by Meg Muldoon
But after several moments of searching in the pitch darkness, I realized that I’d been woefully mistaken.
If the matches weren’t on the table, then they had to be in one of the kitchen drawers, I reasoned.
I moved slowly through the living room, trying to avoid running into any furniture, and headed toward the far kitchen counter. Huckleberry and Chadwick, awakened by the sound of the wind, had started barking. A few moments later, I heard their claws scrambling on the hardwood floor as they jumped down from the sofa.
Outside the wind howled like a wolf with its paw caught in a trap.
I suddenly felt cold and alone and scared, and I wished that Daniel were home. And that he wasn’t out there somewhere in the storm.
I ran into something hard, and realized I had successfully made it to the far side of the kitchen near the window. I felt around, opening the first drawer, rummaging through glue sticks, rolls of ribbon, broken light strands, and other unidentifiable objects, searching for the matches that I knew had to be there.
My hand finally struck a small, square, cardboard box.
“Thank goodness,” I muttered, relieved that we hadn’t run out.
Blindly, I opened the small box and pulled out a match. I fumbled around, striking the side of the—
Craaacccck!
The box of matches fell out of my hands and landed on the floor at the loud noise.
I peered out the window, into the utter darkness of the night, trying to make out past the shaking trees and thick sheets of rain what had caused the eardrum-busting sound.
And then, I saw her.
For a split second, there at the window, staring back at me.
Those eyes of hers as empty and soulless as two black coals.
A moment later, the ground shook beneath my feet as something massive crashed down.
Chapter 30
Enough was enough.
I pulled up to Santa’s Nightmare Lane, parking several houses away from the one I intended to visit. I sat in the car for a long moment, gripping the wheel until my knuckles turned white.
I thought it all through again.
First, her showing up at my pie shop, leering at me with those empty eyes of hers. Then all the strange accidents: the knife falling on my foot, Harold’s niece almost backing up over me with her car, the kitchen fire, and then last night, the pine tree getting knocked over by the wind, coming within inches of taking out our kitchen.
And, perhaps the most damning of all: the fact that I saw Hattie outside the kitchen window just mere seconds before the tree fell.
All of it was too much of a coincidence. And while it made no sense logically, the bad luck had all started with me seeing Hattie that morning outside the pie shop.
I couldn’t sit back and wait for the next disastrous thing to happen to me anymore.
I needed to know what The Witch of Christmas River wanted.
And I wasn’t going to wait to get killed before I found out.
Chapter 31
I stood before the witch’s lair, looking up at the house’s crumbling façade, its neglected paint color melting into a backdrop of blustery, angry grey skies.
My hands felt slick with perspiration, and my heart made slow, laborious, fearful thuds inside my chest as I stood on the cracked sidewalk.
Had I really seen Hattie Blaylock in the woods outside my house the night before? Or had it been a figment of my imagination? A trick that the darkness and storm, combined with my own thoughts and fears, had played on me?
After the thunderous sound of the tree falling, I had gone outside to investigate. Hattie Blaylock was nowhere to be found.
All that was there was the splintered tree.
It was hard to think that an old, sad recluse could be responsible for the string of strange accidents and events that had been plaguing me lately.
But maybe Hattie wasn’t the sad recluse that we all thought she was.
Maybe the kids were right about the old woman.
Maybe she really was a witch.
I stood there, thinking it through some more, until I realized that I was just stalling.
I took in a deep breath, summoned my courage, and urged my legs to move forward – up the creaky old wooden steps, then onto the front porch. Then to the front door.
I rolled one of my sweaty hands up into a fist and raised it, ready to knock.
But I didn’t need to.
The old, paint-peeling door opened slightly, and a soft, muted light shone from behind it.
“I was wondering when you might visit, dear,” an old voice said.
Chapter 32
The inside of Hattie Blaylock’s home wasn’t much different than the outside.
The out-of-date wallpaper was yellowed and faded and peeling. The furniture was timeworn and musty, and much of it seemed unstable. In one corner of the living room, an old grandfather clock stood, forever stuck at 3:23. In the far corner sat a piano with a thick layer of dust on it. On a sofa near the window, a white cat was curled up, flipping its tail occasionally either out of boredom or contempt: I didn’t know which.
It was hard to tell whether it was the same pale white ghost cat that had paid me a visit several days earlier.
The drapes seemed to have been permanently drawn, with only the faint glow of a couple of old lamps to illuminate the large living room. I doubted if sunshine had touched a single item in the room in the last decade.
The place smelled strongly of old perfume and something else:
Decrepitude.
It appeared that The Witch of Christmas River was headquartered in a house that seemed only fitting for a witch.
The woman slowly made her way across the living room, carrying an old silver tray with two saucers and a chipped porcelain teapot. I got up from the musty sofa that she had directed me to sit on to help, but she shook her head.
“I can do it,” she said
I wasn’t sure what I expected when Hattie Blaylock opened the door of her home to me, but I hadn’t expected to sit and have a cup of tea with her. I guess I had imagined her sending me away with an evil, hateful glare, or something to that effect. But instead, the old woman had invited me into her home, somehow having expected my visit.
“It’s been so long since I’ve had any company,” she said, sitting down in an old wingback arm chair, sucking in wind on account of her journey from the kitchen. “I have almost forgotten how to be a good hostess.”
I leaned forward, pouring the tea for us, sparing the old lady the trouble. I handed her the mug, and she cupped her hands around it for warmth.
She stared at me with those empty eyes of hers, and for a second, I felt that old fear return.
“Please, go on and ask your question, Ms. Peters,” she said.
I cleared my throat, taking my mug in my hands, wondering about whether or not I should drink from it.
If Hattie was indeed a witch, she might have put something in the tea. This might have been her plan from the beginning to get exactly what she wanted. Lure me to her home, then take me out with something as innocent as a cup of tea.
I held the mug in my hands, not bringing it to my lips.
“It seems like you want something from me, Mrs. Blaylock,” I finally said. “You were at my pie shop twice. And since then, strange things have been happening to me. I even thought…”
I trailed off, swallowing hard as I looked into her emotionless eyes.
“I even thought I saw you last night… at my house,” I said.
Nothing changed in her old parchment-colored eyes.
I felt my heart speed up.
She took a sip of her tea, then slowly placed it on the silver tray in front of her.
“Dear, do you know how many such stories I’ve heard in my time?” she said.
I looked hard at her.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that everyone in this town thinks I’m a witch,” she said. “A familiar of the devil. A harpie. A blac
k magician. Don’t think just because I’m a recluse, I don’t know what people are saying about me in this town.”
She settled back into her chair. The soft lighting settled on her static grey hair like a glowing layer of dust.
I cleared my throat, and took in a deep breath.
“Are you, Mrs. Blaylock? Are you a witch?”
A thin smile spread across her face, and the expression was scarier than her usual one.
“The power of suggestion, Ms. Peters,” she said. “Any psychologist will tell you that once the seed of a thought is planted in someone’s mind, they will start seeing that thought turn into reality before their very eyes.”
She seemed pleased with her own response, lacing her old fingers together and resting them across her frail body.
“That’s not exactly an answer,” I said.
Her mouth turned down, as if she’d just tasted something sour.
“What I’m trying to tell you, Ms. Peters, is that I had nothing to do with any of the strange things that have happened to you. That’s your real question – not whether or not I’m a witch. I was not at your house last night, either. However, I will admit that I was outside your pie shop on two occasions within the last week.”
I swallowed hard.
“Why were you there?”
She straightened out her paisley dress and looked up.
“Isn’t it obvious?” she said.
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
Her black coal eyes burned into me.
“Because of the renovations,” she said, slowly. “Because of the thing you found behind the wall, dear. The ring.”
Chapter 33
“How do you know about that?”
Something flickered in her old eyes suddenly – and that vacant, empty look faded away into something else. An emotion that seemed like bitterness or pain of some sort.
“I know about it, because I saw who put it there,” she said. “Saw it with my own two eyes.”
I placed the tea down on the tray in front of me, my hands trembling slightly.
If Hattie had seen who hid the ring behind the loose brick, then she’d be able to tell us who Ralph’s killer was.
I leaned on the edge of the chair toward her.
“You know who hid it?” I said, my voice cracking.
She nodded.
“But before I tell what I’ve kept to myself for nearly six decades, you must hear the entire story,” she said, a strange desperation taking hold of her voice.
She grabbed my hands suddenly, and the shock of it nearly sent me flying backwards. She gripped them hard.
“You must not skip to the end,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “Will you sit and listen to my story, Ms. Peters? Will you hear what I have to say?”
Her eyes lit up, and the suddenness of it evoked a fight or flight feeling deep within me.
Everything in me wanted to leave that room – to get out into the fresh air, away from the drab, decaying smell of Hattie Blaylock’s house.
But I knew I couldn’t leave.
Because Hattie had something to tell: and I needed to hear it.
I took in a deep breath, and summoned up what courage I had left.
“Yes, Mrs. Blaylock,” I said, returning her cutting stare. “I’ll listen.”
There was something like gratitude in her old eyes.
Chapter 34
“Time makes a fool of us all,” she said, looking past me in the direction of the grand piano. “That’s something you learn when you grow old. When you look back on your life, and no longer recognize the person that you once were. And you realize that time has made you unrecognizable to everyone, but most of all, to yourself.”
She stretched out her old ancient hands and looked down at them, smirking unnaturally for a moment.
“There was a time when I could love,” she said. “When I did love. When my heart wasn’t bitter and mean and cruel. Long before it collapsed on itself like a dying star.”
She shook her head silently.
“What we women go through,” she said. “The suffering.”
Her black licorice eyes fixed for a moment on the lounging cat. I felt small shivers travel up my spine, remembering what kids around here said about Mr. Adams the cat. That he had once been her husband, and that she had transformed him into a feline after a marital spat.
“I met him my first year of high school, when my family moved here to Christmas River from Tacoma,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “And I knew the moment I laid eyes on him… There was an instant chemical reaction. Have you ever felt something like that, dear? Where you just knew that your life was going to change with just one look from a man?”
I didn’t have to think much about her question.
I did know – I’d had that feeling twice in my life. The first time was that night when I was a teenager, with Daniel and our first kiss by the lake. The second time was when he showed up on the back porch of my pie shop, chasing a dog on a snowy night years later.
I nodded at her.
“Good,” she said. “Many don’t ever get to know that feeling.”
She paused for a moment. The dusty silence of the room was deafening.
“I loved Ralph Baker for nearly six years,” she said, abruptly. “I loved your great uncle with everything I was made of. He was my first love. And he had a beautiful soul. The kind that shone through, even when he tried to taint it with the ugly things of the world.”
Her face grew slightly dark when she said the last part.
I studied her for a long moment.
Then, I suddenly realized something.
Of course…
A small, but important, piece of the puzzle had just revealed itself.
“Hattie’s not your real name, is it?” I said.
She shook her head deliberately.
“My Christian name is Hannah,” she said. “Hannah Templeton.”
Chapter 35
My mind raced in a dozen different directions as I studied the old woman.
Why had she changed her name? And how had she kept who she was a secret from everybody all these years? The Pastor didn’t know that she was Hannah – and he knew everything about everybody in this town.
But for the moment, asking those questions would only stall the momentum of the story. Hattie was telling her tale, start to finish. And I wasn’t going to slow her down or get in her way.
“Hattie,” I said, leaning closer to her. “What happened to Ralph that night? Do you know?”
She bit her wrinkled lower lip, and for the first time, her eyes seemed to hold real emotion.
She nodded slowly.
“It was my fault,” she said. “I’ve had to live with it for all these years. I should have never gone to…”
She closed her eyes with a degree of pain.
“I had been with Ralph for six years when he proposed the summer of 1960,” she said. “We were both only 20 years old, but back then, that was more normal than it is today. In fact, it seemed like I’d been waiting forever for him to ask for my hand.”
She sighed at the memory.
“I was so happy that day. So, so happy. I thought my heart was going to burst with so much love and pride. Do you know the feeling? Of having the only man you’ve ever loved love you back so completely?”
She looked down again, straightening out the wrinkles in her dress.
“Then one day – it was that September – one of my girlfriends convinced me to go along with her to the Harvest Fair in Redmond. We had a grand time. But then my friend stopped in front of the psychic reader’s tent – you see, she believed in that mumbo jumbo, and she wanted the psychic to tell her if her boyfriend was going to propose too.
“I was always taught to stay away from those things. My family was very devout, you see. My whole life revolved around the church in those days, so I should have known better than to go into that old psychic’s tent. But I did it anyway, going against what
I’d been taught. Thinking it would be harmless.”
She paused for a second while Mr. Adams got up from the sofa and stalked across the room to the fireplace. He stretched out in front of it, waiting for warmth that would never come.
“My friend was the one who wanted the reading,” Hattie continued. “But the psychic told us that it was me who needed the reading. She said there was something important I needed to know.”
Hattie peered deep into my eyes.
“What was it?” I asked.
“She told me that that night, I would dream of a man. And that this man was my true soulmate. And that I needed to heed the dream and pursue this man and no one else, or I’d be cursed for all time.”
I swallowed hard.
Hattie rubbed the side of her face as if she had a toothache, and stared away, her eyes full of emotion.
“And she was right: I did dream of a man that night,” she said. “But it wasn’t the one it should have been.”
A lone tear slid down her wrinkled face.
“It wasn’t my Ralphy.”
“Who was it?” I said, timidly. “Who did you dream of, Mrs. Blaylock?”
She slowly brushed away the tear.
“I saw Ralph’s best friend, instead,” she said. “Rick.”
She shook her head.
“But I convinced myself that the psychic didn’t know what she was talking about,” Hattie continued. “I convinced myself that it was just cold feet, the kind that any prospective bride might get. After all, how could I fall out of love with Ralph in the matter of a single night? I’d never even thought about Rick in that way to begin with, then all of a sudden, here he was, supposed to me my soulmate?”
She shook her head again.
“It just couldn’t be,” she said. “It just couldn’t be.”
She paused for a long moment. Then, as if the memory had suddenly become too real for her, she looked around the room, as if to remind herself that those days were behind her.
