There had been rain this summer, in brazen contradiction to the Farmer’s Almanac. Okotoks, Taber, and Pincher Creek had done well while drought and hail had afflicted the rest of the Prairies. The politically correct weather and George’s apparent well-being had revived the mayor from her attack of despair at the close of the solstice festival.
And what about George? Terry knew what he had seen go up in flames in the Hay Man last June, and it wasn’t Newman’s goat. George was never quite the same again either. Not really. Oh, he still lorded over the town and bellowed and cussed and avoided council meetings. But if you mentioned goats, or stags, or nights in the forest, his eyes would glaze over and he’d start shaking like a tractor engine that had thrown a rod. Something had happened to him that night.
And now Peasgoody was insisting that the Council attend the Big Rock doings on Halloween night. The entire Town Council must be present, she had warned. Including George. Especially George.
Ah, well, it was only George, after all. Terry nodded to the mayor in favour of the Autumn Frolic changes.
It was a quarter past ten when the headlights of George Stromley’s Ford Bronco turned off the 2A Highway and bounced into the asphalt parking lot of the Big Rock, the world’s largest glacial erratic, nestled in a farmer’s field just eight kilometres northwest of Okotoks. It was All Hallow’s Eve, and the stars were bright, with a large, gibbous moon drifting above the Rockies, not a hand’s span to the west. Atop the Big Rock, the flickering glow of burning wood outlined the massive black cauldron where Madam Peasgoody worked her magic.
Terry Sutton stood at the edge of the grassy trail leading from the parking lot to the Rock. He watched the Ford Bronco roll to a stop, then cast Eleanor Woodhouse a wry grin as from the driver side door stepped a yellow, six-foot chicken with long, feathered wings and an anatomically incorrect, bobbing, three-pronged cockscomb. Before either of them could speak, the yellow chicken cried: “Has anyone got scissors? The zipper’s stuck!”
“Newman?” asked Eleanor. “Is that you? Where’s George?”
Newman Porter, all cluck and feathers, waddled over and grimaced at them through the shadowed opening of a giant bird’s beak. “Hotter than Hades in this suit. You’d think if someone rents you a costume they’d bloody make sure the zipper works.”
“A chicken?” asked Terry. “Why would you rent a chicken costume? None of the rest of us dressed up.”
Newman scowled at him. “The chicken is a much maligned bird. Sacred in parts of Central America and Brazil.”
“Where’s George?” repeated Eleanor.
“Took my kids out trick-or-treating,” Newman told her. “Of course I needed a costume.”
“George took your kids trick-or-treating?” replied Eleanor. “George can’t abide children.”
Newman stared at her, momentarily stunned. “Of course George didn’t go trick-or-treating. I took my kids out. Therefore the noble chicken costume. Is that a turnip?”
Terry lifted his Jack-O-Turnip to where Newman could see it. It had a carved, imp-like face with a small candle burning inside. “Traditional Celtic Jack-O-Lantern,” Terry told him. “They don’t have pumpkins in Wales.”
“I knew that,” said Newman, who claimed to know everything, pretty much on a weekly basis.
“Ah, there you are,” said Carter Donaldson, shambling toward them along the path from the Rock, looking much like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, though it wasn’t a costume; he always looked like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. “Haven’t been here in years, you know. Looks different at night. No tourists.” He peered into the yellow bird’s beak, then stumbled backward. “You’re not George!”
“You were expecting George to arrive in a chicken costume?” Eleanor asked him.
“I was expecting George to arrive in George’s truck. Newman, you promised me you’d bring George.”
Terry studied the Ford Bronco. “I don’t see anyone else. Is George coming?”
Newman smoothed some of his feathers. Then he straightened and said: “No.”
Carter wailed, his face falling into his hands. “Mayor Abigail will wring my neck. She made it my job to ensure that George showed up, and you said that you’d bring him.”
Terry looked at Carter, then at Newman, then shook his head. Personally, he’d rather George didn’t come to the Celtic New Year celebration at the Big Rock; the man was a royal jackass. It was only the mayor’s mad devotion to Madam Peasgoody that obliged the Okotoks Town Council members to attend. Although how anyone could call one madwoman and six bureaucrats a celebration was something he had yet to figure out.
“What’s happening up on the Rock?” asked Newman, his voice all business. “Is that a fire?”
“Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,” said Eleanor, smiling. “Madam Peasgoody is mixing some kind of witch’s brew. I’m hoping it’s root beer.”
Newman glared at her from within the bowels of the bird’s beak. “Root beer? This isn’t a children’s party. That woman is up to no good. I know. I’ve done research.”
Terry took Eleanor’s elbow and attempted to lead her away. Newman was bad enough when he knew everything, but when he resorted to looking something up there was no stopping him until he shared it with everyone.
Eleanor shook off Terry’s hand. “No, I want to hear this. Just what have you discovered, Newman?”
The giant chicken beckoned them closer. Light from atop the Big Rock reflected eerily from his rubber-shrouded glasses. “Halloween is the witches’ High Sabbath, when they do all manner of evil things.” He paused theatrically. “With cauldrons.”
“That’s not all,” added Carter, his expression grave. “I hear they do unmentionable things to chickens. You’d better watch out, Newman.”
Newman scowled at him. “This is serious. Peasgoody is big trouble.”
“You think she’s a witch?” asked Eleanor.
“What do you think?” Newman demanded, pointing up at the Rock with a feathered arm.
Terry had to admit that Madam Peasgoody, dressed in a black robe and stirring her giant black cauldron atop the Big Rock in the dark of night did, in fact, look guilty as charged. Worse, there was Mayor Abigail Smyth-Jones, marching down the grass path toward them. With George absent, Peasgoody wasn’t the only one guilty of something.
“Newman?” asked Abigail, peering into the chicken beak. “Yellow suits you. Where’s George?”
“He’s not coming,” said Newman. “After what happened last summer he’s not coming within ten miles of Peasgoody’s sorcery.”
Abigail’s forehead tightened. “Nothing happened to George last summer.”
“Well,” admitted Terry, “we did all watch him go up in flames in Peasgoody’s solstice bonfire.”
“Up in flames,” echoed Newman.
“That was a goat,” said Abigail. “You know that, Newman. It was your goat.”
“It was supposed to be my goat,” asserted Newman, “but it was George that burned. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Are those police lights?” asked Eleanor.
Out on the highway a police car sped toward them, lights flashing but with no siren. It pulled up next to George’s Bronco, and out stepped Sheriff Winslo and George Stromley. George marched around his truck, inspecting it for damage, then stomped up to where his fellow Town Council members stood watching.
“One of you stole my truck?” George’s heavy face was a mix of anger and incredulity.
“The chicken did it,” said Terry, only now thinking that of course Newman stole the truck. George would never let anyone borrow his Bronco.
George grabbed Newman by the neck feathers and shook him. “You stole my truck!”
Newman sputtered for breath. “I had to, George. It was the only way to keep you out of Peasgoody’s pot. If I hadn’t
taken your truck you would have driven out here, and that would be the end.”
“The end!” shouted George. “The only end around here is your butt. Winslo, slap him in irons! Grand theft auto.”
“Wait, George,” said Eleanor. “Newman was only doing you a favour. He figures Peasgoody’s got it in for you and that you were better off at home.”
“Judas Priest!” spat George. “For your information I had no intention of coming out here tonight. Not until my truck went missing.”
“George!” Mayor Abigail crossed her arms and her forehead tightened further. “You know that as a member of the Okotoks Town Council you are required to be here.”
“Why?” bellowed George, throwing his hands in the air. “To watch some mad woman stirring a pot?” He stared up at the Big Rock. “What in Judas’s name is that woman doing?”
Terry turned with the rest of them. Peasgoody had ceased her stirring and was now tying a goat to a stake.
“My goat!” Newman shouted and charged up the grassy trail in his chicken suit, yellow feathers flapping in the breeze. When he reached the Big Rock, he clambered up its craggy side in a very unchickenlike fashion.
Terry turned back to the others, only to find that George’s eyes had glazed over. The big man was shaking like a small earthquake, just as he always did whenever goats, stags, or nights in the forest were mentioned, even though four months had passed since his mysterious encounter with a giant stag in Sheep River Park on the night of the Summer Solstice Festival.
There was nothing you could do for George when he got like this, so Terry took Eleanor’s hand and followed Newman up the short trail to the Big Rock. Carter and Mayor Abigail came behind, leaving Sheriff Winslo to mind George.
The Rock was an easy climb — children clambered over it on a daily basis, after all — but there was always the danger of slipping in the dark. Terry set his Jack-O-Turnip on a flat surface and gave Eleanor and the mayor a hand up.
He could hear Newman railing at Peasgoody long before they reached the presumed witch where she stood with her black cauldron and her goat. Terry thought the Welsh woman’s expression was bleak at the best of times, but now it carried the additional feature of astonishment. In all likelihood, Madam Peasgoody had never before been harangued by a six-foot chicken.
Terry didn’t think it possible, but Newman eventually shouted himself out, at which point Peasgoody shook her head with disgust and reached past Newman to pull George, who had been standing unseen behind the bulk of Newman’s chicken costume, toward the cauldron.
“George?” everyone said at once. George had stopped shaking, but his eyes were still glazed; he moved without argument at Peasgoody’s direction. Terry looked back toward the parking lot and saw no sign of either George or Sheriff Winslo.
“What’s going on here?” demanded Carter.
“It’s animal abuse, that’s what it is,” said Newman. “How could anyone do such a thing to a goat?”
Terry looked back from surveying the parking lot and was so startled that he almost fell off the Big Rock. George had somehow climbed up onto the cauldron and now stood with one foot on the cauldron’s rim and the other on the goat’s back. George’s balancing act was almost as amazing as the goat’s refusal to collapse under his weight. (George was what politically correct people call a healthy eater.)
Peasgoody was back at her cauldron, stirring with a wooden paddle and muttering a sequence of unintelligible words that sounded vaguely Irish. Mayor Abigail watched in rapt silence, while Eleanor’s silence was mostly just shock.
“Is this some kind of circus?” demanded Carter.
“I thought George was supposed to go into the pot, not on top of it,” suggested Newman.
Peasgoody seemed to have reached some sort of denouement in her incantation. She raised her arms, and her mutterings became shouts. Then came a sudden flash of light, and George no longer stood balanced atop the cauldron and the goat. White smoke swirled where George had stood, and from within came a flapping of wings. A grey eagle, with bright startled eyes, squawked once before swooping off into the night.
“Not a circus,” suggested Terry. “Perhaps a zoo.”
He watched as Peasgoody, her incantation ended, collected up her things and made her way down off the Big Rock. Newman was hugging his goat, which bleated with terror at being mauled by a giant chicken, while Eleanor wandered over to the cauldron and sniffed at its contents.
Before Terry could stop her, she stuck a finger into Peasgoody’s concoction and poked it into her mouth. Her large eyes widened. “It is root beer. And here are some Styrofoam cups!”
Terry inspected the cauldron and discovered, to his astonishment, that the waning flames beneath it weren’t giving off any heat. The smoke was rising not from the fire but from a piece of dry ice floating in the root beer. From out of the darkness he thought he heard a cackling laugh.
“Where’s George?” Carter asked suddenly.
Terry was about to suggest that George had flown off toward the town of Black Diamond, when he glanced back at the parking lot and saw Sheriff Winslo standing with George by the Bronco.
“We’ve been here the whole time,” insisted Winslo when Terry and the others climbed down from the Rock and joined them. George had resumed shaking, his glazed eyes tracking Newman’s goat. “What was all that fireworks up on the Rock?” Winslo demanded. “You realize that fireworks are illegal.”
“I’d explain it if I could,” Terry told him. “But neither of us would believe it.”
Winslo frowned, then busied himself settling George into the passenger seat of the Bronco.
“I’ll just stick my goat in the back,” said Newman. “Then I’ll drive George home.”
“I’m afraid you’ll be coming with me,” said Winslo. “George was adamant about charges. Grand theft auto. And I’ll have to add unlawful possession of a goat.”
“What?” demanded Newman. “This is my goat. What do you mean unlawful? A goat is no different than a dog. They’re commonly kept as pets in the Andes Mountains of Chile and Peru.”
Turning a deaf ear to Newman’s arguments, Sheriff Winslo stuffed the well-informed chicken and his terrified goat into the back seat of his police car then drove off down the highway, leaving Terry and the others to finish off the root beer and drive George home.
The Christmas Goat
Yule: December 22
Snowflakes the size of pennies fluttered to the paving stones as Terry Sutton and Eleanor Woodhouse walked hand in hand down the lane toward George Stromley’s country house.
“It’s not so much a house as it is a castle,” Terry commented. “George adds to it every summer. It’s been written up in Distinctive Homes of Alberta five times in the past eight years.”
“Is that Newman Porter skulking around the portico?” asked Eleanor. “I thought he and George weren’t speaking.”
Terry nodded as he squinted into the evening gloom. “Not since Halloween, when George had Newman arrested and confiscated his goat. That’s Newman alright. I’d recognize that prominent forehead anywhere.”
“Hello, Newman!” called Eleanor. “Are you going to Stromley’s Christmas party?”
Newman scuttled toward them down the driveway, waving his hands. “Shhh! I don’t know yet. And until I do, I don’t want George to know I’m here.”
“You mean he invited you?” asked Terry, surprised that George would do any such thing, even if he had invited the rest of the Town Council.
“He did,” said Newman. “That’s what worries me. Not only that, he said I could have my goat back.”
“Well, it is Christmas,” suggested Eleanor. “Maybe George had a change of heart.”
Terry and Newman both looked at her, and Eleanor attempted a smile. “I mean, even Scrooge had a change of heart.”
Newman grimaced. “It will take more than three ghosts and a saucepan of gruel to scare George into behaving like a human being. Especially since Peasgoody’s been on his case.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” relented Eleanor. “These past few months he’s been an absolute ogre. You think Peasgoody is the cause?”
“She’s a witch,” Newman asserted. “Like I’ve said all along. And not one of those New Age namby-pamby white witches either. There’s something sinister about this Peasgoody woman.”
“Are we going in?” asked a voice from the snow-spattered darkness. “Or is the party out here in the driveway?”
Wrapped in a whirlwind of red and green scarves, Madam Peasgoody smiled as she strutted past them on her way to the Stromleys’ front door. There she rang the doorbell and was granted entrance.
From a dozen speakers secreted about the living room, Bing Crosby murmured something about sleigh bells and knee-deep snow. All well and good for someone who winters in a Florida orange grove, thought Terry. Obviously, the crooner had never shovelled the wretched stuff from his sidewalk November through March. And sleigh bells, or any kind of bells for that matter, rang morosely when it was forty below with gusting arctic winds and a chill factor of minus sixty.
Walking in a winter wonderland, Crosby concluded as Terry rejoined Eleanor by the Christmas tree and handed her a glass of George’s high-octane eggnog.
Mayor Abigail Smyth-Jones was frowning at the tree ornaments. They included, among other oddities, fresh fruit and flowers. “It’s a real tree,” she said, rolling a Japanese orange in her fingers before replacing it in the pine branches next to a giant coralroot orchid. “I’ve never seen such a huge tree inside a house.”
“I helped George bring it in,” said Carter Donaldson, puffing out his chest. “We had to take out the living-room window to haul it inside, and then it wouldn’t stand up until we trimmed an extra foot off the bottom.”
“And it was worth all that trouble?” asked Abigail.
Tesseracts Twelve: New Novellas of Canadian Fantastic Fiction Page 17