A Circle of Crows (4 page)

"What's the matter, chickpea?” she asked her niece.

"Oh, Claire got sick at school and she can't stay over now. I've been looking forward to this for weeks."

"Well, why don't you stay in the Autumn Room anyway? Put on your movie and I'll bring you up popcorn and soft pretzels with cheese. Maybe she can stay next weekend."

"Alright.” And Morgana dragged herself up the wooden staircase.

The moon shown so brightly outside, that all the items in the yard were clearly visible.

Rae paused the video and looked up at her sister.

"I'm way too tired to go to my suite. Mind if I just crash on the couch?” Rae looked entirely too comfortable in her tartan pajamas with her feet curled up under her.

"Suit yourself, I'm going to check on Morgana."

Rachael climbed the wooden steps followed by the Dodger. In the dimly lit hallway, she nearly tripped over him. “Watch it, furball. I'm not your master."

She reached the Autumn Room and looked in to see her daughter asleep on the large mahogany sleigh bed with the television still on. The blue-green light cast a hue over her daughter's face. Rachael shut off the TV and walked over to the bed. She stared at her sleeping daughter for a moment and gave a silent prayer of thanks. Sometimes when she slept, Rachael noticed her husband's contours on Morgana's face and although sad, felt proud that his essence was carried on in their beautiful child.

Rachael pulled the covers over Morgana and pulled the window shut. She quietly left the room, avoiding each creaky floorboard she had committed to memory, and closed the door with a quiet click.

Chapter 6

Through the Looking Glass

"Help me..."

The sound was barely perceptible at first, just a whisper of the night wind, or perhaps the branches of trees scratching against the window pane.

"Help me..."

Morgana rolled over and placed her hand over her eyes in a confused attempt to shut out the sound.

At first, Morgana felt, rather than heard, Chloe growling on the bed beside her. She sat up in time to see the Jack Russell terrier's hackles raise as her dog barked out loud and jumped off the bed.

"Quiet, Chloe!"

Morgana went to the window and stared into the moonlit courtyard separating the inn proper from the cottage where Aunt Bella and Uncle Sam lived. It used to serve as servants quarters in the 1900's and Morgana had always enjoyed the stories her mom would tell her about the history of the inn. She noted that the moon was full tonight and she could make out every detail in the yard below.

"Help me..."

Morgana whipped around so fast, that she cricked her neck and immediately began to rub it.

"Who's there?” she said.

The floor-length mirror across the room began to shine with a pale white light.

Morgana crossed the room and peered into it.

"Hello?"

The mirror's contents began to swirl madly and the whiteness became thick and churned back and forth.

Morgana touched the mirror and Chloe growled louder.

With her touch, a little girl of about four or five appeared, looking up at Morgana with tears streaming down her face.

"Please help me."

"Who are you? What is going..."

The window flew open and autumn leaves began to fly through the room in a tempest; they were so thick, Morgana could no longer see the dog on the ground beside her.

Her hand, still pressed against the mirror, was suddenly entwined with tiny fingers, which began to pull.

"
No! Help!
"

The Jack Russell could be heard barking wildly, but to Morgana, it sounded as if the dog were miles away, rather than right at her feet, where she remembered her pet to be standing.

Morgana pulled backward, but the little hand clutched her and she could hear the girl sobbing in terror.

Then it happened.

She passed into the mirror.

The feeling of falling flooded her senses and she felt vertigo and feared she would vomit.

The lights began to change around her, a psychedelic show of color and sound.

Visions began to stream past her on either side of her descent.

A little boy and girl, playing at the water's edge, then screaming and trying to run from an unseen foe in the water.

A mother crying on a bed, holding a child's old-fashioned boot to her chest, rocking back and forth.

Then Morgana began to shake involuntarily as she began to smell ... sulphur.

Through a field on her right, hundreds of people fled in a stampede, all of them looking up toward the sky in terror. To the left and right, fires blazed and burning houses were falling to the ground. And something huge and black could be seen slowly approaching. Its body ascending and descending with each beat of its wings.

Thud.

Morgana hit the ground head first. Before she lost consciousness, she could see the girl, blond curls falling over her filthy face, and she felt the dampness and cold of the floor on which she lay.

Chapter 7

Intuition

Rachael sat straight up out of a dead slumber. Had she heard a noise? As always, Morgana's safety was her first thought. Having the feeling of something being wrong, she leaped out of bed and with haste, went to her bedroom door and flung it open, startling Rae, who sat up immediately. Their eyes met and both twins perceived fear in the other's eyes.

"Morgana?"

Raena ran across the room to the fireplace and grabbed a poker from the hearth and lobbed it toward Rachael. She caught it in midair and did not pause, even momentarily, from her ascent up the stairs. “Should I call for Sam and Bella?” Raena cried.

"No time."

"Right."

They flew up the staircase, already feeling the draft blowing down as they approached.

Bella opened her eyes quickly and stared about the room. Sam was snoring peacefully beside her.
Was that a noise
? Maternal instincts, which had been steadily growing since her attempts to conceive, kicked in and she immediately thought of her niece.

Is it safe?

She threw back the down comforter and ran to the window and peered into the dark. She watched as the light in the Autumn Room flicked on.

"I knew it,” she muttered.

She ran out the front door and bounded across the lawn, barely perceiving the cold September air. What she did notice was the leaves. They were swirling madly through the night air and forming a funnel-type cloud, which was flying straight into the Autumn Room's open window, almost as if a vacuum had been created.

At this sight, Isabella broke out into an all-out run. She plowed through the kitchen and up the stairs and was calling to her sisters as she navigated the dimly lit hallway, now filled with swirling leaves. Indeed, it appeared that the leaves had overtaken the house. She stepped through piles of them on her ascent up the stairs.

At the door of the Autumn Room, Bella stood staring at her sisters. Raena was trying to pull down the window to stop the influx of leaves, which were flying around the room as if in a wind tunnel.

Rachael, looking ill, was calling her daughter and coming out of the adjoining bathroom.

"
Morgana!
Morgana! She's here, I know it, but I just can't find her."

Raena managed to shut the window and the wind stopped as if a current flow had been shut off. As she shut the window, the swirling silver appeared in the mirror.

"The mirror,” said Bella. She ran to it directly. Isabella put her hand on it. The mirror turned from silver to smoke, and suddenly, Isabella's torso fell into it as the vacuum recommenced. The window shattered from the force of the wind now streaming toward the mirror again.

"Bella!” Rachael yelled. “Raena, help me!” she called to her sister, who was on the floor and bleeding from the shards of broken glass in her palms and feet.

Rachael reached toward the mirror and grabbed her sister's waist. She tried to pull Bella out, but was failing miserably. Isabella slipped further forward and her waist disappeared. Raena crawled forward and grabbed her sister's other leg, the pair of which Rachael had seized in desperation seconds before. Isabella's voice could be heard screaming, but it sounded as if it was underwater, and her words were imperceptible.

"Rachael, on the count of three, give it all you have and pull. Brace your legs against the wall. Ready: one, two, three ...
now
!"

Bella flew backward out of the mirror, covered in a wet, gelatinous substance. She fell into her sisters’ arms and the mirror turned transparent and was normal again. The three huddled together on the floor and Rachael began to weep. Sam entered the doorway, bare chested with goose pimpled flesh, but readily armed with a shotgun in his right hand.

"What's happened?"

"Morgana, she's been lost."

Chapter 8

Old Wives’ Tales

The sisters sat around the scrubbed wood table with cups of coffee in their hands as the last police officer shut the inn's front door with a tinkle from the silver bell above it. Rachael looked despondent.

"Well, what could we tell them? They would think we were bats for sure,” said Isabella.

"Yes, I agree,” said Raena. “Let them think we have some deranged killer lurking about the town again, like in the 1900's. Perhaps then, they may be of some help to us."

Blue eyes watering, Rachael softly said, “What do we do now? I don't know what to do. I feel helpless."

"I don't know, we need to think ... something will come to us,” exhaled Raena as she put a hand over her twin's in an attempt at comfort.

They all moved to Rachael's apartment, and sometime before dawn, all drifted off into fitful slumbers.

Isabella dreamt. Her eyes fluttered and danced back and forth with her dream. Her eyes opened quickly and her breath caught. She sat up from the couch where Sam lay beside her and stepped over her sisters, who were sprawled out on the floor of Rachael's suite. With a feeling unuttered, they had all fallen asleep in close proximity.

She padded into the library and scanned the bookcase. “Ah-ha!” She reached up and grabbed a leatherbound book with yellowing parchment pages.

She sat down at the activity table used for the children's circle time and began rifling through the passages.

"Here it is!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Rachael, get up and come in here!” In a moment, Rachael came walking into the study.

"What is it, Bella?"

"I found this journal last year in the attic when we were spring cleaning. It's from the innkeepers who owned this place in the early 1900s. This letter is dated September 5, 1905.

"Here—read it.” She handed the book to Rachael for her to examine.

Dearest Sister,

I am writing in reply to your letter about our dearest angel. I do not know how I will go on. As I explained, she and James were outside at play. Dusk was coming, so I went to the front porch to call them in. James came in from the side of the house, but she did not. When I asked him if he had seen her, he responded that she had been playing down by the pond. I went down there, but she was nowhere to be found. Local men searched the pond and all the surrounding wood, but it seems she has disappeared into thin air. I do not know if I can go on with this loss. The melancholy is incomprehensible. I still feel as if she is here at times. I feel as if I hear children talking to me at all hours. I fear I may be going mad...

"She never sent it,” stated Rachael. “But what does this have to do with Morgana?"

"Don't you remember those old wives’ tales Grandma used to tell?” asked Raena as she stood in the doorway to the library. “She said when she was a girl, there were lots of children who disappeared from this town. They suspected a serial killer."

"Again, get to the point! What does this have to do with Morgana's disappearance?” said Rachael heatedly. “Are you proposing a one hundred year old serial killer abducted her?” She was slightly hysterical now, blue eyes darting back and forth like an animal poised for flight.

Raena walked to her sister and embraced her, but not for long, as she feared everyone in the room might lose their composure and begin wailing if Rachael started crying.

"No, of course not,” said Raena. “I'll head down to the library and see how far back the microfilm dates. There might be some sort of a pattern with the disappearances."

Morgana opened her eyes. She was wet to the bone. A dank, musty scent filled her nostrils and her head and legs were throbbing. Her first thought was that she was in a cave, and then her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. Upon the walls were chains and shackles and as she peered past them, she could make out the outline of huddles of small children, all staring at her fearfully. She appeared to be the eldest in the room. All the rest looked to be between four and eight years old. Suddenly, a little girl emerged from the shadows. She came to the surreal conclusion that it was a dungeon.

"I'm sorry that I called you,” she said quietly. Tears shone bright in her blue eyes. “I could see you and your room looked like mine; I thought you could save me."

"Where are we?” asked Morgan. “How long have you been here?"

"I don't know, I feel like I have been here forever."

Just then, a door creaked open down the corridor. A huge man dressed in a complete suit of mail was walking toward them. His black matted hair fell over one eye as he began to speak.

His mouth revealed yellow and necrotic teeth which reminded Morgana of an ear of rotted corn. “Good, the big one is still alive,” he said to a smaller soldier, who was slight with black hair. “She'll be of use with the smaller ones."

All the children were softly crying and huddling even closer together at the sight of the man.

"No worries, brats. None of you are coming with me ... today."

"Her Highness wants to see you soon, my Lord,” reminded the slight man.

"Yea, yea. You, big one, come with me!” He grabbed her gruffly and led her down the corridor.

A cart with food on it—bread, water and cheese—was pulled into the hallway.