by Harper Lin
“They might hear me.”
“Who, honey?”
“If they hear me, they’ll tell my sisters,” she whispered. “My dad will be in trouble.”
“I can assure you, Evelyn, no one will hear what you say in this café. And nothing you say will be repeated.” The authority in Aunt Astrid’s voice was something Bea and I learned about long ago. She told the truth.
Evelyn looked at Bea and me and then Aunt Astrid.
“My sisters aren’t right,” she muttered. “They’ve done something. Bad. And they don’t plan on stopping.”
“What did they do?” Aunt Astrid asked.
Evelyn looked nervously around and past me to the front of the café.
“I don’t have any proof. You’re going to think I’m crazy. But they aren’t smart enough to be doctors.” Evelyn sighed as if she’d just revealed a huge secret.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They got help,” she continued.
“Honey, you aren’t making any sense,” Aunt Astrid said soothingly. “Do you know what she means?” She looked at Heather.
“All I know is that as long as I’ve known Evelyn, her sisters have been mean to her. Right?” She looked at her friend. “It’s just jealousy. Evelyn is prettier than they are and most definitely smarter. They hate her for that.”
“Is this true?” Bea sat down next to Evelyn and placed her hand on her forearm.
“Partly,” Evelyn admitted. She kept looking around as if she were waiting for a bus. She swallowed hard and put her other hand on Bea’s. I was sure she could feel strength there. I kept my fingers crossed it would be enough to get her to tell us something more. “They did something. Something with a Ouija board.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
I could tell by my aunt’s body language that this made her mad. It was a simple thing. People had been told not to play with Ouija boards since the things were invented, and yet they continued to do so. Then they wondered why their lives fell apart.
“What did they do?” Bea asked.
“They made some kind of deal.” Evelyn was speaking more confidently. “They told me my days were numbered and that no one would miss me. That no one would be left to miss me.”
It broke my heart to watch her sitting there. She cried like a little girl, and the makeup on her face ran down her cheeks. Heather put her arm around her. She also had tears in her eyes.
“You calm down now, honey.” Aunt Astrid’s voice was firm. “We can help. But we need to keep being brave for just a little while longer.”
“If you say anything to them, they’ll get mad!” Evelyn croaked. “They have some kind of power. They’re witches or something.”
“Honey, they aren’t witches.” Aunt Astrid said that with such conviction I wanted to cheer. I looked at Bea, who was reading my mind.
We let the girls stay at the café for the rest of the afternoon. It was a windy day, and the foot traffic was pretty low. I told Bea and my aunt about Evelyn losing her boots and her alibi for last night. Everything was starting to point to another person breaking into my house, and I was feeling pretty confident we all knew who it was. Or at least had it narrowed down to two people.
“So what do we do?” Bea asked Aunt Astrid quietly as we prepared the girls some healthy spinach-and-turkey salads with a cranberry dressing Bea concocted.
“After they’ve finished eating, you girls should drive them home. See what there is to see around Evelyn’s house. Then get back here as quickly as you can. I’ll be getting our supplies ready. Girls, we are going to have teach the Elderflowers a lesson.”
20
Three Human Forms
Evelyn and Heather were in much better spirits as we drove them home.
“Are you sure your mom won’t mind you staying at Evelyn’s house? We can get you to your front door, no problem,” Bea said.
“We were going to hang out after school anyway. My mom is working late tonight at the Dollar General, so she doesn’t mind. My dad is on a three-day job. He’s a truck driver.”
“That makes me feel better that you guys are sticking together,” I said, turning around from the front seat. “Is your dad home, Evelyn?”
“I don’t know. Fern and Gail have been forcing him to look at old folks’ homes even though he only just turned sixty. They keep telling him he’s too old to take care of me.”
If I didn’t have a bad ankle, I would have stopped at the sporting goods store, picked up a Louisville Slugger, and waited for those two witchy wannabes to get home. Then I would have taught them a lesson about respecting their elders and not playing with Ouija boards.
But I did have a bum ankle, and I was so bad at sports that I’d probably crack my own skull before cracking anyone else’s.
When we pulled up in front of Evelyn’s house, the girls hopped out.
“Cath, I’m sorry about your ankle,” Evelyn said after I rolled my window down.
“It’s okay, kid. It’ll heal.” I smiled.
“I’m afraid to go in the house,” she confided. “For the first time in a long time, I felt safe at your café. It was like the feeling of coming up from underwater.”
“And now?”
“I feel like I’m being watched again. I can see them out of the corners of my eyes, but when I look, nothing is there.” She growled. “One thing is different. I don’t feel as scared.”
“Good. Here. This is from Aunt Astrid. Get a big plate, and burn it. Let the smoke go all around your room. It’ll help calm you.”
“What is it?”
“Just a little sage. My aunt swears by it.”
Evelyn took the bundle of sage. She and Heather went into the house and waved from the window, smiling.
“Do you think they’ll be okay?” I asked Bea.
“I hope so. Do you see that?” She pointed to the side of the house that was casting a long shadow as the sun was starting to go down.
I squinted. Was I seeing things right?
“I don’t believe it,” I grumbled. From the shadow emerged three human forms. They were barely there and just a shade darker than the rest of the natural shadow on the ground. If you weren’t looking for them, you wouldn’t see anything more than something out of the corner of your eye. But Bea and I knew they were around. We could see them. They could see us.
“Is the one in the middle wearing a hat?” I asked. The whole idea of a shadow person wearing a hat annoyed me. It was as if the thing were trying to be cool, as if being a shadow person weren’t scary enough, but one of them had to don a human element. I was freaked out and annoyed all at once.
“It sure looks like it. Unless its head is shaped like that,” Bea answered.
“I don’t think its head is shaped like a top hat. That’s just crazy.”
“Right.” Bea scowled. “I’m scared. Do you think we should get Evelyn and Heather?”
“No.” I listened to my instincts. “Those things are ready to pounce on us, but I don’t think Evelyn and Heather are in any danger. Not from these guys, anyway.”
“If you say so.”
For the first time ever, Bea threw the car in reverse, spun out of the driveway, and put the hammer down. We got back to the café in ten minutes when it normally took half an hour.
“Remind me not to tease you about your driving anymore.” I clutched my heart. “Good thing those lights were yellow when you sped through them. I just hope Jake doesn’t get hold of the photos from the cameras that caught his wife breaking the law.”
“It’s your car. You are the one who’ll get the tickets,” she sassed.
As I pulled myself out of the car, Bea ran to the front door to hold it open. I shuffled as fast as I could because it was terribly cold and because every shadow seemed as though it were moving behind me and gaining.
“Lock the doors, girls. We’re closing early.”
I was so happy to hear those words I almost giggled. Evelyn was right. It felt safe at the café
.
“Should I shut the lights off?” I asked.
“No!” Aunt Astrid shouted. “No. After you girls left, I did a little digging based on what Evelyn told us combined with the mutilation of her mother’s corpse and the strange claim that the Elderflower girls made a deal. They did. And I’m afraid to say ‘with Satan’ might be a slight understatement.”
My stomach soured. Nothing sounded scarier than the words devil or demonic except Satan or something worse than Satan. What did these idiots get us into?
Under the bright lights of the café, Aunt Astrid plopped down the Greenstone Lexicon. It was one of the older reference books she had in her arsenal. Within its delicate pages, she stuck a couple of red Valentine’s Day napkins to hold her places.
“If these aren’t what we’re dealing with, then this might be like taking a knife to a gunfight.”
“What?” I swallowed.
“We’re in this now, Mom. You know you can count on us.”
“We will have to get the cats. Treacle was able to fend one off Cath. There’s no telling how many will be there by now.”
“But where? How many what?” I asked. “And about this knife to a gunfight thing. That’s just a figure of speech, right? You don’t really mean we’ll be outgunned, do you?”
“At the Elderflowers’ house. The shadow people,” Aunt Astrid said. “And yes. If I’m wrong about this, we might have no other option than to run and keep running.”
My cousin patted me on the shoulder and smiled. “It’s been nice knowing you, Cath.”
“You too, Bea. You too.”
“All right. Now that you two squared all your affairs, let’s take a look at the enemy.” My aunt opened her big book to the first place she had marked with a napkin. “Opacum Diabulus.”
“A-Am I reading this right?” I stuttered. “Does this say that this thing grants immortality in exchange for souls? How can you sell someone else’s soul?”
“I’m glad you asked.” Aunt Astrid grinned as she flipped to the next marked page. According to the history of the Opacum Diabulus, they preyed on people with narcissistic tendencies. “The Elderflower sisters seem to be rife with this affliction. When they played with the Ouija board, this thing and its minions were just waiting for the chance to slip through the portal. The problem is that these things were given an invitation. It’s like inviting vermin into your house. Once they are there, it is impossible to get rid of them on your own.”
“So we’re like the exterminators.” Bea put her hands on her hips and looked off proudly into the distance like a superhero.
“Yeah. That will be our nickname. Not Ghostbusters but the Exterminators. We sound like mafia henchmen.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” Aunt Astrid said. “Like the gangsters in movies, you never get something for nothing. They require payment for their services. Unfortunately, Marie Elderflower was the first installment.”
Bea and I just sort of stood there dumbstruck. The idea of trading in your own mother for the possibility of immortality was so foreign to us we couldn’t quite wrap our brains around it.
“These things thrive on terror. Marie was essentially tormented to death. Her behavior could easily be called dementia, but she was not crazy. Those things preyed on her like the one that came from under your bed, Cath. Marie’s severed toe and the insertion of the corn kernel and dead spider were part of the next payment plan. Like interest being added to the debt. The toe has to accompany the next victim. The corn and spider were to defile the body and prove loyalty,” Aunt Astrid continued. “Or else the Opacum Diabulus will break your kneecaps or thumbs or whatever diabolical equivalent you’d like to use.”
“So, if this group is really like a loan shark-y-slash-Al Capone-y organized crime outfit, are we risking retaliation?”
“Well, I think it is safe to say yes. You already had a taste of that, Cath.” My aunt’s face was grim. “But the Opacum Diabulus is only as strong as the people who summoned it. That is where we have a fighting chance of stopping this. The narcissistic personality type isn’t a fighter. If we can get Fern and Gail away from their “protection,” we can end this.”
“How are we going to do that?” I asked.
My aunt flipped the book to the last page she marked with a napkin.
“We just need a diversion. We need to draw their attention then ambush them. It will require we split up.” She pointed to the page in the book that held the only procedure known to extract the Opacum Diabulus or Gazzo, as I had grown fond of calling it. A movie reference made it easier for me to deal with. The slimy loan shark in Rocky was a spot-on image for me to visualize instead of the horrific black thing that crawled out from under my bed.
“There are only three of us. How can we split up?” Bea asked.
“Well, Cath has a bad ankle. She can’t be left alone. So you will go with her. I’ll handle my end.”
“But Mom…”
“Bea, that little girl needs our help. She lost her mother in a very cruel and malicious way. Right now is a time for courage. Not selfishness. It’s selfishness that brought this evil to us to begin with.”
Bea nodded and took my hand.
“Besides, you don’t think your mother has connections? I’ve got connections. You don’t worry about me. Just make sure you do what I tell you.”
Aunt Astrid read the remaining details from the book to Bea and me, and we made our plan. But as with all perfectly laid-out plans, there was a fly that desperately wanted to land in the ointment. In our case, it was the rain the following day.
21
Ambush
We had all slept under Aunt Astrid’s roof that night. Actually, it was more like a catnap, but she insisted we rest in preparation for the ritual we were going to have to perform the following morning. But as the sky started to lighten, I heard the first ping-ping-pings on the windowpane. It was raining. Normally, this would encourage me to pull the blankets up higher and roll over for a little more shut-eye. But not today. I sat bolt upright, flung off the covers, then jumped out of the bed only to land my feet on the floor with a cuss and growl. My ankle was still too tender to put much weight on. I grabbed the walker and behaved as if I were eighty years old.
“I don’t believe this! Can you believe this? Rain? Today, it has to rain! We couldn’t get just one day of sunshine. Very funny, Universe! Very funny!”
Hwwwaaa! Hwwwaaa! Hwwwaaa!
I honked my horn in frustration.
Bea popped her head up from the sofa in the living room.
“Do you hear that?” I grouched. “Rain. So much for the sun minimizing the shadows.”
“It’ll be okay,” Aunt Astrid said as she came out from her study, wiping her eyes awake and patting me on the shoulder. “They’ll never expect us to do anything on a day like today.”
I wasn’t comforted by my aunt’s words. I looked at Bea, who groggily scratched her head and waved good morning to me.
After a breakfast of Bea’s special “before dangerous witchcraft” tea and toast with homemade lemon marmalade, we got dressed. Treacle, Marshmallow, Peanut Butter—whom Bea had brought over the night before after she brought Jake leftovers for dinner—Bea, and I then lined up and waited for my aunt to conjure up one of her strongest, most powerful protection spells.
So much sage was burned around us, I could barely see Bea standing next to me. The words Aunt Astrid recited were in a language I didn’t know, but I could feel their power settling deep inside my chest and working their way outward.
I felt as if I could stand on a train track with an oncoming locomotive barreling down on me and stop it not with my bare hand but with just a look.
“Okay, girls. You’ve got your supplies, and you know what you are supposed to do with them. Get yourselves over to the Elderflower house and stay out of sight. This isn’t a fight in which we want to use our hands. We want to engage the enemy as little as possible. It’s an ambush. The element of surprise is our greatest ally.�
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“How will we know when you’ve got your end of the surprise set up?” I asked as I leaned over the top of my walker and grabbed a banana for the road.
“You’ll know. It will be obvious. Just follow the instructions. Stay out of sight. I’ll join you as soon as I am able.”
It should be mentioned that my aunt Astrid didn’t drive. She knew how, but it was rare to catch her behind the wheel because of her vision. The merging and melting of dimensions had the tendency to make her weave and dart dangerously in and out of traffic. She was the stereotypical “female driver” men warned their sons about.
Her part of the plan required she be at the Elderflower offices. It was early enough in the morning that they wouldn’t be open, and foot traffic would be scarce. So no one would see her appear out of thin air. Teleportation was a very rare gift. Aunt Astrid explained it as opening a door no one could see and stepping through. The trick was knowing what door would get you to where you wanted to be.
“Now remember, we are supposed to stay out of sight. No matter what happens,” Bea said as we parked the car down the block and tiptoed up to the Elderflower house. Our three familiars, who were sitting patiently in the back seat like little dolls, had come with us. But they quickly went to their posts and blended in to their surroundings so seamlessly I lost sight of them almost instantly. The overcast day gave everything a flat appearance.
“I got it.” I hobbled with my walker. The thing made a click-click with every step. “I don’t know how I am supposed to do that with this thing, but I certainly will blend in as best I can.”
Bea pulled my hood up so it covered half my face. She did the same for herself before we ducked behind the neighbor’s bushes.
“You stay here and hold the bag,” Bea instructed as she pulled out a package of salt and seven black-onyx stones from the backpack she was wearing. “After I put this stuff around the house, I’ll end up just across the yard in the other set of bushes. I’ll just wait there until Mom makes it clear she’s done her part.”