by Tom Hansen
“I have one more thing I need to show you, in the library. I didn’t bring it up with Ushageeta because, well, I haven’t been able to really figure it out myself yet.” She stole a glance outside, noting the lack of sunlight. That was perfect. Maybe a car would pass by and Edna could see the same face. “But given everything else, I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind.”
Nancy grabbed two cups and placed them on the counter before placing a teabag in each. “We have a couple minutes till the water is boiling.”
Nancy led the way to the library where she flipped on the light. The second she walked into the room, she felt a chill run up her spine, culminating in her head. She stopped and shuddered. She put out her hand to steady herself.
“You alright?” Edna’s face grew concerned.
“Yeah, just got the willies is all.”
Edna frowned. “Well, don’t faint on me, I probably wouldn’t be able to pick you up.”
Nancy chuckled slightly as she held onto the doorframe to help balance her. “You mean you wouldn’t have that superhuman strength I hear about?”
Edna smiled. “Pretty sure that only works with mothers when their children are trapped under cars. Besides, I’m certain you’re the mother in this relationship.”
“If that’s the case, I have a few decades of spankings I need to catch up on.”
Edna winked. “You would be the type, wouldn’t you?”
Nancy recoiled. “Oh you. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Edna laughed. “Of course you didn’t, which is why it’s so much cuter when you overreact.” Edna grabbed Nancy around the shoulders and squeezed. “Feeling better?”
Nancy nodded. “Yeah, just one of those spine tingling things. Been a long day I think. I’ll be glad to get some sleep.”
Nancy took a couple steps forward and turned. “I told you my husband inherited this house from his uncle when he passed away. Richard used to hide our valuables behind this spot in the library.”
Edna clapped her hands and giggled with delight. “Such excitement!”
Nancy breathed in slowly, calming herself. When the tingle drew up her spine again, she shuddered, twisting her head slightly to the sensation as she breathed out. A feeling warmed over her; it was like she could feel someone at the door. X-ray vision without the sight. Women’s intuition on steroids. She had the strong sense that two people were at the door, maybe three? Clearly she needed some training on these new witchy powers of hers.
Nancy took a step forward toward the hidden compartment when the doorbell rang.
Chapter Sixteen
Nancy Moon.
Nancy recognized the voice in her head immediately. It was the girl in her dream. The one in the blue dress.
“Who could that be?” Edna asked.
Nancy shook the dream voice out of her head before replying, “I’m not sure.”
“Should I answer it for you?” Edna started walking toward the foyer.
Be careful.
The voice in her head called to her again.
“No, I’ll get it. Stay here.”
Nancy walked out of the library and over to the front door. A forceful knock surprised her again as she grabbed the handle. She breathed again. Calming herself, then opened the door.
Who she saw shouldn’t have been a surprise, yet somehow she already knew.
“Anca.” She looked back and forth through the door to look for the others that she felt. Nancy didn’t see anyone, which was disconcerting with the feeling she had. “What brings you here this late?” And how did you know my address?
Anca looked up at her, her eyes fuming. “I go to park and you not there. Why you not there when I come?”
“I am sorry, Anca. Something else came up and I was not able to make it to the park.”
Anca pursed her lips before talking again. “You break promise of meeting. I have to track you down.”
Nancy frowned at this statement. “I’m sorry, but I had something come up. I realize I made an appointment with you, but I’m not going to take this accusatory tone from you. It’s late. I’m about to go to bed. If you still want to talk about Linda, I will be happy to discuss it tomorrow or the next day. I’m tired, and I am sorry you made the drive all the way out here for nothing, but I have to insist that we do this tomorrow.”
Anca took a step forward, the edge of her shoe just barely touching the threshold between the brick of the porch and the wood floor of the foyer.
Nancy heard the voice in her head again. Shut the door, Nancy. Drive the witch from your home.
Anca looked up in surprise at Nancy. “What did you say about me?”
Nancy responded. “I didn’t say anything. Now please if you could just —”
Anca took another step forward but stopped, as if some invisible wall was in the way.
Nancy remembered the feelings she had when she entered Ushageeta’s and Anca’s homes.
Anca took a step back, shaking her head slightly as she muttered something so quiet Nancy couldn’t pick it out.
Nancy tried to fill the silence. “I’m really sorry about not being there. Something came up that I couldn’t miss.”
A mixture of emotions flashed across Anca's face. She looked away for half a second. A tear flowed down her cheek. “No. I’m sorry for way I treat you. I have had rough week, and I think I was in shock over Linda’s death. I see that now, I see that I’ve not been treating her death like I should and the main reason I wanted to see you tonight was to apologize. I also treated you poorly when you came looking for him after he … he disappeared.”
Nancy didn’t quite know what to say. Anca seemed genuinely remorseful about Linda’s untimely death. People grieved in different ways, didn’t they? Maybe Anca was just unable to process the fact that Linda was dead until now? Something tugged at Nancy’s mind, though, telling her this was not a good idea. Was it? Would it really make much of a difference? She had a lot to think about and a long and confusing day to process. Still, having Edna here meant the two would be up late talking about things anyway. Edna didn’t seem to know how to go to bed before midnight.
She glanced over to look at her friend, but Edna wasn’t where she had originally been standing. Maybe she had gone to the kitchen?
She looked back at Anca, who had another tear flowing down her cheek. She looked like she had lost a hundred years of age. Nancy’s heart dropped. Something seemed amiss, but it was all so confusing. She felt a slight tingle in her stomach.
“I’m sorry, Anca. I’m really tired. I was about to go to bed myself. Can this wait till tomorrow?” Nancy had the flash of a second—or was it third?—presence in the front yard. She looked past Anca but didn’t see anything. She wondered if Edna had snuck out the back door to get to her car.
“Please, I came to give you a gift. I only need to be here for a minute then I will leave and we can meet another day.” Anca smiled and that was too much for Nancy. Her normal logical self was being taken over by her emotional side, something that didn’t react too well to logical explanations.
“May I come in?”
Be careful. That voice again, only much more distant this time.
She nodded, managing a weak smile. “Fine. Just for a minute.” Nancy took a step back to allow Anca to come in.
The second Anca crossed the threshold, Edna, who seemed to be hiding in the library, sneezed. It was enough to knock Nancy out of the emotional haze that clouded her judgment. Reality slammed into her like a derailed train, chaos and death, despair and terror all hit her at once. Her mind flashed back to the last few times Edna had sneezed and something clicked. The tiger!
In that singular moment, Nancy realized a key piece of information she had been missing this entire time. It all was so fantastic, but after everything that happened, was it really that out of the question?
Anca’s face was a sneer and a laugh, twisted in joy and disdain, with a hint of triumph.
Behind Anca came a roar and a wall of orange
and black fur filled the doorway. Oh God, what have I done? Nancy’s hunch was correct.
Nancy stumbled back from the door, hitting her head on the wall behind her.
The snarling beast bounded into the foyer, filling up most of the space. Anca squeezed in behind it, shoving the cat’s hindquarters out of the way so she could get inside. Nancy seemed to be seeing stars, but she recognized something in those terrible feline eyes, something she had seen before.
“I thought I noticed something about you before.” Anca’s voice had changed, no longer mournful and sad, but willful, powerful. It was the same voice she used when she was angry.
Anca took another step forward as Nancy took a step back. Nancy kept a pistol upstairs in the side table next to her bed, but she doubted she would be able to make it up there in time.
Anca snapped her head to the side and looked down the hall to the library where Edna was standing. “Very clever, putting a nullicant on your house. Such a powerful one, too. You have been hiding out on me, haven’t you? Oh my, this is quite the place you have here. So many nooks and crannies to keep secrets. No matter. I have all the time in the world to tear this place apart till I find it.
“And you.” Her eyes were back on Nancy. “Keeping low, hiding all these years. Staying out of sight so the rest of us don’t know about you. Very sneaky, but now I’ve found you.”
Nancy stammered while taking a couple sidesteps toward Edna. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Now, please. Leave!”
“I want the bukvar back. I know you stole it!”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Anca took another step forward, raising her finger in front of her face to point it at Nancy. “I will tear this place apart to find it. I will tear you apart, if I must.”
The tiger loomed behind Anca, filling the doorway. Its frightening gaze never left Nancy’s. Despite being large, its features looked stretched, like it was too long and thin. Nancy had never stood next to one of these cats before, but she had a feeling this one was larger than normal.
Those eyes, though. Nancy had seen those eyes. So expressive, so full of emotions. It had to be the same tiger she had seen on the hood of her car only a few days before. But those eyes, those golden-rimmed eyes, held … knowing.
Nancy tried to inch sideways toward her friend.
Anca glared, and the tiger growled as it took a step inside the foyer. Anca raised her hand at Nancy and shot her fingers out from her closed fist. Something hit Nancy square in the chest, throwing her back, knocking the wind out of her. Her head whipped back and cracked into the wall. Plaster sprayed out from the impact, and dust flew from her face.
Anca spewed forth a string of words that sounded like cursing. She glared at her hand held in front of her like it had done something wrong.
To her side, Nancy saw the shape of her friend, holding something long and thin in her hand. Edna sneezed again, unable to contain her allergies. Nancy tried to focus on what was in Edna’s hand but the crack against the wall had caused her eyesight to go a bit blurry.
“No, Edna—” The words caught in her throat as the pain from the blow to her head caught up with her. The space around her moved in waves, threatening to topple her. She reached out to the small table against the wall for support. She just needed to stand, make it to her gun, or a phone, but she couldn’t see or think. Everything was happening so fast.
Anca shouted angry foreign words Nancy couldn’t understand. Edna edged toward Anca with … was that a fireplace poker in her hand? Nancy shook her head. No, not like this, you need to run!
She turned to the side to yell at Edna, but words were not able to form in her mouth. Anca raised her hand again, her lips moved ever so slightly and flung her fingers out again.
“Edna!” Nancy finally managed to yell at the top of her lungs. She could hear the panic in her own voice.
Edna’s eyes went wide; pain and fear danced on her face. Then she went slack, falling to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Rage filled Nancy as she watched her friend crumple. She began to reach for the poker.
Suddenly, Anca screamed, a bloodcurdling, painful wail. Nancy turned to see Anca being pulled backwards by an invisible force. Anca struggled to move, to take a step. Her arms flailed wildly as she railed against whatever was pulling her back through the doorway and out onto the sidewalk.
Once she was past the threshold. Anca stopped moving. She stopped screaming and looked around, confused. She touched her middle, a mild look of perplexity and frantic stress on her face.
Despite the pain in her head, Nancy had to chuckle. “But only for a minute,” she said to Anca, realizing her limited invitation must have been binding.
Anca looked up at Nancy, her mouth twisted in rage. “You!”
The massive tiger filled Nancy’s field of vision, as if to remind her he was still there. Its reeking breath bore down on her. Anca had somehow been pulled out of her house by some unseen force, but her vicious minion was still inside.
Anca seemed to come to this conclusion at the same time and barked an order. The tiger’s head snapped up in response, its predatory eyes boring into Nancy’s sockets. Nancy tasted blood in her mouth and shivered.
Her mind screamed. She wasn’t sure if her mouth made the same sound. Terror overwhelmed her senses, preventing her from hearing anything but an unbridled roar as the tiger’s massive blood-stained paw came crashing down on her head.
Chapter Seventeen
The smell of rotten meat woke her up and made her stomach roil.
Then the pain overpowered the smell.
Not a sharp pain, but a dull one on the entire right side of her head, telescoping from the back to her jaw. She kept her eyes closed as she breathed in the horrible scent again.
God, what are these people eating in here? She tried to move but found her arms were immobile, bound behind her.
That’s when she tried to yell, only to realize that a foul-smelling rag had been crammed into her mouth, allowing only a muffled moan to escape.
Nancy wretched, dry heaving, trying as best she could not to throw up. She worried where the foul bile from her stomach would end up, not having anywhere to go with the rag in her mouth.
She opened her eyes and looked around. The room she was in was at least thirty feet wide in both directions. It reminded her of a warehouse or a partially constructed floor on a skyscraper. Two steels doors led out through two different walls. The floor beneath her was old, worn wood, something not commonly found in a warehouse. Three small windows with arched peaks on top lined the wall opposite her. They were uncovered and dark. Must still be nighttime.
A wave of dull pain spread across her head. She winced and sucked in a breath, which made her stomach churn again, threatening to expel its contents.
Nancy closed her eyes and concentrated on a single dot of light in her vision, an exercise her mother had taught her decades ago to control wild terrors and focus her mind. The pounding of blood in her temples lessened and her frustration and terror abated. Her jaw relaxed, reducing the overwhelming need to wretch and make a bad situation worse.
She looked around more at her prison.
A dark wood podium stood between two desks covered in heaps of papers, books, and candles. The space directly in front of the podium was cleared of the clutter that littered the rest of the room. A six-sided star had been drawn in white chalk with a large black circle surrounding it, just touching the tips of each point. Dusty, unlit red and black candles were spaced around the circle, while an oddly familiar character was scribbled in the middle, similar to the ones she had seen in her house.
The whole macabre setting filled Nancy with dread. She didn’t know where she was or where Edna was.
She continued to scan the perimeter of the large room. Three cages littered the outskirts of the space, along with a multitude of boxes next to one of the steel doors. She glanced at the windows again, certain she had seen that style before bu
t not sure where to place them.
The steel door in the wall to her right opened and Nancy caught the dim light showcasing a stout shadow that walked through it.
Anca entered. Nancy suddenly remembered where she had seen those windows. She must be in the rest of the upstairs behind Anca’s apartment, probably through the door Anca had yelled at her for touching.
The light from the other room illuminated the cages next to the door, and in one of them was the unmoving shape of Edna Maddox. Trepidation flooded Nancy as she stared at her friend. Edna’s chest rose and fell.
Well, that is something.
Just as the door was closing, however, Nancy caught the shadowed shape of another entity in the room. Situated just to the left of Edna’s cage was the tiger, sitting calmly on his haunches, watching Nancy. She had missed it before, but now that she knew where to look she could see the reflective eyes of the beast staring at her constantly.
Nancy heard the distinct shuffle of metallic chains as the tiger looked over to its master. As it turned its head, Nancy caught the glimpse of a large manacle around its neck. The thick iron chains, anchored into the concrete wall, were taut as it leaned toward the cage where Edna lay just out of reach.
Anca strode across the room and pulled the rag out. Nancy dry-heaved one more time as her mind lingered on the smell of the rag. She could still smell the foul stench, though, as the rag now hung loosely around her neck. Stale coffee smell from Anca’s breath helped Nancy get over the wretched rotten meat aroma.
“Good to see you awake. Is the head still hurting?”
Nancy glared back. She wanted to scream, spit, and kick. She wanted to knock this woman out, but she needed to develop a plan.
“Silent treatment.” Anca sauntered over to one of the desks and placed a cup down. Wisps of steam dissipated into the air, causing Nancy’s mouth to salivate.
Anca seemed different. She almost seemed cordial, a far cry from how she was acting at Nancy’s house. How long had it taken Anca to drag them back here to her lair? What time was it?