Part 4

The first who arrived in the creepy house again was Brenda. She had a piece of interesting news for Edwina. Hardly arrived, she reported what she had got by observing Gull Cottage. "Edwina, you won't believe it."

"Won't believe what, Brenda? Tell me, why you are so excited?" Edwina's face darkened because she suspected bad tidings.

"Clara popped in to Gull Cottage, and Mrs. Muir had a small talk with her. Captain Gregg was there too and Clara saw him. And when she had left..." Brenda didn't finish because she began fiendishly laughing.

Now Edwina began to explode. "BRENDA!" she yelled. "You tell me immediately what had really happened or I sent you to the sharks."

Brenda's features stiffened, she knew that Edwina seriously meant her threat. "Okay!" Brenda answered abashedly. "I'll tell you. When Clara had vanished she left a miracle behind and the Captain and Mrs. Muir touched by accident and then they kissed each other. That's really what I wanted to tell you."

Now Edwina exploded completely and it crashed terribly in the old timberwork. Suddenly, she was fiery red in the face with anger. She began foaming with fury and almost kindled a fire in the house. But she stopped a few seconds before the flames started to play about with fire. "Oho, this is excellent. So much better, because now the drama will be even more intensive. Maybe I should thank Clara for that accident, as she has given me and Melissa the perfect start for our revenge."

Exactly at this moment Hilda and Wanda were also dropping in. Edwina hadn't expected both back so early. "What has happened now, then? You both shouldn't be here. You still should be in town. Don't tell me you have bad news for me, too." her voice sounded very dangerous again.

"Edwina, there is a very big problem for all of us." Hilda reported her.

"What big problem?" and it crashed in the old timberwork again. Hilda and Wanda winced. Both knew, Edwina was terribly irrational if she was annoyed. It was now Wanda's turn telling Edwina the bad news. "It's Ms. Grant, Mrs. Muir's housekeeper. She's a big problem for all of us. She arrived in town just in the moment we had Mr. Peevey under our control again. She has messed up our whole fiendish plan. Now this young Dr. Ferguson has told her what has happened up till now in Schooner Bay. And Hilda had got some of her thoughts."

"And what were Ms Grant's thoughts, Hilda?" Edwina's voice was full of anger.

"She knew by now we are here to cause trouble in the town and what's even more worse: she has the suspicion that we have forecast a malicious way on Gull Cottage. And she wanted to warn Mrs. Muir that they had to expect a witch attack. I'm afraid she is the one who could torpedo yours and Melissa's intrigue. I tried manipulating Ms Grant but I didn't have any luck. She has a very strong will. I'm afraid she is a serious, increasing danger for us. What now?"

"You really ask, what's now, Hilda!" now Melissa yelled and the thunder crashed again. "Quite simple, we must prevent Ms Grant leaving Schooner Bay. And I have a excellent idea how we could captivate her there." Her eyes glowed very fiendishly at these thoughts.

Around Schooner Bay, the sky started to dangerously darken. Terrible thunder crashed through the air and a dreadfu thunderstorm swept over the town. It crashed and hissed terribly. Martha was about to make her way to Mrs. Muir's car when she was lifted up by a bad gust of wind and flung full speed against the door of Dr. Ferguson's practice. Good thing the doctor had heard this deafening noise and found Martha unconscious lying in front of his door. "Oh, my God." he yelled against the terrible storm.

With his last strength, he pulled Martha into the safety of his practice. Just in time, too, as he could close the door behind them before a bad approaching gust of wind got hold of him also. He knew he had immediately to inform Mrs. Muir.

But just in the moment he touched the phone, he got a terrible electric blow. He started to tremble and then fell unconscious on the floor. Nobody outside the practice suspected that three unconscious people were lying on the practice floor. And outside the dreadful storm raged further. Suddenly, a very fiendish laughter could be heard. Melissa was extremely satisfied with her work. Now, she and Edwina had free attack reign for their revenge.

Two days had now passed since Martha had left the house in a great hurry. And she still hadn't returned or had been in touch by phone to let everyone know that she had to stay in Schooner Bay a little bit longer. Carolyn was very worried about her. Hopefully nothing bad had happened to her. For two hours she had tried desperately to reach Dr. Ferguson but hadn't succeeded. She had wanted to hear from him whether Martha had arrived in town unhurt or not.

Then Carolyn had tried reaching Claymore or someone else in town but overall found the same result. NOTHING! The line to town was dead. Now Carolyn was really worried. "BLAST!" she cried. "What's going on here?" Due to the exceptionally misty weather outside, her worry about Martha got bigger and bigger.

Just in this moment, the Captain popped in. "Madame, your language!"

"Please, in the moment I'm not in the mood to discuss my language with you." Carolyn hissed. Of course, she soon afterwards regretted her outburst of rage. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. It's only..." she didn't finish.

"I know, my dear." and put his right arm around her waist to show her she wasn't alone in this bad moment. "If it is that urgent, I will look for Martha. And don't worry, Carolyn, I'll find her." he couldn't help himself, in this situation, calling her by first name. "And don't worry about me, either. This weather cannot stop me from looking for Martha." he had immediately noticed Carolyn's worried look out of the window. "I'll be back very soon, my dear." He kissed her on the forehead and vanished.

Of course, Carolyn was calmed by no means. Quite the reverse, her unrest grew greater. And she learned within a few seconds how she was right to worry.

Daniel had hardly disappeared when out of the mid air, an extremely attractive young woman appeared before Carolyn. Carolyn knew only one thing - it wasn't a human person. But who was she? Carolyn would learn soon."Who are you?" Mrs. Muir wanted angrily to know. "And what do you want here? You don't belong here. This is my house!"

"Now, wait a moment. Who says that it is your house? You only rented this place. This house really belongs to my dear friend, Captain Gregg. And I want to meet him again and I think I'll take Daniel with me when I leave this place again. And to answer your first question, Mrs. Muir, I'm NATASHA, a very dear old girl friend of Daniel. You see, I know everything."

Carolyn started now to explode. How could this ghostly woman have the audacity to drop in unannounced HERE! Or had the Captain expected her visit without telling Carolyn? Suddenly, Carolyn felt terrific jealousy arising in her. And it now came to her full consciousness that Daniel had never told her anything about his relationship to other women of his past apart from Vanessa. Carolyn cooked with anger. She gripped the first object she could find and threw it in the direction of that underhanded female ghost. Of course she knew she couldn't hit that ghost.

The thing went full speed through Natasha and of course Natasha began laughing like the devil and yelled. "You can't fight me, Mrs. Muir. I will win our duel. Daniel is mine and I'll take him away from you. And I'm very sure he wants to come with me and no one else. I will ensure that you will lose him forever. I'm coming back very soon." and then she vanished with a loud crash.

Natasha had appeared so convincingly that Carolyn had believed her every word. Now Carolyn was sure Daniel had lied to her from the first day she had met him. Carolyn was half-crazed with jealousy. "I would kill him if he wasn't already dead. This common guy. Now wait, I'll pay it back on him. He can count on it!" she yelled in to the empty air.

Carolyn couldn't suspect that the top witch, Edwina, had sent Natasha to her. Edwina was fiendishly pleased with Mrs. Muir's jealous outrage and thought. 'Full of it! This runs very well, better then Melissa and I had suspected. Revenge is really sweet. Now we have only to wait. Mrs. Muir will do the rest for us. But wait, I must be sure she'll choose the right man for that play.' So she decided further to keep Carolyn in sight.

In the meantime, Daniel had discovered Mrs. Muir's station wagon but no trace of Martha. He didn't like this dreadful thunderstorm at all. He got the suspicion that Mr. Turner had his hand in this game, too. But he was thoroughly mistaken. Daniel knew through eavesdropping that Martha had been called away by Dr. Ferguson, that young pip. So he searched for Martha in the doctor's practice, too. But what a fright he got, since neither the doctor nor Mr. Peevey nor Martha could be found in the practice. Daniel knew they must be here. He searched in the whole house but no sign of the three persons. They were gone. But where and how? The Captain knew no living person could survive in that thunderstorm outside.

Now the Captain was worried, too. What should he tell Carolyn? He vanished and made his way home. He couldn't know that there still awaited a much worse surprise for him, in the form of the revenge angel, Carolyn.

But where were Mr. Peevey, Dr. Ferguson and Martha now? Had Daniel arrived a little bit earlier in the practice, the kidnapping of the three humans would have been foiled by him. Melissa had transported the three unconscious persons right under the Captain's nose into the creepy witch house outside of Schooner Bay.

When Daniel popped into Gull Cottage again, he was greeted by a jealously foaming Carolyn. Before he could manage to tell her what he had found in town, Carolyn was already speaking furiously. "Wonderful, the heart breaker has the goodness to appear again. Such impudence. Why don't you stay with Natasha where you want to be? Or hasn't she found you? And don't tell me you haven't expected her. I know very well that you have." Carolyn was in a terrible jealous rage now.

Before Daniel could realized what was going to happen, Carolyn gave him a slap with her bare right hand into his hairy face. At last Daniel realized what Carolyn was reproaching him with in her terrific jealousy. "I did what?" he yelled back. "What are you babbling about? I've never seen Natasha but once in a time when I was alive but never since! Very well, you believe I have an afterlife affair with her. But why do you believe that, Mrs. Muir? Has she appeared here while I wasn't here?"

Before he could continue, he was interrupted by Carolyn. But now she was even more furious than before. "So you try to tell me again you haven't expected her. Very well. Now I'm very sure you have lied to me since the day we first met. I hate you! And don't you dare speak to me again. And you can count on it, I'll pay it back on you, Captain." she yelled with sarcasm in her voice and then ran like a fury upstairs to her room and slammed the door behind her.

Daniel recovered slowly from Carolyn's appearance. Her blow had sat. Now Daniel was thinking. 'What did she reproach me for? I'm having a renewed love-affair with Natasha? This is ridiculous! So, Natasha had the impudence of appearing here and making Carolyn believe I would be interested in her again. MR. TURNER!' Daniel shot through his head. 'Who else could know about my early love affairs so well if not Mr. Turner?' he thought further. He should be throughly mistaken about this case also.

And now he remembered Carolyn's last words, too. She had yelled she would pay it back on him. 'What if she had already made her threat true and was falling in love again with a living man? Or perhaps had already flirted with him while I was searching for Martha?' Now the jealousy arose in him, too. And he disappeared with a loud thunderclap. The atmosphere in the house couldn't be more stuffy then now. It was really thick air.

The Captain hadn't, in his rage, noticed that Jonathan had come in the front door and had closed it behind himself very quickly. Completely sopping and shivering through his whole body, Jonathan ran up the stairs to his room. He pulled immediately off his wet things and slipped into his warm pajamas. Quickly he hurried into his bed and pulled the covers around him to warm his body.

What happened, you ask? The boy had become the victim of an extremely insidious witch attack. He had tried to stay at Claymore's home because he had been surprised by this terrible thunderstorm. He had hardly been under Claymore's safe roof when he had been seized by icy fingers which had lifted him up, transported him out the door again and pulled him through the middle of the terrible thunderstorm, forward to his home, and had tossed him against the front door of Gull Cottage.

Now Jonathan was lying under his pillow and still shivering with cold. He trembled so loudly that his teeth chattered. Carolyn was in her room and still foaming with anger. She tried to make a phone call again, and was glad to see that the phone worked again. She still wasn't completely sure whom she should present to the Captain as rival. Who was available and courageous enough to fight with the Captain? Carolyn was thinking very intensely.

But a noise from the direction of the children's room brought her back to reality. 'What was that?' she thought. 'I should take a look, maybe one of my children needs help.' At this moment, she forgot the rage against the Captain. She hurried to the children's room. When she opened the door, she got a fright when she saw her son lying in his bed and trembling. "Oh my God, Jonathan." she called and hurried to his bed. Putting her right hand on the forehead of her boy, she noticed that he was really glowing. "Jonathan, can you hear me?" Carolyn called. "Here is your mother. Could you tell me please what happened to you?"

Jonathan slowly opened his eyes and saw his mother sitting on bed. "Mom!" he said in a thin, wavery voice. He managed with his last strength to say a bit more. "The witches, Mom!" before slipping away again.

Carolyn, now completely worried and not realizing what her son had said at the end, hurried to her room to call for Dr. Ferguson. She tried to reach him but got no answer. Now she was even more worried. She couldn't know that Dr. Ferguson with Martha and Mr. Peevey had been kidnapped by a witch.

What should she do now? She hurried back to her son. When she opened the door again, she stiffened when she saw the Captain standing at Jonathan's bed's. She had expected anything but not him standing beside her son.

She was still furious with Daniel but tried to keep her emotions under control. Her son was more important at this moment then her revenge desires. So she closed the door behind her again and waited to take a further look at her son when the Captain had vanished.

Edwina, who had watched the whole scene, was extremely dissatisfied with present situation. Melissa's and her intrigue had been going very well till Jonathan had showed up in Gull Cottage again. Edwina cooked with anger. Which of her witches started this unpardonable affront? She had to find out and punish her terribly. Now she must pay attention that the reins didn't slip away from her and the sweet revenge be wrecked.