by Harper Lin
“Excuse me,” I barked loudly over the rest of the barking that was going on. Treacle trotted two paces ahead of me. I watched the rat man jump out of my cat’s way and back up against the doorjamb. But as I passed him, I heard that same raspy voice I’d heard the other night.
“Cath!” It shouted inside my head.
When I looked back at him over my shoulder, there was nothing there but a dark shadow. I didn’t waste time. Treacle read my mind, and we ran out of the vet’s office and toward the car.
“That could have gone better.” I panted as we jumped in and drove out of the parking lot before my door was even all the way shut.
“Did you see it?” Treacle asked.
“See what? The look on Gail’s face when she realized we were bamboozling her? Yes. She’s pretty mad.”
“No. Did you see the shadows?”
My hands instantly began to sweat as I gripped the steering wheel. I swallowed hard even though my mouth had gone dry.
“The one by the door? Yes. I saw him.”
“No. The other one.”
“What other one?”
“I thought you looked right at it. It dove at you but then disappeared.”
“I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. In fact, I’ve been seeing that a lot. Something moving out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn to see, there is nothing there. What is that?”
“I think it’s the shadow people.”
“Shadow people? You mean you think there are more than one?”
“Yes. I think there is a gang of them.”
“Do you think they are just around us, or do you think they are at the doctor’s office too?”
“I think wherever there is an Elderflower, there are shadow people.”
We hurried to get home to my aunt’s house. I wasn’t allowed back in my place until Aunt Astrid took care of business, so we let ourselves in and went immediately to the fridge.
“I wonder if there is anything in any of Aunt Astrid’s books that look like these weird symbols. Did you see them all over the vet’s office? They were over the doors.”
Treacle nuzzled up to Marshmallow, who came to say hello.
I went into my aunt’s study and began skimming the books on her shelves. It was amazing how many tomes she had collected over the years that answered so many questions. If we didn’t guard our witchcraft so tightly, this collection of books would probably fetch a small fortune.
“Let’s see. Spells. Incantations. Vision interpretation. Demons. Haunted locations. I’m glad she has these organized by subject, or else we could be here all day.” I strained to see some of the higher shelves. My aunt’s study was a cozy place, but I had seen some chocolate pie in the fridge, so nothing was going to keep me in the study for very long.
“Aha! There you are, you sneaky devil. Denotations of the Netherworld, Volume One and Two. Yikes. This ought to have something in it, right?”
I stood on a chair to get the giant tome off the shelf. It was dusty and had that wonderful old-book smell that was romantic and thrilling all at once.
“This reminds me of studying for school. I swear my algebra book was this big,” I grumbled.
“It wasn’t that big. You thought it was because you hate math,” Treacle said.
“Your point being?” I rolled my eyes. “Hey, what would you call that rat man standing by the door? Was he a shape-shifter? A shadow person? A harbinger of doom and gloom?”
“Rat man?” Marshmallow asked.
Treacle gave Marshmallow a blow-by-blow description of what happened at the vet’s office.
“Treacle, did you hear that man call my name?”
My cat looked at me and purred.
“Nope.”
“I swear, it sounded like the same voice, the same growl as that thing that was in the bedroom the other night. But this guy was solid form, right? And he had a rat on his shoulder, right?”
“That wasn’t a man.”
“How do you know?” Marshmallow read my mind.
“Because what Cath saw was mostly man, and what I saw was mostly shadow. He was the goon at the gate. He was there to make sure that nothing happened to Gail that would cause problems.”
“So was he her bodyguard?”
“Bodyguard or prison guard. It’s hard to tell.”
I hoisted the book of symbols up on my shoulder and walked back to the kitchen. After dropping it on the counter, I pulled the pie out of the fridge and cut myself a wedge.
“So you think he was there to keep an eye on Gail for one reason or another?” I asked around a mouthful of pie.
“That’s what I think, and I don’t think he was alone.”
“Well, let’s see what we can find in this book.” I sighed at its size. “The beginning of every book starts on page one.”
I grabbed the doodles from my purse and held them in one hand while I flipped the pages with the other. In between, I devoured two slices of chocolate pie and two glasses of milk.
It was nearly three o’clock when Bea and Aunt Astrid finally arrived back home. Their story was even more treacherous than mine.
16
Specters
“What took you so long?” I asked as they came through the front door. “I was worried sick about you two. Haven’t you ever heard of a telephone? That’s it. You are both grounded.”
“Very funny,” Bea said as she helped her mother in the house.
“Aunt Astrid? Are you all right?” I quickly stopped the teasing and rushed to help. My aunt was pale, but she still had that wild twinkle in her eyes.
“I’ll be fine. We had to get out of that office a lot faster than when we walked in. So, what happened at the vet’s office?”
Hearing my aunt’s voice, Marshmallow jumped off the couch, where she’d been snuggling with Treacle. She hopped up on the table behind the sofa and waited, demanding an explanation.
“I told her to take it easy, but she never listens to me,” Marshmallow said.
“That’s because I’m the only one who can hear you. Be patient, and let’s hear what happened,” I replied, stroking the cat’s head.
“I know, Marshmallow. I’m late,” Aunt Astrid said as she lifted the cat in her arms like a baby and slung her over her shoulder. Marshmallow purred happily. “I’ve got to sit down.”
“I’ll get you some water, Mom.”
“Tea would be better,” my aunt said. “And a slice of chocolate pie if Cath hasn’t eaten the whole thing.” She winked at me.
“I only had two slices,” I said as I stepped over to the kitchen to help Bea. As the kettle began to bubble, I told them what had happened at the vet office.
“So, it was quite a spectacle,” I finished. “But we did get rough sketches of the designs over the doors. Maybe you’ll recognize them from something you’ve seen before.” I handed my drawings to my aunt.
“Oh, I do recognize these. They were at the doctor’s office too.”
“What do they mean?” I went back into the kitchen to get teacups for Bea, my aunt, and myself.
“They are blinders,” my aunt answered with a sad click of her tongue. I didn’t ask any more questions. I waited for the tea, brought my aunt a slice of pie, and took a seat next to Treacle, who was casually waving his tail over the side of the ottoman he had chosen to lie on. I wanted to hear what happened.
“Normally, I’d suspect the Elderflowers were into something that they’d lost control of. But that isn’t really the case. Not based on what we saw.”
Aunt Astrid and Bea were just planning on scoping out Fern’s dermatology practice. But there was a sign on the door that invited walk-ins for a free consultation.
“We’d be stupid not to take advantage of that,” my aunt said. “So I drummed up a quick skin ailment on my shoulder, and Bea and I walked in.”
“What kind of skin ailment?” I asked curiously.
“What does it matter?” Bea asked around a mouthful of chocolate pie.
&nbs
p; “Just curious. Did you make it gross and oozy so she’d have to keep you there a long time?”
“No, Cath. I just made it a cross between ringworm and prickly heat.”
“Eww.” I wrinkled my nose.
“It wasn’t really anything. Just a mirage. But I couldn’t walk in without anything to show her.”
“You should have given Bea a wart on her nose.”
“Funny, cuz. Very funny.” Bea brought the TV tray with three cups of tea on it and set it on the coffee table before taking a seat next to her mother. I chuckled because Bea was one of those lucky ladies blessed with perfectly smooth skin, bright, wide eyes, and naturally long eyelashes. A wart on her nose would have been as hokey and out of place as a wad of chewed-up gum on the Mona Lisa.
“So, with my fake lesion, we walked in and told the nurse at the front desk we’d just walked in and were hoping the doctor could make a suggestion as to what to do. But even that turned out to be more troubling than we expected.”
My aunt went on to describe a spiderwebby haze that hung over the place.
“Fern Elderflower obviously had a cloaking spell of some kind over the place. It was a phantasm that had settled over the entire office.”
“But you couldn’t see it?” I asked Bea.
“I saw a state-of-the-art office with spotless walls and windows and floors. Everything was neat and orderly. Everyone was professional, if not frigidly so. But had I not been on a data-collecting mission, I wouldn’t have noticed anything strange. You know how some women professionals are. They feel they have to be tougher or more serious than the men in their profession.” Bea rolled her eyes. “I just assumed Fern Elderflower was one of those kinds of women.”
“The lobby was filled with people,” Aunt Astrid added. “She’s obviously developed a reputation, but not everything was as it seemed. Some of those patients, I could see right through.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Exactly what I said. They were not real people. They were specters. Phantoms.”
“To me, everyone looked relatively normal, except the nurse at the front counter. She looked very intense, like she had just found out someone keyed the side of her car,” Bea said. “So, when I told her that my mother had a weird something on her shoulder, she quickly handed me a clipboard full of paper and a pen and went back to her work behind the desk. Normally, a doctor’s office asks about insurance first. Not a peep from this one.”
“Now that in itself is suspect.” I shook my head and folded my arms over my chest. “Don’t trust an outfit that doesn’t ask about insurance when insurance is who pays them. Totally suspicious.”
They said they took their stack of paperwork and halfheartedly filled it out while looking around the office.
“That was when I noticed the symbols over the doors.” Aunt Astrid took a huge forkful of pie and washed it down with a sip of tea. “Now, I could be wrong, but I think those were what was keeping the haze over the entire place.”
My aunt went on to say that having one of those symbols meant nothing. But using them together was like plugging a few cords of Christmas lights into one another. They worked together and stretched the electricity, or in this case, the paranormal illusion, over the whole building.
“But that sounds like witchcraft, and you said the Elderflowers aren’t witches,” I replied.
“They aren’t. They are borrowing from someone,” Bea said.
“Or something,” my aunt added.
After completing the paperwork and handing everything back to the nurse, they sat in the waiting room for an hour. Finally, their name was called, and they were led to a smaller room, where they waited for another twenty minutes. That was when Aunt Astrid saw it.
“We aren’t alone,” Aunt Astrid had said to Bea. “Over there in the corner. Do you see that shadow?”
Bea squinted.
“That was one thing I noticed,” Bea said to me. “I kept seeing things moving out of the corner of my eye like a person falling or someone lunging toward us. But every time I looked in the direction of the movement, there was nothing there.”
“That has been happening to me too,” I admitted.
“There was something there, all right,” Aunt Astrid said. “And now we had one in the room with us.”
She described it as a faint, pulsing discoloration against the wall. Had she not had the ability to see through to other dimensions, she would have completely missed it, as Bea had. But her keen sense of her surroundings made the phantom’s attempt at camouflage unsuccessful.
“Before I could attempt to connect with it, Fern walked in,” Aunt Astrid said before eating her final bite of pie.
“Connect with it? Why in the world would you try to do that?” I asked while debating whether or not I should have one more slice of pie myself.
“We have to know what we are dealing with. There is a reason these things are around the Elderflowers. But like I said, before I could reach out to it, she walked in. She wasn’t alone either.”
My aunt went on to describe Fern entering the small examination room while being followed by two hulking shadow people.
“They weren’t as defined as what you saw, Cath. But they were there, and they were not about to let Bea or me find out anything about Fern.”
“How do you know that?” I asked nervously.
“I could see them talking to her. Like a criminal in front of an investigation panel, Fern Elderflower wasn’t going to say or do anything they didn’t approve of. The scary thing was that she didn’t seem to mind their influence.”
“I couldn’t see them as clearly as Mom, but by this time, I felt them,” Bea continued the story.
“So, Mrs. Greenstone. You are here for a free consultation about a mark on your shoulder. Did you complete your paperwork?” Fern asked coldly. “We cannot do a consultation without first having all your personal information.”
“Of course.” Bea smiled but got nothing in return.
“So, tell me about your history. Have you ever had anything like this before? Do you smoke? Consume alcohol? Is there a history of skin cancer or any other similar afflictions in your family?”
I wondered if Aunt Astrid mentioned our deceased great-aunt Isobol, who had a revenge spell backfire. After finding her lover two-timing her, she decided the female who was sharing his affection should be taught a lesson. So, with eye of newt and wing of bat and wart of a horny toad, she was determined to give this woman a horribly disfiguring skin condition that would render her unlovable by any man. But as with most revenge spells, combined with mediocre witchcraft and a maximum level of hypocrisy, Great-Aunt Isobol ended up not giving the mistress a crippling affliction. Instead, she gave herself a severe case of acne that would flare up whenever she was out in public. The pustules would be known to violently erupt at times. It earned her the nickname “Oozy Isobol.”
It didn’t kill her. But it did humble her. She resigned from any further revenge spells, especially those having to do with affairs of the heart. Since her lover had been a married man, she essentially cursed herself since she was his mistress long before he added a second to the mix. The universe would dole out justice the way it saw fit.
“No. Not at all. I’m thinking it’s probably just a topical fungus,” Aunt Astrid said pleasantly.
“Do you want to tell me why you can’t seem to leave my family alone?” Fern hissed while she scribbled on the clipboard of my aunt’s paperwork.
“What do you mean?” Aunt Astrid said, playing dumb.
“I know who you are, Mrs. Greenstone. You show up at my mother’s funeral, trying to get information from my sister. You crash my house to try to talk to my father. Now you have your other family member snooping around my sister’s veterinarian office just like you are doing here.” Fern clenched her teeth. “What is it that you think you are doing?”
“Fern, please,” Bea interrupted. “You’ve got it all wrong. It’s just a happy coincidence we keep running int
o you guys. That’s all.”
“A happy coincidence?” she snapped bitterly. “This is my practice. This entire building is mine, and I’m telling you to leave. Do not come back, or there will be severe consequences.”
It was at this time that the shadow people started getting more visible to Aunt Astrid. One stood at the door Fern had walked through, and the other was immediately to Fern’s left.
“They were like bouncers,” Bea said. “I tried to act innocent with Fern and reached out to touch her arm. You would have thought I tried to stick her with a used needle. She slapped my hand away and—”
“Slapped your hand away?” I gasped.
“Literally.” Bea nodded with her eyes wide, showing as much shock as me. “I was going to make an issue of it, but Mom took hold of my hand and started to pull me toward the door. Tell her what you saw, Mom.”
I looked at my aunt, whose forehead was a sea of wrinkles as she thought about what she saw.
“It was like the place was decaying. Like how a person films a flower growing from seed to bloom and it is sped up for the camera. That was how this looked. I could see it, but Bea couldn’t.”
My cousin shook her head again.
According to my aunt, the paint and plaster began to peel and crumble. Cobwebs and grime began to form and spread out from the corners. The floor began to fade underneath a bed of dirt and strange dark patches where water or some other kind of ooze had seeped up from the ground.
“How did you get out of there?” I stroked Treacle’s fur as he slunk around my leg before plopping down on the floor to nap.
“For a second, I didn’t think we were going to make it,” my aunt continued.
She and Bea continued to apologize to Fern, who was watching them with an icy stare. But it was obvious their cover had been blown, and any unnecessary lingering might cause more harm than good. As Fern took a step closer to Aunt Astrid, so did the shadow that was at her side.
“I reached for the doorknob, and when I took hold of it, I felt a frigid, slimy coating. There was nothing there that I could see, but I felt it. It made my hand slip. Bea and I could feel those shadows closing in on us. The air was getting thicker. I tasted a mossy dampness in my mouth. Finally, I was able to get a strong enough grip to wrench the door open.”