The Witching Hour

This week Chuck got us to check out each other's images we have to upload and write a story about an image we have picked out... I've chosen the Standing Stones.  

The Standing Stones

Enjoy.

Thunder cracked overhead.

It was time.

Erica watched as the moon moved overhead. 

The dagger poised above the struggling white rabbit as the eclipse was almost done, the moon was almost blood red, time of opening the pathway home was to happen.

But would somebody here stop her before she could finish the ritual, or would she be able to do it right?

Lightning flashed across the low, dark clouds; illuminating the open fields surrounding her as rain poured from above.  This was time, the right time, for this to happen!

Erica plunge the dagger into the chest of the rabbit, feeling its pungent fear fill the air as her arm came down, as its blood first oozed over the blade, then ran more freely as the tip struck the stone she was holding it onto. 

Tears filled her eyes as she felt and saw its life slip away, knowing she had killed something she wished she didn’t have to, ‘Oh, dammit, you big sook, let’s just get on with it.’ She muttered as she bent over the rabbit, opening the tiny carcass up and cutting out its heart for what she needed to do.

The massive dark stones stood nearby, blackened and slick by the rain now pelting down from the skies around them.  This made them terrifying.  But 1650 was no time for Erica to be in – especially seeing she was a practicing Witch back home in the Twenty-First Century; the witch hunts were just beginning around this part of the country and if she was caught, she’d be burned at the stake, or worse, and never get back to her own time.

Besides, the Wise Woman had told her about these Standing Stones and given her directions to them – even walked her to this very spot two weeks ago – and told her about the ritual she had to perform to get back home.  So, here she was, doing this very thing…

…praying to the Gods above that she wasn’t going to get caught…

…hoping that this worked…

…wishing she didn’t have to kill an animal to get back home…

The clouds cleared for a moment and she found the moon was completely red.

It was time to use the animal heart!

She knelt right by the stones with the heart in one hand and the bloodied dagger in the other.  As the rain poured down, she quoted the Latin the Wise Woman had been teaching her for months and drew the pattern in the mud hoping this would work.

Then, she heard it… a rumbling beneath her… behind her…

‘No… it can’t be.’ She turned from her spot with the dagger still poised and the tiny heart in her hand to find the hilltop behind her lined with torchlight.  Lightning flashed and it lit up the township of people who lived over the hill, ‘Oh crap… they’re gonna kill me.’ She turned back to her ritual and started to speak faster, draw faster.  As Erica did, something amazing happened!

The drawings in the mud began to show silver and glisten in the darkness.  When she spoke faster, it showed the diagram she was drawing, until she no longer needed to draw it; instead holding the dagger up to the heavens with the tiny heart as it began to beat on its own.

This was what the Wise Woman said would happen!

Erica smiled as tears of happiness blurred her vision and she felt positive that she was going home!

At long last, she was going to be able to watch television, listen to modern music on the radio and watch YouTube!  Yes!  This was starting to sound like a wonderful reality!

In the next flash of lightning, she heard the people from the township screaming, thundering down the hillside. 

Fear tightened in her gut as she looked up to find the doorway between the massive black stone light up, and she saw daylight!

Rising from her knees, she stepped over the diagram, kept a hold of the rabbit’s heart and dagger and walked through the brightly-lit doorway.

As soon as she was through, she felt the sun on her face, the warm breezes of a nice Spring day and she looked at her hands where she still held the heart and dagger. 

Turning, she sliced the heart into four, chanting a closing mantra, stabbing the dagger right in the middle of the doorway.  Then took two pieces of the heart in both hands and smeared them into the rockfaces as hard as she could from top to bottom.  As she did, a brilliant flash emitted from the doorway and the storm that had been occurring in between those stones before was now gone.

Erica sat on the ground soaked to the skin, her hands and arms covered in blood looking at the dagger.  She had to leave that there.  So, with all her strength, she shoved it into the ground up to the hilt… hoping it would stay there.

Turning, she looked around.  The hillside was exactly as it had been hundreds of years ago… so had she been sent home?  Looking over the valley, she rubbed her hands on her long dirty dress, wondering if it had all been a bad dream… wondering…

‘Erica?’ a familiar male voice called out behind her.

She turned to find her boyfriend running up to her from the hilltop, ‘James?’

He pulled out an iPhone, ‘Hey, yeah, I found her… she’s covered in mud and muck, and drenched as though she’s been in a storm, but she’s here!  We need the trucks… we’re at the Standing Stones, dude.’

‘What year is it?’

‘Why?’

‘I just came from 1650.’

He took a few steps back, ‘Well, we’ll have to get you checked out then.  And the year is 2015.’

‘Are we together?’

‘Of course… why?’

‘When I left, you were mad at me.’

‘About what?’

Looking back at the stones, Erica wondered what the hell happened to change their relationship, ‘In what way are we together?’

‘We’re married.’ He looked at her hands, ‘And who’s blood is that?’

‘I had to kill a rabbit to get here.’

He turned away, ‘Dude, we have a witch… it’s burnin’ time.’