Blood Creek Witch Page 8

  If only her parents were here, too.

  “You are a liar, Jack Parsons,” Jessabelle said. “You practically live in these woods. I ain’t sure you could get lost in them if you wanted to.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Everybody knows.”

  Jack shrugged. “I reckon. But just last night, I discovered something I’ve never seen before, and I’ve been that way hundreds of times.”

  “What was that?” Jessabelle and Jenny asked in unison.

  “Some house in the middle of the woods. It ain’t even a ruin, either. Don’t think anybody still lives there, but it’s in good shape. It’s a little spooky is all.”

  “You never noticed a house?” Jessabelle asked.

  “Nope. Don’t ask me to explain.”

  Exploring a mysterious old house sounded a lot more fun to Jenny than hunting the snallygaster. “Where is it?”

  “Just down yonder.” He waved indistinctly. He seemed satisfied with his answer, like he’d given exact GPS coordinates.

  “Let’s go there,” Jenny said, not realizing she’d said it until the sound of her voice faded under the cicada’s growing chorus.

  Jessabelle nodded, grinning wide. “We might as well. We ain’t finding much else but a sunburn. Unless you know of a cave near here where that thing might lair up.”

  Jack shook his head, and scanned the ridge line one more time before turning. “Okay. This way I s’pose.”

  What they followed wasn’t a trail, exactly. Jenny’s wardrobe, intended for suburban wear, proved poor armor against a determined assault by hundreds of snaring tree branches, sticker-bushes, burrs, and thorny weeds that tripped and grabbed her no matter how clear the spot or how carefully she stepped.

  If the flora did the same to Jessabelle and Jack, they didn’t show any indication. Jack strode forward steadily, keeping the shotgun’s barrel low and pointed toward the ground in front of him. Immediately behind him, Jessabelle drifted along with improbable grace, as if she’d rehearsed each step around the grasping plants. Jenny failed to imitate Jessabelle’s movements. She was the Jar-Jar to their Jedi.

  After fifteen minutes of this, Jenny started taking it personally. She couldn’t keep up, and was developing new and interesting scratches on her skin and holes in her clothing. Her hair tangled in a branch when she tried to duck under it. She reached back to untangle her hair, and her hand brushed through the spiderweb now entwined with the twigs and her hair. She screeched in spite of herself, and yanked her head free, barreling forward to catch up with the others.

  “I think I need to get my hair cut if I’m going to keep—” she started, when Jack grabbed her with a free hand. Jessabelle cupped her hand over Jenny’s mouth. Jenny made an annoyed sound, thinking it was some kind of joke as she looked over at her cousin.

  Jessabelle stared at the trees, eyes wide with terror.

  “Shit,” Jack whispered. “I think it heard us.”

  The thrum of the cicadas ceased. For the space of four heartbeats, silence gripped the entire forest, an inhale before a roar. Then, behind a rise of trees, something tremendous thundered toward them, half hidden behind a wall of green and brown. What Jenny could see behind the thick foliage in no way resembled the snallygaster.

  “Jenny, do your witch thing!” Jack shouted as he stepped forward, hunching and raising the shotgun to his shoulder. Jessabelle removed her hand and stepped off to the side, crouching like a sprinter awaiting the starting gun.

  “I don’t know how…” Jenny started to say, and then she thought of her mother’s rhyme. Was that really it? Was the poem actually a spell that could protect her?

  The thing exploded from the trees ahead of them. Like a pale-faced King Kong, the ten-foot tall beast charged forward, all hair and hunched back where bony ridges protruded from its shoulder blades. It roared from a mouth full of jagged-edged teeth, yellow eyes almost glowing in the sunlight with primal fury.

  Jenny began trembling, and couldn’t remember how her mother’s rhyme began. In desperation, she closed her eyes to the monster in front of her, and focused on old memories of her mother’s voice. Jack’s shotgun blasted near her, a powerful and terrible explosion that was only half as terrifying as the sound of the monster in front of her, but it broke her concentration again.

  Think! Remember! The distant memory of her mother’s voice came to her. Jenny recited the old verse in a quivering voice:

  Angels surround me

  Angels protect me

  Angels enfold me

  Angels direct me

  Protect me asleep

  Protect me awake

  Keep evil afar

  And never forsake

  Her eyes flashed open and she continued the song, her voice rising in volume in challenge to the monster’s roars. It closed the twenty feet between them in two bounding strides.

  It towered over her, ignoring Jack as it might a housefly. A tiny part of her brain noted that her entire head, probably shoulders too, could fit inside the creature’s oversized mouth. The monster reached down with both clawed hands to scoop up its motionless prey and shove her into its eager, slavering jaws.

  She hoped her death would be quick.

  Brilliant light flashed around her as the monster grabbed at her. It jumped back as if it had touched a hot stove. Jack, barely an arm’s length away, fired again. Blood streaked the creature’s face from deep gouges along its left cheek and stubby ape-like nose. It roared like thunder as it balled its hands into fists and swung them down with its full weight down onto Jenny’s head.

  The light flared again, less brilliantly. The air compressed around Jenny, knocking the wind out of her. She wheezed and coughed, and started repeating the words of the poem. “Angels surround me,” was all she managed before the creature took one more side-swipe at her, almost casually as it focused its attention on Jack. A dull glow surrounded her when the beast’s palm and claws struck, knocking her backwards into the side of a half-fallen tree.

  She couldn’t tell if it was witch light or simply her vision which flashed with the impact. Something stabbed into her shoulder, and she collapsed beneath the tree.

  Stupid weak reloads! Jack reeled backwards after the second shot, breaking open the shotgun’s action and frantically jamming two fresh shells into the chambers.

  He was too slow. The monster sent Jenny flying into a tree, and was almost instantly in front of Jack, poised to pounce with its claws extended.

  Jack fired as it reached for him, the shot tearing strips out of the monster’s left hand. It roared and reared backwards, wary. Jack fired again, this time hitting it high on its chest. It was impossible to see the damage through the matted hair, but the monster howled and lashed at him with its uninjured hand. The blow missed, but knocked the gun out of his hands. The beast could catch him in a heartbeat if he ran, but that was one more heartbeat than he’d get standing around waiting to get eaten. If nothing else, maybe he could draw it away from the girls. He ran.

  Something else roared. This was different, the shriek of a woman mixed with a bestial howl. It was the terrifying sound he’d heard while tied to a tree. Things crashed behind him, and the giant monster roared again. Powerless, Jack kept running. Seconds later, he stumbled into the clearing around the mysterious old house. He crouched on the far side of the porch, listening to the terrible noises of the monster smashing its way through the forest. Jack had never been much one for religion—Preacher Harris’s sermons put him to sleep—but he silently prayed for the girls’ safety. At this point, nothing but divine intervention could save them.

  Sean finally rediscovered the trail. This far up, it was hard to tell the faint trail from a random stretch of bare ground. As he made his way back down the hillside in temporary defeat, a terrible roar ripped through the air behind him. His blood froze. The predatory sound wrenched his insides on a primal level. He wanted to flee, to hide, to bury himself underground and stay there until the hunter had left. He also wanted to i
nvestigate. His curiosity won out. He had to find out what had made the sound.

  He turned around and clambered up the path, ready to leap into the cover of the weeds at any moment. A gun fired, and the thing roared again. Had the authorities taken down the wild animal that had killed the kid last night? If so, Sean had to revise everything he thought he knew about bears. This one sounded more like something that would destroy Tokyo in a monster movie.

  Another roar sounded, then crashing, growing closer by the second. For a moment, he considered trying to hide up in a tree. He recalled an online video showing the speed and ease with which a bear climbed up and down a tree. No, a tree wouldn’t work.

  The crashing drew closer. Sean’s curiosity fled, as did Sean, but it was too late. He couldn’t outrun the crashing and thunderous footsteps behind him, but he didn’t dare look to see how close death chased him. Or even what form death took.

  A giant black cat the size of a large dog appeared beside him, quickly passing him alongside the trail. At any other time, its appearance would have terrified Sean, but at the moment they were both racing in the same direction, away from the thunderous noise behind them. In no time, the cat had leaped ahead of Sean and down toward the clearing.

  “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you,” the old joke came to his head. It was less funny now than when he’d first heard it. The monstrous thing behind him closed the gap, taking a single stride for every three of Sean’s.

  Inexplicably, the cat—a panther?—spun around and raced back up the trail toward Sean. It passed him again, and leapt at the creature mere feet behind him. Roars and shrieks and crashes continued as Sean bolted out through the ragged tree line where he’d first found the trail.

  Evelyn stood beside her SUV at the top of the overgrown dirt road.

  “Go!” was all he could shout without seriously breaking his stride. His hoarse voice was barely audible even to himself.

  Evelyn took off her sunglasses and stared as he raced toward her. He dodged ancient ruts and overgrown tree stumps before stumbling to a halt in front of her car. He waved down the road as he tried to gather breath to speak.

  Evelyn raised her eyebrows. “That’s a great way to fall and break your leg, you know.”

  Sean sucked in some air and gasped, “Get in! Drive!”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.” Breath. “But.” Breath. “Here!”

  She looked up the hillside. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she muttered.

  Sean turned. What burst out into the clearing took Hollywood’s version of Bigfoot, stretched it to ten-feet tall, and adorned it with an oversized head, a predator’s mouth, and bony horns and claws. Creatures out of Sean’s worst nightmares did not compare.

  Evelyn approached it.

  “Evelyn, what are you doing? We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “Silence,” she said.

  Words died in Sean’s throat. She continued toward the creature. It charged down the hill at her. As it reared up to attack, it froze. It stared down at the woman, and then sat on the ground in front of her. She circled around behind it and calmly stroked its head.

  Jenny wasn’t sure if she’d lost consciousness, or just all sense of time as growing pain forced her back into focus. Everything hurt, even her ragged breathing, but her shoulder throbbed more painfully than anything else, and her foot was caught in a tangle of old branches at an awkward angle. The only good news was that she was not being chewed up by the monster. The roars grew more distant by the moment as it inexplicably crashed away through the forest.

  She wiggled and pulled at her ankle to tug it free of whatever held it stuck. Pain shot up her leg as it came loose. Was her ankle broken? She didn’t know. She’d never suffered a broken bone before. The pain from the ankle quickly receded as the throbbing pain from her shoulder grew worse.

  The monster’s sounds faded in the distance. A disappointingly large part of her wanted to just lie still and wait for help. She reminded herself that no help was coming, and that Jack and Jessabelle might be hurt. Or worse.

  She clenched her eyes against tears of both pain and loss. A sob surprised her, and she coughed from the dust coating her throat.

  “Jenny?” Jack’s whisper came from nearby. “Jenny, are you okay?”

  She opened her eyes. She tried to wipe them with the back of her hand, but the motion caused more pain behind her shoulder. Carefully controlling her voice to avoid another cough, she called back, “I’m here, Jack. Where did it go?”

  He appeared around the tree, crouched low. “It ran off. Why it did that, I don’t know. Something else caught its attention, I reckon. But we gotta get to safety before it gets back. Have you seen Jessabelle?”

  Jenny shook her head and tried to push off the ground. She winced in pain. Jack reached out to her to help her, and glanced at her shoulder. His eyes widened. “Is that your blood?”

  Jenny shrugged, which increased the pain. “Probably,” she answered. “Something jabbed me.”

  He turned to the fallen tree behind her. A short, thick stub of a broken branch glistened with blood where it had stabbed her. Jack exhaled and shook his head. “Whatever it is you do, it saved you. I would have been dead three times over from that thing.” He took her by her uninjured arm and helped her up. “Can you walk?”

  “I don’t know.” Jenny put weight on her injured ankle, and almost collapsed. She steadied herself on the fallen tree. “I think my ankle is twisted.

  “That means you can’t run if that thing finds us again.”

  Jenny stopped herself from shrugging and hurting herself again. “We really couldn’t outrun that thing anyway.”

  Jack nodded slowly, scanning the forest. “I reckon so. We’re near the old house. Maybe we can hide out there for a bit until we know the coast is clear. And we’ve got to find Jessabelle.”

  Jack put his arm around Jenny and helped her down the hill. As they walked, she felt out how much weight she could put on her ankle. She could still move her foot around, which she guessed meant it wasn’t broken. After five minutes, Jack gingerly let her sit down next to an unnatural formation of rocks. “I’m gonna go see if I can find Jessabelle. And maybe my shotgun,” he said, and left her.

  Jenny panted from the exertion. She couldn’t breathe deeply without wheezing or coughing from the dust and who-knew-what-else in her lungs. She stared at the rocks. The formation included a thick sheet of plywood sandwiched between stones. Eventually, she realized she was looking at a well.

  Several minutes passed. Jenny wanted to lie down and just take a nap, but her shoulder hurt too much to try. She started to worry about how long Jack had been gone when soft footsteps approached. Jenny turned as much as her pain allowed. Jessabelle crouched next to her.

  Jenny stage-whispered. “Are you okay?”

  Jessabelle nodded. “I’m fine. How about you? That thing sent you flying into that tree.”

  “I’m banged up, but I’m pretty sure I’ll live.”

  “We’ll take you home. Hattie will fix you up, if she don’t kill us all.”

  Jenny winced through a wave of pain from several places. “What were we thinking?”

  “You might recollect I was the one saying this was stupid. But I wouldn’t want to be the one to mention it.”

  Jenny’s laugh turned into a cough. It tasted like dirt. She’d be coughing stuff up for days at this rate. She was saved having to respond to Jessabelle’s I-told-you-so by Jack’s appearance through the trees, shotgun in hand. “Hey, Jessabelle,” he acknowledged simply. “You didn’t see what made that critter run off, did you?”

  “You mean that giant that almost killed us all?”

  “That ain’t no giant. Least not the same kind I saw before.

  Jessabelle stared down at the ground. “It went down the trail. There was some guy coming up this way. I didn’t recognize him.”

  Jenny’s heart turned cold. “Did the giant…?”

  Jess
abelle shook her head. “No. It was the weirdest thing. It chased him into the clearing a ways up from the Casto’s and just stopped. Not attacking or anything. Just standing there. It was still there when I left and came here. We’re going to have to go around the long way if we go at all.”

  For a moment, Jessabelle’s explanation confused Jenny. They’d hiked for hours before getting here, and while they’d taken a longer, circular route, she didn’t think they were so close to town that Jessabelle could have gotten there and back again in fifteen minutes. But her own perception of time was pretty confused by this point, and she dismissed her doubts.

  Jack took off his John Deere hat and wiped his forehead against his shoulder. He replaced the hat and motioned to Jenny. “Jenny’s too hurt. It’s going to be hard enough getting her down the short way. We could hole up in the house for a bit. That thing ain’t touched it. Then maybe I could go get help.”

  Jenny’s ankle didn’t hurt without weight on it, but she knew it would be a terrible hike down. “That depends. How far out of our way is it?”

  “What?”

  “The house.”

  “We’re here.”

  Jenny and Jessabelle looked at each other. Jessabelle wrinkled her brow and bit at her lower lip. Neither of them got the joke. They looked back at Jack, waiting for the punchline.

  Jack looked from Jenny to Jessabelle and back again. Scratching the back of his neck, he suddenly smiled and said, “Oh, I get it. While y’all were waiting for me to show up, y’all decided to play a joke on me. Funny. Hah-hah. Right. I’m going crazy or something. But seriously, ladies, shouldn’t we try to get inside before that thing comes back?”

  He motioned toward empty slopes and forest and weeds. Aside from the sealed-up well, there was no evidence any humans had ever lived here. Jenny cleared her throat. “Jack, I honestly don’t know what we’re supposed to see.”