He asked me if I needed anything. I shook my head. Held up the can of soda, heard it fizzing inside. He told me they hadn’t been able to reach my mom yet, but he had some questions for me.
I waited. He looked over at the police officer and a moment later she was gone, the door clicking softly into place behind her.
Do you believe in witchcraft?
He stared at me for a long time, thinking about the question. He wasn’t scared of silence. He knew it was a tool that could be used to pry information out of unwitting victims.
I was not an unwitting victim.
Finally, he replied to my question: No.
Good. He’d passed the first test. He asked me why I wanted to know. I told him I didn’t believe in it. And if he had said he did, I wouldn’t have been able to take him very seriously.
He laughed. It was involuntary. I saw him reassess me, saw his first impression subtly shift its shape.
I’ve read a lot about the occult. It intrigued me.
He asked me why I had used the past tense. I told him it had intrigued me, but not anymore. I’d done my research and realized there was no empirical evidence in favor of the supernatural. He nodded, letting me know he understood.
He asked me for my impression of what had happened.
I think there was a lot of blood.
He agreed with me. He’d been in the gym. There was a lot of blood.
Any idea who might have done something like this?
His second mistake of the game. First, his choice of chair, and now he’d stumbled over the rules of our query protocol: no direct questioning. He stood up, remedying the first problem, but the second required that he skip a turn.
What happens to the bodies now?
My tone was curious, but even. No uptick of the register at the end of the sentence.
He told me the coroner was already there. She and her technicians would take the bodies back with them.
In an ambulance without its lights on or in a hearse?
Neither. The coroner had a van. That’s how they would transport the bodies.
All five of them?
He nodded.
I was done asking questions, but he didn’t notice because his cell phone began to buzz in his jacket pocket. He held up a finger, asking for me to give him a moment. He answered the phone with his name and rank. He didn’t speak after that—just listened. From the intensity of his expression, I could see the call was important.
I wondered if the person was telling him things about me. Bad things.
Finally, he hung up the phone.
I’m going to have Cathy take you home and wait with you until your mother gets there.
Cathy was the police officer’s name.
He walked to the door and opened it, conferred with Cathy out in the hall—and that’s when I began to suspect he was manipulating me. He’d realized what he was dealing with and he’d decided to let me think I was off the hook. He was showing me his throat, letting me think I had won—and then he would pounce.
My heart began to thump loudly. I laced my hands together even tighter, the too-long sleeves of my hoodie bunching up around my wrists. I hadn’t expected to meet my match. There was no way I could’ve known someone like him would get the case. This was an incredible stroke of luck.
I wanted to blurt it all out immediately. Tell him everything in excruciating detail right there in the Chemistry classroom… but I understood he was asking me to keep the game going a little longer. I would let him lay his trap—and things would play out to their natural conclusion.
If prolonging the end brought him joy then it brought me joy, too. I would go home and wait. When I couldn’t take the anticipation any longer, I’d ask my mom to take me to the police station where I would spill my guts.
Check mate, Detective Longfellow.
* * *
My mom was at the house when Cathy dropped me off. She ran out the door and, despite the blood, wrapped her arms around me, squeezing tight. There were tears in her eyes. She told me she loved me and held onto my shoulders until I told her she was hurting me.
I took a shower and watched the blood swirl down the drain. I left both doors open—one leading into my room, the other into my sister’s bedroom—so the mirrors wouldn’t steam up. I could see my reflection. I liked how my naked body looked, unformed and lobster-pink from the scalding water.
Wrapped up in a plush green towel, another towel wrapped around my wet hair, I stepped into my sister’s room. It was an alien landscape now that she wouldn’t be coming back to inhabit it anymore.
I walked over to the white wicker dresser and I looked at the photos taped to the mirror above it. My sister and her friends, laughing and joking around. All smiles and wide eyes.
I saw my mother had already been here. The bed was freshly made, the dirty clothes picked up and thrown into the hamper in the bathroom. Everything straightened up, so no one would know my sister had been a slob. I wanted to yank off the comforter and mess up the sheets. Go into her closet and rip her clothes off the hangers—throw them on the floor.
I went back into the bathroom and finished drying off. I dropped the towels into the hamper, my sister’s dirty clothing hidden underneath the thick green cotton fabric. Like grass over a grave.
I put on a button-down shirt and some jeans, let my wet hair air dry. I sat cross-legged on my bed—but through the Jack and Jill bathroom, I could see my sister’s room. I watched my mom come in and sit down on my sister’s bed.
She didn’t see me as I watched her cry. After a while, I slid off the bed and onto the floor. I reached under the bed and felt around until I found my journal.
I lay on my back in the soft carpet, the journal held above my head. I liked rereading all the things I’d written. I set it down on the floor and rolled over, sticking my head under the bed.
I found the book wedged between the mattress and the slats of the bedframe. I brought it into the light, ran my hand over its raised cover. It smelled like leather and sweat. I set it down on top of the journal. These were the things I would take with me to the police station.
My proof.
Part of me had hoped it would work; the other part knew it was an exercise in futility. But I had to try. I did everything the spell said: the prep, the ritual, the sacrifice. Nothing happened—even after all that blood.
My mom came into the room. Her eyes were red and puffy. She asked me if I was okay, but my affirmative answer barely registered. I offered to make us dinner and she nodded.
I went downstairs to the kitchen. I made macaroni and cheese from the box. No additions. I put the bowls on the table.
My mom picked at her pasta. We didn’t talk. I was hungry and ate all my food. When she excused herself to go to bed, I finished her bowl, too.
I tried to watch TV. To clear my mind, so I could hold out longer. But after an hour of staring at the screen and seeing nothing, I went back upstairs. I packed my journal and the book into a backpack. I went to my mom’s room to wake her up. She would have to drive me to the police station.
But she’d taken pills to sleep. I couldn’t wake her up.
I sat on the top of the stairs and tried to wait it out. Twenty minutes went by like a decade.
* * *
It took me an hour to walk to the police station. I stayed on well-lit streets and didn’t take any short cuts. I replayed the day’s events over and over in my head. I was sweaty when I reached my destination. I was so happy to arrive, I almost smiled.
Almost.
The sergeant at the front desk was unhelpful at first. He wanted to call my mom. But when I told him who I was, the name registered. He picked up the phone and asked for Detective Longfellow.
The sergeant kept a watchful eye on me as I moved to the waiting area. The couch I chose was so overstuffed that when I sat back, my feet didn’t touch the ground. I was there a long time—but I didn’t mind. I just held my backpack in my lap and waited. I figured someone was trying
to reach my mom. Another exercise in futility. I’d learned from experience she wouldn’t wake up until the next morning.
It was way past my bedtime, but I wasn’t tired. I was nervous and excited, anxious to talk.
We can’t seem to get a hold of your mother.
I must’ve closed my eyes for a minute because he was standing above me. I told him she’d taken some pills to sleep. Then I asked if I could speak to him in private. I could tell he was trying to suppress his annoyance—had I given in too easily?—but he nodded. He led me through the bullpen and toward a darkened conference room.
Can we go into one of the interrogation rooms instead?
He gave me a funny look.
Please?
We went to an interrogation room and he opened the door. We sat opposite each other across the width of a table—and it felt symbolic. Like we’d never left that Chemistry classroom at the high school.
What can I do for you?
He wanted to make me work. I appreciated that.
So I took a deep breath and told him everything.
I showed him my journal and the book. I explained how I stole the prescription pills from my mom’s medicine cabinet. Took them to the high school gym where my sister and her friends were practicing their dance routine for the Fall talent show. I told him how simple it was to convince them the pills were Ecstasy I’d gotten from an older kid at school. That my sister thought we were close and so she suspected nothing.
Then I told him how I dragged the girls’ unconscious bodies into a pentagram formation on the gym floor. How I stole a straight razor from my neighbor’s house and used it to slit their throats—one at a time—while they slept.
I told him how I walked out of the gym—but the invisibility spell didn’t work. The gym teacher, Mr. Stevens, saw me walking down the hall. I told him my sister and her friends were dead and he started running.
I thought I told the story well—even though I was shaking with excitement. But Detective Longfellow just scratched his head.
Frances, you didn’t kill your older sister and her friends. Sometimes when something traumatic happens to us, we go into what’s called ‘shock’. You saw Mr. Stevens—your next-door neighbor—come into the gym and do a very bad thing. You feel out of control and your imagination takes over, creates a narrative that gives you some power over the situation.
I stared at him. My mouth hung open. Was this a new twist in the game?
We have Mr. Stevens’ DNA on the murder weapon and his fingerprints. Only his fingerprints. We know he’s been abusing your sister—that he was in fear of her telling her friends about their…
I stopped listening. This was not a part of the game… because there was no game. The idiot thought someone else had committed my crime.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch him in the face. I wanted to cry.
…now I’m going to have someone take you home. But we’re going to make sure you get the attention you need. I remember what it was like to be ten…
He babbled on about me seeing a trauma therapist, someone who specialized in children. That with a lot of therapy, I would be okay.
But I wasn’t paying attention. My perspective had already begun to shift, my anger slowly boiling away.
In the morning, I would wake up and finally accept what I had always known about myself. I didn’t need witchcraft to make myself invisible; I was already equipped with the perfect disguise. In this skin, I could get away with anything.
HAINT ME TOO
Chesya Burke
Haints are sad sometimes. Sometimes lost or can’t find their way to wherever it is that they go when they ain’t supposed to be here. This one was angry, the girl knew. Black. The house cut-up like it meant to chew on those white folks and swallow them whole. The lights in the upstairs rooms flashed on and off, off and on again. The front door swung open and closed, back and forth. Somewhere in the depths of the house, something banged on the walls, the windows, the floors, like it craved attention, needing to be recognized though unseen. No one dared go inside, but the family was too proud to leave Myrtle House, so they sat on the front porch. All seven. Father, mother, three boys and two girls. The perfect Southern American Dream to the little Negro girl, Shea, watching from her three-room shack that sat on the land which her father tilled every day but which belonged to the family who now sat resolved on their elaborate veranda.
“Maybe we can get some peace t’night.” Shea’s father watched the house for a moment and then looked over to his wife. “As long as she’s here, they ain’t.” The large man, extra blackened by hours in the sun working the white man’s land, walked back into the house that was not his own, letting the screen door slam on its hinges.
“I hope she tear the thing down.” Her mother grabbed Shea’s hand, squeezed.
Shea looked back at the rattling house. “Who’s she, momma?”
“The haint that’s making all that fuss. She ain’t happy.”
“She dead?” Shea knew that a haint was a ghost, a dead person who didn’t know they wasn’t alive, or didn’t care much for the idea of being dead.
Her mother nodded, “She dead, alright. And not too happy about it, I ’spect.”
“How she die?”
Her mother dropped her hand and turned to look at her, “Like this!” The woman made a silly face with her eyes closed and tongue hanging out her mouth like a panting dog. She looked like the idea of every dead person Shea had imagined. That was the joke between them. Everyone died; always the same way. Dead was dead. Didn’t much matter how you got that way. So anytime word came that a family member had passed away, Shea would ask how and her mother or father would make the dead-face. Shea didn’t know why, but it always made her feel better, as if things weren’t so bad as long as her parents were there laughing at death. This time was no different. Shea giggled and followed her mother into the house.
Her father had been right, things were peaceful that night. Shea and her family slept undisturbed.
* * *
Shea always tried to sneak out to the pond when she was supposed to be doing work. She didn’t like work and she didn’t want to be in the house with those mean kids. They were always doing things to hurt her. She wanted to tell her parents, but she knew that it would just make them upset. They couldn’t do anything about it. That was just how it was.
Shea had been so lost in her own thoughts she had not seen the old woman sneak up behind her. The girl jumped when she realized she was not alone. As the woman’s dark skin came into view, she breathed a sigh of relief—at least it wasn’t Mrs. or one of her brats. Most people would not be this happy to see this old woman, they were afraid of her. Shea knew she was supposed to fear her, too, but really she just wanted to know how she had lived so long. No one bothered her, or made her work until her back was broken. If that meant people needed to be afraid of Shea one day, she was willing to do whatever it took. She wouldn’t dare tell momma or daddy that, though.
The old woman stood, staring at the girl.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Shea.” Now, she had never told this woman her name. She had never even really spoken to her outside of the polite hello that happened in passing. Her mother had told her to respect the woman, which was, as far as the girl could see, what everyone seemed to do.
“How do you know my name?”
The woman shrugged, walked closer. “You hear things.” She had never been this close to the woman before. She noticed that, for an old woman, she did not look that old, didn’t have many wrinkles. Her eyes were bright and searching and she didn’t act like an old woman at all. Plus, she never went to church and sometimes the preacher would devote whole sermons to her—sin. They said she was magic.
Shea didn’t know what to say, but she had so many questions. The woman smiled. She had never seen this in the woman either. “Why are they scared of you?”
She waved her hand, dismissively. “People fear a lot of things.”
&nb
sp; Well, that didn’t really answer anything, did it? But the woman did not wait for her to ask another silly question.
“There’s something in the air. Do you feel it? It’s electric.” Shea looked around as the woman rubbed her arms up and down as if she had caught a chill. “Tell me, girl, do you want to be free?”
“We are free.”
“Are you?”
Shea thought about it for a moment. They were, right? Maybe not as free as the white people they worked for, but they were not slaves either.
Then the woman asked, “Are you afraid?”
She was. So often, she was.
The woman looked off toward the big white house, nodded toward it. “Have you seen her?”
“Her?”
“You know. Her!”
She knew who the woman meant. Shea shook her head. She had not seen her, she had only seen the things that she could do when she got really, really mad.
“Is she free, you think?”
The girl had never really thought about it. Now that she could, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to put any thought into being trapped in the afterlife the preacher talked about so often, beholden to these people while dead in the same way that she was in life.
“No. She’s not free. I’m not either.”
“So, what should you do about it? What do you want?”
“I want to be you.”
The woman laughed, hard, loud. Negro people didn’t laugh like this, free or not. “I’m a witch, girl. Is that what you want?”
If it would make people afraid enough to leave her alone, “Yes,” she did want this.
“Then pray.” She nodded toward the house again. “To her.”
Blasphemy! “You only pray to God.”
The woman shook her head. Her silver hair looked so wrong on her young face. Everything about this woman was wrong. She knew this now. The woman got on her knees, met Shea’s eyes. “You pray to woman. To mother. To the blackest of all things. Those things are god, girl.”
Hex Life Page 23
