by Chris Cooper
Something else escaped the Witch’s attention, though—another police cruiser approaching from the direction of Lilly’s cabin. Perhaps the officers inside had seen the lightning strike or heard the explosive boom that came with it. Oliver wasn’t quite sure what exactly had led them there, but because he didn’t have the Briarwood key, they had been invisible to him, obscured by the remnants of the barrier surrounding the hidden town.
As the rain poured, two officers emerged from the car with guns drawn. They stood in the crooks of their cruiser doors with looks of shock on their faces as they watched the Witch float above the field.
After several moments of dreadful silence, one of the officers shouted, “Stop!” The command seemed to reach the Witch’s ears, but instead of halting, she merely flicked her wrist, sending the officer flying backward. The remaining officer opened fire, sending a spray of bullets toward her, ripping through her tattered gown into her pale flesh and causing her to fall to the ground.
“She’ll kill them,” Anna said. “We have to do something.”
Oliver pressed the gas pedal to the floor and pointed the car directly at the Witch. She regained her footing and turned toward the other cruiser. With another flick of the wrist, she ripped the car sideways, sending it spinning like a pinwheel. As her invisible grip lifted the second officer in the air, Oliver’s car barreled into her. The Witch flipped onto the hood and smashed into the windshield, body breaking the glass before flipping over the hood and back onto the ground. Anna screamed and lifted her arms to shield her eyes.
The Witch lay in the field behind him, and he felt sick to his stomach at the thought of what he’d just done. She was nothing more than an abused child, but he couldn’t let her kill again. Oliver saw the second officer in his periphery. He’d fallen to his feet and was running to check his partner.
“We have to keep going,” Oliver said, pulling himself together and straightening the wheel. “What if Izzy’s home? He’s headed straight for her.”
He had to take the long way to Izzy’s since the hill was too steep and too wet for the car to climb. As the car struggled up the hill, Oliver hoped against hope that Izzy wasn’t home.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The light on the second floor of Izzy’s house had once been a beacon of sorts, calling Oliver back to safety. Now, he subconsciously pleaded for the light to remain extinguished. If he was in luck, Izzy was still sitting at the police station, out of reach of the desperate man with the gun.
Oliver and Anna quietly exited the car, their feet sinking into the soft ground, which quickly turned to mud under the weight of their shoes.
The door sat ajar, and one of the glass panes had been smashed out of it. As Oliver cautiously pushed the door open, he heard rustling from the living room and held his hand out for Anna to wait in the doorway.
Oliver edged into the kitchen, careful to avoid the bad floorboard. Simon was desperately searching for something, and Oliver wasn’t eager to confront the armed man, who at this point, had nothing left to lose except for the boy. Oliver heard a sigh of relief and a jingle from the living room.
He was looking for car keys. Surely, Simon can’t drive.
If Izzy’s keys were at home, so was Izzy—unless Eric had taken her to the station.
Oliver hoped Simon would take the keys and drive off into the night or, hopefully, off the side of a cliff. But instead of running toward the door, Simon flipped the living room lights on.
“Isabelle?” he yelled up the staircase. “Would you take us for a ride? Stay here, boy,” he said as he began to climb.
He needs a driver.
The Witch’s brother stood in the living room as Simon slowly ascended the steps, gripping his revolver. “I know you’re here. Now, come out and say hello.”
Oliver pulled the weapon from his belt. It had two barrels, which meant he had precisely two shots to stop Simon. He slowly pulled one of the hammers back, being careful to muffle the click.
As Simon approached the blind corner at the top of the staircase, he let out a sudden yelp and fell backward, toppling down the stairs and onto the living room floor. He lay still for a moment, and the brother stood motionless, with a look of panic on his face.
Izzy descended the staircase, hands wrapped around a wooden baseball bat and ready to swing again. Before she could make it to the bottom, Simon shook himself off and picked up the revolver next to him. Izzy froze as he rose to his feet and pointed the weapon at her.
“How fitting that I should take one last Elder before I depart,” he said.
Elder?
“Now, put down the—”
Oliver aimed the bladed pistol as best he could and pulled the trigger. The bullet whizzed past Simon and smashed through the window next to the front door. The shot caught the entire living room by surprise. Simon fell backward against the couch, and while Izzy ducked on the staircase, Simon’s son hid behind the coffee table. Anna flew around the corner of the kitchen, brandishing a metal meat tenderizer.
Oliver cocked the second hammer and stepped into the living room as Simon scrambled to his feet and ran toward the door, jerking his son’s arm along the way. Oliver held the gun steady, pointing it directly at Simon’s back, but couldn’t bring himself to fire again.
Simon’s footsteps pounded down the front steps as Oliver and Anna ran to the living room to peer out the window. A few moments later, Izzy’s car doors slammed shut under the porte cochere, and the engine turned over, revving several times as Simon struggled to shift the car into drive. Oliver stepped out onto the porch just in time to see the car awkwardly peel out from the side of the house and onto the road to town.
Without the Witch, Simon would surely be captured. He was a walking dead man, in more ways than one.
“Call the police, and tell them he’s headed toward town!” Oliver shouted through the front door as he ran to the side of the house to grab the police cruiser. He wondered just how far the man would make it without crashing.
He had been correct about the police presence in the town, and only a short time passed before the blare of sirens echoed through the streets. When he reached the square, the tail end of the station wagon appeared in the distance. The vehicle had crashed into the statue of the town founder.
As another cruiser raced toward the square—as fast as a car could race through the narrow streets of Christchurch—Oliver pulled up in the cruiser along the back of the station wagon and ran toward the driver’s-side door. Although the wagon had been made of sturdy metal, it was no match for the heavy stone base of the statue, and the front of the car’s body had crunched around it, completely collapsing the front bumper and hood. The engine stuttered before dying completely as the officers approached the car.
Simon lay slumped against the steering wheel, blood dripping from his forehead down the cracked leather. Oliver wasn’t sure if the injury had come from the impact of the crash or Izzy’s baseball bat.
The passenger seat was empty. He craned his head to look for the son but saw no signs of him anywhere. Did he run? Was he ever in the car to begin with?
Another cruiser skidded to a halt, and the officers climbed out and moved in. Simon let out a groan and shifted slightly in his seat.
“Back away from the car,” one of the officers said from behind. Oliver lifted his palms into the air and slowly backed away. The officer cautiously approached the car and knelt next to Simon once he saw the man was no longer a threat.
Simon was limp as the paramedics lifted him onto the stretcher. After the ambulance carted him away, Oliver was escorted to the police station, sans his obscure pistol. The station was a veritable buzz of activity, and Eric stood in front of an old metal desk, poring over a map of the area, surrounded by several other officers.
The receptionist took one look at Oliver then spun around. “Sir!” she shouted, vying for Eric’s attention.
He glanced up from the map. “Thank God,” he said under his breath, crossing the room to greet
Oliver.
“We got a call from the edge of the woods a little while ago. Something about a commandeered police car hitting a floating woman. What happened out there, and why do you look like you’ve been playing dress up?”
Oliver ignored the last question. “Simon crossed back into Christchurch and the Wi… woman broke the barrier, so we were able to drive through. She tried to attack the approaching cruiser and—”
Eric held a hand out and stopped Oliver. “Okay, okay. Well, we’ve got him now. Just have to make sense of whatever happened in the field. We’re going to get Izzy and Anna down here too so that we can take statements.”
It’s over? What about the Witch’s brother? Didn’t anyone see him?
“I’ll call them,” Oliver said. “I have to let them know I’m okay.”
Eric pointed Oliver toward one of the desk phones in the corner of the room. “You can wait in the interview room once you’re done.”
Oliver tapped Izzy’s number into the dial pad. Anna picked up the phone on the other end. When she heard Oliver’s voice, she began to cry.
Oliver spoke quietly, so as not to be overheard by the others in the station. “Look, they want you and Izzy to come down to the police station. I need you to do something for me, though. Simon’s son—the officers in the field must not have seen him. No one besides us knows about him. We have to keep it that way.”
“But why would I lie about—”
“He’s been locked in that cell for who knows how long. You saw it. If he was smart enough to escape, he’ll be smart enough to survive on his own. There’s no telling what will happen to him if he’s roped into all of this, and he’s been through enough. Tell Izzy too.” He hung up the receiver and headed toward the interview room.
Oliver sat in the uncomfortable metal chair and waited for his interview. The room was hot, so he took off his heavy overcoat and set it on the interview table. His eye caught the crimson on his cotton shirt. He had completely forgotten about the puncture wound on his left side, and he rolled up his shirt to examine it. Although his skin was stained with clots of dried blood, the wound had completely healed.
Chapter Thirty
The Christchurch paper ran a story about Simon and the Jane Doe who had confronted the police at the edge of the woods, tying them to the town murders and attacks on Madeline and Izzy. After a short stint in the hospital, Simon was taken into police custody and faced charges that would surely put him away for the rest of his life—a life Oliver assumed wouldn’t last much longer without his bloody fountain of youth. The lack of a weapon led to obvious questions about why deadly force had been used against the woman, but the dashcam footage put those questions to rest.
The video from the flipped cruiser clearly showed the Witch levitating across the field, and testimony from everyone present that day verified the unbelievable events. Oliver hadn’t noticed at the time, but the commandeered cruiser was equipped with a dashcam as well and had managed to capture several glimpses of the town on the other side of the patch when Oliver crossed into Briarwood, with Anna and Simon, through the crack in the portal.
Finally, he had cold, hard evidence the Witch and Briarwood were both real. But as the people of Christchurch had done hundreds of years before, they chose to bury the truth with silence and quaint village delusions. The paper made no mention of the more whimsical details of Simon’s siege on Christchurch, and the dashcam footage only made it to a select few. Although no one spoke of the Witch or Simon, in public at least, none of the townspeople were daring enough to approach the briar patch after that day.
Oliver was sweeping debris into a neat pile. Several large mounds speckled Izzy’s living room floor, and Pan had made it his job to run through each of them, causing such a mess that Izzy had to confine him to the bedroom. Although Izzy’s life leading up to the murders had been one of a pariah’s, she had found a new level of acceptance among the townspeople—Madeline made sure of it. A crew of helpers had arrived to assist her, Oliver, and Anna in cleaning up the mess from the attacks. The support was sorely needed since most of her belongings, on the first floor at least, had been left in complete shambles. Izzy’s furniture had been broken and splintered, and several of her sculptures had been shattered across the floor. Oliver noticed her wiping a tear from the corner of her eye every now and then, but he was certain the resilient woman would be able to quickly fill the room once again with a new batch of eclectic odds and ends.
“You never told me you were an Elder,” he blurted out as he helped her collect the pieces of an abstract plaster bust.
“Excuse me?” she replied.
“Simon. It was one of the last things he said—something about taking care of one more Elder.”
Izzy blushed.
“That’s why Madeline took everything so personally. You weren’t just helping around town—you were an Elder.”
“Well, it certainly didn’t last for long,” Izzy replied. “We were at each other’s throats by the end of the year. I was unceremoniously discharged.”
Anna had busied herself in the kitchen, pulling the knives out of the wooden doorframe and putting all the drawers and cabinets back into proper order.
After several days of cleanup, the house was finally completely cleared of debris. Oliver was sitting at the kitchen table with Izzy and Anna. A thought had been building in the back of his mind.
“I have to go back to the city,” he said out of nowhere, looking into his swirling Irish coffee.
The pronouncement seemed to catch the other two by surprise.
“What? Why?” Anna asked.
“I just think it’s time to go back. My apartment is just sitting there, and I won’t be able to pay the rent much longer without some kind of income.”
Oliver had never planned to stay forever. Christchurch was intended to be a momentary reprieve from his life in the city. The time had come to grow up and go back to face real life once again. Whatever real life meant, he wasn’t quite sure.
Izzy didn’t say anything at first but just sat and stirred her coffee.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said after an extended silence, “we could use some permanent help around here. I’m not as spry as I used to be. Hopefully, Anna will take over the bakery when it’s time, but she’s going to need help, and we’ve got the bees to take care of. I’d be able to pay you.”
“I really do appreciate the offer, but my life’s been on pause long enough, and it’s time that I do something about it.”
Izzy seemed wounded by his words. “You have been doing something about it. Your life isn’t on pause. This is it. What you were doing back in the city—that’s what you should be running away from.”
Later that night, Oliver sat on Izzy’s porch and looked down at the tree line across the field. The town of Briarwood sat locked away behind the patch, behind the invisible wall that obscured it from view. He wondered if he’d ever make it back and what would happen to Gideon, now that Mercy had likely succumbed to her wounds. He felt guilty for leaving them behind after they’d helped him so much.
And what about Simon’s son? Oliver empathized with him. Where is he going to go? And who ended up with the coin?
Oliver stared at a blank page of his yellow legal pad. His resume was in sore need of updating, and he wondered how he would talk about his previous position. Surely, they’ll want to call my old boss for a reference, right? Maybe I’ll just take it off, say I took a gap year—more like two years at this point. Without the job with Mr. Sally, his resume would look the same as it had when he had walked across the aisle at graduation. He sketched out a list of new skills:
Beekeeping and Honey Harvesting
Baking and Bakery Management
Custom Car Painting
Murder Solving
Witch Hunting
The list quickly devolved into absurdity before he scratched it out completely.
Chapter Thirty-One
Oliver stood in the doorway of his studio apa
rtment, clutching two paper grocery bags. The light from the dreary sky cast a gray filter over his possessions enclosed by the whitewashed walls he had longed to forget.
After setting the bags on the table, Oliver stepped over to the window overlooking the city. He’d spent too much time in this apartment, too far removed from the people below him.
“Where should we start?” Anna asked from behind. She cradled a stack of flattened cardboard boxes under each arm.
“If you two want to start in the kitchen, I’ll start packing up my clothes,” he replied, pulling the cleaning supplies out of the grocery bags.
Izzy rounded the corner and came into the apartment. “You mean to tell me that you had to climb that staircase every—oh, how wonderful!” She had been distracted by the large cast of characters adorning the apartment walls. “Did you do all of these?”
“Every one,” he replied.
“We have to take these with us. We should hang them in the bakery!”
Oliver laughed as he pulled a box from the pile and began to tape it together.
The studio apartment left little room for storage, so the trio had finished packing and cleaning within a few hours. Oliver took one last look at the empty room. Within a short amount of time, all evidence of his existence had been completely wiped away. Soon, someone else would live here, and Oliver would be long forgotten. The more he thought about it, though, it wasn’t the fault of the city or his old job, for that matter. He’d chosen this place, to live in isolation. Despite the drama of living in Christchurch, Izzy and Anna had become family like he’d never known before. In his own strange way, he had become part of the fabric of the town, made connections, and found a pair of people who had brought something out in him he didn’t even know existed.
