Blood Creek Witch Page 19

  “Did he ever use it?”

  “All the time. I used to re-read his letters, especially after he died. But there weren’t nothing really secret in them. He just included special messages to me to let me know he was thinking about me. Even though mama knew the same trick, I felt like they were my private letters.”

  “And you say Grandma Annabelle taught that to him?”

  “Yes. You said you didn’t see anything really useful in those books. Maybe we ought to check them for hidden messages.”

  Jenny considered this. “Who else knows about this?”

  “Outside of the family? Nobody.”

  Secret codes for her family inside her journal? Jenny’s only reason for hesitation was fear of disappointment if they weren’t there. “Let’s go.”

  When they got to the church it was, as usual, unlocked. This time, Preacher Harris was cleaning, preparing the building for the evening’s meeting. Jessabelle stood watch outside as Jenny slipped in, trying not to alert the preacher. He was vacuuming, his back turned to her. She ducked over to the side shelf, hidden from his view, and reached behind the old shoes for her grandmother’s journal.

  It wasn’t there. Jenny stood on her tip-toes to examine the bottom of the shelf, but there was nothing there. Had Evelyn discovered it? Had anyone else? How would she find it?

  “Looking for something?” The strange, shrill voice behind her caused her to jump. Jenny spun around and faced the woman in the polka-dot dress. Aside from her creepy eyes, she seemed almost physical.

  “Esther!”

  “You put that horrible book here, the one by Victoria Norton’s daughter! The book full of Devil-work, here, in the Lord’s house!”

  “Did you read it?” Jenny asked.

  Esther seemed baffled. Whether it was by the question itself, or simply the fact that Jenny responded to her, Jenny couldn’t tell. Finally she answered, “I would never read such filth.”

  “Then how did you know what was in it? It was full of stories of raising her children.”

  “Mixed with the Devil’s recipes, no doubt!”

  Jenny didn’t have an answer for that one. She doubted there’d be much point to arguing with a ghost. “What happened to it?”

  Esther crossed her arms and twisted her lips into a smug expression.

  “You moved it?”

  “I prevailed upon the preacher to move it.”

  “How? Can he see you? Can he hear you?”

  “I whisper into his ear. He listens without realizing it.”

  “And you don’t think that’s evil, too? Influencing him like that?”

  “He needs a woman’s influence, with Alice gone.”

  “You’re not a woman anymore, Esther. You’re a ghost! Why do you even stay here?”

  Too late, Jenny realized the vacuum cleaner had turned off several seconds ago. Preacher Harris poked his head around the corner, staring at her.

  “Jennifer, who are you talking to?”

  It seemed impossible, but Esther’s expression took on a deeper shade of smug.

  Once again, Jenny felt bad about lying in a church, or to a preacher. He’d seen too much already, and if he was the one who took the book, she’d have to deal with him anyway. “I’m talking to the resident ghost, Esther.”

  “There are no such things as ghosts, Jennifer.”

  Esther dropped her hands, frowning.

  “I don’t think Esther likes that answer,” Jenny said.

  Preacher Harris shook his head. “No. This is what I keep trying to tell your aunt. There are demons who masquerade as ghosts, but no lingering spirits of the living.”

  Esther stamped her foot, although it made no noise. “Well, I never…! A demon! Who do you think you are?” She waved her hands in the air. “Would a demon be in a church? Would a demon help you fight against witchcraft and other evil? Would a demon help preacher after preacher who served this community?”

  “She disagrees. She says she inspires you and helps you and others fight witchcraft and evil. She helped you find my grandmother’s diary.”

  “No, nothing of the sort. You may mean well, but these kinds of stories…”

  Esther folded her arms. “Oh, he thinks he’s so smart? He took your book to his house, and placed it on his closet shelf, where he keeps other material of questionable virtue. Like those fantasy stories! Pagan garbage! He shouldn’t waste time reading about lords of rings and wizards and other nonsense.”

  Jenny repeated her own version of Esther’s comment. “You put it on your closet shelf?”

  Preacher Harris stopped, and the color drained from his face. “What? How did you…?”

  “I told you. Esther also disapproves of your choice of literature.”

  Harris gasped. “I was going to put it in the lost and found, but I didn’t feel comfortable storing it here in the church building.”

  “May I have it back, please?”

  “Yes, Jennifer. I’ll go get it right away.”

  Jenny shifted her gaze between Harris and Esther. “Look, I know you both have problems with my family’s history. And I don’t know enough about it say whether you are right or wrong. But, my aunt is a good person who is trying to protect her neighbors from some really scary stuff, and almost died last night doing it. I would hope that counts for something.”

  Esther faded from view.

  Preacher Harris said quietly, “Let’s go get the book.”

  As they circled around the church to the house behind it, Jenny said, “If it’s all the same to you, please don’t mention the book to anyone else. There may be stuff in there that someone might use to hurt people.”

  “I wouldn’t know, Jennifer. Once I realized what it was, I stopped reading. But I see no reason to tell anyone that I know anything about it.”

  She stopped at the threshold of the house, while he brought out the diary. He handed it to her. “Please understand, I have to teach what I know. There’s much that I don’t understand. I consider your aunt a friend, even though we have gone the rounds a few times on matters of doctrine. I think she understands that, and I hope you will, too.”

  Jenny took the diary, and simply said, “Thank you.”

  Jessabelle decoded the diary out loud while Jenny wrote everything down on a pad of paper. Jessabelle made some mistakes, explaining that it had been a long time and that there were some special rules based on punctuation to keep things from being too easy to decode. Jenny discovered that many of the spelling and punctuation errors on Annabelle’s part were deliberate keys to the message.

  The hidden message explained the few spells listed in the book. In one, Annabelle described a charm to break a witch’s curse. The recipe called for the “blood of a saint” in its original form, which put it in the realm of unattainable as far as Jenny was concerned. Weren’t saints all long dead? She doubted anyone had blood samples in a filing cabinet at the Vatican or anything like that. But the selected words pulled out of that section of the recipe read, “I think anyone who stands up for truth like that, and is able to resist evil and temptation, is a saint.” It was cryptic and probably unusable, but no longer in the realm of impossible.

  The closer to the end, the more hastily the journal had been written. Annabelle relied more on abbreviations and shortcuts, filling in a single day’s entry on multiple pages. The encoded messages got more complex and seemed like they needed another code to decipher, leaving out punctuation and a solid order.

  “What does RTB mean?” Jenny asked. “She uses that a lot at the end. Like, `Up Blood Creek to RTB.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think it means ‘round the bend. She talks about it a few times. I remember her talking to Aunt Hattie about going ‘round the bend.”

  “Okay. Maybe that’s what it stands for, but what does that mean?”

  “Normally?” Jessabelle shrugged. “Around here, folks sometimes say that means going crazy.”

  “That’s what it sounds like without the coded message.
Like she thought she was going crazy and would die soon. But your decoded part sounds like it’s an actual place: ‘Old seals are gone. My best chance is to go RTB soon. I’ll lock the way behind me, but you’ll have the key to find me. Up Blood Creek to RTB.’ And then here, she was talking about what I thought was a weird recipe, and she explains how to assemble it into a witch bottle. What’s a witch bottle?”

  Jessabelle shrugged, shaking her head. “I was ten years old when grandma disappeared. Men went searching through the woods to find her, but couldn’t. That wasn’t so unusual. Folks used to disappear a lot around here. They told me she’d taken sick in the head, and had wandered off and died. I had nightmares about finding grandma cold and dead in the woods, getting eaten by bugs.”

  “Bugs?”

  “I don’t know why, it’s just what I dreamed up. Bugs were scary.”

  “Do you think she knew what she was doing?”

  “After what we’ve seen, do you think she was just being crazy?”

  “No. I just wish I knew where this ‘round-the-bend’ place is.”

  Jessabelle glanced at Jenny’s notes. “Up at the head of the creek, maybe?” Jenny cast her an exaggerated dirty look, and Jessabelle snorted. “Sean said he saw a glowing bottle there. Maybe it was a marker, and there’s a cave or something up there. Jack and I were talking. Maybe that’s where these monsters came from.”

  “And our grandmother went there? Why? To keep the monsters from coming out? Is that what she meant by locking the way?”

  Jessabelle shrugged. “Maybe. Although look at that message at the end again.”

  The encoded message from the last few pages was choppy and almost incoherent compared to the concise and cohesive information earlier in the book. Jenny could easily make the case that her grandmother’s mental faculties were degrading, or that she was simply in a hurry. The final coded message read, “Bottle blocks must do both sides RTB. Stop white suit bring daughter here pat key is safe prayer mother loves you always.”

  “D’ya have any idea what a ‘pat key’ is?” Jessabelle asked.

  “I don’t know. Unless she was talking about my mother, who changed her name to Patricia. But she went by Trisha. Did Grandma Annabelle know her changed name? ‘Bring daughter here pat.’ Sounds like she wanted my mom to come home or something.”

  Jessabelle shook her head. “She don’t write like that. She was in a hurry, though. Maybe she was asking your momma to bring you here.”

  “The white suit is a reference to that man from the hospital. She needed to stop that creepy guy.”

  “Key is safe? What key?”

  Jenny looked back over their notes. “There’s the witch-bottle to prevent travel from the RTB, and she suggests she’s going there. To place a bottle on the other side? So that nobody can go in or out? So maybe if you have the key you can get through?”

  Jessabelle held the last blank pages up so the setting sun as was framed by the mountain and tree branches, as if trying to wring one final secret from the diary. She slammed the book closed, suddenly, and asked, “What time is it?”

  “Almost seven.”

  “I’m gonna be late for the meeting!”

  “Are you going to say anything?”

  Jessabelle shook her head. “Maybe. I guess if Jack needs me to back him up. After what that ogre did to Hattie’s house last night, they got to be ready to hear him out. Especially when we can direct them straight there.”

  “I’ll be at the farm. With Sean, probably.”

  “Jenny, stay hidden, okay? I’ll find you. I reckon Evelyn’s gonna be fit to be tied when her ogre’s killt!”

  Jenny nodded firmly. “I imagine she will.”

  Jessabelle ran toward the church, and Jenny continued to study her grandmother’s diary.

  Jack had never seen the tiny church so full of people. He successfully defended a space on the pew beside him for Jessabelle, even though she hadn’t yet arrived when the preacher insisted on a prayer to begin the meeting. It was far longer than Jack deemed necessary. The prayer seemed like an hour-long sermon, though it was probably closer to two or three minutes.

  Really, the meeting shouldn’t be much longer than the prayer. If only people would believe him, Jack could just stand up and say, “Hey, all y’all, the monster that did this is an ogre that’s holed up inside the Casto’s barn. Grab weapons and come see for yourselves!” But of course, that wouldn’t work. He needed someone to back up his claim before people invaded the Casto’s.

  When the preacher at last said, “amen,” Jack craned his neck around to see if he could see John Casto, but neither he nor his wife were either seated in a pew or standing along the walls.

  Michael “Botch” King—by far the wealthiest man in town—started the meeting in an even-tempered tone, insisting that people not turn the crisis into a ‘witch hunt.’ Jack thought that was funny, considering all the witches currently residing in Maple Bend. His plea was twice as long as the prayer, but it seemed to settle people down a bit. As Botch wound his speech to a close, Jessabelle slipped in through the wall of people and joined Jack in the pew. She sat just as Botch said, “Thank you” and took a seat up near the pulpit.

  People whispered among themselves. Jack took the opportunity to ask, “So you got my back in this?”

  She nodded, although her face was pale. “Sorry I’m late. Jenny and I learned some things.”

  “Like what?”

  Jessabelle shook her head, and pointed to the podium. “Not right now! After this is over.”

  Fred Colton stood up beside the pulpit and reminded everyone of what nobody needed to be reminded about—the deaths of Grace Alls, his son Sam Colton, the attack on Hattie’s trailer, and Hattie’s serious injury. His emotional appeal worked, and the room grew angrier as people began to growl and call out things like, “We need to protect ourselves!” and “That weren’t no bear!” and “Someone lied to us!”

  The last scared Jack, after years of suffering through his reputation. People were like animals when they were angry and scared, and frightened animals would lash out against those who meant them no harm. He sank lower in the pew, hoping no one would notice him or care.

  Then, suddenly, Fred called on Jack to stand up. All eyes turned to him, including Jessabelle’s. Her eyes seemed full of trust.

  All he could do was tell the truth.

  Fred called out, “Jack, did you see what killed my boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What was it?”

  Five years of mockery and distrust stood against him like a wall. Since that one day, he’d never told a lie, but he’d learned what not to say. He’d learned to deflect attention. He could do the same here. A simple “I’m not sure, but check the Casto’s barn” wouldn’t be a lie, and it would get the job done. He didn’t have to make a stand. He glanced over at Jessabelle. She looked, if anything, even more uncomfortable than him. But unlike everyone else in the room, she believed him.

  “It was no bear. It was a monster, sir.”

  Some people started laughing, but when the rest of the room didn’t join them, their laughter died.

  “We need to find out what did this and kill it!” Fred demanded, with cheers through the room. He continued, “Then we need to find the person responsible, and—”

  Jack had to interject now. “The thing that killt Sam is dead, Mr. Colton. The thing that smashed up Hattie’s house is still alive though. And I know where it is.” The noise instantly rose. “The monster is in the Casto barn right now.”

  Fred glared at Jack. “The Castos are hiding it?”

  People gasped and started talking amongst themselves. Some laughed nervously. The chapel grew loud and restless. Jack had to shout over the rising noise. “No. Something happened to the Castos. Evelyn Rodriguez has control over the monster.” The crowd erupted into noise and argument, and Jack could barely hear himself say, “But that ain’t what killed Sam. Or Grace, probably. Evelyn ain’t killed nobody yet, that I know.” />
  People began shouting. Few were listening to Jack now as he shouted, “We need to kill it right away, now that y’all know. But shotguns don’t hurt it much!”

  Jessabelle stood by him and shouted, “I’ve seen it, too! It’s real! And it’s really dangerous!”

  A few people quieted down, staring at Jessabelle. She trembled so slightly that Jack could barely see it. Botch King and Preacher Harris watched her, but said nothing.

  “May I say something, please?” a voice asked from the back of the room at a conversational volume. Nobody should have been able to hear her over the din, but the room silenced instantly. Jack turned, and locked gazed with Evelyn Rodriguez. Her lips curled into a vicious smile. Jack felt his blood freeze, and he hoped the feeling wasn’t magical and literal.

  Evelyn strolled into the eerily quiet chapel. Aside from her footsteps and the shuffling noises as people parted for her, the only other sound was distant crickets. Evelyn strolled up along the aisle toward the front of the chapel, below the podium, and turned to face the rest of the room. “My neighbors, I share your pain. I’ve been here long enough to be a part of this community, and feel your losses as my own. The terrible animal attacks that killed our friends and family were awful, but no longer a worry. And freak storms like the one that damaged Hattie’s trailer last night are uncommon but happen all over the country several times a year. The poor dear was always a little crazy, and imagined a monster at her door. We all know there are no such things as monsters. Poor lying Jack can’t help but make up stories like he has always done. But humoring him and giving him the attention he craves won’t do anyone any good, especially not Jack. No, we must rely upon our own common sense.”

  Jack felt his hands shaking with rage. “What a load of horseshit!” he roared at the top of his lungs.

  Evelyn raised an eyebrow at him. No one else spoke for several seconds. Then whispers and mutters floated toward him from all over the room.