The Witch of Halloween House

by Jeff DeGordick

  Into the Witch's Snare

  Vince's Pontiac crawled up the hill and its headlights flashed across the parking lot. It slowly rolled to the other end and stopped in front of the church. The headlights washed against the welcome sign sitting at the start of the path leading up to the church doors.

  Tommy and Brett sat nervously in the back of the car, and they waited in silence for Vince to say something, but he just sat there.

  "Can we go?" Tommy asked.

  "Yes," Vince said, "into the church." He stared at the two of them in his rearview mirror.

  "I meant go home," Tommy said quietly.

  But Vince just sat there, his steely eyes staring at them through the rearview mirror.

  "Come on Vince, this isn't funny," Brett said. "I don't want to be here."

  "Go in the church," Vince said emotionlessly.

  "No way," Brett said, holding his arms across his chest.

  Vince put the car into park, then he opened his door and stepped out. Brett watched in fear as he walked to the back and opened his door. When Vince reached in and grabbed him by the collar, Brett put his hands up defensively.

  "Okay, okay!" he said. He got out of the car and backed away from Vince, and Tommy did the same, not wanting to be near the man alone.

  Without another word, Vince got back in the driver's seat and turned the car around, speeding out of view down the hill.

  The two boys found themselves in the empty parking lot of the church that was about as far on the outskirts of town as they could get. The church itself was Irish Catholic, and it sat at the edge of a cliff overlooking a river flowing down below. It was normally a picturesque place to visit, but as the two boys turned around and saw the building standing against the dimness of the moonlight, their skin crawled.

  "This is where the witch has been taking them?" Brett asked.

  "Yeah," Tommy replied. "Me and my sister found some clues that led here." He looked around and saw the little marsh in the distance near the start of the long and winding roads leading up to the church's parking lot where the timothy-grass grew. Then he turned and looked at the gardens on the west side of the building and saw the same flowers that had been in the box, and one or two of the weeds.

  "So are they... inside?" Brett asked. There didn't appear to be any activity outside, nor inside for that matter, as all the lights in the church were off. Beautiful stained-glass windows adorned the east and west sides of the building, but any visible glow coming through them was absent.

  Brett turned and looked down the road, thinking about Vince. "I really hate him, you know," he said suddenly.

  Tommy turned to him. "He seems the same as my dad," he said. "I think he's being controlled."

  Brett dismissed him. "He was like that before all this started. He reminds me a lot of my dad before he left." Brett had always kept up a tough shell, keeping anyone from getting too close to him, and Tommy could finally see where he got it from.

  "Does he always hit you?" Tommy asked.

  Brett stared out at the edge of the cliff past the church. "You know, let's just go, okay?" There was irritation in his voice, and Tommy knew it must have been a tender subject. "It can't take that long to walk home from here, could it?" Brett asked.

  "But what about all the kids that disappeared?" Tommy asked, turning back to the church.

  "I really don't want to go in there," Brett said, and his apprehension was surprising to Tommy; normally Brett would be the first one to sneak into a place at night.

  "Well I'm going in," Tommy said. He was terrified of what he would find, but all the clues seemed to lead to here, and if he could help save someone, he would; it's what his mother always taught him was right when she was still around, and his father even taught him the same lesson back when he spent more time parenting and less time working.

  Tommy walked along the pathway and came up to the tall and wide doors at the front of the church. Brett was left in the lurch behind him, but he could only take standing in the darkness by himself for so long before he grunted and joined him.

  They pulled on the doors, expecting them to be locked, but they swung open easily, as if someone was expecting them. They found themselves in a small coat room, and there was a doorway beyond that led to a lobby. All of the lights were out, and it didn't look like anyone was inside.

  "Are you sure you got the right spot?" Brett asked.

  Tommy's eyes scrunched up. "I think so," he said. He moved forward carefully and spotted a light switch on the wall as the door to the church he'd opened slowly swung closed behind them. He flicked it on and to his delight the lobby lit up with white fluorescents. They crossed into the sanctuary, which they could barely see from the off-glow of the lights in the lobby, but it seemed empty, too.

  Their footsteps echoed in the large room as they plodded across the carpet. Brett found the light switch and turned it on, and half of the lights in the sanctuary illuminated over their heads. The boys searched the large room, but there was no one there; no children; no witches.

  Tommy's fear was starting to settle down, and he became confused. Could he have been wrong about this place? If the witch wasn't keeping all the children here, then where?

  "Doesn't this place have a basement?" Brett asked suddenly, remembering a time many years ago when his aunt had forced him to come here with the family.

  Suddenly Tommy remembered this too. His father and mother had taken him and his sister to church four years ago, not long before she died. They never came much before, but his mom wanted to leave a lasting impression of tradition and family on his young, impressionable mind. Sadly, that lesson had certainly fallen through the cracks. But when they took him and his sister here, they would sometimes run downstairs in the basement and play.

  Tommy and Brett walked to opposite ends of the sanctuary and searched around the pews at the front. Tommy opened a door to a small room next to the stage and pulled dusty white cloths off of old furniture.

  When he returned, Brett stood on the far side of the large room, facing one of the stained-glass windows. His head was pointed down to the carpet and it looked like he was shaking. When Tommy called his name, Brett quickly wiped an arm across his face, then he turned around, but kept his face pointed away from Tommy.

  "What do you want?" Brett asked.

  Tommy walked up to him. "Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine," he said. "Get away from me!" Brett shoved him and Tommy stumbled to a pew, falling hard on the wooden seat.

  Brett marched up onto the stage as if nothing happened, and he noticed a display sitting at the back. He walked up to it and peered down at the glass case. "Cool!" he said.

  Tommy was confused at what he saw from Brett, and his sudden change in demeanor, but he got up cautiously and joined him on the stage. "What is it?"

  "It's a knife or something. Maybe a dagger."

  "A ceremonial knife, maybe?" Tommy suggested, admiring the way the curved blade attached to the hilt, and the decorations etched into it.

  "Get it for me," Brett said.

  "What?"

  "Break the glass and take it," Brett said. "I want it."

  Tommy shook his head. "No."

  Brett shoved him again. "What's your problem? Don't you want to hang out with me? I didn't know you were such a dumb ass."

  "I don't want to steal it," Tommy said. "That's wrong."

  Before Tommy could give another excuse, Brett tipped over the display's stand and it crashed open on the floor, shattering to pieces. Brett bent down and picked up the dagger, eyeing it proudly and feeling the weight of it in his hand.

  "What are you doing, Brett?" Tommy asked.

  "I'm taking this, what's it look like?"

  "No, I mean why are you acting like this? Bullying me? It isn't right. I saw Vince bully you, and you didn't look like you liked it very much. So why are you doing it to me?" Tommy's nature was inquisitive and honest, and it was like Brett's kryptonite when confronted with it.

  Brett's face fa
ltered. His mouth fell open and he tried to say something, but when he couldn't find the words to directly face his problems, anger rose in him instead. He gripped the blade of the knife tighter as his face went red. "I... You..."

  Tommy saw the knife in his hand and backed up slowly. "We don't have to fight," he said quickly. "I thought we were friends?"

  A tear dropped out of Brett's eye, and his face twisted into horror when he felt it stream down his cheek. He dropped the knife and took off running, wiping his face with his sleeve.

  "Wait!" Tommy cried and chased after him.

  Brett took a left out of the sanctuary and headed for the staircase going down to the basement. Tommy followed him to the stairs and watched as he fled down into the darkness. He stopped suddenly, not wanting to run headlong into the unknown. "Brett!" he called. But he didn't answer.

  Tommy didn't want to go down there, but he couldn't just leave Brett alone like that, especially if there was something down there that neither one of them wanted to see. Tommy held the railing tightly and slowly made his way down. He called out Brett's name a few times, listening as the silence answered him.

  His feet touched the basement floor, and he felt the coldness wash over the area. Tommy fumbled around in the dark for a light switch, and as his finger touched it, his heart seized, afraid of what horrors waited for him when he shone a light upon them.

  The bulb flickered on over his head, casting the area in a pale glow. The main section of the basement was empty, and there were a few rooms connected to it. Some were for storage, one was a play area for the kids, and one was a library. Distant memories came back to him as Tommy crept around in the dark, poking his head in each room.

  "Brett?" he said.

  Sobbing came from behind him.

  Tommy turned around slowly, staring back across the basement. There was one last storage room that he hadn't checked yet. He made his way over to it. His fingers slid along the dark wall inside, then he turned on the light. Stacks of boxes sat in the middle of the room with furniture pushed around the edges. The soft sobs came from the other side of the boxes.

  Tommy's heart beat rapidly. "Brett?" He walked around to the other side and saw Brett's miserable shape curled up on the floor with his knees hiked to his chest. His head snapped up at him and he saw a mess of red and wet eyes. Brett held an arm over his face to shield the shame.

  "Go away!" Brett said.

  Tommy was dumbfounded; he had never seen Brett this... this vulnerable.

  "I can't do it anymore!" Brett sobbed. "It's all my fault!"

  "What's your fault?" Tommy asked.

  "Everything!" he said. "All of this! If it wasn't for me, no one would be hurt or missing. Nobody would be acting weird!"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I did it! Okay?" he cried, offering his hands up in appeasement. "I burned down Halloween House with the witch inside!"

  "You what?" Tommy asked, shocked.

  "I didn't mean to! Everyone was standing around her house, throwing rocks and stuff. I thought it looked fun, so when no one was looking, I snuck around to the back and lit a fire. It was just supposed to be a joke! I thought someone would put it out! I didn't mean to do all that!" He sank his head in his hands and started bawling, his chest heaving up and down with miserable sobs.

  Tommy walked up to him and cautiously placed his hand on Brett's back.

  "Get off me!" Brett shouted, knocking his hand away.

  Tommy took a step back. "It's okay, it's not your fault. You didn't know."

  Brett looked up and considered him for a moment, then he turned his head away again and stared at the floor.

  Tommy turned around, feeling cold from the startling revelation. Then he thought again about everything that had happened since, including the witch supposedly kidnapping the children and bringing them to the church. But they had been upstairs in the church and now he had seen every room in the basement, but the entire place was empty; there were no kids anywhere. Had he been wrong about this place?

  "Now things will never be the same again," Brett muttered, starting to calm down. "I just wanna—" Brett paused in midsentence, reaching behind him and plucking something off the back of his neck. He held the strange item in front of him and looked at it. "What the hell, Tommy? Why did you throw this at me?" He held it out to him, and Tommy saw that it was a flower from the garden outside the church.

  "I didn't," Tommy said.

  Brett reached behind his neck again and pulled out something else stuck to his coat. He looked at the timothy-grass and then threw it on the ground, smacking the back of his neck repeatedly with his hands to get it all off. He turned to Tommy to ask how it all got there, and then he noticed something on the floor. "What the...?"

  Tommy turned to the doorway.

  Weeds and flowers—all the clues that had led Tommy here in the first place—lined the floor in a trail leading out the door of the room.

  Brett stood up and the two of them silently drifted out of the room into the main section of the basement. The trail let up the stairs the way they'd come, and they both stared at it, questions filling their minds. They rounded the corner and came up onto the ground floor, and then they both gasped.

  Lining the lobby were hundreds of lengths of rope, with a loop tied on the end like a lasso. Well over a two hundred of them were strewn all across the floor like hungry snakes, and many dozens were hanging from the ceiling like nooses.

  Tommy suddenly realized it was a mistake to want to come here in the first place. And as the lights flickered and the witch appeared in the room in front of them, he realized that the church was never a place where the witch kept the children; it was only a trap.

  Carmen ran across the parking lot to the front doors of the church, her lungs burning. She heard screams inside, and she opened one of the doors just in time to see Tommy cowering in the far corner of the lobby as the witch slowly glided to him. Brett was knocked out, lying face-first on the floor. She looked up momentarily, mesmerized by all of the ropes, terrified at what was going on.

  "Tommy!" she screamed.

  "Help!" Tommy cried from the corner as the witch closed in.

  Carmen took a step in the doorway and pulled out her witch mirror that she hung around her neck. She held it up and tried to do something with it, but in the next moment she found herself sailing through the air, something like a sonic wave hitting her and sending her flying. She crashed onto the cement sidewalk and grunted from the dull pain. The door to the church slammed shut, and when she got back to her feet, yelling her brother's name and pounding on the door, she found that it was firmly locked.

  She took a step back and watched as swirling black energy seemed to emanate inside the church, visible through the stained-glass windows.

  "Tommy!" she cried. She wrenched on the doors, but they wouldn't open. She picked up a rock and threw it at one of the windows, but it bounced off, and it would have been too high up for her to climb through, anyway.

  She heard a final shriek from her brother, and then like a star collapsing and sucking in on itself, the sounds of the swirling energy shrunk to a central point, and then there was only silence.

  Carmen tried the doors again, and this time they opened. There were no more ropes in the empty lobby. And Tommy and Brett were gone.

  She started crying, as her face twisted into a horrid mess of emotion and guilt. The thought of losing her brother to the witch was overwhelming, and she couldn't believe she had let that happen. She cried his name, as if it would help, and she ran through the entire church, desperately searching for him. But after going through the basement and ending in the sanctuary, she was left alone. She climbed onto the stage at the front of the sanctuary and saw broken glass strewn across the floor.

  There was an item amidst the glass, and she bent to pick it up. It was a strange curved dagger. There was a yellowed sheet of paper amidst the glass and she held it up to find that it was a historical description of the dagger. It was an
old Irish blade that men used to carry, and her eyes flicked through the paper line by line until they fell on the word "iron".

  Carmen paused, deep in thought. She wiped the tears out of her eyes. So she had the salt, she had the garlic, and now she had an iron knife and a witch mirror to protect herself. But what could she do with all of it? Where was the witch hiding, anyway? Where were the children?

  The more she thought about it, the more she came to one singular conclusion. She thought of her dad delivering the strange box. She and her brother hadn't seen anything there, but they must have missed something; everything had to be at Halloween House. If her brother was still alive, then he was there; she could feel it, and she would do anything, even giving her own life, to get him back.

  Brawl

  Carmen ripped open the door to the police station and hurried through it. Some officers standing around turned their heads to her, but she didn't give them any attention as she made her way to the jail cells at the back. She didn't even look into her father's office; she was only here for one reason.

  The officer sitting at the desk in the booking area of the cells glanced up, seeing a blur of motion in his periphery, but she was already gone before he could see her.

  Carmen went to the end and peered into Peter's jail cell, only to find it empty. She frantically looked in the other cells, but she didn't see him. "No..." she said. She turned around and stormed for her father's office.

  He was sitting inside with his feet up on the desk. He stared blankly at the wall next to the door, and when she walked in, his eyes lazily dragged over to her. He seemed completely gone now, like he was a shell of his former self. His eyes scrunched up suddenly and he rubbed the back of his neck.

  "Hi there, Sweetpea," he said. But none of the love and warmth was in it anymore.

  "Where is he?" she demanded.

  "I think it's past your bedtime," he said. "Let me drive you home and tuck you in."