told him that there was something beyond the sane world nearby. He moved the bowl to his side; the blade kept focusing on the house.
Beth stood unflinching as the rain drenched her neatly prepared hair, slopping it out of place. “Wow, this is just… It’s amazing.” The words were hollow and devoid of emotion.
Ted stepped several feet away from the van and froze, fixated on the house. “Yeah, some cameramen would give an arm and a leg to film in a place like this. This is the type of story that can make a career.”
“Make your career?” Richard mumbled. He stepped out of the van and shuddered in the cold rain.
This is just a crappy old house.
“You guys want to actually go in? What if we fall through the floorboards? Or step on a nail, or…”
“It’s beautiful.” Beth finally inched forward across the wet gravel and climbed the warped wooden steps. “Wow…” She nearly spun after reaching the porch and looking it over.
Ted broke his fixation to grab his camera from the van and followed behind her, leaving the back van doors open. Hefting the camera onto his shoulder, he moved up to the patio and tested the bronze handle on the front door. It made a painful screech as Ted forced its turn.
Richard could only watch in stunned silence. He thought about just sitting in the van until they finished. He closed the van door but didn’t pull his hand from the handle.
No one asked me anything. Maybe they won’t care if I just sit in the car.
A flutter above snapped his attention upward. On the second floor, behind a dirty window, he saw the white, fleeting, ghostly image of a woman watching him, her dress fluttering like a torn curtain. He blinked and it was gone.
“Shit!” Richard sprang forward, sloshing rainwater and mud with each step, before he jumped onto the groaning wooden stairs of the porch, racing toward Beth. “Guys, there’s someone in there!” He grabbed Ted’s arm before he could step inside. “I saw a woman. She was all white and staring down at us. I’m pretty sure she had an eyeball hanging out. She was all like...” He stuck his tongue out and closed half an eye.
Ted ripped his arm from Richard and glared at him with fire in his eyes. Beth stepped behind him. “What is with you guys?”
Richard’s mind scrambled for an answer. “What’s going on? Why don’t you...?” The gears began to turn. The lessons he had learned, the old books he had read. That one book he thought was only good for a distraction.
They’re enthralled. This is cursed ground. They don’t have the defenses I have. They don’t have the necklace.
His hand rose once more, clutching the necklace hard enough that it might pierce his flesh. His heart pumped like a jackhammer, shaking his arm with each pulse of blood.
“Oh my God,” Richard said with disbelief. “Listen, Beth, Ted, this place is cursed! You’re enthralled. It’s drawing you in. These types of places…” He cast his gaze out to the muddy grounds, the gravel road, and the woods that now seemed more threatening than ever. Something was inviting him in.
“The curses, they manipulate your minds! They distracted others, pushed them away from here so they wouldn’t come. But we stepped in. The knife, the ritual, it showed us to this place, but I can’t... I can’t defend you guys!” Beneath his grip, the necklace grew even warmer. “It’s real. It’s all real!” He begged them to listen, but his words found no
ground, nothing to connect to, scrabbling against Ted and Beth’s dull fixation. There were no words that the enthralled could hear, none that would draw them from the curse’s snare.
“Amazing…” Beth strode past Richard and brushed her finger against the wall, leaving a neat trail through the thick dust and exposing the yellowing grime beneath.
“Listen to me, dammit!” Richard seized Ted’s sleeve with both hands, pulling it tight. “We’ll get stuck in here, it won’t let us leave. It’ll never let us go!”
With frightening speed, Ted shifted toward Richard, and slammed an open palm against Richard’s chest. Richard lost his breath and stumbled back.
“Richard Fitcher,” Ted said. “Witch hunter. Why are you such a coward? Isn’t this your job?”
Richard sucked in a breath. A hundred words came to mind, but he couldn’t find the breath to speak.
What’s he saying?
“Ted Court,” Beth said with toneless words. “Cameraman. Angry sports fan. Asshole.”
Then Richard felt it; an itch inside his brain. It scurried beneath his skull and tried to hide. He didn’t know how he knew that it was there or that it was trying to deceive him, hide from him, but he knew just the same. It was there, clawing its way through the grooves of his brain. Prickly spines sunk through his mind and pulled forward, slithering around through the recesses of his consciousness. He went weak in the knees and collapsed onto the dusty floorboards. Ted and Beth remained undisturbed as Richard writhed in pain. They simply wandered around the house, their minds lost in the fog.
Richard’s shaky hands went up to the sides of his head and snagged on a root of hair. It felt like it would rip from his skull, but somehow that pain was more bearable. He raged, silently, in his own mind, clenched his eyes shut as the throbbing pain sharpened and cut pieces away.