Witches (7 page)

It made Amanda sick to dwell on it. She was a witch, too.

“Do you believe Rachel haunts Black Pond?” Amanda asked Mabel.

“Black Pond’s a place of darkness. I don’t know about the rest.” Mabel studied her. “I’d stay away from there if I was you. You seem especially susceptible to such things.”

“Perhaps I am,” Amanda replied softly.

Amanda’s sixth sense was squirming. An uneasiness nibbled at her. There was more to this.

“Mabel, that’s an intriguing story, but I’d best be going home now. It’s getting dark outside. And I wanted to sketch some designs tonight for the new pots I’m making tomorrow.”

“Well, it’s about time you got back to work.” Mabel gave her a guarded glance, seemingly glad to have dropped the subject of the witch, with night coming on.

Fetching Amanda’s empty basket, her hat, and her shawl, she didn’t utter another thing about Rachel as she said her good-byes.

“Thanks for the company and the delicious food, Amanda. Come by again real soon.”

Amanda gave the old woman a strong hug, gazing down at her. She’d left the remnants of their feast for Mabel.

She’s so frail and tiny, can’t weigh more than a sack of potatoes, all pale skin and brittle bones. She’s so old. What will I do when she goes, too?
Amanda brooded.
I’ll truly be alone out here, then. Just Amadeus and me, and my memories.

When Mabel walked her to the door, Amanda noticed that she was no longer wincing in pain, or limping. Just very tired. Good.

She left, stepping out into the lengthening shadows of an autumn twilight. The air was heavy with the promise of coming frost. Jake and she used to bundle up warmly and take long walks on such evenings.

For a moment, she stood at the edge of the forest and looked back at the trailer. She took the time to weave a spell over it and the old woman. If there were any devil’s disciples around, Amanda wanted to protect Mabel and make sure she’d be safe.

On her way home, she strode briskly through the woods, warm in her shawl, her eyes on the ground as the light turned an iridescent mauve and then to dark amethyst shadows. It was cold and still.

For some unnamable reason, she went a different way home than she’d come. Nowhere near the pond—or so she thought.

She halted on a large slab of rock halfway home to take some pebbles out of her shoe. After she’d tossed the rocks into the tall grass, she was straightening to leave when she blinked...and found herself standing beneath a huge willow tree on the edge of a dark body of water.

The pond. The same place she’d been earlier when she’d seen the ghost.

Startled, she gazed around. The sun was a dim crescent on the horizon, the night ready to take over, and the wind was suddenly icy.

“How did I get here?” she demanded aloud to no one, backing away from the willow tree.

There was a dangerous presence around her. The air glacial. Leaves crackled under her unsteady feet.

The cries for help originated in the distance, deep in the darkening woods. A woman’s screams pleaded for mercy and grew louder and more horrifying as Amanda listened, holding her breath. There were the echoes of galloping horses, their thundering hooves pounding; bloodthirsty shouts and jeers like a hunt...coming nearer...nearer, toward the pond, until Amanda had to clasp her hands over her ears to shut out the horrendous sounds.

The rabble surrounded her. The noises so ear splitting, and the woman’s terror so palpable, she could almost reach out and touch it.

The trees’ leaves and the bushes were violently disturbed, the dirt splattered up from the ground, stinging and pelting her. So real, she felt a horse’s warm, heaving flank slide past her, and she jumped. The scent of the horses, the leather of the saddles, even the sweat of the men was cloying—was real
.
All around her.

Yet, there was nothing
there.

Phantoms. All.

An eerie trance descended over Amanda as the invisible shades pranced around her. In macabre fascination, she listened as a woman groaned and cried on the ground. Amanda’s heart pounded along with the woman’s terror. She spun about, sweeping the area with her eyes and then her hands, but there was nothing she could do to aid the woman for there was
nothing
there.

This had all happened in the past.

One last wail crescendoed into the vibrating dusk and something heavy flew by—she felt the air ripple as it went past her—into the pond’s waters and a woman’s dying scream echoed into dead stillness.

Amanda’s ears were still quivering with the unearthly sounds; she couldn’t escape them. Shutting her eyes, she shouted out an ancient spell, one she hadn’t used in a long time and the past released her.

The woods were silent once again.

She cautiously opened her eyes.

Directly in front of her was a dark clothed woman, ephemeral as fog, hovering above the pond’s seething waters, beckoning to her. Trying to tell her, or warn her, of something.

“Rachel?”

“Yes.” The eyes were pools of gloomy emptiness.

“What do you want of me? Why did you bring me here without my consent?” she reprimanded angrily, her firmness concealing her apprehension.

The ghost didn’t answer, only moaned. It was drawing closer, as the water began to purl, surging before it in waves.

For a terrifying moment, Amanda couldn’t move. She felt the frigid water lapping hungrily at her feet, trying to suck her in. A force so strong, her body could barely resist it.

The wraith was mouthing words, her arms outstretched, almost touching her.

“Amanda...help...me...find...peace.” The apparition begged over the wind that whipped wildly about them.

“I don’t know what you want from me. I can’t help you. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be here. I command
you to return to your grave!” She yelled at the spirit.

“No!”

Amanda invoked a stronger spell to send the ghost back.

It worked.

The hold on her snapped like an overextended rubber band and Amanda fell backward, tumbling to the ground.

The apparition screamed in rage, and Amanda cringed in stunned surprise as it faded back into the wet mist until it was gone. The water continued to churn tumultuously, and the willow tree’s branches lashed out at her as if they were alive and trying to beat her.

That wasn’t how a spirit usually responded to a powerful witch.

Amanda turned and walked away through the darkness. Her steps dragging now from the two spells that had sapped her energy. She had to get home and sleep. She was so weary.

Rachel might have been a white witch too; her guilty conscience pricked her. Like her. Perhaps she should have helped her.

No, the Old Religion doesn’t allow it.
What was in the past, was in the past. It would do no good to resurrect it now.

Later, recovered from the magic, and safe in her home before a blazing fire, with Amadeus at her feet, Amanda drew up another enchantment to cancel out any lingering traces of the disastrous one of the night before. That spell had most likely brought Rachel into the real world and she was sure the new one would get rid of her. Amanda couldn’t help but feel pity for Rachel.

Rachel, who couldn’t rest.
What torment her soul must have endured for its hate to still have so much power after all this time.

Too much power for a dead woman...or a dead witch, if that was what she’d truly been.

Rachel. What did you really want?

Amanda didn’t really want to know the answer because knowing might only cause her more guilt. Interfering with the dead was no business for a live witch.

She gazed pensively into the flames.

She could do something for Rachel’s spirit, though.

Softly, she spoke the words of one final spell, one that would give Rachel’s soul peace. Forever—or so she hoped.

That was the least, and the only thing, she could do for a long-dead sister witch. Even that drained her so much she fell asleep in the rocking chair, fire still crackling, Amadeus cuddled in her lap; forgetting completely her vow to find the satanic cult that was causing havoc in the area.

She’d just done too much magic in one day.

Chapter Two

The next morning Amanda got up early, disturbing a comfortable Amadeus, and struggled into her robe with cold fingers. Scuffing into the kitchen in slippered feet, she snapped her fingers at the wood stove in the corner and flames leapt up inside.

She warmed herself over it and gazed through the ice-etched window. Outside, an overnight milky blanket of ice had attached itself to the ground, and the frozen tree limbs clacked together in the breeze like loose skeletons under a forbidding steel-gray sky.

She tried not to dwell on Rachel or Witch’s Pond. It was over. The incident was an enigma she would never solve now.

It was Saturday. Seven days from All Hallow’s Eve. It was the night when her Celtic ancestors had celebrated Samhain, the beginning of winter, and thanked the earth for its bounty of the previous summer. Through the ages, this was the night they’d dance in wild abandon before bonfires in scary costumes, trying to divine the future, and driving all the God-fearing folks crazy. It was also a night when the barriers between human and supernatural forces were broken. A night for witches.

Even the British church setting November first as holy All Saints’ Day couldn’t stop the pagan rites.

She thought of her older sister and smiled.
If it stays this cold, Rebecca, you’ll not be doing any nude cavorting in the woods this
year.

As if witches did such antics any longer. Well, perhaps, if it made good fodder for her books, Rebecca probably still did it.

By the time she’d finished eating breakfast, the kitchen was warm and cozy. She had a book opened before her and Amadeus was begging for scraps in her lap when the knock came at the door.

“Ernie!” Amanda exclaimed, after she tugged the door open. “Long time no see.” She grinned, feeling a little self-conscious in her robe, though he’d seen her in it many times when he’d come over to visit Jake. She pulled at her belt, tightening it.

He stood there sheepishly in his mailman’s uniform, clutching a package in his arms. “Hello, Amanda. Got some things here for you. Your Book-of-the-Month club selections.” He handed her a brown package. Amanda loved books and read all the time, especially history books, science fiction, and horror. After she’d taken the books, he lifted a large package up from behind him for her to see, groaning at the weight of it. “And this enormous thing. Whatever it is.”

“Heavy, huh?”

“Very.”

“Come on in with it,” she told him. “It’s freezing out there.”

“I know.” He agreed, chattering his teeth to make her smile again.

Amadeus had scuttled under the table. He curled up in a ball and glared out at Ernie as if he’d never seen him in his life.

“Amadeus, behave.” She chided the cat. “Don’t know what’s gotten into him. He’s never acted that way with you before.”

Ernie stepped inside, bringing the cold with him. “Must be the beard. He doesn’t recognize me.”

Amanda noticed the new growth, streaked with gray, on his face. It did make him look different. “I like it. Makes you look distinguished.”

“Thanks.”

“Why the hand delivery? That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t want to leave it outside by the mailbox. It’s so big, someone might have run off with it. Didn’t want it sitting out in the weather if it was important. So I thought I’d hand deliver it, and see how you were getting along at the same time.”

“That was nice of you.”

“I meant to stop in sooner, but I didn’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not. In fact, I visited Mabel yesterday. It felt good to get out,” Amanda said, closing the door. She watched him take the package over to the corner and set it down with a grunt.

He straightened up.

“What’s in it?”

“By the size of it and the address it came from—Trenton, New Jersey—I’d guess it was that cake of clay I ordered a while back, before...” The words
before Jake died
hung in the air between them, inescapable, dissipating only when Amanda’s lips turned up at the corners and she shook her head.

The look he gave her was heartbreaking.

“It couldn’t have come at a better time,” she assured him. “This morning I planned to start working again. The clay supply out in the workshop’s probably a hunk of stone by now.”

“Ah, I was going to ask how the pot business was doing.”

“Growing, and I haven’t been supplying the demand enough lately.” She couldn’t help but banter back.

He chuckled, getting it. “Well, now you’ll have no excuse not to. Work, that is. Put me at the top of your list. I’d like another one of those green pots. Bigger than the last one. My rubber tree has outgrown it but I’ve received so many compliments on it I want another one just like it. I’ll find something else to put in the old pot.”