Blood Creek Witch Read online

  Her sight blurred. Crying during a stranger’s funeral would be unacceptable. People would think she was crazy, or at least overly emotional. She needed to focus her attention on something else, something to distract her.

  A woman in an old-fashioned, polka-dot print dress with a broad collar stood near the casket as the preacher spoke. At times, her mouth moved, as if she were speaking to the dead woman. Nobody paid the lady any attention. As she’d only attended one other funeral in her life, Jenny assumed the woman had some kind of role in the program.

  The woman stopped speaking and stared across the chapel directly at Jenny. Jenny’s blood froze. The woman’s eyes seemed wrong, somehow. A darkness hovered around her eyes, like they were painted on her face with muted colors, and then dabbed with a hint of violet. Jenny dropped her gaze to her lap, staring intently at her hands.

  Hattie sucked in air, and leaned over. “Jenny,” she whispered with a surprising urgency. Jenny felt a cool presence nearby. She looked up.

  The woman in the polka-dot dress stood in the aisle only two pews away, staring with her shadowy, violet-tinged eyes at Jenny. The woman stretched out her hand, as if she meant to grab Jenny, while her mouth animated in soundless syllables.

  Jenny bolted out of the pew as the woman lurched forward to touch her. Heedless of the gasps around her, she fled out the double doors and into the daylight of the dirt parking area.

  The woman didn’t follow.

  Once her instinct to flee subsided and her heart quit pounding, Jenny stopped and considered her options. She’d just made a spectacle of herself in the middle of a funeral and freaked out some obviously mentally disabled lady. Only a few hours in her new home, and she’d earned herself a terrible reputation. How quickly she’d forgotten everything her parents had taught her.

  A young boy stared at her through one the church’s arch-topped windows. Jenny pretended she hadn’t seen him, but he waved at her. She awkwardly waved back.

  Standing in the parking area until the funeral was over wouldn’t do. Jenny began making her way back to Hattie’s home. The tears started partway into the walk, drying on her cheeks in the warm air. They had quit flowing by the time she reached the mobile home. Hattie hadn’t locked the door, which seemed unnatural to Jenny. Even in the suburbs, leaving a door unlocked invited trouble, and her parents were sticklers about security. This time, Jenny was grateful for the oversight. She went straight to her “room,” and turned up the window air conditioner to occupied levels.

  Jenny bunched up her pillow and buried her head into it. She had hoped to fall back asleep and forget any of the morning had happened, but there was no chance of that. Finally, she got up and explored the room in the daylight.

  When she had time, she would make the room her own. Hattie had hastily half converted it from a library and storage room. Shelves were over-packed with books, magazines, and loose pieces of paper. Dust-free gaps in the stacks suggested some recent removals.

  Jenny couldn’t grasp the organization, if any existed, but the subjects ran the gamut from gardening, history, and religion to building a website. A photo album caught her eye. She pulled it down and began browsing through it on the bed.

  All the pictures had been taken with old-fashioned cameras that used film. Some of the earliest photographs were in black and white, and most were labeled with names and dates. A few were dated as far back as the 1930s. She recognized none of the names until the last few pages. Hattie and… Amy? The young woman in the pictures could have passed as Jenny’s older sister. Her hair was a brighter shade of red than Jenny’s, and her freckles far more pronounced. And of course, the photo was taken in the 1980s. Was it another aunt? Or even her mother, under a different name?

  The front door opened. Jenny closed the album and went into the living room to face the music. She began a sputtering apology, but Hattie rushed forward and embraced her tightly. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry. I should have warned you about Esther.”

  Tears came again, but only briefly. “I’m sorry, Aunt Hattie. I didn’t think. She just freaked me out. Now everyone must think I’m a horrible jerk for how I treated her and ran out of the funeral like that.”

  Hattie shook her head. “If anyone asks, I’m telling them you were overcome by emotion from your parent’s deaths. And nobody else saw her.”

  Jenny stepped away. “What?”

  “Don’t you know? This hasn’t happened before?”

  “What happened? Embarrassing myself in public?”

  “No.” Hattie’s eyebrows wrinkled as they come together. “Oh, honey, this is not the way to learn.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Have a seat, sweetheart.”

  “Why?”

  “Sit down!”

  Jenny sat. Hattie sat in the chair beside her. “Esther’s dead, Jenny. She’s been dead since before I was born. She was something of a busybody in that church in her day, and her ghost haunts it still. I don’t think anybody but you and I can see or hear her, at least consciously, but she still gets her demands across from time to time.”

  “Are you telling me I saw a ghost?”

  Hattie arched her eyebrows. “Your mama never told you about ghosts? You’ve never seen them before?”

  Jenny considered her dream the night her parents died. Her childhood friend, Vanessa. In real life, they’d moved shortly after her mother learned about Vanessa. “I don’t know,” Jenny responded.

  Hattie sighed. “You have what we sometimes call ‘the Sight,’ honey. All witches have it to some degree. I’m surprised your mama didn’t tell you about it.”

  “Wait, what? Did you say ‘witches’?”

  “Oh!” Hattie’s hand rose to her throat. “You don’t know that either? We really do have a lot to talk about.”

  Jack Parsons had barely graduated from high school at the beginning of the month. He tolerated education itself well enough, but the other kids made school hell. Now it was over. He found himself only a few months away from what people considered “adulthood,” and he was educated on very few matters. About the only thing he really knew better than anyone else was the woods and hills around Maple Bend, where he spent the majority of his spare time. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the sort of thing his guidance counselor referred to as a “marketable skill.”

  The woods were his refuge when he was a child and Pa got violent, in those years when Ma was skinny and scared, and Jack was too young to understand what was happening. “Go hide in the woods, Jack,” she’d whisper when Pa came in late and looking for trouble. Jack would return home hours later, to find Pa snoring and Ma with a few new bruises, but happy to see him safe.

  One day, when he was twelve years old, Jack disobeyed her. He fought back. He gave as good as he got, and had a permanent scar across his left cheek to show for it. It was a badge of honor to him, even if the girls at school didn’t think so. He’d fought only one battle with his father, the decisive one. Pa left their mobile home before dawn, and never returned.

  The joy of that victory didn’t last long. Ma grew more withdrawn, fat, and drunk with each year. Jack couldn’t figure out how it was his fault, but he felt guilty about it all the same. When the guilt grew too strong, he’d think about the bruises she’d carried most of his life and the feeling subsided.

  Now he had one last summer before he turned eighteen and people expected him to act like an adult. In Maple Bend, that often meant taking welfare or disability, drinking to stave off depression, and sometimes dying under mysterious circumstances. After his pa’s behavior, Jack wouldn’t touch the bottle. But, he knew the dangers of the woods better than anybody else. If he couldn’t convince his ma to leave this place, maybe those dangers would claim him as the next unexplained death or disappearance.

  But, not on a beautiful June day like today. With the afternoon sun shining through the rich canopy of leaves, the cicada song surrounding him, and no demands on his time, he couldn’t imagine any better place to be in the entire
world. He took a less familiar route, and pushed his hike as far as he could until he knew he couldn’t make it back until sunset. Satisfied, he turned around, and followed the overgrown trail back to what passed for town.

  An old house stood not too far from the trail. While obscured by trees, it wasn’t exactly hidden, particularly from this direction. It looked like it had been there for decades, and something familiar about it tugged at Jack.

  The problem was he was sure it hadn’t been there before.

  He drew closer and cautiously orbited the house to get a better look. It was an older style home, with low stone walls along the bottom giving way to unpainted, treated wood walls up to a peaked roof. Weeds and vines grew over the walls, and it showed no indication of having been inhabited in years, but otherwise the place seemed to be in good condition.

  Three silvery nails jutted from the front door, bright in the subset light in spite of age and elements. They formed the points of an inverted triangle, and served no purpose Jack could see. He peered in through two of the windows, but the grime covering them made the glass practically opaque. He discerned only vague outlines of furniture and walls in the darkness within.

  It was getting late. In a half an hour, it would be hard to follow the trail. He had no time to explore, and it was too dark inside to see anything. Besides, he’d watched a few horror movies. The house might look abandoned, but his imagination conjured up images of psycho hillbillies with chainsaws and shotguns. Even as he forced that kind of silliness out of his mind, a nervous old hermit with a double-barrel wasn’t silly and could end his day badly. No, it would be better to come back during the light of the morning and properly knock at the door. The mystery would keep for one night.

  He left the house and made his way back, hoping he’d hit the more familiar and better-traveled path home before it got too dark.

  He almost made it.

  He smelled the smoke before spotting the campfire. Once again, curiosity compelled him to investigate. As he crept forward, the firelight spoiled his vision in the deepening shadows. His shoulder caught on a branch, which made a swishing noise as it sprang back into position.

  The three boys around the campfire jumped up. Alan Mecham, Samuel Colton, and Mason Beach stared at Jack. While he knew it was irrational, Jack felt like they were intruders on his private domain. As far as he knew, their families owned the property and he was the trespasser. He pushed his annoyance and played it casual, forcing a smile and waving as he stepped into the firelight. “Hey guys. It’s just me.”

  Sam was Jack’s age, and the other two were twenty years old. They were as close to a peer group as Jack had had growing up in Maple Bend. Assuming “peer group” meant similarly-aged boys who ignored and bullied him. Any group like that gained its sense of superiority based on who they excluded, and there just wasn’t anyone else to exclude. By his age and his reputation, Jack became the designated outsider.

  “Hey, Jack,” Mason said, wearing his all-too-familiar fake grin. That grin meant he was up to no good, often at Jack’s expense. “Have a seat, and have a smoke. Enjoy the summer!”

  Each of the young men held a hand-rolled cigarette. The smoke smelled of something other than tobacco. Jack pretended not to notice. “Nah, thanks. I gotta get home, make dinner for my ma.”

  “Little late for dinner, ain’t it?” said Alan. Alan was twenty years old, but looked like a tall fourteen-year-old. Freckles and red hair offset his wiry build. He and Sam advanced. “Besides, your mama should probably skip a few meals, right?”

  Jack smiled for a moment like he approved of the joke, and then bolted. He didn’t get far before Alan tackled him below the knees. Jack caught his fall on his hands, but then all three were upon him. One on one, he could have held his own against any of them, but three was something different. Within seconds, Alan and Sam dragged him to a tree and Mason tied Jack’s arms behind the trunk. Mason started by using cords that had held the fire logs together, and then he pulled Jack’s sneakers off his feet and tied Jack’s wrists together with the laces.

  Jack pulled and struggled the whole time, more to minimize the effectiveness of the knots than out of any hope of escape. Unfortunately, for all of Mason’s faults, he knew how to tie knots. Had he been a Boy Scout? How much could he have possibly learned in the two minutes it would have taken them to kick him out of the organization?

  “What do we do now?” asked Alan. “He’s seen us.”

  Mason said, “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t get caught with this shit again, Mason. I’ll be tried as an adult.”

  “Shut up! I’m thinking.”

  Jack shook his head. “I ain’t telling anybody anything. Just let me go.”

  Mason stared at Jack, his blond mustache twitching up at the ends. “I don’t think you will, huh Jack? You’re a good guy, right? I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you have a beer and a smoke with us, and then we’ll call it good, right?”

  For a moment, Jack wavered. He remembered his father. “Don’t ever start,” his ma warned him, even as she dove into the liquor herself. Jack figured he was in trouble from both sides of his family, an alcoholic waiting to happen. On the day his pa left, he told himself he’d never start, not even once. He’d held onto it this long. He wouldn’t weaken tonight.

  Besides, what would these guys do? They were bullies, not murderers. So far.

  He shook his head. “You guys do whatever you want. It ain’t none of my business.”

  “’Course it ain’t,” Mason replied. Then he turned to his two companions. “Okay, here’s what we do. Alan, get the stuff. Sammy, put out the fire. We’re leaving.”

  “Come on!” Jack said as the other young men returned to the campfire to hide any sign of their presence. “Untie me.”

  Mason sneered at him. “You’ve gone and ruined our party, Jack. Now we gotta hide our stuff in case you go blabbing your mouth again. Behave, and we’ll come back and untie you. Just remember, in case you feel like telling folks about our little campfire here, it’ll be your word against ours. And your word doesn’t carry much weight, does it, Lyin’ Jack?”

  Jack seethed. He hadn’t heard anyone call him “Lyin’ Jack” in over a year, but it still stung. He tried not to look at Sam. That old betrayal hurt the worst. “If nobody will believe me, why do you care? Just let me go. This is crazy!”

  Mason ignored him. Alan came back with a paper bag in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other, carefully avoiding eye contact with Jack.

  Sam returned from putting out the fire, standing close to Jack. He spoke quietly. “We ain’t going to leave you here all night, idiot. Just long enough to stash our stuff, and then we’re coming back for you. Just be cool for once.”

  Jack pulled at his bonds again. “You know this is worse than what you were doing, right?”

  “We’re just playing around. You got my word, Jack. As soon as we’re done, I’ll come back. On my own if I have to, okay?”

  Sam’s face was still visible in the dying sunlight. It had been years since they’d been close, but Sam seemed earnest. Jack opened his mouth to respond just as a woman’s horrified scream sounded from the woods. The throaty, strange cry sounded either not quite human, or like a human in extreme pain. Jack’s flesh grew cold and clammy.

  “Someone’s in trouble,” Sam said. “Who would be out here? Some kid?”

  As if in answer, the primal, terrifying cry split the air again.

  “Panther,” Alan said. “They sound like a woman’s scream.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Mason replied. “Those things are extinct around here.”

  “Bobcat, then. Something like that.”

  Mason considered the growing darkness for a half second, and then said, “Doesn’t matter. We gotta go.”

  Jack pulled at the cords. They cut into his wrists, and didn’t feel any looser. “You can’t leave me like this if there’s a panther around!”

  “It’s no panther, you idiot. It’s just…�
� Mason trailed off, recognizing that the alternative—abandoning a girl in mortal terror—was no better. “We’ll be back for you in a half-hour.”

  They disappeared into the woods. Jack yelled at them. “Mason! Mason, come back, you asshole!”

  The unnatural, predatory scream answered him, closer than before.

  Jack struggled to bring himself to a stand, pulling one arm painfully around the stub of a small branch to allow more movement. He tugged and rubbed the cords against the tree trunk behind him, but imagined he did more damage to the bark and his flesh than to the cords.

  Only faint blood-colored traces of sunlight radiated over the top of the hills, and little of that penetrated through the trees above. Until now, Jack had always loved being in the woods at sundown. But now the darkness concealed the source of the noise, and Jack felt a terror he’d not known in years.

  Minutes passed. In the darkness, the once comforting forest noises grew threatening. Leaves rustled ever-so-faintly a short distance away. He gave the cords one last, frantic strain, hoping the adrenaline of fear would give him the strength he needed to break them. They dug deeper into his wrists.

  From the darkened brush twenty feet away, a black, feline head emerged, much larger than any housecat he’d ever seen. Two yellow eyes, glinting in tree-filtered twilight, glared at him.