Witch Hollow and the Wrong Spell (Book 1)
Page 16
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That night, Cassandra had a dream about the Ghost standing under the moon and howling. It wasn’t the plague doctor, nor the witch. The Ghost had transformed into a silver-haired old woman and was letting out a loud, devastating wail.
Cassandra jumped up in bed. The voice still sounded in her ears, but she soon realized that it wasn’t a dream; she could hear it even after she was awake: an eerie scream that seemed to come out of the depths of the darkness—frenetic, endless, and chilling. It was so dark that looking around, Cassandra barely distinguished the closed window from the grey walls of the bedroom. She turned to her sisters. Electra was sitting in the bed, listening to the voice outside.
“What is it?” Cassandra asked.
Frantic cries continued with temporary lulls. Medea opened her eyes and sat up. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Cassandra murmured. “A strange cry.”
Electra went to the window. It would be dawning soon, but the sun wasn’t in the sky yet, and the whole territory was enveloped in darkness.
“Electra, what is it?” Cassandra asked. “Do you see who’s crying?”
She kept silent.
“El?” Medea spoke, but Electra lifted her finger to her lips.
Cassandra paced to the window. “Something is happening,” she said, “I can feel it. Something bad will happen.”
“Let’s go back to bed,” Electra said.
The girls hadn't managed to sleep for an hour, when an ivory crow rapped her beak against the window.
“Go away, bird,” Medea whispered, burying her head under the pillow.
The crow continued to knock on the window.
“Morrigan, go away!” Cassandra told her.
Any other bird would have flown away, but Morrigan obeyed only to Andromeda. The crow once again knocked on the glass.
“I hate this bird!” Medea grabbed the pillow and hurled it at the window. The crow cawed, flew aside, and a second later started knocking with the beak again.
“She won’t leave us,” Electra moaned sleepily. “Get up.”
During breakfast, Cassandra was pensive and absentminded. She was musing over something and hardly ate anything. After breakfast, Jack and Medea left for the Old Curiosity Shop, and Cassandra sat by the window, waiting for their return. The concerned look on her face didn’t change for another hour. In the end, Electra called her to their bedroom and asked what was bothering her.
“I think I know what we heard last night. It was a banshee wailing.”
“No!” Electra shook her head.
“I am telling you, it was a banshee. Someone will die. Or is already dead.”
“No, don’t—”
They heard rapid footsteps behind the door and froze in fear. Medea rushed into the bedroom:
“Miss Prizzi has been murdered!”
Her breathing was ragged from the fast running. Panting, she managed to shout just a few words, but those were enough to make Electra and Cassandra turn white.
“Murdered?” Electra whispered.
“I need water.” With trembling hands Medea reached for a glass on the table.
“What are you talking about? What has happened to Miss Prizzi?”
Medea gathered air into her lungs and breathed out. “She was murdered.”
“When? How?”
Medea told them all that she had heard in the town. Miss Prizzi had been found by one of her friends who, as always, had gone to visit her in the morning for a gossip session, and had stumbled upon her dead body.
“They say there are no traces of robbery… Everyone is puzzled… Jack was with me, so I couldn’t ask more questions…”
“We have murdered her,” Cassandra whispered. “We killed that old woman.”
“It’s not us.”
“It’s us. It has to be our Ghost. We evoked it. It’s our fault!”
“Ours,” Electra whispered. “But not a Ghost. It’s a Demon. And it killed Miss Prizzi.”
Cassandra opened the window and hung her head out, taking big gulps of air.
Electra grabbed her head and sank to her haunches, muttering under her breath, whilst pale Medea leaned against the wall and tried to control the situation. But the girls didn’t listen to her. Cassandra was almost in a swoon, and Electra was blacking out.
They sat in their bedroom, staring aimlessly at the walls. The silence was interrupted by their cats’ quiet meowing, sitting as still as their mistresses.
A knock came behind the door. Medea opened the door and Jack entered. He sat down on the bed and looked at his cousins’ stunned faces.
“Are you in trouble?”
The girls nodded.