Triple Toil and Trouble

by Constance Barker

  Okay, now that she couldn’t understand what he was saying, Echo could put him in the medical profession.

  “Those aspects, of course, did not go unnoticed by my benefactors. I was delusional, believing all the grants they threw my way were for the benefit of mental health. Ha!” McGooby crammed the rest of his ice cream cone in his mouth and chewed violently. He winced. “Brain freeze!”

  “You do realize we haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Harvest said.

  “The long and short of it is, the proper frequencies interacting with a human brain opened a gateway to the Twih. My patients weren’t crazy—they’d encountered some entity, or got accidentally sucked out of this dimension for a time. In other words, you’re not paranoid if the goat-man is real and out to get you. See?”

  Echo didn’t. She side-eyed her sisters. They didn’t seem to get it, either.

  “That doesn’t explain what happened to you,” Harvest said.

  McGooby shrugged. “It was probably the Jade Coven. Not the losers who were after you last summer, the original bunch. I think they were jealous of my research. That’s why I had to move my experiments to a private facility.”

  Harvest’s brows raised. “You had a secret lab?”

  “Yeah, kind of a bachelor lab. Hey baby, wanna visit a whole new world with me? Well, truthfully, Leshy’s a lot smoother with the ladies than McGooby ever was.”

  Echo’s turn to raise her brows. “Leshy is smoother?”

  “Oh, yeah, Leshy gets the tail. Literally, sometimes.”

  Quinn made a face. “Really? Women are... interested in a goat-monster?”

  “Don’t be hatin’, boo. Do people still say boo? Mostly the kinky ones. They see me all goaty and they can’t keep their panties on.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Echo said.

  “No, you probably don’t. It’s tough in this mundane reality,” McGooby shrugged. “Twih chicks dig me.”

  Harvest tried to take up the thread. “So you performed these experiments in a secret lab.”

  “Bachelor lab.”

  “Right. Where is that lab?”

  McGooby nodded in the general direction of the river. “Under the reservoir, like the rest of Fishburn. That’s where I first opened the Arcadian Portal, the gateway to the Twih. What was my reward for this astonishing accomplishment? I was turned into a goat-monster that forever guards the pathway between dimensions. There are worse gigs, I s’pose.”

  Echo sat up straighter, thinking of Ryker Novak’s missing brother. “What if we went there now?”

  McGooby angled his head. “We’d get really wet.”

  “No, I mean, is the portal still open? If we went to the lab, could we end up in the Twih?”

  “Could be.”

  Holy smokes, Echo thought to herself.

  QUINN JUMPED IN. “I’VE had a talk with Nick. He says in thirteen months, Cora Anderson will give birth to twins, who will be identical to her daughter, Zuri. How is this possible?”

  McGooby leaned closer. “Is this a birds-and-the-bees thing, because I could—”

  “It’s a time-is-weird-in-the-Twih thing.”

  “Oh.” McGooby’s shoulders sagged. “That. Well, if Nick and Cora did the horizontal bop in the Twih, I suppose it’s possible that she wouldn’t get pregnant for years. Of course, I did mention that my patients had encounters with the Twih, and it made them totally bonkers. Technical term.

  “Twih time is a matter of view point. Take the three of you. You’re triplets. Obviously, you weren’t physically born five years apart. It was five years from the perspective of the mundane world. Slushy time is hard to explain. You need to talk to an expert, like Nick or your mom. Don’t talk to your dad. He’s probably the one to blame for the five-year gaps. Humans can’t fully appreciate the finer aspects of Twih time. I could go on, but I need more ice cream.”

  Echo shrugged and stood up.

  “Now, beyond the temporal anomaly, and the magic stuff, you three are an interesting case study for a neuro-psychologist. Quinn’s a righty, Echo’s a lefty, and I’m betting that you’re ambidextrous, Harvest?”

  Harvest frowned. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “I used to date an ambidextrous girl. She was all kinds of handsy.”

  “How about I get you ice cream, and you shut up?” Echo said.

  HARVEST LAY AWAKE THAT night. It was creepy enough getting hit on by a half-man, half-goat. Somehow, getting hit on by a nonagenarian who looked thirty and acted like an adolescent was even creepier. Her insomnia, she had to admit, was more the product of his lack of answers. She thought going to the victim would make the investigation easier. Instead, it left her at square one. If McGooby himself didn’t know what happened to him, how could she figure it out? And fifty years later, to boot.

  Resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t sleep until she found somewhere to start, Harvest rolled out of bed. She padded to her office, the bedroom at the other end of the hall. The room smelled musty and dusty despite the fact that the window was open and she’d taken a dust buster to the pile of boxes after bringing them in.

  She was not a trained detective. The files made little sense to her. One folder had a ream of paper dedicated to the phrase Case re-examined, no further evidence or progress to report. Harvest flipped through this. Dozens of detectives had pursued the case over the years, the vast majority adding nothing.

  They were, or course, not looking from the angle that McGooby’s disappearance involved the supernatural. She opened the box that contained the initial investigation. Sitting on the bed, she read through the big binder. There were statements from his wife, Marge McGooby, her original call to the police, an admission they did not get along well, a statement that Alan was despondent after losing his job at the state hospital. The investigator’s notes considered suicide, although no note was found. Another investigator theorized that any man married to Marge would probably run away.

  Not helpful.

  Harvest opened a crackly envelope of photos. One was a candid shot of McGooby playing Santa Claus. She noted that he hadn’t aged at all. Another was a group of nurses. A couple of them were circled, with notations. One notation was “wants me bad,” the other, “nice cakes!” Obviously, McGooby’s work.

  Another photo showed a group of doctors, McGooby included. There was a woman with bouffant hair and cat eye glasses, an African American man, an Asian man, unaged Alan, and one doctor who had aged quite a bit. Harvest sat up straighter. She recognized the man. Turning the picture over, writing on the back confirmed it. Cedric Pye had treated their mother when she had somehow fallen out of the Twih. Despite his advanced age, he was still working at the state hospital. Ah ha, she thought.

  A third photo was even more telling. The man she had mistaken for African American was apparently Haitian, Dr. Henri Dardompre. He held a tiny Haitian flag as the others stood against the backdrop of the Olympics flag. Nice Cakes and Wants Me Bad were part of the group, dressed in nurses’ whites and starched caps. There was an Asian man in the crowd, as well as the bouffant hair woman. They appeared to be celebrating something, all except Dardompre, who looked downcast.

  Flipping the photo revealed the names. Alan McGooby, of course; Nice Cakes was Paula Waters, RN; Wants Me Bad was Midge Kaufman, RN; Bouffant was Dr. Eunice Smith, the Asian man was Winston Ping; the two others in the photo were Dr. Jon Cranston and Dr. Marc Alford.

  Seeing the names revealed gave her an idea. Harvest grabbed a pair of terrible 80s-style asymmetric sunglasses in neon pink and green. The ugly shades were a gift from her father, and formerly belonged to her mother. Beyond the dated fashion statement, the sunglasses had a special function. Harvest could see magic when she wore them. Would they work on a photograph?

  She slipped them on and took a look. To her surprise, most of the figures popped, brightening with a yellow glow. Only Dr. Cranston remained a flat black and white image. McGooby and Dr. Dardompre shined the brightest. To test the glasses,
she looked at another photo. It was the one with Dr. Pye. He didn’t glow at all. Neither did most of the subjects. But McGooby, Dardompre and Eunice Smith all wore shifting yellow halos.

  Harvest put the sunglasses back on her nightstand. She put the photos back in the envelope and got into bed. At least she had one person she could talk to. Hopefully, Dr. Cedric Pye would give her a lead.

  Chapter 6

  “ALTHOUGH FOR THE TWIH-born it is quite apparent to us, it’s hard for you to see that Nick’s plan is dangerous.”

  Quinn was dreaming. She walked a dense forest over uneven ground, feet softly landing in deep duff. To her left, a wild river rushed a curving track. Her mother walked on her right. Rhyming of course. Then Quinn remembered. She put dream headphones on and pushed the play button on her dream Walkman. Mom smiled.

  “One of Nick’s favorite tricks.”

  She frowned, pulling the Walkman from her briefcase purse. The play button was depressed. “Is this thing not working?”

  Mom chuckled. “I’m messing with you.” She grabbed Quinn in a quick hug. The music of her laughter, the warmth of her touch, nearly derailed Quinn. She wanted nothing more than to talk and laugh with her mother. Yet dreams could be fleeting. At any moment, her alarm could go off. The forest grew lighter, and at the same time, foggy. She was slipping out of the Twih. Focusing, she managed to stay in the dream.

  “I know that it will be difficult, but why is it dangerous?”

  “There are preparations to be made by a Twih-born before entering the mundane dimension. Potions need to be brewed, tools need to be forged, like that knock-off Walkman that helps us talk. Like the sunglasses I wore that Harvest now possesses. Like the grimoire in your bag, and the amulet gifted to Echo. Before you were born, elements to make up these protections were plentiful. Now, the crystals rarely bloom, the minerals fail to sprout, seeds do not effloresce, the pollen remains out of matrix.”

  Their passage stirred a pack of what looked like fluffy green squirrels with six legs. The bug-eyed animals turned as one. Then, they inflated like puffer fish. Quinn tried to keep a grip as the pack floated away like balloons.

  “Some kind of climate change?” she managed.

  “Our worlds are bound. Changes in one affect the other. I believe the Twih is more influenced by the human populace turning inward in distracted solitude more than any other factor.” Mom waved her hand, as if the words were smoke. “In any regard, Nick must travel deeper into the Twih to obtain these ingredients, and in turn, the natural resources of this world become that much more depleted.”

  “Is that why you can’t cross over?” Quinn asked.

  “This—how did you phrase it—change in the climate is part of it. It has made it more difficult to regenerate the gifts I gave to you and your sisters: control to Echo, insight to Harvest, creativity to you. Until I have restored myself, even here in the Arcadian Calm, the lands closest to your world, I am weak, disoriented.”

  Quinn’s stomach churned, her steps weighted by guilt. “But it’s been eighteen years since Echo was born.”

  Mom shook her head, laughing. “Linear time, I never did get the hang of it.”

  “Okay, so if you live outside of time, I guess Nick just knows he’s going to have two more daughters. That I kinda get. Otherwise, I’ve heard of cryptic pregnancies, but come on.”

  “It’s more than that. Nicholas believes that you and your sisters have unbalanced both the Twih and the material realm. You are half-Twih witches, born to a Twih witch within the Twih. He feels that half-Twih witches, born to a human mother in your world will realign some sort of cosmic scale.”

  Mom’s mouth formed a doubtful moue.

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “Your alarm is about to sound.”

  “NO WAY CAN I EAT.” Echo paced around the kitchen. “I’m too excited. We’re free diving the reservoir today. Ryker will be wearing swim trunks.”

  Gramma Em reached into a low cupboard and plunked the waffle iron on the counter.

  “Oh, waffles? Maybe I could eat a little.” Echo took a seat at the table.

  Gramma smiled, breaking eggs and mixing batter.

  “Is that your gramma’s recipe?” Echo asked.

  “Who has time to separate eggs? No, this recipe is from the master.”

  “The master?”

  “Alton Brown.”

  “Ah.”

  Quinn thumped down the stairs and poured herself a cup of coffee. She sat at the table without a word.

  Aunt Mary busted in the side door, swearing under her breath. “Hive beetles,” was all Echo caught.

  Gramma turned and scowled. “Looks like gloom and doom are contagious.”

  “Your michelia champaca in the greenhouse looks like it’s ready to keel over,” Mary said. “You know tropical plants don’t do well here.”

  “We’ve had it for forty years, Mary. It just needs some TLC. Sit down, I’m making waffles.”

  “Gramma Jane waffles?”

  “Alton Brown.”

  “Oh, hell to the yes. The day is looking up” Mary took a seat. She grinned at Echo. “Big day today. Smokin on the water. Naughty with a hottie, coffee and biscotti. Diving and conniving. I should learn to rap.”

  “No,” Gramma said. “You shouldn’t.”

  “What’s with the long face, Quinn?” Mary rubbed her back. “Bad sleep?”

  Quinn shook her head and sipped her coffee. “I’m fine.”

  Echo frowned. “Really?”

  “Yes, I’m perfectly fine.”

  “Well, the last time you drank coffee without cream, you did the green apple quick step for three days.”

  Quinn gazed into the black depths of her mug. “Dammit.”

  Echo passed her the half & half. “Spill. Not the cream.”

  Her sister blew out her cheeks and dumped cream into her coffee. “This whole Uncle Nick thing is really bugging me. I dreamed about Mom last night. Now I’m more confused than ever.”

  “You dreamed Mom? Lucky! I haven’t had a Mom dream in weeks.”

  Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Weeks? How often do you have Mom dreams?”

  “A lot. Not so much when I’m at school. The rhyming thing usually makes me wake up with a headache.”

  “Uncle Nick gave me a magic Walkman knock-off. It makes the Twih-folk sound normal.”

  Echo did a double take. “Seriously? Where do I get one of those?”

  “What was it that Trinity said that made you more confused?” Gramma closed the waffle iron with a sizzle.

  “That there’s something out of balance between this world and the Twih, that having half-Twih witches born in this reality will restore things. But Mom thinks the Twih is suffering from change in the zeitgeist.” Quinn sipped her coffee; added more cream.

  Echo’s brows squeezed together. “So, the three of us are making the Twih all weird?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why Uncle Nick needs me to help him get custody of Zuri. I don’t know how he knows Cora’s having two more of his babies. I don’t know if these things are related.”

  “Why does it have to be so complicated?” Echo took a plate of waffles and eggs, thanking Gramma. “He can just cast a love spell on Cora, like Mom did to Dad.”

  Gramma Em dumped more batter in the waffle iron. “Love spell? Who told you that?”

  Echo exchanged a look with Quinn. “Leshy, the man-goat.”

  Waffle iron closed, Em folded her arms. “Look, girls. Your father fell in love with your mother when he was too young to know what love is. The feeling had to be mutual. Trinity is a powerful being from another realm of existence.”

  “Your gramma’s right. You can’t force someone to love you, not even with magic. If you’re looking for a hook-up, you’re better off with booze.”

  “Mary!”

  “They already know this, Em.” Aunt Mary sipped her tea. “Face it, girls, the reason Cora and Nick got together probably had more to do with Nick being a pant
y dropping hump beast than magic. I know he’s your uncle and all, but I can’t imagine a chick who wouldn’t put out.”

  Gramma flipped the waffle on a plate. “Mary, stop it. Have you taken your morning meds?”

  “I’ll have to check my pill counter. But I just want to say, love is its own magic. There’s no controlling it. So get that idea out of your heads.”

  Chapter 7

  AFTER A MORNING OF serving people for unpaid garbage bills, Harvest was more eager than ever to solve the case of the missing McGooby. Luckily, Dr. Pye managed to squeeze her in before lunch. She drove the circular roads around the Warren State Hospital and parked in a visitor spot. On the acres of lawn, patients and nurses gathered, taking in the early summer sun. Not long ago, her mother was one of those patients. While Harvest didn’t know what zapped her mother out of the Twih, she remembered well the adverse effect it had on Trinity O’Broin Hutchinson.

  “How is Trinity doing?” Dr. Cedric Pye had vestiges of wispy hair over an age-spotted scalp, glasses that could probably spot lifeforms on the moons of Saturn, and hands like bird claws. His smile, looking like original teeth, was still engaging.

  “She’s doing better. In fact, my sister spoke with her last night.”

  “That sounds like improvement. Which facility is she in?”

  “It’s... out of state.” Harvest quickly drew the photos from her briefcase. “What I really wanted to talk to you about was this man.”

  “Alan McGooby?” Pye gazed at her over the top of his spectacles. “You working for the police now? Every few years, I get a visit from a detective, and I tell them the same thing. Our work did not much coincide, which was good, because the man never matured beyond adolescence. He was socially awkward, a terrible dresser, not much better at grooming or hygiene. He treated the nurses like his own personal harem, although the nurses did not return his affections. Well, except in the case of his wife. There’s no accounting for taste.”