The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

  Winnie the Pooh wallpaper decorated the walls, and dozens of stuffed animals lay cluttered everywhere—on the floor, on a pint-sized yellow chair, on an orange bookcase and the top of a pink desk.

  A little girl slept in bed, hugging a Raggedy Ann doll. Big rainbow letters spelled Laura in the headboard above her.

  Rebecca gripped his wrist again. She’d gone pale. “I can’t get away from it.”

  “What?” He whipped around to see what she saw. “I don’t get it. There’s nothing but a window.”

  “Look through it, Brian.”

  He couldn’t. The blackness outside was all-consuming. No street lamps or stars or moon. Nothing. He shuddered.

  Rebecca tugged him toward a pair of slatted doors filling half a wall. “We have to move Laura before she looks out there and gets frightened.”

  “Wait!” He’d seen enough horror movies to know bedroom closets should never be opened at night. “Don’t pull—”

  With her free hand, Rebecca yanked one of the doors open.

  Another wild swirl of color blasted Brian. He cringed…then blinked at bright sunshine. He followed Rebecca through the doorway onto a bed of grass. The sun warmed his face, birds tweeted, and puffy clouds drifted across a blue canvas of sky. But when he glanced over his shoulder into the room, the black gloom still lurked at the window. “We can’t leave her alone in there.”

  “We didn’t.” Rebecca motioned toward a bed of flowers where Laura lay sleeping. “Luckily, things are easy to fix here.”

  Brian stole another peek in the room. The bed was empty. Because Laura had somehow beamed into the garden. “Um, can I ask where here is?”

  “We’re in the land of a little girl’s dreams. Shut the door, would you?”

  “Gladly.” He closed the door on the room, the window, and the nightmare beyond.

  “Where should we go, Brian?” Rebecca’s eyes sparkled, and the tremor in her voice was gone. They’d defeated the gloom. “I can take you anywhere.”

  “Anywhere?”

  “Anywhere and any when. The laws of time and place are suspended in the World of Mortal Dreams. In fact, I’m not aware of any rules at all.”

  They’d stepped into an impossibly vibrant scene for a dream. A shimmering waterfall crashed down the side of a snow-capped mountain. A colorful flock of jungle birds cawed overhead. The green, dewy grass beneath Brian’s feet dampened his shoes. “So this is all a figment of my imagination?”

  “Not yours. We’ve stepped into Laura’s dream. People do this sort of thing all the time, but they forget when they wake up.” Rebecca opened her hand, revealing the golden two-sided coin he’d last seen in the lot behind Club Intrigue. She gave it to him. “They don’t even know they’re dreaming. With this compass, you will.”

  The gold coin was as warm as clothes pulled out of a dryer. He flipped it back and forth in his palm. “How does it work?”

  “The temperature and color let you know you’re in the World of Mortal Dreams.”

  “And when I’m not?”

  “Cold silver.” Rebecca closed her hand around his. “The image on both sides is Saint Brigit, the Irish patron saint of travelers. She’d want us to go exploring now, I think.”

  Rebecca led him though an endless grassy field. They walked and walked, basking in the sun, grooving to the chirp of crickets, until they reached an enormous redwood tree rising alone in the meadow.

  She turned the knob of a wrought-iron door fitted into the bark. “A friend of mine dreamed her way into this tree once.”

  The door opened, revealing a youngish woman dressed in a roaring-twenties flapper costume. Thick blonde curls cascaded down her neck in a style that must have bitten the dust ages ago. Her short black dress came down to her hips, and dark, gartered stockings took over from there, creating the impression she’d been outfitted in a turn-back-the-clock line by Victoria’s Secret. The room stayed true to the era, full of antique wooden furniture and with oval black-and-white portraits on the wall.

  “Dreams linger,” Rebecca whispered. “In a sense, we’ve gone back in time.”

  The scene wobbled. Brian reached into his pocket for the coin. It had cooled.

  “Stay with me.” Rebecca took his arm and led him inside.

  The coin warmed, and the woman went into motion, stepping up to a museum piece—a wooden cabinet case with an ancient phonograph on top, complete with a horn-like speaker and a crank on the side. She turned the handle a few times. A record started spinning. Then she swiveled a mechanical arm and lowered it onto the disc, starting a scratchy piano tune.

  “Scott Joplin,” Rebecca whispered.

  The woman swayed to the music, twirling around in their direction, and froze. She recovered with a smile. “Rebecca, how nice to see you again! Is this your boyfriend?”

  “Yes, he is.” Rebecca ran her hand down Brian’s arm. The tone of pride in her voice dizzied him as much as her fingertips against his flesh.

  The woman extended her hand. “I’m Agatha Christie.”

  Words caught in his throat.

  The scene went purple, then orange, blue, yellow…green.

  Brian wobbled on the lawn, next to Laura’s garden. His heart beat like the lead drummer of a heavy-metal band. “What happened?”

  “You woke up for a moment,” Rebecca said, “and now you’re dreaming in Laura’s world again.”

  “How far back did we go?”

  “Nineteen twenty-seven.” Rebecca squeezed his hand. “You’ll need to travel much further if you want to learn all there is to know about me. You’ll figure out how to do that, won’t you?”

  * * *

  “Huh!” Brian shot up from the couch. He glanced across at his bedroom.

  Rebecca was gone.

  “Not again.” He sagged back down. Opened his hand. Found the coin.

  Cold silver.

  The waking world totally sucked.

  Chapter 18

  Two empty weeks later, Brian pushed a cartload of DVDs down an aisle, rounded a corner a little too fast, and caught a quick blur of color—blue jeans, beige blouse, blonde ponytail—before nearly running Sharon down. She’d been kneeling on the floor to line the lower shelves of a display case with DVDs.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No problem.” She scooted away to let him pass.

  He hadn’t seen much of her since the burnt-door incident. They’d been working different shifts or she’d been avoiding him or both. “Is everything okay?”

  “Peachy.” But she sounded pruney. Cauliflowery. Weedy. Didn’t look too happy, either. Her signature smile had gone dim. Not much eye contact, either.

  He glanced at the DVDs on her shelf: Pride and Prejudice, Titanic, The English Patient, The Hours. He took a stab at humor. “Wait. I’ll go find the Saw series to round out the field.”

  Sharon pulled a DVD out of a carton on the floor and stood it on the shelf. “These romance movies are my happy place, Brian. I’ve been having a little trouble coping.”

  Uh-oh. Having trouble coping was girl-to-girl language. Chicks didn’t lay that sort of line on a guy unless they were (a) girlfriend and boyfriend, or (b) so messed up over something, they’d forgotten to speak in girl-to-guy language, such as get out of my face. He’d been ready to move on and wait for a time when Sharon was in a better mood or whatever, but would he ever hear a louder cry for help? Something was wrong. And he was supposed to be her friend. So he stayed rooted to the spot.

  Sharon looked up at him. “Did Rebecca tell you what happened the day she came to our dorm? Did the two of you talk about it?”

  “Not much.” Looking back on it brought nothing but uncertainty. He hadn’t seen Rebecca since then, except for visits in his sleep at night. The shared dreams faded to the dust of forgotten fantasies by the next morning every time. Were the visits even real? Of course they were. He couldn’t give up hope. She’d show up in the flesh again, sooner or later.

  “Abigail disappeared, Brian. And I don’t m
ean she walked away. This was more like into thin air.”

  “Damn.”

  “She faded back in a few minutes later, didn’t answer a single question about what happened, and then she said she was done with school. Just like that.” Sharon turned her attention to the DVD carton, pulled one out, set it on her shelf. The Twilight Zone. “She went home. And that’s fine. But what did I see happen?”

  How could he have been so thoughtless not to realize an unexpected poof in Sharon’s everyday world might cause collateral damage? He should have called her the next day rather than selfishly wallow in the misery of his own emotional damage when Rebecca skipped out on him. “Listen, Sharon, you’re into the occult and all, and that means you’re open to out-of-the box thinking, right?”

  She fixed him with a deer-in-the-headlights stare. “I’m not sure anymore. I used to like my predictable world. Now I’m in a weird one.”

  “Well, work with me here, because what I’m gonna tell you fits right in with science.” He reached into the box, riffled through some DVDs, and found Inception. He put it on her shelf. “Can you buy the idea that during our dreams we cross into a different dimension and interact with everyone else who’s dreaming?”

  “Nice try.” She fished in the box, pulled out The Illusionist, and smiled.

  “Trust me. The more you think about it, the more it’ll make sense. But here’s the quantum leap. Maybe some people can jump from one dimension to the next at any time. With both feet. Back and forth. Poof.”

  “Poof?”

  “Uh-huh. And they can return from there to anyplace here they want. In warp speed. Abigail might be anywhere right now.” He searched Sharon’s face for a hint of acceptance. If he’d managed to reconcile the scientific world to this new, virus-infested beta version, maybe she could start coping again. God. She’d been obsessing for two weeks? He should have called her.

  “Thanks, I think.” Sharon held up another DVD. Hope Floats.

  Bbbbbrrrrrrinnnnnggggggggggggg. The door chime rang much louder than usual and ended with a weird, tuning-fork resonance. Although Sharon usually shouted a greeting to any and all customers, she kept her gaze on him.

  He turned to the front, but Charlie at the checkout counter seemed oblivious, too. Who could blame the guy? Ever since he’d made a name for himself as starting quarterback for the Badgers, girls had been using movie browsing as an excuse to corner him. In this case, a sultry brunette stood at the counter kneading his upper arm. Charlie lived for these moments.

  Bbbbbrrrrrrinnnnnggggggggggggg. Again! Maybe gusts of wind wobbled the door back and forth just enough to keep the bell vibrating. Charlie would have known from his vantage point, if he could tear his gaze from his groupie for a second, whereas Brian couldn’t see past a row of shelving near the entrance.

  The chime lingered on, impossibly long. Doors just didn’t vibrate that way, windy day or not. Brian reached into his pocket for the St. Brigit coin. Cold. He definitely wasn’t dreaming.

  “Do you hear that, Sharon?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The bell. It keeps—”

  Rebecca stepped into view.

  He blinked. He grabbed the coin again. Still cold. Meaning he was awake and Christmas had come early. The first day of school. The last day of school. His birthday, Easter, the Fourth of July. A burst of delight went off like a flare, painting his thoughts every shade of the rainbow. They took a joyride around the color wheel until settling on…yellow?

  Rebecca’s ridiculous scarf propelled his ponder reflex in a mach-four takeoff that kicked his celebrating heart to the curb.

  Why would a girl whose fashion statements centered on faded dresses and, in this case, a gray overcoat, wear the one loud thing? She’d done it before, too, the day they met in Nebraska. Was she trying to tell him something? A clue maybe?

  “Brian?”

  The first bite of a chocolate-covered strawberry paled in comparison with the sound of Rebecca’s voice. Questions about winter-wear choices could wait. He hurried toward her, and she to him, with so much abandon they could have starred in any of Sharon’s favorite romances. He finally got why those movies were so popular. People lived for moments like this, and not only chicks.

  He lifted Rebecca right off her feet with his hug.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked.

  Yeah, he did, enough for everything else to fade away. He looked her up and down, kissed her, smooched again, and one more time before he noticed an odd aspect of the fading-away thing. Stillness.

  He peeked over her shoulder at the reflection in the window. The cashier, Sharon, and every customer in the store had gotten stuck in place. “Wow.”

  Rebecca stepped back. “You’re as handsome as ever! I should have waited a bit longer before visiting you again, but I couldn’t resist.”

  He tried comprehending what she’d just said, but the store proved too great a distraction. The scene looked as though someone had pressed the pause button in the middle of a reality show.

  A girl had knocked a DVD from the shelf. The box hovered in the air while her mannequin mom reached a frozen arm to catch it. A man bent over the drinking fountain, the stream of water hanging midair like a gob of glue. Charlie had fumbled his groupie customer’s change across the counter. Some of the coins stood on end at odd angles.

  Rebecca took his chin in her hand. “I’m standing here, not over there. This is our moment.”

  “But what’s happening?”

  “I stopped your world for a few seconds.”

  Brian’s mouth had gone dry. “You stopped…my world?”

  But she wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. She stared down the aisle at Sharon with anything but love in her eyes. “Why is your friend here, Brian?”

  “Sharon? She works here and—”

  Rebecca waved an arm.

  The store came back to life. Everywhere. All around him. Including Rebecca, who clenched her fists and headed down the aisle.

  He hurried after her. “Hey, wait up.”

  Sharon had her back to them, still busy with her movie display and showing no awareness she’d been frozen moments earlier. She turned when he spoke. “Brian, where’d you go? I—”

  Rebecca cleared her throat.

  Sharon’s smile faded.

  The two girls shifted hands to hips and stared each other down. The crackling animosity had the effect of a firestorm, sucking the air out of Brian’s lungs.

  Rebecca broke the silence. “I see you’re still hanging around my Brian!”

  Then Sharon. “I work with your Brian. Why don’t you forget petty jealousy and worry about getting rid of the burn marks on my door?” Her voice was loud enough to carry to the far corners of the store.

  “You don’t need me for that,” Rebecca shouted. “A pail of soapy water will do the trick.”

  “I wish I had one right now!”

  “I’m sure you do! You take delight in drenching people, don’t you?”

  Brian dodged the girls’ waving arms and made an attempt to step in the middle, but Rebecca stopped him with a hand to his chest, and Sharon shuttled him aside with a well-placed shift of her hip.

  The two combatants glared at each other in dangerous silence until—

  Rebecca cracked a smile. “You got me good with that pitcher of water.”

  “Yeah.” Sharon said nothing more for a long moment. Then, “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be.” Rebecca spoke to the floor in barely more than a whisper. “I deserved it.”

  Brian breathed.

  In some kind of instinctive bonding ritual, the two of them slumped to the floor at the same time and wrapped their arms around their knees.

  “You and Abigail scared the hell out of me,” Sharon said.

  “I have a history with her,” Rebecca said, “but we shouldn’t have behaved like that in front of you.”

  Sharon arched her brows up at Brian. “You mean Abigail shouldn’t have scared the hell out of me by d
isappearing?”

  Rebecca nodded. “And I shouldn’t have pretended to sizzle your door. That was just a trick. The marks do wash off.”

  They went on like that, back and forth, in quiet voices, until they’d reached something of a truce, if not outright friendship. They each stretched an arm up, and Brian pulled them to their feet.

  Rebecca hugged Sharon. “Nice seeing you again, friend of Brian’s.”

  “Ditto,” Sharon said.

  Brian went for the coin in his pocket. Still cold. Rebecca slipped a hand in his that wasn’t. He staggered to the front of the store beside her.

  The shouting portion of that love fest had flustered Charlie into head-down, pretend-to-be-busy mode. His groupie had moved on, and he didn’t have a customer in sight, proving that even a brute of a varsity football star could be totally intimidated by a catfight.

  Brian tried to catch his eye. “Hey, meet Rebecca.”

  The cashier, college jock, shift boss, but mostly chicken finished straightening some movie guides before looking up, first at Brian and then with a furtive glance toward Rebecca. “Hey.”

  “Mind if I leave a half hour early? We’re gonna hang out.”

  “N-no prob. Sharon and I can hold the place down. Here, knock yourself out.” He tossed a bag of popcorn to Brian.

  Once outside, Rebecca grabbed the bag. “How sweet! Do we steam it?”

  “No, we microwave it.”

  “Oh.” She threw the bag into a garbage can, then turned to him, beaming the brightest eyes in the world. “Why don’t I just cook for you tonight?”

  He grinned. He was onto her. “You mean conjure, as in bread, cheese, and cider?”

  “No, I mean cook. Do you like goose? With only two of us to eat it, you’ll be taking leftover sandwiches to school for a week. Still, I think you’d love it. I can make mashed potatoes, cranberries, beets—”

  “I don’t like beets. Nobody does.”

  “No beets then. What kind of dessert would you like?” Rebecca prattled on about the dinner. Broccoli-cheese dip, buttered rolls, eggnog.

  When she paused for breath, he settled his hands on the shoulders of the most captivating girl he could ever hope to meet. “I love you.”