The Cursed Blood

by Jeremy Craig

  White Owl ignored him and fixed me with a serious and haunted look. “By the time I arrived, three had already died. Horribly. Heads savagely ripped from their bodies by something very, very strong with very sharp claws.”

  “It was probably a bloody Ogre. They have a thing for heads, you know,” Gramps bantered back with a chuckle. “Damned stinking, bumbling, brutish beasts like to boil them up in cauldrons. Call it head cheese pudding. Smells bloody awful but they go absolutely crazy for a good bowl of it. Especially if it’s spiced with curry and sage.” I almost choked on my pizza as my stomach did a lurching flip flop at that idea.

  “Ah, yes. An Ogre that mysteriously passes through warded and locked doors and leaves not a trace of their passing?” White Owl arched his brow at Gramps who merely HARUMPHED and grumbled to himself as he took a huge bite of his pizza.

  “Yes, every scene was the same,” White Owl explained with a touch of frustration in his voice as he steepled his fingers before his face and took a long deep breath. “Down to the last detail. The basement doors were the only things left open, and there wasn’t a single sign of forced entry, mundane or magical. No scratches on the locks, no smells of sulfur, no aura spikes, nothing. Not a thing disturbed, looted, or out of place. Just grizzly headless bodies.”

  “Sounds awful,” I answered in a much squeakier voice than I had attended that I tried—and failed—to hide by slurping at my straw I had in my bottle of Coke. Manx, who seemed to agree, whined mournfully as he continued to stare up at the Master hopefully.

  “That wasn’t the worst of it,” White Owl divulged in a voice so soft that the rhythmic tick of the wall clock and crackle of the fire nearly smothered it out. “On Devils’ Night while the hunt was on for the killer, we had an unusual break in the case.” At this Gramps scoffed, belched, and went back to munching on his supper with a roll if his eyes.

  “There was a witness,” White Owl finished to which Gramps almost choked as he swallowed and laughed at the same time.

  “Hardly a credible one,” Gramps snapped.

  “Credible enough,” White Owl retorted blithely as he snapped his fingers and the pizza box on the coffee table floated over to him, hovering over his lap till he selected a slice then zoomed back to the coffee table. Manx perked up at this as he absolutely adores pizza, eyeing the flying box then the slice in White Owl’s hand hungrily.

  “It was a little girl scared out of her wits. Had likely been up watching scary movies all night,” Gramps explained, as if that cleared everything up. “Poor thing had no idea what she had seen and was likely so terrified her mind was playing tricks on her.”

  “Anyway,” White Owl dismissed Gramps with a pronounced eye roll. “Her name was Jesse, and she confirmed what I had feared all along, that the Click- Clack had come for her babysitter who was a particularly awful young Witch with a penchant for cruelty, bullying, and nastiness.”

  Gramps barked out a dry, sarcastic laugh at this. “Oh, so a teenage girl being mean is justification for her to have her head ripped off in the kitchen as she makes popcorn, now is it?”

  White Owl nodded sadly. “To me, no. To the Click-Clack, however, it definitely seems to. Does everything terrible have to have a reason you agree with to do what it does?”

  Gramps again rolled his eyes and dunked his pizza crust into a bowl of blue cheese salad dressing he’d poured out. (Dipping crusts and chicken wings are just about the only use Gramps ever has for salad dressing as I doubt the man has ever willingly bought a head of lettuce or an actual salad in his very long life). He chewed thoughtfully then took a pull of his pipe, his old friend watching him with a long-suffering frown, waiting patiently for him to answer.

  “No. But normally there would have to be a shred of evidence for a thing to be taken seriously or investigated. As to this Clack-Clock of yours, that is certainly not the case,” Gramps insisted as he double dipped then jabbed the drippy blue cheesy half eaten crust at White Owl with a chuckle. “And people, nasty or not, meeting unpleasant ends in unconnected places isn’t pattern enough to prove a thing.”

  White Owl eyed him a moment, shaking his head in disgust at the odd crust habit before continuing. “Yes, she was a particularly nasty girl, a bullying brat, but we only found that out much later. I obviously had my suspicions though. And no, she didn’t deserve what happened. Few deserve to have their heads ripped off as they pop popcorn, now do they?”

  He looked to me for support but all I could manage at this point was a bit of a squeak and nod as I sipped at my drink. “We were let in by the local Darkling Sheriff (towns or areas with large concentrations of the races or magical folk have a duly appointed sheriff from the local bureau to investigate and keep the peace) and there she was on the floor, headless and splattered on the floor like a broken doll.”

  White Owl shook his head sadly. “Little Jesse was shaking, cuddling her stuffed animal, almost unable to speak and all wrapped in blankets and being cared for by her family by then. The family was well to do and respectable. Dad was a Half-Elf Apothecary with a successful shop and the mother a Human Medicus Arcanus. If I recall, she ran the local clinic and was well loved by everyone in the community.”

  He took a bite of pizza, chewing slowly as he let the silence draw out just enough before continuing. “Took me an hour to coax her out of her silence and when she finally spoke, I almost wished she hadn’t as she proved my fears well warranted.”

  Gramps grunted and pinched his nose as he smoked and tiredly shook his head as if he was staving off a devil of a headache that this story was threatening to make worse. White Owl ignored his skeptical look and resumed the story.

  “She said the victim, Magdalen, had sent her to bed early and was planning to have her boyfriend over for a kissing scary movie session on her parents’ new couch. Typical teenager stuff. Told her that if she ratted on her, she would hex her cat. Alice didn’t like this much but felt she didn’t have much of a choice.”

  “So, what happened?” I queried uneasily.

  “Jesse said she was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and absolutely flummoxed that Magdalen had confiscated her favorite stuffed rabbit. A silly fluffy pink thing with a waistcoat and pocket watch that her Aunt had given her for her last birthday.”

  “Well, that’s not nice. Why would she do that?” I asked perplexedly to which Gramps snorted and White Owl shook his head.

  “Who knows.” He sighed. “But as Jesse lay there under her blankets in her pajamas, she said something felt different. She said it was cold, making her shiver even though the house was lovely and warm. Something was just not the way it should have been, and she pulled her blankets up over her head.”

  “How could she be a witness then?” I asked confusedly. “If she had her head under the blanket how could she have seen anything at all, never mind a Click-Black?” Gramps gestured to me with a full mouth with his half-eaten crust as if to say, See, even he sees it’s poppycock, and he’s just a kid.”

  “We’ll get to that in a moment,” White Owl answered with a full mouth. “She said she could hear the popcorn popping, her babysitter talking on the phone mounted to the wall by the stove in the kitchen, but she also heard something else…”

  “What did she hear?” I gasped excitedly.

  “A click-clacking. Like something tapping on stone and wood. I found out later that there was a vent to the basement in her bedroom, right beneath her bed,” he explained as he chewed. “She was hearing it creep from the boiler and up the stairs.”

  “It comes from the boilers?” I asked wearily. That sounded preposterous. What kind of thing comes from the boilers?

  He nodded and Gramps rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes indeed it did. Legend says that’s where it was made, so that’s where it climbs out of every year.”

  “Made?”

  White Owl grunted in agreement. “Yup. They say it used to be a young woman. A FeyBorn who was burned at the stake during the Witch hunts of colonial America—”

 
“Who says that specifically?” Gramps asked shrewdly between chews as he gave his old friend a one eyebrow arched look of heavily sarcastic disbelieving curiosity that earned him a rather rude gesture from the old Master.

  “I say it. I am a very credible source.” At this Gramps nearly choked as he burst into laughter, ignoring the dark look he was getting from White Owl as he chewed on a candy corn. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted. She was a colonial girl. A Witch, and a skilled healer. But to them it didn’t matter a bit how much good she did precisely, condemned to be burned at the stake for what the ignoramuses that went for town folks deemed ‘Black-Magic.’”

  “Wouldn’t the Oldfable have stopped them from seeing her magic?” I asked incredulously.

  “Good point,” Gramps chuckled approvingly.

  White Owl scowled and shook his head. “The Oldfable isn’t perfect, as you both know. The mundanes she lived amongst must have found it odd that folks who went to her, a simple country girl, for healing and medicine were better off than those treated by their educated physician. So, to them she was a devil worshiping Witch. It’s why Fey healers rarely help mundanes even now.”

  “That’s awful.” I shook my head at this.

  “Indeed, it was. To them her works were unnatural. Which to the ignorant means evil, and so as she stood tied to her log surrounded by kindling, just as they set a torch to her. She warned her killers they would never be rid of her. That her seared soul would come for those whose hearts hid darkness with the wings of reverence and decency on the anniversary of her death every year from then on.”

  “An awful lot to say as ones burning at the stake,” Gramps scoffed derisively between bites. Once again White Owl ignored him as he carried on with his tale.

  “Well, anyway. Jesse said she heard the creek of the basement door then an awful scream as she shivered under her blanket, then nothing but more clicking and clacking.” He finished off his slice and wiped a bit of grease on his blue stripped flannel shirt and again taking up his cup.

  “What happened?” I asked as he poured more hot cocoa into his cup from his nearly ever present battered old thermos and took a sip. I remember at the time my heart was thundering in my chest and I was hanging on his every word.

  “Her door creaked open,” he explained as he eyed the pizza box hungrily and set his cup back on the end table. “Little Jesse huddled in horror, shivering under the sheets, and heard something creeping across the carpet. Creaking and popping like twigs being snapped and bent.” I shivered at this.

  “Something lifted the blanket just enough to return her stuffed rabbit to her with a blackened claw like hand, pat her on the head, and creaked, clicked, and clacked back out the door, closing it behind itself as it went.” White Owl finished and I sat there staring at him, not sure if I wanted to believe him or not trying to reign in on my heart thundering away as Gramps shook his head and chuckled.

  “Did you try to catch it?” My hushed voice cracked as I spoke, and I remember I felt a shiver of unease as I stared at the old Master, hoping for some kind of happy ending.

  “Of course,” White Owl assured. “But we never did, and every year more heads are taken. On a misty night, like tonight it just so happens.” Just then something spattered several times against the window, and my heart about leapt out of my chest and Gramps leapt from his chair cursing. White Owl grunted. I tried to regain control of my breathing and Gramps flew out the door in a rage screaming very imaginative obscenities at the prankster egging his house.