Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead (Toad Witch Series, Book One)

by Christiana Miller

  I laughed and headed into the apartment, while Gus plotted out his next card move.

  I grabbed a couple of beach towels out of the linen closet and was heading back to the screen door, when I noticed the wrought iron gate opening and a young Fed Ex guy walking in, looking around for an apartment number. I had a feeling he was looking for me, but before I could open the door, Gus waylaid him.

  My 80's mix CD finished and in the sudden silence, I heard their voices echoing through the courtyard. I stood and watched through the screen door, wondering what was going to happen next.

  Gus, in his best upper class British accent: "I say, old chap. Are you looking for 1-C? She can't hear you. Stone deaf, poor thing. But, no worries, I can sign for it. I'm her live-in caretaker."

  The Fed Ex guy was staring at Gus, like he was some kind of exhibit at Cirque Berzerk. Then he looked down at the package he was carrying, flummoxed.

  "Poor old girl. She'd be lost without me, really," Gus continued. "Constantly forgetting where she puts her glasses, her teeth, if she's had an enema or not. If it wasn't for me, the old bat would be living in a pool of watery shite. So, come, come, my good man and let me relieve you of your duty. Chop, chop."

  Unsure and a bit grossed out, he cautiously gave in and handed the package to Gus. Gus signed and tossed the package on the picnic table while the Fed Ex guy beat a hasty retreat.

  I emerged from the apartment, walked over to Gus and shoved him in the pool. He landed with a satisfying splash.

  "Hey! What was that for?!" he sputtered, when he surfaced.

  "Sorry, stone deaf, remember?" I eyeballed the Fed-Ex package on the picnic table. "Did you have fun with the delivery guy?"

  "I enjoy my small amusements."

  "No doubt. He seemed kinda cute."

  "Not my type. Scares too easily." He paused and thought about it for a second. "Yeah, good thing you're moving. I'm pretty sure Fed Ex isn't going to make any more deliveries here."

  I picked up the package. "A law firm in Wisconsin."

  "Maybe Lyra's wife is suing you for the five grand back."

  "The way my month is going? Not out of the realm of possibility."

  I ripped it open. Folders, legal documents and Polaroids tumbled out.

  I took one look at the pictures and grabbed onto the edge of the table, struggling to breathe. I was beyond light-headed -- it felt like my entire body had gone numb.

  "What? What's wrong?" Gus asked, climbing out of the pool. He picked up a picture and looked at it. "Nice." He put the picture down and stared at me.

  The blood had drained from my face, leaving me pale, and I shook uncontrollably. I sat down on the bench and put my head between my knees. "I think I'm going to throw up."

  "My psychic reactor must be tapped out, because I'm still not getting it. But if you throw up in the pool, you're on your own with that bitch of a manager."

  I picked up a picture and shoved it at him. "It's the cottage from my nightmares. I can't believe it really exists."

  Gus sat down and flipped through the legal papers. "Who's Tillie McDougal?"

  "My Aunt on my mom's side. Technically, she's my Great-Aunt. I don't really remember her, just what I've heard from my dad. Aunt Tillie and Uncle Owen were the last ones to see my mom, before she vanished."

  "Looks like you're her sole heir. She left a living trust and the order of succession was your Uncle Owen, your mom and then you."

  I sat up and looked at him. "So they're all dead?"

  "Looks like."

  I felt the world swirl around my head and go black.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I came to, I was laying down on the picnic table with Gus's pool-water soaked tank top draped over my forehead. Gus was looking over the papers from the Fed Ex packet. He glanced over at me. "You back?"

  "I think so."

  "Don't pass out on me like that again. I don't like it. And you're a bitch to lift. Talk about dead weight."

  "Sorry," I croaked.

  "Did you hit your head? Do you see two of me standing here? Should I take you to a hospital?"

  "No, I'm good."

  "Good. Remember to keep breathing. I've been looking through this stuff and, while it sucks for your Great-Aunt Tillie, this is your lucky day."

  "How do you figure?" I slowly sat up and placed my feet on the picnic table bench.

  "Listen to this." He stood up and started pacing, as he flipped through the papers. "As last remaining heir, you inherit everything. Except for the possessions and assets that were liquidated to pay hospital costs, property taxes, etcetera. But everything else is yours. Your aunt had set it up through a living trust, so there's no probate. And there's no mortgage. She owned the house outright. Looks like it's been in your family for a long time. And now, it's yours. Devil's Point, Wisconsin. How perfect is that?"

  Suddenly, Mrs. Lasio came tearing through the front gate. "You, brujo, put your clothes on. This is a polite courtyard."

  Gus looked up at her, a bit flummoxed. "We're sitting by the pool. I have a sarong on. What the hell is your problem?"

  "In the pool you wear swimsuit. Out the pool, you wear clothes. This is not a whorehouse."

  I took the wet tank-top off my forehead, looked at Gus and started to laugh.

  "I am wearing clothes. A sarong counts as clothing."

  Mrs. Lasio was still bellowing. "I don't want to see that. No one wants to see that."

  "It's okay, we'll go inside." I said, climbing down from the picnic table.

  Mrs. Lasio slammed into her apartment.

  Gus turned to me, flummoxed. "What the hell was that about?"

  I laughed. "Your sarong is very thin, very white and it's wet. And you're standing in the sun. So you, Mr. Commando, are a 1950's peep show."

  As we gathered up all the papers, Gus grinned at me. "At least you're not hyperventilating anymore. So my humiliation is having an up side."

  "That's because I've decided it's impossible."

  "What is?"

  "This whole thing. It's all impossible." We walked into the apartment. I closed the door and turned on the air conditioning. "It's just another dream. I must have fallen asleep while I was packing boxes."

  Gus reached over and punched me in the arm. Hard.

  "Ow! Fucker! That hurt. What the hell was that for?!"

  "Every time you look at that bruise, you'll know you're not dreaming."

  I glared at him. "You do that again and you'll wish you were dreaming."

  Gus put up his hands in surrender and dropped the papers on my dining room table.

  "Are you spending the night?" I asked, changing the subject.

  "Love to, but I've got a date. Speaking of, did I leave my black trousers here?"

  "You did. They're hanging in the closet. And I have a bottle of that shampoo you like, if you want to hit the shower first."

  Gus looked down at himself. "Think I should?" He sniffed at his armpits. "Oh, yeah. That's ripe. Why didn't you tell me I was a walking Stilton cheese?"

  "Why do you think I've stayed on the opposite side of the courtyard?" I took a bottle of Jack Daniels from a cabinet poured a shot of bourbon. "Go on and get out. I don't want you here anyway."

  He laughed, kissed me on the cheek and trotted off to the shower.

  A few minutes later, I walked into the bathroom, sipping my bourbon. "Am I allowed to turn down an inheritance? I'm thinking living in my car is a better bet."

  "That seems silly." Gus said, over the sound of the water.

  "Not really. That cottage has been haunting my dreams. I'm thinking anything that wants me there so bad, should probably not get what it wants." I sat on the toilet and put my drink on the countertop. "Maybe I can cash it in. Is there some kind of real estate service that'll take it off my hands?"

  "In this economy? You won't get anywhere near what it's worth." Gus shampooed his hair and yelled over the water as he rinsed. "Let's think about this logically. You saw the place when you were a child,
maybe heard stories about it from your mom's family. Flash forward to now. You get evicted, and you start dreaming about a cottage that your family owns, that your conscious mind forgot. It's simple, straightforward, psychology. Maybe your sixth sense picked up that Aunt Tillie was getting old, ready to kick the bucket..."

  "Thank you, Dr. Phil. And maybe tonight I'll dream the winning lottery ticket numbers."

  Gus opened the shower door and frowned at me. "You're a witch, dear heart. Why is it so impossible for a witch to dream what's going to happen in the future?" He ducked back into the shower to rinse off the shampoo. "And if you flush, I'll kill you."

  "I'm not peeing, goof. I'm just sitting. Thinking. Notice that the lid's down. I normally don't pee on the lid."

  "I don't trust you. You're a woman."

  Just for that, I flushed. Gus screamed as he got blasted with cold water. "Bitch! Just wait 'til I get out of here."

  "There's a problem with your logic, McFreud. This cottage that I've inherited? I've never been there. I've never seen it. But it was the last place my dad ever saw my mom alive. So it kinda freaks me out. I don't want anything to do with it."

  Gus opened the shower door and poked his head back out. "Why didn't you ever tell me about your mom?"

  "I spent enough of my life chasing after a ghost. Ironic, huh? Now it seems like ghosts are chasing after me."

  "Nothing is ever as simple as it seems."

  "No kidding," I snorted, in agreement.

  Why'd you stop looking for her?" he asked, stepping out of the shower.

  I thought of my dad and could see his bright blue eyes, aquiline nose and tanned skin as if he were standing in front of me. "My dad died of a broken heart. That seemed a good enough reason to quit."

  "Sounds like real love. Or real commitment." Gus started toweling off. "Or someone who should have been committed because of love."

  Devil's Point, Wisconsin. Even the name sounded like a warning. I slugged down the rest of my Jack and thumped down the glass, suddenly resolved. I knew what I had to do. I stood up.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To give the Devil back his due," I said, over my shoulder, as I walked out.

  Gus half-ran, half-hopped out of the bathroom, pulling his pants on, as he ran after me.

  I grabbed the Fed-Ex package and shoved everything back in.

  "Mara?! Wait!"

  "I'm getting rid of this," I said, tossing the package in a small, metal trash can. I got a box of matches out of a drawer and I lit one, ready to send this gift from the grave back where it belonged.

  Gus blew out the match and grabbed the box from me. "Are you nuts? This is important stuff, Mara. You can't just burn it. This cottage could hold the key to what happened to your mom. Don't you want to see if Tillie had any pictures of her? Any memories she may have written down?"

  I turned away from him so he couldn't see my eyes starting to tear up. I couldn't understand why the thought that my mom might actually be dead, felt so painful. It was easier to think of her as being out there, somewhere, living a life that had nothing to do with me.

  "Besides, I'm sure they have duplicates. Burning it isn't going to make it go away." He took the package out of the garbage and handed it back to me. "So stop being a girl and man up. This solves a lot of your problems. Aunt Tillie couldn't have picked a more fortuitous time to kick the bucket. Don't run away from your gift horse."

  "I bet the people of Troy heard the same speech and look where it got them."

  "You're about to be homeless. Can you really afford to be indulging your paranoia, looking for some kind of psychic ambush?"

  I sighed.

  "Stop worrying," he continued, buttoning his wild-colored shirt. "If date night bombs, I'll be back for some comfort food and one-on-one freak-out time. Just try to hold it together until then, okay?" He kissed me on the cheek. "And don't hog all the bourbon."

  "And if it's a great date?"

  "I'll call you after breakfast and you can go off on me then. I'll promise to listen to all your paranoid delusions without laughing."

  "As a best friend, you kinda suck."

  "Tough love, baby. Tough love. Okay, are we good?"

  I nodded, reluctantly.

  He stuck a pair of heavy silver earrings through his oversized ear piercings, put on his Celtic man jewelry, and strode off in a cloud of amber and patchouli.

  Later that night, it was just me, the Fed Ex package and a rapidly dwindling bottle of bourbon. Between the yard sale and the packing, the apartment felt denuded and strange.

  I took another swig and paced the living room, trying to ignore the package. That didn't quite work, so I gave it the hairy eyeball and walked gingerly around it, expecting it to leap off the table at any second.

  I turned on the TV, but I couldn't concentrate longer than thirty seconds. I tried putting in Murphy's Romance, one of my favorite old-time movies with Sally Field and James Garner, (okay, so I'm a sap for happy endings), but that didn't help either.

  It was odd how fate worked. I spent the last few weeks preparing to move, even though I didn't have a place to move to. I'd sold off as much as I could and I've been packing up the rest. I'd made all the preparations, without any destination. And now the destination just magically dropped in my lap. It was like the universe intervened and brought me a new home. But at what cost?

  It did what you asked it to. Magic follows the path of least resistance.

  "Who said that?!" I looked around, but I was the only one standing in my apartment. I eyeballed the bottle of bourbon. Could bourbon make you hear things?

  I had to think logically. Maybe Gus was right. What if the cottage had been haunting my dreams because my subconscious was somehow aware that it was going to be my new home? I tried to shut down my fear and calm my emotions.

  Or maybe your fetch did its job too well and killed an old woman so you could have a place to live.

  "Shut up!" I said, reaching for the rest of the bourbon and pouring myself another shot.

  I looked around, daring the voice to say something else, but it was quiet.

  I picked up the package and slowly went through the documents. Deed of Trust, pictures of the property. The pictures looked enough like the cottage in my dreams to make my spine tingle. But it was also different. It was bigger, fancier, nicer. Maybe it was just a dream after all. Maybe I was getting all worked up over nothing.

  There was an envelope with a copy of Tillie's Last Will and Testament along with her Living Trust. There was also a folder with a Death Certificate.

  When I opened the folder, a newspaper clipping and an autopsy report fell out. I picked them up and the bottom fell out of my world.

  Chapter Seventeen

  "Mara, Mara, wake up!"

  The voice seemed to be coming from a mile away. I tried to grab onto the sound and crawl towards it.

  "Mara! You get back here right now. Two more minutes and I'm throwing you into the pool. And let me tell you, that water's damn cold at night."

  I tried to make my lips to say "no" but my will and my body seemed to be disconnected.

  Cold. Icy. Wet. Salty. I reached up. My face was wet and salty. I opened my eyes. Gus hovered over me, an empty water pitcher in one hand, a container of sea salt in the other.

  "Rude," I croaked.

  "Rude, my ass." Gus said, placing a chunk of sea salt in my mouth. "Do you have any idea how much you scared me?"

  I tried to spit out the salt, but he forced my mouth closed.

  "Stop fighting me. You need to ground out whatever this is."

  I made a face at the way the salt burned, but I swallowed it. He handed me a bottle of water and I gulped it down, trying to wash the taste of salt away.

  "Aren't you... on a date?"

  "I was. I was having a great time, too. Until you called."

  I looked up at him in confusion. Then I looked down at myself. I was on the floor, propped up next to the couch. The portable phone was about a foot away. The
contents of the package were scattered on the floor.

  "Do you remember calling me?"

  I shook my head. "What did I say?"

  "You screamed."

  "What did I scream?"

  "I don't know. I couldn't understand you. The machine picked up, I heard you screaming and the line went dead. So I rushed over here. What happened?"

  "Oh..." As the salt worked to ground me, memories started to return, bit by bit. "I'm sorry. I don't know what got into me."

  Gus picked up the empty bottle of bourbon. "I do. Now what's this all about, Mara? I was in the middle of an after-dinner blow job, so it better be good. I've never deflated so fast in my life."

  The package. I kicked at it and papers went flying. "That..." I pointed at the package. "That's what happened."

  "Yes, we went through that before."

  "You missed something," I croaked. I crawled over to the pile, scrabbled through the papers and handed him the newspaper clipping and the autopsy report.

  "Gruesome." He said, flipping through it. "Especially the pictures. What idiot put these in here? Damn, when I die, no autopsies please. Even if it is foul play. Just toss me on a burning pyre. After you cut off my head, of course."

  I snatched the envelope back from him. "Don't you get it?" I held up the newspaper clipping. There it was, in black and white. A small, Volkswagen Cabriolet crunched into a tree. Perched on the hood of the car was a large, black crow. Behind it was an autopsy photo showing a ravaged corpse with a missing eye.

  Looking at the clipping again, I started hyperventilating. "I dreamt Aunt Tillie's death. The whole thing. In excruciating detail. Remember? The glass with gray water? The dead crow in the bathroom? I killed her!"

  "That's ridiculous. Dreaming it doesn't mean you've caused it."

  "She swerved to avoid me. This is all my fault."

  "Breathe. Slow down. Deep breaths. You weren't really there." Gus put his hands on my shoulders. "Come on, work with me here, I don't have a paper bag and I'm running out of salt." He slowed his own breathing and projected calming energy into me.

  "You don't understand. I... Killed... Aunt Tillie..." I gasped.