O-Wem O-Witch

Patrick was dressed as a construction worker. He had overalls, a hardhat, work boots, and even a tool belt with a power drill in a holster. It wasn’t really a costume if you asked me. Dressing up as something you see every day isn’t what Halloween is supposed to be about. I was dressed as a faerie.

“That’s such a stupid costume! What’s the point of dressing up if you’re gonna be something ridiculous like that?”

“What’s so ridiculous about it?”

“You look like one of the Village People! You might as well stand next to a cop and an Indian and start doing the YMCA!”

“Yeah, well you’re the one who looks ridiculous. How many faeries do you know who walk around with a Louis Vuitton purse?”

“I am a fashion faerie, if you must know. I go around to all the poor slobs with no sense of style and I wave my magic wand and POOF! Instant trendy.”

“And the desperation to be trendy is a desirable quality on the planet you’re from?”

“You wouldn’t know style if it smacked you in the face, Fatrick.”

“Wooo. Fatrick. What a burn. Get this man some Aloe vera, stat!”

But I think that did burn him a bit. He was quiet for a few minutes and then when we passed a house with a bunch of toys in the yard, he took out his power drill and started drilling holes into some poor kid’s prized possessions.

“What are you doing!?” I hissed at him, trying to be quiet and furious at the same time. “That’s somebody’s toys!”

“This will teach ‘em to leave their mess all over the yard.”

“You’re such a jerk!”

He ignored me and punched his drill through the forehead of a Mr. Potato Head.

“Now he’s Mr. Potato Dead!” he muttered with a demented giggle.

I continued down the street, no longer wanting to be seen with him. A few minutes later he came hurrying up to me again, still laughing.

“Here. I brought you a souvenir.” He handed me a plastic Potato Head ear. “This is for all the times you say I never listen to you.”

“Hardy har. You’re such a jerk. That poor kid will be crying his eyes out when he sees what you did.”

“Did you see all the toys he had? He’s probably a spoiled little brat. He deserves it.”

“You don’t even know him!”

“This guy’s an ass too,” Patrick said in front of someone else’s house. And he drilled a hole through an expensive-looking fence.

“God! You’re such an idiot!” I told him, stomping ahead without him once more.

“You sounded like Napolean Dynamite just then!”

“Whatever. Why did mom make me take you to this stupid party anyway? It’s gonna be so lame. You’re an idiot. All your friends are idiots. The whole place will be full of holes by the end of it, and you’ll all finish out the night playing with yourselves over some stupid Megan Fox movie.”

“Megan Fox is hot!”

“Well if you meet her, you can wow her with your fabulous YMCA dance. Jack ass.”

And so we continued on in silence. The party was quite a ways away yet. We’d left early because we had to walk the whole way. Not only did mom insist on me escorting this little menace to his stupid Halloween party, she wouldn’t even give us a ride. I’d begged her for nearly half an hour, but she ignored me, dancing around the kitchen with her headphones in her ears listening to some stupid musical from the 1970s or something and icing Jack-o-lantern faces onto the cupcakes she’d baked. She was dressed as a witch. How appropriate.

“Mom! Please!”

“Let’s do the Time Warp again!” she sang to herself.

Patrick drilled his drill at me. “She can’t hear you, stupid. She’s in Rocky Horror Picture mode.”

“God! I hate this family!”

The trick-or-treaters were trickling out into the streets now. Ghosts, magicians, knights, pirates, and pokemons all started wandering up and down the streets in little groups. One kid was even dressed like Indiana Jones. He even had a whip and a toy gun on his belt. I wanted to grab the whip and give Patrick a few lashes with it. Too bad fashion faeries didn’t carry weapons of their own.

Oh yeah, and there were a whole lot of vampires. Vampires were everywhere. It was really pretty ridiculous. Was there a sale on stupid looking teeth and fake blood or something?

“I vant to suck you blood…” a little kid muttered as he walked past.

“You’ll have to suck it outta my arse, ya little bastard,” Patrick said.

“Oh my God! Can you be a civilized human being for just one day of your stupid life!? For even one hour?”

“No,” was all he said.

“You’re just a sad little jerk who’s mad at the world because you’re overweight and you can’t even get a girl to talk to you, so you gotta be an ass to everyone else!”

“Wow! You shoulda dressed up as Sigmund Freud. You want me to tell you all about my mother too? Obviously you’ve got me all figured… out…”

He trailed off. He’d stopped walking. What now? I turned back and saw him standing on the sidewalk, staring through the wrought iron fence of some ramshackle old Victorian house. It was grey with black trimming. The second floor windows seemed to be scowling down at passers-by above a porch that sagged on each end, making it look like an angry frown. The lawn looked like it hadn’t been raked in about 200 years. To our right, an old metal sign creaked, swaying in the breeze above the gate: Trespassers Beware. And then in parenthesis below that was hand written, I ain’t kidding! The whole place looked abandoned, creepy, and old. Worse yet, it felt creepy and old too. And it was even scarier, now that it was almost totally dark. You could be sure no trick-or-treaters would be knocking on that door. Not even on the biggest triple-dog-mega-dare you could imagine. A second sign hung on the gate as well, one side of a cardboard box that said, Peddlers will be roasted alive! Keep out!”

“Come on, Patrick. What are you staring at? Let’s go!”

“Look. There on the window sill.”

I looked. Up on the saggy porch, to the left of the front door, the light was on in one of the windows. The window itself was open a bit and I could see what looked like a fresh-baked pie, steaming on the window sill.

“What about it? Come on! Let’s go!”

“It’s apple pie. Can’t you smell it?”

“Big deal. There’s gonna be all kinds of deserts at the party. Now can we just-”

“Wait here,” he said. And with a quick glance up and down the street, he ducked under the creaky sign and into the yard. The gate groaned far too loudly and then shut itself again with an irritated clang, as though it would have rather have been part of the fence so it wouldn’t have to be bothered with all that opening and closing nonsense.

“What are you DOING!?” I hissed at him again. This was much worse than drilling holes in some poor kid’s toys. Now he was messing with some apparently psychotic old bugger’s apple pie. He ignored me of course, tip-toeing across the crunching leaves toward the stairs. “Patrick!” I said, one last time, trying to get his attention. But he was zoned in on the pie. He apparently meant to steal it. I looked up and down the street again. There was a not a vampire or pokemon to be seen. It was like they’d all vanished. A cat darted from beneath a parked car across the street, scaring the hell out of me, but other than that, the area was deserted.

Patrick got to the front porch and crept towards the open window. When he got there he turned to grin at me one last time, and then he reached for the pie. But then he stopped as though distracted by something only he could hear. He stepped forward and leaned over to peek in the window.

“Patrick! Don’t!” I whispered, as loud as I could, but there was no way he could hear me from the street.

He leaned right over and was nearly sticking his head right in the window. He let out a startled squeaking noise and suddenly his whole body was yanked up off the ground and dragged into the house. It happened so quickly I’d nearly missed it between blinks. He was there one second. And then he was gone. His power drill was all that was left of him. It clattered to the porch floor with a couple of thumps and then all was quiet again. I stared, stunned, horrified. At first I thought I’d imagined it, but then the window dropped closed with a ka-chunk like a guillotine, the shade was pulled, and the light behind it went out.

“Patrick!” I screamed, when I finally realized he was really gone. “Somebody help me! Patrick!”

But nobody heard me. Nobody was around. Not even a cat.

After I gave up screaming for help, I ran to the front door and tried to look in all the windows. All was dark. I grabbed up the drill and ran to a neighbor’s house to bang on the door. Of course nobody answered. I ran back out into the street to flag down a car, but no cars came. Five minutes had passed, then ten, and there was no sign of anybody. Should I run all the way home and get my mom? Why had that idiot gone after that stupid pie in the first place?

I finally decided to try to get into the house myself and maybe try to rescue him. It was a ridiculous idea but I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. I was panicked about my brother being murdered by some lunatic old man with a pie fetish. I had to get him out of there. It was the only thought in my head.

The only entrance I found was in the back of the house. There was a back door but it was pad-locked. I used Patrick’s drill as a saw and cut through the wood around the lock. It was old and rotted anyway. The drill would also come in handy as a defensive weapon, if need be. This is what I told myself anyway.

The door swung open and I stepped into the darkness. I was apparently in a very old kitchen. I stood in the doorway, aiming the drill like a gun with both hands, waving it back and forth at every little skittering noise I heard in there.

“Patrick!” I whispered again. But I heard no reply, only my own breathing. I stepped forward. The door thumped closed behind me. There was a hallway in front of me, leading away into even thicker darkness than was in the dreary old kitchen. I called to him again, a little louder, but there was still no reply. Finally I stepped forward, heading into the hall. I had to find that front room he’d been dragged into. And if I had to drill the drill through the old bastard’s head, so be it. I was ready. I just had to save my brother.

I made my way down the hallway purely by feel. It was pitch black. There was light behind me in the kitchen, and a very dim light ahead of me, but the hall itself was as black as a coffin. The floor creaked. The skittering noises rustled in the walls. I stepped forward again and bumped into something… an end table. I went around it and made my way toward the light of the front room.

I went through the doorway and saw the window with the blinds pulled down. “Patrick? Are you in here?” No answer. And then I took a step forward again, and my foot squished into something soft and slimy. I slipped in it and fell sideways into some sort of chair. I bumped off of that and landed on the floor. The drill slipped from my hand and jostled away across the floor. My hand had slapped into the gooey mess on the rug. It was still warm and wet and sticky, and my first thought was that it was Patrick’s guts. The old psycho had already ripped him to shreds with an axe or something. I yanked my hand up in a panic and began frantically wiping it off. And then I smelled it and realized what it really was. It was apple pie.

I needed some sort of light. Then I remembered there was a lamp in this room when we’d first stopped in front of the house. I crossed the room and felt around for it. I found it and fumbled for the switch. It clicked on and the room was suddenly bathed in pale, brownish colored light. I spun around and saw only furniture—chairs, bookshelves, a table, an old foot-pedal sewing machine. There was a crackling electrical sound and the smell of burnt copper. The light flickered a bit, as though it would go out, but then it steadied again. My heart pounded, terrified of being plunged back into darkness. I scanned frantically around for the drill, but it was nowhere to be seen. Had it gone under the old couch? Had it clattered over into the hallway? I couldn’t see it anywhere.

“Patrick?” I called. And then I saw a rat dart across the floor out in the hallway and I nearly jumped out of my own skin. It was all teeth and hair and little beady eyes, and it was so quick it was almost a flash.

I slowly walked to the hallway again and looked out into the darkness. To the right was the front door and the stairs leading up to the second floor. To the left was the kitchen where I’d come from, and a small door that apparently led down into the cellar. A cellar. Uhg. It was the last place I wanted to be, but probably the first place a maniac would take someone they’d just kidnapped off of their front porch. If I was going to find Patrick, I was pretty sure I’d find him down there. But now I didn’t even have my drill.

There was an umbrella stand next to the front door. I pulled an old one out of it. It had a pointy metal end on it, and a curved wooden handle. It looked to be about ten thousand years old and probably hadn’t been open since Noah’s flood, but it was something to hold onto anyway. It was nice and heavy. I headed for the stairs. But when I got there, the light in the living room started flickering again. Then it went out for nearly a whole second. I turned back toward the living room, wondering if I’d have to go back there and turn it on again. It came back on its own but then went out again, this time for nearly ten seconds.

“Oh God, please…” I whispered in the dark. There was an electric crackle again, and the light came back on finally. I turned back toward the cellar again, and screamed. I was looking up into a hideously wrinkled and deformed old face with pale greenish skin, a fat, beak-shaped nose, and a long bulbous chin. It was not a man at all. It was a woman. Two powerful hands grabbed my arms before I could turn to flee. I screamed again, looking up into her face. Her teeth were rotted and random, like a row of brown and reddish headstones on a purple graveyard. Her hair was clumped and matted like the straw of a black and white broom. Her eyes were shiny wet black beads in her head. She hissed at me like an angry cat and a low rumbling growl rose in her throat. That was all the horror I could stand. I yanked one arm back reflexively and jabbed the umbrella at her face. The long metal point stabbed right into her eye and cold black goo squirted out, splashing across my neck. I screamed again, expecting her to collapse in a heap, but she held on, still grinning, still staring into my very soul with her one remaining eye. And then she began laughing. She threw her head back and cackled a long and sickening laugh. And when she stopped laughing again, she gave me a fierce glare, reached behind her back, and clobbered me with Patrick’s drill.

Everything went black, even blacker than it already was.

---

I woke in a cage hung from the ceiling in the cellar. My eyes were blurry at first, but I smelled fire. I glanced over toward the only light source. There was a great cauldron in a fireplace with a fire crackling underneath. There on a table next to the fireplace was Patrick. He was tied. He was gagged. He was still breathing, but he was not awake. There was blood and pie smeared on his coveralls. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead. So was I.

“Patrick! Patrick, wake up!”

“He can’t hear you, dear,” the sound of a dozen hissing snakes said from beside me. My head snapped left and I saw her sitting there, on an old gnarled wooden throne that looked like it was made from tortured trees. Her right eye was still gone, and the wound oozed black blood down her cheek, but she didn’t seem to be in any pain.

“Who are you?” I said. “You can’t do this to us! You have to let us go! The police-”

“Are you afraid, my dear?” her voice rasped again. “You need to be very afraid for the spell to work. Your fear gives it power, you see. Your fear charges the crystal, for me. The crystal cannot suck the soul from your flesh until it is fully charged, and I do so need that dear sweet soul. I’m getting so terribly, terribly old, you see. So be a dear and give in to your fear, and I shall end your misery.”

“You can’t do this to us! I-”

And as I felt a flash of fear bubble up in my guts, I noticed a dim flicker in the crystal hanging from the ceiling.

“See? See there?” she pointed at it with a crooked finger. “Once that crystal stops flickering, you’re mine! Go, be afraid! Be terrified! Give in to fear! I’ve been living on rats and birds and cats and toads so long, but as you can see, they’ve deformed me quite a bit. But a sweet succulent soul like yours is exactly what I need to be beautiful and comely once again, and then I shall be able to lure whomever I wish into the cage. I’ll keep the comely ones, such as yourself, for the crystal, but fat and ugly ones like him go into the stew.”

The cauldron was steaming a bit now, heated by the fire beneath it. It was large, big enough for a child to hide inside perhaps, if any children were foolish enough to wander into this God forsaken house as we had.

“Please! Let us go and we won’t tell anyone about this. I promise! We’ll just run away and never return.”

She got up off the throne and shuffled over to the side of the cage, leering at me with her one good eye as though I’d insulted her.

“That’s what they all say, dear. So say they all, when death is near.”

Then she shuffled over and tapped at the crystal with a gnarled looking fingernail and turned to glare at me once again.

“Still dark, yes. But it is powerful enough. I shall try the incantation a little early. Sometimes it works before things get messy.”

Messy? What was she planning to do to us? My fear flared up again and the crystal flickered a bit. She smiled a malicious grin and nodded, wringing her hands together.

“That’s right. There you go. It’ll all be over before you know…”

I decided to try my best to control my fear. If that weird little crystal got stronger the more I was afraid, I’d better not give in to it. What was the happiest thought I could possibly think of? I couldn’t think of anything. All I could think of was Patrick drilling holes in some poor kid’s toys.

The old crone approached me, holding a small leather bag she’d lifted from a shelf by the fire. She began chanting out a demented little rhyme at me as she slowly shuffled around and around the cage, jabbing at me with the pointy tip of her old wooden cane.

“O-wem, O-witch.
I’ve got you, bitch.
I need your soul
to scratch an itch.
Give in to fear
the end is near
shed one last tear
give one last twitch.
O-wem, O-witch
I’ve got you, bitch.
Your life and mine
shall make a switch
Then you shall die,
but I’ll be fine…
O-wem, O-witch
I damn you, bitch
Your soul is mine.”

Her voice was like a hissing leak of poison from an old iron pipe, and each time she jabbed at me, I jumped a bit, and the crystal glowed a little hotter.

Control! Control! I screamed at myself.

“You really should go as a pirate this Halloween,” I said. “Just throw a patch over that eye of yours and off you go.”

And the flickering suddenly ceased, much to the old woman’s furious dismay. She growled at me again, leering at me out of her good eye. And then another cold, calculating grin spread across the cemetery of her mouth. She lifted the bag from her chest, pulled the draw strings open and dumped its contents over the cage. It spilled through the bars above me, down over my head and into my hair, down the back of my shirt and all over my legs. What was it? Pepper? Black sand? What the hell was it? I lifted my arm to look and she suddenly threw her head back, cackling horribly again.

Spiders! I was covered in tiny baby spiders! Thousands of them. They were in my hair, in my shirt, crawling into my ears, and up my nose. I screamed like I’d been stabbed through the heart, slapping myself all over my head and face in a desperate panic. I flipped and flopped and writhed in the cage like a worm on a hot pan.

“Ho ho! Ho ho! Look at that crystal glow!” she said, in between gasps for breath, and more hideously sadistic laughter.

I forced myself to calm once again, though I could feel the things crawling all over me. They were dropping to the floor by the hundreds but I was still covered in them. I whipped off one of my faerie wings and started beating at the bars of the cage, and at my head and shoulders.

“I sure hope at least one of these things are radio active,” I said, between screams. “Cause I’m gonna turn into a superhero and kick your frickin’ ass!” I kicked at her through the bars of the cage and knocked her back into that throne of hers. She fell with a crunch and I think she broke something. Her laughing stopped all at once and she glared at me again. I took a quick glance at the crystal again, still flicking spiders away, and she restarted the incantation. It was still only flickering, but it was much, much brighter now.

“O-wem, O-witch, O-wem, O-witch, your soul is mine. I’ve got you, bitch…” She went through the entire chant once more but nothing happened when she was done. She tapped at the crystal again. “Not long now,” she said, giggling. “I think though, that it’s time to wake your fat little friend.” She drew an old pair of shears from a nearby table and hobbled towards him. “Wake up. Wake up, fatty Patty. I’ve got something here that will drive you batty.”

She walked right up to him, lifted one limp hand from the table and snipped his little finger off. He lurched to life, suddenly screaming into the gag. His eyes flashed open wildly and he yanked and kicked at the ropes that restrained him. I watched in horror but then shut my eyes tightly when I saw the crystal pulsing more steadily. Patrick was screaming helplessly into his gag, and the old crone rapped him hard on the head with her cane.

“Quiet, you! You squeal like a pig!”

Then she took a nibble of the finger she’d cut off of him and spat, disgusted.

“This one’s been playing with himself! Foul swine!”

And she snipped off another finger as punishment. Patrick thrashed wildly again and blood spurted from his wounds, then he fell into piteous sobbing. The old hag threw his fingers into the cauldron, which was now simmering steadily.

“Disgusting!” she said again. “Luckily I’m not the one who eats it.”

Then she busied herself with dicing carrots, turnips, and potatoes with an old dagger she’d pulled from yet another shelf. It was a heavy old iron thing, but it was apparently razor sharp. She handled it deftly in her withered old fingers too. When Patrick kept kicking and screaming behind her, she turned and lopped off another two fingers from his other hand with a quick downward chop and flipped them into the stew with the tip of the dagger. “Keep you silent, I say again! Your squealing’s like a knife in my brain!”

Then she turned back to the vegetables and I got busy yanking and kicking at the old wooden bars of the cage. Patrick’s muffled screams covered the noise I made, but it seemed to be no use. The most I could do was bend one of the bars slightly outward at the bottom. It wasn’t even enough to get a leg through. I kept at it though. A bend would eventually become a break. Something was irritating my hip as I kicked and kicked, but I hardly noticed it. I was watching the old hag, and the crystal, and trying to control my fear.

She got all her chopping done, and I’d still kicked only enough away to get an ankle through. I gave up, exhausted, cut, and scraped up. I reached into my pocket to find the source of the irritation. There was the little plastic ear Patrick had given me. I squeezed it in my fist, fearing it would soon be all I had left to remember him by. Then the old buzzard turned back to the crystal to check its progress.

“Still so dull. What a shame. I guess we’ll need a tougher game.” She hobbled over to me and I flinched, readying myself for whatever cruel scare she had for me next.

“Well,” I said. “If the next game is an ugly contest then you definitely win.”

“I was beautiful once,” she answered. “Four hundred years ago, I was the most beautiful prostitute in the city of London. Even the lords coveted evenings with me. But I was abused as well. Men are such pigs, you see. The slightest insult to their precious little manhoods, even a giggle, and they’ll shove your face into a kettle of boiling stew. And then, all your beauty, all your fame is gone in an instant. I was hideous after that, a face to frighten children and make babies cry. But that’s when I met Daenna. She taught me the secret to healing, to immortality. She showed me how I could restore all my beauty as good as new. And all it costs is the soul of a pretty young maiden. Maidens are getting harder and harder to come by these days though. As you can see, I’ve waited a very long time…”

She didn’t notice the section of the bars I’d kicked away. I think maybe she was long gone out of her mind, bat shit crazy maybe a hundred years before I was even born. She seemed to be paying more attention to the crystal than anything else. She kept glancing up at it as she talked, waiting for its flicker to steady.

“But you should have seen the stew we made of that tiny-peckered lord, my dear. Oh it was a work, I tell you. Daenna and I somehow managed to remove his entire skeleton without even killing him. Well, the skull and spine we had to leave of course, but the rest of him… you should have seen the look in his eyes when we showed him his own shin bones. Perhaps I’ll do the same thing to fatty patty.”

“Are you gonna keep on babbling, you ugly old whore? I’ve got a party I’ve gotta get to.”

She didn’t seem bothered by my insult at all, and that kinda scared me a little more.

“Do you know who the stew is for, you insolent little brat? Do you know what makes the magic work? Do you know who gets to feast on your unspoiled flesh after I’ve torn out your soul? Here, let me show you.”

She turned the cage around and faced me toward the back wall of the cellar. There was a waist-high door set in the brick with tiny slit windows in it. It looked like a furnace of some sort. Something glowed from between the slits. Then she shuffled over and began turning a crank on the wall. The door began lifting. Inside, there was what looked like a glowing bear, except it wasn’t a bear. It was bald like a man, with muscles like a man, but it was glowing like hot coals. It had the head of a dog, with horns like a bull, and claws like an eagle’s talons. Its eyes were nearly white-hot fires as it stared up at me. It lunged, and I screamed, but its neck was yanked back by an incredibly thick chain. It snarled, and growled and spat glowing dribbles of molten rock that sizzled into the stone floor when they hit.

“Still trying to resist the fear, child?” the hag said to me. “This is a demon-dog, a Bär-geist. It’s one of the smallest horrors that exist in the hell you’re going to after your soul is drained of its essence. You see, hell is real. It’s oh, so real, and I’m sending you there in my stead. It’s how I’ve managed to survive so long, you see, by appeasing these hounds with much tastier morsels than myself. Now are you ready to scream for me? Ready to finish charging the crystal so I can take your soul? It’s nearly done now. Just a few more screams…”

I fought it with everything I had. But one scream managed to escape me when the dog-thing lunged again. The chains held though, and I simply turned away, grabbing the bars and refusing to look. I looked at Patrick instead. He was glaring at the dog with wild-eyed terror.

“Well, then,” the old hag said. “I’ll just have to finish preparing my stew.” And she walked up and suddenly, carelessly slit my brother’s throat with the dagger. Blood gushed out in a deep red fountain. I stared in terrified shock, but did not scream. The stone brightened anyway. It was pure terror that charged it, not just screams. My brother was laying there bleeding to death, and there was nothing I could do about it, and my soul’s screams were charging the crystal that would steal my soul and make the old hag new again.

She saw the crystal brightening and she threw her head back, cackling her cold cruel soulless laughter. I was shocked. I was horrified. I was helpless. My only weapon was a plastic ear. I threw it at her in a pathetic attempt at retaliation and it spun through the air between us. Her mouth was wide open, gasping for breath to below out another cackle and the ear dropped right down into her throat. Her laughter was cut off. Her hands went to her neck. She twisted and gasped, thrashing left and right, knocking a stool over, scattering instruments of torture this way and that. And then she slipped on my brother’s blood and fell sideways, crashing into the now boiling cauldron and smacking her head on the hearth. The cauldron teetered a moment, and then slopped a great splash of its stew over its rim, splattering her face with the boiling brew. Not a squeak escaped her. She couldn’t even breathe. She thrashed wildly though and in her crazed panic, she grabbed a flaming log from the fire and threw it at me in a pathetic attempt at retaliation. I ducked and it hit the top of the cage, setting the rope holding it to the ceiling ablaze. More stew slopped over the edge of the pot and splashed across her face, melting her flesh away until part of her skull was showing. Still she kicked and thrashed, refusing to die. And then the cage I was in fell. Weakened by my kicking, an entire section of the bars snapped away and it only took one more kick to free myself. I found myself lying on the cold stone floor looking up at the crystal hanging from the ceiling. It was now glowing steadily. The witch’s own terror had completed the charge.

I got to my feet and walked over to what was left of the hag on the floor and pointed at her.

“O-Wem, O-Witch, I’ve got you, bitch. Your soul is mine, O-wem, O-witch!”

There was a flash of light and something seemed to be yanked right out of the old figure on the floor. The light itself was screaming as it zipped through the room and into the crystal. Just then the hell hound snapped free from his chains and lunged at the body on the floor. It dove into the flesh in the same way the light had come out of it and moments later the figure exploded into a puff of dry ashes. Both the dog and the hag were gone. The little plastic ear remained though, laying half buried in the dust.

I lifted the crystal from its little hook on the ceiling. It was swirling and pulsing with light now. I held it by its chain, not touching it and walked over to my brother, who was gasping his last choking breaths. I laid it on his chest and the light seemed to be soaked up by him, like his skin was a sponge. Suddenly, his wounds began to close, his breath steadied. New fingers grew out of the stumps at his knuckles, and even the cut on his forehead mended. I took the dagger and cut his bindings.

“Wha… what happened?” he mumbled, opening his eyes. “The pain is gone.”

“Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!”

The flaming log had lit part of a wooden support beam on fire, and the blaze was now crawling up toward the wood of ceiling. Patrick shook his head, rubbed at his throat, and then sat up. He held up his hand and wiggled his fingers. They were brand new.

“Come on!” I said, even louder, heading toward the stairs.

“Wait!” he told me. “Look!”

There was an old chest at the back of the cave where the dog had been chained up.

“There’s no time! Let’s go!”

But Patrick wouldn’t listen. He never listened to me. He ran into the little cave and began trying to drag the chest out. “It’s too heavy! Help me!”

And since I knew he wouldn’t listen to me anyway, I decided I’d better just help him. I grabbed the handle on one side and he grabbed the other. We lifted it and carried it to the stairs. The flames were spreading across the ceiling now. The smoke was getting thick.

“Heave!” he said. We heaved, and thirty seconds later we got it to the top of the stairs and slammed the cellar door. “We’re rich! We’re rich!” he giggled dementedly. He was pretty damn happy for someone who’d just gotten their throat slit five minutes earlier.

“You don’t even know what’s in here?”

“Why else would she hide a chest in a cave with a devil dog?” he asked. “Total security!”

He snatched up the drill from the hallway floor and buzzed it through the ancient-looking lock. He flipped the lid open and we saw a near mountain of gold coins, gems, jewels, necklaces, crowns, and fat stacks of cash from nearly every era of modern history. There was a very old dress too, thin and faded, on one side of the pile. And on top of it was an ancient painting of a beautiful-looking victorian woman. The caption read: Madam Patricia Wemwick, October 31, 1609.

“You think that’s her?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. And there was a far away look in his eye for a moment.

A billow of smoke wafted from under the cellar door and the hallway was getting hotter. I slammed the lid shut again.

“Come on! Let’s get this thing out of here!”

“Don’t go that way,” Patrick said. “The front door is double bolted.”

“How do you know?” I demanded, dropping my side of the heavy chest again.

“I have no idea.”

We staggered out the back door and down the lane behind the house. We were halfway home before we heard the fire truck sirens screaming down the street.

We heard the next day that the place was completely destroyed. Even the chimney had collapsed. The police reported no victims of the fire and no eye witnesses as to who may have started it. The neighbors were not sorry to see it go, so there wasn’t much of an investigation.

We hid the chest in our own basement and lived pretty happily ever after, carefully buying ourselves things now and then so as not to arouse any suspicions as to where we’d come by the wealth. Not even Mom asked us any questions when that Christmas we got her a brand new iPod, fully loaded with nothing but show tunes from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Other than that, things were pretty much the same, except of course for my morbid phobia of spiders, and Patrick’s aversion to apple pie.

The End

Oh, and PS. We replaced all the little kid’s toys with brand new ones, and Patrick even paid for the repairs to the old man’s fence. So I guess maybe things are a little different after all.