by Harper Lin
That was when the screaming started.
The Well
“Oh my God! Jake! No! It’s Jake! He’s down there!” Bea’s eyes were three times their normal size as she stared into the hole and then at me. “You’ve got to help me!”
Looking at my aunt, I saw she was confused and terrified all at once.
I took two quick steps toward Bea but stopped short. It didn’t make sense. Why would Jake be down there? He had no reason to even come to this house. And how could he have gotten in when the place was locked up tight from the outside?
“Bea, give me your hand,” I said. She was near hysterics, and I was afraid she would lose her balance.
I inched my way closer to her and peered as best I could down into the darkness. Even if Jake had wanted to go down there, he couldn’t. There was no ledge, no ladder, no rope, nothing to hold on to. He would have had to be floating.
“He’s slipping! Cath! He’s slipping!”
“Bea, he’s not down there. Nothing is down there.” I kept my cool on the outside even though my heart was pounding so hard, I could feel my pulse in my feet.
My aunt was not moving from her spot against the wall. I couldn’t tell what she was doing, but I felt that if I didn’t grab for Bea, she was going to dive headfirst into that nothingness, and I’d lose her forever.
“He can’t hold on much longer! He’s going to fall!” she screamed in my face.
I didn’t know what was scarier—the house, the darkness, or the madness in Bea’s eyes.
“Jake’s not here!” I yelled firmly, grabbing her arm.
It was impossible to pull her back. She yanked away from me and got down on her hands and knees ready to lower herself down into that hole, reaching for something she was seeing that I knew wasn’t her husband.
“He’s barely holding on, and you won’t even help him!” She sobbed. “Jake! Jake!” She lowered one leg over the side.
I got on my belly and grabbed hold of her arm. “He’s not there, Bea! Nothing is there! Trust me!”
She shook me off, and in my head, I was sure I saw her tumble into that giant, mouth-like hole and disappear with a scream. But just as I tried to grab her again, her mother stepped in.
Walking bravely up to Bea, she took hold of her daughter’s arm and with one yank, pulled her up and away from the opening. Then came the thunderous voice I hadn’t heard since I was a kid.
“Beatrice Louise Greenstone!”
She was in such a fury that I was afraid my aunt was going to push Bea right down into that hole. But she didn’t. She grabbed Bea like an ornery child having a fit in a department store, and yanked her to her feet with strength I didn’t know she had. Bea looked at her mother in shock and anger, and when she began to scream and cry, my aunt slapped her so hard across the face that my teeth chattered.
“He isn’t down there, Bea!” she yelled.
Bea looked shocked. In all our life together, I had never seen her mother lift so much as a finger toward her or me. And quite frankly, we were too scared to do anything to cross her anyway. Maybe it wasn’t really being scared, but we respected her so much we just didn’t want to disappoint her by acting bad. I’m not sure. But at that moment, I watched Bea’s eyes fill with tears of pain and confusion.
“He isn’t down there, honey.” My aunt touched her child’s cheek gently. “He isn’t.”
Maybe Bea began to cry really hard. I couldn’t tell because I was crying.
“Let’s get out of here,” Aunt Astrid said coolly. “I know what needs to be done.” She pulled Bea with one hand and grabbed a hold of me with the other, leading us back up the stairs as though we were ten years old again.
But as we climbed each step, I heard something behind us. It wasn’t my imagination or an echo of our footsteps. It sounded wet and squishy, reminding me of the sound a can of condensed soup made when I shook it out of a can. Something was slithering up out of that pit. Before we disappeared around the corner of the winding staircase, I looked behind us and saw them. Thick tentacles that were a sickly looking gray color were oozing out of that darkness, searching blindly for our heels.
Aunt Astrid pulled us quickly along and out of the room then slammed the hidden door shut before the thing reached the top of the stairs. If she knew it was creeping up behind us, she didn’t say anything. I listened but heard a silence more unnerving than the slithery sound of those horrible tentacles.
With all of the protection we came in with, the creature had still gotten a hold of Bea. Had it known about Jake? Had it known she had helped heal him? Was this a personal attack, or were we all in for it?
As we made our way back through the house, I looked out the windows to the backyard. Part of me expected to see our little black-eyed friends out there peeking in. But I didn’t. I only wished it would have been them.
I didn’t know how long we were down there. It seemed like only a couple of minutes. In that time, the sun had pushed its way through the clouds. The bright oranges and yellows of the fallen leaves made a pretty fall blanket across the ground. I almost didn’t see Treacle hanging by his neck from the tree closest to the house at the edge of the patio.
“Wha…” was all I choked out.
I swallowed hard. Unable to look away, I realized that Marshmallow and Peanut Butter were also strung up there. They had all been beaten. Tortured.
Starlight Elixir
I didn’t realize my feet had stopped moving. Standing stone still at the window, I felt a wave of sadness and guilt rush over me. Dare I look at the swinging thing to my right?
It was a man. I knew it was. Without looking directly at it, I knew who it was. But I couldn’t bring myself to look. No. It wasn’t real, and I knew that. But even though I knew it was all in my head, if I looked and saw who it was, it would be burned into my mind. There was no telling how long the image would stay there. It was bad enough I was going to see Treacle, my beloved pet, in nightmares about this day. I couldn’t bear the idea of a person in my life being dreamt of in that way.
“Cath!” That voice. It sounded far off.
“Come on, Cath, honey! It’s time to go!”
I nodded and followed my aunt. I didn’t look back out into the yard. I focused on Bea, who was pale and trembling.
As I crossed the mosaic-tiled floor, I realized the image the tiles made was also an octopus. Had I gone upstairs and looked down from the landing, I would have seen the perfect image of the monstrous beast all at once. As it was, I saw just the tentacles as I hurried my pace, fearful they might come to life and drag me down into that darkness.
Outside, the air felt good and cold. Bea began to cry. I nodded at my aunt then felt in Bea’s pocket to grab her car keys. I dashed to her Chrysler and got the engine roaring.
“I saw him in there, Mom,” Bea cried. “I saw him.”
“No. You didn’t, Bea.” Aunt Astrid looked at me. “Can you drive?”
I nodded as they piled into the back seat. As soon as the door slammed shut, I sped around the circle, tore out down the cobblestone drive, and didn’t slow down until we were in front of the Brew-Ha-Ha. The ride felt as if it had only taken seconds.
My mind hadn’t registered any stop signs or green lights. It was as if I were driving in my sleep. When the sight of familiar landmarks snapped me out of it, I couldn’t believe how far we had traveled. And the weird thing was that I didn’t get lost coming out of Prestwick. My autopilot seemed to know where to go while I momentarily checked out.
I parked the car and let out a deep sigh. My body began to ache, and my head was beginning to feel the pressure of magic burnout. I couldn’t quite understand it, because it was Aunt Astrid’s potion and spell that we had used. We didn’t do battle or have so much as harsh words for any entity. I couldn’t figure out why we were so drained.
“That is what it does, girl,” Aunt Astrid said, helping Bea out of the car.
“I’m all right now, Mom.” Bea shook her head as if she had also just woken
up from a trance or a weird dream. I saw Bea’s eyes, and they seemed to look everywhere but at me. She was embarrassed.
After everything we had been through together, this horrible experience was nothing any of us could have foreseen or controlled. She didn’t know I had seen something too. She didn’t know that I was freaking out on the inside, wondering if what I had seen was just a trick or if it was a premonition. How could I tell her when she felt so bad for nearly throwing herself down a well into oblivion?
Aunt Astrid quickly went to the kitchen, where Kevin was already busy baking. He gave a quiet salutation and went back to his work, as usual, not paying much attention to us. That guy really loved to work in the kitchen.
My aunt returned with two bottles of water and two wet washrags. She handed one of each to us.
“What do you mean when you say that’s what it does?” I asked, rubbing my face with the wet rag and cracking open my bottle of water.
“That creature in that pit doesn’t just hope for strangers to come and visit the house so it can suck their life forces from them. It reaches out for people. It sends other entities to do its dirty work.”
“How do you know this, Mom?”
Sitting down at the counter, Aunt Astrid began to knead her hands. “Because I saw them. There was a whole army of abominations waiting to crawl out of the hole and feed. But you see, they can’t all come in at once. They have to take turns, earn their place. But…”
“But? What?” I asked, sipping my water with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
“But if they accomplish their goal, we may be in for a bigger and longer fight that I’m not so sure we’ll win.”
“What does that mean, Mom?”
My aunt shook her head and pursed her lips together. “I can’t say just yet.” Both Bea and I could tell she was hiding something. “Can you two manage the café without me today? I need to do a little digging, and it will probably take me most of the day, if not all of the remaining sunlight to find what I’m looking for.”
Bea and I nodded. It wasn’t that we didn’t like working with Aunt Astrid. She was great, and we loved all being together. But she was the boss. There was something wonderfully playful about coming to work and having the boss gone for the day. It was like a snow day in the middle of fall. We were almost instantly transformed back into teenagers.
“We’ll be all right, won’t we, Bea?”
“Sure. I’m feeling much better already,” Bea said. “But I would like to call Jake, just to be on the safe side. Just to know he’s all right.”
I nodded and motioned to the café phone.
“All right,” Aunt Astrid said. “Are you sure you’re both doing okay? Does anyone need a Starlight Elixir?”
“Ugh! Gross!” Bea said. I held my stomach and shook my head sternly back and forth.
Just the thought of a Starlight Elixir was enough to make me throw up. That was what it did. The name wasn’t fooling anyone. Sure, it sounded all pretty and soothing until I tried to choke it down. Then every toxin, every germ, every bad vibe, dirty look, negative thought, or magical residue that had ever accumulated in my system from my toes to the top of my head came rushing out of me. And the elixir couldn’t even promise that I would throw up. Things might decide to go south, and that was just as bad.
“Well, when this is all over, we might all be smart to suffer the side effects and toast to our health,” Aunt Astrid said as she left the café.
I put my hand on Bea’s shoulder and pretended to heave. “You don’t think she’ll make us do that, do you?”
“If I know my mother, you better just get ready to say ahh.”
“Turn to the right and cough?” I joked, making Bea giggle.
We talked and laughed a bit throughout the day. But unlike other times when we had been left to mind the store, there was a cloud hanging over both of us. I couldn’t speak for Bea, but I just wanted to ignore it. I didn’t want to talk about what I had seen or what Bea had done. I wanted to forget it all. I never thought I’d ever back down from a fight, but this one, those black-eyed kids and their multi-armed pet in the pit were too much. I was scared, more scared than I had ever been before. I wasn’t even sure why. I mean, we had gone up against ghoulies and ghosties and demons before, but there was something about this that had needled its way into my head and was not budging.
“What are you thinking?” Bea asked, bumping me with her hip as the evening started to darken the sky outside.
Thankfully, it was a slow night, and there were only two people in the café. One had earbuds in, and the other seemed to be engrossed in his own thoughts.
“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “Something is… not right. Did you ever get that feeling that something is going to happen?”
“Like a storm or something?” Bea asked, fluttering her long eyelashes as if she were trying to hold back a sudden burst of tears while she stacked the cups underneath the counter for the next morning.
“Yeah. A storm.” I looked at her then out the big glass window of the café.
“Are you scared, Cath?”
“More scared than I should be. I’ve got this feeling like something is watching me walk along the edge of a cliff and just waiting for the right moment to jump right out and scare me so I fall.”
“It would look like you jumped.”
“What?”
Bea pushed her pretty red hair away from her face. “If you were walking along a ledge like on Route 66 where that big drop-off is and someone scared you, it would look like you jumped when in reality, someone else caused you to fall.”
“That’s exactly right. You feeling it too?”
“Yes.” She stretched and squared her shoulders. “But Jake is at the station, safe and sound, and Blake is with him. They’ll watch out for each other. Sort of like you and I do.” She smiled broadly, and I couldn’t resist smiling back.
I walked up to her behind the counter and took her hand. “There is no one on the planet I’d rather be scared to death with than you.”
“Yeah, right.” She gave me a huge, knowing grin while squeezing my hand.
“What? Who? Who would I rather be scared to death with than you? Tell me. Because I have no idea what you’re alluding to. No idea at all.”
Her laugh was loud and contagious, and I played as dumb as I possibly could, but I had the feeling that Bea was talking about Detective Samberg. I tried not to smile but felt my cheeks ignite with embarrassment. I might as well have confirmed her suspicion in writing. But I said nothing and went about cleaning the tables off until I froze in my tracks and pointed out the window.
“What is it?” Bea asked, walking up behind me.
Two children were standing across the street, staring at the café. More likely, they were staring at us.
“What do you think they’re doing?” Bea walked up next to me and folded her arms in front of her as if daring them to try to step foot in our café.
“I think they’re watching us. Do you get the feeling they’re mad?”
“Yup. I think they’re mad they missed us at the house. I think they’re mad we got out of there and aren’t contemplating suicide.” She looked at me seriously. “You’re not thinking of suicide, are you? Oh, please be honest. You know I’ll help you fix it if you—”
“No.” I looked at Bea as if she had lobsters coming out of her ears. “I’m certainly not thinking of killing myself.”
“I just wasn’t sure, you know, with Detective Samberg working so many hours and—”
“Would you please give that up?”
We both looked out the window to see the children had gone. Poof. Just vanished into thin air.
“Where’d they go?” I shouted, more to myself than anyone else. I went to the door, but before I could burst through to look up and down the sidewalks, Bea grabbed my hand.
“Wait! That might be just what they want, to get you to open the door or step outside.”
I froze in my tracks. “
Those sneaky little brats.”
“Aren’t they, though?” Bea narrowed her eyes and scanned the sidewalk from the door.
We stood in silence for a few minutes until both customers, probably wondering what we were mumbling about, decided it was time for them to go.
“Thank you and have a good night,” I said as I handed the earbud guy his change.
“Be safe,” Bea added. “Don’t talk to strangers on the way home or any weird little kids.”
The guy nodded and looked at us as if he suspected we had both been drinking.
“Should we pay your mom a visit before we go home?” I asked.
“Yeah. I think that would be a good idea.”
Gloklad
Aunt Astrid had spent the entire day at her home tearing through her extensive library looking for what, I couldn’t quite say. But from the looks of her place, she had done a bang-up job.
Books from the upstairs rooms had been added to the mountains of books already in her living room and kitchen. Old tomes with exotic lettering etched on leather covers were spread open along with contemporary booklets and article clippings. Some books were written in English and some in other languages I didn’t dare try to pronounce for fear of conjuring up a dirt devil or vegetable ogre that would wreak havoc on my family.
“Hey!” I had shouted as we’d let ourselves in the front door. “Must be nice to just take the day off.” I walked up and kissed my aunt on the cheek. “Right, Bea?”
“Oh, yeah,” Aunt Astrid said. “My daughter and niece were almost swallowed by a bottomless pit, but I think I’ll just curl up with a good book or two today.”
Truthfully, my aunt looked as if she had been moving furniture. Her hair was messed up, and she had about four different pencils sticking out from it at all angles. Her sleeves were rolled up, and her feet were covered in her pink, fuzzy, not-going-outside-anymore-today slippers.
Marshmallow was lying on a tall stack of books, and the top one lay open to some random page. Her feet hung off the edges, and her tail bobbed lazily up and down.
“Hey, pretty,” I said to her in my head. “What’s been going on?”