Witches (42 page)

She found herself reliving vignettes of the last few times she’d seen her sister.

That weekend the summer before last with Amanda grinning over a spinning pot out in her workshop; the childish pride she’d always had over her pottery. She and Jake so happy together. Gossiping with Amanda that summer morning as they’d sat alone companionably munching hot bread and drinking coffee in her sunny kitchen, talking about life in one of their rare sisterly moments, as Jake had slept in the back room of the cabin that was now gone.

Amanda’s haunted eyes and puffy face at Jake’s funeral. Her pain had been so palpable it had made Rebecca wince. For as much beauty, power, and goodness as Amanda had had, it hadn’t been able to bring the thing she’d loved the most back to her. Jake. Oh, how jealous Rebecca had been of her and Jake at times over the years. In some ways, she and her sister had been a lot alike, but not in that. Rebecca had never known such love and could not imagine the pain of losing it. Seeing her sister’s grief that day had made her feel guilty for ever having been so envious.

Memories of Amanda filled her thoughts. Rebecca had never realized until this how much Amanda meant to her. As long as she was there, even if they’d hardly seen each other in the last few years, what with Rebecca’s book tours and traveling, just to know Amanda was in that cabin in the woods when she did need her, had made all the difference. She missed her not being there.

She missed her, period, because she loved her.

They drove through a churning sea of white, the car chugging valiantly mile after tedious mile along the almost invisible road. Rebecca couldn’t see how Ernie was driving at all. It was the worst blizzard she’d even been in. A miracle they were going anywhere.

What seemed like an eternity later, Ernie spun off the road and started through a shimmering expanse of untracked snow. Through the woods. “Here’s the tricky part,” he said, his teeth held tightly together. “Getting close to the pond without actually ending up in it.”

They had to arrive there without getting lodged in a snowdrift or caught in a ravine. They had to get the van through the land Rebecca had had to slog through a couple of days before. Wasn’t going to be easy.

Rebecca closed her eyes, silently wove a minor spell, and crossed her fingers. They made it.

Ernie released a great sigh, switched off the car. “We’re here.” He’d tucked the van under the skeletal willow tree for some protection from the gusty wind. Yet it still shook like a shivering dog.

“About time.” Rebecca stretched in the seat beside him and squinted out the window at the frozen pond. The place looked different than three days ago. The water slick, iced over, and the surroundings covered in a blanket of sparkling white. “Brrr. Looks cold out there.” She’d wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

“I’m afraid it’s too bad out there to raise the tent, Rebecca. The wind would tear it right out of our hands and into New Jersey.”

She nodded, concurring. “So we stay in here. For now. It was a silly idea to have brought a tent in the first place.”

“Yep,” Ernie answered, watching the willow sway above them wildly as he turned the car back on to circulate more heat. “Might as well be comfortable. Concerning our supplies. We have more than enough food and water to last us. Warm clothes and blankets. High boots. Snowshoes, even. I’m real glad I also brought along extra cans of gas. We could stay here for days, running the car for the warmth if we’re careful. We should crack a window so we don’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning. I’ll check every so often to be sure snow doesn’t clog the tailpipe. In fact, I’ll have to check on that pretty soon. The snow’s now as high as the bottom of the door crack. We could easily become trapped here. Snowbound.

“Having said that, Jane knows where we are and if we don’t return in three days, the allotted time, she’ll send out the Mounties.”

“You mean they do snow rescues down here in Connecticut? In your dreams.”

Ernie laughed.

Upward through the falling snow there was just the tinge of a pinkish winter sky, and an eerie solitude to the woods and fields around them, with its dark wet branches of a thousand trees lined with ridges of white going up along the horizon. To Rebecca it seemed as if the world had turned monochromatic, accented in black. The hush of the icy forest was unreal. It was as if she was in another place, an alien place, and suspended in time.

“What does your watch say, Ernie?”

He lifted his wrist and peered at it in the twilight inside the car. “It doesn’t talk but the hands read four-twenty. It’ll be dark soon.”

“Thanks.” She still had over seven hours until midnight, when she was supposed to evoke the warlock’s spell, torch the book of spells, and sprinkle its remains across the pond. She shaded her eyes from the white glare and inspected the area before them on the shoreline around the willow tree. It would be slippery.

“Do you think the pond is truly frozen solid?”

“I’m not sure. The weather’s been subzero long enough, but I wouldn’t stake my life on it.”

“I can perform the ritual right there.” She went on softly, almost more to herself than Ernie, pointing. “In front of the car. In the headlights.”

They fell silent for a while as the night closed in around them. The snow was whipping around, but it made things bright enough to see by.

Ernie finally spoke. “I brought some cards along. Want to play something? It’ll help pass the time.” Rebecca turned and smiled at him in the half-dark snowlight.

Though the car was running, they’d left the lights off.

Not just to save the battery, but because Ernie was afraid someone would find them waiting there. He wasn’t taking any chances.

“Sure. I know how to play poker, spades, and pinochle.”

“Great. Poker.” He reached back behind his seat and brought up one of the lanterns. He lit it and the front seat was flooded with soft light. “I’ll deal first.”

They passed the time until twelve, the witching hour, playing cards and talking about Amanda. Jake. The past. Their lives. Ernie loved talking about Jane and her kids. At one point Rebecca almost spilled the beans and mentioned Jane being pregnant with his son (it would be a son), but something stopped her at the last second. Maybe Jane wanted to give him the news herself. Rebecca could tell already that he’d be so happy.

She tried not to let the growing evil of the place she could sense hovering around them get its claws into her too deeply, or she knew she’d be lost.

At ten minutes to twelve, cramped from sitting so long, Rebecca took the metal container that Simon had given her, the book of spells, and Ernie’s lighter, and hobbled out toward the pond. Tibby would have been of real help to her now, but he hadn’t reappeared. She’d have to do it alone. She remembered that Simon had said that she’d be in the direst danger after she’d destroyed the book. Yet the atmosphere of the place had become more threatening every hour since they’d first arrived. She could feel it in her bones. In the air like heavy static. Evil was congregating, waking up and flexing its muscles all around her.

It was still snowing like crazy. The whole world illuminated, as if the snow produced its own light from underneath. She could see perfectly well but Ernie still snapped on the car’s headlights for her.

In their harsh glare, Rebecca, bundled up like an Eskimo, waddled to the edge of the frozen pond and began weaving the intricate spell that she’d memorized in a chanting whisper and her words carried over the air. The snow was deep, higher than her boots. The wind moaned around her, sharp and cutting.

It took a long time and when she was done, her gloved but stiff hands placed the ancient book in the container as her tired body shook with the numbing cold, laid the receptacle on the snow, and set fire to the book with the Bic® lighter. It burned swiftly as she watched with regretful eyes. The flames arched up in exploding colors. The cries she heard could have been captured souls being released.

She had to fight for a moment to keep her balance in the blustery wind. A great tingling had coursed through her body like an electrical current. What was that, she thought, bewildered, then forgot about it. Yet she felt somehow different. Less fatigued, more confident.

When the book was only ashes, she lifted the container and crunched as close to the pond as she could get. Tossed the ashes out into the wind and watched the soot swirl away over the ice.

Slowly, above the pond, close to the shore, a feeble flicker of light began to glow. A pinpoint like a distant star.

Rebecca’s eyes fastened on it and after a few minutes she was sure. It was expanding. The doorway.

I did it!
She cheered to herself. Her clenched fist swathing through the night air in a gesture of victory in the car’s headlights so Ernie could see. She jumped up and down excitedly, then ran back to the waiting car and hopped in. Ernie switched the headlights off.

“I see it,” was the first thing he uttered, his chin resting on the top of the steering wheel and his eyes riveted to the light pulsating above the water. It was the size of a baseball now. “You really did it.” There was astonishment in his voice.

“Did you doubt it for a second?” she asked proudly as she shivered next to him. “I also feel like a popsicle. Turn the heat up.”

Ernie slid his eyes to her reddened face. “I already did. As high as it’ll go.”

“Thanks.”

“Why don’t we take turns watching it?” Ernie suggested. “We both need some sleep. You sleep first, though, in case something happens. You’ll need all your strength.”

“Good idea.” Rebecca leaned her head on the seat’s headrest, her gaze on the growing doorway. She didn’t feel like climbing in the back and fighting with a sleeping bag. “Just promise you’ll wake me the instant something changes. Something happens.”

“I will. Promise.”

Rebecca shut her eyes and attempted to sleep. She was amazed, as excited and nervous as she was, that she was able to.

Though not for long.

“Rebecca?” She heard the sibilant whisper in her ear. Louder, more urgent, “Rebecca!” Someone was shaking her violently awake. Ernie.

Gasping, she came to, unsure where she was. Then her eyes flew open in startled terror as she saw what was in the van’s headlights.

Demons.

“
Oh, God!”
Ernie, sitting next to her in the semi dark with his eyes popping, gulped. “What the hell are
they?”

Rebecca had the obscene urge to giggle. Fright. These were real, honest to goodness inhabitants of hell. Snarling. Viciously menacing. Massive. No, some were Brobdingnagian. Each encased in a glowing aura of unearthly luminescence so that when they moved it appeared as if a living light shield coated them.

They looked like escapees from some state of the art special effects monster movie.
Aliens,
maybe. Or a cross between
Aliens
and every
Howling
movie ever made.

They were hulking around the car like vultures circling their dying prey.

“They’re demons,” Rebecca murmured, “from hell, is what they are. Burning the book must have brought them from the nether realms. Burning that book was like sounding a trumpet of black magic.”

One of the creatures, a bear-like thing with the face of a deformed snake, was hammering on the hood, peering in at them as if they were tonight’s snack, but it was too stupid to figure out how to get to them. He whammed the hood again and the car bucked like a wild horse on speed. Rebecca knew what a sardine in a tin must feel like. Except sardines were already dead and she wasn’t.

“What does it want?”
Ernie’s voice quavered on the verge of hysterics. His face was whiter than the snow outside.

“Us,” Rebecca quipped, humorlessly. “They love human flesh. Raw. I believe they’ve been sent to dispose of us before we can help Amanda.”

“By whom?”

“The Devil, of course. They’re his minions, after all. Like Rachel is his creature. I’d suspected Satan was behind this from the beginning. Then that English warlock confirmed it. He prepared me for something like this. Said it could happen.” Her eyes were glued to the supernatural creatures.

“Thinking it may happen and it actually happening is a hell of a difference,” Ernie threw in.

“You telling me?” Rebecca’s laugh was thin.

She had to give the mailman credit, he had courage. He didn’t whimper or pass out. Looked like he wanted to, but he didn’t.

Another of the fiends, one of the ones that could have been a twin to the monster in
Alien,
pranced around to Rebecca’s window and hunkered down; a sinister eye gawked in at them, rows of jagged teeth as large as shark teeth salivated, and then a mammoth spiked tail slammed against the side of the car door. The glass cracked and the door dented in.

Ernie yelped loud enough to wake the dead.

Two of the monsters were tugging at the door handles, gibbering like mad apes, drooling with unearthly hunger as they studied the two terrified humans cowering inside. Another one, a dog-faced thing that stood on three legs and had lots of arms, was carving up the fender like it was cold butter instead of painted steel.

“Do something, Rebecca!”
Ernie wailed at her. He was plastered as far back against the seat as he could get.