Witches in Wonderland

by J. D. Winters

  Never mind. The cord was set, and as I looked around the valley, I saw that all the objects Gran Ana had listed were tied tightly to it. My project was done. I began to back away. I was hell bent on getting as far from that white rock as I could go. In a moment, I was actually running.

  My panic died quickly enough. I wasn’t about to present myself to my grandmother like that. Still, there wasn’t much I could do about the wet condition of my hair and clothes. And by the time I’d arrived at the lagoon-like glen where her house was, I had other things on my mind.

  The first was—where the heck was her house? It should have stood before me, a magnificent old redwood structure, all black glass and polished wood. But it was gone. Instead, there was a doll house and a puddle and…

  But then I realized what I was seeing. It was a miniaturized model of her house, a miniaturized model of the grounds around it. I swallowed hard and wondered what would happen if I looked hard into those tiny windows. Would I see a miniaturized version of my grandmother inside?

  “Oh!” I cried out in frustration. “Okay. I get it. Very funny.”

  I was pretty sure I knew what it all meant. First, it was the consequences of taking too long when she’d warned me not to. Then, it was an example of the sort of spell I was going to be able to use myself once she deemed me worthy of learning it. Yeah, I could have used a spell like that with the white rock. Though something told me it just might be that nothing magic worked on that thing, unless the rock let it.

  But putting that aside, I was pretty annoyed with my grandmother. After the lecture she’d given me for seeming to fail, she could at least congratulate me for finally succeeding.

  Or maybe not. Tough love, huh? The only part I wasn’t sure about was the love itself.

  “Thanks a lot,” I grumbled as I turned away, heading for my car—which, miraculously, was still life-sized. My life, that is. “If I get pneumonia, I’ll tell the doctor who made sure I caught it,” I called back at the little dollhouse.

  I had to admit, it looked adorable sitting there against the bed of daffodils that were just beginning to bloom. They looked like a backdrop of giant palm trees.

  Flowering palm trees.

  The wonders of Gran Ana.

  There were only a few people in the café area of the bakery but they stared at me as I walked through, still dripping everywhere.

  “Hey, what happened to you?” said Krissy, up to her elbows in flour and croissant dough—the place that she seemed to be happiest.

  “I’ll tell you all about it once I’ve had a hot shower,” I said as I sailed past her and headed up the stairs to where our rooms were. I took a long steamy shower, still chilled to the bone, and tried to make some sense out of it all. Sometimes I worried that I might not be thinking clearly. After all, with the loss of my memory, I’d been left without a past to help me deal with the present. Much less the future. And there were times when I missed that depth of knowledge keenly.

  What had that all been about out at Gran Ana’s place? Why had she set me such a difficult task without any hints to the meaning behind it? Then she’d come out to rant at me, to imply that what she wanted out of me was a trained killer. Well, that would never work. I just wasn’t going to do it. But it had pushed me to try harder, and I had succeeded. And then she’d bugged out and left me there with my mind swimming around in confusion, much the way my body had swum around the day my car sailed into the lake and I….

  No, I wasn’t going to think about it. The horror swept through me anyway and I had to shake it off. I finished up my shower and dried off and as I was toweling my hair dry, I walked out into my bedroom to find Rennie Dobbs sitting on my bed.

  We’d been friends in high school and she wasn’t letting that relationship die on the vine just because I couldn’t remember it. I didn’t remember anything that had happened to me before about two months before when I had suddenly found myself in a motel along the highway with a deed to this café and not much else.

  How did I get there? That was the question. It seemed to have come about because of something my grandmother had done, but no one seemed to know just what that was. By all rights, I had died that day when the car went into the lake. But still, here I was. And Rennie hardly cared as long as we were still friends. She always seemed to think I’d be happy to join any adventure she was on at the moment. And I had to admit, her good humor was contagious.

  Today she was dressed in a black gown with long, trailing sleeves and black striped leggings. That would have meant her choice of attire was unusually monochrome, so she’d fixed that by wearing bright yellow tennis shoes with rhinestone encrusted shoelaces. Typical Rennie.

  “Hi honey,” she greeted me with a huge smile. “How are you?”

  I glared at her, rubbing my hair with a towel. “Still cold,” I said. “I just took a dunk in the river.”

  “Oh. Sorry. That’s no fun.”

  She didn’t ask me what river, or why I was dunked. She seemed to have something else on her mind. But I wasn’t in a very good mood. Not completely receptive.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked her.

  “Oh, Krissy was busy. She seemed to be hiring someone or something. Asking for references and such. So I didn’t want to bother her, I just came on up.”

  “Oh.” Of course. Good old Rennie.

  But I frowned. Who could Krissy be hiring? She worked for me and she would have to run any new employee needs past me first. I’d already brought on a high school girl to help with customers in the afternoon. Now she’d taken it on herself to hire someone else? Hmmm. I wasn’t sure I liked that.

  “Uh…listen Haley.” Rennie looked nervous. That was unusual too. Rennie was usually the soul of confidence.

  “There’s something I need to tell you. I don’t want you to hear it from anyone else. It’s…it’s going to be a jolt but I ought to be the one who gives that jolt to you. You see what I mean? We’re such close friends and all….”

  Were we? I tried to see it from her point of view. So maybe we were. But we weren’t exactly bosom buddies who told everything to each other every day. No. That wasn’t the kind of friendship we had. Still, I had seen her dancing with her husband when he was…let’s just say, in his beastly mode. I shuddered to think of how big and wild he’d looked. But in that moment, I’d seen something basic and raw in Rennie that would stay with me forever. I knew her in a special way that I didn’t think many did.

  But that was okay. Sure. We gals needed to stick together. In a way.

  “What is it Rennie? You can tell me anything.”

  Oh, why did I say that? For sure I didn’t want all the gory details of anything in her marriage. Hopefully, that wasn’t what was obsessing her at the moment.

  “Alright, honey,” she said, looking earnest. “Here’s the straight stuff. The real deal. The solid truth of the matter.”

  And then she hesitated.

  “Uh…Rennie? Just what exactly are you talking about?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “We rented out your house.”

  I looked around. The place where I lived was an apartment over my café/bakery. That was true. But there was nothing that could be rented out here. Unless she was planning on moving me out, along with Krissy. But that just didn’t make any sense. Besides, this place was mine, not hers. How could she rent it out?

  “Rennie, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She gave me a significant look. “No one does. I never seem to connect, you know what I mean? Sometimes I think…”

  “Rennie!”

  “Oh. Yes. About the rental situation. I do it for the ghosts, you know. The poor things need a place to stay. So when I rent out local haunted houses, they feel needed. They feel like they can do a haunting or two and make a difference in people’s lives. You know what I mean?”

  “No,” I said quite honestly, staring at her. “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Oh Haley, come on. You’ve seen t
he ads.” She put on an announcer-like voice and said, “‘Come to Moonhaven and be scared out of your wits!’ Not the greatest tag line, but it gets the job done.”

  I was shaking my head. “Never seen them.”

  “You don’t watch much TV, do you?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “How about this one? ‘Slimy toads, screeching voices, icy fingers in the night. We’ve got it all in Moonhaven!’”

  “Rennie…” I made a face.

  “That one ran all week and that’s how I got the people who are staying in your house right now.”

  “My house? I haven’t seen them.” I was about to cuff her about the head and shoulders if she didn’t make this more clear. I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “No, not this one silly. Your old house. The one your family lived in. The one sitting on Oak Street. Corner of Oak and Garvey.”

  That struck an unpleasant chord deep inside. “Oh. That one.”

  That was my house alright. The one my family lived in all during my younger years—or so I’d been told. I didn’t remember it. But somehow, having Rennie using it as a tourist ghost house exhibit gave me a bad feeling. Like I ought to be defending the honor of my family a bit more vigorously. Or something. That’s just it. I wasn’t sure what. You just aren’t trained to deal with situations like this. My family had disappeared around the time I hit the water of the lake. I had no real idea who—or where—they were.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What makes you think my old house is haunted?”

  “Oh, it’s full of ghosts.” She laughed in a jolly manner meant to reassure me. “I should know. I put them there.”

  Suddenly an icy fear swept through me. Was she talking about…she couldn’t mean—the ghosts couldn’t be of any of my own family. Could they? I felt my knees weakening suddenly and I reached out to hold myself steady, but I was trembling. If those ghosts were related to me or any part of my family, I didn’t want to know. Not now. I wasn’t ready to face that.

  “Rennie,” I said in a strangled voice. “Wait. I…I…”

  For once, the woman seemed to catch on quickly. “Oh honey, no!” she cried, grabbing hold of me and giving me a quick hug. “These are not your ghosts. Believe me, I would never do such a thing. These are strange ghosts. And volunteers. They signed up for this of their own free will. Believe me, I would never….”

  “Signed up?” I was staring at her now, my confidence back, my fears fading. “How does that work exactly?”

  “I don’t mean they go around signing their names with pens to petitions or anything like that. But there are ways I can communicate with them. And I have to keep them organized somehow, or they’ll get ideas and start trying to haunt random people. And we can’t have that.”

  “Of course not,” I said, still slightly dazed.

  “What I do is stash them in various empty houses. Tourists pay to stay a weekend and get a scare or two. It’s fun for them. And the ghosts are mostly harmless.”

  “Mostly.”

  “Yes. I have other places to put ghosts who won’t behave. Believe me, they would rather be in a nice house with nice people. After all, that’s exactly what they were before they died.”

  “Uh huh.” I shook my head. “How do you make them stay where you put them? I would think ghosts might be a little hard to herd around. And how do you get them to stick to your haven-town rules? Or is it all a lie that ghosts tend to be mean and scary?”

  “Well….” She was thinking that one over.

  “The reputation of ghosts is this—they don’t behave!”

  She gave a grunt and her shoulders drooped. “You got that one right. They’re a nightmare most of the time.” She gave me a Rennie-style superior look. “But I’ve got my ways.”

  I couldn’t resist it. I had to tease her—just a little.

  “A dungeon with implements of horrible torture? How do you torture a ghost? Do they notice?”

  “I don’t use torture, silly.” She made a face, then moved closer and whispered in my ear, as though there might be someone listening at the door. “And of course, there’s a special spell containing them in the house. The spell was cast by someone important. I’m not allowed to reveal who that was and I’m not going to do it. But you would be impressed.”

  “No doubt.”

  She leaned close and whispered sharply. “It was your grandmother of course.”

  “Oh.” That surprised me.

  “She totally backs my idea. I was so happy to have her support.”

  “She, uh…. She said it was okay for you to gather ghosts for tourist appreciation?”

  “She did. She thought that might keep them calmer. She gave me her okay personally.”

  I nodded, still finding it hard to believe. How did this help the haven? But I supposed, if Rennie could keep them under control, it might work out okay.

  “I use guardian stones of course, to keep them in bounds. Really special ones.” She raised an eyebrow with more Rennie-style significance. “Sealed with a sorceress’s spell.” She made her eyes go very wide so I wouldn’t miss her meaning.

  I nodded. Sealed with a sorceress’s spell? That had to mean more of Gran Ana’s work. As far as I knew, there weren’t any other sorcerers around here. Nor any warlocks. Anything with Deep Magic had to come from my grandmother.

  That piqued my interest. I knew the town itself was protected by guardian stones of some sort, but I’d never seen them. There was still so much I needed to learn.

  “Are you trying to tell me that you actually presented this plan of using ghosts as haunted housing bait for tourists to the Council and they okayed it?”

  She looked a little shifty for a moment, but then she came back, sure of herself as ever.

  “Yes. And here’s why. I’ve hired a Council approved ghost handler to cover all those pesky little details that come up when you try to manage ghosts. Rosy Grenada is her name. She’s amazing, like the ghost whisperer or something. Not like the TV show, The Ghost Whisperer. I mean like The Dog Whisperer. But for ghosts. She knows her stuff and the ghosts respect her. So it’s all good.”

  I was frowning. “So she can see them?”

  “Of course. She’s special and believe me, they do what she tells them to do.”

  “Really.” I was skeptical. “But all they have to do is glide away and all the ghost managing in the world isn’t going to stop them.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. We have special spells and things to keep them right where we want them. Rosy is a wizard at these things. Just wait until you see her.”

  I don’t know, I guess I’m just a one person “Show-Me State”. I had my doubts. All the ghosts I’d heard about so far had been completely un-trainable. They tended to hide from you and then, when you least expected it, they would jump out and screech “Boo!” at a level that could break your eardrum. So I wasn’t optimistic. But I was willing to be convinced.

  You have to understand about Moonhaven. We’re a little different here. It’s a really nice town and very picturesque. We’re slightly remote, and though we live by state and federal law, that’s a surface requirement. Underneath, those of us who are supernaturals have something else we answer to. The Council.

  The State Council of Preternatural Events—or SCOPE for short--guards and protects the haven towns in the Western States, and it maintains various local Councils, like the one Rennie is part of. Made up of a few special VIPs from the town government and appointees like Rennie from the supernatural community, along with representatives from the State Council, it attempts to keep things running smoothly, and to prepare us all for the possibility of attack.

  Yes, attack. It has happened before.

  Those of us living in haven towns know that we face that danger, and accept that we are sworn to protect the regular people of our towns from harm—or even knowledge of the danger--as far as that is possible.

  For some reason, thinking about that reminded me of the little
red fox I’d seen in the valley near that huge white stone. I’d seen it again as I was driving home. For a moment, there it was racing alongside the road, keeping up with me in my ancient compact. I gasped when I noticed it, gasped and pulled over, hoping to get a better look. But by the time I’d stopped the car, it was gone. I couldn’t catch a glimpse of it anywhere. Funny.

  Meanwhile, Rennie was going on and on about the ghosts and as I focused back on her, I realized there must be some purpose to her visit. She’d given me her spiel and she’d presented me with a map to the haunted houses of Moonhaven. Now what? She didn’t usually drop by just to chat—or even to inform me of things she might have done that affected me.

  “And so I came over to ask you for a favor,” she was saying, looking just a bit pitiful.

  Ah hah.

  “I’ve been so low energy since I used all my powers up to cure Chuck of that bad case of hives. I’ve got nothing left. Could you please cast a couple of spells for me? Just little ones. Well, medium sized. I just need….”

  I grimaced. “Rennie, you know I can’t do that.”

  “Well, I thought, since it’s your house, maybe….”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe you could get those people I rented to out of there. I need them to go.”

  Whiplash. That was life in the Rennie zone.

  “Why?”

  After all this work of getting them here, what had gone wrong?

  “I just want them to leave. A tiny spell. Give them bed bugs, give them nightmares…I don’t know. Make them decide to leave town quickly.”

  I blinked at her—she was actually suggesting that I cast a spell that would give those people bed bugs? Rennie! I sighed.

  “Wait. I thought you were just giving me a glowing report about how well this program was working. What’s the problem?”

  She made a soft moaning sound. “Most of the rentals have been great. Very successful. But these people in your house—I would never have rented to them if I’d known. They are here in order to tape an episode for their TV series. If the Council finds out, I’m done for.”