In the Shadows

That was when Cora noticed another woman clinging to the

shadows of a door stoop, her dress oddly childlike and several years

out of fashion. Her hair draped across her collar and down to her

knees in an impossibly long braid.

The witch.

“Thomas!” Cora gasped. He was immediately by her side, and

recognition dawned on his face with the same mixture of surprise

and horror.

The elegant woman spoke to Mary, reaching up to tuck a

strand of hair back in the braid. Then she took Mary’s hand, pat-

ted it, and pulled Mary alongside her.

“She’s rather upright for a dead woman,” Thomas said, his

voice dry. Cora didn’t know whether to be relieved at this proof

of life, or cross at the witch for pulling such a horrible trick on all

of them.

“They know each other,” Cora said. “No one knows the

witch — Mary, I mean. She never comes out of her house. Why

would she now?”

“Let’s follow them.”

Cora hesitated, but found the pull of answers too strong to

resist. She felt as though Mary owed her. She’d spent too long

being terrified of everything she associated with that house and

that woman, and now to see her walking down the street as

though everything were normal? Cora wouldn’t have it. This was

her town.

They hurried after the women, keeping a discreet distance but

careful not to lose them. Mary drifted as she walked, constantly

pulled back to the sidewalk and redirected by the other woman.

They disappeared around a corner. Turning it, Cora and

Thomas pulled up short, horrified to be nearly on top of their