by Scott, D. D.
“Hey, there’s one that looks like Nicky. Should I take that too?” He asked.
I thought for a moment…about all of the deadlines Nicky had missed, about him calling me Allwitch, about his propensity for escort services and more.
“No. Just leave that one,” I said, thinking karma was bound to catch up with Nicky Blane sooner or later.
Captain Allen raised his eyebrow but didn’t say a word about my decision.
“Now then…I need plain, basic dolls that we can make symbolic of Liza.”
“Oh no. You’re not going to hex her!”
“Relax. We’ve got to have three in her likeness too for my reversing boxes. Here, these will do,” he said, taking three of the six dolls laying next to Liza’s sewing machine.
These dolls hadn’t been dressed up yet to resemble any others we saw in her case.
“Okay. What else?” He muttered, rummaging through the items on the sewing table. “I also need something that either belongs to or will symbolize her to put on the dolls.”
Not finding anything to his satisfaction in her sewing supplies or in the quantity he needed, he looked around the living room next. It didn’t take long for him to focus on all of the boxes of shotgun shells.
I opened my mouth wide and started to speak, but before I could get anything out, he gently closed my mouth with his large cold hands, then reached into one of the boxes and removed three shells.
“I’m making what’s called reverse mirror protection boxes.”
“What’s that?” I asked, giving up on trying to stop him, figuring whatever he was up to Liza probably deserved it.
“If you know who jinxed you, they can always do it again, right? So, you’ve got to bind-up your enemy in a mirror-box spell. These little beauties will bind up your enemy and make sure that everything evil they do bounces back to them, hurting them each time they try to hurt someone else.”
“It’s negative reinforcement, so to speak.”
“Good way to look at it, Ace. I’ve got to smash a few mirrors, glue the pieces to the insides of a box, arrange the doll in Liza’s likeness in the box, sprinkle it with red pepper and sulfur powder and chant the spell.”
“You have a spell?”
This couldn’t be good. We already had spells we were trying to undo. We didn’t need to cast more!
“I do now. But I can’t say it till I prepare the box and right before I bury it in the cemetery and pay the spirits a dime to hold down our little Liza.”
“They only charge a dime for that?”
“Evidently.”
Damn, if I wasn’t going to go get a roll of dimes for future use.
“Okay. I gotta run. I’ll call you when the box is ready, and if you’d like, we can bury it together.”
“Perfect. I want to hear this spell.”
“I thought you might enjoy that.”
He turned to leave, but stopped right as he was about to exit the living room and go back into the kitchen.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“What the hell is that?!”
I followed his gaze, and there, crammed into the corner of Liza’s sewing area was a small table holding two, tilted black candles, that had at one time, when lit, dripped wax on two photos, one of Darryl and one of Hank. She’d printed out a photo of Hank from a feature the New York Times had done on him.
Reaching the table at the same time, we picked up a handwritten recipe card that accompanied the candles and photos.
“The Three Nights of Hell Spell,” I read out loud. “This is a black-magic spell. To be used only against one’s most dangerous enemies. When cast once, it causes three days of pain and nightmares. If cast a second time, the victim will be seriously injured. If cast three or more times, the victim will surely die.”
My hands trembled causing the notecard to slip to the floor.
“Is she on night one, two or three?” Captain Allen asked, his eyes wide open just like mine.
“I have no idea,” I said, suddenly feeling rather faint.
I reached for the table’s edge just as the Captain looped his arm through mine to steady me.
“Well, we’d best find out,” he said. “Time to wake up Sleeping Beauty.”
CHAPTER TEN
“Look,” Liza said, sitting back on the couch between Captain Allen and I after we’d dragged her out of her bed, “all I did was tweak the Three Nights of Hell Spell.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?” I asked.
Actually, more than a little, I thought to myself.
“It hasn’t been…until today…with the extra energy from the gasoline explosion.”
“What do you mean by tweaked?” the Captain asked.
And I so hoped he got an answer to that question. I’d asked the same one earlier and got nowhere.
“I was just going for the three nights of pain thing. Not the death after night three. I used my own jingle instead of what’s on the card.”
I held the card in my hand and read the spell to myself, too damn afraid to read it out loud in case that would cast it again. It said:
“As I do this candle spell,
Bring mine enemy three nights of hell,
Candle black, black as night,
Bring him pains of flesh tonight!
Lesions on his skin will grow
Afflict him with a painful blow
Sores and pain afflict him now,
For three nights he will wonder how,
Dukes of darkness, Kings of Hell,
Smite mine enemy, bring him hell.
A creepy energy moved up and down my arms giving me goose bumps. Surely, I was imagining things. I do have a rather over the top imagination. So yeah. That had to be it.
“Let’s hear your tweaked version,” Captain Allen commanded.
“Okay. Fine. No harm can come of it anyway because we’re not using the candles with the photos,” Liza said.
Then she chanted:
“As I do this candle spell,
Bring mine enemy and my friend’s enemy three nights of hell,
Candle black, black as night,
Bring them pains of flesh tonight!
Lesions from burns on one’s skin will grow
While the other, afflict him with a painful neck blow
Sores and pain afflict them now,
For three nights both assholes will wonder how,
Dukes of darkness, Kings of Hell,
Smite mine asshat enemies, bring ‘em hell.
Finished with her cantation, she still had a wicked sparkle in her eyes, although it appeared much more dim than when she was in full spellcasting revelry.
“What about the last part?” I asked. “This card says you finish by lifting the curse.”
“Well…I haven’t done that part yet.”
“Do it…now,” directed Captain Allen. “Or I will arrest you.”
“On what charges?” She asked, the wicked sparkle back in place.
I’ll have to admit, I was wondering that too. How do you arrest someone on suspicion of witchcraft? It wasn’t like we were in Salem Massachusetts in 1692. But yeah, I wasn’t dumb enough to ask.
The Captain didn’t answer, and didn’t look the least bit flustered or concerned at all that he had to vouch for his threat.
“Okay. Okay,” Liza said then sighed. “You really need to lighten up.”
She went over to the small table, lit the two black candles, let the wax drip on Darryl and Hank’s pictures, then tore up the photos and said:
When three nights of pain have been endured,
I lift this curse, rest assured.
Darkness leave them, go away.
The curse is lifted now, today.
“I don’t know why y’all’s panties are in such a pinch,” she said, while blowing out the candles. “I need three different photos of each one before I can do the death part of the spell. And, I’d only found that one press shot of Hank.”
“
What a relief,” I said.
And yes, I was being a total smart ass. By now, I was more than ready to bail on being her understudy.
“I betchya you had everything you needed on Darryl’s behalf,” the Captain added, unable to keep a grin from stretching across his lips.
“I sure did,” she said, damn near salivating. “But I have to cast the spell three times in the same month for the death part to work. Lucky for him, I didn’t know that till yesterday. So, in that regards, the bastard’s safe. Well…till next month.”
Captain Allen and I just looked at each other. I mean…c’mon on, how do you respond to that?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
While the Captain and Sam constructed our reversing boxes using the Voodoo dolls they’d collected, the rest of us busied ourselves with either spiritual bathing, house cleansing and floor washing or hanging protective charms around the farmhouse.
Molly, my housekeeper, was usually a cooking and cleaning machine. But not tonight. As we went about our nonconventional “housework,” she stood off to the side, making tsk-tsk noises, and drawing the sign of the cross over her head and chest. An avid churchgoer, she wasn’t having anything to do with what we were up to on this chilly winter evening.
I’ll admit, this whole situation was turning out to be ironic and a major challenge for all of our belief systems. Take me, for instance. I’ve prided myself on being free of any supernatural hang-ups for a long time. But here I am concocting potions and preparing incantations to chant.
A skeptic by nature, I’m still having a hard time taking seriously the connection of Liza’s actions to the unfortunate incidents that had befallen the two exes. Skepticism is a good thing if you’re a detective working a murder case. It’s also come in handy while constructing my fictional crimes and their resolutions.
But as I watched the reversing spell potion bubble away in my chili pot, I realized I was in uncharted waters.
Note to self: Time to get a new chili pot. There was no way I was going to subject a group of friends, innocently gathered for chili and football, to whatever lingering effects might be attached to my poor, doomed pot. And damn if I didn’t really love this thing too.
“Do you think all of this stuff is going to work?” Sam’s cousin, Zoey Witherspoon, asked while hanging a horseshoe over my back door.
“I don’t have a clue,” I said, figuring there was no sense in getting everyone’s hopes up. “Everything I’ve read says we have to understand the culture of the person casting the spells. Who the hell understands Liza?”
“Good point,” Zoey said, going over to check on Grams who was completely engrossed in a small pot she had on one of the back burners of my stove. “What are you working on?”
“The pages I printed out said to put a piece of red flannel in hot water on the back of the stove and let it boil,” she said, cranking up the heat on the dial.
“What’s that supposed to do?” I asked.
“It makes the one who has a spell over you come and ask forgiveness.”
Great, I thought. That’s just what we need. More Aunt Liza.
“Personally, I like this one best,” Grams said, pulling a second printed sheet from her apron pocket. “It says all we’ve got to do is freeze the bitch.”
Zoey and I choked on our whiskey, looking at each other as if deciding in the silence if we (a) wanted to know more about that and if so, (b) who was going to ask for clarification.
What the hell? I loved Grams’ perspective on things, so I took the challenge.
“How exactly are we going to freeze Aunt Liza?” I asked.
For the record, I was all for it, btw, and just needed to know how to get ‘er done.
“Says here you just take a bottle of water, preferably Holy Water, drop a slip of paper into it that reads something to the effect ‘Aunt Liza is out of - person’s name here - life forever’ and set it at the back of your freezer. Thus, freeze the bitch,” Grams said, looking very proud of her scoop.
“Did someone ask for Holy Water? I have some,” Sam said, coming back into the kitchen with the Captain.
“Perfect! Give me that stuff! We’ve got a bitch to freeze!”
Grams was waaay too excited about this whole thing. But at least she added humor to an otherwise not-so-funny predicament.
Why the hell did Sam have Holy Water, anyway? That was Sam. Always working every angle of the metaphysical playing field. One day, she’s all about Buddhism, and the next, she’s carrying a vial of Holy Water like it’s the most natural thing ever. Nothing wrong with covering your bases, I guess. That said, I decided it wasn’t the time to ask because that would get Grams even more whooped up. And we certainly didn’t need that to happen.
So, while Grams and Sam put Aunt Liza into the sub-zero, I finished sprinkling red pepper and salt in every corner of the kitchen, which is also supposed to help take off any spells cast on me.
“Looks like we’ve got the reversing box ready to bury,” the Captain said, setting the one he’d made for us on my kitchen table.
Before I could check it out, Liza was knocking on my back door.
Molly, who would normally answer the door if I was busy, made the sign of the cross again and headed for her suite.
I shook my head, glad I’d also added red pepper to the insides of my shoes too. There was no such thing as over-preparing when it came to Aunt Liza.
“Wait! Wait! Don’t open that yet!” Grams yelled, reaching for an onion.
She chopped the thing in half with one dangerous thrust of a meat cleaver and held it high in the air in the direction of my back door.
“Onions keep the evil spirits out!” She yelled.
Who was I to argue?
“What the hell are you all still doing over here?” Liza asked.
Then she whispered in my ear. “Has that crazy ass Grams lost it again?”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle or chili pot black.
“I just came over to apologize for all of this…”
“Aha! I told ya that boiling red flannel would do the trick!” Grams cackled as if she were the witch and not Liza.
Hell, what if they both were? I suppose that’s highly possible. If I’d only already had a dime under my fireplace to keep the witches out.
“Oh my God! You’re binding me?!” Liza shouted, then shrieked as she stared at the reverse mirror box.
For a moment, it felt as if we were in Oz, about to dump a big-ass bucket of water on The Wicked Witch of the West.
“Is there a better way to stop your crazy ass spells?” I asked, knowing if there was she’d sure as hell never tell us.
“Well, no. But I could tweak that so that I…”
“No tweaks!” We all shouted in unison.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Now I was tweaking. Well…my phone was.
Damn. I did not need any more distractions. Already at my whit’s end, my phone rang again, pushing me ever closer to the edge of insanity.
I looked at the caller name on the screen and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was my ex, Adah.
My blood froze. Holy crap! Liza hadn’t been applying her wanna-be witch shenanigans to her too, had she? I thought she just had it in for her and Sam’s exes.
I excused myself, went into my office to take the call, then reluctantly pressed the talk button. “Hello?”
“Hi.” The tone of her voice was distant, seemingly indifferent.
“Hi. Is everything alright?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” She fired back.
“It’s just that I haven’t heard from you in so long…” I said then paused.
There was clearly no way I could ask her if, within the past few hours, she’d experienced some life-jeopardizing incident. Heck, any question I asked might make her suspicious.
She’s a research scientist and instructor at a prestigious academic institution on the East Coast that just happens to rhyme with barvard. So, without demonstrable proof, she wasn’t likely to t
hink anything that occurred during the past few hours would have anything to do with me or my tragically eccentric aunt.
But Adah always did seem to have a sixth sense that she attributed to being her mother’s daughter. And her mother was one formidable soul. From a family with roots in Zanzibar as far back as written records were kept, she was from the old country…the oldest, literally. Her father was just as formidable. He was the son of a Zulu chieftain who became a famous Keynesian economics professor at Cambridge.
She wasn’t the most likely partner to be hooked up with this farm boy, I’ll admit, but from the first day I’d met her, I was beyond smitten.
“Hello?”
“I’m here,” I said, coming out of my revelry, although my mind was still racing trying to figure out what Liza might have done to her. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked, totally terrified of the answer.
“I was in the process of rearranging my lab earlier, and one of my graduate assistants dropped a centrifuge at a rather inopportune time. Now I’ve got three broken bones in the top of my foot. Needless to say, that’s the end of my triathlon training.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Liza was gonna pay for this. Adah and I weren’t married anymore, but I still cared for her, and Liza knew that.
“I didn’t know you were training for a triathlon,” I said, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“How would you? We haven’t spoken for some time. I’m just sitting in the hospital with my foot in the air, and I thought it would be a good time to check in. You’ve been on my mind since I saw the article in the Globe about Jack Collins’ murder. When I read that his body was found on your farm, I nearly spit up my espresso. So, how are you holding up out there?”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. Really, I am,” I said, doing my best to sound halfway convincing, which was tough considering my blood was beginning to boil.
