The Witchfinder Wars

by K. G. McAbee

  "Ding dong, the witch is dead...the witch is..."

  I stopped long enough to grab the vase sitting on the edge of his mother's desk, ripping the flowers out and tossing them aside before throwing the dirty water in his face. Michael's shout brought both Lofton and the principal out of the office I had just left. They looked stunned as I set the vase back down.

  "Add that to my list of sins too."

  I left, crossing through the now empty halls to head toward the sidewalks leading me home. I was so angry I don't remember most of the walk. All I could think of was how unfair the whole thing was.

  When I reached Evie's gardens, I squared my shoulders and put it behind me. I was a good student, the best in school, but I would get better. I was more determined than ever to prove myself to the idiots who surrounded me. No matter what it took. Who it took. I grinned as I headed upstairs. They thought I could call upon the Devil to help me. But I knew Satan didn't exist.

  I had access to something much more powerful, much more dangerous, than any devil.

  My Great Mother. My Goddess. She would lead me down the path I was supposed to take, while I destroyed anything and everything that got in my way.

  And the rest could go to hell where they belonged.

  Chapter Six

  Tommy

  I was sure I wouldn't be able to sleep a wink after Grand told me, well, everything she told me, and she told me a lot I couldn't believe. But I surprised myself. After we talked until almost two in the morning and she left, I crashed and fell into the deepest sleep I could ever remember. But not a restful, soothing sleep, the kind of sleep I really could have used. I kept having dreams and waking from them, my heart pounding like a drum, covered in sweat yet shivering with cold.

  Or maybe it was fear. 'Cause some of those dreams were strange. Falling rocks I could understand. The sensation of being crushed alive. But the sense there was something I had to do, someone I had to get to, before it was too late, that was the worst. I'd wake and my legs would be trying to run, and my hands would be grabbing out at the emptiness above my bed.

  The dreams began as soon as I was asleep.

  I was standing in the middle of a long straight stretch of highway. It unrolled in front of me forever, until I couldn't make out where it ended. At first there was nothing on either side of the blacktop—blacktop with a blood red line running down the middle of it—just misty, cloudy nothingness.

  Then the clouds began to group together and rise up on one side of the road, clumping and getting less and less hazy and more and more dense, until finally rough jagged rocks loomed high over the road on my right. On my left, the clouds collapsed like some giant was sucking them away through a straw.

  A deep rumble shook the earth, like thunder but louder and stronger than any storm I'd ever heard or experienced. I looked up, craning my neck back to see the sky, but there was no sky—only dense blackness without even a sprinkle of stars.

  The rumble of almost-thunder came again and this time, the blacktop beneath my feet shook and trembled with it. I looked down. My feet were bare. Then the skin began to peel away and I could see the bones of my toes, white against the black road. I jerked my head up away from that terrible sight and there, off in the distance, were two bright eyes racing toward me like a lion after a zebra.

  The lion howled.

  But they weren't eyes, they were headlights. I could hear the lion's growl change to the roar of a big racing engine.

  A car was coming straight at me.

  I tried to move, but I was stuck. I didn't want to, but I looked down. The bones of my feet had grown into the asphalt, pushing it up and twisting it like the roots of trees tear up the streets in a town.

  The roar grew louder, the headlights blinding me as they got bigger and bigger.

  I threw up my right hand to shield my eyes and, as if I had somehow told them, forced them, commanded them, the rocks that reared above the right side of the road began to tumble down. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. Fast as sound. Fast as light.

  The first rock, not a very big one, hit the roof of the car racing toward me. It bounced off, but more followed, more and more, piling over the car, covering it and raining down on it.

  Suddenly, I could move. My feet were just feet again, with their regular skin; no bones showed. I ran toward the rocks.

  Ran because I knew that car, as red as the line running down the center of the road.

  My dad's Ferrari.

  I climbed up over the rocks, yelling "Dad! Dad!" as they shifted beneath me like living things. I tried to move them, to dig down to the car, but as fast as I could fling one aside, more rolled into the empty spot.

  "Tommy?"

  I stopped. "Dad?"

  "Tommy." The voice was my dad's, but he didn't sound scared or hurt.

  He just sounded sad.

  "Dad! I'll get you out! Hang on, okay?"

  But the rocks kept coming, hitting me, covering me as everything grew darker and the air filled with bitter grit forced itself into my mouth and throat. I tried to call Dad but I couldn't.

  "Tommy," I heard him say, quietly, calmly. "Tommy. I'm sorry, son. I'm sorry I have to leave you. But it's my only hope."

  I woke up coughing, my face wet with tears.

  After that, I figured I'd never get to sleep again, even though I was so tired I could barely move.

  I was wrong.

  Almost at once, I was asleep and dreaming. Funny thing, though. This time I knew I was asleep; knew I was dreaming.

  I was walking through woods. It was night, but a pale blue-green light filled the spaces between the trees and I could see where I was going with no problem. I came out of the woods into a little clearing. Now I could see where the light was coming from—a blue moon, full and fat and about three times normal size, rode just above the tops of the trees across on the other side of the clearing, almost like it was balancing on their leafy tips. I could see the man in the moon, his face cocked sideways, smiling down at me.

  I smiled back.

  Then a voice asked, "Are you Tommy?"

  I looked around but didn't see anyone, which I would have if anyone had been there. It was almost as bright as noon under a fat blue moon.

  "Noon, moon," laughed the voice. "Spoon, June. Words are power, Tommy. Be careful how you use them."

  "Who are you?" I asked.

  "Your doom. Doom, broom, loom."

  There was a pile of rocks about as high as my waist in the middle of the clearing with something sparkly on top of it. I walked toward it, saying, chanting almost: "June, moon, broom, loom."

  When I got closer, I could see the sparkles came from a shallow silver bowl. There were shapes and symbols carved or etched into the cold metal; some I recognized but most I didn't.

  I looked inside the bowl. Right in the center was a small puddle of water, like someone had dumped a cup of ice in it after drinking all the soda and it had melted. That thought was so strong I looked around the pile of rocks for a crumpled paper cup. I didn't see one.

  When I looked back in the bowl, the water was gone, like it had drained out while I was looking for the cup.

  "Behold your doom, Thomas Carlisle Matthew Hopkins," said the voice. It didn't sound as scary as the words were, more like cheerful, almost happy.

  I shrugged. "Okay. Sure. Show me."

  I leaned over the bowl.

  Inside was a little red car. Beside it was a coil of silver wire that looked both cold and smooth and sharp enough to cut flesh. Next to the wire was a blue stone gleaming like a tiny chunk torn out of the moon above. And beside the stone was a small doll, like I'd seen my sisters fight over plenty of times. The doll had red hair underneath a pointy black hat, and its tiny hand held the handle of a broom.

  I reached into the bowl to touch the car, the doll.

  At the instant my hand moved, the coil of silver wire rose up like a striking cobra and stabbed right toward my heart...

  I rolled out of bed and hit the
floor.

  Hard. My knees hurt.

  "Okay, that's it. That is most definitely it," I said as I climbed back up on the bed.

  I didn't stay there long, though. I didn't dare chance going back to sleep, even as tired as I was, not with dreams like the one I'd just had waiting for me.

  I grabbed a couple of pillows and the bottle of water from my bedside table and wandered over to the window seat. I had a big corner room right above Grand's, with windows on two sides. I settled myself on the cushioned seat, took a swig of water and looked outside.

  It was either really late or really early. Night was fighting a losing battle with day; little fingers of pale pink, just the color of Jos's favorite t-shirt, were inching into the sky. I looked down into our front yard and got a sudden image of Jordan What's His Name trimming the bushes with his dad while they waiting for this big house to sell.

  Thinking of the bully gave me a quick flash of his victim. Anya? Yeah, that sounded right. I could see her as clearly as if she stood right in front of me: red hair in a shaggy ponytail, tendrils escaping from its rubber band to fall around her pale face. Her eyes, like little chips of emerald, huge and full of fear.

  Or was it fear? She sure hadn't seemed to be afraid of Jordan or his gang, even though he alone had to outweigh her by a good sixty or seventy pounds. Not even considering his pack.

  But Anya, even though she must have known she wouldn't stand a gnat's chance, had stood up to them all. Heck, she even called Jordan a jerk.

  From nowhere, the thought came: Am I that brave as I face everything coming at me? All the changes I can almost hear, like a herd of stampeding mustangs—or a race car—rushing toward me from my future?

  I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of my window, closed my eyes, and gave myself permission to think about Dad.

  Spenser Hopkins was—had been—a tall guy, taller than me though Grand said I'd probably catch up with him by the time I got into my twenties. He'd had hair so pale blonde it looked white in some lights, but his eyes were dark blue, almost black in some lights. He loved my mother and books and good food and fast cars and Grand and me and the twins, but he worked so hard I don't know how much time he was able to spend on any of these loves.

  I tried counting up in my head the number of occasions I could remember being alone with Dad and came up with a big fat three, one of which was the time I'd broken my left wrist in two places when I fell off my skateboard. He came to the hospital—we were in Seattle then—and brought me the new laptop I'd been wanting. I remembered we didn't have much to say to each other—I was eager to check out my new computer, even one-handed, and he, I'm sure, had to get back to work.

  But one thing I remembered very clearly. Dad got up to leave, leaned over the hospital bed and ruffled up my hair.

  "I love you, son. You know that, right?"

  I felt pretty uncomfortable at the question. I nodded, careful not to meet his eyes.

  "Good. You're going to have some pretty hard choices to make in your life, Tommy, choices you can't even begin to imagine right now. But I'll try to always be here for you, son, and I'll help you all I can. That's a promise. Remember that, okay?"

  I remembered it then, and I still remembered it.

  But he'd been wrong. He wasn't here, and he couldn't help me now.

  I opened my eyes. The glass was fogged from my breath. It turned the lights in the street below into tiny suns glowing in the darkness.

  A light came on below me. I could see the bright yellow rectangle, its edges crisp and clear, it cast on the grass below.

  Grand was having trouble sleeping too.

  I raised my window and the blurred suns became streetlights again. They were starting to dim as the faint pink in the sky turned brighter. I watched as they blinked out and houselights began to come on in the little town spread out in the valley below. Early as it was, I could see lots of lights in the old brick mill by the river, which cut Manning in half. WFG had remodeled the abandoned mill, turning it into a high-tech clinic and research facility.

  WFG.

  Witch Finder General?

  Well, of course that's what the company started out being called, but that was back in the seventeenth century! Surely nothing related to, well, could witches have anything to do with a modern company?

  Grand must be kidding.

  Right?

  Well, I'd find out soon enough. Uncle Clay was supposed to arrive sometime today.

  He was going to tell me all about it, about WFG and my dad's job and what was expected from me.

  I got up and almost fell down again. My leg had gone to sleep. I hopped and stumbled forward, bumping into the book bag I'd dropped at the foot of my bed yesterday and forgotten.

  It fell over and my trig book tumbled out and skittered across the pine floor, to end up under a dresser across the room.

  I had a sudden memory of yesterday morning. Dreading the first day of school. New place, new people. Taking trig, taking chemistry. It had seemed, then, liked the worst possible kind of day.

  Now I knew better. I would have given anything to have yesterday morning, and yesterday morning's problems, back again.

  ***

  I took a shower and pulled on jeans and a tee. I almost hoped to see the image in the fogged bathroom mirror again, but there was nothing behind me but wet towels draped over the john.

  I could tell it was a strange day when I stepped into the hallway outside my room. Nothing but silence from my sisters' room instead of the usual arguments and yells and whines.

  Well, I thought, no time like the present to become the overbearing, protective, domineering big brother I was apparently destined to become. I knocked on their door.

  "Jos? Jax? You guys ready for breakfast?"

  Silence.

  Remembering former earth shattering explosions when I'd entered their room without permission, I opened the door, slow and careful.

  Jos was sitting on her bed, crying. Jax was next to her, one arm around Jos's shoulders, offering a tissue with the other hand.

  I went in, knelt down in front of them and gathered them both into an awkward hug.

  We went through half a box of tissues between us before we went downstairs.

  ***

  "Your Uncle Clay's plane should be arriving around noon," Grand said as she poured cream into her coffee. "I'm going to keep you all home with me today. I hope you don't mind."

  Normally, this would have been the signal for the twins to dance around the breakfast room table, whooping and pumping their hands in the air. Today, Jos didn't even look up; she just kept pushing strawberries around in her bowl of cereal. Jax sniffed but didn't say a word.

  I looked at the poached eggs congealing on my plate.

  "Tommy?"

  I looked up at Grand. "Yes, ma'am?"

  Grand was sipping her coffee. "I didn't say anything, honey."

  I looked at the girls, but they both shook their head in that funny way they sometimes did, in perfect unison like they were one person controlling two bodies.

  I shrugged and went back to my eggs. They looked even worse than before.

  "It's gonna be okay."

  This time I realized the voice I was hearing didn't belong to anyone in the room with me, or anyone I knew, even.

  Or did it?

  Oh, great. Just great. I'm hearing things now.

  I looked out the tall French doors across the table from me, the ones opening to the back patio with dozens of huge clay pots full of flowers. I hoped Jordan the Jerk had been forced to fill them all by hand, with really fresh cow manure and no gloves. The thought almost made me grin.

  Then I saw something. A misty figure of a girl standing on the other side of the glass—or maybe she was part of the glass 'cause I could see right through her.

  No, that's not right. She wasn't like the invisible woman or something; she was clearly there and just as clearly Anya, the girl Jordan and his goons had been hassling yesterday.

&nbs
p; But the image was just as clearly not her, could not have been Anya. The red-haired girl dressed in a faded brown tee and jeans was like something painted with a transparent paint, if it makes any sense. No, she was more like something on a stained glass window; that was it. Colors were there but I could see right through her.

  She had the saddest look on her face.

  "Tommy, what's so interesting out in the garden?"

  Grand's voice shattered the Anya-image like it really had been made of glass. But it didn't disappear all at once; the face, with a sad little smile, lingered for a minute.

  Like the Cheshire Cat.

  Like a blessing.

  Now that was weird. No sleep can really do some truly strange stuff, huh?

  "I, uh, saw a cat or something," I said, then went back to trying to defeat those damned eggs.

  ***

  None of us seemed to know what to do after breakfast. I wandered up to my room, retrieved my trig book and moved all the books to a nice neat pile on my desk. I wondered when I'd be back in school and I dreaded all the fake sympathy from people I didn't know.

  A couple of times I glanced out my window, just to check if theghost girl might have come back, but all I saw were vans delivering flowers and cars with people getting out, their hands full of casserole dishes and plates covered with foil.

  I went down to Grand's room. She was sitting at her desk.

  "What's with all the people delivering food?" I demanded.

  "It's a southern thing," she said. "You always take food to a house where...someone has died."

  "But we have a chef," I waved my arms around like it was Grand's fault these strangers were coming to our house.

  "Doesn't matter. It's what we—what southerners do, like eating turnip greens and..." her voice trailed off.

  "Well, that's just great. What are we going to do—no, what is Brent going to do with a dozen casseroles?"

  "Oh, they'll come in handy. It's a thoughtful thing, Tommy, so people who have had a loss won't have to think about cooking."

  The phone rang and Grand answered it. Her voice sounded funny, kind of cold and distant.

  "All right. Oh, that's nice. We'll be expecting you." She hung up. "Your Uncle Clay is ahead of schedule. I've got to send Ray out now to the airport to get them."