Cryptic Curses in Witchwood

by Jessica Lancaster

  I quickly turned the tap on, washing away the blood. “I knocked it,” I said. “Clumsy.”

  He shrugged. “He’s got a nice garden too,” he said, pressing his face up against the window of the door. “A bit small.”

  I looked out through the window of the kitchen, above the sink. He was right. Greg’s garden was smaller than mine, almost like the two houses at either side of him were encroaching on his land. While it might not have been the largest, the garden was divided into six small lots, each covered in a small green tent. “What’s he growing?” I asked.

  Grey smoke filled the clean void around the man’s body. He pressed his body weight against the door handle, pulling the door open. “Now that’s he’s not here, I can finally help myself to some of those gloves.” He waddled back, opening the door.

  “No,” I said, protesting as I moved in front of him. “You’re not going to steal from him.”

  He laughed, blowing smoke in my face. Luckily my glasses protected my eyes from the pure acidic stench. “Greg never leaves his doors unlocked,” he said. “So, he’ll never notice.”

  I wondered, if he wanted new gloves so badly, he could climb the fence separating the two gardens, but then I looked him over again as he tugged at his beard with one hand and tapped his pipe with his other. “I don’t think Greg would want you inside,” I finally said.

  “Else what?”

  “I’ll call the—”

  He gulped. “You’re that witch.”

  There was also that, but I’d never use my abilities in whatever ways his brain was concocting. “Leave,” I said.

  “Right, right,” he scoffed, pulling the pipe from his mouth. He shook his head, waddling back down the hall with a hand on his pants, keeping them up as he spread the unearthly stench of smoke with him.

  Greg wouldn’t be happy to know I’d let his neighbour in, or that he came in with a cloud of smog covering the upper half of his body.

  I reached the outside handle of the back door to close it when I stuck my hand in something wet. I knew, immediately.

  Blood.

  If I touched anymore of it I’d go crazy. I held my hand out, carrying myself over to the sink. I washed away the sticky residue, scrubbing it with a little soap.

  “All in the past couple of hours,” I murmured to myself.

  He had to have been here after he left my house. Or someone else was here looking for him, it could’ve been someone else’s blood, someone else could’ve smashed the glass. Greg didn’t strike me as the type of person who would go without cleaning after himself, even in a rush.

  “But the back door was left open,” I said in my continuation to verbalise my thoughts. “And if Greg never left his doors unlocked. He must’ve been in a rush.” It still didn’t make sense.

  I stepped to the door, looking outside. Greg had stone slabs paved in a line on the back of his house. But it’s not the stone I noticed first, it was the deep red droplets of blood going left from the door. It led directly to the fence of the next house.

  Pushing my head over the fence to get a look at next garden, I couldn’t see any signs of a struggle or further blood. But there was a handprint.

  A ruffle came from one of the small green plastic tents, covering a piece of land.

  “Hello?”

  It couldn’t be Greg. It wasn’t large enough.

  I approached slowly, stepping on the grass. The ruffle came again. It was right at the back. I paused, weighing the options, and the chances of it being some feral animal out here trying to steal Greg’s plants.

  I should’ve left it, but I didn’t.

  “Hello?”

  The ruffling came again. Like a struggle to break through the greenhouse tents. Exercising a polite degree of caution, my hands and mind were cocked on guard.

  Thwap! A slice cut through all the plastic and out popped a large black bird.

  “Oh, Goddess!” my hands clenched tight at the sight of the raven.

  It danced on the deflating plastic for a moment before looking at me and cawing. I leaned in to get a closer look.

  “You’ve got something to tell me, don’t you,” I said, slowly looking into its startled white eyes.

  It cawed once more before flying away, swooping overhead.

  The sign I was looking for. Something had happened to Greg. A raven doesn’t just fly into a plastic tent, especially not one in a garden between two high fences. I tapped a finger to my chin in thought, screwing my lips and eyes as I examined the area.

  I need to find out where Greg got to.

  SEVENTEEN

  The same hazy sense of eyes on me continued as I walked back home. I had no idea who was watching me. The sensation prickled at the back of my neck, and as a witch, I’d honed my senses plenty. I knew when I was being watched.

  A mix of screeching and ringing permeated the front door. It was loud, unbearable.

  I pushed the door open.

  “Shut that thing up!” Ivory screeched. “Now!”

  I groaned, listening to the shrill telephone ring. “I’m home now,” I said, cupping my ears as I closed the door with my foot. “How long has it been ringing?”

  “Forever!”

  Rushing to the living room. The phone cut off.

  “It’s gone now,” I said.

  A second later, the piercing ring came again.

  “Hello?” I said, expecting some telemarketer, relentless in their effort to get me to switch energy providers. All I heard was sobbing. “Maureen?” I took a guess. I didn’t need to be bothered by all her drama today, someone had gone missing.

  “Oh—oh—oh, Nora!” she sniffled.

  “Yes, Maureen. Are you okay?”

  “It’s Greg,” she cried.

  The phone dropped from my hand, falling to the ground. I didn’t bother picking it up. My heart raced. I set off to Maureen’s house. If Greg was there, I had questions, but also if Greg was there, bleeding, that was another matter.

  I was on Crescent Road when the thought of taking supplies hit me.

  Maureen stood at her front door, waiting. “I knew you’d come,” she said. “I’m not seeing things this time. I’m not.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, breathlessly. “Where is he?”

  She looked me in the eye, her face already breaking into tears. “The compost heap!” she cried.

  I ushered her inside, taking a hold of her elbow. “Let’s not make a scene,” I said, trying to keep a level head, but inside I was panicking, my throat bloated with the heated need to vomit.

  She stopped in the hallway before the kitchen. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t look again.”

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “He—he—he was just, flopped over it. Half of his body hanging out of it.”

  I gulped down the fireball of heat in my throat. “He’s still there?” I asked.

  “I—I—”

  She hadn’t checked again.

  I didn’t want to believe what she was telling me was true, for the first time, I didn’t want it to be true.

  “He helps with the garden,” she said after a deep breath.

  “He helps a lot of people.”

  “Did you see any—” my throat clenched. “Blood?”

  She sobbed harder into a piece of tissue.

  “I’ll see,” I told her.

  She let me go alone, although this was one of the times someone behind me for comfort would’ve been appreciated. From the small wooden porch, I couldn’t see anything in the compost heap. Perhaps she was still seeing things. My chest sank with relief.

  “Let’s do this,” I told myself, pulling my red blazer tight across my chest with both hands. I huffed, looking around the area for any sign of vandalism, or ravens flocking around in trees. Nothing. Not a single caw and the fences on both sides of the garden seemed intact.

  The earthy smell of wet compost wafted in my direction. I pinched my fingers at the tip of my nose, closing my nostrils. The dewy smell s
eemed new. I approached the bin. Zilch. Not a single print, foot or hand in sight. It was evenly mounded, including the place I’d prodded yesterday.

  Something caught my eye.

  Hooked to a wooden splinter, sticking out of the side. There was a white strip of fabric.

  Take every chance .

  This was Greg’s. I’d seen it on his wrist. He’d told me about it. It was something his mother would say. He’d been here.

  I rushed back inside, waving the piece of fabric in the air. “Maureen,” I called.

  She screamed and sobbed harder into her tissue. “I don’t want to know,” she said.

  “He was here,” I told her. “He was in your garden. I found this.”

  She stopped crying only long enough to see the object in front of her face. “What—what is it?”

  “It’s Greg’s,” I told her.

  “Oh, sweet—”

  “He was here,” I said, only realising afterwards that I was possibly feeding into the things she’d been seeing. After all, I didn’t see any signs of blood, and Greg would usually come by Maureen’s house to help.

  She blew her nose. “I—I—I knew.” She pulled the tissue away. “I knew I wasn’t going crazy.”

  She must’ve seen Greg. It wasn’t looking good. He was still missing. There were a lot of points, but no lines to connect them. Was Maureen doing all of this? The minor flickering thought turned my stomach queasy.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No idea, he comes around often.”

  “Okay, well, I’m going to head home,” I said. “If you see anything, call me, or go out and see, touch it.” I hunched my shoulders in a large shrug. “Maybe prod it with a stick. Then scream, again.”

  “I don’t want to cause another scene.”

  She could’ve fooled me. No more scenes.

  EIGHTEEN

  With the band of fabric clenched in my hand. I had to get home. I had to find Greg. Like the saying, there’s no smoke without fire, well the same could’ve been said for blood; there’s no blood without someone bleeding out. My throat shut at the thought.

  Racing with my heart, I barged in through the front door. Ivory snapped at the loud sound, but I rushed straight to the kitchen.

  I had to have something here for a locator spell, if I’d unpacked everything manually, I might’ve known where it was. I guess the true downside to witchcraft was that sometimes, magic worked in ways you wish it didn’t.

  “Okay, okay.” I straightened myself, pulling the constriction of the jacket off to give myself more room to breathe and much-needed room to think.

  Splashing a little water on my face from the kitchen tap, I nodded to myself and the slight reflection I caught in the corner of my eye on the glossy tiles.

  Everything would be where it was needed. I just had to think.

  Clapping my hands twice, my book of shadows appeared on the kitchen counter from being locked away in my bedroom cupboard. My mind ran a million miles an hour, trying to think of the spell I needed, usually I could do this blindfolded, but something about this just cut me to the point I was hobbling around in the dark, trying every light switch.

  “Ah-a!” I stubbed my finger on a page in the book. The spell was a little more hardcore, asking for blood of the missing. Which, I had – in the bin.

  I didn’t have to dig, the cotton swabs I’d used to clean Greg’s hand were on top of the pile. Using blood in magic was a grey area, and a line I’ve watched many witches travel carefully down. As long as there’s no death or intended injury, then the blood is usually usable.

  “First step is getting the ingredients,” I told myself.

  Blood. Check .

  I needed a crystal or a gem, something to hone in on. There were two types often used in aiding witches to find lost things; amazonite, a light green gemstone with creamy white spots through it, or chalcopyrite, a brassy-coloured mineral stone. I had neither. I still had very little crystals and gems, other than the ones on my fingers. I’d have to do this one solo.

  I gathered the remaining items on my kitchen counter; a small silver chain (although useless without the stone), a bowl, and a white candle.

  Shutting the blinds of the kitchen window and over the door, I closed myself in darkness, or at least as dark as it could possibly get with the odd stream of light passing through.

  As instructed, I lit the candle, placing it behind the bowl.

  “Blessed be, Goddess,” I said. “Help me.”

  I added the cotton with the blood to the bowl.

  “I’ve lost something.”

  I moved my hands above the candle and the cotton in a circular motion. Closing my eyes, my mind flooded with images of Greg. What I needed was for the cotton to burn, and in the flames, it would show me where he was. But nothing. I held his missing wristband, and still, nothing. I tried adding the band to the bowl. And after five minutes of trying and trying – I stopped.

  I gave up and blew the candle out.

  Crossing my fingers, I hoped he was at the hospital, or someone was helping him with whatever injury he’d sustained. I don’t know why he didn’t just come back to me, I could’ve helped. I’d already helped him when he cut his hand.

  Before it got too late, I walked the length of the street again, noticing his lights were still off. The old man had gone, but the faint smell of smoke continued to perfume the area near his house. I hadn’t noticed it before, but then again, I hadn’t spent as much time here to notice anything like that.

  The unoccupied house beside me, the one which I’d presumed burnt down during the night, was still intact. I stared a little, wondering how it could’ve happened. Not a single sign of a burning ever happening. Perhaps I’d dreamt the whole thing, perhaps Greg hadn’t even stayed over.

  No. I snapped myself out of it.

  My gut knew. My gut told me it had happened.

  Nothing could settle what I was feeling or thinking.

  Knock. Knock.

  The only people I knew who’d knock would be Greg or Maureen, and I wasn’t too sure Maureen knew where I lived, or that she ever leave her house. I didn’t want to answer it. And nobody called after 6 P.M. if it’s important they’ll—

  Knock. Knock.

  —knock again.

  “Give me another hour!” Ivory snapped.

  “It’s the front door,” I said back to her quietly as I hurried to the door, wrapping a chunky knit beige cardigan around myself.

  A tall man. Dressed in a luminous yellow jacket and heavy black trousers, he stood at the door. He held a police cap in his hand, pressed to his chest. I looked at him through the hallway light.

  “I’m PC Adrian Lane,” he said quickly. “Can I speak with a Ms. Lavender?”

  Looking him in the eye, they were red. “Sure,” I said. “What about?”

  He scoffed. “Well, if you let me come—”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said, moving in his way. “The house is a mess.”

  The last thing I needed was an officer of the law coming inside and having him see Ivory, or even hear her complain from inside the cupboard. The thought didn’t bare going over, I knew he’d be suspicious if he heard a voice calling out.

  “Okay,” he said, his jaw clenching as he tilted his head from side-to-side. “So, Evanora Lavender, is it?” he asked with a smile.

  “Yes, yes it is.”

  “I had a couple questions.”

  I nodded. “Go, right ahead.”

  He cleared his throat, hacking at a cough. “Where were you last night between the hours of 8 P.M. and 9 P.M.?”

  “Home,” I answered immediately.

  “And do you have anyone who can corroborate your story?” he asked.

  “Gregory, my neighbour, he was here.”

  He hummed. “I’ve already tried to visit Mr. Marston.”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t heard from him all day,” I replied.

  The police office
r rubbed at his eyes again. “But he stayed here, correct?”

  “Correct,” I said. “How did you—”

  He glanced behind himself, shuffling on the spot. “There are a lot of people who saw him enter, but nobody saw him leave.”

  I gulped – hard.

  “He wasn’t here this morning when I woke,” I said.

  He continued to rub his eye, screwing one eye shut like an awkward wink.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes.”

  I hummed at his protest. “Perhaps you should see someone about it, it looks like it could be infected.”

  “It’s just from an all-nighter at the station,” he snapped. “We’re busy.”

  “Investigating the house fire from next door?” I asked.

  He looked at the house that had been alight last night. “No,” he said. “We haven’t had any reports of a fire.”

  “But—I—well—”

  “Sorry to have disturbed you,” he said, planting his hat firm on his head. “But I should be somewhere else.”

  I had more questions, like was there some infectious eye disease going around? Nothing was making sense. I needed to know what was happening. I needed to know what was going on. I tried to object, but he was already halfway down the garden path while cogs turned in my head.

  NINETEEN

  Odd . The man had walked here. I knew the nearest police station was in the centre of town, and that was a solid twenty-minute walk away, but only if you didn’t tire or need to take a break.

  “Ivory, I’m heading out,” I said, approaching the cupboard. “The back door is open, and the wards are up. Tell me if you see anything strange happening tonight.”

  “Strange?” she asked, excitedly. “Will do!”

  In my closet was my trusty cloak, used to make me invisible. I whipped the cloak around my shoulders, over the cardigan I was wearing. It was a little chilly.

  I fastened the cloak in place with a brooch. One look in the mirror reflected nothing. It had been a couple weeks since I’d been able to wear this, and it gave me butterflies to pin it in place again.

  PC Adrian Lane was at the end of the street when I left my house. I hurried, trying to catch up to him as he stood near Lorette’s fish and chip shop. It wasn’t open yet. He stood, almost waiting impatiently.