The Mystery of the Whispering Witch

pinch you,” Honey said slowly. “I’m telling you. It all happened.”
    “Then where’s the evidence?” Trixie asked, trying to sound reasonable.
    “The evidence is here,” Fay’s voice said from behind them.
    They turned to see her standing, white-faced, in front of the big entrance doors. Her fists were clenched tightly at her sides.
    Trixie frowned. “Well? I don’t see anything— only you.”
    Fay swallowed hard. “I know,” she answered slowly. “That’s just it. I'm the evidence. You—you can blame me for everything. You see, it’s all my fault. I—I wasn’t sure before, but now I am.” Trixie stared. “I don’t understand. What is it you’re sure of?”
    “I’m possessed,” Fay said simply.
    “Possessed by what?” Honey asked, sounding as bewildered as Trixie felt.
    “It’s been going on for some time,” Fay said, as if she hadn’t heard Honey’s question. “I haven’t told anybody—not anybody. At first I thought it was all my imagination. I kept on hearing things, things that no one else seemed to notice.”
    By now she was crying, and her whole body shook with sobs.
    “It’s all right, Fay,” Trixie said, hurrying to her side. “It’s all right. We’ll look after you, won’t we, Honey?”
    “Of course we will.” Honey stopped, thinking. “Listen, Trix, one thing’s for sure. I’ve had enough of this house to last me a lifetime. I know it’s late, but let’s call Brian. He’ll come and get us and take us to your house—”
    Trixie frowned. “That’s no good. The phone’s out of order here. Don’t you remember? Now I’m wondering what happened to it.”
    Fay tried to choke back her sobs. “It’s nothing spooky, if that’s what you mean,” she said at last. “The storm last night knocked down a line, that’s all. But—but the phone won’t be fixed till tomorrow. Oh, Trixie, Honey, what are we going to do?”
    Trixie didn’t hesitate. “We’ll walk home,” she stated, “and from here on out, Fay, antiques or no antiques, you’re staying at Crabapple Farm until your mother’s out of the hospital.” Her face was grim. “As for that other thing you just told us— about being possessed, I mean—”
    “You can tell us about it later,” Honey finished. “But we will help you, Fay,” Trixie said, not really knowing whether she and Honey would be able to. Fay’s problem seemed to be getting far beyond their experience.
    At first she thought that Fay was going to refuse to move from her position by the front door. It was as if, having begun to tell them her terrible secret, she couldn’t rest until she’d told them all of it.
    But with Honey helping her, Trixie urged Fay back to that small bedroom where they had spent so many horrifying minutes. This time they made sure that the door was wide open as they dressed.
    Then Trixie and Fay, almost without thinking, grabbed a handful of Fay’s clothes and flung them into a suitcase. Then, thankfully, they made their way out of the house.
    Trixie didn’t even begin to breathe easier until they were standing at the mansion’s rear gates.
    “What are you girls doing out here at this time of night?” a man’s rough voice asked suddenly from behind them.
    Startled, Fay smothered a scream, Honey jumped nervously, and Trixie swung around and gazed up at a tall figure that had appeared noiselessly out of the shadows.
    Shaggy black eyebrows hung over a pair of cold gray eyes. The figure’s face, long creased with small wrinkles, was topped by an untidy mane of white hair that fell in ringlets over his ears.
    Trixie swallowed hard as she noticed what he was wearing. His painter’s overalls, which once could have been white, seemed to be stained with dark splotches of—could it be blood?
    Without thinking, Trixie stepped away from him, even though she knew who he was. Zeke Collins, the odd-job man at Lisgard House, had been a resident of Sleepyside for as long as she could remember.
    She stared now at those dark stains and wondered if, perhaps, he had managed to trap some small, defenseless creature from the swamp and had been busy butchering it.
    She shuddered. “We—my friends and I—are on our way to my house,” she stammered at last. “We—we were going to spend the night here—”
    “But something happened,” Fay added.
    “It was the witch, wasn’t it?” Zeke Collins said.
    Honey gasped. “How did you know?”
    Zeke Collins rasped a thumb across a stubble of beard on his chin.