Where There's a Witch

by Alt, Madelyn

  “Oh, Mrs. Maddox,” I said, never very comfortable when confronted with gratitude. “Well, you’re very welcome. I didn’t do anything special. I guess I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “No. Never think it,” Harriet said, adamant. “My girl, she’s gone, but maybe this way the man what got her will be put away, not to harm anyone else. That’s what I hope and pray, anyways. Some good’s got to come of him taking my Ronnie before her time. That’s how I feel.”

  Mrs. Angelis leaned forward in her seat. “They’ve picked up Tyler Bennett, you see. Just this afternoon.”

  So, it was a done deal, then. I wondered if Tyler would have the means to pay for his own lawyer, or if he was to be assigned a public defender. Something told me that the latter was more likely.

  Assuming they could make the charge stick.

  Assuming? Now, why was I thinking about it that way?

  “May he rot in hell for what he’s done,” Mrs. Maddox hissed. “I’m sorry, Emily, I know it ain’t Christian to wish ill on your neighbor, but that’s how I feel.”

  “Dear, dear,” Liss said, coming around the counter and putting her arm around the trembling shoulders of a woman wizened by time and too much hard living. “Come along here and walk with me. Let’s give you a chance to collect yourself.”

  Liss’s calming influence was mesmerizing. Mrs. Maddox didn’t stand a chance of turning the request away. Blindly she rose and allowed Liss to lead her gently away. Tara had disappeared, up to the loft with Minnie was my guess. She could often be found there if she didn’t have anywhere more pressing to be.

  “Poor woman.” Emily Angelis’s soft voice broke through my thoughts. “Thank you for being so kind. When she asked if I’d mind driving her here to thank you in person, I just couldn’t say no.”

  “No need to thank me, honestly. Either of you. I saw what I saw. Whether it helps to put the person who did that to Ronnie away or not, we’ll see how things go.”

  She looked at me, her head tilted curiously. “You don’t seem so certain.”

  I shook my head and smiled. “Don’t mind me. Just speaking without thinking.”

  “I do that sometimes,” she said, nodding in understanding. “Mama chides me for letting thoughts fly free like a little girl without a filter, but I can’t help it sometimes.”

  “Everyone does that, I think.”

  She took a sip of her tea, her fingertips toying with the handle long after she placed it back on the table. Something was on her mind; I could tell.

  “May I ask you something?” At my nod, she cleared her throat, taking time to form both thoughts and words. “I read the article in the newspaper on Monday.”

  Everyone had read that article by now. “Oh?”

  “Is it true, then? Do you all really traffic with spirits here?”

  I coughed. “Traffic? I guess that depends on your definition. Do we conjure spirits in order to ask them to do our bidding? No. It would be dangerous, not to mention the height of arrogance to suppose that . . . Well, no. If you mean, do we receive information sometimes from spirits, and do we do our best to investigate their world in order to understand our own, then yes. We do do that. Sometimes we also help those spirits who for whatever reason fail to cross over. And we try to help those who live with spirits in their homes, so that they don’t have to live in fear all the time.” I looked her in the eye. “Does that change your opinion of us?”

  She shook her head. “No, not really. I mean, the Bible does say that’s a sin . . . but there are also instances in the Good Book where spirits are conjured. My husband might not agree with me, but I happen to believe the sin lies with the intent. If you’re doing what you say you’re doing, I would have a hard time convincing myself that the Lord would object.” She took another sip of her tea. “I . . . um . . . I’ve actually seen a few things myself. On our property.”

  “Have you?” I asked, surprised.

  She nodded. “Mama . . . well, she often sends me off to bed early. For my own good, you see,” she explained quickly, “because . . . well, because of the . . . female issues I’ve been having.” Blushing, she peeked at me, then in a rush confessed in a whisper, “Miscarriages. Three now.”

  I didn’t know what to say other than, “I’m so very sorry.”

  “And, well,” she rushed on, her cheeks taking on a pink tone for the first time since she’d walked through the door, “sometimes I don’t go straight to bed when she thinks I do. Bobby, he’s been so busy . . . well, he wants to give me time to heal, you know, before we try again. He’s been sleeping in the guest room downstairs. So, I stay up sometimes, just sitting in my window in the dark, watching the shadows move.”

  I started getting that creepy-shivery feeling. I’d seen the shadows move when they shouldn’t. But unlike Emily Angelis, I knew for a fact there was something there that shouldn’t be. “Go on.”

  “I saw something that night. The night that poor Veronica was killed. Just . . . a big, dark shadow that wasn’t a part of the larger darkness, but separate. Moving around outside by the church. It frightened me,” she said simply. “I didn’t tell Mrs. Maddox; I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want her to think that her daughter might not have moved on to Heaven.”

  “No. No, she doesn’t need to hear that. Thank you for telling me.”

  She nodded again and went back to her tea, sipping away, lost in thought. As was I.

  We watched Liss with Harriet in silence for a while, just drinking in the peace of the store. Liss soon had Harriet confiding all to her, words pouring free in a torrent from a mouth twisted in grief and pain. “She was just a troubled girl, that’s all. A poor troubled girl. But it weren’t her fault, you see. She had a hard life. No father to teach her how a good man acts towards a woman. She was dealing the best way she knew how. But that meant repeating her mother’s own sins, don’t you see? Mine. I was the one insisted she see Pastor Bob for counseling for drugs and boozin’ and men. That Ty Bennett, he and she was like dynamite together . . . jostle ’em a bit and there’d be an explosion somewhere, somehow. My ferocious baby girl.”

  She was weeping softly now. Liss dug into her pocket and handed her a fresh white handkerchief, touched with delicate lace at the edges. Harriet took it and wiped her eyes, then covered her nose and honked loudly into it before handing it back to Liss. Liss, bless her heart, took it without comment and tucked it back into her pocket as she soothed Harriet Maddox with warmth and compassion and a steady hand on her shoulder. Eventually her sobs slowed and her breathing calmed. By the time that she was ready to leave, Harriet was leaving not just with a gift of borage tea, but with a measure of peace that she’d not possessed when she entered the store, and that was quite something in my book.

  Felicity Dow, witch, friend. Miracle worker?

  It worked.

  Chapter 15

  “How on earth do you do that?” I asked Liss when she returned to her place behind the counter.

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Give someone so incredibly down a lift of spirit that they so desperately need?”

  Liss smiled. “It’s not hard, really. You listen to their spirit, very, very intently, with your own. You can hear all sorts of things that way. Secret things, shameful things, sorrowful things, guilty things, privately joyous things. And then your Guides help you say the right words that they so badly need to hear in order to begin healing.”

  Reason number 1,048 that Liss is my favorite person in the whole world.

  “What did she tell you?” I asked.

  “Not much more than you probably heard at the end. There are a lot of repetitive thoughts and concepts that spin through a person’s mind as part of the grieving process. Mostly they’re just muddling their way through the muck, trying to make sense of their pain. They need to talk, to release the emotion that builds with every passing moment so that they don’t feel they’re going to explode from it. Harriet is the same as every other mother out there who
se child passed before they did, no matter the age. She needed to hear a message of hope. That life is not the end. That there is more out there, and that she will see her child again.” She paused, her eyes twinkling. “I dare-say, I may have renewed her dedication to her church.”

  Compassion, a kind and listening ear, and a message of hope. Was it really that simple? Was that all that it took to heal a broken heart?

  Oh, but wait. If that’s what it took, wouldn’t the counseling that Ronnie had been receiving have helped her? Wasn’t that what Pastor Bob had been doing for her? Listening? Pointing her in the right direction with a message of hope for her future? Because something seemed to have gone very wrong with his method of counseling, if I wasn’t mistaken. Ronnie didn’t seem to have lost any of her anger toward Ty, even though it had been nine months since she’d been involved with him. And in her case, the need for healing her heart seemed to have been a matter of life and death.

  And now Ty would be paying for that inadequacy with the rest of his.

  Perhaps Pastor Bob’s methods of healing were a little rusty.

  I was mulling this over as I reached into the broom closet for the dust mop to give the floors a quick run that they didn’t really need. It was just as I closed the door behind me that the realization hit me.

  Counsel . . .

  Ronnie herself had said that the pastor had been counseling her to help her get past the demons of her past relationship: sex, drugs, and booze.

  But what had Pastor Bob said when Tom questioned him? He had claimed not to know her enough to place a face with a name. Too many parishioners to know each and every one, or something like that.

  But I had been there that afternoon, when Ronnie asked him for counsel.

  The plain truth seemed to be . . . he lied.

  The question was, why?

  After a few minutes of indecision, I texted the information to Tom, as clearly as I could, before I lost my nerve. Every bit of information helps, I reasoned. Maybe I’d call him about it later. Maybe we could talk and set a few things straight. Clear the air with grace and humanity, and maybe, just maybe clear the way in our lives for someone else.

  Marcus? my mind couldn’t help inserting.

  Perhaps.

  I heard the back door to the office open, barely preceding a flurry of voices, both male and female. I peeked through the velvet curtains.

  Charlie came through first, dressed in dusty jeans and T-shirt. “Bad ass!” he was saying. “Crosses everywhere, man! That just rocked!”

  Devon McAllister, fellow N.I.G.H.T.S. member and resident conspiracy theorist, was right behind him. A surprise, because I didn’t know he even knew Charlie. He waved at me, grinning. “Hey, Maggie.”

  And bringing up the rear was your favorite angelic blonde and mine, Evie Carpenter. She did a little Snoopy dance when she saw me. “Maggie!”

  “Evie! What are you doing here?” I wondered if Devon’s presence could be explained by Evie’s. Or was I the only one who’d noticed our young techno-geek had a serious thing for her, despite his being five years older?

  Evie lifted a finger to her lips and grinned. “Shhh.”

  Tara came running into the office from the front, her face alight. She thrust Minnie at me and threw herself into Charlie’s arms. Looked like whatever issues they had been having had been resolved, I noticed, smiling. “Charlie! What are you doing here? I thought you were working.” She kissed him soundly in a free-spirited, uninhibited, completely un-Tara-like fashion.

  Ah, love.

  “And Evie!” she continued, throwing her free arm around Evie’s shoulder and kissing her soundly on the cheek for good measure. “Oh my Gawddess, it has been slow here without you!”

  Maybe it was just boredom, but Tara really seemed to be mellowing. Good for her.

  “Did I hear voices?” Liss popped her head into the office, too. “Goodness. I see my hearing hasn’t forsaken me. Hello, happy young people.” She beamed when she caught sight of Evie.

  “Tell them, Charlie,” Devon urged.

  Charlie didn’t need much in the way of convincing, but Liss thought everyone might be more comfortable sitting rather than standing in the crowded office. We all played follow-the-leader out to the beverage counter, where my cup of Lemon Ginger Zing was cooling. Liss, Tara, and Evie brought out the cups and a tray of blueberry scones that hadn’t quite sold yet.

  “We wouldn’t want these to go to waste, now would we?” Liss said with a twinkle.

  Charlie got right down to relating the tale of how he’d come to be helping the experts for the historical society. With the labor crew grounded until the historical investigation concluded, Charlie was desperate to find a way to put some extra cash in his pockets, so Tara had approached her Aunt Marian to see if the investigation would need additional manpower to help with lifting and hauling. With the go-ahead from the Special Investigation Task Force that very morning, Charlie had received the call he was waiting for. They’d been out all day in the hot sun, first setting up the equipment to safely lower the experts into the pit and then beginning the historical survey of the site. At first Charlie was kept up top while the pair of experts assessed the stability of the underground room, but once absolute safety was established, Charlie was allowed to come down as well to help.

  “It was really bad ass,” he said, repeating himself with his favorite phrase of the month in that habit common among teenagers the world over. “There were crosses everywhere, a couple of really rough-looking old tables, pages from an old Bible, a kid’s book of animals. And even creepier than the crosses? A couple of animal skeletons. They’d been killed, you could tell, and it kind of looked like it was on purpose. That was the creepy part. Other than that, though, the place was pretty bare. Dusty, but empty. I think it was kind of a disappointment to the guys from the historical society.” He grinned. “But it was still bad ass.”

  What was it about teenage boys that made them adore adventure so much? Show them a mountain, and they want to climb it. Show them a ledge, and they want to jump from it. Show them a rope, and they want to swing from it. Show them a dark, scary place, and they want to investigate. And then they grew up to be men, who also never met a mountain they didn’t want to climb, a ledge too high to jump from, a rope that didn’t whisper their name . . . and so on . . . and so on . . .

  It was hopeless, really.

  “Man, I wish I’d been on the crew, too. My dad, though . . . he’d have a cow,” a gloomy Devon told him. He shook his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes, but it flopped back in. “He’s already telling me I’d better have my degree by the end of this next school year, or he’s cutting me off. It wasn’t bad enough that he made me attend Grace with their strict rules, rather than IU like I wanted.”

  Devon was our perpetual college student, who had more interests in and fascinations with the world than you could shake a stick at. He also had a banker father who would never understand his geeky, studious, underground rebel of a son, who would much rather hunt ghosts than hunt for errors in a spreadsheet, and who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like.

  Evie gave him a loop-armed hug over the shoulders from behind, the way a kid sister would hug her older brother, and Devon’s cheeks went scarlet. “Poor Dev. Your dad and my mom are two of a kind. I’m not supposed to be here. Mom thinks that Maggie and Liss are going to lead me over to the Dark Side.”

  Tara raised a dark brow. “You still haven’t told them about your abilities, have you?”

  “Are you kidding? I’d be packed off to boarding school before you could say ‘witch hunt.’ You all would never see me again. I’d return someday, maybe five years down the road, a pale shell of my former self, with all life stamped out of me.”

  Obviously Tara had been teaching Evie a thing or two about melodrama.

  “The kid’s book actually had a name written in side it,” Charlie said off-handedly, “which I guess is good for the historical society because then they can look up whatever in
formation they can find on his life. Elias C. is what it said.”

  Liss, Tara, Evie, and I all crossed glances. The guys noticed. “Hey, what’s going on?” Devon asked, just as Charlie said, “What?”

  “Maggie’s being visited by a spirit that calls itself Elias,” Tara said carefully.

  “Hey! Cool coincidence,” Charlie said.

  Tara shook her head. “It started visiting her the day of the fundraiser. Right after the cave-in.”

  A shiver ran through the room, seemingly passed on from one body to another like a bolt of electricity.

  “Could it be the same entity?” Devon asked.

  How could it not be? It was a question I kept asking myself over and over again as I secretly made a phone call to Marian later that afternoon.

  “Stony Mill Public Library, Marian Tabor speaking, how can I help you?”

  “Hi Marian. Maggie.”

  “Oh, hey, Maggie. What’s up, girl?”

  “I just heard about the items that the survey team found in the cave-in room.”

  “Fascinating, isn’t it? Of course we were hoping there would be much more down there, but at least we were able to take photos of the room intact, with all of its articles in their original positions. The same way it must have been left decades ago. Why it was buried, I don’t know. I don’t suppose we’ll have an easy time of deciphering that mystery, either, especially if Pastor Angelis isn’t aware of such an event in the church’s history.”

  “It isn’t the first Grace Baptist,” I commented, lost in thought, “so maybe it was closed down at that period in time. Pastor Bob has photos of the original building. I guess it burned down in the fifties. The pastor at the time lost a son in the fire. Pastor Zeke Christiansen.”

  “No, you’re right about the fire,” Marian began to confirm. “Of course I was only a child at the time . . .”