The Wicked Garden Page 3

  Teddy had appointed himself the role of Gretchel’s protector a long time ago. His first glimpse of her was a phantasm seared on his brain: A redheaded Amazon clutching her middle, mesmerized by the sight of a burnt up truck. Teddy knew who she was—Gretchel was not someone you would mistake for anybody else—but his first glimpse of her was almost like a ghost sighting. She was ethereal, barely clinging to this world.

  Teddy and his recently divorced mother had just moved to Irvine and were renting one of the houses on the property owned by Gretchel’s family. Once people knew where he was living, they were eager to pass along rumors about hauntings in the patch known as the Wicked Garden, and macabre stories of the Witches of Snyder Farms. Teddy wasn’t afraid, though. He was just curious, and his paradoxical personality—equal parts extrovert and underdog—quickly made him a favorite of Miss Poni, matriarch of the family.

  It was through the old woman that Teddy finally met Gretchel. Miss Poni led him into a room in an ancient cottage nestled close to the shore of a massive misty lake. She announced, “Gretchel, this is Teddy,” and the flame-haired beauty sitting at a window turned to face them.

  Teddy knew that Gretchel hadn’t spoken in months—not since the last suicide attempt. He was well-equipped, though, to fill up the empty air with mindless chatter. He repeated celebrity gossip from magazines. He described his crushes. He showed Gretchel dance moves he’d been working on. Her eyes followed him, but it was only when he pulled a brush out of his knapsack and stroked her long hair, softly, over and over again, that she smiled and spoke.

  “You’re my angel, Theodore Wintrop. They’ve sent you to look after me, haven’t they?”

  Teddy wasn’t sure if they had or not, but he already felt like her caretaker.

  After that afternoon, Teddy loved Gretchel like a sister, and she loved him back. She trusted him with all of her secrets—even the ones he could barely stomach. In her clearer moments, she sought his advice, and even took it—until she met Troy. Teddy would never forget that night.

  He was attending community college in Irvine. Gretchel was a freshman at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Teddy knew that she had settled down a bit since starting school, but he also knew that she was always one drink away from the self-destruct button. Teddy also knew that her party persona had less to do with revelry and more to do with quieting the voices in her head, and he had a bad feeling that Halloween in Carbondale wasn’t the best environment for keeping Gretchel out of trouble.

  The town had a reputation for wild Halloween celebrations. Gretchel’s family had begged her to come home for the weekend. Gretchel was sensitive to the fissures between this world and the Otherworld under normal circumstances. Samhain was no time for her to get lost in a chaos of cheap beer, frat boys, and girls in sexy vampire costumes.

  But Gretchel refused to go home. Teddy assured her family that he’d watch over her. Of course, he had no idea of what that night would bring.

  Teddy was hardly a stranger to serious partying, but he had never seen anything like a Carbondale Halloween. The masses of partygoers were buzzed up and out of control, and Gretchel was no exception. Teddy was pretty sure that they hit every bar on The Strip—some of them more than once. By early morning, the crowd felt dangerously restless, and Teddy was begging Gretchel to let him take her back to her dorm before any real trouble began.

  It was not to be. When she was drinking, Gretchel was attracted to mayhem like a pirate to rum. After the bars closed, she led Teddy into the streets, toward the wild heart of the crowd. Teddy held onto Gretchel’s hand, and let her drag him through the madness. She was dressed as a redheaded Alice in Wonderland. Teddy was dressed as himself.

  The scene was rowdy, like a Kindergarten classroom without a teacher—if the Kindergartners were college students full of adrenaline, hormones, and alcohol. Some of the revelers were dressed in costume, but most wore flannel shirts and torn jeans. Bands trying to bring grunge to the Midwest finished their sets, and, after bartenders announced last call, hordes of students poured out into the already-crowded streets.

  Teddy and Gretchel were in the heart of the mob. When they heard yelps and cheers coming from a few yards away, Gretchel couldn’t tolerate not knowing the source of the excitement. “Put me on your shoulders. I want to see what’s going on,” she told Teddy.

  “Gretchel, you’re six feet tall! You’ll break my back!” Teddy exclaimed.

  “Hop on,” a taller, more sturdily built kid told her.

  “No, Gretchel. We have to go,” Teddy said, trying to pull her away.

  She gave him a sad look, and Teddy stomped his foot.

  “Fine. Hop on the linebacker and take your look, but only if you promise to get us out of here before this turns into a full-blown riot.”

  Gretchel climbed aboard the obliging set of shoulders. Her goofy, inebriated grin dissolved.

  “What do you see?” Teddy inquired, wringing his hands, as if he were the nervous White Rabbit to Gretchel’s Alice.

  “It looks like a car’s been flipped over about a block down the street. Something’s on fire. There are guys hanging from a tree, and there’s a huge fight,” Gretchel shouted.

  Teddy started to panic. “We should go, Gretchel. Now!”

  It was too late. A gorgeous redhead floating above the crowd was hard to miss, and the men surrounding Gretchel had definitely taken notice. They began chanting, urging her to show a little more skin. Instead of flipping up her shirt like so many of the young women around her, Gretchel flipped the boys a double bird. This only made the chanting more insistent, angry instead of playful.

  “Gretchel, stop antagonizing them,” Teddy chided, “You’re going to get us killed.”

  Suddenly an ambulance siren went off in the distance, and Gretchel screamed.

  “You’ve got to get down!” Teddy called. He watched as she held her hands to her head, and wobbled on her perch. Teddy was terrified. He knew that the ambulance sirens had triggered a flashback—a bad one. Teddy got on tiptoe, and looked for a way out of the seething crowd.

  He felt someone tap him on the shoulder, and a voice with a Scottish burr said, “You’d best keep your eye on that one.” Teddy turned and saw a beautiful young woman with raven hair and tulle fairy wings.

  He followed her pointing finger across the street, and saw a young man watching Gretchel quietly and intently. This dark-haired man-boy exuded an eerie calmness in the middle of pandemonium, but Teddy didn’t feel reassured. He felt as if he were looking at the devil himself. Teddy turned back to the girl in the fairy costume, but she was gone.

  Gretchel was screaming, ducking her head, trying to protect herself from invisible assailants. The crowd of men thought she was just being coy with them, and chanted even louder. They grabbed at her legs, trying to pull her to the ground.

  “Hold still! I’m about to drop you!” the guy holding her yelled.

  Gretchel couldn’t hear him. She was somewhere else, and it wasn’t a happy place.

  Teddy laid a steadying hand on her leg and said, “Gretchel, it’s okay. Just get down. I’ll help you.”

  “They won’t be quiet,” she cried. Teddy knew she wasn’t hearing the sirens anymore. She wasn’t talking about the deafening sound of the riot. Gretchel was hearing voices in her head. “Make them stop,” she pleaded.

  She squeezed her eyes closed, and grimaced as if she were in pain. It was rare for her to hear the voices when she was intoxicated. Something was terribly wrong. She kept bending down like she was ducking from something, and holding her head with her hands.

  “Dude, please let her down. I have to get her out of here,” Teddy begged the man holding her.

  The crowd was still chanting for her to show herself, the sirens blared, and then Teddy watched—like he was seeing it in slow motion—as the quiet guy across the street looked directly at Gretchel and launched an empty beer bottle. It struck her in the forehead, knocking her backward into the mob. The crowd roared, cheering the
fall of the bitchy redhead who wouldn’t show her tits.

  As she lay on the ground, blood gushing from her head, a few kind people gathered around to help her. Teddy ripped off his jacket and pressed it against the wound, trying to stop the bleeding.

  After a couple of minutes that seemed like hours, Teddy and the others were able to get Gretchel on her feet. Teddy was trying to guide her out of the chaos when a voice beside them said, “Come on. Let’s get you out of this mess. I’ll take you to my place.” Gretchel stopped as someone grabbed her arm.

  Teddy turned around and a chill ran down his spine. “She needs to go to the hospital,” Teddy asserted, slapping at the hand fastened on Gretchel’s arm.

  “Back off, faggot.”

  Teddy gasped. He was terrified. He knew that this guy was pure evil, and he knew that he was no match for him.

  “No one talks to my friend like that, asshole,” Gretchel growled as she shoved her captor in the chest.

  He just laughed. “Chill out, Red. You’re coming with me. I’ll get you cleaned up,” he said, beginning to maneuver through the crowd.

  “I’m not leaving Teddy.”

  “I’ve got a warm bed and more booze.”

  Gretchel hesitated, and that was all the opportunity the guy needed. He tightened his hold and started pushing Gretchel through the legion of students before Teddy could tell Gretchel what this man had done to her—before he could even protest. He tried to chase after them, but he was carried off in the riot. He felt the pepper spray before he saw any cops, and he hit the ground writhing.

  Teddy never found Gretchel that night. He struggled for hours through streets crowded with people, just trying to get back to her dorm. She wasn’t there, of course, so he slept a few hours in the bushes. Later that morning, he was pacing and waiting when a red convertible pulled up. Gretchel stumbled out, looking like Alice had missed Wonderland and taken a tour of Hell instead. Teddy glared at Troy behind the wheel, but he just grinned and roared off.

  Gretchel’s head was haphazardly bandaged, and Teddy was silently praying that she didn’t have a concussion. He was worried, relieved, and furious.

  “You had sex with him,” he accused.

  “He saved me,” she said.

  “Saved you? Saved you? He was the one that threw the beer bottle, Gretchel. He looked right at you and aimed.”

  She stared at him for a moment, as if she understood the implications, but was more than willing to ignore the truth. “Well, he made up for it. He took me to breakfast at Mary Lou’s, and gave me a hundred bucks for a new outfit."

  “So, you’re a hooker now?” Teddy fumed.

  “Don’t you ever call me that!” Gretchel’s eyes blazed, and Teddy steeled himself for a slap. He had crossed a line, and he knew it. He was able to stammer out an apology while Gretchel was deciding whether or not to hit him.

  “What about the voices you heard last night? They were trying to warn you right before he threw the bottle, weren’t they? You were ducking and holding your head. They knew something was going to happen. You knew something was going to happen.”

  “What voices?”

  “You started hearing the voices when the ambulance siren went off.”

  “I don’t remember a siren, Teddy, and I didn’t hear any voices,” she said, but he knew she was lying through her pretty white teeth. “I barely remember getting hit with the bottle. Just let it go. So I got another wound that will turn into another scar, and a nice guy helped me out. I slept with him. Big deal. Can this fight be over?” she asked.

  But the fight wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. He had fought with her the rest of the weekend, and for a good part of the next seventeen years.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Irvine, 2010s

  Gretchel left the salon with her long hair trimmed and styled differently enough to please her husband. Her phone rang just as she got into her car. It was her mother. After a brief conversation, Gretchel set out for Snyder Farms. The infamous property on the outskirts of Irvine was comprised of three houses, a lake, and two thousand acres of fertile farmland. It was where she was raised, the place she still thought of as home.

  “Mama, I’m here,” Gretchel announced as she walked through the kitchen door of the old farmhouse on the hill.

  She was welcomed by Suzy-Q, a beautiful white Saluki. There had been a dog of this breed on the property for nearly a hundred years. They were a family tradition and Southern Illinois University’s mascot. Gretchel got down on her knees to give the hound a tight squeeze. Suzy-Q licked her face and nuzzled her shoulder, almost knocking her over. Gretchel glanced up at her mother.

  “She’s never this happy to see me. In fact, she usually ignores me.”

  Ella Bloome eyed her daughter strangely. “Suzy-Q’s very sensitive to change. Baby Girl, something’s afoot, and I think you should take heed, just like the rest of us.”

  “Mama, what’s wrong?”

  “Holly had a vision last night.”

  Gretchel dismissed her niece’s precognitive gift. “Her visions don’t always come to pass, Mama.”

  The sound of a bone-shaking, crackling cough came from the living room. Ella scowled, distracted. “Miss Poni’s cold isn’t passing. I’m off to get some fresh ginger and fennel. She’s refusing to see a doctor, but if it persists another day, I may need you, Marcus, and Cindy to help me force her.”

  “I can’t force her, Mama. She never forced me when I was sick,” Gretchel sighed and let Suzy-Q nuzzle her again.

  Ella knelt down to her daughter and the hound. “Holly saw a funeral in her vision.”

  Gretchel felt the color drain from her face as a chill ran down her spine. “No,” she whispered. Then more loudly, “No. Holly’s visions are wrong as often as they’re right, and Miss Poni would know if she was dying.”

  “Miss Poni doesn’t tell all of what she sees.” Ella shook her head, and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye. She rose and pulled on a heavy winter coat. “I won’t take too long; just a few errands.”

  “Take your time.”

  Her mother stopped, and took a closer look at Gretchel. “Baby Girl, are you okay? Have you been crying?”

  “No. No. I’m just sick of this weather. You know how I get in the winter,” she mumbled.

  “I can't see how it’s different from the other seasons. You haven't turned with the wheel in years.” Ella gave her daughter an appraising look. “You should see a doctor, too. You’re skin and bones.”

  “I’m fine, Mama. Just go,” she said as she shooed her mother out the door.

  Ella eyed Gretchel suspiciously, and then she motioned toward the living room. “The over-the-counter cold medicine I’ve gotten Miss Poni to take is making her all kinds of loopy. Be patient, Gretchel. I won’t be long.” And with that she was out the door.

  Gretchel peeked around the corner, and saw her ninety-seven-year-old grandmother sitting in a cushioned rocking chair, an old book across her lap. She wasn’t moving. Gretchel panicked.

  “Grand Mama, are you okay?” she asked. She felt her grandmother’s pulse and shook her gently.

  “Aurora? Is that you, honey?” the old woman asked.

  Gretchel stared at her in disbelief. She hadn’t heard that name spoken in decades. She put her hands to her mouth. She pushed back a sob and an overwhelming urge to lose consciousness. Her eyes fluttered, her head swam, but she slowly brought herself back to reality. The crone was staring at her, waiting for an answer.

  “Grand Mama, it’s me, Gretchel. Mama went to do her running, so I’m going sit with you for a while. Would you like a cup of tea or something to eat?”

  Miss Poni stared blankly. The old woman was confused, and Gretchel didn’t think she had the courage to deal with it. Not today.

  A familiar light came back into Miss Poni’s eyes. “No, Baby Girl. I’m just fine, but it sure is nice of you to come sit with me. I’ve had a terrible cold. I’ll be sound in a few days, and you won’t have to worry ‘bou
t coming ‘round so much. Your mama shouldn’t have to be watching me like a hawk, either,” she said as she pushed her ancient cane against the floor to start the chair rocking. Gretchel stared awkwardly at her grandmother. She was being abnormally sweet. It must have been the medicine.

  “Mama’s fine. I’m sure you took good care of your mama when she got older. It’s just something daughters do,” Gretchel said.

  She took a seat on the sofa, and her sense of panic subsided. She thought about how glad she was that she wasn’t taking care of her own mother, who was seventy-two and still a force to be reckoned with.

  She was also grateful to her older brother, who had taken control of the family farm when he was just twenty-three. Marcus had graduated from SIU, and was preparing to start a masters program in agricultural sciences when he left it all to run Snyder Farms.

  He had worked hard to save his family’s livelihood, and within a few years he pulled the farm out of the red, only to be slammed back down during the flood of ‘93. He rose to that challenge, too, and, now, the farm was not just surviving but thriving under his management. The third house on the property was the one that he had built a few years after he got married. Marcus was committed to the farm in a way that Gretchel never had been and never could be, and, for that, she was thankful.

  “The women in my family died young," Miss Poni said, almost to herself. Then the old woman lifted her head and raised her voice. “I’ve never told you this, but my mama, she died young. She was very sick, Baby Girl. The spirits made her sick, and I don’t just mean the Scotch. She drowned in a pool of guilt and shame long before she ended her life in the cottage lake. You know that lake’s haunted, and now you know who was calling you when you tried to do yourself in all those years ago.”

  Gretchel was barely listening. She was busy dreading the evening ahead.

  “How much do you know about our ancestors, child?” Miss Poni asked.