by Dani Lamia
Phoebe gasped as the floor of the basement changed. The off-white, chalky surface of the cement faded away, darkening to a blue that was almost black. Strewn throughout the surface, she could see faint shapes that she at first could not identify. Slowly, they came into focus, and if she had not been so bound, she would have leaped from the floor. All around them were the ghostly forms of the dead, the buried victims of the Pyncheon family, as they had been interred.
Phoebe and Holgrave were transfixed as the dead squirmed and writhed in their graves, as if trying to dig their way to the surface. A white glow above the ground came into view, and they saw, standing in the pentagram, the ghost of Alice Pyncheon, her feet hovering over her own skull. She appeared as she had during her possession of Phoebe, prior to her throat slashing: alive, sad, but otherwise in health. Her long black hair draped around her face, and her white gown was clean and flowing. She stood staring at nothingness in the distance beyond Phoebe and Holgrave, utterly still.
“Alice Pyncheon,” Panas addressed in a full authoritarian voice, “I release your spirit from your servitude of this coven. Ba’al, I pray thee make it so and dismiss this spirit from our house!”
“So mote it be,” the witches chanted.
Alice Pyncheon’s ghost grew faint, and her figure drooped as if doused with a deluge.
“No,” whispered Phoebe.
“Be gone from here forever, Alice Pyncheon!” Panas commanded.
At that, Alice disappeared from the circle. The blueish black ground where the wraiths churned and wriggled faded away as well, leaving only the cement floor.
“It is done,” declared Panas. He and the coven released one another’s hands and left the circle. His face was passive, even bordering on boredom as he stepped past Phoebe without meeting her eyes. Once alongside her, he turned and bid Dzolali to come forward. “The blade,” he said and pointed to Hester.
Dzolali bit her lip and hesitated. Her watery-eyed gaze searched Phoebe’s face.
“Please, no,” Phoebe whispered as tears tumbled down her face.
Dzolali sniffed and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry. I love you.”
“Dzolali!” Panas shouted. His powerfully deep voice pained the ears as he turned to the young witch.
Dzolali nodded briefly and drew the long, curved knife, the one she had used to dispatch Onenspek. Stepping forward, she presented it to Hester, who took it in hand. Hester, in trade, gave Dzolali the bowl of Harriet Pyncheon.
Phoebe’s eyes settled on the bronze bowl, seeing once again the familiar symbol upon its side. The same symbol she now wore around her neck that formally belonged to Alice.
Oh, Alice. I’m so sorry. Alice, I wish you could help us now! Phoebe cried out in thought.
Panas gave a chuckle.
Phoebe stared at the high priest. Sheer terror covered her being in that moment, and she thought of pleading for mercy, begging to join the coven, but the image of herself came again, that image of Phoebe, the high priestess witch of the House of the Seven Gables, flying over White Lake and reigning fire and death upon its buildings and people. She shut her eyes tight and tears streamed again.
Holgrave said something, but Phoebe did not turn her focus to him other than to acknowledge his words as pleas for her salvation, not his own.
Phoebe, Alice called to her, sounding far away. Phoebe you must summon us forth!
With her vision distorted with tears, Phoebe peered at Panas. He did not hear Alice. She looked to Hester, then Dzolali, who had come near, holding the bowl close to Phoebe’s right breast. Phoebe saw Panas move behind her and out of sight.
How? Phoebe thought to Alice Pyncheon.
With all your will. All your might, was Alice’s answer. Only together can we fight the power of the coven.
I thought Panas destroyed you!
One cannot kill what is already dead. Call us, now, Phoebe! Alice urged.
Hester, blade in hand, moved around Dzolali. Glendarah came closer, watching Phoebe’s face with a delight that made Phoebe envision her bludgeoning.
Phoebe’s mind raced, trying to decipher what Alice had meant, then with panic boiling over into sheer terror, she took a deep inhale and cried, “Alice Pyncheon! I call upon your spirit! Alice Pyn—”
Panas yanked Phoebe’s hair, thrusting her head back and exposing her throat.
“No! Please!” Holgrave screamed.
“Alice Pyncheon! I call upon you!” Phoebe yelled, close to emptying her lungs. “I call upon you, spirit of Alice Pyncheon! Spirits of this house, I call upon you all!”
The cold blade touched her skin as a great rumbling at her feet began. The vibrations of it traveled up her legs and through her entrapped body.
“What?” Hester said from behind her, but it was quickly squelched. The rumbling became a roar, and the basement floor and walls shook with a sudden violence.
Phoebe strained against the grip of Panas to look about. Glendarah’s smugness was gone. She looked about the walls and floor, her arms out to her sides as if to keep balance. Dzolali struggled to keep the bowl level, and she, too, scanned the walls for an answer.
The light fixtures began to vibrate. One bulb burst, showering the floor with white shards. The roar increased to an ear-piercing thrum, and Phoebe shut her eyes.
Dzolali screamed. A chorus of voices then joined the earthquake’s rumble. The thin wood panels cracked, and some of them fell away to the floor. The industrial-grade washing machines swayed, cracking the cement as their feet crashed back to the surface. The door of the washing machine swung open, then slammed shut again.
The floor once again turned dark, like a field of dirt in the dead of night. The spirits wrestled with the trappings of their graves, but they sprung free, and like passengers aboard an elevator, they surfaced in pairs, trios, and quadruples. Transparent figures began to walk the floors among the living, menace on their decayed faces. Others floated above her, flying like angels with their arms spread wide and their mouths open as they bellowed.
The walls and ceiling of the basement evaporated into nothingness, revealing a vast, dead land. Dead trees of bare branches and the brown dirt of the land stretched beyond the house’s structure. It was again that land of the dead, the land that had appeared to Phoebe when Alice had possessed her that second time. The light above was no longer electric neon but of the stars and the moon.
The spirits swooped all around Glendarah, and she shrieked, warding them off with her clawed hands. In her right, a ball of energy formed, but quickly fizzled. Two on foot attacked her directly, decayed men in the ancient suits they were wearing when they were murdered. Glendarah howled madly and was thrust into the air. When she landed a short distance away, a group of angry spirits descended upon her.
Dzolali swung the bowl in her defense, but it had no effect on the ghostly figure that dove onto her. Its long, flowing white hair and gown identified the wraith as a female, and it took Dzolali’s throat in its skeletal grip. Spinning violently, it took Dzolali with it, flinging the defenseless young witch in another direction.
The earthquake shook on with Phoebe and Holgrave in their places, the ropes held to the now invisible beam and spikes.
From behind Phoebe, Hester screamed, a long, high-pitched wail of torturous terror. Phoebe shut her eyes, even though there was no chance for her to see the horrors unfolding. She listened for the voice of Panas, but he said nothing. Instead, his grip on Phoebe’s hair simply ceased.
Phoebe kept her eyelids clenched and hung her head, wishing to see no more. Holgrave was quiet, and despite her concern for him, she knew the vengeful ghosts would do him no harm.
All about her, the spirits called and bellowed, chilling her blood and sending her body atremble. A call reminiscent of a rebel yell sounded directly in front of her, and Phoebe snapped her head up, eyes open.
It was Glendarah, bloodied, b
eaten, and in her current, aged form. Her dress was in shreds and her gray-blonde hair in shambles. She produced a blade of her own, a small but wide dagger, and had it raised above her head as she charged Phoebe. Her face twisted into a murderous grimace.
“Alice!” Phoebe screamed. “Guys! A little help!” She twisted and bucked in her entrapment, but the rope, though now weakened, held firm.
Glendarah’s pace was not what it once was. Her embattlement had done injury to her right leg. Nonetheless, she was almost upon Phoebe when she was descended upon by a fast-moving, glowing spirit. Perhaps it was Alice Pyncheon herself, but the attack was too swift to see. Glendarah’s clothes and hair flailed about in the brief struggle, and when it was done, the witch dropped to the ground, covered in blood and unmoving.
Her dagger had found a home in her own chest.
An image of Glendarah, almost like one of Holgrave’s negatives from his black-and-white film, left the body and rose into the air. Glendarah was looking up, her hair flowing to a strong wind, her face expressionless. Her arms were out to her sides, palms up, as if checking for rain. Her rise halted abruptly, and the specter of Glendarah turned her face downward to see what was wrong.
Phoebe found that Glendarah’s form had been seized by the feet by two great hands. Larger than life and looking big enough to have grabbed her by the waist, they held on. A head, shoulders, and arms belonging to the hands came from the ghostly ground. Phoebe presumed it to be a demon, with a hideously gnarled face, tightened into a stern frown. On top of its bald head were two horns, much like the goat-horn charm she had seen around the witches’ necks.
The demon snarled deeply, loud enough to be heard over the cries and howls of the freed spirits and the earthquake’s thunderous crashing. Glendarah screamed, higher in pitch than seemed humanly possible, as the horned monstrosity pulled her downward. In a flash, Glendarah’s spirit was taken from their sight, sinking into the ground from which the Pyncheon victims had arisen.
Phoebe blinked hard, trying to comprehend all she was seeing. Was that the devil? Just a demon? Did he just take Glendarah to hell?
Movement to Phoebe’s left caught her eyes, and there Dzolali crawled weakly in her direction, a trio of ghosts ripping into her back and legs with their claws or skeletonized fingers. Another tore at her head, ripping away her once beautiful hair. Dzolali looked to Phoebe and reached out her hand, as if pleading for mercy. She collapsed, dropped her face to the ground, and became still. The spirits moved on from their task. Those on foot sauntered away, aimlessly, perhaps cheerfully, as they might have in life on a casual stroll through the woods. Others, airborne, floated away, upward, and soon headed out of sight.
Just as with Glendarah, the ghost of Dzolali left her earthly flesh. She did not expect to rise, however. Her hair stretched into a fan of strands to the unseen wind, and she kept her hands to her sides. Her form left the dirt but steadied seemingly by itself, and in the demon’s grip, Dzolali cranked up her leg and made a stomping motion. Dzolali became a demon of her own, her face contorted into a hateful, monstrous mass of frown and fangs, and as her future caretaker came up to insist on her capture she fought with her claws out.
She kicked and swatted, but her strikes were ineffective. The demon took her ghostly form in both hands and flung her down through the dirt. She was gone, and he, the demon or the devil, followed.
Alice herself flew into Phoebe’s view, radiant with light and warmth. She came close to her and reached above her. Phoebe cast her eyes where the ceiling had returned and saw the railroad spike that kept her in place slide out of the beam. It fell away to the cement floor with a clang. Alice moved to Holgrave and did the same.
The ropes binding them undid themselves, dissolving into the nothingness from which Glendarah had conjured them. They were free.
The vision of Alice Pyncheon smiled and winked out of existence. The trembling at Phoebe’s feet ebbed away, and the rumbling silenced. The dead lands faded away, allowing the walls of the House of the Seven Gables to return. Many of the light fixtures had failed, with a few more of the tubular bulbs having come free to shatter upon the floor. More of the wood panels had broken and lay in splinters.
Phoebe whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Phoebe turned to Holgrave and saw his eyes cast downward. From his expression, she knew that he had found her great-aunt Hester lying on the floor.
Dzolali was lying sprawled in front of the staircase, face down and covered in blood. Glendarah’s remains were upon the pentagram rug, staining the black-and-white fabrics with red. Phoebe turned and found Hester, quite dead and in a sitting position against the wall, bearing many scrapes and cuts along her face and body. Her black dress was mostly missing, torn away in strips. The sacrificial blade that she had intended to use on Phoebe had been plunged into her chest. Hester had returned to her aged self, and her eyes had been gouged out.
“Oh, my God,” Phoebe groaned and looked away, covering her mouth with her hands.
Holgrave rubbed his wrists and stared about the room, wide-eyed. He had never seen so much gore and death in his life, and it struck him dumb.
Phoebe had had enough of the basement, and though she wanted to sprint up the steps, hop in her car and never stop, she could not. Dzolali’s corpse was in the way.
Dzolali’s arm was outstretched, pointing to where Phoebe had been bound. Phoebe closed her eyes but kept seeing Dzolali’s agonized face begging for help—or perhaps bidding a goodbye, she’d never know.
Phoebe tore her eyes away from Dzolali’s remains and stepped over the body, onto the first step and upward, concentrating on one step at a time. She heard Holgrave following.
Phoebe didn’t stop walking until she was through the front door and down the porch steps. The soft dirt of Gable Way was a comfort, as was the cool air of predawn. The continued silence of the area was no comfort, however. She expected more change to come from such an impossible scene.
Phoebe turned around and found Holgrave standing close, a look of concern on his face. She looked past him at the house. The lights were on throughout the hallways, she knew well from experience, but in the growing dawn, the only visible evidence of the practice was on the first floor. The windows of the living room glowed faintly yellow. It was brighter through the screen door.
Nonetheless, Phoebe’s world had completely changed, and for all time. Hester was gone. The lovely and dangerous Dzolali was gone. As was the witch, Glendarah, and the poor artist, Onenspek.
“Oh, my God,” she said to Holgrave, returning to the verge of tears. “Panas. Where did that freakshow go?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Wait,” Phoebe said, recalling the encounter. “You knew him. Called him ‘Maule.’”
“Yes,” Holgrave answered. “Matthew, to be exact. But it cannot be. Matthew Maule was my great-great-grandfather. I know him only from old daguerreotype pictures of him. Long dead.”
“So, whoever that is, he’s still in there,” she surmised and looked to the house’s windows once again.
“Perhaps,” Holgrave said. “But I don’t think so.”
“What’ll we do now?”
Holgrave thought this over for a moment, then took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. “I have an idea, but we need to be ‘on the same page,’ as you Yanks say.”
23
Erasing the Night
It was Holgrave who volunteered to go inside and call the police, using the phone in the parlor. He watched Phoebe from the window and kept his concentration on the sounds in the house. The conversation was short, and he was assured that units were on the way.
Holgrave hung up the phone and was still for a moment, listening before he ventured out of the room. He turned to the front door, and as he pushed through the screen door, a squawk sounded, and from quite near.
Holgrave froze, and he felt the blood run from his f
ace, leaving it cold in the dewy morning air. He spun around, and as he did, the squawk rang out again just before the screen door clacked shut.
There was no one there.
Holgrave took a deep breath and rolled his eyes as he exhaled in a cheek-puffing whoosh. He turned back to the door with an eyebrow arched. Beyond it, he could see Phoebe, who shrugged and put her palms out to her sides as if to ask, ‘What?’
With his index finger, Holgrave pressed against the screen door again, slowly. The springs screeched and creaked. “Idiot,” he admonished himself and left the porch.
By the time he rejoined Phoebe, they could hear the roar of motors in the distance. At such an hour, the night sky gave only a hint of the coming sunrise. A blip of a siren sounded in the distance, signaling a cruiser crossing a major intersection, and then only the call of winding motors remained as the cars came closer.
Phoebe and Holgrave watched the red and blue lights dance through the trees. Tires ruffled over the dirt of Gable Way, and the first of the police cruisers slid around the last bend, bathing them in lights.
“All right,” Holgrave said to her. “Steady on.”
Phoebe didn’t react, though she heard him. We’ll see how this goes.
***
“Miss Pyncheon,” Detective Sergeant Arman Khalid said, “I know this is going to be a frustrating process, but it is a necessary one. I need to go through your activities of this morning once again.”
Phoebe, Holgrave, the detective, and two uniformed White Lake officers were with them in the kitchen. Khalid, Phoebe, and Holgrave were perched on the stools around the wood-topped island, and the two uniforms stood near the kitchen door, which they had propped open. The house was the focus of the White Lake Police Department, and officers and detectives, forensic men and women, trafficked in and out of the home.
Phoebe looked into the man’s mahogany eyes. “I understand. Whatever you need.” She wiped her tears, still flowing, honest ones, born of the stress, fright, and the loss of a family member, though not a loved one.
