Witches and Ghosts Supernatural Mysteries

by Angela Pepper

  * * *

  My hands are conspicuously empty. As I knock on the door, I find myself wishing I'd brought flowers. Or chocolates. Or both. What do you say when the door opens? What do you say when it's a man, about thirty, and he's wrinkling his brow as if to say, Hey, kid, we didn't order any pizza.

  You say, “I'm sorry to bother you, but is Austin home?”

  “Tina?”

  “Yeah. Austina. Is that how you pronounce it? I guess I don't really know her.” I shuffle my feet, the saddest dweeb in the universe.

  “Is that your Caddy?” the man asks.

  I turn and watch as a car with tinted windows drives along the street, real slow. Julie and the Jeep are long gone. She said she'd come in with me, but I insisted she go about her regular Julie business.

  “I don't know who that could be.”

  “Well, come in,” the man says. “We have a rule, and that's no crying. If you have to cry, do so in the bathroom or on your own time.”

  I step over the threshold and kick off my shoes, even though the man is wearing his. Mine aren't as nice as his, which have tassels.

  “Friend from the coffee shop?” he asks.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He's not wearing a wedding ring, so I'm not sure if this is the husband, but he could seriously kick my ass either way. His sleeves are rolled up and he's got big, meaty forearms, like Popeye, but the sophisticated, urbane version.

  I follow him down a hall, where he knocks on a door softly before pushing it open. Inside, Austin is sitting on the floor, surrounded by magazines, scissors, and cut-outs. She's exactly as I remember her, or possibly even prettier.

  “What, are you scrap-booking?” I say, trying to sound, to anyone else standing in the doorway—like, say, a big man with muscled forearms—like someone who's not slept with Austin, or even had impure thoughts about her.

  “Zan,” she says, beaming. “Wow. Come, sit, you can help me glue.” She clears a spot on the tasteful, cream-colored carpet next to her. “Thank you David,” she says, as though dismissing a butler, and he disappears, off to pump weights or lift cars.

  Austin looks like she does in my photos and memories of her, but smaller. She has dark crescents under her eyes. I sit down next to her and wrestle my inflexible legs into a cross-legged position. Now what?

  She throws her arms around me and kisses me, closed-mouth, but so hard I think my lips might crack. I don't mind the forcefulness, though I note with fear that the door to the room is open.

  She pulls back, and I say, “I should have called you. I should have called the very next day, but I went to the lake, and, then ...”

  “My cousin Claire called to warn me you were on your way,” she says. “So, what scared you more? That I'm married or that I'm dying?”

  “You're not dying, you're having surgery. You are having surgery, right?”

  “Dying is easy, living is hard,” she says, leafing through an open magazine on the floor. “But I decided to stop thinking about time in a linear sense. Just because a song has stopped playing doesn't take away from the song or its beauty ... or how it made a difference to someone.”

  I swallow hard. “I guess.”

  “We don't mourn for the years that existed before we were born,” she says. “And it was more than years. It was forever. Time is so long that it can't help but meet up with itself, and all our songs will play again.”

  At a loss for words, I examine the scissors and glue sticks spread out on the floor before us.

  “By the way, the marriage isn't real,” Austin says. “David's a family friend.”

  I whisper, “You're not really married?”

  “You know how things are, with experimental surgeries and unconventional medical treatments. You're a smart guy. I'm sure you figured out straight away our marriage might be an insurance thing.”

  “You mean Mr. Arms isn't going to squeeze my throat until my head pops off?”

  “Not unless I ask him to,” she says. She picks up a magazine and points to a page. “What do you think of this dress?”

  It's a wedding dress, which looks like all the other wedding dresses: white, fluffy. “Nice.”

  “They'll shave my head for the surgery,” she says. “It will take three years to grow back to full length. Only then can I even start to think about getting married. I have to have my hair just right, you know.”

  I tsk-tsk as lightheartedly as I can. “You girls and your wedding plans.”

  The room darkens as a cloud passes in front of the sun, and the day jumps forward to late afternoon. Time is slipping away from us, and the tighter I try to hold on, the more I miss.

  “Thanks for coming, it's been nice to see you,” Austin says.

  It's been nice. She wants me to leave, but I can't bring myself to go.

  “When are you out of surgery?” I ask. “Can I bring you ice cream?”

  “I'm not having my tonsils out. It's a brain tumor. If I survive, I probably won't even know what ice cream is. I won't even be human.”

  “Don't say that.” My jaw hurts and my eyes are threatening to break the rule about no crying in the house. “I'll bring you flowers for after. What's your favorite flower?”

  “Send lilies, for my memorial,” she says. “This page.” She points to the scrapbook in front of her, at a page filled with cutouts of white lilies. “I always liked how they smell like hot dogs. It makes the whole thing more festive. I wish I were Irish. Some of my ancestors were, but not enough to count.”

  I stare up at the ceiling and choke down my feelings. If Austin is a song, it's not fair her song's about to finish. It isn't right, so it can't be true.

  She continues leafing through the magazines, as calm as Sunday afternoon.

  “Did you have chemotherapy? You still have your hair,” I say.

  “I've had chemo, but everyone's different. Not everybody loses their hair,” she says.

  “Your hair's so pretty.”

  She smiles and twirls a section of pale hair with one hand. It's the most bewitching thing I've ever seen a girl do.

  “I love you,” I say.

  She frowns, wrinkling a little vertical spot between her thin eyebrows. This is the first time I've seen her frown, and it crushes me.

  “People keep saying that to me,” she says. “And since the diagnosis, they also keep telling me to think positive and be positive, but as this dumb ol' tumor grew and grew and no doctors were willing to operate, I started to feel like it was my fault for not thinking positively enough.”

  “You don't have to be positive, I guess. You could get angry. I think I'd be angry, and depressed. I feel that way now, and I don't even have a ... um.”

  “Exactly,” she says. “My parents think going in for a radical surgery with a low survival rate is my own method of doctor-assisted suicide, just to get it over with already.” She tears a page from a magazine. “That's why me and my parents aren't exactly talking right now.”

  I rub my sweaty palms on my jeans. “You can always talk to me. You can talk to me about anything, and I won't lecture you about staying positive. I promise. I'm not really that positive myself. My friends describe me as angsty. I may have a reputation for overreacting. Just a bit.”

  Softly, she says, “I haven't braided my hair since that night.”

  Sensing an invitation, I lean in to kiss her, but she turns her head, and I get nothing but long hair on my lips.

  “You're a sweet kid, Zan, and we had our fun,” she says. “Get lost and forget all about me, okay? Like you already tried to do, but more successfully this time.”

  “But I didn't. I couldn't.”

  “David!” she yells. To me, she says, “David will show you out.”

  “But what about the future?”

  She sighs and rubs at the crease in her forehead, still not looking at me. “If I'm alive, in this future you talk about, I'll probably date someone my own age. Stay in school, okay? You're a great guy. Some woman's going to be lucky to have you
.”

  I want to kiss her again, smell her skin, but now David's at the door. I want to bury my face in her silvery hair and wrap my arms around her, forever.

  When I stand up, an invisible part of me tears out of my body and dies on the floor. On the way out of the house, David's talking about recovery rates and radiation, but I can't hear him from where I am, deep under the water.

  The last time. I just saw her for the second time, and the last time.

  I don't think I even said goodbye.

  Somehow, I get my shoes on. David pats me on the shoulder, gives me a gruff little hug, then I'm on the step, and the door is shut behind me. I have nowhere to go. I need to find a body of water to sink into.

  * * *

  I am definitely not imagining the black Cadillac that's following me down the street. The weather has changed from sunshine to rain, and I cross my arms against the chill, wishing I'd worn more than a shirt, but of course, when I left the house this morning, everything was different.

  I turn right at the corner, then as soon as the car follows, I turn back and cross the street instead. A few minutes later, the car is back behind me. There's no way they can expect to go unnoticed, so I finally give in and trot up to the side of the car, where I knock on the window.

  The driver doesn't roll down the dark, tinted window, despite my banging on the glass. The car stops and the back door pops open.

  What do I have to lose? I'm weightless and foggy as I slide into the back of the car.

  I can't say I'm surprised to see Mr. Bad Suit at the wheel and the scary old woman from the gas station cottage, Heidi, in the back seat next to me. The pupils of her eyes are as dark as graveyard dirt, and her skin, which was wrinkled before, is now gray and stony.

  While I'm not surprised, I'm still horrified. The inside of the car smells like new leather, but also decay. I nearly jump back out the door, but I remember I have nowhere to go, so I stay.

  Life is weird, but so is death. People are dying all the time—people I love and people I don't even know.

  I've got two senior citizens chasing after me, which isn't so bad compared to dying. I'll find out what they want. What's the worst that can happen?

  “Do you know who we are?” the man asks.

  “No, and I don't care. You want my power, right, my gift? Can you really take my curse from me?”

  “Sweetheart,” Heidi says softly, perhaps trying to sound benevolent, but failing. Her voice comes out in a hiss, like an air leak in something huge and rotten. “Darling boy, Zan.”

  She reaches a gnarled hand to me, and I recoil against the door. The car is moving again, but slowly. I put my palm on the door's handle, just in case.

  Heidi tucks her hands neatly on her lap. “We weren't going to harm you. I would have told you so if your silly friends hadn't taken you away from me so rudely.”

  “You can have my power, but I want something in return,” I say. “I want you to take my memory.”

  “All of it?” the man at the wheel asks over his shoulder. He sounds excited, like a perverted suspect on a TV crime show.

  “Selected bits,” I say. “The last few weeks, from the moment I met that girl I told you about, Austin.”

  “We can do that,” Heidi says, her voice bubbling like mud.

  “And while you're at it, take away the business with my parents,” I say. “I'd like to be free of all of that.”

  “Mine,” Heidi snaps.

  “We could share,” the man says, and they laugh.

  “How soon can we do this?” I grip the door handle tighter. “It won't hurt, will it?”

  “Tomorrow's no good for me,” the man says.

  “Newt,” Heidi says angrily. “Make time. Your bridge group can wait.”

  “Your name is Newt?” I ask. “Like, eye of Newt? Are you a witch too?”

  Heidi turns to me, and even though she's not touching my hand with hers, I sense her scanning my thoughts—my emotions—and sucking them up.

  “You can drop me off here,” I say, pulling at the door handle, which is, wouldn't you know it, locked.

  “No, no, let us drive you home,” Newt says. “We already know where you live.”

  “Fine,” I say, crossing my arms.

  “I have to run a few errands,” Newt says.

  Heidi nods, as though this is a typical routine for the two of them. I turn to look out the tinted windows, past the raindrops, where dark shapes fly through the sky next to the car. Crows. They're everywhere. Metallic scratching sounds come from the roof of the car. Does rain make that noise? I check outside the window again, but the crows have vanished. My mind must be playing tricks on me.

  My mind. So helpful at times, but also so jam-packed with crap I don't want.

  I can't wait to be rid of the memories I no longer need.

  Chapter 15

  Newt puts on the turn signal and parallel parks the car. “I have to pick up some ... incense,” he says. “Maybe you want to get out and stretch your legs.”

  The rain isn't letting up, but I tell them I'll get out here. “I can make my way home on my own,” I insist.

  Heidi turns over one hand in a so be it gesture. I suspect the rotting smell may be coming from her.

  “Hang on,” Newt says, squirming to retrieve something from his pocket. After some grumbling, he writes something on the back of a envelope. It's an address on the other side of town. “Come the day after tomorrow, at four,” he says.

  “Day after tomorrow.” I look down at the note in my hands. The handwritten loops remind me of antique documents from museums. “You have really nice handwriting.”

  Newt's voice pitches up high with delight as he says, “Thanks!”

  I open the door and step out. The sun is much lower on the horizon than I expected. I feel, for a moment, like I'm on the opposite side of the planet, perhaps because I can't read any of the signs. They're in another language, and I don't know where I am. Something catches my eye, and I turn to see a shop window full of upside-down, shiny, featherless ... ducks? I'm in Chinatown.

  * * *

  I stare at the window next to the butcher for several minutes, contemplating. Finally, and at the risk of being thought a total idiot, I decide I will walk into the Chinese herbalist and ask about magic spells and witchcraft. Why not? There's a small sign in the window that I think means palm-reading, and my last meeting with a palm-reading psychic was so illuminating.

  The collection of bells on the door ring as merrily as Santa's sleigh when I step inside the herbalist's shop. The place smells appealing, like those woody little cough candies Gran buys at the health food store. The air is cool and dry—refreshing. I breathe in deeply, guiltily stealing all the microscopic bits of herbs into my lungs.

  “Yes?” says the woman at the counter. She is Chinese, as expected, and wears thick, round glasses. “You have acne, yes?” she says.

  At the mention of acne, the two pus-volcano spots that constantly plague one or the other of my cheeks heat up with shame. “You're right, I do have acne.” I have to admire this woman's straight-forward approach.

  “And a broken heart.”

  I look down at myself, trying to see what gave me away. My shoes are untied, but that's not out of the ordinary.

  “Do you have anything to cure a broken heart?” I ask, hoping for a gentler approach than whatever Heidi and Newt have in mind. “Something to make me forget?”

  She gives me a bemused look. “Why forget? No, love is special. Love is better than any of this.” She waves her hand in front of a row of jars. One contains what appears to be cinnamon sticks. Maybe this isn't a Chinese herbalist, but a cooking store. I'm a stupid, non-Chinese guy, making assumptions. I shake my head.

  “Willy okay?” she asks.

  I swear she said the word willy. “Haven't had any complaints,” I reply.

  The woman pulls down three jars, then measures some sticks and herbs out on a digital scale. “Tea,” she says. “Clear up that acne. Twice a day
, two cups. Not tonight, though. Start tomorrow, before your breakfast.”

  “Before breakfast.”

  She checks a Hello Kitty calendar hanging on the wall behind her. “Tomorrow,” she says. “The moon is right.”

  “Acne is related to the moon?”

  She waves one hand in a charming circle and smiles. “Everything relates to the moon. Women, and the world.”

  I thank her and pull out my wallet. Here goes nothing, I think. “Do you have anything more powerful? Like, magic? To protect against ... witches?”

  “Beg pardon? Not all women are witches,” she says defensively.

  “I don't mean like that. I mean real witches.”

  She adds a little pinch of something yellow to the tea mix, then scoops it up with her hands into a silver tin. Behind me, the doors jingle with another customer coming in the door, but the woman doesn't take her eyes off me. “Try this first,” she says. “It will help take away your troubles. Take away your acne, take away your troubles.”

  I'm jostled from behind by some tourists gawking at the herbal treasures in here. “Is that a skull?” the gum-chewing woman asks the man—presumably her husband—weighted down with a camera and her purse. The camera's good-quality, but he's gone and ruined it by using a cheap lens. Ordinarily, I'd stop them to chat camera-talk, but instead, I quietly pay for my anti-acne, anti-trouble tea.

  The tourist woman says, “That is a skull, a tiny skull. Isn't that the darnedest thing? What kind of an animal is that?”

  “Crow,” says the woman behind the counter. She pushes her glasses back up her nose and gives me a knowing look. “You can tell by the large beak,” she tells them, which seems to satisfy the tourists.

  I thank the woman and leave, feeling slightly unsettled, and clutching my herbal tea. If only a tea could take my troubles away.

  The rain has stopped, and a rainbow shimmers in the distance, appearing to terminate in an alley a few blocks from here. A part of me yearns to chase after the end of the rainbow, though there's probably little in that alley but a big dumpster.

  I wonder, can Austin see this rainbow from her room? I try to picture her, sitting in a chair by her window, looking at the same sky.