Aunt Tillie was sitting in her recliner by the counter watching. She smiled widely when she caught sight of us. “I think they’re here to see me,” she said haughtily.
“Think again, old lady,” Thistle barked out. “Although, we will be dealing with you later. We don’t have time for that now.”
“Oh, really? And why not?”
“Thistle had another vision,” Clove said.
“What did she see?” Aunt Tillie was leaning forward in earnest concentration. She seemed to have forgotten her joy about cursing us from just a few seconds before.
“That we’re running out of time,” Thistle said shortly. “We need help. We need your help.” She was trying not to choke on the words.
“What do you need?”
Thistle and I exchanged suspicious glances. Aunt Tillie was never this anxious to help. She usually made us beg.
“Are you deaf, girls? What do you need?”
“Why are you willing to help so easily?” I challenged her.
“Is now really the time for that?” My mom chided me. Probably not, but I didn’t think I could trust Aunt Tillie as far as I could throw her. She may be little, but she’s heftier than she looks.
“I may enjoy torturing you girls, but I don’t want anything really bad to happen to you,” Aunt Tillie admitted grudgingly. “If one of you were to die, that wouldn’t be good for any of us.”
“So, you’re saying you actually like us?” Clove was trying to be endearing.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Aunt Tillie said shortly. “My life would just be a whole lot more boring if I didn’t have you three to torture.”
We proceeded to fill everyone in on the remainder of Thistle’s vision – and our actions of the afternoon. Aunt Tillie looked thoughtful when we finished.
“What about a seeing spell?” She said finally.
“A seeing spell? Like to see what’s really underneath the façade that people put up? Like a lying spell?” Thistle looked confused.
“We only called it a lying spell when you guys were little,” Aunt Tillie corrected her.
“Why?”
“You little shits had such trouble telling the truth,” she answered. “We were trying to scare you.”
“So what does the spell really do?” I asked impatiently.
“It clarifies things.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Shane and Sophie may not have seen their killers clearly, but the spirits did.”
“The spirits?” Not more of this crap.
“Yes, the spirits,” she spat back. “We need to cast a spell that lets us see what really happened clearly.”
“Well, then let’s do it,” I said resolutely.
I caught my mom and Marnie exchanging furtive looks.
“What?”
“It has to be done at the scene of the crime,” my mom said finally.
The corn maze. Again. We should just build a house out there.
“Tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.” Thistle seemed as resigned as I was.
“We can’t teach it to you quickly enough,” Marnie said morosely. “We’ll have to go with you.”
“No way! We can’t drag you out in the corn maze in the middle of daylight so you can do some ritual.” We’d never live that down – even if we did solve a murder in the process.
“That’s why we have to go after dark,” Aunt Tillie said sagely.
“What if someone catches us?” I complained.
“Then we’ll pretend we’re lost,” Aunt Tillie brushed me off. “I do it all the time.”
“We’re not all eighty-five,” I argued. “If we try using that ruse we’ll get locked up in an asylum.”
“Just let me handle the police if it comes to that,” Aunt Tillie said in her best withering tone. “Good grief, you three act like you’ve never broken the law before.” Not with our mothers in attendance, that was for sure.
“Tonight is the full moon,” Marnie bit her lower lip.
“You have to wear your clothes,” I practically exploded.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, giving me a curious look. “Your obsession with nudity is troubling, though.” She had no idea. “What I mean is, didn’t Thistle’s first vision say that it would all happen on the night of the full moon?”
I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach as I realized that Marnie was right.
I turned to Thistle and Clove helplessly. “What do we do?”
Thistle shrugged. “We’re in unchartered territory here. I don’t think we have a choice. We have to go into the maze tonight. All of us. We can’t do it alone.”
I shook my head as I turned back to them. “Be ready to leave at ten,” I finally said.
Aunt Tillie let loose of her most condescending grins. “It’s going to be a fun night tonight, girls. You better suit up.”
“Suit up? Like Batman?” Clove looked horrified.
“If that will make you feel better. I was talking about wearing black, though,” Aunt Tillie corrected her.
“Oh, yeah, we know that.”
“This isn’t our first rodeo,” Thistle scoffed.
“Yeah, but now you’re working with professionals,” Aunt Tillie said. She started to move toward the den with a clear purpose. “I think I’ll take a nap in preparation for tonight,” she said heavily.
“Oh, good, the head of our team needs a nap,” I muttered under my breath.
I couldn’t help but notice how excited my mom, Twila and Marnie appeared to be, too. Great. This was going to be one big disaster.
“Does anyone think this is going to blow up in our faces?” I finally asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Thistle said. “No doubt.”
“I feel like I need my own nap just thinking about it,” Clove sighed.
“What we need is to just sneak away when they’re not looking and try to do this ourselves,” I offered lamely. I knew it wouldn’t really happen, though.
“Girls,” I heard my mom practically sing. “Are you hungry?”
“What are you having?” Thistle asked. I wanted to kick her.
“Lasagna.”
Crap. They make really good lasagna.
Twenty-Six
Clove, Thistle and I ate dinner at the inn – the lasagna was awesome, as always – and then we ran back to the guesthouse to get ready for the night’s excursion. I slipped into my simple black track pants, black tennis shoes, a black T-shirt and a black hoodie.
When I went out into the living room, I found that Thistle and Clove were dressed in almost the same thing – although Clove’s tank top had a few rhinestones on it. Thistle tossed the knit hat I had worn the first night we snuck into the corn maze at me and I offered little complaint this time when I put it on my head, making sure that all my hair was tucked up underneath it.
I paused in front of the mirror long enough to make sure that my zit was truly fading away. Yes, I know, now is not the time to be shallow. It’s human nature. I can’t help it.
“You can barely see it anymore,” Thistle said. I noticed that she was busy camouflaging her face again.
Clove and I both followed suit and then we headed back up to the inn. Shane and Sophie had said they would get out to the corn maze themselves – they’d been practicing “winking” in and out of places – and they would wait for us there. We slipped in through the back door. I still wasn’t sure that taking the four older women with us was such a good idea. That initial reluctance was only reinforced when I saw what they were all wearing.
“You can’t go like that!”
“What?” My mom asked innocently, smoothing down her crushed velvet tracksuit in an attempt to eradicate any wrinkles. Priorities.
“Those are pajamas.” I looked over to see that Marnie and Twila were wearing the exact same outfits – just in different colors. Marnie was in navy, my mom in gray and Twila was in a deep mauve.
“You went to the corn maze in pajamas,” my mom pointed out.
“These aren’t technically pajamas,” Twila argued. “Just because we lounge around in them, that doesn’t mean they’re pajamas. They’re meant to be worn in public. The models were wearing them outdoors in the catalog.”
Thistle nudged my elbow. “It’s not worth arguing about. We’re probably lucky that they’re not dressed like Army men – or carrying swords, or something.” Or brooms and wands.
She had a point.
Marnie was looking at Clove intently. “What’s all over your faces?” She reached a hand up to touch the paint on Clove’s face.
“It’s just some makeup to camouflage our faces,” Clove said, slapping her hand away indignantly. “We’re all really white – I mean really white – and that stands out in the dark.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Twila enthused. “I want some.”
Thistle sighed and pulled the tin of paint out of her bag. “How did I know you’d say that?”
“Where’s Aunt Tillie?” Please say she went to bed early. Please say she went to bed early.
“She’s still getting ready,” my mom answered. She didn’t even bother looking up at me. She, Twila, and Marnie were having too much fun with the face paint to even register the long-suffering looks that Thistle, Clove and I were sharing. That was probably a good thing.
Clove picked up a cookie off the plate sitting on the little end table next to Aunt Tillie’s chair. She’s a stress eater. Actually, we all are. Thistle and I were munching on cookies before we even realized what was happening.
My mom finally noticed what we were doing – and she was frowning at us.
“What?”
“You shouldn’t be eating heavy foods now,” she chastised us. “It will just slow you down.”
No, what was going to slow us down was them.
“Don’t say it,” Thistle warned under her breath. “We can’t afford a big fight now and if you say it, we’re going to have a huge blowup.”
“All right, let’s go!”
We all turned to see Aunt Tillie standing in the door impatiently. As usual, her entrance was designed for the maximum amount of drama that was sustainable for the current situation.
Clove giggled madly when she saw Aunt Tillie’s outfit.
Since she was so short, Aunt Tillie usually had to have her pants professionally altered so they would fit her. I had no idea where she had managed to find what looked to be black parachute pants in her size. Maybe they were Corey Feldman’s castoffs?
She had thrown a black sweatshirt on, as well, and she was wearing military combat boots. The best part of the outfit, though, was the combat helmet she had secured on her head – complete with a strap under her chin.
“Where did you get that hat?” Thistle asked.
“Forget the hat, where did you get those pants?”
Aunt Tillie didn’t look like she was enjoying our mutant mixture of horror and merriment. “I’m prepared for all occasions, at all times. When are you going to realize that?”
“But what other occasion did you need a hard hat for?” Thistle couldn’t stop staring at the hat. I found it a lot less objectionable than the pants, which made a shuffling sound every time she moved.
“In case it gets hairy out there, I want to protect my head,” she said, her tone bland.
“But why do you have it?” Thistle wasn’t going to be deterred.
“Maybe I just like it.”
I had a feeling Aunt Tillie might have been indulging in the family pot a little more than anyone realized.
“Where did you get it from?” I asked finally. It was a rational question for an irrational woman.
“I found it in a catalog when that Army supply guy stayed here a few months ago,” she sniffed.
Ah, that explained it. Aunt Tillie had never met a catalog that she couldn’t find something to buy in. We still had a closet full of mousetraps, and no mice.
“You can never be too prepared, you know,” she continued. “And now I’m ready in case we have a nuclear war.”
“The hat is going to save you from a nuclear war?” Thistle was still dumbfounded.
“No,” Aunt Tillie said derisively “The underground bunker that’s being built in the spring is going to save me from that. The helmet is just for when the roof caves in on us. When everyone else has a concussion, I’m going to be the only one with my mental faculties still intact.”
Oh, well, at least she’d thought it out.
Marnie handed Aunt Tillie the canister of face paint. “So your face doesn’t stand out in the dark.”
Aunt Tillie waved the canister off. “My face stands out regardless. Paint isn’t going to change that.”
Isn’t that the truth?
“Besides,” she added. “I don’t trust anyone who hides behind that much makeup. That’s what strippers and prostitutes do.”
Whatever.
We all agreed that the only vehicle we were all going to be able to fit in was Marnie’s Range Rover. Thistle got behind the wheel and Aunt Tillie got in the passenger seat. My mom, Marnie and Twila got in the backseat, which meant Clove and I had to sit in the cargo area in the back.
“This is ridiculous,” I grumbled when Thistle hit a big dip in the road and we bounced up and almost crashed our heads into the roof of the vehicle.
“I think it’s fun,” my mom giggled.
“You would,” I muttered.
“What did you say, dear? I can’t hear you mumble insults when the radio is up so loud.”
Despite the fact that it would have been more pragmatic to park farther away from the maze, there was no way we could do that with Aunt Tillie in tow. She’s spry for eighty-five – but she’s still eighty-five.
When we were all outside of the vehicle and checking to make sure we had all of the supplies that we would need in a duffel bag, Thistle couldn’t help but complain. “We’re going to get caught.”
“Probably,” I agreed.
“People in town are going to think we’re even weirder than we are,” Clove said.
“Oh, what, seven women sneaking into a corn maze at night is suspicious? Three dressed in black, three dressed in velvet track suits and one dressed in riot gear – that’s not suspicious at all.”
“Sarcasm is never your friend.” I wasn’t sure if my mom or Twila let loose that little pearl of wisdom, but it was a regular refrain in the Winchester house.
“Can we just get this over with?” If we were going to jail tonight, we might as well get the ball rolling. I could use a good night’s sleep – even if it was on a stiff jailhouse cot.
Thistle and I took the lead. Clove wasn’t happy about bringing up the rear by herself – but she admitted she would much rather be behind everyone else than in front of them. She still remembered our first nighttime trek into the maze – and she wasn’t eager for a repeat. We all hated to admit it, but we felt a little better with Aunt Tillie there. She was far scarier than any murderer – or murderers, in this case.
“Where are Shane and Sophie?”
“They’re probably waiting in the center of the maze. We told them we would be out here as soon as possible – but it took a little longer than any of us thought. They probably got bored waiting.”
By this point, Thistle and I could have maneuvered our way through the maze in the dark – which was a pretty good thing since the only person we allowed to have a small flashlight was Aunt Tillie.
It took us a little longer than we expected, mostly because Aunt Tillie had decided to be as disagreeable as she could possibly be during the walk.
“I don’t understand the point of a corn maze.”
“It’s just fun for families,” I answered her testily.
“They why do they have hay bales?”
“I don’t know. Ambiance?”
“How is hay ambiance?”
“You use hay when you’re decorating for Thanksgiving up at the inn,” I countered. She was just tryi
ng to be a pain.
“That’s cute.”
“Maybe they think this is cute,” Clove offered.
“Somebody should tell them that they’re wrong,” Aunt Tillie said.
“Why don’t you call them and tell them that tomorrow – if we’re not in jail, that is,” Thistle suggested.
“That’s a good idea.”
Sarcasm is truly lost on Aunt Tillie. Still, it might be fun for her to irritate other people in town for a while. Her family deserved a respite – however brief it might be.
I think we were all relieved when we made it to the center of the maze. Thistle dropped the duffel bag on the ground haphazardly and immediately started pulling things out of it. She handed Clove the candles and instructed her to light them in a circle.
My mom and the aunts were busy looking around the clearing. “This isn’t very festive,” my mom said finally.
“It was meant to be scary,” I said. “But they took all the scarecrows out when Shane’s body was found.”
I looked around the clearing. At first I didn’t see them, but then Shane and Sophie solidified in front of my eyes. “That’s a neat trick,” I told them.
“We’ve been practicing,” Sophie said proudly.
“What’s all that stuff?” Shane was watching Thistle rummage through the bag with genuine interest.
“It’s for a ritual,” I told him.
“To make us remember?”
“Not exactly. We think, maybe because you guys were drugged, that your memories are always going to be blurry. You might not have intact memories – and we can’t wait any longer. We have to remember for you.”
“So what will the ritual do?”
“We’re hoping it will show us what happened here. Like an echo.”
“So, you’re trying to make the maze remember?” Shane asked. He didn’t fully understand. I didn’t blame him.
I considered the question for a second. “Actually, that’s about the best way you could put it. Certain locations can tell us what happened there, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
“Will we all be able to see?” Sophie asked.
“We should,” I said. “I can’t guarantee what you guys – as ghosts – will be able to see. I don’t think you should be any different than anyone else, though. We’re in unchartered territory. I guess we’re all about to find out together.”
Witchy Dreams Page 20