Page 11 of The Bane Witch

11

Bane Witch

Ed reaches for a glass speckled with sick, and Myrtle grabs his wrist. “Go on, Ed,” she tells him. “Get some rest. Acacia and I can handle this.”

It’s after ten o’clock, but we finally get to work cleaning up. I quietly collect a trash bag, reach for the same glass, notice Myrtle doesn’t stop me.

“Throw anything he touched away,” Myrtle says to me. “Anything he threw up on.”

Ed stands, puzzled. “You sure, Myrtle?”

She nods. “Absolutely. I don’t need anybody else keeling over in here. You already got a bad back.”

He gives her an irritated look. “Never stopped you from bossing me around before.”

She only chuckles at that.

“You’re older than I am,” he reminds her as he scoots to the front door, but he bends to rub at his dog’s ears when Bart runs over to greet him, and I know he’s glad to get away for the night.

We stack the remaining chairs against the far walls and scoot the tables over, righting the overturned one together. I pick up dishes from the floor that aren’t tainted, taking them to the sink. Once we’ve collected everything to throw away, Myrtle has me double bag it and take it to the trash cans outside. When I return, she’s shaking a spray bottle of water mixed with bleach, a mop in one hand.

“Get the bucket. Fill it extra hot. And bring a roll of paper towels,” she tells me.

I’m not looking forward to cleaning this up, but it’s the least I can do after killing a man in her establishment. At least it’s not blood. But as I lean over the floor with paper towels a moment later, I decide blood would be better.

Myrtle props the front door open, and we work in silence until the floor and furniture have been thoroughly sanitized many times over. When we’re done, we take turns scrubbing our hands and arms from the elbows down at the kitchen sink. It’s practically midnight when we finish up.

“I think that’s it,” I say, exhausted and ready to take a scalding hot shower and collapse into bed.

But Myrtle frowns. “No, not quite.” She starts for the staircase. “There’s one last thing we have to take care of. Get the door.”

I walk over and close the front door.

“Lock it,” she tells me, and I do as she asks, then follow her into the storeroom.

She pulls a small hiking backpack from one of the lower cabinets and drags it over to the salt bin. “Retrieve the jars.”

“I thought you wanted them hidden,” I tell her as I stand over the bin, uncertain.

“That’s what we’re doing,” she says, reaching down into the salt herself and coming up with a jar that might have once contained pimentos but now holds a bevy of tiny, dried white flowers. She sets it in the backpack. “This was only temporary. We need a more permanent solution until this whole investigation blows over.”

I follow her lead, reaching down and pulling out jar after jar until we’re sure we haven’t left a single one behind. Myrtle zips up the pack and shrugs her shoulders into the straps. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” I ask. “It’s late.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” she says, grinning at me. “On a hike.”

I keep just a few steps behind as Myrtle leads us deeper into the forest than I’ve ever been. I get a sense we may be headed to one of her nightly stops. I have so many questions coursing through my mind that I’ve no idea where to start. My tongue sticks to the bottom of my mouth, useless.

Finally, Myrtle asks me a question. “So, what did you say to Sheriff Brooks? He looked… intrigued.”

“Nothing,” I’m quick to tell her. “I mean, nothing unusual. I saw what everyone else did. I told him that. But…”

She stops and looks at me, her eyes indecipherable in the darkness. “But?”

“I mentioned the woman who came in with the guy who died,” I confess. “Was that wrong?”

Myrtle laughs then shrugs. “Of all the wrongs committed tonight, that one is the least of our worries.” She starts walking again. “He seemed real familiar with you.”

“He gave me a ride from Saranac Lake.” I duck around a branch sticking out into the path, leaving out the bit about my overnight stay. “I ran into him at a market. Didn’t know he was a sheriff, or I wouldn’t have accepted.”

“Probably better you did,” she says over her shoulder. “I haven’t seen him look at a woman like that in years. Might be our best defense under the circumstances.”

I don’t want to admit that the idea sends a misguided thrill shooting through me. He’s an attractive man, the first I’ve met in a long while with a demeanor that actually appeals to me, not just mentally but on some intuitive level. But after Henry, I can’t imagine sharing my life with a man, letting someone in again, trusting him. I know the world isn’t populated with men like Henry, that there are good, decent men out there who make wonderful husbands and partners, loving fathers and respectable colleagues. I just don’t think I have anything left for one of them. I don’t think love is an experience I get to have.

I clear my throat. “Are we going to talk about what those circumstances are?” I ask quietly, stepping over a large rock.

Myrtle grunts, and my frustration grows. But before I can complain, she stops. “Here we are.”

I look around. We are off the path, standing among a mix of balsam firs and red spruce trees. Ferns tickle my calves, and the ground is uneven. Before us rises a low hill. Through the branches, I can make out patches of stars. Not far off, I hear the trickle of water. “And where is that exactly?”

Myrtle stoops, brushing at leaves and needles and pine cones on the hill. Her fingers latch on to something and give it a hard shake. Forest fodder goes flying, and she tosses a sheet of camo netting aside and then a tarp. I hear a hollow sound, the clang of metal. She grips something in the hill and pulls it upward and back. I realize it’s a door.

“Tarp helps to hide the entrance and keeps it waterproof,” she tells me. She drops a foot into the hole and starts down.

I stand in the dark, in shock.

A second later, she pokes her head back out. “Well, come on. I want to get some sleep tonight.”

Stepping in, I realize there’s a steep, ladderlike staircase that leads down into the hole. I take each step carefully, but Myrtle lights an LED lantern once she’s inside. She dims the light, but it’s enough to make my descent easier. I arrive inside a small room, large enough for a cot bed at one end, a worktable and storage shelving at the other.

“What is this place?” I ask her, turning around.

“This,” Myrtle tells me, “is my hideaway. It’s important in our line of work. A little place like this can mean the difference between a long and happy life under the radar and burning at the stake.”

Our line of work… I am prickly with unspoken meaning. She’s not exactly referring to hospitality. “Did you make this yourself?” I ask her, amazed. The walls and floor look like poured concrete. It’s solid and comfortable, a feat I can’t imagine a single person, let alone a single woman, accomplishing.

“I had help,” she says, dropping the backpack on the worktable. “Sadly, he didn’t make it.”

I spin to face her, even more on edge. “What do you mean by that?”

She starts unpacking the jars onto some shelves near the table. Her eyes slide to mine. “Exactly what I said. He died just after the completion, which was great for me and too bad for him.”

I suck in air, not believing my ears. She says it so cavalierly that it makes my hair stand on edge.

“Don’t look so offended,” she says wryly. “He had it coming.”

I practically choke on my own breath.

Myrtle pauses and turns to me, setting a hand on her hip. “You feeling sorry for him?”

I don’t know how to respond.

“Well, don’t,” she says. “His name was Stan. Had a little girl back in the nineties whose room he liked to creep into every night from the age of seven onward. A child that age shouldn’t know certain things, like the taste of her daddy’s sweat. He was a sick man who ruined a life that wasn’t his to destroy. I did the world a favor. But I got my money’s worth out of him first. If you ask me, he went down easy. He deserved a lot worse than I gave him.”

My fingers curl into fists at my side and then straighten again. “H-how did you know that? About his daughter?”

“I got my ways,” she says darkly, giving me an appraising look. “I imagine you do, too.” Once she’s put the jars away, she turns to me. “Let’s get something straight. No one knows about this place, and I intend to keep it that way.”

“No one?” I repeat.

“Well, except Bart,” she concedes.

“The dog?”

“He’s impossible to hide things from,” she tells me. “But he’s not talking anytime soon, so I figure he can be in the club—a kind of honorary member.”

“There’s a club?”

She smiles. “Figure of speech.”

I wrap my arms around my waist, completely lost. “Myrtle, what’s going on here?” I whisper. “What happened to that man tonight? What are you telling me?”

She presses her lips together with pity, then steps over and pushes down on my shoulder until I sit on one of the narrow steps. She takes a seat on a small twig stool across from me. “Piers, honey, there’s something you should know about us. Something your mother should have told you a long time ago.”

“Crows,” I whisper.

“What?”

“You told me we were crows. When I was a little girl and you came to see me, that’s what you said.” My mouth feels dry around the words.

“And so we are,” she agrees. “Do you remember why I told you that?”

“ Because crows feed on what others can’t, including other birds, ” I repeat. I’ve never forgotten her words in all these years.

“That’s right,” she says reassuringly. “You’ve done that before, haven’t you? Eaten something other people couldn’t eat, not without it making them real sick.”

“Pokeweed.” It might be the very first time I’ve spoken the word aloud. Saying it feels like a release, like a marble I swallowed years ago has finally come back up.

“Your mother preferred castor beans,” she tells me. “Swore by it for a time. A short time, mind you. My sister, Angel—your grandmother—liked lily of the valley, which is where your mother got her name. I just so happen to be partial to a little fungus called the destroying angel. I think you’ve heard of it? Tasted it, at least.”

Something inside me roils, bucking against a truth I’ve been denying for so long I don’t know how not to. The mushroom near Regis’s house comes back to me, its enticing glow. And Regis telling me to leave it alone, that it would kill me before sunup. The trail of them around her cabin, like a constellation.

“Of course,” she goes on. “I don’t like to limit myself, especially here where there is so much life. And I have a particular gift for… shall we say… making my own blends? So, far be it from me to chastise you for getting into my supply. It’s just, you might have told me. We could have prepared.”

“Prepared?” I can hardly form the word.

“Now, we have to clean up this mess. Oh, they’ll think he picked the mushroom up long before he got to my place. Destroying angel usually takes several hours to work. But it’s a risk having so many witnesses and Sheriff Brooks sniffing around here. I’ve been very careful to establish myself in this community. I have a good thing going. I don’t need Angel’s and Lily’s mistakes haunting me. And yet here you are.” She gives me another appraising look. “The venery will be angry I kept you from them, but I had to be sure. Now I’ll have to call a conclave to sort this out.”

“The venery ?” I remember the word from the day I eavesdropped on her and my mother.

She pats my knee but doesn’t answer. “At any rate, speaking of names, did you come up with Acacia all on your own?”

When I don’t respond, she goes on. “The acacia tree produces a cyanogenic poison to discourage indulgent herbivores. Did you know that? It’s no wonder you gravitated to it. But it’s your real name that I want to tell you about. You should know that it is very special. You weren’t named Piers because your mother wanted a boy, though she did. We’ll get into that some other time. No, my girl, you were named for Pieris japonica —lily-of-the-valley bush. Delicious berries, I’m told. Sadly, responsible for multiple deaths in children every year. I wish people would stop landscaping with stuff that can kill them. Of course, that would only make our job harder.”

I shake my head, trying to make sense of what she’s saying. “The man, tonight. The one who died. I did that when I spit into his coffee because… because of what I ate in your jars?” I point at the shelves, which I now realize are lined with countless jars like the ones in the storeroom. “That was destroying angel mushroom?”

“Delicious, isn’t it? Such a shame the general population will never get to taste it.”

I stare at her, horrified and titillated all at once. “What about when I was a little girl? The man at my feet, I did that, too?”

Her brows arch tellingly. “Ah. The bad thing. I was wondering when that might come up. Yes, I’m afraid you were initiated into our gifts rather young. I imagine he was your first.”

“My first?”

She smiles. “But certainly not your last.”

I feel nauseous. I don’t bring up Don; I don’t need to. It’s evident that his death is also my doing.

“It must have been terribly confusing for you,” she goes on. A sympathetic hand pats my knee. “What horrors did you see when you looked at him? Far too young for such things, but nature will take its own course, I’m afraid. Like it did with your mother. Don’t trouble yourself over him any longer, child. I’m sure you didn’t fully grasp it at the time, but you were only doing what you were born for. And in the end, the world was better off. The women you spared would thank you if they only knew to, I’m sure.”

I bracket my head between my hands, trying to stitch it all together.

“There, there,” she soothes. “It’s like I always say, a very little poison can do a world of good. ”

My eyes meet hers. “But I killed them. You’re saying I’m a murderer.”

Myrtle clucks her tongue in disgust. “You misunderstand me, my dear. A Corbin, yes. A murderer, no. ”

“A killer,” I whisper.

“That, too,” she agrees amiably. “Every family has their traditions.”

“Aunt Myrtle…” I stare at her in disbelief. “What are we?”

She takes a deep breath. “You’re not just any old girl from any old family, Piers. You never have been. You’re a bane witch. And it’s time you start living like one.”