The Mystery of the Whispering Witch

by Campbell, Julie

  The voice stopped, but the three girls couldn’t move. It was as if they were frozen with terror.

  “Oh, Trix,” Honey cried, clutching her friend with both hands, “what does it all mean? What is it we have to watch for?”

  Trixie’s face was grim as she stared at the floor. She pointed. “There!” she said, her voice shaking. “That’s what we have to watch for!”

  Unbelievably, a curl of black smoke was billowing toward them from beneath the door.

  “The house is on fire!” Fay screamed.

  Helpless, she and Honey watched as Trixie twisted and tugged and yanked desperately at the knob once more.

  “It won’t budge!” Trixie shouted.

  The smoke, thicker now, stung her eyes and choked her lungs. She gazed frantically about her.

  But no window had appeared magically since the last time she’d looked. The walls, with their brave display of bright mementos, offered no other exit. The room had become a prison from which there was no escape.

  Trixie turned to her friends. “It’s no use,” she said hopelessly, her voice catching on a sob. “We’re trapped! And, like Sarah Sligo, we’re going to be burned alive!”

  The Odd Odd-Job Man ● 6

  GASPING FOR AIR, Trixie and her friends huddled together in horror on Fay’s bed. They clutched each other for comfort as the choking smoke billowed toward them.

  Suddenly, outside the door, someone screamed. Then there was silence.

  It seemed that that terrible scream still hung in the air as Trixie strained her ears to listen. She expected still to hear the muffled roar of an angry mob. She wouldn’t have been surprised to hear muffled footsteps moving haltingly back along that dark passage.

  But she heard nothing.

  Puzzled, Trixie turned her head toward the room’s only exit. She expected to see long orange tongues of flame reaching under it to consume her, the way they had reached out to consume the witch, Sarah Sligo.

  But again, she saw nothing.

  Even the smoke had stopped belching. As she watched, the choking fog seemed to lift, slowly at first, and then faster. It was as if someone had opened an outside door to let in the blessed fresh air.

  Trixie reached out and shook Honey and Fay, who were still clutching each other convulsively. “It’s the weirdest thing,” she said slowly, “but I think we’re saved.”

  Honey moaned. “You’re just saying that to make us feel better, Trix.”

  Fay’s eyes were closed and she was gasping for air. “You’re wrong, Trixie,” she whispered. “You must be. How can we be saved when we’re about to be burned to death?”

  “See for yourself,” Trixie told them as she moved stiffly away. She clambered off the bed and stood still, looking about her.

  There was no question about it now. The haze of smoke still hung in the air, but it was less— much less. Around her, the house was quiet, as if it were exhausted.

  Trixie moved to the door and stretched out a trembling hand toward it. The knob twisted easily under her grasp.

  She hesitated, afraid to look into the passage outside. What terrible sight would meet her eyes? Would she see the still body of a figure dressed in a black hat and a flowing cloak? Would the dreadful specter be burned beyond all recognition?

  Trixie gasped at the very thought and snatched her hand away from the door.

  Honey had been watching. “What is it, Trix?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Is—is the door still locked? Will we have to stay here forever?” Trixie’s mouth felt dry. Her throat burned painfully. “I was thinking—that is—what do you think we’re going to find once we open that door? Oh, and by the way, it isn’t locked now.”

  “Then open it,” Fay whispered.

  Slowly, cautiously, Trixie’s hand moved toward the knob once more. At that moment, she thought she heard the faint click of a spring lock moving quietly into place.

  Trixie flung open the bedroom door and stared straight ahead of her. She saw only the dim outlines of the passage outside. Gathering all her courage, she stepped across the threshold and glanced quickly at the back door. She had the feeling that it was this lock she’d heard closing.

  She was afraid to turn her head and look the other way, toward the front of the house. How far had the fire reached? Was it even now creeping toward her defenseless back? If so, why didn’t she feel the fire’s heat? Why hadn’t the doorknob felt hot under her fingers? Why was it so icy-cold here in the passage?

  Above all, where would she find the body?

  At last, she turned and looked. She rubbed her eyes and looked again.

  There was nothing.

  No fire licked its way along the passage toward her. No inert body lay like a bag of old laundry on the floor.

  A haze of lingering smoke hovered outside Fay’s bedroom door. But it was the only sign that anything at all had happened that night.

  “Come quickly!” Trixie told her two friends and beckoned to them to follow her.

  Moments later, they stood in the entrance hall and stared about them in disbelief. The front doors, still locked and bolted, stood unmarked. No axes had marred their surface. No hinges hung drunkenly to testify to a shouting mob’s rage.

  Over her friends’ strong objections, Trixie insisted on searching, first the downstairs, then the upstairs, for any sign of the source of the fire. She didn’t find any.

  “I simply don’t understand it!” she exclaimed to Honey some ten minutes later. “It’s just as if nothing happened—nothing at all. Pinch me and tell me if I’ve been dreaming all this time.”

  “I don’t have to pinch you,” Honey said slowly. “I’m telling you. It all happened.”

  “Then where’s the evidence?” Trixie asked, trying to sound reasonable.

  “The evidence is here,” Fay’s voice said from behind them.

  They turned to see her standing, white-faced, in front of the big entrance doors. Her fists were clenched tightly at her sides.

  Trixie frowned. “Well? I don’t see anything— only you.”

  Fay swallowed hard. “I know,” she answered slowly. “That’s just it. I'm the evidence. You—you can blame me for everything. You see, it’s all my fault. I—I wasn’t sure before, but now I am.” Trixie stared. “I don’t understand. What is it you’re sure of?”

  “I’m possessed,” Fay said simply.

  “Possessed by what?” Honey asked, sounding as bewildered as Trixie felt.

  “It’s been going on for some time,” Fay said, as if she hadn’t heard Honey’s question. “I haven’t told anybody—not anybody. At first I thought it was all my imagination. I kept on hearing things, things that no one else seemed to notice.”

  By now she was crying, and her whole body shook with sobs.

  “It’s all right, Fay,” Trixie said, hurrying to her side. “It’s all right. We’ll look after you, won’t we, Honey?”

  “Of course we will.” Honey stopped, thinking. “Listen, Trix, one thing’s for sure. I’ve had enough of this house to last me a lifetime. I know it’s late, but let’s call Brian. He’ll come and get us and take us to your house—”

  Trixie frowned. “That’s no good. The phone’s out of order here. Don’t you remember? Now I’m wondering what happened to it.”

  Fay tried to choke back her sobs. “It’s nothing spooky, if that’s what you mean,” she said at last. “The storm last night knocked down a line, that’s all. But—but the phone won’t be fixed till tomorrow. Oh, Trixie, Honey, what are we going to do?”

  Trixie didn’t hesitate. “We’ll walk home,” she stated, “and from here on out, Fay, antiques or no antiques, you’re staying at Crabapple Farm until your mother’s out of the hospital.” Her face was grim. “As for that other thing you just told us— about being possessed, I mean—”

  “You can tell us about it later,” Honey finished. “But we will help you, Fay,” Trixie said, not really knowing whether she and Honey would be able to. Fay’s problem seemed to be getting fa
r beyond their experience.

  At first she thought that Fay was going to refuse to move from her position by the front door. It was as if, having begun to tell them her terrible secret, she couldn’t rest until she’d told them all of it.

  But with Honey helping her, Trixie urged Fay back to that small bedroom where they had spent so many horrifying minutes. This time they made sure that the door was wide open as they dressed.

  Then Trixie and Fay, almost without thinking, grabbed a handful of Fay’s clothes and flung them into a suitcase. Then, thankfully, they made their way out of the house.

  Trixie didn’t even begin to breathe easier until they were standing at the mansion’s rear gates.

  “What are you girls doing out here at this time of night?” a man’s rough voice asked suddenly from behind them.

  Startled, Fay smothered a scream, Honey jumped nervously, and Trixie swung around and gazed up at a tall figure that had appeared noiselessly out of the shadows.

  Shaggy black eyebrows hung over a pair of cold gray eyes. The figure’s face, long creased with small wrinkles, was topped by an untidy mane of white hair that fell in ringlets over his ears.

  Trixie swallowed hard as she noticed what he was wearing. His painter’s overalls, which once could have been white, seemed to be stained with dark splotches of—could it be blood?

  Without thinking, Trixie stepped away from him, even though she knew who he was. Zeke Collins, the odd-job man at Lisgard House, had been a resident of Sleepyside for as long as she could remember.

  She stared now at those dark stains and wondered if, perhaps, he had managed to trap some small, defenseless creature from the swamp and had been busy butchering it.

  She shuddered. “We—my friends and I—are on our way to my house,” she stammered at last. “We—we were going to spend the night here—”

  “But something happened,” Fay added.

  “It was the witch, wasn’t it?” Zeke Collins said.

  Honey gasped. “How did you know?”

  Zeke Collins rasped a thumb across a stubble of beard on his chin. “Aye, there ain’t much that goes on around here I don’t know about,” he said, almost to himself. “What was it this time? Did Sarah make an appearance?” He stared from one to the other of them. “I’ll tell you straight, someone’s doin’ something to upset Sarah. Someone’s calling her back from her grave. I don’t like it, I tell you. I don’t like it at all....”

  Fay looked as if she was about to faint.

  “We’re going home,” Trixie said firmly. “Come on, Fay, Honey. Good night, Mr. Collins.”

  Zeke Collins didn’t move. “It’s almost like it was in the old days,” he muttered. “There’s black magic around, and that’s bad news.”

  Trixie swung open the gate and pulled her friends after her. “Good night,” she called again over her shoulder. She could sense that the old man was still staring after them.

  “You mark my words,” he shouted suddenly. “Whoever it is who’s disturbing the haunt—aye, and there is a haunt to disturb—is going to be sorry. There’s an evil spirit in that house, and her name is Sarah Sligo. You hear me?”

  By the time Trixie and her friends had reached Glen Road and were hurrying along it, some of the night’s terrors seemed to be nothing but a bad dream—a nightmare from which they had at last awakened.

  The streetlights threw the girls’ shadows ahead of them, making them appear as if they were giants out for a stroll. The shadows shortened, vanished under their feet as each lamp was reached, then lengthened again behind them.

  Trixie could hear the small sounds of the night life around them as tiny creatures scurried through wild underbrush searching for food. In the distance, getting fainter with each step, the marsh frogs kept up their plaintive croaking.

  Trixie could hear Honey and Fay talking in low tones beside her. But she wasn’t listening. Her mind was busy, trying to recall every detail of the horrifying night’s events. She remembered, too, the confession Fay had been about to make when it was all over.

  What had she meant when she’d said she was possessed? Was it possible that Sarah Sligo had somehow taken over Fay’s body and was now trying to work her evil once more?

  Trixie had no answers to any of these questions. “But just wait till morning,” she muttered to herself, “and then I’m going to try to find out everything there is to know.”

  All the same, she couldn’t help wondering where the knowledge would lead her.

  Dark Suspicions 7

  IF YOU REALLY WANT to know what I think about your mind-boggling and mystifying adventures last night,” Mart said for the third time, “I think that with a small amount of cogitation—if you are still capable of it, Trix—you’ll come to the same sane and sensible conclusion that I have reached myself.” He took a deep breath. “In other words, sister mine, you were dreaming.”

  Trixie glared at him across the breakfast table. “We weren't dreaming, my dear little twin brother. You can ask Honey.”

  Mart reddened and looked annoyed, as he always did when Trixie reminded him that he was only eleven months older than she was.

  He forked up the last bite of blueberry waffle from his plate and popped it into his mouth. “Me mmf mewy wiff monk merfy,” he said.

  “If you wouldn’t talk with your mouth full,” Trixie told him, “maybe I could understand what you’re saying.”

  Mart chewed, swallowed, took a long sip from his milk glass, and leaned back in his chair. “Ah, that’s better,” he announced, patting his stomach. He cocked an eyebrow at Trixie. “What I said was that I can’t very well ask Honey. She took Fay over to Manor House to show her around there. So until I receive definite confirmation of your hair-raising tale, my considered opinion, previously stated, remains unchanged.” He looked across the table at Brian. “What do you think?”

  Brian had been listening quietly to their conversation. “You have to admit, Trix,” he said at last, “that the whole thing sounds crazy. You woke Mart and me up in the middle of the night to let you in. You promised to tell us all about it this morning—”

  “Which I’ve done,” Trixie put in.

  “—but it still doesn’t make sense,” Brian continued. “Mart and I were talking about it after you three had gone upstairs to bed.” He stared at her curiously. “How did three of you ever manage

  to fit into two beds, by the way?”

  “Very carefully,” Trixie answered absently.

  Although the Beldens had a guest room downstairs, Trixie hadn’t even thought of asking either Fay or Honey to sleep in it when they all reached Crabapple Farm the previous night. After their terrible experiences at Lisgard House, it was as if the three of them had an unspoken agreement to stay together and offer comfort to each other.

  Trixie had wondered if Fay would want to stay up and talk for a while. But she hadn’t. Her face, still white and drawn, had a strange, stricken look to it, almost as if she’d had more than she could bear for one day.

  And so, carefully avoiding the subject that was foremost in their minds, Trixie and Honey had insisted that she should rest. Although Fay had told them that she knew she would not be able to close her eyes for the rest of the night, it hadn’t been five minutes before she was fast asleep. Soon Trixie and Honey were, too.

  In the cold light of that Saturday morning, however, the events of the previous night seemed somehow less terrifying. Now that Trixie had had a chance to think about them, she was sure there was some sensible, believable explanation for what had happened.

  “You know what I think?” she said suddenly. “I think someone’s trying to scare Fay into having a nervous breakdown.”

  Brian shifted uneasily in his chair. “Now, come on,” he said. “You’ve got no reason to believe anything like that. What on earth gave you such an idea?”

  “Figure it out for yourselves,” Trixie told her brothers. “When I got to the house last night, I thought I saw someone outside. That was the first thing.�
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  Brian nodded. “That was Zeke Collins.”

  “Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t,” Trixie replied. “But then there was the other stuff. I heard someone telling me to beware. And then— and then—”

  “You thought you saw a ghost,” Mart said. Trixie nodded. “I thought I did, really. I—I know it sounds silly.”

  “Wow! What an understatement!” Mart leaned across the table toward her. “Did it occur to you that it could have been either Fay or Honey perpetrating a peculiar practical joke?”

  Trixie flushed. “That’s really silly,” she said with conviction. “They were asleep. Anyway, neither of them would do such a thing.”

  Brian frowned. “I think you’re right, Trix,” he said, “at least as far as Honey is concerned. But what about Fay?”

  “What about her?” Trixie demanded. She stared at him, puzzled.

  Her eldest brother played idly with his fork and, with the handle of it, drew lines on the tablecloth. “None of us know Fay that well,” he said slowly. “I was wondering whether she might have been behind all the strange things you say you saw and heard last night.”

  Trixie felt bewildered. “But why?”

  Brian shrugged. “Beats me. The whole thing sounds funny, that’s all. You heard people arriving at the house, you said. They were angry and shouting. Then you say they broke down the front door with axes. After that there was the business with the smoke. But when you came to look afterward, everything was normal. The door hadn't been broken into, there wasn't a fire—”

  “Fay could have cooked up the whole thing,” Mart said. “Maybe she needed you there as witnesses. Maybe she was trying to turn your tumultuous tresses to silver.”

  Before Trixie could come up with a retort, Brian put in, “He means she was trying to turn your hair gray.”

  “Or maybe,” Mart said thoughtfully, “she knew that you are constantly panting after problematical predicaments—mysteries to you, Trix—and she decided to provide you with one.”