Resting
Witch
Face
Hazel Hendrix
Copyright © 2017 by Hazel Hendrix
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 23
Chapter 1
Centuries-old fabric tore with a loud rip that I could not disregard. “Aw, cr—”
Even though I technically wasn’t even about to swear, I censored myself as I looked to my right and saw a set of brown eyes accusing me from beneath their heavy wrinkled lids. I laid my satchel on the sidewalk and twisted to look behind myself at the length of my pristine white gown. A row of sparkling glass seed beads was about to fall off a shredded thread, but the fiber leapt upright and reattached to the floral embroidery as the silk cloth behind the motif knit itself back together.
I couldn’t help but grin. As tired as I was of wearing the enchanted gown, it always put a smile on my face when the dress repaired itself like that, so much that I was occasionally tempted to purposefully damage it just to watch the magic happen. But of course, such an act would be considered sacrilege.
Despite the sharp edge that had torn my dress, the wrought iron fence that stood beside me was one of the most beautiful that anyone had ever seen. Hand forged in 1793 by one of my great uncles, it was the pride and joy of the occupant, Priscilla, who was both my sixth cousin five times removed and my eleventh cousin three times removed. That basically made us as related as two random people on the street in a big city, but we kept track of that kind of thing around here.
I waved hello and all 94 pounds and 116 years of her instantly rose from her chair. She stomped off her porch and down her flower lined sidewalk until she stood next to me and leaned on the ivy covered iron fencepost.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning, Gemma,” she answered, huffing for breath. “Nice dress.” Her friendly but mocking smile revealed the few teeth she had left.
I passed Priscilla’s house each time I walked to town, which was every other morning. And I wore the same antiquated long white dress and carried the same open basket of freshly picked silver river hyacinth. Not because I wanted to. I was acutely aware of how ridiculous I looked. Because it was tradition. If I could get away with doing this in jeans and a t-shirt driving my Subaru, I certainly would.
Priscilla knew this. That didn’t stop her from making a comment at least once a month.
“Wicked Brew stayed open until 11:30 last night,” she informed me, referring to our cousins’ coffee house. “Serving outsiders.”
“Everybody has to get a cup of coffee somewhere.” I didn’t want to tell her that after eight o’clock most of that coffee was spiked with spirits, and not the ghostly kind.
“At 11:30?” Priscilla balked. “Easy for you to say. It’s my land sitting between the ruckus and yours, keeping it quiet.”
Hers and nearly 1,000 acres of five other families. It was a twenty minute walk just to get to her door. “It is nice to live at the end of the road.” I was trying to be polite. “Well, I should be—”
“I hear that every room of the Inn is full,” she interrupted me. “How many people do you think drove in from out of town?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
“Zinnia says she’s only renting to genuine cousins like she always does. I don’t believe her.”
I needed to get going. I didn’t have time to gossip. “Isn’t your great nephew staying there this weekend?”
“He has legacy rights and has been coming up every summer since he was born!”
Everyone had a niece, nephew, aunt, or cousin with legacy rights who had sporadically visited the quaint community of Dewdrop since birth. And we were all afraid that they’d move in one day, too.
Legacy rights basically meant that you could live here. It might be in a shack that you built yourself out of scrap metal 100 feet away from the cabin of an aunt that hated you for ruining her view, but you could live out your days there rent free.
It was mostly a non-issue. Once a witch left Madison County, aside from going to college, she usually left for good. Half of me was ready to follow their lead. The other half couldn’t imagine living with humans exclusively.
“We’ll just have to see how it plays out, Priscilla. You can’t ban people from visiting town.”
“Oh, yes we can. My grandmother had a spell for that.” She glanced at the pristine bundle of hyacinth I held.
“Here,” I said, plucking a stem free and handing it over the fence. “Happy Hettymoot.”
Her face brightened and she replied, “See you there. Don’t bring that dog.”
With a wink, she sniffed the flower I’d given her and settled back into her wooden rocking chair on the porch. Her house was in a great spot for a lady who liked to keep up on everyone’s business. Heavens knew what she would see today.
I spent my next few steps inwardly passing judgement on my elder for her lack of hospitality. Then I understood her completely as my heart thumped when I caught a glimpse of the group of people in the town square. It was just four or five out-of-towners so I couldn’t call it a crowd, but it promised to turn into one soon enough. I hated crowds in general, but the potential of this one made me especially anxious. It shouldn’t have, really. I’d have the pleasure of seeing nearly every single one of the 1000+ members of my extended family that weekend anyway, but on some level I was simultaneously dreading and excited about that.
Those strangers on the other hand… It felt like they were watching us. Probably because they were.
If it kept growing at this pace, Hettymoot would become a commercialized festival with a billboard on the highway instead of the glorified family reunion it actually was. And all because of some stupid website that lets wannabes trace their supernatural roots back to right here.
Any other family would probably just be annoyed. Of course, people wouldn’t party crash just any old family reunion when they realized they were distantly related. But when you find out you’re descended from a powerful clan of New England witches that still lives and practices on tens of thousands of acres of ancestral land, apparently it’s a lot more tempting to drop by and check it out. Why not pick a time when the ghost of the matriarch witch herself is said to make an appearance at her grave? And bestow a powerful blessing to boot.
It was only 8:30 in the morning and most shops weren’t even open yet, but they would be soon so I quickened my pace. The faster I got done in town, the sooner I’d be back in the peace and quiet of the farm. On another day, especially a bad day, I might have described the ‘peace and quiet’ as mind-numbing boredom that I somehow had to escape. There’s nothing like having your quaint hometown overrun by tourists to make the grass on your side of the fence mor
e than green enough.
The picturesque downtown strip of Dewdrop was barely more than four blocks long and most of the shops were clustered in the center square. Several vacant storefronts sat next to Priscilla’s family’s property line. The shops had been empty since I could remember and I doubted they’d ever be rented again with such a depressing view.
Across from those shops were the old gallows, the creepiest relic in Dewdrop. Why we kept it around, I would never understand. It was just out of view from Priscilla’s porch and you couldn’t see it from the downtown because of a twisted old Elm tree that arched over the main road. Of every witch that dwelled here, I probably saw the eyesore the most, aside from the spirits that often gathered around it.
They were there that morning. I recognized the woman with the strawberry blonde hair in the dark blue skirt dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. I must have seen her do that a hundred times.
“Why?” she moaned like she always did. A man in a tricorn hat wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The spirits were stuck on repeat, at least whenever they appeared here. “Why?”
According to our historians, the gallows were only used a few times in the late 1700’s. It was mostly a protective measure so it was clear that Dewdrop policed itself well and had a no tolerance policy for dark magic. Or any magic, depending on who came asking. The witches here were still reeling from The Burning Times in Europe and that catastrophe in all-too-close Salem. Our family even staged a few executions using cousins that didn’t live here as stand-ins.
I wasn’t sure how many people had actually been hanged there, but one death in particular must have left a mark. Five spirits circled the gallows every so often, staring up at the noose and mourning. It was usually just a rope, an ethereal rope that wasn’t actually there. Today the body of a young man with shaggy hair swayed gently in the breeze. I didn’t turn my head, I never did. The sound of the woman sobbing sent a chill down my spine.
I quickened my pace and kept my distance from the ghostly mourners, knowing they would be gone as soon as the sun got high enough to chase away the shadows. I rounded the corner and the door of a shop called Twitching Whiskers swung open in front of me, nearly knocking my basket from my hands.
“Do you have any idea who they’re related to?” asked the owner, Tabitha, pointing to the group of tourists.
I was still rattled, but I shook it off quickly. It wasn’t altogether unusual. “I don’t.”
“I think they’re some of those... Oh, you know. People from that dang computer.”
I chuckled at the visual of a group of people crawling out of a computer. Tabitha didn’t know much about the internet. Her expertise was cats. And in a town full of witches, that meant she got a lot of business.
“They probably did find us through that website, yeah,” I agreed with her.
“For Hettymoot, no less. Such disrespect wouldn’t have been tolerated in my day.” Tabitha was only in her mid-fifties, the same age range as most of the other high-ranking, decision-making witches. From my perspective, it still was her day. “Oh, by the way. We’re having a sidewalk sale on Sunday,” Tabitha informed me.
“What?” I exclaimed. “No one told us.”
“Gee, I wonder why.” Tabitha rolled her eyes. “But Neoma is casting her spell Saturday night.”
“You’re sure?”
“She’s my sister!”
My fingers clenched around the handle of my basket. Neoma cast a spell on the highway sign about once a month to divert traffic through our downtown strip. She had for years. Her daughter started augmenting it with a twist on a water spell that made people really thirsty and have to pee at the same time. Desperate to get out of the car, tourist after tourist would be grateful to stop in Dewdrop. Every entrepreneurial witch with something to sell would set up a table and try her luck at getting a few confused travelers to part with their cash.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit ironic that everyone is complaining about out-of- towners, but we’re planning to trick a bunch of them into coming here like 48 hours after Hettymoot?” I asked. “I thought the Goven wanted to keep a lower profile.”
Tabitha mused on this for a moment before saying, “Times are tough.”
Times were not tough! They seldom were for the witches in Madison County. That was more or less the point of being a witch.
We didn’t have to worry about getting burned at the stake anymore, no one had a mortgage, and we were typically a very healthy bunch that used magic potions and herbs instead of health insurance. Back when we were all crafters and farmers, we had crop blessings, rain spells, and durability enhancements that made our goods the talk of the state. Now that we were all… well, most of us were still crafters and farmers, myself included, and we still had that edge.
The human town over, the one people were actually trying to get to on the highway when they got derailed here, is what kept ours alive economically. The people of Woodshade loved their herbal medicine from quaint small towns and for the most part, that’s what it seemed like we were. So we peddled our energy and weight loss supplements, our bath salts and healing salves, our relaxing lavender oils with an extra supernatural kick, our good luck charms and safe travel talismans, and people kept coming back for more because they actually worked.
If you asked me, we were amongst the luckiest folks alive. But I’d never breathe a word of that in Dewdrop because complaining was a family pastime.
“Well, I’d better get to Elements before it opens to drop this off,” I said.
“Aren’t you going to give me one of those?” Tabitha asked, giving me a cheesy smile. “I am your cousin after all.”
Sometimes if felt like everyone in the entire world was my cousin. I guess technically, they are, but it feels very literal in this town. “Sure,” I replied, plucking free another piece of hyacinth. “Enjoy.”
“Oh, Gemma, you should be proud,” she said, taking a sniff. “These make the best enhancements and this year’s crop has been exceptionally potent. What’s your secret?”
“I can’t tell you,” I laughed. “Then it wouldn’t be a secret.”
“Oh, get on then.” Tabitha shooed me away. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. Don’t you dare bring that dog.”
Two requests to leave Bliss at home and I hadn’t even made it to town square. Fat chance. That dog was the best friend I ever had.
As I got closer to my destination, that group of strangers noticed me. I couldn’t really blame them, I did stick out in the white dress with the flowers. A girl in a faded black t-shirt and jeans with gaping tattered holes in the knees turned in my direction and took a picture on her phone.
“Juno, do you think she’s a ghost?” her blonde friend whispered. Normal people wouldn’t have been able to hear her, but witches had good ears.
“No. Maybe she’s a hippie though. Look at the flowers.”
“I read that some of the witches were hippies back in the 60’s.”
“Yeah, but so was everybody.”
“I still think she’s a ghost.”
“She’s not a ghost,” their male friend interjected. He had light reddish hair and wore a t-shirt with an interesting geometric pattern and his own pair of torn up jeans. “This whole thing is fake, you’re not a witch. That website is bogus and it exists simply to lead people to this tourist trap of a town.”
If only everyone thought like him.
“It does not!” the blonde girl protested. “My great great great—”
“Yeah, I know, Alicia. Your grandmother was a ‘witch,’” the boy said, using air quotes. “So was her grandmother. And tomorrow night the oldest grandmother of them all is going to rise from her grave and welcome you with open arms into your new witch family.”
“And give me powers.”
“And give you powers,” he repeated sardonically. “Maybe a hat and broom, too.”
“Kyle, you’re just jealous because we all found our witch ancestors and you didn’t.”
“Y
eah, okay.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Has anybody seen Tom yet?”
“Isn’t he sleeping in?” Juno asked.
“No, he wasn’t in the room this morning.” Kyle pulled out his phone. “Maybe he went to Woodshade to get some coffee. Or to visit civilization.”
“Geez, why did we even bring you guys?” Alicia groaned.
“Because Tom is the only one with a car?”
“Neither of you even have ancestors from here. We should have just made it a girls’ trip.”
Well, our suspicions were confirmed. These people had found us on that stupid site with an interactive version of our family tree. Hopefully, it was just a fad that would soon fade away.
Ironically, there were several ghosts standing around the tourists that they couldn’t see. One I knew in life and the old woman was eyeing the visitors with as much disdain as she would have if she were still here in the flesh. The others were older, some probably dead for at least 200 years. There was always spiritual activity in Dewdrop, but it definitely increased during Hettymoot.
Resting Witch Face Page 1