Page 18 of The Witch

PRESENT DAY

JULIA

Caroline Eldridge. The witch.

I open my mouth, ready to ask my grandmother what the hell she’s talking about. Except at that moment, I notice tendrils of smoke wafting out of the toaster. That thing is about five seconds away from catching fire.

“Gram!” I cry out. “The toast!”

Gram turns her head to discover the smoking toaster; her expression is utterly unimpressed. When it is clear she’s not going to do anything to prevent the imminent combustion, I jump to my own feet and press the button to eject the bread. I start to freak out when nothing happens and the stench of scorched bread grows stronger. Panicked, I yank the plug out of the wall.

Disaster averted.

I lean against the counter, breathing hard. Meanwhile, Gram struggles to her feet, moving toward the toaster. I watch with my jaw slack as she pulls the burnt toast from the machine. One piece is too hot and falls from her fingers to the floor, but she manages to get the other on a plate. Then she scoops up the toast on the floor and places it on my plate next to the first. She picks up the plate and puts it down on the kitchen table.

“Here you go, dear,” she says, as if this is a perfectly normal breakfast routine.

I gawk at the toast. Both pieces are charred black, and one was on the floor only seconds ago.

“Uh,” I say. “I’m really not that hungry.”

“Are you sure?”

I push the plate to the center of the table. “Very sure.”

I’m not hungry, but I am extremely worried. My grandmother—one of the best cooks I’ve ever known—burned toast and served it to me like it was fine. Off the floor. And in the process of cooking it, she nearly set fire to the house. It was bad enough when she was calling me by the wrong name, but this is an entirely different level of dangerous. And this is a woman who Ethel was planning to leave on her own all day when she did errands outside the house.

I need to talk to Ethel about my concerns—ASAP. But right now, I’m late for my appointment at the museum.

I left my purse in my room, so I head back through the living room on my way to the stairs. As I pass through, I feel the eyes of the couple in the painting staring at me, as I often do. But this time, the feeling is so intense that I stop short and whirl around.

The likeness of Archibald and Molly Eldridge has hung over the mantel for as long as I can remember. Over three hundred years. I can’t tell how old they were when they sat for the painting. They could be anywhere from my age to middle-aged, although neither of them has gray strands showing.

Archie Eldridge appears to be the successful and powerful merchant that he was. His strong chin is lifted in the air—the sort of man who commands respect. I can’t help but notice that he was handsome, in a seventeenth-century sort of way.

Molly Eldridge was also very attractive—a beautiful woman by any standards. Her features are soft and feminine, but there’s something hard in her eyes. A fierce determination. Molly Eldridge was a woman used to getting what she wanted.

I wonder how my great-great-great-etc.-grandmother felt about the fact that her husband’s former wife was a convicted witch.

As I stand there staring at the painting, the silence in the room feels almost stifling. Something is off in here, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. I look around, trying to figure out if the furniture moved during the night. But no, everything is exactly where it was the night before.

Except…

My gaze falls on the grandfather clock. Every time I have come into the living room, it has been ticking in that hypnotic way. But now the clock is silent, its hands frozen at 3:41.

“It stops every night at three forty-one.”

I almost gave Mick a heart attack yesterday, so apparently, he is repaying the favor. I leap back about three feet, clutching my chest. Mick is standing in front of me, dressed in a pair of dirty overalls, holding a rake in his right hand.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” he says while I gasp for air.

“No worries.” It occurs to me how often I say that phrase in my life, considering I worry an awful lot. “I just noticed the clock stopped.”

“That’s right.” He rests the rake against the sofa and wipes his grimy hands on his overalls. Ethel would likely have a fit if she saw him in here with such dirty hands. “Like I said, it stops every night at the same time. I wind it up again every morning.”

“You…” I clear my throat. “You should get somebody to take a look at it.”

“We did.” Mick frowns at the silent clock. “There’s a man in town who repairs clocks and watches. We had him come all the way down here, and he said there was nothing wrong with it.”