Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel

by A. W. Jantha

  He slammed on the breaks in the middle of the street and hopped out, not bothering to take the keys with him. Allison helped Dani and Binx out of the back seat before grabbing a packed duffel bag from the floor. The group hurried through the gate, breathing more easily once they were safe on hallowed ground—that is, until Max slammed into Billy Butcherson.

  Dani shrieked and Allison hurried back to help him, but Max shouted at them to go. Then he pulled out his dad’s pocketknife.

  The girls were gone when Winifred arrived a second later, still clutching her broom. She floated near the top of the gate and shouted down at Billy, who was fighting Max for the knife.

  “Catch the children!” she said.

  Max winced as Billy overpowered him, forcing the knife closer and closer to Max’s throat. Then Billy surprised him by levering Max’s hand higher, above his head. Billy sliced through the threads that sewed his mouth shut. He released Max then and gave a dry, guttural cough. Small brown moths flew from his lips and fluttered away.

  “Come now,” Winifred ordered. “Kill him. Do it now!”

  “Wench,” Billy snapped at Winifred. “Trollop!” Max found this a bit rich since Billy had been the one running around with his girlfriend’s younger sister. “You bucktoothed, mop-riding firefly from Hell.”

  Winifred let out a scandalized screech.

  “I’ve waited centuries to say that,” Billy told Max.

  “Say what you want,” Max said, shrinking away. “Just don’t breathe on me.”

  “Billy,” said Winifred. “I killed you once, I shall kill you again, you maggoty malfeasance.”

  Billy grabbed Max around the waist and tugged, pulling both of them into the woods.

  “Hang on to your heads!” Winifred called after them.

  Her taunt followed them, but she didn’t bother flying over the graveyard gate, which worried Max. The witches had to be plotting something.

  It didn’t take long for Max and Billy to find Allison and Dani in the clearing that housed Billy’s open grave—which meant, Max feared, that it wouldn’t take long for the witches to find them, either.

  Allison and Dani scrambled up, each holding a sturdy branch.

  “Max, run!” shouted Dani.

  “Max, move out of the way,” said Allison, charging.

  Max threw himself between her and Billy. “Wait!” he said. “No. No, no. He’s a good zombie.”

  Allison gave the dead man a searching look.

  “You’re sure?” she asked Max. “How do I know you’re not just saying that because you’ve been bitten?”

  Max gave her a look, and Allison relented. “Okay, fine.”

  Billy followed the pair down the low hill, toward both Dani and his own open grave.

  “Hi, Billy!” Dani said, waving.

  Max looked at her face: her fear was gone, and she seemed to think the idea of befriending a zombie was totally reasonable. Was she so adaptable because she was still a kid? He couldn’t remember ever being like that. Maybe she really did have a thing or two to teach him. He hoped they’d all survive the night so she could.

  Billy helped Dani into his grave. “You’ll be safe in here,” he said.

  Max dug through their duffel bag of supplies. He handed Allison a fresh carton of salt and pulled out a baseball bat for himself.

  “You okay, Dani?” he asked his sister.

  “Yeah,” she said in a small voice. “I’m fine.”

  Adaptable or not, she was still his sister, and they both knew she was still in danger. He adjusted his grip on the bat and practiced swinging a few times.

  Allison opened the salt container and drew a circle of it around the grave.

  “Here they come,” said Binx, who was perched on a headstone. “Billy, guard Dani. Max, Allison: spread out.”

  They’d just taken their places when Winifred descended from the dark sky. Her dress and robes fluttered around her, caught by a light autumn wind.

  “For the last time,” she said, “prepare to meet thy doom.”

  She swooped low, heading for Dani. Max took a swing at her with the baseball bat.

  Winifred veered to the side, cackling, and then course-corrected. This time, she bore down on Max. “You little pest,” she said to him. “I’ve had enough of you.”

  He swung at her again, but Winifred grabbed the bat from his hands and flung it away, chortling.

  Max made to run then, but Winifred was a step ahead. She opened her palm, and a branch of electricity rippled out of her skin and made contact with the nearest tree, right at the joint between its trunk and heaviest branch. Dani screamed as the branch toppled down, blocking Max’s path and separating him from his friends.

  Billy, who stood between Dani and the witch, glowered at Winifred. “Go to Hell!” he said.

  The eldest Sanderson smiled tightly. “Oh, I’ve already been there, thank you,” she said. “I found it quite lovely.”

  Sarah and Mary—the first on a ratty mop and the second on an upright vacuum—dove toward Max and Allison. Max fled to the right and Allison to the left, splitting up the two witches as they scrambled into the woods and tried to seek shelter among the trees.

  Winifred cackled, pleased that her sisters had followed her instructions for once. Billy took a step closer to her. He looked as if he was going to say something else spiteful, but Winifred gave another sharp laugh before diving straight toward him. Dani, hidden in the open grave, gave a frightened warning shout. Billy lifted his arms to grab for Winifred’s broom handle, but he missed. Winifred pulled up at the last moment and thrust her legs forward, kicking him in the jaw. His head flew off for the second time that night and bounced and rolled to a stop several feet away.

  In the woods, Allison slipped behind a huge pine tree as Sarah turned a corner, and waited there until she was sure she was safe. After a few heart-stopping seconds of ducking and weaving, Max dove under a half-collapsed tree and waited in the leaves until Mary swept past, calling out “Sister Sarah! I lost our dinner!”

  From her safe spot in Billy’s grave, Dani peeked out from between her fingers. When Winifred left to track down her sisters, who were weaving through the woods calling for Allison and Max, Dani dragged herself out of the grave and hurried over to rescue Billy’s head.

  Max and Allison stumbled out of the woods at the same time and spotted each other from across the clearing. Max lifted his chin in recognition, then headed straight for Billy Butcherson’s grave. He froze so suddenly Allison almost crashed into him from behind. Dani had disappeared.

  Allison spotted Dani first and tugged on Max’s sleeve. The youngest Dennison was several yards away. She’d gingerly picked up Billy’s head and was offering it to his body, which was desperately shuffling through leaves and sticks. “I think you dropped this,” she said.

  As Billy reattached his head, everyone heard a familiar shout. Winifred reemerged from the woods, her sisters at her heels. She aimed her broom handle toward Dani and Billy, and before Max could run or shout or even blink, Winifred had his little sister around the middle and was lifting her into the sky.

  Billy, Max, and Allison took off after them, while Binx watched helplessly from where he stood before a gravestone.

  “Bye-bye, big brother,” called Winifred over her shoulder. She pulled from her robes a glass bulb filled with green liquid. Then she looked at Dani and gritted her teeth. “All right, you little trollimog.”

  Sarah and Mary waited some distance away, celebrating their sister’s success by spinning in wide circles on their mop and vaccuum, fingers barely touching.

  “Hold on, Dani!” called Binx, dashing over rocks and gravestones in her direction.

  Winifred bit down on the bottle’s cork and yanked it from the neck of the bottle. She spat it onto the ground. “This will teach you to call people ugly,” she said. “Open your mouth.”

  Binx ran up the sturdy branch Winifred had torn down only minutes before. He leaped from its highest point and knocked the vial fr
om her hand. As Winifred reached for it, he clawed at her face and arms until she flung him away. Binx gave a yowl as he hit the ground, but he was on his feet in a moment and scrambling to shelter in the underbrush.

  The potion bottle tumbled end over end as it fell, but somehow not a drop of liquid spilled. Max caught the bottle. White smoke bubbled out of the top, smelling of saltwater taffy and pond scum.

  “Give me that vial,” said Winifred.

  Max held it over his head. “Put her down, or I’ll smash it.”

  “Smash it,” said Winifred, “and she dies.”

  Allison called his name and tried to run over to him, but Billy pulled her back.

  “He’s got a plan,” Billy whispered to her. “I think.”

  Max glared at Winifred. She said she would kill his sister if he broke the bottle, but he knew that if he handed it over she’d just kill her anyway, slowly sucking out Dani’s life force in front of him, just like Binx had told him they had done to his poor sister Emily. He couldn’t be the one to sentence his own sister to that.

  But he could do it to himself.

  He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long swig, swallowing the whole thing. It bubbled and burned as it went down his throat.

  “Max, no!” shouted Dani.

  But it was too late.

  Sarah and Mary froze, shocked by the turn of events. They waited for Winifred’s reaction.

  Winifred gasped, recoiling as if she’d been burned.

  Max smashed the empty bottle against a nearby tombstone and glared up at the eldest Sanderson. “Now you have no choice,” he said. “You have to take me.”

  Winifred descended slowly. “What a fool you are, to give up thy life for thy sister’s.”

  When Mary and Sarah heard Winifred’s words, the two of them exchanged a look.

  As she neared the ground, Winifred released Dani and grabbed Max’s collar instead.

  Dani collapsed, sobbing, and Billy and Allison hurried to help her up.

  Winifred, who was surprisingly strong, lifted Max by only his shirt. His body had begun to glow, letting off a golden, pearlescent sheen that moved when he moved, but at a more leisurely rate.

  Winifred brought Max’s face close to hers and opened her mouth. A narrow stream of light peeled off from the rest of him and coursed past her lips and down her throat. Max’s eyes grew wide, for he could feel the draining sensation somewhere in his chest. He felt, also, like he was growing older, as if each second were a lost year. The world suddenly wasn’t so funny anymore.

  Distantly, he could hear Allison and Dani screaming, but he didn’t know what to do about it. For some reason, all he could think of was the red plastic car he’d gotten for his fourth or fifth birthday. He’d raced around in it, pedaling the thing with his feet like a Flintstone and shouting that he’d be a race car driver one day. Then he thought of the day Dani had been born, and how his father had put the small squirming pink thing in his arms and told him that now he had responsibilities, and he’d looked at his baby sister and felt a warm, comfortable weight settle around his shoulders. He thought of meeting Jack, and of hearing the Ramones for the first time, and of screaming at his parents when they sat him down and explained that his dad had taken a job on the East Coast, in Salem, Massachusetts. And then he thought of Allison and her vases and her laugh and their conversation in the sewers, when she’d told him she liked him better when he was around Dani, and how he’d realized that maybe he liked himself better then, too.

  Max reached up and pushed Winifred’s face away. She swatted his hand at first, but he tried again, with as much force as he could muster. As she turned her face away and had to close her mouth, the remainder of Max’s life force coalesced back around his body. Having it closer to his skin made him feel more solid—and more aware of his surroundings. This gave Max an idea, and he heaved his whole body toward Winifred, scrabbling for her throat and digging his thumbs into the hollow of it. The witch gagged and pushed back at him, finally shoving him hard enough that he almost fell. He was left clinging to the handle of her broom by only his fingers.

  Max pulled down hard, flipping the broom, and suddenly Winifred was unseated and hanging by only her fingers, too, scrambling to get a better hold on the prickly bristles. “Hallowed ground!” she said desperately, looking down. “Hallowed ground! Sisters!”

  “Winnie!” called Mary. “I’m coming!”

  The brunet witch sailed over the other children, not realizing that her vacuum cleaner’s cord was dangling within their reach. Dani grabbed it by the plug and dug her heels into the soft earth. Allison and Billy anchored themselves to the cord, too. Mary only made it a few more feet before the cord stopped her from going any farther. She looked over her shoulder and let out a strangled cry when she realized what had gone wrong. That only made Allison, Billy, and Dani pull harder on the line.

  “I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget,” Winifred said to Max as they both struggled to pull themselves back onto the broom. They spun and spun like a top as, in the east, a sliver of orange light broke the horizon. Winifred pulled herself back onto the broom, but the promise of sunrise gave Max a second burst of energy. He just had to wait for it to reach his tingling fingers.

  “Sarah!” Mary pleaded, still struggling against the spiteful humans trying to drag her onto the graveyard soil. Beneath her, the vacuum revved and whined.

  Sarah flew down and grasped her sister’s hand, tugging, but Billy, Allison, and Dani had better leverage. With each tug, they pulled Mary a little closer to the ground.

  “Let go—now!” shouted Allison. They all did at once, and the released tension sent Mary and Sarah spinning through the air.

  Winifred watched her sisters arc over the treetops, trying desperately to right themselves, so she didn’t notice when Max swung his body around and put all his weight into knocking her from her place on the broom.

  She hit the ground with a heavy thud. Max dropped down a few feet away, panting. Winifred roared as she turned over and began to crawl toward him. Her movements were stiff and labored, though, as if each additional pull of muscle and twist of tendon was more and more difficult to control. Her long nails, as sharp and hooked as claws, dug into the earth each time she planted her hands, and each time she pulled them back, earth and grass flew up and muddied her palms and wrists.

  Max pushed himself away from her, but he was so, so tired. Gold light shimmered before his eyes.

  At last, Winifred grabbed him by the front of his sweater and lifted him up, struggling with her own aching hips as she stood. She opened her mouth to suck the life from him, but when Max looked down he saw that the curled toes of her boots had begun to smoke and harden into granite.

  The stone crackled over her skin from the soles of her feet to her calves and knees and stomach and shoulders and head, until Max found himself dangling from the grasping fingers of a furious statue.

  He wiggled about, ripping himself free. He grunted when he hit the ground, but the gold halo surrounding his body faded as the sun fully broke over Salem Harbor. A scrap of his shirt hung from Winifred’s stone talons, fluttering meekly like a flag of surrender.

  Above the graveyard, Sarah gave a squeak before bursting into a cloud of purple glitter. Mary’s jaw dropped open just as she exploded in a firework of red smoke. Their mop and vacuum hit the ground with two distinct thuds.

  Winifred’s statue began to quiver and then crack, and with a burst it blew apart, lighting up the world, briefly, with a lime-green glow.

  Max sucked in a disbelieving breath and collapsed onto his back. For a moment, his entire world consisted of his pattering heart, the sweet relief swimming through his head, and morning’s gray light.

  Max, from his place on the ground, buried his face in both arms.

  “Max?” called a tentative voice, but he was still dazed and didn’t know how to answer. Instead, he heaved himself into a sitting position and looked around at the clearing, where nothing had
changed and everything had changed. The witches were gone, but there had been witches. He was alive, but he’d nearly had his essence drained out through his pores. And Dani—

  “Dani!” he said, turning to try to find his sister.

  She was dashing down the low hill toward him.

  “Max,” she said, kneeling beside him. He thought he’d never heard her sound quite so gentle. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he croaked. “I think so.”

  “You saved my life,” she said.

  He looked at her small surprised face. “Well, I had to. I’m your big brother.”

  She beamed. “I love you, jerk face,” she said.

  “I love you, too.”

  She threw her arms around his neck, and he wrapped one of his own around her back.

  “Come on,” Dani said after a few seconds. She helped him to his feet and led him to Billy’s grave. Winifred’s ex was already climbing back into his broken coffin.

  Allison walked over and slipped an arm around Max’s shoulders. She felt solid and stable and real in a way that still seemed to escape the rest of the graveyard—and even Dani, who was helping Billy get settled in his coffin.

  Max wound his free arm around Allison’s waist.

  “It all really happened, didn’t it?” he asked her.

  She squeezed his arm. “Yeah,” she said.

  The Black Flame Candle, the Sanderson sisters, his almost kiss with Allison in his parents’ still packed kitchen. Binx and Billy and Dani’s kidnap and rescue, and Max’s own life drifting into a witch’s angry mouth before his eyes. All of it was real.

  Despite how unbelievable the night had been, Allison made him feel grounded just by standing near him. In fact, having Allison so close made Max think that he could take on the world, at least if he was with her. He looked back at the broken remains of Winifred’s statue and realized that maybe they already had. And maybe they would have to again, but it wouldn’t be so scary the second time around.

  “Bye, Billy,” Dani said as he reached for his coffin’s lid. “Have a nice sleep.”