Witchy Dreams

by Amanda M. Lee

  “What time are you going up to The Overlook?” Thistle asked me.

  “I still can’t believe they renamed it that after the renovation,” Clove muttered.

  “We tried to tell them,” I said. “We told them that was the name of the hotel in The Shining, but that only made them more resolute. We told them to keep the old name, but you can’t argue with them when they make up their minds.”

  “They think it will make tourists want to stay there.”

  “It’s worked so far,” I admitted.

  “Yeah,” Thistle blew out a breath “It’s still creepy. I expect to see ghosts around every turn, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.” She turned to me expectantly. “You’ve never seen a ghost there have you?”

  “No,” I shook my head. “That’s been our family home since it was built in the 1600s. Witches don’t usually become ghosts.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Clove said. “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know either. I’ve just never met a witch who became a ghost and didn’t move on.”

  “It’s probably because witches usually finish their business before they die,” I said.

  “In the case of our family, it’s usually because witches finish everyone else’s business, too,” Thistle snickered.

  I laughed pleasantly on the outside– but on the inside I shuddered. Wasn’t that the truth?

  Three

  I gossiped with Clove and Thistle for another half an hour before I made my way back to The Whistler. I had to file the holiday happenings roundup before dinner. It wasn’t exactly taxing work, but given the makeup of the town, it was a lot of work. Every business had some sort of event happening over the next couple of weeks and if I missed one, then I would be accused of purposely omitting it.

  It took me about two hours to do the write-up and send it to the layout people via email. The edition would be printed tomorrow, so I had gotten the article in just under the wire. I was happy to see that Edith had apparently forgotten her discomfort with the populace’s fixation on gruesome deaths and was back to being her usual snippy self.

  Thankfully, I was alone in the office this afternoon so I didn’t have to explain to anyone why I was talking to thin air. Usually, I just told the handful of part-time workers who filtered through the newsroom that I was talking to myself and planning the latest edition of the newspaper. I’m not sure – given the stories that flew around the town regarding my family – if they believed me. I really didn’t care, though. I was beyond worrying what other people thought about me. The city had taught me that.

  When I was sure everything was set – and I’d marked the mockups accordingly and left them on the paginator’s desk – I left the office. I had about a half an hour before dinner and if I wanted to make it to The Overlook in time, I would have to hurry. Lateness was frowned upon in the Winchester house. So was swearing, burnt dessert, and sarcasm, quite frankly.

  I had walked to work that day. It was only a mile and I wanted to enjoy the fall colors and warm weather while I still could. When the snow hit, walking wouldn’t be an option. The town was beautiful in the winter, with all the twinkling lights and decorated Christmas trees, but even when plowed, the roads were largely impassable.

  The Overlook is the biggest house in the county. It’s an old Victorian that the Winchester family built in the early 1900s. Actually, to be fair, it started out as a ramshackle shack long before that, only taking on a life of its own as the family grew. It has grown throughout the years, with each generation adding something new to the house. Now it boasts twenty guest rooms, a four-bedroom core where the family resides, a huge greenhouse and adjacent stables. There’s also a large guesthouse on the premises where Clove, Thistle, and I reside together. It’s not technically part of The Overlook – but that doesn’t stop my mom and aunts from coming and going from the guesthouse whenever they see fit. We can’t really complain, either, since we live there rent-free. The lack of privacy is disturbing, though. Thankfully, the aunts only make their presence known about once a week – just long enough to comment on our housekeeping skills.

  When I got to The Overlook, I stopped at the guesthouse long enough to drop off my purse. Thistle and Clove weren’t there, so I figured they had already made their way up to the main house without me.

  When I got to the main house, I let myself in through the back door. A few months ago, the house had undergone a massive renovation to make the core of the house – where my family resided – more separate from the rest of the building. After the renovation, the aunts decided that they needed to rename the property. Hence, they now live in The Overlook.

  The family living quarters are located at the back of the house and include four bedrooms, a living room, a library and a warm den where my mom and aunts take their evening tea – and gossip sessions. The family living quarters are attached to the rest of the inn via a stairwell and through the large kitchen.

  When I entered the house I couldn’t help but smile when the tantalizing smell of stuffed cabbage hit my nostrils. My favorite. My family may be out there – but there are no better cooks in the county. If you hear them talk, there are no better cooks in the world. They might be right. I never told them that, though. I didn’t want to encourage them.

  I could hear the steady stream of chatter from the adjacent kitchen. Everyone must be in there, I figured.

  “You’re late,” my mom admonished me when I entered the warm room.

  I looked up at the clock on the wall and sighed. “One minute is not late.”

  “It’s not on time.”

  My mom, like her sisters, is short. She’s about five feet, three inches tall and still has the same blonde hair she had when I was a kid. She claims it’s natural – but I have my doubts. I never voice those doubts out loud, though. I know exactly how that conversation would go.

  Clove was sitting on the counter munching on a cookie. Her mother, Marnie, was standing on the floor in front of her with her hands on her hips and glaring at her disdainfully. “Who taught you to sit on the counter? That’s what heathens do.”

  Clove sighed dramatically and hopped off the counter. Standing next to her mother, the resemblance was startling. Marnie was the same height as her daughter – and she had the same expansive bust. Like my mom, her hair seemed untouched by time. I knew for a fact she dyed her hair, though. I’d seen the empty dark dye bottles in the trash. Marnie owned her color jobs, though.

  My Aunt Twila was stirring something on the stove as she talked to Thistle. “Blue dear? I don’t think it’s flattering to your coloring.”

  I could see Thistle bristle at the comment. She was fighting the urge to argue with her mother. She knew it was a fruitless endeavor. We all knew that. That didn’t mean we didn’t engage in fruitless endeavors from time-to-time – or from minute-to-minute, for that matter.

  I stifled a smile. My Aunt Twila’s hair had always come out of a bottle for as long as I had known her. A bright red Ronald McDonald bottle. She had the same coloring as my mother and I had – that Thistle had naturally – but she never embraced it. She liked to be different. Her hair, much like Thistle’s, was cropped short. Marnie and my mom had chosen to keep their hair longer – and they often swept it up in messy buns to keep it under control. Twila never had that problem.

  “I like the color,” Thistle argued.

  “The color is fine in a blouse – not on you though, it washes you out – but it’s not okay for hair. Hair should be natural.”

  “Your hair isn’t natural.”

  “My hair is natural for me.”

  “Maybe this is my natural color.”

  Twila regarded her daughter contemplatively for a second. “No, dear, it’s not.”

  I pulled Thistle away from her mother before she could say the words that were dying to come out of her mouth. I didn’t want the yelling to start until after I had gotten the stuffed cabbage in my stomach to sustain me.

  “How was work today?” My mom asked.
>
  “Fine. Same old, same old.”

  “And how is Edith?”

  “The same.”

  “So she’s still a frigid old biddy?”

  Every head in the room turned as my Great Aunt Tillie entered the room. If Marnie and Clove were tiny, Aunt Tillie was miniscule. She was four feet, eight inches of raw power – and general disdain for everyone. She reminded me of a hobbit – without the hairy feet. Actually, I don’t ever remember seeing her feet – so it was entirely possible they were hairy. She had dark hair and olive skin like Marnie and Clove – while her sister, our grandmother, had been blonde and fair before she died a few years ago. She had long ago given up the battle to keep her dark hair intact, though. She’d embraced the gray a long time ago. I didn’t actually remember her without the gray hair. I had seen pictures, though.

  “She’s not a frigid old biddy,” I argued. “She’s just stuck in a time long since passed.” Like most of the town, I thought.

  “You forget, I knew Edith when she was alive,” Aunt Tillie pointed a gnarled finger in my direction. “I know who she was – what she was.”

  “And what was she?”

  “She was a nasty woman who tried to ruin my life.”

  I sighed heavily. Here we go.

  “She tried to steal your Uncle Calvin from me, you know?”

  My Uncle Calvin had died thirty years ago and my Aunt Tillie still acted like he was going to come through the door at any time. He had died before I was born, but from all the stories I had heard, he was a wonderful man. How he put up with Aunt Tillie was a mystery to us all. I loved the woman, but she was mean – and she could hold a grudge like nobody’s business.

  “Well, I’m not sure I believe that,” I started to argue with Aunt Tillie. We were like oil and vinegar. All of our interactions always evolved into an argument – and sometimes a slap fight.

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “No. I’m just saying that maybe you are exaggerating.”

  “I don’t exaggerate.”

  Thistle and Clove snorted. Aunt Tillie turned on them with speed that belied her eighty-five years. Thistle and Clove immediately stifled their reactions. They were more scared of Aunt Tillie than anything else – including wild animal attacks and mismatched socks. They were in self-preservation mode. Aunt Tillie was more ferocious when cornered than any animal ever could be.

  “She used to bring your Uncle Calvin cookies all the time,” Aunt Tillie had turned back to me.

  “Was she naked when she brought him the cookies?”

  Aunt Tillie looked scandalized. “Of course not.”

  “Than why do you think she was trying to steal Uncle Calvin?”

  “Why else would she make him cookies?”

  “Maybe because she knew you couldn’t cook.” I hadn’t meant to actually say it out loud, but I did. The truth was, while my mom and aunts were accomplished cooks – kitchen witches each and every one of them, like my grandmother – Aunt Tillie was known as something of a disaster in the kitchen. She couldn’t boil water – and when she tried, she burned it.

  “I can too cook,” she growled. “I just choose not to. I’m an old lady. I shouldn’t have to cook.”

  The truth is, Aunt Tillie is only old when she doesn’t want to do something. When she wants to do something dangerous – and we remind her of her age – she tells us she’s old, not dead.

  “Fine, she was after Uncle Calvin. It obviously didn’t work.”

  “Not for lack of trying,” she huffed. “The only thing that stopped her was the fact that she was murdered.”

  “You didn’t do it, did you?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then how do you know she was murdered? I thought she was found slumped over her desk and everyone thought she had a heart attack?”

  “I never believed that,” Aunt Tillie sniffed. “And that was before I knew she was a ghost.”

  Aunt Tillie was post-cognitive, too. She could see ghosts and talk to them. “Did you ever ask her about it?”

  “Of course not. Why would I want to help the woman who tried to steal my husband?”

  “I don’t know, to do the right thing?”

  “Have you ever asked her?” My mom was trying to ease the conversation before Aunt Tillie hexed me with some horrible curse. Don’t scoff. She’s done it before. When I was a teenager, she gave me a big zit on the end of my nose right before the prom – I swear it was her. When I was in college, she once made it so I could only turn to my left for an entire week. It made getting to classes a nightmare – and a long ordeal – on a daily basis.

  “I have, but she doesn’t remember anything,” I finally answered my mom. I couldn’t help myself from arguing with Aunt Tillie – but I also didn’t want to try and cover a story when I could only make left turns. People would think I was stranger than I already was.

  “Well, you should help her find out so she can move on,” my mom clucked.

  “I offered,” I admitted. “I don’t think she wants to move on. I think she’s generally happy as she is.”

  “She’s not happy, she’s miserable,” Aunt Tillie admonished me.

  “Maybe she’s happy being miserable? I know some people like that,” I said pointedly.

  Marnie hurriedly ushered everyone into the dining room. I think she was trying to head off a big showdown between Aunt Tillie and myself.

  Clove, Thistle and I helped carry dishes into the dining room – where a handful of inn denizens were milling about and waiting for the meal. One rule that held fast in The Overlook was that dinner was served at 7 p.m. sharp – and everyone ate together. If you wanted food before or after that, you were just fresh out of luck. Despite that, the legend of the Winchester women and their cooking was enough to keep the inn at capacity most of the time. The curiosity factor is enough to draw in a lot of people.

  After everyone had taken their seats – Thistle, Clove, and I always sat together as a show of unity for each other– everyone began passing the dishes around the table. The guests were chatting away happily. They all seemed enthralled with Hemlock Cove – and they couldn’t stop talking about the magic that abounded in the small hamlet. They also couldn’t stop raving about the food – which always made my mom and aunts happy.

  Occasionally, they would ask questions. We had been trained to answer them politely – and honestly.

  “Did you ever have any witch burnings here?” The woman who asked looked to be about twenty-five or so. She was here on her honeymoon. I could tell she just liked the thought of horror. She didn’t really want to hear about any horror.

  “Not to my knowledge,” I answered.

  She looked a little disappointed at my answer.

  “Of course, the records from back in the day were destroyed in a fire in the early 1900s, so there’s really no way for us to know for sure.”

  My mom beamed at my answer. The woman nodded thoughtfully. “They might not have written it down if they did it.”

  “They might not,” Clove said with a smile. “You should never write down your misdeeds.” She’d learned that from personal experience when Aunt Marnie read her diary when she was a teenager. She’d been grounded for a month over the dalliance under the bleachers with the quarterback.

  “That’s for sure,” Aunt Tillie muttered as she sipped from a glass of wine. I frowned when I saw her doing it.

  “I thought the doctor said you weren’t supposed to drink anymore?”

  “Red wine is good for you,” Aunt Tillie argued.

  “Yes, but the doctor said one glass a day and I know you’ve had more than one glass.”

  Aunt Tillie glowered at me. “You mind your own business. All you reporters, you’re so nosy.”

  I thought that was rich coming from any woman in this family, but one look at my mother’s frown told me that pointing that out would be a mistake. Instead, I turned back to the inquisitive woman.

  “What are your plans while yo
u’re in town?” I feigned interest – if only to keep my mother off my back.

  The woman – I learned her name was Emily – seemed to glow under my attention. “We’re going to go out to a corn maze tomorrow.”

  “The one at Harrow's Bluff?”

  “I think that’s where it is. It’s new.”

  “I’m going out there tomorrow to do a story on it.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you there?”

  I smiled brightly at the suggestion, but inside I was hoping I would be able to avoid her. Tourists can be a pain.

  Emily had glommed on to me, though. She monopolized the conversation for the duration of dinner. I continued to answer her questions throughout the meal – and then quietly excused myself to the kitchen when there was finally a break in the conversation. I was surprised to find Aunt Tillie there. I hadn’t noticed her leave the table, which meant she had done it sneakily – and she was chopping up something on the cutting board.

  “What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing.”

  “It doesn’t look like nothing.” She had pushed her stool up to the counter so she could reach it easily. She obviously meant business.

  “I’m just chopping herbs.”

  I tried to peer over her shoulder, but she actively tried to block my gaze. That only made me more suspicious. When I finally got a glimpse of what she was doing I grabbed her wrist.

  “That’s belladonna,” I admonished her.

  “So?”

  “What are you planning on doing with that?”

  “I’m putting together a sleeping potion. I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

  I’d once seen Aunt Tillie fall asleep at a parade, so I knew she was lying. “What are you mixing up?”

  “I told you,” Aunt Tillie wrenched her wrist free from me. “I’m making a sleeping potion.”

  “For who?”

  “None of your business.”