“Do you like being a cop?” Julie asks Detective Wrong.
“YES I DO,” asserts Detective Wrong with her big voice. “Every day is different, though I wish we didn't have to deal with homicides.”
“It might have been a suicide,” I offer, a little too cheerfully.
Detective Wrong raises her eyebrows. “Suicides don't shoot themselves repeatedly. Once usually does the job.” She pulls a phone out of her pocket and looks at the screen. “Off with you two, and stay out of trouble. Stay away from bees.” She has the smallest hint of a smile when she mentions the bees.
I did sound like an idiot with my reason for being in the pawn shop. At least she assured us Julie and I were not prime suspects, as someone phoned in the gunshots a few minutes before she showed up to investigate, and to her we appeared to be “just kids in the wrong place.”
Julie grabs my arm and we hustle away. “You and your errands,” she says as we walk down the street, though the crowd that's gathered at the outside edge of the yellow police tape. “I so did not want to see a dead person, whatsoever.”
I look over my shoulder at the scene, feeling a tinge of sadness we're no longer at the center of the action.
“I'm sorry somebody got murdered and delayed your pre-party plans,” I say to Julie.
She hasn't asked what I meant when I said I thought I'd killed Newt already. She hasn't put together the fact that the dead man back there was the same one who tried to steal my magic power just a few months ago. If he was alive until recently, that means his partner in crime, Heidi, also escaped the basement of the house before it exploded. Which may mean it's only a matter of time before she's kidnapping me again, raising her ceremonial dagger over my chest.
“Bus!” Julie yells. We start running to catch the bus. Running feels good, after all the buildup of adrenaline from the crime scene, the police, and the crowd. I could run for miles.
* * *
As Julie hangs the Halloween party decorations around the basement, she's unusually quiet, doing all the work herself without giving me and James heck for not helping or helping but hanging things crookedly.
The twins' mother redecorated the basement in September to have a beach theme. It used to be Moroccan, and some of the star-shaped lanterns remain, but now the walls are each different colors: white, blue, green, and sand. I'm relieved the wood paneling from the walls is gone, and with it the splinters. The new carpet is brown with flecks, and it does have a bit of a beach feel, especially with the striped yellow and white canvas stretched across the ceiling in an homage to cabanas.
“This place couldn't look less like Halloween,” James says.
Julie has put up orange streamers and some paper pumpkins, but they're reading more autumn celebration than fright night.
“Everything pales in comparison to your hideousness,” I say to him.
“At least I'm not black Hitler.”
“I'm Charlie Chaplin!”
“Sure you are. Mwah-hah-hah.”
I imagine his cheeks dripping and melting when he talks, but I still can't look at his horrible, horrible face.
“You're eating eggs now?” I ask. James used to be vegan up until the summer, when he ate a steak to help heal his black eyes.
“I'll eat eggs on occasion,” he says. “But the floodgates are not open. This body is a temple.”
Julie steps down off her ladder and points her finger at me. “Zan! I just remembered. Did you say you knew that guy at the pawn shop?”
James swoops in, smelling like the pickled duck eggs he has strung together on a cord around his neck. The eggs have very realistic irises painted on them, which are—strangely enough—even more disturbing than the dead body we saw today. “You knew the murder victim?” James asks.
I feel something in my chest: relief, like when you wake up from a bad dream and assure yourself you didn't kill people. For months, I've been living with the guilt that when I made my escape from Heidi and Newt, they were trapped in the basement of an exploding house. They'd been locked in by me, so I was responsible for what happened to them, even though you could say it was in self-defense.
I wasn't thinking too clearly at the time. I'd been heartbroken, because the girl I'd just met and fallen for, Austin, was dying from a brain tumor. The two witches, Heidi and Newt, offered to take away my magic power—the ability to see a girl's secrets when she pokes my belly button—as well as my memories of meeting Austin. They tricked me into drinking some tea that caused me to astrally project, with my soul walking around the world outside of my body. I had this goofy idea I'd go see my girlfriend, Austin, who was in a coma after her brain surgery. Actually, that idea wasn't so goofy, because it worked, and I did visit her, inside her own mind. She, along with the ghost of my mother, convinced me to keep fighting and not give up on my life, so I found the strength to escape from Heidi and Newt before they could kill me. When I last saw them, they were locked in the basement of a house that blew up as I drove away in their car, which I borrowed.
I never told anyone but James, Julie, and Austin that I'd been at that house, and I never thought I'd see either of the witches again until I found Newt on the ground in the pawn shop. In a pool of blood. After having been murdered by someone. Murdered! My fleeting sense of relief is replaced by the painful grip of dread.
“Maybe he had an identical twin,” James says.
I had not considered that. What if the dead body was a man named Edward or Roger or Frank? But would Newt's normal-named twin have the same bad fashion sense? Newt had worn funny, old-fashioned suits, cut too short on the legs.
James and Julie both have their phones out. “You guys, this is serious,” I say.
In unison, they say, “Newt Steadfast, owner of All U Can Pawn.” Then the twins bicker over who got the answer first. Everything's a contest with those two.
I don't weigh in on their argument, because I'm troubled by a fear-inducing thought looping through my mind. If Newt wasn't killed in the house explosion, Heidi wasn't either. She seemed to be the more powerful of the two, or at the very least, the smartest. When she held my hand for a palm reading, she'd pulled me into her own vision, which was something I'd never experienced before. When I read girls, they don't notice anything happening, and I have very little control over my visions. I shiver at the thought of being touched by Heidi's power, and her dagger.
Heidi also hinted she was connected to the crows that had seemed to be spying on me for weeks during the summer. I haven't been seeing many crows around lately, so I assumed I wasn't in any danger, but the crows have been on my mind, and I catch myself drawing them frequently.
If Newt was alive, up until today, does that mean Heidi is out there somewhere, plotting to trap me again and take my power?
I tell James and Julie my fears, and they listen, but they don't seem concerned. They weren't there when I was kidnapped, and I usually detect some eye-rolling whenever I talk about it. James and Julie often accuse me of overreacting, and exaggerating my stories.
“That guy was killed by a gun,” Julie says as she pats down the dark curls pressed to her forehead and cheek. “Not magic. But maybe you should go to the police and tell them the whole story. Like how you drank the magical tea.” She giggles. “Oh, and then the big, bad witches tied you to a hospital gurney in someone's basement to do a magical ritual.”
“Julie, that's exactly what happened!”
She pulls at her glued-on false eyelashes. “Yeah, yeah,” she says.
“I believe you, man,” James says. “But you shouldn't tell anyone else but us. I imagine it's not so much fun to be in a mental institution. Less fun even than high school.”
“Good thing you're taking karate,” Julie says. “You go ahead and karate chop them if they come for you again.”
“I've been taking karate for two whole months!” I say. “I'm not Neo in The Matrix! You can't just download karate into your brain.”
Julie pats me on the hand in a motherly way. “It's
still muscle memory, like my dancing. Don't worry about that old lady, but if you do see her again, call Officer Weirdo.”
James puffs out his chest. “Call me first, dude.”
Sarcastically, I say, “Thanks guys.”
“I could loan you my bear spray,” Julie offers.
James grins. “I think I have a lucky rabbit's foot.”
I mumble, “You guys'll be sorry when I'm dead and you don't have anyone to make fun of.”
Double eye-rolls.
I apologize for being overly dramatic. “Low blood sugar. I'm hungry,” I say, grabbing for a bowl of chips.
* * *
The party is a bust. Some people come, music is played, and there's even some dancing, but the guy Julie likes doesn't show up, and she won't leave my side, with her sad, sad face.
I'm grouchy about the text I got from my girlfriend, but trying not to show it.
James won't take off the eyeballs and the disgusting special effects gore on his face to play Mr. Pumpkin for my photo booth, so all I get to do with my camera is take pictures of people standing in front of the sand-brown wall or the green wall. Some of the costumes are good, but my heart's not into partying because Austin's not here. She's not coming, which is giving me a sad face to match Julie's. Austin texted an hour after she was supposed to be here, saying she was feeling tired and going to bed early.
Shad and Rosemary win the vote for the best costume, with him as the fisherman and her as the lovely mermaid on his hook. Shad's a very tall guy and tiny Rosemary looks like a minnow next to him. Normally, I'd get more creative in directing the poses, but tonight I just snap them off like mugshots.
It's not even midnight when I pack away my tripod and camera to go home.
* * *
Outside, the night is punctuated by weak, almost-apologetic firecrackers. I expect to get used to them going off every few minutes, but every time one crackles, I get an irritating jab in my brain. Last year, I was one of the snotty-nosed kids lighting firecrackers up in alleys from inside my robot costume, and this year I'm a world-weary adult who wants to pound the crap out of those little brats.
Orange faces leer out at me from the jack-o-lanterns on every porch. The carving styles vary, but they are unified in their intent, their wicks drowning, their flames struggling. Watchful eyes.
A snow-white cat darts across my path.
Something at the edge of my vision moves and I turn to see jaggedly-carved faces staggered up the steps of what could only be the home of artists. The house itself is covered in white cottony spiderwebs, but the monster on the front lawn takes my breath away. A sculpture looms before me, made of appliances and scrap metal. One leg is a car's bumper and the other is a stack of toasters. The figure's head is an old television with two dials and a tangle of antennas. The screen flashes on. Static fades in and out while a man with cropped black hair soundlessly preaches, his mouth never stopping, his dark eyes never blinking, never looking away from the camera lens. No sound comes from the old television, but if I stare at his mouth long enough, I feel like I could read the words.
Chapter Three
I'm gaping up at the silently-preaching man on the old television screen embedded in the sculpture when something moves. “Holy crap,” I say out loud, in awe that the artists have integrated working robotics. However, it wasn't the sculpture's shoulder of rusty kettles and curling irons that moved. The statue remains welded still, only its preacher man face moving.
The movement was a big crow, who now lifts out a shiny black wing, grooms a feather, and tucks the wing back down.
We study each other, the crow and I. The man on the television screen gets closer to the camera, until his mouth fills the small screen, his teeth angrily biting at his words. Still no sound comes from the television, but the statue itself creaks and groans under the bird's weight.
“Get off there, stupid, you're wrecking it,” I say to the bird.
The bird raises its wings and jumps up and down. An alarm clock embedded in the chest of the man turns on, with red LED numbers showing the time as 7:77.
No firecrackers have gone off for several minutes, and the silence of the night wraps around me. A breeze fans the flames of the jack-o-lanterns, enraging their faces.
All the dogs in the neighborhood begin barking, and something nearby lets out an unearthly howl. I whip around to see a small ghost—a child in a sheet—running toward me. The eyes have shifted around, and the little ghost collides with me, sending me to the lawn.
I pause, on my knees, in front of the sculpture. The preacher man on the screen has turned, so the back of his head fills the screen. The crow on the sculpture's shoulder raises both wings, but doesn't fly away.
I turn to check on the little ghost, but he or she has already gotten up and is scurrying away, shoes slapping on the pavement. The dogs all stop barking simultaneously.
A car drives down the street behind me, the windows rolled down to share music and laughter with the neighborhood. The car sound fades, and I'm kneeling before lawn art, letting my imagination get the better of me.
My camera! I zip open my bag in a panic, worried I broke something in the collision or fall, but everything seems undamaged. I take out my digital, remove the lens cap, and take some photos from a low angle under the creepy TV-man sculpture. The light is dim, so I take several while holding my breath, using my elbows on the lawn to keep steady.
The crow doesn't fly away, but then again, he's not doing anything that isn't normal crow behavior. Stop being paranoid, I tell myself as I stand and dust the grass off my black suit.
“Seeya, crow,” I say as I walk away.
The streetlight ahead of me blinks off just before I reach the comfort of its circle of light. So does the next one, and the next. I cross the street, but lights keep blinking off, no matter where I go. The carved pumpkins, with their maniacal grins, get brighter.
I swear the crow is following me, but when I turn around, I can't pick it out in the darkness. More firecrackers go off in the distance as I walk past a tree covered in fifty dollars' worth of toilet paper.
Besides setting off firecrackers, I've never done any classic Halloween pranks, like throwing eggs or putting flaming bags of dog poo on porches. Toilet paper in the tree looks ethereal at night, like snow, though the neighborhood does have a vaguely post-apocalyptic aura right now.
I think the TV-man sculpture got to me, because I keep seeing the preaching man's face when I blink. A jittery, snaky feeling starts in my legs.
I walked into a murder scene today. I should probably talk to a counselor or something. The snaky feeling gets into my hips and I walk a little faster.
The witch is coming for me, I think. The crow comes out of the dark, swooping across my shoulder, its wing clipping my cheek. My ear stings, and when I pull my hand away, there are drops of dark blood on my fingers.
Firecrackers pop and sputter again, closer this time, and I break into a run. I'm three blocks from my house. Pulling my keys out of my pocket to save seconds, I run as fast as I can. When I get to the front of the house, I don't bother with the little gate in the pergola, but leap over Gran's rose bushes.
On the front step, I can't get the key in the keyhole. My hand shakes and moves stupidly, as though frozen solid. My pulse throttles up my throat. A thousand beady eyes are closing in. The wind rises up behind me, like the beating of a thousand wings.
I'm almost in tears by the time I get the key in and the door open. I enter quietly, even though nobody's home. Gran and Rudy are out of town at a casino for the night. I collapse against the door on the inside of my warm, safe house. Peering out the peephole, I see nothing—not a single crow, let alone a murder of them. Now I feel ridiculous.
I shuffle down to hall to the bathroom, squeezing my eyes shut until the light is on. The sight of something black on my face makes me gasp, but it's just my costume's mustache. I take off the little patch of fake hair and throw it in the garbage. My ear is still bleeding from the cr
ow's attack, but the wound is barely a scratch.
The antique clock back in the living room sounds twelve reverberating gongs, and I sigh with relief that Halloween is over.
There will be no more sexy girl legs at school tomorrow, but the sun will come up and burn away the memory of this night. I close my eyes, turn off the bathroom light, and dash away from the mirror, holding my breath until I get to my room and safely on top of my bed. I'm in my familiar space, with the striped wallpaper and the quilted patchwork bed cover Gran made from some of my childhood clothes and other scraps, mostly denim and corduroy. Sure, I'm nearly an adult, and I'm not a tiny guy, but the walk home was freaky, and I think everyone turns into a little kid again when they're scared.
I take off my Charlie Chaplin suit and lay it across the wooden chair next to my bed. I bought the jacket and pants at a thrift store with James, and it was only ten dollars, but it's a good-looking suit. I hope nobody died in it.
Eyes closed, I burrow down in my covers. Of all the nights for Gran to be away, she had to pick tonight. I hope her fiance is showing her a good time, at least. I hope she's eating a lot, because she's still too skinny.
Tomorrow's a new day.
I'm way too tense to sleep.
I get out of bed and click on my computer monitor, stinging my eyes and bathing my room in a blue glow. I actually have two monitors, side-by-side. James got them from his dad's office when they were upgrading all their systems. It took some fiddling around with my graphics card, but now I can play a game in the main screen, the bigger one, and have email and other chat screens open in the second monitor.
My computer setup is perfect, though it doesn't leave much space on my antique desk for textbooks. I run my fingers appreciatively over the wooden surface, remembering my grandfather sanding and refinishing the wood. The desk was a garage-sale find, and cheap because it had been left in a barn for years, under a bird's nest. Grandpa cleaned off the bird crap and the weathered shellac, bringing it down to the wood and back to life again. This was not long after I came to live with him and Gran, and not long before he got sick.
Witches and Ghosts Supernatural Mysteries Page 127