by N. M. Howell
“Why are you doing this?” I shouted at him, wrestling against his strength. “What do you have against cops?”
The boy pushed me down onto my back again and pinned my shoulders down with the entire weight of his body. “Not cops,” he snarled. “Retired cops. Cops who gave up on their communities. Pathetic weak people who abandoned those who need them most.”
“What happened to you to hate them so much?” I said through gritted teeth. I pushed up against him, but couldn’t make him move.
The boy screamed loudly and slapped me hard across the face.
“Shut up!” he yelled. “They deserve to be punished.”
I grunted and called on all my strength, but it was no use, the boy had me pinned. I began screaming and thrashing, but still he held me down.
He grinned down at me with that eerie grin and continued his incantation, nearly spitting the words onto my face.
I didn’t recognize what he was saying. It sounded like Latin to me, but whatever it was, I doubted it was going to end well.
“Bailey,” I shouted. “Do something!”
I could see Bailey from the corner of my eye trying to tear up a floorboard to use as a weapon, but it was no use. A moment later, though, she reached into her bag and brought out Mrs. Brody’s heavy little box.
She then threw the box as hard as she could, and it made contact with the back of the kid’s head.
His eyes grew wide upon impact, and he slumped down on me heavily, completely unconscious.
17
“Nice one,” I said to her as I tried to wiggle free from under the boy’s weight.
The box itself fell to the ground and shattered, spilling its magical contents into the room.
I regained my breath and pushed the boy the rest of the way off of me. Bailey came to help and rolled the boy into his side.
“The gun would have been a better choice, no?” I asked, pulling Bailey into a sideways hug.
Bailey shook her head. “I’m sorry. I panicked.”
I shrugged. “Whatever, it worked. Thank you.”
I rubbed my shoulder where I had hit the ground. It was extremely tender, and I had a feeling I would have a massive bruise.
“Quick,” I said. “Pull the others away from the liquid. They might recover if we can get them fresh air.”
Bailey and I dragged the unconscious bodies towards the outer walls of the mill, as far away from the spilled liquid as possible.
The ghosts watched us as we worked, but said nothing.
Finally, I approached one of the ghosts and asked if they had any advice. The male figure shook his head. “No, it’s too late. They’re gone.”
I shook my head, refusing to believe it. “You’re wrong. We can save them.” Tears began streaming down my cheeks as I desperately tried to think of a way out of the situation we were in.
I brought out my phone all the while keeping an eye on the unconscious kid on the floor. He could wake up any minute, and we had to be ready.
I tried dialing 911, but there was no reception where we were.
I swore under my breath and ran to the other side of the building. Still, no signal.
“No wonder the sheriff wasn’t answering our calls,” I said to Bailey. “There’s no damn reception here.”
I gasped as the boy stirred, but after a moment he fell still again.
“We don’t have much time,” Bailey said in a panic. “What do we do?”
I looked around the room hoping that something would jump out at me with an idea.
I had grabbed the sheriff’s gun and slid it into my back pocket and Bailey did the same with Brett’s, so at least we could protect ourselves if the boy awoke.
The guns wouldn’t protect us from magic, though.
“The handcuffs,” I said. “Grab the sheriff’s handcuffs, and we’ll cuff the kid in case he wakes up.”
Bailey nodded. “Good idea.”
Bailey grabbed the handcuffs from the sheriff’s belt, and we snapped them around the boy’s wrists. I then kicked the kid over onto his stomach so we wouldn’t have to look at his evil face.
Bailey raised her eyebrow at me after I did so, and I shrugged. “To keep him from choking on his tongue,” I said.
I felt strangely calm, and I noticed Bailey even had a large smile on her face.
I glanced around the room and realized what was happening.
“Oh crap,” I said. “Bailey, Mrs. Brody’s box. It’s filling the entire space with its magic.”
I began to hear the faint sound of sleigh bells and the smell of Christmas baking consumed me.
Bailey laughed. “Oh no. What do we do?”
The box was smashed into pieces on the floor, and we had no hope in containing the magic.
I jumped as the boy stirred again on the floor. This time he groaned and tried to move his arm.
Bailey and I stepped back from the kid. Sure, he was cuffed, but we still didn’t know what sort of magic he was capable of.
As the kid groaned into the floor, I ran toward his bag and dragged it as far away from him as possible. Perhaps there would be something in the bag that would be useful.
“I’m going to look through here,” I said. “You go try and call for help.”
I began to giggle. Dammit, I couldn’t help myself. The stupid holiday spirit in the room was too powerful. I could barely resist the urge to start singing. What the hell was happening to me? It was certainly the most inappropriate thing that could possibly have happened at that moment.
Bailey began humming a Christmas tune as she hopped between the unconscious bodies on the floor, checking to see if they were still alive.
“No one’s dead yet,” Bailey sang. “Their hearts are still beating. Barely, though.”
She looked so unbelievably happy from the magic in the room as she pressed her cheek against Brett’s chest. I couldn’t believe the situation we had gotten ourselves into.
“What the hell is happening?” I shouted to the room around us. The ghosts nearby jumped away from me, but the holiday spirit in the room was too much for anyone to resist.
We were locked in an old mill with no hope of getting out and calling for help. Our friends were lying on the ground dying, a murderous teenager was groaning on the floor in handcuffs, and we were dancing around humming Christmas tunes, the happiest we had been in a long time. Unintentionally happy, mind you. But happy none the less. What on earth was Mrs. Brody thinking, putting the box in Bailey’s bag? That was certainly not the time for carol singing.
The sound of carols in my head began to grow louder, and I realized the spirits in the room had began to sing. Dammit.
Of course, it would affect them, too. It affected Sarah and Peter when Mrs. Brody opened the box on Christmas Eve, so it made sense it would have the same effect, here. Only, the effect was about ten-fold, as the entire magical contents of the box filled the room.
At least it improved the mood in the room. The ghosts were no longer scared and angry, they were actually smiling and singing with each other.
I shook my head, trying to imagine what this scene would look like to an outsider. What a mess we had gotten ourselves into.
“Bailey,” I finally said. “What are we going to do? We need to call for help, and fast! They’re going to die without help.”
Bailey laughed. “I know, it’s awful. We need a plan.” She smiled and began singing the Christmas Song with the spirits around her. If she was concerned, she definitely didn’t show it. I doubted I did, either, and felt immensely guilty for it.
I focused my attention back to the kid’s bag I had in my hand and began looking through its contents to see if there was anything valuable we could use to get ourselves out of this mess. There must at least be a key or something for the door.
The bag contained mostly newspaper cut-outs and a notepad, and I dumped the entire contents of it onto the floor for a better look.
I recognized many of the people from the missing persons articl
es we had read, and many of their faces were cut out in the newspaper clippings. I looked up around me and recognized the spirits who matched the identities of the victims in the articles.
There wasn’t much else in the bag apart from more clippings, a notebook, and a framed photo of a middle-aged couple. The male had the same lopsided grin as the kid, and I suspected they were his parents.
I looked through the papers on the ground and found a newspaper clipping with the matching photo, dated back to three years prior.
The couple had been murdered in their home during a break-in while their son hid in a closet. The kid had apparently called 911 a few times, but the local police officer - of which there was only one, apparently, in his tiny town - had recently retired and moved away with his girlfriend and they hadn’t yet replaced him. By the time the state police arrived, the parents had been killed, and the suspect had escaped.
Well, crap. No wonder the kid had it out for retired cops.
I spread out the papers, hoping to find a key of some sort, but there was nothing like that that I could see.
I picked up the notebook and flipped through it, pausing on the first page that contained a list of scribbled names.
About halfway down the page, I read the names Jordan O’Riley with the word retired next to it and my name beside it.
I shook my head and wondered how the kid even knew we were together. He must have spent ages researching these people and their lives. As far as I knew, Jordan and my relationship wasn’t really that public and his methods of finding out about us were really quite worrisome.
Not as worrisome as the dying bodies around me, though. I snapped the notebook shut and bent down next to Jordan. His face was growing more pale by the minute, and I began to panic as the realization that they might not actually make it came crashing down on me.
I stroked his hair and shook him again, whispering his name into his ear. He lay still, completely unconscious and nonreactive.
“Help!” I finally shouted at the top of my voice. “Anyone, please! Help!”
Bailey shouted as well, and we both yelled at the top of our lungs. It was no use, though, as no one could hear us in such a remote location.
About an hour passed since the box broke and the magic was released, and the power of the spell was just getting stronger. Mistletoe was sprouting along the walls and roof beams, and I swore the air was sparkling.
I tried my best to ignore my surroundings, trying to focus on the people on the floor and a way out, but the environment was distracting and all I could think about was eggnog and Santa Clause.
“UGH!” I shouted angrily. Well, it came out sounding cheerful, but deep down I was angry.
I ran towards the door and began kicking it and shaking it, hoping that maybe the latches would break or something.
I whispered a small incantation to break the lock, but the spell zapped back at me and shocked my face with its strange reaction. The kid must have spelled the door. Of course, he would, given the lengths he seemed to have gone to lure those poor people to the mill.
I glanced up towards the ceiling as snow began to fall inside the room. Mrs. Brody’s magic was strong, and the entire mill began to look some crazy scene from a Christmas movie. I shook my head and brushed the snow off my shoulders, trying my best to ignore the sounds and smells emanating from all around me.
I finally had to cover my ears with my hands and fell to my knees, shouting for help repeatedly until I felt like I was going to pass out.
I jumped back a moment later as I noticed one of the thin windows illuminate with light from outside. I tried to listen through the sounds of Christmas, but I couldn’t really hear anything past the growing sound of sleigh bells and music.
The light got brighter, then instantly turned off.
I ran towards Bailey, panicked. “It’s a car. Someone is outside!”
Bailey’s eyes grew wide with fear. “Do you think it’s another couple?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It could be an accomplice of his. We have no way of knowing.”
“Quick, behind the wall!” We nearly had to shout through the loud sounds in the room. Whoever was outside was going to be met with an exceptionally strange scene when they came in.
We both held our breaths as we watched the front door through the cracks in the wall.
The doors slowly opened, and three silhouettes appeared in the doorway. As they stepped closer into the room, I breathed a sigh of relief as I recognized the blue of Mrs. Brody’s hair.
Bailey and I ran back around the other side of the wall to greet them.
“Don’t close the door!” I shouted.
The door nearly closed, but Jane reached back and grabbed it before it shut.
“It locks from the inside. We were locked in!” I managed to say through heavy breathing once I ran all the way across the mill to join them.
“What are you doing here?” Bailey exclaimed.
I couldn’t believe our luck. Maybe we weren’t going to die in this Christmassy prison, after all.
Jane removed her shoe and used it to prop the door open. “When you guys didn’t answer your phones, we suspected something was wrong.”
“And then Mrs. Brody sensed her spell was released, and we really knew something was going down,” Rory said.
“But how did you get here?” I asked. “How did you know where we were?”
Mrs. Brody rolled her eyes. “You girls constantly underestimate me.”
“Do you track us?” I asked, shocked.
Mrs. Brody shrugged and gazed about the room.
I walked up to one of the windows and stood on my tiptoes to look out of it. I cupped my hands around my eyes to block out the light and looked out to see Brett’s car outside.
“How did you use Brett’s car without the key?” I asked.
“What did I just say, dear?” Mrs. Brody exclaimed. “I have my ways. Don’t you worry about it.”
Rory stepped into the room with a blended look of both terror and awe.
“What the hell happened here?” she asked. She then pointed at the shifting half-conscious teenage boy on the floor. “And who is he?”
I walked up to the boy and bent down to see his face. His eyes were closed, but he shifted and groaned, and I suspected he was slowly coming to.
“The one responsible for all of this,” I spat.
Rory stepped away from him, the look on her face turning to one of complete disgust.
Mrs. Brody, quite the sight to see in her favorite brown nightgown and electric blue spiky hair, stepped into the center of the room and took in the scene around her. She then looked to the side wall and noticed the still forms of the Jordan, Brett, the sheriff, his two officers, and the couple, and frowned. “Well, let’s do something about this, shall we?”
18
Good old Mrs. Brody always knew what to do in the strangest of situations. She waved her hands, and at least the snow stopped falling inside, but the rest of the spell was still running full-force.
The spirits were singing, and the air still smelled like cookies, but at least we could see now without the thick falling snow.
I led Mrs. Brody towards the couple, and she kneeled down next to them and began inspecting their bodies.
“They drank straight from the potion that did this,” I explained. “They were the first ones down. Everyone else just inhaled it after he dumped it on the floor.”
Mrs. Brody nodded. “Alright. Thank you, dear. Will you be so kind as to go get my bag from the car?”
“I’ll get it,” Bailey said, and she sprinted out through the doors towards the car. She came back a moment later with a tiny purse, no bigger than a satchel.
“Just set it down over there, dear,” Mrs. Brody said, pointing near the spilled liquid on the ground. Most of it had dripped through the cracks between the floorboards, but there was still enough for her to go investigate its contents.
She walked over to the puddle and dip
ped her finger in the liquid. She then sniffed it and gave it a quick lick.
I recoiled at the sight and really hoped she knew what she was doing. The last thing we needed was an unconscious Mrs. Brody to top off the events of the evening.
Fortunately, she didn’t seem affected by the magic, and she tasted the liquid a few more times before figuring out what the contents were.
“Clever,” she murmured as she worked.
“What is it?” I asked. I wished she would hurry up. Jordan’s face was growing paler by the minute, and I wasn’t sure how much time he had left.
I could appreciate the benefit of the stupid Christmas spell, as under any other circumstance I would be absolutely catatonic at that moment, watching my boyfriend slowly fade away. As chance had it, while I was obviously concerned, the spell was so all-consuming that my heart wasn’t breaking nearly as much as it should have been.
If he did die and the spell wore off… Well, that would be another thing, entirely.
“It’s a combination of a sleeping draught, a paralytic, and a touch of foxglove to stop the heart.”
“Witches clove?” I asked, shocked. My father had taught me all about different herbs and their uses when I was young. Foxglove, or witch’s clove, was one that he taught me to avoid at all cost, as it was extremely poisonous and could kill you if consumed. I remember that one in particular, because the flowers were so pretty, and I would often bring them home for my aunt in a bouquet. That was until I learned how deadly it was.
Maybe that was why they stopped inviting me home for the holidays.
Mrs. Brody nodded and began looking through her tiny satchel. She then pulled out a few glass containers and set them on the ground around her and began filling them with various liquids and crushed herbs from her bag.
I watched her in wonder, curious how so many large items could fit in such a small bag. Magic was absolutely amazing, sometimes. Even growing up in a house full of magic and spells, some things still blew me away. I watched her pull item after item out of that tiny bag, and couldn’t help but think of Harry Potter.