The Witching Elm (A Memento Mori Witch Novel, Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  Thomas swallowed, staring into the park from his café table. He couldn’t argue it away anymore. All signs pointed to something supernatural. A magical tree materializing, killers who disappeared into thin air—this was the work of something otherworldly.

  The world as he’d thought he understood it no longer existed. He took a deep, shaky breath. It wasn’t just the Harvesters. He’d been researching that phrase—lux in tenebris lucet. What he’d found had unnerved him. The coffee probably wasn’t helping his jitters, but he needed it after all the sleepless nights.

  He took a long sip of his strong brew and looked up just as Tobias and Fiona walked in. Like Thomas, they both had dark circles under their eyes, and deep purple bruises marred Tobias’s neck.

  “What happened to you?” Thomas asked when they sat down.

  Tobias sighed and touched his neck. “Harvester.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Thomas looked from Tobias to Fiona and back. “They’re real, aren’t they? I mean, the tree…” He shook his head. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I know,” said Fiona. “But we know a cloaking spell that we can use if we need it. It makes us invisible. We can teach it to you.”

  “A cloaking spell. That’s a real thing now…” He tapped on the table and then hunched toward them. “Where did they go? How did they just disappear?”

  Tobias rubbed his eyes. “You said the legend was that a sorcerer raises an army from the grave, right? So they were already dead. The dead have the ability to travel between worlds. It’s how we see ghosts from the other side.”

  Thomas frowned. “You really confronted them, up close?”

  Fiona nodded. “But don’t tell my mom. She’d freak out. She won’t stop calling me. She’s coming back from New York, but they won’t let anyone through the police barrier.”

  “You two need to be more careful, you know that?”

  Fiona touched his arm. “So you believe me now about Maremount?”

  “Witches, ghosts, demon séances, whatever messed-up magical stuff you’re talking about, I’m on board. What do we need to do to stop this? There’s a poem, right?” Thomas tried to keep the hysteria out of his voice.

  “We have the whole thing now.” Fiona pulled out her phone and showed Thomas a snapshot of the old handwritten text.

  He read it to himself a few times, and then pointed to the top. “What’s this about the beginning and the end?”

  “It’s the moment of death and rebirth of the universe, I think,” said Tobias. “There’s a wand, too. We don’t know what it does yet. It might be used to remove an enchantment from something.”

  “Do you get what the poem means?” Fiona pressed toward him over the table. “What are the instructions?”

  “The King, his voice extinguished after death, awaits in buried ash to speak again, made whole above the one who made him mute—the burned, the chopped, the choked rise from the roots.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I was hoping I’d just know.” He took another sip of coffee. Under the table, his leg bobbed up and down. He looked up. “There’s a whole other thing, too.”

  Tobias frowned. “A whole other what?”

  Jesus. He was making even less sense than them. He pulled the chalice card out of his wallet. “A man gave me this. Said he’d been watching me.”

  Fiona squinted at it. “That’s Munroe’s symbol. The symbol of Blodrial.”

  Thomas nodded. “You’ve seen this?” He’d been reading about them for days in old conspiracy theorist journals. “The Blodrial cult is called the Purgators. They’re a cult of witch hunters. They started in ancient Rome. The witch-hunting Kings, James and Charles the First, were both members. The Purgators led the witch hunts in England. You know, the Malleus Maleficarum?”

  “The hammer of the witches,” said Tobias. “The witch-finding guide.”

  “The Purgators drove the sorcerers out of Boston,” Thomas continued. “Led to the creation of Maremount. And I think the witch hunters are still here. There are some of them in the government.” He whispered, “and they might be watching us.” He knew how he sounded. He sounded like a complete nutter, like the ranting woman in the park who wore pink tube socks over her trousers. He took a deep breath, shaking his head. “Anyway, I don’t want to sound paranoid, but somebody gave me this card and said to call him.” He shoved it back in his pocket.

  “Munroe has that tattoo. Her dad is a senator,” said Fiona. “And he must be a—what did you call it?”

  “Purgator,” said Thomas. “It means something like purifier.”

  “Her family has been at the school forever,” said Fiona.

  “So you don’t know what the poem means?” said Tobias.

  “Have patience. I’m going to think about it some more,” said Thomas. “I’m a bit sleep-deprived at the moment. This is all madness.” He rubbed his eyes. “Send me that photo. I’ll keep working on it, but you two should get back to school.”

  Fiona texted him the picture, and they said their goodbyes. Gripping his hot paper cup, he stepped out into the spring air. Wandering into the Common, he saw, for the first time, the new elm tree and its ivory boughs curling into the air. The dead hung from its branches, and police labored to cut them down, surrounded by yellow tape. Every time a policeman approached the bodies, he seemed to be repelled backwards, like there was an invisible barrier. For a few minutes, Thomas watched the police moving forward and back in in a macabre quadrille.

  This was a place of death long ago. It wasn’t just hanging—there were severed heads in this celebrated spot of liberty. His students were always fascinated to learn how the Thanksgiving alliance had turned deadly in the decades after the Mayflower’s landing.

  He walked along one of the Common’s old cow paths. He always got an interesting reaction from his students when he talked about Matoonas, the Nipmuc leader. Matoonas’s son was falsely accused of murder, and the Puritans displayed the son’s head on a pike in this very park. Years later, during King Philip’s War, Matoonas himself was captured along with a second son. The Puritans decapitated them both, jamming their heads onto pikes that faced each other. The idea was that since the soul resides in the skull, father and son would be forced to stare into each other’s moldering eye sockets in the afterlife. It wasn’t enough to kill them in one world. You had to destroy them after death, too.

  He rubbed his forehead and looked down at the poem as he walked. Something flickered in his mind. His voice extinguished after death… made whole above the one who made him mute.

  He put his hand over his mouth. He understood what the spirits wanted. They wanted the King to speak again.

  36

  Fiona

  As she rifled through Celia’s closet, Fiona had a brief respite from thinking about terrorist attacks. Earlier in the day, she’d run into Jack and was surprised to learn that the Athenæum would go forward with its fundraiser, despite the bodies that rotted nearby—including Ms. Ellsworth’s. Though students and faculty mourned her loss at Mather Academy, something of a blitz spirit had arisen within the lockdown area, defiance tinged with hysteria. No one wanted to “let the terrorists win.”

  That afternoon, Celia had appraised the jeans and T-shirt Fiona planned to wear and instructed her to select a dress from her closet. A black sheath dress hung next to a yellow chiffon sundress and a long, emerald silk gown. She didn’t know much about clothing, but the green dress’s low backline reminded her of a 1930s movie star. She cast off her uniform and slipped into the gown. It draped over her as though someone had designed it for her. She grabbed a belted black coat to wear over it.

  When she stepped out into the courtyard, she caught a faint scent of putrefaction. The parents of Mather students were unhappy that their children were once again trapped within police barriers, but no one wanted to complain too loudly. Standing in the way of law enforcement officials was the same thing as helping the terrorists—though now, with the supernatural tree dominating the park, people were slowly start
ing to replace the word “terrorist” with the word “witch.”

  As Fiona passed the elm, she noticed that the work crews had given up trying to remove the bodies. Instead, they labored to erect a giant metal scaffold around it. Someone would likely drape it with cloth to shield the eyes of passersby from the grim sight. But not, unfortunately, from the stench.

  She pulled her coat tighter as she crossed the center of the park. Her mother would have wanted to see her in the gown. She would have tried to fix Fiona’s hair, too, but she was locked outside the perimeter.

  When Fiona opened the red door to the Athenæum, a woman dressed in black directed her to the coat check. Leaving her coat with a young man, she wandered up to the second floor. Many of the women had dressed up for the event’s nature theme. A long-haired woman wore a garland of leaves around her head, and her companion wore a wreath of flowers. The women in the room sported an array of colors—green dresses, flowers, and a white Grecian style, while most of the men wore sedate suits, some dressed up with colorful bowties. Many guests held glasses filled with brown drinks and herbs.

  She strolled into a large room draped with floral garlands. She didn’t quite belong here, among all these elegant adults. She turned back toward the stairs, relieved to see Jack standing by a doorway, dressed in a dark gray suit. As she touched his shoulder, he turned and smiled. He kissed her on the cheek and handed her a glass of cold herbal tea before they set off to wander the first floor.

  “I guess people weren’t put off by the prospect of another attack,” she said.

  He smiled and raised his glass. “We can’t let a little terrorism get in the way of our parties.” A look of concern crossed his face. “You were safe, though? I tried to find you. Grunshaw hid in his room this time. But you weren’t in your room. I was worried.”

  “I ran outside after someone.” She didn’t really want to get into another discussion about Tobias. It was obviously a sore point.

  The color drained from his cheeks, and something flashed in his eyes—anger? “You went outside? During the attack?”

  She nodded and sipped her drink. She wasn’t going to get off this topic easily.

  “Let me guess: You went after Tobias.”

  “He was trying to save Ms. Ellsworth.”

  “Was he now? Well, he didn’t.” He turned away, frowning. “I told you he was bad news. He invites chaos everywhere he goes.” He glanced at her again, touching her collarbone with the tip of his fingers. “I know there’s something you’re not telling me about him.”

  Oh, you know, just that he’s a sorcerer from another world who’s teaching me magic in a secret coven. Nothing big.

  She felt bad about lying to him, but there was too much to tell at this point. She sighed. “Can we talk about something else?”

  He tilted his head. “Well, I guess I don’t want to anger the best friend of a witch. I might end up a newt.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  He smiled faintly, brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I don’t like the idea of you running into the Common while people are being murdered. But I guess I understand that you can take care of yourself.”

  “Thank you.” She put her arm through his, and they started walking. “So, what made you decide to come here? You don’t seem like the social butterfly type. Is it some kind of Hawthorne family thing?”

  He looked around. “You’re right, actually. I really have no interest in talking to anyone here. I came early to get a preview of their temporary exhibit—the Voynich Manuscript. I spent some time studying it before you arrived. Do you want to see?”

  He led her to the exhibit room, the same room where Tobias had first confessed about Maremount. The stained glass was replaced by enlarged images of yellowed drawings and inscrutable script. In the center of the room stood a glass-encased stand containing the Voynich Manuscript itself. Walking over for a closer look, Fiona stared at the crooked chunks of handwriting in a language she’d never seen.

  “What is this?” She gazed around the room at drawings of women in baths of green water.

  “No one is quite sure. It surfaced in the early 20th century, and it was carbon dated to the early 15th century. It seems like it might be an alchemical text, but no one has deciphered the language.”

  Fiona looked closer at the brown ink and small looped letters. It looked a bit like Angelic, but it wasn’t. There were no Latin translations to help her.

  “It was probably some sort of code.” Jack waved his drink around as he spoke, and the pink had returned to his cheeks. “There are rumors that the great alchemist John Dee once owned it in the 1500s. Now that everyone’s talking about witchcraft again, it suddenly seems more interesting.”

  “So the witchy talk sparked your interest?”

  “I just like a mystery, really.” He smiled and took a sip of his drink.

  “Do you have any particular theory about what it means?”

  He looked into the air, chewing his lower lip, and then said, “It could be a coded magic book, or 15th century science, or it could be—”

  His words were cut off as the library’s lights blinked out. Jack hugged her to him. In the darkness, someone shrieked, and a glass shattered. She could feel Jack’s breath on her neck.

  She whispered into his ear, “What’s going on?”

  In the nearby rooms, people chattered. A man began to shout, “Nobody panic!” over and over, his voice rising in pitch.

  “Where’s the exit?” a female voice called out, and then a banging noise rang through the room.

  A man shouted, “The entrance is locked!”

  Fiona held tighter to Jack. He had a musky smell, like myrrh.

  “Wait here,” he said, and she reluctantly released him.

  The guests’ voices grew louder, discussing alternate routes out. She almost thought she could make out the sounds of Angelic in the din. As she fumbled toward the main hall, a single flame punctuated the darkness, followed by screams. Her heart thrummed hard in her chest. Someone was on fire, burning from the chest outward. Flames erupted toward the ceiling. Fire illuminated the man’s face from below, and agony contorted his features. Another flame followed from someone else’s chest. As shrieks rang through the room, Jack stood by her again.

  “We should get out of here.” He grabbed her hand, leading her away from the smell of burning flesh.

  Disoriented by the darkness and smoke, she didn’t know where he led her. Clinging to his arm, she stumbled after him down a stairwell. “Where are we going?” She tried to stop herself from crying, but she let out a sob.

  “I know a way out.”

  “Do you know what happened back there?” Her breathing wasn’t normal. She was nearly hyperventilating.

  He hugged her shoulders. “Take it easy. I’m getting us out of here.”

  “People were burning.” With shaking hands, she pulled her phone out of her bag to dial 911, but there was no reception. “Is your phone working?”

  He opened a low door into what seemed to be an earthy-smelling tunnel. “Someone else is calling for help now, I’m sure. There were a lot of people there.”

  She held his hand as they walked underground, and she traced her other hand along the damp walls for balance in the dark.

  “It must have been something to do with the terrorists,” he said. “Or witches, or whatever they are. I don’t know why they’d come to the Athenæum. Maybe they were after the book. We’re going up stairs in just a moment.”

  Her heart hammering, she tripped on a loose stone as she climbed, but Jack steadied her. They halted, and he pushed on something above them until a small door swung open to the fresh night air. Police sirens whined in the streets around them. He helped her out, following after her. As she stood and took in her surroundings, she recognized the crooked tombstones and obelisks of the Granary cemetery abutting the Athenæum. They had just crawled out of what appeared to be a crypt.

  She took a shaky breath. “How did you know a
bout that exit?”

  “It’s an old Hawthorne family secret.” He wiped a tear off her cheek. She hadn’t even been aware that she was crying. “You need to get home. I’d like to walk you, but I’m going to have to go back and help. I just wanted to get you away from the witches as quickly as I could. It was so hard to tell what was happening. Take this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small glass bottle on a silver necklace strand. “It’s a good luck charm for your way home. Trust me—it’ll work. ”

  Before she could protest, he pulled the collar up on his coat and disappeared back into the crypt. She looked down at the charm. In the streetlights, she could just make out that some kind of dried plant filled the glass. She fixed the clasp around her neck and let herself out of the cemetery, eager to secure herself behind the school gates. She crossed the park in a jog.

  When she arrived in her room, she pulled out her phone and found a text from Thomas:

  Field trip to America’s hometown tomorrow. Meet in the park. Bring your friends and the wand.

  37

  Thomas

  A part of Thomas had hoped that it wouldn’t work—that they would intone the spell and remain completely visible, that maybe there was still a rational explanation for it all. He’d hoped that he could go back to his cocktails and cigarettes and let the police do their job. But he’d watched as his hands and body disappeared in front of him after they’d chanted the spell. It was a dizzying feeling, like vertigo—when everything you thought you knew about the world was thrown upside down.

  Thomas wondered, not for the first time today, if he’d lost his mind. He was in the middle of a group of teenagers on a skull-hunting mission to a Plymouth cemetery. They’d used the invisibility spell to sneak through the police barriers that morning.

  In his right hand, he gripped a thin wand made of hickory wood. Now fully visible, Celia sat across from him on the train, flipping through a fashion magazine. Alan hung on to the baggage racks above his head, swinging his legs below him. In many ways, they seemed like ordinary kids.