The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

  “Wait. I already was admitted.” He pulled the ticket out of his pocket. “I’m just looking for one of the performers so I can—”

  The man lifted Brian by the shirt and shoved him all the way back through the doorway. “The show ends in half an hour, pal. You wanna see one of the performers, go cool your heels in the parking lot till they come out.”

  The door slammed in his face. He pushed on it. Locked. He pounded on it.

  Yeah, like that would work.

  He snatched the cell phone out of his pocket. But who could he possibly call—the cops? Officer, I imagined a suicide attempt, and the club invoked its discriminatory policy against hallucinating clowns.

  His breath came out in hazy puffs. A fat raindrop chilled the back of his neck. If he had to wait a half hour for Rebecca, sitting in an idling car with its heater on would beat standing outside and freezing.

  Back at his Kia, wind flapped a flyer wedged under his wipers. He yanked it out.

  Poetry Readings, Songs and Comedy at Club Intrigue! Opening night!

  A shadow of handwriting bled through from the other side. He flipped it over.

  The world isn’t what you think it is. Go home. I’ll find you there, later tonight. R

  The wind caught the note and blew it out of his hands.

  Chapter 15

  Brian let himself into the condo and hit the light switch, illuminating the ordinary contents in the immediate area. Couch, chair, TV, table, book.

  Book?

  Rebecca’s Ogham poetry lay open on an end table—the book he always kept by the microwave in the kitchen. Somebody moved the thing, opened it, and angled the ribbon and Sharon’s address card on either side, shaping the whole arrangement into a flower—the kind of decorative touch April lived for.

  Only his aunt shouldn’t have been home. She’d left for her shift at the diner just before he went out.

  One of the kitchen drawers clattered shut.

  He caught his breath, took a step back. “April?”

  No answer.

  The little umbrella stand by the door didn’t offer much in the way of defense weaponry, although a parade baton did poke out, ready for action, with its red, white, and blue stripes and silvery tinsel. Ridiculous? Yeah. But it looked heavy. He grabbed it.

  Light plastic. Great. Perfect choice, if whoever snuck into the condo came packing a Wiffle Bat instead of a gun.

  More noise.

  He clenched the useless weapon tight. “Who’s in there?” Oh to know tae kwon do at a time like this.

  “It’s me, Brian.”

  He dropped the baton. “Rebecca?”

  The most sensational girl in the universe stepped out of the kitchen. Tangled red hair fell down her shoulders and hung in clumps across her forehead, as if she’d gotten caught in a rainstorm and didn’t quite finish drying in the wind. Bags under her eyes dampened a weak smile. And what were those marks around her neck? He wouldn’t let his crazed imagination go there. No way had she actually hanged herself. That had been a stage trick.

  “Don’t look so worried,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “How did you get in here?” He looked past her, into the kitchen. The back door was supposed to be locked.

  “Does it matter? I need a white knight, and here you are.” She leaned forward, quick, kissed his cheek, backed off, smiled.

  One little kiss and every one of the hundred questions bouncing around in his head took a back seat, leaving an echo up front. White knight, white knight, white knight. “I crashed a poetry reading trying to save you.”

  “That’s what heroes do.”

  Hero. Like Spiderman and Mary Jane. Rebecca got it. But the questions came roaring back. What happened on that stage? How did she get into the condo? Where did she go when she left him, back in Nebraska? How did one of her poems write itself on his computer one night?

  What was she?

  “You’re looking at me like I’m a ghost, Brian.” She took his hand. “See? I’m solid.”

  Yep. Solid and soft with pale green eyes melting his shoes into the floor. Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her, kiss her. He leaned forward.

  “Actually, I’m a witch, not a ghost.”

  Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her—Wait! “What?”

  Rebecca crinkled her forehead. The lighting changed, tinting bluish. The air turned damp and warm as a greenhouse. The shoot of a plant sprang out of the floor, sprouting thin branches, growing green fronds, becoming a palm as it stretched to the ceiling.

  He staggered back.

  “I know how to take fantasies from the dream world and shape them into illusions here,” she said. A smiling, gleaming-eyed girl who’d just turned the laws of horticulture—and time?—on their ear.

  He blinked, and in the tiny fraction of a second between closing his eyes and reopening them, the palm disappeared, the air thinned, the lighting went back to normal. Not his heart, though. It beat the daylights out of him.

  “See?” She grinned wide as a kid finishing off a card trick without a hitch, which, actually, she kinda was. “The code allows me to tell you one thing about myself, so there it is. I’m a witch.”

  “Um, there are other things about you?” He stared at the point in the floor where the plant had grown, a little afraid to take his eyes off it. “You can do more than that?”

  “Let’s see,” she said. “I can cast illusions, write poetry…” Her eyes gleamed with either pride or humor. Maybe both. “Oh, and dream hop.”

  Brian tried to take it all in. Tried to cram a massive balloon bursting with impossibility into the little shoebox people called science. Rebecca actually had been in his head. The mind-meld thing. Not because he’d been suffering from some crazy fit of illusions. “This is way different than Oz.”

  Rebecca stared at him, lost, as if she didn’t get the reference. She shrugged. “Anyway, I’m a pure witch, so according to the code, you have to figure everything else out on your own.”

  “Code?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “More complicated than growing a tree out of the floor?”

  Her smile faded. “Much more.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re supposed to guess at things. I’ve got riddles for you to solve. And if I don’t do this right…”

  Uh-oh. Did witches crinkle their foreheads that way just before guys turned into toads or melted into little puddles? “Should I be worried?”

  The crinkles eased. Her eyes gleamed again. “You muddle me, Brian.”

  “Same here.” He touched her face, she settled a warm hand over his, and they came together in an eyes-closed, tingly kiss.

  The air warmed again. Birds sang, crickets chirped, and faeries giggled in an unmistakable, faerie-giggling way. Like from a cartoon…except real? He’d worry about that later. For now, mmmmm.

  The kiss ended the way the greatest dreams did, with every detail rushing away, leaving a warm glow in their wake.

  Rebecca wobbled into his shoulder. “My toes curled!”

  “Same here.” He tried to catch his breath. “Teach me how you do that stuff!”

  “Illusions? Sorry. Only a witch can cast them.” She headed into the kitchen. “Hot chocolate helps when I feel faint. It’s mostly sugar.”

  “Slow down. We need to process this.”

  But she’d slipped away, humming some song until she stopped at the stove and fished a baggie of white powder from a pocket of her dress. “No, not flour.” She pulled out another, light green. “Not this one, either.”

  She found a third and held it up with a grin. “Presto!”

  “You carry baking supplies around in your pockets?”

  Rebecca rummaged beneath the sink until she came out with a pot. “Where’s your fireplace?”

  “Right next to the door for my wine cellar.”

  “Oh. Where’s that?”

  “I’m joking. You have to use the stove.”

  She went up to it and examined one of the bur
ners, poking beneath it with a spoon. “I don’t see any pilot light.”

  “It’s electric.”

  She jerked away. Stared it down with hands on hips.

  This couldn’t be happening. How could he even begin to process her smile, her magic, her crazy sense of humor all bursting back into his life? “I’m dreaming, right?”

  “Do you have the coin I left for you, Brian?”

  “You mean the one I found behind that warehouse?” He fished it out of a pocket, held it up. “Yeah. Why?”

  “You’ll need that. Now how do we make hot chocolate some other way?” She glared at the stove, turned to him, spread her arms.

  Crazy funny. She had enough power to grow a tree out of the floor, but she was afraid to deal with a stove. “Use the sink faucet on the left. The water comes out plenty hot.”

  Rebecca gaped at him as if he’d told her pigs could fly.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  She brushed her lips against his ear. “Modern devices defeat me,” she whispered.

  In what universe were hot and cold faucets modern?

  Who cared? Rebecca’s lips were there for the taking. He found them with his and savored the taste of peppermint. The kiss brought stars—two little ones wobbling around like drunken fireflies before fading out.

  Rebecca staggered to the sink from that body blow of a kiss. “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  She ran water from the faucet until it steamed. “We need to take baby steps.”

  “Uh-huh.” Otherwise, one more kiss and their heads would explode. Besides, he had a boatload of questions. If the hanging was a trick, why did she show up here with marks on her neck? The red splotches had faded away somewhere between kisses one and two, but he’d seen them for sure.

  Illusions?

  Please don’t let this be a dream.

  A black cat came out of nowhere and rubbed against his leg.

  Make it all real. I promise to be good forever.

  He followed Rebecca into the living room. They sat on the couch. The cat came over for more leg rubbing but darted away when Brian tried petting him.

  Rebecca grabbed a pen from the coffee table and tossed it across the room. The cat ran after it, slapping at it with his paw until he zigzagged into the kitchen. “I wasn’t sure my flyer would work.”

  “You could have just knocked.”

  “What fun would that be?” Crinkles of humor replaced the shadows beneath her eyes.

  “Why did you leave in the first place, Rebecca?”

  She lifted a hot-chocolate mug to soft, pale lips capable of transforming the world into a wonderland with each kiss. “This should be warmer. Why not make a fire out back for cooking?”

  “Yeah, we could just toss some hot chocolate on the grill next time. Come on, Rebecca. Throw me a bone. What’s been going on?”

  She set the cup down, crossed her arms. “The rules won’t let me tell.”

  “Okay, then how about explaining the rules.”

  “I can’t. That’s one of them. I’m following a sacred code.”

  Bong, bong, bong—a miniature pendulum clock that never worked before went off with enough gusto to almost shake itself off the mantel. He’d bought it for next to nothing at a garage sale and forgotten it even existed.

  Rebecca looked up at it. “How smart! People think a clock should mark time, but yours celebrates it.”

  Give her credit. She had evasiveness down to a science. “Let’s try going over this again,” Brian said. “You can’t tell me what’s happening, because of some crazy rules.”

  She sipped her drink and eyed the clock, then him, weighing something, rolling it around in her head for so long he didn’t expect a response. Finally, “I know other ways to communicate besides telling.”

  “How?”

  “Anytime something odd happens, consider it a clue.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind next time you hang yourself.”

  She elbowed him. “Don’t be sarcastic. This is about a prophecy.”

  “A prophecy?”

  “More of an Irish fairy tale, but I believe it’s true.” She touched his cheek, drifted her fingers down the side of his neck, and walked them the length of his arm. “In the distant future, a maiden named Rebecca and a lad named Brian will stare down the darkness, hand in hand. Those words were set down many centuries ago. Then, one day years later, somebody showed up at a young maiden’s window, proving the prophecy with a simple coin while winning her heart with a promise.”

  Rebecca’s voice came at him from a distance, barely piercing through the fog of her touch. But he needed to wake up and focus on the questions. “A coin? A promise? Darkness? Where do we start? It’s everywhere.”

  Her eyes lit up. “You mean you can see the void?”

  “What void?”

  “Oh.” She frowned. Lowered her gaze. Dropped her fingers from his wrist.

  Me and my big mouth. Every inch of his arm itched for her touch again. How to bring it back? “Rebecca, I saw something earlier. Like a black fog, behind Club Intrigue. Is that what you mean?”

  She gripped him again. “The void will swallow every dream if we don’t stop it. But the prophecy says we might prevail.”

  Okay, this was getting crazy. Or crazier? The whole night had been nuts from the beginning. But before he let himself descend with her into total insanity, he needed to at least make a token effort at chipping away at the weirdness. “Rebecca, I don’t know about a prophecy, but I did hear a legend about the Witch of the Hills. She lives near your cabin, supposedly. Some relative?”

  “Am I so famous I have a special name?”

  “Nope. This witch has been around for centuries.”

  “I see.” Rebecca had that cheek-puffed, lips-pressed look of someone about to explode into laughter.

  No way could she be the Witch of the Hills. Yet what was impossible anymore? She’d already done plenty to prove the universe had gotten so far off-line even the hardest of reboots would be a waste of time. “Rebecca, how old are you?”

  “Look and tell me what you see.” She stood and struck a pose, a dead ringer for the girl on the cover of his sister’s favorite book, Anne of Green Gables.

  “You aren’t the one I’d send into a 7-Eleven to buy the beer for me and my friends.”

  Her expression went blank.

  “I’m guessing sixteen.”

  “There you go.” Rebecca came back, sat beside him, and settled her hand on his knee.

  Once again, mere physical contact threw his head into a spin cycle. He groped for the words to express the jumble of thoughts and emotions bouncing around up there, found one he’d used before. “Girlfriend.”

  “Boyfriend,” she whispered.

  What more could a guy want? Except… “Here’s the thing, Rebecca. For all I know, you’ll disappear on me again. It’s hard to say something special knowing I’ll feel like an idiot later if you go away and never come back.”

  She arched her brows. “Something special?”

  “Yeah, I mean something like… I don’t know.”

  “White knights take risks.”

  “Okay. I’ve been totally obsessed with you from day one.”

  Rebecca’s smile couldn’t have gotten any wider. “Have you now?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Those green eyes bored into his again. “I’m obsessed with you, too. But know I have a jealous heart, Brian.”

  What girl didn’t? “Hey, we all have our flaws.”

  “I do try to be a good witch most of the time.”

  “So, your family. Are they all—?”

  Rebecca’s face fell. The humor washed out of her eyes. “I have no family.”

  Great. He’d blown it, turning an unbelievable moment into something three days past expiration. Heavy silence sucked the oxygen out of the room, because he was an idiot. What was he trying to accomplish, tricking her into spilling background info after she’d said she couldn’t?

  Bong
.

  The clock! He went to the mantel, grabbed the thing, brought it over. “We first met just about a month ago. Here’s an anniversary present.”

  Rebecca cradled the clock in her hands, turning it around, up and down. She lifted it high with arms outstretched, a smile beaming from her lips to her eyes. She set it down. Leaned her head on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

  More silence, but plenty of oxygen this time. Enough to grow plants out of the floor for sure.

  “This will be hard on us, Brian. Things have to be done a certain way.”

  “No problem. I’ll back off the questions until you’re ready to tell.”

  The lights dimmed. Rebecca’s book of poetry popped onto her lap, and the clock shifted to the coffee table at their knees.

  He lurched back. A world this full of magic needed to come at him in bits and pieces. Not like a bat across the side of the head.

  Rebecca opened the book to a sketch of a faerie on one page and her hash-mark hieroglyphics on the other. “I love reading to you. Listen for the big clue about what I am.”

  “In a distant town long centuries ago,

  there lived

  a gypsy all alone.

  Fortunes she did tell and poetry she wrote.

  Her tales

  inscriptions set in stone.

  “When this woman died at seventy and four

  she left

  not just her written words.

  Faeries, goblins, witches, elves and many more

  now live

  within a netherworld.

  “Dozing in the day and waking in the night,

  the ones

  who shadow in our dreams

  come from fairy tales that story queens oft write.

  They join

  the exiles unredeemed.”

  Brian racked his brain to find a clue in all of that. “You’re not some sort of shadow.”

  “No, I’m as real as you are.”

  “And you’re not seventy-four.”

  She gazed at him without a word.

  “So you’re an exile unredeemed?”

  Rebecca kissed his cheek.

  “Where, in your cabin?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s my refuge. Where have you been seeing me lately?”

  “In dreams.”