A Murder in Hope's Crossing

by Brooke Shelby

  With his keen eyes, Bramble regarded the sky. It was clear around the bleeding horizon where the sun had touched, but he could feel Maggie’s fear mounting while his own instincts told him that the coming night was foul in its intent already.

  “Come, let’s go inside and hole up,” she announced, stepping back to look at her freshly charged wards one more time and hoping for the best. “I am not taking chances with that psycho, Bramble. Much as I trust magic now, locking down the house tonight will not be a bad idea in any event.”

  “I must concur, my dear Maggie,” he answered as he followed her onto the porch, looking back at the first blinking star in the low heavens. “Whatever tonight brings is best left outside the house.”

  27

  While the evening breeze caressed the wind chimes on the veranda, Maggie tried to enjoy the beautiful cadence of the melody as the pipes danced. She tried to enjoy the odor of the meal she was preparing for Bramble and she tried to pretend that she was not checking the locks over and over. Bramble could sense her dread escalating, but he thought it best to be supportive and distract her with some lively conversation. Still, he secretly felt the same trepidation as the windows darkened to usher in the night.

  “You are a most superior cook, my dear,” he complimented her as he munched away on the banquet she had laid out for him. He dared not remark on how overdone it was, because he knew that Maggie cooked enormous, unnecessary meals when she was stressed. She hardly even noticed how much food she prepared for Bramble while she declined dinner due to her nerves.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” she smiled, tapping her fingers restlessly against her wine glass.

  “What exactly is this scrumptious delicacy?” he inquired, trying to keep her mind occupied by trivialities.

  “Um, tenderloin wrapped in bacon, stuffed with your favorite gravy,” she revealed.

  “It is absolutely divine, but for the first time in my life, I think I might save the other half for breakfast,” he purred. “And you know that I am not one to leave leftovers. You have outdone yourself!”

  Maggie smiled uncomfortably. It was great to hear Bramble give her an honest compliment instead of busting her balls incessantly, fun-loving as his intentions had always been, yet she could not stop worrying about Oroville. Instead, she downed glass after glass of wine to still her what-if demons.

  “My dear, I would feel better if you did not overdo the drinking,” he mentioned casually through his hearty munch. It was a caution that categorically reminded her of her situation, to keep her wits about her, but it had to be said. “Look, I am sure nothing will even happen tonight, Maggie, but should something transpire, we should be sharp, right?”

  She sighed and nodded, “I suppose you are right, Bramble.” Her tired eyes lay on him with endearing loyalty and affection, clearly the look of mild inebriation. “Then again, if I am going to get my head bashed in …”

  “I hate that term,” he interrupted.

  “… I will at least be too drunk to feel much of it. In fact, I should smoke some of Aunt Clara’s greens,” she finished indifferently.

  “Self-pity looks terrible on you, Maggie Corey,” he chastised her. “Pull yourself together and trust your magic, dammit. Nobody likes a whiner.”

  “Do you prefer a corpse?” she snapped back at him, pouring out the very last droplets of the wine and slugged it back. “There. All done. See? I have stopped drinking so that I can be sharp when the serial killer comes for me.”

  “Oh God, you are so dramatic!” he scoffed. “Enough to make me lose my appetite.”

  With that, Bramble licked his lips and whiskers and bounded from the table and vanished into the corridor like a dancing shadow. Maggie resorted to the sofa to watch something on her laptop and pass the time of her insomnia without going mad, but the normally tranquil clinking of the wind chimes spelled foreboding that would not let her be. Her porch lights were on, but she doused any light in her house, so that no intruder could guess her location.

  Just after midnight, Maggie drifted off to sleep, unable to hold her tired, slightly intoxicated mind afloat. Only the mantle clock ticked lazily, monotonously on the mahogany ledge where it stood. In the distant volume of her plugged-in headphones, the movie’s soundtrack raged on in full action of its climax, but Maggie was blissfully asleep.

  There was no thunder this time and the night was quiet, save for the stirring of the breeze. Something thumped outside the house. Not even all the wine in Maggie’s system could impair her vigilance and she sat erect, eyes wide to listen.

  “Bramble, did you hear that?” she whispered loudly, but her cat was napping on her bed upstairs.

  Maggie listened, her heart slamming the inside of her chest in anticipation of the lurking unknown she knew waited outside. Her breath came in a quicker cadence as she slowly got up and stole towards the hallway, where there were no windows to betray her position. A loud click came from the vicinity of the kitchen and it made Maggie gasp in the dark.

  Hold, please hold … talismans,’ she begged in her mind, sinking to her haunches. What if he gets through? What if the charms don’t work?

  Her mind raced with all the awful outcomes she imagined and these did Maggie no favors. All they accomplished was to push her fear into overdrive and tax her poor heart. The sounds, brief as they were, moved ever so slightly from one part of the house to the next. However, Maggie could not distinguish the nature of the respective thumps as a certain break-in-in attempt. The bottom line, she reckoned, was that she was not even certain that what she was hearing was in fact someone trying to gain access to her house. She would have to make sure of it if she wanted to react to what she thought was a crime in progress.

  A soft brush of something hairy disturbed the skin of her calf in the dark. Maggie shrieked loudly, her cry cutting through the silence of the night. Putting her hand over her mouth straight after did not do her any good now. The scream had sounded and whoever was outside would definitely have heard it. Maggie looked down at her ankle and found that the eerie sensation was Bramble, rubbing against her leg from where he had emerged from the shadows.

  “Great! Thanks, Bramble,” she whispered.

  “Sorry, dear. I thought you called me,” he replied.

  “I did,” she sighed, feeling terrified and defeated. “You could just have said something before just grazing my leg out of the blue like that, you know? My God, do you want me to have a heart attack?”

  “You are very timid for a witch, you know?” he mumbled.

  “Well, I am new at this job and excuse me for being a little on edge because a man is trying to get in my house to kill me!” she babbled in frustration, her voice raspy and abrupt.

  “Where is he? Did you see him?” Bramble asked.

  She shook her head. “I have not had the gall to try and peek. What if he has a gun aimed and he shoots me right in the face the moment I look through the window?”

  Bramble had no nice way to reply. “Rest assured about that. He is a hands-on sort of brute, remember?”

  Images of Oroville battering women to death drowned Maggie’s thoughts. Bramble had the most devastating logical responses, delivered at the worst of times, she thought.

  “Great,” she hissed, “so at least I will not get shot.”

  “That’s my girl,” Bramble approved.

  He knew full well that his remark was driving Maggie to a new level of vexation, but now was not the time to mollycoddle his witch. She had to know what she was dealing with and she had to know that she was the only one who could save herself. Maggie knew him by now and she was clear on what he was trying to instill in her.

  At once, a window shattered lower to the south of the house. This time, Maggie had the good sense to hold in her vocal reaction. She picked up her cat (more for moral support than assistance) and stalked down the stairs to the basement, where the sound had emanated from.

  “Basement window. No protection from magic, but we have double burglar bars down there,”
Bramble reported as they went.

  Maggie was remarkably satisfied at the information. Although she trusted magic, there was still nothing as appeasing as knowing that the property had actual concrete protection from the really real world. She was reluctant to resort to magic, not for any hypocritical reason, but only because she knew the real world better.

  With the ample moonlight illuminating his silhouette, Oroville’s twisted shadow bent and warped along the dirty glass of the basement window as he tried to look in through the rather antique rusted bars. Maggie and Bramble froze in their tracks, watching the tall, gaunt maniac groan and swear. His long, rugged arms could not breach the bars, even though the glass was out of the way.

  His frame looked diabolical in the blue glow of the moonlight and it made Maggie cringe. Knowing that this fiendish criminal was here to kill her only reinforced his image as a kind of Ripper figure in her psyche.

  “Bitch!” she heard him snap just before he relented, at least for the basement window.

  “God, how I would love to cut his filthy tongue out,” Maggie whispered.

  She did not notice Bramble’s kitty grin glint in the cool moon glow. He loved it when she said old-school stuff like that, like a proper witch would. As quietly as she could, Maggie carried Bramble up the stairs and into the west hallway, where more noise came from.

  “He is actually trying to get through the trapdoor, can you believe?” she whispered.

  “I can walk, you know?” Bramble snorted in her neck.

  “I know, but I feel better when I am holding onto you,” she rejoined and he accepted the sentiment. “Can’t you do something to him?”

  Bramble was completely befuddled. “Where on earth do you get the wine you drink, woman? I am a cat for all intensive purposes and as far as magic goes, I am hardly in a position to fart bolts of lightning, you know? What do you want me to do? Bury him in a sandbox?”

  She put him down, scoffing, “If you are going to be bitchy, you can walk.”

  That ugly and familiar sound pulsed through Maggie and she fell back to lean against the cold wall in the dark.

  “He is trying to get through the wards! I know that sound, that reverse whistle! Bramble, he is trying to force his way through,” she whispered in fear as the attack grew more aggressive.

  “No chance,” Bramble said, checking his protracted nails. “The wards will hold.”

  Just as he spoke, his eyes became bright orange. His whole frame became visible in an orange and yellow glow as Maggie watched him, but it took her a moment to realize that the color and light came from outside the window.

  “He is setting fire to something again!” she growled in panic and a good measure of anger. She raced to the window, watching Oroville in plain sight. There he stood, trying repeatedly to light a petrol bomb and throwing it at the protected windows of the ground floor. Each attempt simply bounced back to his feet, crashed and doused, leaving ugly black marks where he stood.

  Maggie could not help but think like a normal woman. The mad killer outside kept at it, persisting at his task and moving around the property with clear intent to set fire to it all. Like a hungry lion, his eyes wild and sick, he stalked around the fence.

  “That’s it. I’m calling Carl,” she panted desperately. Maggie punched in Carl’s cell phone number. Every time it rang unanswered, she shivered and hoped he would answer as the bottles of gasoline crashed on the concrete and stones of her property. Finally, a drowsy Carl Walden answered his phone and at once, Maggie tried to say everything all at once.

  “Calm down, Maggie. I can’t make out a …”

  “Listen to me, Carl! He is outside! Do you hear me?” she shrieked.

  “Who?” he asked, provoking her seething annoyance.

  “Fu—f—goddamn Oroville Chance, dammit! Who the hell do you think? The tooth fairy?” she screeched in panic. He did not get a word in as she kept begging. “Please, Carl! Please, come immediately or I am dead. Do you hear? Dead!”

  Bramble’s eyes studied the maniac’s movements as he raged outside, but when he saw Oroville get in his car, he had to sound the alarm.

  “Maggie! Maggie, come quick. He is up to something new and I don’t like it,” Bramble caterwauled. “He is going for the shopfront.”

  “What?” she cried, clutching her phone to come to the window. “Oh my God! He is completely insane! He is trying to ram through with his car!”

  “Good luck with that, son,” Bramble muttered as they watched Oroville’s car roar full speed toward the front façade of Corey’s Herbs and Simples.

  “No way!” Maggie shouted, feeling more furious than frightened at the audacity of the trashy hatemonger. “That’s it. I am going to get some incriminating footage of this horse’s ass!”

  She started filming everything. Oroville was livid when he saw the flash, that same flash he had seen from the window the last time he’d failed at getting back at the witch he despised so. Grabbing hold of the steering wheel with eyes fixed on the shop, he laid his foot hard on the accelerator. Upon what Oroville thought was going to be impact, however, his car’s engine promptly died, clattering to an embarrassing halt mere inches from the shopfront.

  Maggie stepped bravely onto her porch to get a better view of the attacker and his feverish attempts on her phone. When Oroville saw her pointing the device toward him, he screamed through his window.

  “What do you think you are doing, you dumb bitch?” he seethed, trying to exit his car, but his haste marred his efforts, making him even angrier. Oroville thought she was wielding some sort of wand as she pointed the light at him.

  “I am making you famous, moron! You are going to have a huge fan base on social media when I tag this town and your church on social media,” she shouted back at him. “You are going to have a lot of new boyfriends in the supermax!”

  Bramble smirked, but he made sure that Maggie did not approach Oroville. He was still a legitimate threat.

  28

  As if the night knew that it harbored special hostility, the wind picked up with every attempt Oroville had been making to destroy the Corey store and house. The formerly gentle breeze had escalated to a whipping gust that promptly brought a thick bank of clouds from the east. Maggie was filming the intruder to make sure that she had concrete proof in any case against him. He was fed up with her tenacity. It was far too difficult to get his hands on her and it drove him crazy.

  The tall, lurching frame of the psychopathic Oroville Chance lumbered towards Maggie.

  “I suggest you get off the veranda and get inside, Maggie,” Bramble cautioned.

  “Just another few frames,” she protested, one eye shut to film the approaching brute accurately. “Must get his face in. They have to be able to see that it is him, Bramble, otherwise he will just get off again with a rap on the knuckle and a church cover-up.”

  Oroville’s voice thundered over the noise of the coming storm and the clattering wind chimes as he cursed Maggie without relent.

  “Gonna get you, witch! If it is the last thing I do, I am going to cut you down like the godless thing you are,” he recited. “I shall not suffer a witch to live. Generations will perish. Bloodlines will be severed!”

  Maggie found his speech peculiar, almost rehearsed. He kept saying the same things, but the words did not belong to his station. He was a dumb lump of flesh with no proper pronunciation or eloquence, yet here he used sentences that sounded vaguely educated.

  When he drew near enough, Oroville was astounded to see that the thing in Maggie’s hand was not some obscure object of conjuration, but a mere cell phone. He frowned, taken aback by the fact that she was still not using any magic to battle him. In fact, he was almost disappointed.

  “Moron,” Maggie sighed. “He still doesn’t know that the house and the shop are guarded by magic.”

  “He is not the brightest bulb in the box, my dear. Get your ass inside the house!” the cat hissed. Maggie realized that Oroville was getting exceedingly close and s
he began to retreat.

  “I just can’t get his face right,” she complained with a wince as she tried to zoom the camera in on Oroville.

  “Darling, his face has never been right to begin with,” Bramble said.

  Oroville could not put two and two together with this witch. She was clearly not casting or pointing, neither was she invoking as he had been told she would, yet he still could not hurt her property. His face twisted between rage and confusion at this, but he knew one thing. It mattered not whether she was casting or not. She had to be killed and she had to be killed tonight.

  “I shall not suffer a witch,” he chanted as he pulled a Bowie knife from his boot.

  “Oh, can it already! You sound like a broken record!” she shouted defiantly. “Witch hunter? What a joke! You are nothing more than just another superstitious ass with a trigger for women who see what an idiot you are!”

  “What did you say?” he seethed. “I won’t be talked to like that by some filthy Jezebel!”

  “Oh, that’s rich!” she retorted, allowing Oroville far too much time to get closer. “Tell me, why did you kill your mother-in-law, huh? Was she a witch too? I know that is why you killed my aunt Clara, but what is your excuse for Bettina?”

  “She was a miserable bitch, just like you. Just like your whole heathen family!” he growled as the thunder roared above him. “Bettina was no witch, but she was as bad as one. Cow! Just like you, always had to get her way … until I stopped her.” He started laughing maniacally. “I showed her that she was not in charge of me anymore. And now I am gonna show you!”

  Maggie tried to get away, but Oroville’s long physique lunged at her with consummate speed. He grabbed her by the ankle while Bramble hissed and caterwauled, scratching at his face, but Oroville dealt him a clout of note.