A Hillcrest Witch Mystery Collection Read online

It’s a blood curdling shriek, filled with terror. This is no yell of surprise or happiness. Someone—a woman, by the sounds of it—is screaming as if her life depended on it.

  The sound pulsates from the cabin, vibrating through the twilight air.

  Suddenly, the scream is joined by another sound.

  Yip, yip, yip!

  The scream dies down, and Blueberry Muffin gives one last little yip.

  “Shhh!” I say, reaching around the Chihuahua’s snout and pressing my hand against her lips.

  She begins licking my hand. I start to retreat, as quickly as I can. I bounce backwards, trying to put as much space between myself and the creepy cabin as possible.

  The clearing is perfectly quiet once again. The scream has stopped echoing off the rocky mountains that surround the clearing, and Blueberry’s barks have faded as well.

  Maybe whoever was inside, didn’t notice.

  Now that I’m farther away, I crouch down behind a large boulder. I wait, with my back pressed against the cold rock. I’m breathing hard. My one hand is still in front of Blueberry’s snout, and her little warm tongue is lapping away at my fingers.

  At least if she’s licking me, she’s not barking.

  While she’s still licking my fingers, I use my other hand to begin pulling the shoulder straps of the carrier off me.

  “What are you doing?” Turkey asks me.

  “You have to stay here, with Blueberry Muffin,” I say. “I’m going to go see what’s happening in that cabin.”

  “Someone’s screaming in there, that’s what’s happening!” Turkey says. He sounds a bit panicked. That makes sense, because he’s an extension of me, and I’m a bit panicked.

  I reach around my back and fumble with the buckles until I feel them release.

  “I have to go see what’s going on,” I say. “What if it’s Melanie in there? What if she’s hurt?”

  “Don’t leave us here!” Turkey pleads.

  “Turkey,” I say, stroking his head and then scratching behind his ears. “You can do this. Just watch over Blueberry. It could be dangerous in that cabin, and I don’t want you two in harm's way.”

  “But I don’t want you in harm’s way either!” protests Turkey. “You can’t go over there. It’s not safe!”

  “I have to,” I repeat.

  Nervously, I pull my messenger bag off my shoulder. I search through it and find my gun. Next, I find the handcuffs. The key is inserted in the lock, and I remove it, and slide it into a small pocket in my bag.

  If I’m desperate enough to use these cuffs, I won’t be needing the key right away. I make sure that the cuffs are in a loaded position, and then push them into the back pocket of my black pants.

  “Be careful,” Turkey says, as he watches me prepare.

  I feel like a warrior, about to charge into battle. I lean down and kiss Turkey on the nose. Then, because I’m feeling truly scared, I kiss Blueberry too.

  Seeing Turkey’s jealous expression, I finish with one more kiss on his nose.

  “I’ll be back,” I promise, giving him one last scratch behind his ears.

  Then, I turn and begin running towards the cabin with my gun drawn.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As I approach the cabin, I hear someone shouting.

  I recognize Melanie Haywater’s voice. “I’m going to tell everyone what you’ve done!” she says. “You’re not going to get away with this!”

  I move faster.

  I’ve never been a runner, but my adrenaline has kicked me so far into ‘fight or flight’ gear that I feel like I could win the Hillcrest one-mile Dash for A Cure, if it was happening right now.

  I’m not even conscious of the steps I’m taking. My feet seem to move effortlessly over the rock-strewn ground, and in an instant, I’m at the cabin’s door.

  I don’t knock. Instead, I barge right in, waving my gun. “Stop!” I shout, though I have no idea what I might be stopping.

  I see Melanie tied up in a chair. There’s a cinder block strapped to her feet. Her cheeks are tear stained. Her eye fly open wide at the sight of me.

  “Penny, behind you!” she says.

  I begin to whirl around, but it’s too late. I feel the impact of a body smashing into me, and strong, wiry arms wrap around my torso.

  Like a football player being tackled, I begin flying to the ground. As the cabin’s rustic wood floor zooms up to my face, I squeeze my eyes shut. In another split second, my right cheek thuds against the hard floor, followed soundly by my forehead. There’s a body on top of me.

  “I knew I heard something out there,” says the body. Though my eyes are closed, I know that smug, sleazy voice. It’s Ralph!

  “Get off me!” I shout.

  “Or what are you going to do?” Ralph says.

  I feel my gun, still in my hand, being pried away from me. I open my eyes just in time to see it slide across the floor, out of reach.

  “Shoot me?” Ralph finishes.

  Then, I feel my hands being tied roughly behind my back, with scratchy, thick rope.

  Shoot. This is not going well. At all.

  I’m on my stomach, pinned flat to the ground. My arms are now tied.

  My legs are still free! I start kicking.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Ralph says. This is when I feel his efforts move to my ankles. He grabs for one foot, and then the other, and then I feel the rope bind my legs together.

  “That pinches!” I say, as he secures the knot.

  “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt for long,” he says smugly. I cringe at his words. I don’t like the sound of them.

  “What—are you going to kill me, like you killed Joe Gallant?” I ask.

  I feel Ralph’s hands, which have been working with the knot, still for a moment. I’ve affected him.

  Encouraged, I keep talking. “You can’t stuff me in a freezer, up here, Ralph. I’m not going to freeze to death, like Joe did.”

  “He’s going to drown us!” Melanie says. She’s crying, and her voice is ragged. “He said he was going to take me out in his rowboat and throw me over the side. Do something, Penny!”

  Now the cinderblock tied to her feet makes sense.

  I speak. “Melanie figured it out first, didn’t she, Ralph? When I started poking around, saying that Joe’s death wasn’t an accident, Melanie caught on fast. She figured out that you did it, before I did!”

  “What you said that day, when you came for coffee, made so much sense,” Melanie says tearfully. “The freezer never malfunctioned before. Why would it, on the day that the restaurant was to be sold?”

  “How did you know it was Ralph?” I ask her.

  I feel Ralph’s bodyweight lift off me. I’m still on my stomach, but as he gets up I’m able to roll onto my back. Then, with a heroic abdominal effort that I think Jumper Strongheart would have been proud of, I manage to sit.

  Melanie is speaking. “I’ve always had a bad feeling about Ralph,” Melanie says. “And when I came up here to talk to him, just today, he went bezerk. He tied me up—that’s enough of an admission of guilt for me.”

  “It is for me, too,” I say.

  “Stop it!” Ralph shouts.

  He’s moves across the room, to where Melanie is seated. He begins dragging her chair towards the door. “You both think you are so clever! Tell it to the fishes.”

  “Why did you do it, Ralph?” I ask. “Did you hate Joe so much that passion drove you to end his life, or was it a strategic move, to ensure you would own the restaurant?”

  I can see his face clearly now, as he works to move Melanie across the room. He grimaces as he strains against the weight of her body, the chair, and the cinder block.

  My hands are behind me, but if I make fists, I can use them as leverage against the floor. I press my hands into the ground and try to move my hips. It works! I’ve moved a few inches to the right.

  If I can cut Ralph off at the door, maybe I could stop him.

  I repeat the reverse-crab walk kind o
f move. Again, I use my hands to press into the ground, lift my hips up, and swing them to the right.

  “Hey! Stop that!” Ralph says, looking over at me. He’s really struggling to move Melanie’s chair, and when he pauses to look at me, he’s out of breath.

  “Why did you do it, Ralph?” I ask again.

  I can see that we’re flustering him. He’s losing some of his suave sleaziness. He’s beginning to look overwhelmed. I move again towards the door.

  “Stop that!” he shouts, abandoning Melanie’s chair and approaching me. “Stop moving like that, or I’ll kill you right here and now!” He points to my gun, on the floor on the other end of the cabin, where he threw it.

  “I don’t think you would, Ralph. That’s not your style,” I say. I crab-walk again, just to test him.

  He moves towards my gun.

  I hope I’m right about this.

  I keep talking as he stoops to pick up the gun. “You’re not a murderer, Ralph. You just want to be successful. You want to have friends. You want to be liked. You thought owning the restaurant would get you there. You didn’t hate Joe, did you? You didn’t even want to kill him.”

  He picks up the gun. His brow is furrowed. “I had to kill him,” he says. “Cliff would have given the restaurant to him, if I didn’t. I would have been Cliff’s assistant for the rest of my life. This was my only chance at something better.”

  “It was easy to do, once Joe was in the freezer,” I say. “You just closed the door, turned down the temperature, and made sure that he couldn't get out. It was like you weren’t even killing him.”

  Ralph aims the gun at me. His hand is unsteady. This is really getting to him.

  “You’re not going to shoot me, Ralph,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “That would be far too violent. Too messy. That’s why you put Joe in the freezer, and why you want to drown us. If it looks like an accident, you can convince yourself that it was an accident.”

  “You both could have come up here, for a paddle in the lake,” Ralph says, lowering the gun. “I’ll untie you once you’re at the bottom. I’ll leave the boat, drifting out of the water. When your bodies are found, the town will mourn your tragic accidental death.”

  “It’s still murder,” I say. “Someone will find out.”

  “Who?” Ralph asks.

  Now that he’s set the gun down, he’s walking towards a small closet next to the cabin’s little kitchen area. I watch him open the closet door, and bend down to reach into what looks like a tool box. When he crosses the room, heading in my direction, I see a roll of duct tape in his hands.

  He pulls off about a foot of the silver tape, and tears it with his teeth.

  “I think I’ve heard enough from you,” he says.

  I try out my crab-walk maneuver, but this time I don’t get very far. Ralph stoops over me, and places the tape over my mouth.

  Then, he scoops his hand under my arm, and drags me up to my feet. I let my body go limp, hoping that dead weight will be harder for him to drag along. However, the little man is surprisingly strong.

  He maneuvers me into a wooden chair, and then wraps a rope around my torso, half a dozen times. At first, I rock back and forth while screaming, despite the tape, as he works. The scream is muffled, and the more rope that gets coiled around me, the less wiggle room I have for rocking. Soon, I’m not even able to move an inch.

  “Penny!” Melanie shouts. “Penny, keep fighting him! He’s a no-good-weasel of a man! He’s not going to get away with this. Ralph, you absolute coward! You rotten—”

  Ralph bounds over to Melanie, and I watch as he stops her words short by applying duct tape to her mouth.

  He stands up straight.

  Melanie and I are both screaming, but with the tape over our mouths, our cries are muffled and wordless.

  “That’s better,” Ralph says, tossing the roll of duct tape away from him and then brushing his hands together, as if he just completed a particularly challenging home repair project.

  He continues dragging Melanie, in her chair, to the cabin door. I watch in horror as he unties her torso, so that she’s free from the chair. Her arms and legs are bound, like mine are. He hoists her, fireman style, over one shoulder. Though she’s petite, she does have a cinderblock strapped to her feet, and he strains against the weight.

  As Ralph reaches the threshold of the door, with a squirming, squealing-beneath-the-tape Melanie over his shoulder, he turns to me. “Don’t move,” he warns.

  In protest, I start wiggling, as much as I can. When I rock side to side, I feel the chair begin to move with me. Suddenly, the whole chair tips over. The side of my head smacks against the floor. It hurts.

  “I said, don’t move!” Ralph says.

  My vision is skewed. The world has turned sideways. I see Ralph put Melanie on the floor, as if she’s a sack of potatoes. Then he walks towards me, and disappears around the back of the chair.

  I feel the chair being righted, and then he’s dragging me across the cabin, towards the kitchen and the little closet that I noticed earlier.

  I struggle as much as I can, but no matter what I do, I can’t stop him from dragging the chair, with me tied to it, into the closet.

  “I’ll be back for you,” he says ominously.

  He slams the closet door closed, and I hear him lock it.

  Everything turns pitch black. I can’t see a single thing.

  The sound of Melanie’s struggle fades quickly. I can picture the rowboat that I saw along the shore. It’s a ways away from the cabin—it will take Ralph some time to get there.

  I have time.

  I have to get free.

  But how?

  There’s panic rising in my chest, and my thoughts are racing. I strain my eyes, trying to make them adjust to the darkness faster.

  It’s no use.

  Sweat beads form on my forehead, and my breath comes out in short, hot bursts from my nostrils. Each time I try to suck air in, I feel like I’m getting less and less.

  If I keep this up, I’m going to hyperventilate and pass out, and then I really won’t have a shot at saving Melanie. Or myself.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and slow my breathing. As I slow my breathing, time itself seems to slow down. I focus on the sensation of air moving through my nose; in and out, in and out.

  Slowly. Slowly.

  My heart, which has been galloping within my chest, begins to slow down too.

  Breathe, I tell myself. In and out.

  My world is dark. As I focus on my breathing, everything else begins to fade from my awareness—the cabin, the rowboat, the cinder block around Melanie’s ankles.

  The steely grey sky, the peach clouds, the glittering lake of ice-cold mountain water. The trees, the trail down to town, it all fades.

  Even Hillcrest begins to fade from my awareness. The constant background hum of people and their needs, desires, and concerns slips, dissolves, and then evaporates completely.

  All I am aware of is the air, moving gently over the space just below my nostrils.

  My reality is pinpointed on this one sensation.

  In darkness and silence, I feel myself enter a state of complete tranquility.

  Though my eyes are closed, and I’m in a pitch-black closet, I start to see shapes.

  They are clouds.

  I feel as if I am above them, flying almost. I’m reminded of my dream, in which I was soaring above puffy white clouds. As I think of my dream, the vision becomes stronger.

  It’s like I can see the clouds.

  Then, a voice enters my consciousness. It’s just like when I hear Turkey’s voice, in my mind, except this time it’s not Turkey’s voice that I hear.

  The voice is as clear as a bell—neither male nor female. “Your place of power is above the clouds. You can only get there with solitude and silence,” the voice says.

  As the voice speaks, I feel warmth in my chest, and I think of my necklace. The Power Spell! It is activating. I know this in the core
of my being. I feel the warm sensation spread to my toes, fingers, and up to my scalp.

  I’m not afraid—not even one little, tiny bit. I feel completely safe, secure, and almost giddy with joy, despite my dire circumstances. As the warmth fills my body, I open my eyes.

  I see a crack of light beneath the door. I wiggle, trying to sense how tightly the ropes are wrapped around me. They’re tight. As I move, the chair squeaks and groans. It’s an old, wooden chair, fairly lightweight.

  I put pressure on my feet, and manage to rock forward until I’m almost standing, though my knees are bent.

  With as much force as I can muster, I sit back, slamming the chair into the floor. I hear a crack.

  Some of the wood has given way.

  I stand again, and then BAM! I sit back onto the chair. I feel it give in a little bit more.

  Again and again I do this, until finally, with a shudder, creak, and then splintering sound, the chair disintegrates into a pile of wood beneath me. I land on my bottom, and the ropes around me immediately loosen, now that there is no chair frame to hold them taut.

  I stand up, and the ropes that secured my torso to the chair fall off me and pool on the ground. My arms and legs are still tied, but at least I’m free from the chair.

  I feel so clear headed. It occurs to me that though Ralph has tied my wrists together behind me, I can still move my fingers.

  Kneeling, I maneuver my hands so that they are right above the ropes around my ankles. I slide the ankle-ropes around until my fingers feel the bulge of a knot. Within under a minute, I have the knot undone.

  Next, I move my focus to the toolbox on the closet floor. It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for: a knife. I position it against the edge of the box, and then drag the remaining ropes over the blade.

  The ropes give way, and my hands are freed. I immediately lift my hand to my face, and pull the tape off of my mouth.

  Now, I just have to get through this door. I try the handle, but it doesn’t turn. Ralph locked it.

  I’m about to lift my foot to try a karate kick, when another thought strikes me.

  “Reserare!” I say, mimicking the word I heard Azure mutter, when she wanted to unlock her apartment door.