Blood Creek Witch Read online

  She continued to study both the physical bottle and the feelings that surrounded it. It would be best to replace it, but even though she had the instructions, she didn’t fully understand how to use them. The shoddy appearance of the witch bottle was a function of simplicity and time. It had been built with great skill and care, years ago. Maybe it would be possible to recharge the bottle, to give it enough power to continue functioning for another couple of years. Long enough to learn how to make a replacement.

  Jenny glanced along the swampy clearing and spotted something else flashing in the morning sun. Staring directly at it, she saw nothing, but as she turned away, she caught the glimmer of a path, shimmering in gold. Jenny poked Sean, and pointed it out to him. “You see that?”

  He shook his head. Jenny squinted to see if it was just her imagination, but if anything that only made the contrast more pronounced. Something was there.

  “Must stop white suit bring daughter here pat key is safe prayer mother loves you always,” Jenny recited from memory.

  Jessabelle looked at her, and then to Jack. “Didn’t you say that Evelyn was fixing to bring that guy’s daughter back here?”

  “Yep.”

  Jenny shrugged. “So Grandma Annabelle was trying to stop that.”

  “That sounds kind of mean,” Sean said. “Why would your grandmother not want Thadeus to get his daughter back?”

  Jack answered, “He said he’d been cultivating this area for more than a century. If his daughter’s on the other side, how old is she?”

  “What’s he been cultivating?” Jenny asked.

  “Death,” Sean answered. “Avery said something weird to me that one night. About how Annabelle was accidentally helping the man in the white suit. That fear and death help his plans.” Nobody said anything in response. It all seemed so bizarre. As the silence continued, the buzzing grew louder.

  Jenny repeated part of Annabelle’s message. “Pat key is safe. Prayer mother loves you always.” The words didn’t make sense. On a whim, she stepped toward the faint glowing roadway before her, stepping through the water, sinking not quite to her ankles.

  “Uh, you going somewhere, Jenny?” asked Jessabelle.

  “I’m seeing where this path leads.”

  “What path?”

  Unsure how to explain, Jenny continued forward. The path shimmered in front of her as she stepped out of the water on the other side. She could almost touch it, but it hovered just out of reach, like mirage. She walked several more yards. Abruptly, the path vanished. Jenny stepped backwards, and it reappeared. She’d reached the threshold.

  The others splashed toward her. “I’m okay,” she called, stepping forward and backwards a few times to verify the path’s boundary. She turned around, where her friends stood on the near side of the shallow pond, but she didn’t see the path from the other direction. It seemed like a one-sided illusion.

  If this was the crossroads, how did someone cross to the other side?

  Jenny puzzled, and the buzzing grew louder still. Just as loudly, several yards away, came the sound of a woman’s laughter. Jenny took several steps toward her friends just as a cloud of insects coalesced above them. Several dog-sized mosquitoes that couldn’t possibly exist in nature descended. Jenny cried a warning, and immediately began the words of the protection spell. This time, she targeted Jack, who stood in front of Sean and Jessabelle. Jack swung at the closest of the giant mosquitoes with his baseball bat. He missed, and it flitted backwards.

  Jessabelle screamed as she transformed. Her scream turned into the roar of a predator cat as the panther crouched, ready to spring. The great cat lacked the lacerations and blood that had marked her after the battle against the ogre. If there were injuries beneath the skin, the cat’s body language gave no clues. The scream as she transformed gave plenty.

  Sean pulled his knife again, ducking down and guarding their backs. Jenny stood unarmed and continued the protective song. There was little else she could think of doing. Her self-defense courses hadn’t covered what to do when fighting giant mosquitoes any more than they’d covered ogres or dragons.

  She finished the modified rhyme, just as one mosquito swooped down and lanced at Jack’s chest with a proboscis that looked like an over-sized knitting needle. The air around Jack flashed briefly, and the mosquito dropped on all of its legs onto the ground. Jack took a great overhead swing and squashed the creature into the earth.

  Jenny began reciting the spell for Jessabelle. Before she could complete it, another mosquito lanced her cousin, its proboscis sinking into the fur-covered flesh of her shoulder. The cat howled and attacked with a fury, rending the giant mosquito to pieces. The area around Jessabelle’s shoulder began to swell and bleed. Jenny finished the spell, snapping protection around the feline, but damage was already done.

  A swarm of black insects gathered around Sean like a dark cloud. He swatted and slapped, but they were thick on him, covering his face and hands and clothes. He dropped the knife, and leapt prone into the water. Undeterred, the mosquitoes descended upon every uncovered surface of his body, as if guided by an unseen hand. Jenny recited the rhyme a third time, hoping it would protect him even though thousands of insects were already upon him. Sean thrashed futilely and curled into something resembling the fetal position as he covered his face and head with his arms.

  In the middle of Jenny’s song, an uncomfortably warm but not painful sensation grew against her chest. She pushed through, ignoring the warmth and the telltale hints of dizziness even as a third giant mosquito surged toward her. At the moment she finished, a black blur flashed in front of her, seizing the enormous mosquito in its deadly jaws. Jessabelle tore into the creature, scattering pieces of thin wing and hairy insect flesh.

  The air around Sean crackled like a bug-zapper from Hell, as hundreds of tiny insects disintegrated or dropped from the air. He flailed at the remainder, slowly regaining his feet. Jenny had trouble maintaining her own, as her vision swam.

  Jenny touched her chest to find the source of the heat. Her hand clutched the pouch around her neck, the charm she’d made against curses. The pouch itself was warmer than it should be, and the herb mixture crackled under the pressure of her fingers as if it was ancient and desiccated.

  Jessabelle stopped her destruction of the mosquito, looking victorious and ready for more. Then she fell with an animal cry and began writhing on the ground as if being struck with an electric current. On the other side of the pond, Evelyn appeared from behind a tree, watching Jessabelle’s pain with a tight grin.

  Jenny’s charms protected them from curses. Jenny’s charm had burned itself up stopping some unknown spell Evelyn had thrown at them. Jessabelle’s charm had vanished to wherever her clothes went when she transformed, and no longer protected her from whatever torture Evelyn had conjured against them.

  Jessabelle’s deadly claws flailed at the air and mud as she shrieked a primal, half-human cry of agony. Evelyn laughed. Jenny took a deep breath, trying to summon whatever reserves of strength she had left to protect her friends from the witch. The dizziness lessened, but didn’t go away.

  Jack tossed the baseball bat to Sean and rushed to Jessabelle, scooping the flailing cat in his arms. The cat fought against him, slashing and biting. Tiny flashes of light appeared where claws struck, wearing down Jenny’s protective spell.

  “Change back, Jessabelle!” Jenny cried.

  In the space of a moment, Jessabelle became human again. Her screams subsided as an electric blue nimbus of light, visible to Jenny’s eyes, appeared at the base of her neck. The amulet had reappeared with her human form.

  Sean swiped at more giant mosquitoes. These creatures were smaller than the ones they’d already killed, but they were clearly dangerous. The buzzing monsters flitted away from his attacks, turning their attention to Jenny.

  Realizing she was targeted, Jenny began the song once more. Her vision darkened and the world spun around her. Evelyn’s laughter turned into the chant of another spell
.

  “We’ve got to run!” Jack called. Sean grabbed Jenny, interrupting her concentration, but not the overwhelming vertigo and exhaustion that descended upon her. His knife, forgotten, fell into the mud. He half-carried her in one arm, swinging randomly behind him with the baseball bat held in the other, pulling her through the ankle-high water away from Evelyn. Jack and Jessabelle ran beside them. The giant mosquitoes circled like low-flying buzzards. Jenny tried, once again, to finish the spell.

  Sean’s grasp slipped, and Jenny fell into the mud. She made an effort to stand and rejoin the others, but even rising to her hands and knees took more strength than she had left. A quick glance around as her elbows buckled made her realize that there were no others to rejoin. Her friends had vanished. She was utterly alone.

  The giant mosquitoes buzzed over her head as Jenny collapsed onto the wet earth. Her world went black.

  One moment, Sean half-dragged, half-carried Jenny as they fled Evelyn and the giant mosquitoes. The next, a flash of light engulfed them and Jenny slipped from his grasp. He stopped and turned to help her up, but she had disappeared.

  He raised the baseball bat, but no giant mosquitoes attacked. Evelyn was nowhere to be seen. The creek still broadened here, but the large pond of semi-stagnant water was gone. “What happened? Where are they?”

  Jessabelle hunched down, rubbing the shoulder that showed no visible wound in her human form. “Nowhere. I reckon we went ’Round the Bend.”

  Sean searched for his knife. It was nowhere to be found. He’d dropped it when he put his arm around Jenny, on the other side of… whatever. The bend. “We’ve got to go back.”

  Jack nodded vehemently, taking several steps back the way they came. “How do we go back?”

  Jessabelle shook her head. “Grandma said something about a key. Maybe Jenny figured out what it was, and used it for us.”

  “Then why didn’t she come?”

  Sean paced back the way they had come, and then returned, idly scratching at his face. “Maybe she couldn’t? We need to get back to her! She’s in trouble!”

  “So’re we,” Jack said. “If y’all remember, this is where the monsters come from. And I reckon we only survived our last fights with them on account of Jenny.”

  Jessabelle said, “She’s more than a match for Evelyn, ain’t she? She just needs to do that same trick she pulled with the ogre, and Evelyn’s gonna get chased by mosquitoes from here to Charleston. Then Jenny’ll come find us on this side.”

  Not in the state she was in when Sean grabbed her, he realized. But Jessabelle had hope, and Sean didn’t want to destroy that. “Yes, she’s powerful and dangerous. She’s the sort of person Evelyn would rather negotiate with than fight.”

  That last part, Sean felt, was no lie. Evelyn was like those popular girls in high school. Expert manipulators, they mastered a game of social chess that Sean never fully grasped, or even realized was being played much of the time. Evelyn might see Jenny as a chance to trade up from Sean.

  They waited for a few minutes, but nothing else came through. “Jenny could be buying us time,” Sean said.

  “We need to find Grandma Annie!” Jessabelle announced. “She needs to know Evelyn is coming. She can send us back.”

  Jack shook his head. “Yeah, but where is she?”

  Jessabelle pointed down the stream. “Things ain’t so different here from our side. So why don’t we look for her at her house?”

  Sean and Jack looked at each other. Jack shrugged and said, “I ain’t got a better idea.”

  They set forth along the stream. Every so often, Jack stopped and turned, looking around at the forest.

  “Memorizing the way back?” Sean asked, idly scratching the back of his hand.

  “Trying to,” Jack said. “There’s a good chance when we come back this way we’ll be in a hurry, and I don’t want to miss it.”

  “If we can go back at all,” Jessabelle added. “Grandma Annie never came back.”

  Jack shook his head. “If some dumb old ogre was able to get through, so can we.”

  A short distance further down, they found a trail beside the stream. It continued down the mountain in one direction, and turned away from the stream and across the mountainside in the other. Jessabelle examined the path. She broke her silent investigations with the words, “Uh-oh!” She pointed to the ground as Sean arrived beside her. While it lacked a distinctive heel, the footprint in the dirt was clearly human-like and wearing a shoe or boot. Sean compared it to his own foot. The imprint was far larger.

  “Could that have been our ogre?”

  Jack looked over Sean’s shoulder and whistled. “Nope, giant,” he said. “The ogre had bare feet, and they were smaller than this. The giant I saw years ago had clothes.”

  “Could he have been friendly?” Sean scratched the side of his face, looking back up the stream path.

  “It wasn’t like I was going to ask him.”

  “You realize that without Jenny’s protection spell, one hit from something like that…”

  “Yep. But look on the bright side.”

  “What’s that?”

  Jack adjusted his John Deere cap. “That ghost that’s after you ain’t gonna find you here.”

  Sean shrugged and chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. “No, probably not. I guess that’s a silver lining.”

  Jack’s face darkened. “Um, Sean, you don’t look so great,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Jack squinted. Jessabelle turned and stared at Sean. She was the one who answered. “Oh, yeah, you got half et up by mosquitoes, didn’t you?”

  Sean felt his face. He really did itch, everywhere his skin had been exposed to attack. The cloud of mosquitoes hadn’t swarmed over him long, but they’d done damage. “It’s no fair. I used mosquito repellent.”

  Jessabelle started to laugh, but covered her mouth. “I think you needed Evelyn repellent.”

  Jack turned back toward the trail. “We could have all used that. So, y’all think we should go down toward, well, where Maple Bend ought to be? Or across?”

  Jessabelle shrugged.

  Sean, trying to ignore the itching that became a hundred times more noticeable now that he was paying attention, pointed the other direction. “Wouldn’t that be kind of in the direction of the Rose house?”

  Jack nodded. “More or less. But I can’t know for sure. The trees are different, and it wasn’t like I ever saw the place before last week. If we stick to the trail as best we can, we shouldn’t get lost.”

  “Could you find our way back if we got lost?”

  Jack shrugged. “Maybe. But only some of the mountaintops look right. This ain’t what I’m used to. Back home, you can’t get lost too far before running into a road or telephone line or something. Here, we could get lost forever. Or run into a nest of monsters.”

  Sean whistled. “That doesn’t sound encouraging.”

  Jack grinned. “It’s kind of cool, though.”

  Sean smiled in agreement. As terrifying as it was to be so lost without knowing how to get back, or even knowing where their next meal would come from, Sean couldn’t help but be caught up in the rays of sunlight shifting through the trees, treading over land that hadn’t been mapped by a satellite. It felt magical.

  He stopped himself from scratching at his forehead. When he removed his hand, he spotted something up ahead, just to the side of the trail. He froze. Jessabelle also froze, her eyes open wide. Jack stopped to look at them, and then followed their gazes.

  On the side of the trail, a creature resembling a horse grazed. Its hair was brown with gray spots. Between bites of grass it raised its head, its translucent central horn gleaming with a fiery hue in the sunlight. The beast turned its head so its right eye stared at them.

  “It’s… it’s…” Jessabelle’s eyes widened over her slack-mouthed grin as she pointed at the creature. “It’s a unicorn!”

  “A what?” asked Jack.

  She spared a d
isgusted glance at Jack. “You dummy. You never heard of a unicorn?”

  “That there is a horse with a horn. What’s so special about that?”

  Sean answered. “They are supposed to be magical creatures with special powers. They are also supposed to be willing to serve virgins.”

  Jack and Jessabelle quieted. The unicorn stared at them, slowly lowering its head. Jessabelle broke the silence. “Well, I’d qualify. Would I just have to walk up and talk to it?”

  Sean breathed a sigh of relief. He noticed a similar expression on Jack’s face. Apparently, all three of them were qualified.

  “I don’t know,” Sean said. “Maybe?”

  Jessabelle took two slow steps forward. The unicorn did the same, following the slow dance at a distance. Then the beast stamped one hoof, lowered its head and horn, and charged.

  Jessabelle yelped, turned, and fled from the unicorn. The creature slowed, eying the two boys. They stood stock still. It lowered its horn and charged again. Sean and Jack separated and took cover in the nearby trees.

  The unicorn paced, snorting. The group backed away, but it responded with a bull-like charge again, targeting Jack. They scattered, but Jack found himself slowed by grasping weeds in his path. He leaped clear as the horn skewered the air beside him. The unicorn bolted to one side as if it expected a counter-attack. It cast its gaze around, snorting as it took another position, lowering its head again with the horn pointed at them.

  “That’s not what unicorns are supposed to do!” Jessabelle said breathlessly, keeping a tree between herself and the creature.

  Jack kept moving, not taking his eyes off the unicorn. “So Sean,” he called, “When you said these things liked virgins, did you mean with barbecue sauce or something?”

  “I’m sorry!” Sean called back. “I don’t remember reading anything about them being aggressive.”

  “Maybe you need to read better books.”