Cattywampus

by Ash Van Otterloo

  The lights in the foyer were off, and Katybird stumbled inside, relieved to be alone. She curled up on the cool tile beneath a table of bulletins and wondered where Podge was. She hummed softly to herself in a shaky voice, only realizing halfway through that she’d picked “This Little Light of Mine.” Katybird was too stressed to think of another song, so she decided to go with it.

  Don’t let magic blow you up, I’m gonna let it shine.

  She’d not been in the church for ages. Her mama had stopped making her come when, after the girls from the slumber party kept praying for her “condition,” Katy was forced to explain to her well-meaning youth leader that she was intersex. When they’d offered prayer for that, Katy had decided to stay home and watch cartoons with Podge, who appreciated Katy’s awesomeness. ’Course, not showing up had meant a few elderly members had badgered her mama about whether the Hearns were backslidin’ into their old ways, which was polite old-people code for witchin’. If those people could see her now, hands sparklin’ with tangled-up magic, wouldn’t their tongues wag? Her family would never live it down.

  We’ll find Podge, she decided. We’ll find the well water. Things’ll be fine. If Delpha can be brave, then so can I. The glow died down to a buzz that numbed her fingertips.

  Katy headed for the front door, ready to rejoin Tyler and Delpha. Just before she grabbed the handle, a shout echoed down the long hallway leading to the fellowship hall. Someone was back there. “It’s prob’ly nothing,” she whispered. But she found herself moving toward the long, dark hallway anyway, sneakers squeaking on the tile.

  Katy shoved open the door, then froze.

  Over a dozen people stood slack-jawed around rummage sale tables, their hands clutching kitchy junk in terror. Five decaying witches stood at the center of the room with moldy wands raised. The tallest McGill zombie twisted all the way around, hissing at a tourist nearby, its eyeless sockets yawning with menace. The young woman blubbered, clutching her little purse dog protectively against her chest. Her sobs bounced eerily around the quiet room—everyone else had gone mute with fear.

  It took a moment for the unthinkable to sink in: Katybird and Delpha had failed to beat a handful of cursed McGill zombies to downtown Howler’s Hollow. The monsters had found their way to Spring Fling.

  A wet, guttural growl made everyone jump.

  “Which ones of you dawties is Hearns, then?” the zombie rasped, twirling its wand up and down its rotted fingers like a coin.

  Do something, Katybird, she told herself, stomach churning. Her pulse drummed in her ears. She had no magic. No powers. But these poor people were just as defenseless, and they didn’t know what they were up against. Katy looked around for a familiar face, to see who was in charge. But there was no one she recognized.

  A balding man beside her took up a ceramic chicken as a weapon and moved to strike the zombie. If the man hit the zombie, he’d just make it angry. Without thinking, Katy yelled, “Stop!”

  Everyone turned to look at her. Katy swallowed hard, then stepped farther into the big room and squared her shoulders. “It’s part of a play rehearsal,” Katybird cried, voice cracking. People’s eyes flicked toward her in confusion, then back to the zombies. Sell it, Katy, she told herself. Sweat trickled down her back.

  “But their makeup ain’t done yet. It’s not nearly creepy enough. Rummage sale’s closed for an hour, folks. Bye!”

  The shoppers relaxed. They grumbled as they filed out the door, shaking their heads. “Hillbillies!” one of them muttered.

  She gulped.

  The five McGill zombies turned in unison, gazing at Katy. Acid rose in Katy’s throat. The nearest one lunged. With a rattling snarl, its bony fingers snatched at Katy, missing her face by a foot as Katy screamed and leaped backward. The zombies gathered around her in a slow half circle, seeming to savor her predicament. Katy was a mouse, and they were toying with her. She was dizzy with panic. She couldn’t fight zombies with snarled-up magic. She glanced around the room for ideas. The zombies inched even closer, hissing. Could she distract them? They only cared about defeating the Hearns. Maybe Katy could play that against them and buy herself some time. But what might appeal universally to every old person, dead or alive?

  “Th-the Hearns are on their way to this rummage sale,” Katy blurted, her voice squeaking. “An’ if you don’t get the good stuff first, they’ll snap up everything here faster than you can blink.” Katy shuddered at her word choice. These things didn’t have eyes to blink with. “They’ll … they’ll beat you at rummaging!”

  The zombies exchanged dark looks. Katy held her breath, sweat rolling.

  All at once, the undead witches attacked the rummage tables like a pack of wolves, with a savage rage that made Katy shake. The zombies shattered and shredded as much as they pocketed. One set a pile of socks on fire with her wand, filling the room with smoke. Plates smashed and silverware bounced, clanging across the floor.

  Trembling, Katy scurried to the edge of the smoky room, grateful she wasn’t the one being ripped to tatters. What next? The rummage sale would only keep them occupied for so long before they turned their creepy eye sockets toward the festival outside. What would Delpha do?

  Her eyes landed on the baptismal tank at the far end of the room. The thing was, in essence, a deep bathtub on a raised platform, with walls built around it so little kids wouldn’t topple in. The rectangular tank had a clear Plexiglas window on the front, so people could watch their friends and families be baptized by submersion—more or less a spiritual dunking booth. The act was meant to symbolize resurrection from death.

  A wry smile played on Katy’s face. It might work as a zombie jail, and there was a certain poetic irony to it. Skirting around the ransacking McGills, Katy stumbled to the baptistery and tried the big metal door. It was unlocked, but the lock mechanism was inside the tank, not outside. She couldn’t trap the zombies with the lock like that. Rats.

  The zombies smashed and ripped their way through another row of tables. Katy crawled to grab one of the fallen butter knives from the floor. When she’d gotten it, she hurried back to the baptistery door.

  Katy licked her lips in concentration. Once, when Caleb was three, he’d accidentally locked himself in the bathroom while her dad was out for milk. Katy had undone the screws holding the doorknob to get Caleb out. Now she planned the same for the baptistery door.

  She undid the screws with the flat knife, then yanked her half of the doorknob loose. Once that was done, she pushed the other half through, so it fell away in a clatter. Katy used her index finger to open the inside latch, swinging the door open. Then, hands shaking with fear and excitement, she replaced the handle halves backward, with the lock on the outside.

  Katy glanced at the zombies, and her heart slid to her shoes as she realized not every innocent person had escaped the rummage sale.

  The town’s oldest, sweetest citizen, Mrs. Hattaway, who was mostly blind, had been manning the cash box. How had Katy not noticed? Now the tiny lady stood in the middle of the room, mistaking the zombies for actual people. “Precious saints,” she warbled, “please don’t do the dishes that-a-way!” She squinted at the zombies through thick glasses, clutching the money box with gnarled fingers. “I’m afraid y’all will have to pay for whatever you break!”

  “Oh no, Mrs. Hattaway—!”

  But Katybird wasn’t fast enough. The tall McGill zombie’s leathery face cracked as a smile split—actually split—its face. With insect-like speed, it raised its wand and landed a hex on Mrs. Hattaway’s frail chest before Katybird could even scream.

  It wasn’t pretty magic. The old woman moaned as she slowly went gray and rigid from toe to head, like stone. Katy held her breath in horrified silence as Mrs. Hattaway’s watery eyes went dull. Timidly, Katy reached with one finger to poke the old woman’s arm, then leaped back, shuddering, when she felt cool granite. They’d turned Mrs. Hattaway into a tacky lawn ornament!

  Katybird couldn’t stop shivering from shock.
Mrs. Hattaway was as much a part of the Hollow as Sadie’s Kitchen or Spring Fling or the church itself. She couldn’t be dead-dead. This couldn’t really be happening. A guttural growl from one of the witch zombies assured her it really was.

  The creatures turned toward Katy. She stumbled back, slipping on ceramic plate shards and slicing her elbow open. Chest tight, she jumped to her feet and screamed with all the ferocity she could muster. “The Hearns are in there!” She pointed at the baptistery door. “After them!”

  All five zombies erupted with snarls and bloodthirsty squeals, hiking up their skirts and charging the door. Katybird followed hot on their heels, praying her plan would work. The first granny zombie screeched to a halt at the doorway, sensing something was fishy. Too late. Her zombie sisters slammed into her full throttle from behind, and four of them fell like ugly rag dolls into the baptismal tank.

  The last granny teetered on the threshold, arms flailing. Katybird lifted her purple sneaker and kicked the thing with all her might. The zombie toppled forward, and Katybird slammed the door and locked it, breathing hard.

  The trapped witches snarled and cussed and beat their hands against the walls, trying to escape. One who’d been born in a century without clear plastic headbutted the Plexiglas and fell back dazed and confused. A wretched chant arose: “Kill the Hearns! Kill the Hearns!” The undead witches’ crazed faces contorted with a blind hatred that sent cold dread down Katybird’s spine.

  “Not this Hearn, you hateful old bats!”

  Katybird turned, crestfallen, at the statue that had been Mrs. Hattaway. Her eyes welled with tears. What must the poor woman have felt? Without warning, the trapped magic in Katy’s hands surged, and the stinging knocked the breath from her. For a few minutes, she knelt on the glass-strewn floor and felt sorry for herself. If only I were like Delpha or Tyler or Mama or Nanny, she thought. If only my magic worked, I might have saved her …

  But everything was so wrong. Her magic. The zombies. Every bit of it was cattywampus, crooked, wrong. Katy wished she could reach out and straighten it all, like a picture frame on the wall.

  Then, bolting upright, Katybird realized she could. Tyler was right. Katy had plenty of power at her disposal—her mama and her nanny would do anything in the world to help her if she asked them. Her own fear of disappointing her family was the only thing stopping her. She hadn’t wanted to fail Delpha, either. But those worries seemed so small now, compared to what had happened to Mrs. Hattaway.

  Heart quickening, Katybird fished a hair elastic from her pocket and yanked her curls into a ponytail. Folks in the Hollow needed protection, and she could help by telling her family the truth. Katybird sprinted for the outside door, shoes crunching and slipping their way across the wreckage of the rummage sale. She blinked hard in the harsh afternoon sun, then tore across the street toward her family’s festival booth.

  DELPHA AND TYLER RAN THE LENGTH OF MAIN Street a second time, searching the bustling street for Katybird.

  “Let’s split up,” Delpha suggested, mopping her forehead. “You check by the port-a-johns on that side of the street, and I’ll go look up by the Hearns’ museum tent. Meet back at the welcome booth in five minutes.”

  “Okay,” Tyler agreed before threading through the crowd.

  Delpha squeezed the bottle of tincture in her sweaty palm. She hoped she’d find Katy first so she could give her the tincture right away. Then they’d see about finding the girl’s silly raccoon and doing the Reverse-Curse. They were close now, and Delpha’s heart fluttered in anticipation.

  She swiveled right, toward the row of tents where the Hearns set up their museum info booth every year. Delpha squeezed past strollers and slow-walking folks, huffing with impatience. A flock of balloons bobbed a hundred yards ahead, marking the Hearns’ booth. Almost there …

  A woman nearby let out a bone-chilling scream. The festive chatter died for the length of several booths, replaced by worried whispers. Delpha tensed, hand shooting to her wand pocket. She stood on tiptoe to get a glimpse of what was going on, then stumbled back with a gasp as the canvas tent nearest to her erupted into flames. The crowd parted and people shrieked, littering the ground with snow cones and boiled peanuts in their frenzied press to escape. One man elbowed Delpha, and she lost her balance, crashing sideways onto the asphalt. When she got her breath back, she gasped.

  Four wizened witches with cadaverous cats and foxes winding around their legs sauntered through the screaming crowd. Black smoke rolled from the burning tent behind them, and they cackled as the flames licked toward the neighboring booth.

  Delpha coughed and scrambled to her feet, still clutching the tincture bottle. “No,” she whispered. She and Katy had been solving this—they’d been fixing it!

  “Where’s them cursed McGills?” a Hearn zombie snarled through a mouth of crumbling teeth. The eyeless owl on her shoulder screeched and flapped, shedding mildewed feathers.

  But before Delpha could run, a deafening explosion from the other side of the street shook the ground. Delpha swiveled long enough to see the far wall of the church collapse into rubble, and a handful of bedraggled McGill zombies crawled from the gaping hole in the wall. One of them snapped an arm back into place before raising a splintered wand. She led the little group in a limping charge to meet the Hearn zombies head-on.

  The whole festival dissolved into chaos as fear rippled down Main Street. Some people tried to be heroic. A trio of men from the Howler’s Hunting booth volleyed over their table with bolt-action rifles, firing off several shots before an undead Hearn calmly melted the guns’ barrels into puddles with a flick of her withered wrist. The curse demands the zombies murder whoever gets in the way of their feud, Delpha remembered. “Don’t try to fight ’em!” Delpha shouted, but her voice was tiny in the pandemonium.

  In the middle of the road, a sandy-haired boy stood bewildered, clutching a balloon that read Hearns’ Appalachian Culture Museum. A McGill zombie caught sight of the balloon from behind, and its face contorted in a horrible grin. It began stalking toward him like a cat. Delpha’s heart liquefied. It was Caleb Hearn, Katy’s little brother, all alone.

  Delpha stuffed the tincture into her pocket and pulled out her wand. She was shaking, and she had no idea what to do, but she began to run toward Caleb anyway. I can’t let them hurt him! she thought. Delpha tried to use her puppet magic on a tent, but a tourist ran into her and knocked her wand from her hand. After a quick search, Delpha couldn’t find it, and she kept running for Caleb anyway.

  Caleb signed something over and over, looking around. Then he yelled out, “Daddy? Daddy?”

  Delpha stumbled. It felt like she was falling through space. For a second, she couldn’t remember where, or when, she was. A lost memory bubbled up inside her, and a bright wave of pain pierced her chest. Her hand gripped her shirt over her heart, and she couldn’t make her legs work.

  “Daddy, don’t leave without me! Daddy, the cake!” She was standing in her gravel driveway, watching their family’s blue pickup rumble away. Her birthday. Delpha clutched a box of cake mix in one hand and a wire whisk in the other. They’d been fixing to make cobbler together. He shouted “I love you!” through the open truck window, but he didn’t come back. It got dark. Cicadas had sung for a long time while she waited. There’d been no birthday dessert. Mama had locked herself in her room, and Daddy was gone. He left his best girl, his little cricket, and he didn’t come back for her, even though Delpha had slept out on the gravel and waited all night.

  CRACK. Delpha startled, then leaped toward Caleb, but it was too late. The stone hex hit his tiny back so hard, he flew forward several feet and landed in Delpha’s arms. Delpha hugged him tight. Caleb wheezed painfully for several breaths before his small body finally went still and rigid. The balloon floated off into the sky. Delpha’s tears dotted the concrete.

  Smoke stung Delpha’s lungs. Her throat filled with a leaden lump of grief. She clutched Caleb’s cool, stony hand and wept. “I’m so sorry, s
weetie. I’m so sorry.” He was so helpless, and Delpha had failed him. None of this made sense.

  “You favor the McGills, wee one.” The hot, foul stench of the McGill zombie’s breath against her ear made Delpha’s skin crawl, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Leathery, flaky skin scratched Delpha’s cheek.

  “Are ye one of us?”

  “I … I am Delpha McGill,” Delpha whispered, voice shaking.

  “Trust no one, bairn! Hate and kill!” The zombie hobbled off, cackling to itself.

  They’ll keep killing folks until we unmake them, Delpha told herself. Katy and I still have to do the Reverse-Curse. Delpha planted a kiss on Caleb’s stone cheek. “I’ll find a way to fix you,” she promised him. Then Delpha was up and running, screaming Katybird’s name into the chaos, dodging running bodies.

  “Delpha Storm McGill!”

  Delpha froze in place, her stomach a block of ice. Only one person would call her by her full name. She turned stiffly to see Mama furious and pale as she strode through the confused crowd to snatch Delpha’s arm. “What in mercy’s name are you doin’ here?”

  Delpha stared like a deer in highlights, and Mama didn’t wait for an answer. She kept right on scolding, lowering her voice to a hiss.

  “Someone’s been messin’ with strong conjure, and we’re gettin’ out of here before folks start remembering our family used to do magic, and pointin’ fingers. I’ve told the Hearns that secret magic is still breaking the rules …”

  Delpha couldn’t breathe. When Mama was like this, fussin’ nonstop, it felt like the world was closing in on Delpha. She couldn’t even think to form an excuse. Mama yanked her down the street by the arm with one hand, furiously texting on her cell phone with the other, giving Delpha no choice but to stumble along after her.

  “I came home from a birth at seven this mornin’, and you were gone. An’ I told myself, I can trust my daughter! She’s stayin’ between our house and the museum trailhead, like a good girl. And here you are, in this mess. Where’ve you been?”