The Witch's Ladder Read Online Free Page B

blue and white smoke as she hit the street. By then, the overwhelming sense of doom had returned stronger than ever, and she believed that nothing short of getting away from the research center would make that feeling disappear. With every mile, a measurable level of comfort returned, and with determination and a heavy foot those miles quickly added up.
    It probably wouldn’t have mattered, fate being what it is, but as she sped off in haste, Valerie failed to notice something crucial. Her thoughtfulness kept her in the parking lot long enough to make sure that Barbara had gotten into her car safely. However, in putting so much distance between her and the research center so quickly, she didn’t notice that Barbara hadn’t pulled out behind her.
    As her decades-old driving ritual demanded, Barbara sat in her car performing a pre-drive checklist, one she completed every time she got behind the wheel. Priority one on the list was to lock the doors, which she did. Next, a series of equipment checks that her father taught her to perform when she first learned to drive. Starting from left to right and always in the same sequence; release parking brake, turn off directional, dome light, radio, depress clutch, shift transmission into neutral and start engine. The last thing on her list before shifting into gear was to adjust the rearview mirror. This step was not on her father’s list, but then her father never moved the mirror to check his make-up when he arrived at his destination.
    As she had done a thousand times before, Barbara reached for the mirror and swung it into position, allowing it to frame the landscape out her rear window. Only this time something did not seem right. Something in the reflection caught her eye as it swept into position. She reached for the mirror again and swiveled it left to right, but saw nothing to cause alarm. She then pitched it downward, onto the back seat. Wide brushstrokes of moonlight cascaded in through the windows, washing the interior in ribbons of steel blue, muted whites and gunmetal gray. On a cloudy night, it might have been easy to miss, but not this night. She leaned forward, squinting into the mirror at what looked like a large bundle of clothes or rags piled up on the back seat.
    “ Well I’ll be ….” She looked deeper into the mirror. “What is that?”
    She put her arm over the top of the seat and turned around to inspect the oddity first hand. In that instant, it sprang to life, attacking with lightning speed, wrapping itself first around her face and then her entire head. With tremendous force, it plucked her from her seat, pulling her over the backrest, twisting and wrenching her head violently. She screamed, but her muffled cries, suffocated in threads of black wool and hair, would not come out. Her arms and hands flogged at the beast to no avail. She mule-kicked, striking the dashboard and the gearshift. The car lurched forward and stalled. Her foot knocked the mirror off the window. She kicked harder and the windshield broke. The horrid sounds of breaking bones and snapping vertebras followed. Her struggle ended with her lifeless body falling limp onto her seat.
    A long, gray cloud slithered overhead, obscuring the full moon that Barbara had admired earlier. In the cloak of darkness welcomed by her killer, the bloody business of harvesting began.
    Miles away, cruising toward the sanctuary of her home, Valerie Spencer took notice of how the damning sense of doom had suddenly abandoned her, leaving the void filled with an uncanny sense of tranquility. Once home, she drew a hot bath, lit an incense candle and set it on the windowsill. She slipped out of her robe and into the tub, feeling silly for having worried herself so.
    A medley of Spanish folk music tripped softly from wall speakers in the adjacent bedroom. Vapors of steam ascended in ghostly columns like morning fog. It felt relaxing and delightful, a glorious and enchanting treat much deserved. She slid down