by Tricia Owens
~~~~~
Melanie arrived at the shop just after eight. Even in the morning the sun was already blazing in the sky and pouring light through Moonlight's two front windows. After setting the magickal wards around the property to keep out any magickal beings, I locked the door of the shop.
"It's not so scary when it's daylight, yeah?" my best friend said, shooting me an anxious smile. She held up a pink bakery box stamped with the name of her family's food truck, Todos Tortas. "I brought some snacks so we'll be energized. No way you can fall asleep with a bunch of sugar in your veins!"
"You're trying to put me into a diabetic coma," I complained, but that didn't stop me from snatching the box from her and checking out what was inside.
As I made my first choice of the day—something with a yellow jelly on it that smelled like passion fruit—Melanie slowly wandered between the shelves. She'd been inside Moonlight tons of times, but I realized in that moment that I'd never seen her actually checking out the items up close. She usually just hung around the counter with me.
Maybe because she's been scared of it all.
"Hey, you know you don't have to do this with me if you'd rather not," I told her around a mouthful of bread. "I don't want to guilt you into this."
She looked back at me. "It was my idea, you know. Besides, I can tell you're scared."
I made a face, prepared to argue. But she was right. I was scared. Scared of the unknown, because I didn't know if my particular brand of sorcery could fight it off. If I needed to defend myself or go on the offensive, my magick came out in the form of my familiar, a Chinese dragon I called Lucky. Lucky could be a wisp of air or he could be a corporeal dragon capable of burning the entire city to the ground.
But that strength came with a price: it required my life energy and it would most likely cause me to lose all touch with humanity and plummet into the consciousness of my dragon, essentially becoming the dragon. Bad news, that. So I tried not to use my dragon that often.
And the truth was, maybe my dragon would be ineffective against a cursed or haunted object. I had no idea what I was dealing with here.
"I'm a little nervous," I admitted, "but I'm also a big girl. Don't feel obligated to stay, Melanie. I can handle this on my own."
"Nope, too late. I'm already here. You're stuck with me." She patted a porcelain faced doll on its head, then immediately jumped back when one of its arms lifted toward her. "Wow, yeah, this place is Creep Central. It's definitely better that you know what you're dealing with here so you don't wind up smothered in your sleep."
"Gee, great visual, Mel. Thanks!"
She laughed and came back to me. "So what now? We run around and poke everything?"
"I guess that's one way, but it seems like a lot of effort and unnecessarily risky. Let's try something first."
I had an old Sony camcorder on the shelves that I took down and placed on the counter where the register was. I aimed it out at the shop and checked the viewfinder.
"We'll record the shop while we're in back," I said, stepping away from the camera after pressing Record. "Something might show up just because we're not watching. If the quality is crappy I'll use my phone, but I'd rather not get it involved in case it's, you know, tainted."
"Ooh, this is going to be fun!"
I looked at the camcorder hopefully. "As long as the Blair Witch doesn't show up I'll be happy."
~~~~~
While the camera recorded, Melanie and I lay in bed and watched video game walkthroughs on YouTube.
"How are they so good?" she wondered aloud as we watched whoever was playing the game defeat an army of demons with a bunch of complicated maneuvers that likely would have broken my thumb had I been the one holding the game controller.
"I think they play these things over and over until they're experts at it. Then they film themselves. At least, I hope that's what they do. It's too depressing to think they might be this good from the get-go."
"If I were that good, I'd play nothing but RPGs. Ones with cute boys, like Final Fantasy."
"I'd play horror survival just like this." You would have thought I'd had my fill of monsters and ghouls, but apparently not. Or maybe the prospect of blasting them with various weapons and gaming magick was what appealed to me. In the gaming world, I could be powerful without risking life and limb.
Melanie turned onto her side and peered up at me. "Do you ever think that maybe one day, magickal beings will outnumber normal people?"
"God, I hope not. Think about all the crazy things that are out there, Melly. And that's just the things we know about, the things that have been seen in the light. The creatures that could always be in hiding? No thanks. That's way beyond my comfort zone."
"Ugh, that's totally true," she whispered fiercely. "So many monsters. So many things created by black magick. Lots of things are probably out there that shouldn't exist. Like they'd make you go insane if you saw them or heard them."
A shiver crawled over my skin. "I don't want to try to imagine them. You shouldn't either. It'll just give you nightmares."
"I think it might be too late." She rolled over onto her other side, so she faced the bead curtain. "You ever wonder if maybe all the stuff in here might one day attract something like that? Something scary?"
I sat up. "Are you trying to freak me out?" I closed my laptop lid. "My uncle has been running this shop since I was a kid. Nothing came after him."
But of course, as soon as I said it, I had to acknowledge that no one knew what had become of Uncle James. He'd been missing for two years now, which was why I was running Moonlight Pawn.
"I'm just saying, Anne, be extra careful from now on."
She had me spooked, which admittedly wasn't difficult to do considering the circumstances. I slid out of bed. "Come on. It's been a couple of hours. Maybe the camcorder caught something."
I peeked through the beads first, though, just in case I spotted something in motion. Despite my sneakiness, it was no dice. Everything appeared nice and quiet.
Sure it was.
I pushed through the curtain with Melanie right behind me and picked up the camcorder. I depressed the Record button to stop it and then angled the viewfinder so my friend could see it, too.
"Ready?" Feeling just a bit more excited than scared, I pressed the Play button.
I expected about two hours' worth of boredom. We got something else.
"Holy cow!"
"Yeah," I agreed with Melanie. "Holy cow."
The interior of the shop showed up clearly in the video. Everything on the shelves were still, just as they were now. It was what moved within the shop that shocked us. A ghostly figure danced up and down the aisles. She was transparent and didn't have facial features that we could make out on the screen. She held the hem of her dark dress, revealing bare feet, as she moved around the shop. Her hair was as white as snow or maybe a pale blonde, falling past her hips. Though she moved smoothly and elegantly, like she was an accomplished or practiced dancer, the hairs rose on my arms as I watched her.
"I guess I should have checked first to see if this camcorder was haunted," I muttered.
"You've got a ghost in here! Is it part of the shop?"
"I have no idea. I'm hoping it's only part of the camera."
We watched the video for several minutes. The ghost didn't seem to tire, so I fast forwarded it. The ghost danced manically and then abruptly disappeared.
"Whoa." I rewound it until she was back on the screen, then pressed Play again.
She was dancing as usual, but then ten seconds later she suddenly stopped with her back to the screen. Then, to my extreme discomfort, she turned around and faced the camera. Even lacking a face, I could tell her attention was on the camera. She began to walk toward it, as if curious, but then rushed at it with clawed fingers.
Melanie and I cried out and leaned backward as the screen filled with white mist. My heart was pounding as I stared at the screen and the now-empty shop view.
"Whe
re did it go?" Melanie whimpered.
Very, very slowly, I turned my head.
"Thank god." I slumped. "I thought it might be behind us."
"What?!"
Melanie spun, too, but fortunately she didn't find anything creeping up on us either.
"Well, this was something I regret in a big way," I drawled. I studied the camera for a long minute. "I need to know if this ghost is in the shop or in this camera." I aimed it at the shop and pressed Record.
I watched the viewfinder, cringing, as I panned the camera over the interior. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
"Anything?" Melanie whispered.
I turned to her and the viewfinder filled with her worried face—and the ghost standing right behind her.
"Ahhh!"
My fingers flexed and the camera fell right through them. It hit the floor and shattered into dozens of pieces.
"Well, damn," I said as I stared at the wreckage. "Now I'll never know if there's a ghost in here or if it was only on this camera."
"Try your phone!"
I did, and nothing unusual showed up. Was the ghost merely hiding? Or had it gone the way of the camcorder?
"I don't like mysteries," I declared with a scowl.
"I guess it's true what they say," Melanie said, looking haunted. "Ignorance really is bliss!"
~~~~~
After the scare with the ghost, I needed some concrete answers.
"This thing came in recently," I told Melanie as we stood before the bowl filled with sand. "The timing is too perfect. It must be connected."
"What does it do?"
I lifted the glass lid and dragged my fingers through the sand grains. "This."
The granules shifted, wiping out the furrows I'd made and replacing them with a word: ASK.
"Is there something in this shop that wants to hurt me?" I asked aloud.
The sand rippled, like there was a gopher beneath it, displacing the grains. Then the sand reformed into a word: YES.
"Perfect!" Melanie exclaimed, then hunched her shoulders at the look I gave her. "Okay, not perfect, perfect, but at least we'll get an answer now."
"Unless it's lying to me or trying to trick me." Both were serious considerations.
"What item wants to hurt me?" I asked the sand bowl.
More shifting granules. Then: GIFT.
I thought about it. "That's no help. I haven't received any gifts lately that weren't flowers or food."
"I swear my goodies weren't cursed!" Melanie quickly told me.
"Yeah, right. Calories and fat are a curse, you know." I sobered. "Maybe it means something that I received for free?"
That seemed likely, but it also narrowed down my list to about twenty things, including the bowl of sand and its buddies in the hat box. Magickal beings ditched things at Moonlight on a regular basis, apparently aware that I was dumb enough to take them without questions.
I looked down at the sand again. "Can I prevent it from hurting me?"
The sands formed a new word: REMOVE.
Big revelation there. I capped the bowl with its lid.
"Alright, enough of this. We need to go big or go home. We need to hold your Night of Jinxes, Melly."
She clapped. "Yay! This'll be exciting."
That wasn't exactly the word I would have chosen.
"I need to set the mood," I told her. "Hold on." I ducked into my studio and came out with a couple of bed sheets. "Help me pin these up."
Together, we pinned two bed sheets over the front windows. The fabric wasn't opaque enough to cast us into complete darkness, but it was enough to turn Melanie into a short, shadowy figure by my side. It was now officially spooky.
"Just in case some things only operate in the dark," I explained to her.
Melanie edged toward the bead curtain. "And activating all the curses?"
Instead of replying, I reached into that rumbly core behind my breastbone where I felt that my sorcery lived. Normally I willed it to take the form of Lucky, my dragon. But this time I didn't give it shape, I just sort of...let it bleed out of me. I could see it as a faint glowing mist, but I knew that Melanie wouldn't. She kept looking at me, waiting for me to respond.
"Anne?"
"There," I said, as my sorcery began to climb the shelves and slowly rise up over the items resting there. "I'm infusing everything with magick." My heart was racing. Was this the craziest idea ever or the cleverest? "Let's duck back behind the curtain now and see what happens."
~~~~~
"Your plan might make me sneeze," Melanie whispered from where she lay on her belly beside me.
We were stretched out on my duvet which I'd spread on the floor of my studio. Each of us held small hand mirrors which we had thrust through the bead curtain so we could see what—if anything—occurred within the shop.
"Maybe the warden will be by soon with some Benadryl," I whispered back. I felt like a prisoner watching for the daily mail cart as I angled my mirror this way and that, trying to catch something in motion.
"What do you think is going to activate first?"
I shifted the mirror, aiming it at the shelf with the six items I'd taken in the night before, including the bowl of sand, all items that could be considered gifts since their owner hadn't demanded payment in exchange for them. None of the items seemed to have become activated by my sorcery, though. I muttered a curse beneath my breath. I wanted this to be over and done with.
But though my main suspects looked innocent enough, something else had begun happening. "Check out the second lowest shelf on the far shelves!"
It was an old toy fire truck, made of metal and weighing what felt like fifty pounds. What kind of kid had been strong enough to push that thing around? Guess kids were tougher back in the old days.
Most of the red paint had been scraped off the body of the vehicle but the wheels were intact. The upper torso of a fireman would periodically pop up through an opening in the roof of the car as you pushed the vehicle along. He was popping up right now, even though the fire engine wasn't moving. Also, the formerly smiling, friendly fireman was now a skeleton and the rest of the fire truck was in flames.
"Holy—Anne, that's gonna burn down the shop!"
"It's supernatural," I murmured, trying to keep cool even though I was shocked. "See how the flames are tinged blue at the edges? And nothing around it is affected."
Melanie nodded eagerly. "That's kind of cool, then. Did you know it did that?"
"No." And that worried me. I thought I had just about everything in my inventory pegged. If I'd missed a flaming, skeleton-driven fire truck, what else had I missed?
Eventually the flames died down and the skeleton regrew his skin and became the nice fireman again, but I'd never look at it the same way again. I practically felt betrayed by it. But I didn't have to dwell on it for long. One of the mini-Chinese vases was overflowing with blood.
"Ugh," Melanie grunted when she noticed it, too.
"No biggie," I assured her quietly, "it's not real. I've never had to clean up anything around it, so..."
"Maybe it's better that you don't know what any of these things do," Melanie suggested.
I was beginning to think she had a good point.
She and I startled as the zombie nutcrackers on the counter began to chatter as though they were yelling at each other. I relaxed when I saw they weren't going to do anything else. But then the cameos started in and they actually were yelling.
It's coming! Anne Moody, it's coming for you!
It lives with you…
Anne Moody, prepare for it!
They were annoying enough when they were only moaning to me but now, with them shrieking, I gasped and covered my ears with my hands.
"What is it?" Melanie asked, pushing up onto her knees. She couldn't hear the cameos. No one else could.
"The cameos," I gasped. "They're going nuts."
It's coming! It's coming!
Coming for you!
Anne Moody, prepare...
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"Argh, I can't take it!" I jumped to my feet and burst through the bead curtain with Melanie just a few feet behind me.
At the counter, I slung open the jewelry case door and sent my dragon inside. Lucky, although taking the size of a cat in order to fit inside the case, widened his mouth enough to gobble up the tray, cameos and all. I'd never tried this before, and to my amazement and relief the harping voices became a low, indistinguishable murmur while they sat within Lucky's closed mouth. It wasn't something I could maintain forever—non-magickal people would see this magickal dragon sitting there and question what was up—but for now, it would keep me sane.
"Thank god," I sighed, slumping back.
"Anne," Melanie whimpered, "look!" She pointed out at the shelves.
A woman's hand attached to an arm was sliding along the shelves. It originated from somewhere behind other, larger items, so I couldn't tell what curse had born it. The hand and arm both were filthy, as though they'd clawed up through the soil of a grave. Its long nails were mostly broken and jagged. What bothered me most about the thing—beside the fact that it existed at all—was the tension in the limb. Cords of muscle and tendons strained beneath the dirty skin as the hand crept along, as though it were angry and looking to seize hold of something, or someone.
Would the rest of the woman climb out of the shelves, too, once she'd found what she was looking for? Or would she yank her victim into the depths of where she had come from?
"No way that's been in here all this time," I choked out, equal parts horrified and angry. "No way!"
Melanie yelped when the two porcelain dolls leaped off the shelves, landing on their faces on the floor. Their soft, short limbs moved, pushing the dolls slowly across the floor, heading toward us...
Something began to laugh. It was low pitched and masculine. But then a pair of higher, girlish voices joined it.
"What's doing that?" Melanie cried out, backing against the counter.