An Old Witches Tale

by Agnes Lester Brown

  Chapter Two

  Fae was irritated.

  She stomped down the dusty wooden staircase, her dream catcher earrings swinging wildly as she descended into the basement of the Shady Pastures building. Her roommates, Dinah and Blaise, followed close behind her.

  “Dinah, I still can’t believe you dropped your hat, and then were stupid enough to leave it behind in the reception area last night for Claptrap to find.” As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she flicked on a switch, and a single lightbulb on the ceiling bathed the windowless room in a yellow light. It illuminated the cramped space that served as the headquarters for the Potion Portal, the secret magic factory where the three witches crafted spells, potions and witch paraphernalia, right under the noses and the sharp eyes of the old age home staff and its docile residents. They’d been at it for almost two years now and had slowly become legendary for their products among the witches and sorcerers in surrounding towns.

  “Fae, for the hundredth time, I’m sorry it happened, okay? I couldn’t help it. The bag was just too heavy for me,” the petite Dinah protested. “It must’ve spilled out of my bag when we came rushing through the front door after our delivery. I promise, it won’t happen again. Besides, it happened two nights ago already, and you haven’t let up since. When are you going to let it go and move on?”

  Fae harrumphed. “We better be extra careful when doing deliveries at night from now on. Claptrap has had a strong suspicion we’re up to no good for a while now. Did you see the way he glares at us in the dining room? If he happens to find anything weird lying around and link it to us, we’ll get ourselves banned from Shady Pastures for life. And if we’re kicked out, there’s no way I’m moving in with my kids, I tell ya.”

  “At least we made good money off those youngsters last night.” Blaise giggled as she put on her apron and potion-proof plastic gloves. “I hope they treat those wands I made with respect, and read the instructions.”

  The basement room was an old laundry that had been out of service and abandoned for many years. The women had happened upon the space after getting lost while wandering around an abandoned wing of the building on a boring Sunday afternoon. Apart from an ancient ironing machine and a row of laundry baskets that the witches now used to store herbs and other potion ingredients, the room had been bare when they’d discovered it. In the beginning, it had been used for occasional potion experiments, but over time it gradually evolved into a lucrative side hustle that helped fund the witches’ family gifts at Christmas time.

  Inside the room, bunches of dried herbs, twigs and leaves hanging from the ceiling and walls gave the air a pleasantly woody, perfumed aroma. Following a small fire six months before, when a candle had accidentally fallen on a pile of dried ingredients, the smoke from the herbs had wafted into the air conditioning. For the following week, the Shady Pastures residents had been particularly calm and peaceful, and the air in their rooms had smelled remarkably fragrant and fresh.

  Two well-worn wooden tables cluttered with scales, cutting instruments, wax-dripped candelabras, and open books with coffee-stained pages stood in the center of the room. Two small cauldrons and a number of blackened kettles stood simmering on an old gas stove. Half the wall space opposite the tables was lined with bookshelves packed with leather-bound spell books, magic instruction manuals, and potion recipe books, many dating back several centuries. A tiny storage room lined with shelves displayed row upon row of bottles of all shapes and sizes, containing anything from dark, opaque liquids, some with objects floating in them, to silver jewelry parts and yellow, purple and red powders. A section of the storeroom was hidden behind a black velvet curtain—this was the spell- and wand-testing area. A handwritten sign in red ink attached to the curtain read: “Wear protective clothing and spray with spell repellant before entering.”

  “I’m in desperate need of something to get me going this morning,” Blaise said and filled her cup from a steaming pot of coffee brewing on the stove. “Anyone else want a cup, too?”

  “I’ll have one, and add a shot of bourbon, please,” Fae said and held out a large white mug with an inscription on the side. “I need something to steady my nerves after last night,” she added. She smiled and pointed at the mug when she saw Blaise’s curious look. “I got this new one on Saturday, when Hazel and the kids visited all the way from Fennelmoore. Look, it says ‘World’s Most Magical Granny’ on the side. Isn’t that cute?”

  “Is there hot water?” Dinah asked, coming around the table with a dainty cup and saucer in one hand and a bone china teapot in the other. “I’ll stick to my usual brew of mint and cinnamon tea.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I had any use for one of these,” Blaise sighed while holding up a vial she’d filled with love elixir. She cackled a mischievous laugh. “But, boy, did it help me date a few studs in my younger days.”

  “Last time I used a spell in bed was to stop Randolph from snoring,” Fae said and made a face. “I hadn’t slept a wink for more than a week, and I simply had to do something or go mad.”

  “Have respect for the dead, especially when he is… was your husband, Fae,” Dinah chastised her. “You never know when you might need his help.”

  “I see we have a new order that arrived this morning, for three new besoms,” Blaise said, putting on her reading glasses to decipher a text message on the stamp-sized screen of her cell phone. “Apparently three competing witches took a tumble and crashed in the annual Southwand Broom Race. All three replacements need to be cut from a willow tree with extra birch twig bristles, and dunked in cabal bean oil, so next year’s race should be a humdinger.”

  “As long as we charge for the customizing,” Fae said. “Too many customers think because we’re in an old age home, they can—”

  The next moment, a loud, swooshing noise coming from above the ceiling interrupted Fae. It sounded like someone was dragging a bag over a metal surface. Then it crescendoed in an earsplitting crash in a corner of the room where the witches had stockpiled several bags of bay leaves. A thick cloud of white dust instantly filled the room, and then everything went dead quiet for a few seconds.

  Wheezing and coughing, the witches backed off into the storeroom in an attempt to get out of the way of the choking dust. Crouching together in a corner, Fae rubbed her watery eyes and looked at Dinah and Blaise’s ashen faces, covered in a layer of dust.

  “Anyone hurt?” she wheezed as she wiped the dust from her face. “Are we all in one piece?” When everyone nodded, she began to giggle, more out of shock than mirth. The other two started chuckling too, pointing at each other’s powdered faces. They looked like three clowns in the middle of a makeup session.

  Their laughter was cut short as they peeked into the workspace outside the storeroom. “Looks like something fell through the ceiling,” Fae said, peering through the settling dust and pointing up. “You guys stay here, I’ll take a look. Blaise, did you lock the basement door with magic?”

  Blaise nodded. The padlock on the door to the passage that led down the staircase was rusted closed, so they had to use a spell to open and close it each time they came to the basement. “These walls are so thick, it’s unlikely anyone heard anything,” she said. “But what fell through the ceiling? It must be something quite heavy, judging by the racket it kicked up.”

  Fae edged step by step out of the storeroom, keeping an eye on the hole in the ceiling in case another object came crashing down. She reached the gaping hole and looked up into the cavity.

  “Looks like an old chimney up there,” Fae called back to the others, but then she corrected herself. “No, it’s lined with something like stainless steel, and it runs at an angle. Could be an old laundry chute. At some point, after they built the new laundry, they must’ve closed it up. I doubt anyone even remembers that it once existed.”

  Still not completely convinced the coast was clear, Dinah and Blaise slowly made their way to where Fae was standing, still gazing up into the hole.


  “It looks like the inside of a long-forgotten tomb,” Dinah said, then glanced around the room, which looked like a snow-driven fairy-tale landscape. “This is going to take weeks to clean. And how am I going to find my bottle of blood pressure pills in this mess?”

  “Just as well they’re gone,” Fae said. “I told you long ago to dump those pills and use a natural remedy instead.”

  “Wait! Don’t move!” Blaise’s voice was urgent, in sharp contrast to her normally laid-back drawl. Everyone stopped and looked to where Blaise was pointing. “There’s something lying there. It looks like… is that a human body over there?” A motionless shape lay partially obscured among the bags of bay leaves. Most of the bags had burst open on impact, and bay leaves and debris from the ceiling covered most of it.

  Fae took a long-stemmed wooden spoon used to stir the cauldrons and carefully brushed the leaves and pieces of ceiling board to one side. A collective gasp arose as she did so. Dinah and Blaise stumbled back a step as they held on to each other, shock written on their faces.

  Fae wiped more debris to one side, and as she did so, the back of a man’s head appeared. Beside it lay a dusty blue-and-white baseball cap.

  “I know who you guys are thinking this is, and unfortunately you’re right,” Fae said solemnly. All three were silent for a few moments before she continued. “There’s only one person who wears a baseball cap like that around here, and that’s our good friend Joe Humberton.”

  “I… I can’t believe this is happening. Please tell me he’s alive,” Dinah whimpered, removing her glasses and wiping away the tears that were streaming down her face through the layer of dust on her cheeks.

  “Blaise, you’re the expert on this one,” Fae said and stood to one side. She and Dinah knew Blaise had spent forty years working as a nurse in hospitals while honing her witch skills after-hours. “Can you check his pulse to see if he’s still alive?”

  Blaise shook her head and retreated a few more steps. “No way am I touching him without gloves. Who knows what happened to him? We can try turning him around with a broomstick to see if he’s still breathing, but—”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Blaise, don’t be such a wimp. He’s not going to bite you,” Fae snapped, but Blaise refused to be persuaded.

  Fae sighed and looked at Dinah. “Since Blaise is being such a sissy, Dinah, can you please check to see if he’s dead?”

  For a moment Dinah was flustered, and then she managed a weak smile. “Of course, I completely forgot. Let me tune in and see.” She put her glasses back on, then leaned forward and peered intently at Joe’s torso while the others watched in silence. Her voice was dreamy when next she spoke, as if she was in a trance.

  “I don’t see any colors inside him. If he was alive, I’d see pulsating red in the area around his heart. His lungs would be a healthy blue, and he’d have a halo around his head.” She paused. “I can’t see anything but black and grey. He’s got no hues at all. All life energy has left his body.” Her voice faded with the last sentence, and Fae and Blaise had to strain their ears to hear her.

  “Remember, Joe came to our table at breakfast yesterday,” Blaise said. “He looked a bit pale, I thought. Do you guys think something was bothering him?” The other two nodded. They’d also noticed he hadn’t been his normal chirpy self. But when Blaise had asked if anything was the matter, he’d merely shaken his head. That was the last time they’d seen him alive.

  Dinah grappled at her head. “What do we do next? If we tell anyone there’s a body down here, it’ll be the end of the Potion Portal, and Claptrap will revel in the prospect of having us troublemakers thrown out. This is the end of us. We’re ruined.”

  Fae and Blaise huddled around her. “Don’t worry, sweetie, we’re going to find a way to get through this,” Fae consoled her. “Witches are never stumped when stuff like this happens to them. We always have a plan to put things right. Now, calm down, and let’s think this through.” She gave Dinah a peck on her forehead.

  “Anyway, thanks for confirming that Joe’s no more, Dinah, honey,” Blaise said, relieved that she was off the hook and had gotten out of poking around Joe. “What would we do without those astral glasses of yours?”

  “They give me aural vision, not astral,” Dinah corrected her. “I inherited them from my grandmother. Legend has it she got them from her great-grandfather, a powerful Celtic sorcerer who came to America from Ireland.”

  “We’re going to have to find some way of moving the body,” Blaise said. She looked around the room. “A cart of some sort? We don’t have a leftover winch lying around, do we?”

  Fae rolled her eyes. “I know you’re ever the practical one, Blaise, but last time I looked, this was a potion factory, not a car repair shop.”

  Blaise put her chin in the air. “Well, then, O Wise One, why don’t we dig a hole and bury him right here? Or do you have any better ideas?”

  “Shush, I’m trying to think.” Fae closed her eyes, frowned and pressed her fingers down on her temples.

  “Well, you did say this was a potion factory and not a toolshed,” Dinah said, screwing up her eyebrows. “So maybe we could—”

  Fae clicked her fingers. “Clever girl. Yes, of course, why didn’t I think of that? If we’re in the potion and spell business, then why don’t we use magic to—”

  “Make him disappear into thin air?” Blaise sneered. “On what television police drama did you see that happen? Or was it on the cartoon channel?”

  Fae shook her head and held up her hand. “No, wait, stay with me here. Blaise, didn’t you once come up with a levitation spell for a client who needed to get her cat down from a tree without a ladder? Maybe we can dig it up and use it to lift Joe up, and get him out of here.”

  “I remember that. We never had any bad feedback from her, so it must’ve worked. But I doubt whether it’ll be strong enough to lift a hundred and twenty pounds,” Blaise said and folded her arms.

  “Well, unless you have a better idea, that’s our only plan at the moment,” Fae said and walked over to the bookshelves. She dragged a small stepladder closer. Climbing up until she stood on the top rung of the ladder, she ran her fingers over the bookend labels, murmuring to herself. “Let’s see, it should be under R for raise. Or was it L for levitation or lifting?”

  “I think I put it under C for cat,” Blaise said from below. “It made sense to me at the time.”

  Fae looked at her over her reading glasses. “Well done, Blaise. What would we do without your lexiconic skills?” She stretched and stood on her toes, carefully removing a thick volume marked Spells: A–E from the shelf. She passed it to Blaise, who blew the dust off the cover and placed it on the table.

  “Right, let’s see now,” Fae said and began paging through the spell book. Each page was filled with a collage of handwritten entries, margin notes, doodles and sketches.

  “Go back one chapter,” Blaise said after Fae had browsed through half the book. “I think I saw what we’re looking for.”

  All three huddled over the spell book. “Yes, that’s it.” Blaise pointed to an entry. “I remember crafting that spell, but it was meant to lift a female cat owner, not a six-foot-tall fifty-something man.”

  Ignoring Blaise, Fae recited the spell softly several times. Then she stood up firmly. “Alright, everyone got it? Let’s go see if it works.”

  “I have a brilliant idea where we can put him,” Dinah said. “How about on that garden bench near the duck pond? He always loved to sit there and watch the sun set. It’ll be a treat for him to spend his last few hours there.”

  “Dinah, the man’s dead, gone, kaput,” Fae said. “Besides, I don’t think we’d be able to hold him up in the air as long as it will take to get him out across the lawn, and chances are he’ll be seen gliding his way there, a few feet off the ground.” She paused. “Room Fifty-Four next to ours is vacant. Let’s put him there until we can think up a plan to bury him.”

  They decided to wait an hour, until morni
ng teatime, when all the residents and staff would be gathered in the entertainment room. Mr. Drake’s strict instructions were that no one was to be in their rooms during teatime, and his iron-fisted rule of Shady Pastures allowed no exceptions. Therefore, the passage where rooms 40 to 55 was located would be deserted, and—hopefully—no one would see a body floating past their room.

  They gathered in a circle around Joe’s body. “I’ll say the spell, since it was my invention,” Blaise said, clearing her throat and closing her eyes. The room was dead quiet for a moment, and then she began chanting the levitation spell in a deep, solemn voice.

  Minum…

  …Vaporius…

  …Unanimus…

  Blaise’s voice was muted by the thick layer of dust that covered everything in the room. Fae couldn’t help thinking Blaise’s incantation sounded like a car that had trouble starting on an icy morning.

  Joe’s body twitched but remained where it had landed.

  “Shouldn’t he have levitated already?” Dinah whispered after the body had stayed put for more than a minute. “Blaise, are you sure you used the right spell? Does it have a ‘best before’ date?”

  Blaise fetched the spell book from the table and checked the spell she’d cast. “It’s the right one, yes. But like I said, it might not work for what we have here.”

  “Well, you’re the spell expert, Blaise. Better put your thinking cap on and come up with a solution. There’s a lot at stake here.” Fae was getting impatient with their lack of progress.

  “Let’s try splitting the spell between us, so we can put more energy into it,” Blaise said. “I’ll say the first part, then you follow, Dinah, and Fae, you say the last bit.” She clenched her jaw. “Come on, let’s work together. We can do this.”

  They gathered around once more, holding hands this time.

  Minum…