Williams Witch Mystery Bundle: Books 4-6 (Ebook)

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Book 4 Title: Hexes and the Haunted House
Format: Ebook
Length: 41,451 Words
Publication Date: July 4, 2024
Publisher: Alorium Publishing

Book 5 Title: Spells and the Suspiciously Silent
Format: Ebook
Length: 47,838 Words
Publication Date: October 15, 2024
Publisher: Alorium Publishing

Book 6 Title: Grimoires and the Ghostly Guest
Format: Ebook
Length: 47,468 Words
Publication Date: January 15, 2025
Publisher: Alorium Publishing

SPOILER ALERT: This sample may reveal secrets from earlier books in the series. If you're new to Point Pleasant, you might want to start at the beginning!

I stared up at Meredith Walker’s house. Grace and the Retirees crowded around me. Sarah, Betty, and Agnes were silent, their necks craned as they studied the home. We had stopped by the night before. There was something sinister about the boards haphazardly covering the windows and the way the house seemed to lean over the street. In the dark, none of us could muster the courage to take the first step inside. We had stood frozen on the front steps until Agnes suggested we come back when it was light out. We hoped it would be less intimidating in the day. Somehow, it had gotten worse.

The plan made me uneasy. After Grace had found the key to the house in a box of mementos that had belonged to Sarah’s mother, she was laser focused on getting inside. All her dreams, and the stories the Retirees remembered about the origins of the curse that plagued all our families, hinted that it started there. The place felt cursed. Everything around it was bright and cheery, but the house seemed to suck in light. It was as if it had a permanent gloom hanging over it.

I tried to visualize the house as it was in the picture Grace had found. It was a black-and-white shot, but I liked to imagine the home was painted a nice beige. It was a two-story craftsman sitting at the top of a hill in the heart of Point Pleasant on Whidbey Island. Broken windows along the ground indicated it had a basement, which was uncommon on that side of the Cascades. I held onto the image of a tan house with a picket fence and tried to force a smile onto my face.

“All right, ladies. Are you ready to see if the key works?” I asked.

“No.” Agnes wrapped her arms around her. “I know it’s the middle of winter, but I swear when I take a step closer, it gets noticeably colder. It’s frigid enough already.”

“That’s called the shade,” Betty quipped, although she didn’t move any nearer herself.

“I know the difference between shade and this feeling,” Agnes shot back. “And this is different. It feels wrong here.”

“This is the best lead we’ve got. Meredith was a member of your mother’s coven. She disappeared the same year the curse started, and her house has been vacant ever since. It can’t be a coincidence. Answers are inside. Do you honestly think we’ll be able to figure out what happened if we don’t go in?” Grace asked.

“I’ve lived long enough not knowing.” Sarah draped her arm around Agnes’s shoulder. “Is this really necessary?”

“Well, if you won’t go in, then I guess I’ll do it on my own.” Grace straightened her shoulders and took a few steps forward. After the third step, she faltered and scampered back. “Just as soon as the sun comes all the way up.”

I tried not to laugh. The house had a presence, and all of us could feel it. I couldn’t blame Grace for not having the nerve to go in alone. None of us had the night before. I wasn’t sure I had the confidence to go in with a group.

“It is all the way up,” Sarah whispered.

We stood in silence, staring at the house. We knew almost nothing about Meredith Walker. There were a lot of photos of her with my great-grandmother’s coven, so we assumed she was a member. But we didn’t know what happened to her. The Retirees’ mothers had never brought her up in conversation. She was in photo after photo until she wasn’t. She vanished around the time the rest of the coven was cursed; a curse that had gone down the familial lines ever since. Without going into the house, it was impossible for us to know whether she’d started the curse or if she was its first victim. Like Grace said, we couldn’t ignore the timeline. It really was our best shot at finding answers to the all-important questions: Who cursed us? Why did they curse us? And how could we break it?

My family’s curse hit my daughter Grace especially hard. We both had the Sight, but hers made life almost unbearable. Her nightmares kept her awake most nights. She couldn’t touch anything without feeling the emotions of whoever had touched an object last. And that frequently became a vicious feedback loop as her emotions fed into what she was feeling until she was shaking and crying on the floor. It had forced her to drop out of college and move in with me. My ex-husband was not pleased, especially since she couldn’t explain what was wrong. He wouldn’t understand her being a witch. So instead, he blamed me, since what he labeled as her emotional breakdown had happened soon after I filed for divorce. He was too much of a narcissist to realize I left him because I finally realized I wasn’t happy and couldn’t be happy with someone who didn’t really care about me.

I gritted my teeth. The Retirees might be okay with not knowing, but I had to. For my daughter. I squared my shoulders and held my hand out.

“The key,” I said.

Grace dropped it into my hand.

I strode across the street. Grace and the Retirees scampered after me. They huddled together a few feet behind me and shuffled forward as a group. For Grace. I have to know for Grace. Stop being a coward. It’s only a house. I peered up at the craftsman home as I ascended the broken concrete stairs. A creepy, possibly haunted house.

My hands shook as I pushed the key into the lock on the front door. Despite the layers of rust on the lock, the key slid into place easily. I swallowed and looked back at my daughter. The Retirees clustered around her, all having donned matching puffy jackets. Somehow, in the house’s shadow, they seemed fragile. They had never looked weak to me before. Even with their graying hair and deep-set laugh lines, they exuded energy. But right then, they huddled around Grace, giving support and receiving it in return. They clutched each other as I turned to the door and twisted the key in the lock.

It clicked. My heart skipped a beat, and I held my breath as I pushed the door inward.

The inside was trashed. Beer bottles littered the floor, and graffiti covered the walls. I let out the breath I had been holding. With the door open, the knot of fear inside me unwound. Over the years, I had inspected a lot of abandoned properties owned by banks. The house reminded me of so many of them. Empty houses became magnets for kids looking for a place to party or for the homeless in search of a place to crash for the night, protected from the elements. That space was no different.

I hovered in the doorway. If it’s no different, then why don’t I want to go inside? The hairs on the back of my neck hadn’t gone down. I counted backward from ten and stepped through the door when I hit number one. A shiver went through me, and the knot of fear in my stomach tightened again.

Whispers filled the air. I couldn’t make out any words. It was like a whispered conversation in another room, no one word distinct. I steadied myself and took another step inside.

“What do you see?” Betty asked.

The group hadn’t moved. They still clung to each other a few feet from the porch.

“Graffiti.”

“So somebody’s been inside?” Grace pulled away from the Retirees and inched her way up the steps.

“Several somebodies, by the look of it.” I nudged the edge of an abandoned blanket.

I waited in the middle of the living room. The unnerving feeling that had settled over me when I stepped inside hadn’t gone away. My skin crawled. A voice in the back of my head screamed for me to get out, to run away and never come back. My hands clenched involuntarily at my sides. The pressure of my nails digging into my palms grounded me. I focused on that sensation while I waited.

Grace stepped through the front door and gasped as she crossed the threshold.

“Do you feel that?” she asked.

I nodded.

She darted toward me and grabbed my arm. Her gloved fingers dug into my skin as she wrapped herself around my shoulder, burying her face in my hair.

A few seconds later, the Retirees followed her inside and closed the door behind them, probably to keep any passersby from accidentally coming in after us. They stood as a group in the dim light.

“This definitely feels like a place where a curse could have happened,” Agnes said.

Sarah and Betty spoke over each other as they described what they were feeling. A tightening of the chest. Insects crawling across their skin. A faint whisper in the air.

“Do you know what they’re saying?” I asked.

The Retirees shook their heads in unison.

“We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t…” Grace pulled away from me and stood in the middle of the room, swaying with her eyes closed. “You did this.”

“Hadn’t what?” I asked.

Grace shook her head. “I can’t make it out. Just the occasional word here or there. It’s all blurring together.”

“All right. We’re here. We made it inside. Let’s be quick about this. Look for clues about what caused the curse, and then get out,” Betty said, stepping away from the group. “Keep each other in sight. I’ll go left with Agnes. Sarah, you and Grace go right. Dani, pick a direction, but don’t go too far. We don’t know what could be in a place like this.”

The tension in my shoulders eased a fraction. I was used to Betty acting with confidence. Seeing her step back into a leadership role reassured me. It couldn’t be that bad if Betty was confident.

The groups dispersed. Grace took her gloves off and hesitantly touched the wall. I followed suit. One of our most useful gifts was psychometry. It was our ability to read the emotional residue left behind by whoever had touched something last or, if the object was involved in something impactful, the most important emotions connected to the object. Grace was better at it than I was. She picked up more than just the emotions. Sometimes, she saw stuff as well. I had to cast spells to see anything. My latent ability to read an object began and ended with emotion. But then again, her visions were always of the past while mine were of the future. The future couldn’t leave an emotional residue. It hadn’t happened yet. While it was only a small silver lining, she never had to deal with visions of impending doom, only doom that had long passed.

I kept the group in my peripheral vision as I stepped farther into the house. It was an older home, so it had more walls than a recent construction. The kitchen and dining room had a wall separating them. Doors led from room to room, with a long hallway running down the center of the house, with a flight of stairs at the end.

Touching the walls left an oily sensation on my skin. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. The wrongness of the place made my teeth ache. For Grace. I have to know what happened, for Grace. Her nightmares won’t end until we know. I forced myself to keep my finger on the wall as I continued down the hallway toward the stairs.

Each inch of curling wallpaper was filled with a mixture of rage and fear. How could anyone hang out here? In the doorway to my left, Betty peered around the kitchen. Agnes stood next to her with her arms wrapped around her body.

I forced myself forward. I stopped at the foot of the stairs and craned my head. There were no lights at the top of the stairs. All the windows had been boarded up. The weak sunlight filtering in through the cracks between the boards didn’t reach that far. I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my cell phone for a light. My hands shook as I turned it on and took my first step onto the stairs.

“Ouch,” Grace hissed behind me.

I turned toward her and froze midmovement.

A woman had appeared at the top of the stairs.

I swallowed and shifted my gaze to her. She floated an inch above the top step. Her hair swirled behind her. She gave off an eerie green light, which allowed me to see the space around her. It was a standard landing. A table stood behind her, and I could see it only because she was completely translucent.

The woman let out a wordless wail.

I stumbled back and tried to cover my ears. It didn’t help. The sound wasn’t coming from her. It was coming from inside my head.

The Retirees ran into the living room behind me, their hands over their ears. We all stood there, staring up at the woman as her expressions shifted. She settled on rage.

The woman flew down the stairs toward me. I took a step back. My foot came down on a bottle, and I fell backward. Pain shot through my body as I landed hard on my tailbone. Betty grabbed me by my shoulders and yanked me toward the front door as the woman floated closer. I scrambled backward across the room as Betty pulled me along. Agnes darted ahead and opened the front door.

The wailing grew louder the closer the woman came. I couldn’t look away from her. Even when I had been staring down Tina’s killer, I had never seen someone so filled with rage. It was in every inch of her body. It consumed her. The emotions of the house shifted with her. With every touch of my hand, the rage grew.

My hand found the lip of the front door, and I scooted outside as Betty and Agnes scrambled out of the way of the group. Sarah and Grace stumbled out after me. Agnes lunged and closed the door and locked it.

“What was that?” I whispered.

I didn’t wait for anyone to answer. We scrambled down the stairs and fled to my car. The Retirees piled into the back seat. Grace threw herself into the passenger seat and hugged her hand to her body.

“I don’t feel good.” Grace wavered in her seat and slumped against the dash.

“What happened?” I pulled her up to look at her. Grace’s skin was clammy. Her eyes moved rapidly under the closed lids.

“She got a splinter,” Sarah said. “Do you have tweezers?”

“At my office.” A splinter. I blinked. A piece of that house was under her skin. She wouldn’t be able to get away from the emotional feedback loop. It would just continue building. What happens if it’s in there too long? My gran told me that when I was a kid, I was comatose for a week when the Sight overwhelmed me. I wouldn’t let that happen to Grace.

• Potions and the Pleasantly Poisoned
• Tomes and the Tangled Trail
• Divinations and the Disappearing Dead
• Hexes and the Haunted House
• Spells and the Suspiciously Silent
• Grimoires and the Ghostly Guest
• Enchantments and the Eerily Ensnared
• Rituals and the Restless Remains
• Charms and the Cursed Coven