Witch of the Wild Woods Ch. 00 Prologue

Witch of the Wild Woods

By: Autumn G. Hughes

Prologue: Silver & Gold

Luna left the window open again inviting an obnoxiously frigid breeze into their shared guest room. Lane couldn't sleep. An early attempt to bring himself to orgasam and exhaustion failed. There were a myriad of other ways to get himself to sleep; get up, close the window, maybe even find a way to turn on Uncle Dan's ancient heater. It wasn't like the house was an original colonial or anything. Nevertheless, when they'd first arrived in Washington nearly a month ago, it felt like their uncle had gone out of his way to make everything in his home older than it had to be. "Retro-style," is what he called it.

So it happened that when Luna would sneak out of their guest room around Midnight for the last few days, the "Retro-style" window panes wouldn't be able to close all the way once they were opened. Owls hooted. Late summer breezes whispered through the dense trees. Branches scraped against one another in an eerie nocturnal symphony. Lane was torn by doing what little he had to in order to get some rest and breaking his perfectly comfy position in the old twin bed covered in a thick down feather comforter.

That's when Lane heard the scream.

He immediately sprang out of bed, reached for his navy blue vest, ballcap, and black aluminum maglight. He slid his bare feet into the scuffed Timberland Boots and bounded toward the window. Lane waited. His hands gripped the pale oak window sill. Cool summer air blew across his knuckles. The night symphony had resumed. Leaves danced upon the wind. Branches scratched together and forest creatures moved unseen through the brush.

That scream wasn't Luna's.

Luna did not scream.

He and his adopted sister had only been siblings for three years. That time had flown with the grace of a peregrine falcon in a nose dive after its prey. They'd gotten into more than their fair share of mischief for barely being thirteen; pub fights, conspiracies, and a dozen absurd supernatural situations. As harrowing as the predicaments they found themselves in, Luna never screamed. A squeal of delight perhaps? To scream in fear was something Lane had yet to hear escape his sister's lips.

Having scanned the woods behind their uncle's unnecessarily rustic shack, Lane eventually saw a single light on in the second story bedroom a few houses up the road. They weren't too deep into the woods; barely at the base of mountains. Uncle Dan had managed to purchase what started out as a modern ranch home across the street from Mount St. Helens' National Volcanic Monument. At first read that sounds like a busy tourist spot. It was not. At least it wasn't from the perspective of Lane who'd spent most of his life in Sante Fe, New Mexico with a modest civic center and downtown. In this town, if you could even call it that, the silence weighed heavy.

Screams echoed for miles.

After a few minutes of staring at the light up the road, Lane awkwardly maneuvered his gangly limbs and body out the window and onto the grass outside. That not too distant light was still on. It flickered and strobed. It called to him. Thoughts of phoning the sheriffs were immediately dismissed. Lane had learned time and again that law enforcement, while not entirely unhelpful, were usually more of a hindrance. Whatever danger may lie in wait, Lane and Luna worked more efficiently when they dealt with a mystery directly rather than waiting for questionably-useful-officials to arrive.

Lane had walked nearly a quarter mile up the empty road when he realized that Luna was not by his side. Three years may not be a long time, but in the spring of his youth, Lane considered himself radically fortunate to have a sister like Luna. She simply had no fear. Or, at least none that they'd encountered so far. Her confidence was contagious, and she often admired his ingenuity. Being reliant on Lane wouldn't be giving her the credit she was due. Individually, they could manage just fine. Together? They were an unstoppable force and immovable object that worked in tandem to overcome obstacles no ordinary pair of siblings could. When the frightened scream broke the still of the night once more, Lane felt the absence of Luna's fearlessness and the courage it fostered.

Lane stood there, frozen in the middle of the street across from the house with the second story light blinking in odd sequences. His eyes had adjusted enough to the dark. No street lamps lit his path. Only the bright waxing crescent moon and trillions of stars shown down from above. It was a young girl who'd screamed judging by the pitch and timbre. There was terror laced in that scream that made Lane's skin crawl. Someone needed help and by the looks of things only a thirteen year old armed with a flashlight was going to answer that call.

Taking a deep breath, Lane sprinted around the side of the house. Luna's methods were usually more direct. She would have burst through the front door without knocking. Lane however solved a puzzle by finding the edges first. Making a complete lap around the house, panting for breath, there was no immediate evidence of forced entry. No clear and present danger from the outside. Now came the moment of truth.

Stepping up to the front patio, wooden patio creaking, bending under boot, Lane balled up his fist and knocked on the door; "Miss, it sounds like you're in distress, is everything okay?" Still waiting for his final bout with puberty to deepen his voice, Lane's attempt to come across as authoritative and masculin was comical at best. He probably would die from embarrassment if whatever was waiting inside didn't kill him first.

Suddenly, there was motion in the house. Footsteps pounded down the stairs. A crash of something porcelain shattering and muffled sobbing. Lane stepped back, flashlight held like a club above his head ready to strike.

The door flew open.

Lane held his impulse to close his eyes and start swinging. Instead, he was captivated by a girl of unspeakable beauty. She was the kind of lovely that caused Lane's jaw to lock in place and words to lose all meaning and vanish from his lips. Pale bare feet under powerful legs ran past him. Bare pearl white arms dotted with freckles pumped up and down while she propelled herself forward off the deck. Ample breasts were loosely concealed under a size-to-big black shirt with Chris Jericho's face on it. Her flowing, curly auburn hair shimmered under the dim porch light. Those eyes: sapphire oceans to drown in, stared back at Lane when she'd stopped and spun around to face him.

Her rose petal lips parted in a gasp, "IT'S IN THERE!"

Lane blinked away his instant infatuation and came back to reality. There was a girl. She was in trouble. He had a job to do. Jogging after her to the grass covered empty lot across the street, Lane asked in the manliest voice he could conjure, "What's in there, miss?"

The girl finally came to a stop. Her shimmering blue eyes locked onto the second story window. She breathed heavily. With the back of her left hand, she wiped away the tears that had been streaming down her cheeks. Once she caught her breath, she quickly looked Lane up and down, "Who are you? What are you doing out here?"

Lane cleared his throat and dropped the macho act; it ended up just hurting his throat and sounding objectively silly. "I'm Lane. Lane Woods," He stated calmly, without conjuring any stoicism or false bravado; "I heard a scream from my uncle's house, down the road there. Are you okay?"

"Why aren't you wearing pants?" The girl asked, pointing.

Slightly more self conscious, Lane tried to gloss over his choice of wardrobe, "It sounded like an emergency. They're bike shorts. It's sometimes hard to regulate my temperature at night because the... Nevermind. Not important." Her perfect rose lips flashed a small smile. Lane blustered, "My apologies for not coming to your aid in the proper attire. You screamed so I ran over. Are you hurt? Is someone hurting you?"

The girl shook her head, red locks swayed as she did so, "There's..." She trailed off, biting her lower lip, "I'm fine. It's nothing."

Lane raised an eyebrow, "No one screams like that over nothing." She glanced away, embarrassed. Lane offered a sincere smile, "I know you don't know me from Adam, but helping people is what I do. It's okay. Is it your parent's? Or, relative?" Glancing up to the house, Lane watched as the light in the upstairs room suddenly flickered and shorted out with a loud pop!

The girl gasped and shivered.

"It's a ghost," came a familiar, jovial and accented voice behind Lane.

Turning on his heels, Lane let out a sigh of relief. Luna casually strolled up to the two teenagers standing in the grass with a satisfied smile. Her dark, cropped pixie cut made her look about a year older than she was. Those seafoam green eyes searched over the girl who had run screaming out of the house at the end of the lane.

"It is a ghost, is it not?" Luna asked softly.

There was a pregnant pause that hung in the air over the girl. So many questions in Lane's mind waited to spill out into the frosty early morning air. Reluctantly, the wild red headed girl replied, wrapping her arms around herself like a cocoon while nodding her head.

"Yes," She whispered.

When confronted with the supernatural, skepticism was usually the default position for most individuals. For Lane and Luna, it was more a matter of narrowing down exactly what category of supernatural the situation fell under in comparison to all the other weird shit they'd encountered over the years. Digging into his pocket, Lane withdrew the palm sized spiral notebook that he kept for recording such instances. Thumbing over the tabs, Lane flipped open the section labeled, 'Spooks and Spectral Phenomenon.'

"Ghost," Lane said mostly to himself while uncapping his pen, "If you don't mind, can we ask you a few questions to narrow down exactly what kind of ghost we're dealing with?"

"Have you recently had a close relative pass away?" Luna began while pacing back and forth behind Lane. Her delicate fingers plucked imaginary violin strings in the air while her brain was busy turning over the possibilities.

"I'm sorry, who are you two exactly?" The red headed girl asked again, bordering on breaking down into angry tears. Couldn't blame her. This time of night, alone, possible ghost; Lane should have developed a better bedside manner for this sort of work.

"I'm sorry, I know this must be difficult, terrifying for you. Everything is going to be okay. I promise. My name is Lane and this is my sister Luna. We literally deal with stuff like this all the time," Lane said, taking a cautious step forward.

"All the damn time," Luna added impatiently, "So are we talking multiple voices, one voice, no voice and just knocking on stuff? What?"

Lane shot his sister a stern look. She held up both her hands in temporary surrender.

"What's your name?" Lane asked the gorgeous redhead girl. Her hair was a shade darker than his own. He tried to keep his eyes on hers, but the rise and fall of her chest was distracting even for the most well meaning thirteen year old.

"Jordan," She sniffed, "Jordan Breathnach."

"Breathnach," Lane repeated mulling the origin over in his mind, "Celtic for those who have Welsh ancestry, right?"

"I guess?" Jordan answered, still a little breathless and bewildered.

"It probably is," Luna added, "My brother's nothing if not a wealth of obscure information." She rolled her eyes at Lane and whispered, "May we continue, please?"

"You two are siblings?" Jordan asked.

Luna beamed, "Yup. Twins."

Jordan looked back and forth between the two who couldn't look more unalike. For one, the girl was black. Specifically, she was of Nigerian and Iranian descent, a not too common combination of parinatage, but one that created an unparalleled beauty. Her sharp facial features and athletic build presented a radiant androginous fashion model unusual for a budding teenager to possess. Lane, on the other hand, was a typical awkward American ginger; unkempt hair, gangly limbs, and the makings of a square jaw. He wasn't unhandsome, but if puberty hit some people like an eighteen wheeler speeding down a highway, this boy was a VW Bug politely waiting to change lanes.

"Twins in that we share a birthday, but Luna is adopted," Lane admitted gently, more so for Luna's sake than Jordan's curiosity. Her journey through foster care still held bitter memories even after their three years of living under the same roof.

"We also have the same eyes," Luna added, batting her long dark lashes, "But enough about us. You're hosting a ghost, oui? Up there, where you were screaming from?" Luna gestured demurely with a finger to the second floor bedroom.

Jordan nodded, drew a deep breath and recalled the events of the last month; "You were right about the knocking. For the last few weeks, almost every night, I'd wake up to hear something pounding on my window. The first night, I was... I couldn't bring myself to get out from under the covers. Every night since, the knocking got worse. Louder, more violent. It shook my dresser. Nearly knocked it over..."

Lane placed a gentle hand on Jordan's shoulder. She didn't recoil, but looked up, startled. With a reassuring smile, he asked, "If you don't mind, we'd like to investigate. May we have a look inside?" Jordan glanced up to the bedroom window once more and shivered. Lane added, "We'll be right there with you, okay?"

---

With a fair amount of reservation inviting two stranger's into her home, Jordan allowed Luna and Lane inside. Luna bounded up the stairs seemingly without a care. Lane remained by Jordan's side. The wooden steps were carpeted. No stereotypical creeks as they journeyed up to the haunting on the second floor. Even so, silently creeping through a possibly haunted house in the dark after midnight was plenty unnerving.

Lane whispered, "Your parents aren't home?"

"They drove down to Portland to visit my grandma. She's in hospice. Hasn't been doing well since my grandpa passed," Jordan answered in a low whisper. Lane wrote down the facts in his journal, only occasionally glancing up to catch a glimpse of Jordan's lips.

There was something about those rose petal lips that overwhelmed his thought process; what would it be like to kiss a girl like that? Kissing was not an activity Lane was tangibly familiar with. That was Luna's department. Boys, girls, non-binary people of every flavor were always on his sister's radar and she'd often kiss and tell him all about the experience ad nausium. It sounded like something he'd want to try, but had next to no idea how to go about it. Just as well, he thought, I've got a job to do. Someone needs help, not a kiss.

Luna stopped outside the bedroom, waiting for her brother and Jordan to catch up; "This the room?" she asked, gesturing with her head.

Jordan nodded.

Cautiously, Luna tapped a foot on the royal blue carpet on the other side of the door. Nothing. She stuck her hand into the room as if testing the waters. Lane noticed all the hair on Luna's arm suddenly stood up on end like she'd grabbed hold of a Van de Graff generator. High concentration of static electricity or unusual magnetic field. That wasn't uncommon. There was definitely some kind of... Presence in the room.

Lane flipped on his Maglite and swept the room. Jordan gasped at the sight. It looked as though a small tornado had ravaged everything from the bed, the contents of the closet, and the dresser that had been pushed up against the window. In addition to the disaster spreading out over the floor several smaller objects hung in the air; orbiting nothing in particular; shirts, a small porcelain figurine, and a hairbrush were all suspended, rotating at different speeds.

Instead of screaming, Jordan reached out and grabbed hold of Lane's hand. If he weren't so fixated on studying the room he would have noticed an impossibly beautiful girl had impulsively woven her fingers between his. Instead, he took a step forward after Luna. He was compelled to solve this mystery, but Jordan held him back.

"Don't go in," Jordan pleaded in a hushed voice.

Lane suddenly became aware of his recent attachment to Jordan and touching her soft, snow white skin; "Oh, I'm..." Lane stammered. He forgot how to... word? SPEAK. He forgot how to do that thing with his mouth. Staring into Jordan's brilliant blue eyes, he also failed to notice her expression change from frightened to weirded out.

Then came a flick on the back of his head.

Luna.

His sister's sing-song French lilt chided; "Come now/ loverboy/we've got a job to do."

Lane squeezed Jordan's hand gently and slipped out of her grasp. Luna was right: stay focused on the task ahead of them. There was a haunted room an arms length away that needed to be dealt with.

Luna strided forward again, her eyes searching the floating objects and scanned the mess that had been piled up in the center of the room, "Strange: I'm not seeing any significant build up of ectoplasm. Activity like this usually takes a lot of effort, or maybe they weren't being manipulated for a long enough period of time. Kind of placed here... Haphazardly...?"

Luna bent down and pushed through the pile gingerly with a pencil.

Lane started on the edges. He moved slowly, counter clockwise around the room. The open closet, the bed that was stripped of its sheets, and finally the wall and window that overlooked the street. Lane stooped down to pick up the lamp that had been knocked on the floor. There was a little slime running off the side of the lampshade. Ectoplasm; a sort of coagulant or mucus side effect produced by some spirits pushing through their plane of reality into ours. It was and still is gross.

Fortunately, Lane had stumbled upon a clue.

"Perhaps whatever it is, is searching for something?" Luna suggested.

Lane stepped back from the dresser, "I'd say that's a fair hypothesis. Jordan, you mentioned your grandfather passed away recently?"

Jordan remained outside her bedroom door; "Yeah. Almost a year ago."

"Is there any other special occasion coming up for him? A birthday or anniversary?" Lane probed, tracing a finger along the silver frame of the mirror attached to the dresser. He considered the scene of the crime. The series of events leading up to this night. The Knocking. Someone or something trying to get Jordan's attention to find something. There was something missing to bring the borders of this puzzle together.

"Yeah," Jordan said, a finger pressed against her temple while she recalled, "My grandfolks anniversary is tomorrow. It would have been seventy years together since-"

Furious Knocking rattled the room.

Luna stepped back as the pile of random objects suddenly leapt up and fell back down into the pile.

Lane smiled, "Jordan, what's your grandfather's name?"

Luna had already backed out of the room to stand beside Jordan.

Hesitantly, Jordan whispered, "Patrick."

Again there was a violent knocking that shook the bedroom. Jordan nearly fell over if it weren't for Luna holding her steady. The banging didn't cease as the temperature in the room dropped nearly twenty degrees. Lane could easily see his breath. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a Black Sharpie Marker and thumbed through his notebook.

"Lane, get out of there!" Jordan screamed over the deafening thuds.

"It's okay," Lane shouted back, "What you thought was someone banging on the outside of your window is actually coming from the other side of your dresser mirror."

"What the hell are you talking about?" The girl with the wild red hair cried.