The Witch is Dead by Shirley Damsgaard Page B

satisfied with his samples, the medical examiner followed Bill over to where the skull rested in the grass.

    “Well,” I said, rubbing my legs and watching Tink. “Do you want to go home now? I can come out in the morning and get our stuff.”

    Tink and Nell exchanged a look Chris caught. Reaching out, she took Tink’s hand in hers. “Don’t worry about the other campers. I bet T.P.’s going to be a hero before this story is finished making the rounds,” she said with a smile. “Why don’t you still stay the night, Tink? All the excitement’s over.”

    Tink’s eyes darted back to Nell.

    “Come on,” Nell said with a playful jab. “Mom’s brought marshmallows, and we can make s’mores.”

    “Ophelia?” Tink asked with hesitation.

    I glanced at Chris. I appreciated her kindness to Tink and decided I should make more of an effort to know her better.

    “Sure,” I replied with a grin. “Whatever you want to do, sweetie. Only wash the dog first. I’m not sleeping with a smelly puppy.”

    The girls ran off to wash the stinky puppy.

    Chris was wrong about the excitement being over. Later that evening, after a relaxing evening roasting marshmallows and making s’mores around the campfire, and right before the witching hour, Tink’s nightmare screams echoed through the campground.

    Eleven

    Tink and I were up at dawn to break camp. I wanted her out of there before the campground came to life. She didn’t need to endure the stares of the other campers. As we pulled down the tent, a much easier job than erecting it, we tried to be as quiet as possible. Nell’s family still slept in their tent, and I didn’t want to wake them. I decided I’d give Nell’s parents a call later that evening and make my apologies for our hasty departure. Tink’s nightmares should be easy to explain, right? She was a sensitive fourteen-year-old, and who wouldn’t be freaked over her dog bringing home a human skull?

    Before pulling onto the blacktop leading back to Summerset, I cast a worried glance at Tink. She sat slumped in the passenger seat with her baseball cap pulled low on her forehead.

    Focusing my attention back on the road, I thought about how to frame my question. I didn’t want to upset her any more than she already was, yet I needed to know the details of her nightmare.

    “Want to tell me about the dream?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

    She turned toward the window and watched the early morning landscape fly by.

    The sun was higher in the hazy sky now, indicating the day would be a hot one. Low trailing fingers of fog reached across the green pastures and settled in the gullies. Outside the car window, I heard the calling of the crows as they circled on the horizon.

    A peaceful summer morning.

    I sensed the opposite in Tink. Distress resonated around her like an energy field.

    “Well?” I insisted.

    With a sigh, she tipped her head back against the head rest and pulled a tan leg underneath her. “It was sort of the same dream as before. I was walking down the path in the woods when I noticed a terrible odor—”

    I cut her off. “The same way T.P. smelled?”

    “Yeah,” she replied hesitantly.

    “What happened next?” I prodded.

    She shuddered, obviously recalling the dream. “The corpses came out of the woods, just like before, only this time some of them were missing parts of their bodies.” Tink shuddered again.

    I sensed her reluctance to continue. Reaching out, I laid a hand on her bare knee. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay.”

    “No, it’s better if I tell you about the dream. Maybe you can figure out why I’m having them.” She sat up tall in her seat and I felt her eyes on me. “As some of the spirits reached out to me, I saw they had no hands. Just raw stumps. And the expression on their faces was awful.”

    “In what way?”

    “Like they couldn’t figure out what happened to their hands.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tink’s