Midlife Curses

by Christine Zane Thomas

  “He got away!” Trish yelled. “Did you see that?”

  I realized she was talking to me. I looked down to see that I was solid once again. I hadn’t notice it happen. And I was hoping no customers had either.

  From their vantage on the ground, it probably looked like I was ducked under my register the whole time.

  “I saw,” I said.

  “Dave!” Trish shouted. “Where are you? He just got away.”

  “We have other problems,” Dave called back. “Get over here.”

  I followed Trish to the meat counter where Dave was kneeling over a body, two fingers on the side of its neck. I moved to get a better look at the body’s owner. He wore jeans and a vest like mine.

  Hal.

  Dave sighed. He shook his head, then spoke into the radio on his shoulder.

  “Dispatch, are EMTs in route?”

  A garbled response.

  “No,” he replied. “No shots fired. We have one in need of assistance. I think he just fainted.”

  As Dave spoke, Hal’s eyes fluttered open.

  “You all right there, big fella?” Dave asked.

  Hal nodded. “What… what happened?”

  Nick, who was standing a few feet away behind the counter, said, “That kid passed us on his way out. You saw the gun, and the next thing I know, your eyes rolled into your head and you hit the deck. Hard.”

  “How hard?”

  Nick fought a smile. “Pretty hard.”

  “All right, well, wait here,” Dave told Hal. “We’ll get you checked out for concussion.”

  By this time, the whole the store had regrouped around the butcher counter. Willow hovered at the edge of the crowd. She looked upset, but she tried to get Dave’s attention without anyone else noticing.

  “What happened to you?” he asked. “You let him get away?”

  “Not exactly,” she said without elaborating.

  Dave scratched the stubble on his cheeks, frustrated by how the events had played out.

  This was my third encounter with the sheriff’s office. It was the most stressful yet. Granted, the suspect had only gotten away with a bag of M&Ms. Still, he’d pointed a gun at my face.

  Dave sighed and held up his hands. “Let’s interview the main witnesses. Get everyone else’s information and cut them loose.”

  “You aren’t going after him?” Trish asked.

  Dave glared at her. “Tell me what he got away with first.”

  “M&Ms,” I said.

  “Then no, Trish, we’re not going after him. We’ll look at the video and try to identify him. We’re going to need your breakroom again. Whose register did he try to rob?”

  “Who do you think?” Trish pointed at me.

  “Of course.” Dave said. “And where’s Jade?”

  “The bank, I think.”

  “Well, I hope she’s not robbing it,” Dave joked.

  In the breakroom, I told him what happened—everything, including when I vanished or whatever that was. He didn’t say much, just nodded and scribbled notes. Willow and Trish sat on the counter behind us.

  Dave leaned back in his chair. “You going to tell us how you let him get away?” he asked Willow when I’d finished.

  “I had a vision,” she said meekly. “I had him covered when he came out the door. I told him to stop. Then I wasn’t here anymore.”

  “Not here?” Trish asked.

  “She freezes up,” Dave replied. “Her eyes get cloudy and she’s goes stiff. It’s freaky. But I imagine Constance going incorporeal is freaky too.”

  “What was this vision?” Trish asked Willow.

  “It was us,” Willow said. “The four of us, I mean.”

  “Were we in a breakroom?” I asked.

  “No.” She shook her head. “At Nell Baker’s cabin.”

  “Why on Earth would we be at Nell Baker’s cabin?” Dave asked. “And who is Nell Baker?”

  “It has something to do with Mr. Caulfield’s murder.”

  “Okay,” Trish said slowly. “There’s just one problem. None of us know where Nell Baker lives.”

  “That’s right,” Willow agreed. “We don’t. But she can find out.”

  I was surprised to find Willow’s finger pointed in my direction.

  There was a knock on the breakroom door. Dave answered it.

  Jade stood there, a scowl creasing her normally smooth forehead. “I leave for fifteen minutes and this is what I come back to? What the heck happened?”

  “A robbery,” Dave said. “But not much of one. I’m sure one of your other employees can fill you in.”

  “Why not you? Or them?” She gestured at me and Trish.

  “Because I need to take them with me. Police business. I’m sure you understand.”

  Jade glared in my direction with a triumphant glint in her eye, like all her suspicions about me had been confirmed.

  21

  In Witch We Find The Cabin in the Woods

  “You didn’t have to say it like that.” I climbed into the passenger seat of Dave’s SUV—not the back as Jade would’ve liked. Trish got in the car with Willow.

  “Like what?” Dave asked.

  “Like I’m wanted for questioning in Mr. Caulfield’s murder,” I said. “Jade already thinks I did it.”

  “She does?”

  I bobbed my head up and down wearily as I fastened my seatbelt.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Dave said. “Jade is suspicious of everyone and everything. You’ve really got to be careful around her.”

  “I’ve noticed.” I said. Dave knew about the podcast from her alibi—if he wasn’t already a listener.

  “Her podcast sheds a certain light on our little town,” I said. “I like to know what she was recording the night of Mr. Caulfield’s death.”

  “She told you about her alibi?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I stretched the truth a little.

  “Why would she tell you that?” he asked. “Who was sleuthing? You or her?”

  “Both.” I admitted. Now he sounded like I was butting into the case when he was the one who needed my help.

  “She accused me, so I accused her. Please, just tell me what she was doing.”

  “I can’t really say.”

  “It is about her podcast, Creel Creek After Dark, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  It took me and Trish the better part of an afternoon to figure that out.

  “Then why can’t you tell me? Did you listen to it?”

  “No, have you?”

  “A few episodes,” I said. “Wait. You didn’t listen?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. I haven’t had time. I have a copy of it. They were up at the—”

  “At the vineyard,” I cut him off, knowing this had to be the episode they’d been building up to—the one they were so excited to share. And Dave had a copy of it.

  Woop!

  Behind us, a siren blipped. Willow and Trish were glaring in our direction. It dawned on me that we weren’t moving.

  “I don’t know where I’m supposed to be going.”

  “That’s right. I’m supposed to know. Except I don’t know either.”

  “Willow said you would.”

  “Wood.” A memory popped into my brain. The first episode of the podcast I’d listened to—the story from a listener about a cabin in a wood outside of town. A cabin where a witch lived. And died.

  “It had to be Nell Baker,” I said to myself.

  “What had to be?”

  “A cabin in a wood,” I said. “I know what I have to do. Help me think of a rhyme. What rhymes with wood?”

  Dave smirked. “Could, should, pould, good.”

  “Pould isn’t a word.”

  Dave shrugged. “Doin’ my best over here.”

  I racked my brain.

  “She lived in a cabin in a wood.

  She was a witch who wasn’t good.

  I need a map to her place.

  So we can solve th
is case?”

  “Is that really going to work?” Dave asked after I finished.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Starting route to cabin in a wood.” A familiar woman’s voice said.

  I pulled out my phone. The map was open with a destination plugged in and directions highlighted.

  “I think it worked.” Dave threw the SUV into drive.

  We followed the directions to the other side of town to an old dirt road not even indicated on the actual map. The highlighted route told us to turn. Dave maneuvered the SUV over bumps and craters for about a mile until the road narrowed and was gone disappeared.

  We all got out and followed the map into the woods, overt a stream, and through thick brush.

  The directions ended at Nell’s cabin. It wasn’t the well-built log structure I’d pictured in my head. It was more a shack, made of plywood and spare siding. There was a single window and a door.

  Only a hundred feet or so from the stream, it was erected in a glade just large enough for it. In fact, a large oak limb brushed the cabin’s tin roof like an arm over a shoulder.

  “Wow,” Trish said, “this is exactly what I imagined when I read about witches as a kid.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not what I pictured at all.”

  “That’s because you had a real childhood. Tiffany Aching, Harry Potter—Mom told me they weren’t real. I wasn’t allowed to read them.”

  “Wait… you didn’t read Harry Potter?”

  “Ladies!” Dave shushed us.

  It was pointless. Fallen leaves covered the ground, swishing and crunching with every step. If Nell was in there, we weren’t going to surprise her.

  Not that I wanted to give a witch who lived in squalid shack like this one a fright. But neither did I want to give one much of a head start.

  “I read some,” Trish whispered. “And I watched the movies.”

  Dave sighed. “Well, there’s no use being tactical with you two around. Nell Baker,” he hollered at the door. “Nell Baker, if you’re in there I need you to come to the door.”

  There was no movement from the shack. However, there were sounds. The sound of animals, clawing and hissing. Shrieks peppered the noise, sounding like profanity. I couldn’t tell if they were somewhere in the distance or inside.

  Dave approached the door and pounded it twice. The animal sounds went absolutely nuts.

  Inside, I thought.

  “Nell Baker. This is the county sheriff. Please, open the door.” Dave turned to Willow. “What happens next?”

  “This is as far as I got.”

  “Are you telling me you might have led us into a trap?”

  “Never once has my gift led me into trouble,” Willow protested. “Well, not much trouble.”

  There was a rustling of leaves behind us, and we all turned to find a raccoon staring up at us, wide-eyed, his paws to his little chest.

  “Brad?”

  “There’s nothing from the other side beyond that door. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Brad, where did you come from?”

  “From your grandmother’s,” he said.

  “Who is Brad? And why are you talking to a raccoon?”

  “It’s her familiar.” To me, Trish said, “Dave and Willow can’t understand familiars. You’re going to have to translate.”

  “Oh,” I said, intrigued by this turn of events. “He says there’s nothing to worry about inside.”

  “That’s not exactly what he said,” Trish countered. “He said there’s nothing from the other side to worry about in there. Probably not a witch in there either.”

  “Not a live one,” Brad said, on tiptoes sniffing the air.

  “That’s right,” I said to him. “You’re supposed to protect me. Where were you an hour ago when I was getting robbed?”

  Trish came to Brad’s defense. “He can only protect you from the other side. From otherworldly things. You know, things that go bump in the night.”

  “You have this lot,” the raccoon waving a paw in Dave’s direction, “to protect you from everything else.”

  It didn’t seem like Brad was impressed with our local sheriff and his deputy.

  “All right. The varmint says the coast is clear. That’s good enough for me.” Dave kicked in the cabin door, and that’s when the smell hit us.

  A mix of death and animal feces threatened to knock us into yesterday. And the animal sounds went through the roof, raising by decibels. Cages shaking, birds shrieking, a possum hissing.

  Nell kept rows of cages stacked against a wall. Twelve total, each with an animal locked inside. There were snakes, squirrels, a possum, and a hawk. Some had water, but their food bowls were empty and probably had been for some time.

  Then there was Nell herself, sitting quietly in a rocking chair, rotting. That story, the one they’d read on the podcast, was true. It had to be.

  And that meant the story’s protagonist, the one who’d come to kill Nell and to steal her book, well, they were real too.

  22

  The Vampire’s Estate

  Dave called it in. It would be a while before the coroner could get out here to us.

  Trish and I waited outside while Dave and Willow tried to look around inside the cabin. The smell was so intense they could only stay a minute or so before they had to come out for fresh air.

  I explained the podcast episode to them—what I remembered.

  “It’s like you feared,” Willow said to Dave. “Someone is after us.”

  “But she wasn’t murdered,” Trish protested. “Look at her. She died in her sleep. For all we know, that story was just that, a story.”

  “It mentions a book,” I said.

  “A book? What book?”

  “It didn’t say.” I shrugged. “One that Nell owned.” I was hoping that maybe Trish had sold it to her. I gave her a look.

  Trish shook her head. “No. She wasn’t an avid shopper of mine. I don’t know what Nell kept here. But by the look of it, not much.”

  “That doesn’t mean she didn’t have an important book,” I said. “Would it come to you after she passed? Your mother’s spell?”

  Trish looked uneasy—maybe I’d said too much.

  “What’s this about someone after us?” Trish changed the subject.

  “You know,” Dave said. “A slayer. A hunter. I didn’t say there is one. I’m just not going to rule it out. Someone killed a vampire, after all.”

  “Right. Exactly,” Trish snapped. “Probably just a slayer coming through town.”

  “A slayer?” I asked.

  “Come on. I know you’ve seen Buffy. Whoever it was, they’re probably long gone by now.”

  “Then why would my vision lead us here?” Willow asked. “Why would they kill a witch?”

  “I’m trying to tell you they didn’t kill her. Mother nature did.”

  “Still, why are we out here?” Dave asked.

  “Because someone had to find Nell’s body,” I said.

  Willow began to make a perimeter with police tape. And Dave brought the animal cages out to the side of the house.

  “Okay, should we let them out?” I gestured at the cages.

  “I’m not sure,” Trish replied. “It’s not like any of them know how to live as animals.”

  “Not anymore?” I asked. “How long do you think they’ve been cooped up like that?”

  “I don’t think they’ve ever lived as animals,” Trish said.

  “What do you mean?” Dave asked.

  “Yeah, what do you mean?”

  “Don’t be dense, Constance. You know exactly what I mean. Nell was a witch. She did witchy things.”

  “Witchy things like what?”

  “Like turn people into animals,” Brad suggested.

  “She talked about it at one of our little get-togethers with your Gran. She claimed they were bad people.”

  “What kind of bad people?” Dave asked.

  “I don’t know. Lawyers and
repo men. People from the IRS.”

  “You’ve got to be—”

  “I’m just kidding,” Trish slapped Dave’s back. “Seriously? You believed that? Look at this place. Does this look like a place a repo man would visit? ‘Ma’am, I’m going to need to take that cauldron. You’re fifteen payments behind.’”

  “Oh.” I was glad she was joking.

  “You got me.” Dave whistled. “I thought these really were people.”

  “They are,” Trish said. “That wasn’t the joke.”

  My heart sank. That wasn’t the joke?

  “You ever see the show Dexter?” Trish said.

  “Yeah,” we chorused.

  “Well… if I had to guess.”

  “Something tells me you’re not really guessing,” Dave replied.

  “Okay, you’re right. My mom told me about it. She’s been doing this a long time. What my mom did with books, Nell did to draw murderers and rapists to Creel Creek, into a trap. Then she did this.”

  I squatted down next to a possum, hissing and baring its fangs at me.

  “And she kept them here in this shack?” I put my hand out to show the possum I meant him no harm. “What if they didn’t come?”

  A spark left my fingertip the instant I said it. It zapped the possum on the nose. The animal began to change.

  First, the twitchy, whiskery possum nose and mouth turned to lips buried in a beard, under a hawk-like nose. The spell traveled down the possum’s body changing it before our eyes until finally, the thick possum tail morphed to the hairy behind of a middle-aged man.

  The cage struggled to contain him. Every inch of him was pressing against the thin metal bars. His eyes were wild and frantic. He twisted his hand toward the padlocked latch, but it was secure. The frame of the door, not so much.

  “Blood,” he screamed. “No blood. Let me out of here. Blood. No blood. Let me out. Let me out, you bi—”

  “Do something!” Trish yelled.

  “I—I—don’t know how.”

  “Point your finger at him and repeat after me.

  “Your misdeeds sealed your fate.

  You’re destined to be a possum in a crate.”