Page 115 of You'll Be Sorry

“That’s a skull,” he said, voice low. “I know I just saw one in the well. But that felt different. It was old, like an exhibit in a museum. This…this is…”

“Sad.”

“Yeah.”

He swallowed thickly. She squeezed his hand again. “Okay,” he said, a bit more crisply. “We’re here. Now what?”

If only she knew. “The witch rhyme, its four colors. Mason jumped to the conclusion that the colors referred to lost currency. And maybe they do, but take it from an interior decorator—color is a powerful tool, with color symbolism being a basic tenet of design.”

“Color symbolism?”

“People have an inherent response to color. The color red. Can signify love, hence Valentine’s Day; stimulate hunger, which is why it’s used in many restaurant interiors; and also convey danger, à la stop signs.”

“Navigation,” Theo added thoughtfully. “In boating, a red light indicates port side. All right, colors are a language unto their own. But how does that apply to a dimly lit cave?”

“Beats me. To Betty’s point, however, I’ve never heard of color-coded early-American witches. Red, blue, black, and white. Hmm.” She found herself shivering again and released Theo’s hand long enough to rub her arms. “This space. It feels sowrong. And not just what we’re seeing now. It’s more than that.Deeperthan that. What those women described to the midwife. Their nightmares of devils and demons. They were here. This…this is where it all happened.”

They both lapsed back into silence, gazing at the scene around them. So many bones—a skull, part of a pelvis, what appeared to be a femur, clearly some ribs. And over there, another skull, definitely smaller than the first.

Raquel forced herself to breathe.

“There’s a stone.” Theo spoke up finally. “In the middle of that alcove, do you see it? It’s flat, unnaturally so. Kind of like, you know, a creepy altar piece that might be used for human sacrifice.”

She didn’t require his graphic description to see his point. Of all the various features in the cave, the flat stone stood out. They worked their way closer.

Theo shined his light directly upon the surface. It gleamed with such dark, glossy tones it appeared wet, but Raquel didn’t have it in her to touch it to find out. Dear Lord. She was shaking terribly now.

“We should go,” Theo said. “You can explain color theory to the sheriff later. Let her deal with this.”

Raquel shook her head. “Black. Onyx maybe? But either way, about as black as black gets, don’t you think?”

Theo sighed, looking around gamely. The boulder was positioned before a dark, curved nook. He stepped inside, sweeping the space with his flashlight.

“Raquel.”

He illuminated the chiseled stone above him, homing in as shiny blue dots appeared. Some kind of mica flecks in the rock? They studied it, then nodded as one.

“Now we just need red and white.”

Raquel already had an idea on that subject. Kneeling down, she brushed away a top layer of dirt and debris from the base of the altar. A thick vein of milky white quartz appeared, zigzagging the stone floor. “And now red.”

“I’m guessing feldspar, a reddish mineral common in these parts,” Theo murmured instantly. “Hence the Redstone Quarry. It’d be protruding, like a chunky crystal.”

They started searching in earnest, Raquel, wiping off various bumps and outcroppings with her gloved hands while Theo brought his headlamp closer.

“Holy shit.”

The walls, as Theo had predicted, were dotted with pinkish gray clumps. Cleaned and polished, Raquel could only imagine how beautiful it would look. The entire alcove, for that matter, a mineral wonderland of red, blue, black, and white. Meaning.

She looked down directly where they stood.

“If X marked a spot?” she asked quietly.

“We didn’t bring a spade or pickaxe.”

“Don’t worry. I did.”

Three things happened nearly at once. Raquel and Theo snapped around. Theo’s headlamp went flying as he was struck by an arcing shovel. And a heartbeat later, a gun went off.