The Seventh Witch (9 page)

I saw Aunt Dot’s hands tighten, and her eyes darted from side to side.

“It’s not right to speak of the dead.”

Her remark took me off guard. We’d just spent the last twenty minutes talking about Annie and Robert. Why not Granny Doran?

“Great-Aunt Mary told me her spirit didn’t cross over.”

“Sister told you about Granny Doran?”

Well, sort of, but I wanted Aunt Dot to think that I knew more than I did.

“Yes,” I replied in a confident voice.

“Humpf,” Aunt Dot said, picking up her glass. “It doesn’t surprise me that woman haunts these hills.” She took a drink. “She always had more confidence in her gifts than she ought to.”

“What do you mean?”

“She wasn’t much of a witch, and neither is her granddaughter,” she huffed. “Causes more trouble than good. It was the old man who had the real power.”

“He was a witch?”

“Not a witch. The seventh son of a seventh son.” Aunt Dot drained her glass and rose to her feet. Removing the bottle, she crossed the kitchen and put it away. “And he was just as evil as his wife and granddaughter. Heaven only knows what would’ve happened to folks around here if Annie would’ve let him bully her into giving them Abby.”

Grabbing the glasses, I hurried over to join her at the counter. “Wait a second…they wanted to take Abby?”

She gave a disgusted nod. “He knew the gift ran strong in our family, especially in Abby.” Her lip curled. “Pah,” she spit out, “since Annie had no man to provide for her and Abby, he thought he could hound her into agreeing.” A fierce light shone in her eyes. “But he didn’t know my sister.”

I clutched the sleeve of her robe. “Is that what started the feud?”

She shook off my arm and turned toward the living room. “I don’t like talking about that time. I’m going to bed.”

“Wait!” I cried, rushing after her. “Abby’s never mentioned a word of this.”

“She wouldn’t,” Aunt Dot replied softly. Lifting a hand, she stroked my cheek. “Don’t worry about it, child. It all happened so long ago. He’s dead, his wicked wife’s dead. The only one left who can cause any trouble is that Sharon. And she’s no match for Sister.”

As I watched Aunt Dot toddle off to bed, I hoped she was right.

“This is weird,” I mumbled to myself in my sleep. I knew I was dreaming but what I saw in my mind didn’t have the misty, vague feeling that most dreams do. It felt real.

I stood in the corner of an old cabin, just out of the circle of light coming from a single bulb hanging in the center of the room. Flyspecked wallpaper covered the walls of the kitchen, and the smell of stale cigarettes mingled with the sour aroma of unwashed bodies. Ugh. A group of men sat gathered around the kitchen table. Shadows played across their faces as the poor excuse for a light fixture swung slowly on its frayed cord. And even in my dream, I felt the tension surrounding them.

The man at the head of the table spoke in a low, insistent voice. I strained to hear his words, but the loud ticking of a clock muffled them. He wore a work shirt darkened with sweat, and his hands, lying in front of him on the table, were grimy. Brown eyes in a face shaded with a grizzled beard darted to each man as he spoke. They stopped when they landed on the man to his right. Ethan.

At the unkempt man’s words, Ethan sat back in his chair and propped one arm across the back. He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted when a woman suddenly stepped into the light and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. With her long brown hair hiding
her face, she bent and whispered in his ear. He nodded once and rose.

Taking his arm, Sharon Doran led him from the room. As they left, low chuckles and lewd looks from the remaining men followed them.

They stepped out the kitchen door and into a warm summer’s night. A full moon lit their way while hand in hand they crossed the porch and walked into the woods.

Wake up, wake up
, cried a voice inside my head, but my eyes felt glued shut. And without a will of my own, I felt myself being pulled along behind them.

They walked through the woods as a gentle breeze rustled the tall grass at their feet. They finally came to a stop at a glade, and in the dream, I sensed something familiar about this place. It was the clearing with the standing stones.

But it had changed. The wildflowers were gone, and in their place tall thistles grew. The water that had cascaded into the pool had dried to a trickle, and the pool itself had turned a dark, slimy green. And the stones? No warm glow surrounded them now. They looked flat and lifeless, their rough surface twined with kudzu.

My hands clenched into tight fists and a great sadness filled me. Something had taken this once peaceful spot and turned it harsh and ugly. I wanted to warn Ethan. He needed to leave this place, but I was only a silent witness to the scene that I knew was about to play out.

I watched as Sharon dropped Ethan’s hand and danced away from him to the center of the stone circle. In the moonlight, she laughed and spun in a wide arc, her arms outstretched. Stopping, she faced him and a seductive smile spread across her face. Lifting a hand, she slowly undid the first button on her shirt. Then she moved to the next…and the next, her eyes never leaving Ethan and her smile never changing.

Like a man possessed, Ethan suddenly crossed the distance between them with long strides and gathered her in
his arms. Her triumphant laugh rang through the glade as he pressed his lips to the side of her neck.

I could almost hear her purr.

Oh my god, I thought, covering my eyes with my hands. I don’t want to see this.

I bolted upright, scanning the room. My heart raced and a thin sheen of sweat covered my forehead. Wiping it away, I looked at the bed next to mine and saw Abby’s still form. I inhaled deeply, then let it out slowly.

“Well, that answered a question,” I whispered in the darkness while a profound feeling of disappointment settled in my still racing heart. “Ethan and Sharon are lovers.”

The visit was turning out to be more than I expected. Thanks to my dream, I’d lost all respect for someone that I’d begun to care about; I’d learned that an old secret continued to haunt our family; and the mountains weren’t as peaceful and idyllic as I remembered from my childhood. I felt like an actor, dropped in the middle of some Greek tragedy without knowing my lines.

I just wanted to go home.

Everyone seemed to pick up on my mood and cut me a wide berth, including my mother. I caught their long looks and the head shakes. Even Dad and Tink stopped their whispering in the corner and cast a sideways glance in my direction. Finally, as I was helping put away the breakfast dishes, Tink sidled up to me.

“Are you going shopping with Grandma in Asheville today?” she asked me.

“I’m not really into shopping today,” I replied as a little voice inside my head said,
Are you ever?

Lavender eyes studied my face closely. “You want to hang out with me and Grandpa?”

Throwing an arm around her shoulder, I forced a smile. “Thanks, but I think I’ll stay here, maybe read a little.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I lied.

She leaned closer and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Grandpa and I want to show you something.”

“Another map?” I asked, giving her a playful squeeze.

She shot a look over her shoulder at Dad as he strolled out the kitchen door. “No, Grandpa threw it away.” Tipping her head toward mine, her face grew serious. “It’s really important.”

Concern sparked. What had those two been doing? “Okay,” I replied, wiping my hands on a dish towel. “Let’s go.”

I followed Tink out the door and across the yard. Turning the corner of the barn, I saw Dad waiting for us. Tink walked up to him and he handed her two el-shaped pieces of wire.

She grasped the short end of the L in each hand and pointed them straight out in front of her. Immediately the wires crossed, forming an X.

Dowsing rods. A vision of another one of the cousins bilking Dad out of more money flashed in my head. “Where did you get those?” I asked suspiciously.

“Grandpa made them for me.” Her eyes sparkled. “Aren’t they cool? They work a lot better than the willow ones I made at home.”

She took a step away, and I watched the rods move back to their original position in her hands. Sidestepping to her left, the rods crossed again.

“See?” she said with a triumphant look over her shoulder.

I came up to her and placed a hand on her arm. “You found your ley lines?”

“Yeah,” she answered with a quick nod, and stuck the rods in her back pocket. Grabbing my arm, she pulled me after her as she skipped away from the barn. “Come on, wait until you see what we found.”

Glancing back at Dad, I gave him a skeptical look. He answered me with a huge smile.

With a shake of my head, I let Tink drag me off into the woods.

It was a beautiful morning. Blue jays called from the treetops as squirrels skittered through the branches. Ahead, I thought I caught a glimpse of a white-tailed deer bounding through the dry leaves.

I felt the remnants of my dream fade. So what if Ethan was a sleeze? Yeah, he’d come to the rescue when Tink had been kidnapped and I’d always be grateful, but there’d never been any romantic attachment. We were only friends, or had been. At the moment, I didn’t know if I even wanted to be friends with a guy who’d sleep around, even if it was part of his cover.

When we stepped into a small clearing, I felt the prickle of awareness creep up my spine. The woods became very silent and a weight pressed down on me. I skidded to a halt.

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” I turned toward Tink and saw the concern I felt mirrored on her face.

“I know…I feel it, too.” She pulled on my arm. “But it’s just in this one spot.” Pointing to the trees ahead, she took a couple of steps. “The feeling goes away when you reach the edge of the clearing.”

Reluctantly, I followed her. She was right—once we stepped back into the woods, the feeling vanished as quickly as it had come. The timber was still quiet, but the oppressiveness was gone. Now all I felt was a sense of calm, a sense of reverence.

Dropping my arm, Tink bounded ahead. “There,” she cried, twirling around to face me. “Do you see it?”

“See what?” I asked. “All I see are more trees and a small hill.”

Dad stepped next to me. “It’s not a hill, Ophelia. It’s a burial mound,” he said in a hushed voice.

I squinted at the supposed burial mound. Thin saplings grew across the crest and dry leaves caught in dead vegetation covered its sides. Looked like a hill to me.

Dad saw the skepticism on my face and stuck his hand in his pocket. Withdrawing it, he held out his hand, palm up. Lying in its center was a small red stone, and carved on it
were three swirls, just like the ones on Cousin Lydia’s amulet. Tink ran over to join us.

“Isn’t it awesome?” she asked excitedly.

My eyes flew wide. “Dad, you’re going to be in such trouble—”

He held up his other hand, cutting me off. “I haven’t been excavating the burial mound,” he insisted. “I found this over there, by the base of that tree. At first I thought it was a rock, but when I brushed the dirt away, I saw the carvings.”

“What is it?”

He traced the swirls with a finger. “I don’t know…” Pausing, he eyed me with speculation. “Could you touch it and—”

I quickly took two steps back, holding up my hands. “No way. There’s been enough freaky stuff going on around here without me picking up on something from a dead civilization.”

“What kind of ‘freaky stuff’?” he asked, cocking his head.

“Never mind.” I stuck both hands in my pockets. “I’m not touching it.” I peered at the stone. “If that is a burial mound and the stone is part of the grave goods, how did it get over by the tree?”

His eyes narrowed. “On the far side of the mound there are signs of digging—amateur artifact hunters, I presume.” He shook his head in disgust. “They’ve ruined so many sites with their blundering.” Sighing, he continued, “I suspect one of them dropped it.”

“Do you know how old it might be?” I asked.

He slipped the carving back into his pocket and looked toward the mound. “It’s hard to say without sending it to a lab, but my guess would be it’s from the Mississippian culture.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“Roughly 900 to 1700 a.d.”

“Wow.” A thought occurred to me. “I don’t think Great-
Aunt Mary would approve of you pulling in a team of archaeologists to find out.”

He laid a hand on my shoulder. “I have no intention of launching a dig. Tink and I are only trying to prove her ley line theory.”

“That the lines connect these sites?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you—” I stopped and looked at Tink as a fear sprang to mind. “Tink, do you think it’s a good idea for you to be wandering around burial mounds?”

The vision of some ancient American spirit taking a liking to Tink and attaching itself to her flipped through my head.

She giggled softly. “It’s okay. I’ve kept my shield up like Great-Aunt Mary taught me and not tried to reach anyone.”

“Okay, but has
anyone
tried to reach you?” I asked, not satisfied with her answer.

“No,” she replied with a roll of her eyes. “Quit worrying…I haven’t even seen any shadows flitting over the mound.”

I let out a sigh. “Good,” I replied sternly, “keep it that way.”

On our way back, I felt the same unease as we stepped into the clearing. Tink had removed her dowsing rods from her pocket and was watching them cross and uncross in front of her. When we reached the center of the clearing, the points went crazy and began to pull to her left. Without thinking, she veered off, following them.

“Tink, no,” I cried out, watching her move farther and farther away from us as she concentrated on the thin metal wires.

Dad spun and ran after her. One second he was running, the next he lay facedown on the ground.

“Dad!” I hollered, rushing to him.

Hearing my cry, Tink spun and raced toward Dad’s prone figure. “Grandpa!”

Together we rolled him onto his back.

“What happened?” Tink asked, her eyes clouded in fear.

But before I could answer, Dad groaned and his eyelids fluttered open. “Damn it…I stepped in a hole.”

“Look at me,” I commanded as I stared into his pupils. I breathed a sigh of relief—they weren’t dilated. Grasping his upper arm, I helped him to a sitting position. “Can you stand?”

“Of course I can stand,” he replied in an irritable voice as he tried to move to his knees. He fell back on his butt and looked at me. “My right foot…I think I broke it. Your mother’s going to kill me,” he exclaimed.