Page 125 of The Witch’s Orchard

Which leaves only Deena’s room.

I pause outside it. Take a breath. Listen.

A woman’s voice is talking, but low enough that I can’t make out the words. A little girl cries. Not screaming this time but weeping. The other voice snaps, and the weeping gets louder. Louder.

“I want my mommy…” the little girl wails.

I spin around the doorway and find… nothing. An empty room. An empty bed. The door to the closet hanging open. The door to the bathroom also open. Empty. There is no one here.

I wait. Listen.

“Just sit still,” Deena’s voice says. “Sit still and it’ll be okay.”

My breath catches in my throat. The sound is coming from behind the tapestry to the left of the bed. I pause. Look at the window and remember how I’d felt so sure that there was something off. Something that didn’t fit.

Now I understood. Deena’s room was longer in reality than it appeared from within. Standing down in the yard, looking up at the house, the window had been in the middle of the wall, but here, from within, the window was nearly at the edge.

A second room. A panic room. Hidden.

“It’ll be okay,” Deena says again. “If you just listen and mind. Sit still now.”

And I realize I had been wrong. Deena had hidden those girls in this house the whole time. Right under the nose of everyone who visited, everyone who attended her Christmas parties and sang beside her piano, everyone who admired her roses and complimented her décor. Right under the nose of everyone. Including me.

I breathe in a long, silent breath and feel a tickle in my chest that I can’t afford. I can’t afford the noise, the distraction. I swallow, desperately, in an effort to shut the cough down, and, finally, get it under control.

Again, I ready my gun and nudge the tapestry aside with my foot. Behind it is a thick steel door, the front of it dressed to look exactly like the wattle and daub in the rest of the room. It is hanging open.

I tiptoe inside. This is a panic room, as I thought. But it’s been kitted out like a nursery. Two twin beds against the wall, each under a skylight, each adorned with its own handwoven wool blanket. One red, one blue. There are two desks and two chests and two baskets of antique woodentoys and a tray with a carafe of water and a plastic cup and, on the farthest side of the long room, Deena Drake, sitting, with Lucy Evers at her feet. Deena is sitting very awkwardly. And then the penny drops.

Deena Drake is tied to a chair.

I move toward her.

“Deena,” I say. “What—”

And then there is pain. Nothing but pain. It spreads through my skull, a sickening heat. I spin around but I’m already falling.

My gun goes off, but I feel sure I hit nothing. I see a glint of silver. A candlestick. Plaster from the ceiling falls like snow into the pale blond hair of a young woman. Her delicate feylike features and ice blue eyes are unmistakable.

“Jessica?” I say.

She smiles at me.

It’s the last thing I see.

FORTY-TWO

I’M SITTING ON THEporch. I cannot see the driveway or the forest or the holler. I can only see fog. A silver mist as thick as stew. It swirls only feet from my vision.

My granny is sitting behind me, and I can hear the creak of her rocker. I remember the way her ankles were so thick. The way her hands were so warm. The way she chuckled deep in her chest, her bosom bouncing, when she laughed. I don’t see any of it now. I only hear her rocker. I can’t turn my head. I am stuck, trapped in a body I cannot control.

“Did you find her?” she asks. “The little girl?”

“Yes,” I say. “But, by the time I did, she had turned into a monster.”

My granny goes on rocking, and now I can hear the knife in her hand. She is peeling an apple. I hear the gritty rip of skin from flesh. The undoing of a thing.

“Every apple has a little poison inside it,” she says.