LOT'S MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Old Bone Woman

When the water melts away, the three ladies are gone and I'm alone in some sort of shack. Light pours in through the thick boards that make up the ceiling. Instead of paintings, human skulls with these weird red symbols on their foreheads line the walls.

There's a thing hunched in a corner. I try to leap out of the way when it growls and lunges at me. Its clawed hand gets ready to take my eyes out, but then stops. Instead of ripping my face off and putting my skull next to the others, it slaps me upside the head.

"You got any sense in that head, boy?" After screeching at me, the whatever-it-is drags a shaggy brown blanket higher around its broad shoulders and turns so I can see more of it. It has a wrinkly face and a long, pointed nose. Twigs and other things (I don't want to know) are matted in the stringy salt-and-pepper hair. I'm guessing that this thing is definitely what Grim was calling the Old Bone Woman. But she's supposed to be the most powerful monster at the lake?

I start to say something, but she keeps on going.

"You seen mah kitchen?" She's probably saying my, but the way she wheezes, the word sounds a whole lot more like mah. "Well, have ya?"

"Um, no."

"Sometimes, you gotta creep up on mah kitchen. Mah old body be wantin' some tea. Warm the body and warm the soul. Umm mmm, a good ole cup of tea with a smack of honey and a pinch of cinn'mon. A nip of whisky don't hurt neither." She makes this soft crooning noise, like she's trying to call a kitten. Then she adds in a whisper, "But mah house, he's a tricky one. Never know where things is gonna be. The rooms always be a-changin'."

I want answers, but it looks like I've walked into a double-helping of crazy. Grim could have warned me that she's nuts.

The Old Bone Woman cautiously reaches for a door that's near her, like she's expecting for it to sprout teeth and bite her. It doesn't. Instead, it disappears and then reappears about four feet away.

After glaring at the door, she looks at me and sighs. "My advice to you, boy, is that before you move into a house, make sure it's all the way dead first. Dead houses ain't got no spite to them, not like this place."

"This one is alive?" I ask slowly. The floor shudders under my feet, like the house is trying to answer me.

"Yep. We be in a livin' thing. Instead of guts and blood, it's got chairs and tables."

That's all she says. That's it. Then she watches the wall, like she expects another door or something worse to pop up.

"Then maybe you should move," I tell her.

"Cain't. You gotta be able to get out to do that. And this hateful place keeps hidin' the front door." Scratching her back with a small branch she pulls off of the blanket, she says, "Them Ladies can find ways to get folk in, and my magic can get you out again. No way for me to get out without that door, though. But I'm gonna find it, so you just wait, Old Hateful!"

She shakes her fist at the ceiling and waddles off to stare at another patch of wall. Great. I'm pinning my hopes on somebody that can't even find their way out of their own house.

After a few minutes, I get fed up and say, "I'm here for answers."

She sucks on her lip for a second and then snarls, "I know full well why you be here, boy."

"Then you can tell me about ..."

"... that Mr. John Kirby and the one callin' hisself the Glass Man. And maybe a little 'bout the Stone Men, too." She pulls me real close, like she's going to try to crawl under my skin. "But before any of that, let's get a look atcha."