by Harper Lin
“Say goodbye.” Fern waved at me.
“Yeah. Hasta la vista, baby,” Gail added.
Just as I looked into the red eyes and saw myself reflected in them, I heard a familiar voice.
“Get away from her!”
It was Marshmallow. Behind her came Peanut Butter. They dashed up to me and stood on either side of my head. The Gazzo flinched backward but bared its teeth at both cats.
Then Treacle came in the front door. He was puffed up to almost three times his normal size. His green eyes stared at the beast.
“I know you,” he growled loudly. His tail whipped back and forth. I felt as if I were in some parody of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western and there were going to be a shootout between my cat and Gazzo.
Slowly, the weights were coming off my limbs.
Marshmallow and Peanut Butter snarled and swatted at the thing and at the sisters. With every inch the blackness receded from me, the more of my strength returned.
“Don’t just stand there. Get a broom,” Fern ordered. She stepped forward and tried to kick Marshmallow away from me but instead got a long, healthy gash along the side of her leg from the cat’s sharp claws. “Ouch! I’m going to skin you alive for that.” She put her hand over the blood coming from the wound.
“I don’t think you’ll do any such thing,” I said as I started to push myself up.
Gail returned from the kitchen with a broom and began swiping at the cats. They darted back and forth, away from her clumsy swings.
That was when I noticed her feet. She was wearing Evelyn’s combat boots. She was the one who’d broken into my house.
I gulped at the air. I could smell the sage burning upstairs. It was like a shot of vitamin C. The familiar pain in my ankle was there, but I was thankful for its sobering effect.
As Gail swung the broom, I grabbed ahold fast and yanked it clean out of her grip. She let out a yelp of surprise.
Meanwhile, Treacle and the Opacum Diabulus had engaged in a screaming match. I understood Treacle’s threats.
“I beat you back before! I’ll do it again. And you’ll never return! Never!”
The horrible shouts and cries that poured out of the Gazzo’s mouth sounded like the hopeless cries of lost souls, making me shiver. But I had to focus on the Elderflower sisters. Now I had a broom. Would it be enough? It had to be.
“Get the black one out of here!” Fern ordered her sister. “It’s the black one! Get it out of here!”
“I’m trying!” Gail whined as she tried to kick at my cat. That was it. Finally, still wobbly on my feet, I took the broom and swiped it at Gail’s feet, causing her to land with a thud on the hardwood floor.
Fern made a wild, clumsy dash at Treacle. She reached for him with her hands curled like claws. She grabbed my cat and pulled him to her by the scruff of his neck. Treacle hissed and growled, scratching madly but missing his attacker.
“Not very tough now, are you?” She puffed up with pride and turned to hand over my beautiful feline to the Opacum Diabulus. The Gazzo. I was terrified as I stepped up to the thing. Holding my breath, I stuffed the fear way down deep, spun the broom in my hand like a ninja, and channeling every bit of energy I had, swung for the fences. The hard end of the stick contacted Fern’s face with a solid crack. A home run.
“Ouch! Oh oww!” she cried, dropping Treacle and reaching for her face.
Treacle fell to the floor, landing on his feet. With Marshmallow, Peanut Butter, and me, he cornered the top-hat-wearing specter. Before Fern could get her bearings, I grabbed Bea’s bag that she had dropped at the door and pulled out the bag of salt.
Gail tried to scramble over and yank it from my hand, but she had hit her forehead so hard she stumbled over her feet. There wasn’t much left in the bag. A handful at best. I hoped it would be enough as I threw it at the Gazzo.
As I expected, it was like buckshot tearing little pieces of blackness away, revealing an angry, fiery inside. It peeled its lips back in agony, and the hundreds of voices that bellowed all at once from inside its mouth shrieked in pain and infuriation.
It recoiled and writhed in a grotesque manner before it swiped long black talons at Fern and Gail. Then it rushed to a corner, where it stood glaring at all of us before blending into a normal shadow and disappearing.
“What have you done?” Gail wailed. I whirled around and saw her gaping at Fern.
“What have I done? You are the one who couldn’t stop a cat!”
My head was beginning to pound. These two sisters didn’t know any other way to communicate. It was shouting, or it was nothing.
“Where did it go? Call it back! Call it back, Fern!”
“It’s not coming back.” I started to giggle. Aunt Astrid must have succeeded at her end. I couldn’t wait to hear the details. “Looks like your bodyguard isn’t as tough as a couple of cats and three ladies.” I burst out laughing and pointed at Fern and Gail as the cats came and stood protectively between the Elderflower sisters and me.
“It’s not gone.” Gail was near tears. “It’s not gone, Fern. We need it. We’ve come so far. I’m not going back to the way things were!” she screamed, making my head throb.
“Shut up, Gail! I’m trying to think!” Fern shouted.
“Don’t tell me to shut up! You shut up!”
“I’ve had enough of you, Gail! Just shut your mouth!”
It was as if they had forgotten I was even there. I would have liked to laugh at them. It would have been so easy to take this time to twist the knife a little. But I didn’t. In fact, I grew more and more uncomfortable with each insult they traded.
Evelyn was right. Everything about the Elderflower sisters was a lie. They were not professional or successful or smart. They were a con. They were a complete hoax on everyone around them.
I didn’t laugh at them. I felt a sad queasiness in my gut that made me want to run away and hope to never see them again. I opted to scramble upstairs. A train of cats followed me. I knocked quietly at Evelyn’s door while Gail and Fern continued their argument downstairs. I wondered if it was going to come to blows.
23
Crocodile Tears
Evelyn opened the door and smiled at me.
“Can you feel it?” she asked.
“Feel what?” I smirked as the cats slipped inside the room, past my feet.
“The air. It’s like we can finally breathe again.” Her eyes were red but dry.
“How are we doing up here?” I asked, wincing as the sisters continued throwing insults and threats at each other. Mr. Elderflower was sitting up. The color had come back to his cheeks, and he looked visibly younger than he had on the floor when we’d first arrived. He still had the goose egg on his head, but his eyes were clear.
“Well, Dad and I are good. I think your sister is wiped out.”
“She’s actually my cousin. But I think of her as a sister.” I stepped inside. The smell of sage was comforting. It had kept the Opacum Diabulus and his goons from entering Evelyn’s room. But when I looked at Bea, my heart nearly stopped.
“Hey, girl,” she said. Her face was ghostly pale. She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed.
“I think our work is done here, Bea. Let’s get you back home.”
“Okay. But I don’t think I can walk down the stairs without stumbling,” she admitted between chuckles.
“I’ll help you, Bea.”
“Mr. Elderflower, are you sure?”
“I’m positive.” He stood up, and I gasped at the transformation. It was as if he’d grown an entire foot in height, and his shoulders were like those of a linebacker. He bent down and scooped Bea up as if she were just a child.
Evelyn got the door, and I slipped out ahead to make sure the coast was clear.
Gail towered over Fern, who was sitting in a green armchair, rocking back and forth. I wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or what, but they seemed to have changed since just a few minutes ago. Their makeup was garish, and their cl
othes looked as if they didn’t fit right, either too tight or too loose.
They stopped what they were doing and stared at their father. He set Bea down, and I quickly looped her arm around my neck to help her stay up. My ankle was killing me, but Bea needed my support. She was exhausted and suffering from severe burnout.
“Fern! Gail! Shut your mouths!” Mr. Elderflower shouted. He sounded like a drill sergeant. He sounded like a father that had been pushed to the limit. The two ladies froze.
“Evelyn, call the police.”
Evelyn’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
“I’m sorry, girls.” Mr. Elderflower stepped closer to his bickering daughters. “Your mother and I did our best. We were never rich people, but we loved you. Somehow, that wasn’t enough. You’re just bad.”
“It was Fern’s fault.” Gail began to sob gallons of crocodile tears. “Oh, Daddy. She made me do it. She told me we’d be rich. She said—”
“Do you really think, after all that has happened, I’d believe anything that came out of your mouth?” Mr. Elderflower asked quietly. “Evelyn, give me the phone, honey.”
I watched as Evelyn dialed 911 and handed the phone to her father. Nothing had changed in Fern or Gail. They glared at their baby sister with the same hatred of the snake for the woman in the garden. They weren’t sorry.
“Hello. Yes. I need the police at my home. My daughters tried to kill me. I suspect they killed my wife, who passed a few days ago. Also, they have been practicing medicine without the proper licenses.”
I squeezed Bea around the waist and nodded toward the door. Treacle walked ahead of us, pushed the screen door with his paw, and held it open with his body.
“Such a gentleman,” I said.
“Meow!”
Bea insisted on picking up the onyx stones that we had used in our restriction spell. She inspected them and grinned. There were several shadow people trapped inside them. She could see their shapes shifting and thrashing just beneath the shiny surface.
“Aunt Astrid will want these,” she said.
“You wait here. I’ll go get the car.”
“What about your ankle? Oh, Cath. You have got to be in some serious pain.”
I looked around the yard and saw my walker lying on its side exactly where I had tossed it. I hopped over to it, bent down, set it upright and squeezed the horn.
Hwwwaaa! Hwwwaaa!
The sounds of sirens were quickly approaching, so I hurried to the car. The adrenaline kept me going. Just as the squad car pulled down the Elderflowers’ street, Bea was slamming the car door shut, and we quietly and slowly pulled away.
No one needed us anymore. What would we say? That we’d had this threefold plan to rid the Elderflowers of the menacing Opacum Diabulus that sort of went sideways for a while but all was well that ended well? Yeah, our cats were the real heroes of the day. Scout’s honor.
“I hope Mom is okay.” Bea rubbed her forehead.
“We’ll know soon enough.” I looked at the back seat. The cats were snuggled together with their eyes narrow slits, and their motors could be heard purring with the car engine.
“So, what happened up there?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t believe what that man had inside him. To be honest, I don’t know how he was still alive. There were parts of his aura that were nearly black. If they were a physical part of his body, I’d call it gangrene.” She blinked as her eyes welled up. “Those girls had been torturing the family for years. But it all came to a head when Evelyn started planning for college. Remember, she said she was a straight-A student. That was a slight understatement. By the time she turned sixteen, she had invitations to three universities, one of them Dartmouth.”
“That little morbid chick?”
“Yeah,” Bea chuckled.
“All broody and black, and here she is with a genius IQ. Isn’t that something?”
“Yeah, to normal people, that is impressive. But Gail and Fern were beside themselves. They had already been dabbling in things they shouldn’t have been.”
“But how did they get the things they had? The offices? The cars? They wore designer clothes, and their hair and makeup were always done.” I scratched my head. “When Evelyn yelled that it was all fake, she was right. Mrs. Elderflower was the first one to question their acquisitions. She thought they were hookers.”
A burst of laughter rocketed out of my throat before I could catch it.
“I’m sorry. They just don’t strike me as the hookin’ kind.”
“No. They don’t. But they don’t strike me as a dermatologist or a veterinarian either. But that’s what they were telling everyone. They forged their diplomas and transcripts. But the Opacum Diabulus gave them everything else. The offices. The big houses and cars. Even their youthful appearance. It was all a mirage.”
“No one suspected anything weird?”
“Yes. Marie did. According to Evelyn, she walked in on Fern and Gail practicing some kind of black-arts ritual in the basement of their house. That was when the shadow people started showing up.”
“They summoned them, like Evelyn said.”
Bea nodded and fidgeted in her seat. She wanted to get home to make sure Aunt Astrid was okay. I pushed the accelerator farther down.
Bea continued telling me the Opacum Diabulus helped make everything look beautiful and shiny and new. They made patients submit their will while they were in their offices and not realize they were being robbed of their money and parts of their soul. It was the action of truly selfish hearts.
“Marie tried to help them, but it was too late. They were too corrupted.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine wanting something so badly I’d be willing to kill for it. It’s a concept I can’t wrap my brain around.”
As we drove the rest of the way home, I told Bea about my skillful maneuvers with the broom. We laughed at that. But when I described how Fern and Gail turned on each other, we finished the rest of the drive to my aunt’s house in silence.
We were delighted to see her front door was open. All the cats trotted in before us. But while Bea staggered as a result of her burnout and I hobbled with my walker, the pain in my ankle reaching the level of excruciating, the quiet that came from inside the house suddenly gripped our hearts.
24
Black Mass
“Mom?” Bea stepped inside first. “Mom!”
There as no answer.
“Aunt Astrid?” I propped the walker next to the door. It was easier to hop using the furniture to balance than try to struggle along with that contraption.
Bea ran upstairs to check those rooms.
I searched the spare room and the downstairs bathroom before I got to the study. I found her lying on the floor, facedown.
“Bea!” I screamed. Her footfalls could be heard pounding across the ceiling. Quickly, I fell to my knees and rolled her over. Putting my head to her chest, I listened.
“I can’t hear anything.” I started to cry. “Bea! I can’t hear anything!”
Bea’s face was pale already. But when she saw her mother lying on the floor, I was afraid she was going to faint.
“I can’t hear her heart, Bea.” My hands trembled as I reached up for my cousin. She rushed to her mother’s side. Rubbing her hands fast back and forth, she began her second examination of the day. How much more could she take?
I watched her hands and her eyes. It was as if she were folding dough in the air or conducting an orchestra only she could see.
“Mom!” she yelled. “Mommy! I’ve got it!” Bea’s right hand clenched into a tight fist. “I’ve got it, Mommy! You can breathe! Breathe!”
As though she were starting a lawnmower, Bea pulled and yanked and tore at something I couldn’t see. I couldn’t help at all.
“Let go!” Bea yelled. “She isn’t yours!”
With one final wrench, Bea fell backward, and my aunt gasped for air. Her coughing and choking and gulping big breaths were like music
to our ears.
“Mommy!”
“Oh, Bea. Cath. You girls.” She pulled us to her and held us tightly. “For a minute there, I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”
We all caught our breath and let the tears and adrenaline subside before any of us spoke.
“Aunt Astrid? What happened?”
“Well, let me tell you—it was no Fourth of July picnic.” She smiled and looked at my ankle. “Cath, that thing has swollen terribly. My gosh. What were you doing? Playing soccer with them?”
I chuckled and shook my head.
“Bea, honey, you need to lie down. Immediately.”
“I’m okay now, Mom.”
“No, you are not. Come on.”
Aunt Astrid instructed me to put my pajamas on and go lie in her bed with a pillow under my foot. She took Bea into her bathroom and ran her a bath. None of us spoke of what happened until Bea was in her pajamas too and we were both in my aunt’s giant, cozy bed.
“I’ll put on some tea,” she said soothingly, brushing our hair away from our foreheads.
“Aunt Astrid, aren’t you going to tell us what happened?”
“Of course. But let’s have a little tea first.”
I looked at Bea, who blinked her heavy eyelids at me. Somewhere between that and my aunt walking out of the room, we both fell dead asleep. When we woke up, Peanut Butter and Treacle were on either side of us. The sun was either just setting or just rising. I couldn’t tell.
Bea still looked pale.
I looked at my foot. The swelling had gone down a little, so I decided to get up and seek out my aunt. I found her sitting in the kitchen with a steaming cup of tea in front of her. The click, click the walker made with each step caused her to look up.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Better. I guess I needed that rest.”
“Of course you did.” She got up and pulled a teacup from the shelf. Before I could sit down, she had the cup steaming and steeping in front of me.