Two and Twenty Dark Tales (13 page)

The red digits on the cable box flashed the time at me. Seven forty-five. My heart jumped a little. I laughed at my own stupidity, fought the image of Bridie’s pleading eyes, and tried to forget the whispers and the movement of her lips against my ear. I flicked through the channels, but my eyes kept being drawn to the red flashing time on the cable box.

Each flash, another second passing.

Another moment closer to eight.

The flashing seemed to slow, until a second felt like an eternity and mirrored my heart thudding sluggishly in my chest. I glared at the red flashing digit. It pulsated slowly, like time was grinding to a halt. The digital eight faded to darkness, but was not replaced by nine. It stalled. My breath caught in my lungs. My heart ceased beating. A cool breeze ran over my arms and I watched as a fresh onslaught of goose bumps climbed their way up my arms, racing toward me. As they reached my neck, the prickly feeling got softer and crawled to my ear. Whispers, familiar and mocking.

“
Looking through the keyhole…”

The cool breeze dissipated, my heart dared to beat again, and the number nine slowly illuminated on the cable box. Seven fifty-nine.

I uncurled my legs, feeling for the icy floor beneath them. The cold seized my toes and moved upward, turning my flesh to stone.

Wee Willie Winkie.

I watched the red light pulsate with each passing second. I’d lost track of how many had passed. The desire to run for my bed overwhelmed me as the icy grip of the now familiar voice sang loud and clear from the other side of my front door.

“
Crying through the lock…”

The sound of a dog barking released my legs from where they had rooted to the cold, tiled floor. First one, then another. A scratching noise at the window nearly made me turn to look, but my eyes were drawn to the red numbers.

Seven fifty-nine flickered to eight.

The front door thudded. Then again and again, growing more persistent. It combined with the voice, now hauntingly clear.

“
Are the children in their beds?”

My hands clasped the sides of my head, remembering Bridie’s words: “don’t listen.” The front door was banging now, shaking at its hinges. Rattling like a heavy train was passing just outside. I clamped my eyes shut and drew my breath to scream.

Everything stopped.

Silence chased me up the stairs.

I dove into my bed, burying my head in the soft caress of my blankets, focusing on the sound of my thudding heart and rasping breath.

Footsteps.

Rhythmic beats on the stairs.

The muffled sound of shoes on carpet.

The deafening silence of presence.

Through the flimsy protection of the sheet, I saw his outline as he moved quietly to my bed. His head moved swiftly to mine, the image blurred to darkness as his face pressed against the material in a horrifying mask.

My lungs bowed to the pressure.

My heart grew silent.

I was being siphoned of my very being.

His voice was muffled through the sheet. Words carried on the hot trickle of his breath.

“It’s past eight o’clock.”

– The End –

Come Out to Play

Angie Frazier

Girls and boys, come out to play,

The moon doth shine as bright as day;

Leave your supper, and leave your sleep,

And come with your playfellows into the street.

Come with a whoop, come with a call,

Come with a good will or not at all.

Up the ladder and down the wall,

A half-penny roll will serve us all.

You find milk, and I’ll find flour,

And we’ll have a pudding in half an hour.

– Mother Goose

I
stepped into our bedroom and knew something was wrong. The wind from a brewing storm battered the curtains, but I hadn’t left the window open.

“Aelwyn?”

My sister didn’t move. She sat in the rocking chair and stared into the bleak sky, the wild sea wind toying with tendrils of her hair. She hadn’t moved without help, or spoken, for a month, ever since the accident in the bay with Papa. My heart stuttered. Had
she
opened the window? Had she finally come back to me?

I went to her, the sun rising in my chest—but it plummeted, leaving raw twilight in its place. Nothing had changed. Aelwyn’s expression was still flat, her eyes the same dead blue. I stared at her pale, parched lips and willed them to twitch. I needed her to look at me, to speak to me. I needed her not to have left me all alone.

The stormy August wind rode low against my back. Our father had perished in the bay and our mother was long dead—so who had opened this window? I crouched before Aelwyn, my hand on her knee. That was when I saw it: a strip of curled birch bark, clutched loosely in Aelwyn’s hand.

No.

I slid the curl out and smoothed the edges. My fingers turned to ice. On the tawny underside of the bark were the four words every generation of the village Bleddroth had been taught to fear:

Come out to play.

The witches had been here. They’d left their beckoning for Aelwyn and they wanted her in the forest. Tonight.

***

I found my sister’s betrothed at the gristmill. Rhys stood at the loft door, open to where the wheel’s paddles slowly rotated, catching the river water on its course toward the sea. His dark brows were furrowed in earnest concentration as he made marks in a ledger.

Rhys was courting my sister, but he’d been my friend first. He’d taken care of us since Papa’s accident, and after I found the beckoning that morning I’d immediately thought of him.

He looked up and his fawn-colored eyes landed on me. “Bronwyn? What’s wrong?”

He’d always been able to read me like that.

The clatter of machinery screened my voice from the other grist workers. “I needed to see you.”

Rhys set the ledger down and slid his pencil behind his ear. “Has Aelwyn taken a turn?”

“No, no.” I reached into my pocket. Closed my hand around the thin, curled missive. There were rules. I wasn’t supposed to show the beckoning to anyone. But I could trust Rhys. I didn’t want to keep this secret from him.

I held out the bark. He frowned as he took it. The water wheel creaked by, dark water sloshing out of each swaying bucket. He opened his hand—and then closed it, knuckles white.

“
Bronwyn
,” he whispered. His eyes flicked to mine and seared them. “You? But that’s impossible. I thought … I was certain—” He stopped and came within an inch of my face. I held my breath, aware of him in this awful manner for far too long. It was so wrong. I shouldn’t have wanted to kiss my sister’s intended the way I did.

“It was left for Aelwyn,” I explained.

Rhys practically jumped away. I puzzled over what he’d meant. What had he been ‘
certain
’ about?

“Oh,” he breathed, the shock on his face reanimating into something livid. “She can’t go. Not when she’s … the way she is.”

No one quite knew what to call it. Aelwyn had come out of the sea with her heart still beating, her lungs still functioning, but I feared she was just as lost as our father.

“I know,” I said. My hands shook. “But we can’t ignore the beckoning.”

Like I said, there were rules. No one ignored the witches in the woods. To do so would invite disaster. Too many children had disappeared from their homes over the years to believe otherwise. Sometimes a birch bark curl would be found in the child’s bed, other times, nothing but cold linens. No one knew if the witches punished those who ignored the beckoning, or if the children had gone out to play as ordered and just never returned.

I wasn’t going to take any chances with Aelwyn.

Rhys stepped closer. He hitched his chin lower to better pierce my eyes with his. “What are you going to do?”

I closed my eyes, my throat tight. “I’ll pretend to be her. I’ll go in her place.”

Aelwyn and I weren’t identical twins, but we shared nearly every feature: fair hair and skin, long legs, and narrow hips. But where Aelwyn’s eyes were sea blue, mine were bay green.

“You
can’t
,” Rhys said.

“I haven’t a choice. Someone has to and it can’t be Aelwyn.”

Frustration corded the muscles along his neck. “You shouldn’t have told me about this.”

“But—”

“You won’t come back!” He latched onto my arms just as his father shouted from across the loft.

“Rhys, a hand here!”

I startled back, relieved for the interruption. Rhys was right. I shouldn’t have told him. It had only made leaving more difficult.

I retreated before Rhys could stop me, weaving through the maze of stone wheels and grain basins. I would go into the woods. Tonight, I would be Aelwyn. And I would pray to all that was holy that the witches waiting there wouldn’t discover my deception.

***

I glided the comb through my sister’s hair. She sat in bed, the quilt gathered around her waist. The air was humid enough to beget thunderstorms but I couldn’t leave her uncovered. Pulling the thin, patchwork blanket over her legs had given me a sense of security for her. That she’d be all right when I left.

“And Rhys will take care of you,” I told her yet again. My hands trembled as I set down the comb and broke her sheet of blond hair into three sections. The braid was messy, my mind elsewhere.

“They won’t know I’m not you,” I said. “As long as I go out to play, they won’t care.”

At least, I hoped they wouldn’t.

Aelwyn stared at the wall, eyelids drooping. She’d sleep. She wouldn’t even realize I had gone. I eased her down onto her pillow and kissed her cool forehead. I missed my twin more in that moment than in any other during the last month.

There was no point in lingering. I took her lamp and walked to the back door. The forest began just beyond our herb garden. Shivers worked me over. Where was I supposed to go once I entered the woods?

Oddly, my first steps in felt like a release. I was just as curious as I was afraid of the woods and what lingered within them. The trees closed behind me like a curtain. Even with the fanned-out light, I stumbled over the undulating floor, vines and thorns snagging my skirt. I kept a crawling pace until I realized just how lost I’d become. Even if I turned around, I wouldn’t know my way home.

“This is a surprise.”

I let out a short scream and wheeled toward the voice behind me. Wide arcs of light swayed over the face of a boy. The woodsman’s son. He and his father lived on the edge of the woods and kept to themselves.

He stepped over a fallen tree trunk between us. “But you’re Bronwyn.” His dark eyes gleamed onyx in my lamplight.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.” How did he know mine?

“Maddox,” he said, his manners as rough as his looks. “
You’ve
come out to play?”

The breath hitched in my throat. A slow smile curved his lips.

“I was certain it would be your sister. Then again, I’m not sorry it’s you. Come on,” he said, and continued past me.

“What do you mean?” I swung the lantern after him. “You know where you’re going?”

Maddox stopped. He pressed one of his thick, dark brows into a downward slant. “You don’t?”

I stumbled around a moss-covered boulder. “There were no directions given.”

Maddox looked down his nose at me. The shadows from the lamplight cut dark lines along his chiseled face. “You weren’t beckoned.”

The lantern handle slipped in my sweaty palm. “What? Of course I was.”

“If you had been, you wouldn’t require
directions
.”

Was he saying Aelwyn would have known where to go? But she’d never set foot in these woods. I dug into my pocket and held the curl of birch bark for Maddox to see.

“It wasn’t left for you.” He didn’t even bother to look at it. “If I discovered it this easily, do you think the witches won’t? Go back. Tell your sister this is
her
task, not yours.”

I let my arm fall to my side. Hadn’t he heard?

“She’s not well. She can’t
move
let alone come out here to do whatever it is the witches want. If I ignored the beckoning …” I shook my head. “I have to at least try.”

Maddox raked a hand through his hair. The waved, obsidian strands brushed the strong planes of his shoulders, defined, no doubt, from wielding a woodsman’s axe.

“Do you have any idea what this is about?” he asked.

I put the birch bark back in my pocket and shook my head. He growled with frustration.

“Follow me,” he ordered. I kept close to his heels. “I’ll help you—but I can’t promise you’ll live.”

I clutched the rough trunk of a whitebeam. “What?”

Maddox sighed as he stopped yet again and turned back. “The witches only call out those who have the ability to play their games. It’s a test, Bronwyn. A test to see who is the best at their craft.”

I still couldn’t see. “Craft?”

He gave a maddened groan. “
Witch
craft. The one who displays the most skill is admitted into the coven. The others—” he shrugged. “The others don’t return.”

I dug my nails into the tree. The ground seemed to swell beneath my feet.

“They’re going to know you’re not a witch,” Maddox added.

“But Aelwyn is,” I said, my throat hoarse. “My sister is a witch?”

But she couldn’t be. I knew my twin and she was just a girl, just a normal girl. I inspected Maddox closer now. His raven coloring and sinuous build spoke of strength and secrets, but magic?

“We need to go,” he said, harsh as a Welsh wind curling off the sea.

He cut a path through the woods with confidence. I rushed to follow.

“Your only hope is to show the witches you respected their beckoning enough to come, albeit uninvited. They may spare you.”

Maddox drew to a halt. The lamp brightened a thick wall of ivy, vines, and interlocking branches. Craggy stones poked through the gaps of tangled flora. He gripped one with his broad hand. “This is the ladder.”

I set the lamp on the ground.

“Climb,” he commanded. I didn’t have a choice.

I slowly pulled myself up what had to be an ancient wall overrun by the creeping forest. I heard Maddox below me. I was probably holding him up. A burden he’d been saddled with.