Hex Life

by Rachel Deering

  “There’s no such thing,” Karolin whispered, her breath hitching on her sobs. “It’s just a story.” But with every new golden mushroom cap she spotted, the more she convinced herself that they were reapers of the dead. Chanterelles would sprout from the remnants of her body, and one day, a girl just like her would venture into these woods with her family for a day of mushroom picking. She’d use a small paring knife, just like the one in Karolin’s hand, to cut the mushrooms that sprouted from Karolin’s decaying chest.

  “Dad!” She tried again, screaming the name as loud as she could.

  She wasn’t stupid. If he hadn’t heard her before, he certainly wouldn’t hear her now. And yet, the moment that yell passed her lips, she spotted movement behind an ancient oak as knobby and twisted as a hundred-year-old hand. Karolin’s heart sputtered to a stop as she saw a boy run out from the shadow of that tree.

  “Wait!” she called, but he was quick, the hood of his sweatshirt bouncing between his shoulder blades as he bolted through the branches and moss.

  “Please, wait!” Karolin yelled, her own sneakers carrying her over treacherously soft earth, her grandmother’s wicker basket clutched in one hand, the knife in the other.

  In the back of her mind, she knew she was only making things worse. Chasing after some random stranger rather than continuing to seek out her father was insane. There was no telling where this kid was going, or whether Karolin would ever be able to find her way back to where she’d started. Yet she blew past tree after tree, none of them scored with a ‘K’ to mark her path. It’s him, she thought as she pursued her target. It’s got to be. Because, while any kid could have been wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt, he had something that Karolin had, too. In every telling, no matter how elaborate, her dad had included that minute detail: the red sneakers. They were the kid’s calling card. They were why her father had given her a pair just like the ones in the story.

  But who is he? she had once asked. The boy, what’s his name?

  I don’t know, was all her dad was willing to say. As if the story hadn’t been creepy enough. Could be you, or me, or anybody. It’s impossible to know.

  “Hello?!” Karolin gasped out the word as she continued to run. The wicker basket slipped from her fingers and tumbled to the ground. Perhaps someone would find it one day—the same girl that collected the corpse finders that sprouted from Karolin’s shallow grave.

  The boy was weaving in and out of the pines, though Karolin couldn’t tell whether he was running serpentine to lose her or to make sure that she’d get even more lost than she already was. Not that it mattered. By the time she stopped running to catch her breath, all hope of finding her way back to the spot she’d started from was gone. Her wicker basket, her father, and the few trees she’d marked with a ‘K’ were but a memory now, completely forgotten.

  Because there, in the not-too-far-off distance, was a house in the trees.

  There, held up by the thick and twisted trunks of a few primitive oaks, was a wooden cabin with a roof so impossibly sloped, it looked like a sharpened fingernail pointing toward the sky.

  The place reminded Karolin of old teeth—jagged and off-kilter. An entire side of the house was covered in moss. North, she thought, though what help north would be now, she hadn’t a clue. There was a light on, shining through one of the crooked windows. It glowed jack-o-lantern orange in the shadows of the trees. And just above it, a stack of stones that made up a lopsided chimney billowed a plume of smoke.

  Karolin took a backward step, her gaze frozen upon the raven that was perched at the cabin’s highest peak. When she moved backward, she bumped against something that hadn’t been there before. Spinning around, she stumbled at the sight of a picket fence, or at least something that resembled one. Though this fence wasn’t made of wood. No, this fence—the thing that hadn’t been there seconds before—was made of something else. With hundreds of brown-capped mushrooms lining the slats like a ribbon of silk, she dared to lean in to get a better view. It was built out of something that resembled polished stone or ivory; something that looked like the stuff she’d found on junior archeological digs.

  Bone. The word rang out in Karolin’s brain clear as a bell. And those mushrooms…

  The panic she had managed to shake off gripped her again, refusing to abate. She struggled for air, her mouth opening and closing in soundless gasps. Her fingers twisted tightly around the handle of the small knife in her right hand, as though whoever lived in that terrible-looking house could be warded off with the likes of a tiny blade.

  It was then that she heard it. That crow emitted a throaty caw from atop its perch, the sound growing louder from behind her as the bird swooped to the ground with the flapping of wings. Then, a rustle of fabric. The soft crunch of leaves underfoot. Karolin froze, the sensation of no longer being alone suddenly so overwhelming that her entire body began to shake. It had been the same at Fenway Park. She hadn’t been able to catch her breath. She’d fallen into an uncontrollable tremble. By the time her parents had found her, the hot-dog vendor had dialed 911.

  Now there was no one to pull Karolin from beneath the weight of her own terror. There was only the presence behind her, bringing with it the smells of melted candle wax, heady incense, and freshly overturned soil. It smelled of ancient cemeteries and mausoleums. It smelled like a dank old root cellar. And then, as if summoning her to turn, the rustle of fabric and leaves was replaced by something far more ominous. A creak, like the sound of a rusty hinge. Except, this was no old door. This sound was being made deep inside a human throat.

  Karolin squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears continued to flow. Somehow, she brought herself to turn away from the fence she was sure was made of human bones and come face to face with a woman draped head to toe in what looked to be thick oil-cloth. Her hair was obscured by the oversized hood that hung over her eyes. All that was visible of her features was a pointed chin and an impossibly long nose, flat as a shovel until it abruptly bent concave toward the ground.

  Karolin tried to produce a scream but found herself breathless and mute, standing there slack-jawed, her face hot with tears, gasping for air. As if amused by the terror she was causing, the ominous rasping emanating out of the crone’s throat slid into an even more nefarious laugh. But rather than taking a forward step toward the child before her, she turned away.

  It was an opportunity. Every brain cell in Karolin’s skull cried out for her to get a grip, keep it together and run. It didn’t matter in what direction as long as it was away, far and fast. She wasn’t sure how she managed to get her legs to work again, but before she knew what she was doing, she was beelining away from the woman, keeping that terrible fence to her right. She was almost at a bank of massive spruce trees when her foot sank hard into a divot hidden by moss. She felt something snap just above her ankle, and it was then that a scream finally escaped her throat, not of terror, but of pain. Her cry was, however, short-lived. She found herself facing someone familiar, someone she hadn’t expected to see.

  The boy looked older than Karolin by a good five years. She imagined him reflecting her own expression back at her—horror at the fact a place such as this could exist. That a woman such as the one looming behind Karolin could truly come to be. Karolin blinked away from him and looked over her shoulder, afraid to keep her eyes off the old hag for more than a few seconds. Inexplicably, the woman stood less than a few feet away from them now, having transported herself just as quickly and effortlessly as she’d made that awful fence appear.

  “So…” The witch let the word escape her in an almost pleasurable hiss. “You’ve finally come back, Gzegorz.”

  Gzegorz. Hearing that name felt like lightning spiking Karolin’s heart. Because she’d heard that name before. It was Polish for Gregory, the long-form of Greg. Her eyes snapped back to where the boy had stood, but he was gone. And in his place, her father stood.

  “Dad?!” She wanted to yell it, wanted to force herself to her feet despite her broken
ankle. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and believe that she’d find safety there. But the name only left her in a weak whisper, because she knew who she had followed. It had been the boy from all the stories, the ones in which he had attempted to barter for his life. He promised the witch anything she wanted. Gold. Jewelry. But the witch had wanted nothing except what the boy already had: youth. In each telling, he was seized by the back of the neck and dragged into a crooked house. At least, that was how the story had gone. But now, as Karolin’s fingers curled into the moss under her palms, she began to understand.

  The boy’s fate had been one of her father’s many embellishments.

  The boy had, in fact, been allowed to go free.

  “A promise is a promise,” the crone spoke again, her gaze roving over Karolin’s slumped form. “Late by over a year,” the woman grumbled, then looked to Karolin’s dad.

  Over a year. Karolin couldn’t help but look back at her father. Was that true? Had there been some sort of missed deadline? Had Mom—

  “Leave us,” the witch said, her voice suddenly forceful, as if annoyed that Karolin’s dad was there at all. “This settles your debt.”

  Karolin’s mouth went dry. What? She wanted to scream the word into the woods around her, but no sound escaped her throat. She wanted to run again, but that was impossible now. She wasn’t even able to stumble backward as the witch closed the distance between them. The scent of overturned soil and candle wax was now accompanied by a new smell—an overwhelming sickly-sweet stench, like fruit that had long gone bad. It was only when the woman reached for her that Karolin was able to draw in a sharp intake of breath, gasping at the sight of bony fingers twice as long as any human hand should have possessed. They were tipped with thick yellow nails sharpened to jagged points; skin thin as tissue paper, wrinkled and pressed over her hands like a terrible attempt at papier-mâché.

  With wide, imploring eyes, she dared to look away from the woman and back to her father. Was he really going to leave her here? Was this why he’d taught her those survival skills? Was it why he’d told her the same terrible story a thousand times over? Had he changed the ending from what had happened to him to reflect his own daughter’s grim and inescapable fate?

  She didn’t want to believe it, but the shoes were proof. He’d imagined her here, in this very spot. He’d missed the witch’s due date. Mom had died. And that’s when he had changed, when he had given her the All Stars, when he’d pulled into himself despite planning an international trip. She’d naïvely believed that this was a vacation, just the two of them healing their hurts together. But she now understood that it was nothing like that at all. As her father took a few backward steps into the darkness afforded by those spruce trees, his intention became clear.

  Karolin yelped when she felt bony fingers wrap around her arm. “Come,” the woman wheezed, but it wasn’t a request. Reflexively, Karolin attempted to pull away, but the grip that seized her arm was as tight as a vise.

  “Dad?!” She tried to twist away as she looked back to her father through a veil of tears, but the shadow beneath that massive spruce was now vacant.

  “Come,” the witch repeated, and Karolin was pushed forward, limping on her bad ankle toward the cabin in the woods. And when she pulled her free hand back and stabbed at the woman’s arm, the witch didn’t flinch, as though she didn’t feel the blade at all. Rather than reacting, she continued to shove Karolin toward the crooked house nested up in the trees, and it was then that Karolin caught sight of something that simply shouldn’t have been. There, poking out from beneath the sleeve of her own shirt, was a small outcropping of mushrooms. Not chanterelles, but real corpse finders. They had begun sprouting from her flesh even before the witch took what she was rightfully owed.

  TOIL & TROUBLE:

  A DARK-HUNTER HELLCHASER STORY

  Sherrilyn Kenyon & Madaug Kenyon

  The eleventh bell rang out across the dismal shadows of Carrion Hill where three rigid, gray shapes practiced a dark, forbidden art. Yet it was one oft sought by those like the regal man standing before them, who’d shaken off his shackles of organized faith to beseech their wisdom and implore their sinister aid in his cause.

  “Oh great Fates, with wisdom of old. Over your cauldron, where you toil. I beseech you now, for your gifted sight. To carry me forward through this night. What will come, good or foul? This I must know, before dawn’s first prowl.”

  He held himself with the familiar arrogance the witches didn’t need their single eye to see. Rich robes fashioned from hues of red, orange, and purple which had been woven by the hands of those he deemed unworthy, and trimmed with gold thread until those same poor women had gone blind from their imposed labors.

  Now he, the feared master, came to them as a loyal servant to offer minted gold and jewels to the witches three to whom he bowed in utmost respect. And well he should. For they were the shapers of destiny. Older than time and more callous than any king.

  Dieno, the sister who had the ability to see every tragedy lurking within a single lifetime. That was her gift.

  It was also her curse.

  Enyo’s visions showed the battles that awaited their querent. Small and large. Every skirmish, every death match. She could tell this king exactly who was plotting against him.

  Last was their petite sister, Persis, whom others cruelly mocked as “the destroyer”, for she knew the steps one could take to avoid ones fate…

  Or cause it. Her words about the future were the ones that mattered most. They were the guidance that could make or break a single life. The irony was that everyone knew it and yet failed to listen time and again. But that was because these Stygian witches were missing their fourth sister, Pemphredo. She’d been the one who could show their querent the way through the prophesies. The one who could guide them to safety and unravel their verse.

  Without her…

  Humans were screwed.

  Since time immemorial the witches of Carrion Hill had foretold and guided the destiny of lord and pauper alike. King and peasant. In their hands lay the power to destroy nations—to shatter dynasties…

  Or save souls.

  ’Twas this power that made them the sole arbiters of truth in a time and land dominated by chaos.

  “Listen!”

  “Hear!”

  “See!”

  The witches spoke out, one by one. As they’d rehearsed a thousand times before, the sisters cackled and howled, and prepared their boiling cauldron. They threw in the usual, expected ingredients as they didn’t want to disappoint their customer—eye of newt, wing of bat, and the withered tongue of a liar… all humanely gathered, naturally, as the sisters were ever conscious and respectful of such concerns. The last thing they’d ever want was to insult anyone’s sensibilities, as that had nefarious endings for their kind, such as causing them to end up tied to stakes and set afire.

  Or thrown into ovens by ungrateful, bratling children they’d taken in after their parents had thoughtlessly lost them in the woods.

  People were ever vicious that way. And every year more and more of their sisters were lost to such cruelty. Soon it would be just them and Uzarah left to guard the gates, if things didn’t change. Then mankind would know why witches had been necessary in this world.

  Not to practice magic or foretell silly fortunes for those too weak to make their own.

  They were here to cast back into darkness the mistakes the gods had made. To shield mortals from their own stupidity and incessant need to fabricate their destruction. But they, like humanity, were growing old and tired. And with every sniveling request such as this, the sisters three really didn’t see a need to salvage this world, or the ones who wasted their time with such trivialities as their own fortunes when the entire universe sat poised on the verge of annihilation.

  As the ingredients simmered, they stirred the pot three times, one for each of them, and muttered their time-honored chants.

  “Double, double. Toil and trouble.
>
  “Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

  “For a charm of powerful trouble,

  “Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

  “Come and see. Come what may.

  “Things we want and things to delay.”

  Now came the fun part… Magic was more art than science and while Dieno could see the trouble that lurked ahead and Enyo hear the battles to come, it would be up to Persis to give him the words he needed to avoid those catastrophes.

  Not that it would matter. Mortals never listened. They were ever bent on their own destruction.

  Dieno scooped up her Stygian eye from the cauldron in order to look into the prophecy taking form. There, she could see the king’s fate in motion while her gray sisters could hear it—a vicious cycle that would continue for a hundred generations. One that was older than the icy hand of time… a foolish family would cast out their own. Despondent and angry, he’d take his revenge upon them in a brutal series of murders, only to be brutally murdered by his own children in turn.

  Round and round, the hatred grows.

  Killing all kindness everywhere it goes.

  Where it stops…

  Well, we know.

  And they could tell him, but what was the fun in that?

  Enyo pursed her lips. “Not the most original of prophecies, is it?” she whispered.

  Persis sighed as she grabbed the eye for her own look. “Nay. Seems as if patricide be the crime of the hour. How very gauche.”

  “Can’t they ever come up with something more original? Like pinning cheese to their balls?” Deino retook the eye, trying to find a better outcome.