A Whole Lotta Witchin Goin On

by Constance Barker

  “Consult them about what specifically?” I asked, there was so much going on that I couldn’t even think as to what we would be consulting the ghosts about. They had been appearing more and more human-like every day. Where normally they appeared almost gray, and transparent they were becoming peachy toned and more opaque.

  “Well, I thought we should see if we could get more information about the trouble that’s supposed to come in just a few days,” Becky said looking at me like I was insane for not know what she was referring to. I had told her about my incidents and that I could feel an impending doom for lack of a better word and while she was concerned, she seemed to think that it was all going to be okay. She had been nothing but nerves at first, but after I told her that I didn’t feel that Hazel was scared or in trouble she seemed to take it to heart. I didn’t mean for her to rely on it as factual, since it was no more than just a feeling, but I was glad that she seemed more like herself. She took it to mean that Hazel would come back when she was ready to, that she wasn’t missing, she was just gone for the time being.

  “I’m not sure what more they could tell us, but I’d never object to having a conversation with our trio of ghosts,” I said trying to be lighthearted.

  “I bet if we could talk to just Little Timmy he’d be able to tell us something,” Becky said. I felt a similar way, that Little Timmy would be more open to us if he were allowed to be. The Colonel was secretive and distrusting, though I think he did consider us to be friends and Mary Jane would never tell us anything that might upset the Colonel.

  “As much as I’d like to join you in talking to dead people, I think I’d rather make sure that the museum is vermin free for the celebration,” Moody said slinking around our legs. Rats and mice must not be very intelligent creatures as they are constantly being chased off by Moody, but they always come back only to be chased off again. Before Becky was able to stop Moody from actually killing the poor creatures, even when their lives were on the line they would come back to the museum.

  “Just be careful,” Becky warned. She was less concerned about Moody and more reminding her to be nice to the rats and mice she was about to terrorize. Moody hissed at her but in a teasing way before running off. I was almost surprised that she had decided to leave us being that the last couple days at the museum she had been practically attached to both Becky and I at the hip. She wasn’t exactly a fan of the ghosts though, so I didn’t blame her.

  “To what do we owe this pleasure?” Colonel Augustus asked us almost as soon as we got outside. I couldn’t believe that they were the same ghosts we had talked with only a couple days before. I had only caught glimpses of them since our previous conversation about the anniversary, but those glimpses only gave me an idea of how human they appeared now. Standing beside them I could barely tell that there was a difference between Becky and I and the ghosts. There was something off putting about seeing them in color, a rosiness to their cheeks. They even had a human energy about them.

  “We wanted to see how you were doing,” Becky said sweetly. She had decided that we shouldn’t go in with our questions but try and ask them to Little Timmy after distracting the Colonel and Mary Jane somehow. They had been reluctant to say much about it the last time we talked to them, so we didn’t want to risk them not saying anything again.

  “We are simply wonderful!” Mary Jane exclaimed, I was struck by how youthful she looked. She had lost her life at a very young age, younger than me. Her cheeks were flush with color and her hair a rich auburn. I could easily see that she was a rare beauty when she was living. She was no hideous figure dead either, but there was something about the light behind her eyes and the brightness of her skin that was enchanting. I imagine that she was the object of affection for many a man on the battlefield, though she clearly only had eyes for the Colonel. I wondered with a pang of sadness if that was only a result of being stuck halfway on earth with him for so many years. Perhaps she led an entirely different life when she was living. “We feel almost human again and it shall be wonderful when the ball comes, when we will be nearly living once more.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be nice...I’m looking forward to seeing you all there,” I responded. I was infinitely curious about them becoming human again briefly. I couldn’t even imagine them looking more human than they did right now.

  “We are impatient for it to come,” Colonel Augustus said with a grin. He pulled Mary Jane close to him and they both laughed like two people in love. Little Timmy looked more sullen than he usually did, even though he was looking more alive. I didn’t blame him, he was only a teen when he died and was doomed to be a teen forever. He was also alone, and had to watch the Colonel and Mary Jane love each other. That was a singular type of torture. His youth was also amplified by his appearing more human, more alive, but so was the obvious horrors he had seen in his short life. His eyes were deep set and the skin underneath them was darkened, as though he had permanent black eyes.

  “It will be very nice when it comes along,” Little Timmy said, though I almost felt like he was more excited for it to pass than he was for it to come. Of the three he seemed to have had the energy sucked out of him instead of being reinvigorated. It was odd since he had seemed so enthusiastic before when he'd been creating music for the Colonel and Mary Jane to dance to. “I am looking forward to it.”

  “Are you?” I asked before I could stop myself. It wasn’t exactly a polite question to ask and Becky and I were trying not to offend them as much as possible.

  “Well, why would he not be?” The Colonel was the one who responded, though Little Timmy had opened his mouth to reply. “It is the thing we most look forward to each half century.” I nodded, though I could see Little Timmy’s face fall slightly.

  “Could you teach me one of those dances that you were doing before?” Becky said trying to get us back on track. She had put some traditional music on her phone and was going to play it for the couple to distract them while I spoke with Little Timmy. The Colonel and Mary Jane were instantly mesmerized by the music that to them seemed to be coming out of nowhere.

  “It would be our pleasure,” Mary Jane said taking the Colonel’s arm and beginning to dance with him. They weren’t teaching so much as they were caught up in the magic of dancing with the person you loved and hearing the music that they had long been apart from. Becky would interrupt with a question every once in a while just to ensure that they were distracted and would keep being distracted. I waited a few minutes before putting the plan into action. Watching them dance was incredible, their movements were so fluid and it was as though dancing was as natural to them as walking.

  “You seem distracted,” I said going over to Little Timmy who was standing off to the side. He was actually leaning against the museum and I had the distinct impression that this was exactly what he was like when he was alive. A little sullen and always slightly off to the side, maybe sometime he would join in the fun when he felt lighter, but I could tell that it was not often. He jumped a little as I spoke to him.

  “Trouble always comes around now,” He replied with a sigh. His eyes never left the Colonel, like he was nervous that he would overhear what he was saying. I imagine it was left over from him being his commanding officer way back in the day. “It just doesn’t feel worth it anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. His words seemed ominous. It almost sounded as if they had a hand in the trouble. As if they traded their corporeal-ness for whatever trouble was to come. He looked at me a mimicry of a smile starting to form on his face.

  “I mean that every fifty years we pretend as though we are living for a short while and every time we do, something terrible happens in this town. I do not know if we are the cause of the trouble for certain, but I do know that there is a correlation,” Little Timmy looked away from the Colonel as he spoke to me. His eyes were filled with intensity and sadness.

  “What kind of terrible things happen?” I asked, a chill surrounded me. It was as though a blanket was arou
nd my shoulders but instead of warmth it was a blanket of pure ice.

  “People go missing, sometimes they wind up dead, murdered. Animal attacks. Fires. It goes on and on,” he said quietly. His eyes shifted once again towards the Colonel, his fear was almost palpable.

  “You seemed so excited just a couple days ago.”

  “I was,” he said. “But then I remembered what it was really like. We are not really alive, we look more alive than we did a few days ago, but we are still dead. We cannot feel the things around us. I can lean against this edifice, but I cannot feel it against me. The wind tousles my hair but I do not feel it brush across my skin. It is like we are playing at being alive and it does not feel like it is worth all the trouble that comes along with it.”

  “I can see how that must feel bad,” I said lamely. I could only imagine how isolating that would be, and I doubt my imagining would be anything close to the reality. “So the town falls apart every fifty years?” I asked. The cold felt like it had permeated my very being. The things he had said about what happened in the town made my stomach turn into a rock. Especially with Hazel having gone missing, he said that some times the people who went missing turned up dead. I hoped that wasn’t the case.

  “You have no idea,” He said once again turning towards me. I could hear the traditional music and Mary Jane and Becky’s laughter in the background. Even the Colonel let out a laugh every once in a while. It was a harsh juxtaposition to what Little Timmy was telling me, like when horror movies put an unsettling twist on children’s lullabies. “When it first happened we were so happy to be coming back in anyway at all. It did not matter how or why, but as we became more human, we noticed that the town seemed in disarray.

  “Children went missing first, and then they found a body. One of the young ones appeared to have been mauled by an animal of some kind, one by one each of the children were found. On the final night of our so called living, about a week past the celebration, a distraught parent set half the town on fire in their madness. The next time a serial killer wiped out nearly a quarter of the population in town. Somehow, Mary Jane and Colonel Augustus are able to forget the horrors every half century and are only excited. I cannot seem to forget though,” He finished with a sigh and stood from the building. He joined the Colonel and the others once more, but gave me a dark look before he turned away.

  Chapter Nine

  It was like some kind of sick joke seeing Fang and Jimmy Jack in a Starbucks of all places. One had opened up only a few years back near the edge of town. It was closer to the larger towns surrounding Stillwater, which was where most of their customers came from, in addition to the tourists. It seemed to be profiting off of the disappearance of Hazel, with the diner closed there was no other good option for breakfast, coffee or hang out space. The baristas looked overworked and the place was over crowded. We practically had to drag both Fang and his son to the chain coffee shop. I had never seen two people less comfortable and less suited to a place.

  “What the hell did you bring us down here for?” Fang grumbled. He was hunched over glowering at everyone else in the room. I couldn’t pretend that I was much more comfortable in the coffee shop either, only Becky and Fern seemed at peace with the place, but the pair of them would figure out how to belong anywhere. The Starbucks must have appeared to most as comforting, a standard throughout the entire country that never changed too much and always offered deep arm chairs and overpriced coffee.

  “Well, there was no where else that we could all meet,” Fern said, even though we could have easily met at someone's house. I had told her all that Little Timmy had to say the day before, and it had rattled her to the core, which wasn’t an easy feat. Even Moody seemed distressed when she heard the warning. I think that Fern wanted to meet outside of the house so that Moody didn’t have to hear it again. Shaking up Moody was something that I had never seen before, and I didn’t really want to see it again either. After hearing it she had curled up and remained awake but didn’t say another word the whole night, not even to ask for her dinner.

  “And what the hell are we meeting about?” Fang replied. He had tried to order a black coffee and had looked like he might attack the barista as the poor thing asked half a dozen times if he was sure there was nothing else he wanted in the coffee. I’d imagine that the barista had only had a plain black coffee ordered a handful of times, if that. And once she had told him the price he refused stubbornly to pay it until a mortified Jimmy Jack just paid the bill for him.

  “Hazel, obviously,” Becky said. She used to be scared of Fang, and I didn’t blame her. I mean it wasn’t like he was called Fang for no reason. He was an incredibly intimidating man, and I would steer clear of him if I didn’t also know him for his soft glances towards Hazel when he thought no one was watching or his cheeks in a flush when he realized he was caught. He was a soft man in a very hard and rugged exterior. Becky had gotten used to him as everyone else in the town had, but I presumed it had more to do with the increasing amount of time that she was spending with Jimmy Jack than anything else. “What else would we meet about?”

  “And what are we supposed to be discussing about Hazel?” Fang asked aggressively. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, I could tell that something was off. It was the same feeling I got when my other incidences occurred, but my vision remained intact. He had no concern for her well-being. Either he knew where she was or he did not care for her as we all suspected he had.

  “She’s missing, Dad,” Jimmy Jack said as though his father was somehow not comprehending or had forgotten the situation. It was immediately obvious to me that Jimmy Jack was also covering something up as well.

  “I know that,” Fang exclaimed. “I just don’t know what we're supposed to be doing about it. She’s not at home, she has no phone on her, she didn’t take her car, how are we supposed to find her when she clearly doesn’t want to be found?” He sounded frustrated, but beneath that frustration I could hear him trying to convince us of his statement.

  “There’s always something that can be done,” Fern said with an air of authority. Fang glared at her but only for a moment...I was sure that only I had noticed it. I looked between Becky and Fern, they seemed not to feel or notice nothing out of the ordinary. There was no way that I would say anything to either of them unless something more than just a gut feeling was presented to me. If there was one thing that I learned from Fern in all her years as a detective, evidence was the most important thing in any case. We could learn a lot from her visions, but they meant nothing without evidence to back them up. Our powers could only be tools to help in solving cases, and even sometimes they were useless. Right now they felt particularly useless. “We’ll canvas around town to see if anyone has seen anything. We will interview tourists and do everything that we can to try and find our dear friend.”

  “Isn’t that the job for the police?” Fang said nastily. Fern looked taken aback and even Becky and Jimmy Jack looked shocked by Fang’s admonishment. It was not as if he wasn’t aware that the Sheriff had essentially barred all of his officers and deputies from assisting her. Fern miraculously didn’t hold it against them, but I’m certain I would hold a grudge. The Sheriff was keeping them busy with other things and ensuring that they would be prepared for the upcoming celebration.

  “It is,” Fern replied icily. “But we aren’t going to be getting their assistance for the time being, so if we care about finding Hazel, then we need to be the ones to do something about it.” There was suspicion in each of my companion's faces at this point. I felt less alone in my conviction than I had previously.

  “Of course,” Fang said softening slightly. It felt more like backtracking to me. “I’m just worried.” With that statement Becky and Fern seemed to absolve any previous statements that he had made. I was not so easily satisfied by the pandering.

  “We’ll find her,” Fern assured him. Becky nodded and placed her hand on Fang’s shoulder in comfort. The gesture made my stomach churn, not because I t
hought Fang guilty of anything terrible but because I knew him to be guilty of concealing something.

  “I hope so,” I said, eyeing Fang trying to gauge his reaction. To attempt to figure out what it was that he was hiding, though I couldn’t imagine that I’d be able to.

  “I am sure that we will,” Becky echoed my sentiment with more positivity and assuredness. I felt guilty that I told her I felt that Hazel was not in trouble, there was no way I could know for sure. It was nothing more than a feeling and after Little Timmy told us what happened to others who had gone missing around a fiftieth anniversary - they seemed to regularly end up dead. In my gut I felt that Hazel was safe, but I could not stop the panic from seeping in. There was nothing that I knew for sure anyways, no evidence.

  “How should we split up then?” I asked, deferring to Fern’s expertise. Not that she had ever single-highhandedly led a search party before.

  “Fang, Jimmy Jack, could you both start on the back roads?” Fern asked them. “Start with those along your regular delivery route, I suppose they’d be most likely to talk to you openly.” Fang and Jimmy Jack both nodded, but neither seemed to have their heart in it. “Becky, would you mind canvassing the surrounding areas? You are younger so maybe people will be more likely to talk to you in those areas. Mazie and I will stick to the town center. Everyone knows us, which I suppose can be a blessing and a curse.” I was impressed by Fern’s skill for not the first time. She always seemed to know exactly what to do. I supposed that was why the Sheriff was so scared to have her running against him. It only took a few more moments before she had handed out missing person fliers to everyone in the party.