A Sinister Spell in Faerywood Falls Read online

  Apparently that wasn’t all that my aunt, whom I had never met, had arranged for me. Out of the kindness of her heart, she’d also lined up a potential job for me in town.

  I was grateful for it. I really was. Especially since she didn’t even know me.

  The cabin, I soon discovered, was probably nothing to get all too excited about. As I pulled up in front of it, seeing the number four in faded white paint on one of the posts on the porch, I was immediately reminded of a cabin that I’d stayed in as a kid when I’d gone to summer camp. This one couldn’t have been much bigger.

  “Well…Mom said it would be rustic,” I said, staring out at the tiny cottage, frowning. “Rustic is right. I wonder if I’ll have to sleep on the floor.”

  I hopped out of the car, and was greeted by the noise of chirping crickets and gurgling bullfrogs. It was a peaceful sound, and it quickly put me at ease. I noticed there was a cute little tree house built into a thick tree in front of the cabin, a feature that would doubtless have been more appreciated by guests with children to enjoy it. Still, it looked fun and whimsical. Maybe this place had some charm to it after all.

  “All right, you, let’s get you inside before you take off into the night,” I said, hefting the box with the sleeping fox out of the front seat. As carefully as I could, I walked up the creaking steps to the door.

  Right…the key.

  I set the box down beside the door and wandered back down into the yard. A small, thin pine tree that stood on the front lawn had a low hanging branch, and I spotted the blue birdhouse swinging from it. Reaching up inside, my fingers scraped against the cool metal of a key.

  Well, at least it was right where I’d been told it would be.

  I returned to the porch, picked up my new fox friend, and unlocked the door.

  I stepped over the threshold, and my heart sank as I switched on the light.

  It was small. Very small. As in there were only two rooms in the entire place, and one of them was a bathroom.

  A narrow bed that was covered in patchy quilts stood in one corner. A kitchenette ran along the wall to my left just as I entered, and I noticed a small, wooden table beneath a window that looked barely big enough for one person to sit at. At least there was a refrigerator. There was also a ratty couch that was covered in a mustard yellow and pea green fabric that looked straight out of the seventies, and a wood stove in the corner that looked as if it hadn’t been used in years.

  “I left home…for this?” I asked, closing the door behind me.

  I coughed as I inhaled. A thick layer of dust and mustiness had settled in over the whole cabin. I wasted no time turning to one of the windows and shoving it open. It stuck a little, and I made a mental note to try and fix it later. If I was going to have to live in such a tiny place, I was going to need to make the most of it.

  I walked the short distance from the door to the couch, where I gently set the box with the sleeping fox down. I debated about putting it in the bathroom but I wanted first dibs so I could shower.

  I turned around and stared out the window at the car, still completely packed with all of my stuff, including a toothbrush, pajamas, and all the food I’d gotten at the gas station.

  With a groan, I trudged back out into the night to get the minimal amount of items I’d need to make it until morning.

  Later, as I let my hair air dry and my food heat up in the tiniest and loudest microwave I had ever seen, I used the internet on my phone to search for a local wildlife service. It was after midnight, and I knew it was a long shot, but I tried to call them anyway.

  There was no answer and no way to leave a message, so I hung up and tried to find a veterinarian in the area. I was glad to see that there was one…and only one. I sighed, dialing the number. It was no surprise when he didn’t answer. I left a message on his machine.

  “Hi, my name is Marianne Huffler, and I just moved into the area. While I was out driving tonight, I happened to find an injured fox on the side of the road. I brought it home with me, worried that it might get killed. It’s sleeping right now. I think it’s okay? Anyway, please call me back. My number is…” After leaving my number with the machine, I sighed and hung up. It wasn’t like I had actually expected anyone to answer, especially not this late. Even still, it would have been nice to have some help.

  I got up from the arm of the chair where I was sitting, and walked over to the box, peering inside. The fox had curled up in a tight ball, and I watched the even rise and fall of its chest. It was sleeping, and pretty soundly, too.

  I ate as much of the microwave noodles as I could before I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I dragged myself over to the bed, snatching my pillow off the floor along the way, and collapsed onto the mattress. I didn’t even care that the blankets weren’t mine. At that point, I knew that I could probably sleep on a cold rock.

  I rolled over onto my side and realized I could see the night sky out the window. The stars were so clear out there. It was like the entire sky was made of them.

  It reminded me of the night that my mother had told me…well, everything.

  “Prudence? Dear, there is…something that I need to tell you. I need you to sit down to hear this, all right?” Mom had said.

  “You’re acting like someone’s died, Mom,” I’d said. “What’s going on?”

  She’d sighed, her eyes puffy. “After this whole thing that happened with Peter Snipes, I’ve realized I have to tell you the truth.”

  “The truth? The truth about what?” I asked.

  She gave me a hard look in that moment. “All of these terrible tragedies that have happened to you and around you, especially this most recent one that nearly cost you your life…haven’t they ever seemed strange to you?”

  “Of course they have,” I had said. “First Jacob was murdered, and then after I’d managed to meet Peter, another man who I could love, a man who eventually asked me to marry him, he turned on me and tried to kill me.”

  My mom had gone pale, like the beautiful moonlight streaming in through the windows of her kitchen, as we had sat around the table. It had always been just her and me in that tiny cottage on the outskirts of Hillbilly Hollow, Missouri. Even after I had grown older and moved into a place of my own, I had still spent a lot of my time over at my mom’s. We Huffler women mostly kept to ourselves and liked our quiet life.

  “What if I told you there was a way to break your cycle of bad luck?” she asked in such a low voice that I had almost missed her words entirely.

  “I wouldn’t call it a cycle,” I said.

  “You’re right, that’s not the right word for it…” she said, as serious as I’d ever seen her. “It’s a curse. And there is only one way to break it.”

  She then proceeded to turn my entire world upside down by telling me that I was not, in fact, her daughter. Not by blood, anyway. She’d adopted me when I was only an infant. She’d found me in a basket in a forest when she was visiting her sister in the Colorado mountains one summer. She also told me there had been a note tucked into my basket. The note said that the child must remain in Faerywood Forest, and if she did not, then she would be cursed, plagued with misfortune until she returned to that spot.

  Misfortune didn’t even scratch the surface.

  “I didn’t believe it at the time but now I do, and I see there is only one answer,” my mother had said. “You have to return to the place of your birth. It’s the only way to break your curse.”

  A curse, huh? Even though it had been several weeks since that conversation, I wasn’t any closer to believing in curses. Sure, I’d had bad luck in the romance department. I’d fallen head over heels for “Preacher Jacob”, the pastor at the little church in Hillbilly Hollow, but he hadn’t returned my affections. He wound up dead not all that long after I’d confessed my feelings for him.

  That heartbreak ended up introducing me to Peter Snipes, the funeral director at the home where Jacob’s services were held. Peter had been so kind to me, noticing
how much I was hurting even though I wasn’t Jacob’s family. We started spending a lot of time together, and one date led to another, and before I knew it, he’d proposed.

  I had never been so happy.

  At least, I was happy until I discovered a terrible secret about the crooked way Peter ran his business, a secret that made him feel so threatened that he had poisoned me to keep me silent.

  The next time I opened my eyes, I was hooked up to tubes and wires, with the sterile lights of a hospital shining down on me. I’d been told he’d tried to kill me and nearly succeeded.

  The idea of restarting my life, away from all of that pain and heartache was definitely appealing. Whispers followed me wherever I went around town, and I was tired of all the pitying stares. Even if I didn’t stay here in Faerywood Falls, Colorado, permanently, it would still give me a chance to let the dust settle and allow people back home to move on with their lives.

  The idea of leaving my mother was a lot harder, but finding out that I was adopted so long ago was something that was going to take me some time to come to grips with anyway. And what better place for that than the spot where I was supposedly born?

  My mother never found that note again, the one she’d discovered tucked into the basket with me when she’d stumbled upon my crying form in the middle of the Colorado woods. The note had been lost over the years since. But I didn’t need to see the message to believe the story, strange as it was. My mom had never lied to me.

  Anyway, all of that was in the past now. I had put my sad story behind me and was ready to move on with a new life in a new place, with any luck.

  Gazing out the window at the starry sky over Faerywood Falls, I hoped that the morning would bring goodness with it. The image of the bats fluttering over the road and the golden eyes staring at me from the depths of the trees sent a fresh shiver down my spine as I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t want to tempt fate, but…

  What could go wrong next?

  5

  It was as if I’d just drifted off to sleep. My dreams were filled with dancing lights and lapping water against a shore. The moon hung high above, and every once in a while, I could have sworn that I heard it sing.

  Bang bang bang.

  I sat straight up, my heart pounding in my chest.

  It was morning. Bright, warm light streaked in through the windows. In the glow of the new day the panes looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned in years. There was a rich smell of cedar as the sunshine washed over the wood of the small cabin. A layer of dew clung to the branches outside the windows.

  Bang bang bang.

  I blinked, looking around. What was making that racket?

  My foggy mind suddenly seemed to switch on, and the memories of the night before came flooding back to me. The gas station. The golden eyes. The fox.

  The fox.

  I leapt out of bed and hurried over to the box, peering inside.

  The animal was gone.

  Where could it be? I whirled around and looked all over the floors, the couch, and glanced under the bed. The fox was nowhere to be seen.

  The only evidence of it that I found was the torn package of food from my dinner the night before. Apparently, my furry visitor had helped itself to my leftovers after I’d fallen asleep.

  With a groan, I turned and figured out where it had gone. The window I’d opened last night was still cracked, and there was definitely a big enough gap for a fox to slip through.

  A woman’s face suddenly appeared behind the glass, and I jumped.

  She was shorter than I was, with white hair and piercing blue eyes. Her face was round with a small chin and a narrow, pointed nose that somewhat reminded me of a bird’s beak.

  She was wearing what looked like a beekeeper’s hat without the netting, and a shirt that belonged on a safari, not in the middle of the forest.

  “Good to see you’re up and about already,” the woman said with a firm nod and a smile. “It’s best to make sure that the early bird catches the worm, right? Good for you.”

  I glanced down at myself and wondered what she meant. I was still in my pajamas, and the room inside looked like a mess, even though I hadn’t brought all that much in with me the night before. Did it look like I was busy working instead of snoozing the morning away?

  “Uh…thanks,” I said, not really sure what to say. “I don’t mean to be rude, but…who are you?”

  The woman tipped her hat. “The name’s Mrs. Bickford, the owner of this little slice of heaven that you’re renting. Which makes me your new landlady.”

  “Oh, well it’s very nice to meet you,” I said, reaching for my jacket on the back of one of the chairs. “If you give me just a second to change, I’ll come out and greet you properly.”

  “That’d be good. There are a few things I wanted to go over with you,” she said. She turned her head and looked up, her brow suddenly furrowing as she put her hands on her hips. “No, Jim, I won’t forget.”

  “Sorry?” I asked.

  She looked back at me. “Oh, nothing, dear. It’s just my husband. He’s always nagging me about this or that. You’ll learn how it goes when you get married.”

  I couldn’t see anyone standing out there with her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t just off to the side, or maybe down off the porch.

  I quickly grabbed my overnight bag from beside the bed and ran into the bathroom. I hastily changed into something that would be more suitable for moving all of my stuff inside, brushed my teeth, and rushed back outside.

  Mrs. Bickford was standing on the porch overlooking the lake that I could now fully see in the light of day.

  It was magnificent. The lake was wide and long. I could see the other side, where other tiny cabins were dotted around the shore. The same dense, thick forest pushed right up to the edge of the water, the dark green pines and spruces all stretching upward toward the beautiful, cloudless sky.

  The water rippled as a gentle breeze passed over its surface, and it reached the two of us standing there on the porch, ruffling my hair ever so slightly. It carried the earthy scent of the grass and the musky smell of fresh water lakes.

  The view alone eased my anxious heart, and helped me to relax a little.

  “So, Prudence, isn’t it?” Mrs. Bickford asked, turning to me.

  “Actually, I’m going by Marianne now,” I said.

  She didn’t question that, just nodded up at me, a look of determination on her face. “Well, I’m glad to see that you found the key to the cabin, Marianne. How was your first night?”

  “Great,” I said. “I was so ready to sleep when I finally got here.”

  “What time was that? After midnight?” the woman asked. “I saw your headlights pull in.”

  I said, “Oh, I’m really sorry if I woke you up or anything. I didn’t mean to be so loud.”

  “You were fine,” Mrs. Bickford said. “Now, there were a couple of things I wanted to show you.” She turned and stepped right into the cabin, leaving the door open for me to follow after.

  I blinked and followed her inside.

  “Now, this place may be small, but I like to think the tight size just makes the cabins cozy. Besides, I heard you’re looking to move into the area permanently from Missouri,” she said, walking over to the fridge and pulling the door open. “Should be a nice place to get your feet off the ground.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, a twinge of nervousness flooding through me. “How did you know that?”

  “Your aunt told me,” she said, pulling a water bottle out of the fridge. “Would you like one, too?”

  “Sure,” I said, wondering why the woman was going through my fridge and asking if I wanted anything. “So do you know my aunt well, then?”

  “Very well, yes,” she said. “My husband and I have been friends with your family for many, many years. She’s a special lady, your aunt. And so is that cousin of yours. She really knows her way around a – well, lookie here. I see that Mr. Gibbs did get here yesterday to fix t
hat ice maker. Good to see, good to see.” She turned to me and planted her hands on her hips again. “Now, if you ever need anything, and if something breaks, or you spring a leak or anything like that, you just let me know, and I’ll let Mr. Gibbs know, and he’ll come right over. He’s a real hoot, that one. He likes to talk about the old days. Where everything around Faerywood Falls was as it was meant to be.”

  “And how is that?” I asked as I watched her move over to the stove, pull open the door and peer inside.

  “Well, quieter for one,” she said, running her finger along the wire racks inside. “All these tourists around have made life here a little more…well, difficult, as it were. Those of us who have lived here for generations don’t much like the company. It messes with our ability to do – oh, good, I did leave a broom here for you. Silly me, I’d borrowed it a few weeks ago and…oh, dear, this isn’t a bed for a pet, is it?”

  She’d stopped over the box on the couch where the fox had been sleeping the night before. The look she gave me was like a teacher who’d caught a misbehaving student in the act.

  “No, not a pet,” I said. “It was – ”

  “Because you know that you aren’t allowed to have pets here,” Mrs. Bickford said. “My husband is highly allergic, and we’ve had too many accidents over the years with people’s precious pets getting lost in the forest. I’d had enough of the reports.”

  “That makes sense to me,” I said nervously.

  Mrs. Bickford sighed and looked about. “Well, I should get out of your hair. Jim tells me that I talk too much and make our guests uncomfortable. I just wanted to make sure you knew you were welcome, and be certain that everything was working well enough for you. Oh, that reminds me. The door to the bathroom sticks sometimes. Just twist the handle to the right and it should pop open, okay?”

  “Sure, sounds good,” I said.

  “I left my number on that note on the fridge for you,” she said, pointing to the refrigerator door. “Call anytime you need anything, but only call after nine if it’s an emergency. Oh, and I’m not home on Thursdays. That’s bingo night and Jim hates to miss it.”