The Witches of Hollow

Chapter I

"That's a nice story." Kitty said, slouching down into her car seat, rolling her eyes. 

"Its not a story!" Mom turned around from the front, taking her eyes off the road for a moment. "It actually happened! Many years ago..." Her grin was wide, and I couldn't help but laugh at her enthusiasm.

"You read that off the internet, didn't you mom." 

"I did not!" My mom snickered. She raised her right hand, and turned back to look at us. "Cross my heart and hope to die. Nancy told me when I announced that we were moving here. She loves that kind of stuff you know. Researches it any chance she gets. If there's a story about witches, then she knows it." 

"Eyes on the road mom..." I muttered. Barely listening to her claim about Nancy. I was used to telling her this, she always became to preoccupied with telling her stories that she forgot about the car 

"Right right. No need to remind me Charlie. If you're so worried, how about you try driving this big van with two screaming kids in the back." I was also used to hearing this. My mom likes rhetorical questions, the ones your not supposed to answer. 

"I would!" I shot back. "If you'd let me." Unfortunately, I was the type of person who answers those kind of questions. 

"Wait, I'm not screaming! Am I screaming?" Kitty hollered.

"No, honey. Your not. I was just, over exaggerating the situation." Mom said softly. I sighed. That was Kitty. Always one step behind everyone else. Not that I could blame her. It must have been hard, growing up in a house with my mother and me for a brother. 

The car was quiet, save for Mom's whispering. She always whispered to herself when she got nervous. It was normal in our apartment to hear her silently talking to herself. But I didn't think this trip was something for her to be so anxious about. 

Kitty's next question was: "are there really witches here?" Her voice filled with wonder, and her eyes went wide, imagining all the things she would have to tell her friends back home. 

I spoke before my mom could. "No Kitty. Witches aren't real. Their like... Unicorns. Or mermaids. Just a work of fiction. Someone just thought them up and put them in a book." 

"I'm pretty sure that person was Shakespeare." My mom said. "You know, the Weïrd sisters." 

"Macbeth!" Kitty smiled. "I remember when Charlie read me that play. I liked it." 

"Mom, I don't think Shakespeare thought up witches...." I trailed off. Kitty was glaring at me. Her classic "why-must-you-crush-my-childhood-dreams" look. 

It was best to give it up at that point. So I turned my body away from both of them, and instead leaned my head against the cold glass of the window. It was an eerie night, filled with street lamps in random locations, and fog that clouded them into a orange-ish white haze. 

Our family has always different than the rest. We love the paranormal things. Witches, sirens, monsters, ghosts. Anything that scared other kids, we were all over it. I had grown out of my obsession with demons a few years ago, and my believe had been slowly dying ever since. But Kitty is still all over it. She's convinced in the world being filled with all sorts of evil spirits. At only nine years old, she has thought up more scenarios, written more stories, and scared more of her classmates than all the theorists out there. 

Dad's disappearance had only seemed to fuel the witch crazed fire inside my little sister. For me, it had shut it down. For the past six months, Kitty has been searching nonstop for any evidence that dad had been kidnapped by some evil force. Neither mom or I could bring ourselves to tell her that "MIA" didn't mean "Mildly Interesting Aliens." 

My father was in the military, a general and war hero. He had planned to come home after his last overseas mission, but something went wrong. The ship went missing near the British Isles. All radio lines were cut off, and no one could reach the people on board. They sent out search boats, but they didn't find anything. He was reported Missing In Action on December 25, 2017. 

Before he left in July, he told my mom that as soon as he came back he wanted us to move to Hollow, Washington. 

"The city is just too much for me now, Ashley. You know that. There's this tiny town in the top corner of Washington. It's where my father grew up. He took me to visit when I was younger. And plus, think of how Charlie and Kitty would love to get the city out of their lungs. Finally, some clean air." 

Kitty and I were hiding behind the staircase when my dad said that. I remember Kitty smiling, her little face lighting up at the prospect of going somewhere new. And I remember thinking that I wished I was born with her adventurous spirit. She was always ready for something different. But I loved the city. New York was where I'd lived 13 years of my life, and the thought of leaving it made me want to throw up. 

But, here we are. Six months later, I was forced out of our beloved apartment looking over Times Square, pushed in the car, and driven cross country all for the wish of a dead man.