Season of the Witch

Chapter 6: The Axeman Cometh

Melanie woke up in a cold sweat thanks to the vivid nightmares she'd had all night featuring Myrtle being burned at the stake, leading up to her own execution by fire after she had an argument with Fiona. Her prior experience with setting people aflame had made the things she saw, heard, and smelled in the dreams seem all too real. After taking a moment to pull herself together and stuff her grief inside a little box, she made herself get out of bed and started the day with a cold shower. Then she arranged her damp hair in a French braid and put on a vintage green velvet dress with long sleeves and a lace collar that came down to her knees, sheer black stockings, and a pair of vintage floral grunge Doc Martin boots. She wore her rings on her fingers and a black velvet choker that had a small gold charm shaped like a heart around her neck. When she finished getting dressed, she searched through her things until she found the most recent collection of makeup samples that Myrtle and Cordelia had encouraged her to try. She stared at them for a moment before walking back into the bathroom to put them on. Melanie usually didn't wear makeup. She hadn't even bothered to put on anything more than a little powder and mascara when she went to that fateful frat party with Madison and Zoe. But Myrtle used to say that makeup was a woman's war paint. And, right now, Melanie felt like she needed some. She carefully applied a nude eyeshadow as a base and blended a darker tan in the crease. Then she used the small brush to blend a burgundy shade around the outer edges of her eyes before applying black eyeliner to her top lid and part of her bottom lid, starting from the outer corner. She smudged the lining a bit for a smokey look and applied black mascara to her lashes. Then she smoothed a little of Clinique's Almost Lipstick in Black Honey onto her lips, painted her nails with a quick-drying nail polish in burgundy, and went downstairs to face the day. Her nails dried along the way.

After an awkward breakfast, where Melanie and Queenie made it a point to actively ignore each other, Zoe and Melanie decided to start their investigation by searching through Madison's things for clues. They began with a box filled with miscellaneous items that Madison had kept under her bed. They found a magazine the missing star had kept open on an article about herself and a pair of sunglasses. Zoe put them on and tried mimicking Madison in the mirror. She rolled her eyes at her own impression and took them off. Melanie looked at Zoe and shook her head. She still couldn't believe it. There had been a zombie attack on the school. And she had missed it. She was proud of Zoe for how she fought back. And she was impressed with her new ability. Spell negation was a great power to have. Moving on, they found a pair of spiked rhinestone-covered headphones, a small gun—which was kind of disturbing—and a scarf. The scarf turned out to be wrapped around a small liquor bottle, like the kind they served on planes, because it fell out when Zoe picked it up and rolled across the floor and into the closet. She followed it into the closet to retrieve it, while Melanie kept searching through the box. Zoe paused when she heard a squeak and something made a few of the clothes hangers move. She reached her hands in and pushed them aside.

"Find something?" Melanie asked when she heard the sound of the hangers clacking together and squealing against the metal rod they were on.

"Yeah. There's another door in here," Zoe answered, and Melanie came over to see for herself. "I think it just opened by itself. Must have been a draft." She pulled the door all the way open and crouched down to have a better look inside, using the light built into her phone as a flashlight.

"A secret compartment. Sounds promising," Melanie said, squatting down beside her. She held up her own cell phone to give her more light. "See anything Madison might have hidden in there?"

"No. This stuff is old. It looks like it hasn't been touched in years," Zoe said, shifting a musty old pillow out of the way so she could open a dusty wooden trunk, which contained a variety of odds and ends. "These photographs are ancient." She handed them over to Melanie, who started flipping through them. Melanie frowned when she began to notice a disturbing trend as the years passed. She also noticed something else.