Witch Clan: Matriarchs, John Stormm [great reads txt] 📗

answers be found in the black tower on the edge of the abyss? How did Elvyra fit into this? There were no easy answers.


An Ancient Enemy

Friday night, it was horrific mouse traps. Saturday night, it was an obsidian prison on a tall cliff. Last night it was Elvyra's ghost coming to each of them and telling them to stay away.

It was Monday morning and as Willard had left early for work and she decided enough was enough. Everyone had dark circles under their eyes, including herself, she noted as she washed her face and looked in the bathroom mirror. Children were resilient creatures, but nobody could take this kind of anguish every night and not be worn down by it. She would pack some things for a day trip and she and the children would pay Elvyra a visit at her home. No more vague threats or warnings. It was high time for specifics. She belted her witch blade under her apron and called to the children on the front porch to come and pack their gear for a day trip.

Leona helped her by wrapping three fried egg sandwiches on fresh baked bread in waxed paper. A few leftover muffins were added to the lunch menu and Johnny brought in a couple sweet pears for each of them from the backyard. To this Emma added two bottles of Willard's stash of soda pop and included a folding camp knife with a bottle opener in Leona's day pack. The children would share one. Lunch packed, she locked up the house and they set out for Cobb's Hill Park. She had her canvas handled shopping bag folded flat and tucked in her apron strings, but didn't really think she'd be picking up much today.

A few puffy clouds wafted overhead. There was not enough overcast to make her worry about any real chance of rain. A slight breeze sighed in the trees, but otherwise not the sound of another living creature could be heard in the woods today.

"Shhh!" She stopped along the trail trying to listen for the bustling traffic through the city outside the park. There was none to be heard. These woods were strange at even the best of times, but something certainly wasn't right today. Without hesitating, she headed straight for Elvyra's back door to the woods. When they arrived at the trail behind her house, Elvyra's gathering basket was setting on the marble table in her backyard. It appeared to have been laying there for sometime as the greens inside were withered from sitting out too long. If nothing else, Elvyra was fastidious. Emma was worried. Johnny and Leona wanted to explore their way up the side yard to the front of the house that was not visible from the street, but she forestalled them from wandering about and had them accompany her to the back door where she rapped loudly. There was no sound anywhere to be heard. Not even a breeze to rustle in the leaves.

She looked through the glass on the back door, taking in an airy kitchen with pots and pans hanging from hooks and herbs drying in tied bundles. In the living room beyond, a large fireplace mantle of fieldstone dominated the room with several iron pothooks and a cauldron hanging from one, but no fire in the hearth. Still getting no answer, she tried the door latch to find it unlocked and hesitated just a moment before opening the door and searching inside.

“Elvyra?” she called. “Are you home? It’s Emma. We’ve got to talk.”

She looked around for clues while the children stood huddled by the kitchen door as if ready to bolt at the first sign of the dark witch. The kitchen was spacious, with plenty of counter space. A single blue china teacup on a matching saucer with a little cold tea in the bottom was the only indication that anyone had even been here recently. She continued moving on through a large open arch to the living room area. She paused at the hearth. Nothing but cold ash. Any embers had burned away many hours ago. The big surprise came when she moved for the doors that went to rooms in the front of the house. Both were closed and nailed shut with planks, metal straps fastened across the doorframe and bits of twine and ribbons with runes printed on them stretched across to bar entrance. It was obvious that Elvyra had not passed through these doors and hadn’t done so in years. Whatever secret these doors held, Emma would let them keep their secrets for now. The basket outside suggested that Elvyra had returned from gathering in the woods, but not into this portion of the house. This left the options that she had either moved through the yard to the front or had returned to the woods without her basket. Trying the walkway to the front was her first choice.

Returning outside, she had to remind the children to restrain their natural curiosity to dash for the front of the house they had never seen. As much as it intrigued them all, there was no telling what they might find there in a world not their own. The sky was growing steadily more overcast and darker, though the day hadn’t yet reached the noon hour. About halfway through the yard to the front, she stopped and withdrew her witch blade and scratched a crow’s foot shaped rune into the paving stone.

“What’s that for?” Leona asked. “A rune for protection?”

“Always a safe bet,” she replied. “It will also mark that we have been this way as well as the direction we are traveling.”

“We’re just walking to the front of the house, Grandma,” Leona pointed out.

“A part of the house that does not exist in our world, little witch,” she said. “And is not subject to the rules we know. Anything can happen, and probably will.”

“I’m wishing that we didn’t have to come here,” Johnny said.

“Me too, Son,” she agreed. “But nothing is going to leave us alone until we face it and sort it out.”

“I was afraid that was what it was going to take,” Leona confessed.

Arriving at the boundary of the backyard, they came upon a six foot high, arched wooden gate with runic figures carved along its posts and trellis. Some were familiar, while others were completely foreign to Emma. The ones she recognized had no message of impending danger in them, and since there was no repeat of the sealing of the inside doors, it seemed safe enough to pass. The latch worked without any problems and they passed to the front of the house. The structure was consistent with the back of the building and complete with a front porch and gabled roof. The windows were glassed and had lace curtains much like her own, but the house was dark within and nothing beyond the curtains could be seen from the outside. The front lawn extended another forty feet to a low trimmed hedge bordering a dirt road showing no signs of any recent use. Beyond the road, on the other side was the dark, twisted woods they had seen in their dreams. Johnny stood silently on the front lawn and gazed long at the haunted forest across the road as if his fae sight could penetrate its gloom.

“You stay put in this yard, young man,” she admonished him. “We don’t want you disappearing on us while we try to find Elvyra.”

She grasped the front door handle but the latch seemed to be frozen in place. Try as she might, it couldn’t be turned or jiggled. Moving to investigate the front windows, she and Leona looked up. Elvyra stood in the window, looking past them with an expression of pale horror frozen on her face.

“We’ll get you out of there, dear,” Emma promised her. “Don’t you worry. Stand back now.”

Emma unfolded her canvas shopping bag and held it flat across the glass of the window and drew her knife and smashed its pommel hard into the center of the sack on the pane. The glass panel gave a resounding bong but would not shatter. Looking at the light play across the runes on her blade, she decided to try another tack and pointed the blade at the glass.

“I need you to cut for me now,” she muttered, and pushed the gleaming blade into the glass as if it were made of wax. Drawing the blade slowly in a large oval, the big piece of glass clattered to the porch but did not break. Only then did Elvyra’s voice reach her ears.

“I warned you not to take your eyes off that boy, you fool,” Elvyra shouted. “He’s gone now and we are surely doomed.”

As one, Emma and Leona turned to look where Johnny had been standing in the front yard. He was gone. Across the road she could make out his tiny form walking into an opening in the thick growth and disappearing into the darkness. Leona was nearly hysterical over the loss of her cousin as Emma helped Elvyra out of the front window of the house.

"Take it easy, sweetie," she said to her granddaughter. "It's not as if we didn't have plenty of warning that this might happen. First, we'll arm ourselves with information, and then we'll get him back."

Elvyra looked as if she might suffer a fit of apoplexy, but Emma fixed her with a stern eye and addressed her in a low growl.