Bewitched

by Mark Jay Harris

  It looked good, but as the ball peaked, he sensed he had overthrown it. It would go long, coming down just a hair beyond the basket, probably bounce off the side of the rim. He watched it drop. Just before it came even with the hoop, it spun backward and tipped an inch in his direction, dropping through the hole on its way down.

  Mike’s mouth fell open, and he stared, mystified. How had that happened? He’d made the shot? No way!

  He turned toward the foul line where Serena had wandered and saw her giving him a glorious smile. “You no HO, mon.”

  ***

  A 1991 Dodge Spirit was not a car young men aspired to own so they might drive it proudly into the school parking lot, but it was a car, and it did go forward and backward. The dull red paint on the hood was peeling back, or some sort of clear-coat protecting the paint was peeling back, giving it the appearance of having had acid poured on it during a windstorm. Either way, the clunker Darren’s parents let him drive more closely resembled a heap than a registered motor vehicle.

  Darren usually chatted with Mike after school, but today he hadn’t been able to find him. As it worked out, that was okay with him because he wanted to move quickly with his plan. Things had been strange the last couple days, and Samantha Spelling was the common denominator. Atavus had him convinced she was a witch and that he was part of a long line of witch killers called Pessum Ire. Atavus had been so believable in his explanation, and right now Darren needed some explanations for what was going on. First, he’d seen Samantha floating in the gymnasium in two locations. Second, there was the ball that flew out of the net during the game. Third, she’d walked through that food fight. Fourth, during that bizarre conversation in English, she’d basically used rhetoric to prove witches could exist. And fifth, there was that sudden, unexplainable stink over at Tiffany’s table.

  Was there a possible sixth? Why was he so drawn to her? Could that be witchcraft? Or, was he simply attracted to her? Attracted to a witch...this at least deserved a closer examination. So, the plan today was to follow her home. The problem was that the heap he drove was hardly inconspicuous.

  Darren had seen Samantha leave by way of the south exit. He hurried to his own car and was now slowly driving toward the back lot. He spotted Samantha saying goodbye to Cheryl Mignon. Samantha made her way toward the far back of the lot before she stopped. No other car but hers was around. And it was a beautiful vehicle. Darren hadn’t noticed the car before, but he would never make that mistake again.

  Samantha looked around. Seeing no one nearby, she placed a hand on the open doorway and vaulted into the driver’s seat of the BMW M6 Convertible. Its ruby-black exterior finish made it appear as if it had been driven off the showroom floor. It positively sparkled in the bright, though cold, March sunlight. He could see its toffee colored leather seats. Chrome shone around the lights and the front grills. And the wheels were decked out with M-radial spoke alloy rims. The car screamed Limited Edition. Darren knew a little about cars, not a whole lot, but he was certain this one had to cost in excess of a hundred-thousand dollars.

  From where he was slowly coasting, he heard the magnificent machine purr. Samantha put on sunglasses, looking like a movie star in that car, and carefully drove across the lot before entering the street.

  Darren maneuvered around other cars in an attempt to catch up with her. He dodged several students walking through the lot and ended up cutting off another student as she tried to back out of her parking spot. He received a loud honk for his poor manners.

  Samantha had turned west when she left the lot. He had to catch up. But by the time he finally got to an exit, he found himself stuck behind another car.

  “Come on, come on!” Anxiously he beat his palm against the dashboard.

  Finally, he entered the street, turning west himself. Two blocks down, he saw the intersection that entered Main Street. The beautiful black car was waiting for the light to change, its left blinker flashing.

  By the time he made it to the same intersection, there were two cars between him and Samantha’s BMW. He was glad to have cars between them; he didn’t want her to notice the heap. It was impossible to keep his eyes off her hair blowing in the wind; it was an attractive sight coming from that incredible car.

  They passed a shopping plaza, followed by open farmland. When they finally came to an intersection with a gas station on the left, she entered into the turn lane. Pulling up behind her, he felt exposed. He was sure she wouldn’t recognize his car, but just to be certain, he pulled a baseball cap down over his face and slipped his sunglasses over his eyes. But she wasn’t checking her rearview mirror for a tail; she was singing along to the radio, bobbing her head back and forth to the beat.

  No doubt about it, she was cute.

  After executing the turn, he followed her east for about five blocks, passing a school and several neighborhoods. They turned south one more time and came to the end where it teed off to the east and west. She turned east. He held back some distance, watching where she drove. When he turned the corner at the end of the street, her car was gone, and he wondered if she had somehow made it disappear. But as he drove past the corner house, he spotted her car. A flash of blonde hair disappeared through a gate of the tree-lined yard. Darren continued to drive until he reached the end of the street. He turned the corner and parked the heap in front of a house.

  Sneaking down the tree-lined street back to Samantha’s yard, Darren moved from tree to tree like an idiot, pretending to be a spy. He knew he was acting stupid, but he was afraid she’d pop out of the yard and yell, “Caught you!” So, he continued in the best form of stealth he could muster.

  After reaching the side yard, he peered around a large elm at the empty car sitting in front of an old broken-down garage. The yard was bordered by an old, eight-foot high wooden fence draped with thick ivy vines and overhung by branches of a Russian olive tree that shaded half the driveway. Cautiously Darren crossed the asphalt, climbed onto the bottom brace of the wooden fence, and peered into the yard.

  It was surrounded by silver-leaf maples, Russian olives, and quaking aspens that formed, along with more ivy and ground cover, a tree line perimeter around the entire property. The house itself, flanked by a variety of spirea shrubs, red-twig dogwoods, and scrub oaks, was a combination of different styles. It appeared to have been built before the turn of the twentieth century and then rebuilt and added to several times during the intervening years. In the front was a long porch with white painted wooden slats that hid half of it. A yard chair sat open next to a paneled door, painted red and white. The exterior of the house was painted lavender with red trimmed window frames.

  Darren dropped down from the fence and crept through the side gate Samantha had used. Scrunching down in an effort to make himself smaller, he scuttled over to the side of the house into a copse of scrub-oak and young quakies. He moved between the tangle of trunks and branches until he saw an open window. Crawling he came to a small empty bed of earth just beneath it. He hoped the cracking twigs and dried roots hadn’t been heard inside.

  He lifted his head above the window ledge and peered inside. The view was ideal. He was looking directly into the kitchen where Samantha and an old woman were busy working. All of this was visible to him from the side window of what was probably a family room that opened into the kitchen. Overall, it was very homey with the exception of an area by the pantry that was an open expanse of earthen floor about four-feet by four-feet. A fire burned on the dirt floor, different from other fires as it consisted of a single log blazing away unassisted. The flames it produced were large and crackling and licked mercilessly at a large pot suspended from an iron-worked tripod. As his eyes locked on this bizarre sight, Darren couldn’t keep the word cauldron from bubbling up in his mind.

  Samantha was walking down a hallway with a vial in her hand. She sat on a stool at the island and grabbed a slice of bread. As she nibbled, she fed some of it to a large black bird with milky-blue eyes that hopped about freely in front of h
er. The old woman said something, and Samantha rose from her seat with the small bottle, walked over to the cauldron, and carefully poured it in.

  Judging by her wrinkled paper-thin skin, the old woman had to be in her nineties. Her white hair was swept up on the top of her head in a wispy bun. Her eyes, though tired, had a brightness about them that belied an energy one wouldn’t expect from her. Those same eyes, however, periodically grew confused and clouded as if seeing something no one else could see—or ever would see. Probably losing her mind in her final years, Darren concluded.

  Their voices carried easily through the window wedged open ten inches above the sill. Darren got into a comfortable position and listened as the two women talked.

  ***

  Samantha poured a sour-smelling mixture of powdered hyssop, ground mimosa tree bark, and bile from a farm animal—she wasn’t sure which—into the cauldron her aunt stood over. Despite the foul odor, she knew once this potion was brewing, she and her aunt would be much safer in this house.

  “Is that the mixture I made earlier?” Clara’s low baritone voice quavered as she spoke. Her voice was husky, and it sounded as if it hurt her to speak. Yet, at the same time, it conveyed an element of warmth that immediately drew Samantha to her.

  Samantha replied, “Yes, Dear One. I took it from the storage room downstairs, just as you asked me. How long has it been down there?” She wrinkled her nose, hoping the taint of this part of the potion wouldn’t stink up the whole house.

  Her aunt chuckled under her breath. “You didn’t appreciate its fragrance?” Her eyes twinkled. She turned to the blind bird on the island and pushed her arm at its feet. The raven automatically climbed up and cawed at her. “She found my compound stinky, Saba.”

  “I certainly did!” Samantha returned to the kitchen island, opened a schoolbook, and started leafing through its pages. “It smells like cat urine.”

  “Good, good. That means I made it correctly.” Clara set her bird on a perch above the cauldron. She stirred the pot, examining its contents as she hummed a tuneless song. “What are you studying tonight, my pet?”

  Samantha looked up from the text. “Calculus.”

  “You should be spending more time with the Papyrus of Ani or the Words of Osiris.”

  “I’m tired of spells. I’d rather read history.”

  Her aunt examined her through heavily veiled lids. She made a clucking sound and turned back to her cauldron. “Spells are power, never forget that. Would you bring me up the sheep-bile concoction, my pet?”

  Samantha’s face filled with concern for Clara. “Dear One, I just put it in the cauldron.”

  “Oh!” Clara backed away as if the large pot had jumped at her. “Well then, we let it simmer. The blanket spell is complete. Our house is no more.” She waved her hands, indicating the house had disappeared. Stepping away from the brew, Clara joined Samantha at the island. “All right, my pet, let me help you with your history. If anyone knows history, it’s me. I’ve lived enough of it. And Saba used to regale me for hours with stories of Egyptian dynasties.”

  Samantha bit her lower lip, worried about her aunt. “It’s calculus, Dear One. I’m working on calculus.”

  “Oh well, I’ll find Grimalkin. She understands all the Persian mathematics.” She made as if to walk toward the window in the family room that was letting in air, then hesitated, and said to her niece, “You know you can cast safely now. As long as that cauldron boils, no witch will feel or hear an incantation. You could even conjure a demon if you were so disposed.” She paused, thinking for a second and added, “Why, you could even tehlo mi your mother, and she could never track you back to here.”

  Samantha regarded Clara as if she’d suggested she stick her hand into a fire. “We’ve already discussed this. Why would I want to speak to her?” Her mother had imprisoned her in a Catadromus spell for over three thousand years, released her for thirteen years to grow up in the Appensus. But ten of those years she spent on earth during the Elizabethan period, before being cast back into that state of suspended animation for another three centuries where she’d still be if Clara hadn’t freed her four years ago. Since that time, her mother had been seeking her from this netherworld in order to destroy her.

  Clara took a seat in a heavily padded rocker at the side of the island. She leaned her head back and lightly pushed off with her toes. “It might be a good idea to know what she’s up to. We think she’s in the dark, but so are we. Now we can speak to her safely; perhaps she will utter a word or two that will give something away.”

  Samantha crossed from the island and gazed down on Clara. “She must be consumed by fury after the way we left, considering all the objects we took with us. Are you sure she won’t be able to reach through the web of the tehlo mi and force a spell through?”

  Clara looked sagely at her niece. “The blanket spell is very powerful, my pet. Not even your mother can break through it. We, on the other hand, are only reasonably sure she cannot leave the Appensus.”

  Samantha sighed. Apprehensively she faced the window over the sink. Hedges and tree limbs blocked most of her view of the cloudy sky. She pictured her mother in her mind. During her final encounters with the woman, she was enflamed in a rage. Endor’s furious nature had consumed her over the centuries, and that nature had begun to take physical form in her flesh. Her countenance resembled a distorted drama-mask. She appeared as if in pain and anguish, but in reality, it was a foul temper that had permanently disfigured her.

  With this image in her mind, Samantha recited the words of the spell. “Tehlo mi-ah Endor.” As she chanted, she slowly walked in a circle in the middle of the kitchen. “Tehlo mi-ah Endor.”

  A crack reverberated throughout the room and shook items on tables and shelves. Several spices fell to the ground. A glass crashed against the tile floor. Saba filled the room with squawking and flapping wings.

  Samantha and Clara exchanged a look, both knowing and worried.

  A disembodied voice that sounded as if the room itself were speaking shook both Samantha and Clara. It rattled the window frames.

  “Sahwin!” a loud, husky woman’s voice intoned, calling Samantha by her birth name. “At last you speak.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Samantha replied. She glanced at Clara, whose eyes were closed in concentration, following the thread of the spell to the other witch. “Do you remain set on my destruction?”

  “Child, the mist of fate is a spell no witch can alter. Your fate is not under my control, even if I must pay homage to it by seeing to your annihilation.”

  “The prophecy is clear,” Samantha boldly replied. “If I am killed by witchcraft, the destroyer will be annihilated, cease to exist,” she finished, using the quote the demon had used at the time of the prophecy, now over 3000 years old.

  “Fah!” The disembodied voice roared, once again shaking the house and shattering the glass of an upstairs window. “Your interpretation of prophecies is limited, young one!” The voice grew in a crescendo throughout the house. “And you speak to me while your feeble-minded aunt plays upon the cables of your spell!” The voice fell silent.

  Samantha glanced at Clara, who appeared exhausted, but who nevertheless nodded wearily. Samantha cocked an ear, wondering if the interview had concluded. She was about to say something to Clara, though she didn’t feel the thread of the spell had been severed.

  Suddenly the voice boomed. “I will escape the Appensus! Be warned. I have ways and means of which you and Shalbriri know nothing!” The voice cackled, but it sounded like a soul in the gall of bitterness. “Your blanket spell is no more than withered reeds against the storm I’ve unleashed. You cannot hide from me. Consult the stone you stole from me, or call your own demon if you have doubts. Fate, my little one, no one can escape it!”

  The voice ended abruptly, and the pressure, which had been weighing down on the room like the heaviness that precedes a tornado, suddenly lifted. Samantha swallowed hard, and her legs felt wobbly against the strain she’d
been exerting. She leaned back against the island, and exhaled loudly. “She broke the connection.”

  No one spoke for several moments. Samantha regained her strength and stood up. She turned to her aunt, but before she could ask her question, Clara spoke. “The devil is the father of lies.” Clara closed her eyes again, and rested her chin on her chest. She appeared to be upset or pondering something distasteful. Samantha refrained from speaking, choosing to patiently await her aunt instead.

  Clara’s face twitched, and her eyes slowly opened. “Summon Grimalkin. We will need her wisdom and knowledge.” Samantha nodded, the task already done. “It has been years since we’ve viewed the stone. Perhaps another viewing will reveal something new. The stones are buried beneath the hearth in the basement. Please, summon them, my pet. I will need my strength to open them.”

  Samantha ordered, “Conprecatis Silicis Saxum!” She cast an arm in the direction of the basement. A whirring hummed from beneath the floor boards. The droning grew louder as it buzzed up the stairway. The door flew open of its own accord and gave entrance to a blur of black stones that streaked through the air like bullets toward Samantha. The three stones immediately stopped in front of her hand, where they hovered for a moment before gently dropping into her palm.

  Clara lifted herself from the rocker with some effort and grabbed her cane from the air with a spell and gesture so quickly performed Samantha missed it. She hobbled toward the kitchen island and her niece. “Set the large stone in the center of the island,” she directed.

  Samantha obeyed, then backed away as her aunt raised her arms. Clara concentrated on the stone in the center of the island and incanted, “Apertus solutus vocis larua!”

  A black and red light shot out of the stone and flashed around the room like high powered strobes. The humming grew in volume as the lights slashed through the room, moving quicker in response to the increasing sound. Both women squinted and covered their eyes against the glare of the reddish beam. The sound reached a peak and continued to whine as the lights blurred in their rotation, filling the room with a constant ruddy glow. Both women gazed again upon the flashing stone as the harsh glare diminished and the humming decreased until it was replaced with the sound of a closing door squeaking on its hinges.