Dark Corner

Chapter 30

Take Me to the River

I knew what I had to do. I knew from the moment Agatha Hollows disappeared under the bridge that I would have to return someday. The hunters had seen me. The young men—really boys—didn’t see the real me, but the lieutenant knew who and what I was. He has hunted me ever since. I’d have to say goodbye to my friends. I crept into Mrs. Twiggs’s room. She had taken over Mrs. Tangledwood’s master bedroom. She was still asleep. I nuzzled her head. She woke with a smile.

“Terra, I can’t let you go. I know what you’re thinking. It’s too dangerous. Not just for you but all of us. What will we do if we lose you?”

“You have Abigail; she is your leader.”

“Abigail is still just a girl. She’s not ready to take on that responsibility. She’s afraid.”

“Mrs. Twiggs, if I don’t go you’ll never see Albert again. There are worse things than death. None of you, especially Abigail, will be safe if I stay.” I knew this day had been coming, but I’d been selfish in my search to find my Elizabeth. “I’ve shirked my responsibilities to you, my coven.” I paused. “I was afraid.”

Before Mrs. Twiggs could answer, I leaped off the bed. Abigail was in the next bedroom, rocking in the chair by the window, staring into the distant nothingness. A book lay open on her lap. It was The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Curious but appropriate reading. She snapped it closed and pointed it at me. “Terra, do you realize who?” She paused. “What you are about to confront?”

“Yes, Abigail.” I knew what the creature was when it was covered in flesh. It carries its evil now in the spirit world. Agatha Hollows killed the flesh, but she couldn’t kill the spirit. There’s only one way to do that in this world. I believe Agatha left that to me. “The creature is a Dullahan, a headless horseman. It is the only creature that could break through the woods surrounding Agatha Hollows’s cabin and the enchantment Mrs. Twiggs had placed on the Leaf & Page. The whip it carries is made from the corpse of a human spine. His wagon is covered in dried human skin. When the Dullahan stops riding, that is where a person is going to die. It calls out the person’s name, and that is when that person perishes. He has come to call our names. There’s no way to stop him as a spirit, Abigail, he must die when he is flesh.”

“Terra, I can’t let you go. It’s too dangerous,” Abigail said. “You can’t leave me here alone. I can’t do this without you. I have so much to learn.”

I wanted to tell her that I would be back, but I knew it wasn’t true. “Abigail, you’re strong. You’re the strongest witch I’ve ever known. Everything you need is inside you. Embrace your bloodline.”

Abigail didn’t turn to say goodbye. She couldn’t.

There was one last room I had to enter. I stopped outside Pixel’s room, trying to find words to say to him that would make him understand. He was asleep on the featherbed, upside down, his white belly sprawled out, paws kneading the air, giggling. “Flutter,” he repeated. I leaped on the bed next to him and stared at him. What a wonderful creature this Pixel is. He flung his eyes open and leaped on me. We bounced in the fluffy down comforter playing like cats should. Then he stopped. “What wrong, Terra? Why Terra sad?”

“Pixel, I have to leave for a while.”

“Pixel go.” He tumbled around the bed.

“Not this time. I need you to stay here and watch over Abigail and the ladies.”

“Terra no go.”

“It’s important, Pixel. I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

All the joy flushed out of his face. I couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. I scurried out of the room, down the spiral staircase, and out the kitchen doggie door. Tracker was waiting for me outside. I rubbed my head against his chin. “Guard Abigail with your life and be nice to Pixel, okay?”

He wiggled his tailless behind. He was a smart creature for a dog and fearless. I headed to the Montford District with its crooked streets. Its graveyard was a beacon for the ghosts of Asheville. Its geographic coordinates were calculated by Frederick Olmsted, the genius who constructed the landscaping at the Biltmore Estate. The Vanderbilts were steeped in the supernatural pursuits. Olmsted was their architect of the conduit to the spirit world. They searched the four corners of the earth, acquiring exotic plants and trees. Spirit trees from Ireland, holy trees from the dark continent, bamboos from the orient, all to bring the magic from those places to the Biltmore Forest and to Asheville. The Montford graveyard was at the epicenter of that conduit. The lieutenant would be waiting for me there. I arrived early afternoon. I was tired. It had been a long walk. The cemetery was empty except for a few lost souls. I leaped on top of a headstone. I bent over to read the name Mordecai Alabaster. I waited for dusk. It seemed a cliché, but spirits truly like to travel from twilight to dawn. Not that they’d be seen in the daylight but because the daylight reminds them of their life on earth. The warmth they will never feel again. That was true for all ghosts. But the lieutenant was not a ghost. He had never felt the warmth of the sun, for he was pure evil. The sun melted past the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had no fear. I felt almost relieved that this day had come. I had lived it often enough in my dreams. That feeling of standing on the edge of a great precipice and jumping off. The fear of falling is worse than the actual fall. I wanted to jump off into this last journey. I smelled the lieutenant as his wagon drifted through the headstones. There was one other ghost with him. He was not the one I had felt in the Biltmore basement. The lieutenant was holding a brass urn. “You can let him go,” I said. “I’ll show you the way.”

He opened the urn and threw the ashes into the air. They swirled like a whirlwind and formed into Albert who looked at me with terror in his eyes. Then he disappeared.

I led the lieutenant out of Asheville onto the road that Agatha Hollows and I had traveled so long ago. Time slipped away as we walked all the way to Saluda, to the Green River. It was swollen from the spring rains. The lieutenant stopped on the muddy bank.

“You know I can’t cross moving water. You’ve tried to deceive me. All your companions are dead.” The lieutenant lashed out his whip, tearing fur and flesh from my back. I howled in pain.

“Wait,” I said. “This is the only way to get where you want to go. You must follow the exact route that Agatha and I took. It’s an intricate puzzle of connecting pieces you must pass through. I watched her closely. I know all the windows you must climb through before you can open the door. I can help you cross. There is magic I know that can give you your flesh back long enough to cross.”

“If you fail me, Terra Rowan, your companions will suffer a painful death in this life and the next.”

Agatha Hollows left behind crumbs of magic along our path, knowing that someday I would return and might need them. I couldn’t summon magic in my form as a cat, but I could use hers. I followed the crumbs until I found the mountain laurel she had charmed. “Touch this tree,” I said.

They touched the tree. The roots snapped out of the ground and wrapped around them. There was a loud humming from its trunk like a buzz saw. Flesh creeped across their bodies. In a matter of minutes, they stood in front of me as their former selves, the men I had seen in Agatha Hollows’s cabin when they came for her. The mountain laurel withered, leaving nothing but a small sliver stuck in my paw. I tried to pull it out, but it was lodged too deep.

“Carry me, the water is too deep for me to cross,” I told them.

The lieutenant picked me up and carried me toward the water. He stopped. “Walk. It’s the only way,” I said. As he stepped into the water, stepping-stones rose up to meet his feet. As the water rushed past us, we reached the middle of the river. This was where Agatha Hollows warned me the bottom dropped off, deep and dark. I thought at that time she was warning me to be careful, but I knew now she was giving me a way to stop anyone who came after her. I reached up and sunk both my claws into his cheeks. He screamed in agony. The stepping-stones sunk back under the water. A Dullahan is two creatures—the head controls the body. Without it the creature will perish in the flesh and in its spirit. Agatha Hollows could not take his head at the bridge. She left that for me to do. I tugged until his head separated. His arms swayed madly, reaching for his head. He struggled as we sank to the bottom. I gave up my life to save my friends. I could feel my light struggling to pass from my body as I exhausted all my air. I welcomed this death and awaited my new life. And then I felt myself being lifted out of the water. A large black bear had grabbed the lieutenant’s head and was dragging him and me to the shore. The bear tore at the head as the lieutenant’s body pounded at it. The spell wore off in time for him to grab his head and turn back into a vapor, disappearing into the woods. I lay nearly dead at the feet of the black bear. I could smell its foul stench. I was waiting for it to finish me. Instead, it picked me up and stared into my eyes as it shape-shifted into the form of Mrs. Lund.

“Terra, are you okay?” she asked.

I was too weak to answer.

She built a fire and laid me close to warm me. She watched over me throughout the night. In the morning, I woke as she was turning a trout on a stick over the fire. She took off pieces and fed them to me. I could feel my strength returning.

We finished the fish. I sat up and studied her. I had never met a shape-shifter before. Elizabeth had told me of the ancient days when they walked with witches. Not quite friends but not enemies. They had a mutual respect for each other’s magic. Somewhere in our great history we might actually have shared the same bloodline. The magic we had woken in Asheville roused her from whatever slumber she had kept.

“That’s right, Terra, I was drawn to your magic,” she said, putting out the fire.

“You can read my thoughts. I wasn’t speaking to you.”

“Yes, Terra. When Abigail Oakhaven found her spirit tree, it awoke white and black magic. It woke the Dullahan which lay dormant after Agatha Hollows took his flesh.” She threw water on the fire, poked at the embers. “It joined the gray coats to hunt witches to drain their light. When it found Agatha Hollows, it made its way to the eternal light. Now we’re both searching for the same thing to reach the next level of our powers, to follow Agatha Hollows into the light. We can’t let him do that, can we?”

“That’s why you contacted Mrs. Loblolly. You knew her ancestor, the colonel, was tasked with finding supernatural powers to fight the war. You knew that if you followed her you would find the lieutenant.”

“The colonel was sent a message from a private under the lieutenant’s command. The message read they found a witch with great powers and that they had followed her to Poinsett Bridge,” Mrs. Lund said. “When the colonel and his men arrived at the bridge, they found the lieutenant and his men reduced to ashes, their uniforms intact. The colonel kept the uniforms and the ashes and locked them away, thinking they were killed by magic, which they were. Agatha Hollows reached out from the portal just long enough to destroy them, but the Dullahan did not die a true death. The spirit lived on trapped in the ashes, dormant until you woke it. You woke me also, and I’ve been hunting the hunter. I contacted Mrs. Loblolly, and she told me she had the colonel’s collection of Civil War uniforms. When I found the lieutenant’s uniform, it still had remnants of his ashes. I placed it on the mannequin in the Biltmore along with the colonel’s sword to draw him to me. It thought it killed me before I could kill it. It doesn’t know the limitations of witches and shape-shifters. It doesn’t know how to kill me. Your friends aren’t safe. You need to go back and warn them.” With that, she turned into a great horned owl and lifted me up gently in her talons. She could have made me take her to Dark Corner to the portal, but instead she brought me back to Asheville. For now, I believed she was a good being, a kind being, and that’s the way I would proceed with her.

She dropped me at the doorstep of the Tangledwood Estate. “Save your friends, Terra,” she said before flying up over the mountain ridge.

“Terra back.” Pixel flew on top of me. “You keep promise, Terra. Good Terra.” He was so excited to see me he didn’t notice Mrs. Lund. For now, I would keep that secret to myself.

Mrs. Twiggs, Abigail, and Charlotte came out and joined the celebration. Even Tracker acted glad to see me as he cleaned my fur. Albert stood quietly on the corner of the great steps.

“Thank you, Terra, for bringing Albert back. But what about the lieutenant? What happened?” Mrs. Twiggs asked.

“He’ll be back, but we’ll be ready. Gather the ladies. I have a story to tell.”