Calm Before the Witch Storm

by Constance Barker

“I know fifty guys out of work,” Gert said. “I don’t want to get them in any trouble.”

  “You’re the Agency, right? Well, who hired the agency to trap my pig, Gert?”

  Gert couldn’t meet her eyes. “That damn mill. Hires twenty guys for a week to run a machine for some buyer. Hires a hundred to clean the place up before an inspection. Keeps people hanging on. I wish it would either reopen, or close for good. People are desperate in this town.”

  “Cry me a river, Gert. That’s my pig. Who would want to take him from me?”

  “I knew your Aunt Nancy and Uncle Ed,” Gert avoided the question. “Nancy was a kook! But she was really nice. Even though they owned that big house, and Ed made lots of money, they didn’t put on airs. Ed was always working on that house when he retired. In this store a lot. When Ed died, Nancy carried on. Maybe a little less cheerful, but still a hoot. That potbellied pig of hers, he followed her everywhere. Cute little guy. But when he went, it was the last straw for Nancy. Locked herself in that house. I heard they were institutionalizing her.”

  “Yeah, so did we. That’s why we took her in. Can we skip the walk down memory lane and get to the person who wanted my pig gone?”

  “It’s just that I was thinking about your aunt when I got the call. Obviously, it couldn’t be the same one. That was more than ten years ago.” Gert’s eyes rose to meet Nann’s. “The caller didn’t leave a name, just gave me a credit card number and the job they wanted done.”

  Nann couldn’t believe Gert didn’t know the caller. The woman seemed to know everyone. “Go on.”

  “We have caller ID on the phones here. The woman who wanted the pig captured called from Shoreline Properties LLC.”

  THIS WAS ALL JUST A big land swindle. Nann found it shocking, and not a little depressing, that someone would let children die for a plot of ground. She needed to put a stop to the Piper, but she didn’t have the spell to do it. Still, the call to pig-nap her familiar came from Shoreline Properties. Did that mean Barb Buford was an evil witch? Sure, she was annoying, but evil? There was only one way to find out, but it would have to wait until night fell.

  In the meanwhile, she wondered if there was another way to rid Calamity Corners of its Piper. She unlocked one of the occult book cabinets. Closing her eyes and spinning around three times, she grabbed a book off the shelf. Okay, maybe not such a good choice. Egyptian Pyramid and Coffin Texts and the application to Hieroglyphic spells to Practical Magic; or, The Great Works of the Clandestine Priestesses of Heka didn’t seem a likely source. Still, she let it fall open in her hands.

  The Singing Fire was the name of chapter twenty-seven, and as she read, she found that it was a spell for getting rid of pests. It wasn’t much different from the spell in the Tome of Knowledge Dark, other than a lot of praises to Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess. There was no mention of reversing the spell. The belief was that there would never be a lack of rats around the royal granaries along the Nile.

  She replaced the book, did her spin, and grabbed another. This was much closer to the mark. Magic and Morals: How Fairy Tales Re-interpret Historical Events to Explain Magic. When she let it open, it fell to the last page of the Pied Piper chapter. She riffled back through.

  This wasn’t the usual Pied Piper story. In this version, the children of Hamelin were seduced not by a pipe-playing rat-catcher, but by a pagan coven. The town had hired the coven leader to eradicate a plague of rats in the town. In payment, they burned her and her followers at the stake. The children threw themselves on the pyres to join the coven in death.

  How uplifting.

  Nann put the book back and locked the case. Calamity Corners didn’t have royal granaries. Nann recalled seeing more squirrels and chipmunks on her Brooklyn fire escape than she did in the surrounding woods here. The area was out of rats, but the Piper was as hungry as ever. Whether it was a singing fire or a pagan spell, Nann had no way to banish it without that missing page.

  Or didn’t she? Maybe what she needed was to find the thing, study it, and maybe an idea would come to her.

  FIND YE SOME SECLUSION, a high abandoned space. Nann walked in the woods beyond the mill, surrounded by piles of foliage-covered waste. Even on a bright summer day, it felt creepy out here. It was hard to believe these mini-mountains were the byproducts of paper-making. The tallest one stood away from the other mounds. It was covered with more mature trees. Something told her that this was the highest and most abandoned space around.

  She climbed, the slope so steep she needed to pull herself up by the thin tree trunks. Out of breath and sweating (ladies don’t sweat, they glow, her mother would say), she summited the top. With all the brush and weed trees, there wasn’t much of a view. She swiped the glow off her brow. There wasn’t anything up here.

  Nann took the Athame from its pocket in the bottom of her bag. Holding it before her, blade down, she drew concentric circles in the air.

  “Divulge to me what my eyes can’t see,

  cast away all anonymity,

  disregard the forms my mind finds real,

  let any magic stand now revealed.”

  The blade left sun glimmers in its wake that hung in the air. These hovering sparks grew with each passing of the Athame. Nann continued the motions of the ceremony until she had a swirly window hanging in the air before her. When she peered through...

  Shadows danced in the flickering green light of an aurora. Nann moved closer. The light changed colors, blue, purple, rising like a freezing fire, billowing in clouds of pure hue. Dancing shapes within were small. She squinted, trying to see their features. They were boys, she was certain, shadowy dancing boys.

  All at once, she heard the sounds of drums and music box bells, flutes and tambourines, distant but drawing closer. One of the boys danced in a circle around the other. The other looked exhausted, but continued shuffling along to the music.

  She needed to get them out of there! But—

  Was that fair food she smelled? Fried dough? Sweet and savory, the heady aroma drew her closer. That aurora could be hiding a whole carnival. Nann didn’t even feel the Athame fall from her fingers as she stepped into the magical glow. Heck, without enough bookshelves, what was she doing anyway? It seemed like fun, dancing in the lights, the music, the food...

  WHACK!

  “Ow-wah!”

  Nann danced backward on one leg, holding her shin. What the hell? She was back on the toxic hill, the lights gone. Pokey charged up the slope through the trees and bashed his head into her other shin.

  “Ow-ha-how!” She reached down, clutching her other leg. “Stop already, I’m out of it.”

  Pokey oinked, glancing over his shoulder, oinked again. Nann wished she had remembered to pick up a portable radio so she could understand the pig. One thing that needed no translation—this was the scary thing in the woods.

  Following Pokey’s eyes, she saw the roof of a house on a nearby bluff. Founder’s House, she could tell. Her house. From the deeds in the assessor’s office, she knew her property abutted the Mill’s, but standing on the waste hill, she understood just how close she lived to the mill. And the monster that ate children.

  “You saved me, Pokey.” Even though her shins were killing her, she crouched down to rub behind his bristly ears. “You’re a good boy. A good pig. Hey, you wanna see my new store? Take a ride in Cricket?”

  She found her Athame in the leaf litter and replaced it in her conjure bag. Together, they walked back down the hill, through the woods, past the mill. Nann didn’t know much, but she did know that she didn’t have strong enough magic to defeat this Piper without the banishing ceremony. Nann had a pretty good idea who had that page—and it was probably the same person who had Aunt Nancy’s copies of her school tax payments. Barb Buford.

  Was Barb a rival witch? Maybe she was just a regular person messing around with forces she couldn’t control. Otherwise, why not just shut the Piper down? Either way, Nann had to get her hand on that stolen page.

  “I’M R
EALLY GOOD WITH locks and burglar alarms.” Tink knocked back her girl-drink. It was still too early for a serious fight to break out at Margie’s. She twirled the tiny drink umbrella. “I can get us in, no problem.”

  Nann told her friends what she suspected about the Piper. To their credit, they listened without judgement. Now the rubber was hitting the road.

  “Breaking and entering?” Zinnia said. “No way.”

  “It’s not like we’re stealing anything,” Nann said. “Karmically, you’re in the clear.”

  “Yeah? How about legally? We could get arrested.” Zinnia chugged the rest of her beer.

  Nann thought about it. Her sorta-invisibility spell wouldn’t work on three people at the same time. “We’d have to be careful.”

  “Why do we think it’s going to eat another boy anyway?” Zinnia held her glass up for another. “Why wouldn’t it lure a deer or something?”

  Tink held up her glass as well. “I guess it might, but a ten-year-old boy weighs, what? Seventy pounds? A fawn wouldn’t get that big until later in the year. I mean, if this is a step-up diet the Piper’s on.”

  “I don’t think so,” Zinnia said. “I mean, if it was looking for larger meals, it went from rats and squirrels all the way up to children? Seems like a big jump.”

  Margie brought another round. After staring into her blue-whatever, Tink nodded. “So it’s just like the story, then. The Piper wasn’t paid, so he’s taking hostages, or revenge, or whatever. All I know about it is from the fairy tale, or folk story, or nursery rhyme. Whatever it is.”

  Nann sipped her beer. “Well, earlier accounts of the Hamelin story don’t include a rat infestation. The Piper, from a magic perspective, is just a spell to get rid of pests. From what I can make out from all the different sources is, the Piper can’t grow strong enough to lure children until after it’s eaten a bunch of other things. Then it grows in size and power.

  “On the other hand, the child-abduction aspect is kind of a fail-safe for the witch or sorcerer who summons a Piper. If you don’t pay up, or, worse, if you burn the witch at the stake, the Piper goes into kidnap-and-kill mode.”

  “Whoa. So what is ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ really about?” Zinnia made a faux-serious face.

  “Taxation,” Tink said. “Based on the wool trade in the twelfth century. Anyway, you’re pretty sure you can zap this Piper if we find the stolen page, Nann?”

  She shrugged. “We can’t just arm-chair detective this thing. I mean, when was the last complaint about a Piper? The thirteenth century? The story doesn’t say the Piper takes only boys, but children. Here, it’s just boys. And what then? Adults? Fatter people? Gert at the hardware store?”

  Nann’s joke was met with puzzled looks. Okay, maybe the joke was too mean. It wasn’t like Nann couldn’t afford to lose a few pounds.

  “How sure are we that this thing is even real?” Zinnia had yet to be convinced.

  “Maybe all the magic stuff around here. I’m a shop goblin. You turn into an alligator—”

  Zinnia’s eyes went everywhere. “Shh!”

  “Nann’s a Druid,” Tink went on, “there’s a long-standing society that hunts vampires here, I mean, yes, I’m sure this thing is real.”

  “What I’m really worried about is some search party member stumbling into the Piper by accident,” Nann said. “I almost did myself. This is up to us. A bunch of guys with stakes and holy water aren’t gonna cut it.”

  Zinnia finished her beer again. “You really think it wanted to eat you?”

  “Yeah, I think that was the plan.”

  “Things sure got complicated since you came to town.” Zinnia held her glass up to Margie. “Maybe one more beer...”

  THEY TOOK ONE OF TINK’S cars-as-payment into Port Argent. Parking a few blocks away, they walked to the real estate office. No one was on the street. Nann read the sign on the door. Barb Buford, Your Hometown Real Estate Agent.

  Zinnia kept glancing over her shoulder. “We can’t commit a crime in front of a church!”

  “We’re not committing a crime,” Nann said. “We’re looking for clues.”

  Tink chuckled. “Clues? Who do you think you are, Nancy Drew? More like Nancy Druid.”

  Nann gave Zinnia a hard look. The squat blonde held up her hands. “I didn’t say anything.”

  Grabbing a folding tool kit from her coveralls, Tink went to work. It took only a few seconds for her to rewire the burglar alarm. With skinny little tools, she went to work on the lock. The deadbolt turned. “There’s one,” Tink said. Next, she jammed her probes into the knob. A second later, she turned it. “Got it.” Except the door didn’t move.

  “I thought you said you could unlock it!” Zinnia’s eyes were on the church.

  “It’s unlocked.” Tink twisted the knob back and forth. “See? There must be some special security lock on the inside. Hold on, let me try the dog door.”

  They watched as Tink got down on her knees, long arm exploring the other side of the door. “Is there a dog inside, Zinnia?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Don’t you have some kind of super alligator senses or something?”

  “What? No!”

  Tink stood back up. “No good. I can’t feel anything. It must be higher up than I can reach.”

  “So can we go now?” Zinnia glanced at the church again. When she turned back, Nann and Tink stared at her. “What?”

  Nann and Tink stared harder.

  Zinnia’s face closed down. “Oh, no. No way. I’m not changing into an alligator. I’d have to get naked.”

  “We’re all girls here,” Nann said, “We all suffered through high school gym.”

  “The church!” Zinnia’s voice was a whisper.

  “We’ll turn our backs, and shield you from the church,” Tink said. “Just hurry it up.”

  “We’re standing out on Main Street here,” Nann prodded.

  Following the swish of fabric and the bump of the pet door, Nann and Tink turned to find a neatly folded pile of clothing.

  “Oh, I got it,” Zinnia’s voice was muffled. “This latch thing here. You can only unlock it from the inside. Locked room mystery—solved! You go, Nancy Druid.”

  “All right already, let us in,” Nann said.

  “I want my clothes first.”

  “Come on!” Tink and Nann said together.

  “You want in, I want dressed. Push ’em through the dog door.”

  Zinnia could dress as fast as undress. In a few seconds, the door swung wide. Nann drew the Athame and headed past the conference room. “Her office is over here.”

  “What’s with the potato peeler?” Tink asked.

  Nann waved it before her, looking for magic. “It’s not a potato peeler. It’s an Athame.”

  In the office, she walked to a file cabinet. The magic knife showed no sign of magic in the room. Tink opened the drawers anyway as Nann checked the desk.

  “Oh, this is cool. A little model town.” Zinnia found it on a stand near the windows.

  Nann rifled through the desk. “Dang it, I got nothing.”

  “I might have something,” Tink said, leafing through the files. “Shoreline Properties owns a bunch of houses on the west side of Calamity Corners. They all have double and triple mortgages.”

  Nann frowned. “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Trust me, I own a shop in a ghost town. I know what double and triple mortgages look like.”

  “Oh, hey, Nann, isn’t this your house,” Zinnia said.

  Nann walked over to the model. Indeed, one of the little buildings looked like Founder’s House. It stood next to several buildings and a pool that didn’t exist. “Founder’s House B&B?” she read the legend.

  “And the Bluffs Hotel and Resort.” Zinnia cocked her head at it. “That’s right above the mill. There’s nothing up there.”

  “The company’s filing for bankruptcy,” Tink announced.

  “Wait a second, wait a second. How could they afford to ma
ke a yuge offer on my house if they’re broke?”

  “How can they build a resort if they’re broke?” Zinnia asked. “Or buy the mill property like we’ve heard?”

  “Maybe this isn’t a property swindle after all,” Nann said. At that moment, they heard the creak of a floorboard upstairs. Two seconds later, the trio ran up Main Street toward Tink’s car.

  Chapter 10

  They sat panting in Tink’s car. “We forgot to lock the door thingie.”

  “I’m not changing back into an alligator.” Zinnia leaned out the window. “Maybe Barb’s the forgetful type.”

  “Like so forgetful she forgot her company was broke?” Nann said.

  Tink looked at her in the rearview. “Well, there was no magic stuff in her office. She’s off the hook for the Piper.”

  “No she’s not,” Zinnia said. “It’s just like the story. This town used to be full of rats, especially the mill. Maybe the company, you know, hired an exterminator and then didn’t pay up. Because they’re bankrupt. Right?”

  “Right. And who’s more likely to steal the page that reverses the summons? The people who can’t afford to pay it off, or a pissed-off Piper?” Tink said.

  Nann had to concede the point. “Even if we don’t know who summoned it, or who took the page to un-summon it, we still need to make it go away before it makes another little boy go away. It has a hold of two. If we don’t do something, I’m afraid they’ll die soon.”

  “I can’t think about it right now,” Zinnia said. “I’m starving. B&E, changing into an alligator, it’s hard work.”

  “Well, this isn’t Calamity Corners. There are a bunch of restaurants in Port Argent. You need alligator food? There’s a rib place, a seafood place,” Nann said.

  “I might want to eat like an alligator, but I’m on budget. I can’t afford ribs or fish most of the time. I try to save up for the full moon. Usually, I’m eating ramen, or mac and cheese. I can’t always eat what I want.”