“Awesome.” She pays for her purchase and leaves.
More customers come in, but the third woman is still wandering the aisles almost as if she is in a daze. Houston comes out of the stockroom carrying a box of items to stock the shelves. I wave him over to watch the counter for a minute so I can check on the woman.
“Looking for something in particular?” I ask.
“Halloween is coming,” she says without looking at me.
“Yeah. Yep.”
“You carry a lot of stuff here.” She absently runs her finger over a few figurines.
“We try to keep a varied selection.”
“For the other witches.”
Something in her voices sends a chill over me. “Was there something specific you were looking for?”
“Closure,” she says. She turns to face me. She’s crying.
“Are you all right?” I ask and gently touch her arm.
She looks down at my hand on her arm then looks up at me and scowls. “No, I’m not all right.” She pulls a small knife out of her pocket and lunges at me. Her attack is awkward and I easily block it. An unfortunate reality is that witches need to learn self-defense because we never know when we’ll be attacked by a crazy person or monster and not be able to just freely call on Hellfire.
She tries to stab me again and I knock her arm out of the way. She loses her balance and bumps into one of the glass display cases, causing it to fall over and shatter. Houston rushes over to help me subdue her while Eric calls the police. She just starts screaming at me that I’m evil and that she hates me.
“Nancy, this is Williams’ wife,” says Houston. “She thinks…” Houston pauses as he sifts through her fractured mind, “…she thinks your mom came back from the grave to cause the accident.”
“You people are evil!” she shrieks. “She was a witch and a Satanist and she killed him! You can all burn in Hell!”
* * *
“Were you injured?” asks the police officer.
“No, I’m fine. We’ve got a broken display case but other than that no real damage.”
“I see you have security cameras. We’ll need a copy of the security footage.”
I tell Houston to go retrieve the footage for the officer. “I…I don’t want to press charges.”
“She attacked you with a knife.”
“She also has small children and her husband recently died in a car accident.”
“So you know her personally?”
“No. Her husband was involved in a drunk-driving accident earlier this year that killed my mother. He recently died in a single car collision. She’s suffering from delusions. She thinks my mother returned from beyond the grave for revenge.”
“Did you previously get any threats?”
“No. This was rather sudden. No threats.”
“Not even during the trial?”
“There was no trial. The prosecutor offered him a plea deal. There was supposed to be a sentencing hearing, but he died before that happened. I never even met her before today.” I look over at my shattered display case. “She needs help, not jail time.”
“You’re a better person than most,” he replies. “We’re still going to take her in for processing. DA will make a final determination on what charges to file. I’m sure he’ll take your feelings into consideration.” He finishes getting my statement. Houston gives him a copy of the security footage. The police leave after getting statements from both Houston and Eric. We close up the shop for the day and get to the task of cleaning up the mess. I call Anastasia and tell her not to come in after school. Her mother calls a few minutes later to get more information about what happened. She expresses concern about Anastasia working at the shop until things are sorted out with the Williams’ woman. Despite Anastasia’s pleas in the background, I can’t help but agree with her mother.
“None of this is your fault, Nancy,” says Houston as he sweeps up broken glass.
“I know. It doesn’t help, but I know.”
“You need to press charges,” says Eric while itemizing the broken items. “You’re bloody lucky it was a knife and not a gun.”
“She’s grieving her husband,” I say.
“Plenty of folks grieve without going off their trolley and trying to kill someone.”
“I’m fine, Eric.”
“That’s not the point. This was pre-meditated. She came here with a weapon looking for you. This wasn’t an attack of opportunity.”
“He’s right,” says Houston without looking up. “You can’t just let this go. Next time it will be a gun.”
“She has children.”
“And next time it will be a gun. There will be a next time, Nancy.”
“Just because she was thinking about killing me in the moment doesn’t mean—”
“Nancy, stop and listen to me,” says Houston. “I was in her head. This was not grief. This was fanaticism. This was a religious wacko who didn’t come here because she was grieving her husband. She came here because she believes that your mother did this and she believes you deserve to die. The whole time she was screaming at us while we were holding her down? The thing running through her mind was Exodus 22:18.”
“Bloody Hell,” mutters Eric.
“Houston, we have to de-escalate the situation. I hear what you are saying. That is just more reason to not escalate this.”
“She tried to kill you! We’re way beyond de-escalating!”
“If I press charges, she’s becomes a martyr. Her husband’s attorney was already prepared to play that card during the drunk-driving trial. It was one of the reasons why the DA offered the plea deal.”
“The plea deal you hated,” says Eric.
“That was a different situation. The drunk-driving issue was a straightforward car accident that should have been a slam dunk prosecution. This is a whole different animal.”
“What, you think a jury is going to find her not guilty because Exodus says you are supposed to die?”
“No, I think crazy attracts crazy and if I press charges this entire thing becomes a circus. A very dangerous circus.”
I leave them to finish the clean-up and go into my office. I call Lee to tell him what happened. He offers to leave work and come over to keep me company, but I tell him not to. Right now all I want to do is go curl up in a ball in my bedroom and hide. Lee, of course, agrees with Houston and Eric. He becomes a little agitated when I try to explain to him why pressing charges is a bad idea.
“You shouldn’t allow these Christians to have so much power over you,” he says.
“Most Christians aren’t like this, Lee.”
“Of course they are. The only difference between most Christians in this country and Muslim terrorists is that the Christians are too lazy to give up their comfortable homes to blow shit up.”
“Lee! Your parents are Christians, remember?” There is a long pause. I hear his breath getting heavy like he is having trouble breathing. “Lee? Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry, Nancy. I…I…I didn’t mean that. I’m just upset about what happened. I wasn’t there to protect you. I should have been there.”
“Lee, its fine. I was more than capable of protecting myself. I’m not helpless.”
“If something happens to you…I don’t know what I would do.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me. I didn’t call you to get you worked up. I just wanted you to know what happened.”
“You sure you don’t want me to come over?”
“No, I need to let Mom know what happened and discuss things with her. It will be best for me to just do that and then chill out the rest of the night and get myself together.”
* * *
October 26th
My phone rings at 5:30 in the morning. It is the police station.
“Mrs. Werlock? This is Officer Lopez.”
“Oh.” Though he is trying to convey calm and control, his voice is cracking enough that I already realize what happened. “What happened
?”
He tells me that Mrs. Williams had a psychotic breakdown while waiting for her attorney to show up and post bail, because even though I had said I didn’t want to pursue the case, the prosecutor filed the assault charges anyway. He can’t give me too many details at this time, but at some point she ended up in cardiac arrest. They were unable to save her.
“What about her children?” I ask.
“I’m sure Family Services is making sure they are taken care of.”
“I see.”
I hang up with Officer Lopez and spend the next half hour just staring at my alarm clock.
Learn more about the world of Nancy Werlock.
https://sites.google.com/site/nancywerlock/
Episode summaries, list of characters throughout the series, an Arcane Glossary, Who’s Who in the World of Magic, the Colleges of Magic, and more.
nancy werlocks diary s02e12 Page 3