Lend a Helping Hand

by Sara Bourgeois

  “Shoot,” I said and started to shake the door handle. “Please open.” I pleaded with it.

  I could feel the panic setting in and taking over. Something primal gripped me and my survival instincts kicked in.

  “Maybe there’s a door on the other side,” I muttered to Grim. “Do you remember if there were doors on both sides of the cabins?”

  “I think so,” he said and we started around the building.

  As soon as we started for the other side of the cabin the rain slowed. It would have been a relief except that I could hear the scarecrows moving across the damp ground toward us. They were quickly closing the distance as we ran up the back porch of the cabin.

  I all but flung myself at the door, and surprisingly, it gave way easily. I tumbled inside, and Grim practically fell on top of me.

  After slamming the door shut, I looked around in vain. I wanted to find something to barricade the door with but it was so dark in the cabin.

  “Grim, can you make any light?” I whispered.

  He was able to produce a small, dim bubble of light for us, but I had no idea how long it would last. I remembered that the outbuildings closer to the main building had electricity, and I hoped that the cabins did too.

  Using Grim’s light, I looked along the cabin’s walls for a light switch. I finally found one and held my breath as I flipped it.

  “Oh, thank the Goddess,” I said as the lights flickered on.

  I looked around the dusty room and decided that we’d block the front door with an old mildewed sofa and the back door with a huge bookcase that lined the living area wall.

  The sofa moved fairly easily, and I wasn’t sure how much protection it would offer us. But that was okay because the front door was stuck anyway. It was more there to slow down anyone who made it through rather than keep them out.

  Without magic, moving the bookcase proved difficult. Grim was able to use his power to make it somewhat lighter, but he couldn’t do much physically to help me. He was just too small, but thankfully some of his powers still worked. It was one of the advantages of having an Elder familiar, and in that moment, I was so thankful he’d come to me.

  It took a lot of grunting, sweating, and straining to move the ancient bookcase. It had to have been made of solid oak, and I knew then that the cabin was for staff. There was no way they would have put something so nice in a cabin for patients.

  After about ten minutes, I got the thing situated across the back door. I tried not to think about the fact that not only had we blocked them from coming in, but we also trapped ourselves inside.

  The lights flickered precariously, and I hoped that they’d stay on. The old bulbs lit up every speck of dust in the cabin, but they did provide me with some comfort. The cabin felt like it was our oasis from the insanity outside.

  “I wish we’d stayed home,” I said with a defeated sob.

  “We’ll get through this,” Grim said as reassuringly as he could. “Besides we know they have Ginger now. They took her to lure you here. We’re doing the right thing.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked. “We can’t just stay here.”

  “We’re going to have to stay here for a bit,” Grim said. “My powers are drained significantly. How about you?”

  “Mine are gone,” I said. “Whatever that rain was completely drained me.”

  “Well, we’ll wait a while. Maybe when we dry off, we’ll be okay. If not… we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Grim said.

  “I’m going to look around,” I said.

  The cabin was small and drafty. There was a main area with a living room and kitchen. Off to either side was a bedroom with a small bathroom.

  I walked into the bedroom on my left and flipped the light switch. The light flickered on and then went out. “Great.” I muttered, but a few seconds later, it came back on.

  Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to tax the electrical system, but I wanted to inspect the cabin. I had to know if there was another way for us to get away besides the doors I’d barricaded.

  I couldn’t believe how much furniture remained in the old cabin. The queen-size bed was broken and unusable, but no one had ever cleared it out. There were two nightstands with broken lamps too.

  Out of curiosity I opened the drawer on one of them and found a moldy old paperback book. Just as I was about to reach out and pick up the book, I heard a tapping sound on the bedroom’s window. Seconds later, Grim was at my side.

  Neither one of us made a move to look behind the thick green curtains that covered the window. They hadn’t rotted away at all and must have been made of synthetic cloth.

  “They are still out there,” I said, shivering at the memory of the scarecrows.

  “I doubt they’re going to get bored and wander off,” Grim said. “We should find some weapons.”

  “What are weapons going to do against dark witches?” I asked. “If we don’t have magic, we’re sitting ducks.”

  “I’d just feel better if we had something to fight with. They must not know for sure that we don’t have any magic or they’d have already found away in.”

  The tapping on the window came again. One of them, or all of them, was on the other side of the window messing with us, but Grim was right. If they knew we were practically powerless, they would have come in already.

  “Let’s go back into the other room,” I said as quietly as I could.

  We went back into the living room area, but I wanted to check out the other bedroom. I figured the stalkers were outside the bedroom we were just in so I had to have a few seconds to look around the other bedroom.

  I crept over to the window, and when I didn’t hear anything, I slowly peeled the curtain back. Not only was there no one out there, but the rain had stopped and I could swear it was getting light out.

  A banging at the front door sent me scrambling from the bedroom into the living area. Grim joined me in the middle of the cabin and for a minute we just stared at the door.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  Someone pounded on the door again, and I felt myself begin to quake with fear. We’d run out of time, and my powers weren’t completely back.

  “Zoe!” A familiar voice called out. “I know you’re in there.” Joe shouted. “Your mother and Glinda are here, and they promised me this is where we’d find you.”

  A smile spread across my face and I almost lept for joy, but as I reached for the doorknob, I hesitated. What if it was another trick? What if the dark witches got tired of trying to scare us and decided to trick us with fake versions of our loved ones? Three scarecrows could have just become fake Joe, Glinda, and Mom.

  “Let them in,” Grim said. “With three witches we can get Ginger and get the heck out of here.”

  “What if it’s not them?” I asked.

  “We can’t hide in here forever anyway, Zoe. Open the door and look at him face to face. Even without all your powers, I bet you can still see his aura. You’ll know if it’s him or not.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He was right. Even without the auras, I’d know Joe. I’d be able to feel it.

  I slid the moldy sofa out of the way, and the thing fell halfway apart as I moved it. So much for using it as a barricade. At least I’d thought it was making us safer.

  When I turned the knob, the door opened easily. Joe stood on the other side of the door with my Mom, Glinda, and Trucker standing behind him.

  I knew instantly it was them and threw myself into Joe’s arms. He squeezed me tight, and I couldn’t help but burst into tears.

  “How did you guys find us?” I asked as I pulled back from his embrace.

  The sun was suddenly back in the sky, and I had to squint my eyes against it. I felt my power come back, and the anxiety that I’d been feeling for the past few hours drained away instead.

  “Okay, we’ve got her. Let’s get out of here,” my mom said. “I don’t like this place one bit.”

  “No, we can’t leave without Ginger. I know
she’s here and we have to get her,” I said. “You guys can help. That will make everything much easier. But how did you find me so fast?”

  “So fast?” Joe asked. “You’ve been gone for two days. We came here looking for you twice, but even though your car was here, we couldn’t find you. We looked everywhere, but your Mom and Glinda did some sort of spell, and it got rid of the illusion magic covering the asylum.”

  “Ginger is here too. A ghost named Chastity told us she is in the attic space. We almost made it to her, but something is wrong here. We went up the stairs to the attic and ended up in the barn. But we have to try again. We have to.”

  “I don’t know, Zoe,” Mom said.

  “No. I’ve come this far, and from what we’ve seen, getting Ginger back is only the icing on the cake. The dark coven is here and there are demons, and we have to take them down. With all of us here, we can do it.”

  “I say we go for it,” Glinda said.

  “Yeah, let’s kick butts,” Trucker said. “And let’s do it fast so we can be home in time for dinner. I haven’t eaten since lunch.”

  “It’s good to have you guys back with me,” I said. “Let’s do this. Joe, are you okay coming with us? You don’t have to.”

  “There’s no way I’d leave you…”

  And then he was gone, and it was night again. At first I thought that I’d been fooled and the whole thing was an illusion, but Glinda, my mom, and Trucker were all still there. They stood their with their mouths open in stunned silence.

  Glinda spoke first. “What just happened?”

  “Who knows in this place,” I said. “We’ve got to get to the attic of the main building. I’m sure we’ll find him there too. The dark coven just raised the stakes.”

  Without waiting for them to say anything else, I took off for the main building without looking back. I could hear my friends and family following me, and it made me bolder.

  I knew that on the other side of the doors were the zombie things, but there were enough of us to take them on. As we hit the steps, the sky opened up and the stinging rain started.

  “Hurry,” I said. “This rain will drain our magic. We have to get out of it.”

  I sprinted up the steps and threw the asylum doors open. Just as I suspected, the zombie things were still inside. They’d been shambling around, but as we all spilled through the door, they turned their attention to us.

  They began moving in our direction much faster than I expected. Each one let out a loud noise that I knew was call. Who they were calling, I had no idea. Either they were calling out to their masters in the dark coven or they were summoning more like them. Either way, it wasn’t good.

  “Crap,” my mother said.

  “Hit them with Dead Drop,” I said.

  “Necromancy?” Mom shrieked. “Zoe, really!”

  “Come on, Mom. We’re not raising them. We’re putting them down. It’s fine.”

  She thought about it for a moment and then raised her hands. I didn’t even think about the fact that not only did she know what Dead Drop was, she obviously knew the spell too.

  Tendrils of deep green magic snaked from her fingers, and I followed suit. Glinda didn’t really know the spell, but it didn’t take her long to pick it up.

  The zombie horror things began to fall and as they did, their bodies burst into a million little pieces and then blew away like dust.

  “We’re going to make it,” I said as we neared the stairwell. “Keep going, guys.”

  Trucker and Grim augmented our magic, and when I turned back to make sure my Mom was okay, I saw Sage’s head poke out of the giant bag she had flung over her shoulder. The fact that we had three witches and three familiars to beat the coven and save Ginger and Joe made me feel much better. The dark coven might have been strong, but we would stand up to them regardless.

  We made it up to the fifth floor and filed through the door. I could see the room that hid the attic stairs at the end of the hallway. We were so close, but of course it couldn’t be that easy.

  A disgusting stench filled the air, and then black smoke began to rise from the floor. From that smoke emerged what I could only guess were demons. They were twisted and vile. I could feel the hatred pouring off of them.

  Their heads snapped to attention and their black gazes fixed on us. Some of them growled while others giggled an unsettling and unearthly sound.

  I wasn’t sure what exactly to do about demons. They weren’t the dead, so we couldn’t just put them down. We’d have to fight them with white magic, but I couldn’t decide which was the best spell for sending them back. There were so many. I’d need to rip a much bigger hole in the veil than I was comfortable with. It was dangerous not only to us, but to the rest of the world as well. The dark coven had put us in a precarious position.

  “What do we do?” I asked. “The hole we’d have to rip in the veil to send these things back could end up unleashing hundreds more of them. Maybe that was their plan all along,” I mused.

  “I know what to do,” Mom said. “You guys follow my lead.”

  She did something I did not expect at all. Instead of fighting, she cast a protection spell over the demons. Then, once that was cast, she began the ritual to bring them peace and happiness somewhere else. It’s the only karmically clean way to get someone who is bothering you to go away.

  Glinda and I just looked at each other and then joined in. We offered the demons as much love and peace as we had to give. The three of us poured our hearts out.

  And it worked.

  At first, the demons laughed at us, but then something changed. When they began to feel the love, their expressions changed. They began to weep and fell to their knees. After that, they smiled.

  The darkness outside lifted and brilliant sunshine streamed through the windows. That light gave way to a heavenly light as the Goddess’s visage appeared, and much to our delight, the entities that were once demons went to her. They crossed back over to the other side willingly, and many of the souls trapped in the asylum went with them. I even saw what looked like a teenage boy dressed in retro clothing. He turned back and smiled at me. Lonnie Mitchell was finally free. His entrapment in the asylum was over and he moved on to heaven. I knew that someday his parents would see him there, and I felt my heart swell.

  Just as fast as it had begun, it was over and the path to the attic was cleared for us. Blackwell Rock felt lighter, but I could still feel some darkness lingering. The evil was coming from the attic just as Chastity had said, and with the rest of the gloom cleared out, it became like a beacon.

  “Let’s go get them,” I said.

  Chapter Four

  We made our way up the narrow stairs in a single-file line. I was relieved when we walked through the doorway at the top and found ourselves in the attic instead of in the barn or somewhere else.

  I was not relieved when I saw the scene before me. The dark coven was thirteen witches, and they were in a circle in the middle of the attic space chanting something I couldn’t understand.

  Ginger sat terrified in the center of their circle, but when she saw me, the tremors of terror that had been coursing through her stopped. She gave me a soft smile, and I thought that it would turn the coven’s heads toward us, but they kept chanting.

  My eyes darted around the dusty, hot space for Joe. He and Lupin were tied up on the far wall of the attic. They’d been disregarded. Ginger was who they really wanted.

  What were they doing to her? I wondered. Then I figured it out. They were draining her of not only her magic but her lifeforce as well. I watched in horror as Ginger started to turn gray.

  “Stop,” I screamed, but the coven just kept chanting.

  Ginger looked at me again and gave me another soft smile. She mouthed I love you, and then I saw it in her eyes. My best friend and now sister had accepted that she was going to die.

  I turned to my Mom and Glinda. “Hit them with everything you’ve got,” I said.

  “Like love and light
?” Glinda asked. “Or what? What do we use here.”

  “No love and light,” I said and raised my hands. “We fight fire with fire.”

  I unleashed every ounce of righteous fire I had burning in my belly. My Mom and Glinda followed suit, and within seconds the dark coven was shrieking and breaking the circle.

  One witch stepped forward and shrugged off the flames. I didn’t care. We’d stopped the ritual.

  “Oh, no,” Joe said.

  “What is it?”

  “She’s the wife of the state trooper that was killed.”

  “Shut up,” she hissed and waved her hand in his direction.

  Joe looked stunned as his mouth sealed shut and he could no longer speak.

  “Stop this now,” I said and stepped to her.

  “He’s right,” she said. “I killed my husband because I had to make a sacrifice to bring the coven the power we have today. I killed the man I loved to help my fellow dark witches. I brought the bullet that pierced his heart to the demon as tribute. That should give you some clue as to what I’m going to do with you.”

  I was about to speak when I heard someone shriek and then there was the pounding sound of someone running up the attic stairs. It caught me off guard, but it caught the leader of the dark coven off guard too.

  We both watched as Amanda burst through the doorway. She kept screaming like a mad woman and had some sort of ornate dagger held high above her head.

  The dark coven tried to stop her, but the dagger cut through their magic. She stopped front of the dark coven leader and plunged the knife into her heart.

  All I could do was stand there with my mouth open for a moment. The dagger disappeared and a huge demon appeared over the coven leader’s body.

  “Well, I guess that means you fulfilled the deal,” he said and snapped his fingers.

  “What?” I asked.

  “She made a deal with me for the shifter. I said if she killed a witch, she could have him back. I gave her the use of my witch bane dagger to do it. Now the deal is done. I can go.”