Romancing the Paranormal

by Stephanie Rowe

  “Oh? That’s quite handy. But Marie, you’ve always handled these powdered potions. I’ve never blown—”

  Marie closed my hand and the clump disintegrated into a fine powder. “The only way to learn how to give a good blow-spell is to just do it. I sure as hell ain’t getting within ten feet of that deranged fool. I don’t know what came unglued in that head of his, so there’s no telling how he’ll react at first. Besides, if you plan to marry the man, there’ll be many touchier moments than this ahead. Trust me. Now go on, blow it. And be careful, sometimes the person you blow will have a reflex and spray you.”

  Wills and Kate, still dressed as Mardi Gras revelers, had joined Esmeralda, Vasili, and Randy. The little crowd roared with laughter. Not just politely chuckling at one of Randy’s stale jokes, but doubled over from gut twisting snorts and cackles. “Wanda, look at them. I sure hope they aren’t laughing at the expense of those poor Sasquatches.”

  “Never mind that herd of jackasses. You’ve got this.”

  “Thank you, Marie.” My brisk steps quickly closed the distance between me and Brad. I’ve heard it said that the element of surprise gives you the best advantage. I thrust out my arm and put my palm up. I blew the dust in Brad’s face. “Loquimini in anglicus!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I Svippy

  “Haf—hach—foo!” Brad sneezed and showered me with little rust colored blobs.

  I wiped off my eyes and saw Brad cleaning the residue from his nose and ears. “Brad? Can you understand me?”

  He nodded sharply, enough for the long purple feathers of his carnivalesque Viking helmet to bob around wildly. “Yes, I can understand you. My name is Svipdagr. Who is Brad?”

  “Svipda, Svippy dar? What?” My eyes bounced around as they followed the waving feathers. “Brad? What in Christ’s kitchen is going on with you?” Whatever relief I should have felt about having succeeded in getting him to understand English was overwhelmed by a wave of desperation. “Who is Svipdagr?”

  I noticed that Marie had already called Wanda over to listen in to our odd conversation. I looked at them. “Are you listening to him? I don’t get it.”

  “I am Svipdagr, but you can call me Svippy.” He said it with conviction. He was completely absorbed in Norse delusion.

  “Svippy.” Marie and Wanda barely muffled their snickering. “Svippy the spandex Viking.” Snicker, snicker, snicker. This was well and truly awful.

  As bad as it may seem, I was right there with them, on the verge of getting a few laughs myself. “Marie? Wanda?” I squeaked out a desperate plea. “Help.”

  “Oh man! Gertie! You sure know how to throw a love spell on a man.” Wanda wiped the tears of laughter away. And she giggled some more. “Okay, let me talk to him.”

  “Svippy, tell us what you are doing here. Why are you dragging that ship around? And why do you have the dragon chained up?”

  His Norse accent stuck around with his English, and it made it hard to understand him. “Some lonely witch called upon my mother, Groa. Whoever this witch was, she begged for a warrior. My mother is really getting desperate for me to get married. She’s been hounding me for years to settle down. And so now she sends me to this strange place to marry the lonely witch. And let me tell you that I’m not very happy about it either. I don’t want a wife, and it’s humiliating to be suddenly plucked from my glorious battles in Asgard, in front of my warriors. At least I have been given a strong and sturdy body, and I’ve captured a dragon that will bring a good price.”

  Olaf made a few sad moans in response. “Greww, grew.”

  “I’ve even found this ship and some armor. Two strange and horrible berserkers have agreed to join my band of warriors. You see them?” He pointed the long horn towards Wills and Kate. “Let us get this over with. Who’s the lucky lady? Whoever she is must come with me. I will take her to my mother, where we will become married. Unless someone has a better idea, I suppose my mother will finally get her wish to see me get married.”

  “Hold on there, Svippy.” Wanda stopped him. “So, because of some spell that had been cast by mistake, your mother took advantage of being summoned?”

  “Yes, it’s what she does best. Take advantage of people.” Svippy acknowledged.

  “This time she sent you here to get a wife and bring her home. But you don’t want to get married. So why don’t you just tell her no? Get out of this man’s body and go back to your never ending battles in Asgard.”

  Svippy made it very clear what the big deal was with the ring. “I can’t tell her no. She’s very powerful, controlling. She’s, she’s…”

  “Your smother?” Wanda seemed to know the type. “The smothering mother?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right. Can you imagine how I feel? What sort of legendary hero has to leave his quest to run home at his mother’s every beck and call? This sort of thing went on for years, when she died, I thought I was free.” Svippy shook his head. “But it only got worse! It added more inconvenience by having to run to her new place in the afterlife. And as far as this marriage plot goes, it will be impossible to break apart. She has already sealed it by putting a magical ring inside the witch that will become my new bride. If the witch with the ring inside of her fails to meet my mother, that’s the end of her. That ring becomes a serpent and it will devour her from the inside. Only Groa can take it out and she will not do that until we marry.”

  I was almost unable to breathe for over a minute. “Huh? So that ring inside of me is Groa’s trick? Well, that answers the question about what Groa’s steep price was. It was this...this arranged marriage. To be shanghaied off to never-land and become the wife of her boy, Svippy. I don’t normally say bad things about other people, but your mother sounds like a real bitch, Svippy.”

  “You have no idea. And you are the one that I am to take as my wife?” Svippy looked at me as if he was looking over a horse to buy. A horse that was far below his standards. “Humph.” He lifted my arm and squeezed it in a vain search for my tiny muscles. “You couldn’t even carry my shield.” Svippy waved my limp arm around and then let it go. He didn’t even try to hide the fact that my weak little arms disgusted him.

  “Relax, Gertie. I think we can fix this,” Marie said as she put her hand on my shoulder. “The answer is simple. You go along with it, to seemingly go along with it. We need to trick her in to thinking you and Svippy are actually married. Tell her a lie about why you need that ring out. Perhaps we can convince her that you can’t have children until the ring is removed. Something like that. If she’s been pushing old Svippy here into marriage, you can bet that she’s anxious for some grandbabies. With the ring out, you and Svippy can both get the hell out of there. Brad will have his body back. Svippy can go back to his realm and play Viking.” Marie turned to Svippy. “Brad is still in there, in your head. Isn’t he, Svippy?”

  “Yes, he is sleeping in here someplace. I think it is very possible for your plan to work. It must work! I have no desire to wear a useless, scrawny wench as my ball and chain for eternity.”

  To listen to Brad—err, Svippy talk about me like that was like taking a punch to the gut. It was weird to see someone you love acting so bizarre and a completely different person. Unnerving actually. This was right out of Randy’s predictable science fiction movies. They all seem to have a character that ends up with his brain taken over by a space alien. Normally, I would have been angry, but I knew this wasn’t Brad. That didn’t stop me from saying something.

  I shook Svippy’s hands off and took a step back. “Well, that’s good then. Because if you think for one minute that I’m going to carry your shield around like I’m your pack mule, then you better adjust your tight little spandex skivvies. The brains in your ass must be getting squeezed.”

  Marie gave me an approving nod and she was now full of confidence. There’s one thing about Marie Laveau that I’ve learned and that is she loves a good quest. “Let’s get back to our real problem. Tell us, Svippy. Where does one go to find
Groa?”

  “You go to hell.”

  “Excuse me?” Marie growled. “Listen fool, you forget who you are talking to.”

  “I said, what I said. You go to hell.” Svippy shrugged his shoulders. He repeated it slowly, with more volume and a fresh batch of sarcasm. “YOU, GO, TO, HELL.”

  I think he wanted to add “What’s the big deal” or words to that effect. But he never got another chance to open his mouth because there is one more thing I know about Marie Laveau. She won’t let any man disrespect her. Without warning, Marie swung her arm around like she was in an imaginary tennis match. A sickening smack filled the air and Svippy’s head jerked like a prizefighter’s punch had found its mark. The ridiculous purple and gold Viking helmet tumbled across the yard. It was quite a blow. But Marie hadn’t even touched him. I can only imagine that she clobbered him in the head with some kind of invisible, and quite effective, magical shillelagh. “Go ahead and say that one more time, smartass. You’ll be picking your teeth out of your ass.”

  Svippy wobbled, took a half step to the left, and stepped backward. His head drooped, his arms were halfway extended, and his hands flopped around like they were connected to his wrists with hinges. “Marie! I just had déjà vu! Once, when I was a little girl in Chicago, I got to see a marionette show. Svippy looks just like one of those string puppets. Well, except for the huge, shiny, red contusion rising up from his forehead…and that incoherent babbling, of course. Oh, wow! One of the few happy times of my childhoo—”

  “Did they crack the marionette’s skulls open in that show, too?” Esmeralda interrupted me. I hadn’t even noticed that she had come over by me.

  “No.” I tried to remember some details. “I don’t think so. Not that I remember anyway.”

  Svippy the human puppet suddenly collapsed and became a whimpering pile on the ground. Wanda threw her hands up. “Puppet show is over, ladies, someone cut Pinocchio’s strings.” Wanda knelt down. “Wait a second. Shh! Stay quiet and listen to him. Listen to what he’s saying.”

  “Ger—Gertie. What happened, Sunshine?”

  “Sunshine? That could only be Brad! Yay! Brad’s back! Marie, you must have knocked Svippy back to somewhere over the bifrost. Thank you.” I knelt down and cradled Brad’s big sore head.

  Randy started to sing. “Somewhere over the bifrost…”

  “Don’t thank me.” Marie didn’t try to conceal the hopelessness she was about to express. “You’re in a real mess now. Svippy never told us where we have to go to find Groa. And we have no idea how long you have until that ring becomes a hungry snake, a big hungry snake inside of you.”

  “Marie! Svippy was trying to tell you. He said ‘go to hell’ and I think I know what he meant by that. According to old Norse, there are nine different realms or dimensions. Some are reserved for Gods or heroes and some are for the afterlife. The Norse concept of death and the afterlife was quite complex. In fact, to this day nobody can say exactly how it worked. We do know that there were at least three places for the dead to go. Warriors slain in battle would be divided between Odin and Freya. Odin’s share went to Valhalla and Freya’s share went to Folkvangr. Ordinary people who died in any other way went to a place called Hel, or Helheim as it is also called. But it wasn’t a bad place. It’s not the place we call Hell. There was no judgment, no damnation. It has nothing to do with the popular meaning of Hell, the fiery place where the bad people go. Two totally different places. They just sound the same.”

  “I hope there’s not going to be a test.” Randy muttered.

  “Ah ha! Now I get it, and since I seem to have knocked Brad back into the driver’s seat, I don’t feel too bad for beating on him like he was an ugly Walmart piñata.” Marie smiled with pride at her moaning handiwork that was sprawled out in front of her.

  Randy began to pace around and his restlessness was a sign that he was worried. “Wanda, can we even get to this Helheim place? And what if we do? How do we find Groa?”

  “Don’t sweat it, my boy.” Wanda took a reassuring tone. “Getting to Hel will be fairly simple. I have no doubt that we’ll find Groa. If we have a good plan and work together, we’ll be fine.”

  Esmeralda nodded in agreement. “There is one thing I’d like to point out. We have no idea why Svippy tied up Vasili. What did Svippy know that we don’t? Or am I the only one that wonders? Do we take Vasili to Hel with us?” She nodded towards Vasili, who was trying to communicate with the Sasquatch couple.

  At that moment, I realized something about Esmeralda. Despite the fact the Esmeralda enjoyed torturing people with her prickly personality, she was a truly loyal friend. Brad wiggled around and got on his feet. I walked up to Esmeralda and looked her in the eye. “Esmeralda? I just want to say thank you. You know, for going on this trip to Hel because of me. I never even asked you to.” I had to move quickly. I caught her in a bear hug. “Randy says you have a heart made of rusty barbwire dipped in diesel fuel, but I think you have a heart of gold.”

  “Randy said that about me? Well…” She shook herself free. “He’s not wrong.”

  Marie was back in charge. “Listen up, witches. Tonight we leave for Hel to save Gertie from having some bloodthirsty monster snake pop out of her chest like she’s a giant cake at Satan’s bachelor party—”

  “Or like that scene from Alien.” Randy pointed out.

  “Yes, or like that. In any case, this will be a dangerous journey into the supernatural world of the dead. There will probably be monsters, corpses, bizarre landscapes, and really spooky shit in general. This is exactly the stuff I live for, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. If you want to stay behind, I understand. So, who are the big fat chickens? Anyone?” She looked the silent group over. “No? Good. We meet again at midnight, here at Gertie’s plantation. As far as the satyr goes, leave him to me. I’ll have a little talk with him.”

  Brad put his arms around me and looked me in the eye. “Gertie, let’s go back to the house. I want nothing more than to make love with you and to get some ice on my head.”

  “Hey, you two! I heard that.” Randy fidgeted and his hands were shaky. Marie’s words must have had a chilling effect on him. “You guys are going to go screw around at a time like this? Aren’t you the least bit nervous?”

  “Randy, please don’t worry so much. You know how Marie is all dramatic.” I waved my arms around to imitate a ghost. “Wooo, it’s going to be spooky. Wooo…”

  “Yeah, well, I tend to think she knows what she’s talking about.” He was nearly whispering.

  “Once we get there and meet Groa, I’ll just explain everything. It’s not like we meant to summon her spirit. And now that Svippy disappeared, she’ll realize her son has no intention of getting married and settling down. She’ll have no choice but to remove the curse.”

  “Well, I’m going to catch up with Marie and the others. I want to learn everything I can about this place we’re heading off to visit. See you guys back here later.” Randy jogged in Marie’s direction.

  “He does have a point, Gertie. But if you’re not worried, then neither am I.” Brad took my hand and we headed back into the house.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sexy Time

  Brad ripped the flashy carnival outfit off and tossed it straight into the trash. I made it perfectly clear that I had no problem with having him only in his boxers in my kitchen. I led him over to what Randy calls “My granny chair”. It’s an old but comfortable large chair that I keep near a sunny window. “Brad? What’s the last thing you remember?” I was hoping that the best part of our disastrous dinner date wasn’t simply the result of my wayward magic spell. Brad sat in the chair and watched me pace back and forth as I talked. He seemed to enjoy it. “Actually, what I’m really wondering is…if everything you told me that night…did those ideas suddenly pop into your head that day? Or have you been thinking about it for some time?” The icepack I had prepared hovered only inches from the nasty lump on his head. Brad must have thought that I wor
ried about how it might hurt to lay the ice on his injury, but I think I hesitated for another reason. I wanted to know, and I didn’t want to know. He took my hand and placed the ice pack on his wound. “And I know I must have said something about Vasili trying to kiss me.” I lifted my chin up. “But I don’t feel bad about that. I’m completely innocent on all counts.”

  “Hmm…you sure have a lot of questions for a guy who was just possessed by a Viking’s spirit and then took one of Marie’s magical haymakers to the head.” Brad winked. “Of course I remember everything that evening, going out to dinner, you scarfing down the ring, the trip to the ER and of course, coming back here to your room. It was beautiful and really hot. Then out of the blue, you told me you had to take some pills that you got from a shrink! I don’t know what she gave you, but they hit you hard…Marie Laveau hard.” Brad removed the ice pack. “Do you remember what you were trying to do?” Brad’s mischievous smile and his twinkling eyes awaited my answer.

  “Oh, I know what I was attempting to do. But…those pills. They just—”

  “Turned you into a jellyfish? I know, I tucked you in. After that I heard this strange sound coming from outside. Music. I think it was from some sort of flute. I went downstairs and out onto the back porch. That was the last thing I remember.” Brad winced when he adjusted the ice. “I wish I could tell you more. I only know what everyone has been telling me.”

  I was getting a little frustrated that Brad had not even mentioned his romantic proposal and it brought the sassiness out of me. “Modern medicine! All I wanted was some birth control pills and I end up at a psychiatrist’s office. And to top it off, she drugs me! How does witchcraft get to be the one with the bad reputation? I’ll stick to a witch doctor any day, thank you very much. It’s no wonder people are talking about health care problems in this country. Doctors aren’t called doctors anymore. Shrinks and gynos and God knows what else.”