As she gazed at Stephen’s crude altar, the blood of his animal sacrifice splashed across the rough-hewn wood, she understood his intention. She would be his final sacrifice. He mistakenly believed he’d access the power of the chamber by taking her life.
Sweat rolled down his face as he worked, muttering under his breath, dabbing his fingers into the blood and wiping it across his forehead and then pressing it to his lips.
She watched him with detached awe, and she hardly felt her feet pressed into the cold stone floor or her arms secured to her body by the straightjacket.
The energy in the chamber shifted with Stephen and she thought, yes, it yearned for the sacrifice as well. Whatever the spirit of the place had once been, it had become a mouth hungry for suffering and death.
George had told her of such places, places where ancient people went to satisfy the spirits with sacrificial offerings. Places that later grew overgrown and derelict after the people realized that feeding it only made it hungrier and more powerful.
“Stephen, what happened to George?” she asked.
He intended to kill her. He no longer had to keep his silence.
He blinked down at the altar, lifting a stone and then shaking his head and replacing it. When he looked up, his expression was flat and cold.
“George,” he said stretching the syllable out long. “George died. Your precious George,” he muttered. “He hated me; you know?”
Liv did know.
“Is that why you killed him?”
“Ha,” Stephen laughed and looked at her, incredulous. “I’m not an animal, Liv.”
He flipped through a book. It was not one of George’s spell books, but Liv could see the symbols within it were surprisingly similar.
“Where did you get that, Stephen?”
“I didn’t take it from George,” Stephen snapped. “Though if you want the truth, I intended to. I intended to take the stones and the books, all the magic he withheld from me, and you. He kept it from you too, Liv. This,” he slapped a bloody palm on the book. “I bought from a man in Iceland. I went there a year ago. I was dreaming these symbols, Liv. Your and George’s staves, or whatever you called them. But even after I got the book, I couldn’t stop thinking of the hag stones. I needed them. To do this magic, I needed the stones.”
“So, you killed George for a pile of stones you could have found on the bank of a river?”
He glared at her and spat on the floor.
He looked at the spit, horrified.
“My tooth,” he shrieked, dropping to the ground.
Liv gazed at the clear spittle. There was no tooth.
Stephen picked up a stone and held it out, accusingly.
“You did this! You and your black powder and your black magic!”
He threw the stone across the room and climbed to his feet.
“I went to the Stoneroot Forest and George tricked me. ‘Come with me, Stephen. I’ll take you to my cabin,’ he said. But he didn’t. He led me deeper and deeper into the woods until I was lost, and then he… he disappeared.” Stephen clutched his head, as if the thoughts were trying to escape. “He appeared and then disappeared over and over until I didn’t know if I was dreaming, imagining him. And then I was holding a knife. I don’t even know where it came from, and the next time he appeared, I plunged it into his heart.”
Liv listened to the story numbly. George had lured Stephen to the cabin. He’d intended for Stephen to kill him.
“Damn you, George,” she mumbled.
Stephen looked up at her sharply.
His eyes watered and ran. He was not crying tears of sadness, but tears of desperation.
He touched a finger to his cheek and howled, rubbing at his cheeks with both hands.
“Blood, there’s blood coming from my eyes.”
But there was no blood.
In the darkened corridor, Liv saw Mack. He held a large rock in his hand.
He waited until Stephen turned back to the altar.
Liv nodded, and he raced into the room.
Stephen barely had time to straighten when Mack crashed the rock into the back of his head. Stephen went down on his knees and fell forward, thumping against the table and falling to the floor.
Mack stared dumbfounded at the crumpled doctor.
“Release me,” she commanded Mack. “Don’t worry, I can feel him. He’s still alive.”
Mack undid her straps.
Liv grabbed the poison ring from the altar and followed Mack down the tunnel.
Around her, the whispers called her back.
Stay, they seemed to say. Stay for a little while longer.
She slowed and stopped, bracing a hand against the damp stone wall.
Mack turned.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and then as if seeing something in her face, he grabbed her hand and pulled her forward into the cool night.
Once out of the chamber, her legs seemed to function again. Some of the fog in her mind abated.
“There,” Liv exclaimed, pointing at the black cat who stood at the base of the willow, watching them. She took the bone sitting near the cat’s paws and slipped the poison ring over it.
Digging quickly, she stuffed the finger and ring into a shallow hole and threw dirt upon it.
“Liv,” Mack yelled, and she looked up as Stephen raced from the chamber, a knife clutched in his hand.
Mack dove in front of her, and Liv screamed as the blade sank into his chest.
The cat screeched and jumped onto Stephen’s back. He shrieked and tried to wrench it free, but its claws were lodged deep in his shoulder.
“Volva,” George’s voice floated across the forest. The sound had emerged from dark grove of leafy trees.
Liv helped Mack, limping and clutching his bleeding chest, toward the trees.
A thick mist began to rise from the ground. Soon their feet and ankles were obscured, and then their legs.
Liv heard Stephen searching for them, cursing and tearing at the brambles.
They slipped deeper into the woods and soon Stephen’s shouts were drowned by the forest.
“My truck’s in the parking lot,” Mack wheezed gesturing forward.
Somehow they made it to the blue pick-up truck with a partially peeled bumper sticker on the rear fender that read ‘I’ve got Detroit Tiger Fever,’ next to a goofy cartoon tiger. Mack struggled into the passenger seat.
“Keys are under the rug,” he muttered, gesturing at the floor.
Liv pulled the keys out, stuffed them in the ignition and roared from the parking lot. The truck fishtailed as they turned onto the road that led them away from the asylum. Liv did not have a driver’s license.
Mack glanced at her, his face slick and pale.
“You okay?” he mumbled.
Liv gritted her teeth and nodded. She wasn’t a good driver. She’d only driven a handful of times in her life mostly with her mother on the rare occasion they borrowed someone’s vehicle.
She sped away from Traverse City, knowing the hospital could not save Mack from Stephen’s knife. If he were to survive, she had to get him to the Stoneroot Forest.
Chapter 38
Liv
Liv paused at the edge of the wilderness, breathless as she took in the house blazing in the violet dusk. Light flickered in the windows and poured forth from the first-floor windows and the door that opened to reveal dozens of costumed strangers. People milled on the porch. The sounds of a string band floated a haunted melody across the lawn.