Pumpkins and Potions

by Tegan Maher

  Ice cream shop? The closest one was in Linsburg, twenty minutes away. “Lu u 2,” Maggie texted back.

  She supposed if Shane had noticed anything strange, he would have told her. And she didn’t want to bother him with demonic pumpkins... not yet, anyway. Not when he was watching the kids.

  She sighed, stomped her boots off on the welcome mat, and went in search of Aunt Dora.

  6

  “I think she’s drunk.” Merry lifted Dora’s head off the table, sniffing at her breath. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

  “What did she drink?” Maggie asked, looking about. “And does she have any left? Maybe if we get the pumpkin drunk, it will pass out and leave us alone.”

  “Do we need to call poison control?” Ruth Anne asked.

  At this, Dora snorted and blinked her eyes several times. She looked between her three nieces, slowly regaining herself. “Am I dead?” she asked, pinching her arm.

  “Only if we are,” Maggie replied.

  “Oh, girls! I didn’ wan’ anyone ta see me like this!” She shooed them away, lifting herself out of her wooden chair with the flats of her hand. Leaning on her cane, she made her way to the kitchen. “Not that a woman can’ get drunk, if she wants,” she continued, the sour in her voice tempered by the oversized bunny slippers on her feet. “’specially one my age.”

  “Is everything okay?” Merry asked, as the three followed her to the next room.

  “Forty years,” Aunt Dora said, splashing her face with cold water from the sink. “Seems like yesterday since we started this thing. Now, it’s jus’ me and Jillian left.” She blotted her face dry with a towel hanging off the over door and returned to the parlor.

  “She’s lonely,” Maggie whispered, when their aunt was out of hearing range. “I suppose we aren’t the best company most of the time.”

  “Oh, Maggie. I feel so ‘cats-in-the-cradle’ right now. We should spend some time with her.”

  The sisters made up a tray of tea and cookies and took it to the living room, where Dora was wrestling her feet out of the bunny slippers.

  “Forty years, and I realized how little I’ve done since,” Aunt Dora flailed her arms about. “I mean, ya girls are nice an’ all, but I haven’t a legacy fer myself. I need a legacy! Something…” Her eyebrows slouched.

  “Something big?” Ruth Anne answered.

  “Aye!” Dora held her hands out. “Big.”

  “It is her,” Merry said, chewing her nails on the back porch, sitting tight between Ruth Anne and Maggie. Aunt Dora was still in the living room. “She wants this pumpkin as her legacy. But how is she doing it?”

  Merry pursed her lips. “The seed pouch is missing from the counter. She must have planted it. But maybe she had nothing to do with how it’s growing?”

  “Yep, just all one zany coincidence,” Maggie said wryly.

  Ruth Anne looked back through the kitchen window. “If we accuse her and we’re wrong, her pride will be hurt. But if we’re right, it will hurt even worse. Aunt Dora would be mortified if she were caught cheating.”

  “Let’s find a counter-spell,” Maggie suggested, getting antsy. “We’ll handle it quietly. And humanely,” she added, for Merry’s sake. “Where’s that book Aunt Dora’s been carrying around?”

  “The junk drawer, by the pantry,” Merry said, prompting Maggie quickly to her feet.

  Just as Merry predicted, it was in the kitchen drawer, nestled among old matchbooks, dull knives, and an assortment of tangled cords. The cover certainly felt magickal, Maggie thought, as she slid it from the drawer. The title read: The Happy Witch’s Cookbook.

  “Bingo!” Maggie dropped the book into her tote bag, then peeked out into the living room, where Merry and Ruth Anne were persuading Aunt Dora to join them.

  “It’s good for you to get out,” Merry pointed to the front door. “You’ve been stuck inside this house for a week…right?” she asked, her final word laden with suggestion.

  “Mostly,” Dora admitted, huffing. “Can’ an ol’ woman jus’ sit in her chair and watch her stories?” She began looking around for the remote control that Merry hid behind her back.

  “We’ll go for a little drive in my Jeep,” Ruth Anne said brightly, jingling her keys. “Maybe stop off at the espresso shop on the way home?”

  Dora’s eyes lit up. “Home from what?” She recently developed a fondness for espressos. Pushing her feet back into the bunny slippers, she clicked the lever on the recliner and launched herself to a standing position.

  7

  It was just past five o’clock. The town of Dark Root lie nestled under a dreamy indigo sky, with splashes of purple and black along the edges--a harbinger that nighttime approached.

  Maggie was crammed into the crowded backseat alongside Merry, whose scarf fluttered in her face the entire ride. Aunt Dora sat up front, her eyes searching and alert. Ruth Anne said they were only going for a ride, but Dora’s iron grip on her handbag clued Maggie into her Aunt’s suspicion.

  Ruth Anne drove as if racing time. Her passengers bounced and bumped, grabbing seats and handles when the Jeep went airborne. On the left side of the road, fog floated up from a ravine like steam off hot soup, gradually obscuring the landscape. Maggie wasn’t worried--Ruth Anne had driven this route so often she could do it blindfolded. Which was comforting, as her glasses had been fogged up since leaving Harvest Home.

  “When ya gonna say where yer takin’ me?” Aunt Dora asked, to no one in particular.

  “You mean you have no idea?” Merry asked sweetly, as they pulled up beside the pumpkin patch.

  “Bah!” Aunt Dora said, waving her hand away.

  The fog draped them like a loose shroud as the women unloaded from the Jeep. At first, Dora just stood there, drawing her shawl in around her shoulders. Finally resigned, she marched forward with the others, her bunny slippers weighted like bricks. “Ya could have told me ta dress warmer,” she grumbled.

  “I’m not a weather forecaster, Auntie,” Merry said, just as sweetly as before. She waited for her aunt to catch up. “This place ring any bells?”

  At the sight of the pumpkins spread out in the field, Dora dropped her head and sighed. “Ya bring me here ta twist the dagger in my heart?”

  “No,” Maggie said. “We came to show you that there are… nature consequences to your actions.” She was trying out one of the ‘solutions’ in the Lazy Moms parenting book she skimmed on the bouncy ride over.

  “Natural consequences.” Merry corrected. Sweetly. “Aunt Dora… do you have anything to tell us?”

  “Bah!” She batted the air again, her brows edging down over her eyes. “It’s been forty years…can’t we leave the ghosts alone?”

  “Ghosts?” Ruth Anne asked, wiggling her glasses, but Dora said no more.

  Full darkness was setting in, but there was enough moonlight to see by. And cellphones helped cut the fog like tiny torches. “Oh, My Goddess!” Merry yelped, the first to reach Thirty-Three. “That can’t be our pumpkin!?”

  Ruth Anne and Dora gasped out loud.

  “Ta-da!” Maggie said, standing to the side of the pumpkin. “Surprise!”

  “It’s twice the size it was this afternoon!” Ruth Anne whipped out a measuring tape. Her eyes scrolled as she performed mental calculations, scribbling them into her notebook. “Two and a half times, approximately—in less than six hours. That’s biologically impossible.”

  “And, magickally delicious,” Maggie added. She turned to her aunt, as pumpkin shock therapy clearly wasn’t eliciting any confessions. “Auntie, this pumpkin appeared only yesterday. The others were planted a few months ago. We know you had the final seed, so is this yours? And did you use a little…” Maggie wriggled her fingers.

  “The seed? It’s been missin’ since yeser’day mornin.’ Shane stopped by wi’ the kids, and when he left, it was gone.”

  Maggie squeezed her aunt. “We thought maybe you were trying to win the contest. Like you did forty years ago. Merry heard you r
eminiscing…”

  “An’ ya thought I cheated!” Dora shook off her niece. “I could win easy, if I wanted, no magick needed. It’s in the way ya talk to the pumpkin--touch ‘em, make friends with ‘em. That’s how they grow.”

  “Exactly!” Ruth Anne said, pointing to Dora in kinship. “Exactly,” she repeated, much quieter when her sisters looked at her.

  “So, you didn’t use a spell?” Maggie asked, removing the cookbook from inside her coat. “Merry saw you with this, too.”

  Dora shot Merry a traitorous look as she snatched the book from Maggie’s hand. “It’s a recipe book. Can’t ya read the title?’” she pointed to the cover. “I was tryin’ to fin’ a recipe—a recipe I once shared w’ my friends, forty years ago.”

  “A pumpkin recipe?” Maggie questioned.

  “Not jus’ a recipe—ambrosia of the gods!” She sniffed and continued. “Spiced Pumpkin Punch. It was Joe’s drink, made with the innards o’ my prize-winnin’ pumpkin. We joked it was so strong ya could only drink it once e’ery forty years. I kept the seeds so we could have that 40-year-drink, but it’s jus’ me and Jillian left.”

  Maggie and Merry folded their aunt into their arms, covering her with apologies.

  “Do you know how to dispel it, Auntie?” Maggie asked.

  “Nah. But a big pumpkin isn’t such a bad thing, is it?” she grinned, stepping closer.

  The sisters looked at one another, and Ruth Anne grabbed for her aunt’s wrist before she got too close. “There’s more,” she said. “I’ve been nursing some small animals back to health, and they’ve disappeared into thin air. Right about the same time this monster appeared. I think they might be connected.”

  Dora’s face drained of color. “Sounds like dark magick,” she said, forcing a shiver from her nieces. She put out her hand and slowly moved in the direction of the pumpkin, as if approaching a dog that might run off with the slightest provocation. Frowning, she announced, “There’s magick, a’right, but I can’t get a sense o’ its nature. But ‘tis one of the original seeds.”

  Maggie sighed. “I’m guessing Montana swiped the seed from your house and planted it here. But that doesn’t explain its enormous size or the missing animals.”

  “Or it’s heartbeat,” Ruth Anne said, her ear pressed to the pumpkin. “And I swear, every time I look away from it, it grows just a little bit bigger.”

  Maggie’s phone vibrated. “Eve’s almost here,” she said, reading the text from their younger sister. “Maybe we can figure out a counter-spell.”

  “Guys!” Ruth Anne’s voice rose to near panic. The vines growing out from Thirty-Three’s stem were snaking towards her ankles. “I think its achieved sentience! Run!”

  As she sprung forward, a thick vine whipped out, coiling around her calf. Just as quickly, it lifted her into the air, dangling her upside down. “Help! Help!” Ruth Anne tried to keep her glasses on as loose change sprinkled from her pockets.

  Aunt Dora sprang into action, pulling her wand from her housedress pocket. She tapped it, uttering a quick incantation:

  From wood to steel, snackity-snick,

  Cut these vines, clean and quick!

  The wand turned a molten, metallic blue. Dora lumbered towards the pumpkin, taking a slow swing at a vine. “Let my niece down!” she ordered. The bramble immediately swarmed her, wrapping her like a mummy.

  “Okay, nature girl,” Maggie turned to Merry. “You have any magick that might help with this?”

  “Only the healing kind. Which might make it stronger. What about you?”

  “I can probably call in a lightning bolt,” Maggie said through clenched teeth.

  “No lightning bolts! Not lightning bolts!” Ruth Anne pleaded, as the pumpkin swung her to and fro. “And if this thing eats me, please come up with a more noble version of my death.”

  “You’re going to be fine,” Maggie said, scrambling through Ruth Anne’s bag for anything that might help. “EMF reader…radiation detector…metal detector…crayons?”

  A memory tickled Maggie’s brain but she couldn’t place it. Something to do with crayons.

  Yellow headlights rolled up alongside Ruth Anne’s Jeep. Eve! The memory continued to nag at her. Crayons…crayons…crayons!

  Maggie quickly shot Eve a text. She watched her younger sister’s silhouette emerge from her car and run to the Jeep, removing items from the rear hatch.

  “Damn, it!” Maggie said, looking back at the pumpkin, certain it grew in that momentary look-away.

  Eve arrived, impeccably dressed and groomed as usual. “What the hell? she said, handing the bag to Maggie. “Whatever game you’re playing with that pumpkin demon, I think its winning!”

  “He’s gonna eat us!” Ruth Anne cried, followed by a muffled response from Aunt Dora.

  “Pumpkins don’t have mouths,” Eve replied as if it were obvious.

  “Hasn’t stopped it before!”

  “He’s not going to eat anyone,” Merry said, trying to appear calm.

  A thin vine swept out in an arc, just missing Eve’s feet, leaving a whooshing sound in its wake. “Mess up these boots,” she threatened, picking up the wand-knife Dora dropped, “and I’ll make you a jack-o-lantern.”

  Maggie rummaged through her tote bag that Eve brought from the Jeep, pulling out the three books her kids had been coloring. “Eve, do these look familiar to you?”

  “Where did these come from?” she asked, taking them from her older sister. “I thought these got thrown out when we were kids.”

  “How about you, Merry?” Maggie nodded towards the coloring books.

  Merry looked down. “I think… were those…?”

  “Yes!” Maggie and Eve said together.

  Merry nodded. “Miss Lettie gave us these to color when the elders were having their Council meetings!”

  Eve handed the books back. “These creeped me out even back then. I remember once I – “

  “Guys!” Ruth Anne interrupted. “While you’re walking down memory lane, this thing’s growing! I dropped my glasses and Dora’s eyes are covered.”

  The pumpkin had indeed grown, so Eve double-timed her explanation: “Once, I drew a bird in this book, and one landed on my windowsill moments later. Another time, I drew a rainbow and it started raining--an hour later, a rainbow appeared. But the strangest coincidence was when I wished I wasn’t alone while you two were at school, so I drew a mouse for a friend--sure enough, one ran out from under my bed. I kept him in a shoebox for weeks.”

  “That’s pretty freaky.” Merry stared hard at the pumpkin, her eyes daring it to grow under her watch.

  “I asked Miss Lettie about it,” Eve continued. “She claimed it was a wishing book, and that whatever I drew would come true. That’s when I threw them away, or at least I thought they were thrown away.”

  “Sounds about like our childhood,” Maggie nodded, quickly flipping through the drawing pad. There were faded pictures of simple apples, rainbows, and even a ghost. The next few pages were empty. And then, sparkly drawings appeared on the pages, all pink and purple: a princess hat, an ice cream cone… and a large pumpkin, drawn in the approximate shape of a fairy tale carriage.

  Maggie glanced at Shane’s text again: At ice cream shop now. I know. More sugar. But they were trying to talk me into a kitten!

  Luna! Maggie assumed Montana could be involved in this mayhem, but never her sweet little Luna. She’s drawing out her wishes. Maggie flipped through the remaining blank pages, relieved to not find a kitten.

  “This thing will keep growing,” Maggie explained, “eventually becoming a carriage. Just like in Cinderella.”

  “And it’s taking Ruth Anne and Dora as footmen,” Eve added. “So what do we do?”

  “I have an idea.” Merry pulled out an assortment of markers from her handbag and passed them around. “On the count of three, we draw.” She poised her orange marker over a blank sheet. “One…two…”

  8

  “Mom!” June Bug’s excited cry
rang out across the pumpkin field. “I won third place in the ‘Orangy-est’ category!” She raced over to where the Maddock sisters stood together.

  “I heard,” Merry said, inspecting the shiny orange ribbon.

  “And she might have won second, if I wasn’t the judge,” Ruth Anne winked. “It was a toss-up, so I awarded it the contestant I wasn’t related to.

  “It’s okay, Auntie,” her niece said, smiling. “You won’t be judge next year, so maybe you can help with mine. Without magick,” she added, looking up at her mother.

  “I’d be honored to share my expertise!” Ruth Anne smiled, standing up straighter. She looked at her watch. “I have to get going. There’s a Haunted Dark Root Tour scheduled in a half hour. It’s the maiden launch of The Haunted Pumpkin Patch,” she said, billowing her arms up and down. “One day, a mysterious pumpkin appears--it grows and grows, and then, poof, it’s gone!”