Chapter Five
When I woke up, the blinds were closed again. I was sure I hadn’t gotten out of bed all night, because the cat and I were in the exact same positions as when I fell asleep. A feeling I couldn’t quite explain crept up my spine. It was as if I’d thought the world was in focus, but now I could see that it was a little off-kilter. Either that or I was worried that there was someone secretly living in my house that liked to close the blinds while I slept. Oh, and they’d broken into my room at Hattie’s to close them there too.
What I needed was some answers, and hopefully they didn’t end with me being completely nuts. I stood up from my bed and planted my feet on the floor as another new idea hit me. This one was as if there was a tiny itch in the back of my brain. Hangman’s House wasn’t what it appeared to be.
I’d seen it as just another old house, but it was like I’d connected with it in a deeper way. There was so much more, and all I had to do was open my eyes and look. I had no idea where these thoughts were coming from, but it was almost as if they radiated up from the floorboards, traveled up my body, and then lodged themselves in my brain. Just like everything else, it was crazy, but it felt like the house had established a telepathic link straight to my mind. Could houses even think?
I stepped out into the hallway and looked around. Nothing seemed any different, but as I was about to write off my feelings as being more craziness, my eyes drifted up to the pull chain that would grant me access to the attic.
The chain stuck at first, but two good, hard yanks and the stairs came down with a loud creaking sound. “Let’s do this,” I said to Meri without really considering that I was talking to him again. “But I guess you already know what’s up here.”
At the top of the stairs I felt along the wall until I found a switch. I almost fell backwards down the steps when the light came on, and I saw what was in the attic.
“Get out,” I whispered. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope, it’s real.”
“You’re talking again and it’s freaking me out,” I said to Meri without looking at him.
“Your denial was amusing at first but now it’s getting old,” he responded.
“Shut up and look at all these books,” I said as I glided across the rug to the first shelf. “This is insane.”
“Like you?” Meri quipped.
I shot him a look over my shoulder, but nothing could distract me from what I’d found. The attic was huge, and I realized it was more like one big, open third story than a cramped storage space. There were rows and rows of bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling, and the other wall was lined with shelves all the way around the perimeter too.
Most of the books were just an extensive collection of fiction dating back to the first books made on a printing press. I didn’t even want to think about how much they were worth. Some were just paperbacks and library copies, but there were a lot of first editions too. In the middle of everything was a shelf that looked different. The wood was different, and the books in that case looked like they were written in Latin. I wasn’t sure because I couldn’t read Latin, but it was definitely an old language.
“I wonder what these are?” I pondered out loud.
“Witch books,” Meri answered.
“What?”
“Magic books.”
I pulled one off the shelf. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? I can’t even read what they say.”
“That one is The Book of Magical Charms,” he said.
“Oh, really?” I asked and opened the book. “What is it about?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. As long as I’ve been alive, no witch has ever been powerful enough to decipher it.”
“That’s convenient,” I said and put it back before pulling a black book from the shelf below. “What about this one?”
“That is a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum. The Hammer of Witches. It was a witch-hunting manual,” Meri said.
“Then what is it doing here?”
“One of your ancestors stole it from the witch hunter who tried to kill her. She put a hex on his family, but only to end their witch hunting. As long as the book is in your possession, that bloodline will not hunt witches again.”
“There are families of witches and witch hunters too?”
“Yes.”
“I think I want to know more about some of these,” I said.
“What do you want to know?” Meri asked.
Reminding myself that, for my grip on sanity, I should not be conversing with a talking black cat about witch books, I pulled my phone out of my pajama pocket and Googled for the closest antique book dealer. I expected to have to drive into the nearest city, but there was a place called Badersmith Books right in Coventry.
I grabbed a stack of the books that seemed like the most important ones and headed back to the bedroom to get dressed. Once I was presentable, I slipped the books into an old backpack from my college days and headed out to the car.
When I opened the door, Meri jumped in and made himself at home in the passenger seat. It wasn’t the strangest thing to happen in my recent memory, so I decided to let him stay.
“If you’re riding along, then you can at least give me directions to Badersmith Books,” I said as I fastened my seatbelt.
I reasoned that it would prove that Meri wasn’t real. If he was just my imagination, then he wouldn’t be able to give me accurate directions to the bookstore because I’d never been there before. It might also mean that I was completely nuts, but at that point I wasn’t sure which I was more afraid of. Was it worse to be crazy or to find out that everything I thought I knew about the world was wrong?
As I pulled into the small parking lot for Badersmith Books, I had to stifle a whimper. Meri’s directions had been spot on.
“I just saw the directions when I looked the place up on my phone,” I reasoned. “The cat didn’t just give me directions. It was just imprinted on my subconscious mind. That has to be it. I’m not crazy and the cat doesn’t talk.”
“Brighton, calm down,” Meri said.
I covered my ears with my hands and closed my eyes. “I’m not crazy and the cat doesn’t talk.”
If I hadn’t still been seatbelted in, the tap on my driver’s side window would have made me jump high enough to hit my head on the roof of my car. It was Sheriff Wilson, Thorn, and he was looking at me like I was a nutjob babbling to herself in her car at the bookstore. With her cat. Which I was.
He stepped back and I got out of the car. Without even thinking about it, I left the door open long enough for Meri to hop out too. When I saw him sitting on the ground next to me, I didn’t say anything. There was no way I was going to leave an animal in the car while I went into the store. I’d seen all those PSAs about how cracking a window isn’t enough. That cat had become the bane of my existence, but I wouldn’t let him suffer.
“Why are you here, ma’am?” Thorn’s voice was curt, and clearly he wasn’t glad to see me.
“Brighton,” I corrected. “You keep calling me ma’am and it makes me feel old or like a suspect.”
“Should you be a suspect?” He cocked one eyebrow high.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling because I found the gesture completely adorable. I found Thorn attractive and intriguing, but it was evident he found me to be a pain in the butt.
“No, I shouldn’t be,” I said and squared my shoulders. “But as far as what I’m doing here, it’s a bookstore. I’m here about books.”
“You need to wait here,” Thorn said and he abruptly turned and walked into the store without so much as a backward glance.
That was until he got to the door. Before he pulled it open, he stood there for a moment studying me. His look had softened, and he regarded me with curiosity when I’d expected contempt. Before he ducked into the store, he held up his index finger indicating that I should wait a minute. I went around to the passenger side and removed the stack of books from my b
ackpack.
I did wait one minute, and then annoyed at being made to wait in the parking lot of the bookstore with no explanation, I proceeded inside.
Once I was inside, I stayed near the door because I could hear Thorn and another man talking. I’d let the door close behind me softly, so my presence didn’t interrupt their conversation.
I realized quite quickly that it was Thorn asking the man about a rumor he’d heard. Apparently, Ralph, the bookstore owner, and Harkin had a loud argument the week before at Mann’s Gas & Grocery. Ralph admitted to the argument without missing a beat, but unfortunately for my curious heart, he didn’t go into any detail as to what the argument was about. Thorn pressed the issue, but Ralph continued to insist it was a stupid squabble about the last box of cinnamon cereal.
After a few more attempts, Thorn grew increasingly frustrated and turned to leave. He didn’t seem pleased to find me standing near the entrance as he made his way to the door.
I ignored his piercing stare and brushed past him to the counter where Ralph stood looking bored. After setting the books down, I introduced myself and told him where I found the books.
“Hello, I’m Brighton Longfield. I just moved into Hangman’s House. I was going to clean out the attic, but to my surprise, I found that the attic is actually a fairly extensive home library. I brought some of the books that piqued my interest. I was hoping you could tell me more about them.”
I could have sworn that he looked nervous. “Those are old spell books,” he said with an anxious chuckle as his eyes darted behind me. “Of course, they’re all nonsense.”
When he kept staring over my shoulder, I turned to see Thorn standing in the spot I’d just vacated. He was watching us and listening to our conversation. I fought the urge to get annoyed because he was doing the exact same thing I’d just been doing. How could I fault him for that?
He must have been convinced that we were just discussing old books because he turned with a wave and left. As soon as he was out the door, Ralph came out from behind the counter. He went to the doors, locked them, and turned the sign in the window to closed before returning to me.
It unnerved me at first, and Ralph must have picked up on that. “I get nervous when there are books of this value just hanging around out in the open. I locked the door as a precaution.”
That made sense, and I relaxed a little. But I tensed up again when he picked up one of the books and began caressing it in a way that was a little over-the-top creepy. I took a step back as I watched him flip through the books and stroke their pages and spines. It took all of my strength not to snatch them all away from him to protect their dignity. He was practically slobbering over the volumes.
The very last one he paged through had him shaking with excitement. He looked as though he was going to explode, and then he hugged the book to his chest and turned to me. It was a handwritten tome with a black leather cover that had been stamped with a gold pentagram. Of the books, I thought it would be the one of the least value, but I’d been wrong.
“I will give you two hundred and fifty thousand for this book right now,” he said. “We’ll call the bank on speakerphone if you like and they’ll confirm for you that the check is real,” he said, turning his body slightly away from me as if to keep me from taking the volume back.
Just then, Meri jumped on my shoulder again. “Do not sell your ancestral magic books, Brighton. No amount of money in the world is worth it.”
My stomach churned at the thought of turning down that much money. Especially since it was for a book that up until an hour ago, I didn’t even know I had. How could I miss something I’d never used or needed? Still, given the way Ralph was acting, I trusted that cat more than his creepy butt. I had to question my sanity, but it just felt like the right thing to do.
“No thanks,” I said and reached over to pull the book from his clutches. “I’m not in the market to sell them right now.”
His face turned red and his eyes narrowed. “Well, I’m busy man, and we’re closing early today.” Ralph came around the counter.
As I grabbed my books, he moved closer to me crowding me toward the door. “I’ll just be going then,” I said as I hugged the stack of books to my chest protectively. It was a mirror of what he’d done, but the difference was that they were my books.
He rushed me to the door, and I was more than happy to oblige. Ralph had left the key in the lock, so I twisted it and let myself out. When I looked back, he was glaring at me and relocking the door.
Meri was on my heels, and then we were back in the car and headed home. “If you knew what the books were, why didn’t you just tell me?” I demanded from Meri once we were on the road. “Why did you make me go in there to get answers you already had?”
“Because now you believe me, and you wouldn’t have if I didn’t let Ralph do the convincing for me,” he said and licked his paw casually.
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Maybe the book is just worth a lot of money. But I would definitely have it appraised by a second source at least before taking an offer for it. He could have low-balled me. It could be worth twice that much.”
“Brighton, you cannot sell that book,” Meri said as we pulled into the driveway. “That’s your family legacy, and it could cause catastrophic damage if it ever fell into the wrong hands.”
I got out of the car and let Meri out. “Let’s go inside and I promise to try and set some of my skepticism aside if you’ll tell me more.”
Once we were inside, I checked the cabinets and found a box of herbal tea that seemed familiar but that I didn’t remember buying. It wasn’t surprising as I often mindlessly threw things in my shopping basket.
When the tea was made, I settled in on the sofa in the living room with the books stacked next to me. It would have been nice to have a fire to make the room more cozy, but I was too worried about burning Hangman’s House down to even attempt it.
While I sipped my tea, Meri jumped into my lap and made himself comfortable. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know about my family. You say we’re witches, but no one other than Maude has ever even mentioned anything about magic. My grandmother didn’t want me moving here. Is this why? But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would they have all turned away from their heritage?”
“The Tuttlesmiths and the Skeenbauers are the founding families of Coventry. If you go to the courthouse, there is a statue outside of the two original witch families. But it’s not just a courthouse, Brighton, it’s a temple, and they built it on a ley line. Do you know what that is?”
“It’s some kind of magnetic line that circles the Earth,” I answered.
“It’s more than that, Brighton. It’s a line of power, and it acts as a beacon to paranormal creatures and magic. Anyone who has any kind of magical ability will find it amplified when they stand on the node of a ley line. The courthouse is a temple built on a place of power.
“The Skeenbauers and Tuttlesmiths lived in harmony for a long time, but eventually, the human population began to grow. The two families disagreed on how to manage magic and what laws to enforce in Coventry. The Skeenbauers didn’t want to allow humans to move into the town, but the Tuttlesmiths could see that times were changing. They knew there was no way to keep them out forever, and they felt it was better to hide in plain sight.
“The disagreement eventually led to feuding. It was never outwardly violent, but took the form of more subtle hexes like poisoning each other’s crops and infertility spells. After decades of that, both families dwindled to only a few descendants.
“It would appear that the witch families had been lost to the modern era, but forty years ago, Amelda Skeenbauer became the matriarch and leader of the Skeenbauer coven. She renewed the feud in a grab for power, but it wasn’t difficult. The Tuttlesmith numbers had dwindled even more than the Skeenbauers. There weren’t many of them left at all, and most of them hadn’t paid much attention to maintaining their powers. She was success
ful in driving them out of Coventry. The one witch who remained was powerful enough to oppose her, but Amelda turned to the humans and had her thrown into an asylum. It didn’t take much to get a single woman committed back in those days.
“For Amelda the move was more about pride than it was about closing Coventry off to humans. By then, it was too impractical. But she and the other Skeenbauer witches had Coventry all to themselves. They had the temple and the ley line power under their complete control. Until you came along.”
“How does anyone not notice this going on? How can magic hide in plain sight? We’re in the internet age.”
“Well, Coventry does draw a lot of parapsychologists because honestly, the proof that magic exists is right there out in the open. Most people are conditioned to ignore it, though. They write those who do believe off as nutjobs. The non-witch residents of Coventry never seem to notice the parapsychologists or the investigations. Humans willfully ignore it all.”
“But if Maude was so powerful, why did she allow the humans to take her away? Why did she let them keep her locked up like that?”
“They kept her drugged and sedated for a long time, Brighton. By the time they stopped doing that, she had lost the will to use her powers. They dwindled to almost nothing once she left the radius of the node and stopped practicing. Plus, the way her family treated her broke her spirit. What Amelda did wasn’t the worst. Maude suffered far worse at the hands of her own family. They disowned her and took all of her assets other than the deed to Hangman’s House. They had the deed, but for some reason, they could never sell the house. No one would buy it. I believe that whatever magic Maude had left, she used it to ensure that this house would end up back in the hands of a worthy Tuttlesmith. She could never get away because she made sure you would end up here.”
Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection Page 5