The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1)

by Anna Roberts

  She was sweating, but she had never been so happy to be wearing two pairs of underpants and a maxi pad. Could spirits crawl up between your legs? Even if she had believed in those things, Blue felt sure Gloria’s rules said they couldn’t. Hadn’t she said Blue was protected by her youth and fertility?

  And why didn’t I let her just paint my blood on the doors?

  Blue got up to get a couple of Cokes from the fridge. She hadn’t heard the voice again since last night and that was fine with her. It had been vivid, but that was nothing unusual; ever since they put her on Celexa her dreams had been incredibly clear, and although she had stopped taking the medication her brain refused to go back to whatever it had used to do before. She couldn’t remember that well; everything before had been all fucked up in its own way, but it still seemed like a fool’s paradise in the wake of the storm.

  “Are you in hea-ven?” Axl asked the Ouija board, half-yawning, half spacing his words like one of the preachers on the lawn.

  “You don’t believe in heaven,” said Blue.

  “No,” he said. “But it doesn’t know that. Come on, help me.”

  She sighed and touched her fingers to the glass. The thing nearly tipped over in its hurry to race to NO.

  “Okay,” said Axl, laughing. “So are you in hell?”

  The glass didn’t budge.

  “Then where do you exist?” asked Blue.

  Once again the glass rocked under her fingers. She could see why people believed in it; it really did feel as though it had a life of its own. It scraped across the wood, spelling out first I-N-T-H-E before she realized it was supposed to be two words. In. The.

  IN THE SPACES.

  “The fuuuck...” said Axl, impressed. It was still moving.

  I-N-B-E-T-W-E-E-N.

  Blue could feel the hairs rise on the nape of her neck once more. Her insides felt cold and tight and it was only when she spoke that she realized how long she’d been holding her breath.

  “What does that mean?” she said. And she couldn’t stop. That was the worst part. She knew all she was going to do right now was give herself another night of bad dreams and maybe another sleepwalk, but she couldn’t seem to take her fingers off the glass.

  Another rock and scrape, and it was off again. L-I-T-T-L-E.

  Somehow she knew where it was going next. P-I-G.

  “Rude,” said Axl.

  No, no, no. This was wrong. It was tugging at the threads of her nightmare, unraveling memory, but it was like her fingers had been glued to the bottom of the glass. It whizzed across the wood now, scratching back and forth over the letters at a pace she thought would topple it. But it didn’t. It had so much to say.

  LET ME COME IN.

  “Who are you?” said Blue, her heart in her mouth. Little pig, little pig, let me come in. She was the only person who knew it had used those words. And the feeling was back again, that sticky, dirty, crawling feeling that went with the voice.

  Someone outside was speaking in tongues again – “Roombala shreena amanala lalalalala” – and the glass stopped abruptly, as if listening.

  Axl didn’t speak. He glanced up and caught Blue’s eyes, and nearly jumped out of his skin when the glass started up again.

  It skidded over to Y.

  The nonsense outside grew louder; when one person started speaking in tongues, everyone started to join in, making a weird chorus of nothing-sounds, eerie and wordless. The glass scraped over to A, then E.

  It stopped on L.

  “Yael?” said Blue. It meant nothing to her, so she asked anyway. “Are you the one who’s been swinging the light fittings?”

  Nothing, then once again it started to move. YES.

  “We should stop,” said Blue.

  “Shut u-up. This is just getting good.”

  “Axl, you really need to watch more horror movies.”

  But Axl was already asking. “Yael? Are you a ghost.”

  Scrape. Scratch. NO.

  “Well, you kinda sound like a ghost,” he said.

  The curiosity was like an itch now, the kind you only had to brush with a fingertip to remind you that it was there and then it was too late, because it consumed you until there nothing left in the world but the desire to scratch. “We should stop,” she said, again, but her fingers stayed on the glass.

  I-A-M

  It shot over to W then H. A pun that could only be deliberate. Whatever was moving that glass was smart.

  I AM WHOLLY SPIRIT

  There was a noise in the hall. Not a crash, more like a creak. A loud one, startling as a gunshot. Axl jumped back from the board. The shot glass fell off the table, bounced on the linoleum and rolled there, back and forth. Blue was suddenly aware that she was breathing far too fast.

  “Wait there,” she said, getting to her feet. Her knees felt like water, but once again that awful curiosity kept driving her forward.

  Gloria stirred in her armchair.

  “Are you okay?” said Blue.

  The old lady opened her eyes and squinted up at her, her dentures clicking as she licked the taste of sleep out of her mouth. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. Sit tight.”

  It was the front door. Blue could hardly believe what she was seeing. Where Gloria had driven in the iron nails, there was now a crack down the entire length of the door frame. Like someone with monstrous strength had somehow worked their fingernails into the wood and split the whole thing like a banana. For a brief, mad second Blue struggled to remember whether they had earthquakes in Florida.

  She took a step closer.

  Tink. Clink.

  What the hell?

  The nails were sliding out of the wood, as if someone was pushing them from the inside. They clinked onto the floor, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in pairs, and then more, raining down onto the threshold.

  Someone shoved her hard her from behind and she went sprawling, scrambling for the door handle to keep her from falling. The front door swung open and the push from behind swept into a push from the inside. Blue felt it shoving up the length of her spine, under her skin, filling her head until she thought it would burst, and then it seemed to roar silently out of her mouth, leaving a sticky, brown-tasting film on her tongue as it went.

  The people outside were staring at her. In the middle was the sparkly cat lady, once again wearing a different face. Not the friendly leafleting face, or even the soft, pliant spirit face. Somehow Blue knew just by looking at her that someone else – or something else – was looking out through her eyes.

  “Little pig, little pig,” said the cat lady, in that sticky, dirty-brown voice. “Let me come in.”

  Blue stepped backwards into the house. Axl was right behind her, a reedy jangle of too-long limbs. “Get away from here,” she said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Get back!”

  The truth was that she had no idea what was going on, but that dream hadn’t been a dream, had it? That thing – the thing that was staring back at her through the cat lady’s eyes – had been crawling around in her own brains and bones, walking her down to the cellar like she was some kind of meat puppet.

  “Not by the hair of your chinny chin chin,” said the cat lady, with a lopsided smile. “Hello, Blue; it’s good to finally meet you.”

  A stranger, but not. Oh God, she had been so stupid. Playing around with a Ouija board while those idiots hung around outside with their mouths open, trying to suck the Holy Spirit into their bodies.

  There was a scuffle behind Blue and Gloria – pushing hard for such a thin old woman – shoved in front of her. She had taken off her iron necklace.

  “Get out of that woman, you bogey,” said Gloria. “Get out right now. You think she’s strong enough to carry you around?”

  The various guitars had died out in a series of plinks and jangles. Now the evangelicals, with their fierce appetite for theater, had turned towards the cat lady.

  “And you are?” said the cat lady, w
ith a laugh. “Well, that’s gratitude for you.”

  A preacher drew closer to the spectacle. He had shiny black hair and a shiny orange face, and the pants of his blue suit were as shiny as the rest of him. His dark magpie eyes, stretched out at the corners by a Burt Reynolds facelift, were bright with a belligerent, infantile need; someone was getting more attention than him and he didn’t like it one bit.

  “I-ah call to ya Lor-ud Jeeesus...”

  The cat lady ignored him. “I could leave you,” she said to Gloria. “Right back where you were before. With holes in your brain and drool down your blouse.”

  “Like you did that out of the goodness of your heart, Yael,” said Gloria, and Blue’s heart skipped a beat. “You did it for the same reason you do anything; because I made you.”

  The cat lady began to laugh, slow and sarcastic. Her mouth was wide and her head went back far enough to show the metal fillings in her upper back teeth. The preacher raised his hands again, the greedy gleam in his eye almost feverish now.

  “Sure, Gloria,” said the cat lady. (Yael? Seriously?) “Why don’t you tell your little sorcerer’s apprentice there just what you made me do?”

  The preacher started up again. “Inna tha nayum of Jeeesus...” His hands came down on the cat lady’s head. She glanced at him in surprised silence for a split second and then the laughter started again – Yael’s laughter. There was no way that cat lady had a laugh like that in her. It was mad and mocking all at once, and came from deep in her throat as though the disembodied thing inside her was reveling in the fleshy sensation of vocal chords vibrating.

  “Is she gonna puke pea soup?” whispered Axl.

  “Inna tha nayam of a-Jeeesus Ah cast thee ou-at of this wo-man,” said the preacher, his voice rising to a megachurch howl, his hands pressing down on the cat lady’s blonde head. “Be-gone unclean spirit! Be-gone!”

  There were wails and moans and amens from the crowd. The cat lady stopped laughing and shuddered under his touch, swaying on the balls of her feet as she seemingly strained upwards towards him. She moaned and then Blue saw it – a thin stream of blood trickling down from her nose.

  Gloria saw it, too. She almost fell down the porch stairs and smacked at the preacher with small, bony hands. “Get out of my way, you goddamn amateur.”

  The preacher pushed at the cat lady’s head, whipping her skull back on her spine. With a grand, theatrical “A-MEN!” he released her, and she dropped to the grass. There was blood on her cat sweatshirt, but he didn’t see it; he was too busy bellowing to the crowd, hands in the air, giving thanks to the Lord.

  Gloria got down on her knees and felt for the woman’s pulse. Blue followed her down and knew without asking that it was bad; the cat lady’s eyes were staring at nothing and one of her pupils was huge, blown.

  “You piece of shit,” said Gloria. “She never did a damn thing to you.”

  Blue took hold of the cat lady’s wrist, feeling for a heart beat. Oh God, the voice had said that, hadn’t it? Last night it had threatened to blow out a blood vessel in her brain, put her in a wheelchair for life. The cat lady’s wrist was still warm and soft, but it was too late. She was already broken beyond repair.

  Several of the crowd knelt to carry her away; presumably they thought she had been ‘healed’.

  “She’s dead, you idiots,” said Blue, sounding shrill and childish to her own ears. But the horror of it was closing in on her; so fast, so sudden, and nothing you could do about it. “She’s dead! Don’t you understand? She’s dead!”

  *

  An ambulance passed Gabe on his way home, screaming past him along the water-edged strip of highway. Eli didn’t say a word as it went, but the sound of the siren left a ringing texture to the silence in the front seat. Everyone had the same guilty thought when an ambulance flew by like that; at least it wasn’t me.

  Except it was, or at least too close to home.

  There were police cars parked outside Gloria’s house. Cops moved in and out of the crowd, nodding and taking notes. With panic already fizzing behind his eyes, Gabe searched the scene for the ambulance and found it, its back door a little ajar. He glimpsed a stretcher within. It was covered with black plastic. A body bag.

  Eli caught his elbow; he hadn’t even realized he was about to fall.

  “Let me go,” said Gabe, in one breath, and rushed forward towards the house.

  Blue was sitting on the porch steps, Axl at her side. He wore the helpless expression of a kid completely out of his depth, and she didn’t look much better.

  “Blue, what the hell happened?”

  For an endless second she just looked at him like he’d beamed down from a spaceship in front of her, then she shook her head. “I...I don’t know.”

  “Where’s Gloria?”

  “Inside. The paramedics are checking her over.”

  “Oh my God,” said Eli, coming up behind. “Is she okay?”

  Blue nodded. “I think so.”

  “Will someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?” said Gabe, nearly out of his mind with fear and confusion. There was a dead person in that ambulance and none of this made any sense whatsoever.

  “It’s my fault,” said Blue.

  “What?”

  “We were playing with the Ouija board,” said Axl, in a guilty rush. “Then one of those goofy old Jesus ladies got possessed – like, for real. And this guy tried to cast the devil out of her and whatever and she just...died. Like literally.” He pointed to the lawn. “She was right there. Dead.”

  Gabe pointed to the ambulance. “That’s her? In there?”

  “Yes,” said Blue. “It was that woman I told you about. With the cat t-shirts. She had some kind of stroke or seizure and then...oh God, Gabe, it happened so fast. Like switching out a light.” She started to cry and Axl put a nervous hand on her shoulder. Gabe so badly wanted to comfort her, too, but he was still trying to put the whole thing together in his head. Right now it was the only thing he seemed to be able to do.

  “She was sick?” he said. It made some sense. A lot of those people outside were elderly, some of them none too healthy. Maybe the old girl had just had a heart attack on Gloria’s lawn.

  Axl shook his head. “No. I told you. She was possessed. Like she was saying all this weird stuff, like nursery rhymes – the three little pigs or something. And Gloria came out and told this...like ghost or whatever to get out of her head.”

  “Well, this is turning out to be a trip down memory lane,” said Eli.

  Axl looked up at Eli with a who-the-fuck-are-you coolness that told Gabe that this trip was going to be a shitshow from start to finish. “Wait there,” said Gabe, and went into the house with Eli. There were nails all over the hallway and the wood of the doorframe was split, like someone had taken a battering ram to it.

  Gloria was sitting in the living room, a paramedic crouched at her feet. “Are you guys family?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Gabe. Gloria looked up at him. She looked dazed, but in a way that was horribly familiar. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid as to take it for granted that she might one day look at him that way again. “Look who’s here,” he said.

  Gloria gazed up at Eli and smiled, slow and vacant. “Charlie,” she said, reaching out a hand.

  Eli took her hand and moved round to the front of her chair. “No, it’s me,” he said. “Eli. I came down from Tavernier.”

  She frowned at him for a moment. “Where’s Charlie?”

  The paramedic straightened up and spoke softly to Gabe. “I’m sorry about this, man,” he said, putting a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “It’s rough.”

  “I know,” said Gabe, although he didn’t. He only had half an idea of what was going on.

  “How long since she was diagnosed?”

  “Diagnosed?”

  “The Alzheimer’s,” said the paramedic. “It’s pretty far gone.”

  “But she was fine,” said Gabe. “She was...her old self.”

  T
he paramedic squeezed his shoulder, still talking very gently. “I know how it looks sometimes, I do. But at this stage...you shouldn’t be doing this on your own...”

  His words faded out into snatches of officialdom. Outreach programs, home help, support network. And absolutely none of it made any sense to Gabe.

  *

  The rain stopped outside Orlando. The streetlights gleamed on the wet, turning the puddles gold. We’re off to see the wizard.

  Reese snored softly in the passenger seat. In the backseat Grayson was talking about something National Geographic, his voice blurring in and out with the hiss of water on the tires. Follow, follow, follow.

  “What are you talking about back there?” said Charlie, determined to keep his brain awake.

  “Qin Shi Huang..”

  “Oh. Obviously.”

  “The terracotta army guy,” said Joe.

  “Oh. Him.”

  “United a bunch of warring city states and created the Chinese nation,” said Grayson. “It was always going to fall apart when he died, and he knew it, so he decided it would be easier if he didn’t die.”

  Charlie glanced at Reese. “Sounds a little like someone we used to know.”

  “He became obsessed with living forever,” said Grayson. “Or at least becoming a God when his mortal spell was up. He’d take mercury pills and drink these weird concoctions full of crushed pearls and precious metals, thinking they’d turn his flesh into something divine.”

  Joe, folded up like a lawn-chair beside him, stirred. “But they just poisoned him?”

  Charlie caught Grayson’s eye in the rear view mirror; this was all a little close to the bone, but if Grayson knew that then he was giving nothing away. He just kept rambling on in that teacherish way that Charlie guessed was his way of soothing himself.

  “When he finally died his chief minister arranged for a cartful of rotting fish to be dragged behind the Emperor’s palanquin, to disguise the smell of the corpse and buy him time to figure out how to prevent chaos.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I don’t remember, exactly. But I have a feeling it didn’t.”