A Whole Lotta Witchin Goin On

by Constance Barker

  “I don’t know what that was, why or how it happened, but we need to focus on what happened to Hazel right now.” I could see how incredible Fern would be as a Sheriff and as a mother some day in the future. She was very good at organizing what was important even when it seemed impossible to discern what was the most important thing.

  “Fair enough,” I responded. Honestly, I didn’t even want to know or think about what happened or what was happening to me. I wanted to avoid it as much as possible. “Do you want me to deal with everyone out there?” I asked gesturing through the kitchen door.

  “No, definitely not,” Fern said almost laughing at me. “And have you go eyeless in front of even more people, I don’t think so. I’ll do it.”

  “Okay,” I nodded agreeing with her. She left the room giving me a look and nodding towards Becky, who was still manically cleaning the kitchen. I went over to Becky and took her hand in mine. “Hey, it’s okay.”

  “I know,” Becky said. “I just want it to be clean for Hazel when she comes back.” She had stopped cleaning once I grabbed her hand.

  “It will be, I promise we will make sure it’s clean but I think we need to try and look for where Hazel went first,” I assured her, nodding a little bit more than was normal. “She’ll be back soon, I’m sure she’s fine.” I didn’t believe it. In fact, I knew it wasn’t true. Something felt very very wrong.

  “I hope so,” she replied, but she believed it as much as I did. Fern came back into the kitchen and let out a long breath. “What do you need from us?” Becky asked, ready for a task to be appointed to her.

  “You both need to go to work,” Fern said sternly.

  “Work can wait,” I responded, shocked that she would even suggest that Becky and I not help find Hazel.

  “We’ve already got Fang and Jimmy Jack going to her house, so I’m going to head to the hospital,” Fern sounded more calm now. “There’s no need to worry yet.” Again, no one in the room believed it, but we all pretended to. Becky and I left for work which almost seemed more surreal than Hazel disappearing.

  “What could have taken her away so quickly?” Becky asked me. We had somehow found ourselves polishing silverware at one of the banquet tables they had brought in for the party. I wondered how the museum could afford to be closed, but then remembered that Becky and I seemed to be the only staff doing anything for the party and figured they must be saving a lot on labor costs. It wasn’t very long until the party and it was honestly kind of a nice distraction at the moment. There still hadn’t been any word from Fern, which wasn’t very comforting, so polishing and speculating was all we could really do for the time being.

  “Does she have family?” I asked, feeling terrible that I didn’t know. As I thought about her more, I realized just how little I knew about Hazel. It struck me as odd how I could see someone almost every day of my life, but know extremely little about them. I thought of how I never realized that Becky was a witch as well and wondered if I was simply too oblivious or self centered to notice anyone else.

  “I don’t know?” Becky responded but it was more a question than a statement.

  “How do we not know?” I asked rhetorically, horrified at both of us. Perhaps Fern would know more, maybe Becky and I were both too self involved to notice the worlds of those around us.

  “I feel like she once mentioned a daughter or maybe a niece once, but I can’t be sure,” Becky sounded defeated. “We’re terrible, aren’t we?”

  “I think we might be, yes,” I sighed. Becky was furiously polishing beside me, going through piles of silver while I was lazily working on the same spoon for quite some time. While Becky seemed to use work as a way to keep distracted, I was unable to focus on anything at all for too long. “We just never had deeper conversations than just simple small talk, I guess.”

  “Now that I think of it, I can’t remember Hazel ever offering us information about her personal life,” Becky said. I could almost hear her going over every conversation she’d had with Hazel over the past few years trying to remember if they had every talked about family or anything of much substance.

  “I’ve known her practically my entire life and I think she knew everything about everyone and now that I think about it, I’m not sure I knew a thing about her.” There was little more for Becky and I to talk about and there was more than enough work to keep us both occupied for the rest of the day. I had the added misfortune of having to remember those terrifying moments of darkness, and then of discovering what happened to my eyes and the gnawing fear that it would happen again. Although we never stopped thinking about Hazel, we didn’t allow ourselves to talk about her again. It wasn’t until I was back home that I allowed myself to worry out loud again.

  “Moody, what do you think happened to her?” I asked sullenly scratching the cat behind her ears. Nothing was more comforting than petting an animal in my opinion, something was so soothing and rhythmic about it.

  “She probably thought of a new recipe and couldn’t find a pen, so she just had to run and find one to write it down,” Moody said with sarcasm. I sighed, not knowing what else I had expected from her. She didn’t know Hazel very well, and she didn’t care about anyone aside from Becky, Fern, and begrudgingly, me. She could be rather callous towards everyone and everything outside her own little bubble. I supposed I would be similar towards people outside of my own circle of friends. Fern always joked that the only reason that Moody and I butted heads so often was because we were so similar.

  “I can only hope that’s all it was.” Fern hadn’t gotten back in touch yet and she wasn’t home from the station, which was certainly a bad sign. I was dozing off on the couch to the sound of soap operas and Moody purring (or snoring rather) when Fern burst through the front door to our house. “What’s going on?” I asked groggily, as Moody leapt from the couch to greet Fern.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Fern said apologetically.

  “What’s going on? Did you hear anything about Hazel? Is she okay?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking all the questions that had plagued me the entire day.

  “We still know nothing,” Fern said with a sigh. “I’ve filed a report. Fang said there was nothing at her house and there’s no indication of where she went or why she left.”

  “Nothing?” I asked feeling defeated. As often as I had assisted with cases that Fern worked on, and as much as I liked to imagine myself as some kind of junior detective or private eye, I could not even fathom where to begin when someone just vanished out of thin air.

  “Not a thing, no,” Fern said collapsing onto the couch. “I’ve filed an official report. I didn’t really know what else to do. I thought about calling her family, but I couldn’t recall if she ever mentioned having any family.”

  “Becky and I were saying the exact thing earlier.” I felt marginally better that it wasn’t just us who seemed to not know anything personal about Hazel. “To be honest, I racked my brain all day and I feel like we don’t know anything about her.”

  “I’m afraid you might be right, at least in that we don’t know facts about her life, but we know her,” Fern insisted. I could hear how exhausted she was and the worry in her voice. “I am exhausted.”

  “I know,” I replied. I was exhausted myself. I felt like I hadn’t had a good night's rest in a long while and I knew that one would not come until we found Hazel and discovered what was going on with me and my weird eyes.

  “I’m pretty tired myself,” Moody said kneading her paws against me in an effort to get me to my room so that she and Fern could go to sleep in peace.

  “I don’t even want to think about what could be wrong with me,” I said with a sigh. I didn’t want to bring it up but I couldn’t not say it out loud any longer.

  “Maybe nothing is wrong with you,” Fern said rubbing her temples. I could tell at once that she'd been thinking about my problems all day long in addition to Hazel’s disappearance.

  “Of course something is wrong wit
h me!” I scoffed. “First the sky goes dark when the sun is out, then again in Hazel’s restaurant after I had a feeling of certainty that something was wrong,” Fern shook her head as I was talking, as if she was dismissing everything I was saying.

  “It could be your power,” Moody purred sleepily. She had given up on kneading against me and curled up to try and fall asleep. “Like Fern’s visions or Becky’s ability to feel others emotions.”

  “That was what I was thinking as well,” Fern admitted agreeing with the feline. “I don’t know what it could be or why it’s only appearing now, but that was the only thing I could think that makes sense.”

  “I don’t know how much sense that would make, but I guess we have to hope for the best, because who knows what else it could be,” I said pushing Moody off me and leaving for my room. It was too much and too late to think about it all.

  Chapter Seven

  It had been almost three full days since Hazel’s mysterious disappearance. No one had seen or heard anything from her and the diner had been closed since. There was a feeling of hopelessness around the town, everyone, even the tourists seemed sullen. Hazel’s absence was weighing on everyone, except for the Sheriff it seemed. He'd been doing everything in his power to make Fern’s job in finding her as difficult as possible. Of course, this wasn’t general knowledge and only a few select people knew what the Sheriff was doing. Surprisingly, or I guess not so surprisingly, the most put out by this was Amber. She was furious at the man, we all were, but being that Amber was at the center of a very poorly handled case recently it was as though she had just realized that injustices could happen to everyone.

  “I just don’t understand how he could be doing this!” Amber exclaimed for about the twentieth time in the last half hour.

  “He sees an opportunity to get ahead of me in the campaign. Hazel’s case is on me,” Fern said, also for the twentieth time. She had been calmly explaining to Amber the same thing over and over. I wanted to pull my own hair out, and I could tell that Fern was also about to break if she had to go over it again. “It’s not right, it’s not okay, but there is nothing we can do about it.”

  “But, there has to be something,” Amber replied stubbornly. “He can’t just cut off your resources...I mean we’re talking about a person here! We’re talking about Hazel! And if you don’t become Sheriff than he’s just going to keep being a bad Sheriff.” Amber reminded me briefly of a child throwing a tantrum. I did know that she cared about Hazel as much as the rest of us did, and her being missing was grating on her as much as on us. In addition to that she was obsessed with Fern winning her campaign and becoming the next Sheriff. “And not to mention that he seems to care more about this one hundred and fifty year celebration than anything else.”

  “We know,” I said, but it came out aggressive. More like a growl than a statement. Fern sighed, and I could tell that she was grateful that I finally stepped into the conversation. “It’s all terrible, but all we can do is keep campaigning and keep looking. If we keep complaining, but not doing anything, nothing is going to happen.” Amber was finally quiet. I think it was more my tone of voice than what I actually said that shut her up.

  We were stuck in our house with Amber there, because the diner was closed and there seemed to be no other communal space that we spent time at regularly. Moody was particularly unhappy with this set up. She complained non-stop about how she had no privacy anymore. I found this ironic considering how clingy she had been as of late. Moody had wanted nothing more than to go everywhere with us the past couple weeks, but now that we were home so much more, she wanted us gone. Personally, I thought that Amber was her real gripe and not us staying around the house more than normal. She couldn’t stand Amber in the same way that I couldn’t and Amber had been over every day since Hazel’s disappearance. It had only been three days, but it felt like a year, and not just because out of worry for her. I think it was hard on Moody to not be able to be herself in her own home. She was already forced to remain silent anytime she left, and not being able to speak inside was practically torture for her.

  “Fine,” Amber huffed, but only so that she could have the last word. “Well, I have to go, I have a store to run.” She left without saying anything else. I rolled my eyes at the over dramatic slam of our front door.

  “Finally,” Moody groaned. “Can we instate a new rule? That no one is allowed to come over, ever?” I laughed at that, agreeing with her. I didn’t really like our house becoming a revolving door for the people of Stillwater. This was more dramatic than it should be because the only people that had been over were Becky, Amber and once Jimmy Jack had stopped by with Fang waiting impatiently in the car.

  “How are you?” Fern asked me as soon as we heard Amber’s car pull away, ignoring Moody’s question. “Anymore instances?” She asked. ‘Instance’ was what we decided to call whatever was happening to me.

  “None,” I replied, which was a lie. “It seems like it was just a one time thing, nothing to worry about. Definitely not my new power.” This was also a lie. I figured that I was the last thing Fern needed to worry about right now. There were more than enough things that she had to deal with.

  “Are you sure?” She asked suspiciously. I could tell by her tone that she didn’t believe me at all. I nodded in response, even though I was lying to her to spare her from worrying, I felt nothing but guilt around it. “Alright.”

  “What do you think we should do?” Fern looked more exhausted than I had ever seen her, which was quite a feat considering that I don’t remember a time where she didn’t look exhausted. She slumped down on the couch and pulled Moody onto her lap.

  “I don’t know, Mazie,” She said leaning her head against Moody’s who squirmed trying to get away from her. “I have no idea. Nothing seems to be coming up, no leads, no clues. It seems like she had no one aside from us and we didn’t even know anything about her.”

  “I don’t know either,” I said with a sigh. “I mean how do you look for someone who just vanished a few feet away from you?”

  “I thought that maybe we could track her car, but she didn’t take it,” Fern released Moody who trotted out of the room quickly not wanting to be held captive again.

  “How far could she have gotten without her car?” I asked. Nothing felt right or good in the world with Hazel missing and I couldn’t shake this nagging guilt I felt about it. I knew it wasn’t my fault or any of our faults that she disappeared, but somehow I felt like I was connected to her. Both our eyes going blank at the same time was eerie at the very least, and I knew how Hazel must have felt in the moments before she had gone missing. The world going dark around you was terrifying, and I had more context for it than she did. At the very least, I knew that there was a paranormal side of the universe and even though I didn’t know why these ‘incidents’ were happening, I knew that they tied into that supernatural world. Hazel must have been even more terrified than I was at the time. I had a few more of these moments since she went missing, but I didn’t think it was right to tell Fern about them until after we found Hazel. That was what I wanted us to focus on, not on me. I knew that Hazel wasn’t in trouble. Something was certainly wrong, but something told me that she wasn’t scared. It was like in the diner when I stood up from my seat and instinctively went to the kitchen because I knew that Hazel was gone. With every new incident my instincts grew clearer where I was certain of something even though I couldn’t explain how or why.

  “I don’t know how she could have even gotten out so quickly,” Fern sighed. There was nothing more than uncertainties and questions in the case. It didn’t help that there was so much more that was going on as well. With the Sheriff not giving her the resources she needed to search effectively for Hazel, Fern was already overworked. In addition to this, Amber was not letting up on the campaign and was continually on her case. I knew that Amber was thinking somewhat long term and that Stillwater would as a whole would benefit from Fern as the Sheriff, but I couldn’t help but f
eel annoyed that she still seemed more concerned with Fern becoming Sheriff than Hazel’s well being. Even worse was the impending one hundred and fifty year celebration that seemed to hang over the entire town. For some reason it felt like less of a celebration and more of a warning. I wondered if that had something to do with the vague warning from the Colonel of trouble coming our way.

  “I’ve unfortunately got to go,” I said realizing that I was most certainly going to be late for work, which I had been for the last few days in a row. It was hard for work to feel like it mattered with Hazel gone and so much else going on.

  “So do I,” Fern nodded in agreement.

  “Moody, do you want to come with me?” I shouted, not sure where she had run off to after escaping Fern’s clutches. I had hardly finished my sentence before the orange beast ran back into the room.

  “I wouldn’t mind it,” She said trying to play it off as though she wasn’t dying to join me at work. This solidified my belief that she was only bothered by our visitors and not us being at home with her.

  “Come on,” I said, giving Fern a wave and nodded Moody towards the door. I wished that Fern could stay home the rest of the day and sleep, but I knew that even if she didn’t have to go to the station she wouldn’t get any rest anyway.

  Chapter Eight

  “I think we should consult the ghosts,” Becky said as soon as I walked into the museum. Which meant two things; that no one was in the museum aside from us, and that she had been thinking about this for quite a while. The museum was starting to feel like the only people allowed in were just myself, Becky, Moody and the ghosts. Our boss had once again taken a very convenient vacation during a busy time of year. He seemed to only be around during off season, when the museum was practically abandoned. There wasn’t much left to do to prepare for the celebration, or at least not much left for Becky and I to do. The entire museum was transformed into a banquet hall. Each room was decorated in abundance and looked more like a wedding venue than a museum. The celebration was only a couple days away, so it felt good to be ready for it a bit early.