“But if they’re the only ones who can read it, what difference does it make why they want it? They will help you, even if they ultimately just want the book.”
“But that’s just it, Noah, I don’t think they’re the only ones who can help me. I think they told me that so I’d come back immediately.”
“But what if you’re wrong, Anika? You’ll die.”
Anika gave a tired smile. “I don’t know, Noah. But I don’t plan to die. Something tells me there’s still hope. At home. I need to be home.”
“I will come, Anika. With you.” Oskar’s eyes were desperate.
“I know you will, Oskar. You’ve come a long way in your personality since the first few days of our time together. I’d say you are a different man.”
“I sorry about—”
“Oskar, stop it. You’ve nothing to apologize for. The payment for both of you is at the travel office. I wish I had more to give you.”
Noah seemed to have resigned himself to the decisions that were being made before him, and Anika could see him struggling with his own emotion. “Your ship is scheduled to arrive in less than an hour,” he said finally. “Everything has been taken care of.”
“Noah, thank you. Thank you for everything. I’ll send you money for my ticket the instant I arrive. To what address should it go?”
Noah shook his head and grinned. “Anika, I’ve known the captain of your vessel since the times I was still in school. The list of favors he owes to me would take a lifetime for me to document. It is my pleasure to have at least one of them repaid in your honor.”
Anika slipped her palms into Noah’s and took one long stride toward him. “Thank you again,” she said, and then placed a soft kiss on his mouth. She could feel the heat of blush on his cheeks.
Noah blinked several times and then cleared his throat. “Uh, I know you must have things here, yes? Belongings to be sent? Would you like me to see about those things?”
Anika giggled. “Thank you, Noah, that was all pre-arranged in case...in the event I didn’t return from the mountains. Thankfully, what I envisioned didn’t come to pass, but it all works out the same, I suppose.”
Anika grabbed her duffel from the back of the carriage and slung it across her shoulder and then walked silently to the edge of the dock to wait for her vessel.
Chapter 32
Amanda Klahr’s eyes sprung to life at the sound of the hollow bouncing sound invading her sleep. She held her breath and lay board still, her eyes searching the room, trying to place the sound and wondering if it only existed in her dream.
Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! The sound again. It came from the bedroom window.
Amanda turned her body slowly toward the noise; it was an exaggerated motion that she imagined would have looked almost comical to an outside observer, like a bad actor who’d been cast in a low-budget monster movie.
Amanda had to swallow a shriek caused by the face she met at the window.
The face was young and beautiful, that of a teenager, and their expression appeared locked with fright.
Amanda’s first thought was that it was Petr, but as her focus cleared through the outside glare, she saw it was the face of a girl. Amanda met the girl’s eyes, casting back her own frightened look in an expression she imagined was very similar to hers.
The mystery girl now turned her body away from the window, always keeping her face to the glass, and made a waving gesture to her right, beckoning with her hands to come to her. Within seconds, another face appeared beside the girl’s. This face was slightly older, male; Amanda guessed he was barely in his twenties. She had never seen either of them before.
The two people just stood there for several moments, staring at Amanda through the glass, mesmerized, as if Amanda was some new species of animal that had been recently captured and exhibited at the city zoo.
Amanda’s immediate impulse was to scream at them to help her, to tell them she was being held prisoner and that they needed to act quickly or they would all die. But the truth was she didn’t know who they were or why they were there, and the possibility remained that they were there as some kind of trap.
Amanda stayed calm, and with eyes wide, she finally shrugged up her shoulders and held her palms up with fingers out, hands high near her head. What are you going to do? her signal asked.
The girl did nothing and continued staring at Amanda with the same locked expression. But the young man finally moved, looking down for a few beats before holding up a piece of paper. Amanda read the words: WE’RE GOING TO HELP YOU.
Amanda felt an impulse to laugh, and a new energy surged through her muscles. She got to her knees and leaned forward as far as possible toward the window. She couldn’t get very close with the shackle on her leg, so there wasn’t much use in the move, but it felt to her like the right position. Amanda breathed heavily now, a combination of hope and fear. A thin smile began to form on her face.
And then she watched in terror as the boy lifted a small rod of thick metal—it looked to Amanda like an iron stake—and began to measure the down stroke he would make to the window pane.
Amanda began shaking her head and waving furiously toward the window, her arms crisscrossing, silently pleading for the man to stop.
His focus on the impending blow appeared sharp, and Amanda suddenly envisioned the torture and death that would come to them all in a matter of seconds. The window would shatter, and then the witch would appear in the room seconds later. She supposed the kids could get away, which Amanda would pray for, but the chain around her ankle would prevent any chance of her own escape.
Why wasn’t the girl saying something to her companion? She obviously could see Amanda gesturing like a mad person; instead, the girl just stood staring like a lobotomized fool.
There’s nothing to lose at this point, Amanda thought, so she desperately barked out a grunt, cupping her mouth in an attempt to project her voice toward the window, hoping the loud, low-pitched sound would land in those young ears outside the cabin while avoiding the old ones of the woman who was, ostensibly, still somewhere inside.
As he was on the final reel of what was certain to be the impact swing, the man heard Amanda’s animal-like noise and looked up, the shock in his eyes matching that of the girl. Amanda took a heavy breath at her victory, though the second part of the plan, the part about the witch not hearing her, remained to be seen.
Amanda held up her hands now with her palms out, signaling the man to hold off on his plan. She then pointed toward the kitchen and mouthed, “She’s there.” Amanda then sat back against the wall and held up her ankle as high as possible to show the clasp of the metal chain resting on her foot and the chain snaking off it.
For the final piece of the charade, Amanda made the gruesome motion of a throat being slit. It was a dramatic move, she realized, but it was a necessary payoff to the equation.
The sound of the breaking window plus the witch plus the chain around Amanda’s ankle equaled death.
The man nodded immediately in understanding and then held up a finger for her to wait. Seconds later he held up a pistol to the window, a mammoth of a gun that almost certainly did not belong to him. The gun helps, Amanda thought, but she didn’t necessarily trust the man’s acumen with it. She would rather they left immediately and brought back help. Perhaps a group of men, preferably who had begun shaving. The young man and the simple girl with him were no match for the woman of this house.
As for the System officer, Amanda couldn’t be entirely sure where he was, but she thought she heard the cruiser pulling away this morning. And that would have made perfect sense, she now realized. What was his alternative, really? To hole up in this place until Petr and Gretel and Anika miraculously appeared on the stoop? Unless that happened today, that plan wouldn’t work at all. A System officer was a very serious position, and he would have to keep his patrol. It would raise a considerable number of eyebrows if a System officer suddenly didn’t show up for his shift. The disappearance of
a System officer was not something that was ignored for long, particularly considering the not-so-distant scandal of Officer Oliver Stenson.
But even if the System officer was gone and the witch was alone, Amanda didn’t like the setup of the scenario. The man outside appeared prepared to fight, in theory, but not in experience. And the girl seemed fated to prove a liability.
How did they know she was there though? And it was clear they knew. Nobody without plaid gear and a hunting rifle would slog through this part of the Northlands forest. And these two weren’t hunters. The man had an iron stake and a pistol.
No, they knew she was here, or at least they had heard she was here, and they were now investigating the rumor for themselves.
Whether they had thought through this entire rescue seemed another thing entirely.
“Go for help,” Amanda mouthed, waving her hands outward as if directing a driver who was trying to back his truck from a tight space. “Go.”
The man flashed the gun again, as if she hadn’t quite understood he had it, but Amanda shook him off, continuing to wave them off.
The girl was now nodding furiously, apparently liking this suggestion and in complete agreement with Amanda’s strategy.
The young man, who Amanda had now concluded was the girl’s brother, still wavered, not quite sure this was the best course of action. He turned and said something to the girl, who replied instantly, never stopping the up and down head-bobbing of assent.
The conversation finally ended and the two faces looked back toward the window. The girl smiled now, tears in her eyes, and then lifted her hand to give Amanda a half-wave. The man looked more solemn as he nodded while mouthing the letters “OK.”
Amanda smiled weakly at them both, and then watched surreally as the young hero’s lips peeled back, stuck in an exaggerated mouthing of the letter K. From behind his head, the blade of a knife appeared and slid quietly across his throat. A river of blood appeared just under the man’s chin and then quickly cascaded in a sheet down to the bottom of his neck and chest. His tongue convulsed for a moment, lingering in the air like a cobra before falling limply to the side of his mouth, and his eyes scrunched tightly in what Amanda could only assume was unimaginable, gruesome pain.
The scene played out in eerie silence and irony; the girl sat waving to Amanda while her brother choked on his last breaths of life. Amanda unconsciously thought of the signal of murder she had made just moments ago, and she closed her eyes in guilt and despair.
After a few seconds, the young girl’s screams broke the silence. She suddenly realized the horror that was happening beside her. Amanda thought she would have rather heard the choking man than those dull screams from the girl.
Her howls lasted only a moment, and then Amanda saw the knuckles of a gnarled hand bury into the top of the girl’s head and then snatch it from sight.
And then there was silence.
Amanda sat back against the headboard, pressing back on it as if trying to roll an impossibly large boulder off the edge of a cliff. She was crying now, hysterical, shaking her head in a useless attempt to get those images from her mind.
“No!’ she screamed. “Noooo!”
Amanda closed her eyes and tilted her head to the ceiling, feeling as if she were on the verge of hyperventilating. She tried to slow her breathing, holding her position, quietly mouthing a prayer.
After a minute, when she felt her composure had returned, Amanda looked back to the window, and there, as repulsive as any ogre she’d ever imagined in a fairy tale, was the smiling face of the witch. She stared at Amanda, her eyes crazed like those of the rabid dogs Amanda’s father had made her put down when she was a young farm girl growing up in the Back Country.
Amanda stayed quiet, waiting, anticipating. Finally, the woman lifted her arm slowly, smiling wider as she did so, and then displayed the dangling head of the boy who had come to save her. His tongue hung like a thick glob of meat from his mouth; his eyes shined with terror.
The woman started laughing, and Amanda screamed again.
Chapter 33
“What are you going to do, Pete?”
Petr and Ben stood in the lobby of the System station and watched as Overseer Conway drove his cruiser from the lot, unaware of the position he’d put Petr in with the news that Dodd was at the station. The decision Petr made next could cost him and his friends everything.
“I don’t think we have much of a choice, Ben. If we leave now without seeing him, he’ll find out we were here. Conway will say something to him about it. About speaking with me. That’s almost a certainty.”
“So what if he does?”
“He’ll be suspicious. Probably assume I was up to something. Especially since I asked Conway to let Dodd know about Gretel’s return. If I knew he was here, which I do because Conway just told me, why would I then leave without telling him myself?”
“Good. I like the logic, Petr. Decision made. Let’s go talk to this Officer Dodd.”
“I need you to wait for me here, Ben.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Are we doing this again?”
“Listen, Ben, please. I need to have this conversation one-on-one.”
Ben looked at the floor, still not convinced.
“Come with me to his office then. But I need you to wait outside. Please.”
“Fine, but if he tries to snatch you up or something, I’m coming in guns blazing.”
Petr laughed. “You don’t have a gun with you, and nothing like that is going to happen. I’m not here to make trouble. This wasn’t in the original plan, so I’m going to say as little as possible and then get out of there. We just came to plant the seed, so I’m going to plant it and then we’re leaving. I want to get back and help Hansel and Gretel clean up a little.” Petr paused, and his face turned grim. “And then prepare for her.”
The two boys turned into the hallway and walked toward Dodd’s office, Petr feeling a strange sense of power in his stride despite the butterflies in his belly. As they approached the frosted door of Detective Dodd, Petr noticed it was ajar by about six inches. He walked up slowly to the crack and dropped his arm in front of Ben, holding up a hand in the gesture to hold tight.
Petr glanced around the station to see if anyone was noticing them, but the few people who were mulling about either had a head buried in a folder or were engaged in some important conversation. He put his eye up close to the gap in the door, Ben behind him now, and peered through, maneuvering his body to get a line of sight on the desk.
Dodd was seated there, hunched, hands by his side, staring at a large black book that lay sprawled across the middle of the desk.
Petr stood frozen for a moment, narrowing his eyes, trying to focus in on the book, but unable to note anything other than its size, which was massive. He’d seen this book before; it was the one high on Dodd’s bookshelf when he was there a few weeks back.
Petr stepped back quietly from the door and motioned for Ben to join him, and they walked away several feet past the office.
“The plans are changing again, Ben. I do need your help. But you could get into trouble, so I understand if you say no. I can figure something else out.”
“Still, Petr? Still with the doubt?
“I don’t doubt you, Ben, I just want you to understand that there is a risk.”
“I’ve got it. Now what do you need me to do?”
“There’s a book in Dodd’s office, he’s reading it now; I want to see what it is.”
“Okay, easy enough.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but I have a plan.”
“Fine, but before I hear it, can I ask you something?”
Petr nodded. “Of course.”
“Do you think Gretel likes me? Because I kind of think she does.”
Petr rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know, Ben. You can ask her yourself when all of this is over. Right now, I need you to listen to me.”
DODD PICKED UP THE phone on the first ring, his
mind snatched away from the hypnotic symbols and scribbles of the mysterious book. He looked at the clock as he answered and saw that he’d been staring at the same page for over twenty minutes. “This is Dodd.”
“Officer Dodd there’s someone to see you. I tried to send him back to your office but he insisted you come to the front desk. He said it has to do with one of the cases you worked on, the one about the Witch of the North.”
The mention of Marlene stopped Dodd’s breathing. “I’ll be right there.”
Dodd rose from his chair and left the book in place, slipping out the door in a rush, too focused on the front lobby to see Petr Stenson standing just a foot away, shielded by the open door.
Dodd saw the boy sitting in a chair in the lobby area. He walked to him slowly, not wanting to appear too eager. He reasoned now that he should have given it a few minutes before leaving his office. “Son, are you the person that wanted to speak with me?”
“Yes, hello, are you Officer Dodd?”
A simpleton, this one, Dodd thought. “Yes, son, the receptionist said you have some news about one of the cases I worked. Is that right?”
“Yes, I’m a friend of Petr Stenson. Do you know him?”
The name brought a lump to Dodd’s throat. “What is your name?”
“My name is Ben. Richter. As I said, I’m a friend of Petr’s.”
“All right Ben Richter, friend of Petr Stenson, what is this news you have for me?”
“She’s come home. Gretel Morgan. And her mother is on the way soon. Petr thought it important to tell you.”
Dodd could feel the first bead of sweat form on his temple, and he had to fight back a smile. Marlene. She was right all along. Not exactly right, of course, because they hadn’t come to the cabin as she predicted, but she was right about Gretel. She was back. Home. It couldn’t have been a coincidence.
The Gretel Series: Books 1-3 (Gretel #1-3) Page 52
