by E J Elwin
“That’s the last thing you need to worry about,” she said, “especially tonight.”
“Thank you,” I said, as I picked up the drink.
“Cheers,” she said, clinking her glass against mine.
I raised the glass and drank as Phil Collins’s famous drum break erupted from the jukebox and filled the room. The whiskey had an edge of cinnamon which added to the burn. It was damn good. I looked around at the other patrons and saw a large man wearing a trucker hat and 1970s-style aviator eyeglasses. He was watching me but as soon as I noticed, his eyes flicked away. He exuded a Father Gabriel-ish vibe, and I got the unexplainable feeling that he was a bad man.
“Let’s go sit down, shall we?” said Jessica, as though she could sense my discomfort.
I nodded gratefully and we walked across the room to one of the red vinyl booths.
Jessica sipped her drink thoughtfully. “This is a very strange place for a teenage girl to be.”
“Are we sure the spell worked?” I asked. “I can’t imagine why they’d want to come here.” I glanced over at the bar and saw the man in the trucker hat watching me again, his mouth full of bar nuts. He picked them one by one from the bowl as he stared at me.
“It definitely worked, it always does,” said Jessica. “This is the place.”
I sipped my whiskey as “In the Air Tonight” faded away and was replaced by the distinctive guitar riff of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch.” I looked around at the jukebox, curious to see which one of these morose men had chosen the song, and saw, to my great surprise, two girls standing there.
They stood with their backs to us, flipping through the song choices in the jukebox. They were both made up for a night out. The one on the right had long brown hair hanging in loose waves around her shoulders. She wore a dark purple top, blue jeans, and high-heeled black boots. Her friend, in contrast, had bright blonde hair tied back with a baby-blue bow headband. She wore a sundress that was the same shade of baby blue but was spotted with white polka dots. It came down past her knees and flared out like a 1950s poodle skirt, and she wore a fuzzy white shrug over it. The darkest color in her outfit came from the royal blue kitten heels she wore.
“That’s them!” Jessica whispered. “They must have been in the bathroom, like you said!”
There was indeed a small hallway next to the jukebox that led off to the bathrooms. I watched the girls flip through the songs, and caught a glimpse of their profiles. I had the weirdest feeling that I knew them already. They weren’t familiar by sight— very few people at my high school in Wineville dressed as nicely— but there was something there that I recognized. It was like seeing relatives I had met at a family reunion a long time ago but couldn’t quite remember.
“They’re so cute!” said Jessica. “I wonder which one of them it is…”
I looked at her, then back at the girls. “It’s both of them,” I said. “They’re both witches.”
Jessica looked at me in surprise and I was equally shocked to hear the words come out of my mouth. “How do you know that?” she asked in astonishment.
“I don’t… know,” I said.
I didn’t know how I knew it but I did. The knowledge dropped suddenly into my head, and I was as certain of it as I was of the answer to two plus two. Both of those girls were members of the Sacred Four, though which ones exactly— The Hanged, The Drowned, or The Stoned— I wasn’t sure.
“I’ll go ask them to join us!” said Jessica.
Before I could say anything else, she was out of her seat and striding across the room toward the jukebox. I watched her tap one of the girls on the shoulder, then they both turned around. She said something to them that I couldn’t hear and then they both looked over at me in the red booth. I smiled nervously and raised a hand in greeting. Then they began to walk toward me. I took a sip of my cinnamon whiskey, then looked up as they approached.
“Girls, this is Arthur,” said Jessica.
“Hi, I’m Sylvie,” said the girl with brown hair, putting out a hand.
She had hazel eyes and a kind smile.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said.
The moment I took her hand, all the light in the room flickered as if someone were playing with the light switches. Everyone looked up at the metal lamps as they plunged the room into bursts of darkness. Even the Christmas lights behind the bar and the purple LEDs on the jukebox stuttered and flashed. In the same instant, I felt a charge run up my arm from where I held Sylvie’s hand. I thought of those handheld prank devices that released an electric shock during a handshake. They were popular when I was little, and I’d gotten shocked a total of two times before developing an aversion to shaking people’s hands. This handshake also felt like an electric shock, except there was no pain— only power.
Sylvie met my gaze and I thought I saw a flash of the same recognition I felt for her. She looked around the room as the lights returned to normal. “That was weird,” she said.
I glanced at Jessica and saw the excitement in her eyes.
“This is Lizzie,” said Sylvie, indicating her blonde friend.
“Hi,” said Lizzie with a soft smile, holding out her hand. She had brilliant blue eyes, the color of the sky on cloudless days. I glanced at Jessica again before I took Lizzie’s hand.
This time, the lights didn’t flicker. Instead, the mellow sound of “Season of the Witch” vanished suddenly and was replaced by a booming rock and roll guitar that came out twice as loud. At the same time, there was the sound of shattering glass from the bar.
Lizzie, Sylvie, Jessica and I turned around. The man with wispy white hair who had been staring into his dark-colored drink now sat there dripping wet and bewildered, his cocktail glass in shards on the bar. The other men looked baffled at the sight of him and at the row of beer taps across from him behind the bar, all four of which were suddenly pouring beer out onto the floor.
“What the—?” The poor bartender in his white clothes hurried to the taps and struggled to turn them off, soaking himself in the process. He looked around at the man dripping in his own cocktail. “Harold, what the hell are you doing?” he shouted angrily over the loud rock song now blaring from the jukebox, which I recognized as Joan Jett’s “Love Is Pain”.
“I didn’t do anything!” the man said indignantly.
“It’s true, he didn’t,” said another man. “There’s something wrong with your taps, Ed.”
The bartender, Ed, muttered something about drunks and then hurried around from behind the bar to the jukebox to turn down the music.
“What the hell is going on?” asked Sylvie, bemused.
“Old jukebox and cheap cocktail glasses?” suggested Jessica brightly. “Speaking of, can I get you girls some drinks?”
“Oh, that’s okay—” Lizzie began but was cut off.
“That’d be great, thank you!” said Sylvie. “Beer is fine.”
Jessica smiled and went off to the bar. Ed the bartender looked up from dabbing at his beer-soaked clothes, his expression instantly brightening as he saw her approaching.
Sylvie and Lizzie sat in the red vinyl seat opposite me.
“I like your jacket,” said Sylvie.
“Thank you,” I said with a smile.
“Where’d you get it?” she asked.
“I, uh, ordered it off a magazine.”
“And what brings you to this dive?” she asked.
I hesitated, wondering if I shouldn’t just blurt out the whole truth. What if the Brotherhood suddenly tracked us down while we were wasting time with pleasantries? I decided that Jessica would probably be much better at breaking such big and bizarre news.
“Just out on a Friday night adventure,” I said.
“You’re not twenty-one, though, are you?” she asked with a sly smile.
“No,” I said. “Neither are you, right?”
She shook her head smugly as Jessica returned to the table bearing two pints of beer.
“The Purple Haze’s finest
!” she said. Sylvie and Lizzie thanked her, and Sylvie took a large swig while Lizzie took a polite small sip.
“How about you?” I asked. “What brings you here? This doesn’t seem like your crowd.”
“Well, I’m actually a middle-aged man with a drinking problem at heart,” said Sylvie. Jessica and I laughed at her deadpan delivery. “Actually, we were planning on going somewhere else after. We’re on this big night out to try to lift Lizzie’s spirits a little.” She reached out and grasped Lizzie’s hand, whose blue eyes suddenly became glassy with tears.
“Oh, honey!” said Jessica. “What’s wrong? Was it some awful boy?”
Lizzie shook her head. “Last weekend, I was— I was in—” She was unable to finish the sentence. Jessica fished a tissue out of her purse and handed it to her, which she accepted with a teary thanks.
“She was in the Seastar disaster,” said Sylvie in a low voice.
“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry!” said Jessica. “That’s terrible!”
“What’s the Seastar disaster?” I asked.
“You don’t know?” asked Sylvie in disbelief. “Don’t you go to Seaside?”
I assumed she meant Seaside High School. “I’m from Wineville,” I said.
“It’s been all over the news, too…”
I shook my head. I hadn’t watched any TV since losing Connor the first time in the car accident. After meeting Harriet and bringing him back, and everything that followed, I had almost forgotten that television existed. I had no idea what was going on in the news.
“Last weekend, the SHS swim team was out on a boat called The Seastar,” said Sylvie. “They were celebrating winning a meet. They hit some rough waters and the boat capsized. Forty-three out of the forty-seven passengers died, including thirteen kids from the swim team. Lizzie was the only one of them to survive.”
I gasped in horror and looked at Lizzie. “I’m so sorry!” I said, echoing Jessica.
“I still don’t know how I did it,” whispered Lizzie. “The last thing I remember was a giant wave, and then I woke up on the shore. Two of my friends from the team were near me, but they weren’t breathing. I tried CPR but it didn’t work. Nothing worked…” Her voice broke and Jessica handed her another tissue. “I don’t get it. How am I still here? How come I survived and they didn’t?”
I glanced at Jessica and knew she was thinking the same thing.
“I’m going to tell you something,” she said to Lizzie. “It’s going to be really hard for you to believe, so just bear with me.” She paused. “I know why you survived and they didn’t.” Lizzie and Sylvie stared at her. “Before I tell you, though, I have a question for you,” she addressed Sylvie. “Have you also had a near-death experience recently?”
Both girls looked flabbergasted, Lizzie somewhat appalled. “What does that have to do with Lizzie?” asked Sylvie.
“But have you?” asked Jessica. “An accident that you probably shouldn’t have survived but came out of completely unhurt? Think about it.”
Sylvie was silent for a few seconds.
“I fell,” she said finally. “Last weekend, when Lizzie went off on the Seastar, I went hiking at Tillamook Head. I was almost at the top when I slipped. It was really high up. I could have died. I should have died, but I opened my eyes and I was lying in some dirt, totally fine…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Lizzie, stricken.
“Well, I was fine,” said Sylvie, “and then the Seastar completely put it out of my mind. Also, I wasn’t entirely sure if I could trust my memory of it. I was, um, really high up in more ways than one…” She mimed smoking something with her thumb and index finger.
“Really?” asked Lizzie, with a most disapproving look. “Are you serious? That is so dangerous! You could have been killed!”
Sylvie looked vaguely contrite. “I know… but I wasn’t. Isn’t that the point?” she asked Jessica. “What do you know that we don’t?”
“There’s no easy way to say this,” Jessica said, and then turned to me, “is there, Arthur?”
I shook my head. “You should take a drink,” I told them, gesturing at their beers.
Sylvie took a big gulp of hers without hesitation, and Lizzie followed with a sip that was maybe a little larger than her first one.
“You’re witches,” said Jessica, as soon as they put their glasses down. “Both of you. You have magical gifts that saved your lives.”
They both looked at Jessica like she had just claimed to be a drug dealing tooth fairy.
“Come again?” asked Sylvie.
“You’re witches,” Jessica repeated. “You have gifts, powers, if you will, that kept you both from drowning and falling to your deaths. Arthur has a similar gift that saved his life just last night.”
Sylvie squinted suspiciously at Jessica, a smile curving at the corners of her lips. “What is this?” she asked, and then looked around the room. “Are we on camera?”
Jessica sighed but had a smile on her face, then appealed to me.
“It’s not a joke,” I told them. “Trust me, I thought the same thing. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, myself. The thing is, we purposely came out here to find you. Last night, my boyfriend Connor was murdered by a group of witch hunters called The Brotherhood of Armin.”
“What?” Sylvie and Lizzie said together, looking horrified.
“They attacked us and our friend Harriet back in Wineville,” I said. “They were mainly after her. Connor isn’t— wasn’t— a witch, and I didn’t know I was one at the time. They chased us to Portland and blew up the building we were in.”
“Wait, that was you?!” asked Sylvie, startled.
“Yes, how—”
“That’s been all over the news, too!” she said. “The shooting at the Flame Fest in Portland, the people dead in the streets, that building on fire—”
“That was us,” I said. “We tried to fight them but we were outnumbered and they had a rocket launcher. As it turns out, my gift is that I can’t die by fire. Yours—” I addressed Lizzie, “is that you can’t die by drowning, and yours—” I turned to Sylvie but then hesitated.
“Hanging,” said Jessica. “She’s the Hanged Witch.”
“Huh?” asked Sylvie.
“You can’t die by hanging,” I said, “or falling, in this case.”
“Any hanging-like death that would require defying gravity in order to survive it,” said Jessica. “That’s what you did. Your gift stopped you just before you hit the ground. Now that I think of it, being pushed off a cliff was also a method of execution during the Burning Times…”
“The Burning…?”
“That’s another thing,” I said. “And you should take another drink.”
This time, neither of them hesitated and knocked back healthy mouthfuls of their beers.
“You’re doing great!” Jessica mouthed to me, and I was warmed by her encouragement.
“The Burning Times,” I said, “is the term for the longest and deadliest period of witch hunts in history, the ones that happened across Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That’s where our gifts come from, from the different ways that they executed people. It’s a long story but in a nutshell, a witch named Ursula who could see the future predicted that there would one day be four witches with the power to defy death by execution,” I said, making air quotes with my fingers. “That’s what we’ve now done, defied death, and somewhere out there, very nearby probably, is another girl who has done it too. We need to find her before the Brotherhood does and then, according to the prophecy, we’re supposed to band together to take them down.”
I paused, and they watched me in shock.
“Oh yeah, we’re called The Sacred Four,” I added.
“That was very well said, Arthur!” said Jessica. “I’m so proud of you!”
“Do you mean witches, like, actual witches?” asked Lizzie. “Like with flying broomsticks and green skin and—”
“Hey, do you se
e any green skin here?” asked Jessica. “That’s an unflattering myth. The flying broomsticks, though, are real.”
Lizzie’s eyes went wide.
“How do we know this isn’t a hoax?” asked Sylvie skeptically. “How do we know you aren’t part of, like, some sex cult or something?” I thought of Father Gabriel and winced at her suggestion.
“Fair questions,” said Jessica. “Well, we could—”
“Can you make something float?” asked Lizzie.
“I can’t do it as readily as our friend Harriet can,” said Jessica. “And this isn’t exactly the place for demonstrations. Hmm…” She sipped her gin and tonic with a thoughtful expression. “The number four,” she said finally, “is huge for you all. Ursula made the prophecy on April 4, 1644, at four in the morning, the day of her fifty-fourth birthday. When are your birthdays?”
“Jessica, I don’t think that’s going to—” I began.
“October fourth,” said Sylvie.
“November fourth,” said Lizzie.
“Arthur, when’s yours?” asked Jessica.
“August fourth,” I said in surprise.
“How much do you want to bet that the third girl’s is September fourth?” asked Jessica.
Sylvie suddenly jumped in her seat, and we all looked at her.
“I was actually born at four forty-four in the morning! And so were you!” she told Lizzie. “Remember when we did those star charts for art class and asked our moms about it?”
Lizzie looked astonished, and I gasped as I remembered asking my mom the same question. “Holy shit, so was I!” I said.
“Imagine the odds,” said Jessica, looking she was biting back a laugh at our expressions. “You’re all also sixteen years old, which is four, four times. You were all born in 1990. Ursula was born in 1590, exactly four hundred years before.”
“That is freaky,” said Sylvie.
“Is that enough to convince you to come with us to find the last girl?” asked Jessica.
Sylvie and Lizzie looked at each other. “Hell, I’m in!” said Sylvie. “If anything, just to see if you’re right about her birthday!”
