The Old Witches Camp

by Avian Swansong

“Crap, where the hell is that stupid water bottle?” Birdie muttered to herself as she left the discomfort of the un-air-conditioned cabin and stepped onto the wet dirt path.

  The warm air from the storm that had surprised them that evening wrapped her in a weighted blanket of humidity. The trees in silhouette surrounded her, shushing and whistling. The close feeling only heightened the anxiety she was feeling. Her stomach roiled like the clouds that skittered back and forth across the dark sky. Moonlight through the branches waving in the breeze stretched her shadow into a tall, lanky caricature. As her old lady body carefully found her way amid the rocks and twigs on the path, the shadow behind her became her spirit guide, providing direction from the other world. The extra help was welcome, considering she left her flashlight inside the tiny overstuffed cabin she shared with Tom.

Tom had offered to accompany her, seeing that she was unusually apprehensive that night. But Birdie wasn’t going to let a passing summer storm and an unexpectedly disturbing ritual stop her from venturing out into the world. Still, her feet ached in the flip flops that didn’t give her enough arch support and her right hip twinged with every step. Not for the first time she wished she could simply transport herself through the air rather than having to depend on the creaky knees, the failing back and the wheezing lungs that never seemed to gulp enough air to get from here to there. All she wanted was to take a painkiller and a sleeping pill, to reach oblivion and dreams. But she needed her water bottle!

Like a sleeping dragon, the 16-sided building loomed in the near distance. Its many-segmented metal roof shielded the space like wings protecting the creature’s eggs from predators’ sneaky eyes. The wall-size doors were open on six sides, revealing the benches, the stage and the ritual altars filling the concrete-floored expanse. Just two hours earlier, the place had been filled with almost sixty witches chanting, dancing and casting a formidable sacred circle. Now, it appeared empty as Birdie approached but the energy of their magic still buzzed throughout the huge room.

Birdie climbed the two stairs into what she called the Hexadecagorgon, or the Hexadeca for short. Her hand reached out automatically to the light switch by the door and flipped it. Of course nothing happened. The remnants of the hurricane that had treated them to a show of jagged lights and drumrolls from the gods had taken out power lines and cell towers throughout the Adirondack mountain region. She chastised herself for not remembering and then cursed herself again for leaving her flashlight behind.

Birdie felt a sliver of spiky fear, but quickly straightened, and tried to orient herself. There was nothing to be afraid of. It was just dark. She was a witch and the dark was her friend, wasn’t it? All she had to do was to remember where she had been sitting tonight.

Birdie prided herself on being flexible, not tied to rigid habits like so many of her friends. She was determined to sit in a new spot every night of camp, and feel the energy from all directions.

That was all well and good, being open to new experiences and such, but it only worked if you could keep track of  where you sat. Was it in the west? Or the south? She sighed.

If I can’t even recall where I was two hours earlier, I must be getting old, she thought.

As the clouds ambled past the moon, the light through the open doorways stumbled around the space like a drunken miner’s headlamp highlighting one area and then another. Outlines of the witches who had sat there earlier shimmered on the metal and wood park benches in the circle. Bats skittered in the high ceiling, probably annoyed that a human was disturbing their nighttime hunt.

Birdie started to move carefully around the circle counterclockwise — widdershins. She thought that dispersing energy was what she needed to retrieve a lost object. For some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she felt compelled to stay on the outside of the circle, away from the potent energy of the center where they had raised a cone of power to celebrate their community coming together earlier that evening. She had learned over the years to heed that intuitive tickle.

The darkness made everything formless, with shifting shapes and blurred boundaries. Birdie felt a little dizzy and reached out her hand to the back of the bench in front of her to steady herself. Her eyes had not yet adjusted to the dimness. She couldn’t identify the spot she had occupied. She felt like she was moving in a dreamscape, walking forward but not getting anywhere.

Still holding on to the bench, she shook her head and scanned the floor in front of the bench, hoping to find her water bottle. But she saw only someone’s black shawl and a broken umbrella. She lifted her head and looked across the circle, from the west to the south. She saw nothing on either bench or floor.

Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw a mound in the center of the circle. A figure seemed to be curled into a fetal shape facing away from her, arms outstretched in front of them[OS1] . She gasped.

A chill ran up the back of Birdie’s neck. Was it a ghost?

No, she thought, it’s okay. She willed the gooseflesh on her arms to subside. Someone just fell asleep. It’s cooler in here on the concrete floor than in the cabins.

But she didn’t hear any snoring. Everyone snores, don’t they? At least a little?

Suddenly everything seemed to come into focus, the windows, the candles, the altar tables, the altar cloths, the goddess figurines, the slats on the benches, the crack in the concrete floor. It all seemed to be drawn with an extra fine felt tip pen, with a body in black in the center.

Birdie couldn’t breathe. Her heart beat fast and loud. She knew something was very wrong, no matter how much she didn’t want to admit it. She approached slowly, fearing the worst.

“Hello?” she said softly. No answer.

Birdie gingerly knelt beside the prone body. It was petite and a bit plump, similar to Birdie. Its black robe and hood partially hid a face with short curly black hair. The outstretched arms appeared to be praying.

Before Birdie could check the pulse, she recognized her. It was Terra. The same woman that had disrupted the opening ritual. The witch that had suddenly been possessed by an eco-conscious deity screaming for justice, and railing against the plastic water bottles spread throughout the circle by campers merely wanting to hydrate.

This was the same woman that she and her friends complained about every year. The same woman they were hoping would not come to camp. Here she was, lying motionless.

Birdie sighed. A frisson of guilt pricked at her heart. Was she dead? Had one of the Adirondack ghosts gotten to her? Or had someone finally taken her out?

Suddenly, the figure on the floor sat up and knocked Birdie backwards. Terra’s eyes flew open. She had a look of terror on her face as if she had been in an awful nightmare. She looked around desperately, not appearing to know where she was, or who Birdie was. As Birdie watched, Terra came to full awareness. She took a deep breath, and scowled as she focused on Birdie’s face.

“What the hell are you doing?” Terra demanded. “Don’t hover over me!”

“What are you doing?” Birdie retorted. She began gathering herself to stand. Her fear was rapidly reverting to anger. “Why were you lying in the middle of the circle? Are you okay?”

Terra looked around, confused. “I was — I don’t know — I was soaking up the energy,” she said with a slight question at the end of the sentence. She shook her head, as if she were trying to remember something. Terra growled as she got to all fours and then slowly rose, creaking and grumbling. She looked around, searching for the way out.

“Now I’m done. Goodnight.” Without looking at Birdie, she swirled and headed toward the same door Birdie had entered.

“Wait,” Birdie called. “What’s going on? Are you all right? Come back!”

But Terra was gone. A cloud covered the moon, and Birdie saw only a black doorway where she had left. Birdie’s heart couldn’t decide whether to speed up with fear and/or anger, or relax with relief. She grumbled to herself that she had been genuinely worried but of course she shouldn’t have been. Terra never paid any attention to how she was affecting others. She simply expected the world to revolve around her.

At least she’s gone now, Birdie thought. She sat back on the cool concrete, relishing for a moment the relief from the heat. Her pulse slowed as she leaned against a bench.

She needed to get back to the cabin. Maybe Tom would know what is going on with Terra. He would have a rational, scientific explanation for her strange behavior, she was sure.

She decided to continue looking for her water bottle, the precious aluminum vessel with the painted purple swans, gifted to her by her covenmates. She wished the storm had taken Terra as it seemed to have disappeared the bottle. The shadows in the cavernous space settled back into a cloudy tableau, neither of this world nor the other. And Birdie still couldn’t remember where she had sat that evening.

Had she really found Terra passed out on the ground? she thought. She shivered.

A ray of moonlight brushed the metal cap of a water bottle next to the north bench. A glint of shiny purple swan wings beckoned her.

Disclaimer

The Old Witches Home is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ReDreaming organizational structure and procedures are loosely modeled on the practices used in Reclaiming, a tradition that you can learn more about at https://reclaimingcollective.wordpress.com/ .