by Amy Hopkins
Dear Mister Perkins,
I trust this letter finds you well. Now, enough of this nonsense. Release my son from your custody and be done with it. You damn well know he didn’t kill Jonas Weatherbee, and God help you if you see an innocent man hang for another’s crimes.
Yours, Anna Marple.
A signature scrawled at the bottom ended the letter. When Red and Amelia nodded, she slid it away to read the next one.
Mister Perkins,
You did not respond to my letter. Please, my Richard is innocent. You cannot let him hang for this crime that he did not commit.
Now I know I am not the most well-regarded woman in town. I know you’ve heard those rumors, but that’s all they are. I attend church on a Sunday and have a respectable income of twelve dollars a week cleaning for Mister Jones. I’m no witch, Mister Perkins, and you’d best not let my son take the burden of those accusations against me.
Please, Mister Perkins, do the right thing. The pastor says that God keeps his children safe, and I pray it is true. I find it hard to keep that faith when my boy, my Richard, is sentenced to death.
This necklace is the only thing of value I have. Take it. Use it as your security if you wish, but save my boy.
Sincerely,
Anna Marple.
“Ouch.” Penny could almost feel the animosity bleeding from the jagged letters beneath her fingers. “That poor woman, she sounds so desperate. I wonder if he really was innocent?”
The third letter was short. A couple of hastily scrawled lines, smudged in places and marred by creases in the paper as if it had been crumpled, then smoothed.
Rot in hell, Perkins. You killed my son and took everything from me. By the unholy powers I possess, I will see your town burned to the ground.
“This house is definitely haunted,” Red remarked. “I can feel it in me jellies.”
“Not necessarily,” Amelia murmured.
Red scoffed. “What, you think it’s just a boring old house full of flying books?”
Amelia pointed at the letters. “If Anna really was a witch, maybe she’s the entity that crossed the Veil.”
“Oh, wonderful.” Penny glanced back at the silent room. “Ghosts and a vengeful witch.”
“But no clandestine organizations that kidnap twenty-year-old geeks who like video games,” Red pointed out.
“Unless it’s all a front,” Penny shot back.
“You know,” Amelia suggested. “It might be a trap. What if the spooks know about the house and gave this address to lure in idiots like us? Maybe they know something malevolent is here, and they think it’ll take out anyone who comes looking for them.”
The thought made Penny’s gut churn. “Amelia, a few flying books wouldn’t do much to stop anyone. Do you think…”
“Something worse is around the corner?” Red suggested. “Let’s make like a genius and get the hell out of this weird house before we die.”
Nodding, Penny headed back across the hallway to the sitting room. She opened the door. Then, she stepped back.
Amelia stepped on her heels. “Why’d you stop?”
“I must have opened the wrong door.” Penny stepped back, confused. This was the only door on this side of the hallway.
“What?” Red laughed. “Don’t be daft, Penny. This is the…” he paused as he realized the layout had changed. “Oh. Where did the windows go?”
The sitting room was exactly as they had left it, right down to the discarded tapestry and ancient tea set. The room, however, was windowless.
“That’s not even possible,” Penny insisted. “Is it?”
“Guess we’re stuck here until the end,” Amelia moaned.
“The end?” Penny gripped the doorframe. “You mean until we die?”
“No. Well, no.” Amelia plastered a false smile on. “Just until we meet the evil entity trapping us here and defeat it.”
“Or die trying.” Red walked over to the wall across from them and punched the blank spot that should have held a window. A chunk of plaster fell away to reveal red bricks. “That’s what you really mean to say, isn’t it?”
Amelia’s smile faltered. “Look, statistically, people are really unlikely to die in a haunted house,” she insisted.
She’s lying through her teeth. “How do those statistics hold up once you’re already in a haunted house?” Penny asked.
Smile gone, Amelia glared at her. “Fine. We’re basically screwed. We have about a twelve percent chance of surviving.”
“Oh.” Penny checked her belt, reloaded her gun—since the holy water had a decent chance of being helpful here—and opened the sitting-room door. “Twelve percent isn’t that bad. I thought it’d be a lot worse, actually.”
“Seriously?” Red stared at her, mouth hanging open.
Penny gestured with her gun. “How many people statistically enter a haunted house after three semesters at a school that trains you to deal with shit like this? And how many of those are armed to the teeth with holy water, salt, and flamethrowers?”
“Not many, I bet.” Amelia grinned and drew a small cross from her own pack. “Not to mention, we’re really smart, and we know stuff. Like, if there’s an actual Salem-era witch involved in this mess, we should go the religious combat route. We good?”
Red grumbled but agreed. “But I’m gonna point out there’s something else in common here.” He held up a hand, raising a finger with each point. “Anna Marple is a woman.” Two more fingers. “And Penny and Amelia? Both girls. You two dragged me into this.” He threw his hands up. “Women are trouble!”
Chapter Fifteen
Back in the hallway, Penny cracked open the door to the next room. Dust covered the floor, and an old high-backed chair sat in the corner. The emptiness sent a shiver across her skin. “Nothing here.” She backed out and closed the door behind her. “Where to next? The eerie glow of the afterlife, or the stairway to death?”
“Not funny,” Red grumbled. “I just want to take the fastest path out of this place.”
“Impossible.” Amelia headed toward the niche behind the stairs. “This kind of event is usually linked to a set sequence. Like the letters. We had to discover those first, it’s a clue to what’s inside. Even if you skip something important, it’ll come back round to get you.”
“You know that’s not at all reassuring, right?” Red loaded his holy water cartridge into his gun and holstered it. He replaced it with a small flamethrower, bouncing it in his palm.
“Don’t use that here!” Penny snatched it out of his hand. “This whole place will go up in flames, with us in it!”
Crestfallen, Red accepted the flamethrower back from Penny and put it away. “Fine. But I’m burning this hellhole to the ground when we leave. I’ve got bruises all over me back, and we’re not done yet.”
Amelia cocked her head. “I wonder if you can even burn a fire witch? It’s either poetic justice and will work like a charm, or she’ll be completely immune.
“And just like that, this place gets even creepier.” Penny headed toward the staircase. Instead of going up, she peeked around the back. “Looks like this leads to a kitchen.”
The kitchen was dark, the shadows deepened by a thin coating of sooty grime on the walls and windows instead of the pale dust coating the other rooms.
Red ran a finger over the tiled counter, leaving a clean streak of white and blue porcelain exposed. “Someone needs to get rid of the maid,” he remarked, screwing up his face. He wiped the dirty fingertip on his pants, leaving a black mark. “Aw, now I’m all dirty!”
“That’s smoke damage,” Penny told him. “Maybe the oven flue got blocked.” She leaned over the ancient wood-fired stove and stuck her head in, then drew it out, coughing. “Ugh. Blocked by a family of spiders. I think I just snorted a cobweb.”
“What’s that in the corner of the room?” Amelia pointed at a cluster of blackened debris that came to her knee. The ceiling above had crumbled away, revealing rotted floorboards above.
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Penny stepped back, running her eyes over the room. “The soot and scorch marks are all coming from that direction.” She waved a hand at the ceiling above. “And the damage is worse above it. Maybe that was the origin of the fire?”
Red nudged the heap with a toe and his breath caught in his throat. “I don’t think it was the fuel.” He crept closer, then pulled back. “I think it was the victim.”
Penny’s gut twisted as she realized the shape of the burned heap was curled into a fetal position. “It’s…a body?”
The black shape twitched, and Amelia squealed. “It’s alive!”
“It’s not—” Penny’s protest stuck in her throat as she realized Amelia was right. Penny yanked her gun from her belt, pointing it at the blackened, twisted shape that rose from the scorched remnants.
Two eyes shone malevolently from a skeletal face. A gaping maw formed by broken teeth and melted lips opened, and a hoarse scream filled the room.
Red screamed back, a shrill, ear-piercing sound that drowned out the damaged vocals of the ghoul before them. He grabbed a heavy cast iron pan from the cooktop and hurled it at the specter. The pan slammed through leathered flesh and brittle bone to clatter on the wall behind it. The ghoul crumpled to the ground.
Red stood over it, breathing heavily.
“Wow, babe. You, uh, really showed that thing.” Amelia’s lips twitched but she held onto her composure. “Was the high-pitched scream a distraction technique?”
Red gave her a wavering grin. “Sorry. I kind of panicked.”
“Intentional or not, it worked,” Penny told him. She patted Red on the back. “It’s okay. We won’t tell anyone you shrieked like a girl.”
“Hey, I didn’t see any girls screaming.” Amelia winked at her boyfriend. “But I won’t tell, either.”
Red wiped a sooty hand over his sweaty forehead, leaving a smudge. “Right. Focus, Red. You’ve got this.” His shoulders wriggled as a shiver wracked him, but he shook it off. “It’s just a house. It’s a creepy as fuck, haunted to the bones, probably witch-infested…house.”
“Can we get a move on?” Penny lowered her gun and clicked the safety back on. “The sooner we’re done here, the sooner I can curl into a ball and cry tears of relief.”
Amelia nodded. “This place really does have an atmosphere, doesn’t it?”
A quick search of the kitchen revealed little of interest, the contents being mostly kitchen equipment and a few intact jars that once held preserved food but were now filled with an opaque, gelatinous substance.
Once Amelia was satisfied they would learn nothing new, the trio moved on. “I haven’t seen a basement,” she said slowly. “So whatever the end goal is, it’s probably up there somewhere.”
Penny drew her weapon again, taking point as they went up the narrow steps. The boards were spongy beneath her feet, and one cracked loudly under her weight. “Be careful,” she whispered to Red. “You don’t want to fall through.”
A tiny landing at the top led to a single door, striking in its sparkling perfection. Somehow, despite the rot through the rest of the building, this door was untouched by age, unmarred by the stains of the ancient fire.
“This is it.” Amelia gestured to the door. “This is the payload. Whatever is in there will either kill us or let us out.”
Penny twisted the brass knob. The door swung open cleanly to reveal an old fashioned office. A desk, not unlike the damaged one downstairs, sat across from her. A plump, balding man sat at the desk, flicking idly through a stack of papers on his desk. He dipped a long pen into a glass ink jar, then scrawled on the page before him.
“Anna, I simply see no way to intervene.” Despite the man’s age, his eyes were bright and intelligent, if scornful and hard. “There were witnesses. I’m afraid your Richard was guilty. Now, he faces the judgment of a higher court.” He looked back down at his desk, flicking the paper aside casually. “May God have mercy on his soul.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Perkins.”
Penny jerked back, spinning around to look for the source of the voice. A dark-haired woman stepped out of a shadowed corner, her face drawn and eyes rimmed with red. Anna Marple.
“Jonas Timms had eyes for Catherine. You know he did.” Anna spat on the floor. “He wanted Richard gone so he could have her for himself.”
Perkins made no reply, simply slipping another sheet of paper to one side.
“Damn you!” Anna shot over to his desk and thrust her arm forward, her fingers splayed. “You can’t ignore me, you bastard!”
Perkins gave a strangled scream as his body was lifted into the air and slammed against the ceiling, his limbs pinned by an unseen force.
“Do you know how it feels to lose your light, your reason to live?” Anna shrieked. “Know now. Laura is dead, burned to ashes like my son.”
Perkins heaved a tight gasp, his terror crumbling to grief. “No.” His whispered plea fell on deaf ears. “No! She is with child!”
“If she was, then they are both dead.” Anna hissed the words, unmoved by the tears streaming down the man’s face. “And now it is your turn. Perhaps you will see them at the gates of Hell.”
Anna flicked her hand and Perkins erupted into flames, writhing and screaming as his body contorted in agony. Flames licked at the ceiling, racing toward the books that lined the nearby walls.
“I will burn you to the ground! You and everyone else in this hell-forsaken town.” Anna’s eyes reflected the glow of the fire as they turned to Penny. “All of you.”
Flames shot from her fingers but Red was faster, swooping in front of Penny with a shield of silver foil. “Good thing she’s never heard of an emergency blanket, eh?” He grinned as the roaring fire rained against the protective sheet.
The heat lessened, and Anna let out a yell of frustration.
Penny cocked her weapon. “Where’s Amelia?” She had to yell over the crackling and hiss of burning wood.
“Behind the desk,” Red told her.
Penny nodded to show she’d heard. “You’re on defense!”
Red nodded and dropped even closer to the ground, taking the sheet with him. Penny blinked her burning eyes, exposed to a fresh wave of scorching heat. There. A shadow moved in the smoke, and she let off two rounds. The quick pop-pop of the gun was punctuated by the sound of the specialist bullets exploding into wood, followed by a hiss of evaporating water. Then, just as Penny had given up hope, there was a wail of pain.
Penny shrank down behind the fire blanket, and Red pulled it over her head.
“Did you get her, lass?”
Penny shook her head. “I think I hit her with some holy steam, but it sure didn’t sound like the throes of death.” She couldn’t be sure how much damage had been done, but now they knew at least one of their weapons worked. “Let’s move out.”
Penny crouched beneath the billowing smoke and pointed her flashlight toward the mayor’s desk. She clicked it on and off a few times, signaling to Amelia that they were retreating. A sequence of flashes came back, showing she had understood.
Huddled under the fireproof blankets, they fled. Penny paused only to yank the door closed behind her. “Ouch!” She sucked her fingers, which were singed from the hot doorknob.
“Downstairs,” Red suggested. “We can make our stand in the kitchen.”
“There’s no chance those water pumps work, Red.” Amelia ran as she spoke, taking the stairs two at a time.
“No,” he agreed. “But it’s not quite as flammable as these old wooden walls. It’ll hold a boat-load of blessed steam, and it’s full of sharp things.”
Penny grinned. “You’re thinking we need to go Queen of Hearts?”
“Off with her head!” Red jumped, sailing over the last four steps and spinning on one foot with a grin. “Then the old bitch can burn herself down!”
Penny slapped her palm on his as she passed him in a high five. “Let’s hope the whole building goes down with her.”
"Don't steal all my
fun." Red followed Penny and Amelia into the kitchen. He quickly glanced around, then armed himself with a cast iron cooking pot.
Penny scanned the room, even as she felt the seconds ticking by. An evil cackle filled the air, but she ignored it.
Something sharp. She spied a small paring knife. Too small. I need something with a bit of weight behind it. Something that will slice through— A grin spread across Penny’s face when she spotted what she needed. Perfect.
A heavy weight slammed into the kitchen door. Penny gripped the cleaver in her hand and edged behind the heavy table in the center of the room. Another slam, this one hard enough to dislodge a pin in one of the heavy black hinges.
Silence.
The door exploded, metal bracing and ancient wood splintering as it flew across the room.
Penny threw herself under the table, flinching as something ricocheted off it. She heard Red's cry from the doorway and scrambled forward, coming to her feet to see her friend wrestling with the gruesome specter.
Anna Marple’s face had aged and withered, her hair thinning to just a few grey strands sprouting from an age-spotted scalp. She bared her teeth—what was left of them—and drew back a hand, her movements strong and steady despite knobbled joints and wasting flesh.
A ball of flame flared in her palm as her other hand gripped Red's throat.
He struggled to free himself from her chokehold, his toes dangling a few inches off the floor as the witch floated in the middle of the room.
Penny wanted to react. She itched to move but forced herself to wait. She didn't have to wait long.
With a yell of victory, Amelia yanked the crone's flaming hand behind her back, caught it in a garrote, and twisted it painfully up to her shoulder blades. While Penny gripped the cleaver, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, Red dropped to the floor and grabbed the pot he had dropped in the attack.
He swung it, smashing cast iron into the witch’s skull. Anna screamed in anguish, her cries bubbling as blood poured from her mouth. Her eye swung from a sticky tendon, dangling by her cheek beneath the cavernous indent in her head.
