by P T Winger
Erin screamed and swerved, and felt the thump-thump of her tires running over something. She managed to straighten the car and pull over, skidding to a stop.
Erin shot a look behind her, and, seeing nothing, opened the door and got out. No one stood in the road, and no body lay on the pavement or under her car.
“Hello?” She walked behind the car and checked the side of the road. No one lay in the ditch. She trotted to the other side of the road. No woman in a pink dress. All she saw was a squirrel lying on the ground with its head partially crushed. Its legs twitched for a few seconds, then went still.
Erin put a hand to her cheek. Realization hit hard. Her great-grandmother had shown herself again just as a squirrel ran across the road. Erin had swerved her car just so, and killed the animal.
Sacrificed it, in fact.
She heard the engine of an approaching vehicle, and her mind cleared. Snatching up the squirrel by the tail, she ran back across the road and opened her trunk, then tossed in the squirrel. A second later, a dump truck roared over the hill. Standing behind her car, Erin realized she hadn’t pulled completely off the road and the driver might not see her in time. She turned and dashed off the road and the truck swerved partially into the other lane to avoid hitting her car. The driver blasted his horn as he pulled back into the lane.
Erin jumped into her car, determined to get out of there before she caused an accident.
◆◆◆
Once home, she shut off the car and pulled the keys from the ignition, then closed her eyes and rested her head on the headrest. The old woman had appeared twice now, and both times Erin had changed course on her plans.
She really needed to make an appointment with her doctor to get her head checked. Maybe she did have a problem with her brain, was having delusions of seeing an old woman who’d emerged from long-term memory.
The alternative was to believe Rosalyn Clower’s ghost was guiding her, and this was ridiculous. Ghosts didn’t exist.
As if in answer to this thought a sudden, overpowering floral powdery scent filled the car.
“Oh no,” Erin whispered.
She lowered her head and opened her eyes, afraid to look behind her. She clutched her keys in one hand and kept her gaze on her lap while she reached for her purse on the passenger seat. She needed to get out of the car. Right now.
Instead of her purse, her hand closed around cold, bony fingers.
Erin screeched, jerking her hand away and scrambling for the door handle. Only when she was standing in the driveway did she dare to look in the car.
Empty. She waited a moment, breathing hard, then opened the back door and peered in. No one sat in the back seat or crouched down behind the front seats. She moved to the other side of the car and opened the passenger side door. Reaching in, she grabbed her purse. Rosalyn’s Clower’s scent was gone.
She shut the door and rubbed her trembling fingers where they had touched the old woman’s bony hand. Another hallucination? Or had the experience been real?
“It’s the recipe, that’s all,” she whispered. The episodes were due to the recipe. She’d had her great-grandmother on her mind too much lately after finding the paper in the recipe box.
But that wasn’t entirely the reason. Deep down, Erin knew the old woman had come back to haunt her into making it. Why else would the paper appear after Erin had torn it to bits? Why else would the ingredients have ended up on her grocery list when she didn’t remember writing them?
Because Rosalyn Clower knew Erin needed to create the recipe. To everyone who hurt her family, it was payback time.
With that, Erin opened the trunk, held the squirrel by its tail, and carried it to the back yard. She placed it on the old picnic table near the fire pit. Then, she gathered some newspaper and kindling and was about to start the fire when she considered whether the squirrel would need to be skinned.
The recipe required burnt flesh of sacrificial animal but didn’t state whether it needed to be hairless. She pictured the chocolates with burnt squirrel hair in them and decided yes, skinning the squirrel would be sensible in case not all the hair burned off. No one would eat the chocolates otherwise.
She stood looking at the animal. She’d never skinned anything before, unless she counted removing the skin from a roasted chicken before eating it.
Could she do it herself?
She did a search online on her phone, looking for instructions on skinning a squirrel. A good many videos came up of hunters demonstrating the technique. After watching a few, she adopted a reluctant resolve that she could replicate the process.
Erin gathered a knife from the kitchen and a pair of rubber gloves as well as newspapers, paper towels, and a plastic bag to clean up. She returned to the picnic table and spread the newspaper over her work area. Steeling herself, she held the knife above the body.
Why Great-Grandma Clower wanted her to use road kill instead of a nice slab of meat from the grocery store she had no idea, but she supposed this was a part of the recipe’s effectiveness and needed to be included.
The videos had mentioned cutting around the anus first – which sounded horrendous even though the squirrel was dead – making a few cuts around the legs next, and then practically peeling the skin off the body, almost like removing a shirt. The hard part would be cutting up the midsection without piercing the guts, which, according to the videos, would ruin the meat.
But first she needed to remove the head, and for more reason than just the skinning. The little thing stared at her with dead eyes half open, open mouth showing sharp teeth stained with blood. Erin pressed the knife edge on the squirrel’s neck, closed her eyes, and pushed down. She heard bones crackling as the knife cut through.
She tossed the head into the bag, glad not to have to look at it again. Then she went to work on skinning the animal.
It took a while. The videos had made it look easy. The skin would not come off like a shirt; it seemed stuck fast to the legs no matter how she followed the directions to begin pulling it. She gave up and inserted the knife at the pelvis and began cutting up toward the neck. The knife made small ripping sounds, and the raw smell of the innards wafted up. Her stomach threatened to turn, so she walked away and took several deep breaths. After a moment she felt better. This was just like chopping beef for stew. Like cleaning out the giblets from a turkey. She could do this. She went back to work.
She managed to finish cutting without piercing the guts and then pulled out the innards, still slightly warm. Sweat dripped from her brow.
Now she could rip the skin from the neck down, and it tore off in pieces. Finally done, she stood back and examined her work. The table was a mess of blood and guts. The squirrel looked like a long, tiny, pink chicken. She cut off the feet and then proceeded to clean up, putting the feet and innards into the bag along with the newspaper.
Satisfied with her work, Erin peeled off her gloves and put these into the bag to throw away with the rest of the trash. She then checked her phone for the time. Almost noon already.
She started the fire. When the kindling caught, she added the oak logs and watched the flames build up, inhaling the pleasant smoky scent.
It used to be a cheerful thing, starting a fire and roasting marshmallows with the kids on a weekend evening. David sometimes cooked hot dogs and hamburgers out here. Perhaps they could do that next weekend. It had been a while.
Erin placed the metal grill onto the fire pit frame. When the grill was hot and ready for cooking, she dropped the squirrel onto it. Immediately, the flesh began to sizzle. Smoke drifted up and dissipated in the fall air.
Perhaps the squirrel’s spirit had gone peacefully into the realm of the dead even though it was midday, not nighttime under a full moon as Thelma’s big book had advised.
About ten minutes into roasting, she found the squirrel emitted a savory scent. Her stomach rumbled and she realized she hadn’t eaten at all today. But she wouldn’t be eating squirrel.
When the animal had
turned to a blackened husk of hard flesh, she took it inside and set it on the butcher’s block beside the stove to cool before being chopped up. The oak took its time to burn down to ash. When it had finally, she shoveled some of it into a metal bucket. It still smoked, and tiny embers glowed. She took the bucket and headed back into the kitchen.
Time to put everything together.
When the water in the double boiler was ready, she melted the chocolate and paraffin. The oak ash had to be added in small amounts to avoid it floating into the air and coating everything. It sizzled as she spooned it in little by little, stirring and checking for how much it thickened the mixture. She hoped she was putting in the correct quantity. She added one more spoonful of ash and stirred, watching it swirl and disappear into the chocolate and wax mixture.
Next, she pulled the burnt squirrel meat off the bones, a quick process that left a pile of little bones on the edge of the chopping block. After this, she pulled out a meat cleaver and slammed the blade onto the burnt flesh until the meat was little more than crispy black fragments. These she rubbed between her fingers to break them up further to use in the mixture. Perhaps a couple of tablespoons would do. This done, she guessed at the amount of the next ingredients. She added two teaspoons of powdered mustard seed, a small handful of salvia, and lastly enough dried blood to make the mixture thick but still pliable. She leaned over the pot and sniffed, smelling chocolate with a musky, slightly pungent overtone.
Not bad. A rather strange scent, but not bad at all. Hopefully it would taste good.
When the mixture had cooled a bit, Erin laid out some wax paper and began rolling the concoction into balls with her palms.
Apart from finding and skinning the road kill and roasting it over oak, the whole experience seemed like any other time she made candy – though not with these particular ingredients, of course. After a few minutes, she began to hum a tune from a song that had been popular when she was younger.
Perhaps she would make some candy for the kids – real candy that they could eat, of course – later in the week. They liked the cream filled chocolate balls she usually made for Easter. Maybe she’d surprise them with a fall version, something with brown sugar and sweet pumpkin flavor in the cream.
She finished shaping the mixture into balls, then gave them a good look.
If the recipe did work, was the potential risk worth giving them to her enemies?
Damn right it was worth it. No one messed with her family. No one made them upset. No one tried to take her husband away.
Erin cleaned up her kitchen. She put the leftover burnt squirrel into a bag and stuck it far back in the freezer. The oak ash went into an empty coffee can. This, along with the other ingredients, went into a cabinet high up in the butler’s pantry. After throwing away the newspaper and plastic, she sanitized the countertops and scrubbed the sink while the chocolate balls cooled on the waxed paper.
She needed a shower after all this.
Later, dressed and brushing her hair, Erin heard the bus pull up outside. She trotted down the steps and met Ryan and Alyssa at the door.
From the slump of Ryan’s shoulders, she assumed Jake had been at it again. Ryan walked in and kept going toward the kitchen. Erin turned to Alyssa. “What happened?”
Alyssa shrugged. “Don’t know. He’s not talking.”
“It’s not the bully, is it? Has Jake been bothering him?” Erin shut the door.
“Mom, I said I don’t know. I don’t really talk to him on the bus. He sits in the front and I’m in the back.” Alyssa shrugged her book bag from her shoulders and onto the floor. “I’ll ask him.”
“Not necessary,” Erin said. “I think I know.”
Ryan came through the parlor holding up a chocolate ball. His expression had brightened. “Hey, are these for us?”
Cold panic swept through Erin. “No! Put it down!” She rushed toward him.
The candy fell from his hands onto the wooden floor. He backed away, eyes wide. “Sorry.”
“Please tell me you didn’t eat one.” She stared at her son, panting with fear.
“No. I didn’t eat any.”
Erin grabbed Ryan’s hand and almost dragged him to the kitchen sink. She gave a vicious twist to the faucet handle and water gushed into the sink. “Wash your hands now.”
“Okay, okay,” Ryan said, and stuck his hands under the water. His expression was a mixture of puzzlement and alarm.
Alyssa had followed them into the kitchen. She was carrying the chocolate ball Ryan had dropped. “Mom, when did you get to be such a germophobe?” She glanced at the candy on the waxed paper. “Who are they for?”
“Someone else. Don’t touch them. Come here and drop that into the disposal. Wash your hands, too.”
After making sure Alyssa washed, Erin took a deep breath and tried to give a reassuring smile. That had been a close call. “Don’t worry, I’ll make you all a batch. These are for my book club.”
They both stared at her, perplexed.
“Sorry,” Ryan said again.
Erin stood in front of the candy, making a barrier between it and her children. “Why don’t you two go start on your homework while I finish up here?”
Alyssa shook her head. “I’ll do it later. I’m going to Ketawna’s house. Since she made the cheerleading squad, she’s going to teach me what they’ve been learning. You know, just in case I get asked to join.” She strolled out of the kitchen. “Don’t worry, I’ll be home by six-thirty.”
Erin had been correct. Alyssa had said she didn’t care about being a cheerleader, but obviously she did.
Ryan went to the pantry for a snack.
“Honey,” Erin said, softly, “I want to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“What does Jake look like?”
“I don’t know. Yellow hair.”
“What was he wearing today?”
“How should I know?” Ryan scrunched up his face. “I don’t look at what people wear.”
“Was it a green striped shirt? And a brown jacket?”
Ryan thought for moment. “Yeah, maybe.” Then he looked up at Erin. “Yeah. Green shirt with stripes. He got ketchup on his stomach and told everybody he’d been stabbed.”
Erin sliced an apple for him, on a part of the counter top well away from the chocolate balls, and sent him up to his room. If Ryan had eaten the chocolate ball, who knew what would have happened to him? She should have put them away in a safe place before she went upstairs to shower.
She didn’t yet know the effects of the candy. How many of the balls would someone have to eat for anything to happen?
She took a quick count of the candy. There were twenty-two balls, each about the size of a large marble. Five per enemy, plus a couple of extra balls.
Now came the time to recite her intentions. Erin thought about what she wanted the candy to do. She wanted to simply modify the person who ate it. Make them change their decisions, change their thinking. That was all.
She went to the steps and climbed, then listened. The sound of country-style rap music drifted from Ryan’s room. This meant he’d settled in, doing homework perhaps, and wasn’t likely to come downstairs for a while. Andrew would be practicing for wrestling tryouts at this time since he’d been forced off the football team. Erin returned to the kitchen.
After complete, recite the intention.
She’d start with the issue of the bitch screwing her husband. Erin gathered five of the candy balls and placed them into a decorative clear plastic bag. She closed her eyes and thought for a moment, then said, “For my enemy, Jessica. I intend for you to stop having sex with David.”
She opened her eyes and stared at the candy in the bag. Nothing had changed in its appearance. The idea of reciting her intentions was strange enough, but she’d almost expected the chocolate balls to emit a cloud of mist or Gothic organ music, or something. She laughed at the notion.
It seemed like a silly game, but her intention was deadly serious
. Her smile faded as she took a marker and labeled the bag with J, then closed it with a wire twist tie.
She placed five more candy balls into another bag. “For my enemy, Tiffany. I intend for you to make your daughter quit the cheerleading squad so Alyssa can get on.”
She labeled the bag T and set it aside, then repeated the ritual. “For my enemy, Coach Dumcas. I intend for you to stop coaching.”