CHAPTER 5
A M Y
HAWKINGTON,
LOUISIANA
SEPTEMBER 9,
1865
9:37 P.M.
I still had my father’s rifle on my
bedroom wall.
He used it all throughout the war;
even during Gettysburg. A gunsmith friend of his engraved his name in the wood,
just a few weeks before he died. It still fired like a charm, and it was still
loaded, with an unused Minie Ball in the chamber.
I
wished he was still there, but not just because I missed him, but because I
needed him.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. The front door
shook with each pound.
It’s almost ten o’ clock. Who could
be knocking at this hour?
I slid out of bed and flipped my
long, ginger hair out of my eyes. SHE would not answer the door. She never did,
because she was doing something far too terrible to talk about.
“Can I help you?” I inquired, swinging
the door open and breathing in a gust of cold night air. Before me stood two
people my age, a male and a female. She was shorter than he, with darkly-tanned
skin and thick makeup smeared on her face, most noticeably the eyeliner that
coated the skin around her shadowy brown irises. Her lipstick looked like she
stuck her mouth into a jar of blood and decided it matched. He, however, was
more well-groomed, and more attractive, not to mention, with soft blond hair
and vivid blue eyes, his face cleanly shaved.
“Hello, Amy,” greeted the girl
coldly, her wide, fang-like teeth spreading as she grinned. “Happy to see us?”
“It’s bittersweet,” I muttered. I
was a bit comforted by their presence, but they were wasting their time. They
would have gotten out alive if they had turned back there and then. “You might
want to leave. She’s touchy tonight.”
“We didn’t come this far to take
orders from you,” he groaned, shoving past me, almost knocking me to the floor.
I steadied the ornate flower vase that I hit with my elbow. .
“Where is she?” she hissed, almost
snarled. They gazed around the dark foyer and up the long staircase. He pulled
a long revolver from his belt and cocked it.
My hands trembled as I stumbled back
over to the door. And then I saw the army that they had brought with them:
probably no less then a hundred people, all with various dangerous objects that
any average witch-hunting mob might have. Torches, pitchforks, guns. The front
men, the tallest and burliest, had wild razorback boars tied to thick chains at
their disposal. The animals snorted and pawed at the dirt.
Oddly enough, it did not frighten
me. Because these mobs of witch hunters came every other week. Each time, they
would venture through the woodlands of Louisiana, hunting, watching, waiting.
Not for me, but for HER.
Then again, maybe it was a good
thing that my father was dead.
We lived in the bayous of Louisiana
just outside the town of Hawkington, perhaps the most superstitious place one
could ever visit. But that night, they had reason to be there, because this was
no superstition.
“She must be upstairs,” murmured the
man, named Ray. He was the town butcher, but that was not the only reason he
liked to use knives.
“You go first.” Her nickname was
Whisper. She was Ray’s girlfriend and what I believe to be a madhouse escapee.
Ray began to slowly creep up the
stairs. Whisper unsheathed a slender dagger from within her torn blue frock. It
was covered in blood, probably from when she cut herself in her sleep.
I grabbed a candelabra from the
sidebar next to the door and used the matches on the wooden surface to light the
nine candles. The room was illuminated. I was fearful of what was going to
happen next, and I needed something to see with and defend myself with. Because
earlier, SHE was whispering things softly in her room, which you could hear
around the house, but now she was silent.
Whisper turned and saw the
candelabra, rushing back down the steps and grabbing it from me. She pointed
the dagger at my chest.
“Not a sound,” she hissed, deranged.
I nodded and gulped, closing my eyes so that I would not have to watch. At this
point, I was trembling, despite the fact that this happened all the time. I
hated it, I hated her, I hated them.
Then the candles went out, all on
their own. All that was left of the flames were wisps of smoke.
“What was that?” whispered Ray,
turning and coming slowly back down the steps. “Is she here?”
I opened my eyes. They both turned
to me and glared. “Where is she?” snapped Whisper. “Does she know we’re here?”
I trembled and nod. “I am very,
truly sorry for what is about to happen to you.”
I dropped to the floor and covered
my ears to avoid the screaming. I watched, curled up in a ball on the cracked
wooden floorboards, as Whisper’s knife slowly began to fight against her
control, on its own. She stared in surprise at it as it turned quickly towards
her.
The
last thing I saw was the glint of the moonlight on the blade before it killed
Whisper. I could only pray that God would not let HER harm me.
“COME OUT, YOU DEVIL!” shouted Ray,
terrified and shaking. I could see his knees knocking together as he held his
gun aloft nervously. He fired it into the ceiling once, making me jump. The
moonlight illuminated the floor as a thin rope, most likely from within the
cellar, came snaking along like a serpent past my feet. I trembled and did not
move. SHE was going to kill him, too.
A tear streamed down my cheek. Why
did I have to endure this terror?
Ray saw the rope and fired five
shots, one after the other, at it, eventually losing all of his ammunition. I
just looked up at him, my eyes full of tears, as he realized in shock what was
about to happen.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my lip
shaking. The rope, like a living cobra, shot towards Ray and coiled quickly
around his neck, constricting him and killing him. He dropped to the floor,
dead, right next to what was left of Whisper.
Then I saw her: she stood just in
the shadows of the living room, next to the foyer, wearing a simple black
nightgown as a contrast to my white one.
“Hello, Amy,” she greeted
devilishly, her voice like a hiss and her eyes like those of a reptile. “Sleep
well?”
“WHY DID YOU KILL THEM?” I screamed.
I ran towards her and shoved her, sending her toppling backwards. I hated her.
I hated her and was cursed to be her sister.
My sister, the witch.
“I had to,” she stated coldly,
rising to her feet, unscathed. “It was his orders.”
“Whose?”
“My superior’s.”
“What superior?”
She did not answer. Instead, she
strode past me and coiled her long fingers around the brass doorknob. Her nails
were painted black and her hair was long and loose, the color of chocolate.
“What are you going to do about the
some hundred people outside?” I inquired, trying to keep from bawling with
fear. She grinned.
“I called for backup.”
I rushed over to the door and she
swung it open, revealing the mob, still in the exact same place that it was
before. They glared with fiery anger at her and I.
“Would you like to watch?” she
asked. I shook my head.
The mob saw my sister as she stepped
out onto the porch and readied their weapons, the sounds of cocking guns and
snorting boars echoing through the dark forest.
“Hello, all,” she greeted eerily,
projecting her voice to the back of the mob, “Welcome to the house. Cup of
tea?”
The last thing I saw was the sight
of HER army making their presence known; the trees erupted in flames around the
mob, and then an army of mounted men in white robes and hoods rode out of the
trees, winning the battle for her. I slammed the door shut and sank to my
knees, crying and listening to the screams.
c. Taylor Ward 2013. All rights reserved.
