Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead (Toad Witch Series, Book One)

by Christiana Miller

  A few steps later, and I had come full circle. I was back in the clearing where I had found my branch. I could see where the drag mark I was making had started. Great. Gus would bust a gut when I told him about this.

  As I turned towards the direction I thought led back to the house, a weird, homeless-looking guy jumped down out of a tree and blocked my path, nearly scaring me to death. He had one crazy glass eye that was solid white and one normal eye. His clothes were old, ragged and starched with mud.

  I tightened my grip on my tree branch and calculated my odds of whacking him with it, if he turned out to be some weird serial killer.

  He limped over to me. "You got money?"

  "You almost gave me a heart attack."

  "That ain't no never mind to me. I'm the troll. And this is my road. You want to walk the troll road, you gots to pay the troll."

  "What road? It's the middle of the fucking woods."

  He pointed at the bulge in my jacket pocket. "What's that?"

  I pulled out the troll doll.

  "A troll for Troll!" he said, delighted. He carefully put the troll in his mud-encrusted pocket and ambled away. I looked around for the woman with the dog, but she was nowhere to be seen. Then I looked around for the Troll, but he seemed to be gone as well.

  Great, I was lost in the woods with what I was beginning to suspect were either escapees from a lunatic asylum or figments of my imagination. I hoped to the Gods that it wasn't a sign that I was going to die out here. It made me wonder just how hard I had hit my head against that tree. Maybe I had a concussion. Could concussions cause hallucinations?

  I turned in the direction I thought the house was and started walking as the sun slowly vanished. The trees blocked so much of the sky, there wasn't even a sunset to see. There was just a gradual increase in the level of darkness until it was pitch black. Thankfully, I found a penlight in my jacket pocket, so I wasn't walking completely blind.

  In L.A., it was never really fully dark. Between the houses that were always lit up, and the businesses that were lit up even when they were closed, the traffic lights, car headlights, street lights, there was no getting away from an electrically-generated haze of light. Normally, it was one of my biggest complaints -- between the pollution and the light, it was impossible to see the night sky, And after all the years I had spent in the Midwest with my dad, I really missed seeing the constellations.

  But here, in the heart of the Wisconsin forest... I'd give anything for a twenty-four hour convenience store to appear around the bend. Or the moon. Or even a clearing without trees. Anything that would lessen the darkness.

  I kept walking, using the stick as a staff, to keep me from tripping on exposed roots. The rustling of animals in the shrubs was creeping me out. Every time I heard leaves shift, my heart jumped. I didn't know if what I was hearing was small, peaceful animals minding their own business, or large, predatory animals stalking me. Or some crazed rabid rodent-like creature about to attack. The beam from my little penlight was so small, it was almost useless.

  What if they weren't weird hallucinations? What if I was really trapped out here with two crazy people? Maybe even two cannibalistically-inclined crazy people? Ugh. I should have taken my cell phone.

  In the distance, I saw a light flicker, followed by another and another. Little fireflies of hope. I walked towards them as quickly as I could and soon found myself in a clearing.

  A wolf loped up, hunting food, its luxurious coat glowing in the moonlight. I froze, not wanting to attract its attention. It paused and looked me over, clearly wondering if I had anything tasty for him. It bared its teeth and I averted my eyes. The last thing I needed was to challenge a hungry wolf. Then I thought, what am I doing? They're supposed to be more scared of us than we are of them. So I tried to make myself as big and noisy as possible, and ran straight at him.

  He looked at me, letting me know he wasn't impressed, before he turned and vanished into the depths of the forest. Once he was out of sight, I continued to walk as fast as I could towards the little lights. When I stopped to get my bearings, I felt a bony hand on my ankle. I screamed, but it was the old woman with the dog. The dog's eyes glowed red in the beam from the penlight.

  "I didn't see you sitting here."

  "There's a great deal you don't see," she said. "And a great deal you wish you didn't see."

  "How long have you been watching me?"

  "I have been with you since the beginning of time and I am that which is attained at the end of desire," the old woman cackled, showing a scattering of yellowed teeth.

  Great. A homeless Wiccan. Perhaps someone's looking out for me after all. Or maybe my mom sent her as some kind of guide. "Can you help me? I'm kinda lost."

  "Can you help me?" the old woman mimicked. "Great big pillock of a girl. Can't help yourself, how can you help anyone else? Lost, lost, all is lost. When the battle has begun and the day is barely won, can your voice be brave and true? No, all is lost, cries you. Woe is me, woe is me. Time comes for all of us dearie, now it's come for you."

  The temperature dropped and I started shivering. If I didn't get eaten by wolves first, I might just freeze to death before I found my way out of here.

  "What are you doing here? You don't belong here!" The Troll was back.

  "I was just talking to..." I looked down but the woman was gone. "Did you see an old lady? She was sitting right here, with a dog." He threw a rock at me, hitting me in the shoulder. "Ow!" I could feel blood trickling down my arm.

  "Go on, get out!"

  In the distance, I saw the lights again, dancing between trees. Then I got pegged in the thigh with a rock. "Ow, knock it off. I'm leaving!" Anything to get away from the crazy man with the all-too-good aim. I rubbed my thigh and took off, following the lights. Did Wisconsin have will-o-the-wisps? Or was it a mega-swarm of fireflies?

  When the lights stopped moving. I stepped out from the trees and found myself standing next to a small cemetery. There was a group of fairy lights gathered in the far corner, in front of a large tombstone with an overhanging stone angel.

  The lights banded together to form a figure -- a female figure. She stood up and beckoned to me. I took a step back.

  "Nothing against you," I told her image, "But I'm kinda done with ghosts right now."

  But she came at me, relentless. Like she had all the patience and time in the world and I was a recalcitrant child. I brandished my staff like a club. "Seriously. I'm at the end of my rope with the spirit world around here. One more ghost attack and it's brass vessels for everybody."

  She flew at me, her mouth open, pleading. "Help me!"

  She pushed right through my body and then turned into a hundred bats, which flew away in different directions.

  I fell backwards, my arm hitting the sharp edge of a rock, ripping open the flesh. I could feel blood running down my arm to my hand. Then I heard a scream, deep, primal, full of rage, shattering the night. It took me a few minutes to realize I was the one screaming.

  The old woman and her dog walked towards me again. From the other side, the weird old man appeared from the trees. The air crackled with electricity as lightning shot from cloud to cloud and a black horse, covered in black feathers, appeared in front of me, its eyes glowing, its nostrils flared and red.

  I held out my gashed-up arm and let the blood drip in a circle around me. "By my blood and by my bone, protect me Lady, send me home."

  A loud thunderclap. The darkness swirled around me, in a vortex. Then the heavens opened up and rain poured down.

  Chapter Thirty

  I woke up on the living room floor, cleaning supplies dropped haphazardly around me. Had it all been another dream? It was so vivid. Argh. Everything was so surreal. I had felt alive and awake in the dream, but now it felt like my head was full of cotton. I was getting really tired of the way this cottage kept screwing with my grasp of reality.

  I shook my head and felt a sudden stab of pain. I pressed my hands to my scalp. When I brought m
y hands back down, they were covered in blood. I winced and stood up. I checked my reflection in a mirror on the living room wall. Besides a bloody head, I had a gash on my arm and another one on my shoulder. I looked down. There was a cut on my thigh and there was blood on the edge of the paint can next to me. They weren't the deep, go directly to the hospital and get stitches before you bleed out cuts, they were more annoying than serious, but still...

  Had I fallen off the couch and cut myself on the paint can? But was so deep into the dream, it just became part of what was happening?

  That seemed kinda impossible. Who sleeps through multiple contusions and cuts?

  Could it have been the paint fumes in the room? Maybe the fumes overwhelmed the oxygen in my brain?

  I picked up the paint can, wondering if I had gotten hold of some lead-based paint. I wiped blood off the label and squinted at it. Latex. I put the can down and looked around at the room I had just cleaned and painted.

  GET OUT NOW was written on the wall.

  In blood.

  Fresh, dripping blood.

  Probably my blood.

  Did I do that while I was unconscious? I looked at my hands, but it was impossible to tell if they had been bloody before I pressed my hands against my bleeding head.

  Could it be that Aunt Tillie saw an opportunity to freak me out again and took advantage of it? Or had someone broken in, noticed me sleeping and figured it would be a good prank? That seemed like the least likeliest scenario.

  It had to be Aunt Tillie.

  Or maybe that Devil she warned me about.

  I shook my finger at the ceiling. "Look out, Aunt Tillie -- and anyone else who might be hanging out here -- your days of tormenting me are numbered!"

  Come tomorrow, I was going to ward the whole freaking house, like I had done with the bedroom. I'd just have to figure out a way to do it that wouldn't trigger the cottage's inherent security wards. Being turned into shrubbery wasn't exactly on my agenda.

  I was in the bathroom, on a Bactine, Neosporin, band-aid spree, when my cell phone started ringing. And kept on ringing. Finally, on the thirtieth rendition of Ode to Joy, I was done playing Florence Nightingale, so I came out and snatched up the phone. Odds were it was someone selling something. Like a new service upgrade.

  "No," I snapped. "I don't want to change my plan."

  "Well, excuse the hell out of me."

  "Gus?! Oh my Gods!" I couldn't believe how ridiculously excited I was to hear his voice. "Did you just call and hang up like ten times in a row?"

  "I don't like voicemail. Did you know that in nature, up to eight percent of male sheep are gay?"

  "It's about time you got around to calling me, you perv. And lay off the sheep, or the ASPCA is gonna lock you up."

  "I'm just sayin'. How's it going in the middle of nowhere?"

  "You'd love it. Talk about a haunted cottage. I have so many freaking ghosts hanging out here, I'm thinking about charging them rent." I quickly caught him up on everything that had happened, reveling in the note of envy in his voice.

  Then I rubbed my eyes and yawned. "Either that, or I'm totally losing my mind and haunting myself. I'm having the craziest time sleeping out here. I have dreams that are so real, I think I'm living them. And reality is so weird, I think I'm dreaming it."

  "Sabbatic dreaming. Cool."

  "No. It's not cool. It's like I'm going crazy. I don't know what's real anymore. And now I'm hurting myself in my sleep. I woke up on the floor, with all these weird, bloody gashes on me, and blood all over the wall. You're not going to believe this wall. I'll send you a photo. I don't know if Aunt Tillie did it, or if I did it while I was hallucinating. Maybe I'm trying to scare myself away."

  There was silence on the phone.

  "Gus? You there?"

  "Don't hate me."

  A chill ran through me. "Why? What did you do?"

  He cleared his throat. "You know those supplements I gave you? The ones for sleeping?"

  "Yeah. The stuff you said would help my sleep be more restful and help me lose weight? I've been taking them. But no matter how much I take, it doesn't seem to be working."

  "Uh, yeah... How much 5-HTP are you taking? I may have given you the wrong dosage."

  I went into the kitchen and sorted through all the vitamin and supplement bottles. I picked up the 5-HTP. "Two pills, three times a day. Each pill is one hundred milligrams."

  "Yeah... that could be why you're having out of control dreams."

  I stared at the phone in disbelief. Serves me right. I should always double-check things when it comes to Gus. "And what, exactly, does 5-HTP do?"

  He cleared his throat. "It increases the serotonin levels in your brain. You would have had some wicked sabbatic dreams if you were taking half that. But you're taking twice as much as I do. Sorry, I thought I gave you the fifty-milligram bottle. Anyway, your subconscious is wide open. Especially with some of the other stuff I gave you. That's probably why you've been such an easy target for your ghosts."

  "You sandbagged me?!"

  "I thought if we were both dreaming on the same wavelength, we could meet on the sabbatic plane. And how cool would that be? To be able to interact in dreamscape? I mean, I could have sworn you were there with me earlier. Did you see the black horse I sent you?"

  "Made of feathers, with red eyes? Yes, I saw it. You moron. I'm gonna kill you, next time I see you. Do you know what kind of hell you've been putting me through?" I paced back and forth, wondering how pissed I should be.

  "Sorry. Really. I mean... I just thought it would be fun."

  "You so owe me."

  "I know."

  "No, you don't understand. There is no end to how much you owe me on this one." We discussed all the ways he was going to make things up to me, starting with a supply run to Mama Lua's.

  If it hadn't been for Aunt Tillie's earlier poltergeisty attack on my living room walls, while I was gone, I would have written off the entire haunting as being Gus-induced hallucinations -- or, as he liked to call it, sabbatic dreaming. But not even knowing that Aunt Tillie was still a threat, could keep me from buying into a rising-from-the-ashes feeling of hope and self-confidence. I was riding the high of youthful ignorance and exuberance, relieved that things weren't as bad as I thought. I fooled myself into thinking that I could get Aunt Tillie under control. That the living trump the dead. But the lack of panic and hesitation would ultimately make me clumsy and stupid when I most needed not to be. But, at this point, I didn't see the twelve-foot wide, spike-filled ditch that was waiting for me, just around the bend.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The next morning, I woke up gasping for air. Something was wrong. I could feel it. The cottage was practically vibrating. I looked out the bedroom window, but the lake was calm and the skies were sunny and blue.

  I hurriedly showered and got dressed. I couldn't shake the feeling that the cottage had battened down the hatches in preparation for something. And when I went downstairs, the feeling got stronger.

  I walked through the cottage, but I couldn't pick up anything specific. Although I was starting to rethink my plan to add my own personal wards to the cottage. The wards that were in place were so strong, they made my head feel like it was in a vise. And the energy that permeated the cottage was vibrating so hard, I really didn't want to risk messing with it.

  I went to the kitchen, took three Advils and then headed into the living room. Grundleshanks gave me a baleful look.

  "Oops! Sorry, bud. I forgot to feed you last night."

  I gave him fresh water and tossed a few crickets into his tank. He blinked, forgiving me as he slurped up the first one.

  I glanced out of the bay window, at the rowan tree. It had been thriving since I had arrived. That got me thinking about J.J. and his family. And how, every day I spent in the cottage, it felt more and more plausible that the cottage actually could, and would, defend itself against all attackers.

  "If I get turned into a tree," I asked Grundlesh
anks, "what kind of tree do you think I'd be?"

  Grundleshanks snagged another cricket and blinked at me. I saw an image of white thorns in my head.

  "Really? A hawthorn? Yeah, I think so too."

  Oh, geez. Not only was I talking to the toad, I was also supplying his side of the conversation. I wondered how long I could live by myself in the middle of nowhere before I completely lost my mind.

  "It's better than having me supply my side." A voice whispered inside my head.

  I stopped in my tracks and stared at the toad tank, shocked. "Did you just... talk to me?" I asked, incredulously.

  I whirled around to see if there was someone -- anyone -- else in the cottage. Then I turned back to look at the toad. "Did you just talk to me?"

  He blinked at me and I swear he grinned. Then he sunk into his mud.

  I put my face next to the glass, so I was looking at him human-eyeball to toad-eyeball. "Let's pretend you didn't. And don't do it again. Because I'm in no hurry to be put in a loony bin."

  I swear he shrugged and croaked "whatever" at me, just as the doorbell rang.

  Keeping one eye on the toad, I answered the door and found an AT&T guy on my doorstep. "I'm here to hook up your phone and set you up for DSL and cable."

  "Oh, thank goodness!" I was so happy, I almost hugged him. "You don't know how much I've missed civilization."

  He smiled. "I can imagine. Even by our standards, this is pretty out of the way."

  As he got to work I sent the cottage as strong a thought as I could: He's here to help us. Do not screw with him. I mean, I felt a little silly because I wasn't quite sure if the cottage actually was sentient, but just in case... Although, a part of me must have believed it, because my nerves stayed on edge until he was finally done and on his way.

  "Yippee! We're back in the twenty-first century!" I unpacked my PowerBook and did a happy dance as I walked past Grundleshanks.