The Case of the Wayward Witch

by A. A. Albright

  I pointed to the eyesore. Well, one of the eyesores. ‘What’s with that? You’ve never seemed like a hippy to me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m certainly no hippy,’ he said, opening up one of his files and furiously scribbling. ‘Special herbs, those. Between those and the iron horseshoes, they keep the bad spirits away.’

  ‘Mm hm.’ I nodded slowly and backed away. ‘Of course they do. Well, I’ll just leave you to fight your demons while I go and make you that tea.’

  I zigzagged around more piles of books in his hallway, finally entering the kitchen. It was even messier than his office, and judging by the rubbish spilling out of the bin, he’d been living on ready-meals, coffee and whiskey for quite some time.

  As I searched the cupboards for cups and teabags, I could hear his voice drifting towards me, as he spoke to someone on the phone.

  ‘I’m telling you, Moody, the car crash was another one of hers. So what are we going to do about it?’

  There was a short pause before my uncle said, ‘Well no. Obviously I don’t have a stand-in. My brother’s still off with that stupid band of his, and the only other relatives in Ireland are women.’

  There was yet another pause, before my uncle continued again. ‘Well, of course I’m going to have her drop my files over to you. Maybe I’ll get her to do a bit of sorting out in here, too, but that’s about as much as I can trust her with. You know they can’t do the more difficult parts of this job. Their brains just aren’t up to it. And don’t get me started on their bodies. They just wouldn’t have the stamina. Not like you and me, eh Moody?’

  I frowned, rinsing some cups before placing teabags in. I had been considering having a bit of a tidy-up in the kitchen, but not after hearing that. If he didn’t consider me capable enough to do the difficult parts of his job, then I certainly wasn’t going to go out of my way for him.

  I’d been quite looking forward to detective work. I’d imagined myself with a nicely-cut trench coat and a magnifying glass. Maybe on a glamorous train journey, solving the murder before we arrived at the station. Instead, it looked like I was going to be doing nothing other than dusting and filing.

  Grumbling to myself, I went in search of milk and sugar. The milk I found was low-fat, and I had to assume it had been the only carton left at the shop, because my uncle did not do diets. It was also out of date, but only by a couple of days, so I figured it wouldn’t kill us. The sugar was non-existent, which was a bigger problem for me than the milk. I liked my tea sweet and strong, and by the bucket load. Seeing as Uncle Faster’s teabags didn’t look all that great, I threw another couple into each cup to make sure it was strong enough.

  There were no biscuits to be found, but there were an awful lot of ornamental knives in the drawers. There were more old books in the kitchen, too, piled everywhere, usually stained with tea and covered in dust. Again, I resisted the urge to tidy things, and instead I headed into his office.

  He’d finished his phone call, and had returned to making notes in one of his files.

  ‘This tea’s too strong,’ he said, staring down into the cup.

  ‘Don’t drink it then. It’ll be more for me. Hey, I heard you on the phone while I was in the kitchen, Uncle Faster. Who’s this Moody guy you were talking to?’

  He gave me an irritating smile and shook his head. ‘The curiosity of a woman knows no bounds. You ought to watch that, Katy. Remember what happened when Pandora opened the box.’

  ‘It was a jar that she opened, actually, not a box.’

  ‘Smarty pants.’ My uncle shot me a look of concern. ‘You are, you know. You always were, Curly Kate. If only you’d stuck it out at business school, you could be running an empire by now.’

  I turned away from him. Business wasn’t the only course I’d dumped, just like the boutique wasn’t the only job I’d quit. And I hated the thought of being a quitter, really I did. It was just that I’d always had this sense that I was searching for something. That there was a calling out there for me, something I was destined to do. One of these days I was going to figure out what that something was.

  I wandered around the office, picking up more old books and nosing at them. Some of them were in languages I didn’t recognise, and some of them just had words so old-fashioned that they might as well have been gobbledegook. I did notice the words Witches and Demons peppered throughout, which was kind of disturbing. What with the herbs and horseshoes hanging everywhere and now these books, I was beginning to worry about my uncle’s mental health.

  As I laid down yet another book (it seemed to be about witches’ familiars) I spied a dagger peeking out from the back of one of the shelves. Carefully, I pulled it out and turned it over in my hands. There was an inscription on the handle, saying: To Henry. Use with a true heart, and your aim will be just as true. Love, Aunt Jude.

  ‘Henry,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘That’s my dad’s name – or should I say it was his name, before he changed it to Dean Danger and joined the stupid Danger Boys. This must have been his knife, I guess. What is it with the two of you and changing your names?’

  He had been taking a long slurp of the tea I’d made (so much for it being too strong), but he slammed his cup down and stared at me. ‘How did you know that was Henry’s knife?’

  ‘Duh. Because it says so on the handle.’

  ‘Yes, but you shouldn’t see it,’ he argued, looking rather excited. ‘I mean, how could you? Women don’t get the gene.’

  ‘What gene? What are you talking about?’

  He picked up his tea again, looking away from me. ‘Nothing. I’ve said too much.’

  ‘Fine,’ I muttered. ‘Don’t tell me then.’ I plonked down into an overstuffed chair and picked up the closest book: The Witch Hunters’ Manual by Magnus Kramer. ‘Huh. So the gene that the women are lacking is the crazy gene, I take it? Kinda glad I missed out on that one then.’

  He rolled over to me, grabbing the book and squinting at me. ‘These things aren’t a joke, Katy. And to be honest, I’m getting a bit desperate here, so if I thought you’d actually understand the family business, then I might ask you to join.’ He sighed. ‘Can you really see the inscription on that knife?’

  ‘I said so, didn’t I?’ I read it aloud anyway, just to prove myself: ‘“To Henry. Use with a true heart, and your aim will be just as true. Love, Aunt Jude.”’

  His fingers drummed up and down on the book he’d snatched from me. He huffed and puffed for a few seconds and then said, ‘Open this up, will you?’

  I grabbed the book and opened it.

  4. Among Us

  ‘“Witches,”’ I read aloud, ‘“the foulest of all woman-kind, are living among us. It is up to us, the brave and canny Kramers, to seek them out and dispatch them post-haste. In this book, I shall instruct the hunters of the family in how to identify, catch, and kill those creatures most foul.”’

  I snorted. ‘Is this guy for real? Witches are among us?’ I looked mockingly around the room. ‘I suppose there’s one hiding behind the curtains then, is there? Good luck to her if she is there, because those curtains haven’t been washed in a decade.’

  He shook his head. ‘I told you, Katy, these things are no joke. Witches are all around us. Not in this house, thanks to my precautions, but there are hundreds of them in Dublin alone.’

  I pulled at the collar of my shirt, wondering if I should call the hospital and tell them he was possibly concussed.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he went on. ‘You’re thinking I’ve gone a bit soft in the head. But Katy, if you can see the inscription on that dagger, then it’s only a matter of time before you find out I’m telling the truth. They’re everywhere, Katy, and we need to fight them. They’re in league with himself down below. They’re his servants. They do his bidding here on earth. And without our family, they would have caused even more trouble than they already have by now.’

  ‘Our family? You mean the Kramers? So I’m related to the nutjob who wrote this book?’

 
‘You are. And Magnus Kramer was a very sane man, I’ll have you know. For centuries we – and a couple of other families – have been doing the good work of dispatching them back to where they belong. I wouldn’t normally tell you things like this, but there’s a particularly dangerous one on the loose at the moment, and, well…’ He nodded down to his two broken legs. ‘As you can see, I’m not exactly well-placed to catch her. Read some more. Please, Katy. For me.’

  I nervously shut the book, staring at my uncle, examining his face for signs of mirth. He looked truly, deadly serious. And the thing was, much as there was to dislike about Uncle Faster, there were also some reasons for me to care about what he thought.

  My mother was right when she’d said that there was a lot to be said for sticking around. Uncle Faster had stuck around, throughout my entire childhood. When my father wasn’t there for my school plays, or my Holy Communion or Confirmation, my uncle was. He was there on my first day of school, and he took me and my mother out for dinner on my last.

  Sure, he probably did a lot of it because he fancied the pants off her, but … he had cared for me, in his own way. So if reading this manual would make him happy, I was game. At least until I decided whether or not to call the doctors in.

  I opened it up again and flipped through the first few pages. They seemed to concentrate on how to identify a witch.

  ‘“If she doth have the mark of the fork on her inner upper thigh,”’ I read, ‘“then a witch she do be, and she must immediately be killed. If she doth not have the mark, then mayhap she be using a spell to hide the mark. In this case, further investigations are necessary. Starving the woman until she admits …”’

  I shut the book, hard. Dust flew out and made me cough. ‘Faster,’ I said when my coughing fit had subsided. ‘This is horrible.’

  There was a moment of silence before he spoke again. ‘It is horrible, it’s true,’ he acknowledged. ‘But it’s also necessary. I heard you and your mother talking about that road accident today, Katy. You drove by it when you were coming to collect me. When you watch the evening news tonight, you’ll see that his name was Freddy de Biers. That’s if they even report it in the first place, because they’re very good at forgetting to report cases like this. And on the off-chance that they do, they’ll say there was nothing behind the accident. But there was, Katy. There was a witch behind it, and her name is Diane Carey.’

  I took a large slug of my tea. Oh, how I wished it had sugar. Lots of sugar. An entire kilo of sugar. Anything to distract me from the sudden rush of fear that was creeping through my veins. What was it the guy had said to the paramedic? ‘I was always going to be murdered. That’s what happens when you go out with a woman like Diane. I should have listened to the warning. She was trying to kill me all along.’

  ‘Why are you looking all dreamy?’ my uncle demanded. ‘Are you thinking about shoes again?’

  ‘What? No! I never – well, hardly ever think about shoes. It was that name you mentioned. Diane Carey. I heard that Freddy guy mention someone called Diane.’

  As I related Freddy’s exchange with the paramedic, my uncle treated me to a series of animated gulps, interspersed with the odd burp here and there. When I finished, he rolled frantically back to his desk and searched through his files until he found the one he wanted – a thick buff folder, bursting at the seams. ‘Open this,’ he said urgently. ‘Read through it quickly and tell me what you think.’

  Reading through it quickly wasn’t really an option, seeing as half of the photos and papers fell on the ground the moment I touched it, but after some reorganisation, I could see that my uncle had gathered as much information as he could about a woman called Diane Carey. He had listed her age as twenty-seven, and her address as unknown.

  There were pictures of her with Freddy, strolling hand-in-hand down Grafton Street. He looked a lot less mangled than when I’d seen him, and both of them were laughing in the picture.

  My uncle had recorded Freddy’s full name and address – he’d lived in a flat on Pembroke Street in Dublin. He’d also recorded the details of a recent call he made to Freddy’s home:

  ‘I tried to reason with the lad,’ my uncle wrote. ‘But he was having none of it. He laughed at me when I told him Diane was a witch. I hope he continues to laugh, but if the others are anything to go by, he’ll be dead within the month.’

  As I came upon the next entry, I saw more pictures of Diane, this time with another guy. This one looked about twenty. Behind that picture, there was another of the same guy, lying dead in the Dublin Zoo, while a bloody-mouthed lion lay next to him, knocked out by a tranquilizer dart.

  The note next to this photo said: ‘Charles O’Brien. Address Unknown. I only knew this poor young man’s name because I was following him and Diane. I witnessed the lion attack. It was as if the fencing fell away, and the lion could see nothing but Charles.’

  I felt my nose wrinkle up. ‘This is dated two weeks ago. I mean, I’m not exactly a news nerd or anything, but I think I would have noticed a report of someone being mauled to death by a lion in Dublin Zoo.’

  ‘You might have,’ my uncle replied. ‘If it had made the news. It’s like what I told you about today’s car crash. They have a habit of covering these things up.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Just keep reading.’

  That rush of fear I’d felt a few moments before was getting worse by the second. I read through the rest of the file, finding details of three more deaths, all young men in their twenties, all having occurred in the past month. One had choked on an apple-pip, another had fallen off a fairground ride, and the last guy had been trampled by the deer in the Phoenix Park.

  All of these accidents seemed incredibly strange and unlikely. They also seemed like stories that should have made the news, but I couldn’t recall reading or hearing about any of them.

  But there had to be a rational explanation, didn’t there? Maybe the reason I hadn’t heard of any of these incidents was because none of them had happened. Okay, so I knew Freddy was dead but … maybe my uncle had found a way to work him into this incredibly tall tale in order to make it more believable to me.

  He could have …

  Well, he might have …

  Hmm, I supposed he could have rolled himself here before we got home, found photos of Freddy online and hastily added him to the file before returning to the hospital to wait for my mother and me?

  Okay, that was ridiculous. He clearly hadn’t done that, but … this couldn’t actually be real, could it?

  I stared down at the woman who had supposedly been involved in the deaths of all these young men. Diane Carey was a stunning-looking woman, with cocoa-coloured skin and long black hair. All of the photos looked like dates, and in every picture, the guys were gazing at Diane like she was a goddess. I couldn’t blame them for that. She was, quite possibly, the most beautiful woman in the world.

  ‘You’re saying …’ I was struggling to find the right words. ‘You’re saying that this … this woman who looks like a supermodel … she’s actually a witch? And you think she’s used magic to kill all of these guys in strange accidents?’

  He nodded triumphantly. ‘Yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying, Katy. Don’t let her appearance fool you, Curly Kate. They can look normal. Beautiful even, like Diane. But it’s only what’s known as a glamour. Underneath, they have green skin and warts on their noses. And their hearts are as black as ice.’

  ‘Cold.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You mean as cold as ice.’

  He let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Whatever. Look, Diane Carey is a wayward witch. And she’s the one who broke my legs. I was just about to get her with this.’ He held up a navy ring-binder – the kind I’d used at college to store my handwritten notes.

  ‘You were going to use stationery. To do … what?’

  ‘This isn’t stationery, Katy. This is the same binder that’s been part of my Toolkit for aeons now. It sends witches to the Dimension of
the Damned, where they can’t harm anyone anymore. I prefer to use the Soul-Sucker knife, because it’s always better to make it seem like the witches have killed themselves.’

  My eyes widened in horror, and he picked a knife out from beneath a nearby sofa cushion – because where else would he keep his deadliest weapon? Waving it dangerously close to his chin, he said, ‘All I have to do is throw this in a witch’s direction, and she’ll automatically catch it and feel a deep, dark well of soul-sucking depression. She’ll feel no remedy but to cut her own throat and die on the spot. It’s beautiful.’ He let out a wistful sigh. ‘But these days you can’t go throwing knives at women without some snowflake kicking up a fuss, can you?’

  I shook my head in mock sympathy. ‘Oh, if only we could be back in the good old days,’ I said. ‘You could smack your kids around back then, too. Probably even your cheeky nieces, and you’d get away with it.’

  ‘I know you’re being sarcastic, but it’s true. There was a lot more support for us in the olden days. We could hang them, burn them, drown them … you name it, we could do it. The people trusted us back then. They knew we were protecting them. Nowadays, they expect us to have some sort of proof before we kill a witch.’

  ‘Sheesh! How awful for you. So getting back to this witch – who you unfortunately couldn’t murder but you had to send to the Damnable Dimension.’

  ‘Dimension of the Damned.’

  ‘Uh huh. And … how did you wind up like that, instead of being the hero of the hour?’ I nodded at his two broken legs.

  ‘Well, that’s a bit of a sorry story,’ he said. ‘I was on her tail, you see. I was just about to bind her, late last night on Grafton Street. But Freddy was there, and he spotted me. He said “Hey look, Diane, there’s that crazy old guy I was telling you about. The one who says you’re a witch and you’re going to murder me.” Well, he shouldn’t have warned her, should he? Because now he’s dead too. I could have saved his life, the stupid idiot.’