The Honey Witch (A Tale of Supernatural Suspense)

by Thayer Berlyn

  “And what did you answer?” asked Aaron.

  “I have no idea,” I replied honestly.

  “No,” agreed Aaron,“I wouldn't have any idea either.”

  After several moments of private reflection, I asked: “Do you know any reason why the sheriff would be here looking around?”

  “He came up a few days ago,” Aaron answered. “But he does that sometimes. Why?”

  “No reason,” I replied. “Jemmy Isaak had it in his head I was dead, though.”

  “Odd,” said Aaron.

  “I thought it was odd, too,” I concurred. "Although, I'm certain old Fitch would be delighted, were it true."

  Aaron sat back, laughed and blew smoke rings in the air. “The summer solstice is two days away.”

  “Ana did mention it,” I replied, inhaling a final breath of nicotine before crushing the stained filter in the over-filled ashtray.

  “Women seem to put greater stock in such things,” said Aaron. He swallowed a rather significant mouthful of the rum and coffee blend, his expression unreadable. “Women and old country folk.”

  ~*~

  Chapter XIX

  Ana Lagori’s homestead stood as a tangible landscape against the sunlight settling in measured and bronzed descent at the evening horizon. The scene was one I had come to anticipate: home, hearth, and the promise of repose.

  What I did not expect to find was old Fitch sitting on the log pile, awaiting my return.

  “You been gone the whole bless’d day,” the old man accused with a sardonic undertone. “Been waitin’ here. Didn’t I say?”

  For a moment, I scarcely recalled the morning’s encounter and the old man’s doleful promise.

  “Is Ana home?” I asked.

  Fitch shook his head. “Nope.”

  “What are you still doing here?”

  “Waitin’ for you,” he reminded me again. “Didn't I say?”

  “Well, I’m back now, “ I replied impatiently. “What is it, then?”

  It was in our mutual interest that I never revealed an involvement in Fitch’s scheme that rainy afternoon, so why did he keep up this wretched haunt? To make matters worse, I began to seriously doubt if I could sustain the ruse if ever directly confronted.

  “What’s your hurry, Yank?” Fitch asked wryly. “Seems to me you’d be more obligin’ to an old friend.”

  “I don’t have time for this…”

  “Yeah?” he interjected covertly. “Whatcha got time for, eh? Time to lay with the witch?”

  I sighed irritably. “Stay out here and rot if you like. It makes no difference to me.”

  “Whatcha got time for, Yank?” Fitch repeated, his voice rising in its accusation. “Time for a swim, eh? Swimmin’ with all the witches? Naked as Adam with all those she-demons squirmin’ around?”

  I stared at him fixedly, saying nothing.

  Fitch snorted knowingly. “Ain’t that a worm up Jesse Lee’s butt, if he know’d what Jilly was up to, cavortin’ with witches and a Yank to boot. Ain’t ya got nothin’ t’say, Doc?”

  Again, I refused to respond to the extravagance behind his allegation.

  “Now, the Parker slut,” he went on, somewhat bemused, “she were born with the Jezebel ways. Weren’t no secret she had an eye on you from the git go, but it sure’s a kick to find crazy Clara in on the deal.”

  “Enough!” I demanded with a cutting sweep of my hand. “If you witnessed anything, you would know nothing occurred.” I inhaled an agitated breath and exhaled it slowly. “Now,” I added with rigid calm, “you keep to your business in the woods, whatever it is you do there, and I will keep to mine. And quit following me.”

  “Gettin’ a bit edgy, ain’t ya, Doc?” he responded, raising a brow.

  “Look,” I said, playing the only card I held, “I’ll tell her. I’ll confess the whole goddamn thing if you don’t stop shadowing me wherever the hell I go.”

  “Yea, you tell her,” he chortled, “and you’ll wind up cleaved just like young Duncan planted there, if they find you at all.”

  Fitch rose from the woodpile and stepped over the sinking fence surrounding the overgrown cemetery plots.

  “Cat got your tongue, Yank?” he mocked.

  I remained unresponsive, cautious against his next move.

  “Hey, looky here, Doc,” he begged petulantly. “You’ll want to see this.”

  He shook up an uprooted clump of sod in his hand. I could see, from where I stood, that it was the grave of Madeline to which he referred, the woman who spit the venom from my grandfather’s wound on that long ago April’s morning.

  I warily stepped over the fence.

  “See here,” Fitch noted, “the earth ‘neath the old lady’s grave is loose.”

  “Some burrowing animal,” I suggested drearily, regretting that I had not kept to my initial response and walked away three minutes into the confrontation.

  “But look,” Fitch argued, “no other is disturbed.” He stepped up to the weathered grave of Jeanne Marie. “Not here,” he observed, “nor here at the grave of Quinta, the witch’s stolen slave.”

  Peering at the grave of Quinta more closely, I read the only date recorded: 1842. I inspected Jeanne Marie’s: 1846. I was reminded, suddenly, of the Union soldier’s diary. It might easily be theorized that it was Jeanne Marie's granddaughter who rescued the young man in West Virginia during the war. The love-lorn, Letitia, may have been the granny, who demonstrated the curative properties of the mountain blue poke Dr. Holt witnessed in 1928.

  I soon had my answer.

  “Story is, that Jeanne Marie was the witch the old master’s son got with child over in West Virginia,” Fitch related without emotion. “She already seen in the girl, Quinta, a likeness to the healin’ ways and what d’ya know, but that old slave owner’s son lost his pretty head racin’ his horse at full speed, and not seein’ the branches for the trees. The witch, Jeanne Marie, and the girl hid on the mountain, there in West Virginia, and whelped the devil’s spawn together.” He pointed to the grave of Giselle. “That one.”

  Fitch spit out a stained wad of tobacco from the side of his mouth. “The women made their way t’Porringer and been here ever since. That one,” and he pointed to the grave of Rosalie, “went back to the old place, sometime in the war, t’dig out the bones of Louisa Belle, the first witch t’sail on a ship t’ America, and her daughter, Emma. The bones rest here.” He pointed to an easily overlooked bolder nearly submerged under moss and overgrowth of unkempt grasses. “Story has it, the witch, Rosalie, came back with a little seed growin’ in her belly.”

  Fitch studied the graves silently for a moment and then smiled cunningly. “All witches, ‘cept him what rests here,” he stated, standing at the grave of Duncan McGraw. “Fell huntin’ squirrel, some say. Well, some say it, I s’pose. Only thing is, that young Duncan went missin’ his head. When the old witch, Rosalie, was dead, Letitia gathered his dust and decreed no one dig what she planted here.”

  He stepped between the engraved tombstones of Rosalie, Letitia and Lily Ann, returning full circle to the question of Madeline’s disrupted earth. He hunched over the clump he had dislodged earlier and loosened another handful of dirt underneath.

  With unconcealed irritation, I warned him against Ana’s impending return.

  “She’s up to the Kelly place,” Fitch dismissed.

  “And likely to return anytime,” I said.

  “She don’t care if I visit Lily Ann,” he replied, with a tone of regret. “Told me so, herself.”

  The dog, Dulcy, whimpered, imperceptibly at first, and then with an increasing whine.

  “Sun’s goin’ down,” Fitch observed sharply. He dug his hand further into the loose dirt. “Wonder what’s been in here.”

  I leaned forward. “It’s getting too dark to worry about it now,” I told him with a fleeting pang of sympathy, making note of the settling shades of twilight. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Damn!” Fitch bellowed, when a reeling
spiral of loosened dirt sprayed up from the ground.

  Dulcy stiffened her limbs and barked repeatedly with rising agitation.

  “Christ!” I breathed, sliding backward across the dampening grass.

  Slipping out of the ground like a dolphin leaping from the sea, the white she-wolf, pristine and unblemished from her dusty bed below, dashed over the fence to the front of the homestead cabin. The skin beneath my shirt moistened as the pounding pressure inside my chest threatened collapse.

  I grasped the venom in Fitch’s erosive laughter, before I became fully sentient of its reverberation against the disappearing shades of the impending nightfall. I felt the rough bark of a stray stick beneath my hand and hurled the brittle object at his head, scraping the side of his grizzled face.

  “It’s Madeline!” Fitch exclaimed, when the blast of an unearthly howl pierced the final density of dusk. “I hear you, Madeline! You rotting old hag!”

  With a rush of adrenaline, I vaulted to my feet. I tripped over the low fencing and burned the palms of my hands when skidding across across the dewy grass, but managed to reach the back screen door intact.

  “Ain’t no place for you to go no more, Yankee Doc!” I heard Fitch’s voice shout from beyond the cemetery fence. “Trapped like a ghost in the attic, you are!”

  Shaken by the mirror of my own fears, I leaned against the wooden frame of the doorway.

  “The next time I see you, old man, I will drown you in the nearest bog.”

  “No you won’t,” he countered. “I’m the only thing standing between you and sleepin’ Duncan’s fate!”

  I slammed the door against the grate of his laughter across the lawn and inspected the burns on the palm of my hands. Peeling off my sweat soaked shirt, I discovered splatters of blood staining the material. The white furred beast sat with its backside against the door. I bunched the shirt into a ball and flung the bundle of stain and sweat against the screen. The brush of sound caught the creature’s attention only briefly. I reached for a clean shirt and washed away the insipid grime of the day behind the curtained partition in the back of the cabin.

  Numbed to that very core where nothing seemed absurd, I lay on the bed fully dressed and contemplated the silhouette of the phantom hound under the rising moon’s light.

  ~*~

  Chapter XX

  Too restless to sleep, I grabbed my field jacket from the coat stand and cautiously stepped out into the chilled night. The revenant no longer guarded the door, but I was not convinced it wasn’t watching. The call of an owl echoed in the nearby pines and the single warble of a tree frog answered from the stagnant pools along the Cutler.

  The air felt contained under the deceiving stillness of the lowering moon, spreading its waxing light through a lattice of shadows and fragrant oleander.

  “Ana…” I sighed without forethought into the cloak of darkness.

  The owl called again, this time further into the boughs. Again, the tree frog replied from the shaded expanse.

  “I’m here,” the whisper of Ana’s voice rolled against the entire chamber of the gloom.

  I looked over the lawn for a trace of her presence. “I don’t know where you are.”

  “Follow me, Ethan,” her voice invited. “Follow.”

  “Ana, I can’t find you,” I answered.

  “Follow…” her voice begged. A vaporous breeze brushed against my jacket sleeve and rustled the leaves of the oaks.

  I reviewed the immediate area again and sighed with a quiet frustration. The fiendish white dog yelped twice from the back lawn. I stepped guardedly around the corner of the cabin, relieved to find the beast did not call from its ghoulish barrow behind the cemetery fence.

  It occurred to me that should I follow the creature into the moon-shadowed forest, I would never return from its rooted and moldering bowels.

  It also occurred to me that should I turn away, I would not reach any hoped for destination with my limbs unscathed.

  The animal’s eyes glistened with what I imagined to be a plea of reassurance that, indeed, if it wished to rip my throat, it would have been done long before this moment.

  “Ethan, my love,” Ana’s call entreated from deep within the shadowy weald. “Why do you linger so? Follow me.”

  With my first cautious step, the white canine bolted ahead and I followed: followed through the deepening murk of nocturnal sounds; followed between the shards of moonlight; funneled through the galaxy of lighted fireflies darting past my field of vision. I followed until the following appeared endless. The deeper I traveled passed the forest trees, the more I realized I would not find my way out anytime soon should I lose track of the ghostly guide, and certainly not in the dark.

  It was then I realized I had, in fact, lost sight of the spectral creature.

  A stab of alarm gripped my intestines. “Shit.” I took three steps ahead and lost my footing against a splintered log. I felt the scraping of dried bark sear the skin above my right eyebrow.

  “Dog?” I called out uneasily. I rose to my feet and brushed the clinging chips of lichen and loose bark from my jacket and hands. “Wolf? White wolf?” Which is it? Dog or wolf? Perhaps neither, but only resembling either. A specter. Neither real nor unreal.

  “Damn it, where are you?” I shouted into the unyielding density of empty response. Despite the odds at failure, I considered turning around. Looking behind, the tangled undergrowth and low branches had undoubtedly bounced back from the initial intrusion. I faced a miserable feat in attempting to retrace the same route. As the full realization of my plight took its depressing grip, an abrupt breeze brushed through the moonlit silhouette of the trees. I felt the sweeping cool against my face.

  “Follow,” the current of Ana’s voice urged. “Follow, follow, follow…”

  Had I not succumbed to the methods of her inviolate sorcery in the many hours before this, I would have held to the inherent idiocy of tracking rushes of air to the body of her voice.

  And so, I followed, a seedling to her flow, until coming to an open grove that under the light of the moon, I clearly recognized as the guarded alcove Fitch and I had broached weeks earlier.

  The wind evaporated all sound while it retreated between the barked columns of half a century old trees, and I soon stood alone under the deafening strain of impenetrable silence.

  Would she now accuse me of stealth and corruption? Of cooperating with the enemy, by engaging in improvident theft of remedies hidden in the dank hollow of dead oaks? Had the hour of recompense arrived and with it, the regret of having followed the temptation to begin with? Would I languish under the moss in eternal benefaction of desire for a Lagori woman; my only companion the discarded remains of another era’s hapless lover?

  “You are here…” Ana’s disembodied voice fluttered through the damp air.

  I turned a full circle slowly, alert to any hazard against self-preservation, yet fatalistic enough to dignify sudden defeat.

  “Yes,” I responded with reserved fortitude. “But where are you, Ana? I can’t see you.”

  A chime of feminine laughter eased the silences between the forest gap and surrounding thickets. Still, she eluded my vision.

  Under the pull of a sudden exhaustion, I begged: “Ana, if you’ve any pity…”

  “Here, here,” she beckoned tenderly.

  My back against the striking width of the moon, I looked up into the ghostly atmosphere.

  “Good God…”

  ~*~

  Chapter XXI

  As tender as the grasses grow,

  Green Lady sweeps soft and low.

  Such delight no man shall know,

  but he, her love, her secret bestow.

  ~Old Wives Rhyme~

  As in the wistful kaleidoscopes that stir the tides of sleep, she billowed in diaphanous layers of altering shades of green above my head. Her skin was no longer the burgeoning flesh color of ivory to golden grain, but had transformed anew to a luminous, velvety emerald. Her long and languid hair s
wam in the invisible whirlwind in palettes of jade and aquamarine, affixed with strings of pearls and shining baubles from the sea; vines and berries from hidden garden corridors. The perfume of the earth surrounded her: the ferns and the wild roses, the spice and the musk, the salt water and the desert sand.

  But beyond the impossible phantasm of even this, it was the certain profundity of infinity stretching like multiple mirrors inside the glistening orbs of her eyes, that caused the surge of panic to seize my every limb.

  “Holy Christ, what are you?” I demanded, backing away.

  She reached out her slender hand. “I am your desire,” she smiled with a quiet reassurance. “I am nothing, if not your Ana. Come, my love.”

  If her intent was to cause clinical insanity, she was succeeding. I covered my ears in an attempt to suppress a threatened delirium.

  “Ethan…” she whispered.

  An increasing pressure swelled inside my head. I felt overheated and contrastingly freezing at the same moment.

  “Come,” she beckoned.

  I dropped to my knees on the ground, recognizing that any man who was witness to such a tremendous vision was doomed to isolation, an asylum or death. There would be no tale to be believed and hence, a man would walk alone in unacknowledged memory of its having occurred, which might be more a curse than believing oneself to be truly insane.

  She descended downward through the ether until the veils of her airy garments fluttered against my cheek bones. I slid back against the spongy ground in an effort to regain my footing, to run, but she dipped forward and reached her hand once more, preventing any retreat. Under impetus of the blinding flash of a single bolt of light, I felt a force ripping from my body. Between my ears, I heard the roar of oceanic waves crashing against the boulders of a merciless precipice.

  And then, the enveloping serenity of a profound and primordial silence.

  The sweeping filaments of her gown twisted against the fleshless sensation of a spirit form I became clearly aware of as being my own. I could sense no separation between our bodies or the tendrils of her bejeweled hair weaving with mine in the floating airs. The sense of intangibility increased as I clung to her shoulder and she to mine. I felt the wispy silk of her leg reach around and clasp my waist, and the sense of actual physical attachment increased. I became as a limb to her sturdy center form.