Malus Domestica

by Hunt, S. A.

  Since the monster had cut him off before he could reach the cupola door that led back to the hospital and Leon, he fled down the hallway to the upstairs bathroom. Flinging the door open, Wayne was surprised and dismayed to find only a bathtub and a toilet.

  He looked back just in time to see the deformed Sasquatch pin Jo-elle to the floor and rake fingernails across his bare chest. Blood pattered up the wall.

  Gathering his feet, Jo-elle leg-pressed the creature’s chest, almost lifting it into the air, and pried himself free, loping after Wayne on all fours. They crowded into the bathroom and Jo-elle shut the door, locking the knob, as if that would help.

  BANG! The thing outside threw itself against the door. A cup of toothbrushes toppled into the sink.

  The window over the tub was painted shut. Mysterious night lay opaque against the windowpane like black felt. “Now what?” asked Wayne, on the verge of hysterics. He ripped open the mirror.

  Instead of a medicine cabinet, a dark living room gaped inside, viewed from a high angle some ten feet in the air. Huge plate-glass windows to the left showered the room in soft gray moonbeams.

  Wayne climbed up on the sink and through the medicine cabinet. “Come on!”

  On the other side, he stood on top of a refrigerator. Wayne climbed down onto the counter, stumbling over a panini press, and jumped down to linoleum. His new thong-bedecked friend leapt down after him and fell, swearing about his ankle.

  The crawlspace they’d escaped through slammed shut, becoming a painting.

  Bleeding on the floor, poor Jo-elle had a mini-breakdown, his hands flapping. “Mother of God and home of the brave, what in the hell was that?”

  The kitchen lights came on, dazzling them both.

  A blond man with a crutch under one arm and a pistol in the other trained his muzzle on them. A pretty woman with a shaved head stood next to him, and they were both in T-shirts and underwear.

  “Joel?” asked the man.

  Joel squinted. “Kenway?”

  “The hell you doing in my kitchen at—” Kenway glanced at the microwave, ejecting the magazine from the pistol and racking the slide. A bullet flipped out and he caught it in his other hand. “—Two in the morning? …Butt-ass naked in hand-cuffs. With a little boy.”

  Wayne’s eyes trickled down until they came to rest on the blond’s left leg, which ended in a nub just below the knee.

  “What’s it look like, Cap’n Hooker?” demanded Joel, panting and grimacing, his hand over the lacerations on his chest. “I needed to borrow a cup of sugar.”

  14

  “AND THAT’S HOW WE ended up here,” said the kid. They were all clustered around the island in the kitchen, wide awake. Robin’s camera still stood at the end of the counter, recording his tale. Kenway made them all omelets and coffee while Joel and Wayne told their stories. His eyebrows stayed high and his forehead furrowed through most of it, but to his credit he never challenged them or made any disbelieving noises.

  Wayne had traded his hospital gown for a sweater and a pair of cargo pants from Robin. They were feminine and a couple sizes too big, but it was a good look with his glasses. A ten-year-old hipster.

  Joel was wearing a pair of Kenway’s jeans. With some alcohol, Neosporin, a bandage, and a bottle of breakfast stout, he was sore and bitchy but otherwise good as new. He’d only been nicked by the nail through the door, and his cuts weren’t as bad as they looked—more scratches than anything else, not quite bad enough to need stitches.

  Robin walked around the apartment, looking through the boy’s ring like Sherlock Holmes with his magnifying glass, trying to detect anomalies. No such luck. It seemed that whatever the ring was capable of, only its owner was able to take advantage of it.

  An engraving inside the ring said, Together We’ll Always Find a Way.

  This was significant. Words hold power, and Robin knew from experience that text—whether engraved or printed—could absorb and retain or channel that power.

  “I need to call my dad and let him know I’m all right,” said Wayne. “If he’s awake now, he’s probably really worried. Probably wondering where I am.” He sighed. “I don’t have my cellphone or I’d text him.”

  Pouring herself a cup of coffee, Robin joined them at the island. She gave him her cellphone and the ring, and he typed in his dad’s number, pressing the phone to his ear.

  “What troubles me the most,” she said to Kenway, “is that the Sasquatch-monster they said was hiding in my old house is…well, I’ve been seeing it for a long time. I’ve always thought it was a hallucination. A part of my schizophrenia.”

  “Really?” He pushed an omelet in front of her.

  “Yeah. I don’t know what to think about knowing someone else saw it too.” Robin sat there picking at it, carving off little bites and eating them in a daze of deep thought.

  “I’m with friends, Dad,” Wayne was saying, trying to lay down some damage control. They could hear the mosquito-buzz of Leon Parkin shouting through the phone. “Yes, friends. No, not Pete. I’m fine, I’m fine. Something happened in the room and I ended up somewhere else. I mean, I don’t know. It was weird. Yes.”

  His face scrunched up on one side and he screwed the heel of his hand into his eye sleepily.

  “Dad, I can explain it better when you’re chilled out, okay?” A tear rolled down his face. “Hey. …I’m sorry. For making you worry.” The boy turned away from them, hugging himself, trying not to sob outright. “Do you forgive me?” Several quiet seconds passed. “I love you too, Dad.”

  “Hey,” said Joel. “Tell him we’re gonna take you back to the hospital as soon as we get done eating.”

  Wayne did so. “I’m sorry for making you worry,” he reiterated, his voice breaking. “Are you doin okay? Dad, you ain’t drinkin nothin, are you? …Don’t worry about me if that makes it harder. Yeah. I just don’t want…y’know?”

  He hung up and gave the phone back to Robin. She took a sip of coffee and asked them, “So you said that the walls were green when you went into the old Underwood house?”

  “The kitchen was burnt slap up,” said Joel. “And your mama’s old diner table was in there, too.”

  “My mom painted the walls green when I was a kid. When they prosecuted my dad and I became a ward of the state, the city fixed it up and painted it blue.”

  “Other than it bein burnt, it looked like it did when we was kids.” Joel gingerly explored the bandage taped to his chest. It was an adhesive combat bandage from Kenway’s old Army supplies, like a big square Band-Aid. “Man, this makes me glad I shave.”

  Wayne made a face. “You shave your chest? …Do you shave your legs and everything?”

  “I don’t really consider this an appropriate topic of breakfast conversation.” Joel winced in mock offense and he tossed one leg over a knee, sitting back with his beer. “Is you always this rude?”

  “That’s so weird.”

  “Little man, don’t be sassing your elders.”

  Kenway scoffed. “You just got away from a serial killer and fought off Bigfoot, and you think a guy that shaves his balls is weird?”

  They all burst out laughing, Wayne hunkering sheepishly over his food.

  After gulping down breakfast, they loaded into Kenway’s truck and headed to the hospital. Robin rode in the back, wearing a thick jacket with the hood pulled over her head to protect her from the wind. It was still dark out—a little after three in the morning, according to her phone—and the autumn air bit her face. She squinted in the gale, holding the GoPro out. This would make good transitional footage. She wanted to monologue, but the snapping of the wind would make it impossible to hear.

  As they pulled into the parking lot of Blackfield Medical, Leon Parkin came striding out the front door, followed by an old woman in a raggedy petticoat that seemed to be made out of swatches from the fabric section of Walmart.

  Kenway was barely out of the driver’s seat when Leon marched up and started raining blows on him, cornering hi
m inside the truck door.

  Everyone exploded into movement, shouting, running to stop him. Joel and Robin got them separated and Leon threw his elbows, trying to shake them off. “Y’all motherfuckers take my son?” he raved, seething in the middle of their circle. White vapor coiled from his mouth. “Who are you? What is this?”

  “Now wait—” Kenway began, putting up his hands. Blood trickled from his nose. Leon charged him again and Joel and Robin wrestled him away.

  Wayne got out and ran to his dad. Leon clutched him against his side. “Get inside, son.”

  “But Dad—”

  “Get your ass inside and I’ll be in there in a minute.”

  The boy looked up with a stern face that belonged on a grown man and pushed away. “Dad, I left on my own. It was an accident.”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “No!” said Wayne, clenching his fists and shivering. He was limping again, his left foot a faint shade of purple. “I been helpin—I been, I been dealin with you, and things, you know, for long enough, Dad, and you owe me. I’ve always been there. Always. Even when you weren’t. So right now, I need you to listen.”

  Stunned, Leon’s face softened as he seemed to see his son, really see him, his eyes wandering up and down Wayne’s strangely effeminate outfit.

  “We both lost her, Dad. I hurt too. You know that?”

  Leon nodded. “…Yeah. Yeah…man…yeah,” as if he were coming out of a trance, and he stooped to gather Wayne up in a huge hug. The old woman clutched the collar of her heavy wool coat, her stringy hair whipping around. Her face was pinched into a vapid smile until she caught Robin’s stare.

  Recognition flashed in her eyes. “Why don’t we all go inside and sort this out somewhere warm, yes?”

  ❂

  “My name is Karen. Karen Weaver,” she said to Wayne, leading them to a back corner of an isolated waiting room. “Believe it or not, I actually live right across the street from you, in the big Mexican church-house. Me and my friend Theresa were out hunting mushrooms by the old fairgrounds when I heard your friends screaming that you’d been bitten by a mean old snake.”

  Robin followed them, her GoPro clipped to a jacket pocket, recording the conversation. Children’s books and old magazines littered an end table, and behind them an aquarium burbled peacefully.

  “What kind of snake?” asked Joel.

  Weaver smiled. “Well, that big kid—Peter, was it? He did a real number on it with that mallet, but from what I saw it looked like a copperhead. Anyway, I put a…a special salve on you, a poultice, I suppose, that worked to nullify and draw out most of that venom, and then Theresa carried you out to the road.”

  With a giggle, she added, “For an old lady, she’s stronger than she looks.” She bent to watch the fish darting back and forth in the aquarium, talking to the glass. “One of your friends got your cellphone and called 911 for you—Johnny, I suppose his name was.”

  Weaver wagged a finger at Wayne. “A very dear little boy, you ought to thank him, and Peter, for their heroics. They’re quite exceptional for children these days.”

  Turning to Kenway, Leon rubbed his head. “Hey, look, man…I’m sorry about the—”

  The vet had produced a paint-smeared handkerchief from somewhere, and was holding it to his nose. “Unnerstandable,” he said, checking the fabric. His nose had stopped leaking. “Enh, I been through worse, trust me.”

  Kneeling to get eye-to-eye with his son, Leon said, “Now…tell me what happened. You said you would explain everything. I want to know the truth.”

  Wayne’s eyebrows scrunched. “When have I lied to you—”

  Leon smirked dryly.

  “—in the last week?” Before his dad could answer, Wayne took out the ring and showed it to him. “It was this.”

  Leon took it in his thumb and forefinger, at the end of the chain still around the boy’s neck. “Your mother’s wedding band?” His features softened, his eyes wistful. “I didn’t know you were wearing this.”

  “I been wearin it for…well, ever since.” Wayne held it up to his eye. “I woke up in my hospital room, got up and peed, and when I came back to my bed I looked through Mom’s ring and saw a door in the wall where there wasn’t one before.”

  He went on to describe the strange past-version of the Underwood house, and the bizarre owl-headed Sasquatch, and rescuing Joel from the Serpent.

  “A killer?” Leon stiffened. “You saw a dead guy?”

  Joel spoke up. “I was chained up in a garage somewhere next to a dude with a cut throat. This red-headed guy had knocked me out and I guess he was drainin people for their blood. Said something about ‘blood for the garden’. He was about to stick me like a pig too, until Bruce Wayne here showed up outta nowhere like Batman hisself and saved my sexy ass.”

  “And you saw this weird dark version of our house too?”

  “Yes sir, I did.” Joel peeled back the lapel of the jacket he’d borrowed from Kenway, exposing his bandaged chest. “And that monster damn near opened me up.”

  The old woman coughed…once, twice, then started hacking into a lacy cloth and struggling to breathe.

  “You okay?” asked Kenway.

  “Oh, yes, yes. It’s getting that time of year when it gets dry outside,” choked Weaver, waving him off. “And I’ve got a bit of congestion. Nothing, really. I’m going to get a glass of water, if that’s all right with you-all.”

  Robin got up and excused herself as well, following the old woman out into the hallway. Weaver glided around the corner and into the restroom, still crouping and wheezing into her napkin.

  The restroom turned out to be empty. Five stalls occupied the back of the room, and a bank of three sinks were set in a marble countertop under a huge mirror.

  Carefully prodding each door open, Robin checked the stalls until she was satisfied no one was in them. “Dammit.”

  She went to the sink and cupped herself a handful of water, washed the sleep out of her eyes, and when she straightened back up, she toweled her face dry.

  When she opened her eyes again, Weaver’s reflection stood behind her own.

  Robin gasped and spun to face her.

  “I know who you are,” said the crone, backing her against the sink.

  “You do?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. You’re huge on the internet, you know.” Weaver grinned, flashing peanut-colored teeth and blue-green gums. Her breath smelled like skunky weed. “You’re the witch-hunter on that Malus Domestica channel, aren’t you? Oh, I’ve been subscribed to you for ages. I even have a few of your T-shirts.” She threw her hands up in mock exasperation, her gaudy rings glittering in the fluorescent lights. “My friends, they don’t think much of you, but I think you’re a very brave young lady to do what you do.”

  “You believe in witches, then.”

  “Believe in them?” Weaver laughed. “My dear, I am one.”

  Robin had already suspected as much. “You’re one of the coven that lives in Lazenbury House.”

  “Ah, it looks like you’ve done your homework.” The witch wrung her knobbly hands. “Are you here to, ahh, slay us too, then?”

  Swallowing, Robin put a little steel in her spine and stepped into Weaver’s personal space. “You murdered my mother and turned her into a dryad. …If you’ve been watching my videos, you know I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now—”

  She ripped the collar of her shirt open, popping a button. Tattooed on her sternum, just below the pit of her throat, was an algiz rune, a symbol like a Y with an extra limb in the middle:

  ᛉ

  “—So I’ve learned a few things…from Heinrich—”

  Weaver was unimpressed. “Honey, Heinrich is a fool,” she said sweetly, encouragingly. “The only reason he isn’t dead yet is because he quit hunting us years ago. He’s made a puppet of you, a henchman, a bloodhound to hide behind and exact his mad, mean crusade against us without having to risk his own life. …You know, you should be proud of you
rself. You’ve done more than he ever did.”

  The witch traced the symbol with a painted claw. “Now, this is very pretty, dear, quite a lovely tattoo, but it won’t save you. You may be protected against being made a familiar, but it won’t protect you from the rest of our bag of tricks.”

  Weaver laid a cold palm on her cleavage, and Robin sidled away, sliding her butt along the edge of the sink.

  Following her, the witch migrated her hand from her left breast and then to her belly. Her fingertips were cold as December, even through the cloth. “Oh, dove, I think I feel something kicking. Don’t you?”

  Robin pushed her away. “Get off me.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Weaver, snatching her hand away. “Did you say dryad? Mother?”

  Her rheumy eyes widened and she swept in, taking off her bifocals and staring into Robin’s face. “Are you…? Could you be? Annie Martine’s daughter? Oh how you’ve grown, my dear. How lovely you are now! Who could have guessed that such a beautiful girl could have come from such a homely woman?”

  “Don’t talk about my mother,” growled Robin, and she let out a mild cough.

  There was a bit of a tickle in her chest…maybe she was coming down with a cold too. “She may have been a witch, but she was a good person, and better than any of you. You had no—cough—no right—”

  “Who knows rights better than you, eh Malus? Malus Domestica, YouTube star, traveling the roads, living the American dream, killing innocent witches by the fourscore. You wouldn’t know your right from your left.” Weaver emphasized right and left with palsied fists, then marched off in that sweeping, handsy Gargamel way of hers, reaching for the door handle.

  Before she could leave, Robin had a fistful of her coat. “Tell Marilyn I’ll be—cough, cough—making a house call.” She pulled the witch close and said through gritted teeth, “You three can prepare all you want, but—cooouugh, cough—I’ve gotten a lot of practice doing what I’m gonna do to the three of you.”