“Oh, that’s terrible. I’m sorry to hear that. But listen, my name is Brenna Ravenwood. I need to find out what happened here.” She looked Celestine straight in the eyes.
Celestine’s round face changed from a haughty expression into an excited smile. “I should have known it was you as soon as you walked in the door.”
“Oh?”
“I’m so glad you’re here!” She dropped the sandwich onto a plate and jumped up from her swivel chair, “Come with me.”
Celestine pulled open a drawer, found a set of keys, and walked toward a doorway in the back. Brenna followed her down a dimly lit hallway where they stopped in front of a tall wooden door with drawings of trees carved into it. Celestine unlocked the door and pulled it open, revealing a long flight of stairs which she proceeded to descend. The stairs led them to a dark basement. Shivers ran along her skin and her breath puffed in front of her. She hugged herself in an attempt to warm up.
Cobwebs laced the low ceiling of the basement. The thought of spiders lingering above her made Brenna swat at her skin whenever she felt an itch. The only light basement came from a candle in a wall sconce. Shouldn’t the public library have something a little more high tech? A heater wouldn’t go astray either.
Celestine lit a few more of the wall sconces, casting an orange light in the room. They walked past rows of shelves full of dusty books and piles of documents. Celestine’s short legs stopped in front of a tall shelf littered with books. She lit the two torches that sat on either side of the shelf and found a stool on wheels and dragged it over to the shelf.
“We were thinking about getting power down here but decided we don’t come in here often enough to bother,” Celestine explained while lining up the stool.
“So, this isn’t your usual history section?” Brenna asked.
“Gosh no. These books down here are worth a fortune, they’re so old. If we let the public down here, we’d have all sorts of trouble on our hands.”
Celestine stepped onto the stool. It creaked under her weight as she reached up.
“I’m part of the public,” Brenna said.
“You’re special. We’ve been waiting for you.
“You’ve been waiting for me?” Brenna asked, her voice shaky.
“Yes.”
“You said ‘we’ve been waiting.’ Who else?”
Celestine hesitated, and then pulled down the collar of her dress, revealing a silver pentagram. “All of the women living here who are descendants of the witches taught by Hawthorn, have been having vivid dreams. Dreams of what happened in the past. We were all told in our dreams the descendent of Rowena Ravenwood would arrive to set the spirits of our ancestors free. It’s not known whether you will succeed or…” Celestine’s voice trailed off. “We’re rooting for you anyway. We know you can do it.”
“How many of you are there?” An eerie feeling crept over her. There was no denying the dreams she had been having were actually visions now.
Celestine’s voice broke Brenna’s thoughts. “Well, in our coven there’s eleven witches, all related to witches burnt in the sixteen-hundreds. All of our ancestors’ souls are trapped in that forest, suffering at the hand of the dark force there.”
“When did all of this start?”
“Well, there’s no way to be sure. Our coven held rituals in the forest each month on the night of the full moon until two months ago. That was after your grandmother died. We all went into the forest, as usual, expecting to hear laughing every now and then as before. Instead, we were faced with an incredibly mournful chanting.”
“I heard the chanting too. I couldn’t make out the words.”
“It’s an old chant witches use to pray to the Goddess to help them find their way. It was mainly used to ask the Goddess to take their life because that would be a better fate than what awaited them. The chant is so old nobody knows the exact words but it’s definitely what’s being chanted in that forest. Those women need help. In death, they were supposed to be free but something dark has put a stop to that.”
“Well, I’m here to hopefully put a stop to him.”
“How do you know it’s a man?”
“Well, I’m fairly sure it’s a man. It threatened me and it kidnapped my best friend.”
“You’re kidding…” Celestine stared down at Brenna from the stool.
“No, I have to help her. That’s why I need to find out as much as I can about what happened. If I can find a man who hated these witches so much to want to keep them in pain, I might be able to find out who or what the evil entity is. Maybe I can find an item that belonged to him or even his name, so we can do a ritual to banish him.”
“Sounds like a good idea.” Celestine passed a heavy book down to Brenna as if it weighed as much as a piece of paper.
“That would work, do you think?” asked Brenna, thinking Celestine might be the right sort of person to touch base with, now that Maggie wasn’t there.
“It should. These things aren’t an exact science. The dark force seems more powerful than anything we’ve ever encountered. There’d have to be some way of trapping it.” She went silent for a bit. “Tell you what, meet me at the Herbery tonight at ten o’clock. You can meet with the coven and we’ll discuss the matter further.” She handed Brenna another three books. “You’re not in this alone, Brenna.”
Brenna smiled, balancing the pile of books in her arms. Celestine dropped another two on the stack and climbed down onto the floor.
Celestine took half of the books and helped Brenna carry them up the stairs back into the warmer main part of the library. Celestine cleared books from one of the tables dropped her selections down. Brenna set down her pile and sat in one of the padded chairs, ready to start the long task of reading through the books, each one thicker than the Oakwood phone book.
“You look cold. Can I get you a tea or coffee?”
“Coffee would be amazing.”
“How do you have it?”
“Milk, two sugars.” Brenna reflected that her eating hadn’t been the healthiest since she arrived in Oakwood. “You’d better make that one sugar.”
“Just don’t spill it on the books or I’ll have my ass handed to me on a platter. Won’t be long.” Celestine bustled away, leaving Brenna alone in the large room to read through a whole century’s worth of terror.
Three coffees and four hours later, Brenna opened the last book on the table. She hadn’t found anything too helpful. The first book went into great detail describing how the witches were tortured. Brenna didn’t want to read much about that so she skipped through most of it. The rest of the books didn’t say anything about who was involved or anything about the Oakwood Trials either. It just explained why the witches were targeted. Brenna agreed with this completely but realized none of these books were going to help her with her pursuit of the dark entity. Besides, her eyes and her heart were aching from reading the horrible accounts of witches being burnt and drowned.
After shutting all of the books and stacking them, she finished off her last coffee, wincing at how strong it was. Stretching as she stood up, she gathered the books in her arms and made her way down to the basement. Some of the torches had gone out but a few still glowed brightly giving her enough light to find the shelf where the books belonged. She climbed the rickety stool and tried to put the books back vaguely where they came from. With an uneasy step down, she reached the floor and started for the exit when a loud thump made her jump. She spun around and saw a book had fallen from the shelf on to the dusty floor and lay there open. Brenna approached the book, slowly looking around the basement. She leaned over the book and saw the words: “Witches Hill trials - 1645.” Bending down to pick up the book, she found an empty chewing gum wrapper in her bag to act as a bookmark. Then she closed the book, cradling it under one arm.