by Skylar Finn
He threw the covers to the side and crept over to the door, opening it a crack and listening. He couldn’t make out the words being said, only the fact that they were being repeated over and over again. This, if anything, only served to spook him more.
Against his better judgement, he padded softly down the hall in his socked feet. If he had more money, he would have jumped out his bedroom window and run down the driveway, piloting his lime green Hummer right back to Philly without a second thought. DJ Swann’s Sense had never failed to keep him alive and had gotten him out of some sticky situations that would have gotten the better of a more oblivious man.
But he really needed the money.
Maybe she was just doing yoga.
He pushed open the door to the parlor, the room he hated more than any in the house—even the root cellar and the basement, the worst rooms of any house besides an attic, in his experience.
It was those doors that freaked him out, decorated with leering goblins and basically openly stating something terrible was going on behind them. Regardless of whether or not it was visible to the human eye.
The room was empty, but the chanting was louder. Puzzled, DJ Swann looked into the fireplace. A fire crackled, casting shadows on the walls. He glanced around, but couldn’t discern the source of the sound. It seemed to emanate from all around him.
Hesitantly, he approached the far wall opposite, where the sound seemed loudest. There was a built-in bookcase lined with leatherback tomes. One was pulled out slightly from the others, and as he went to take a closer look, the chanting abruptly ceased. Puzzled, he put his ear to the wall. He heard the muffled sound of one person speaking, then silence.
Glancing over, he saw the cover of the book: it was engraved with the face of something best described as unholy. He jumped back from the wall. As he backed away, he read the titles of the books lining the shelf: Theory of Necromancy, For the Conjurer, The Book of Shadows.
“Oh, hell no,” he muttered softly to himself. A movement caught the corner of his eye and he followed it to the ceiling. It was a shadow with no apparent source, and as he watched it, it grew longer. Red spots, like eyes, appeared at the top of it. It glided past him and he heard evil-sounding laughter echo in his mind.
He ran for the door. As he crossed the room, more shadows appeared, ricocheting across the walls like pinballs, all of them laughing, chasing him—
—as he reached the door and yanked on the handle, thinking for one frantic moment it was stuck, only to have it give way in his hand, offering the sweet relief of the draft from the cold hallway. Behind him, a massive creaking noise sounded.
DJ Swann read the Bible every Sunday of his youth; in his grandmother’s house, it was required reading. He was always especially haunted by the story in which Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom. The myth of Orpheus in English class later horrified him equally, for similar reasons. DJ Swann had a lot of hard, fast rules about the way he dealt with the world as the result of his Sense, and never looking over his shoulder was one of them.
He didn’t see the entire wall of the parlor swing forward, revealing the horror within.
He was too busy sprinting the length of the hallway to the front door, throwing open the front door, and dashing down the front steps into the foggy night with no other thought in his mind but escape.
17
Spleenwort
“A witch?” I said. I gripped the phone more tightly in my hand. I was on the phone with my cousin Tamsin, who I’d only just met after reuniting with my estranged mother, who then informed me that her entire side of the family—including me—had inherited magical abilities and were practitioners of magic.
Tamsin had just informed me that my current client, a pop star making a comeback, was practicing black magic. My head spun, and it wasn’t from the wine at dinner. Was everyone a witch?
“I thought it was weird when you showed up in that dress last night,” said Tamsin. “The one that looked like it was moving, like water instead of silk? It looked enchanted. Like something I would do.”
“Margo didn’t make that dress,” I objected. “Cameron did. And you told me that magic doesn’t pass through men, because they’ll use it for violence and destruction.”
“He’s not a man,” she said. “He’s her familiar.”
“I thought those were cats,” I said, confused.
“Sam!” she said, annoyed. “I told you, we don’t worship the devil and ride brooms, or wear hats and have cats. He doesn’t have to be an animal. He can appear in human form.”
“So he’s a person?” I said, no less illuminated. All of this was new to me.
“Not exactly,” she said. “He could be a shapeshifter. Or a changeling. To be honest with you, I never fully comprehended the difference. I didn’t pay that much attention in school.”
“There’s a Magic School?” I asked, intrigued. “Is it in a castle?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tamsin scoffed. “All witches are home-schooled. What if we accidentally set fire to the other children? I’m amazed you didn’t blow anybody up with everything going on in your craft. Who do you think made the chandelier fall?”
Our dinner had come to an early and unceremonious conclusion when the kitchen’s chandelier fell on the dinner table with a resounding crash and a lot of broken glass.
“That was me?” I said. “How do you know?”
“Because I don’t do stuff like that,” she said. “I can’t. I told you, I deal with elements. Manipulating objects in space isn’t even a thing, not that I know of. Of course, if anyone can do it, it would obviously be you. And she noticed. So you’d better be real careful from here on out.”
“Do you think she knows?” I said, glancing around as I dropped my voice.
“How could she? You barely even know. You’re like a grizzly bear that thinks it’s a kitten. You have no concept of your own power, so how could anybody else?”
“Do you think she’s dangerous?”
“Of course she’s dangerous!” She sounded completely exasperated. “How can you not recognized dark magic when you see it?”
I thought of Margo’s song at dinner. She’d been singing something weird, performing a sample from her upcoming album, when Tamsin freaked out and knocked over a bottle of wine right before the chandelier fell.
“That thing she was doing, that was a spell?” I asked.
“She’s kind of like a spider,” explained Tamsin. “And you’re all in her web.”
“Great,” I said.
“She’s not just a witch,” Tamsin said in a rush, as if hurrying to get the words out before someone could stop her. “Actually, I don’t think she’s a born witch at all. I think her abilities are learned. I think she made a very deliberate choice about what kind of magic she wanted to embody. I think she studied black magic, probably in order to revive her flagging musical career. I think she made a deal.”
“A deal?” I said. I felt a distinct tug of dread. “A deal with who?”
“Just because we don’t do bad things,” said Tamsin, “doesn’t mean that other people don’t.”
“So what does that mean?”
“I’m not sure,” admitted Tamsin. “I’ve never actually met a dark witch before.”
“Then how do you know they exist?” I asked, skeptical. “I mean, how can you even recognize it when you see it?”
“I know what I saw,” she said. “I’m just not entirely sure what it means.”
“Then what do you expect me to do about it?” I asked, exasperated. I couldn’t exactly have Margo sent to jail on suspicion of practicing black magic.
“I’ll have to ask the coven,” she said.
The light went out in the kitchen. I looked through the door, frowning. Les? Had he been listening in on my conversation?
“Call me back when you do,” I said. “I have to go.”
“Okay,” she said, sounding worried. “Be safe.”
I went into t
he darkened kitchen after hanging up the phone. There was no one there. I thought about what Tamsin told me as I ascended the stairs. I knew I should be worried, but if anything, I was annoyed.
This was the last thing I needed at work.
When I heard pop star Margo Metal was making a comeback, I practically threw myself at the opportunity to do her PR. I thought it could be big, and Margo would end up being the biggest person I’d ever represented. What I didn’t realize was that the underlying activity of the small town of Mount Hazel, where Margo was recording her new album in a house that was one hundred percent haunted, would be much more than I bargained for.
I should have known I was biting off more than I could chew. That was pretty much my modus operandi for dealing with everything, whether it was work, school, or my personal life for that matter. In this case, it was no coincidence that Mount Hazel was actually where I was born. It was the reason I’d insisted to my boss, Coco Z., that I was the one for the job.
Secretly, I wanted to find out if my mom was still here. I hadn’t seen her since I was six years old. A strange and unsettling vision on the night of my thirtieth birthday made me afraid I was losing my mind, and I had to know if I’d inherited something bad. I couldn’t ask my father, who divorced my mother for her alleged insanity in the first place. I didn’t want to wind up hospitalized or committed. The only person I could ask was my mom, and I hadn’t spoken to her for literally decades.
Lucky for me, Mount Hazel wasn’t a large town. I ran into her within a day, before I even started looking for her. She ran an apothecary in the middle of town with her sister, Minerva, and Minerva’s daughter, my cousin Tamsin. My family explained what was happening to me, and as it turned out, I’d definitely inherited something, all right.
The problem was, I still wasn’t sure if I accepted it. Sure, it seemed cool in theory to have magical powers, but it wasn’t like I could do anything fun with them. So far, the only things I’d been able to do was have terrifying visions, occasionally read people’s minds and transmit my own thoughts (which wasn’t nearly as fun as it sounds), and see ghosts. Which I was less than thrilled about to date.
Because that underlying activity of Mount Hazel? It included a murder. My vision had been of a girl who disappeared, and my equally magical grandmother informed me that if I had a vision of it, it was probably already too late. A body was found in the woods that same day. By then, I’d already seen her ghost, who asked me to figure out what happened to her.
On the plus side, I met a hot bartender who also happened to be an investigative journalist covering the murder. So it was possible there was a really fun date in our future, figuring out the perpetrator of an unsolved homicide.
I could hardly wait.
The next morning, Margo’s stylist, Cameron, asked me to accompany him into the woods to look for spleenwort.
Okay, so admittedly, it was weird. Like, who needs spleenwort for anything? What is that, even? It definitely sounded like something used in a spell.
“What’s it for?” I asked curiously. I’d have to be careful not to sound overly inquisitive, or he’d wonder why. All I wanted to do was bombard him with questions after the conversation I had with Tamsin, but he’d know immediately something was up.
I trusted Cameron—or at least, I had—but now I had to question his character. If he was keeping secrets, it might not have been for the most benevolent of reasons.
“Oh, just a new bath ingredient,” he said vaguely. He was swaddled in a camel’s hair coat that dwarfed him and was distracted from his spleenwort search by his current pursuit of weaving a crown from some dry old twigs and sticks.
Margo definitely had some pretty strange bath routines, but his answer was a little thin for my liking. I tried to think of a subtle way to ask Cameron about the night I saw two robed figures exit the house and enter the woods—it seemed obvious now it had been him and Margo—but I didn’t want him to know what I’d seen.
Maybe they were just taking peyote and going camping. I’d seen some pretty crazy stuff since arriving in Mount Hazel—Tamsin’s tattoos and her amazing nature room were pretty high on the list, and seeing a ghost was something I’d like to forget—but nothing that would necessarily convince me there were massive forces of light and dark being channeled by the people that I knew. They all just seemed a little stranger than the average person, and it made me feel like it was okay to be a little strange, too.
Not, necessarily, that I wanted to be. On purpose.
“Oh!” Cameron stopped suddenly in the middle of a clearing. “We should go back.” He edged nervously back the way we came.
“What? Why, what’s—oh.” I looked at the small rise in the forest, which was lined with yellow caution tape. This was where they found the body of Martha Hope.
“We should look around,” I said.
“Why?” Cameron looked aghast. “Someone got murdered here.”
“Isn’t that Margo’s vibe now? Super dark murder ghosts?” I asked. I made a mental note to suggest Super Dark Murder Ghosts as a potential title for her comback album. “I have to start working on her social media, so this should be helpful in terms of inspiration.”
“She’s not going for murder vibes.” He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Just a darker, edgier sound.”
I shrugged. “I can meet you back at the house, if you prefer.” I’d just glimpsed the path in the distance that Martha told me she used as a shortcut through the woods.
“I don’t want to leave you at a murder scene.” He glanced around. “Tell you what. I’ll find the spleenwort, and when I do, I’ll come and get you. Try not to trample on police evidence.”
“Okay.” I was already disappearing up the hill towards the path. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. It was pretty well-trodden from the searchers who’d gone out looking for Martha, and there was nothing to see but frost-bitten ground and trash. I was halfway down the path when I saw her.
It was an arresting and uncomfortable sight because I knew she was dead, though she stood there looking at me as if we’d run into each other walking through the woods. But even if I hadn’t known she was a ghost, I would have known there was something wrong. I don’t think I would have continued walking. I think I would have turned around and ran the other way.
It was her presence; the way she stood so still, just looking. It was the fact that she was wearing a thin white dress, even though it was the dead of winter. It was the fact that there was something so clearly not human about her that gave away the fact that this wasn’t just a girl out for an afternoon nature stroll.
She stood, looking at me for a moment. I froze. I’d spoken to Martha before, but the sight of her never failed to affect me. Then she approached, gliding against the hard-packed ground, and if I hadn’t known before, I would have then. It was her movement, the way her feet never seemed to touch the ground.
Martha was wholly benevolent and just wanted help. I knew better than to be afraid of her. But I still had to turn around as she approached and start walking in the other direction so I wouldn’t sprint away out of instinct. I didn’t want to offend her. She fell into step, figuratively speaking, beside me.
“Do you remember anything, being out here?” I asked her without looking over.
I remember walking home from my lesson, she said. She didn’t speak aloud, but I could hear her as if she had. And then not very much after that.
“I saw you before I came here,” I said. “I saw you being chased. It looked like you turned and saw someone, and asked them who they were.”
“Who did you see?” I asked.
She sighed a ghostly sigh. I’m not sure. I can’t remember. It’s like trying to remember a dream after you’ve already woken up from it. She looked around the woods. Maybe this is being awake, and you’re the one who’s dreaming.
I did not like that at all. One of the issues I had with accepting the recent turn of events that had befallen my life was that I wasn’t a huge fan of
things I couldn’t explain. Anytime someone started getting all metaphysical with me, I became deeply uncomfortable.
“Be that as it may,” I said. “We’re going to have to figure out how to access that memory. I’m not really sure how to do that. But there are some people I can ask.”
Who are they? asked Martha curiously, drifting along next to me. I glanced over at her, having grown more comfortable over the course of our conversation, and quickly looked away. The sunlight streamed through the trees and passed through Martha as if refracted through a glass, beams bisecting her ghostly body.
My family, I accidentally thought instead of speaking it out loud. I usually tried not to do it if I could help it, because it honestly freaked me out. But there was also something about it that was kind of nice. Instead of describing them, I pictured them in my mind: my mother, grandmother, Minerva, and Tamsin. I imagined them in the apothecary downtown.
Oh, the witches of Main Street! said Martha. She sounded delighted.
“What?” I was startled. Nobody knew they were witches, as far as I knew.
That’s just what I call them, said Martha apologetically. They always seemed so interesting to me, like there was something different or special about them. They work in that shop together and I was always so curious, wanting to talk to them, but I was too shy.
I imagined Martha walking past the apothecary, peeping in the window and wanting to go in, but being too intimidated. I smiled.
“They are witches,” I said abruptly. I didn’t know I was going to say it, it just came out. I knew it was a secret and I couldn’t tell anyone, but I didn’t think Martha would be spreading the word anytime soon.
Are they? asked Martha. She didn’t sound disbelieving or judgmental, just curious. Maybe a little intrigued. In what way?
“I’m not sure,” I said, frowning. “That’s the problem. I don’t know if I want to know.”