The Witch's Diary Part V

Continued from Part IV

"I'm worried about Amanda," Jim whispered to Melissa as the four of them waited for their luggage in the airport. "She's been having nightmares since she read that diary."

Melissa glanced at Amanda, who clutched her sister's diary like a child holding a treasured toy.  Her fair skin was paler than usual and there were shadows under her green eyes. "I'm sorry.  Maybe we shouldn't have brought the diary down there."

"No, it's good that she finally knows what happened," Jim went on. "But I hate the thought of her going to that house where her sister died.  I know she believes Rebecca's still alive, but that doesn't make sense. I've seen enough strange things in my life to believe in ghosts.  What you saw sounds like a ghost to me.  And that thing in the house, whatever it is...well, if it's still in there we should just leave it alone."

"Our bags are coming," Nathan called.

When they had retrieved the bags, they stepped out of the air conditioned terminal into a hot, sticky August afternoon.

"It feels like a sauna out here," Melissa said.  "I think it's even hotter than it was in Georgia.  It usually isn't this humid around here."

"How far is my family's old house from here?" Amanda asked after they had loaded their bags into the trunk of Nathan's car.

"About ten miles north," Nathan replied. "Uh, you don't want to go out there right now, do you?"

Amanda opened her mouth to reply but Jim broke in before she had a chance to speak.  "No, you and Melissa probably have other things you'd like to do right now.  Just take us to a motel and we'll go out there later, tomorrow maybe."

"You don't have to go along if you don't want to, Jim, but I'd really like to go out there right now, if Melissa and Nathan don't mind."  Amanda looked at Melissa almost pleadingly.

Melissa looked from Amanda to Jim, not knowing what to say. She saw the worry in Jim's eyes and remembered Rebecca's warning.This is a very dangerous place. You must never come back here. At the same time, for reasons she did not understand, she felt as drawn to the place as Amanda did.

"It's right on the way to my parents' place," she said, ignoring Nathan who was shaking his head.  "If you don't mind riding along when Nathan takes me home, we can stop there on the way."

"We don't mind at all," Amanda said and climbed into the back seat of the car.

"Amanda..." Jim began, but threw up his hands in defeat and climbed in beside her.

They drove in uneasy silence for several minutes and then Amanda finally spoke. "I know you all think I'm crazy, but my sister is alive.  I've never been so sure of anything in my life."

"Amanda, I've never known your intuition to be wrong," her husband said. "But this time isn't it possible that you're seeing what you hope is true rather than what is?  I have no doubt that Rebecca's spirit is still in that house.  Maybe that's what you're sensing.  Will you be able to handle it if--if you're wrong?"

"You're asking if I'll be able to handle it if we find her body," Amanda replied. "Yes, I will.  But we won't.  She's alive."

"If we find a body I'm not sure I'll be able to handle it," Nathan whispered as they rounded the curve where Melissa's car had gone off the road in the thunderstorm.

Bathed in the light of the afternoon sun, the house was not the spooky horror story mansion Melissa remembered. It was just a sad abandoned house surrounded by prairie grass and weeds.  The scent of lilacs hung over the place, even though no living lilac bushes could be seen.  All the trees and shrubs in the yard were bare, as if it were January instead of August.

"I never expected it to look so old," Amanda said as they walked toward the house.  "It looks like it's been here for centuries, instead of only fifty years."

"Winters around here are pretty rough," Nathan said.  "Abandoned places go downhill really fast."

"It's just as bad on the inside," Melissa said. She pointed to the large window on the first floor.  "The last time I was here, there was a light in that window. The light was the only reason I noticed the house from the road. When I was inside I couldn't figure out where it was coming from."

Jim suddenly stopped.  "What the--?" He stared down at his feet. "I can't move!"  He struggled with what appeared to be two green snakes wrapped around his ankles.

Oh my God, the creature has him, Melissa thought.  She screamed as something grabbed both of her ankles, and looked down to see her own feet wrapped in thick green coils--not a monster's tentacles, but grass.  Hundreds of long brome grass stems had wrapped around her ankles, pinning her feet to the ground. The grass held tighter as she struggled, squeezing so hard that her feet began to go numb.  She fell backward and other stems wrapped around her wrists.

"What the hell is going on?" shouted Nathan who was similarly ensnared.  He pulled a jacknife out of his pocket and attempted to cut the grass stems that bound his feet, but other stems snatched the knife away from him.

"If I let you go, do you promise to leave?" A clear voice floated out from the house.  A red haired figure in a white dress stood on the verandah.

'Yes, we promise.  Please let us go," Melissa begged.

The grass released its hold on all four of them and became innocent prairie grass once more.  Vaguely aware of Nathan beside her helping her to her feet, Melissa stared at the figure in white.

"I told you not to come back," Rebecca said to Melissa. Her voice was sharp and her eyes were hard, glittering emeralds. "I only let you in before because I wanted my family to understand what happened. You all have to get out of here." 

"Melissa, what are you looking at?"  Nathan whispered.

"Don't you see her?"

"I don't see anything.  What--"

Melissa was beginning to doubt her sanity, but then she noticed Amanda staring white-faced at the mirror image of herself on the verandah.

"Rebecca," Amanda's voice trembled.  "I'm--I'm your--"

Rebecca turned to Amanda and her expression softened.  "I know who you are," she said. "I knew who you were the moment you opened my diary. You shouldn't have come."

"I knew you were alive," Amanda said through tears.

Rebecca laughed, a cold, hard laugh.  She stepped backward and vanished through the wall of the house, then reappeared in a shimmer of light.  She laughed again.  "Could a living body do that?  I'm sorry little sister, but my life ended the night I picked up a gun and forced our family out of this house.  I wish I could have had the chance to know you, but it's too late.  It's too dangerous for you here.  You have to leave."

"But, the creature...I want to help you."

Rebecca's beautiful face contorted in a mixture of anger and fear. "You can't help me!  You'll only make it worse.  The creature feels safe here.  It sees the house as an extension of the cave where it used to live, but it is very protective of the house and of me.  It sees anyone who comes close as a threat. I've figured out how to put it to sleep, but I can only do it for a short time.  It's sleeping now, but if you're here when it wakes up--"

Hhhhate youuu! As Rebecca spoke, a rasping chorus of whispers rose from inside the house, drowning out her final words.  Rebecca screamed,"Go now!" and her body flickered and disappeared like a candle flame snuffed out by the wind.

Melissa and Amanda both shouted "Run!" and the four of them sprinted to the car and scrambled inside.  The harsh chorus of voices kept echoing inside Melissa's head. Hhhhate youuuu!

With trembling hands, Nathan managed to insert the key into the ignition.  He stomped on the accelerator and the car roared off down the dirt road, dust flying behind it.

"Could someone please explain what just happened?" Nathan asked as he drove.

"Don't ask me," Jim said.  "I was just standing there and all of a sudden I was in a tug of war with the grass.  Next thing I knew, everybody was running.  I wasn't going to stick around and find out why."

"Neither of you saw her?" Melissa asked.

"I didn't see anything but that possessed grass," Nathan said.  "My ankles still hurt."

"I saw her," Amanda said.  "I saw Rebecca.  Oh Jim, you were right.  She's a-a ghost.  She said she didn't need my help, that we were only making things worse by being there."  She began to cry.  "I was so sure she was alive.  I'm so sorry that I insisted we go there and put you all in danger.  I could hear the creature inside the house and it was horrible."

'It's okay, honey," Jim soothed as he put his arms around her.  "We got away in one piece and now we know better than to go back there."

"I think I heard the creature too, right before we left," Melissa said. "It seemed to have a thousand voices, all saying I hate you."  She shivered. "I think it would have killed us if we had gone into the house."

"I'm glad I couldn't hear it," Nathan said. "Wait a minute, Jim, why couldn't you and I hear it?  And why couldn't we see the ghost?"

"Because we don't have the sight," Jim replied.

"But I don't either," Melissa said.

"Melissa, what do you think drew you to the house the day you found the diary?" Amanda asked, drying her tears.  "And remember how you found my grandmother's grave?  Of course you have the sight.  I could tell the first time I saw you.  I thought you knew."

Melissa shook her head.  "No. I didn't know."  Until now, she had assumed that the events Amanda mentioned were due to Rebecca's magic and psychic powers.  The idea that she might have psychic ability of her own was harder to believe than anything else that happened that day.

Nathan put his arm around Melissa's shoulders.  "That doesn't surprise me at all," he said.  "You always seem to know what I'm thinking before I do.  But we're forgetting the creature.  What happens if it gets out?"

"According to what Rebecca said, it won't get out if it doesn't feel threatened," Amanda said.  "It feels safe in the house as long as it isn't disturbed and Rebecca is there.  God, when I think of what it must have done to her..."  She started to cry again and buried her face in her husband's shoulder.

Melissa said nothing, but wondered if Rebecca's words could be trusted.  Rebecca had lied before to protect those she loved.

"I hope my parents don't ask too many questions about the trip," Melissa said when they arrived at her home. "I don't know what I'd say."

She said goodbye, promising to have dinner with the other three the next night. While she walked to the house, she felt a sudden breeze as a shadow crossed the sun.  Puffy white clouds floated across the sky ahead of an ominous wall of purple and grey thunderheads that covered the western horizon.

"I was beginning to worry,"  her mother said as she gave her a hug.  "Was your plane late because of the weather?"

"What weather?  Oh yeah, I guess so."

"Did you have a good time?"  her father asked.

"Um, yeah, it was great."

"I can't understand why anyone would go down south in August, but I'm glad you had a good time," her father said.  "Of course, it's been like an oven around here too."  He looked out the window.  "We're in for some interesting weather tonight.  It's a bad sign when it clouds up after a hot day like today."

"What happened to you?" Eric asked, pointing to the grass stains on Melissa's wrists and ankles.

"Oh, we were--we were playing frisbee and I fell in the grass." Melissa hurried off to take a shower before her brother could think of a smart comment.

She was sure that she would not sleep at all that night, but the pattering of rain on the window lulled her to sleep soon after she lay down. Her dreams were a jumble of green tentacles and shimmering spectres until a sharp crack of thunder woke her the next morning. 

She looked out the window and saw scraps of garbage, twisted metal, and wood lying around the rain-soaked yard.  Yawning, she made her way downstairs to the kitchen where her mother was making coffee.

"You slept through all the excitement last night," her mother said.

"What excitement?"

"The wind was blowing so hard that I thought we were all going to blow away.  I can't believe you and your brother slept through it.  Your father and I were just thinking we would all have to go down in the basement when it settled down. There was a tor--oh, they're talking about it on the radio."

"A tornado touched down early this morning in rural Richland County," a voice on the radio said.  "The tornado destroyed one house and two grain bins but, fortunately, no lives were lost.  According to the county sheriff, the demolished house, located ten miles north of Hudsonville had been abandoned for more than fifty years."

"It must have been that old Garrett place," Melissa's mother said.  "Wasn't that the house where you were stranded in that thunderstorm?"

"Oh my God!"  Melissa put on her jacket, grabbed her cell phone and car keys, and headed for the door.

"Melissa, where on Earth are you going?  You're still in your pajamas."

But Melissa was already gone.

To be continued...