The Haunted National Park: A Tale from the Peter Wood Multiverse
Chapter Five: The Witch of the Park

The slouching figure was that of a woman with midnight black, curly hair that was dishevelled. It reached down to the floor and poured over her face, hiding it from view almost completely. Her clothes were a dark blue and were tattered, and the woman’s pale, long-nailed white hands were wrapped around an old bottle that was sitting in on the table.

At first, they didn’t want to go any closer toward the body than they already were. They wondered how long it had been sitting there, just rotting away. The length of the hair and the cobwebs suggested years, but the skin on the lady’s hands—while very blue indeed—didn’t look rotten at all. Mindy even said that almost thought she saw one of the fingers twitch.

It was of course Peter who took the first steps toward her. He wanted to see what she actually looked like underneath all of that hair. Upon getting closer to her, Peter saw that sitting on her lap was a tattered, light brown teddy bear. When Peter reached for the bear, he suddenly found him stuck as the woman’s hands released the bottle on the table with lightning speed and latched themselves around the bear and Peter’s arm, digging her long fingernails into Peter’s hand. In terror, he watched as the colour suddenly returned to her hands, the tighter she held onto him.

Then the woman sat bolt upright in her chair and let in a long, chilling, raspy breath of air, and a huge gust of wind—with a force that Peter had never felt before—began blowing in from the hallway. It thrusted Oliver and the other five children into the room with Peter and the woman, causing them to fall flat on the floor. Something even stranger happened then: as if by some form of magic, the walls and the pieces of the wooden door that were blown to bits by Mindy’s charges began reconnecting themselves until the whole wall was reconstructed to the point where it was impossible to see any signs of the explosion.

“We’re locked in!” said Peter. Oliver and Lily tried and failed to shove the door back open.

All at once, Peter and Mindy were faced with a terrifying reality: they were now ensnared in this new room by unseen means, and the woman’s body that they thought was a corpse was now breathing heavily and very much alive. Peter then felt something sharp being pressed just underneath his chin. He looked down to see the woman now using one of her hands to press what looked like a tree stick menacing into his chin.

“Who are you?” said the woman’s raspy voice, as the end of the stick pressing into Peter’s chin started glowing purple. “Who are you? Who sent you? How did you get inside my house?”

“No…no…” Mindy began shaking in place as she spoke in a hushed voice. “She’s not a paranormal. She’s a witch!”

The meaning of Lily’s words dawned on them all with a bone-chilling feeling of horror and caught firmly in her grasp was Peter who was now much too close for comfort and looking straight into the witch’s, furious, hazel brown eyes.

“Who are you?” the Witch once again demanded of Peter. “Answer me!”

“I’m…I’m Peter. Peter Wood.”

“NO!” said Mindy, hushing him frantically. “Peter, what are you doing? Don’t tell her your name. Don’t say anything to her! She’s dangerous.”

At the sound of these words, the Witch whipped her head around to look at them, causing Mindy to stumble backwards and into the locked door. Peter realized that she had not noticed her until just then.

“Who’s there?” said the Witch. “Do you hear me? Who else is there? Show yourselves!”

Peter and Mindy swapped puzzled looks. There was no longer any light pouring in from the hallway and the room’s own lights were off, but there was more than enough purple light coming from the Witch’s light that they could all see each other fairly well.

“We’re not going to hurt you…” said Peter. The Witch whipped her head back in his direction and began squinting at him. “We were just exploring the house. We didn’t know anyone alive was still…well, living here.”

The Witch continued to squint at him. “Wait a minute…you’re voice…”

She then shot up to her feet—causing them all to give a small round of shouts and screams—and sent her chair tumbling over behind her. She was careful, though, to not remove the stick—her magic wand—from Peter’s chin as she riffed through the inner pockets of her robes, looking for something. She eventually pulled out a pair of brass glasses and began hastily shoving them onto her face.

“Children…” the Witch said when she finally got a good look at them all. “You’re children…you’re just a bunch of kids?”

“Don’t talk to her.” Said Mindy, just as Peter was about to respond to the Witch. “Don’t say anything to her. We can’t—”

“Oh?” said the Witch. “Really? And why is that? Hmm? After all, each of you sneaked into my home tonight. You are here, on my grounds, uninvited. I was hoping that you’d at least have something to say for yourselves about why that is…?”

Peter turned to look at Mindy. “We…we were all told by our parents that we should never talk to wizardkin. They said that most of them are dangerous—”

“Wizardkin?” The Witch cut her off. “Did you just say ’wizardkin’?” She took another good hard look at them all. “So, if you really are just children…and if you’re calling me that…then there’s those uniforms of yours.” She was referring to their red and gold scout uniforms. “You’re both sleuth scouts. Which means that you’re also paranormals.” It was at this point that the Witch finally lowered her magic wand.

“Well, yeah.” Said Peter, a more subtle calmness now stabilizing his voice with her wand being lowered. “Who did you think we were?”

“Wizards and witches, like myself. I couldn’t see you very well without my glasses and so I assumed the worse. And initially, I thought you were much older than you really are. I thought you were more officials from MAG-PAR sent to deal with me.”

“Mag-what?” said Peter.

“MAG-PAR. It’s what us…wizardkin…call the Magical Parliament—” A loud wailing from outside the room cut off the rest of the Witch’s sentence. Suddenly, she had her wand out again and she threw herself toward it, magically whisking the other children behind her and next to Peter. “They got in.”

“Who?” Peter asked.

“Stay behind me!” She whipped the door open It put up no resistance to her. Charging out the door with her wand in hand, she pointed it down the hallway and shouted, “Concussion-Banishment!”

Peter clamped down on his ears as a loud bang rang out through the ranger station, causing the very walls of the building to shake violently.

“See what I mean?” Mindy shrieked. “She’s dangerous!”

“Let’s get out of here!” said Oliver.

Peter grabbed hold of Lily and Oliver and jumped into super-speed as they made their way into the hallway. However, much to the surprise of the others, Peter slammed on the breaks right in the middle of the visitor’s room when he saw what the Witch was doing: she was crying.

The Witch was now standing in front of the block of ice looking at the ghost that was now only half-frozen in a block of ice but still very still. Peter supposed that it was at the frozen banshee that she fired off her spell but for some reason, it only affected the ice. The Witch had her hands clasped over his mouth as tears ran down her face. “Helena? Helena, is this you?”

“Helena?” Peter said. “You mean the ranger who wrote that letter about you? This is her?”

“What? What letter?”

Peter flashed back over to the door of the staffroom, picked up the ranger’s letter that was left on the floor, and flashed back over to hand it to the Witch for her to read. “This letter. She wrote it and then hid the door to the staffroom you were asleep in…why did she lock you away in there, anyways?”

“Peter, what are you doing?” Said Mindy. She began trying to shove the three of them toward the door. “We need to leave before she—”

“I did this…” The Witch sobbed, sinking to the ground, still speaking to the banshee, and gingerly touching the written words on the letter. “This is all my fault. The government was after me, not any of you. They never would have even heard of you if I hadn’t…if I hadn’t bewitched you...”

Peter didn’t know how to react to this statement. On one hand, he very much wanted to hear and learn about the Witch’s story. But on the other hand, there was the whole matter of her being a very dangerous person, armed with a wand with which she had just nearly brought the building down on top of them, and now she was fully admitting to magically enslaving this now-dead ranger.

“You see?” said Mindy. “She’s dangerous! We need to leave now before—”

A loud chorus of wailing had started to build, coming from somewhere outside the station that was drowning out the shouting of the half-frozen banshee in the room, and at that point was too loud to ignore.

“Quick,” the Witch shot back up to her feet and stepped just out of reach of the banshee. “Shut the curtains. Shut them now! She’s called them!”

“What?” said Peter. “Called who?”

“The other ghosts.” The Witch took up her wand, which had fallen to the floor when she did earlier, and pointed it at the banshee. “I’m sorry, Helena.” With a flick of her wand, she made the ice block grow until it once again froze the ghost in place.

Then several things happened at once; The Witch threw up her wand hand again and in response, the curtains hastily covered the windows. A series of loud thuds then came from the front side of the building and the wailing of the ghosts outside was reaching a fever pitch.

“There’s someone in there!” came a dead man’s voice.

“Is it her?” came a little girl’s voice. “Is it the lady the dead ranger was protecting?”

“Who’s in there with you, Helena? Is it the Witch?” came a dead woman’s raspy voice from outside. “Open the door! Let us in!”

“What do we do?” said Peter, looking around at the rest of them. “What if they get in?”

“No, it’s alright.” Said the Witch, now lowering her wand, somewhat uneasily. “I enchanted the walls of the station ages ago to keep the ghosts out. The only reason Helena is inside is because…well, I’m assuming that she died inside.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Well,” Lily started. “If Peter uses his super speed to—”

“No, it’s not safe out there.” The Witch said firmly. “I’m sorry, but the best thing for you all to do right now is to wait out that storm of ghosts outside. It’ll be safe to go out once they’ve given up on replaceing me in here. All I have to do is not use any more magic and avoid being seen.” Then the Witch sat down on one of the sofas covered in silly string and began wringing her hands as she stared at the floor.

“Everyone will be fine.” Said the Witch. “I promise.” She then looked up at them and smiled briefly, before returning her gaze to the floor.

Peter and the others exchanged uneasy looks as the screaming, shouting, and banging from outside only got louder and shook the building harder and harder. They were stuck, and there was nothing they could do but wait as the Witch said.