The Case of the Wayward Witch

by A. A. Albright

  He shook his head in exasperation. ‘Anyway, she turned to me, pointed at my legs and … voila … They’ll be broken for weeks. That’s what they do Katy. Witches hurt people. I’m lucky all she did was put me out of action. But what’s going to happen now that I’m laid up? How many more men is she going to kill?’

  I looked away from him, partly because he was leaning awfully close to me and he needed a bath, but also because the things he was saying were making me tingle. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end, and I felt my fear begin to change into something I wasn’t used to. Something I couldn’t quite pin down. A sense of foreboding, maybe?

  But this was crazy, wasn’t it? Dating a few guys in a row who wound up dead didn’t make Diane a witch. It made her unlucky. Maybe it even made her a bit of a jinx. But it didn’t make her an evil servant of … what had my uncle said? … “himself down below.”

  ‘Just out of interest, how many of your painkillers have you taken, Uncle Faster?’

  He let out a gloomy laugh. ‘You know I haven’t taken any, Katy. The bottle’s still sealed. Us Kramer men are made of strong stuff. And while we’re on the subject of strength, I don’t remember you ever being sick. You never broke anything or sprained anything either, did you?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘I’m healthy and lucky, I guess.’

  ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘And your father. We barely get a sniffle, and we don’t have stupid accidents. The only way a witch hunter gets hurt is if a witch does it.’ He pointed to his legs again. ‘This is real, Katy. As real as the cute little nose on your face. And as much as I don’t want to, I’m going to have to ask for your help.’

  I swallowed. ‘I … but you said women couldn’t do this.’

  ‘Normally they can’t. But there was an anomaly before, and it seems like you might just be an anomaly too. You can see the inscription on your dad’s knife, which means you are a hunter. Mind you, I’d keep that knife as an ornament if I were you. Won’t do you much good in battle. Your dad threw it at a werewolf once and it bounced right off the thing’s hide.’

  ‘Whoa. Werewolf? I thought you said you were a witch hunter.’

  ‘And werewolves are part of that. Witches created the very first werewolves. Vampires, too. All hexed by witches. All controlled by them. Not the weredogs, mind you. Now they’re the descendants of the hounds of Hell, and I wouldn’t like to have to fight one of them, so I wouldn’t. Especially not with one of your great aunt’s weapons.’

  I put aside the reference to weredogs for the moment. I’d had an enormous dose of strange today, and I wasn’t sure I could handle much more. ‘Aunt Jude. She was the other anomaly, wasn’t she?’

  ‘She was,’ he confirmed. ‘She could see the same things that the men in the family could. Sense the same things. But it didn’t do her much good. She turned out to be the worst witch hunter ever known. No idea where she is now – probably sacrificed by one of them lot. Her Toolkit came back at one stage, so I’m guessing she’s dead as a doornail.’

  ‘Her Toolkit?’

  ‘That’s what we call the bits and bobs we use for identifying and fighting them lot. Hers got posted back here … oh, a few months ago. Well, I say posted, but in truth it just landed on the door with not so much as a note attached. Hmm, that’s an idea.’ He drummed his fingers against his chin.

  After more than a minute, he still hadn’t elaborated, so I thought I’d better give him a nudge. ‘What’s an idea?’

  ‘It’s weird that you can see the writing on that.’ He pointed to the knife. ‘But that alone doesn’t mean you’ll be up to the job. There’s one more thing you could do that would prove whether or not you’re capable of tracking down Diane in my place.’

  ‘Hang on a minute there. What gives you the impression I want to track down Diane? Or that I want to be involved in any of this.’

  ‘Oh, you want to stick your oar in, all right. I recognise the signs.’

  He had me there. Sure, I was feeling overwhelmed right now, but I knew that once I’d calmed down, I would definitely want to know more about all of this. I felt a sense of excitement that none of my half-dozen college courses or numerous jobs had ever given me. Could it be that I was feeling a calling?

  ‘See?’ Uncle Faster grinned at me. ‘You’re excited about this, Katy. You’ve got the tingles. But the thing about being a witch hunter is that it’s a closed club, and membership doesn’t come with a handshake or a few quid being handed to the doorman. You get into this club if you’re supposed to be in the club. Only a member of the club can see the inscriptions written on our weapons. And only a member of the club can open a hunter’s Toolkit. Aunt Jude’s is up in my attic. If you can open that, then I’ll send you after Diane. I mean, you can’t be worse than Jude, now can you?’

  I might have never met my Great Aunt Jude, but I felt a sudden and strong sense of protectiveness. She could have been a terrible witch hunter, but I sincerely doubted she could be worse than Uncle Faster. And all of this only men can be hunters stuff? I’d be willing to bet that the reason Aunt Jude was the only female hunter had nothing to do with her being an anomaly. Probably all the women in the family inherited the gene, just the same as the men did. But with idiots like Uncle Faster in charge of things, they just hadn’t gotten the chance to prove themselves.

  My heart began to thrum. I didn’t really care about proving myself, but I did care about this. If the beautiful Diane was really responsible for killing all of those guys, then someone had to stop her. But could it be me? Should it be me?

  I thought of the other available options. The gardaí would laugh me out of the station, wouldn’t they? The newspapers the same. If any of this was real, then I had to get to the bottom of it and, with Uncle Faster out of action, I’d have to do it alone. Maybe this Moody person, whoever he was, would be able to help me out too.

  ‘Well I’d better get up to the attic then, hadn’t I?’ I said, standing up. ‘I’ll make up my mind after I’ve opened the Toolkit.’ Because I would open it, I was sure – and I couldn’t wait to see the look on my uncle’s face once I had.

  5. The Tools for the Job

  Uncle Faster’s attic was just as slovenly as the rest of his house. And up here, the creepy crawlies were in charge. As I flashed Uncle Faster’s ancient torch around, a gang of rats scurried behind some boxes, while an exceptionally large spider gave me the evil-eye. Its web was in my way, and since I didn’t fancy getting in a tangle with it – or with the spider – I got onto my knees and crawled.

  ‘It’s over by the window!’ he called up. ‘At the back of the attic. And don’t go nosing in any of the other boxes. The things in some of them would put hair on your chest. It’d be way too much for –’

  ‘–me to handle,’ I finished, cutting him off. ‘Yeah, yeah, I know – because I’m a woman, right?’

  A woman whose knees were in agony. I didn’t even know what I was crawling over half of the time. I heard one or two crunches that could have been the tiny bones of the rat family’s earlier generations. I definitely didn’t want to check. The light of the torch was flickering in and out, anyway. During one of its more illuminating moments, I saw that a particularly industrious spider had decided to begin a new web right around the lens of the torch.

  I thought I could see a crack of light over at the north side of the attic, which might be a window. But there was no way I could get there by crawling. The path was littered with piles of what seemed to be Uncle Faster’s old weapons. There were knives, hatchets, wooden stakes and even some antique guns and silver bullets.

  I was glad my mother never took him up on the offer to live here – I doubted I’d have made it past ten in a house like this.

  I bravely unfurled myself, giving a warning stare to the large spider and saying, ‘Tickle me at your peril.’

  Sure, because tickling me was all it wanted to do. It certainly didn’t want to crawl into my ears and lay eggs in my brain. Wait, did spiders lay eggs? Funny how
I never seemed to retain information about things that were totally terrifying to me. I would make a fabulous witch hunter, clearly.

  Taking in a deep and resolute breath, I climbed over the weapons and headed towards the sliver of light, feeling a sense of satisfaction when I saw it: a small wooden chest, just like Faster had described. It was the least dusty item in the attic, which would make my uncle’s timeframe for its arrival correct. This, no doubt, was Great Aunt Jude’s Toolkit.

  I rushed over the last pile of crap. It was mostly made up of (hopefully spent) old grenades, by the looks of things. I made it without blowing myself to pieces, and then I fell to my knees in front of the trunk. The torch flickered out again, but I gave it a good thump, shining light on the chest:

  The Toolkit of Jude Kramer, Witch Hunter

  Well, I could see the inscription, so that was a start. There was no lock, just an old leather strap and a metallic buckle, wrapped all the way around the chest. With hushed breath, I used a rag I’d brought with me to wipe the small amount of dust from the chest, and then I pulled the buckle. It moved easily, with not so much as a creak or a squeak as I eased open the lid.

  So there it was. I could open the box. I was a female witch hunter, just like Jude. Excitement and fear mingled, and I looked through the contents of the chest.

  There were quite a few items inside. She had many of the same hunting manuals as Uncle Faster. They didn’t look like they’d been opened very much, as the bindings were barely cracked. There were notebooks with scrawled writing, too, but there were so many of them that, even if the writing were a little more legible, they’d take a very long time to read.

  Below the books, there was a large piece of lovely red and gold material. It was too big to be a scarf. A blanket, maybe? Or some sort of shawl? I gently eased it out and swept it over my shoulders, discovering that it had a hood, and a toggle at the throat in order to secure it in place.

  ‘A cloak,’ I said gleefully. ‘I’ve always wanted a cloak.’

  ‘Did you say something?’ my uncle called up. ‘Have you found it?’

  Sod him, anyway. He was all the way at the bottom of the stairs. Did he have the ears of a bat?

  ‘I didn’t say anything!’ I shouted. ‘And I’ve not found it yet, but I think I see it!’

  I wasn’t sure why I lied. This quiet time with Aunt Jude’s belongings, though … it felt precious. It felt like something that I didn’t want him getting his big hairy hands all over. Not for a while, anyway.

  There were a few weapons – knives and hatchets, and some ropes that seemed to lasso themselves automatically when I whipped them through the air … There were purses filled with oddly-shaped coins in gold, silver, and some metals I didn’t recognise. The small star- and sickle-shaped coins were so pretty that I couldn’t stop staring at them. It was all a bit on the wow side, really.

  But the most fascinating item in the chest was a small wooden box. Like so many other things today, this too had an inscription. It said: To JK, so you can see things as they really are, all of those things you truly deserve to see. And so you can protect them from those who would do them harm.

  This lid did creak, ever so slightly, as I opened it up. Inside there were a few items – some large, folded pieces of paper that looked like maps, a gold necklace inlaid with a beautiful blue stone, and a magnifying glass.

  ‘A magnifying glass!’ I gasped. I had just been daydreaming about using one of those. But first, I had to put on the necklace. It was beckoning to me, and not just because it was lovely. I felt like this necklace was destined for me, just like everything else in this chest.

  I placed the necklace around my neck, and laid the magnifying glass aside while I unfolded the first map. It was of Dublin City, but everything was too small to see.

  I grabbed the magnifying glass, holding it to my eye and peering at the map. As I did so, I needed to suppress another gasp. Yes, the magnifying glass made the map look bigger, but it also made it look very, very different.

  In Dublin alone, there were countless areas that I knew didn’t actually existed. There was an enormous area, just off Grafton Street, called Warren Lane. It was so big that it could be considered a city within a city. There was an enormous park, and a place called Lupin Lane just off Talbot Street. There was an area called Samhain Street near the canal at Portobello …

  I shook my head in amazement, poring over the rest of the maps, with the magnifying glass still at my eye. In all the counties in Ireland, and all the countries in the world, the magnifying glass revealed cities within cities, towns within towns …

  Each and every one of these oddities had something in common. There was a small drawing on the map, just outside all of them. The drawing was of a gold necklace, with a pretty blue stone. In the centre of the necklace, the word Admitaz was written.

  I stared down at the necklace I wore around my neck. It looked exactly like the one drawn onto the maps. So what did this mean? Could I see these places, go to these places, as long as I wore the necklace? Or did I need the magnifying glass for that, too?

  Another possibility was that the gone-off milk had messed with my mind and I was imagining all of this, but somehow I didn’t think so.

  ‘Katy? Katy?’ There was a pause and then another, ‘Katy?’

  A sense of panic began to form. He said he’d never bothered looking in this chest, and I really didn’t want him to look now. Sure, these things could be no more than the product of my fevered brain (anyone spending more than five minutes with Uncle Faster was bound to go doolally, right?) but what if they weren’t? What if there really was a secret world, a secret society filled with witches and who knew what else, hiding in plain sight?

  Did I really want to lead Uncle Faster to their door before I’d had a chance to check them out for myself? Sure, he might already know all about Admitaz and magical magnifying glasses and whatnot, but wouldn’t he have told me about them if he had?

  If he had tools like this in his kit, then he’d have no trouble tracking down witches. He wouldn’t need to be following Diane Carey down Grafton Street, or to Dublin Zoo. He’d be there right now, wheelchair or not, searching all of these places for Diane, with his binder and his Soul-Sucker knife in hand.

  And something told me that my uncle had a whole lot going on in the bluster department, but not so much in the brains. So if there were witches, and he stormed into one of these secret areas, then he might find himself with worse than just a couple of broken legs.

  ‘Katy!’ he bellowed again. ‘What are you doing up there? You’ve not fainted at the sight of a spider, have you?’

  ‘No!’ I cried, frantically gathering everything together. ‘I’ve found it. I’m coming back down now.’

  6. As They Really Are

  Just as I was about to slip the magnifying glass into the smaller box with the map and the necklace, a flash of movement caught my eye through the window. I used my rag to wipe the glass, and peered down into the garden below.

  ‘Oh, sweet mercy,’ I whispered, wiping a bit more. It was my uncle’s next-door neighbour, and he was heading into his garden shed.

  ‘All the better to ogle you with,’ I murmured, grabbing the magnifying glass and bringing it to my eye, just in time for Mister Gorgeous to emerge from the shed with a crate of beer in his arms.

  But it turned out that mysterious maps weren’t the only thing this magnifying glass displayed differently. Because through it, my neighbour did not look better than the Hemsworth brothers. He looked old, gnarled, and ugly. There was a nasty glint in his eyes, something that made my skin feel like the attic’s spiders and rats were taking up residence beneath my skin.

  He was laughing quietly to himself as he opened one of the bottles of beer. As he drank, his teeth caught the light of the evening sun. They were shiny, pointy, and I had the horrific feeling that they might just be all the better to eat me with.

  With my eyes feeling like they’d been assaulted, I dropped the magnifying glass. A
nd the moment I was no longer looking through it, the neighbour looked like Mister Gorgeous once more.

  I retrieved the magnifying glass and looked again. Sure enough, looking through it made him appear like all my nightmares come true. It was my uncle’s neighbour, and yet it wasn’t. He wore the same tight jeans and red T-shirt, and his hair was the same colour. But everything else about him was so very, very different. He was walking with a hunch. His face seemed to have aged eighty years or so, and as he grinned to himself, I saw his teeth again, and shuddered. What kind of person had pointed teeth?

  So which version of this guy was real? Just a few minutes earlier, I would have sworn that what I saw with my own two eyes was the only thing I could trust. I would have convinced myself that the magnifying glass was like one of those creepy fairground mirrors, distorting Mister Perfect into Mister Not if He Were the Last Man on the Planet.

  But now?

  Now, I’d seen so much. Now, I believed in so much more than I’d ever believed in before. I couldn’t help but recall the words inscribed on the box:

  To JK, so you can see things as they really are, all of those things you truly deserve to see. And so you can protect them from those who would do them harm.

  If this magnifying glass showed things as they really were, then was I now seeing my uncle’s neighbour as he really was?

  ‘Katy!’ he called up again.

  ‘Coming!’ I shouted back. ‘I’ll be there in a sec.’

  I shoved the magnifying glass back into the box, tucking it away beneath the red and gold cloak. With the rope Uncle Faster had given me, I lowered the chest down, and then climbed down the attic ladder after it, brushing myself off.

  He was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, casting a vaguely interested look over the chest. ‘I see the buckle is open. So what’s inside?’

  I opened the lid a crack, just showing him the weapons and books, with the cloak covering everything below. ‘So this makes me a witch hunter, right?’