There was someone there.
He could see the silhouette of a body—female at first look—rising up from the floor of the porch. It was a few steps away from the window, but the shape was unmistakable.
Petr squinted and took two steps into the water, cupping his hands over his eyes to narrow his focus. Were his eyes tricking him? Was the shape simply a floor lamp? Or a shadow? No, it was definitely a human shape, and Petr quickly considered the possibility of a ghost. Why not? If any house was likely to have a spirit haunting it, it was Gretel’s, and since Marlene had died there on the property, hers was not an unlikely choice.
The outline stood motionless for a few more moments—Petr was waded up to his thighs now—and then, like a wisp of smoke, it vanished into the background.
Petr gasped, his eyes now wide and shocked, his mind moving quickly to process further possibilities of what he’d just witnessed. He pivoted now in the water, turning in every direction, hoping in vain that there was someone who could validate that what he’d seen was real.
He ran back up the lake path toward the house, organizing his thoughts into words as he went, saying them out loud to himself so he could be economical and precise when telling Mrs. Klahr, and later Gretel, what he saw.
But as Petr passed the line of fruit trees and came even with the house, he saw Hansel seated on a large tree that had recently fallen near the garden shed. Another few feet and it would have destroyed the structure, along with a bevy of harvesting equipment.
Hansel was staring out toward the lake; clearly he would have seen Petr as he made his way down to see Gretel, just as he would see him now, returning. But Hansel was entranced, and made no movements to indicate his awareness.
“Hansel. Are you okay?”
Hansel sat unmoved.
Petr walked over to the boy and sat beside him on the log, allowing him several feet of space as buffer. He was clearly still in shock from his mother’s death, which apparently he had directly caused, though Petr realized he still hadn’t heard the details.
The two sat silently for more than two minutes, and just as Petr was about to speak, Hansel said, “She wants to blame me. And she probably will for a long time.”
“What happened, Hansel?”
Hansel turned to Petr, his eyes now alive and focused. “But one day she’ll know it wasn’t my fault.”
Petr nodded, not having enough information either to argue or confirm Hansel’s words.
Hansel stood now and turned toward the house, the shock still evident in his body language.
“Hansel,” Petr said.
Hansel stopped but didn’t turn toward Petr, and Petr could sense the resentment in the boy. Perhaps the blame Gretel was foisting on Hansel, he was now transferring to Petr. “What?”
“This might sound like a strange question, but was there anyone else living in your house? With you and Anika?”
Petr turned toward Petr now, his eyes scrunched in a look of confusion and disgust. “No. What?”
Petr gave a half smile and shook off the question. “It’s nothing. I...I’m not sure why I thought to ask that.”
Hansel frowned and walked through the back door of the Klahr house, and before Gretel returned from her rowing session, Petr sprinted for his truck and drove directly to the Morgan property.
WITHIN MINUTES, PETR had parked the truck and was standing at the bottom of the porch steps, staring up and reminiscing about the night his father had sent him from the cruiser, ostensibly to retrieve his police binder, which he had purposely left behind in the Morgan house. Petr had thought a lot over these couple of years about how much his father had used him during the Marlene incident, about how willing he had been to sacrifice his only son—and Petr’s childhood—for the perverse promise of immortality. And as each month passed, and Petr got further away from that dark time in his life, he hated Oliver Stenson even more.
Petr walked deliberately to the top of the steps and then stood staring at the front door for a beat before gripping the handle. He was suddenly frightened at the thought of entering, remembering that Marlene had once taken up residence here, bivouacking in the basement like some subterranean predator, emerging at night under the mask of darkness to kill, including on the night she had murdered Mr. Klahr.
Was she here now?
Petr knew that was impossible—Marlene was dead, there was no question about that—but perhaps someone had come to avenge her. Somebody was standing in that window, he was almost certain of it now, and this new possibility that it was someone sympathetic to Marlene suddenly flooded Petr with terror. It was a notion that now seemed like a very real possibility. She was a witch, after all, ancient and legendary, which meant she probably had family and followers in the darkest of the world’s corners, ready to retaliate against the family that had killed her.
“Just go in,” he said, and then pushed open the heavy, oak door.
The front door of Gretel’s house opened directly into a small kitchen, and once Petr was inside, he could see half of the porch through the sliding glass door to his right. But the other half of the porch was blocked by the house’s central support beam, so he walked gingerly toward the door, placing each step as carefully as a cat burglar. He was now close enough that he could touch his nose against the glass door, and he slowly scanned the full length of the porch.
There was no one out there.
He turned back to the kitchen and focused on that room, noticing several things immediately. There were footprints on the linoleum. Fingerprints on the handle of the refrigerator door. This was by no means smoking gun evidence that someone had just been there—it hadn’t been twenty-four hours since Anika’s death, so presumably she and Hansel would have been there and could have made these marks—but at first glance, the prints looked fresh.
He turned back toward the porch and slid open the glass door, walking out and feeling the fresh breeze sifting in through the screens. Petr walked to the window and stared down at the spot on the other side of the lake where he’d been standing less than ten minutes ago. Across from that spot, on the Morgan side of the lake where he was currently, was Gretel’s canoe. She was apparently done with rowing and had come to visit her property.
He quickly walked back to the front door to see where she’d gone, and screamed at the sight of her standing in the front doorway.
“What are you doing, Petr?” she asked. “Why are you in here?”
“I...Why are you here?” He regretted the words the instant they left his mouth.
“This is my house.”
“I know, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I asked that. Listen to me: I think I saw something...someone...in here.”
“What? When?”
“Just a few minutes ago. Just after you left for Rifle Field. I was looking across the lake and I saw...I don’t know. Someone out on the porch.” Petr nodded toward the screened porch from where he’d just come.
“I don’t...understand.” Gretel’s face was a ball of confusion, as if her misunderstanding was more to do with Petr and his violation of her trust. “Why would you tell me something like that?”
Petr’s mouth opened in disbelief, his eyes now wide and apologetic. “Gretel, I saw someone.” He paused. “I think it was a woman.”
“A woman? What did she look like?” Gretel’s disbelief had morphed into indignation.
“I couldn’t see her exactly, there was just a shape. I thought I was seeing things at first, but then...she moved. She backed out of sight like she knew I had seen her. That’s why I came over here.”
“There was only Hansel and my mother. No one else lived here. You know that.”
Petr thought again of when Marlene had camped in the basement, and the smell she brought with her, a smell he was sure he could still detect remnants of now. So, in truth, someone else had lived there, but Petr decided it best not to remind Gretel of that now. “I do know that. I’m just—”
“Get out, Petr. I need some time here by myself.
There are a few things I have to find before I go.”
“Gretel...”
“Get out.” Gretel didn’t yell the words, but the effect on Petr was the same as if she had.
Petr stepped past Gretel and onto the front porch. Gretel stood at the threshold with the door open halfway.
“When is the funeral?” he asked, having given up on trying to convince Gretel of what he’d seen. Perhaps it was a ghost, he thought, in which case she would discover it on her own soon enough.
“Tomorrow morning at dawn. It will just be the four of us. We’ll have a ceremony at the lake edge of the orchard.”
“Just us?”
Gretel’s eyes softened now and she shrugged. “There’s no one left, Petr. Who would we tell?” Her look turned serious. “And we agreed—that is, Mrs. Klahr, Hansel, and I agreed—not to involve any more police.”
Petr was stunned at this and scoffed. “She was killed, Gretel. No one has called the police?”
“I’m sure you can understand about that.” Gretel’s eyes flamed with warning, her teeth clenched. It was a look that said anything other than total acceptance of their decision would render Petr dead to her forever.
“Where is she? Where is the body?”
Gretel dropped Petr’s eyes and looked to the floor. “It’s at the bottom of the lake.”
Petr still hadn’t heard any of the details of Anika’s death, and he quickly formed his own version of the story; he would find out later he wasn’t far off from the truth of the actual events.
He nodded. “Tomorrow at dawn.”
Gretel nodded back and closed the door.
Chapter 3
STOOPED LOW BETWEEN a pair of twin guest beds, Anika watched Petr Stenson through the gap between the wall and open stairway that led to their basement. Her nose and mouth were pressed against the side of the mattress, her eyes—one of which was now covered with a patch that she’d found in an old first aid kit—peeked just over the top, like a crocodile treading the surface of a river.
Anika had showered and dressed, cleansing her body of lake gunk and feces, reuniting with clothes she hadn’t worn in a year, so accustomed had she become to living life in her filthy robe. Her wounds were still severe, however, untreated and gruesome, her face a portrait of damage.
The twin beds between which Anika hid had been a staple in the Morgan house for years, and though they had been used only rarely, mostly by Anika after her husband Georg’s injury had left him nearly crippled with pain for several weeks, the smell of them now seemed to contain every memory of her previous life. She recalled how difficult life had seemed then, when her father and husband had been simultaneously incapacitated, one spiraling toward dementia, the other laid up in bed by the kick of a spirited horse. She hadn’t known anything about the conspiracy against her then, the plan concocted by her father to bargain his own daughter’s body for the poison of his own long life. She never thought then the ties of family could be broken so easily.
And Georg had been complicit too, unwilling to overcome the temptations of Marlene, the woman who had taken everything from her.
Everything but her children.
Hansel and Gretel had survived the story, somehow, and had even become heroes in it, they with Petr, fighting the power and evil of Marlene with all the bravery of wartime soldiers.
And Anika, of course, had played her role too, ultimately slaying the witch after returning from the Old World, the place where she had overcome desperate sickness and treachery.
But everything felt different now. Anika felt different. New. As if she had been reborn into someone else, a being with new senses and perspectives, yet still in possession of all of the memories and feelings of her former self.
And she was hungry now. She was so hungry.
Petr moved further into the kitchen, and Anika could now see only his legs below the knee, his bare calves triggering a release of saliva at the back of her mouth. She wanted to spit the craving to the floor, disgusted at herself for both the craving and for drawing the boy from the lake to the house. She had been careless on the porch, lingering too long there, allowing Petr to see her, or at least detect the shape of her through the window.
But she had been watching Gretel, had been entranced by her hair and skin and movements, and Anika had wanted to drink up every last moment of her daughter.
She thought of the potion now, and of the addiction that had blossomed from it. Beyond her own demise, it had brought destruction to her children’s lives. It had forced Hansel to become a killer.
But the feeling of the potion was no longer inside of her. Anika could still feel the remnants of the addiction, and the effects it had rendered on her body, but the craving for the liquid was gone.
It had been replaced though, and even at this early stage of her new incarnation, she could feel the replacement was a thing far more sinister.
The spoiled chicken had had the opposite effect of sating her hunger, and Anika had spent several minutes washing off the bird fat and skin from her fingers and nails, nearly vomiting again as the tiny chunks of flesh circled the sink drain.
And her need to feed was growing, with only Petr nearby.
Petr walked back into the kitchen, and his body was again in full view. Anika licked her lips and swallowed, and then crouched lower behind the bed.
And then she heard Gretel.
The tenor and tempo of her daughter’s voice drifting in from the front threshold was ecstasy in Anika’s ears, and the knowledge that Gretel was only steps from her was torture.
Anika estimated it had been only a few weeks since she had seen her daughter, but as she searched her memory, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her in a state of sobriety. Whatever happened at the bottom of the lake had altered Anika, about that she was certain, but it was very different from the fog of the poisonous potion. She was aware now. As fully aware as she’d ever been in her life.
She saw the first shoe of Gretel enter the house, followed by the full stature of her body, and Anika waited in distress for the hunger to emerge.
But there was nothing.
Anika closed her eyes for a moment and smiled, and then took a deep breath before opening her eyes wide, taking in the fullness of her daughter, who looked beautiful and sad.
Anika heard the door close, and then watched as her daughter disappeared from view, walking in the direction of the back bedrooms. She moved from her crouching position and sat flat on the floor, resting her back against the bed frame. She put her head in her hands, pressing her palms to her closed eyes to keep from weeping.
What was she to do now? How was she to exist in this world after today?
As far as the world knew, or soon would, Anika Morgan was dead. Certainly her family would believe nothing else. Hansel had struck her down, and he and Mrs. Klahr had no doubt watched her head sink below the surface of the water, bloody and struggling as she went. And they had later tossed flowers into the water, an obvious sign of her memoriam.
She was dead now, a corpse at the bottom of the lake, and any surprise resurrection, any miraculous appearance to her son would only invoke the terror of Marlene and the abomination of Orphism. She would be seen as a witch from then on, undead, and a constant underlying threat to her son forever, no matter the reparations she made.
But perhaps Gretel could understand. If Anika had indeed died and been resurrected, if she was a product of the potion’s powers and the practice of Orphism, Gretel could fathom it. She probably knew more about the subject than anyone in the New Country.
Anika would allow Gretel to leave today, and then watch from the perch of the porch her own funeral at dawn tomorrow. And by nightfall, she would wait for a time when Gretel was alone, and together they would find answers.
But between now and tomorrow night, she would hunt.
THAT NIGHT ANIKA DREAMED of the Old World, of the Koudeheuval Mountains and the Village of the Elders, and of an even more distant place in that world,
one described to her by her father during Anika’s captivity in the warehouse behind the cannery, just after she’d escaped from Marlene’s cottage and been “rescued” by Officer Stenson. The place her father had spoken of was the land of Orphism’s birth, where the magic of immortality was first discovered by her ancestors, where it was nurtured and revered before leaking out to the rest of the world and hijacked by villains. In her dream, it was in this land where she saw the woman, ancient and malevolent, unfamiliar to Anika. But Anika knew her identity instinctively. It was she. It was Tanja.
The daughter of Tanja.
The daughter.
It was the daughter of Tanja, as told by the village elder through Anika’s interpreter Oskar, who was in possession of the only copy of Orphism that contained the remedy to her illness. She would learn later, of course, that it was Marlene who the elder was referencing, and Gretel had indeed found the cure in her book and brought Anika back from the edge of death.
The ‘Tanja’ part of the elder’s description, however, was still a mystery, but ever since Anika’s emergence from the lake, her name had become prominent in her thoughts.
Anika also dreamed of Noah, the gentle guide who had navigated them up and through the mountains to the amazing society of her ancestors, from which they were then guided to the Village of the Elders. There was almost no way Anika could quantify Noah’s value to her voyage—she would never have made it without him—and as she thought about the man now, she remembered their farewell words on the pier and her wish at the time for him to come with her. How she wished now, more than ever, that he had come. Her life since then may have gone much differently. But Anika knew in her heart that Noah would play a critical role again before the story of the Morgans was finally written, and she gave a sigh of contentment at this assurance.
As if Noah had suddenly spoken her name aloud, Anika’s eyes flashed open, ending the dream in an instant. She was in one of the basement’s twin beds, staring at a pair of wooden support beams that ran beneath the ceiling. She recalled having taken to one of the twin beds to rest, waiting for Gretel to leave, and had obviously fallen asleep there.
Anika Rising (Gretel Book 4) Page 3
