The Witch of the Hills

by J M Fraser

Halfway through, Hal doubled over, breathing hard. “Go on. I’ll catch up.”

  Brian took another painstaking step. And one more. His legs gave out. He braced his hand against a tree trunk, dragged himself up from his knees, staggered forward, and—

  Thick greenery bulged out of the woods on either side of the path, closing off the settlement.

  He pushed the scratchy branches aside and lunged forward.

  More branches sprang out, blocking his way.

  Brian bunched his fists. Glanced around. Maybe if he ditched the path and cut through the forest…

  Hal caught up and grabbed his elbow. “Look into the trees over there.”

  About twenty feet to his right, in a small clearing, a group of girls sat around a campfire. Abigail lorded over them like the queen bee.

  Brian caught her eye. She flashed a malicious grin, held up a hand, and started reciting in a singsong voice.

  “‘All the maidens fair will suffer thy black fate,’

  he growled,

  dark eyes engulfing hers,

  ‘feeling pricks of pins, they’ll scream and twitches make

  then crawl

  beneath the furniture.’”

  “Owweeeooohhhhhh.” A bellowing girl dropped to her stomach and slithered like a snake.

  “Ungawaaaaaaa.” Another stood, twirled, and fell.

  Three girls twitched where they sat.

  “Aighhhhhh!” A girl’s shrieks pierced Brian straight through the heart.

  He ran forward, swatting branches away, dodging trees, tripping, recovering, and coming face-to-face with the worst menace he’d ever met. “Make it stop, Abigail. Now.”

  She eyed him up and down, this colonial urchin, stalker, phooka, hypnotizer, and God knew whatever else. She laughed. She waved an arm.

  The trees disappeared. The settlement came into view. A murmur rose from a few women clustered in the shadows by the well.

  “I can always count on gossipers,” Abigail said. “They’ll think Rebecca cast this spell.”

  “No, they won’t. I’ll set them straight.”

  Abigail touched his cheek. “Your name is Brian, yes?”

  Her hand sent a chill racing down his spine. He pulled back.

  “How can you tell them anything, Brian? You aren’t even here.”

  A green flash blinded him.

  No. He couldn’t let this dream end. Not now.

  Chapter 36

  Brian opened his eyes and gaped at the medicine-cabinet mirror over the sink. He’d looped back to the beginning. His aunt’s bedroom mirror reflected from behind, continuing the vortex that earlier swept him to Nebraska.

  And on to Salem.

  Take me there again.

  He waited. Shifted from one foot to the other. Waited. Eased away from the sink.

  Folded his arms.

  Nothing.

  He leaned forward. Thumped his forehead against the glass. He had to tell the settlers what Abigail had done. The mass hysteria of those girls in the woods had been the work of a malicious creature. A phooka. Nothing to do with Rebecca’s harmless spell.

  He’d set things straight and change the past.

  No witch hunt.

  No hangings.

  But the mirrors weren’t cooperating anymore, and…

  He fumbled into his pocket for the coin. Pulled it out.

  Cold silver.

  He wasn’t dreaming anymore.

  The bathroom walls had gotten too tight for a guy to breathe. He escaped to the living room.

  A roaring blizzard frosted the windows opaque, leaving him shut inside.

  Alone.

  Without Rebecca.

  He grabbed the front door by the handle, yanked it open, gasped for air.

  The storm lowered a white curtain over everything more than twenty feet away. Snow whispered like sugar through a sifter and drifted over every upright object, including his half-buried Kia at the curb.

  He slumped against the doorframe.

  “Brian?” His black-cloaked sister fought her way out of the whiteout.

  “Kara!” He wrapped his arms around her and held on for dear life.

  Kara puffed her cheeks and bulged her eyes. “Not too lonely, are we? Mom sent me to check on you.”

  “What for? Everything’s fine.”

  “Really?” She brushed past him and into the condo, shedding her snow-covered ski cap, mittens, and coat on the floor. “If life is so peachy, why are you standing in the doorway like a lonely puppy?”

  Brian followed her in. Closed the door behind them.

  She dropped her purse. Lost her scarf. Kicked off her boots. Turned to fix a laser gaze on him.

  Game over. Brian lost his brave front. How could he stare into those probing eyes and not tell the truth? “Okay, Kara. My world is in meltdown mode. Happy?”

  “Not really.” She headed into the kitchen. Clattered through April’s stuff. Drawers opened and closed. A cabinet door creaked on its hinges. “It’s time for some heavy drinking. You do have hot chocolate, don’t you?”

  “I’m trying to cut back. Twelve-step program.”

  “Here it is.” Mugs clinked. Sink water whooshed out of the faucet. A spoon stirred. Beep beep beep…the microwave. “Hey, is this her book of poetry?”

  Brian flinched. Her? The use of that pronoun suggested far more knowledge than Kara should have had. He hadn’t told his sister anything. “Have you been talking to Mom?”

  “She and I do live in the same house, Brian.”

  Kara came out of the kitchen holding two steaming mugs. “Let’s cut to the chase. I know everything you know and more. I can’t share the more part, though.”

  “Story of my life lately.” Brian collapsed onto the couch.

  “Yeah, it sucks being you, I guess.” She flopped down beside him, offered a mug, then grabbed his phone from the coffee table and opened the picture gallery. She flipped from image to image and stopped at a recent one of Rebecca—all red hair, smiles, and dimples. “Pretty thing. How many visits does she have left?”

  Brian burned his tongue. “What? How much do you know?”

  “Not quite everything.”

  “You couldn’t have gotten all of this from Mom.”

  “I didn’t.” Kara pressed her lips tight. Her gaze was unyielding. “How many visits?”

  “One, I think. Two, tops.” The admission turned the taste of chocolate sour in his mouth. He shifted up from the couch and paced the room. “I need to hit the road. If I can’t dream my way to Salem, I’ll drive to her cabin and take it from there.”

  “Salem? What are you talking about?” Kara’s dark-shadowed eyes filled with confusion. “If you mean Nebraska, doesn’t legend say Rebecca’s cabin can’t be found?”

  “Been there. Done that.” He grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair.

  “Maybe you won’t be so lucky next time.”

  “I’ll chance it.”

  “Wait.” Kara rummaged through her purse until she came up with a snow globe and a little wooden stand. She set it up on the coffee table. “Tell me what you see.”

  “Flying monkeys? I saw the movie.”

  She elbowed him in the side. “Very funny. Now look into the globe.”

  “Fine.” Brian leaned close enough to peer inside. The globe encased a miniature cabin in a field of scrubby hills.

  Something moved.

  He jumped back.

  Shadows shifted within, as if driven by unseen clouds drifting across the sky. A breeze rippled tiny bushes and shrubs. “Wow!”

  “Isn’t it?” Kara said something under her breath, and a puff of smoke curled out of the cabin’s chimney.

  The flood of magic and mystery pouring out of his previously normal, if somewhat annoying, big sister was more than Brian could handle standing up. He slumped onto the couch beside her. “Could you slow down a little and fill me in on what operating system we’re looking at here? You lost me at Windows 14.0.”

  “Can’t s
ay. Somebody gave this to me.”

  “Somebody?”

  “Uh-huh.” She grabbed the globe and held it up with outstretched arms. “Think of this as a remote control for Rebecca’s cabin. Like back on Thanksgiving.”

  “Slow down even slower, Kara.”

  She smiled from ear to ear. “I made smoke come out of this cabin’s chimney so you’d see it coming out of Rebecca’s when you drove out there. Comprende?”

  “You…helped me find her?”

  His sister had the same delighted gleam in her eye he’d seen in Rebecca’s whenever she bowled him over. “I left a snack on the table, too.”

  “How in the world…”

  “Like I said. Somebody helped.” She set the globe back on its stand.

  “I don’t suppose this helper has a name.”

  “Not one I’d care to divulge. Anyway, we couldn’t be sure you’d notice the smoke that day. We got lucky.”

  “Clearly not an all-powerful helper then, huh? Are we talking Mom?”

  “Nope. Now pay attention. I’m going to use the magic word.” She lifted the globe again. “Cratchmunkin.” Smoke poured out of the chimney.

  Did that mean smoke signals were now billowing out of Rebecca’s real cabin chimney in Nebraska? The idea made his head swim. This went way beyond what little he’d learned about witchcraft. Illusions plus dreams equals telekinesis? “No way.”

  “Your mouth is hanging open, Brian. Look, I need to go.” Kara grabbed her coat from the floor. “I’ll tell Mom you’re fine, Aunt April is doing a wonderful job of taking care of you, and so on.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I promised Brad I’d be home by nine. We’re going bowling.”

  “But it’s blizzarding out. Why not stay here and drive home tomorrow?”

  She slid an arm into her coat. “Don’t worry. I came in Mom’s SUV.”

  “Hold on.” He hustled into the kitchen and hurried back with the book of Ogham. “Can you read this?”

  “Please.” She bent for her scarf. “Why would I interfere with a courting ritual your girlfriend is following so religiously?”

  He touched the ribbon for a good answer. Came up empty. “Because you’re my loving sister? Come on. This book is full of clues.”

  “Clues for what?”

  “How to make your head explode.”

  She grabbed her mittens.

  Brian wedged himself between her and the door. “I’m begging you.”

  But she made a zipping motion across her lips. “What fairy tale did you ever read where a boy’s sister rescues the fair maiden?”

  “This isn’t about rescuing maidens. Well, partly, but there’s this void-like black fog, too, and there’s—”

  “A prophecy.” Kara eased around him. Turned the door handle. “Didn’t somebody carve into stone that this is for you and Rebecca to handle?”

  He dropped his arms to his sides. Racked his brain for the argument that might convince her to read every clue in that book to him. “Her visits are running dry.”

  Kara hugged him. Warm, snug, sisterly. But she pulled away and looked out into the storm. “Stop trying to peek at the last page of your fairy tale.”

  “But—”

  “Ask anything more, and that globe’s coming home with me.”

  “Fine.” Witches lived for their secrets. He got that. Even Rebecca relished the game despite her obvious desperate need to be rescued. He was the ball of string, and she was the cat.

  A cat with only two remaining lives at most.

  Brian glanced over his shoulder at the globe on the coffee table. “Can you puff some smoke out of Salem so I’ll find that, too?”

  A gust of wind blew a cold burst of snow into the condo. Kara stepped into the blizzard. “You can’t change the past, Brian. Worry about the future, instead.”

  Chapter 37

  The cobblestone path crested a hill, revealing a tapestry of pastoral beauty in the countryside below. Shared imagination by a thousand dreamers had nestled a thick meadow between a forest on one side and the bluest of lakes on the other. Rebecca paused to savor the pine-fresh air, bent to pick a wildflower for behind her ear, then continued walking into the rich fantasy.

  But the sky darkened when she reached the field. The scene shimmered. The forest melted into wasteland.

  She shuddered. The World of Mortal Dreams had always been a fickle place. Calm moments could collapse into nightmares from one breath to the next.

  Yet the scene remained idyllic to her right. The path curved into a park where picnickers lounged in the sun, watching their children race back and forth with kites in tow.

  Rebecca sighed from deepest longing—for a peaceful existence without any threat, where she and Brian might settle onto a blanket and share a basket lunch.

  That will never happen. She choked back a sob.

  She still had almost two centuries left to serve from her original five-hundred-year sentence. When her ninth visit had ended, she’d only be able to call on Brian in his dreams.

  Surely, he’d lose interest in her. Inevitably, he’d age and she wouldn’t.

  Rebecca squared her shoulders. This was no time for self-pity. A key question needed answering. How would Brian defeat Abigail and the void? Did the unexpected appearance of an enlightening rod in his hands mean they had a sponsor? Someone with the power to help them do the impossible?

  She had to know. The prophecy hadn’t provided the slightest hint how she and Brian might triumph on their own. And the answers wouldn’t be found in a pleasant park. She turned her back on the greenery and followed a forbidding trail of crushed glass across a blackened lava field. Only the few white skeletons of long-forgotten trees decorated the harsh landscape.

  A fearsome sound, like a thousand out-of-tune trumpets, bellowed from a marsh to her right.

  She hurried behind a rock and crouched down.

  Clomp.

  Clomp.

  Clomp.

  A massive dragon’s footfalls shook the ground. White-hot flames shooting out of its leathery nostrils heated the air to its boiling point. She cringed and crouched lower, trembling at the sight of the scaly beast from her woefully inadequate hiding place.

  Nothing is real here. Small comfort when caught in the throes of a fearful fantasy capable of driving any witch mad—as the scariest nightmares were rumored to do.

  The dragon moved on.

  She breathed. But she waited for a count of twenty before resuming her trek, just to be sure.

  The burnt earth soon gave way to a hilly area dotted with lava pits and bordered by steep cliffs.

  Aaaaiiiiiiiiii!

  The shriek pierced her heart. A banshee? Or perhaps another witch like her, unwisely setting foot on this loathsome trail.

  Rebecca turned to the direction of the park, miles behind her now but not out of reach if she wanted to head back.

  A refuge for cowards.

  She bit her lip. The guardians designed this forbidding land well, bent as they were on screening out all but the most tenacious, fearless women. Only the bravest of witches were welcome in the Gallery of Secrets.

  Such as her.

  Mere illusions couldn’t stop her.

  She pressed forward, mile after mile, until she reached the gate of a sprawling, stone-walled fort. A thick spider web blocked her passage. Enough of this. She lunged forward, breaking through the gooey strands to find herself at the edge of a magnificent interior garden.

  She paused to catch her breath and slow her racing heart.

  A rectangular pool of water, flower beds bursting with rainbow colors, and a maze of shrubs beckoned for her to linger, forget her troubles, then head on home once she’d replenished her spirit.

  She turned her back on the fantasy, found a stairway beside a pile of bones, and headed into the gloom below.

  Five hundred and three steps spiraled into the darkness. The symbolic descent honored the year the great prophet, Aislinn, had been laid to rest. At the bot
tom, Rebecca pushed through a door into a vast, torch-lit study.

  Goblin librarians skulked about, distinguishable by their ancient faces, spindly fingers, and bare, hairy feet. One of them greeted her with a scowl. He took her arm with an icy hand and led her to a giant mushroom serving as a reading table.

  He’d picked a spot off to the side, away from any other visitors, clearly understanding that witches were like feral cats, preferring not to mingle with their own kind except at a safe distance.

  “Thank you.” She settled onto a stool and used a quill pen to write her request in Ogham on a weathered parchment. With the note in hand, the goblin scurried off, only to return with a troll a moment later. The beast growled at her, shaking a thick, menacing club in a gnarled fist the size of a ham.

  These caretakers guarded their moldy books as if they were made of gold and silver! She’d have none of their intimidating tactics. “I told you what I want.”

  A staring match ensued—fiercely determined eyes refusing to blink on either side.

  At last, the goblin and troll shook their heads, muttered something to each other in a strange dialect, and stalked off. They opened a door at the far end of the study and disappeared down a passageway.

  “The book you requested contains a secret only to be shown to a chosen one.” The voice came from behind. A girl’s voice. A soothing voice. A voice she hadn’t heard in many years.

  Rebecca turned to the blonde-haired, ponytailed Gabriella.

  What protocol to follow when visited by an angel? She’d knelt the only other time they met, but perhaps she hadn’t looked into Gabriella’s eyes carefully that time. Now she found something unsettling in those ancient orbs—a hint of darkness completely in contrast with the angel’s child-like appearance and pure white dress.

  Gabriella resolved the impasse by making the first move. She climbed onto the stool beside her. “You want the book, because…?”

  “I’ve come across an enlightening rod shaped as a ribbon, and I want to research its origins.”

  “What do you think the origins might be?”

  Rebecca lowered her gaze, partly out of respect but mostly because her earlier glance into those eyes left her light-headed. What manner of angel hypnotized people? “Perhaps I’ve come to the wrong place for answers.” She shifted off the stool.