by Harper Lin
“You’re always sleeping when you stay indoors,” I answered.
Once we were all safely behind the locked doors and the protection spell of Aunt Astrid’s house, I explained the situation to our three furry companions.
“This is serious business. We need a protection spell like no other. We just found out a thing has a vendetta against us Greenstones, and well, we want to make sure it knows if we beat it once, we’ll do it again. Is that enough of a pep talk for you?”
“Is it the big cat?” Treacle asked, looking at me strangely without his usual purring.
“It is,” I answered seriously.
“Which one?”
“What do you mean which one?” My breath hitched in my throat. I looked at Bea and my aunt as they got all of our necessary supplies ready to begin our enchantment.
“There are two big cats.” Marshmallow stood at my feet, looking up at me like a statue.
My eyes flitted to Peanut Butter, who I should have known would agree.
The big cat was outside his house, leaving footprints.
I informed my aunt and Bea. They both froze for a moment as they listened.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Aunt Astrid replied. I heard a slight tremor in her voice. “One cat or a dozen. They are responsible for killing Bruce Lyle and maybe Donna Flint. We have to stop them.”
The preparation ceremony went long into the night. The cats took their places at our sides as we Greenstone witches called upon the elements of nature and those things supernatural to give us protection as we sought to get the dimensions in balance once again.
Finally, as the sun came up, we were ready, or at least as ready as we were ever going to be.
“Okay, my fierce trio of felines.” I sat down on the floor with the cats. “You’ll need to stay here and keep the home fires burning. We will be going to Mr. Wayne’s house and hopefully will find out what he might know about this cat or cats that eat children.” I gave them each a thorough scratch behind the ears.
“Be careful,” Treacle ordered.
“I will.”
“I should have driven,” Bea complained from the backseat.
“Bea, how many times do we have to go over this? You are a terrible driver.” I scoffed as I put the pedal to the metal.
It had been alarmingly simple to find out where Mr. Wayne lived. Aunt Astrid was ready to do a location spell that could have easily led us to him, but instead we just looked him up online at the Bibich High School website. There it was, all over the screen.
“I am not,” Bea protested. “I obey all the rules of the road, including the speed limit.”
“Riding with you is the real-life version of Driving Miss Daisy,” I teased. I had to. I was terrified on the inside, and it was my only method of defense. “I just didn’t think we had the luxury of letting the snails and turtles beat us to Wayne’s house. I thought we wanted to get there before your husband and the po-po arrived.”
“Po-po?” Bea giggled.
“Yes. The po-po. The police. Don’t you know street talk?”
“No. And neither do you.” She laughed outright.
“You two girls need to settle down.” Aunt Astrid smiled. “How is it that when it comes to life and death, you two can giggle like the inmates of an insane asylum, but one of you eating kale and the other daring to bite into a hamburger sends you off the rails?”
“Priorities,” I answered.
“Okay, speed demon.” Bea leaned forward in the backseat. “We should be coming up to it. Slow down. Don’t park in the driveway.”
“You don’t think I should?” I whispered sarcastically. “Aren’t we going to just go up and ring the bell?”
“Girls. Center yourselves.”
I winked at Bea in the rearview mirror, and she stuck her tongue out at me. I had a flash to the future, where Bea and I would be old and as wrinkled as this cat Aunt Astrid saw, winking and sticking our tongues out at each other. We would be those two giggly girls but not in an insane asylum, just an old folks’ home.
As luck would have it, just as I killed the engine, the front porch light of the house at 3443 Pinto Street went off. The front door opened up, and one very angry-looking Mr. Wayne walked out of his house and to his garage.
“He’s leaving,” Bea muttered as we carefully watched from a few doors down and across the street.
Mr. Wayne was not leaving. Where would he be going? He was suspended from work. As far as anyone knew, he didn’t have another job or even family to visit. He strolled out of the house in sweatpants and a T-shirt, seeming to be oblivious to the cold, and walked to the edge of the street to pick up his newspaper.
He looked around quickly as if half expecting some kind of ambush, but we all ducked down in the car before he saw us.
“Well, we can’t very well just go let ourselves in his house.” Bea bit her thumbnail. “What should we do?”
“I know exactly what we are going to do.” Aunt Astrid looked as if she were having a blast. “Arrhythmias,” she whispered as she opened her door, and before Bea or I knew it, she was hustling up the lawn to the front door.
The grass on his lawn was high, and the cold dampness of the frost darkened the cuffs of my jeans and seeped through my Converse All-Stars. Looking around, I was relieved not to see any joggers or dog walkers on the street, coming in our direction.
The Wayne home was a simple ranch-style place with very few bushes and shrubs in the yard to keep up with. It looked as if a single man lived there.
“We shouldn’t be standing on the front porch,” Bea suggested. Aunt Astrid held her finger to her lips, indicating we should be quiet. The neighborhood was quiet, too. Not a single dog barked, and there wasn’t even the echo of the traffic off of Wolf Road to break up the quiet. I did hear one lonely cricket chirping at his buddies who had already retreated in order to sleep for the winter.
Or die, my thoughts interrupted me. They could have all died. There could be something at this house that silenced the dogs, that killed all the crickets, and who knows what it will do to us.
No. I was just spooking myself. I had the tendency to do that, and now was no exception. My aunt’s sudden burst of energy reminded me of when Treacle was a kitten and had enjoyed a little too much catnip one particular summer afternoon. It was hilarious but not nearly this dangerous.
“Take hands, girls,” Aunt Astrid ordered while we stood on Mr. Wayne’s front porch, in the early morning, out in the wide open for any neighbor or passerby to see.
Aunt Astrid muttered a few words, and I watched as the breeze bent the trees at the very top and the clouds rolled over themselves. But before I realized what was happening, I witnessed everything slowing down. A few snowflakes drifted down in slow motion as if they were suspended from wires being controlled from somewhere above the clouds.
“What’s happening?” Bea asked.
A Delicate Spell
“Time is slowing down,” Aunt Astrid explained. “This was a common spell used many years ago when in the spring the boys and girls would get together for the first dance of the season. They’d slow the time down so they could enjoy themselves under canopies of ivy or at the base of old oak trees.”
“How come you never told us about this spell?” I asked. “This could have come in handy when I was suffering through high school.”
“That’s why. Now, this is a very delicate spell. It doesn’t last long, and if anyone else shows up, it can come to an abrupt end.”
I shrugged and nodded. Of course it wasn’t safe and could come to an abrupt end. Who said being a witch spared you from all of life’s annoyances.
“We can get into his house, search around, and be out of there before he even has any idea what’s happening,” my aunt said.
“But what if he sees us? Won’t that break the spell?” I asked.
“No. He is under the spell with us. He will only see a few shadows out of the corner of his eye. That’s all. It’s nothing out of the ordin
ary that regular people shrug off a hundred times a day.”
“This could be fun,” Bea whispered.
“Well, it’s better than exercising in the morning. I’ll say that.”
Aunt Astrid grabbed the door handle and gave it a good turn. It opened normally, but as we walked in like a marching band, Mr. Wayne looked as if he was standing stock-still. Except he wasn’t. He was in the process of walking to the kitchen, but he was moving at a pace that defied the laws of physics. He moved a fraction of an inch in a minute. I walked right up to him and looked him in the face. He didn’t look at me.
“This is weird,” I complained as Bea shut the door behind us.
“Let’s get to work, ladies. We don’t have a lot of time. Oh, ha-ha. Did you hear what I just said?” Aunt Astrid giggled at her own quip. I hate to admit it, but I giggled, too. Bea rolled her eyes.
I quickly hurried down the only hallway in the small house, and I found his bedroom. It was plain and uninspiring. The bed had not been made, and there were clothes on the floor. Suddenly, I felt guilty about being there. It was one thing for the police to obtain a search warrant and go through a suspect’s things. But it was another for us to do it. His underwear drawer and his laundry were quite personal. As was his medicine cabinet, which held a prescription bottle of sleeping pills.
“If you’re going to do this, Cath, just be respectful,” I tried to comfort myself. But it still didn’t make the situation feel any better. Thankfully, I found nothing out of the ordinary in his bedroom or the bathroom. There was an office at the other end of the hallway. As I emerged from my end, I saw Bea standing in front of Mr. Wayne.
“How’s it coming?” I asked her quietly just in case he could hear us.
“I’m not getting a reading on him.” She shook her head. “I can’t touch him, or else I risk breaking our time-altering spell. But I get a sense that he is hiding something.”
“Would it help to handle some of his personals?” I whispered.
Bea looked at me, and I thought for a moment she was going to call me some kind of pervert and recoil in disgust.
“That’s worth a try. Good call.”
I led my cousin to the bedroom, and she picked up a shirt that had been lying on the floor. There was nothing special about it, nothing like blood spatter or telltale tears. But I could tell by Bea’s reaction she had found something.
“He’s feeling guilty about something,” she said. As she looked down at the shirt and twisted it in her hands, I could see she was trying to dig deeper. “But it could be anything. I can’t see anything that would tell me for sure if he had anything to do with Bruce’s death or if he felt guilty he forgot to pay his electric bill on time. It’s all muddled up. Residual.” She looked at me helplessly. “I need to touch his skin if I’m going to find out any more.”
We started to walk back to the kitchen but heard something slam.
“What was that?” I grabbed Bea’s arm.
“Mom.” Her eyes widened. We both dashed down the hallway past Mr. Wayne, who was still in the same position we had left him in with the exception that his right foot was a little higher in the back than it had been ten minutes ago. As we rounded the corner into the family room, we saw Aunt Astrid standing in front of a door she was holding shut. She was sweating.
“Did you find something?” I asked stupidly.
“Did I.” She swallowed hard. “There’s a portal in there.” She jerked her head toward the door.
“What?” I gasped.
Carefully, Aunt Astrid took the doorknob in both hands and turned it slowly. She gently eased the door open.
“Yikes!” I clutched Bea’s arm. “He has paneling on the walls! The horror!”
My aunt turned then looked at us both. We didn’t see anything, but it was obvious she did.
“It’s right there, and it’s big,” she said.
“So what does it mean?” I asked.
“It means that Mr. Wayne has some special abilities, and I think he’s had more than a hand in the disappearances of those children.”
“I wanted to get a reading from him, but I was afraid to touch him for fear of shattering our spell. Which is working quite nicely, I have to admit,” Bea said. “I could only tell from his clothes that he’s feeling guilty about something, but I don’t know what. It could be anything.”
“Maybe we could tie him up really fast, then he won’t know what hit him when the spell is broken, and you can get a reading on him that way,” I suggested. “We could slip a pillowcase over his head and trip him, and Aunt Astrid and I could sit on him until you get a reading.”
“Sit on him?” My aunt looked at me as if I’d suggested she shave her head.
“I don’t know,” I whined. “I’m just trying to help.”
“We are running out of options, and Mom, didn’t you say this spell didn’t last very long? We are probably already on borrowed time, standing here trying to come up with something. Personally, I like Cath’s idea. The element of surprise is in our favor.”
“Right?” I smiled. “I’ll get a pillowcase.” I dashed off toward the bedroom and yanked the pillow from the bed. Pulling it from the case as I ran back, I thought I saw something moving past the window.
When I came back into the front room, Bea and Aunt Astrid were not there. My heart rate started to quicken. It was funny because so did Mr. Wayne. Before he could become completely reanimated, I heard Bea whistle and dashed toward the spare room where the portal was.
“There are men on the porch,” she whispered.
“What?” I went to peek out the window, but Aunt Astrid grabbed my arm.
“It’s Jake and Blake with their search warrants. As soon as they pound on that door, the spell will be broken, and they are going to find three trespassers who they happen to know hiding in this room.”
“Oh man!” I bit my lip. “I’ve seen movies where the police conduct a search with a warrant. There is nowhere to hide. We are cooked. Do you think we can run out the back door?”
“I’m sure Jake would have that covered in case Wayne decided to try and flee,” Bea added.
“We have no choice.” Aunt Astrid took both our hands. “We have to enter the portal.”
“I’d rather take my chances with Jake,” I argued. “A portal? Can’t that lead to anywhere? Couldn’t we end up in an alternate universe where, I don’t know, spiders are kept as pets and people are required to eat brown rice all the time?” I was nearly crying I was so scared.
“Mom, if we go in there, we might not come out. That’s a chance, isn’t it?”
“And what do you think will happen if your husband finds us? He’ll lose his job. You and me and Cath will all be in jail. There are no magic spells that would get us off the hook. Either we stay and take our chances that the law will take pity on us, or we hide in this portal until the coast is clear.”
Bea and I looked at each other. I searched the room, hoping for a closet or a trapdoor that hid a tunnel that led outside, but there was nothing. We heard Jake’s voice outside the door as he demanded Mr. Wayne open up and said that they had a search warrant. There was a lot of shuffling around, and the noise that came from behind that door was terrifying.
“Planecia Penes,” Aunt Astrid whispered harshly.
Quickly, I took my cousin’s hand, and before either one of us could protest, we watched Aunt Astrid step into nothingness. We followed her carefully.
Psychedelic Roller Coaster
As far as portals go, this was not at all what I expected. I’ve seen artwork of glowing green or blue mirror-like images floating behind decorative frames that are the entry and exit point of the portals. They look mystical and pretty and luminous as the possibility of entering other worlds flickers there.
There was a television show that showed people slipping and sliding through dimensions like they were on a psychedelic roller coaster, and The Doctor travels in his phone booth through clouds and lightning and all kinds of crazy stuff. I thi
nk my favorite was Captain Kirk and Spock jumping into a giant ring, their forms freezing in mid-jump only to come tumbling out the other side.
So that is what I had to compare this with. I was terrified, but what happened was almost laughable.
“This is it?” I grumbled.
“Looks that way,” Aunt Astrid said as she held tightly to the edge of the rocky cave we were standing in.
“How come we aren’t tumbling through space and time or being blinded by flashes of pink and blue lights?”
“You say that like that’s what you were hoping would happen,” Bea said. “I’m just fine with loitering around right here until we can slip back out. We can slip back out again, right, Mom?”
I turned around and looked behind us. The tunnel ran on and on into a very black hole. Part of me wanted to venture back there, but as I leaned a little closer, I thought I could hear something.
“As long as we stay grounded right here, we should be able to walk right back out. The portal is meant for things to enter that specific place. Mr. Wayne’s home. He put it there,” Aunt Astrid said as she pushed her curling gray-and-red locks from her face. “I can only assume he did it so he could come and go as he wanted.”
“Where do you think he went?” I asked. “I mean, do you have any idea where this portal might lead?”
My aunt shook her head.
“How about you, Bea?” I was really talking to keep my nerve, not because I really wanted to know anything. The problem was that I thought I was hearing something behind us but it was so dark.
“I’m not sure what I’m feeling, to be quite honest.” Bea licked her lips. “I didn’t get a reading on Mr. Wayne, my husband is just a few feet from me in another dimension, and I’m in a creepy cave that looks like dirt and rock but yet not like dirt from our planet. No. I’m pretty much useless right now.”
I was still holding her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“It’s all right, Bea. Right, Aunt Astrid? We’re together, and we aren’t moving from this spot.” I tried to sound confident. “We can see the light of our world right there, and it gives us enough light to see each other. We’re doing pretty good. Yeah, I’d say pretty good.”