The Witching House, page 7
Otis shook his head. “Is she magical like you and Grammy?”
“Even more so. Thousands of years ago, Nyraena was one of Pan’s wood nymphs until she one day denied him her love. Pan got so angry that he and his coven of nymphs imprisoned Nyraena in a cavern deep within the earth. Pan wanted her to die a lonely death.”
“Did she die?” Otis asked.
“No, she survived by eating cave mushrooms, roots and worms, and licking spores and lichen off the stones.” Mama gently rocked Otis. “Spending all those centuries living underground, Nyraena began to change, like how a caterpillar in a cocoon becomes a moth. When her metamorphosis was complete, she turned into a powerful Underworld Witch and now reigns over all creatures living inside the soil.”
“Like worms and bugs?”
“Yes, Otie, and the roots and mushrooms too. Nyraena had one problem, though. She was painfully lonely in her cave. And the anger she had for Pan and the other nymphs would never leave. Sometimes, when you put your ear to the ground, you can hear Nyraena’s cries.”
Otis listened, but didn’t hear anything except the hum from the generator.
Mama said, “I’ve been hearing her a lot lately. Nyraena wants me to set her free from her prison. In exchange, she promises to help me take back the coven.” She pulled him tight against her chest. “I’m going to set the Underworld Witch free, Otie. And I need your help.”
Chapter 15
Sarah struggled with the bindings that tied her wrists to the rails at the bottom of the stairs. She carefully watched Ronnie, who was across the hall, pacing in the shadows of the ceremonial room. He was talking to someone, but Sarah could only see half the den from her angle. Was there another person with him? And were Meg and Casey really dead?
The thought tore at Sarah’s heart. She hadn’t begun to accept the loss of Dean. Just this morning the four of them had been laughing together over breakfast, talking about today’s adventure. Now Dean, Meg and Casey were gone, and Sarah was alone in an abandoned house with a crazed redneck. She wept. She hadn’t told anyone she was coming here. Her parents would never know what happened to their daughter. Just gone. Vanished without a trace. Sarah thought of her dog, Bandit, standing at the front window, wondering when she was going to return and take him to the park.
Sarah sobbed so hard her chest hurt.
“Get the tears out,” her kickboxing coached had yelled into her ear the first time he pushed her further than she wanted to go. “After the tears, you’ll unleash your anger. And that’s where your power comes from.” That day she had kicked the bag with a ferocity she didn’t know she had in her.
Now her tears subsided and the rage came quickly. She wasn’t ready to die. She yanked at the ropes.
“What do ya think you’re doing?” Ronnie stepped back into the circle of light.
“Stay away from me!”
“Piggy, you and I are just gettin’ started.” He unbuckled his jeans, unzipped. “I’m gonna make you oink so loud.” He got down on all fours and crawled toward her.
Sarah kicked him in the face. He backed up, shocked by the assault.
“Don’t touch me,” Sarah warned. “Or I’ll kick your teeth in.” Her anger shrouded her fear. She sat against the banister with her leg cocked, ready to strike another blow.
Ronnie wiped blood from his busted lip and grinned. “You’re a feisty little piggy. After I hog-fuck ya, I’m gonna corn ya too.”
He lunged. Sarah kicked his shoulder, but he didn’t stop. He wrapped his arms around her legs, flipped her over. Sarah struggled, but Ronnie was too strong. He grappled her from behind. His erection poked through his jeans.
“Sooie!” He laughed and slapped her thigh and made oinking sounds.
“No!” she screamed and bucked against him.
He pressed a blade against her throat. “Stop moving or I’ll gut you.”
She sobbed as he sliced off her harness and tossed it aside. His hands fumbled to unbuckle her shorts.
“Please stop!” Sarah pleaded.
Something flashed in the darkness, lighting up the den briefly. Then Sarah heard a woman’s cry that sounded like an enraged banshee.
Ronnie backed away with a frightened look on his face. He walked into the darkness. “Mama, I was gonna bring her to you when I was done.”
Sarah searched for the woman who had made the sound. Sarah heard no response, but Ronnie kept talking anyway. “Please, let me have her first!”
Something ungodly roared from the far corner of the house. Then came a pounding on the door.
Ronnie stepped back into the circle of light, buckling his pants. He looked terrified. “You’re meat now, piggy.” He pushed his nose up like a snout. “Oink, oink.” Then he hurried down the hall to the front door.
Sarah saw a fleeting second of sunlight and then the door shut. The click of a lock destroyed her last hope of escape. Like all the other victims before her, she too would die here and forever haunt this godforsaken house.
Chapter 16
June 1972
While everyone in the coven was sleeping, six-year-old Otis collected all the things that Mama had asked for and brought them down to the cellar. Her chains rattled as she crawled toward him and took the burlap sack from his hands. “Good boy.” She opened a spell book and frantically turned the pages.
Otis dug through the sack and pulled out a knife and a jar filled with hair, fingernail clippings and teeth.
“What are these for?” Otis asked.
“My mama, your grammy, taught me to always collect hair and nails from those around you, because you never know when your friends will become your enemies.” She held up a thick bundle of black hair. “Oh, Abigail, you’re going to regret ever crossing me.” Mama dropped the hair into a bowl-shaped hole in the ground. She poured out all the contents in the jar. Then she dug into the burlap sack and pulled out a human skull.
Otis shrank back. “What’s that for?”
“A skull has great power in it. Especially one from a witch, and your grammy was an even more powerful conjurer than me.” Mama set his grandmother’s skull on top of the pile of hair and fingernails.
With the knife, she sliced open her hand and sprinkled her blood over everything in the hole.
“Now, I need your pig.”
“Not Jasper.”
“Otie, sometimes the gods and goddesses require us to give sacrifices. A spell is even more powerful when you offer them something you love. You want Mama to be free, don’t you?”
The boy nodded. He hugged Jasper one last time, then handed him over. The piglet squealed and wriggled in Mama’s arms. Otis cried as she cut its throat. She poured Jasper’s blood over Grammy’s skull, then set the pig’s dead body in the hole. Then Mama buried the contents for her spell and placed her palms on the dirt. “I invoke thee, Nyraena, the Terrible and Invisible Witch who dwelleth in the darkest void of the earth. Whose suffering is my suffering. Whose glory is my glory. I offer you these gifts.”
Mama scooped up the bloody soil and wiped it on her face. “Hear me, Nyraena, and make all spirits subject unto me, so that every spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether, upon the earth and under the earth. And every scourge of my coven, and anyone who dare cross me, may be obedient to me. Arogorobra Sothou!”
Otis and Mama waited in silence for a long moment. Then he felt the ground rumble. The walls began to shudder and the pipes above their heads rattled. He crawled backward as Mama started shaking violently. Her eyes rolled back to whites. Her mouth opened wide and hordes of spiders crawled from her throat, skittering across her face. And then roots started coming out of the ground. They snaked around her body, shredding her clothes, covering her in a cocoon of roots, dirt and earthworms, until all he could see were the solid whites of Mama’s eyes.
Otis ran away screaming.
* * *
Now, Otis looked at Mama’s ghost sitting in the truck next to him, as pretty as when he was a kid. “You promised to take me with you to our special hidey-hole, but you left me behind with Grandpa and Ronnie.”
“I needed you to take care of the house and look after your baby brother.”
After the police found Otis and two-year-old Ronnie still alive, the two boys had gone to live with their grandpa on the pig farm.
“Grandpa was always drunk and mean. He hurt me and Ronnie.”
“And I stopped Grandpa from beating you, didn’t I?”
Otis wiped snot on his sleeve and nodded, remembering the day Grandpa walked into the pigsty with his shotgun and blew off half his own head. The pigs had themselves a feast that day.
Now Mama smiled and pinched Otis’s cheek. “So why don’t you go on home? Let Ronnie handle the feeding tonight.”
Something flickered in his mama’s eyes. An evil he had never seen there before. The mama he remembered had always looked at him with kind eyes. But after she merged with Nyraena and slaughtered the coven, Mama had changed. First, she wanted him to sacrifice his dear pigs to the house so she could feed. Then when her hunger grew, she began to ask for human meat. When Otis refused, Mama started getting close to Ronnie.
Otis had tried to teach his younger brother right from wrong. Had shown him how to feed pigs to the house so Mama stayed fed. But Ronnie had a weak will when it came to Mama. Now he was killing more people.
“This has got to stop,” Otis shouted. “This can’t go on no more.”
Her ghost leaned over for a kiss, and he backed away. “Sorry, Mama. I hope you’ll forgive me.” Gripping his shotgun, he climbed out of his truck and hiked into the woods.
“Otie, come back!”
He tried to be strong and brave, but the sound of his mama crying brought Otis to tears.
Part Three
The Cellar Beast
Chapter 17
Dean woke up in a fuzzy haze, groaning. Where am I?
His eyes adjusted to the gloom. A flock of birds flew down from the rafters and out a hole in the boarded window. He sat up, head aching. Tried to move his hands and legs, but they were bound at the wrists and ankles by climbing rope.
“What the fuck?”
And then it all came back to him—Ronnie blindsiding him. The two of them rolling around on the floor throwing punches. Fucking bastard. Dean’s heart raced as he realized he’d left Sarah hanging. Her rope still dangled over the edge. “Sarah!”
No response.
Dean flipped on his helmet light and inch-wormed over to the hole and peered down. The end of the rope was empty. He yelled, “Sarah!”
* * *
Sarah lifted her tear-soaked face up from her hands and looked toward the distant voice.
“Dean!?”
He called her name again from above. Yes, alive!
“I’m tied up downstairs!” she yelled back, crying hopeful tears now.
She could hear him trying to communicate, but the words were muffled. She thought she understood the last three words—“coming for you”.
“I’m on the ground floor, Dean! Please hurry!”
They were going to make it somehow. Any moment, Dean would come and untie her. They would break down the front door together and escape.
Again, pounding echoed from the far end of the house on the ground floor, where the kitchen was located. And then a horrible thought struck Sarah. A woman was pounding behind the cellar door. Meg—alive somehow? But this woman’s cries didn’t sound human.
Chapter 18
Up in the attic, Dean had been slicing the wrist ropes with his hatchet blade when the whole house shuddered. The wood groaned. The stones in the walls rippled with a sound like falling dominoes. All the symbols etched in the bricks began to glow.
Dean released a breath, awestruck by the miracle he was seeing.
The garret became alive with skittering sounds. The black mold appeared to be migrating across the walls like armies of marching ants. Something sticky hit his neck. He tilted his light up to the vaulted ceiling. Spindles of dark drool oozed down in several places, forming into what looked like black cocoons. As the slime kept sliding down, building upon itself, the glistening cocoons shaped into people’s bodies hanging from the rafters. Directly in front of him, one of the fungus-covered ghosts vaguely resembled Abigail Blackwood.
“Holy shit.” At the sound of Dean’s voice the heads twisted on their broken necks, looking down at him.
* * *
In the ceremonial room downstairs, the circle of candles caught flame, illuminating the bowl of animal bones. The symbols the witches had chalked on the walls glimmered with orange light.
Sarah gasped. From every direction she heard wet, squelching sounds. On walls, floors, ceilings, the black mold slid across the surfaces, congealing into large fungal masses. In several places, the dark matter pooled on the floor and began rising. It looked like swamp trees growing in fast motion. Around the glowing circle, the tree branches shaped into human arms, the trunks into legs—a coven of nude women covered in mold and slime. Old hags, beautiful apprentices and obese women were among the coven. Their seated bodies swayed before a large-breasted woman standing in the center. She held up the severed head of a goat.
In the kitchen, the cellar door burst open with a shriek.
Sarah struggled to unknot the bindings on her wrists. Violent images flashed in her mind…women screaming as they were being torn apart in the ceremonial room…another woman running down the hallway…another drowning her children in a bathtub. Six people hanging themselves in the attic, their necks snapping. The final image made her cry—Dean hanging by a noose.
“No!” Sarah pulled at the rope. Growling, she leaned back and kicked at the rails.
The ghosts of the witches rose to their feet. Their heads craned together, staring at Sarah. Down the hall, the floorboards buckled. Multiple arms and tentacles sprouted from the darkness, scraping the walls and ceiling.
Sarah kicked again and again. The rail snapped, broke loose from the banister. She slid the ropes off and looked back at the ceremonial room. The coven of shadows began walking toward her. Behind them moved a dark mass that filled the hallway. The thing from the cellar shrieked again with an angry, guttural voice.
Sarah screamed and ran up the stairs.
On the second floor, she raced down the long hallway. “Dean!”
A man’s ghost stepped in front of the attic door. He stretched out an arm that dripped with muck. He walked toward Sarah, like a man freshly dug from the grave. Behind him, more dark specters stepped out of the rooms.
Sarah backpedaled.
Behind her, the witches were coming up the stairs.
She darted into a bathroom and closed the door. The tiled floors and walls were speckled with that hideous, slithering blight. Along the back wall sat a claw-foot bathtub filled to the brim with black water. Sarah shook uncontrollably as the wood floors in the hallway creaked beneath several feet. The worst of the sounds were the moans.
She shut off her light. In pitch-dark, she held the knob, her whole body trembling. Wet slaps against the door. It pushed open an inch. Sarah put all her weight against the door, shoved it closed again. Fumbling around the knob, she found a lock and bolted it.
She fell back against the door and released a breath.
In the darkness, the water in the tub splashed.
Chapter 19
The ghosts aren’t really there, Dean tried to convince himself as he cut the last of his bindings. Either the dark was playing tricks on his eyes or Ronnie had set up some kind of hologram machine to create the illusion. There was no time to appreciate the spectacle.
Dean picked up the hatchet and slipped his backpack on. He considered retrieving his cams and quickdraws and the rope dangling over the hole in the floor, but there was no time. He had to get out of this attic and find Sarah. There was only one exit and it was at the opposite end. He’d chop the goddamned door down if he had to.
The hanging ghosts rocked the crossbeams above him, their feet swinging. He counted over a dozen men and women. Some were dressed in ’70s clothing; others—teenagers and college students—wore more recent clothes. Their bulging eyes kept looking at him. They all shifted and struggled against the ropes around their necks.
The symbols flashed bright again. Dean’s head rocked back as it was filled with screams and moving pictures—Sarah running through the house…the face of a wretched creature down in the cellar…the witches carrying his dear Sarah away…
