09 - Return Of The Witch

by Dana E. Donovan

  Brittany said, “On the night April disappeared, she recorded a video on her laptop that she intended to upload to her blog. She obviously didn’t review the footage after recording it, because if she had, she’d have seen that the camera picked up something in the background.”

  “Like what?”

  Carlos said, “Someone was in her house. Ipswich P.D. got a hold of the computer, played the clip and recognized you right away.”

  “Impossible. I wasn’t there that night.”

  Dominic cleared his throat. “That’s not what you told us yesterday. You told us you were there, whether in body or soul, you couldn’t say, but you said you were.”

  “Okay, maybe I was. I honestly don’t know. The point is, if you think I killed April Raines or those other women, then who’s trying to kill me?”

  Paige said, “`Tis the prophecy witch, trying to steal the quintessential from you.”

  “No, Paige. I told you. I do not possess the quintessential. Whoever’s trying to kill me has some other vendetta.”

  Dominic said, “I don’t know about anyone’s vendetta, and I’m certainly not suggesting you killed April Raines or those other women. What I am saying is that just so long as there’s someone out there trying to kill you, I’d rather you don’t go and drag Ursula into it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said I’d rather—”

  “I heard you. Now you hear me. Unless you’ve forgotten, you’re the one who asked me to get involved in this case. I didn’t ask you.”

  “Yes, but that was before—”

  “Uh-uh! Zip it. You’re in this with me now. She’s in this with me. We’re all in this damn thing together until we figure out what’s going on. Capish?”

  “Lilith, I—”

  “I mean it, Dominic.” I turned to Brittany. “Detective, I appreciate your help in aiding and abetting my fugitive status. I know you really stuck your neck out for me.”

  She smiled and nodded. “I’m sure you’d do the same for me, Lilith.”

  I smiled back. “Eh…maybe not.”

  Carlos said, “Lilith. You can’t go back to your house, so why don’t you and Ursula stay at my place tonight. Maybe Brittany can give you a lift. She knows where I keep the key. Is that okay with you, Britt?”

  “Sure,” she answered, though not so convincingly. I supposed I could have done without my last comment to her.

  “Why don’t you guys give us a lift?” I asked.

  “Dominic responded, “Because we have to stay here and fill out a police report for the insurance company or they won’t pay for the damages to my car.”

  Ursula noted, “We did park under a tree to protect the paint.”

  “Aw, did you? Thank you, honey. I’m glad at least someone cares about other people’s property.”

  “All right, whatever.” I walked to the window and peeled back the blinds for a peek outside. The truck driver was still carrying on his interview with the police. I watched him assume a shooter’s stance and mimic the assault I made on the Escalade. He seemed rather convincing. I let the blinds close with a snap. “Listen. Ursula and I will have to slip out the back door. Brittany, you can pull around back and pick us up there if you don’t mind.”

  “Why the back door?” Carlos asked.

  I made a face at him as though I had just swallowed a sour grape. “I don’t like crowds. Is that okay?”

  Chapter 16

  Brittany dropped us off out front of Carlos’ house and told us where we could find the key to let ourselves in.

  “Really?” I said. “Under the welcome mat? Isn’t that a bit obvious?”

  She laughed. “Yes, but you have to remember, we’re talking about Carlos. It’s never that simple.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The key isn’t for the door. It’s for a lockbox hidden behind the doorbell.”

  I hooked a doubtful smirk. “You’re joking, right?”

  She smiled back. “If you ring the bell twice the button will unlatch and allow you to swing it up out of the way, revealing a small lockbox. Insert the key into the keyhole and turn it clockwise. A digital keypad will eject. Punch in the number, one-two-seven followed by the pound sign and the front door will open.

  “One-two-seven?”

  “Yeah, it’s his birthday, January 27th.”

  “Okay, that sounds easy enough.”

  Ursula and I started getting out of the car, when Brittany stopped us. “Oh, and Lilith?”

  I turned back. “Yes?”

  “If that doesn’t work, just try the doorknob. He almost never locks it.”

  “Nice,” I said, smiling. “That’s good to know.”

  We waited until she reached the end of the drive before ascending the front steps to the double mahogany doors.

  I had only been to Carlos’ house once before, only then Carlos didn’t own it. At that time, it belonged to a woman named Valerie Spencer.

  Valerie was a member of Doctor Lieberman’s workshop, a group consisting of individuals with aptitudes that transcended all dimensions of the paranormal. Of course, I was in that group as well. Unfortunately, what went on there eventually spilled way outside the realm of academic studies, ultimately costing many in the group, including Valerie, their lives. The house, therefore, had always held a dark invitation for me.

  Carlos became familiar with the place while working on a case with Tony that centered on the workshop. Its grandiose floor plan, marble embellishments and Mediterranean architecture appealed to his inner flamboyant side. I suppose that’s the reason he bought the house after winning millions in the Massachusetts State Lottery.

  It’s funny how a house can represent one thing for one person and something entirely different for another. I think Tony shared my distain for the home. He’d gone to Carlos’ house-warming party without me, but then never went back again. I think his memories of those old days, like mine, were too difficult to reconcile. For me, they still are.

  Ursula and I took a quick tour of the place to see what touches Carlos had put on it to make it his own. The answer, to my surprise, was apparently none. As far as I could tell, except for the name change on the mailbox, it was still very much Valerie’s home. From the exquisite wall paintings and lush live greenery to the fine Venezuelan artifacts, it appeared that Carlos hadn’t changed a thing.

  “I don’t like this,” I said, leading Ursula past the grand foyer and through the library toward the media room. “It even smells like her.”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “The previous owner. I swear, I think her ghost must roam the halls here.”

  After reaching the media room, which was actually a small theater, complete with cinema row seating, surround sound stereo and a projection room high up on the back wall, I began setting up for my experiment.

  “There,” I said, pointing to a lectern in the corner of the room. “Help me get that over here, will you?” We dragged it across the room and centered it in front of the movie screen. I adjusted its top to give me a level surface in which to work and then set the four evidence bags of ash out on top of it.

  “Do you know what I’m going to do?” I asked.

  “I know not,” she said with a shrug, “but thou art keen in thy purpose.”

  “Damn straight I am, and you’re going to help me. In fact, I’m hoping that Valerie’s ghost is present. We could use her spectral energy to assist us.”

  “Will we be engaged in séance?”

  “Close. We’re going to make a thought form, four if we’re lucky.”

  “A thought form? Sister, I confess I know naught of such things.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll tell you all you need know, starting with how wicked cool they are.”

  “Be they cold to touch?”

  “No, no…well, yes, actually, they are, but that’s not why they’re cool. What makes them cool is that they’re nonphysical entities capable of independent reckoning.”

  “They are
ghosts?”

  “In a way, I suppose. They’re two-dimensional ghosts.” I pointed at the blank white movie screen. “We’re going to make them appear on the wall there.”

  “How shall we do that?”

  I tapped the side of my head. “With our thoughts.”

  She tapped hers. “Of course.”

  “All right now, I think it bears mentioning that the beauty of conducting this with just the two of us is that it’s easier to focus our thought energy on what we’re doing. The drawback of using just us two is that there’s much less thought energy in the room to manipulate.”

  “I see.”

  “The last time I did this, it was in a room with nine other participants, the optimum number of people for such a sensitive endeavor. So you know we have our work cut out for us now.”

  “I am ready, Sister. I shall fail thee not.”

  “That’s the spirit…so to speak.”

  I unzipped the first baggie and sprinkled its contents over the surface of the lectern. “This brown ash is all that’s left of Terri Cotta, guardian of the good earth.”

  Ursula steepled her hands below her chin. “Rest thee well and merry part, Terri Cotta.”

  “Rest thee well and merry part,” I answered.

  I drew a picture of a sunflower in the ash using my finger.

  “Although thought forms fall into a category of level three spells, akin to making a witch’s ladder, creating one requires considerably more finesse. That’s because unlike a witch’s ladder, they are not merely instruments of stored or potential energy. As I mentioned earlier, these things are nonphysical entities. Once established, you have to allow the thought form to run its course. You got that?”

  “I do have that.”

  “Hmm…okay. I want you to take my hands, close your eyes and do as I do.” I offered my hands palms up and waited for her to take them. When she did not, I said, “Um, Ursula?”

  “Aye, Sister?”

  “Are you going to take my hands?”

  She hesitated some before admitting, “I cannot see them.”

  “That’s because you closed your eyes too soon.”

  I watched her crack one eye open and sneak a peek through a tiny slit before taking my hands.

  “You good now?”

  She smiled childlike. “Aye.”

  “Okay then. We’ll begin.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, humming a low note and holding it as long as I could. By my second breath, Ursula had joined me, and together our blended harmonics carried on a wave as smooth as silk.

  It turned out that being in a theater provided great acoustics for our purposes. By our fourth chorus, our verses began to resonate, building layer upon layer and carrying on their own.

  On the sixth refrain, I could feel the vibration in the floor. A circular pattern of sound had established an orbit around us and was now feeding on itself.

  We continued; our voices and breaths consecrated in purpose, fueling a sonic wave that reverberated throughout the entire room. Soon the walls began to rumble. The ceiling shook. The chandelier above swayed in pendulum fashion.

  I felt Ursula’s hands begin to tremble. I pulled them in close, squeezed them, encouraged her not to let go, not to let the commanding wall of sound demand more from her than we could provide.

  She reciprocated, nearly crushing my hand with her grip. We raised our voices to the rush of wind that swept across our faces, ushering in the cold air that always precedes the coming of a thought form. The phenomenon was at hand.

  “Open your eyes,” I said, and we did. The wind ceased and the symphony of sound subsided. On the white wall behind Ursula appeared Terri Cotta’s thought form. I gave a silent nod for Ursula to turn around.

  “Behold,” I whispered. “I give you Terri Cotta.”

  Ursula turned around and gazed at the life-sized apparition on the wall. It was Terri, back at her home, playing out the scene that ended her life.

  She looked older than I had pictured, mid-fifties, perhaps. Stood about my height, as best I could tell, had brown hair, curly, shoulder length. She had a pleasant face with round cheeks and keen eyes that seemed to frown upon us as she peered through thick eyeglasses out into the theater. Yet, as Ursula soon realized, Terri Cotta was not looking at us. She was looking at an unwanted visitor.

  “`Tis the killer’s eyes through which we see!” said Ursula, after gasping lightly.

  But I knew that. Thought forms always play out through the eyes of the one beholding the last earthly images of the victim.

  We both came around the lectern and approached the screen. The lights burned bright in Terri’s house the night she died. A copy of the Salem Gazette lay open on the kitchen table. A cigarette burned in an ashtray nearby. The TV was on, but thought forms are visual records. No sound did we hear.

  Terri answered her front door, perhaps believing the knock had come from a friend or a neighbor. We read the confusion on her face. “Can I help you?” she said, though we only saw the words on her lips.

  A shockwave blew her back into the room. She fell against a coffee table and onto the floor. She tried to pick herself up, but then abandoned her efforts to cover her ears instead. Whatever the sound, it must have been excruciating. We could see it on her face, racked in pain, her body paralyzed in agony.

  It was almost too much to watch, but it was over quickly. In a blink she was gone. Vapor filled the void she once occupied. Ash outlined her body’s footprint. The two comingled lazily in a restless spiral, animated by an unseen energy force powerful enough to dim the lights throughout the house. A slurry mix of both soon lifted in a swirl of dense brown fog. Bits began to clump. Small pieces became bigger pieces. Bigger pieces became larger still. Soon, it was obvious. We were witnessing the affects of accretion, a process as old as time itself.

  “`Tis a body,” said Ursula, after realizing the gas and ash had formed the outline of a person.

  “It’s Terri,” I said. “It’s her essence revivified.”

  Vague features of Terri Cotta began to appear in the molded clay-like substance that formed before our eyes. I thought it might even come back to life, but then it suddenly popped like a balloon, scattered into a trillion bits and disappeared completely.

  With that, the assimilation of Terri Cotta, guardian of the essential Mother Earth, was complete. The image on the white screen faded. I glanced down at the lectern. The brown ash was gone.

  I looked at Ursula and she at me.

  “`Twas a rude houseguest then, wasn’t it?”

  I laughed dully. “Ya think?”

  “Hath thou any doubt of it now?”

  “About the assimilation?”

  “Aye.”

  “I can’t say I saw it coming, if that’s what you mean.” I gestured toward the screen. “I will tell you one thing. The killer is a woman.”

  “And thou knoweth how?”

  I pointed two fingers at my eyes and then to hers. “The killer’s viewpoint. She was looking up at Terri after Terri opened the door.”

  “She was shorter, then?”

  “No, about the same size. See, the killer stood outside on the porch. You remember when we were there yesterday; there was a single step up from the porch to the front door.”

  “Aye, about a half and four inches, I should think.”

  “That’s right, about the difference between Terri’s line of sight and that of her killer’s. On level ground, the two stood eye-to-eye.”

  “Mayhap the killer is a man of short stature.”

  “Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “There was something else. Just before the shockwave threw Terri back into the room, I saw a reflection in her eyeglasses. It looked like a woman with long dark hair.”

  “Be it long as thine and mine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dark, too, thee did say?”

  “Jet black.”

  “Be she pretty?”

  “I thought so.”

  “Oh, my
! Sister, forgive me. I cannot but remember having called upon Miss Terri her home. I would surely have told thee had I known.”

  “Ursula! I’m not suggesting that you’re the woman in the reflection.”

  “But did thee not say she was pretty?”

  “I did.”

  “And that she had the most lovely dark hair?”

  “I said jet black. I didn’t say lovely.”

  “Oh. Pay no mind then. `Twas not I.”

  “I know it wasn’t you. I think it was me. Some of what we just saw here is exactly as I remember from one of my dreams.”

  “What shall we do?”

  “I don’t know.” I picked up a second baggie and held it to the light. “Let’s see if we can do it again with Amber’s ashes.”

  “Art thou sure ye wish to try?”

  “No, but I think we have to. We owe it to those women to find out what happened to them.”

  “Even if it means thou art their killer?”

  “Especially if I’m their killer.”

  I opened the bag and sprinkled its contents upon the lectern. As I drew jagged lines into the ash to represent fire, I paid homage to Amber, just as we’d done for Terri. “Rest thee well and merry part, Amber Burns, guardian of fire.”

  Ursula repeated my sentiments, adding, “May the coven be with thee.”

  I looked up at her and smiled. “Nice touch.”

  She smiled back. “I just thought it fit, is all.”

  “It does. It fits nicely. Now then, you ready?”

  She nodded. We held hands and closed our eyes.

  The residue energy from our last thought form was still very strong. We had taken a deep breath together and started humming in unison. The sound carried immediately. The wind ushered in a cold blast that raised goose bumps on our skin within the second chorus.

  It surprised me how quickly things escalated after that. Before I knew it, bits of paint and plaster rained down from the ceiling, shaken like fruit from a tree by vibrations from a sonic wave already twice as strong as the last.

  I pulled on Ursula’s hand to get her attention. When she looked at me, I shook my head no. She stopped and I stopped, but the angry swirl of wind and sound continued.