The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

  So a game, then.

  To prove the point, Simon meowed from a hiding place in a corner of the room.

  “Boo! Now where’s your owner?”

  The cat sat and cleaned a paw.

  Fine. He’d wait her out.

  He grabbed a chair and dug into his breakfast.

  Screech, screech, screech. The nails-on-a-chalkboard sound of something scraping against glass came at him…

  Brian dropped his fork and bolted to the kitchen window. He didn’t see a soul out there. Just snow and hills.

  He hurried into the bedroom and looked outside. Same story.

  Screech.

  That sound had to be coming from somewhere. He glanced around.

  Screech.

  In the living room?

  He raced over.

  Screech—behind him.

  Uh-oh. Brian’s alert level escalated from orange to red. His heart thumped in his ears like a garage band. Only her mirror was behind him.

  Let’s do this. He spun around to the antique, full-length oval, squared his shoulders, inched forward, and tapped the wooden frame.

  Nothing happened.

  He went for the glass. First with a fingertip. Then with his palm. Up, down, sideways, and…he found a hot spot.

  The glass shimmered like a mirage.

  Simon, who’d sidled up against his leg by then and batted at the glass with his paw, let out a screech and scrambled away with his tail as puffy as a furniture duster.

  And there she was, standing on the opposite side of a window between centuries. The Salem version of Rebecca. The girl who’d nearly been in the clutches of a sorcerer when Brian got pulled back to the present. But this guy was an ally supposedly? Hard to buy.

  “Hey,” Brian said. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t give a sign of seeing him. Instead, she wet a finger against her tongue and touched the glass…then followed that up by rubbing the smudge with a cloth. Screech.

  Ha. Well, that little mystery was solved. Honestly, when this gal wasn’t drowning him in the pools of her awesome eyes, she had a knack for cracking him up.

  “’Tis no time for cleaning,” her mom said.

  “Ah, but the lass has an eye for perfection.” Henry Stoddard towered between mom and daughter, still disguised as a colonial merchant, white wig and all. “My looking glass pleases thee?”

  Rebecca took a few red curls creeping out from beneath her bonnet and slid them back and forth across her forehead, striking a pose each time. She turned sideways and frowned at her profile.

  Brian had spotted his sister doing the same thing a zillion times. Who needed TV, video games, computers, or phones? Mirrors were the greatest self-entertainment devices the world had ever known.

  But Rebecca narrowed her eyes. “Gifts shan’t buy me.”

  Fantastic. She wouldn’t give Stoddard an inch, cool gift or not.

  She stormed away, followed by her mom. Their voices soon rose in argument.

  But Stoddard stayed put, gazing into the glass.

  Brian felt a sneeze coming on. His eyes watered. He sniffled.

  The sorcerer’s focus sharpened.

  Brian backed toward the door.

  “You must be an angel, stranger. I know every demon in these parts.” The sorcerer pressed a hand against the mirror.

  The glass bubbled and melted into a steaming puddle across the floor, soaking the soles of Brian’s shoes. Cobwebs formed around the mirror frame as they had a day earlier when he fell into Salem. This time, a seventeenth-century menace stood poised to cross into the modern-day side just as easily.

  But no problem, right? The modern-day Rebecca labeled Stoddard a good man, and she had over three hundred years of history to go by.

  Brian closed in on him. “Neither one of us is a demon. Let’s start with that.”

  “Yet we are connected, you and I,” Stoddard said.

  “How so? Look, if you can shed any light on all of this, I’d—”

  The doorknob creaked from behind. Brian turned. Saw nothing.

  The queasy sense of having missed something swept through his stomach. He swiveled back.

  Sure enough, during that brief moment, the window to Salem disappeared as if he’d tripped over the power cord. He gaped at his altered reflection in the mirror—no jeans, no shirt, only the pajamas he’d changed out of an hour earlier.

  The door banged open, and there she stood—the modern-day Rebecca—looking like a snow-blasted version of Red Riding Hood. She motioned to the kitchen with a mittened hand. “You should eat the breakfast I made before it gets cold.”

  He followed her gaze to a plate of bacon and eggs waiting untouched on the table, then shoved a hand into his pocket, where an icy coin welcomed him back to the waking world. The time had come to laugh, cry, or break into the liquor cabinet and get seriously wasted.

  Rebecca fitted her coat onto a wall peg. “You look pale. Are you all right?”

  “You bet, now that you’re here. Am I dreaming?”

  “No.”

  But how could he not be? She held a fresh bouquet of white flowers in her hand. “Where did you find those? There’s a foot of snow on the ground.”

  “How fitting, then. These are called snow drops. I have a winter garden.” Rebecca skipped past him into the kitchen.

  He headed into the bedroom. A change of clothes waited in his night bag—the same flannel shirt and jeans he’d been wearing in the dream. He couldn’t decide whether to put them on again or just imagine he did and save the trouble.

  “What are you doing in there?” Rebecca called.

  “I’m figuring out what’s real and what isn’t.”

  “These eggs are real. Do you have any idea how tricky it was to fry them over an open hearth? I went out of my way.”

  “I’m on it.” He got dressed again and found her sitting at the kitchen table, chin in hands, admiring a vase brimming with impossible November flowers. He grabbed the chair beside her. “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?” She looked up at him, the picture of red-haired innocence, the girl he loved—amazing, beautiful, and completely comfortable with a universe turned on its head.

  “How do you go back and forth between fantasy and reality, taking everything in stride?”

  “I’m not going back and forth. It’s all real.”

  “Dreams, too?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Especially dreams.”

  “Then how do you keep your balance?”

  “Never look down.”

  Rebecca might have been a great tightrope walker, but he imagined a bottomless pit of illusion lurking just beneath her balancing act. “Are you causing this stuff?”

  “What stuff?”

  “My trips to Salem.”

  Judging by her widening eyes, probably not. “Trips as in two?”

  “Sort of. I didn’t actually fall through a looking glass this second time.”

  “That doesn’t count,” she said.

  “You mean I’ll be going back again?”

  She grinned. “I remember two visits by my champion from the future.”

  Brian glanced through the doorway at the mirror—the portal to a settlement on the verge of witch-hunting hysteria, the portal to a younger Abigail—the dangerous stalker turned phooka—but most of all, the portal to an earlier Rebecca in need of a champion. “Bring it on.”

  Chapter 31

  Scrambled eggs. Toast. Cereal. This time for real, if the cold, silvery Saint Brigit coin had any say in the matter.

  Brian popped a slice of bacon into his mouth. He closed his eyes and turned off his ears to savor the smoky flavor without distraction.

  He wasn’t alone, though. Rebecca sat close enough to steal a piece of toast from his plate.

  She giggled.

  He tried to laugh, but…

  He set his fork down. “How much longer till you poof away?”

  Rebecca’s smile drooped.

  Soon then. Had to be. A code of
conduct served as the playbook for her life, dictating how long she might stay. When she must leave.

  “I’m never allowed to remain in this cabin for long, Brian.”

  “I figured as much.”

  She reached for his hand.

  He squeezed hers.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” she said.

  But they stared into each other’s eyes first, exchanging a silent vow that things would turn better for them. Destiny couldn’t have looped them together only to break them apart on a regular basis.

  They grabbed their jackets, left the cabin, and headed toward the road. The snowdrifts slowed them until they came across a windswept stretch of bare ground where the sun glinted against a coin. Not a magical one, just a small token of Brian’s eighty-seven-cent breadcrumb trail from a million years ago.

  The thrill of the earlier cabin hunt was history.

  He trudged now.

  She walked beside him, matching his reluctant pace step by step.

  Soon they reached the oak tree, a half mile from adios.

  Rebecca stretched but couldn’t quite reach the lowest limb. “We should hang a swing here.” The cold air brought a blush of pink to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes. Or maybe she’d cheered up. Unhappiness had never been a signature mood for her, even though he suspected she’d been through a lot.

  If she could lift her spirits, so could he. After all, the good always followed the bad. They’d hook up again. Soon. He grinned at her.

  She rushed up and stole a kiss but stepped back before he could gather her in his arms. “Don’t give up on me, Brian.”

  “You know I’d never—”

  She vanished.

  Gone.

  Brian sank to his knees.

  Minutes passed.

  Hours.

  Years.

  Something creaked behind him.

  He turned.

  An old tire hung from the tree limb.

  He laughed out loud. Rebecca must have conjured this makeshift swing when he wasn’t looking. A parting gift of magic, beckoning to him on this bright, clear, beautiful winter day. He hurried over.

  Brian touched the tire. She made it out of thin air. Definitely not real, right? But solid so…why not?

  He grabbed a seat and put the swing through its paces. He pumped his legs, moving back and forth in a steepening arc. The illusion created so deeply personal a sensation he doubted the swing would be visible to anyone else. Maybe the weird scene to some random passerby would be Brian floating up and down with no apparent means of support.

  Who knew? What if most of the world’s mysteries represented lingering echoes of magic like this one? UFOs, Stonehenge, broccoli.

  He’d found amazing cracks in the world, with one surprise after another lurking on the other side. Brian swung himself into a happy space wedged somewhere between reality and illusion.

  Something bright flashed below. One more coin?

  No. He’d left his night bag in the snow, and the rope tying it closed had loosened. Rebecca’s book spilled partway out. Its ribbon blinked in bursts of green luminescence like a supernatural strobe light.

  A swarm of vague ideas teased him, like little notes posted on a bulletin board a foot or two beyond his visual range. He took a mental step closer and focused on…

  Something.

  This thick oak’s existence in the barren Sand Hills might have been a random mistake of nature, like a bush clinging to a mountainside high above the tree line. Yet the unlikelihood of finding a hardy tree springing out of otherwise unfertile ground suggested an awesome possibility. Maybe Rebecca’s conjuring went well beyond a simple tire swing.

  He glanced around for hints.

  Last night’s storm should have spray-painted only the downwind side of the oak’s trunk. Yet this tree was white on all sides.

  And the ground beneath had a uniform snow cover, even in the shadow of the trunk, where shallows would normally form.

  This thing isn’t real.

  Is it?

  How to prove it one way or the other?

  By jumping.

  Brian pumped his legs harder. His arc increased, and the tire strained against the rope as he rose above a horizontal plane.

  Then he let go.

  For a millionth of a second, he flew like a bird.

  An eye-blink later, he stood on wobbly legs.

  Rebecca conjured an entire tree.

  Unreal.

  For some crazy reason, she’d planted the thing months ago, in a spot he managed to stumble upon over and over.

  But why?

  Because she’d wanted a direction marker for her cabin?

  No.

  His thoughts careened down an alpine slide into a dark pool of dread lurking at the bottom.

  Back in August, a billboard lured him off the highway into Sidney, Lynching Capital of Nebraska. He found a noose hanging from the oak that day—a tree Rebecca said was twenty furlongs from her cabin. And what did the Witch-of-the-Hills legend have to say about that distance?

  She couldn’t travel any farther.

  Apparently she could, but her probable method sent icicles down his spine.

  Rebecca hanged herself on a stage the night she crashed back into his life at Club Intrigue, and she wore a scarf around her neck every other time she came calling. Those bursts of color had been more than mere fashion statements. She probably had rope burns to hide, like the one he noticed when she came to the condo after her little stage show.

  Brian knew without a doubt what the coins she’d been spending really were.

  Hangings.

  He shuddered.

  How many more times would she do something so unthinkable to be with him?

  How many times would he let her?

  As if he had a choice.

  Sure he did. There had to be a way of stopping this madness. Brian scrambled over to Rebecca’s book of Ogham and closed his fist around the ribbon. The image of a rundown, old gas station popped into his head.

  Back in August, the goofy attendant of that turn-back-the-clock place pointed him north, and the rest was history.

  Good old Hal had to have some answers.

  * * *

  An hour and a half later, Brian tightened his jacket against a chill in his bones.

  Overgrown bushes at the service island covered the spot where the antique pump should have been.

  And Hal’s shack of a store was boarded up.

  Traffic noise from the nearby interstate provided some comfort he hadn’t slept his way into a time warp again. Just to be sure, he grabbed the Saint Brigit coin out of his pocket.

  Cold silver. He was awake.

  But what about back in August?

  He hurried to the building. A weathered poster nailed into the plywood advertised a county fair dated ten years ago. The faded depiction of hot-air balloons, hot dogs, and carnival rides peeled at the corners from age. And here was a church bake-sale announcement nailed just beneath it. Same year a month earlier.

  Brian’s hands trembled, and not from the cold.

  He couldn’t have met a station attendant in August. The place had been locked down for a decade.

  A broken padlock on the door raised a knee-knocking question. Did he sleepwalk right into a condemned building that day?

  “It’s closed.”

  The unexpected voice shot through his nerves like a jolt of electricity. He swung around.

  A girl bundled up in a down coat looked up at him. Eleven or twelve years old. Smiley. “I’m Gabriella,” she said. A blonde ponytail poked out from beneath her snow hat.

  He tried to smile back. “I’m Brian.”

  “Where are you heading?”

  At this point, he didn’t have a clue.

  The girl gazed at him with keenly probing eyes, hinting at scary wisdom way out of sync with the rest of her appearance. Brian had to fight the ridiculous urge to make a run for his car.

  “You must be heading somewhere,” s
he said.

  “Okay, yeah. I guess I’m driving to Madison. There’s nothing here for me, obviously.”

  “Exactly.” Gabriella pulled one of her mittens off and touched his bare wrist with her hand.

  Brian’s head buzzed. He couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet. A stream of confusion babbled out of his mouth. “I don’t get it. I never would have met Rebecca if the old guy hadn’t sent me north. He started everything.”

  Gabriella shook her head. “Some things don’t have a beginning. They just are.”

  No beginning. No end. An eternity of questions? “So where does it all lead?”

  “You mean the fairy tale of Brian and Rebecca? Perhaps it ends badly.”

  Brian flinched. He had to be dealing with another witch—and not a good one. Or another phooka maybe?

  “I’m far more than that,” she said.

  She could read minds? He yanked his arm out of Gabriella’s grip. Backed a step away. Eyed his car.

  “Go on back to Wisconsin and consider this, Brian. Shouldn’t you forget about Rebecca and help Abigail instead? She might be the one on a righteous path.”

  He couldn’t even begin to process that twisted suggestion.

  Gabriella closed in on him, all innocent smile and hypnotizing eyes. She said something that got lost in the whistling wind.

  He wobbled. Steadied himself. Caught the echo of her words.

  “The world’s a terribly violent place, Brian. I never should have brought you and Rebecca together.”

  “Huh?”

  “Dark-minded people gravitate to the most evil corners of the World of Mortal Dreams. They hatch despicable plans together.” Gabriella wrinkled her forehead. “I believe the earliest ideas leading to the atomic bomb were born in the World of Mortal Dreams.”

  Poof.

  She was gone.

  Another dream?

  No way. The silver Saint Brigit coin was cold to the touch.

  But he wasn’t in the lot anymore.

  Or in Nebraska, for that matter.

  Brian collapsed onto the porch stairs of his aunt’s condo in Madison.

  * * *

  Rebecca sat on a fallen log at a favorite spot, where a vast meadow gave way to a grove of orange trees. But this time, the chatter of birds, scent of fresh citrus, and gurgle of a nearby creek did nothing to cheer her. She wept.