Where There's a Witch

by Alt, Madelyn

  His focus cleared a touch for just a moment, and his gaze slid sideways to mine. “Tea,” he whispered.

  I reached for his cup automatically, closing my hands around his to lift the cup to his mouth.

  It was then that it hit me.

  S-I-S-T-E-R

  I turned to look at Letty, who was watching the proceedings with that same intense, birdlike focus. My mouth had fallen open. I didn’t think I had the strength to close it. My legs felt as if they weren’t going to hold me. I twisted my body as I fell, hoping I would make it into the bench seat. “You . . . you drugged . . . the tea.”

  She considered my words a long moment, then nodded solemnly.

  “You . . .” I closed my eyes, swallowing. My throat felt full, tight. “You’re Elias’s sister.” U-N-I-C-E. Not You’re nice. It had never been that. We had read it wrong and had somehow forgotten that Elias didn’t always spell correctly. U-L-C. Unice. “Eunace. Eunace Letitia Christiansen.”

  She frowned. “Well, of course I am. You needn’t state the obvious, dear.”

  Sister . . . Be careful . . .

  Had I really been that blind? Not Mel. Well, Mel, too . . . but not in the way that Elias had meant.

  With great effort I twisted my head to look up at Marcus. His eyes were closed and he was breathing shal lowly.

  And then the bottom opened up on my world and I slid off the edge of the bench, down, down, down into endless oblivion.

  Chapter 17

  I came to, I don’t know when. And I didn’t know where. All I knew was that night had fallen and I was somewhere dark and cool. My head was throbbing to beat all hell, and both my shoulder and left hip hurt. I closed my eyes—it didn’t help to have them open anyway, I could see nothing—and did a physical self-check. Toes were functioning. Ankles. Knees. Hands, fingers, thumbs. All good. I raised my head off the ground a couple of inches. Other than the wave of nausea that hit me with that ill-advised movement, everything seemed in decent working order.

  But where was I?

  I was still feeling a bit floaty, so I allowed the sensation to run unchecked. It was almost pleasant, if I didn’t pay any attention to the knot on the right side of my head. Ow.

  There was warmth there, too, next to me. I stretched out my hand and bumped into something solid but yielding at the same time. I pushed on it again, a little harder.

  “A little farther to the right, sweetness, and you’re going to be pretty embarrassed.”

  “Marcus!” I sat up too quickly, and the room—or whatever—swam.

  “In the flesh.”

  I got up on my hands and knees and shifted over toward him. “Where are you? I can’t see a thing.”

  “That would be because . . . it’s dark.”

  “Oh. Thanks. Very helpful. I wouldn’t have noticed if not for you.” Smart-ass. I found his leg and patted my way up the side of his body.

  “Hmm. You could have told me you wanted to play. I would have come prepared.”

  “Very funny. Stop trying to distract me. This is so not the time.” I patted his chest, then slid my hand up to his face. His five o’clock shadow was getting fairly poky, so I knew it must be getting late. I stroked his cheekbone with my fingertips. “Are you okay?”

  “My head hurts and my mouth feels like someone stuffed it full of prickly cotton balls, but other than that . . . yeah, I think so.”

  “Good. Sit up.”

  I heard movement, so I was pretty sure he was complying with my order.

  “I take it she slipped us a mickey.”

  “Yeah. The tea.”

  “Wanna fill me in on why? I think I missed some of it.”

  Briefly I told him what I knew and what I had only just put together. “There are a lot of holes as to the why and the how, but if it’s true that Pastor Bob killed Ronnie, maybe she’s just trying to hold things together. For her family. For the church.” The more I tried to concentrate, the more elusive the details became. “I do know that somehow it has to do with Elias, her brother. Somehow!”

  Please tell me, Elias. Please help me to understand. And while you’re at it, if you want to help us get out of wherever we are, that would be good, too.

  To Marcus, I said, “I don’t suppose you have your cell phone on you?”

  He patted his pockets. “I did. It’s not here now.”

  “Mine either. It was tucked into my waistband earlier. Now all I have left are my keys—” My voice drifted off. “My keys!” I slipped the stretchy wristband over my hand.

  “If you’re happy to see them, I’m glad, too.”

  “No, look.” I fumbled around until I found the right attachment, then flicked the tiny switch with my thumb-nail. Suddenly we had a pinpoint glow of blue-white light that illuminated my hands and a very small portion of our hiding place.

  “An LED flashlight? Aren’t you the Girl Scout. I could kiss you for that.”

  He helped me to my feet and, with the flashlight in one hand and my hand tucked in his other, we investigated our space as best we could. It appeared to be some sort of cellar, plain dirt floor that was hard-packed and swept clean, old shelves along the wall. Nothing else.

  Nothing else except a pile of dirt and rubble beneath the irregular opening in the ceiling, and what looked like fresh, green planks closing off the only way out.

  No ladder.

  “We’re in the cave-in room, aren’t we?” I asked, already sure of the answer.

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “At least all those crosses and animal skeletons are gone. Can you reach the boards?”

  He stretched upward while I held on to his waist to steady him. “No. How about if I boost you and you try?”

  He had me stand on his knees and use one hand on the wall to keep myself upright. I could just touch the boards with my fingertips. I summoned all of my strength and tried to channel it through my fingers. “They’re not moving. I don’t know if I’m just not able to push hard enough or what.”

  A voice came through the crack between the boards, startling me enough that I fell off the ledge formed by Marcus’s knees. “Actually, there’s something on top of them, dear.”

  Marcus stood up. His arms went around me protectively. “What do you think you’re doing? What do you want from us?” he shouted at the boards.

  “Nothing really. Except quiet. Peace and quiet. I can’t let you get away with trying to expose Robert to the police, so I’m afraid you’re just going to have to stay down there.”

  “You’re going to protect him? When he killed that poor girl?”

  The lighthearted titter of her laugh coming through the boards made my blood run cold. “Robert didn’t kill Veronica Maddox. He might have played around with her, the swine, but he didn’t kill her.”

  U-N-I-C-E

  “You did,” I said out loud as the horror of the realization struck me. “You did it.” Marcus’s arms closed even more tightly around me, pulling me up protectively against his body, his warmth, his strength.

  “Very astute of you, my dear,” she intoned through the crack in the boards.

  “But . . . why?”

  “Dear, dear. She was so very messy. I can’t bear mess. And dirt. She was dirt. Carrying on with married men . . . men of God! . . . right under our church roof. Can you imagine the scandal if that got out? More messes to clean up. More dirt. Did you know she carried out her inclinations right there in our garden that first time with Robert? Religious counseling has certainly changed since I was a girl, let me tell you. I saw them. Right there on that bench you two were sitting on. I talked to him about it after. Warned him against her. And then the girl went after him again, and I could see I was going to have to do something.”

  “It wasn’t the first time you’d killed, was it, Eunace?” The words just popped out of my mouth from nowhere.

  “Letty, dear. I don’t go by Eunace anymore. And just who have you been talking to?” She sighed. “Secrets. They always seem to get out. People just don’t
know how to keep from flapping their gums nowadays.”

  “Did you set the fire that took your brother’s life? That claimed the entire church?”

  Marcus was looking at me in a whole new light. “Where are you getting this from?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “Elias, I think.”

  “Fine, then. It won’t matter anymore. This is one secret that won’t get out. Yes, I set the fire. And I made sure Elias was going to sleep right through it. Happy now?”

  “Except he didn’t sleep forever.”

  “No, he . . . what did you say?”

  “I said, he didn’t sleep forever. He’s here with us, here now.”

  “Stop it.”

  “He is. He used to spell your name wrong, didn’t he?”

  “Yes . . . how did you—”

  “He used to spell it with a U, not an E.”

  The silence on the other side of those boards was deafening. “It’s starting to rain. I’m going to go now.”

  “Wait!”

  A hesitation and then, “Do mind your manners, dear. It’s ‘Wait, please.’ ”

  “Wait, please, then.”

  “Much better. Your mother would be proud.”

  I heard something against the boards. A heavy thud. Dirt sifted down on top of our heads. This was getting serious. “Elias is sad,” I told her. “He is here. Why did you kill him, Eunace?”

  “If he’s here, why don’t you ask him?”

  “He wants you to say it.”

  She sighed. “It was so long ago. I’m tired.”

  A whine, like a child would make at the end of a long day.

  “Why, Eunace?”

  She huffed out her breath. “Because he was a bully. He was always making Daddy happy. I wanted to be the one to make Daddy happy. And because he . . . he said he’d tell on me. About the animals.”

  The animal skeletons. “You hid them here in this room.”

  “We used to play here sometimes. Found it one day.

  Nearly broke my leg doing it, too. But I didn’t tell anyone. Only Elias. It was our secret place.”

  Tom had said that only a psychopath or sociopath kills without reason. He didn’t know how close he came with that assessment. He might never know, if we didn’t get out of here.

  “If you let us die, he’ll tell. He’ll tell your daughter.”

  She laughed, sadly this time. “My daughter is a foolish, airheaded woman who can’t even manage her own body or life, let alone her husband. She stares off into space, hasn’t a thought she can call her own, and sees things that aren’t there. Why would it matter if Elias told her? Elias is dead. No one would believe her, given her history.”

  “I believed her,” I told her.

  “Then you are a fool.”

  “I believed her when she said she saw you scrambling about in the dark that night. That was when you were moving Ronnie’s body, wasn’t it? That evening, in the dark, after you gave the pastor something to make him sleep and keep him that way? You gave your daughter something, too, the way you always do, but she outsmarted you. She hasn’t been drinking it. And she saw you.”

  She didn’t say anything for several minutes. “You’re lying,” she said finally.

  “She knows, Eunace,” I said, not yielding to her request to be called Letty. “She knows, and Elias knows. And sooner or later, everyone else will know that you are a murderer, too. And that is the way your life here will be remembered. Forever.”

  “You’re wrong. No one will know.”

  “You could change that. You could let us out of here. You could do the right thing.”

  “Oh no. I can’t do that. No, I put you there, and there you’ll stay.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I countered doggedly, hearing her heap another shovelful of dirt on top of the boards, and then another. “I don’t believe you really want to kill us. To let us die.”

  “Oh, dear, dear. There’s something wrong with me, inside, I’m afraid,” she said lightly. “Yes, indeed.”

  It was the last thing we heard her say. For several minutes we heard heaps of dirt and rock hitting the growing pile on top of the boards. And then, we heard nothing at all but the sounds of our own breath in the stillness.

  Unable to think anymore, I clung to Marcus, drawing strength from his calm, steady presence. He pressed his lips into my hair and breathed in my scent, rocking slowly back and forth with me, like a young, flexible tree bending in the wind. We stood that way for I don’t know how long, comforting each other, taking comfort. No one would be coming for us. No one knew where we were. Only Emily had seen us, and that had been earlier in the evening, before Letty drugged her to oblivion. No one would even know we were missing at least until morning, and even then, our absence might be explained away by the mutual attraction everybody seemed to realize we shared. Would the construction crew arrive in the morning, I wondered? Or would Letty find a way to get around that? And even if they did come out in the morning, could we be certain the air down here would last that long? Trying hard not to panic, I thought of Minnie and her beautiful eyes, and of my nieces Courtney and Jenna and the smiles that could get me, just like that. I thought of my mom and dad, Grandpa Gordon, Marshall, even Mel. Tom. I thought of all my friends. I thought of Liss. I thought of Steff. I thought of Marcus. That was an easy one.

  So many people who loved me. Funny, how we take that for granted sometimes.

  And it occurred to me that giving up, even when it seemed the only answer, was not the answer.

  I pulled myself gently from Marcus’s arms and wiped my face with my hands. “Come on. Let’s go over the space one more time and see if there’s anything we can use.”

  The room had been wiped clean by the historical investigation crew. Not a mousetrap, not a crumb, not even a thumbtack remained. Only the shelves . . .

  I walked over to them, pulling on them to test them. They weren’t a solid piece of furniture; they were built to the walls, and too far away from the opening to be much good as a ladder.

  Marcus grabbed hold of one of the boards and rattled it. It was attached to the wall, but it had been built so long ago that the mooring screws pulled right out of the damp wood supporting beams with little effort. Marcus and I looked at each other, and in the next instant we were both tearing at the shelves, yanking and prying, until we had them down.

  And now, we had . . . a pile of wood.

  Hmm.

  “Can we use them for anything?” I asked, breathless with the exertion.

  “Got a hammer and nails?” Marcus cracked.

  I felt my lip quiver. It had seemed a good idea at the time. Action for the sake of action, I suppose. Busy work. And now, there was nothing we could do with them, except . . .

  I grabbed a long piece of wood and held it upright against my body. Staring upward, I aimed it toward the boards above. Whack . . . Whack . . . Whack . . . Over and over and over again, like a metronome. Dirt was sifting down all around me, into my eyes, into my hair. I didn’t care.

  Marcus got up and put his hand on my arm. “Maggie. Maggie, honey. Stop.”

  “No.”

  “It’s not doing any good.”

  “I won’t stop. I can’t. If I stop, I might collapse.”

  “Then I’ll do it for you.” He pressed a kiss to my gritty forehead and took the board from my hands. And as I watched, he started the pounding again. Knowing it wasn’t doing any good but doing it anyway.

  For me.

  I went behind him and put my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek to his back.

  It took me a moment to recognize the sound that I kept hearing in between thumps. My ears were ringing from the blows of wood on wood. I wasn’t even sure that I was truly hearing something and not just inventing it for the sake of hope.

  Finally I stopped Marcus in midstroke, staying his hand. “Do you hear that? Or am I crazy?”

  It was a thudding sound that repeated, much like the pounding of the w
ood here within. Except this wasn’t coming from somewhere inside the room. It was coming from the other side of the wooden barrier.

  Marcus and I looked at each other, and then he started banging away in earnest. I grabbed a second length of board and picked up the counterpoint to his upward thrusts, working in rhythm. And when we weren’t thumping, we were calling out, “We’re here! In here! Down here!”

  Finally a single board was pulled away above our heads, and we were hit with a mixture of dirt and rainwater in our faces. I for one didn’t care. I was never so glad to see another human face in my life.

  It was Pastor Bob.

  And Emily, to be fair. She stood by anxiously, wringing her hands as the pastor finished scooping away enough dirt to get enough boards off to haul us both out, one by one. As soon as Marcus was out, I fell on Pastor Bob, holding myself upright with two fisted hands on his muddy bathrobe, and gave him a big, resounding kiss on the cheek.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Marcus grinned, watching me. “You’re mauling him, Mags.”

  Laughing with relief, I hauled myself off of him and stuck out my hand instead. He took it in his own.

  “Thank you,” I said again, more sedately.

  “My pleasure, Miss O’Neill,” he answered with all the dignity of his office. “Now, could someone please explain to me what the devil is going on?”

  Chapter 18

  It was Emily Angelis who had raised the call of alarm. Emily who had thwarted the intent of her mother’s ritual tea. She’d hidden away in her bedroom, pretending to sleep, until she heard her mother leave the house. Wondering what she was doing heading out into an impending thunderstorm, Emily watched from her window as Letty made her way toward the church. She saw Letty speaking with Marcus and me. And she saw both me and Marcus fall.

  What she thought as she watched her own mother load me up onto her wheelbarrow and cart me toward the cave-in, and then drag Marcus over by his boots, inch by precious inch, I don’t know. It must have been a shock. An even bigger shock when her mother came back without us and headed into the church utility room to wash up.

  Emily had gone then to rouse her husband, only to find him out cold. It took hot coffee, ice, and much talking to get him to wake enough to get dressed. And yet she did it. She got him dressed and out of the house, urging him up to the cave-in before he even had a chance to gather his faculties enough to ask her why in blazes they’d want to go out digging in the dirt in the middle of a monsoon. Blessed woman.