The Secret of the Sacred Four

by E J Elwin

  I heaped a spoonful of cereal into my mouth and busied myself with chewing.

  “He’s got to be around town somewhere,” my dad said. “Maybe a relative dropped in.”

  “But this is just so unlike Father Gabriel,” my mom said uneasily. “Thirty years he’s been at that church and he’s never once forgotten to open for an AA meeting or a Sunday service.”

  “Yeah, he’s a real hero,” I muttered.

  “What did you say?” my dad snapped.

  “Arthur,” my mom said sternly.

  “You know, maybe if you went to Mass like a good, God-fearing man, your life wouldn’t be a cesspool of sin,” my dad spat, his voice dripping with contempt. “It’s only because of your mother that I don’t drag you over there by your hair every Sunday.”

  “Robert!” my mom breathed, appalled.

  “I’m sure Father Gabriel would love to have me in the confession booth,” I said, my temper rising. “Oh wait, I’m not his type, I’m too old!”

  “Arthur!” my mom shouted.

  “You should beg the Lord for forgiveness!” my dad boomed, in that foreboding, self-important tone that I remembered from Father Gabriel’s sermons. “Then maybe you won’t go the same way as your little faggot friend—”

  I rose from my seat, knocking my chair backward, my spoon rattling in the cereal bowl. My dad tossed his paper aside and stood up too. We faced each other across the kitchen table.

  “That boy is burning in Hell right now,” he said quietly, his voice full of malice. “Maybe you want to join him.”

  “Robert—” my mom began, horrified, but I cut across her.

  “I’ve already been to hell,” I said, full of fury. “It’s here with you. And with Father Gabriel.”

  There was dead silence. My mom stopped trying to intervene and only stood there looking from one to the other of us in shock.

  “I have to go to school,” I said coldly. Before either of them could say anything else, I snatched up my backpack, bolted from the table, and headed out the front door. I tore along the path that I usually took to school before veering off in the direction of Harriet’s house.

  **

  I had never been much of a tea drinker before but Harriet’s was delicious. It was her own special blend for mornings— Bewitching Breakfast Blend, she called it.

  “Wakes you up without any jitters,” she said, “and absolutely vanquishes hangovers.”

  We were back in her living room, holding steaming mugs. She sat in her armchair while Connor and I sat on the couch. They sipped their tea as they watched me recount the confrontation with my parents, both the one from that morning and the previous night.

  “I have a simple solution for that,” said Harriet.

  “A simple solution for what?” I asked.

  “For the phone calls from your school,” she said. “If you don’t intend to go back there, I can at least block the calls to your parents about your absences.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Sure! Do you have anything from your school? Something that was issued to you?”

  I rummaged through my backpack and pulled out a cheap pen with the school’s seal on it.

  “Perfect,” said Harriet. “I’ll be back.” She rose from her chair and went to the kitchen.

  “So you really don’t want to go back to school?” asked Connor.

  “No,” I said. “Everything feels different now. It doesn’t feel like my path anymore.”

  “I don’t know if I should go back either,” he said. “Even with a new identity. But then…”

  “But then what?” I asked.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Got it,” Harriet said, coming back into the room. She held up the pen from Wineville High. She had tied a piece of ordinary-looking blue ribbon around it, the kind used in gift wrapping. She pointed two fingers at the fireplace, started a crackling fire, then closed her eyes.

  “No longer in their thrall

  No longer may they call

  A student they hoped to teach

  His parents now out of reach.”

  She tossed the pen with its blue bow into the crackling flames. “There,” she said, returning to her seat. “Now your parents won’t get any calls from the school.”

  “Cool, thank you, Harriet.”

  “Now,” she said, “tell me what else your mother said about Father Gabriel.”

  “Her friend said that he didn’t show up at the church when he was supposed to,” I said, “that no one had heard from him, and that he’s not answering his phone or his door.”

  “And he never will again,” said Harriet smirking, lifting her mug to her lips and sipping from it in an exaggeratedly genteel manner, complete with raised pinky.

  “You aren’t worried that people will find out what happened to him?” asked Connor.

  “Not at all. There’ll be an investigation, but they have nothing to go on. And honey,” she smiled at Connor, “the last place they’re going to think to look is the bottom of your grave.”

  After a few cups of tea, Connor went off to take a bath. That morning in my bedroom at home, I had emptied my backpack of school books and filled it instead with clothes. Connor and I were nearly the same size and I figured he didn’t want to be in his burial outfit much longer.

  “Oh thank you!” he said, taking the clothes I handed him. “I smell like death, don’t I?”

  “Aw geez,” I said, while Harriet sputtered into her tea.

  **

  We spent the afternoon receiving a thrilling lesson in witchcraft from Harriet. She brought out her rusty old cauldron from its corner in the kitchen and set it in the center of the living room. She had filled it nearly to the top with plain, ordinary water. Next to it, she arranged a series of small wooden bowls filled with different-colored powders, and a stack of magazines like the kind found in a hairdresser’s salon. The three of us sat around the cauldron.

  “I’m going to give you both an idea of how I’ll create Connor’s disguise,” she said.

  Connor and I watched her excitedly, eager to see her perform more spells.

  “A complete and long-lasting disguise,” she said, “like the one we want for Connor, is a bit of a process. It takes about a month, or the time between one full moon and another. When it’s done, a small octagonal crystal, called a Concealment Crystal, forms inside the cauldron, which you wear securely around your neck whenever you want to transform into the disguise. However, we can create temporary partial disguises using some simple ingredients and some flame.”

  She reached into one of the wooden bowls, took a pinch of blue powder, and threw it into the cauldron. Connor and I jumped in surprise as bright blue flames burst from the cauldron, rising about a foot into the air before settling into a low-burning fire on the surface of the water. It burned unaided, requiring no stoking or kindling besides the clean water beneath it.

  “These temporary disguises,” Harriet went on, “will last as long as we keep this fire burning, which can be up to a few hours before it needs another boost.”

  She reached into another one of the bowls and took a pinch of a bright yellow powder.

  “Okay,” she said, closing her eyes. “Let’s start small…”

  She threw the powder into the flames, which briefly flashed bright yellow before turning back to blue. She opened her eyes, looked at me and Connor sitting across from her, and smiled.

  “Cute,” she said appreciatively.

  “What?” Connor and I said. We turned to look at each other and both jumped in surprise.

  “You’re blond!” Connor exclaimed, looking up at my hair in astonishment.

  “And you’re— not!” Connor’s bright blond hair had changed to a chocolate brown that looked very much like my own hair color. I looked around at Harriet who handed me a mirror. “Oh my—” My hair had changed into the exact shade of Connor’s blond.

  “You know, that really suits you,” he said, ruffling my bewitched b
lond hair.

  “I don’t know about that, but that brown really suits you.” I handed him the mirror and watched him examine his new dark hair. “But any color would look good on you.”

  “Aww,” he said, nudging me playfully.

  Harriet took another pinch of yellow powder and tossed it into the cauldron, which brought back our real hair. Then she reached for the stack of magazines.

  “These are going to be a bit different,” she said. “Your hair will change but also your face. It won’t match the face you choose precisely, as we’d need some of the person’s blood for that; in other words, you won’t become the person, you’ll just take on a striking similarity.”

  “Does it—?” Connor began.

  “Hurt?” Harriet finished his sentence. “Not at all. It just feels a little strange. Have a look through these,” she handed me and Connor each a magazine, “and find a look that you like…”

  Connor opened his magazine, an issue of Vogue that was a few years old, and rifled eagerly through the pages. I looked down at my own magazine, an old issue of Glamour. Across from us, Harriet flicked through the pages of Vanity Fair.

  “When you’ve picked out a look, tear out only the image of the face from the neck up, nothing else, and hand it to me,” said Harriet.

  When Connor and I had both picked a look, we tore out the images and handed them to Harriet, who had her own ready in her hand.

  “Connor first?” she asked.

  Connor nodded enthusiastically. Harriet glanced at the face he had chosen, then folded the slip of paper over and over until it was a tiny square, before dropping it into the blue flames.

  The effect was instantaneous. Connor’s hair changed color once again, this time to a light brown, then formed itself into a different hairstyle. His features shifted and changed shape, his eyes becoming a little smaller, his jaw a little broader… Seconds later, my mouth fell open as I saw the very spitting image of James Dean sitting next to me. I was speechless as I handed Connor the mirror.

  “Whoa!” he shouted, looking at his reflection. “I look just like him! Well, almost…”

  “Almost” was the most accurate way of putting it. Even though he looked extraordinarily like James Dean— the hair, the nose, the lips, the cheekbones— he looked more like a grandson rather than a clone of the man himself. Still, the similarity was incredible and it was truly something to hear Connor’s voice coming out of this James Dean lookalike face.

  “Very good choice,” said Harriet. “Arthur, are you ready?”

  I handed her the face I’d chosen and watched her fold it into the smallest square she could before dropping it into the blue flames.

  My face felt like it was turned into clay. Invisible fingers pushed and poked at it, molding it like a sculpture into something different. I felt my normally short hair growing at the back of my neck. After a few seconds, the poking and shaping ended.

  “Nice!” Connor exclaimed.

  I looked into the mirror and my heart fluttered in amazement as I saw David Bowie looking back at me— or at least, me as a very good lookalike. I had chosen the iconic picture of Bowie from his Aladdin Sane album cover. My hair had turned the same rich red color and styled itself to look just like his. The outlines of my face had become more defined, almost gaunt, as Bowie’s had been. Most strikingly of all, the bright red and blue lightning bolt stretched boldly across my face, starting at my forehead and going across my right eye and over my cheek.

  “You would,” said Connor, playfully batting my face.

  I looked up at Harriet. “You must have killer Halloween costumes.”

  “I’ve had some good ones,” she said, with a wink. “Bowie looks great on you.”

  I suddenly realized why I had never seen Harriet around town in the years since I first saw her. She must have always gone out under cover of some magical disguise.

  “Now yours!” Connor said to Harriet.

  She smiled and folded her image into a tiny square, then tossed it into the flames.

  Her gray hair turned dark brown and grew past her shoulders and almost to her waist, becoming silky and shiny in the process. Her features shifted; her eyes changed shape and went from bright blue to green, her skin smoothed itself out a great deal, her lips became fuller, and within seconds, there before us was the unmistakable, eye-catching beauty of Angelina Jolie.

  Connor’s James Dean jaw dropped in unabashed astonishment, and I couldn’t help but laugh. His reactions were becoming one of my favorite things about this experience.

  “That—” said Connor, leaning in for a closer look at Harriet’s face, “is amazing.”

  “It really is,” I agreed.

  Harriet flicked back her silky dark brown hair. “Who doesn’t want to be a sultry, beautiful movie star every now and then?”

  James Dean nodded.

  We tried a number of other looks from the different magazines, mostly the faces of easily recognizable people like famous actors and musicians. I got to see my hair in every color of the rainbow and in what felt like every hairstyle imaginable. David Bowie remained my favorite of my own disguises but another highlight was Albert Einstein, in which it took a full five minutes to get Connor to settle down from laughing. His own Elvis Presley transformation was highly entertaining as we discovered he could do an excellent impression to accompany his disguise.

  Harriet eventually blew us away by finding a picture in one of the fashion magazines of a model posing in a Rapunzel themed photo shoot, sporting a massive train of a blonde wig no less than ten feet long. We watched the blonde hair burst from her head, cascade down her shoulders, then settle all around her like a giant python made of blonde hair, before giving her a round of applause.

  It was some of the most fun I ever had in my life.

  **

  “So how was school, Arthur?”

  I sat at the dinner table with my parents. I had managed to get back home with about twenty minutes to spare before they both arrived from work. With no calls about truancy thanks to Harriet’s little spell, I had been back at school all day as far as they knew.

  “Good,” I said, with my best fake smile.

  The confrontation from that morning hung heavy in the air. My dad looked down at his spaghetti and anywhere but at me. I didn’t mind. I didn’t want to look at him either. My mom, ever the peacekeeper, was trying desperately to keep a dialogue going. It was only at her borderline tearful insistence that my dad and I had agreed to sit in each other’s presence.

  “Did you learn anything?” she asked.

  I cringed at the feeble question. “Quite a bit,” I said. “A little about Einstein.”

  “Oh, really? What did—?” She was interrupted by a loud knock at the front door. “Who could that be?” she asked, looking at my dad.

  “If it’s Abigail, tell her now’s not a good time,” he said irritably.

  My mom rose from the table and went to get the door while the most awkward of silences ensued between me and my dad. I heard the front door open.

  “Sheriff Murphy,” my mom said. “What are you doing here?”

  I froze, forkful of spaghetti midway to my mouth.

  “The sheriff?” my dad muttered, before getting up and walking out to the living room.

  My heart thumped. This was about Father Gabriel, I just knew it. I closed my eyes, wishing for it to be something else that had nothing to do with me. Then the sheriff spoke.

  “Is your son home?”

  CHAPTER 4

  The Sheriff

  I sat there, frozen in fear. The police. How did they know? What did they know? How could they have possibly linked me to Father Gabriel’s disappearance? It couldn’t be anything else. No sheriff had ever come to our house.

  “Arthur, could you come in here for a minute?” my mom called.

  I had to stay calm. It was the only way to get through this. I thought of Connor, summoned all my courage, and walked into the living room. “Hi,” I said, spotting the sheri
ff.

  Sheriff Murphy had been on the police force for over twenty years. Growing up, I’d only ever seen him around town but had never actually spoken to him. He was tall and thickset, with the bulging belly of a married man with kids and a fondness for beer. He had closely cropped blond hair that was thinning at the top. He’d brought along one of his deputies, another family man I recognized from around town but had never spoken to. He was younger and fitter than the sheriff and had black hair that he wore in a crew cut.

  “Good evening, Arthur,” said Sheriff Murphy. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

  He spoke to me in that tone that parents use with their kids when they want to seem nice but are really about to dole out punishment. My dad had used it many times when I was little. The sheriff knew something. Yet, despite my rising panic, I felt annoyed at being told to take a seat in my own house.

  I walked to one of the two reclining armchairs across from the couch and sat down. My mom sat in the other one, looking uneasily from the sheriff to me. My dad stood by the chair next to her, his brow furrowed, impatient to find out what was going on.

  My mom cleared her throat. “So what’s this about, Sheriff?”

  “Well, Arthur,” the sheriff addressed me, ignoring her, “have you heard about what’s been going on with Father Gabriel? The priest at St. Paul’s?”

  “Um, yeah,” I said, trying to sound as casual as I could. “One of my mom’s friends from the church texted her about it. He didn’t show up to open the church yesterday, right?”

  “Not just that, Arthur,” said Sheriff Murphy. I hated the way he kept saying my name. “No one has seen him. No can get ahold of him. Friends went in to his house using a hide-a-key, and it looks like he hasn’t been there for a few days.”

  “Um… okay?” I said.

  “This is a man who has never failed to open the church in thirty years, who has barely even left town for more than a few days at a time, and certainly never without telling anybody.”

  Before I could respond, my mom cut in. “Sheriff, I don’t see what this has to do with Arthur,” she said uncomfortably.