by N. M. Howell
“Hey,” I said, squeezing onto the couch next to her. “What are you guys up to?”
“We’ve been invited to Mrs. Brody’s super-secret bridge night in four hours if you haven’t heard,” she said. “So naturally, Rory needs to start preparing.”
Rory threw a makeup brush at her, narrowly missing Jane’s head by an inch and landing by Bailey’s feet as she came up the stairs.
The makeup brush magically flew back through the room, landing on Rory’s makeup table.
“Thanks,” she said to Bailey, without taking her eyes away from the serious business of applying fake eyelashes.
Bailey was a very talented witch and often didn’t even have to lift a finger or utter an incantation to cast a spell. We were all secretly jealous of her, but no one would admit it.
We spent the hour chatting about life and men and other such things. Before long, I checked my watch and grudgingly headed back down to my room to get my tape recorder and notebook so I could go and cover Mr. Thompson’s damned party.
“I’ll see you guys later,” I called back as I made my way carefully down the stairs. Not only was the staircase creaky, but it was exceptionally narrow, and if you didn’t watch where you put your feet, it was easy to miss a step and fall crashing down to the next floor. Trust me, it’s happened more than once over the past few weeks - and it wasn’t even after I had been drinking.
Mr. Thompson’s party was just as I expected it to be: a bunch of old people, some sort of tapioca pudding instead of cake, and a few screaming great-grandchildren running around the floor. Tripping hazards, if you asked me. I smiled warmly at the group, wished the man Happy Birthday, snapped a few photos and asked him to say a few words for the paper. He grunted into the microphone, obviously not pleased that he was forced to sit through such an ordeal. I gave up on the quote, bid him farewell, and was on my way.
Quick and painless, and I could check this one off the list.
I hurried back to the house so I could type up the article quickly, and then hopefully make some headway on the Shadow Festival announcement before heading down to Mrs. Brody’s place for bridge night. I had no idea what to expect, but by the dulcet tones of my housemates, I wasn’t expecting it to be a very lively time.
It was already four o’clock when I got home, so I typed fast and worked quickly, managing to get a good chunk of my work done before the girls came down to get me.
“Ready for the party?” Jane mused, emphasizing the word ‘party’ as she came into my room. Rory shushed her dramatically. The house was large, but the walls were thin, and sound traveled fast in this old place.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I laughed, closing my laptop and stuffing my notes and recorder back in my bag.
We followed the smell of spiced pie down to Mrs. Brody’s apartment and knocked on the door.
She shouted “come in” from behind the door, and we let ourselves into the tiny basement apartment.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.
The apartment was filled with smoke that came pouring out from the kitchen. Mrs. Brody obviously had been cooking, and I could see large cauldrons of something boiling away on her stove-top. I could also see a small steaming pot of something else that smelled suspiciously of devil’s root herb, but I knew better than to ask. I had a particularly good nose for herbs. I would often spend hours on end with my dad in our kitchen as a kid, concocting up all sorts of creative spells and potions. I didn’t say anything, and no one else seemed to notice. She was a seasoned witch, and she knew what she was doing.
Peering through the smoke, I could barely make out the forms of a large group of men sitting around the massive wooden table in the living room. I never had an affinity for spirits, and they often appeared light and wispy to me. It was hard to make them out from the cooking smoke.
Mrs. Brody has been entertaining these men for years, and obviously had grown accustomed to having the presence of ghosts in her house. I wasn’t used to it at all, as you rarely encountered spirits in big cities. I don’t know if it was the bustling energy or crowded population, but I don’t think I even saw one ghost while living in New York City.
I stared at them, unsure what to do or say. Rory smirked at me and walked confidently into the room. She took a seat next to the form of a man wearing a tightly-buttoned jacket and top hat and struck up a conversation as if they were the best of friends. Rory had been in the house the longest, so for all I knew, they were.
Mrs. Brody came scurrying out of the kitchen and ushered us to our seats at the table.
“Sit, sit, girls,” she said frantically. “I’ll bring out your meals in a second.”
Mrs. Brody was good that way, often preparing home-cooked meals for us on a nightly basis. If it weren’t for her, I would be living off frozen dinners and Ramen noodles. I offered to help her serve, but she insisted I stay put with her guests.
While we waited for her to bring out the food, I listened intently on the conversation that was going on amongst the ghostly forms across the table.
“Have you heard?” one said, with a deep southern drawl. “The Shadow Festival is coming to town.”
“How absurd,” another replied. “Who would attend such a thing?”
“A festival dedicated to the paranormal,” the first continued. “What a ridiculous idea.”
“Absolutely preposterous,” another said from the other end of the table. “Who would dedicate the time to such an absolutely ridiculous theme.”
I tried to suppress a laugh. It was hilarious listening to a group of paranormal beings discuss the absurdity of a paranormal festival. I didn’t have the heart to say that they fit directly into the demographic of the event. I kept quiet, listening intently to the men bicker back and forth about the preposterous festival.
Mrs. Brody brought out massive bowls of delicious smelling stew, placing them in front of the four of us. She sat down at the table without one for herself and began chatting with the ghost of the old man next to her.
I found it strange that there were no female ghosts, but given Mrs. Brody’s abrasive personality towards outsiders, I had a feeling she wasn’t one to have many close girlfriends.
The stew smelled delicious, but I felt weird eating in front of a group of spirits who were unable to eat anything themselves. The other girls obviously felt the same awkwardness, as nobody touched their food.
“Oh, go on. Eat, eat.” Mrs. Brody insisted, waving her hands frantically in front of her. “Don’t mind this lot, they haven’t been hungry in years.”
Awkward.
I sighed and resigned to eating the stew, doing my best to ignore the looks from the spirits around me. Through my peripherals, I could barely make them out from the smoke anyway. And after a few minutes of looking, I realized how starved I was, and inhaled the rest of the meal.
The awkwardness slowly subsided as the evening went on. Our bowls were cleared away, and replaced with playing cards and pies, which I was confident were just there for decoration.
We all listened as Mrs. Brodie bickered with her friends. For men who appeared to have lived over a hundred years ago, some of them have quite progressive opinions.
“I recently heard that Rivertown has a new female mayor!” The man with the top hat exclaimed.
“A female mayor?” another asked. “Preposterous!”
“Oh, don’t be such an old prude, Barry,” said another.
“Yes, and not only is she female,” the top hat-wearing spirit continued, “but I hear she is married to a woman, and they have a child together!”
“About time women took over in politics, I say,” the form of a small man in a bow tie announced. “How wonderful.”
“A woman marrying a woman? How ridiculous!” another proclaimed. “How on earth do they even have a child together? That makes no sense. It’s ridiculous, I say.”
“Use your imagination, man,” another said jovially. “My word, what a delight. How fresh and excit
ing these times are.”
“I hear lesbians are popping up all over the country,” another said.
“Ah yes, it’s quite trendy these days.”
“Absolutely preposterous.”
I rolled my eyes. Men.
The evening continued with more conversation, and I even joined in after a while. One of the men was quite interested in my work, as Brimstone Bay has never had a local paper before. We discussed a few of the stories I had written, and I explained how nothing ever exciting really happened in town, and as a result, the paper was more of a weekly log of births, birthdays, and deaths.
“It was not always so,” one man said to me, as he stood up before his friends. The room hushed. “Brimstone Bay was once a dark place. A dreaded place.” His voice took on a haunted tone. “Back in my day, the town was wrought with murder and scandal,” he continued, waving his hand in the air for dramatic effect.
“No way,” I said. “I’ve never encountered anything to support that in any of my research.” I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair, eager to hear what he had to say. He scowled at me, obviously not impressed that I interrupted his story.
“Ah, my dear,” he continued. “Don’t believe everything you read. The youth today are so quick to believe.”
I glanced around the room, but to my surprise all the other men were nodding along, seemingly agreeing with his story.
“Okay, go on then,” I said. “I’m interested.”
The spirit cleared his throat. “Do you not know how men become ghosts?” He paused for dramatic effect. “To remain on this cruel earth as a spirit, one’s life must have ended either by murder or suicide.”
“So, wait,” Jane said, reaching for one of the pies. “You were all murdered?”
Mrs. Brody quickly slapped Jane’s hand away from the pie. “That's’ not for you, dear.” We all eyed the woman suspiciously but knew better than to pry.
Ignoring Mrs. Brody’s quiet outburst, they all nodded at Jane, except for one.
“Yes, girl, and all within this town,” one said. “Well, all except for Jerry, there.” He motioned towards the small man at the end of the table.
“Well, you would have jumped in front of a train too, if you had been married to Buella,” he groaned. The spirits all laughed, relishing in the memories.
I stared open-mouthed, unsure how to respond.
“Why doesn’t anyone know about this? Why isn’t any of this recorded in the library?” I asked.
“Oh, my dear,” the spirit continued. “It’s one of the biggest cover-ups of our age.”
Another spirit spoke up. “After years of darkness and murder, the town became populated with spirits. It became a mecca for the paranormal, and that was simply not acceptable for the rest of the community. Witches were burned at the stake, and the spirits were driven out.”
The first man continued, “It took years of burning records and rewriting history. For all everyone knows now, Brimstone Bay is a quiet, unassuming little town. It’s absurd, but there’s obviously nothing we can do about it.” He rolled his eyes, and the others nodded in agreement.
“Where do you think the town gets its name from?” another asked, looking at us expectantly.
We all shook our heads. “It’s been named that for hundreds of years, has it not?” I asked.
“No, my dear. This town was once known as Birchwood, and it wasn’t until after the Puritans rose up and slaughtered the witches and banished the spirits that it was renamed Brimstone Bay. It’s in reference to the Bible, of course. The wrath of God.”
“The wrath of the damned Puritans,” another man said. I looked at him and noticed he was dressed in a high-collared jacket and distinctly large black hat. The other men chuckled at him.
“Were you one of them?” I asked, recognizing his clothing from movies I’ve seen on similar subjects.
“Aye, I was,” he responded somberly, “but I do not agree with what they did during those years. Murder, it was. Cold blooded murder. ‘The Purging’ they called it, and purge they did.” He shuddered.
“Well,” Mrs. Brody chimed in, “for all the good it did them. They’ve got witches amongst them again, don’t they girls?” She laughed heartily, patting Jane on her back. “I hardly doubt that these soft townsfolk are capable of burning anyone at the stake in this day and age.”
The mood lightened slightly, but the stories haunted me. I made a mental note to do some more digging, but I was sure there was nothing to be found on it at the local library.
The conversation turned back to the Shadow Festival, and we all started chatting again excitedly. We were all looking forward to it, despite the protests from the men sitting around us.
The festival was a chance for us to potentially meet others of our kind, and we were eager to get back upstairs and chat about it. Mrs. Brody, for some reason, didn’t seem thrilled, and her mood darkened at the very mention of it. I made another mental note to ask her what the deal was some other time.
4
“Well, that was an interesting evening,” Jane said, as we hung out in the third-floor lounge after dinner.
I picked absent-mindedly at the peeling purple paint on the window frame, swaying my right leg outside the large open window frame. I was desperate to get to the library and see if I could dig anything up about Brimstone Bay’s dark history, but the library was closed until Monday morning, so I had two full grueling days to get through before I could go look.
I had of course done a quick internet search right after dinner on my laptop, but I came up dry.
Jane’s stomach growled, and we all turned to her. I laughed.
“What?” she said defensively. “I’m still hungry. I really wanted that damn pie.”
“Yeah, what the hell was that about?” I asked.
Mrs. Brody had carefully laid out the spiced pies before her guests but snapped when Jane tried to eat one.
Rory shrugged. “I dunno, but I wouldn’t touch anything sweet that comes out of that woman’s kitchen.”
“Well, technically she didn’t bake them herself,” I said. “But you’ve piqued my interest. Why not?”
Rory smirked but held her silence. All three of them looked like they were going to burst with laughter, I noticed, but no one said anything. I looked around the room, waiting for one of them to break. Someone always breaks.
As expected Jane was the first, collapsing in a fit of giggles on the ground. “Oh my god, remember that time at the antique store’s fundraising bake sale last year?”
“How could we forget?” Rory laughed. “We spent three weeks doing hard-core damage control after that incident.”
“What incident?” I asked insistently. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”
Jane could barely contain herself. “Mr. Hampton held a party to raise money for the shop, and Mrs. Brody offered to bring in muffins.”
“Mr. Hampton’s fundraisers are always so dull,” Bailey continued, “so Mrs. Brody decided she was going to liven things up a bit by spicing up the muffins with worm’s wort sprinkles.”
They all laughed mercilessly, in too much of a fit to continue.
“Worm’s wort?” I asked. “So, she wanted everyone to feel euphoric? Why?”
Jane wiped the tears away from her eyes. “She thought that if everyone was stoned, they’d be more inclined to spend money, I guess?”
“Only,” Rory continued, “she accidentally used devil’s root instead!” The girls couldn’t contain themselves, each one of them rolling on the floor, holding their stomachs because they were laughing so hard.
“She spiked the muffins with a paralyzer?” I asked, absolutely shocked. “People didn’t eat them, surely?”
“If only,” Rory managed to squeak out. “Luckily she didn’t prepare it correctly, obviously thinking it to be worm’s wort instead, so she only managed a light sleeping draught.”
“Oh, my god,” I replied. If they hadn’t all been in such hysterics, I wouldn’t
have believed what they were saying.
“The muffins were the biggest hit of the bake sale, but within ten minutes of the event starting, half the town had collapsed onto the ground, asleep.” Bailey sat up, recovering slightly from her laughing fit. “Mr. Hampton thought it was some sort of protest. He was livid, and we had to convince him that it was a local school group practicing a play.”
The girls all collapsed in yet another fit of giggles. I just stared incredulously. “And he bought that?” I asked.
Rory nodded. “Well, what else could it have been? Witchcraft?”
I couldn’t help but laugh along with them at the sheer ridiculousness of the story.
“It took nearly an hour for everyone to wake up again, and the consensus among them was that they must have had all fainted from the heat.” Rory rolled her eyes. “People can be so thick.”
I shook my head incredulously. “So… No harm done, then?”
Bailey shrugged. “Well, it took us weeks of spreading rumors that some school kid has spiked the punch and that, mixed with the heat from the sun, was what caused the fainting. Some bought the story of the school group, though.”
“Surely some people suspected Mrs. Brody,” I said. The other girls nodded.
“Yeah, well, some did, but the majority the people here think witchcraft is a myth, remember, so those that do suspect rarely voice their opinions,” Rory grinned.
“Huh,” was all I could manage while trying to imagine the scene playing out.
The memory of smelling the devil’s root earlier in Mrs. Brody’s kitchen came back to me, and I wondered what the woman could have been up to this time. I wanted to bring it up, but I thought better of it. Mrs. Brody still had all her wits about her, despite her age, and I doubted very much that she would have accidentally mistaken worm’s wort for devil’s root a second time.
The following week dredged slowly on, the anticipation - or dread, depending who you speak to - of the Shadow Festival growing stronger as the event drew near. I had busied myself with outlining a few articles in advance, so come time for the event I wouldn’t be scrambling for ideas. The day had finally arrived, and even though I was prepared, I could feel my nerves going haywire in the pit of my stomach.