The Death Catchers

by Jennifer Anne Kogler

  “I will not listen to another moment of this nonsense,” Agatha responded. “Go.”

  “We must first deal with the two mortals spying on us right outside your window,” Vivienne responded.

  I looked over at Jodi. As soon as I attempted to turn my head, I felt a strange stiffness. I wanted to tap Jodi on the shoulder to get her attention, but I couldn’t raise my arm. I tried to stand up but was frozen on my knees. The connection between my mind and my muscles had been severed. I attempted to scream for help, but my mouth wouldn’t move either.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Agatha said.

  “You have grown careless, then. There are, in fact, two mortals outside your cottage. One of them is due to have her thread cut shortly,” Vivienne added. “But I will not take any chances and allow their eavesdropping to alter destiny. Their minds will be cleansed.”

  “Do what you must. But should you fail to return directly to Avalon, I will inform the others,” Agatha threatened.

  “Adieu, dear sister,” Vivienne said. Though my head was frozen in place facing Jodi, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the vile flash of Vivienne’s crimson eyes. “We shall meet again very soon.”

  With one fluid motion, Vivienne flung the hood of her cloak over her head, covering her long golden hair.

  Terrified, my mind raced inside my stonelike body.

  Jodi was as still as I was.

  Vivienne strode toward the door.

  Then, an incredible thing happened—something more unbelievable than the mind-boggling conversation between Agatha and her frightening sister.

  Vivienne walked right through the front door, without opening it. It was as if the cottage door was a hologram. Either that, or Vivienne was. I stared at my arm, half-outstretched toward Jodi, willing it to move. Nothing happened.

  Jodi remained in a trance beside me.

  Vivienne came around the side of the house and into my petrified view. She approached us quickly and stopped, looming directly above us. Her red eyes gleamed in the half darkness of the cemetery. They seized on us. Reaching out, the tall robed woman placed one spindly hand on each of our heads. Her hand was as cold as if it were made of solid ice. My head felt numb. Vivienne’s eyes turned from gleaming red to spinning black whirlpools of terror. I looked into them and swore my heart stopped beating. Vivienne let her hand linger on our heads. Jodi’s eyes flashed white with fear.

  A damp, swirling black cloud rose from the ground where Vivienne stood, blocking her figure.

  In an instant, she was gone. The thick midnight-colored vapor engulfed us.

  I gasped as if I had been holding my breath underwater for a minute. I tried to speak. This time, I could.

  “Jodi!” I said, reaching for her. “Can you hear me? Jodi, are you okay?”

  Jodi, as still and mute as the tombstones surrounding us, didn’t budge. She looked dead. I reached for her stiff wrist, desperately hoping I’d feel a pulse.

  Foreshadowing

  Maybe it’s just me, but I think some English teachers go out of their way to make things overly complicated. One of the things I really love about you, Mrs. Tweedy, is that you try to keep things simple. The whole idea of foreshadowing confused me until you explained it as a hint that the author gives a reader about what will happen next.

  I’m telling you, that day in the cemetery with Jodi was a foreshadow the size of Texas. What happened there hinted at every single thing that would occur later on.

  It’s amazing how slowly time passes when you’re panicking. As we crouched outside Agatha’s cottage atop Cemetery Hill, I thought Jodi was dead. She wasn’t moving. After pressing my index finger to the underside of her wrist, I finally felt a pulse. Seconds later, her eyelids fluttered. She stood upright and stepped away from the windowsill. Agatha was still inside. I squinted through the fog. If Agatha was in any way related to the frightening woman who had just touched our heads before disappearing into thin air, I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Ruuuuuuun!” I shouted.

  Half stunned, Jodi stumbled after me, wide-eyed. We zigged and zagged between the rows of tombstones, past Old Arthur and Ambrosius Cantare, finally bursting out of the cemetery gate. We didn’t stop sprinting until we got to Delores Avenue, two full blocks from the cemetery.

  Breathless, Jodi collapsed onto the lawn in front of the Camelot Theater. Clutching my chest, I joined her on the wet grass.

  “What was that all about? Why did you freak?” Jodi asked, still panting.

  “What?” I responded, not understanding why Jodi wasn’t as horrified as I was by being frozen solid by Vivienne. Jodi was flat on her back, looking up at the starry sky. She smiled at me.

  “No offense, but aren’t you a little old to be spooked by Agatha? Maybe you can’t handle the cemetery anymore.”

  At first, I thought Jodi was playing some kind of cruel joke on me—trying to act cool even though she was as scared out of her mind as I was. I recounted exactly what I’d seen in Agatha’s cottage.

  “Look, you don’t have to rub it in, Lizzy,” Jodi said, slightly annoyed. “You were right, okay? Agatha was talking to herself about somebody named Vivienne and some truce and who-knows-what-else. She’s totally crazy.”

  “You swear you didn’t see a woman in black walk through the door like a ghost? Agatha’s sister or something? You didn’t hear her talk about the Last Descendant and Pendragon and Doomsday?”

  “Okay, Lizster. It’s time to give this up,” Jodi said, sitting upright. “It’s just not funny anymore.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny. You don’t remember being frozen? That Vivienne woman touched our heads, Jodi! I saw it!”

  Jodi put her hand to my forehead. “Are you feeling okay?” she said. “Because you are starting to sound, like, straitjacket crazy. Agatha started muttering, I was calmly listening to her, and then you started freaking out, grabbing my wrist. The next thing I know you’re yelling ‘run’ at the top of your lungs.”

  The whole incident—the conversation between Vivienne and Agatha, the way Vivienne put her hand on our heads—was so vivid. But I began to doubt myself. Was it possible I imagined the whole thing?

  “Your forehead’s a little hot,” Jodi concluded, withdrawing her hand. “High fevers cause delusions, you know. Maybe you’re getting sick.”

  “You think I imagined the whole thing?”

  “Let’s get you some OJ and Tylenol from the market,” Jodi offered, ignoring my question.

  “Orange juice? For a fever?” I questioned.

  “Sure. OJ is like chicken soup … it helps whatever ails you.”

  Jodi didn’t wait for me to agree. Instead, she began walking toward downtown Crabapple. I followed, wondering why Jodi was so anxious to change the subject. I started to think that the tall witch-woman, Vivienne, had cast some evil spell on us by touching our heads. What had she meant when she said one of our threads was going to get cut? I knew it was a little insane, but what if she was real and Jodi was under some kind of hex? Maybe it hadn’t worked on me. Worse still, maybe it had. Could Jodi be pretending she hadn’t seen Vivienne? What if Jodi wasn’t Jodi at all anymore, but some kind of zombie? Maybe we both were.

  “What’s your favorite kind of candy?” I asked as we walked down Delores Avenue.

  “Um, you know the answer to that already, Lizzy.”

  “Well, what is it?” I insisted.

  “Gummy bears. But not the imitation kind, only the real kind.”

  “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Turquoise.”

  “What’s the name of your band going to be?”

  Jodi stopped and grabbed my arm. “Seriously, Lizzy. You are acting really weird. Are you okay?”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What I saw seemed so real, Jodi.”

  “Listen. A few years ago, I swore I saw an alien on the Dandos’ roof when I was leaving your house. In the span of a minute, I convinced myself Crabapple wa
s being invaded. Turns out it was a green kite stuck on a shingle.”

  “So?” I wasn’t sure what Jodi was implying.

  “So, everyone’s brain goes a little haywire sometimes. But you didn’t see a witch in Agatha’s house and no one touched our heads, okay?” Jodi’s brown eyes pleaded with mine. She certainly wasn’t acting like she was under a hex.

  “All right,” I said, feeling I had no choice but to drop the whole thing. Jodi released my arm and we began moving toward town again.

  Before long, we were inside Miss Mora’s Market. Jodi went behind the counter into the back of the store. I waited until she reappeared with her mother by her side and a cold quart of fresh-squeezed orange juice in her hands.

  “Hiya, Lizzy!” Miss Mora said.

  Part of the reason I loved Jodi so much was because of her mom, Mora Sanchez. Jodi’s mom is known around town as Miss Mora, owner of the local grocery store, Miss Mora’s Market. Miss Mora is a sturdy woman with a long dark braid and a nice word for just about every customer who comes into her store. Truly, she is one of those people whom everyone likes to the point that it is almost annoying—except how can you be annoyed when someone’s that nice?

  Miss Mora’s Market is five blocks down the hill from our house. Which means that whenever Mom forgets to pick up something, she sends me there.

  “What did your mother forget now?” Miss Mora always says when I drop in around dinnertime. Sometimes it’s green onions or butter or milk. If the market’s busy, Jodi is usually there helping behind the counter.

  Every time before I leave, Miss Mora whistles me back to the counter and hands me a dark chocolate square wrapped in bright green foil and says, “It helps with digestion.” Like most people in Crabapple, she knows Mom’s reputation for turning perfectly good meats and vegetables into heaping burned piles of tastelessness. When it’s especially bad, like when Mom cooks her tuna casserole, so wet and mushy you can barely use a fork to eat it because it’s more like soup, Bizzy winks at me, smiling devilishly, and says, “Rita, you’ve simply outdone yourself this time. Just divine!” Later, Bizzy whispers something in my ear like, “Those green beans should press charges against your mama for what she did to ’em. Mutilation!”

  It would be one thing if Mom only inflicted her cooking on the immediate family. But she loves doing things for other people. This includes dropping off books and baked goods on a weekly basis for Jodi and Miss Mora at their apartment, which is on the floor above the market.

  Now, Miss Mora was staring at me curiously.

  “Honey,” Miss Mora said, “Jodi tells me you’re feeling under the weather.”

  “Her head is hot,” Jodi said.

  “You should probably go home and rest,” Miss Mora said sympathetically. “It may be a touch of the flu.”

  “Maybe,” I said. Physically, I felt absolutely fine. Mentally, I was a mess. I couldn’t get the harrowing figure of Vivienne out of my head. I looked at Jodi. I didn’t know if I was imagining it, but she seemed different somehow.

  Miss Mora took the fresh-squeezed orange juice out of Jodi’s hands and placed it in mine.

  “Take this with you,” she said. “There’s nothing better in this world than a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.”

  I reached into my pocket, pulling out some single dollars to pay for the orange juice.

  “Oh, no, no, honey,” Miss Mora explained. “It’s on the house.”

  I hesitated, clutching the quart of orange juice. Mom had told me over and over again that I was never to accept any freebies from Miss Mora. “It’s hard enough being a single mother in this world …,” I overheard Mom explain to Dad after she chided me for bringing home a free loaf of olive bread, “but Miss Mora, bless her heart, would give away everything in that store of hers if she felt someone was in need.”

  No matter what I said, Miss Mora wouldn’t take my money. I put the wad of singles back in my pocket.

  “Can I ask you a question, Miss Mora?”

  “Anything,” Miss Mora replied.

  “You know Agatha from the cemetery? Is she crazy like everyone says she is?”

  Jodi rolled her eyes and then smiled at me. “Lizzy is convinced that we saw Agatha talking to a witch.”

  “I am not,” I defended. “I just wondered if the rumors about Agatha are true.”

  Miss Mora put both her hands on the counter and leaned toward me. “Agatha Cantare may be a little eccentric, Lizzy, but she’s no more unhinged than half the people in this town.” Miss Mora reached behind her into a wicker basket lined with a red kerchief. She held a foil-wrapped dark chocolate square in her hand.

  “I feel sorry for the poor woman,” Miss Mora said, frowning. “The only person I’ve ever seen even talk to her is your grandmother.”

  “Bizzy?”

  “Sure, in the past couple weeks, I’ve seen Bizzy coming and going from Agatha’s cottage a lot. I think they’ve recently become friends. They’re about the same age, aren’t they?”

  Questions spiraled through my head. Bizzy … friends with Agatha from the cemetery? Did she know that awful Vivienne woman? Was Bizzy a witch, too? It seemed ridiculous. Jodi raised an eyebrow at me suspiciously. I wondered if she could tell what I was thinking.

  Miss Mora unfolded my hand and placed the dark chocolate square inside it. “Insurance in case your mother makes her legendary tuna casserole tonight,” she said, smiling brightly.

  “Thank you,” I responded.

  Jodi turned to her mother. “How come you never give me chocolate?” she whined.

  “Because you were blessed with a mother who can cook,” Miss Mora said, winking at me. “Not to offend you, Lizzy. Rita is wonderful, but the woman can’t cook canned soup.”

  I laughed. “I know. Thanks again, Miss Mora.” I took one last look at Jodi, to see if there was any trace of whatever it was Vivienne had done to us. Jodi appeared to be completely normal. I knew I couldn’t stand there and watch her all night. “See you tomorrow,” I added, reaching back into my pocket. I set the wad of one-dollar bills on the counter. I jumped toward the door, cradling the quart of orange juice.

  “But—,” I heard Miss Mora object.

  “Keep the change!” I shouted as the door to Miss Mora’s closed behind me. I sped home in the soggy Crabapple night, sure that Bizzy was the only one who could explain what had really happened in the cemetery.

  The Protagonist

  Here’s the first curveball in my story, Mrs. Tweedy: this story really isn’t mine. Like a lot of narrators, I kind of found myself caught in the cross fire. The real driving force of this story is my grandma, Beatrice Mildred Mortimer.

  Nobody calls her that, though.

  People call her Bizzy Bea or just Bizzy because she’s always buzzing around when strange things happen in Crabapple. She’s the town gossip who knows everybody’s business. Bizzy Bea is more a term of endearment than anything else, though, and my grandma doesn’t seem to mind it. She’s had the nickname since she was a teenager.

  Bizzy is a better protagonist than I am. She’s the real center of the story. Even if you’re convinced the main character of this story is me (I’m pretty darn sure it isn’t), there are still a few things you need to know about Bizzy before I tell you what happened when I asked her about Agatha and the cemetery.

  Now, Bizzy was born in 1936 in West Monroe, Louisiana, which is right smack-dab on the Ouachita River. I guess that’s only important because she’s got this great southern accent that makes everything she says sound better. Like the word “for” is “fow” and when she says “golf” she just drops the “l” completely and it’s “gof.”

  My grandma loves to tell me that I remind her of an “adolescent Beatrice Mortimer.” This, of course, just means that I remind Old Bizzy of Young Bizzy. Bizzy has this habit of talking like she’s the narrator of a documentary about her own life. For instance, when describing herself growing up she once proclaimed, “In her teens, there were two words most often used
to describe Beatrice Mildred Mortimer: ‘wild’ and ‘child.’ ” Only the way she said it, “wild child” sounded more like “while” and “chi-ull” (and as far as I can tell, Bizzy still is a bit of a “while chi-ull”). Whenever Bizzy tells me I remind her of herself, I try not to be rude and frown. The truth is, I love Bizzy, but she’s not exactly the person I want to grow up to be. Now that I know we share the same curse, I may not have much choice in the matter.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

  As the most opinionated person in our small town of Crabapple, Bizzy has quite a few critics, ranging from Mr. Primrose, the head of the Historical Preservation Society, to Mrs. Frackle, the owner of the Camelot Theater.

  Also, Bizzy looks different, to put it nicely. Her hair reminds me of a large mound of crumpled Kleenex. It’s always a messy pile of white. But she has these magnificent eyes that resemble blue-green algae at the bottom of two pools of crystal clear water.

  Bizzy loves wearing pearls (she wears a string around her neck and so many around her left wrist that they cover half her palm and look like a thick pearl wristband); fishing off the Crabapple Cliffs (I swear she hasn’t caught anything living or larger than an index finger in four years); and putting Konriko Creole Seasoning in just about everything she eats (she even sprinkles some into her morning coffee).

  Though she moves pretty darn well for a seventy-four-year-old woman, Bizzy fell down some stairs a few years ago and now she mostly gets around using one of those combination walker-stools. But it’s not just any old walker-stool. When she got it, she had it painted fire-engine red so it sparkles in the sunlight. It has extralarge wheels, a cushioned seat in the front, and patriotic streamers on its handles. She also attached small side-view mirrors to each handlebar so it was “highway ready.” By far, though, the best part is that Bizzy named her walker-stool: Dixie. Strangely enough, almost everyone in Crabapple refers to Bizzy’s walker by name as well.