Terror sharp and bright blazed in Lori’s chest and she stared, dazed at the bloody knuckles on Adrian’s hand. Her mind, moments before a torrent of thoughts, went blank.
Haltingly, Lori dragged her gaze from the gore and back to the bits of jewelry tangled in the bones. Her eyes bore into one piece, a shiny silver orb. Beverly Silva's harmony bell, her angel caller, lay in the carnage.
On stilted legs, Lori walked to the bones and fell to her knees. She lifted the bell and started to ring it.
43
At last Ben gazed upon the ugly tree with its twisted branches and its thick trunk. Wart-like nodules protruded from the rotted bark.
Wincing, Ben climbed up the tree and shined his light down into the center, into the hollowed-out trunk. Ashy clumps of bark met his gaze, but as he studied it, he realized it was not bark, but bones that filled the hollow in the tree.
Bones and cloth and hair. The topmost hair was pale, almost as white as the bones themselves. Tangled within that hair, he saw a discolored whistle, once red, now faded to a pale pink.
He stared and stared, paralyzed, transfixed, his legs as thick and dense as the other trees in the forest. He was unable to think through to the next logical next step, unable to tear his eyes from the horror hidden in the ugly old tree.
And though it was impossible, he heard the far-off tinkle of a bell and knew it was down, down deep beneath the bones.
The witch did not appear to move, but suddenly she was there beside Lori. She bypassed her, reached a skeletal hand for Adrian, clutched her and dragged her toward the cauldron. Adrian screamed and writhed and though the witch looked little more than bones, she was stronger than any human man.
“No,” Lori screamed and stood, searching for the way to beat the witch. She grabbed hold of Adrian’s other arm and pulled.
Adrian shrieked, tears pouring down her face. The witch’s face was not a mask of fury, but of pure delight. She delighted in Adrian’s screams, in Lori’s fear. They would rip Adrian in two if they both continued to pull.
Lori let go of Adrian’s arm and dove toward the pile of bones. She swept the trinkets, the witch’s trophies, in her arms and plunged through the doorway out of the hut.
Ben heard the ringing of the bell and he reached into the tree and dug. He pulled out bones in handfuls and let them rain onto the earth behind him. He gagged when pale hair slid off a sightless skull. He scooped bones and bark until he was bent over, his top half upside down in the tree, but he didn't dare go further. He'd get stuck. He could die that way.
Ben cursed and climbed out of the tree, searched the ground until he found a strong, sharp stick.
He hacked and tore at the rotten tree, bark crumbling away, bones falling from the hole he'd created, and still that far-off tinkling beckoned him deeper and deeper.
As Lori fled the hut, she heard an inhuman shriek behind her. The witch was furious that Lori had stolen her trophies.
Lori tripped and fell, the jewelry skittering across the moist ground.
The witch materialized in front of her. Her mouth a gaping black hole. The scream that had started in the hut continued. Lori thought her skull might burst and she clamped her hands over her ears.
The witch grabbed hold of Lori’s arms. Her touch blazed against Lori’s skin, singeing her flesh.
Lori grabbed at the ground searching for anything to use as a weapon. Her fingers skittered across the jewelry and landed on the tiny golden unicorn with its sharp horn.
As the witch dragged Lori to her feet, Lori jammed the horn into the witch’s good eye. The witch released Lori as purple-black blood spurted from her eye-socket.
The witch spun back toward her shack.
The hut and the roots beneath it shook and crumbled. The entire structure collapsed in clumps of bark and bone.
Adrian leapt from wreckage.
Lori ran to her. “Run!” she screamed into the girl’s ear.
Lori pulled her away. Behind them the witch continued to howl.
Ben’s fingers closed around a spinal cord and a gleam shimmered in the flashlight. He stared at it. It was gold. The head of a unicorn, its once bright ruby eye dulled and dark. He dropped the spine and fell heavily to his knees, but he didn’t stop.
He dug at the roots of the tree that were black and rotted. An overwhelming stench poured from the hole and bile rose into Ben's throat, but he swallowed it back and dug.
They ran until Lori’s legs were so weak, she had to slow. Adrian’s hand was slick in her own and her wails had turned to whimpers.
Lori blinked ahead of them. She could hear something, panting, but the forest had again changed. The red mist no longer sheathed the ground. It was the forest she knew again, dark but familiar, and a light shone up ahead.
“No,” Adrian whispered, trying to tug away, but Lori urged her on.
They stepped into a clearing. Ben sat on the ground, face glistening and dirty, a flashlight discarded at his side. A black hole lay before him and behind it a pile of bones.
44
Ben leapt to his feet grabbing Lori around the waist.
“No,” she murmured. “Help Adrian. Her hand.”
He pulled away. Adrian still clung to Lori, but she allowed Ben to look at her hand.
He said nothing though dismay flashed across his face. When he took Adrian’s wrist in his fingers, she winced, but didn’t cry out.
“They’re not bleeding anymore,” he murmured, tilting her hand to the side. “But we need to call an ambulance. Do you…” He glanced at Lori, “have the missing appendages?”
Adrian eyes drifted closed and she gave a slight shake of her head. “She ate them,” she whispered.
Lori blinked at the ground in front of her, the bones and dirt coppery red and rancid-smelling. Ben had stepped away. He was on the phone with the police, telling them to come to the woods off Tanglewood Drive. They’d found skeletons, several of them.
"What do we tell them?" Adrian whispered, holding Lori's hand so tight her fingers had gone numb.
"I don't know…" Lori murmured, looking at the forest beyond them. Her fear had gone and she could not say why. Had the witch been annihilated when Ben destroyed the tree or had she merely fled, moving undetected through her own world to take up residence elsewhere?
"They'll never believe us," Adrian continued, tears streaming down her cheeks. "They'll say we made it up, that we're insane."
"We both saw it. It's pretty hard to deny a story when two people experienced it. And your hand. How can we explain that away?”
"It's not that hard. I don't think we should tell. Okay? I want you to say you found me in the woods and I was out of it and… I'll just say I don't remember. Maybe I had an accident and lost my fingers. The blood loss made me disoriented."
"Adrian. Why?"
"Because!" Her voice rose higher. "Because my… my mother says I exaggerate and I make things up and if we tell them this… they'll say I made it all up and I'm trying to get attention and—"
"Okay… shh." Lori hugged Adrian closer.
It was a hard story to tell and it fell to Ben to do it Among the three he was the most level-headed and, ultimately, he hadn’t been there, he hadn’t stepped into that other world.
“We were walking,” Ben told the investigator, “and we saw this strange, creepy-looking tree. We were looking for Adrian. We’d been hiking in this forest the evening she went missing, so we decided to come back. I knock down dead trees all the time. It’s something I learned to do as a kid with my dad. You knock them down safely so they don’t fall on some unsuspecting guy who’s taking a stroll in the woods. Anyway, I started trying to knock this one down and it began to crumble and bones started falling out. We kept pulling it apart and more appeared.”
He swallowed and glanced at Lori, who sat on the ground beside Adrian, her arm wrapped tight around the girl’s shoulders.
“While we were breaking apart this tree, we heard someone calling for help. That’s when we found
Adrian. She was crying and she’d been injured.”
Another policewoman stood at Lori and Adrian’s side. She’d tried twice unsuccessfully to get Adrian to speak with her privately, but Adrian refused to let go of Lori.
The policewoman squatted down, resting a hand on Adrian’s arm. “Do you remember anything, honey? Anything before they found you?”
Adrian shook her head. “I… no. It’s just blank. I was walking in the woods with my friend Diane and then there’s nothing until tonight.”
“Okay. Maybe some of it will come back. Right now you need medical attention.” The policewoman shifted her gaze to Lori. “You’re welcome to ride in the ambulance.”
45
Lori sat in her bay window gazing for a few final moments at her apartment. Cardboard boxes sat stacked against the wall.
“Knock-knock,” Ben said, opening her door and stepping inside.
“Hi.” Lori stood.
“You’re all packed? I told you I’d help.”
“I know, but I needed something to fill the time. Now I’m trying to psych myself up for moving back in with my mom.”
“I told you to move it with me.” Ben kissed her.
“Maybe someday.”
“Should we start loading these then?” he asked.
“Wait. Did you talk to Zander’s brother about what the police found in the woods?”
He nodded. “How much do you want to know?”
“All of it.”
“Okay… in total they found nine skeletons in the tree.”
“Nine?”
“Yeah,” he said. “They haven’t identified all of them. Six are still Jane Does, but they’ve been able to use dental records to confirm Bev, Summer, and Bella. They don’t have dental records yet on Peyton. They’re trying to track down her parents. Five of the nine skeletons were older, all likely girls who were murdered in the 40s and 50s. No identification, but they do have a unique piece of jewelry connected to a twelve-year girl who disappeared in 1944. Marilyn Ashwood. They’re trying to track down her parents to get a DNA sample, but they don’t know if they’re living or deceased.”
“What about the… the old woman?” They’d stopped referring to her as the witch in the days after that night. Each time Lori spoke the word she feared she might conjure the evil back from wherever she had gone.
“One hand and a few teeth from a very old skeleton is all that Zander’s brother knew. I think the rest of her skeleton just… turned to ash when I was pulling out the others. “
Lori sighed. She’d already known that. Ben had told her and she’d seen it for herself, but still she’d hoped that investigators would uncover something that proved the witch had existed.
“They’ve also identified the other body in Hector Dunn’s basement.”
“Who was it?”
“A girl from the upper peninsula. Her name was Polly Snyder. She disappeared in 1996 after going for a bike ride.”
Lori sighed. “I guess it’s finally over.”
Weeks had passed since that terrifying night in the woods. Lori and Adrian had spoken daily. Adrian’s family knew nothing of what had transpired during Adrian’s absence. Adrian clung to the story that she remembered nothing, but in secret she told Lori about minutes that crawled like years and hours that passed in seconds.
Her time with the witch had been so bizarre it was nearly impossible to retell. Some of it was tedious and some of it was delightful, hours shoveling black flesh into the cauldron followed by hours sitting down to a feast of fresh fruit and wine. The witch never spoke, but Adrian had heard her thoughts and likewise the witch had heard Adrian’s. Some moments the witch had been kind and consoling, in others she had been cruel and venomous.
Adrian remembered vividly the loss of her fingers. She’d woke to find the witch crouching beside her. Before Adrian could move, the witch had lifted Adrian’s hand to her mouth and bitten both fingers off at her knuckle.
On the final day, Adrian had known her end was coming. She had resigned herself to death long before Lori arrived.
Now Lori parked the car and turned to Adrian. “You’re sure you’re up for this?” she asked.
Adrian nodded, fiddling with the little bell Lori had given her that night. It was the bell Lori had worn into the forest, but it no longer made a sound. “Yes. I need to do it. It’s starting to fade. Everything that happened… it’s slipping away.”
“For me too,” Lori admitted.
Lori climbed from the car, walked to the office door and rang the green buzzer.
Irene Whitaker opened the door wearing a jewel-colored tunic over black leggings. “Come in, come in. I was so happy you called, Lori. And you must be Adrian.” She took Adrian’s uninjured hand and held it tight, looking into her face. “You are a very brave girl.”
They followed Irene to her table in the back and began to tell their stories.
Epilogue
"Sixty-two days until we meet in Italy," Ben said, picking up Lori's carry-on bag.
"I'm looking forward to it," she told him.
"But you’re off to Machu Picchu first," he said.
“Yep. Time to face some of those fears, live some of those big dreams,” she murmured, leaning into him as he rested his cheek against hers.
"Okay, then this is goodbye for now,” he whispered.
"Goodbye for now."
He kissed her, but she didn't melt into him in the way she wanted. She was leaving on a two-month solo trip and, though it had been hard, she'd refused to get lost in Ben Shaw. She needed to find herself first.
As he drew away, he paused, kissed her ear and whispered, "Stay out of the woods."
She smiled, picked up her bag, and blew him a kiss as she walked backwards to check in for her flight to Peru.
Sixteen days later, Ben opened his mailbox, drew out his mail and flipped past an ad for used cars, a bill for his internet, and lastly a postcard.
He gazed at the photograph of the ancient Incan civilization of Machu Picchu. He flipped it over and read Lori's words.
Ben,
I can't believe I waited so long to see this place. It's glorious. I rode the Inca Rail from the Sacred Valley up the mountain. It was otherworldly, in a very much ‘of this world’ kind of way. You'll be happy to hear I'm savoring every moment.
Forty-six days until Italy. I’m excited to hold your hand in a gondola.
Adiós,
Lori
P.S. I miss you.
Don’t Miss the Next Novel in the Troubled Spirits Series:
Ashwood’s Girls
The True Story that Inspired Darkness Stirring
On April 18th, 1943, four boys were bird poaching in Hagley Woods in Worcestershire, England. They came upon a strange-looking tree known as a wych elm. When one boy climbed into the tree, he looked down into the hollow between the branches and made a disturbing discovery. Tucked within the tree was a human skull.
The boys notified police. Investigators found a full skeleton shoved into the wych elm. The skeleton still had bits of the person’s clothes attached, as well as a wedding ring, tufts of hair, and a single shoe. A medical examiner discovered the skeleton belonged to a woman who had been dead for approximately eighteen months. After finding fabric in her mouth, he surmised she had died from suffocation. The skeleton was also missing one hand, which was later discovered a short distance away from the tree.
The case took a strange turn when respected anthropologist Professor Margaret Murray announced that the woman looked to have been killed as part of a black magic execution.
Investigators searched for the identity of the woman in the wych elm, but repeatedly came up empty. However, one year after the discovery of the body, graffiti appeared in Birmingham. It posed the question ‘Who Put Bella Down the Wych Elm?’
The skeleton discovered in the wych elm has never been identified. For a deeper look at this story, visit my blog.
Also by J.R. Erickson
The Troubled Spirits Ser
ies
Dark River Inn
Helme House
Darkness Stirring
Ashwood’s Girls
Or dive into the completed eight-book stand-alone paranormal series:
The Northern Michigan Asylum Series.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the people who made this book possible. Thank you to Team Miblart for the beautiful cover. Thank you to RJ Locksley for copy editing Darkness Stirring. Many thanks to Will St. John for beta reading the original manuscript, and to Travis Poole And Emily Haynes for finding those final pesky typos that slip in. Thank you to my amazing Advanced Reader Team. Lastly, and most of all, thank you to my family and friends for always supporting and encouraging me on this journey.
About the Author
J.R. Erickson, also known as Jacki Riegle, is an indie author who writes ghost stories. She is the author of the Troubled Spirits Series, which blends true crime with paranormal murder mysteries. Her Northern Michigan Asylum Series are stand-alone paranormal novels inspired by a real former asylum in Traverse City.
These days, Jacki passes the time in the Traverse City area with her excavator husband, her wild little boy, and her three kitties: Floki, Beast, and Mamoo.
Darkness Stirring: A Troubled Spirits Novel Page 28
