Witches

by Christina Harlin

  They all stared in amazement at this leviathan. Sally realized that the pick-up itself was probably just a deluxe-model vehicle. It was the tires that made it enormous: at least six feet tall and maybe two feet wide. Those tires sent tides of muddy earth spewing through the air, high and far enough to actually hit the sides of houses as the truck plowed forward.

  “Now that would get us to the top of the mountain,” said Kaye longingly. “That’s a legit monster truck.”

  The truck wheeled to a stop close to Ardelia’s house and sent more mud spraying over the Othernaturals vehicles. The glaring headlights died. It felt as if they had all just witnessed a freight train coming to a stop in the middle of town.

  After a moment, a man dropped from the driver’s side and made his way toward the group on the porch. Sally had to refrain from pulling back in trepidation. He was to ordinary humans what his truck was to ordinary pickups; enormous and imposing, a man of remarkable height, who looked as if he could hurl logs across a river, so massive were his arms and shoulders. Yet even with the span of him he seemed malnourished; his tattered overalls hung from him like he’d had a sudden weight loss recently. He was terribly ugly, and not just an ordinary brand of homely that could be improved with a nice haircut, but misshapen, perhaps the result of a birth injury. His skull had a strange tiny crown to it but his jaw was huge, and in that distorted face his eyes were set too deep and his nose and mouth seemed badly lopsided. He was in dingy overalls and a ragged t-shirt and he was drenched at once, but he hardly seemed to notice.

  Sally presumed he was middle-aged though the light was bad and she feared looking him too closely in the face. Silly of her? She couldn’t help it. He resembled a man unfinished in some ways, like a man overdone in others. Sally glanced to her friends and saw that they too felt anxiously, ravenously curious. The men, through some unspoken instinct, had edged a little in front of the women. Sally even saw Greg squaring his heavily-muscled shoulders, like a cat might fluff its fur in the face of a threat. She would have been amused and even a little pissed about this macho posturing except it didn’t seem intentional and, either way, she was glad for it.

  The man stopped at the bottom of Ardelia’s porch steps, though he still seemed to tower before them. His mouth hanging open slightly. “Mama?” he said.

  Lightning flared violently across the sky, turning the world flashbulb purple and white. Sally cringed. That’s not right.

  Ardelia didn’t move from her spot.

  Rosemary - omigod, where did she get her nerve? - stepped around Drew, dropped back down into the rain and mud and put out her hand. Her head came just about even with the man’s stomach; his overalls brand tag was at her eye level. “How do you do, sir? I’m Rosemary Sharpe. We’re the ones staying with Ardelia this week, and—”

  The man barely acknowledged her. “Mama, it’s Sunday.”

  “Go home, Elton,” Ardelia said. “I ain’t a’goin to town this week.”

  Elton stared dully at his mother, still ignoring the wet-but-pretty redhead before him. “It’s Sunday, Mama,” he said.

  Ardelia snapped at him. “What’s wrong with you? Cain’t you see I’ve got company? I ain’t a’goin to town! Go home, Elton!”

  Elton’s tiny forehead furrowed, turning his face grotesque. Sally didn’t like herself for judging this man by his appearance; there was simply no stopping it. There was something really wrong with him, something that started with his bones and worked its way out. She couldn’t wait to ask Kaye about it. Elton’s strange and misshapen face turned backwards at his monster truck and then he turned again to his mother. “We worked all day at the rocking chair factory. Seven to seven. Now work is over. It’s dinnertime. It’s Sunday.”

  “Sir,” said Rosemary thoughtfully. “Your truck looks like it’s more than able to get up to Cloda Baker’s house.”

  “Leave him alone,” Ardelia ordered. “He ain’t taking you nowhere.”

  The storm flashed and thunder cracked, and once more Sally was distracted by the wrongness of it all. What was the description she was trying to put her finger on? Cartoonish, that was the word. This reminded her of the exaggerated violence of cartoon storms with their sharp angled lightning and bashing soundtracks.

  “Look,” said Kaye finally. “This is the wildest storm I’ve ever seen. I don’t think it’s safe to be standing out here. We should all go back inside.”

  “Suits me fine.” Ardelia did just that, slamming her screen door behind her.

  *****

  They did return indoors, eventually, though it took several minutes until everyone finally gave up on speaking to or helping out the giant in the rain. Elton Baker remained stock-still in Ardelia’s yard, as if he were trying hard to solve a ponderous math problem in his head. His proximity to the protection spells that covered the house meant that nobody in the group could reach him or read him on a mental level, let alone a physical one. He said two more things to nobody in particular. “It’s Sunday,” was one, a fact that he was determined to establish in everybody’s mind, and then he affirmed, “It’s dinnertime.”

  Maybe that’s what at last woke him up; the guy looked like he could stand to eat. He lumbered back to his truck, climbed into the driver’s seat with astonishing ease, as the running board was at least six feet off the ground and had no steps or ladder. He left the town in the same manner he had arrived: ripping the ground to shreds and blasting the forest with light, until at last he was gone.

  They gathered in a tight knot just inside the front door, whispering to each other. Rosemary said what everyone was thinking. “Kaye - what was wrong with him?”

  “With the facial distortion and the size of him, I’d make a guess its gigantism. That’s an endocrinology issue. As for his behavior? Your guess is as good as mine. With a mother like Ardelia, one might turn out a little less than sociable. Love his truck, though.”

  Before Stefan spoke, he glanced aside at Kaye with one of those hot, appreciative looks they were always exchanging. Sally noticed it and tried to savor the taste of the emotions between them; this was nothing she hadn’t done before. The moment she made the effort, though, a flash of hot, stabbing pain met her squarely between the eyes and she gasped softly - so that was what everyone was talking about. Apparently in this house, she’d better keep her emotional vamping to herself.

  Nobody heard her discomfort over the racket outside, though, and besides, Stefan was talking. “What’s this rocking chair business?”

  “Oh, yes.” Rosemary waved a dismissive hand. “Eyeteeth Mountain Rocking Chairs - the Baker family business. It was founded by one of Cloda Baker’s great-great-great someones, and it’s been in the family ever since. They hand-make wooden rocking chairs, the old-fashioned kind. I think the factory is in the town of Gully at the foot of the mountain. I should have planned for us to stay there,” she grumbled.

  “What, in the rocking chair factory?” teased Greg.

  “No, in the town. It’s closer to the state park and it has motels. I had no idea. I mean, when someone invites seven people to stay somewhere, one sort of assumes that they actually have the space and the facilities to—”

  Sally raised her hand, interrupting Rosemary’s renewed guilt trip. “Can I offer something, here? I mean, it might not be anything important, and it could just be my imagination. I don’t want you guys to think I’m being a Kelly Stroyland here, making shit up.”

  Drew and Kaye had never had the privilege of getting to know former Othernatural Kelly Stroyland, Kaye, in fact, had taken Kelly’s place in the show. Kelly adored being the center of attention, and was able to fake clairvoyance effectively enough to make herself the center of attention a great deal of the time.

  Everyone else remembered Kelly very well and there were numerous chuckles and eye-rolls. Greg said, “Babygirl, you couldn’t be a Kelly if you tried. What’s going on?”

  “Well, it’s this storm,” said Sally, pointing at the roof over their head. “I’d just like to say that
it doesn’t look right. I mean, it doesn’t look right to me. The color and the shape of it are wrong. Shape is a bad word. The brew of it is wrong.”

  To her relief, nobody demanded to know what the hell she was talking about. They took her words at face value and before she knew what was happening, Greg was pointing a camera at her and Rosemary was standing at her side. Rosemary said, “As we all know, Sally is remarkably sensitive to colors, light and heat. Sally, you say there’s something othernatural about the storm we’re experiencing?”

  Sally bit her lip, trying to think of the right words to say. There was no pressure to rush, because any awkward pauses could easily be edited away. Gathering her thoughts together she said, “It’s too purple, the lightning is too symmetrical, and the whole mess looks like it’s part of a big stage show. I mean, I know there’s really rain and wind happening out there - it’s a real storm, I just think that maybe . . . it’s being crafted?”

  Rosemary looked directly at the camera, posing this question to their future audience as well as to her team. “Who would craft a storm? Why? Who could manage such a thing?”

  “Witches,” said Judge. “Obviously.”

  *****

  Just before they’d all trudged unhappily to bed, Rosemary produced a funny purple bag full of pills from her travel case and said, “There are tons of good sleeping pills in here. Anyone want some?”

  Kaye recognized the bag and had a hissy fit. “That’s Ivy Robbins’ bag of drugs! Oh my god, those are prescription drugs – for someone else – and probably expired! Rosemary Sharpe, shame on you! Give me that!”

  “No way,” Rosemary argued, holding the bag away from Kaye. “Besides, I took these to help Ivy get over her addiction. And it’s a shame to let them go to waste.”

  Kaye gritted her teeth.

  “I can’t help you all sleep tonight,” Rosemary reminded them. “If I try any good telepathy tricks, the protection spell on this house stabs me. So it’s drugs, or nothing. And good luck, sleeping through this storm without help.”

  Rosemary took a couple pills from the bag and swallowed them deliberately in front of Kaye, who irritably said, “If you’re so eager to poison yourself, go right ahead.”

  Sally didn’t want Rosemary to poison herself and checked the meds; actually Kaye was wrong, they weren’t expired yet, though the date was getting close. Sally said as much aloud, and Kaye said, “So it’s just a misdemeanor then, well, that’s better,” and Stefan said, “Rosemary dear, maybe you shouldn’t—” and Judge said, “Thanks but I have my own drugs tonight,” and Greg said, “If you tell her not to take them, she’ll definitely do it anyway,” and then Drew finally held up his hands and said, “A couple of sleeping pills aren’t going to kill Rosemary; can we all just please start a line for the tiny tiny bathroom?”

  Sally wondered how many of them had slipped back to Rosemary, as they came from or went to their turn in the bathroom, and accepted her offer of sleeping pills. She’d accepted one herself but had only taken half, a concession to both sides of the argument.

  At least the bathroom and the beds were fairly clean. In a house like this, it didn’t seem like anything could ever be completely clean, but things really could have been much worse. With her teeth brushed, Sally put on an extra pair of socks (she was not risking bedbug bites; she’d heard stories) and climbed into the musty sheets. Soon Kaye joined her, then Rosemary, and finally Ardelia came in, saying nothing as she knelt beside her bed on a little stitched pillow, and prayed in silence for ten minutes. Sally pretended not to be watching, though the ritual fascinated her. Her own parents had taken her to church often enough, to Sunday night services, after the sun had set. That habit made her feel like she’d only seen half of what church was really about. Still, she understood prayer. But Sally thought that kneeling in prayer was something theatrical, which only happened in movies.

  Natural or not, the storm rumbled on stubbornly through the night. The slow throb of pain in her face woke Sally and she lay for a time, confused about where she was, almost afraid. Lightning illuminated the deep darkness and she recognized the room, then she heard the wet smack and snort of Ardelia’s snoring. Sally was sharing a double bed with Kaye. Just a few feet away, Rosemary was in bed with Ardelia, with Ardelia taking up a lot of room and Rosemary scrunched close to the edge. Good thing Rosemary was so dinky; Sally didn’t think it would be too fun to snuggle that cranky old lady.

  There was so much mold and dust in this old house. Of course it was bothering her. She recognized the aching in her face and teeth as the typical headache of swollen sinuses. She was thirsty and needed a painkiller, and a double-dose of allergy meds. She did not want to get up and traipse through this dark, strange place, but she didn’t think she could go back to sleep feeling this miserable, wheezing like a kazoo.

  After climbing from the bed Sally picked up her phone from the nightstand, then tiptoed across the room, her footsteps muffled by the doubled socks on her feet. The bedroom door creaked miserably as she opened it only as wide as was necessary to slip through. The creak did not wake her friends? How? It had sounded loud as a shriek to Sally.

  Once in the hall she turned on her cell phone to light her way. Ardelia’s little house was quiet but it did not seem precisely still. Sally thought a series of horrible things that could be creeping in the gloom at her feet: roaches, spiders, mice – no, rats – even snakes. NO, no, that’s just the dark playing tricks on my eyes. She hurried to the front room, eager to be done with this. Much of the team’s equipment had been left out here. There simply wasn’t room for all this stuff in the cramped bedrooms. Here was her red bag, Sally’s reservoir of everything her mother made her carry along, from Benadryl to epi-pens. She dug through it, then struggled in the blue light of her phone with the seemingly endless child-safety measures on a tab of extra-strength allergy relief pills. She had a small pair of scissors in here somewhere; this wasn’t her first rodeo. But just as she was working the package open, there was a glassy smack from behind her. Stifling a shriek, Sally turned quickly. Someone’s pale hand smashed flat against the filthy window, the only thing she could see of the visitor in the glare of her phone’s screen.

  An adventure? Something for Sally Friend to conquer on her own? She thought fast. She turned on her phone’s camera, went to the front door, and fumbled it open. Soon she was stepping across the mud-strewn porch in her no-longer-white socks, searching for the visitor. Slope had no streetlights, nor anyone who would leave a helpful porch light on. Her camera’s light lent the porch a bit of ambient glow. That was all, and it was impossible to see into the black night. Finally when she reached the porch’s edge, a vague shape emerged, revealing itself to be a woman of some age between 25 and 45, pathetic in her wet clothes and hair. Her posture was slumped, exhausted.

  Sally did not ask permission to record. Screw that. If this rainstorm specter thought Sally was going to stand out here without some kind of recording device on, she was nuts. All of Sally’s video went right to the cloud, and it reassured her somewhat to know that if she was abducted (or murdered!) there would be evidence. She and Greg would deal with the legalities of using unauthorized video later.

  “Hello? I’m Sally. Who are you?”

  The woman did not speak, and in fact did not seem to be interested in Sally at all. Her attention focused on Sally’s phone. The rectangle of white light reflected in her eyes. She reached for it.

  Though the woman’s grasp wasn’t that close, Sally pulled the phone back with a little laugh. “What’s up? Do you need to make a call?” Again that thin hand reached out, imploring.

  Sally was torn between emulating Kaye, who would immediately ask questions about the woman’s well-being and comprehension. Maybe this was a sleepwalker. It was hard to imagine that a denizen of Slope wouldn’t at least speak some English, if only the ability to introduce herself. Maybe the woman was deaf, or — but then, of course, the other half of Sally wanted to emulate Rosemary, who would leave the questions
behind in favor of finding out what might happen next.

  Rosemary won. Sally said, “Okay, here,” and handed her phone to the dripping, sad woman in the rain. She left the recorder on when she did so.

  The woman grasped the phone and stared into it, then began tapping at the colorful screen. Tapping, tapping - getting nowhere, unless it was to zoom in or out on the recording. “Here, let me help. Come here. Hello?” With a sigh, she imagined a dozen things her mother would have to say about this, then peeled off her filthy socks and went, barefoot, down the steps to meet the woman in the yard. Mud squelched, both repulsive and a little seductive, between her naked toes. Spattering rain immediately began its job of soaking her hair and clothes. She reached the woman’s side and cautiously, helpfully, reached out and pushed the button on her phone that would allow access to the menu. This went on for a few minutes, then, with Sally trying to find what the woman wanted and the woman repeating the same mystified tap-tap-tap against the glowing screen. When Sally showed her the actual telephone touchscreen, she thought she saw a brief flare of hope on the woman’s face. But, whatever call she might want to make, the woman seemed to have neither the memory of the number nor the process. Her fingers fumbled. Muted the phone. Made the whole screen disappear.

  When the numbers vanished she seemed to lose her patience with the whole process, and yet as Sally tried to take the phone back, the woman held it resolutely away from her. She turned away and wandered back toward Slope’s ruined road.

  “Hey,” said Sally, following. “May I have my phone back please? Ma’am?” Omigod, the darkness, the mud, the debris in the yards! Should she follow? Surely Kaye could heal her if she happened to step on anything or contract some awful fungus. She steeled herself and followed her new BFF. As they walked, with Sally quietly pleading, and her BFF ignoring her but stubbornly pecking at the phone, their destination became clear: they were going to the hubcap house.