The Witch Cave: The Bell Witch Series, #3

By Sara Clancy and Scare Street

Their worst nightmares lurk in the darkness…

The offspring of four cursed families risked everything to defeat the nightmare that haunts their bloodlines. But when an eerie melody chimes through the trees, they know the Bell Witch has returned. Her harvest of souls has begun, and they are running out of time.

Vowing to put an end to the evil presence, the four survivors venture into a network of caves. They descend deeper into the dark, flooded tunnels only to find demonic spirits tormenting them with nightmarish visions of the past—bitter secrets their families have fought hard to keep buried.

As the frigid water begins to rise, the survivors are confronted with the most horrific terror of all. They soon realize that the only way to get out of there alive is for one of them to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Will they survive? Or will they drown in the shadowy depths of the Witch's cave?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scare Street
• Release date: Sep 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9798201048990

Book preview

Chapter 1

Slow, rhythmic kicks brought Ozzie deeper into the gloomy depths. The farther he traveled, the heavier the water became, gathering to press against his chest like a stone. His breath left him in a flurry of tumbling bubbles. They rushed past his ears, creating an almost popping noise, the only sound to break the consuming silence. Drawing another breath from his scuba tank brought a slightly plastic taste to play over his tongue. When he had first started his lessons, his instructors had insisted that it wasn’t so bad. He’d get used to it. Several months in and that had yet to happen.

The freshwater pool was state of the art. Specifically designed to cater to all levels of expertise, it was an all in one facility. The central pit was little more than a large cylinder piercing the earth for 131 feet. Perfect for deep water diving practice. Random gaping holes speckled the tiled walls; each opening clearly labeled and ranked. Some simulated cave diving. Others spelunking. The deeper they were situated, the harder they became. Ozzie had heard rumors that the ones on the very bottom of the tank were used solely for Black Ops training. He wasn’t keen to explore them just yet and wasn’t sure he ever would be.

The pressure grew against his chest, making every breath a bit harder than the one before it. Shadows crept in around him as the temperature steadily dropped. Ozzie shivered and pushed himself deeper, conscious of the speed of his kicks, counting off his breaths. Bubbles bounced off of his goggles and rolled over the hood of his wetsuit. His ears popped as he passed by one of the observation windows.

Carefully arranged along the length of the pit, the windows served the dual purpose of providing the instructors with some observation points and letting in a bit of light to break up the gloom. Ozzie always tried to ignore them. What he was training for wasn’t going to give him any measure of a reprieve. But he couldn’t help himself. Ozzie never felt as cool as he did when he got to wave at some awestruck kids. He was a little disappointed to find the observation room empty.

Just as he reached the edge of the light, the cord attached to his weighted belt gave a sharp tug. He returned the gesture, ensuring his instructors that he was fine. It wasn’t the first time he was doing a solo deep dive. The whole point of this was to become as proficient as possible in everything he could. He needed to know he could survive on his own and be useful in a group. This time, he wasn’t going to be the weak one. He wasn’t going to be the one everyone needed to save. Ozzie couldn’t do anything about being the youngest, or the least experienced, but he could get better. And he would. Cadwyn, Basheba, and Mina would be able to rely on him.

They had all started their training around the same time. Not together, they were too scattered about for that. But Mina had picked the locations and Ozzie had been happy to fund it. If they were going to the Witch Caves, he was going to make sure they were all as ready as possible. As determined as they all were, he knew they each still clung to the hope that none of it would be necessary. That they could follow through on Basheba’s Plan ‘B’—a cave diving trip in Mexico to celebrate that the Witch was really dead.

Ozzie counted out his breaths, four seconds in, four seconds out, ensuring they remained slow and deep even as his gut twisted sharply. He rolled his shoulders and glanced past his elongated flippers, back up to the top of the pit. The combination of the tunnel entrance and the azure blue water diffused the light, turning what should have been a single glowing disc into a spiked star.

131 feet. The same as a twelve-story building, Ozzie’s mind unhelpfully reminded him. His stomach knotted again. I’m only about halfway, he thought then cringed. Wow, that’s some bad comforting skills you have there Davis-Sewall. The hyphened version of his name still sounded strange. He had spent his entire life as a Davis, and it seemed that everyone had been happy with the arrangement. At least, no one had been in a hurry to tell him that, biologically, Percival Sewall was his father.

It had been a lot of information to take in all at once. He had known that his ‘father,’ Ethan Davis, had been best friends with Percival since college. And he had known that Ethan and Ha-Yun, Ozzie’s mother, had married within a few months of meeting each other. A whirlwind romance. All the stories, however, had glossed over the part where Percival had dated Ha-Yun first. And, when they had realized that they only loved each other as friends, Percival had been the one to set her up with Ethan. Apparently, it had all happened so fast that no one was sure who Ozzie’s father was. Instead of a DNA test, they agreed on the setup that had carried them for fifteen years. Right up until the moment when the Witch selected him for the Harvest and proceeded to try and murder him. Without the Witch, he probably never would have known that his godfather was actually his father. Or why on earth he had been named Osgood.

He snuck one last glance at the star-shaped light above before forcing himself to re-focus on the bottom. Looking back always left him with a sense of dread that he just couldn’t shake. There was something about diving to the depths that left him feeling insignificant and helpless. It was yet another emotion he needed to learn to suppress. He needed to build himself into someone stronger. Because, when they finally did enter the Witch Caves, it would be the girls facing their deepest fears, not him. When the Bell Witch had tormented him with his fears, the girls had been there to pull him through. This time, they would need him. And I’m sure as hell not going to let them down.

Willimina Crane was notoriously claustrophobic. What was worse, she was what Basheba referred to as a freezer. She clung so much to science and logic, that encountering something that existed beyond that fried her brain. Mina always froze up. Doing that while trapped miles underground, in flooded, ghost-infested caves, wasn’t an option. She was going to need someone to keep an eye on her and push her into motion.

Basheba Bell was different. Her knee-jerk reaction to fear, or any intense emotion, was to set the cause on fire. That’s probably why water terrifies her so much, Ozzie thought. Mina’s voice echoed in the back of his mind. It’s clinically referred to as thalassophobia. The fear of deep water. And I don’t think it helps that her namesake drowned in a shallow pool.

Memories of the past spring flashed through his head as he drew in another deep breath. Everything had gone wrong when they decided to head back into the woods on their own terms instead of being summoned there for the Witch’s Harvest.

Ozzie couldn’t help the shudder that passed through him. The Harvest. It took place over the last days of October when the Witch selected one from each of the four families and drew them back to the historical Bell property, where all of the murder and madness had begun almost two centuries ago. Four people against their nightmares and deepest fears, pitted against time to relock the Witch’s music boxes and keep the demons contained.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. In theory, at least. Everything had gone wrong, and he worried that they hadn’t achieved anything. Beyond interrupting a ritualistic sacrifice and setting the old Bell farmhouse on fire, he thought. He cringed as he recalled how fast the fire had spread. They had barely gotten out of the woods before the entire thing was burning. It was haunted anyway.

It gutted him to think that Basheba might have faced one of her deepest fears for nothing. The Witch had tried to drown Basheba on their first trip into the woods. She had succeeded on their second. Ozzie had never felt so helpless as he had when watching Cadwyn Winthrop drag her limp body from the raging river. The nurse had instantly begun CPR, each contraction driving Basheba’s tiny frame into the soft earth. Ozzie still didn’t know how she had survived all of it without internal injuries. Or how she had managed to cough up more snakes than water. But he was sure that Basheba wasn’t stupid enough to believe their lie. That she hadn’t died, merely hit her head.

Basheba’s reaction had been vastly different from Mina’s. He could almost hear Basheba nonchalantly describing herself as a fighter type—impulsive, violent, and unpredictable. Burning down the Bell house in the hope of stopping the curse had always been the plan. Ozzie often wondered how much of the other carnage had just been Basheba working through her emotional issues.

Two more sharp tugs on the safety line broke Ozzie from his thoughts. He returned the gesture and drifted lower still. He wasn’t prepared for the rope to go taut. His startled breath ripped free from his throat in a swarm of cascading bubbles that obscured his already limited view. It stopped as abruptly as it began, leaving only stirred water and a dull ache in his stomach. He floated in the murky nothingness, forcing his breathing to slow, constantly scanning the shadows that consumed him.

The observation window just above him cut a large chunk out of the darkness. Struck with a sudden, childish fear of the dark, Ozzie itched to swim toward it. Beyond the speckled bars of light loomed the entrance star. It rippled softly in the constantly shifting water. Ozzie’s face jerked to the right, his brain working too slowly for him to understand why. It clicked a second later. Movement. Not a dark figure, but something more like a moonbeam. It slipped from one patch of light to another, hidden amongst the blueish haze.

Something moved behind him, close enough to stir the water and push it against his spine. He spun around, holding his breath to keep his vision clear of bubbles, his legs and arms working slowly to keep himself suspended. The world was an empty blue abyss. He was alone. Pain sliced around his stomach when his rope snapped taut, dragging him up again. A few feet flew past in a wave of disorientation and thrashing water.

Ozzie twisted his head up, desperate for a glimpse of what had snagged on his line. In the moment of panicked distraction, a presence slipped past his spine. Before he could turn to face it, there was another sharp jerk. He scrambled at the latch on his belt, the thick rubber of his gloves forcing him to fumble with the release. The water darkened around him in the wake of a growing shadow. He paused, looked up, and choked on a scream.

An enormous great white shark glided down toward him. Silent. Grinning. In his shock, Ozzie struggled to make sense of the animal’s deformity. The tapered tip of its nose was aimed into the depths as it passed him, sinking fast with lazy swipes of its tail. Upside down, the contours of its cavernous mouth and powerful body created the impression of a grinning demonic face—all exposed teeth and laughing eyes. Frozen in horror, Ozzie could only watch as the shadowy second face winked at him.

Laughter exploded around him. Childish and shrill. Churning through the encasing liquid as if it was air. The Witch. Ozzie began to tremble. It can’t be. It’s too soon! All of his panicked self-assurances were in vain. The shark was right there before him as proof of the Bell Witch’s power. Burning the place didn’t work. The Harvest is happening. I’m going to get a music box. Dread consumed him even while the rest of his brain tried to argue. Something solid slammed against his back, jolting him forward, almost forcing him into the pointed end of a shark’s tail.

He glanced over his shoulder to see another grinning face floating past him. It touched me! He screamed the words within his skull as his throat squeezed tight. It’s not an illusion; it’s real, it touched me!

The disembodied laughter continued as light and shadow played across the shark’s face. The laughter took on an edge of sadistic pleasure as Ozzie’s fear cut down to his bones. Blood surged past his ears as his heartbeat quickened, the rush distorting the laughter.

The safety protocol his instructors had hammered into him took over. He grasped his safety cord and tugged once. Instantly, his instructors began to pull him toward the surface, drawing him away from the sharks. The movement caught their attention, and the once mindlessly drifting sharks rolled their faces to track him. As one, they gave chase.

Hyperventilating on his artificial air, he tore his eyes from his pursuers to see where he was going. The rim of his goggles and the flurry of bubbles obscured his view of the darkened and squirming shadows. He swiped one hand through the cluster, dispersing it enough for him to see what he was heading toward.

It was a frenzy of sharks. Each one large and deformed, sweeping back and forth at unnatural angles, ghostly faces in the gloom. As he hurtled toward them, their numbers grew to blot out the light. Ozzie’s rubber-clad fingers scraped over the buckle. He jabbed and pushed, unable to work the release.

Air fled from his lungs in a rush as he hit the latch in frustration, driving it into his stomach. Finally, the lock gave way. The rope slipped through the gap and proceeded up without him, flapping now that it had nothing to hold it down. One of the sharks darted past him to hunt down the trailing end, jaws wide and monstrous face giddy with joy. The laughing became deafening, a hellish choir that assaulted his ears like a thousand icepicks. Ozzie longed to grasp the sides of his skull but forced his arms out, bringing himself to a suspended stop. He searched for the second shark.

It didn’t take long to spot the spectral underbelly of the great white shark playing through the azure haze. It emerged almost lazily to come alongside him. Like the others, it moved unnaturally. Tail up, nose down, drifting like debris rather than a living creature. Ozzie shivered at the sight before he willfully locked every joint to keep himself perfectly still. His lithe body tried to float up, only to be hindered by his weighted diving belt. The contrast left him drifting as the white face filled his view.

Muscles twitched under the alabaster skin to make the laughing eyes move. They shifted blindly from side to side as it inched closer, a noiseless creature in a sea of mockery. Hot tears pricked Ozzie’s eyes as his lungs squeezed. He risked a quick, hard swallow, hoping to keep down the pitiful sobs that longed to break free. The demonic face alone was the same size as him. And that was dwarfed by the sheer size of the beast. Ozzie couldn’t convince himself that he had any chance of winning a physical fight. It’s going to eat me alive.

He clenched his jaw to the point of pain, barely able to keep the images of being ripped apart from his mind’s eye. All around him, the murky light began to strobe. Reflexes almost had him looking up. But the slightest jerk was enough to gain the interest of the shark. It floated closer still, unseeing eyes rapidly thrashing as it searched for him. Ozzie stilled. It wasn’t enough this time. Not while it was close enough to take interest with the trailing bubbles of Ozzie’s breath.

The shark lingered within a few inches of him, tail slowly swiping to keep it unnaturally suspended. Eyes twitching and teeth bared. Ozzie filled his lungs and held his breath. They remained there, staring at each other as the water clouded and darkened around them, each waiting for the inevitable. Ozzie’s lungs pressed against his ribs, fluttering with the increasing desire to breathe. Think! Despite his desperate command, his mind remained blank. What would Cadwyn do? Cadwyn Winthrop was the level-headed one. Calm and composed with a quiet self-assurance that Ozzie could never master. What would Cadwyn do?

Ozzie stretched his mind, startled to find an idea pressing against the edges of his awareness. Afraid of drawing attention, he lowered his arm at an excruciatingly slow pace, his fingers angling for the latch of his weighted belt. The monstrous shadow eyes twitched rapidly, aware of movement but not certain of its source. Ozzie was sure his heartbeat would shatter his ribs when he began to map out the belt buckle with his gloved fingertips. His whole body yearned for air but he forced himself to take his time. Think it through. Be sure before you move. Like how Cadwyn would do it. It was impossible to hear the click, but he felt the latch give way and the belt drop. It slipped down his legs before spiraling into the pit, swirling the water as it went.

With one ferocious flick of its colossal tail, the shark shot down after it. Ozzie didn’t have time to get out of the way. The tail crashed into him. A painful blow that sent him careening into the tiled wall. Transfixed on its prey, the shark either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Blinking the lights from his eyes, Ozzie looked down to see that the shark hadn’t simply swallowed the belt. It had sunk its teeth in and was savagely whipping its head about. Sand and metal spewed into the water, the motion drawing down the others.

Clinging to the wall, Ozzie took a few deep breaths, praying to escape the interest of the mass migration. He glanced up. It didn’t matter how many of the monsters came down to fight over the scraps, there were still more, their clustered bodies steadily choking off the light, oozing out to fill the tank. Until there’s nowhere left to hide.

Ozzie squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to focus, to breathe. What would Cadwyn do? This time, he had no answer. Desperately, his mind whirled. What would Basheba do? Lacking both her knife and her barbaric ferocity, there was little he could do to mimic Basheba Bell. What would Mina do?

His thoughts took on Willimina Crane’s voice as they weaved through the laughter, repeating a phrase she often unknowingly rambled to herself while lost in thought. Observation. Hypothesis. Experiment. His body trembled as he crowded harder against the wall. They’re fast. But they’re huge. Ozzie snapped his eyes open. The spelunking tunnels. Some of the paths were barely wide enough for him to squeeze through, and they were built of unrelenting concrete and metal. If I can get to those, they won’t be able to follow.

Glancing around, he spotted the nearest entrance on the opposite wall. It was separated from him by only a few dozen feet of shark-infested water.

His first thought was to keep to the pit wall and work his way around, slow and steady. Before he could move, however, he discovered that option was no longer viable. Blood blossomed through the blue water. The shark that had taken his belt had drawn too much attention. The others swarmed, taking a bit of flesh each time they glided past it. Ozzie didn’t see the strikes. His focus was on the blood.

His head spun as he watched it seep out into the dark water, a stain that spread all the faster as the feeding frenzy took over. Ozzie plastered himself against the wall. Near hyperventilating, his eyes stretched painfully wide, he watched the impossibly vibrant red spread out to consume the world around him. It’s a trick! Whatever logic he could gather together in his panic couldn’t compete with what his senses were telling him. He still saw it. Thick, red, almost incandescent blood coiled through the black water. His oxygen tank whirled and thumped in protest. The polluted liquid pushed against him and he swore he could smell it. Taste it. It was there even when he closed his eyes. Blood. Crimson and warm. It’s not real! It can’t be real! The laughter seemed to rise and fall as it spiraled around him, a distorted warning that he was close to passing out.

Don’t, he pleaded with himself. It’s only blood—fake blood. It’s all just a trick. I can do this. He forced down one deep breath. The water grew warmer against his