“So, I said, ‘Duh, I’m the best actor in school.’
“‘The best are not always first, nor the least last,’ the woman said. ‘Yet Lenny shall lead!’” Lenny frowned. “Her voice was like a radio station buried in static, so it was hard to understand her, but eventually I understood that she and her friends would guarantee me a career in acting.”
“And you believed her?” Sylvia asked.
Lenny smirked. “Hell, no. She was a crazy homeless woman. I told her to take a hike. But eventually she said that all I had to do was drop by the Dairy Queen after school the next Monday, so it was no skin off my nose.”
“And then?” Paul asked.
“Then Monday after school, I go to the Dairy Queen and she’s there with two other homeless women, eating pretty much the entire menu. I have no idea who paid for it. That’s when they told me I’d play the lead role in Macbeth. Since no one had thrown them out of the restaurant, I thought that maybe they were telling it to me straight. That maybe they were witches.”
Lenny’s face took on a slight grimace. “I was a little surprised when you cast me as Macduff. It confirmed that the witches were just crazy ladies. But Kim Greyson as Macbeth? That’s even crazier.”
Paul was thinking up additional questions to ask when the bell rang. He stepped down from his director’s chair. “Thank you, Lenny, for being honest with us. Like I told you, you’re not in any trouble. But I do suggest that you stay away from the crazy ladies.”
Lenny shrugged and walked away.
“Well,” said Sylvia. “Now we know.”
“Yes. But I don’t see how it helps us. It’s not like Lenny can call off the curse. He’s a victim in this more than anyone.” Paul glanced at his watch, even though the bell had already told him what time it was. “And now I’m off to meet another victim.”
Sylvia looked at him with concern. “Do you want me to come along?”
Paul shook his head. “It’s difficult enough for Riordan to talk to me. I don’t dare tell him that I told you anything.”
Scene 7: Fears and Scruples Shake Us
There was no sign of Riordan at the Dairy Queen. Paul took their regular table near the door and tried not to notice the three witches seated at the booth at the other end of the seating area. With almost an hour to go before the school lunch bell, the place was quiet, the only other customer a young mother with an uncooperative child of perhaps four years of age.
Paul hoped that Riordan wasn’t too ill to make the trip. When they spoke on the phone the previous evening, he had sounded okay, but you never know. Hadn’t Riordan said that his doctors gave him very little time? Perhaps the opportunity would arise to find out what his ailment was.
A plaid shirt blocked Paul’s view of the top of the witches’ heads, and Riordan sank onto the opposite bench, setting a tray in front of him that contained a burger of some kind, fries, and a large soft drink. Paul gawked at it. On the previous two occasions they had shared this booth, the man had only drunk water.
Riordan noticed his reaction and grinned. “I’ve got my appetite back. I can’t remember the last time I felt this hungry. One of my doctors says it’s because I’m beginning to face my fears.” The older man lost his cheer. “Why are you still here? I thought you would have moved to Switzerland by now. Or Antarctica.”
“Running won’t help,” Paul said. “Besides, I’m not the one who consorted with witches. My leaving won’t end the curse.”
“No, but it may save your family. You said there were further developments?”
Paul nodded. “I found out who spoke with the witches. It was a student, Lenny, the boy playing Macbeth.”
Riordan let out a heavy breath. “Not even children are safe. Have these witches no shame?”
“I also found the witches.”
Riordan stared at him.
Paul pulled out the photo he had shown Lenny, and Riordan almost crawled over the back of his seat.
“That’s them!” The older man calmed himself and looked closer at the photo. “They haven’t changed in twenty years.” He looked even closer. “That table they’re sitting at. It looks just like this one.”
“Don’t panic.” Paul put out one hand and clasped Riordan’s forearm, probably in an unconscious effort to keep the man from bolting. “Your curse ended twenty years ago. The witches have no interest in you.”
“You can’t know that!” Riordan’s baritone grew shrill.
“We can ask them.”
The older man’s eyes nearly sprang out of his head. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Apparently not.” Paul couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “The witches tried to make that happen and I survived.”
Riordan attempted to rise out of his seat, but Paul’s grip on his arm prevented him. “You are out of your mind!”
Paul gave the old man a stern look. “What happened to you wanting to face your fears?”
“Twenty-year-old fears.” Riordan breathed hard through his nose. “I’ve no interest in creating new ones.”
“Well, I can understand that.” Paul let go of his arm. “But if the witches were going to do anything to you, I think they would have done it by now.”
Riordan narrowed his eyes. “Why do you say that?”
“Because they’re sitting behind you.”
Paul could hear Riordan’s back crack as he spun around. Even with the older man partially blocking his view, Paul saw one of the hags, the one who looked like a pretzel, lift a wilted hand and wave. “Hello, Simon! You’re looking well.”
Riordan let out a strangled cry and collapsed onto the bench.
“Oh, my,” said the waving hag. “I hope he isn’t dead.”
Scene 8: There the Grown Serpent Lies
The booths at Dairy Queen were designed to hold four adults or some random number of smaller children. Sitting three adults on a side was uncomfortable at best, disastrous if you were trying to eat anything. The witches were eating pizza.
Paul was fortunate to be sitting on the side with one witch, who called herself Netty. However, Netty seemed to be almost as wide as she was tall, so he didn’t feel himself overly fortunate.
Riordan, though not quite as skeletal as he had been the week before, was still wider than the spindly witch who called herself Agatha. Fortunately the older man had merely fainted on seeing the witches, although Paul suspected he might wish he were dead rather than packed in like a sardine between two of them. The third witch, the one who had waved, was named Gertrude and sat at the end of the bench, waging a war against being pushed out into the aisle.
In the confusion of checking Riordan’s pulse and getting him a glass of water, somehow the witches had manoeuvred them to the opposite side of the seating area and into their own booth, with Riordan the centre of a witch sandwich and Paul pressed against the window so neither could leave until the witches let them. If the witches let them.
Paul’s meeting with the witches had hardly begun, and already he was regretting that he had instigated it.
“Simon!” Netty wobbled her round head at Riordan. “It is wondrous to see you again. After all this time.”
Gertrude peered up at him from where her crooked head rested on her hunched shoulder. “Those were glorious days out on the heath, weren’t they?”
“Ah,” said Riordan, his shoulders pulled tight and sitting absolutely still. “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”
Gertrude smiled and let out a loud cackle. “Simple Simon! Why would we hurt you?”
Agatha swallowed a mouthful of pizza. “Your destiny has been fulfilled. Why would we waste our time?”
Paul figured he should say something to get things started. Like, Is Lenny’s destiny also fulfilled? He has the role he wanted. But what came out was, “Are those anchovies?”
Netty snorted. “Only a Frenchman would put anchovies on a pizza. That’s newt.”
Agatha picked up another slice. “Sadly, it’s just the eyes. Hard to find a pizza with whole salamanders th
ese days. Try some.”
Paul swallowed. “Ah, thank you, no. Are you done with Lenny?”
“Who?” all three witches said together.
“My student. The one playing Macbeth.”
“Oh, him.” Gertrude waved her fingers in the air.
Paul flinched, expecting some kind of spell.
“Don’t mind me, dearie. I’m just drying my hands. The crust has cheese in it. Oily, but that’s what makes it yummy. You really should try some.”
Paul picked up a piece of crust, gnawed the smallest bit of one end, then put it down again. “Yes. Delicious.”
“You were asking about your Macbeth,” said Agatha. “The wannabe actor.”
“Yes.” Paul searched for words. “You said his destiny was to have the lead in the school play. He does. Does that mean the curse is over?”
All three witches cackled.
Riordan did his best to slide under the table, but with two witches pressed against him, he wasn’t going anywhere. Paul now regretted asking his old mentor to come. He’d hoped that Riordan’s presence would help even the odds, but Paul now knew that bringing an army wouldn’t even the odds. These were witches, and Paul felt useless against them. He could tell from just looking at Riordan that his old drama teacher felt less than useless.
“You’re here about the curse?” Gertrude again waved her fingers in the air. “And here I thought this was just a social visit.”
Agatha pointed a slice of half-eaten pizza at him. “Once begun, a curse must run its course. It cannot be stopped.”
Gertrude let out a small, wicked laugh. “That said, we’ve decided to stop the curse.”
“Really?” For the first time in weeks, Paul felt real hope.
“Oh, yes,” Gertrude said, still waving her fingers. “We stopped cursing the play ages ago.”
“Simply ages!” Netty said.
“Last Friday, to be exact.” Agatha laughed out her nose, and that started all three witches cackling.
“In fact . . .” Gertrude played with a slice of pizza on the table, spinning the triangle one hundred eighty degrees. “We’ve been anticursing the play.”
“Anticursing?” Then realization struck him. “So that was you who changed the picket signs.”
Another long bout of cackling. Then Agatha caught her breath. “Who else could have done it?”
“Well, thank you,” Paul said. “I don’t know what to say.” And that was true. Paul really had no idea what to say.
“Then say nothing,” Agatha said. “We didn’t do it for you.”
“Then, why?” Paul knew he shouldn’t have said it. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. And here he’d looked into not one but three mouths.
It was Gertrude who answered. “Because there is another curse on your play.”
Netty joined in. “A curse from someone more fearsome than a witch.”
“More fearsome than three witches,” said Agatha.
“Don’t believe them!” It was Riordan, at last working up the courage to speak. “If you believe them, they’ll call it destiny, and you’ll be making the deal!”
The three witches cackled. Then Agatha jabbed Riordan in the stomach with a bony elbow. “That’s some imagination you’ve got there, Simon.”
Netty was still laughing so hard, she couldn’t speak. By some means of magic, she made her words understandable. “We don’t need a deal to invoke a curse.”
Gertrude was nodding her head. “We can curse whomever we want, whenever we want.”
“Now where were we?” asked Agatha. “Oh, yes. More fearsome than three witches.”
Paul couldn’t help himself. He had to know. “Who?”
The three hags spoke together. “The gorgon!”
Paul sat up a little straighter. “The gorgon? You mean the gorgon lady? Mrs. Cadwell?”
Three hoary heads nodded.
“She is a devious woman,” Agatha said.
“With hundreds of minions!” Netty crowed. “Perhaps even three.”
“And,” Gertrude added, “she’s a prig!”
“A what?” asked Paul.
Gertrude shook her head, or at least Paul assumed it was a shake. “Too horrible to explain.”
Paul decided he could look prig up in a dictionary. What he couldn’t fathom was that Mrs. Cadwell was somehow a bigger problem than three witches. “Does she have some kind of dark powers?”
Agatha wagged her head. “Powers are neither light nor dark. The colour is in the heart of the wielder.”
The teacher in Paul told him that colour was the wrong word for the metaphor, but he understood what the witch meant.
“Okay, but you’re saying that the gorgon lady can do things? Like what you did with changing the signs?”
“Worse,” said Gertrude. “We may have changed the signs, but the gorgon created them in the first place.”
“And convinced minions to wield them!” Netty said.
“Right. Right.” Paul searched for a way to ask the right question. “But is the gorgon lady magical like you? Or just an ordinary person like me?”
The witches rumpled their foreheads and looked at each other, apparently as exasperated as Paul felt.
“For God’s sake,” said Riordan. “What can we do to stop the gorgon lady from cursing the play?”
Agatha nodded solemnly. “For starters, you can look at this.”
From out of nowhere, a handbill appeared on the table. It showed an elderly man with a flowing beard and fiery eyes. The caption revealed his name as Reverend Sebastian Archibald Long and listed him as the author of several books. The titles included Daughters of the Devil in Our Day, There Is a Coven in Your Neighborhood, and Samhain Disguised as Halloween. There was a location and date: Ashcroft Senior High, Friday, October 9.
“That’s in two days!” Paul said, his heart slamming into his throat. “Why haven’t I heard of this?”
Gertrude waved her fingers in the air and the date changed to October 16. “That was the original date for the reverend’s appearance. The handbills were going to come out next week. But with the picket signs failing so phenomenally, the gorgon lady convinced him to reschedule. Oh, this time the fingers were magic. Heh.”
The misshapen witch then tapped the handbill with a greasy finger, and the date returned to the ninth. “The reverend was supposed to justify the cancellation of the play after it had already happened. But now the gorgon lady is using him in a last-ditch effort to get the play called off.”
Paul couldn’t believe it. “But this handbill says that he’s going to speak to the school in the large gymnasium over the lunch hour. That goes against school policy. Religion can’t be taught in schools.”
Riordan shook his head. “But the reverend isn’t going to talk about God. He’s going to talk about the Devil. And witches. And the evils of Halloween costumes and candied apples.”
“But that’s the same thing!”
Agatha leaned forward, almost stabbing Paul with her crooked nose. “Not according to your PTA.”
Scene 9: The Instruments of Darkness
“I was wondering when you’d come see me,” Winston said. “I saw you on the news two nights ago. I suppose you’re looking for extra credit for downplaying the PTA’s picketing debacle in front of the media.”
Paul blinked with surprise. “That news article was only fifteen seconds long. I’m surprised you noticed me at all.”
Winston gave him an uneasy smile. “I noticed because I expected you to strangle Mrs. Cadwell. If it had been me on the school steps, I might have. Has she lost her mind?”
“You mean recently?” Paul asked.
The principal waved his hand. “Point taken. If you’re not here about the news coverage, why are you here?”
Paul pulled from his sport coat pocket the handbill he had received from the witches and tossed it onto the principal’s desk.
Winston stared at the crinkled sheet then up at Paul. “Where did you get that? They’re not
supposed to go out until tomorrow.”
Paul shook his head. “It doesn’t matter where I got it. What matters is what it says. You’re really going to allow Cadwell to bring in a bible thumper to speak to the students?”
Winston’s sweaty forehead topped his flushed face, and the battle had scarce begun. The heavyset man pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. “I understand that Mr. Long is a reverend, but he is also an author and will be speaking in that capacity. Mr. Long speaks at schools all over the country in Halloween season, urging students to live clean, respectable lives and stay away from those who would catch them up in lifestyles that include drugs, violence, and the occult.”
Paul couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You really have been drinking the gorgon lady’s Kool-Aid, haven’t you? Reverend Long doesn’t write books about drugs or violence. He writes about the occult. Chalk pentagrams and black candles. Neither of which have ever been seen within a hundred miles of Ashcroft Senior High. The reverend’s talk is only going to bring such things to the kids’ attention and inspire them to try them out.”
Winston’s mouth gaped open, and his skin flushed even further.
“You know I’m right,” Paul said.
Winston threw his handkerchief down on the desk. “Of course you’re right. The reverend is a nut bar, and the only people he inspires are other nut bars. Unfortunately that group includes Mrs. Cadwell and many of the members of her PTA. The way I hear it, they worship the man. I’m not bringing him in; the PTA is. And until the reverend tells the students to get baptized or join a church, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
It was Paul’s turn to stand open mouthed with flushed skin. “She can really do this?”
Winston picked up his handkerchief. “She can do this. And she is doing this.”
That evening Paul and Sylvia retired to the living room to watch some television. At least, that was what they told Susie.
“So tell me about your meeting with Riordan,” Sylvia asked before they had even sat down. “And the witches.”
Much Ado about Macbeth Page 22