The Witches of Dark Root

by April Aasheim [paranormal]

  Merry refilled my plate.

  “I can’ take credit fer dem,” Aunt Dora said. “Der’s yer man.” She pointed to Shane who was quietly watching me with a smile on his face.

  “I told you I make a mean biscuits and gravy,” he said, folding his hands together. “These were left over from the breakfast rush. Was hoping you ladies would have made it over on your own, but I see I have to entice you. Now you know what you’re missing.”

  “You have a rush?” I asked, surprised.

  “I get a construction crowd around 5:30 in the morning on weekdays. On the weekends its mostly older people passing through town on their way to church. Then they magically disappear and I have the rest of the day to ponder my place in the universe.”

  “These are amazing,” I admitted, finishing my second biscuit and looking around for more. When I realized they were gone my mouth formed a pout.

  “I usually only serve them on Sundays.” Shane stood and pushed in his chair. “But if you give me some advance notice, I’d be happy to whip them up any morning of your choosing. Gives me something to do.”

  Merry wiped her hands on a dish towel and gave him a sisterly hug. “If I’m right,” she said, looking up at him with her big, blue eyes. “That’s Uncle Joe’s recipe, but tweaked. What have you done differently?”

  “That, my dear,” he said with a grin. “...Is a secret. If I told you, then you might open a competing business. With all the talent and beauty in this room, I’d be out of work in a week.” He spread his palms apologetically.

  “Okay, be that way,” Merry laughed, gathering up the plates on the table. “Far be it from me to deprive a man of his livelihood. I will just go back to being a lowly dishwasher.”

  I jumped up to help her and Eve followed suit. Soon we had the whole table cleared while Aunt Dora directed, “Put dem on the top shelf, girls.” “Careful, those plates are very old.”

  “Maggie,” Eve said, when we had put away the last dish. “This is Paul.” She walked over to the quiet man and put her hands on his shoulders, giving him a massage. “...Sorry, I forgot to introduce you. He’s a friend from New York and an amazing musician. We met a few years ago and have been joined at the hip ever since.”

  I looked Paul over, giving him a more thorough appraisal.

  He was young, maybe twenty-five, and thin. His dirty blonde hair was slicked back into something between a Mohawk and a pompadour. His eyes were so blue they were almost black. His cheeks were thin but chiseled. If you could get past the greasy hair, he was good-looking, almost handsome. He nodded a greeting at me but didn’t speak.

  “Care to accompany me around town?” Eve asked him, leaning over to wrap her arms around his chest.

  Paul scratched at the back of his ear. “I don’t know. I don’t really do small towns well.”

  I laughed in agreement. “I hear you on that.”

  He locked his cobalt eyes onto mine and I felt suddenly warm.

  Eve tightened her grip on him. “Oh, pretty please. I just have to show you around Dark Root.”

  Paul hesitated. “I’m not sure. Are you going, Maggie?”

  I was so taken aback by his directness––especially in front of Eve––that I didn’t know what to say. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. Merry, Shane, and Eve all turned in my direction.

  “I, um...” I responded, looking to Merry for help. She smiled ruefully, letting me know I was on my own for this one. I could feel Eve’s eyes pierce me.

  Luckily, Shane spoke up.

  “We can all go,” he said. “I wanted to show you guys Dip Stix, anyway. It’s not much but I call it home.”

  We all agreed this was a good idea, except for Aunt Dora who wanted to catch up on her television. Eve’s energy bristled as I made my way past her, but I ignored it. I was battle-weary from the evening before, and too tired to get tangled up in Eve’s drama.

  “Mommy, I’m hungry.”

  The small voice from the stairwell made me turn. It was a young girl, maybe five or six years old, with white-blonde hair and eyes a cornflower blue. She wore a yellow flowered nightgown and rubbed her eyes as she made her way to the table.

  “I saved you a biscuit.”

  My mouth fell open when I realized it was Merry who answered. She caught my confused look and laughed.

  “I told you I had something for you,” she said. “This is my daughter, Mae. You’re an auntie.”

  Mae looked at me with round eyes as she nibbled on her biscuit. No one else seemed surprised. I guess they had already met her.

  “Your daughter? Mae?” I repeated, incredulous. “Spelled M-A-E?”

  “Yes, silly. She’s named after you.” Merry turned towards Paul and Shane to explain. “Maggie’s middle name is Mae. Mother was a huge Rod Stewart fan.”

  “‘Maggie Mae,’” Paul said, bobbing his head and smiling. “Rod Stewart. I think I’m gonna like your mother.”

  Merry looked at me, waiting for a response. I had never been angry with her in my life, but I was upset now. She had never mentioned that I had a niece.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. “I could have made calls, sent Christmas cards...something.” I looked at Mae again. Her hair was smooth and sleek, cascading over the back of her chair as she ate, a miniature version of her mother.

  She was beautiful.

  “Oh, Maggie, I tried,” Merry explained. “But you were pretty much unreachable. And you never...” She let the words trail off, not wanting to hurt my feelings.

  But I knew what she was going to say. She may have married Frank at eighteen, but it was me who had disappeared without a forwarding address. I looked down, suddenly ashamed.

  A soft touch on the tips of my fingers brought me back. Mae placed her perfect, tiny hand in mine. In seconds, I felt calmer.

  She had her mother’s gift.

  “I have a niece,” I said, squeezing her hand. “A niece named Mae.”

  Mae made a face like she had just bitten into a lemon. “I don’t like to be called Mae,” she informed me, as she wiped the crumbs from her lap and onto the floor. “My dad calls me June Bug because that’s the month I was born and...” She dashed from the kitchen and into the living room, returning with a jar filled with crawling insects. “...I collect bugs. Mostly lady bugs, but I like them all.”

  “We’re hoping she’ll outgrow it,” Merry said, as June Bug placed her jar of critters in the kitchen windowsill next to the flowers. “Frank says that it’s important that we encourage her hobbies, even if I don’t like them.”

  I resisted rolling my eyes.

  Frank was a ‘child psychologist’ and I had never had much regard for him. After all, how many child psychologists in their thirties marry girls just out of high school? The memory of him taking Merry away when she was barely eighteen angered me. I had told her that I was happy for her then, but I hadn’t meant it. And I didn’t like to hear his name now.

  But it was her life and I was going to support her decisions, even if it killed me.

  “Everyone got sweaters?” Merry asked, and we nodded like obedient children. My genuine alpaca sweater, a gift from the Woodhaven lost and found, was warm, if a bit grungy.

  Eve scrutinized my outfit and wrinkled her nose but said nothing.

  We lined up at the door and Aunt Dora called to us from her recliner. “Give me a call after ya visit yer mother.”

  I froze, having forgotten that visiting my mother was the real reason I was back in Dark Root, or at least my pretense. But it would have to be done.

  Outside, we filed into two separate cars. Merry rode with Eve and Paul in his black Explorer, while June Bug squeezed in between myself and Shane in the front seat of his pickup truck.

  “Can we have ice cream?” she asked, looking from me to him.

  “Sure, we can,” I said, hoping I wasn’t stepping on Merry’s toes. I knew how parents were about junk food, and Merry, who had never been a fan of processed foods, might be particularly strict.
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br />   “Just so happens I have some vanilla ice cream at Dip Stix.” Shane started up the truck and we followed Paul’s Explorer out of the driveway and over the bumps and cracks of a road that had seen better days.

  “Yay!” June Bug squealed. “Mommy never lets me have ice cream.”

  “Oops.” I looked at Shane and grimaced.

  I was going to be in trouble with my older sister but it was worth it to feel June Bug put her head on my shoulder.

  For a moment, life was good.

  I had thought that Main Street looked different the night before, but without the cover of darkness to soften the blow, the town looked almost abandoned.

  Many of the shops I had grown up with––the book store, the hardware store, the clothing store––were closed. Curtains were drawn, lights were off, doors were shut. And the businesses that remained opened––the Candy Corn, The Haunted Dark Root Tour Company, and Costumes Etc.––had few or no customers.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked, turning my head from one side of the street to the other. “This is fall, the height of the tourist season. Dark Root looks like a ghost town...excuse the pun.”

  Shane’s hands tightened around the wheel. “Sorry, Mags,” he offered, but said no more.

  June Bug sat between us, her mouth pursed in concentration as she took in the sights.

  As we drove towards the apex of Main Street, I could see Dip Stix. Except for the name change and the new awnings, it looked like the restaurant I had grown up with. I took a deep breath, relieved. Not everything had changed.

  “Is that Grandma’s shop?” June Bug pointed to our left and my eyes followed, afraid of what I might see. My heart sank. The main window, the one I had spent many years of my life staring out of, was covered in sheets of paper, announcing that the shop permanently closed.

  “What happened?” Though I had spent my youth trying to leave Dark Root, I never wanted the town to die. It should have been the one place in the world that time couldn’t catch. “I feel like I’m in a parallel Universe. Surely all this couldn’t have happened in just a few years?”

  “It’s turned into a regular Potterville,” Shane said, pulling the truck into an empty parking spot in front of his diner. “I’m surprised Dip Stix gets any customers at all, but we have a few. Still...” His voice trailed off and I knew he wasn’t convinced that Dip Stix was here for the long haul.

  “Mama always talks about this town.” June Bug looked at me, an expression on her face more adult than child, like she had access to knowledge the rest of us could never touch. “She tells me stories about it, about when she grew up here. She said that I would love it, too.”

  “Do you?” I asked, hopefully. Though I hadn’t been around many children, I remembered from my own childhood that kids loved bizarro things, like leprechauns and giraffes.

  “No. I want to go home.”

  I squeezed her hand. I couldn’t blame her. This was the town that time forgot.

  A ball of newspaper rolled before us, like a tumbleweed in a Western movie. I checked the streets again, noting all the litter on the ground. In my youth, I had never seen so much as a cigarette butt on the sidewalks.

  “I’m not happy about this,” I said, knowing I had no right to complain. Who was I to come back after seven years and be pissed off that things had changed?

  We sat in the truck. I couldn’t bring myself to open the door.

  “It’s like no one cares about this place anymore,” I said.

  “Well, Maggie Mae,” Shane said, smiling. “It’s not uncommon for small towns to fall apart once industry dies or its young people move away in search of better...” He gave me a wry look. “...Opportunities. It happens.”

  “But what about the tourists? Why aren’t there people here?”

  “From what I can gather, once you girls moved away, your mother just gave up and the rest of the town followed. You Maddocks were the cogs and gears that made this place run.”

  I looked down at my lap, ashamed. “I just can’t believe the shop is closed.”

  Shane shrugged, trying to play diplomat. “Uncle Joe said your mother hired a girl to work there for a while, but it still fell apart. She couldn’t bring in the customers like you girls did.”

  I laughed at the irony. “I think Eve and I scared off more customers than we brought in.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Maggie. Your mother got old and sick. Her health started going, along with her mind.” He gave me a sympathetic look and pressed his lips together, saying no more. If his goal was to make me feel better, he was doing a terrible job.

  June Bug yawned, unbuckled her seat belt, and curled up into my side. She closed her eyes and within minutes her breathing deepened. I lowered my voice.

  “Why are you here Shane? What’s in it for you?”

  He closed his eyes briefly. When he reopened them I saw a spark that wasn’t there before. “I’m an optimist. I loved this place when I was a kid. When Uncle Joe left me the diner in his will, I decided to give it a go. I didn’t have much of a home growing up...” He choked, covering his mouth with this fist. “...This was always home.”

  He peered at the empty road ahead of us through the windshield.

  “I know this sounds cliché,” he said. “But if we all work together, we can turn things around. We just have to get your mother’s shop up and running again, and start talking to some of the other business owners around here...”

  June Bug was now snoring on my shoulder. I cupped my hand loosely over her ear, responding to him in a harsh whisper. “In case you’ve forgotten since last night, I’m not staying.” I shook my head wildly. “This is only a temporary stop for me. Don’t try and rope me into this.”

  “No, I haven't forgotten. Was just hoping you would change your mind when you saw all this. You could be of some real help.”

  “Listen, I spent my whole childhood trying to move away from this town. I’m not about to make it my permanent residence.”

  “Move away or run away?”

  I shook my head. He was unbelievable. “Call it what you will, but I’m leaving in a few days. Don’t get too attached.”

  “And where are you going? Back to California?”

  I still hadn’t formulated that plan yet. But it didn’t matter. I had left once without knowing where I was going, and I could do it again. And this time I had close to a thousand bucks on me to make the trip.

  “Not California. Maybe Texas or Arizona. Someplace warm.”

  “Will you stay for a while anyways? Just to see how things go?”

  I slumped against the side of the door, depressed. My hand dropped away from June Bug’s ear and she stirred next to me. “Again, I don’t know. Can’t we just take things one day at a time for now? I haven’t even been back to my real home yet. God knows what waits for me there.”

  “Same old Maggie,” Shane said, his face both incredulous and sad. He removed the key from the ignition and opened the door as Paul’s car pulled in behind us.

  “Took them long enough,” I grumbled. “They must have taken the scenic route.”

  I opened my door and got out, then shook June Bug carefully awake. She yawned, smiled, and offered me her arms. I lifted her out of the vehicle and set her on the sidewalk.

  “Well,” Shane said, regaining his cheerful composure. “Ready to see my little contribution to Dark Root’s booming economy?” He gave me a sideways grin as he made his way towards Dip Stix and unlocked the door.

  It was dim inside. He flipped the light and June Bug and I followed him in.

  Delilah’s Deli, aka Dip Stix Cafe, looked exactly as it had ten years ago. Red and white checkered curtains, beige tablecloths, metal fold-up chairs and square tables topped with glass vases and real flowers. The wooden floor was worn, but clean enough to make out my reflection when I looked down. The small counter where the register and candy dish were located was fingerprint free. The room was immaculate, if dated, and I felt a wave of gratitude towards Shane for
keeping up the place. Something from my childhood had remained intact.

  “I see you kept the artwork,” I teased, motioning towards the dozens of lacquered Elvis plaques and commemorative plates that covered the walls.

  Uncle Joe had found the first two at a local estate sale and thought they would add some color to his otherwise sparse walls. But once he started putting them up, others contributed to the collection and soon the entire restaurant was covered in Elvis images in various stages of weight gain and age. It was a long-running joke in Dark Root that one needn’t go to Graceland to see Elvis; you only had to go to Delilah’s Deli.

  “I’m thinking of taking them down.” Shane scratched his head and looked around the room. “I'm beginning to feel like I'm being watched.”

  “Oh, you can’t,” I laughed. He was about to protest so I added, “At least keep a few. Promise?” I smiled sweetly and batted my eyelashes.

  The result must have been comical rather than sultry because Shane burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

  “Well, when you ask like that, I suppose I could keep a few up, to honor Uncle Joe. But I do think this place needs some updating. We won’t attract many younger people here with this kind of décor. I was hoping you ladies might be able to assist with Feng Shui-ing up the place.”

  “Maybe,” I said noncommittally. I did like to decorate. “I guess I could help out while I’m here.”

  June Bug, who had been holding my hand, slipped away to hide under one of the tables, just as her mother and I used to when we were kids.

  Shane stroked his chin, considering. “I’ll take what I can get. If you have any ideas at all for this place, I’m listening.”

  I glanced into the back room, just beyond the kitchen area, where there were boxes and bins shoved into every corner. The cleanliness of the place extended only throughout the main room.

  “It would be easier to burn the place down and rebuild than to try and get rid of all this clutter,” I observed.

  “Maybe.” Shane raised both eyebrows playfully. “How are your arson skills?”

  The front door flew open and a sharp gust of cold wind hit my cheeks.