by Sarff, Julie
Between sips of wine and bites of chocolate cake, everyone at the table nods their heads.
Yes, with ghosts it is always the same, they either want justice or vengeance, or both.
Chapter 2 (Elfie)
I, Elfie, think that Amboise is beautiful in all seasons, but in fall, with the leaves cascading down all over the Loire valley, it’s spectacular. Tourism drops off, and the work at the chocolate shop slows. Noelle, whose real name is Lauretha, can handle the customers by herself. All of which means I am free to help track down the Count’s ghost. Which is a good thing because after further discussion last night, Hatha decided we should drive to Chateau Trisse and rid them of their ghost. Before we leave town however, there’s one thing I’d like to do. I need to find an electrician who can rewire the chandelier and help out with our other pressing issues as well. Most importantly I need someone to fix the central heating system. None of us want to spend another winter like the last one, chopping down trees in the middle of the night and dragging them back to burn in in the chateau’s fireplaces.
And to think you actually aren’t allowed to go around chopping down trees in modern day France. The police wrote Hatha a ticket for felling a large oak that was in front of the house. Just goes to show that living 1600 years into the future comes with a steep learning curve.
Given this pressing need to sort out our wiring, Hendra and I walk the half a mile to town and head for La Bonne Chaleur, a heating and electrical supply store on the Rue des Halles. In such a tiny city, La Bonne Chaleur also doubles as the town’s hardware store. Today, there’s a bunch of new snow shovels optimistically arranged in a bright yellow plastic tub at the front of the store. I say optimistically because last winter temperatures plummeted, but I never saw so much as a flake fall from the sky. The rest of the store is stuffed to the gills with nuts, bolts, wrenches, and drills. There’s also a small corner display that I frequent often in my attempts to fix Chateau Morcelle’s many problems; it contains dust masks, safety glasses, respirators, and books on mitigating mold. As it turns out, chateau renovation is another thing that comes with a steep learning curve.
As usual, Hendra, who hasn’t really adapted to the modern world, charges right up to a girl sitting on a stool behind the counter. “Here me now!” she bellows. “We’ve got all kinds of problems with the eccentricity,” she shouts in really poor French.
“Electricity,” I correct.
“I’m sorry to hear about that, Sister,” the pale girl says, staring up out of large, protruding eyes. “I’ve got problems too. Things I need to confess.”
Hendra looks quite taken aback.
“You need to confess to a priest, not a nun,” I interject.
“I just love your accents, where did you say you’re from originally?” the girl asks.
“Wisconsin,” I say, right as Hendra answers, “California.”
“Both Wisconsin and California, we’ve lived in both places,” I say, trying to smooth over our lies.
“You Americans, you’re so odd.” The girl hops off her stool and calls a man named Maurice from the back of the store. He’s well-dressed, with khakis and a sport coat. Not what one would expect from an electrician.
“Sounds like you need immediate help,” Maurice says before pulling a calendar out of a wooden drawer underneath his cash register.
“Hmmm….” he moans, “Ummm-hummm,” he flips a page of the calendar turning it from September to October.
“Ooo, mais oui.” He picks up a bright red pen and I’m excited to see he’s about to circle a date when abruptly he returns to a positively Gallic chant of “mais no, hum, ummm.” With a beleaguered countenance, he flips the page on the calendar again.
“November?” I hazard.
He shakes his shaggy head, “Il n’y a rien,” he spits out.
“What do you mean there isn’t anything?” I ask. The man simply shrugs.
“I’m afraid I’m booked.” He flips another page. “Until after Christmas.”
Hendra’s eyes narrow and her nostrils flare. She is an elk in rut.
“That won’t do,” she insists and she and Maurice enter into the subtle and mysterious art of French negotiation. Well, Maurice negotiates. Hendra is Saxon; she’s used to brute force if she doesn’t get her way. While Maurice shrugs his shoulders, Hendra pounds her fist on the electrician’s countertop.
As they haggle over dates, or do a strange mating dance, or whatever it is that they are doing, I glance over at the pale girl, the one who wanted to confess. She’s watching Hendra intently, as if she has something bottled up inside her that needs to get out.
“I can do it after Christmas,” Maurice huffs.
“We’ll all freeze by then!” Hendra bellows.
Maurice considers this. “Beh, there is a solution. I shall send my nephew, Etienne. He’s a journeyman electrician. He’ll be there tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. sharp. You must feed him a large lunch, Madam. Wiring a decrepit chateau is hungry work.” Turning away in a gesture that means “that is that,” Maurice ambles off to the backroom. Schizophrenically, Hendra mumbles that Etienne must be a real slacker if he’s available so soon.
Does she want the electricity fixed or not?
Done with our business, we turn to leave and Hendra’s wide hips accidentally bump into a paint display sending color swatches crashing to the ground.
“Oh, so sorry,” Hendra mumbles.
“Oh no, don’t worry. I’ll clean it up.”
“That’s very kind of you…”
“Elise, my name is Elise.”
“That’s very kind of you, Elise,” Hendra says, and takes a step toward the door.
“Sister, please, if you have a moment, I need to talk,” the pale girl entreats again, quickly coming around the counter and blocking our exit. Hendra sidesteps her looking bewildered.
I mouth, “I’m so sorry” and point at my watch as if we have to be somewhere immediately. Overhead, the bell on the door tinkles pleasantly as Hendra and I exit the tiny shop onto the Rue des Halles.
“That was rude,” I admonish the plump witch a second later. Hendra ignores me and lifts the hem of her black robe, reaching down to pull up a sock, which by the look of things, has lost all its elasticity. No sooner does she pull it up taught around her thick calf then it immediately falls back down to the rim of her shoe. “Let her tell her troubles to one of those butchers at the hospital,” she says, giving up on the sock and straightening back up.
“A doctor?” I hazard, trying to figure out what she means by ‘butchers.’
“Yes, a doctor, butcher, whatever they’re called. You know they slice people up over there. They slice them up and then sew the pieces back together and some of them get better and some of them, of course, drop dead.”
I stare at her appalled. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works,” I begin but she waves me off.
“It is how it works.”
“I think maybe you should watch the reruns of Gray’s Anatomy on T.V.”
“T.V. is fiction, it’s all made up.” She waves me off.
“Besides,” Hendra says, returning us to topic. “I don’t have time to listen to some teenage complaint. That girl probably has a crush on a boy. Can you imagine? What would I know about that? Come on, Elfie, Hatha needs us, we’re leaving as soon as possible. Apparently, the ghost that haunts the Count is becoming more unruly. The fine lord needs a hand.”
“They’re not called ‘lord’ in modern day,” I sigh with regard to the Count, but it’s wasted on Hatha who stalks off up the Rue de Halles with manly strides.
I try to keep up with her in my wedge heels, all the while pondering the irony that, just last night, the head witch was arguing against intervention in such matters, and now we’re about to head out to chase ghosts at Chateau de Trisse. I don’t want to get into a long, drawn out discussion with the older, wiser witches, but I really don’t have time for any of this. I have to finish plumbing the downstairs bathroom. The chateau on
ly has one working toilet and that’s just not enough for so many women. I decide to explain all this to Hendra as we walk along, but she simply grunts her reply.
Honestly, Saxons are so ill-tempered, I don’t even know why I bother.
*****
Even from afar, Chateau de Trisse looks haunted. I spy it between the poplar trees as we drive up in our Volkswagen minibus on a twisty road leading from the town of Chloret.
It’s been a long drive, and I continue to adjust my pencil skirt that’s been riding up ever since we left Amboise. I also straighten my frilly blouse. Despite being the home renovation expert (which I learned by watching shows that I live stream on the computer at the Amboise library), I am the most girly of the witches. I relish everything about modern French fashion –the clothes, the short pixie hair-cuts, and the make-up. Oh, the make-up! There’s so much of it, powders and liquids in all shapes and hues. Sometimes I put several colors on my eyelids all at once in bold streaks. They’re all so glittery, it takes my breath away when I look in the mirror. Hendra doesn’t like my eye makeup and even Hatha frowns. Noelle takes a more subtle approach, by pointing out that modern French women tend to stick to “one color.” But life is short. Tomorrow I could get zapped by master Merllyd and pulled back through the portal. So, if I want to wear strips of turquoise, chartreuse and flaming orange across my eyelids, I’m going to do it.
Abruptly, Hatha downshifts, and I’m flung so far forward in my seat my face hits the chair in front of me.
I have the utmost respect for Hatha. She is the head of our coven, but she is also a deplorable driver. The bus lurches and spurts as we turn into the chateau’s driveway. Behind us, I can see the automobile belch a huge amount of black smoke into the air. Up in the driver’s seat, Hatha slips the Volkswagen into whatever gear fits her fancy and I long for the days when we travelled by horse.
“You cannot put it in first when you are driving along in fourth!” Hendra blusters, as Hatha does just this thing and the min-bus jerks especially hard for the second time in sixty seconds.
“You should talk,” sputters Monique sitting beside me, her pointed hat still thoroughly attached to her head even though the tip is squashed flat against the top of the bus. “I remember your first attempt at driving.” Monique snickers and Hendra grows silent. Hendra’s first attempt at driving left our small, newly purchased Citroen half-submerged in the river behind our house. Somehow, she didn’t get the concept of the brake. By the time she had made it half way across the lawn behind Chateau Morchelle, she had the Citroen up to 140 kilometers an hour. That’s when she hit a huge pile of dirt and the entire car went airborne. It was a surreal moment watching the automobile fly through the air. It made a tremendous splash when it hit the river and it was all we could do to pull Hendra to safety.
“I vote that Elfie drives on the way home,” Hendra says.
“I second it,” adds Monique.
“Oh, all right,” agrees Hatha, as we pull around to the front of the chateau.
“Holy hell,” Hendra murmurs..
“You can say that again,” Hatha concurs, as she slows the Volkswagen to a stop.
“Yes, yes, the whole place is most definitely cursed!” Monique shouts with sheer delight. “Come now ladies, why so glum, let us put it right. Perhaps that is our new purpose in life. Everything happens for a reason let us make the most of living in Trance.”
“France….it’s called France,” I mutter, but nobody is listening.
Chapter 3 (Noelle)
I, Noelle, spent the morning, as usual, cracking open the cocoa beans, seeking out their precious nibs. Then I begin the conching. These days, I use a large industrial mixer. When I first opened my store, I used mortar and pestle –it was a brutal process and one that left me with little time to do anything else. Nowadays, I pour all the nibs into the conching machine and turn it on high. I just love modern technology.
An hour and a half later, I am pouring finished chocolate into molds, watching carefully as the silky dark liquid fills up each plastic square. Finished, I transfer the molds to the refrigerator so the chocolate can set. Then, I glance up at the clock. I should be right on track for opening the store at half past ten. I’ve kept an eye out for my spirit friend this morning, but in my experience, ghosts don’t materialize much in the daytime.
At quarter past, I arrange all of today’s chocolates in neat little rows in the display case before turning the sign from Fermé to Ouvert on the shop window. The first person through my door this morning is a local. Monsieur Rene owns a café nearby and has come to inquire about selling “Elfie’s Chocolate Surprises” to his after-lunch crowd.
“Sorry, she’s not in. It’s chocolate with lime today, or chocolate with chili pepper,” The little man hurries away mumbling something about “no-no, not those ghastly lime things again.” In modern day Gaul, everyone is a food critic. I try to ignore them but still, sometimes their words sting. Luckily the tourists keep me in business, especially the Americans.
With hopes that some tourists will soon pass by, I head back to my workroom –a good witch always washes out her cauldron. I am halfway inside my huge iron vat wearing latex gloves up to my elbows, when I hear the bell over the front door.
I hasten out to the front, hoping for a big-spending American but there’s nobody here. Suddenly the temperature drops in the shop and all the hairs on my head stand on end.
I can feel the presence.
I’m not sure why, but today I feel spooked. Dealing with the paranormal is always different. Some ghosts are content to leave well-enough alone while others are back from the dead to punish the living. Which type is my ghost? Is he angry or sad? Abruptly, my old-fashioned cash register zings open and euros rise up out of the till, swirling around my store.
I am tempted to run for it, but I don’t.
“Oh, ha-ha, very funny. If you want me to help you find your murderer and bring him to justice, this is not the way to do it.” I bend down behind the counter to pick the euros off the floor.
The bell jingles again and the room warms; I’m sure the ghost has left. “And a good riddance to you, Sir,” I say as I scramble to scoop up all the money.
“Who are talking to?” comes a young man’s voice causing me to stand up so fast that I hit my head on the lip of the counter.
“You all right, Madam?” he asks.
“Fine, fine.” I rub the front of my head where a bump is beginning to swell. Standing before me is a policeman in uniform. He must have come through the door at the same time the ghost was leaving. He looks young, probably mid-twenties, with hair cut so short it brings the word ‘Nazi’ to mind.
“Can I help you? Would you like a sample of chocolate?” I ask him.
“Actually, no. I’d just like to ask you a question or two.”
Oh dear, here it comes. The town has figured out that Elfie is putting cannabis into the Chocolate Surprises. That’s why the candy she makes has become so popular and the townspeople, in my estimation, have become so placid. I argued with her about it. I told her that cannabis is illegal in most modern day countries. She laughed and said, “But it has so many healing properties. I’m doing it to help everyone out.” There ensued a very heated exchange over it at the chateau one day, and Hatha told Elfie if she didn’t stop making her Chocolate Surprises, she would throw her out on the street.
“Seems very hypocritical, we used it all the time in the Feral Forest. You know it’s good for everything – stress, depression, anxiety…”
I swear I’ve never seen Hatha so worked up. Her face was as red as the leaves on the miniature ash tree that stands in front of our chateau.
Their disagreement caused a lot of ugliness, with Elfie erupting in a fit of temper and Hatha stating firmly, “Elfie, this is a different world we are in now. Unless you want to move to Aspen with Emmeritrude, Adeline, and their warlock, you must stop using cannabis.”
Suffice it to say, Elfie didn’t stop. She’s been coming into my store
and making them from time to time. I stopped arguing about it when I saw that the Chocolate Surprises were flying off my shelves. I should have stopped it, I know, but for the first time since opening, the shop has actually begun turning a profit.
“Have you seen this boy?” the policeman asks and holds up a picture. I’m so relieved he’s not going to arrest me over the Chocolate Surprises that I almost fall over. I regain my composure and scrutinize the picture. A skinny teenager, wearing jeans, a white tea shirt, a denim vest and a huge sneer on his face stares out at me contemptuously.
I almost nod in the affirmative, but then I remember myself. Of course I’ve seen this guy, he’s haunting my shop. I’m pretty sure that’s not the kind of thing the policeman wants to hear.
“Isn’t that the vagabond who went missing? His pictures are all over town,” I respond.
“Yes, it is the vaga…or er…homeless lad that was hanging out in Amboise up until he went missing about a week ago. I guess I should refine my question. Did you ever see this young man in person?”
Oh dear, how to answer this question. I don’t believe in lying.
“Has something happened that you are out canvassing the town? You don’t canvass for every missing person, do you?” I ask, answering his question with a question.
“Indeed, something’s happened. Something very bad. We found this poor guy floating dead in a pond in the Parc Leonardo.”
A normal person would gasp in horror. That is what I would do if I were genuinely shocked.
“How awful. When did you find the body?”
“Yesterday morning, when the Parc opened up for the tourists.”
“I see,” I mumble as I return the euros to my old-fashioned cash register. It makes a pleasant dinging noise as I shut the drawer.
There, all the bills are back in their place. I love neatness. I glance up from the register to find the officer continuing to stare at me intently.