by Madelyn Alt
We were on the ice.
New ice.
It cracked and shuddered under our combined weight, a groaning sound that sent a shiver down my spine. I made myself focus. How far out were we? Too far. The shore seemed a distant memory. Oh, God. Mother Mary, pray for me, I pleaded. Give me strength.
With the last reserves of energy I possessed, I wrenched and twisted from his grasp, falling to the ice with a painful jolt and rolling away from him across the ice and snow. Phillips stopped where he stood, watching my desperate movements with a patience born of dominance.
“You can’t run, you know,” he said, his quiet voice unnaturally loud in the stillness.
My own vulnerability infuriated me as much as his certainty. “Neither can you,” I spat, facing him down.
He just eyed me sadly. Resignedly.
“You’re not thinking clearly. Katie will suspect. She knows you were there tonight.”
“I took you home. Dropped you off. That’s the last I saw of you. I’ll even make sure there are footprints in the snow leading from the curb to your apartment.” He took a step closer, forcing me to move farther out on the groaning ice. “Listen, why don’t you just give in? I won’t hurt you. I’ll make sure of that. I wouldn’t have hurt you before, but you left me no choice.”
“Is that what you told Amanda,” I flung back at him, “before you killed her? Did she beg and plead with you? Did it make you feel good?”
“You’re overwrought. I’m sure if you just took a moment to think clearly, you would see that I’m not the villain here. I’m a victim. Just like you.”
Fury raged through me, powerful, cleansing, uplifting in its strength. Power filled me, spreading inch by steady inch, like ice in my veins. “I am no man’s victim,” I grated out before yielding myself and letting the electric power take control.
In the next instant I found myself leaping upward, bringing my feet together and down with as much force as I could muster.
“Waters!” I cried in a voice that was not quite my own, “Heed me!”
With a rumbling sound that began as no more than a gentle vibration, the ice rippled beneath my feet like Jell-O.
Phillips threw his hands out sideways for balance. “Stop that,” he said, confusion and disbelief in his voice. “What are you doing?”
I did it again. And again. Each time, the thundering groan that answered became louder, the enraged cry of an elemental water spirit roused from slumber.
They say these lakes are bottomless . . .
Phillips had fallen to his knees and was now on all fours, holding on to the ice as though he could steady it. “Stop it, stop it now! What in God’s name is happening?”
But the energies that flowed through me from the ice and sleeping water would not be denied. I felt them surge through the soles of my boots, into my feet, up, up through my veins. A breath of ice lifted my damp hair, freezing it in a Medusa’s snarl of jagged curls. A spectral voice came, from within me, from beyond me. The voice of the Great Mother:
“Blessed are the precious and preserving waters, the blood of Life, the keeper of the mysteries of intuition, the place of magick from whence all life sprang forth. Wash away our troubles. Free us of darkness of spirit. Waters! Heed me!”
I threw my hands into the air, and through that same cold, dark air came the sound of rending, splintering ice. Phillips stared at me in abject horror as the ice beneath his feet seemed to dissolve into snow crystals. He sank into the waters, his grimace of surprise freezing into a mask of terror as he was dragged under by cold, unseen fingers.
My energy spent, I dropped to what was left of the ice around us, panting, and closed my eyes, waiting for the waters to take me, too. I don’t know how long I lay there on the ice, too cold for even pain to overcome. I think I dreamed, of a place warm and bright with love, a place of angels and gardens and the Mother. Mary, bathed in spectral light. Mary, Queen of Heaven. That must be where I was. Heaven, or someplace like it. But when I opened my eyes again, I saw my cell phone lying in the snow four feet from me. I took a deep shuddering breath, wondering if I could summon the energy to reach for it.
I could.
My fingers were so numb I could hardly make them work, but somehow I managed to find my way through the menu to my phone book, then I pressed SEND, knowing the phone would select whoever was first on my phone list. I no longer could remember who that was.
And then I closed my eyes and wept.
I was in the place I had dreamed of, the warm place filled with light. Except the pain had followed me there. I frowned, trying to chase it away. It didn’t belong there—only love belonged there, love and light. I writhed and gnashed my teeth, but it wouldn’t go. At last I was forced to look it in the face, to see it for what it was.
My eyelashes fluttered open.
I was strapped to something that I could feel but could not see, a strange kind of blanket covering my entire body, and the light was a giant lamp shining down on me from above. I could sense things moving around in the background, but just then I had eyes for one thing and one thing only: Tom was staring back at me, his gray-green eyes only inches from mine, his face distorted by fear and worry.
I felt something warm and soft against my cheek. It was his hand.
“Hey,” I croaked, trying to smile.
A shadow crossed in the depths of his eyes. “Hey,” he said softly.
“You must have been the lucky one, huh?” I said, meaning the random cell phone call I’d made from the ice.
He swallowed mightily, then leaned forward to press his forehead against mine, his breath warm and silken on my skin. “Yeah. I’m the lucky one.”
It was much later that I found out exactly what had happened that night after I’d lost consciousness. How the ice had stopped cracking, miraculously and literally, at my feet. How my answers to Marcus earlier from Dr. Phillips’s office had been mysterious enough to drive him to call out the cavalry—or in this case, the Stony Mill PD—on a countywide manhunt when he discovered I’d never reached my apartment. How my random dial to Tom had been the final piece they’d needed to pinpoint my location. How Tom had found me in the open SUV over an hour later, kept alive by the low-running heater despite the open door. How I got there, no one knows.
Dr. Phillips’s body, as it turned out, wouldn’t be found until the spring thaw.
There was justice in that, somehow.
Christmas came and went, much as Christmases tend to do. I stayed close to my family, taking solace in the mundane. In the normal day-to-day tedium of life. At my folks’ house on Christmas Day, my older brother, Marshall, called me from New York, eager for the details of my narrow escape, and told me I was his new hero. Mel revealed that she and Greg were expecting. Again. My nieces, Jenna and Courtney, had given the day a sweetness that made me long for a family of my own. And Tom . . . well, Tom had made the declaration that he wanted to date me, looking after me in the days following my near miss in a way that left no doubt as to whether he cared for me or not. In a way, things looked brighter than they had in a very long time.
So why couldn’t I believe it?
New Year’s Day dawned pure and cold, but bright and cheerful. I got out of bed and dressed for the weather before anyone could tell me not to drive myself. It wasn’t easy shifting with my left hand, but I was a woman with a mission, and I would not be denied.
There was something I had to do.
I stopped at Wal-Mart and picked up a trio of white roses before heading for the cemetery. The snow from the storm had melted away on Christmas Day, but the recent dip in temperatures had left a crust of frost on the recent graves. There was a bite to the air that said the ground wouldn’t be brown for long.
Best get this over with.
My mother had told me where I could find Amanda’s grave. As I steered Christine toward the back of the cemetery where all of the newer graves could be found, I marveled that I had somehow found the reserves of personal strength to do this, alon
e, when once I avoided cemeteries like the plague.
How things change.
Still, I shielded myself with protective light before leaving Christine’s sheltering confines. No sense in breaking entirely with tradition.
Amanda’s stone was a big, rose granite affair that sparkled in the sunlight—I think she would have liked that. As I read her name and the span of dates below, I laid two roses on the stone, then closed my eyes and said a prayer for her and for the unborn child no one would ever know about. It was her mother’s wish, one I could understand, even if I didn’t agree with it.
Secrets. This town was all about secrets. I guess, in a way, all small towns are.
The last rose I left on a stone at the far end of the row, a stone that had been newly erected just this week. In memory of Doctor Newton Phillips, beloved father and husband. There was no body to be found within, but that would come in time. All things come to those who wait.
The CD had been the one piece of evidence that would have blown the whole case wide open, if Doctor Phillips had not acted. Not only had little Amanda kept a list of receipts for cash she’d managed to trick him out of, she also had kept a running list of dates, times, places, and activities. Little Amanda was nothing if not enterprising, but she’d made the mistake of believing utterly in her own immortality and power. Poor, misguided girl.
Was it the blackmail that had pushed Dr. Phillips over the edge? Or the baby? Was it really Dr. Phillips’s child, or someone else’s? Was it even important anymore?
One thing was for certain—Sid Roberson would probably regret introducing his daughter to his country club cronies for the rest of his life. Poor man.
Funny how every day we are given choices to make in our lives. Some are just more far-reaching than others.
I gazed down at the doctor’s newly erected stone. Rest in peace, Dr. P. Please, rest in peace.
As I turned to leave, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye where no movement should be. Overhead, the big oak trees shifted in the windless morning, cold branches chattering together. I looked up, just in time to see a ball of silvery light zip between the branches only to disappear into the trunk of a giant specimen itself.
Secrets and spirits. This town, it would seem, had plenty of both.
Author Bio
Madelyn Alt is the author of the Bewitching Mysteries. A born aficionado of all things paranormal, she currently spends her days toiling away in the mundane world of business and her nights writing tales of the mysterious. She loves chocolate, Siamese cats, a shivering-good ghost story, the magic in the world around us, and sometimes, more chocolate.
Madelyn writes from her 1870s-era home in a small town in northeast Indiana, and is currently at work on the next installment in the Bewitching series.
For more information, please visit her website at: www.madelynalt.com.