Witches in Wonderland

by J. D. Winters

  She heaved a “why do I have to do everything around here?” sigh and threw her head back. “Alright. I’m assuming you really are receptive. Here’s a quick course in ghost detection. Set yourself in an accessible mode. Let your senses go free. Close your eyes. Maybe dance a little, kind of wiggling in place. Sing a soft, melodic song. These things will recharge your sensitivity.”

  “No kidding?”

  “I’m not known for my sense of humor you know. Pay attention. After you feel your sensitivity flowing, you stop and lift your face to the sky, throw out your arms and open yourself to sensation. If you’ve got the wavelength, that should work. Got it?”

  “I think so.” I was doing everything she suggested—except for the dancing and singing part-- but nothing was stirring in the spiritual world, at least nothing I had a feel for.

  “Not now, silly. I would tell you if there were spirits nearby.”

  I shrugged. “Just practicing,” I muttered.

  “Here,” she said impatiently. “I have instructions for just this sort of problem.” She handed me a slip of light cardboard the size of a business card. Her major points were jotted down on it. “Just memorize this chain of action and you’ll be fine. Then use this.” She reached into the depths of her lacy shawl, shoving aside the ever-present gold chains, and brought out a small stone and handed it to me. “Keep this where you can see it. When it glows red, you’ll know a ghost is near.”

  It was a beautiful stone, a shiny rose quartz color, almost clear at this point, softly glowing in my hand. It reminded me of a stone Gran Ana had once given me to wear against my side, supposedly a communications device, though I’d never really found it very useful and stopped using it soon after she gave it to me. After all, we were in the age of the wireless and it was time she got a cell phone.

  I looked up at Clarissa. What was it with these people and their stones? And that made me think of the stone I’d been tasked to secure the day before. Stones, always stones. Grrr.

  “We’re set then?” she said. “Only….” She hesitated, looked at me and frowned as though uncertain as to whether to go on or not. “Alright, you’d better be prepared. The ghost we must find is named Hector. He’s a large male and usually communicates by yelling monosyllabic or disyllabic grunts and snorts. Unintelligible grunts and snorts.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I’m the Psychic Consultant on the show. Remember? It’s my job to know everything about this and I do my research. Anyway, this one is pretty much impossible and he’s been known to use violence. But he’s been caught before and we can do it again.”

  “I think I saw him,” I said, wincing at the memory. “It was an hour or two after the murder, I think. Didn’t he have something to do with your injuries?”

  She nodded, rolling her eyes. “Yes. Don’t ask.”

  I blinked. “Oh. Okay. But how did he get out? I thought there was an unbreakable seal.”

  “They always say that. Until it gets broken. Happens every time.”

  Happens every time. Okay, I was getting a strong message here and it was about time I took a moment to register what was going on. Clarissa was definitely a supernatural. That had been clear for some time. But she was a much stronger spirit than I’d understood at first. In fact, she was so full of witchy ways and knowledge she was scary. Just how powerful was she? Powerful enough to be a sorceress? I didn’t really want to ask her that.

  I swallowed. Back to the subject of Hector. “So what happens if we find him? Who do we call?”

  She stared at me for a moment, then giggled. “I’m sorry. I have an almost irresistible urge to break into a chorus of ‘Ghost Busters’.”

  I put up a hand, even though I was grinning too. “And you claim you have no sense of humor. Still, spare me.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Surprisingly, when she smiled she was almost likeable.

  “Here’s what you do. There are two methods that can work. The first one takes learning a long string of Latin phrases and must be chanted while using a shaker filled with a sand-like substance called Dead Man’s Tears. You sprinkle them on the ghost, still chanting the phrases. He goes limp and collapses at your feet. You open a special small bottle of handblown glass and the ghost gets sucked inside like a genie. You pop on the cork. Voila. It’s over.”

  That sort of blew me away. “Sounds great. But it also sounds like you need a lot of preparation for that to work. Do you have any spare handblown glass bottles on you?”

  “Exactly. That’s why we have to rough it with something cruder.”

  “Such as?”

  “You saw the boxes stacked in the kitchen of your haunted house?”

  I nodded.

  “We use those. We can stash quite a few in at a time and carry them about.”

  “So I understand. My question is—how do you get them into the boxes? Don’t they resist?”

  “Oh yes.” She smiled wisely. “So we make promises. You have to figure out what the ghost wants more than anything and you promise it to him. If you catch the right wave, so to speak, he’ll follow you anywhere.”

  Sounded pretty iffy to me. “And if that doesn’t work?”

  She raised one significant eyebrow. “You call the Ghost Keeper.”

  Sending out an SOS, huh? “Gotcha.”

  “Her number is on the back of the card I just gave you.”

  “Okay.”

  You see? She knew things. She had a strong and confident base of knowledge and actions that belonged to the ages. She was definitely a force to be reckoned with. I wondered, fleetingly, what Gran Ana thought of her. Instead, I got a little insight into what she thought of Gran Ana.

  She was gazing at me speculatively. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you,” she said. “Pity Kenny didn’t know Gran Ana is your grandmother before he died.”

  “Why would Kenny have cared about me and my grandmother?”

  “He would have enjoyed the historic promises being fulfilled.” She smiled at me. “You were the twelve year old who wrote to him years ago when he had that cult TV show, weren’t you? You told him your grandmother was a Super Witch and he ought to come up here and cover the story.”

  I didn’t say a word. I just stared at her, but my heart was like a hummingbird bashing against the bars of its cage.

  “He told me all about it. When he got here, you seemed to have vanished and Gran Ana was gone. To France, wasn’t it?”

  She waited but I still wasn’t talking. How could I? I had no idea if what she was saying was true or false.

  “But I forgot. Your memories are gone, right?”

  That whole speech was meant to manipulate me but I wasn’t sure what she wanted. If she was telling the truth and I must admit, it felt true--then I could see even more reason why Gran Ana might want Kenny dealt with in some way. But murder?

  Impossible. Wasn’t it?

  “Okay then,” she was saying as she rose, “Let’s go. I’ll take the West side. You take the East. Meet you at the Pepper Lane house where the crew is being housed. Or held in custody, as the case may be. See you then.”

  And she was gone in a flurry of lace, gold chains and gorgeous ebony hair.

  I left a little more slowly. Truth to tell, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Walk around town looking for a ghost? Who does that? Nobody. Go back to my old house to get some ghost carrying boxes? I suppose so, once I got a bead on a real ghost. But honestly, I didn’t see how this was going to work at all.

  I woke Toto up and walked him slowly past the Sheriff Station just in case Shane wanted to come out and tell me to my face how I wasn’t allowed to get any information from him or his buddies. I was angry about that. But he didn’t show and neither did anyone else and I had so much to be upset about, so much roiling my mind, I didn’t have time to obsess over any one thing. It was all bad.

  “I’d better take you home,” I told my little dog. He went happily, probably looking forward to being allowed to play w
ith Krissy’s boy Gavin again.

  A few minutes later I was headed back into the search. I’d left Toto eating snacks and waiting for Gavin to wake up from his nap. Krissy was only moderately busy so I didn’t feel guilty about leaving everything to her today. That was happening more and more often. I wondered if she was getting tired of it. If I were her, I would have been. Maybe we ought to have a talk when all this murder stuff died down.

  But for now, I was hunting a big bad ghost. So—now what? Where was I going to go?

  Chapter 11

  Suddenly I remembered the map Rennie had given me, the self-guided tour of the official haunted houses. I’d stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans. Reaching back, I found it and pulled it out. The houses were plotted out graphically, very simple, very clear. I certainly didn’t have a better plan. Why not visit a few of these and see if ghosts of a feather flew together?

  The closest one was only a block away and I started toward it. My cell phone rang as I turned the corner. Rennie’s name was on the screen.

  “Hey girl,” I said. “So I guess you found your phone?”

  “Huh? Oh, yes.”

  “What’s new?”

  “Have you seen Gordon?” she cried. “Or heard anything about him?”

  “No.” I frowned. She sounded distraught. “Is he still missing?”

  “I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve tried all his friends.”

  “Well, he is a grown up now, isn’t he? Doesn’t he ever go off on his own for a time?”

  “Yes, of course, but not when the sheriff wants to see him!”

  “But if he doesn’t know the sheriff wants to see him…”

  “Oh, that doesn’t help. They’re going to end up arresting him for murder if he doesn’t get over there and explain himself. If you see him, tell him to get his butt over to the Sheriff Station immediately.” And she rang off.

  “Nice talking to you too,” I said to the empty air.

  But I was in front of the first haunted house. It looked haunted in a phony, Halloween-decorations way. Styrofoam gravestones had been placed in the front yard and a giant, grinning plastic spider hung from the pear tree just inside the gate.

  It didn’t look very lived in at the moment. I got out my rose colored stone and tried to be receptive—even did a little jig and hummed a little song-- but I got no sense of occupancy as far as the ghostly community was concerned. Then I went up and knocked on the door. A buzzer had been set up to send out eerie, spooky music once that buzzer was pressed, but no one came to greet me. Not even Hector.

  I sighed and started off toward the next house, half a block away. It presented a more stately aspect to the world, all gingerbread and turrets and Victorian charm, nicely painted and decorated. But it too was empty. If Rennie’s project was such a roaring success, you’d think more of the haunted houses would be packed to the gills with happy scared tourists, but that didn’t seem to be happening. My stone didn’t show any sign of red, and my senses didn’t quiver.

  I went around to the back, just to make sure I’d checked out everything, and as I came back toward the front, I noticed someone familiar across the street, pulling up into the driveway, then stepping out of her car and walking toward the back door of the house with a large package in her arms. It was our friendly neighborhood Ghost Keeper herself, Rosy Grenada.

  My first thought was—oh, good—we can join forces looking for Hector. And then it occurred to me that looking for Hector was not a priority with Rosy at the moment. For some reason—was it the stealthy way she moved or the furtive glances she kept casting over her shoulder?-- instinct took over and instead of hailing her, I slipped back into the shadows along the bush line beside the house so that I could observe what she was doing.

  She was lugging one of those cardboard ghost carriers. She disappeared into the house without knocking. When she came out again, she didn’t have the package and I had time to see her more clearly. But that was hard, because she looked for all the world like a bad photograph, rather fuzzy and indistinct. And suddenly I thought I knew why. She was using a cloaking spell to keep herself invisible to humans. But because I had supernatural powers, I could see her, even if not very well.

  My heart was beating hard. What was she up to? She seemed to be delivering something—maybe ghosts—to a house where officially ghosts were not supposed to be.

  While she was adjusting things in the back of her car, I pulled out my phone and called the woman behind all this nonsense.

  “Rennie, do you have some kind of deal going with Rosy, the Ghost Keeper? Why is she delivering a package to a random home not on the register? And why do I have the suspicion that she’s delivering ghosts to non-registered homes?”

  There was silence for a moment while she digested that bit of news.

  “Why would she be doing that?” she said at last.

  Well, that pretty much indicated that they weren’t in cahoots anyway.

  “I don’t know, Rennie. You tell me.”

  “Oh!” She sounded truly overwhelmed. “I can’t deal with that right now. I have a line on where Gordon might be and I’m going out there right away. I’ve got to find him. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Rennie, where are you going? Do you have anyone with you? Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “Don’t worry about me. All I care about right now is my little brother. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

  And she was gone.

  I didn’t like it. It sounded like she was going somewhere out of town and there were all sorts of shady things going on out there, outside the protection of the haven. I tried to call her back. I wanted to make sure she had some help. But she didn’t pick up, so there was nothing I could do.

  Meanwhile Rosy was backing out of the driveway. I didn’t have my car with me so there was no way I was going to be able to follow her. But it turned out that didn’t matter, because she only went a block and a half before she turned into another driveway at another unregistered residence. I stayed out of sight, but I followed her, just the same. Sure enough, she took another cardboard ghost carrier into the house, then came out and got back into her car. This time she drove off too far for me to follow. I had to decide what I was going to do.

  There was a small neighborhood park across the street. It seemed empty, so I walked over and sat on the swing, got a nice rhythm going and tried to make sense of things. I now knew of two registered ghost houses where there were no ghosts, and two unregistered houses where I was pretty sure there were some. Illegally. Now what?

  I had a feeling Hector wasn’t in the mix here. Rosy had said she couldn’t find him and I was pretty sure it would take more than a cardboard box to contain a ghost of his size and strength—so I didn’t think he was nearby. And even if he was, did I really think he’d been the one to kill Kenny? Not likely. So why was I wasting all this time on him?

  In fact, why was I letting myself get caught up in this at all? If Rennie hadn’t dragged me into it, I would probably be blissfully unaware that this haven-wide ghost drama was being played out around me.

  Except for one thing. Well, maybe two. First was the dream where Hector had played a rather intrusive role. Why? What did he have to do with me anyway? And then there was the fact that I saw my grandmother going into the Haunted House last night. Whom had she gone to see? And why?

  I guess I was involved whether I liked it or not.

  So we were back to the same old question—who was the murderer? Who were the suspects? Who had the strongest motive? And who could have pushed Kenny downstairs and then run down to plunge a knife in his chest, just to make sure he was dead. Creepy. And kind of mean.

  There was Gordon, of course. I didn’t think there was much chance he would end up being the prime suspect, but you had to consider him. After all, he’d disappeared into the night. And where was he now? People who run off that way have got to know how guilty it makes them look. And yet they do it all the time.

  I could understa
nd that he was angry. Kenny had humiliated him badly with all his talk of Gordon’s incompetence. Kenny had shown evidence of pure hatred for the man, but then again, he’d still hung around for a few more hours, and he seemed to be prepared to go to work for him. What did it all mean?

  Derek was another suspect. He and Kenny might have been good friends once, but they weren’t getting along lately. Derek could talk all he wanted about Kenny being his best friend. He might have been at one point but there was no evidence of that last night. The two of them had seemed like an old married couple who had lost the ability or the knack of treating each other with anything other than nasty bickering. Derek was obviously not pulling his share of the workload, and his sarcasm and snark were really getting on Kenny’s nerves.

  But was that any reason for Derek to kill him? After all, he could talk big about taking over for Kenny, but when you came right down to it, the pair of them together had been successful. Now that they were pulling apart instead of together, from bits and pieces I’d heard, I had the impression that the original success seemed to be slipping away. They still needed each other.

  I could see them aiming sharp barbs at each other, but not a knife. Still, Derek had made that comment about planning a murder.

  Then there was Mario, the cameraman. I hadn’t seen any evidence of bad feeling with Kenny, but I didn’t know either one of them well enough to say.

  Clarissa? Well, she was fierce enough to do it, but what would be her motive? My impression was that she and Kenny had recently been a couple, but that was over now. I didn’t know much about breakups or the people who had them. Amnesia-remember? But from the few things I’d witnessed lately it seemed that even though the rift often included a lot of acrimony, murder usually didn’t enter into the picture. After all, when you killed someone, you were risking a long, long prison term—or the chair if they still did things like that these days.