The Witch in the Cellar - Conclusion
A young boy and his family move into a house that's the subject of a local urban legend. Is the neighbor boy just making up stories... or is the legend true, and truly dangerous?
Here is the conclusion of The Witch in the Cellar! In case you missed them, here are parts one and two.
My mom was still watching the weather when I went to bed. Before he left for work, my dad had told us to spend the night in the cellar if it looked like storms were coming our way. But so far, the worst of it had stayed to the north of our county.
I lay in bed, listening to the muted warnings of the meteorologist that filtered into my room through the closed door, praying that we wouldn’t have to sleep down in that cellar. Praying that if we did, my efforts that afternoon had done their job.
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but suddenly a pair of hands shook me awake. They had help from a loud crash of thunder right over our house. Lightning lit up my room as bright as day, revealing my mom standing over me. Then it was gone, and everything was dark except for the flashlight she held. “We need to go,” she told me. “Get your shoes on as fast as you can.”
Outside, the wind howled. I shoved my feet into my tennis shoes while little pellets of hail began to rattle against the house and bounce off the window.
“It’s blowing sideways,” she breathed, her voice shaky. Then, with more control, she said, “Hurry. We need to go now.”
“Are we going to the cellar?” I asked. I cringed at how small and afraid my voice sounded.
Mom grabbed my hand. “The sooner the better,” she said, and led me out of my room.
At the front door she paused only long enough to grab an umbrella from the stand. She handed me the flashlight before stepping outside and opening it, but it did nothing to keep the horizontal rain off of us. Before we even made it off the porch the hail grew to the size of golf balls and tore it to shreds. “Hurry!” she shouted over the wind and sheets of rain, doing her best to shield me with her own body.
We made it halfway across the yard when the hail abruptly stopped and the wind calmed down. The thunder sounded more distant, and the rain slowed to a drizzle. “It’s over,” I said, stopping in my tracks and turning to face my mom. “Let’s go back inside.”
“I don’t want to take the chance.” She grabbed my hand and started to pull me toward the cellar, but I pulled back.
“No, mom, it’s okay. We should go back inside.”
She stopped and shined the flashlight in my face. I had to shield my eyes. “What are you doing?”
Just then the wind picked up again. As it howled, I could swear I heard my name. “Please, mommy, don’t go in the cellar!”
“We don’t have time for this!” She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me hard toward the cellar doors. I started to scream, but the wind outdid me. When we reached the doors, the rain became a deluge again, hiding any sign that I was crying as my mom pulled the chain free and hauled open one of the heavy doors. She shoved me inside, gently but firmly, and came down behind me, pulling the door down on top of us. “Get the light,” she snapped as she threaded the chain through the handles on the inside.
I found the light chain and pulled, but nothing happened. “There’s no power,” I reminded her. She hurried over to the utility shelves and turned on a battery-powered lantern. Its LED bulb gave off a soft, white light, much brighter than the incandescent flashlight I still held.
She came over and took me by the shoulders. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. She pulled me close and I hugged her tight as she stroked my hair. I breathed in the smell of her, of soap and her favorite hand lotion and rain. Underneath that I could still smell the faint odor of burnt sage and candle wax.
After a minute or so, she released me. “Turn on the weather radio while I make up the cots. I don’t know about you, but I’ll feel a lot safer if we sleep down here tonight.”
I felt anything but safe, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good to argue. Instead, I pulled the radio off the shelf and knelt on the ground, holding it in my lap as I turned it on and fumbled with the dials. When I found the weather station, the announcer was saying our county was under a tornado warning and that we should take cover.
I got to my feet and went over to where my mom had spread the sleeping bags out on the cots. She sat on the one against the wall and patted the spot next to her. I set the radio down on the center cot and sat beside her. She put her arm around me as I leaned into her. “It’s okay. We’re safe down here.”
I closed my eyes and buried my face against her shoulder, and just for a moment, I let myself believe that.
I breathed deep, letting the weather announcer’s voice calm me as my mom’s fingers combed through my damp hair. Then static replaced the announcer’s voice, just as the cellar doors began to rattle against the chain. Outside, the roaring wind sounded like an oncoming freight train.
“It’s okay,” my mom repeated, tightening her grip on me. “We’re okay.”
The radio static changed. It wasn’t just a lost signal anymore, but the stations were changing, snatches of voices coming through the static as the radio cycled up and down the dial. Mom let go of me to grab the radio. She turned back to the right station, but instead of the weather report a dry, creaky whisper of a voice came out of the speakers, grating out my name.
We looked at each other. My mom’s face grew pale. She turned back to the radio and fiddled with the dial again, but the only thing that came out of it was laughter—that same dry laugh I’d heard in my room the night before.
Then the laughter wasn’t coming from the radio anymore.
It was coming from the darkness under the bed.
My mom didn’t seem to notice. She was still fighting with the radio when I caught a flicker of movement beneath the center cot. I yanked my feet up from the floor with a shout.
Mom stopped turning dials and looked at me, then followed my gaze to where a set of gnarled, gray fingers crept up over the side of the middle cot. They gripped the edge, and behind them arose the top of a mummified head. Thin patches of long, scraggly hair still clung to the mottled gray scalp. As the thing rose, it revealed empty, black eye sockets. Tight, papery gray skin stretched so tightly over the skull it might as well not have even been there. Web-like patterns of blackened veins covered the face and neck. The laughter grew louder as Juanita Crabtree stood, rotted fragments of clothing hanging so loosely they did nothing to conceal a skeletal frame and shriveled, rotting breasts.
Mom and I sat transfixed. I heard screaming, but wasn’t sure if it came from me, or mom, or both of us. Juanita Crabtree’s head fell back as her laughter gained volume, going from the sandpaper-like sound of air passing through dead lungs to a full-on shrieking cackle.
Then, abruptly, she stopped. Her head snapped up and a bony arm rose to point at me. Then she grabbed the cot that stood between us and flung it across the cellar.
Suddenly the screaming also stopped. I felt myself pulled off the cot and onto my feet. The next thing I knew, my mother shoved me behind her as she backed us both toward the cellar doors, which rattled even more violently against the chain.
“What do we do, mommy?” I wailed as the thing lurched toward us.
“We … I …” She looked around, backing us up another step as the creature took another halting step toward us. “Shit!” she finally shouted in frustration.
“Give me the child,” Juanita Crabtree croaked.
“Mom?”
“Shh, baby.” She hauled me up the cellar steps.
“The child must die!” pronounced the corpse.
“Like hell,” my mom muttered as she tore the chain away from the doors. Both doors flung open seemingly by themselves, almost sucking me out with them. “Mommy!” I screamed, holding onto her for dear life.
“Go!” she shouted. Behind her, Juanita Crabtree stopped lurching along slowly and suddenly came at us with supernatural speed. “Run!” my mom said, screaming. “For God’s sake, just run!” She shoved me up through the doors, but running was something I couldn’t do. The wind seemed to buffet me from every side. All around me everything was dark, and I felt myself lifted up into that darkness. The only light I could see was below me, shrinking and getting farther away by the second, and in that light I could see my mother’s screaming face, her arms reaching up for me as Juanita Crabtree’s skeletal arms closed around her. A bony, clawed hand covered her face, muffling her screams as she was dragged back down the steps. The cellar doors slammed shut over them, leaving me in darkness.
***
They found me that morning, lying in the rubble that had been our house. All of my clothes had been stripped off, save for one of my sneakers. My right wrist was broken, but otherwise I didn’t have a scratch on me. I couldn’t remember anything about the night before, so the hospital kept me overnight for observation. My dad wasn’t there. He was out with the search party, still looking for my mom.
I knew they wouldn’t find her, but it was three more days before I remembered why. When I told them, they said I was still in shock, and they kept looking.
I wish they were right. I wish I couldn’t remember; that I could just go on believing along with everyone else that my mom had disappeared in that tornado, that she would turn up eventually, one way or another. I wish what I’d seen that night had just been a bad dream.
But I know what I saw. I know what really happened to my mother—what she gave to save me—and wishing won’t make it go away, any more than a prayer or burning sage.
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Poor little guy.