666 Gable Way

by Dani Lamia

  Lornabeth had cast the spell of silence, which was her specialty, a concoction she had taken a decade to perfect. No sound could travel into or out of the bubble, and no manmade material could impede its effect.

  It was Panas himself that commanded the chamber latch to free without a touch and the door to swing inward, revealing the identity of their eavesdropper.

  “Well, it’s our sweet Alice,” Hepzibah, the fourth occupant of the room, spoke in a singsong. “Come in, dear,” she added and guided their bewildered visitor inside with a dual-handed gesture.

  Wide-eyed and frightened, Alice felt a combination of compulsion and physical pressure work against her wish to flee. In her struggle, she let the candle holder slip from her hand. The brass instrument clattered against the wood floor and bounced down the steps in a succession of clangs. Droplets of hot wax splashed along them. The candle separated from it and was extinguished by wax landing on the wick.

  Alice stammered into the room, fighting her mutinous legs at every step. She worked for breath as her eyes bounced from one outrageous face to the next, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. Her feet carried her to the closest of the women, the tall one. Never having been this close, she was getting closer, and soon the masked woman’s breasts were eye level to Alice. The shiny green hoop skirt was impossibly wide, even wider when the stranger placed her gloved hands upon her shelf-like hips. She stared down upon Alice with a twisted smile showing from underneath the black and gold mask that covered every other facial feature.

  Alice’s legs came to a stop just before she would have collided, but she could do nothing to run in the other direction. She looked to her feet, willing them to move, but they were rooted. It was then she noticed the large round rug that the four visitors stood upon. It was black with a white pentagram woven into it. Alice knew the design by sight, only by what she had learned about witches from her mother.

  “Oh. . .” Alice whispered. Witches? Of course!

  “I’ve seen this one here,” the tallest witch proclaimed. “Alice, is it?” she asked almost sweetly.

  “She’s the chambermaid, Priestess,” the youngest witch said. “Alice Pyncheon. My cousin.”

  Alice thought the voice she had heard on the other side of the door familiar, but she would never have guessed that Hepzibah would be a witch.

  Hepzibah continued, “She was going to sneak away in the night, but the rain stopped her.”

  Alice gasped. She had told no one of her plan. No one at all. She would have stepped to the side to gaze upon Hepzibah, but her feet were planted.

  “Leaving? Is that so?” the tall witch they called the high priestess said through a smile that was not quite pleasant. “Why sneak? Why don’t you tender your resignation in the proper fashion? Feel the need to escape something?”

  Alice couldn’t speak as she tried to hold back sobs of fear and panic. Her eyes bulged and tears ran down her cheeks.

  The witches tittered behind their high priestess. Alice’s body grew hot with anger, but she was powerless to do anything.

  “It matters not a bit, young thing,” Ceridwen cooed. The tall witch turned to the priest and looked into his eyes. His mask, resembling that of a goat, concealed much of his face. Ceridwen turned her head to the side but kept her icy blue eyes on Alice. “Hepzibah, is Alice the chambermaid a virgin?”

  “She is, Ceridwen,” Hepzibah answered with much glee.

  Alice became incensed at this declaration, no matter how accurate. “Hepzibah! How dare you? I may be a lowly chambermaid in this house, but I’ll not take—”

  A great hand struck Alice’s face, probably that of Ceridwen’s, but she never saw it coming. Her sentence was aborted, and the blow would have sent her sprawling onto the floor if her legs had not been bound to the spot on which she stood. Her world was dark for several seconds but returned little by little. Ceridwen remained in her view, but there were two of her and all was fuzzy.

  “Panas, tie this sweet thing up and suspend her from the hook,” Ceridwen commanded.

  Alice said nothing as the immensely strong man manipulated her, binding her wrists behind her, her ankles together, and then a tight wrapping around her chest that constricted her breathing. She looked up as the rope went over the hook that had been mounted in the roof beam above her. As Panas drew the rope, she felt it constrict her chest, tighter, ever tighter, until her feet left the floor.

  Alice tried to scream. The pain in her chest grew intense, and she looked to Hepzibah pleadingly. She drew in as much air as she could and spoke in spurts. “Please . . . stop. I don’t . . . know what . . . you want!”

  To the young woman’s horror, the four of them simply looked up at her in amusement. Hepzibah gave a pitiless laugh and came closer. She stared into Alice’s face, her little dark eyes barely visible through the black cat mask.

  Alice closed her eyes and just kept breathing. Her involuntary movements had started her body slowly swinging.

  Ceridwen stepped to a tall cabinet set against the inner wall, opened it, and retrieved an elegant box of cherry wood. Setting it on a shelf, she swung the lid upward. With both hands, she reached inside and, as she picked the object out of the box, she looked to the bound chambermaid’s face for a reaction.

  Alice screamed. The coven surrounding her laughed heartily.

  The blade seemed to be so long that Alice thought it was a short sword. As Ceridwen turned it in her hands, the yellow lamplight reflected in her eyes. The knife was curved like a scimitar, but it had a hilt too small to be a sword.

  “The coven could always use a fresh supply of virgin blood. Wouldn’t you say, Panas?” Ceridwen asked in a husky, creamy voice. Her eyes drilled into Alice’s face as she moved toward their captive. With her great, emerald green hoop skirt skimming the floor, she appeared to float.

  “Always, Ceridwen,” Panas answered and grabbed the suspended chambermaid at the hips, ceasing her swinging. He lifted Alice’s hair from around her neck. “Especially a Pyncheon woman bearing the mark. It is as you said, Hepzibah.”

  Mark? What’s he mean? Alice’s eyes darted from the knife to the masked eyes of the three witches standing before her. She was crying uncontrollably now, panicking and short of breath, she could form no words at all.

  “Lornabeth, darling, would you mind?” Ceridwen cooed, nodding to a brass bowl on the mantel behind her.

  Lornabeth turned and reached for the copper-colored vessel, decorated with a pentagram and slivers of moons. Lornabeth came forward with it held up in both hands.

  Ceridwen nodded in Alice’s direction and Lornabeth took her place at Alice’s right, holding the bowl near her chest.

  “I think it may be time for you, Hepzibah,” Ceridwen said. She lay the blade over her palms and looked to the youngest witch expectantly.

  Without hesitation, Hepzibah came forward and took the blade from her high priestess’s hands. A wicked smile spread across her thick lips as she gripped the handle tightly, relishing the weight of the ceremonial device.

  “You’ve seen us perform the ritual,” Ceridwen stated.

  “I have,” Hepzibah agreed.

  “Then you know what is expected.”

  Hepzibah nodded. Quite aware of her short stature, she retrieved a step stool from the corner of the room and placed it in front of Alice. Hepzibah stepped upon it, fully enjoying the expression of horror on Alice’s face.

  Alice was beyond panic. She had no control of her breathing, and her vision was growing dark at the edges. With the rope around her chest and Panas’s powerful arms constricting her further, she could make no sounds beyond the rasping cries of her labored breathing.

  Hepzibah, now eye-to-eye with her cousin, brought her masked face close to Alice’s ear. “I’ve read your mind, little chamber-pot girl. You arrogant little bitch. How dare you have such mean thoughts about your master’s daughter. It’s
time to silence you.”

  Alice inhaled with great burning effort. “Please—”

  Quickly and perfectly, Hepzibah touched the blade against Alice’s throat, pressed into her flesh, and drew it swiftly downward. A torrent of blood appeared, missing much of the bowl until Lornabeth corrected, lifting it higher and closer.

  “Very well done, Hepzibah!” Ceridwen praised.

  Hepzibah backed away and stepped from the stool as Alice choked and spat. In her throes of death, Panas struggled to keep her still.

  The bowl filled quickly, and Lornabeth withdrew. The flow was ebbing in strength as Alice Pyncheon died. The rest ran down her body and dripped to the floor.

  1

  Phoebe

  Phoebe sat at her desk, one of three remaining pieces of furniture in her tiny first-floor apartment. Once she was done packing her clothes, which were always few, she opened one of the windows in her living room and tossed out every remaining possession she could fit through it. That left the bed, the desk, the round kitchen table, and her tired old office chair. She had never been a fan of couches, so she didn’t own one.

  Phoebe’s landlord, Travis Beldnar, was an ugly, balding, obese man in his sixties and was not one that appreciated the younger generation. He often referred to Phoebe as “a damned millennial” to her face and, no matter how legitimate the reason for her having to speak to him in person, always looked her up and down with a sneer on his lips and a hunger in his muddy brown eyes. In her proximity, his thoughts would not only wander to visions of basic lust, which repulsed her, but he broadcast to her, without conscious effort, imagined scenes of brutality with himself in a starring role and her as the object of his angst.

  Recognizing the dangerous duality of the man, Phoebe remained aloof, calling him on the phone if she had anything to say to him, rather than cross the hall and knock on his door. He had come to her door last month and promised her, with feigned regret, that she would be evicted by noon on the first of May. Having been fired from her job with the newspaper, and buried in student loans, she had not been able to pay her rent since January. She understood and didn’t argue. The man was an ass, but he was still entitled to the rent.

  Phoebe Pyncheon had been working for the suburban Detroit newspaper for just over two years when she was officially laid off by the editor in chief. Deanna Engles, a dark-haired, severe-looking woman with beady eyes and glasses too small for her head, had called Phoebe into her office and informed her of the layoff. Phoebe had immediately sensed the truth rolling from the boss’s psyche like a cold, ocean-born fog oozes its way onto a beach. No matter how much Phoebe had tried to suppress her unnatural, invasive ability, she couldn’t help but read the message plainly when the editor in chief thought, No one in the office likes you . . . you’re too edgy . . . you awkward liberal twit.

  Phoebe had left the office in tears, but not until she had backhanded Engles’s coffee cup, knocking over the hot beverage, and told her what she thought of the paper and the job. These last things were lies, of course, as Phoebe had truly loved the job.

  The editor in chief had called security, and Phoebe had been escorted from the building.

  Even with her bachelor’s degree in journalism, Phoebe had been unable to find another job in her field. She’d found a part-time job in the local library and another as a part-time waitress at the family restaurant just a few blocks away, but it was not enough to cover everything. In fact, after paying her student loan each month, she would be left with less than a hundred dollars to her name.

  Her mother had instilled in her the concept of personal responsibility, so Phoebe always strived for that, but lately, things rarely worked out in her favor. Her boyfriend, Thomas, another journalist from the paper, had broken up with her a short time after Phoebe was fired, so she could not count on him. Her mother had passed away long before, and she never knew who her father was. Having nowhere else to go, Phoebe clung to the apartment for every last minute.

  The only thing that brought solace to Phoebe was writing fiction. She enjoyed meeting people, interviewing them, and writing articles for the paper, but it wasn’t the same as writing something that was completely her own. With the newspaper, everything was in management’s control. She wrote what they needed her to write. With her novels, however, it was different. That world was hers and no one else’s.

  In between her part-time shifts, Phoebe would sit and stare at her laptop screen, tapping away at the keys like her life depended on it. Her mind would run a mile a minute as she typed out the adventures of her made-up biker-chick heroine in Judy, the Midnight Rider. The first novel had been finished quickly after Phoebe was laid off, and now with so much time on her hands, she was well into the sequel.

  Phoebe didn’t know if the books would fit into any particular genre, or if any publisher would ever touch them, but she knew one thing. They were good.

  She ceased her typing, sat back in the chair, and read the paragraph she’d just written. The breeze from the open window landed on her face, and she took a deep breath.

  “It’s perfect,” she whispered. The prose flowed, the sentences linked together well, and the picture she was trying to paint came across clearly. “Of course, I’m biased.”

  When she wrote, reality was forced out of her mind. There was no concern over where she was going to sleep that night, where she was going to go, or from where her next meal would come. The only things that existed for Phoebe Pyncheon in that moment were biker-chick Judy, the road Judy traveled on, the story’s studly love interest, and, at that moment, the random stranger that Phoebe sensed coming up to her window.

  “Fuck,” she grunted and gave a sigh. She sat back, annoyed to be pulled away from her creation for an apparent pervert that liked to peek into women’s apartment windows. She crossed her arms, swiveled the chair so she could face the window, and crossed her legs.

  She waited. He was close. Shut up! she thought in a shout and repeated her mantra: I don’t believe in psychic powers. Obviously, I heard him coming.

  A moment later, as she bounced her left foot in anticipation, the stranger’s shadow fell across the windowpane. After that, a big hand landed on the sill, and the rest of his body filled the opening. A silvery badge was pinned to a dark brown shirt buttoned onto a large chest.

  Not the UPS guy, Phoebe thought ruefully.

  The clean-shaven face of a Wayne County sheriff’s deputy appeared next, trooper hat and all.

  Phoebe stopped bouncing her foot. His eyes landed on her immediately and, finding that the young woman was apparently expecting him, he gave the small apartment a scrutinous eye.

  “Ma’am,” he greeted. “Are you Miss Phoebe Pyncheon?”

  Phoebe breathed a sigh of relief and, suddenly self-conscious of her appearance, snatched a rubber band from her desk and put her platinum blonde and blue hair into a ponytail.

  “Yes, officer, that is I.”

  The trooper nodded to his right while keeping his eyes on her. “Are these your belongings on the front yard, ma’am?”

  She sighed and dropped her hands dejectedly onto her lap, making a muted clap against her sweatpants. “They are.” She tilted her head to one side and planted a faint smile on her lips. “I’d offer you some coffee, but the machine’s out there.”

  The trooper smiled. “You did receive an order of eviction from Travis Beldnar, did you not?” His tone was neither accusatory nor demeaning. The trooper had somehow inserted a note of pleasantness in the question.

  “I have, sir.”

  “Miss Pyncheon, I have a summons for you to appear—”

  “Officer, I’m leaving today,” Phoebe blurted. “I’m waiting for Goodwill to come pick up that stuff. As you can see, I’m mostly moved out.”

  “I’ll say,” the deputy agreed and gave the pile on the lawn another glance.

  “I didn’t mean to cause Mr. Beldnar an
y trouble,” Phoebe volunteered. “I was laid off, and I just can’t do anything about it.” She adjusted her rectangular-lensed glasses, trying to look as cute and innocent as possible. “I tossed everything. It’s just stuff, and sometimes it’s healthy to start over with a clean slate.”

  The trooper nodded and thought for a moment. “Tell you what . . . when’s the truck gettin’ here?”

  “They said between ten and one,” she lied. There was no truck, and she had not called Goodwill. The guilt of lying to someone, especially a policeman, felt immediately heavy and debilitating.

  “Okay, Miss Pyncheon. I didn’t see you,” he stated flatly and checked his watch. “But my partner and I’ll be circlin’ back here at . . . shall we say . . . two?”

  Having no clock, cellphone, or even a watch, she checked the display on her computer. It was almost eleven. “Two. Got it.”

  “And if you and your pile are still here . . .” he trailed to let his meaning stand.

  “If I’m still here at two, I’m screwed, blued, and tattooed,” she finished for him and put on her best smile.

  The cute deputy laughed.

  Yes! Winning!

  “That’s exactly right, miss,” he said and retreated from the window.

  Phoebe turned back to the laptop, saved her work, backed it up on two thumb drives, and shut it down. She popped up from the chair, taking the laptop from the desk and slipping it into her backpack. She hurriedly went about the three-room apartment, tossing items into the pack. When she came across the framed photograph of her mother, Phoebe sat down hard in the chair one last time.