THE WITCH'S LADDER (Detective Marcella Witch's Series)

by Dana Donovan

  “Lilith!” Michael cried. “What have you done?”

  Lilith glanced at the ground. At her feet lay organs and entrails steeping in still warm gaseous steam.

  “I thought we were all in this together,” he said. “I don’t understand.”

  Jean pushed Michael aside. “I’ll tell you what she’s done. She’s killed Valerie. She’s the Surgeon Stalker.”

  “No. I don’t believe it. We killed the Stalker. The twins, Shekina and Akasha, that’s who the killers were.”

  “We were wrong. Look at her. She killed Valerie and the others. She used us, forced us to kill Doctor Lieberman, the twins and Detective Marcella. She’s the evil entity, Michael, the one Valerie warned us about. She’s the one who moves freely among us. It’s time we stop her. It’s up to us. We have to put an end to her carnage.” She pointed to the rope. “Grab that. We’ll tie her up.”

  “Wait,” said Lilith. “What am I doing here? How did I get here? I don’t…. I don’t understand.”

  Michael gathered the rope without comment. He unraveled a section from around Valerie’s hands and feet and used it to tie Lilith to a tree. All the while, Lilith remained remarkably submissive, neither fighting nor protesting Michael’s attempts to restrain her.

  “That’s it,” Jean cooed from a distance. “Tie her up good. We’ll burn her at the stake like in old times.”

  “Look at her,” said Michael. “Why is she so docile? I’ve never seen her like this before.”

  “She’s acting,” Jean insisted. “Hurry before it wears off.”

  “Before what wears off?”

  He barely finished securing the last knot when Lilith seemed to thaw from her traumatized state. “What the hell’s going on here?” she squalled, yanking on the ropes until her wrists began to bleed. “Michael, untie me this instant. Do you hear?”

  “No,” said Jean. “Your day has come, Ms. Lilith Adams, or Miss Sonya Stewart, whatever your real name is. Or do you prefer we call you Ms. Stalker?”

  “What are you talking about? How did I…. Did you drug me? Sons-a-bitches. You drugged me, didn’t you? Is this because I wouldn’t help you kill Marcella?”

  “Are you going to stand there and deny you killed Valerie Spencer?” Jean looked down and gestured at Valerie’s mutilated body.

  Lilith’s eyes followed. “Is that Valerie? What have you done to her?”

  Michael said, “What have YOU done? We just got here and found you standing over her. How do you explain that?”

  “I don’t know. I…wait. I remember. I drove here with Valerie because she said she got a call asking her to come here. She said the caller had news about the Stalker.”

  “Who called her?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t recognize the voice. We came here together and then…. I don’t know. Something hit me from behind. Next thing I knew I woke up and found myself here.”

  “A likely story,” said Jean. She strolled around the blood-drenched carcass, its stomach, lungs and intestines splayed out in a sprawling heap. “Tell me, Lilith, how is it you can commit all those murders without creating an ounce of suspicion, and now you can’t even fabricate a decent lie to save your own skin?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone. Michael, you have to believe me. Why would I kill anybody?”

  “Why?” Michael answered. “I think I know. Maybe you kill for the very reason you would have us believe that Shekina and Akasha killed. It’s the attraction of blood. Only the attraction was yours.”

  “No. You’re wrong. Come on, think about it. Why would I provide the motive for a crime I committed?”

  “To throw suspicion away from you,” said Jean. “Until your theory about attraction of blood, we were all leaning toward Detective Marcella’s theory of pagan ritual sacrifice, something that would put your name on the top of a very short list of suspects, seeing you’re a pagan witch and all.”

  “No. You’re wrong and you know it. You too, Michael. Look around. Where’s the knife? If I killed Valerie, what did I do with the knife?”

  “You tossed it into the woods,” said Michael, and he began collecting dried branches and stacking them around the tree at Lilith’s feet. “You heard us coming so you tossed it. I should have trusted my instincts. I knew Doctor Lieberman wasn’t the Surgeon Stalker, but you were so convincing. You’re an evil, wicked woman, Lilith. You taught me to kill, and so now it’s your turn to die.”

  He turned to Jean and handed her a book of matches. “You’re in this, too,” he said, apologetically. “We both need to do this, for Gordon, for Valerie—Jesus, for everyone in our lives we ever cared for. She took them away from us. It’s time she pays.”

  Jean took the matches and lit one. She handed the book back to Michael and waited for him to do the same.

  I think it’s fair to say that Lilith stood within moments of becoming the first witch in three hundred years to burn at the stake when I emerged from the woods into the clearing with my weapon drawn.

  “That’s enough,” I ordered. “Drop the match, Michael. You too, Jean. Put it down.”

  Almost comically, the three uttered in surprise, “Detective, you’re alive!”

  Michael and Jean blew out the matches and surrendered with hands in the air. I moved in, believing I had successfully secured the scene, but I had woefully underestimated Michael’s resolve. Just as he had done with Doctor Lieberman and Officer Burke, he sent out a wave of thought energy, which crippled me instantly. I hit the ground holding my head and temples in a futile effort to squelch the intense pain. As I lay in agony, Jean ran up and seized my weapon.

  “Grab that rope,” she hollered. “Tie him up with Lilith. We’ll finish this thing once and for all.”

  Michael moved in with another piece of rope and soon had Lilith and me bound back-to-back to the tree. “I’m sorry we have to do this, Detective,” he said, rearranging the scattered kindling into a neat pile. “But you just keep getting in the way. I suppose you can thank your friend, Lilith, here.”

  “Michael, you’re wrong,” I said, as my crippling migraine began subsiding. “Lilith’s not the Stalker.”

  “Sure she is. She’s a witch. See, she even fooled you.”

  “Don’t talk to him, Michael,” Jean barked. “He’ll try to confuse you. He’s the last person standing in our way. We must put the evil entity down tonight while the moon is full, and Detective Marcella must die with her.”

  “Do you hear that, Michael? Have you ever known Jean to talk like that, to act so cold? The entity has possessed her, not Lilith. She’s your Surgeon Stalker. Just ask her about the beads.”

  “What beads?”

  “The beads we found at the site of every Stalker killing, including Doctor Lieberman’s. They’re from a witch’s ladder. Go ahead and ask her.”

  Michael turned to Jean, but before he could ask, she obligingly reached into her blouse and pulled out a necklace of small black beads. “Are you talking about this, Detective? Lilith gave me this on the night we met. She told me it was a necklace of hope.”

  “Yes, and did she also tell you that if it contained forty beads, then it could also double as a witch’s ladder?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Michael, light the fire now.”

  “No, Michael, wait. I want to hear Jean explain to me how she got so lucky recently at the horse track. Am I supposed to believe it wasn’t psychic in nature?”

  “I told you. I hit a lucky streak.”

  “Then explain how you knew it was me at your front door when you were in your kitchen at the other end of the house.”

  Jean sputtered a contemptuous laugh. “Detective Marcella, I’d have thought you were smarter than that. I saw your car coming around the corner behind my house through my kitchen window. One hardly needs physic powers to see through glass.”

  “No. I don’t believe it. I saw the tornado in your kitchen. That happened because you were able to block my attempts to read your thoughts. You caused some so
rt of boomerang effect.”

  “Oh come on.”

  “It’s true. I attempted to read your mind just like I read Lilith’s, but you knew it was coming. You used your witch’s ladder to read my mind before I could read yours.”

  “Okay. I think we’ve heard enough. Honestly, boomerangs, witch’s ladders. It’s enough to make you laugh. Michael, we have to kill them.”

  “No, wait,” said Lilith. “Michael, it’s true. I gave that necklace to Jean, and under the right circumstances, she could have used it as a witch’s ladder.”

  “Yes,” I added, “and we found those same beads at all of the Surgeon Stalker murder sites. Go ahead. Ask her to show you how many beads are on her necklace? If she has less than forty, ask her to explain where the other beads went.”

  Jean clutched the beads to her chest. “That’s not fair. I don’t have all the beads because I used some.”

  I sneered with vindication. “Yes. You used them when you killed those people, then you cut out their livers and you ate them.”

  Michael cringed. “Is that true, Jean? Did you use the beads like Detective Marcella said?”

  “No, Michael. I used them the way Lilith told me to use them. I dropped them into water so that I could count the ripples. It was supposed to help me with my grief.” She turned to Lilith and snarled. “Incidentally, Lilith, they don’t work worth a damn.”

  “You have to believe,” Lilith said.

  “Whatever. Michael, I swear on my late husband’s soul, I don’t know anything about a witch’s ladder.”

  Michael walked up to Jean and put his hand out. “Let me see the necklace.”

  Jean unclasped the coupling and surrendered the beads. He turned back with the necklace in hand and began walking toward me. His lips moved as he counted softly. I heard him on approach, “Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine....” His trek back to the tree seemed expertly timed so that his arrival coincided with the final count.

  “How many did you say you found at the Stalker murder sites, Detective?”

  “We found eight, Michael, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more. The point is they were found at all of the murders, meaning that whoever owns those beads is definitely the Surgeon Stalker.”

  Michael nodded. “Finally, something makes sense to me. Do you know what, Detective? I believe you.” He held the necklace up for Lilith’s inspection. “Lilith. Do you recognize this?”

  “It looks like the necklace I made.”

  He turned and held the necklace up for me to see. “Detective, did the beads you found look like these?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “And you found eight of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “There you have it, then. We have our Surgeon Stalker.”

  “Good. So, you believe me. Jean is the Stalker.”

  “No, Detective. I hate to advise you of your miscalculations, but Jean is not the Surgeon Stalker. She only has five beads missing on her necklace. You found eight. I’m no rocket scientist, but if you ask me, I would say the person losing all those beads was probably the same person making all those necklaces in the first place. And Detective, you’re sharing a tree with her now.”

  Michael turned to Lilith, and in a show of condemnation, ceremoniously draped the necklace over her head. “Let’s see it help you now, witch.” He turned and walked back to Jean, relieving her of my gun. He clicked the release and swung the revolver’s circular chambers open. “Five,” he counted aloud. There were five bullets in my gun and I knew that one had my name on it.

  I looked on, dumbstruck. I could not believe Lilith was the culprit all along. Even though I had more than enough circumstantial evidence to incriminate her, my every instinct told me otherwise. I leaned to my left and uttered through the corner of my mouth, “I wouldn’t have believed it, Lilith. You had me guessing all along.”

  She leaned to her right and whispered back, “Yeah, well keep guessing, Sherlock. I didn’t do it.”

  “But the beads...we found them all over the place. They were at every murder.”

  “Detective, I must have made a dozen necklaces just like the one I gave Jean. I handed them out like candy.”

  “Really? Then who’s still alive that might have one of your necklaces?”

  “Hell I don’t know. What difference does it make now?”

  “It makes plenty, Lilith. Think.”

  As she tried to recall the names of everyone she had given a necklace to, Michael familiarized himself with my gun. His intentions seemed obvious; he planned to shoot first and burn later. Like any cop, I loathed the idea of someone shooting me with my own weapon, but giving the choice between that and burning at the stake with Lilith, getting shot seemed almost palatable.

  I hoped that Michael would drop the gun and leave it behind after killing us. If he did, then Carlos would surely find it, and Michael’s prints would be all over it. I figured in twenty-four hours he would have Michael in custody. Only then would Carlos stop to appreciate the irony of Michael using my gun to kill me, the gun Carlos bought me for my thirty-eighth anniversary on the force. It’s a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. Carlos joked that it represented one caliber for each year of my tenure. I remembered how he also mentioned he’d have gotten me a Colt .45, but that I’d have to wait another seven years. At the time, I didn’t expect I would be on the force that long. It appeared then I was right.

  Thinking about it, I was glad for the .38 S & W. A Colt semi-automatic just wasn’t my thing. Besides, Carlos had even gone through the trouble of getting the revolver engraved with my initials. ‘How many cops have their guns monogrammed?’ Carlos asked me at the time. I wondered, indeed, how many? That’s when the thought hit me. I leaned over and whispered into Lilith’s ear.

  Lilith leaned closer. “What?”

  “Doctor Lowell,” I said. “Have you ever made a witch’s ladder for Doctor Lowell?”

  She thought hard. “Yes. I believe I have. Why do you ask?”

  I turned and shouted to Michael. “Who called you here, Michael?”

  My point was not clear, but enough to cause him to lower the weapon. “What’s that?”

  “I said who called you out here to the woods tonight? Why did you come? Did you all plan this meeting?”

  Michael looked over his shoulder at Jean; his brows creased. Jean stepped forward. “What are you getting at?”

  “I’m asking you both why you came here tonight. Did you expect to see Lilith and Valerie here also? Did Doctor Lowell call you all out here?”

  Neither one answered.

  I took another approach. “I know about the bag with the bloody towels, Michael. You can deny it, but we all know about it. You all thought the towels had Doctor Lieberman’s initials on it. That’s why you killed him. You thought he was the Stalker. Well, guess what? I know who the Stalker is now.”

  “We don’t need to hear this, Detective,” Jean insisted. “We know who the Stalker is, too. You’re standing next to her. It’s Lilith Adams.”

  “No, Jean. You’re wrong. You know who he is. You’re protecting him.”

  “You sound like a desperate man,” said Michael. “A minute ago you said Jean was the Stalker.”

  “No. The desperate man is the person whose monogrammed initials are on those bloody towels.”

  “And that’s Doctor Peter Lieberman.”

  “No, Michael. But Doctor Lieberman did share the same initials with the killer, and for that he died.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the initials P.L., which stand for Phillip Lowell. The reason Jean is protecting him is because he’s her uncle. Isn’t that right, Jean?”

  “That’s enough.” Jean snipped. “I won’t stand for this blasphemy. Michael, make him shut up.”

  Michael raised the gun.

  “Shoot him, Michael.”

  He squinted into the sight, took aim, but didn’t fire. Again, Jean barked the command to shoot, and alth
ough he didn’t shoot, neither did he lower the muzzle.

  “You’ve got to shoot him, Michael. He knows everything. He knows we killed Doctor Lieberman. He knows we killed the twins, and now we have to kill Lilith. How can we let him go after this?”

  “We can’t,” said Michael. “I’m sorry, Detective. Jean’s right. If we let you go, you’ll hunt us down. There’ll be no rest for us, ever.”

  He drew a deep breath and took aim once more. He pulled back slowly on the trigger. The hammer came up. He steadied his aim, gritting his teeth in preparation of the blast and its expected recoil. Jean, lost in her impatience, nudged him to shoot. The gun went off, shredding bark from the tree between my head and Lilith’s.

  Michael spun about and pointed the gun at Jean. “Don’t rush me,” he ordered. She stepped back and it happened: the divine intervention I was praying for. It came as a mysterious figure born of fog and midnight mist.

  “Leona!” Michael cried.

  She appeared as she had before, her body floating only inches off the ground, her delicate, milky skin radiating a warm translucent glow. I knew at once she had come only in spirit through bilocation, but I was glad to see her just the same.

  “Leona,” Michael called. “Tell us what’s going on, please.”

  Lilith and I were closest to her. From our proximity, we could see her crying. Glistening trails of salt-stained tears paraded down her cheeks. Her long black hair and ankle length gown flowed freely in an elusive breeze. I looked at her hands, expecting to see a witch’s ladder. To my surprise, they were empty.

  “Leona,” I said. “I know you can hear me. What happened to the beads?”

  She held out her hands, palms open, striking an eerie resemblance to the Holy Mother. She looked at Michael and shook her head no. He trained the gun on Lilith. Again she shook her head.