09 - Return Of The Witch (11 page)

“Oh? Does it?”

I took a deep breath and blew the bangs from my eyes upon exhale. “Okay, fine.” I turned south onto Route One-A. “We’ll take a few minutes to check out April Raines’ place, and then we’re going straight home. After that, we put all this behind us and nobody mentions the Pendle Prophecy ever again. Got it?”

“On my word. Not a mention.”

“Yeah, right. Not a mention. We’ll see about that.”

Chapter 11

When we first left Wendy Skye’s apartment, I had all but convinced myself that any feelings of déjà vu I
experienced at Terri Cotta’s and Amber Burns’ place was entirely coincidental. Yet, all that changed the minute we rolled up in front of April Raines’ house in the Little Neck neighborhood of Ipswich.

“I’ve been here before,”
I told Ursula, surveying the neighborhood from my seat behind the wheel.

“I am not surprised,” she said. “Thou art no stranger to Essex County.”

“No, it’s not that. I’ve been to Great Neck before, but never out at this end. This place I know from somewhere else, my dreams I think.”

“In thy dreams?”

“Yeah, I know this neighborhood. I walked it in the rain. See that car?” I pointed to a Toyota parked across the street. “It’s got a busted taillight.”

Ursula seemed conspicuously unimpressed. “Thou need not dream to see a broken light.”

“I know that. What I’m saying is I remember seeing it last night.”

“Did thou break it?”

“No! I didn’t break it. Look.” I pointed again. “Over there. What about that?” She followed my direction to a trailered boat sitting in a driveway three houses down. “The name of that boat is Plum Fun. Now how do I know that?”

“
Mayhap it says so on the back.”

“It does. That’s my point
. You can’t see the back of the boat from here, can you?”

“I cannot.”

“I rest my case.”

“What case be that?”

“I….don’t know, exactly. I’m just saying.”

She smiled and nodded. “Well said then.”

I bumped the car door open with my shoulder. “Come on. Let go check it out.”

Like others in the neighborhood, April Raines’ house sat back from the road a bit
. It had no paved driveway or walk. The lawn out front was patchy at best, and downright muddy in areas more heavily traveled.

The first thing I noticed as we approached
the house was that April, like Paige Turner, Terri Cotta and Wendy Skye, employed a tacky little garden gnome, either as mascot or sentry, outside her front door. Another thing I noticed were the woman’s shoeprints in the mud, two sets, one coming, one going. I pointed them out to Ursula, who did not appreciate the implications at initial glance.

“They are the shoe prints of a woman,” she observed. “Did we not expect a woman lives here?”

“Yes, but look closer,” I gestured a sweep of my hand. “See here, the stride approaching the house is casual, the footprints close together.” I motioned a sweep in the other direction. “The ones leaving are further apart, the stride much greater.”

“Aye
, what feet made these whilst coming did so in a walk. Upon leaving, they did run.”

“Exactly.” I pulled my pant leg up and stepped into one of the footprints. “Ooh, that’s not good.”

Ursula observed, “It doth fit.”

“I see that. Whoever made these prints wore the same size shoe
I wear.”

We continued up
the steps to the door and rang the bell. When it seemed apparent no one was home, I slid my hand along the top of the door casing and retrieved a key. Ursula seemed a bit confounded over that. As I slipped the key into the lock, she cupped my hand and stopped me.

“
Sister, how knew it thee thy key wert there?”

I just looked at her and shook my head. “At this point,
Urs, I’d rather not say.”

I turned the key and pushed.
The door opened, allowing the mid-day sun to spill in from behind us, flooding an otherwise darkened room with light.

Just as we saw at
Paige Turner’s and Amber Burns’ place, the window shades in April’s home were also pulled down tight to the sills. Even the kitchen, which I could see beyond a doorway off the living room, offered no outside light through its curtained windows and back door shades.

I stepped pas
t the threshold and immediately felt the cold presence of evil abound. I turned to Ursula. She felt it, too, crossing her arms to her chest and locking them with a shudder. I raised my brow in silent query. She returned a nod and we continued.

“
Hey.” I stopped at a side table along the wall by the door. I lifted a letter from a stack of mail, the same letter I had seen in my dream the night before. Only this time I could read the return address in the corner.

“Look. Paige Turner sent this to April three days ago. It’s
not been opened.”

Ursula asked, “Should we open it?”

I tore it open. “No, that would be wrong.”

I read the note inside
. It contained only three words:
It has begun
.

I showed the note to Ursula. She read it and asked, “What doth thou
make of it?”

“
Isn’t it obvious? She’s referring to the prophecy.” I tucked the note in the envelope and dropped it back on the table. “Too bad April didn’t read her mail yesterday.”

We
continued down the hall, following the sound of running water all the way to the master bedroom. There, as in the rest of the house, the shades were down, verticals over the sliders drawn tight.

A
yellow bulb burned dimly in a table lamp by the bed, another in a walk-in closet flickered cool white.

Ursula tapped my shoulder and directed my attention to the corner
where a five-foot-tall fountain drizzled a lazy waterfall over stair-stepped slate tiles. I barely took notice, when she nudged my arm and made me look again. I smiled inquisitively.

“Is that water
flowing uphill?”

She nodded.

“That’s curious, isn’t it?”

“`Tis indeed.”

“I can’t do that. Can you?”

“I have not tried.”

“Huh. Probably done with mirrors.”

We entered the master
bathroom where clues to what happened there the night before remained unmistakably evident.

B
lood and bathwater had dried to a brownish crust in a semi-circular pattern on the floor by the vanity. A towel, also blood stained, lay on the floor.

Shards of broken mirror like cracked ice glistened under compact fluorescents i
n the sink, on the toilet lid and in scattered fantail fashion on the floor.

I pointed
to the tiles leading out into the bedroom. “Look there. Wouldn’t you think anyone barefoot in here after that mirror broke would have cut her feet and left a trail of blood out the door?”

“Aye, i
f one did leave through yon door.”

I cleared some of the glass away from the vanity
area with my foot and dropped to my knees. “And what have we here?”

Ursula crouch
ed in behind me and looked over my shoulder. “`Tis a powder methinks.”

“I see that.”

“A blue powder.”

“I see that, too. I’m just wondering
where it came from.” I scooped up some of the chalky dust and worked it between my fingers and thumb. “It’s not gritty, but it’s not exactly smooth either.”

“Be it smitty?”

“Huh?”

“
`Twixt smooth and gritty.”

“Ah, funny.”

She smiled at that, apparently pleased with her spontaneous wit.

I collected a sample of the
blue dust in another little evidence baggie. As I stood and turned around, I noticed a tiny splatter of blood on the wall by the door. It was easy to miss before, thanks to the colorful fish and coral patterned wallpaper. Upon closer inspection, I discovered more tiny droplets peppered throughout the brown and red sea corals.

My min
d immediately returned images of the dream I had the night before. I remembered April standing at the vanity when she spotted something in the mirror. She spun about to confront it and took a hard blow to the forehead, knocking her back against the vanity.

I
pushed past Ursula and hurried to the bedroom. There on the dresser, conspicuously out of place among perfume bottles and a jewelry box, sat an eighteen-inch glass bowling trophy. I picked it up and examined the base.

“
Urs.” I showed her the bottom. “That’s blood there, isn’t it?”

“Aye, methinks so.”

“Someone hit April in the head with this. It wasn’t just a dream. I saw it.”

“Thou wert here?”

I took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “Yeah, I guess I was.” I set the trophy back down on the dresser, but not before wiping it clean. “I wish I hadn’t picked that up.”

“Why?”

“Because now I’ll never know whether or not my prints were already on it before we got here.”

“Or who else’s.”

“Yes. Hey, you know Carlos mentioned that some of the neighbors last night reported hearing a scream, and then the sound of breaking glass. Maybe someone saw something.”

“
Should we ask about?”

“
What could it hurt?”

We stepped out April’s front door just
as a man came walking by the house with his dog. He barely took notice, but his dog, a staunch looking Akita with black eyes and pointed ears changed direction at the sight of us.

I heard him growl as he pulled against his leash, his muscular body leaning into his stance
, forcing his master to re-loop the leather strap around his wrist.

Ursula grabbed my arm and
pulled me back. The man jerked on the leash and smiled through gritted teeth. “It’s okay,” he called out. “He won’t bite.”

As if contradicting his master, the dog
lurched forward and began barking. He recognized me, or my scent, and I recognized his bark. I heard it before, carried in the echoes of a rain-soaked night. He seemed less sinister then, more phantom than menace. Now that our eyes met, I could see his old soul knew something I did not. Something evil had crossed his path before. He seemed certain that evil was me.

Ursula and I waited in frozen step for the man to pull his dog along
. After they turned the corner, we continued across the yard to the house next door.

We climbed the three steps onto the porch and
took up positions at the door. All the windows facing the street were opened, their screens latched with simple hooks. A breeze from Ipswich Bay whispered through them, teasing the curtains like the sails on a schooner eager to launch.

I touched Ursula’s arm to get her attention. “Listen, I’ll do the talking
. I know these folks. They don’t like strangers calling at their door.”

“Thou
doth know those what live here?”

“No, I don’t know
who lives here. I mean I know the people around these parts in general. They’re tight-knit. They don’t take kindly to strangers.”

She looked at me quizzically. “
And who pray tell does?”

“Exactly.”

I knocked on the door and ushered us a step back. Moments later, an older woman greeted us. I knew instantly that something was not right. I could see it in her eyes.

“Yes?” She reeled back and gathered the folds of her collar around her neck. “Can I help you?”

“Ma'am, we’re with the government.” I flashed Tony’s shield and ID so quickly, it might as well have been an honorary Green Hornet membership card in a Batman billfold. “We’d like to ask you some questions about last night, if we may.”

“Who are you again?”

“Agent 86, Ma`am. This here is Agent 99. Now, you mentioned to the Ipswich PD last night that you heard a scream coming from the house next door?”

“You!” she cried, backing away. “It was you. I saw you!”

“Me?”

“
Or her.” She pointed at Ursula. “You came out of the night like an apparition. I was right here on my porch. I saw you. You can’t fool me. I know what you are.”

“What am I
, if I may ask?”

“You’re a shape-shifter,” she answered, as if merely saying it would cause me to shape-shift into
some demon creature that might shred her to bits.

“Ma`am, I think
you’ve made a mistake. You see, I never—”

“I’m calling the police. Right now! I mean it. You better leave this minute and
don’t come back!”

She slammed the door in our faces
. As her footsteps faded down the hall, I felt my knees begin to buckle. My head grew light, my vision blurred and my entire body shuddered. The last thing I remembered was the world spinning and Ursula trying to hold me up as I passed out.