“That’s odd,” I said to myself while staring at the sky. Fern was assuring Amber that we were in the car on the way to the diner, and that we were only a few minutes away, would be there soon, any variation of the statement she could think of to sooth Amber’s ire. The sky was as dark as it was when I had woken up at four in the morning, I checked the clock and then looked at my phone for when sunrise was meant to be. It was almost eight and the sun should have risen at least an hour before. The sky was cloudless, there weren’t storm clouds blocking out the sun, it was like it had forgotten to rise.
“What’s odd?” Fern asked looking at me with concern.
“The sky,” I replied as though she were crazy. It was like she wasn’t seeing what I was.
“What about it?” Fern questioned, this time looking at me like I was insane. “It’s a gorgeous day out.” As soon as she said it, the sky transformed into a perfectly gorgeous and normal day. It was as though I blinked and the sun rose into the sky in the moment that my eyes were closed.
“I guess you're right,” I said shaking my head as though I could shake away the darkness. “It looked for a moment like the sun hadn’t risen.” Fern looked at me concerned. It wasn’t just that the sun hadn’t risen, but there had been a total absence of light in the sky. There hadn’t been stars or the moon either. It looked like someone had just turned off the sun.
“Are you okay?” Fern asked looking between me and the road enough to show me that she was concerned about what I had just said.
“I must just still be asleep,” I replied with a smile. She had more than enough to worry about, and I wasn’t going to add me or broken sky’s to that list.
“After that night, I don’t blame you,” she agreed. As soon as we arrived at the diner, it was clear that we weren’t the only ones who had gotten little sleep and weren’t in the best of moods. Jimmy Jack and Fang barely even looked up when we entered but gave us a nod of acknowledgment. Hazel was shuffling around and didn’t acknowledge us at all, at least Becky managed a half hearted smile. I smiled back and sat next to her. If I could get the chance to tell her about the sky, I was desperate to.
“Good morning!” Amber said in singsong to Fern and myself. I flinched though I didn’t actually mean to. I was trying my best to play nice until the campaign was over at least, but the shrill pierce of her voice penetrated my skull unpleasantly. Her mouth pursed a little in my direction as she noticed the flinch, but she recovered quickly and turned her attention onto my poor sister. “Seems like everyone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.”
“I sure did,” Fern replied with a laugh and an exaggerated yawn that precipitated a sort of yawn domino and all of us took our turn. “Could have slept for hours more.”
“I didn’t get a wink,” Fang grumbled. “There's a damned storm coming,” he announced. “I can feel it in my bones, and I reckon it’s a big one at that.” I studied him for a moment wondering if his bones were sensing the same forbidding feeling that I had in my gut and he just explained it away as a storm coming. Jimmy Jack chimed in about how he didn’t fare much better than his old man over night. I tuned their chatter out as my attention was drawn by Hazel.
Hazel’s graying hair, usually delicately styled, was frizzed around her head like a halo. She had not greeted us as she always did, which even for a tired Hazel was strange. She was in the middle of clearing a table but her movements seemed odd. It was as though she was in a trance, and not seeing what was actually in front of her. She reached for the maple syrup container four times before finally awkwardly lifting it up by the spout instead of the handle.
When she turned around and I finally saw her face, I couldn’t understand why no one was concerned for her. Her eyes were deeply set into dark circles, her cheeks even looked more gaunt than typical. Her eyes were not only deeply set into purple sockets, but her iris was completely void of any color. Her iris and her pupil were gone, replaced with the milky white and red veins of the rest of her eye. I grabbed Becky’s sleeve, without taking my eyes away or blinking. I didn’t want this to disappear with a blink, though it was horrific to see, but I still didn’t want to be the only one to see it.
“What?” Becky asked looking at me with a furrowed brow. She looked up at Hazel and gasped loudly enough that both Fang and Jimmy Jack looked to her to see what she was looking at.
“Oh my gosh!” Jimmy Jack said putting down the bite of food that was on his fork as he looked at Hazel. “Hazel, are you okay?” He stood up walking towards her. Fang had looked over at his son and then to Hazel once more. Hazel was still clearing a table as though she had not heard any of us talking to her.
“Don’t go near her,” Fang said in a dangerous voice. He grabbed Jimmy Jack’s arm with more power than I had thought him capable. He looked between Becky and I, and Fern and Amber. “She looks like she could be sick,” he said, with concern for Hazel and the rest of us as well.
“I’m fine,” she snapped looking us dead in the eye, though she had no iris or pupil to indicate where she was looking. She went into the kitchen, without taking mine or Fern’s order. I felt a shiver all over as she left the room.
“Did you see her eyes?” Fern said quietly. Everyone nodded except for Amber. No one sure what words were appropriate for the moment.
“What are you talking about?” Amber asked, looking at everyone with a raised brow.
“Her iris and pupils were just gone,” I said as though she was an idiot, which in my defense, she was regardless. Amber snorted a laugh at me.
“You must still be dreaming,” she said with an eye roll. “While Hazel was clearly in a bad mood, there was nothing wrong with her eyes.” She looked between each of us as though we were insane, though it was clear by their silence that they had seen the same thing as me.
“You didn’t see that?” Fern asked her. Amber shook her head and shrugged.
“I hate to break it to you, eye pigment doesn’t just disappear” Amber said sarcastically. I could only imagine the confidence it would take to believe yourself in a room full of people telling you something else. It was probably best for everyone that Amber hadn’t noticed. If she had, the entire town would have heard about it moments after she'd seen it. She wasn’t wrong, though I hated to admit it. “I know this is just some kind of prank you guys are trying to pull on me,” she said unamused. “Well, I am not going to fall for it.”
It was clear to me that even though everyone else had noticed it, there was going to be no convincing Amber, not that there needed to be any. No one looked keen on trying to get her to believe us anyways. I was certain of what I had seen. I couldn’t imagine having looked at Hazel and not seeing those vacant eyes, but if anyone could do it it would be Amber. She was probably so absorbed in what she was doing that she hadn’t even looked up at Hazel at all and even if she had she might have been too preoccupied with herself to care.
“You got us,” Fern said to her with an awkward chuckle. She gave me a look that clearly just said that she didn’t know what else to do. “So we should go door to door today, don’t you think?” Fern asked, successfully distracting Amber and launching her into a full on attack plan to visit nearly every house in town before the day was out.
Chapter Five
“You saw that, right?” I whispered to Becky after I was sure Amber wasn’t going to hear me. Becky nodded, she herself looked a little far away. It was an unsettling sight and I could feel my stomach churning at the mere thought of it. Everything that made Hazel herself seemed to have disappeared with her eyes as though she had been replaced with some one else. “What do you think it was?”
“I haven’t even the slightest clue,” Becky said. We were huddled next to each other whispering. I knew that Fang and Jimmy Jack had noticed her eyes as well, but it wasn’t like they would mean the same thing to them as it did to us. It was clearly something other worldly, that had happened to her. I could even hear them discussing the possibility of an allergic reaction to contact lenses in the
background.
“This morning when I woke up the sun wasn’t in the sky,” I said, regardless of how insane it sounded.
“I woke up pretty early too. I couldn’t sleep at all, I don’t think anyone could,” Becky said but I was already shaking my head at her. She stopped mid sentence and looked at me with confused disbelief as she realized I meant what I had said quite literally. “You don’t mean you woke up before the sun rose, do you?” I shook my head no.
“It was when Fern and I were leaving the driveway to come here.” I leaned closer so that no one could hear what we were saying. “I felt like something was out of place or missing and then all of a sudden everything was dark. There was no sun, no moon, not even stars in the sky. It felt like I would never see them again.” I shivered thinking about it.
“What did Fern say?” Becky asked. I shook my head again.
“She didn’t see it,” I said with a sigh. “I said something about the sky and she replied that it was a gorgeous day out. I don’t want to give her another thing to be anxious about.”
“Do you think this is all just a part of the trouble that the Colonel told us about?” I shrugged.
“I don’t think there’s a way for us to know that for sure,” I replied with a sigh. There was far too much uncertainties about magic, especially surrounding Stillwater, for my comfort. “Besides, I think he was mostly teasing about the trouble.” I didn’t know why, but I felt like I couldn’t let Becky know just how scared I was. In normal circumstances I would never even think about not telling Becky something at this point, but my gut told me to keep my larger concerns to myself. They weren’t concrete enough to be more than just a gut feeling at this point anyways and I didn’t want to worry anyone too much. Especially not with whatever we had just witnessed with Hazel.
“Did you say a contact allergy?” Becky asked, returning to the rest of the table and seamlessly joining Fang and Jimmy Jack’s conversation.
“Sure did,” Fang said with a nod. He sounded confident as though he knew that’s what it had been for sure. “Seen it a couple times before. I had a cousin who had the same reaction. We ought to get her to a hospital or something, don’t you think?”
“I doubt she’d be here if she hadn’t already gotten the clear,” Jimmy Jack said giving Becky a smile and his father a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
“I guess that makes sense,” Becky said. Fang gave a nod and then took a large bite from a piece of bacon on his plate. I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t at all satisfied with that explanation and still appeared worried. We sat in silence for a while, Amber chattered on in the background. A few tourists were looking around anxiously for their bill. None of them seemed to have noticed anything unusual, so maybe it had only just happened moments before I had seen her.
I looked to the kitchen door and back to the table of tourists. It had been a while since Hazel had come out of the kitchen. Perhaps she didn’t want to upset anyone further so she was hiding in the kitchen until her eyes returned to normal. It was unlike Hazel to neglect her job, regardless of what was going on with herself. I had seen her come to work the same day as she broke her foot and had it placed in a cast, so it was hard to imagine something that would keep her hiding.
The room went black. It was as dark as it had been when the sun went out, darker even. I fumbled for Becky’s sleeve and made my way down her arm to hold her hand. No one had let out so much as a yelp when the darkness happened, which was my clue that no one else was experiencing it. Two times within an hour or so of each other, I knew I would have to let Fern know about this soon. I couldn’t see Becky, but I could feel her staring intently at me.
My body began to move as if it was on it’s own accord. I let go of her hand and stood up. I could hear her say something, but it sounded like I was underwater, fuzzy and I couldn’t understand the words. I walked towards the kitchen, and though I could only see vague shapes in the darkness, my body led me there without walking into anything on the way. This is a feat I wouldn’t have accomplished even in the light. A hand grabbed mine and I violently jerked my own hand away as I opened the kitchen door. Light poured in again. I had to squint to stop it from hurting my eyes it was so bright.
“What are you doing?” Becky’s voice was clearer now, though it still sounded garbled slightly. I turned to face her. She had followed me into the kitchen, along with Fang, Jimmy Jack, Fern and even Amber. Concern was plastered on all their faces, followed by disbelief and then more concern.
“She’s gone.” Was all I knew how to say at the moment. It was as though I was just getting all my senses back and with that the skills of talking and thinking were coming later. I didn’t know how I knew it, I just did. The concern on everyone’s face was first for me, then for Hazel. The kitchen was deserted, and in disarray. Becky ran past me to turn off a stove burner that had been on. The pan on the burner was bubbling over making the flame burn brighter and bigger with each droplet of whatever she had been cooking.
“Now, I’m officially creeped out,” Amber said before leaving the kitchen. It was unclear as to if she still thought this was all some kind of joke or not, but what was clear was that she wanted nothing to do with it. Amber’s ability to not worry too much about others always astounded me and reminded me why I didn’t much care for her either.
“Something must have happened,” Fern said, her detective voice on. “An emergency of some kind, maybe it was a contact allergy and she had to go to the hospital. Or perhaps a family member was in the ER and she was so concerned she just had to go.” Fern did not even sound like she was convincing herself of either of these possibilities, but as a future Sheriff she knew that every possibility had to be examined. As a witch she knew that the mundane must be out ruled before the extraordinary could be explored.
Fang was slack jawed and bright red. He kept on turning around in slow circles stopping at each point of the kitchen as though he was trying to find her hiding spot within the room.
“Where in the hell did she go?” He said turning again to face where the over flowing pot had been. Something told me that what she had been cooking in the pot was not to eat, what else it could be, I didn’t know. It smelled of soothing herbs, perhaps she had felt anxious, like seemingly the rest of the town, and had made tea to help.
“No one touch anything,” Fern said in a commanding voice. “Everyone walk out of here, without disturbing anything.” She had already gone into investigative mode. We all complied with her immediately. Jimmy Jack practically had to guide Fang out of the kitchen. I could see him shaking as he walked out.
“I’m going to try her on her cell,” Jimmy Jack said taking a few steps away from the group and pulling his phone out.
“Fang, would you mind trying her home phone, just in case, I don’t want to start a panic if one isn’t needed,” Fern said softly to the riled up man. He nodded and left the group to make his call as well. “I’m going to check any local hospitals and ER’s. I know it’s far fetched, but I want to exhaust any and all possibilities before filing an official case.”
“You mean like a missing person’s report?” Becky asked with a shaky voice. “You think she went missing from the kitchen while all of us were just sitting a few feet away?”
“You’d be surprised,” Fern said with a sullen face. She was all business for now. She wouldn’t let her emotions get too much in the way of an organized search party. “Mazie, what happened there?”
“What do you mean?” I asked even though I knew what she meant.
“Why did you go into the kitchen?” She asked, this time she sounded almost aggressive. Asserting that she wanted a real answer.
“I don’t know, something led me there. It was like I could feel that she was gone,” I said looking between her and Becky. I felt panic swell inside me. It had felt like I had no control of my own body. “Everything went dark and all I knew was I had to go into the kitchen.”
“Mazie, your eyes looked exactly like Hazel’s,” Becky s
aid with a concerned look. “No pigment, no iris, no pupil.”
Chapter Six
“I guess there must be something goin’ around then,” Fang said, but every word was dripping with suspicion. He eyed me with distrust after he rejoined the group. He had tried to reach Hazel’s home phone to no avail. It hadn’t even reached the voice mail box...it just rang and rang until he finally gave up in a huff and almost threw his phone across the room. He was shaken up, that much was clear. What had shaken him up the most wasn’t clear, it could have been Hazel’s eyes changing and then disappearing or the fact that my eyes changed as well and then discovering that Hazel had disappeared. Either way, we were all a little shaken up about everything. I asked Becky if anyone else had noticed what happened, but she couldn’t really say much before Fang and Jimmy Jack came back into the kitchen.
“We need to get everyone out of the restaurant,” Fern said authoritatively. “Fang, Jimmy Jack, I need both you both to go to her house and see if she's there.” I knew that she was saying this because she meant it, but also to get Fang and Jimmy Jack as far away from us as possible. To someone who didn’t know Fern, they would only see the intensity on her face, but I could see the worry in her eyes. None of us could explain what was going on or what had happened and it was certainly bothering all of us. Becky had not stopped moving since we got into the kitchen. She was cleaning up everything she could to keep herself distracted. It was something that she did often at the museum. Anytime she was bothered or upset by something you could tell easily just by how little dust there was on the displays. Things had gotten quite a bit dustier as she no longer had to worry about the witch hunter anymore.
“We can do that,” Jimmy Jack said. Fang was still glaring at me from afar, his eyes bore into me. If I was being dramatic I’d say that I could feel them burning holes straight through me. Jimmy Jack led his father out of the kitchen. I could hear Jimmy Jack trying to calm his father on their way out. I couldn’t make it out exactly but Fang was grumbling angrily and Jimmy Jack was speaking to him in a calming manner. As soon as they were gone, Fern turned her attention on me.
A Whole Lotta Witchin Goin On Page 3