The Connecticut Witch Panic
A horror short story from WHERE THE SHADOWS ARE SHOWN by Josh Schlossberg (available as paperback, ebook, or audiobook on Amazon).
1651, Wethersfield, Connecticut
The gallows cast its shadow on the whitewashed walls of the courthouse. At its foot, close to a hundred men, women, and children gathered silently on the frosty dead grass.
Side by side on the wooden platform stood a figure in drab shirt and pants and another in homespun dress, burlap sacks over heads, nooses around necks, hands behind backs. Next to them, a large man in black hood and robe set his hand on a wooden lever.
At the far corner, an elderly man in white wig and dark suit with broad white collar spoke solemnly to the prisoners. “Jonathan Reece. Joan Reece.” Then, turning to the villagers, in a louder voice, “Having been found guilty of entertaining familiarity with Satan, the grand enemy of God and mankind, you must be hanged by the neck until death.”
Muffled moans from the accused. The crowd pressed forward, unblinking eyes locked on the spectacle before them, not a few of them grinning. Towards the front, an elderly woman clutched a young boy by the shoulders, tears streaming down his chubby cheeks.
The judge nodded to the hooded man, who, without fanfare, yanked back the lever. The platform swiveled and dropped the captives to dangle, bare feet kicking inches above the grass.
Gasps, groans, and titters of laughter from the townsfolk. Sobs from the little boy. After a minute or so, the bodies hung limp, liquid dripping from their toes, swaying at the end of the ropes like fish at market.
Present day
Theo, shaking mad, tore his gaze away from the fireplace in the cozy den of his parents’ modest home.
“So, my great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents?” he asked Pop-Pop, the older man’s thin body, swimming in its cardigan, sunk halfway into the couch.
“Add one more great, and you got it,” Pop-Pop said.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Your folks didn’t want to upset you.” Pop-Pop blew the steam away from the mug in his hands.
“I’m eighteen, not some little kid.”
“Maybe they were afraid you’d overreact,” Pop-Pop said softly.
“Why?!” Theo burst out. “How many times do I have to tell everyone that was a one-time thing—” and then took a deep breath, bowing his head in embarrassment. “I’ve been working on it.”
With the sleeve of his fleece Theo wiped a circle of frost from the window. In the dusk, a tangle of yellow Christmas lights glowed in the branches of the lone spruce in the snow-crusted suburban yard half a dozen miles south of Hartford. One incident of chasing and barely rear-ending a guy who’d almost run him off the damn highway. Most of a year and six anger management classes later, he still couldn’t live it down.
“I know you have. That’s why I’m telling you now.” As always, Pop-Pop was calm and engaging around him, no knitted forehead or silent scowl like his parents.
Theo plopped down on the couch, his lean one hundred and sixty pounds shifting the elder on his cushion. “Were they healers? Herbalists?”
Pop-Pop shook his head, which, despite approaching ninety, was still covered in a thick thatch of snowy hair. “Nothing but petty jealousy and score settling. As always.”
“I thought they just went after women.”
“That was most of it in the States. But in some parts of Europe the numbers were actually reversed.” Grandpa took a careful sip. “And hereabouts, of the dozen they executed, almost all were men.”
“Was this during the Salem trials?”
“Earlier. By a few decades.”
Theo shook his head. A local, real-life horror movie. “Why didn’t I hear about this at school?”
Grandpa laughed, bony shoulders hunching up and down in his sweater, which turned into a thirty-second phlegmy coughing fit. “The typical excuses. Leave the past in the past. Let bygones be bygones. No point in opening up old wounds.”
“But if people don’t know what happened, who’s to say it won’t go down the same way again.”
Grandpa smiled admiringly at his grandson, and on that cold December evening it warmed Theo in a way the fire never could. For the first time Theo wondered if maybe his family being too poor to pay for assisted living was a blessing. And while Theo was happy to be out of the house for his first year of college, Pop-Pop was a major reason he’d picked a school less than an hour away.
Pop-Pop craned back his head to drain the last of his mug and set it down on the arm of the couch. “As Mr. Twain once said, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’”
The old man reached out a hand to Theo, a sign he wanted to get up. Theo took it and pulled his grandfather to standing with mutual grunts.
“Sleep tight,” Pop-Pop said, and shuffled off towards his bedroom, leaving Theo with the fireplace flames eating away the cordwood.
It was Friday night, and Theo was due back at school on Monday. He was supposed to be reading another hundred pages from his journalism textbook. Instead, he hunched in front of his laptop at his old desk in his tiny childhood bedroom—rock posters on the wall, cross country trophies on the shelf over an unmade twin bed—and typed “Connecticut witches” into the search engine.
After scrolling past a bunch of Salem stuff, he clicked on an article from the New England Historical Society titled, “The Hartford Witch Panic.” He took a long swig of beer and started to read.
In the early 1660s, a pre-teen girl came down with bad stomach pains after eating soup made by an elderly woman neighbor. Sweating, moaning, and convulsing in bed, the girl claimed the old lady was a witch attacking her insides. Soon, the girl died.
An autopsy found “unnatural” causes, though it was almost certainly accidental food poisoning, common in the days before refrigeration or even germ theory. Constables were sent to arrest the woman, but she’d already skipped town. And it seemed that unconsummated wrath set off a chain of witch accusations in the capital city.
Theo swiveled around in his chair to face the closed closet door. Without much effort he conjured up the heavy sense of dread he’d felt as a kid, refusing to sleep until his parents shut it against the monsters. That was pretty much how those superstitious people had lived every day. Shaking his head, he turned back to his computer and kept reading.
Over the decades, the hysteria swept up and down the Connecticut River to the neighboring towns of Farmington, Windsor, and Theo’s native Wethersfield. Luckily, in most cases, cooler heads prevailed, followed by acquittals. Though, sadly, not before nine men and two women were hanged, including Theo’s great greats, listed by name in the article.
Finally, by the early seventeen-hundreds the mania lifted, and the law that made witchcraft a capital offense got scrubbed from the books. The article ended by recounting how descendants of the victims—no names, though Theo couldn’t help but wonder if they were talking about Pop-Pop—had tried to get the state legislature to issue a formal apology, except it never got the votes to pass.
The findings, instead of giving Theo closure, only made him angrier. Hot as if with fever, he paced the creaky wooden floors of his room, mumbling curses.
Murder. Tearing families apart. Poverty and outcast status passed down through the generations. Even to the present day, what with Theo’s father as a lowly toll booth attendant, and mother, who, as a nanny, had spent more time with rich people’s kids than her own.
Forcing Theo to grow up wearing thrift-store clothes, playing with last year’s toys. Lame camping trips to Maine instead of ski vacations to Aspen like his friends. No brand-new car when he turned sixteen, just a rusty bucket of bolts he was still driving years later. And, if it hadn’t been for his cross-country scholarship, he wouldn’t even have been able to get into a top-rated school without massive debt.
Burning like a pot left too long on the stove, Theo remembered the lessons from anger management: Feel the emotions, don’t repress them, and then find a positive outlet to let them go.
As a journalist in training, he had a free subscription to Lexis-Nexis, the search engine for databases around the world. Making himself sit down again, he typed, “Wethersfield Connecticut judges.”
Before long, he found a spreadsheet of judges back to when the state was officially settled in 1633. One name, Whitley Alaister, was listed over and over from 1648 until 1697. Theo double-checked the date of the Wethersfield hanging—1651—and did a celebratory fist pump. He’d ferreted out his witchfinder, the shedder of his own blood.
Energized, Theo traced the Alaister name through the next two centuries, many who’d been prominent in local politics, business, and education. No surprise there, exploiting blood money to make a name for themselves. Not simply bad deeds gone unpunished but handsomely rewarded.
He got up and skated across the room in his socks, eager to tell Pop-Pop what he’d found. But as he opened the door to the quiet hallway remembered it was the middle of the night. And quietly closed it to sit back down at the computer. Besides, Theo had a feeling that the older man might not think it a worthwhile angle to pursue.
To his frustration, the trail ran cold in the early nineteen-hundreds, at which point the Alaister name almost completely disappeared, save a handful of obituaries of day laborers and seamstresses. And then, towards the end of the century, a few convictions for possession and distribution of narcotics as well as solicitation, aka sex work. He grinned. Could it be that karma had finally caught up with the monsters?
And then, through the eighties and nineties until the present day, only one hit. A 1991 Wethersfield High graduation announcement for one Charlie Alaister. Over a decade before Theo, which would make Charlie almost thirty. Could this be the last living descendant of the bastard who’d set the whole dark chain in motion?
Soon, Theo found three Wethersfield addresses tied to the name. And—Theo’s rage flaring like a splash of water on an oil skillet—all in ritzy neighborhoods. Did this guy even know what his people had done? If he didn’t, Theo was going to tell him. And if he did know, it was past time for accountability.
Theo barely slept that night. Tossing and turning as if in a rotisserie oven, the mattress a baking rack, the blankets sizzling tin foil, dreaming of Mom, Dad, Pop-Pop, and himself tied to stakes and burning alive.
Theo woke before anyone else, the house dark and quiet. After his car finally started on the third try in the frosty dawn, he typed the first address into his phone and set off. It took only ten minutes to leave behind his middle-class neighborhood with its ranch homes, small yards, and older sedans and pickups to another with three-story houses, huge snowy lawns, and fancy SUVs and sports cars. Even the Christmas decorations went from a few sad strings of lights to dazzling, candy-colored spectacles.
“Your destination is on the right,” the phone told him, and Theo parked at the curb of a big red brick colonial, tennis court out front, Lexus in the driveway. He waited until the sun came up in bloody bandages, and, at seven a.m. on the dot, got out. Breath fogging in the cold, a little nervous and unsure what he was even going to say, he walked up the driveway to the wreathed front door.
He rang the bell and an older woman in a robe answered, greying hair and smile lines putting her in her early seventies. She smiled pleasantly and lifted her manicured eyebrows expectantly.
“Hi, does Charlie Alaister live here?” Theo asked, knowing he should smile back but somehow not able to.
She cupped her hand to an ear. “Come again?”
“Charlie. Alaister.”
“I’m afraid not, dear. But maybe I can help you find—”
“That’s okay, ma’am. Sorry to bother.”
Theo turned on his heels, and, hands in pockets, slunk back to his car. One down, two to go.
The next address was fifteen minutes away in a part of town Theo had gone apple picking as a kid but was now, to his dismay, dotted with sterile McMansions. His target was a baby blue Victorian with turrets and arches strung with garish red lights, a giant inflatable Santa in the wide-open yard. A Land Rover, Tesla, and one of those ugly Porsche SUVs sat in the open garage. Could this be the place, the well-feathered nest of his family’s predators?
Head held high, Theo strode up the path, morning air thawing somewhat as the sun rose higher. He poked the doorbell, and a dog yipped on the other side of the door. It opened to a husky boy in a sweatsuit, probably around twelve, with a yapping pug in his arms. Could this be Charlie Jr., next in line to inherit the dirty cash? An image flashed through Theo’s mind of grabbing the kid and stuffing him in the trunk of his car for a ransom.
“Hi, your parents home?” Theo asked through a fake smile.
The kid nodded, sucked in a deep breath, and yelled out, “Daaaa—aaad!”
Moments later, a thirtysomething man, blond ponytail over a zip up hoodie, in faded jeans—a “cool Dad” who probably skateboarded and played video games—came to the door. He squinted. “Oh, you’re not the Amazon guy.”
Theo shook his head, searching the man’s brown eyes for that spark of evil. “Does Charlie Alaister live here?”
“Wrong house, my dude.”
Theo’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. “You sure?”
The man nodded apologetically.
With a mumbled, “Okay, thanks,” Theo moped off to his car. Two strikes. One more and he was out. And what was he supposed to do then? With the burden of knowledge on his shoulders, it wasn’t like he could just drop it.
The next address was at the far edge of town in a neighborhood he’d never actually been before but knew was wealthy. His phone showed two routes to get there, one a straight shot from downtown. But from where he was, the winding route along the edge of the state forest was actually closer, only twenty minutes.
A few miles later, Theo passed an UNMAINTAINED ROAD sign, and Theo left all human habitation behind to bump along a pot-holed dirt road past thick naked oaks and maples and then an icy swamp. It was pretty in a lonely kind of way. After maybe fifteen minutes the road was paved again where the forest opened into snowy fields behind a high fence. Probably farmland once upon a time, now a handful of sprawling estates. He stopped at the dead end of a cul-de-sac where one of the driveways snaked along a dark patch of hemlocks, gate open.
Something inside of Theo told him he’d found his man. Of course, people like the Alaisters would live in a place like this. He shifted into gear and puttered up the driveway to a hulking ivory farmhouse—at least five thousand square feet—with three chimneys, the center one smoking. No Christmas decorations and behind the house was a well-kept barn, probably the garage, and behind that a carriage house.
Now that Theo was close his stomach churned. But there was no time for cowardice. He made himself get out of the car, walk up the shoveled and de-iced path to the massive front door, and banged with the brass knocker. Waited a minute, but no one answered. He knocked again, noticing, for the first time, a security camera overhead. Finally, the door opened, and a lean, dapper late-fifties man in a suit frowned down at him.
“May I help you?” the man—Charlie’s father?—sneered.
Theo’s heart thumped what felt like mere millimeters under his fleece. “I’m looking for Charlie Alaister.”
The man sniffed. “How did you get up here? This is private property, you know.”
“The gate was open. I need to speak to him.”
A disdainful chuckle. “About?”
It was clear in an instant. This was the butler. “Family emergency,” Theo lied without missing a beat.
“Is that so.” The butler eyed him closely, as if trying to pick out a resemblance.
“We go way back,” Theo said, truthfully enough.
A long stare and then a world-weary shrug. “Charlie’s out back in the carriage house.” He gestured vaguely with a hand.
Theo thanked him and set off behind the farmhouse along the path past the barn. He could barely believe that in less than a minute he’d be face to face with his mortal enemy. Butterflies swarmed in his belly.
The carriage house was teeny, no more than fifteen by fifteen, a couple of bushes out front, dead ivy climbing the white walls. Probably Charlie’s man cave or art studio, whatever mega-wealthy people did in their heaps of spare time.
Theo had just gotten to the door when his cell buzzed from his pocket. He grabbed it. Mom. Declining the call, he put the phone on airplane mode.
This was it. Running on the clean burning fuel of righteousness, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so alive. He knocked, wondering if maybe his first move should be to punch the a-hole in the teeth.
A short, stocky woman with squarish face, wide-set sky blue eyes, and messy black hair draping the shoulders of a worn flannel shirt stepped outside, closing the door behind her. Not his type—he preferred tall blondes—but right up his roommate Gar’s alley, who’d probably call her “juicy.”
“Well, hello,” she smiled up at him as if expecting company.
“I’m looking for Charlie,” Theo said, a bit confused. “Charlie Alaister.”
“Pleased to meet you.” The woman held out a hand.
Theo stood there gaping. All this time, Charlie had been a woman? Finally, he remembered to take her hand. A jolt of static electricity made him jerk away with an embarrassed laugh.
“And who might you be?” she asked, almost flirtily.
“Me? I’m Theo—” he stopped himself before saying his last name.
“Nice to meet you, Theo.” Charlie said, an amused—or was it, mocking?—glint in her eyes.
“You live here?”
“Live and work.” She cocked her head. “Mostly work.”
“What do you do, exactly?”
“Take care of the big house.”
“You’re the maid?” He hadn’t meant it to come out that way, but none of this made any sense.
“Domestic cleaner.” She furrowed her brow a second before smoothing it out. “Now, what can I do for you, Mr. Theo?”
At this point, he had no idea. This wasn’t some rich dude rolling in ill-begotten dough but a disheveled toilet scrubber living in a shack. All the steam blown out of him, he thought about coming up with some excuse and going home.
Except this wasn’t about him. It was about his family. And every family that’d borne the brunt of this particular rotten family tree…or been hung from its branches.
“Do you know who Whitley Alaister was?” Theo’s voice shook in the glory of the moment.
“I do.” Her eyes flared a split second before icing over again.
Theo waited a dramatic second before the killing blow. “Then you should know that your family murdered mine.”
Charlie didn’t flinch. Not even a blink. All she said was, “Come inside for a cup of tea?”
Caught off guard yet again, Theo could only nod and follow.
Inside was a small table with a couple of chairs, kitchenette with microwave and hotpot, neatly made twin bed in the corner, and open door leading to a half-bath. All about the size of Theo’s dorm room.
Charlie gestured to one of the chairs, and he sat as she filled an electric kettle at the sink.
“Tell me what happened.” She leaned her ample butt against the counter, staring him down with those frigid blue eyes.
Without preamble, he ran through a quick summary of the Hartford Witch Panic, Judge Whitley, his great-greats Jonathan and Joan. By the time the kettle hissed, Theo had laid it all out there and waited cross-armed for her reply.
Without a word, Charlie took two mugs from the draining board, fished around in the cabinet for a box of tea, and dropped a bag in each. She poured the water, brought the mugs to the table—as if he’d touch anything she served him—and sat down across from him with that same patronizing smile.
“You’ve got nothing to say?” Theo sniped, clenching his fists so hard the nails dug into his palms.
“What’s there to say?” She sipped from the mug, steam blurring her face.
“Seriously?” Theo felt himself revving up again and took a deep slow breath through his nose to keep from redlining.
“Those were dark times.”
“For some more than others,” he shot back.
She shrugged a shoulder.
Okay, now Theo was pretty sure she was messing with him. “I’m here telling you you’re the descendant of homicidal maniacs, and all you can do is sit there?”
She set down her mug softly. “Did I deny any of it?”
The slightest release of tightness in Theo’s chest. Maybe they were getting somewhere.
“We’re all the product of our environment, the times in which we live,” she went on. “These were uneducated religious fanatics who blamed every bad thing on ‘spirits.’” She used quote fingers for the last word.
Theo slumped in the chair. “And that makes it all okay?”
“Not by today’s standards.” She picked up her mug. “Just like centuries from now people will be horrified by things we’re doing.”
Theo was so angry he could only laugh. “Why don’t you care?”
She set the mug down a little harder this time, smile gone. “What exactly would you like me to do? Invent a time machine so I can stop it from happening?”
Theo didn’t know what to say. He just knew this woman was full of crap.
“Black people, Jews, gays, women, all treated badly throughout history,” Charlie droned on. “Still are some places.”
“I’m definitely not saying it’s anywhere near the same—”
“Now, hang on a second,” she steamrolled him in that calm, almost lazy voice of hers. Far more irritating than if she’d yelled at him, her self-control making him a petulant child in comparison. “Guess who else has gotten the short end of the stick?”
Charlie didn’t wait for an answer. “Disabled people. Overweight people. Short people. Unattractive people. Weird people. Anyone who doesn’t fit the mold has always been—probably always will be—pushed to the margins of society, if not outright attacked.”
Theo was speechless. The amount of ignorance this woman was spewing would take him hours to unpack.
“I don’t know you, and I’m sure you’re a perfectly decent person,” Charlie stood up, seeming a lot taller than before. “But I’ll bet you cash money that you look down on folks who aren’t like you.”
Theo could only shake his head. If this was a man, he definitely would’ve socked him in the jaw.
“So, tell me, Mr. Theo, what exactly do you want from me?”
In a flash, it came to him, what had been obvious the whole time. “An apology. I just want to hear you say you’re sorry.”
She nodded, and Theo sighed. He’d done his part to stand up for his people, his enemy had ceded ground, and now they could both move on.
Then Charlie narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want an apology.”
Theo let out a long, frustrated groan. He should’ve known.
“You want me to feel guilty.” Charlie wrinkled her button nose in an ugly way, though her voice stayed cool. “But your real motivation? You want to feel superior.”
Theo swatted his forehead. This woman was like a brick wall.
“I’m not going to beat myself up for something that happened—what—four hundred years ago?” Charlie sneered.
There could be no appropriate response to such blind idiocy. His emotional oven fully pre-heated, Theo launched to his feet, snatched his full mug, and chucked it hard as he could a few inches over Charlie’s head. It hit the wall and shattered, dripping tea from the dent he’d made in the plaster.
Charlie pursed her lips, clearly unimpressed by the tantrum, and then leisurely got up to go to the bathroom. Theo faced her as she went, half-expecting the sociopath to come at him with a baseball bat—maybe even a gun—and tensing to make a run for it.
She did come out with something in her hands. A broom and dustpan. Which she brought over to the mug fragments and swept them up.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Charlie said in a bored voice. “I’ve got more messes to clean up.”
Theo, face hot with ire and shame, slunk out the door, and slammed it behind him.
Theo took the short way back along the suburban main road to the center of town, yelling over the classic rock station all the things he should’ve said to Charlie to make her take the least bit of responsibility for her family’s trespasses.
He whizzed by the big Christmas tree in the town square, rainbow lights vainly trying to inject false cheer into a bleak world. Okay, maybe he’d overreacted a bit by throwing the mug, but did the ice princess really think she could shrug off karma that easily? All the pain, suffering, and death her people had caused, and she wanted to act like it was ancient history?
Theo rolled up to his parents’ house, trying to remember how many beers he’d left in the fridge. An ambulance was pulling out of the driveway. His breath caught and he came to a sudden stop in the middle of the road. Mom in a coat over her bathrobe was getting into her old Chevy sedan. She turned towards Theo, and, in the hang of her head Theo knew what’d happened.
In slow motion, he parked at the curb, turned off the music, and shut his eyes tight. When he opened them again, Mom was knocking on the window, a spacey look in her own runny red ones. He opened the door.
“He didn’t make it,” was all she said.
Pop-Pop was gone. Theo’s favorite person in the world. The only one in the family who actually understood him. Who even seemed to like him. And just like that, Theo’s link to the past—to who he truly was—was gone.
As Theo shut off the car, he knew he should cry, mourn in some way. And he was sad, no question. Though the sadness was only a mild spice in his bubbling stew of rage.
It being Sunday, Theo drove to campus that night, his excuse that he had a big exam in the morning. Truth was, he couldn’t bring himself to stay in the house without Pop-Pop.
Theo, of course, came back a few days later for the funeral. A small, quiet service at the local cemetery, bitter wind gusting through the bare sycamore branches, grey clouds promising snow. Just a few uncles, aunts, and distant cousins from out of town and a handful of friends of the family.
Dad, stuffed into his old black suit, gave a syrupy eulogy by the grave—the typical cliches about Pop-Pop being a “kind and decent man,” “loving father and husband,” joining his late wife in heaven—Mom nodding mindlessly at every word like one of those bobble head dolls. Afterwards, people kept coming up to Theo to say Pop-Pop had had a “good run,” as if the words were written on some script passed around. Theo only nodded, biting the inside of his cheek to a pulp to keep from saying something mean.
When it was all over, Theo went back to the house with Mom and Dad for the wake and sat around as people stuffed their faces until everyone left around sundown. He hung out watching eighties sitcom reruns with them until about ten, when he announced he was heading back to school. Eyes glued to the TV, Mom half-heartedly told him he shouldn’t drive with the forecasted snow. He promised he’d beat the storm, and his folks didn’t argue.
Outside in his jacket, the temperature had dropped below freezing, steely clouds bunched low in the sky. A few sad flakes drifted down like confetti from a party he’d missed. But he had decent tires, and there wouldn’t be much traffic where he was going. Indeed, when he stopped for gas, there was hardly anyone out.
Theo took the main route out of town to the unlit outskirts as the snow fell harder, coating the road. Instead of following the cul-de-sac to the end, he parked a way off by the edge of the fence. After slipping on the ski mask and gloves, he got the half-full gas can out of the trunk, heart hammering in excitement.
Cocking an ear to make sure no one was coming down the dark road, he tossed the can over the fence, shimmied up it, and slid down the other side. Can in hand, he crunched along the crusty snow quickly being buried by a fresh layer, which would perfectly hide his footprints. He had a flashlight but didn’t need it, the snow reflecting more than enough light from the newly risen half-moon. Soon, he reached the patch of hemlocks, and he slunk through the shadows behind the main house—only a few of its windows lit—past the barn, to the dark carriage house.
Blinking snow from his eyelashes, he popped the cap on the spigot and held back a giddy chuckle. Obviously, he wasn’t going to hurt anyone—he wasn’t that kind of person. Just send a little message impossible to ignore.
He doused the bushes in front of the tiny outbuilding until the can was empty, the noxious sweet smell making his eyes water, then reached into his pocket for the matchbook. He almost didn’t light it, Pop-Pop’s voice warning him not to give into his anger. The thing was, he didn’t feel mad at all but cool as a cucumber. This wasn’t blind fury, it was rational calculation. A reminder that the suffering of people like him—like Pop-Pop—could only be ignored at a cost.
Theo struck the match, lit the rest of the book, tossed it flaring into the bushes, and stood back. A hot whoosh, a flower of flame, and he bolted into the hemlocks. Then he stopped to look back to admire his handiwork. And his jaw dropped.
Not only had the bushes caught, so had the dead ivy on the walls. Not thirty seconds later, the whole side of the house was ablaze.
Theo’s mouth went dry, the sour taste of gasoline in the back of his throat almost making him puke. He had to warn her.
That’s when the front door flew open, and Charlie, barefoot in flowing white nightgown,
walked out. Not ran but walked, as if for a midnight stroll, to stand back a few feet and stare at the flames.
Relieved he hadn’t killed anyone, Theo loped through the trees, slipping a few times though not falling, until he got to the fence. He scrambled up and over and sprinted to his car. Tossed the empty can in the trunk. Swiped the inch of fresh snow from the windshield. Got in, stripped off his ski mask, and turned the ignition. The car wouldn’t start.
Pushing back the first tingles of panic in his gut—it usually took the old beater a few times in the cold—he tried again. No dice.
Mouth dry, he made himself wait ten seconds to avoid flooding the engine. If it didn’t start soon, the battery might be dead. In which case, his goose was cooked.
Jail. Expulsion. Shame.
Holding his breath, he turned the key again. To his elation, the engine grudgingly turned over, and the car roared to life.
Letting out his breath in a grateful dragon’s plume, he flicked on the headlights, switched the heat to high, and got moving. Snow really dumping, visibility little more than ten feet, he drove slowly. The good news was his tire tracks on the way in were already gone, as the new ones would be minutes later.
While the quickest route back to town would also be the safest, fire trucks and police were probably on their way. So, he took the fork along the forest—close to four inches already piled on the unmaintained road—plodding along at fifteen miles per hour.
Charlie would, of course, know who did it. And would almost certainly sic the cops on him, since that was what people like her had been doing to people like him for centuries. Except no one had seen him, and even if there were cameras, his face was hidden under the mask. Plus, once he got back to campus, his roommate Gar would almost certainly be his alibi in exchange for an eighth of weed. Indeed, there was only one thing directly tying him to the crime, and that was the gas can.
Theo pushed on through the blizzard until the trees thinned out into the swamp, where he came to a slow stop in the middle of the road. He got out—car still running—popped the trunk and grabbed the can. Shivering against the biting wind, he trudged over to the water. Almost entirely iced and snowed over, there were patches where dark water still showed.
He swung the can back and let it fly towards one of the open spots about twenty feet out. To his dismay, it hit the ice a couple of feet short but then slid the rest of the way to plop and sink into the water. With a fist pump and a cheer, Theo hustled back to the car.
Inside again, he cranked the heat to max as his whirring brain downshifted to something near calm. He’d done the hard part. In less than twenty minutes he’d be back on the plowed road. And in no more than an hour and a half, in his dorm room snuggling under the covers. Boy, would he be glad when the night was over.
Theo was about to get moving again when a patch of white in the rearview mirror caught his eye. Squinting, he let out a hoarse yell. Someone was in the car!
He fumbled for the overhead light and switched it on. Incredibly—impossibly—Charlie, dressed only in her white nightgown, smiled at him from the backseat.
“How-how?” Theo stammered, twisting around to make sure she was really there, the sheer fabric draping her curves.
“Drive, and I’ll explain,” Charlie said serenely.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Theo racked his mind to make sense of it all. Of course, there was only one answer. She’d seen him set the fire, beaten him back to the car, and been hiding there the whole time. She didn’t have a weapon he could see, though he sure wished he did.
Charlie sighed impatiently. “If I wanted to hurt you, don’t you think I would’ve already?”
If that was true—and he wasn’t sure it was—then she was going to make him turn himself in.
“And we don’t need police for this,” she said, as if reading his mind. “The snow put out the fire pretty quick. No harm that a coat of paint won’t fix.”
A huge weight lifted from Theo’s chest, and he bowed his head in thanks. “So, what do you want?”
“Just to talk.”
“To talk.”
She nodded in what seemed like earnest this time. No more condescending tea-time smirk.
He shrugged. It wasn’t like he could kick her out in the middle of a snowstorm. What other choice did he have but to go along with her demands? Worse come to worst, he could pay her off—he had almost two grand in his checking account.
Setting the gear to drive, he tapped the gas and went up to exactly ten miles per hour on the unplowed road.
“Listen.” Charlie took a deep breath and let it out. “You’re right about what my family did. It was wrong.”
“Okaaay.” At this point Theo wasn’t even sure he cared about an apology. Hell, he wished he’d never even looked her up. All he wanted was for it to be over.
“I just want you to know it was never personal,” Charlie said softly. “Picking your family, I mean.”
Either the heat was on too high, or Theo was getting pissed again. Instead of saying something to set her off, he chewed his lip like a gummy worm.
“It had nothing to do with you,” she cast her eyes down, “and everything to do with us.”
Okay, now Theo was listening.
“See, we Alaisters came over from the Old Country to escape certain…accusations.”
“What kind?” Theo blurted, out of patience.
“That we were witches in league with the Devil.”
“Well, were you?” Theo half-joked.
“Witches are for scaring children,” Charlie scoffed, rolling her eyes. “But the lies followed us. And became a problem. When we couldn’t shake the reputation, we pointed the finger elsewhere.”
“At my family.” Snowflakes whizzed at the windshield like Theo was piloting a craft through hyperspace, wipers barely sweeping the snow away before the next blast.
“It was wrong,” she said. “But are you honestly saying you wouldn’t have done the same?”
Of course, he wouldn’t have. At least, he didn’t think so. “A moot point. Your family did this to mine. And there’s been no justice.”
Charlie was quiet a moment, eyes closed. “What’s the difference between justice and revenge?”
Livid, Theo sucked in a breath to tear apart the idiotic statement, but she beat him to the punch.
“We tried to pay our debt,” she hissed, eyes flashing. “Gave to hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, soup kitchens. I, personally, have kept my hands clean for a long, long time. Even if it meant living like—like some peasant.”
An almost complete whiteout through the windshield, Theo nudged the car along through at least six inches of drifting snow. Then the thought hit him. “How did you learn about the history?”
Dead silence from the back, just the smack of wipers and slush of tires. Theo flicked his eyes to the mirror. And gasped. For a split second, an elderly man in powdered wig and black robe with white collar—like a colonial judge—stared back at him with Charlie’s blue eyes. Then Theo blinked, and it was Charlie again.
Theo drove faster as if to outrun his hallucination, steering wheel in a death grip. But he knew he wasn’t seeing things. “Who are you?” his breath fogged in the suddenly freezing interior.
“Sure you want to know?” Charlie whispered through a frown.
Ice crystalizing on the inside of the windshield, Theo had to rub away a circle with his glove so he could see. “Yes, I want to know!”
When he braved another look in the mirror, Charlie was gone. He twisted around to look, but the back seat was empty. What the hell?
When he faced forward again, she was sitting in the passenger seat. Except it wasn’t her.
In the place of Charlie’s face was a charred snakehead seamed like woodgrain, cold eyes glowing not with hate—nothing so warm and human as that—but the bitter indifference of the cosmic void.
The car shuddered and Theo whipped his eyes back to the road. He’d veered off onto the shoulder, heading straight for a fat tree. Panicked, he stomped the brake, knowing right away it was the wrong move as the rear fishtailed in the snow. Then, yelling at the top of his lungs, the car slid in reverse over the edge of the embankment, and, in slow motion, flipped backwards.
They hit the ground hard, and Theo was out like a light.
When Theo came to—seconds later? minutes?—he was upside down hanging from his seatbelt, head a ball of pain, fire up and down both arms but still alive. His eyes were wet and warm with what had to be blood from a stinging gash over his forehead. He tried to wipe it away, but the agony in his arms was so bad he almost passed out.
Then he remembered who’d put him there. He swiveled his cramping neck to the side, but Charlie—or whatever that thing was—had gone. He was alone, and it was freezing. He tried to undo the seatbelt, but his numb fingers could only fumble at the button. As the fog cleared from his mind, it occurred to him that if no one found him, he wouldn’t make it through the night.
He started to cry. Not just for him but his parents, for Pop-Pop, for his clan long mistreated over the centuries, its bloodline ending in this frozen death trap.
The car shifted. It wasn’t done falling. He surprised himself by hoping the next impact would put him out of his misery.
But it was inching forward, not down but up. What the hell? Yes, the upside-down car was being dragged up the embankment, and seconds later was on the road. A tow-truck, maybe? Except it was dark and dead quiet. Then someone trying to open the door. But it was crushed and stuck, and the person seemed to give up.
“Help,” Theo tried to shout, but it only came out as a whimper.
And then in a grind of metal the door was gone, torn off its hinges, snow swirling inside. Oddly, Theo’s only swimmy thought was, Bear?
But it was no bear. It was Charlie in her human woman form.
She undid his seatbelt and scooped him in her arms as if he was a small child. Draped over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, before he knew it, they were gliding along the empty, snowy road.
Theo didn’t know what was happening, but, his entire body aching, he was in no position to do anything but observe. No sound other than the wind, no crunch of footsteps, no deep breathing from Charlie despite them sliding silently along as if she was on skis.
In what felt like mere minutes the road had only a couple of inches of snow. And, sure enough, from over the hill, blue flashing lights and the grind of metal. A plow truck was returning for another round, and Charlie laid Theo gently on his back off to the side of the road.
The truck crested the hill, came to a halt twenty feet away, and the driver’s door opened. A man in a snowsuit stuck his head out into the driving snow, jumped down, and ran towards Theo.
“You saved me,” Theo whispered to Charlie. But she was already gone.
Grinding his teeth against the pain, Theo turned his head to the dark road behind him. A pair of shining blue eyes blinked once before melting into the night.