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.

Baby Boy

They’d dressed Jake in a high-collared tuxedo, and even wrapped his neck in a white scarf, nearly up to his chin, but you could still see the stitches on the left side of his neck where the animal that got him had been at his throat. Christine had asked for a closed casket funeral, but they’d somehow convinced her that the beautiful boy looked so peaceful, lying there like he was merely asleep. The animal had been at his neck but had left his face intact. Let’s enjoy it one last time.

Console, console, console. They all blathered at her incessantly about how they understood, how they would be there for her if there was anything she needed. But she heard the whispers too.

“Honestly! Who lets a five year old wander around alone in the woods?”

“It wasn’t the woods. It was a park.”

“He was found in the woods near the park. They think he was dragged there after he was… killed.”

“It gets dark early in October. He should have been home.”

“Shhhh. She’ll hear you.”

“He loved that park… The poor dear.”

She’d let him play in the park a little late, while she was preparing supper. She’d assumed he was with friends. All his friends had gone home though, leaving him there alone to ride the slide a few more times, to swing on the swings a little while longer, to climb, to run, to be alive.

By the time she’d gone out looking for him, it was after dark. The park was deserted. She’d felt sick with worry, but even then, she’d assumed he’d just gone over to a friend’s house. She tried all his friend’s houses though, and nobody knew where he was. Then she went back to the park, calling for him, and eventually screaming for him. Then she’d called the police.

Now she was at his funeral. Now they were going to bury her baby. She felt the screams rising again from deep inside her, but they were buried somehow. They had her on so many tranquilizers she could barely walk, and the screams were still rising from deep down inside her. The pain wasn’t gone. The pain hadn’t been killed. It had just been buried. She could still hear the screams, very deep down. The pain was a monster that would live forever.

Console, console, and more console. And then it was over. She was in a limousine again, driving to the cemetery, near the woods where he’d been found, near the park where he had loved to play. It seemed appropriate they whispered, that he be buried near the park he loved so much. But Christine couldn’t imagine he’d want to be anywhere near where the thing had got him. She kept this thought buried though, just like the screams.

The police never did find the thing that had gotten him. Some of them had even suggested he’d fallen and torn his throat open on a branch, or a jagged stone. Nobody had seen or heard anything. There were no footprints, fingerprints, defensive wounds, or DNA of any kind to suggest he’d been attacked by a human. There weren’t even any recent animal tracks, just the body of a boy with half his throat torn away. He’d bled to death, but they hadn’t found very much blood at the scene, which led them to believe that he was moved from where he’d been killed, possibly by an animal. The evidence just didn’t add up. The clothes weren’t muddied or scratched as they would have been if the boy had been dragged. It was almost as if something had torn his throat out, exactly where it had killed him, and then simply taken the blood away somewhere.

The police had vowed to get to the bottom of it. But Jake was still being lowered into the ground. What difference did it make who or what had killed him?

---

The screaming resumed later that afternoon, when the tranquilizers wore off. She refused to take any more of them. She didn’t like dodging the pain of her boy’s death. It felt wrong. It felt like betrayal. She would bear the pain of his death, just as she’d borne the pain of his birth. She would wait in agony, screaming as she allowed the pain to ravish through her soul, tearing pieces of it away as the minutes passed into hours. She re-lived every moment of his life, from the first time she’d held him, feeling him softly suckling at her breast, to the last time she’d kissed him goodnight, and everything in between. And she remembered every single time she’d ever scolded and screamed at him too, and the times she’d let him cry all alone because she was too busy to worry about every little issue he had. The what- ifs and if-onlys, stabbed at her like a sadistic mob, blaming her, accusing her, trying to murder her for her guilt, but somehow her soul refused to die. All she could do was lie there screaming, hating her own soul for not dying like it deserved to.

She woke on the floor of his bedroom, not even realizing she’d gone in there, or when she had fallen asleep. It was night now. The October wind moaned through the trees outside his window. His little nightlight glowed for no one. His fish swam aimlessly in the aquarium on the dresser beside his bed. A board game was set up but not played on the floor in the middle of the room—Chutes and Ladders. The blue token was on square four and the red one was on square one. One die was on a number one, and the other had rolled a three.

“Play with me, momma! It’s your turn!”

“I’m busy now, Jake. Why don’t you go play with your friends at the park instead?”

Christine picked up the dice and rolled a seven. She moved the red token to the seven square and then lay sobbing on the floor while she waited for Jake to take his turn. Then her sister Pam was there, trying to hug her, to console her again, trying to lead her from the room, but she refused.

“No! I will not leave this room! I will not! I will stay in here until the pain kills me! I need it to kill me!”

And then Pam was crying, and Christine didn’t know why. Pam had never had a son ripped from her soul. What could possibly be upsetting her?

“I won’t let this grief kill you, Chrissy. I loved Jakey too, and he wouldn’t want his momma dead.”

She got up, and left. Christine rolled the dice for Jake. Jake got a nine. She moved the blue token to thirteen, wondering what Jake would have been like as a teenager. And then she wept some more. She grabbed Mr. Brownbear off his little bed and hugged it until she passed out from the exhaustion of sobbing.

“Come back to me, Jakey! Oh God, please make this all just a dream!”

The only reply was the cold October wind moaning through the trees outside the window.

---

She didn’t take a jacket when she snuck out of the house at 1 am. Pam was asleep on the couch. The TV was blathering quietly to itself about a miracle mop that could wipe up a whole carton of spilled milk in one swipe. Christine walked past the happily smiling memory of her boy watching his favourite shows on that TV and went quietly out the front door, holding Mr. Brownbear’s hand. Pam shivered for a moment as the chilly night air billowed into the living room when the door opened, but she pulled the blanket closer to her chin and did not awaken. Christine was as silent as the night.

The walk to the park was cold and dark, but she had never been so unafraid. If any assailant lunged from the shadows to murder her, she would welcome it. Stab me, slice me, rip me up, she thought. Nothing you can do is worse than the pain I’m already in.

She got to the park and sat alone on a swing, holding Mr. Brownbear. The merry-go-round creaked, waving gently back and forth in the wind. The wind moaned through the trees. Leaves rustled, glowing yellow under the single street lamp that lit the playground from the street. Beyond was the woods where they’d found him. Beyond the woods was the cemetery where they’d buried him. Somewhere in the cemetery was his grave.

“Push me, Momma! Push me higher!”

“No more, baby. Momma’s too tired. Just kick your feet. You can do it.”

There’s no way a mop can clean an entire carton of milk in one swipe. That’s impossible. Almost as impossible as an entire body’s worth of blood simply vanishing…

She took Mr. Brownbear by the hand and walked with him into the woods. “Baby needs his bear,” she told herself. And she was completely unafraid.

---

Someone was standing on the path in the woods. She thought it was a branch at first, leaning way out from the bushes, but when she took a few more steps she saw it was a figure standing there. She just stopped and stared. An old tree moaned above her, its branches creaking and clicking in the wind. The figure, whoever it was, hadn’t seen her yet. It was facing into the woods, just staring. It was dressed in black, a mere silhouette in the near total darkness. She stood watching it, wondering if it would walk away into the night and let her pass. It did not. It just stared into the night, as though lost, confused. She waited, wondering if she should cut into the thicket, off the path, and try to go around.

An especially cold gust of wind blew through her, and she began to awaken from the trance she’d been in since she ‘d gotten up off her son’s bedroom floor and decided to come out here. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure she wanted to wander into the cemetery at 1:30 in the morning just to lay a teddybear on a grave. Her son would still be there in the morning, wouldn’t he?

And then the figure on the path turned and looked in her direction. She saw the pale white of his face, like an unlit moon in the darkness. She saw two darker spots on its face where its eyes should have been. She couldn’t see its eyes though. His eyes, if they were there at all, appeared to be hiding in two caves set in the chalky white cliff of his face. She saw that he was a teenage boy. She saw that he was eating something, something dark and furry, with hind legs and a tail. He was eating it, and staring at her with caves instead of eyes. Her legs felt like jello, and her torso felt twisted around with fear. She backed up a step. Whoever this boy was, he didn’t seem to even see her. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking through her. And he was chewing. And then he lowered his hands and dropped the furry thing. It fell like a stone, thudding to the earth. In the dark, it looked like the boy had no mouth or jaw. The lower half of his face was as black as the clothing he wore. And then Christine realized that it was not that his jaw had been ripped away. It was merely covered in blood so dark in the night that it looked black. She backed up another step, but the figure did not step forward. He just stood, staring through her. Then she turned to flee but she stopped dead in her tracks before taking a single step. There was another figure behind her as well.

This second, smaller figure was much closer too. And he was walking, sort of limping toward her, on legs that didn’t seem to want to take the steps. When it tripped over a tree root, its arms didn’t fly out to break the fall. It just collapsed, smacking it’s face into the earth with a thud as dead as the furry thing the teenager had been eating. This second figure turned its face up from the earth and stared at her, and when it did, her mind finally released its grip on her last strand of sanity, like the bladder of a child who could hold the strain no longer and simply let it all go.

“Jakey?” she whispered. “Is that you, baby?”

The thing did not reply. It reached out little fingers toward her and started crawling across the cold damp earth, dragging a body that did not want to move except by massive effort of will. Christine fell to her knees and stretched out her hands toward him.

“Baby, is that you?”

His little tuxedo was ripped and dirty. He was missing one shoe. He still had the scarf on his neck, but it had come unraveled and dragged along behind him in the dirt. He made no sound at all. Not a moan. Not a whimper. Not even a gasp for breath. He just crawled across the dirt, coming toward her. She glanced back and saw the taller figure had vanished into the night. The path behind her was now clear. Then she looked back at the boy in the path in front of her. The dark caves that were his eyes were closer now and she could see that it really was Jakey. He was staring at her, crawling toward her. He did not blink. His jaw hung open in a surprised, pained expression and there were even clumps of dirt in his mouth. His hands were scraped and dirty, nearly black, as though he’d been digging in the earth. There were leaves in his hair.

She wanted to rush toward him. She wanted to grab him up and hold him. She wanted to kiss him, and cry and love him. But something felt wrong. It was her little Jake, but at the same time, it wasn’t. This was a crawling, dirty, staring, silent boy, a boy that looked like Jake, but Jake would have called out to her by now. Momma! Momma! Help me! I’m hurt! I missed you momma! I was so afraid! This thing made no sound at all. Not even breathing. The only noise in the night was the rustling of the leaves he crawled through, and the wind in the trees. Nevertheless, it looked like him, and it was moving. That was all the convincing her delirious mind needed. She held out the teddy to him from where she sat in the puddle of her dead sanity.

“Jakey! It’s momma, baby! I brought Mr. Brownbear!”

Jake didn’t even look at the bear. His eyes were unblinking in his gaze upon her. She sat, watching him come, and then he was there at her knees. She reached down and grabbed his hands. His hands were cold, as cold as the earth. And then she started crying again, realizing he really was dead. This cold crawling thing with leaves in his hair and unblinking eyes was Jake, but he was dead. He smelled of soil and sour meat, and she would have vomited if she’d had anything to eat that day. She would have gotten up to run, except that some horrified part of her brain had convinced her that this was somehow just a dream. It couldn’t be real. She’d watched them lower Jake into the ground.

And now the thing had crawled right up into her lap and collapsed, lying face up, still staring at her with unblinking eyes. Every motion had taken a massive effort of its will, and apparently it had no strength left. Her tears spilled off her cheeks and dripped onto his eyes. Still he did not blink. The tears merely rolled off his eyes and spilled down his cheeks as though they were his own. She stroked his cheek with her hand. It was cold as well. The flesh of his cheek she’d kissed so many times was as stiff as leather, as dead as the arm of their living room chair. A great wracking sob escaped her, a sob that was more of a long agonized scream than piteous weeping. She snatched him up and hugged him to her breast, crying out to the sky. “My baby! My baby!”

With a massive effort of his will, he slid his cold, dead hands up around the back of her neck and pulled himself up to her throat. Moments later her screaming ceased, and there was only the wind in the trees, and soft sucking sounds.

Spooked

The wind whistles through the cracks in the window frame. It sounds sort of like hissing sometimes, and other times, it sounds like a soft moan of breath from a dying soul. The light from the street spills in, casting shadows on the walls: grey rectangles with snowflakes falling through them, and the claw-like fingers of the tree that shivers back and forth. And the snow taps at the window panes like tiny, scratching fingers. The room is cold.


So she gets up to try to shut the window better. She walks up slowly, feeling the icy air against her legs. Her nightgown does not cover enough.

The house is silent. Her footsteps don’t make a sound, not even whispers across the floor. There is only the wind and the scratching of the cold dead snow against the glass. She can see her breath in the room.

She walks up to the window, feeling around the frame for any drafts whispering in. There are several. It’s an old window. The house has shifted since they put it here, and the rectangles are nearly parallelograms. But the glass has not shattered.

She tugs upward on the window, hoping to open it all the way and give it a good firm slam down into place. It groans a bit and slides up half an inch. She tugs some more but now it’s stuck. And now the winds and snow are blowing in.

And she sees a figure in the night, floating in the air in front of the tree. She thinks it is the tree at first, just shadows playing tricks on her, and she leans in to look harder. There’s definitely a figure in the tree. She stares, almost hypnotized, trying to decide if she’s imagining it. And then the figure, a man in grey, blinks. She has leapt into bed before his eyes have opened again. The covers are up to her chin. She is panting with fright. The frosty air catches her breath and turns it to tiny puffing clouds of icy wind.

But now the window is open a bit and the room is getting colder by the minute. She lies there in the dark, peering out at the window sill, watching the snowflakes billow in, making a little pile. She’s waiting for cold dead fingers to wrap around the bottom of the window and heave it upward.

Nothing happens. There’s only wind and snow. She tries to convince herself she’d only imagined it. It was only a shadow, a trick of light, a certain billowing of the snowfall outside that looked like a face in the night. Yes, that’s all it was. She must close the window. It’s now freezing in her room.

So she slides the blanket off of herself and swings her legs off the bed again. She takes one, two, three steps toward the window and stops. One more step and she’ll be able to see the tree outside again, but she doesn’t want to. She must close the window though.

She leans forward and peeks out. There he is again, still standing in mid air, still floating twenty feet above the ground. The tree’s clawing branches wave back and forth through him, like a magician trying to prove there is no trick. He blinks again, not just a figment of her imagination, but something alive, something staring at her. And in a flash, she’s back under the covers again, this time completely covered, eyes and all. Minutes pass. Maybe twenty before she can hide no longer. She’s running out of air underneath there and she has to pull the cover away from her face to catch a quick snatch of breath.

The snow is still billowing in under the window. No cold dead fingers heaving it upward though.

Now she must close it, not because of the bitter cold but because she’s terrified the figure might come billowing in with the snow, scared he might wrap his icy hands around her throat and steal her soul away, leaving a cold dead-eyed corpse no longer warming the sheets.

She gets up and runs to the window. She can still see him out there, but she ignores him. She heaves with all her might. The window groans and slides upward with a dull wooden grinding sound. Then it thumps into the top of its frame, wide open. The cold winds are tossing her nightgown around now, vigorously, like a flapping flag, mercilessly chilling the flesh underneath. And the icy snow is pelting her skin instead of the glass. She’s yanking hard, downward, but the window doesn’t budge. She bangs on the frame, but it doesn’t loosen. And finally she opens her eyes to see if the floating figure is approaching.

He isn’t. He’s gone. There’s only the tree and the cold blowing snow.

She grabs the window handle and heaves with all her might, lifting her feet right off the floor to add all her weight to the downward pull. Finally the window gives and comes crashing down with a bang that shakes the whole room. She tumbles backward onto her bottom on the floor. The windy whistling has silenced. The window is properly closed now. She scrambles to her knees and peers over the window sill, out into the night. The figure is floating there again. But now he’s closer. He’s approaching. She scrambles backward, still staring, he comes another step closer. His arms are out-stretched now, reaching.

She leaps into her bed and yanks the covers over her head, panting like she’d just run a mile. Her heart is pounding but it does nothing to warm her. Even the sheets feel cold as snow now.

But there was something, she thinks to herself, something wrong somehow. She can’t quite put her finger on it. The feeling gnawing at her guts won’t let go. Something was wrong with the figure in the window.

And then she realizes why she did not see him in the tree when the window was fully open. She didn’t see him because she wasn’t looking at a ghost outside in the night. She was looking at the reflection of a shadowy figure standing in the room behind her.

She sucks in breath, ready to scream what may be her very last scream, and she peeks out from under the blanket.

…

They find her the next morning, half buried in the snow, beneath the tree, about ten feet away from the house. She’s surrounded by jagged triangles of shattered glass. Her body is face down, but her head is turned right around backward. Her eyes are staring, as though seeing something that isn’t there. The coroner and the sheriff can’t decide if she was thrown from the window or if she dove through it on her own. There is no sign of a struggle though, so they eventually chalk it up as a suicide. But why?

“Something must have spooked this girl good.”

They close her terrified looking eyes and cover her with a sheet.