The Wicked Garden (24 page)

Diana tucked it back into her purse, snapped her bag shut, and stood up. “You’re coming home with me now, Eli. You can go to whatever school you’d like, but you cannot stay here.”

He shook his head, trying to come up with words to convince her otherwise. He was tired of trying to persuade
the women in his life to see things his way. It was exhausting. The best he could manage was to mutter, “No, I’m staying.”

“You are
not
. All of your belongings were shipped back to Oregon this morning. Your father’s waiting for you with open arms. The girl isn’t coming back, Eli. Forget about her.”

Eli wiped at his face, and stared out the living room window. “If she had known who I am, I could have talked her into going with me. I could have helped her. I could have helped her baby.” He looked back to his mother. “I would give up everything for her, and, right now, I would give up every penny of my trust to have a normal mother—a mother who actually loves her son more than a crazy fucking prophecy.”

“I know you’re hurting, Eli, so won’t take offense at that comment.”

“Well, you should.”

“This is your fate, darling. I can’t change it any more than you can. But another girl will come along, wearing that same necklace.
She’s
your true love. The girl who just walked out of your life was just a stepping stone toward your destiny.”

“The girl has a name, M
other. The girl’s name is Gretchel.”

“As far as we’re concerned, her name
was
Gretchel,” Diana retorted. “As far as we’re concerned,
she
was, and now she’s gone.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Irvine, 2010s

Gretchel was not surprised when the Woman in Wool appeared in her living room holding the old family shotgun. Standing there, with the gun in her hand, the Woman in Wool no longer looked pitiful and ragged. She was still filthy, her clothes were still worn, but she radiated a fearsome power. In the past, the Woman in Wool had been a terrifying shade. Now, her presence was overwhelmingly physical. The smell of mossy decomposition filled the cottage.

“Whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye,” she hissed. Gretchel began to weep in terror as she watched this newly corporeal presence linger in front of the old fireplace and gaze at the ancestral portraits on the mantelpiece, touching each one in turn. “Pretty lasses. All so pretty.”

“Who are you?” Gretchel asked. “What do you want? Why do you torture me?”

“You don’t know the meaning of torture!” the Woman in Wool screeched.

Gretchel dropped to her knees and clutched at her head pain as the banshee wail reverberated around the room and inside her mind. When she felt still again, Gretchel raised her eyes to the stag mounted above her. She whispered a prayer to the god of the forest, and breathed in his protection. She turned back to her antagonist and tried to banish her. “Be gone, demon. Go forth from here, troubled soul. Your pain is not mine.” Gretchel’s words were clear and strong, but her voice shook.

“My pain isn’t yours?” The Woman in Wool sneered. “Of course it is, girl. Our fate is the same, and greetin’ at a dead stag’s heid wilnae change that.”

Gretchel collapsed. “No. This has to end.”

“Nae, lass. It doesna end.” The Woman in Wool assumed a placating tone. “Come now, dry your tears, lass. I understand. But we’re wicked ones. Wicked ones cannae change. Wicked ones suffer, and then they drown.”

Gretchel thought about her great grand mama. Miss Poni had told her that she had died by drowning. Gretchel thought about the ghost in the lake. Maybe the Woman in Wool was right.

“Yer time is still to come. Ye’ve work to do yet.” The Woman in Wool handed Gretchel the shotgun, and Gretchel took it.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

“The guides, lass. The busybodies who move between this world and the other. The horse, the hound, that great redheaded girl—” Gretchel’s shriek drowned out the rest of the litany.

The Woman in Wool cackled as she faded from the room.

∞

Eli was allowing himself to be lulled by the song of three redheaded sirens when their wordless melody became a scream. Their hands clutched at him as he struggled to wake.

∞

Peter crouched in the forest behind his house. He was experiencing the first bad trip of his life.

∞

Diana watched the Solstice Twin burn in her dreams.

∞

Miss Poni and Ella sat inside a circle made of salt, chanting prayers of protection for Gretchel and Ame. Ella wanted to intervene. Miss Poni knew that they should not.

∞

Ame heard the backdoor slam closed. She raced down the steps and pushed back the curtains to see her mother running across the yard, shotgun in hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Irvine, 2010s

The full moon illuminated the fields and outbuildings that surrounded the cottage, a divine light keeping the shadows at bay.

Gretchel would have preferred darkness.

Even though she was barefoot and bare-armed, she hardly felt the frosty April air. Her hands shook, but it wasn’t from the cold. The pain in her head was a physical presence, a vast and endless pounding, like surf beating against the shore. Agitated voices were audible just beneath the waves of pain, but Gretchel couldn’t tell what they were saying, and she didn’t care. She knew what she had to do. She was just concerned that the din was so loud that it was seeping out of her head. If Epona heard her coming, the horse might whinny, which might wake Ame. That simply would not do. She needed to keep Ame well away from all this.

Gretchel stopped, closed her eyes, and tried to center herself. It wasn’t easy, in her current state. The shotgun in her hands made her think about hunting with her father, and, as she did so, she felt his energy emanating from the Wicked Garden. This sense of his presence was a source of both comfort and wrenching sadness. She stifled tears as she whispered, “I’m sorry Daddy. For everything. For everything I’ve done, for what I’m about to do.”

He won’t listen, lassie. On with it, now!

“Daddy, what should I do?”

Gretchel tried to cling to her father’s presence, but she could feel him slipping away.

The Woman in Wool, who had resumed her familiar place inside Gretchel’s head, answered instead.
He would want you to move with the wind to mask the noise
.

Yes
, Gretchel thought,
she’s right.
And so she did. She hunted just like her father had taught her. She held her breath. She kept her eyelids low and her weight high. She moved slowly, silently, and deliberately toward her prey.

The Woman in Wool cackled quietly.

A sob caught in Ame’s throat. “What should we do?” Ame was talking to Suzy-Q, who was pacing near her, whining fretfully.

Startled by the sound of her phone, she fumbled as she tried to answer the call.

“Ame, it’s Eli. I’m on my way to Snyder Farms—almost there. Are you all right?”

Ame slumped against the wall in relief. She wouldn’t have to handle this on her own.

“She’s got the gun.”

“Where is she?” Eli cried.

“Walking toward the Wicked Garden.”

“Stay put. Do not move! I’m coming, Ame!”

Ame continued to watch her mother. For several minutes, she stood perfectly still, and Ame hoped that she was coming to her senses. Then Gretchel was on the move again, and a chill ran down Ame’s spine when she realized what she was seeing. Gretchel was hunting. She wondered if her mother was tracking one of the spirits that tormented her. Then she heard a low growl rumble in Suzy-Q’s throat, and she saw what was happening with terrible clarity.

“No!” Ame screamed.

She dropped her phone as she ran through the cottage and into the night, Suzy-Q close on her heels.

Ella stomped around the kitchen in the house on the hill. She slammed a kettle on the stove, turned on the burner, and tried to calm herself a little before she spoke to the relentless old woman sitting at the table, waiting for her cup of Darjeeling.

“I’ve listened to you and I’ve followed your advice all my life, Mama, but you cannot expect me to sit quietly and sip tea while my daughter is in danger.”

“Whit’s fur ye’ll no go
by ye, girl. Our only role here is to pray and be strong. The spirit has materialized, and it’s up to Gretchel to dispatch it. This is our war, but this is not our battle. Sit, Elphame.”

Startled by the sound of her given name, Ella took the chair across from her mother. Miss Poni sat up straight and tall, determined to see this long night through, a completely different creature from the confused old thing that Ella had been so worried about. But, still, neither of them was young anymore. Ella meditated on her own gnarled hands, and then she began to weep.

Miss Poni covered her daughter’s hands with her own crabbed claws, and sent all the healing energy she could muster. She knew that she could never make up for everything that Ella had lost. Her daughter would have to do that work herself. But Miss Poni also did hope that the healing would begin soon, and she trusted that the battle Gretchel was waging right now was the next step in a process she had started a long time ago.

Ella’s fingers tensed within Miss Poni’s. “I’ve lost too much, Mama. I can’t—I
won’t
let a member of my family face this kind of danger alone. She’s my child!” Ella broke her mother’s hold on her hands and stood up. She turned with a start when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

It was Claire. “Sit, Elphame,” she purred. “It’s time for tea.”

             
Ame had never been trained as a hunter, but she had youth and fearlessness on her side. As she raced across the yard, Suzy-Q stayed at her heel, not making a sound. Together, they stalked Gretchel as Gretchel stalked Ame’s horse. When they got to the barn, the dog stopped. She seemed to be acting as sentry, as if she understood that whatever came next was up to Ame.

              Gretchel was raising her weapon when she was grabbed from behind. A forearm cut off her breath, threatening to choke her, as her toes dangled just off the ground.

             
“Mother, put the fucking gun down.” Ame’s voice was low and clear, her words a command rather than a plea.

             
Kill her!
The voice inside Gretchel’s head was more frantic, but no less forceful. Gretchel’s body struggled with her daughter, while her mind tried to resist the Woman in Wool.

             
Then she was there with them, embodied. Ame gasped, and her grip slackened for a moment. Gretchel tried to raise the gun. Ame let her mother go and tried to wrest the gun from her hands. The Woman in Wool watched this struggle for a moment, and then she bellowed, “
Enough!
”

             
“I thought ye could do for yerself, girl.” Her voice was calm now. “I thought ye understood. Ye cannae save them—ye cannae save yerself—no matter what those old women up on the hill may say.”

             
Gretchel and Ame’s struggle had turned into an embrace. The gun hung in their hands, forgotten. “Does that mean this is over?” Gretchel asked.

             
The Woman in Wool laughed. “I told ye! This is never over. But it looks like I’ll have to do yer work for ye.” Then she turned away, raised her arms, and mumbled a tuneless incantation.

             
The air above the Wicked Garden swirled, and then it seemed as if reality was pulling itself apart. The weedy earth trembled and rolled. Epona bucked and whinnied, Suzy-Q bristled and growled, and Ame and Gretchel looked on in horror as figures emerged from the soil. Five were vaguely human; one had clearly been a horse.

             
Gretchel seemed to be mesmerized, tears running down her face.

             
Ame thought about her grandmother and Miss Poni. “We’ve got to get to the house!”

             
Ame’s voice seemed to rouse Gretchel, and they both raced away from the Wicked Garden, toward the house on the hill. They didn’t look back to see what might be following them.

             
They hadn’t gotten far when they heard a booming sound, like a subterranean explosion. Gretchel and Ame turned to see a wall of water rise from the lake and expand to fill the horizon.

             
“Epona,” Ame shrieked. “Suzy-Q.” Gretchel pulled her daughter close as the water crested over them. She held Ame’s head against her chest.

             
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Gretchel breathed into her daughter’s hair as she waited for them both to be drowned.

              Miss Poni dropped her teacup and lurched forward, both hands clutching the table. “Mother,” was all she said.

              And then… Nothing. Silence.

             
Gretchel waited for the wave that never came.

             
She lifted her head and saw a full moon over a cold April night. The wraiths were gone. The Wicked Garden was quiet and empty. In the distance, she could see a breeze ruffling the surface of the lake, but that was all.

             
They were safe. For now, they were safe.

              Ella and Miss Poni were waiting for Gretchel and Ame, and ushered them into the house on the hill without asking any questions. Ella wrapped her arms around her granddaughter, while Miss Poni gave Gretchel a penetrating stare. “Do what you must, child.”

             
Gretchel nodded as she slipped on a pair of boots and a barn jacket, and headed out the door. She needed to finish something she had started a long, long time ago.

Gretchel couldn’t remember where she had dropped the shotgun, but she knew where to find Troy’s pitching wedge. It would do. In fact, it was perfect,

The Woman in Wool was sitting in the driver’s seat of the rusted-out pickup in the Wicked Garden. Gretchel had been fairly sure that it would take more than a haunted deluge to destroy her.

Gretchel swung the golf club, and busted what remained of the passenger-side window.

She remembered the accident, and sent the driver-side mirror sailing.

She remembered the figure in the road, and smashed out the rest of the windshield.

The Woman in Wool just smiled.

Gretchel was about to swing once more when she heard a voice she had never hoped to hear again.

“Gretchel, it’s me. It’s Eli. Please stop. Come to me, Baby Girl.”

Gretchel shuddered, and dropped the club. She wiped the tears and tangle of hair from her face, and tried to catch her breath. She looked at the cab of the truck and saw that the Woman in Wool wasn’t there anymore. She turned toward the voice, and there he was. She dropped to her knees amidst the broken glass, and Eli was there to catch her.

Eli carried Gretchel to the cottage and into the bathroom. She let him undress her and sat patiently while he ran his fingers over her skin, checking for cuts and embedded shards of glass.

“Is it really you?” she asked.

“It’s really me,” he assured her,

Slowly, methodically, he picked the glass from her knees.

It took Eli awhile to figure out what was missing. It was the amethyst. It was gone. He felt a sick chill.
Fuck it,
he decided.
The prophecy is Diana’s obsession, not mine.
If Gretchel ever wanted to tell him what had happened to the amulet, he would listen, but he didn’t really care. He had never been interested in looking for his second great love, and he sure as hell wasn’t interested now.

After he finished cleaning and bandaging Gretchel’s wounds, he helped her walk to the living room.

They were not alone. Ame was there, as was Miss Poni. Ame looked apprehensive. “You remember Eli, don’t you Mama?”

Gretchel laughed and cried simultaneously as she let Eli help her onto the sofa, next to her daughter. “Yes, I remember him.” Then she laughed again as she enclosed Ame’s hand in her own.

Eli sat down on Gretchel’s other side, and she took his hand, too. She was almost afraid to look at him, afraid he might disappear. Eli seemed to sense her fear. He gave her hand a squeeze, and she ventured a quick glance through the tears. He was older, of course, but still the most beautiful man she had ever seen. And those aquamarine eyes…. Gretchel had no idea how Eli had come to be with her that night, but an explanation could wait. Right now, she just wanted to be with him, and take joy in knowing that he was with her.

Gretchel’s reverie came to an end when Miss Poni thumped her cane on the floor. She looked Gretchel up and down. “You put up a good fight, Baby Girl. I wouldn’t have expected any less.”

              Gretchel just nodded. There was no telling what her grandmother knew, but that explanation could wait, too. Or—knowing Miss Poni—that explanation might never come.

A tall, slender woman with dark hair emerged from the hallway, carrying an overnight bag. Gretchel had never seen her before, but Ame had.

“Claire… What? What are you doing here?” Ame asked.

The black-haired beauty didn’t answer the question. “I’ve gathered some of your things, Ame.”

“You’re coming back to the house with us,” Miss Poni added.

“What? No!”

“We brought you here because I wanted you to see that you’re mother’s all right. Now you’ve seen, and it’s time for us to go.”

“Mama needs me!”

“Not tonight, she doesn’t child.” Miss Poni’s voice was gentle. “You’ve taken good care of your mama, Ame. No one denies that, and no one denies how hard it’s been. But now it’s time to let the grownups care for grownup things while children rest easy.”