Crooked Hills

by Cullen Bunn

  “Oh, no,” Lisa said.

  “What?”

  “I left my slingshot.”

  I sighed. The weapon had been left on the shed’s dirt floor. I only hoped we didn’t need the slingshot before we were through with Mrs. Brewster and Maddie Someday.

  “Let’s keep moving,” I said.

  “You want to go ahead, go on,” Lisa said. “Try not to get lost. I’m resting for a few minutes.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I sat down on a large rock jutting out of the ground. “Are you angry or something?”

  “I’m not angry,” she said, “but I don’t think we’ve been thinking this through very clearly.”

  “What’s to think about?” I asked. “If we don’t take this arm to Mrs. Brewster, she’s going to kill my little brother.”

  “It’s not that simple, and if you’d just stop to think about it, you’d realize that. What do you think you have there?” She nodded toward the arm. “It’s the arm of a witch, a witch who used to hurt people. She used to kidnap children—kids just like us who were never seen again. And Mrs. Brewster’s planning on bringing her back to life. Whether we help her or not, do you think she’s just going to let us walk out of there unharmed?”

  I knew where Lisa was heading with her argument. I even agreed with her to a certain degree. But what choice did I have?

  “What do you want to do?” I asked. “Let my little brother die?”

  “Of course not.” She ran a hand through her sweaty hair. “I want to save him just as much as you do. I’m just not sure if letting Mrs. Brewster bring an evil witch back from the dead is such a good idea. We’d have two evil witches to contend with.”

  My shoulders sagged.

  “There has to be something we can do.” Lisa placed a hand on my shoulder and offered an apologetic smile. “We’ll figure it out if we put our heads together.”

  I looked down at Maddie’s severed arm. Since it had sprung to life in the shed, it hadn’t so much as twitched on its own. The ring on the boney finger twinkled in the darkness. I held my hand up next to the ring, comparing the scratches on the back of my hand to the symbol etched into the blood red stone. Somehow the symbols connected me to Maddie, the same way the symbol connected the dog and Mrs. Brewster to the long-dead witch. There must have been powerful magic connected to the bauble.

  I shifted uncomfortably on the rock.

  I looked up.

  “Give me those slingshot stones of yours.”

  Lisa untied the pouch from her belt and tossed it to me.

  “Won’t do much good without the slingshot, will they?”

  “I think I have an idea,” I said.

  “You do?”

  “It’s not much of an idea,” I admitted. “It probably won’t work, and chances are it will get us all killed.”

  “I like the sound of it already,” Lisa said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  AN EERIE GLOW SHOWED FROM THE WINDOWS of the witch house, and a light mist seemed to ooze out of the earth itself. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but I started thinking this was the place where all the fog in the county came from. A cold knot formed in my belly, slowly uncoiling like a snake with every step we took.

  I didn’t see Marty anywhere. I worried he’d tried something stupid and gotten himself in a whole world of trouble. Leaving him behind probably wasn’t the wisest decision on my part, but I couldn’t do anything about that now. Still, it would have been nice to know where he was and whether he was alive or dead.

  “We’re back,” I called. “Mrs. Brewster? We have the arm!”

  Walking by my side, Lisa reached out and squeezed my hand for luck. I squeezed back. A weird thought danced through my head. There I was, holding both Lisa’s cute—if somewhat sweaty—hand and Maddie Someday’s gnarled, rotting arm. Still, I didn’t let Lisa’s hand go until the front door of the house opened and old, wrinkled Mrs. Brewster herself hobbled out.

  As she limped down the steps, one hand trembled upon her cane, and the other snapped open and closed in anticipation.

  “I’m impressed, child.” Her voice was high and screechy, and she talked fast, the way I do when excited or scared. “I didn’t expect you to return so quickly. Give it to me.”

  I yanked the arm away from her grasp.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “First, let my brother go.”

  With crooked teeth, Mrs. Brewster chewed nervously at her lower lip. Her dark eyes lingered on Maddie Someday’s arm for a few seconds, then she looked me in the eyes. She was trying to size me up, see if she could somehow get the better of me.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said. “I can run a lot faster than you can. You so much as look at me wrong, and you’ll never see the arm again.”

  “And you’d never see your brother again, either. You’re bluffing, child.”

  There wasn’t much I could say. She was right, and she’d called me on it.

  “Just let me see him.”

  “Very well.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll take you to your brother.”

  She shuffled to the cellar doors and leaned over to throw them open. She must have been a lot stronger than she looked, because she didn’t need any help. The familiar stink rose up from the darkness below.

  “After you,” Mrs. Brewster said, motioning toward the door to the dark chamber like the doorman at a high-rise hotel.

  I started down the steps with Lisa a step or two behind. As Lisa brushed past Mrs. Brewster, she pointed an accusing finger at the old crone and said, “No tricks.”

  Mrs. Brewster rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t dream of it, my dear.”

  Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

  With Mrs. Brewster behind us, we descended down into shadow.

  Reaching the bottom, I saw Alex tied to the rusty metal ring once again. His head hung low, like he didn’t have the strength to look up. I dropped Maddie’s arm and dashed to my brother’s side. The knot binding him to the ring was a lot tighter this time, but I managed to tug it loose.

  I was so busy helping Alex to his feet I didn’t even notice Mrs. Brewster snatch the arm off the ground. She squealed with delight and held the arm up above her head like a first-prize trophy. She hopped up and down and rushed over to the shadowy, dirty thing crouched in the corner like a still spider awaiting prey.

  “Help him out of here,” I told Lisa, passing my brother to her.

  “What about you?” she asked, already ushering Alex up the steps. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I’m not done yet,” I said, watching Mrs. Brewster go to work on the witch’s corpse.

  The stairs creaked beneath the combined weight of Alex and Lisa as they climbed.

  Mrs. Brewster worked like an expert surgeon, stitching up a precious patient after surgery. Her bent fingers worked the leather thread through the decayed, worm-covered flesh of the dead witch. As Mrs. Brewster pierced the flaking skin with the knitting needle and cinched the body parts together, she looked down at the corpse’s fingers.

  She whirled around, snarling, “Where is it?”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. Glancing to my right, I saw that Lisa and Alex had cleared the cellar doors. “Where’s what?”

  “You know what I’m talking about!” Mrs. Brewster loomed closer. “The ring. Where is it?”

  “It’s not there?” I asked. “It was there when we dug the arm up. It must have fallen off somewhere in the woods.”

  “Listen to me, child.” She lurched toward me. “That ring is very important. Don’t lie to me about it. I’m far more understanding than Maddie will be when she awakens.”

  Behind her, something ghastly was happening. The mud and worms and dead flesh seemed to come alive, stitching Maddie’s flesh back together. I saw the corpse twitch, saw the chest rise and fall as the witch took her first breath in a hundred years.

  “A-all right,” I said. I untied Lisa’s pouch from my belt. “I have it.”

  “Give i
t to me!” Mrs. Brewster snapped. She snatched the pouch from my hand. “Foolish child! You’ll learn there’s an awful price for playing games with me.”

  She tugged the drawstrings, opened the pouch, and dumped the contents into her hand.

  She gasped.

  I slapped the back of her hand, and the scorpions flew into the air, landing on Mrs. Brewster’s face.

  Fighting mad, the critters started to strike her with their stingers, injecting their painful poison into her lip and eyelid.

  “Reaarggh!” Mrs. Brewster shrieked, swatting the scorpions from her face and staggering away.

  I ran for the stairs, taking the sagging, rotting wooden steps two at a time. I was only a few feet from the top, and once I made it outside we’d lock Mrs. Brewster in the cellar. Six steps away. Four. Two.

  A clawed hand snagged my leg. I tripped and fell forward, crashing painfully against the hard edge of the steps.

  “No you don’t!” Mrs. Brewster growled.

  I’d been caught. The plan had failed.

  I was dead meat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I KICKED AND SQUIRMED in Mrs. Brewster’s grasp and half-crawled up the steps. She held on tight. I tried to scramble up the steps, clawing at the wood. I shook my leg in hopes of loosening her grip, but her fingernails dug through my jeans and into my flesh.

  Looking back, I saw awful, swelling blisters on her face where the scorpions had stung her. Frothy spittle flew from her lips. She held onto me with one hand and beat at me with her cane in the other. I tried to push her back, but from my position I had no leverage as she dragged me down the steps.

  “Out of the way!”

  I heard Marty’s voice loud and clear.

  I fell as flat as I could on the steps. Mrs. Brewster looked up just as Marty swung over the edge of the doorway. He held onto the door above with both hands, swinging like a kid on monkey bars. He held his booted feet straight out in front of him like steel-heeled rockets aimed at Mrs. Brewster. His boots struck her square in the face. Mrs. Brewster yelped, released me, and tumbled down the steps.

  Still holding onto the door, Marty groaned as he raised himself back out of the stairwell. I scrambled into the night air.

  For a second or two, I couldn’t look down into the cellar. I feared I might see Mrs. Brewster crawling like a spider up the steps. Or maybe I’d see her lying twisted and broken on the earthen floor. Finally, I steadied myself and looked down below. Faint moonlight cast its pale glow onto the cellar floor.

  What I saw was worse than I imagined.

  Mrs. Brewster sat at the bottom of the steps, clutching at her ankle and rocking back and forth. She looked up at me, moonlight spilling across her swollen features.

  “My ankle,” she said. “It’s broken. I can’t stand.”

  She didn’t see the shadow stretching across the floor behind her, the dark shape of a person lumbering in her direction.

  Maddie, I thought.

  Now the undead thing was approaching Mrs. Brewster, like a movie vampire stalking its unsuspecting prey.

  “Help me, child,” Mrs. Brewster pleaded.

  But I couldn’t. With Marty’s help, I swung the storm cellar doors closed, sealing Mrs. Brewster in darkness.

  “Don’t leave me down here!” Mrs. Brewster cried, her voice muffled by the darkness. She yelled for us to open the doors, to help her out of the cellar.

  Then she started screaming.

  And her screams were cut off by horrible, slurping sounds.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Marty said.

  Alex was still pretty shaken up, and Mrs. Brewster’s anguished cries and the sickening noises that followed didn’t help. Not one bit.

  “You guys go,” I told him. “I have to stay, at least for a little while.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s all part of the plan,” I said.

  “You may not have noticed, but your plan almost got you killed.”

  “If I don’t stay to see this through, it’s going to be a lot worse.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  As if in answer to Marty’s question, the cellar doors blew open, shattering the wooden brace to splinters. A figure glided up from the shadows below. She was dressed in the patched gray dress Mrs. Brewster had been wearing. Dark stains soaked the clothes. She was actually sort of pretty—beautiful, in fact—except for the still healing and pink scars around her throat... and the terribly pale color of her eyes.

  Witching eyes.

  The woman floated out of the stairwell and hovered a few inches off the ground as she looked us over, tilting her head curiously, like a dog that had just seen something it didn’t understand.

  My heart slammed in my chest, and my entire body trembled. I was terrified—the way I might have been terrified in the face of a tornado or hurricane or erupting volcano. But I couldn’t run no matter how much I wanted to.

  I stepped forward and faced Maddie Someday.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  THE WITCH LOOKED DOWN AT ME. For a second, she peered right into my eyes, and my head started aching. The eerie force of her gaze made my skin crawl, like chiggers and ticks were scurrying over my flesh. Her eyes fell to the symbol scratched upon my hand, and she smiled prettily.

  “Who are you?” she said, and her voice was like music from a busted flute—melodic for the most part, but awkward and off-key at times, like she wasn’t used to speaking. “You bear the mark of one of my servants.”

  “My name is Charlie Ward.” I used my left hand to cover the marking. “I helped bring you back, but I’m not one of your servants.”

  She looked past me at Marty, Lisa, and Alex.

  “Have you brought these children to me?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “They’re my friends. They’ve been helping me.”

  She eyed them hungrily.

  “They aren’t for you,” I said.

  “You dare to tell me what I can and can’t have?”

  She raised her hand and waved her fingers at me. Suddenly, I was like I didn’t weigh a thing, and I flew across the yard like a rag doll thrown in the middle of a child’s tantrum.

  “Charlie!” Alex cried.

  I hit the ground hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Trembling, I picked myself up.

  Maddie, still hovering an inch or so above the ground, slid toward Lisa, Marty, and Alex.

  “Wait!” I cried.

  “You are an annoying little boy.” She turned. “I have much to do. What do you want?”

  I steadied myself. “This isn’t about what I want,” I said. “This is about what you want.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We have your ring,” I said.

  Maddie looked at her bare finger. She screeched in horror. She floated closer.

  “That ring has been in my family for centuries, boy.” She opened her hand. Her voice was musical and delightful, but her words were cruel. “I’ll flay you alive if you don’t hand it over.”

  I wasn’t even sure what it meant to be “flayed alive” but I didn’t like the sound of it one bit.

  “If you hurt me, my friends will destroy the ring.”

  She glared at Lisa, Marty, and Alex. “I can kill them all in the blink of an eye.”

  “Not them,” I said. “We have other friends hiding in the woods, and if you lay one hand on us, they’ll smash your ring beneath a stone.”

  I hoped I sounded convincing.

  “You’re lying,” Maddie snarled.

  Uh oh.

  “C-can you take that chance?” I asked. “We know the ring is a focus for your power. If you hurt us, it will be destroyed.”

  “They wouldn’t dare.”

  “Oh, yes, they would,” I said. “You’ll never see it again.”

  She watched me for a few seconds, then said, “What is it you want?”

  Got her!

  I fought to remain calm, fought to keep my vo
ice steady.

  “If you want the ring, you must give me your word you’ll leave Crooked Hills forever and never seek revenge on me or my friends and family.”

  “Ridiculous,” she said. “I can’t promise such a thing.”

  “You must not want the ring very badly.”

  I turned away.

  “All right!” she said.

  “All right what?”

  She sounded like a kid who had just been scolded as she droned the terms of her promise. “I give my word I will leave Crooked Hills forever.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “And never seek revenge against you and your friends.”

  “Or my family.”

  “Very well.”

  Lisa coughed into her hand.

  “And the same goes for Lisa, too,” I said. “You leave her family alone, too.”

  Maddie’s lips curled into a snarl. “Agreed. Now tell me where I can find the ring!”

  “We’re going to leave now.”

  “You treacherous fool!” She glided toward me. “If you back out on our bargain, my promise means nothing!”

  “Ah ah ah!” I shook my finger at her. “Stay where you are if you want your ring back.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Like I said, we’re leaving now.” I grew braver, and my voice was steadier. “We’ll leave the ring at the Bleeding Rock.”

  Maddie wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  “As long as we do that,” I said, “you have to keep your word, right?”

  “Yes.”

  The hatred wafted off her like heat from a barbeque grill.

  “All right,” I said. “No tricks.”

  “No tricks, child. But I warn you... I will find a way...”

  With that, she was gone. She seemed to become mist, like the fog that rose throughout Crooked Hills on dark nights. Her cloudy form floated before us, then dissipated.

  I looked at Lisa, Marty, and Alex.

  We’d won.

  Hadn’t we?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “SO YOUR PLAN WAS TO CONVINCE HER to make a promise?” Marty asked.