Witch Souls to Save: A Brimstone Bay Mystery (Brimstone Bay Mysteries Book 4)

by N. M. Howell

  “Oh, you did not just do that,” Rory snapped at the woman. “You try something like that again, and you’ll have us to deal with.”

  I stepped back and sat in one of the chairs and looked up at the portrait of myself as I now recognised it to be. With Mrs. Hemingway in the room, my mind was a little clearer than it had been, although what exactly was happening was still a mystery to me. I wasn’t able to wrap my mind around what was going on in the room, so I just stared at my portrait as it stared back at me.

  There was shouting all around me, and I could feel hot and cold energy weave around my body and press against my skin as my friends fought with the old lady. I heard her cackle and shout something about adding them to her collection. That immediately caught my attention and I snapped my head towards the old woman. She was smiling, and an evil grin spread across her face as she began muttering an incantation. Her arms were outstretched to the far wall and I followed the direction of her hands. I noticed another blank canvas on the wall, and I realized she was trying to do the same to them as she had done to me. There was nothing I could do, though, as I could barely hear the words being spoken about me, let alone interfere or help in any way. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited, hoping that everything would be over soon. My body was numb, my brain was fried, everything around me felt empty and cold. I couldn’t even feel my heartbeat in my chest. I was a hollow shell of my former self.

  A bloodcurdling scream erupted from in front of me, and I opened my eyes to see Bailey collapsed on the floor. The image of her slowly appeared on the canvas, and she cried on her hands and knees as she looked up at the portrait pleadingly. Just then, Mrs. Brody shouted a loud battle cry and waved her hands in the air. The room was filled with such intense magic and energy that I couldn’t help but watch, mesmerized. She came and grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the chair and placed both my hands upon my portrait. She muttered a quick incantation, and I felt my life energy flood back into my body with a flash. I gasped and fell backward onto the floor, panting deeply and absolutely overwhelmed at the sensation of being myself again.

  I stood up and brushed the dust off my feet as I noticed the faces of all three of my roommates and Mrs. Brody were slowly beginning to appear on the canvas on the far wall. I knew we had to do something before they were completely captured, and I immediately shouted as many magical attacks that came flooding into my mind as fast I could possibly manage.

  Before my eyes, I could see my friends disappearing into the same mental fog, I’d inhabited. Their eyes began to glaze over, their lower jaw slackened. The canvas behind them was getting bolder as the painted shapes began to take form.

  “Rory!” I screamed loudly. “Bailey! Jane! Agnes!” It was the first time I’d called Mrs. Brody by her first name but I thought the urgency of the situation warranted it. I needed them all to hear me before it was too late.

  I threw my hands towards Regina Hemingway and flung every spell I knew at her. She had been occupied with trapping my friends and so wasn’t expecting it. It hit her right in the back of her head.

  I wasn’t the only one, though, as everyone else in the room had the same idea. Me shouting their names must have had an impact.

  Five separate spells flew at her direction at once, causing the old woman to collapse on the ground unconscious. Bailey stood up and shook her arms and legs as if shaking water drops from her skin, and she turned towards me and gave me a big hug. All five of us looked back and forth between ourselves and then looked down at the silent woman on the floor.

  I flicked my eyes towards the canvas just behind where she had fallen. It was now a brilliant white and held no hint that only moments before, it had held the faces of my best friends. The other smaller canvas that I had inhabited for a while was the same. Empty, just as it should be. I gave a soft smile, glad to be myself again.

  Mrs. Brody walked over to me and placed her hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, dear?” I bit my lip and nodded. I wasn’t even sure how to even explain what I’d gone through. “Mrs. Hemingway has been capturing people’s souls in paintings. She’s been ripping the souls right out of people and keeping them in her home to keep her company.” If I had any tears left, they would’ve been streaming down my face. I thought of the small girl in the portrait downstairs, and the two movers who were all captured in her canvases. Not to mention the countless others, only a fraction of which I’d properly seen.

  “Who’s Frank?” Rory asked. I remembered now how Mrs. Brody had repeated the name earlier when we were looking at one of the paintings.

  “Frank is Regina’s husband.” Mrs. Brody crossed her arms and stared down at the woman on the floor with angry eyes. “Regina has been making her way from town to town across the United States. We’ve met before when we were younger. I never liked the woman, but never did I think she would surmount to this level of darkness. Poor Frank. I wonder how long he’s been trapped here?”

  “Will the people in the pictures be able to get their souls back?” I asked. I remembered how empty the child and the two men had been in the restaurant, and how numb and emotionless I had felt the past few hours. I shivered at the memory, and my skin grew clammy as the feeling of emptiness washed over me again.

  Mrs. Brody nodded and patted my shoulder one more time. “Oh, I think we’ll be able to manage that. Regina’s magic only goes so far. But we will need to bring the hosts here in order to perform the reverse spell.” I nodded. “That makes sense. I’m sure we can track down at least some of them, Bailey and I saw three people this morning who had been painted here quite recently, I think.”

  “What are we going to do about her?” Jane asked. She walked over towards a woman on the floor and nudged her leg with her shoe. “She seems completely out of it.”

  Mrs. Brody rubbed her chin and pondered a moment. “She was hit by five different spells at the same time. I’m not sure she’ll ever be the same.” She narrowed her eyes and grinned at me, and I broke into a fit of nervous giggles.

  “What do you think prompted her to do such a thing?”

  “Regina has been lonely ever since marrying her fourth husband, Frank. I met Frank, and he was a lovely man, but, for whatever reason, Regina felt he was worth more to her as art on her wall than as an actual companion.”

  “Did Frank pass away?” Rory asked.

  Mrs. Brody shook her head. “No, dear. Everyone who is still active in the frames will still be alive somewhere on this earth. Now the question is, where is she keeping Frank’s body.”

  A new wash of terror flooded through my veins as I thought about what Mrs. Brody had just said. “For a woman who is dark enough to capture people’s souls and keep them for her own entertainment, I don’t even want to know what she would’ve done to her husband. We need to find him.”

  “Yes, indeed we do. But first, we need to deal with Regina.” Mrs. Brody walked over to the woman and bent down next to her head. She tucked a loose strand of gray hair behind her ear and looked up at us. “She seems to be breathing just fine. But I’m not sure what effects the spells would have on her mind. With any luck, we’ll have managed to subdue her enough to forget about what she has done and prevent her from doing it in the future.”

  We all walked over to the unconscious woman and surrounded her. Mrs. Brody waved her hand across her face and muttered a silent spell. Within a moment, Mrs. Hemingway’s eyes flew open, and she looked up at all of us, confusion and sadness spread across her face. “What’s going on here? Who are you?”

  I reached down and helped her to her feet and led her to one of the chairs near the far wall. She took her seat and looked at us expectantly. “Where are we?”

  I walked up to her and sighed loudly as I rubbed my temples with my fingertips. “We’re in your home, Mrs. Hemingway. This is where you live.”

  The confused woman looked about the room, her gaze flicking back and forth between us and the canvases on the wall. “Why do I have so many canvases?”

  Mrs. Brody grinned s
lyly at the woman and crossed her arms. “You’ve decided to take up the art of painting. You’ve bought a bunch of canvases so that you can paint. You’ve decided to spend the rest of your life mastering oil paints.”

  The woman nodded softly and licked her lips. “Oh, that sounds absolutely lovely. When do I begin?”

  “Now,” Mrs. Brody said. She snapped her fingers behind her back and a handful of paint brushes and paints magically appeared on the table. I walked over to the table and picked up a large paintbrush and brought it over to the woman in the chair. She took it from me and smiled down at it. “I think I’ll enjoy this hobby. Have I painted before?”

  “Oh, not necessarily. You’ve certainly got an appreciation for portraits.” Mrs. Brody rolled her eyes as she spoke and turned on her heels. She walked towards the door and the turn back one last time. “I hope you don’t mind, Regina, we’re going to take your art collection home with us to have it appraised for you. Why don’t you stay at home and paint, and we’ll send somebody to look after you.”

  Mrs. Hemingway nodded and smiled. “Oh, marvelous. Thank you, dear. I should like that very much.” She looked dazed, and her eyes were glazed over with a milky coating.

  I blew out a loud sigh and turned to follow Mrs. Brody at the door. My portrait had disappeared from the canvas, but I couldn’t help but feel uneasy about leaving her alone in the room with the canvas. I walked up to the large canvas on the wall and pulled it off of its hangar. “I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Hemingway, I need to take this home and practice painting for myself.”

  “Lovely, dear. You enjoy your painting.”

  Canvas in hand, I left the room and marched down the hall to the front entranceway at the bottom of the stairs. I turned to Mrs. Brody and my housemates. “Are we going to take all the paintings home with us?”

  “Yes, I think that’s the best idea. We can then deal with returning the souls to the rightful owners.” Mrs. Brody smiled at me.

  “We’ll collect the paintings,” Bailey said. “River, why don’t you go sit outside and wait for us? There’s no reason why you need to be in here any longer.”

  I nodded and smiled with relief. “Okay, thank you. Don’t take too long; this place gives me the creeps.”

  I walked out the front door with my empty canvas and sat on a bench, overlooking the landscaping on the other side of the large lawn. I gazed upon the large house that I had nearly been captured in forever, and thought to myself that perhaps haunted houses were a thing, after all. I clutched the canvas in my hand with strong fingers, my knuckles turning white from the force. I couldn’t imagine feeling such loneliness that I would be led to stealing people’s souls and keep them hostage for my own company. Another chill went up my spine, and I hoped with as deep a hope as I had in my heart, that we would be able to return the souls to their rightful owners.

  About half an hour later, the girls emerged from the home with large canvases in their arms. They were followed by at least a few dozen more canvases floating magically behind them as they left the house.

  “Where is Mrs. Brody?” I asked, peering through the open doorway of the house.

  “She said she had some last-minute business to attend to,” Bailey said. “I saw her going to the room with Mrs. Hemingway as we walked out the door.”

  We stood around the front entrance way and waited a few moments, and finally, Mrs. Brody joined us outside. She was carrying Frank’s portrait under one arm and had a mischievous grin spread across her face.

  We all turned and walked down the winding driveway together, followed by a trail of what had to be an entire neighborhood’s worth of human souls captured on canvas. Now that I’d become attuned to the energy, I could hear the whispers and moans and cries coming from the paintings. They were soft and hardly noticeable, but I could sense them in my very soul.

  I turned to Mrs. Brody as we walked in silence down the driveway. “What will happen to Mrs. Hemingway? We can’t just leave her in there alone to paint, surely?”

  Mrs. Brody looked pleased with herself but marched on in silence. I glanced at Bailey who gave me a nervous look back. When Mrs. Brody looked pleased with herself, it often meant that she was up to no good. “Mrs. Brody, what did you do?”

  Our small, pink-haired landlady shook her head as she marched forward, intense determination in her step. Finally, when we reached the end of the driveway, she halted and turned towards me. “Oh, I had a short chat with Regina, and we came up with an idea for her next painting. The poor dear won’t be leaving that room anytime soon, I suspect.” Mrs. Brody grinned wildly and bit her lip to stop herself from laughing. “Fortunately for her, she’s in good company. That woman has always loved herself too much to even accept the company of others in her room, which is why I suspect she captured people’s souls in paintings rather than visiting with the people themselves. She could pick and choose her company on a whim, and all she had to do was leave the room should she no longer wish to have a conversation with that person. She’s always thought highly of herself, that women.”

  I raised my eyebrow and narrowed my eyes at Mrs. Brody. I crossed my arms and waited for her to continue, but she simply smirked up at me and pursed her lips together. When she realized we weren’t going to move unless she said something further, she finally rolled her eyes and smiled.

  “Let’s just say, Regina will have to learn the art of keeping herself company, from now on.”

  Chapter 12

  That should have been the end of the story, but there were too many loose ends to tie up. The most obvious one being all the paintings we now had crammed into the house. Mrs. Brody’s house was large, but it was nothing compared to Mrs. Hemingway’s and there just wasn’t the wall space to fit them all. We had decided as a group, it would be immoral to store them stacked up so only those at the front could see. After so long in the dark, these people needed to see the light.

  Putting them outside was also not an option as the weather in these parts was not known for consistency and Mrs. Brody didn’t know whether a rain shower would damage the canvas or not. In the end, we decided not to risk it, and instead covered every surface we could find with the portraits. It was eerie. Everywhere I looked there was someone staring back at me, and even though I knew these were innocent people trapped within the frames, the whole thing still gave me the creeps. The cats didn’t much like it either. When the portraits had been brought in, they all scarpered up to my room and Pippin gave me quite a filthy look when he realised that my room was to house the portraits too.

  “It’s only until we find the people in the pictures,” I said to the very huffy orange cat. He stuck his nose up and sauntered away from me. The mother cat and her kittens hid under the bed when the first portrait had been brought in and it was only Soot that paid any attention to the paintings. A little too much in fact. I found him clawing at the bottom corner of one that held a picture of a striking young woman. Luckily, he’d only managed to scratch the background and not the woman, but I had to pick him up and throw him out of the house where he joined a disgruntled Pippin.

  “What now?” I asked, once all the paintings had been brought in and Rory had made us all a cup of peppermint tea. I watched Jane throw four of the five mugs of tea down the sink and fill the cups with coffee instead.

  Bailey looked nervous, as she sipped on her coffee. She kept staring around her as if she was fearful that the people in the portraits might jump out and ask for a cup themselves.

  “We need to find the people in the pictures. If that’s the only way to get them back, what else can we do?”

  We all looked towards Mrs. Brody who nodded her head. “I can get them back, but it’s impossible without them here. We need their bodies and their souls to touch to allow them to come together.”

  “How are we going to do that? Does anyone recognise anyone in the portraits?” Rory sipped on her tea and regarded the paintings curiously.

  In the kitchen, there were five of the biggest ones. They had
been propped up along the surfaces. The only one that I knew of was Frank and that was only because Mrs. Brody had told me about him. Mrs. Hemingway’s husband. I wondered just how long he’d spent inside that frame. His clothes in the picture told me it had been at least twenty years, but probably a lot longer.

  Mrs. Brody walked over to the painting and stroked her hand down the canvas. Oh ho, there was a story here that she wasn’t telling us. Not that now was the time to ask her.

  “Frank will be in the house somewhere. She’ll have wanted to keep him close,” said Mrs. Brody almost to herself. I shouldn’t wonder if there are more of them in that house. It’s a big house. Plenty of space to hide people. In a basement, perhaps.”

  I don’t know what was worse, having your soul stuck in a frame for decades or your body trapped in a cellar.

  “She’s not keeping them all in there. I saw three of them only yesterday. They were in Jordan’s restaurant. Two men and a little girl. I knew something was wrong with them. They were like zombies. Well, you saw what I was like. They were like that.”

  “We need to walk around the house and look at all the pictures thoroughly, see if any of us recognises any of the occupants. That would, at least, give us a place to start looking.” Rory – always the voice of reason.

  We decided it would be easier to split up and take a room at a time rather than trying to cram the five of us around each painting. I picked up my notepad and pen and took the stairs to my room. It was as good a place to start as any. The four paintings in my room were all of men. The youngest looked to be about twenty-five and had a hair cut similar to the ones the Beatles wore – a kind of mop-top. His clothing choices reflected the era too. Just how long had Mrs. Hemingway been doing this? If she’d been doing it since the sixties, we were looking at fifty or sixty years of people to find. Would they even still be alive? Mrs. Brody had said that they would, but how long would someone realistically be able to live? At some point they would die of old age surely?