by Pete Kahle
P.J. mounted her bike and pedaled away, down the empty street and down a few long, lonely blocks, trying to hold it together; it's what Daddy would do, she thought.
He was in the front yard, hauling out bags of leaves and sticks to the curb when she wheeled into the driveway. Mother smiled at her from the big window in the living room, which meant the moods of the morning had passed. She wanted to tell them what she'd seen, but it was her fight now; the boojum would come after her next.
"Hey, squirt," Daddy said, wiping his brow with one gloved hand. "You have fun at the library?"
P.J. shrugged, feeling worn out from talking to the cats and being mad and what she'd seen.
"I guess so," she said. "Is it okay if I go take a nap before dinner, Dad? I'm pooped."
He laughed.
"Sure, kid. Sack out for a while when mom and I are doing all the hard work," he teased.
P.J. stuck her tongue out at him and did her best imitation of a flounce as she headed inside, aiming straight for the stairs. Keeping it together.
"Petra, are you all right?" Mother called. "You look flushed. Your father said you cried on the way to the library."
P.J. dropped her backpack, and diverted to the kitchen. She knew how Mother would react if she didn't. Mother was feeling guilty about yelling that morning.
"Uh huh," she said. "It still hurts, you know? It's been so long, but it still hurts."
Mother came over, saying nothing, and wrapped P.J. in her arms. She held her daughter close, stroking her hair, playing the dark strands out between her fingers as if she intended to weave the night into cloth.
"I'm sorry, honey," Mother whispered. "I know he meant a lot to you, means a lot to you. He's still here, and you know cats have nine lives..."
That brought forth the hurt that P.J. held since the Parliament had spoken, and the tears came, hot and stinging.
"He's not coming back, mom," she sobbed, voice ragged.
Mother stroked her hair, and kissed the top of her head when it was all done, looking sad and awful.
"Sweetie, why don't you go read or take a nap until we're ready to eat," she said. "I'll call you when it's ready, all right?"
P.J. nodded and went upstairs. She didn't sleep, or read. Instead, washed her mouth out, checked the sachet, checked her mirror, and got some things out for the business. The little trowel had come from Mother trying to get her interested in gardening. When P.J. grew the kinds of plants and herbs Gramma suggested, she'd been furious and decided that gardening wasn't what P.J. really wanted to do. The knife had come from Gramma, passed over by hand with an admonition to not let Mother know she had it. The slingshot she'd bought with saved allowance money, just in case. Tonight was 'in case', she thought.
Dinner was quiet, punctuated with small talk and the rasp of plasticware on the disposable dishes. Daddy had cooked beer can chicken on the grill, with all of the trimmings, one of her favorites. Mother made sure that everyone got enough, and took over cleaning up. When P.J. rose, Mother reached out and touched her hand.
"Petra," she said. "What are you up to?"
"Nothing," P.J. muttered, feeling guilty enough already. "I was gonna go out back is all..."
"Petra," Mother repeated. "You have that look. I heard you rummaging in your drawers upstairs. The ones you think we don't know about. Where you keep your special things. Honey, please... tell me."
P.J. squirmed. She didn't want to lie, but Mother would keep her inside if she told the truth, which meant that the boojum would be free to do its nastiness. They'd wake up with no teeth in their heads, or worse.
"I don't want to say," she admitted, voice small and quiet. "You'll get mad."
"Is it about what you said this morning?"
The blush came to P.J.'s face, furious red, hot, making her skin prickle. She nodded.
"I see," Mother said, sitting down next to her.
P.J.'s eyes widened, and the blush retreated, replaced by ashes. She nodded again. "It was a boojum, mom," she said. "I swear it was. I saw it in the mirror. It's bad."
Mother looked at her for a long, considering moment. P.J. felt the tears coming again and bit her lower lip. She'd be sent to her room, and the business wouldn't happen. Then the boojum would come. She didn't even have Alec to help her this time.
"Go," Mother said, kissing the top of her head. "Do what you need to do, honey. I'll keep Daddy in our room tonight. We love you so much, you know that, right?"
When P.J. ran up the stairs, it felt like flying.
The sick feeling had come back as the rubber of the slingshot snapped. The grackle screeched, its wing broken, tumbling to earth. This was the business, she told herself. Gramma told her there was always a price, and that the price was too high, so the business had to be done carefully. It was scary and bad, but P.J. knew it was what Father called 'necessary evil.' If she didn't do it, who would?
The bird fluttered weakly, pecking at her hands when she picked it up. That hurt, and she'd need to wash the pecks out after everything was done. Her blood trickled out of the wounds, mixing with the black feathers of the big bird. The blood was part of the business, too. She walked to the spot where Alec was buried, where she'd been digging, and set the grackle in the big, shallow salad bowl.
She swallowed, pressing her lips together, trying hard not to think about this part, about how easy it was to slip the little knife Gramma gave her into the grackle's breast, to snap its ribcage and still its heart, to release the blood into the little pile of herbs and dirt from Alec's grave. She held it there until the bird stopped struggling, and kept going. Necessary evil, necessary evil, she thought.
When it was done, the moon hadn't come out. She mixed and ground and pressed everything together. She managed to keep from crying until she pried open the box Alec was in, until she smelled him. Then the tears became part of the business too. Cats told the truth after all.
Black cat bone and van van oil. A bundle of feathers from a black bird killed under the dark of the moon. Goofer dust from the sachet. It was bigger than it was when it hung on her closet door, and uglier. The scents of lemongrass and citronella mixed with richer, darker ones, earth and blood. She'd made it just like the cats had told her. The business. She spoke the words then. The most important words of all.
"I love you, mister Alec," she said, lowering the little box into the grave. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I love you."
The moon came out then, casting butter-silver light across her face.
She left the window open, after she'd taken her mirror down and positioned it just so. Her door was locked, Mother and Daddy were in their room. Moonlight slid across her floor, and P.J. sat with the mojo in her hands, shaking, letting the fear wash over her and out of her, making her sweat. The boojum could smell it, and that was fine. It masked the smell of what she had, the business.
When it came, it was fast, leather straps whipping and creaking and snapping. It stank, worse than she'd thought. It heaved itself through her open window, its apple-granny wrinkled face looking for her. She'd challenged it, and its kind were proud. She'd made it mad, and that made it stupid. The stench of it made her want to heave, and her stomach quailed.
In P.J.'s hands, the mojo moved. Feathers rustled, and she held it out to the moon, letting the light fall across it. The boojum heard the noise, and hissed, jabbering at her. It whipcracked its leather straps at her, the teeth embedded in them screeching like a fork dragged across a fine china bowl. She screamed back at it, fear and challenge. It went for her, yattering, throwing itself across the room in a single spasmodic movement.
She stepped back, quick, sliding sideways across her bed. Hand under her pillow, fingers closed around the slingshot, its wood still speckled with grackle blood. The boojum scented it and yowled again. It grinned, pausing to put more stolen teeth into its black gums, snapping to set them.
P.J. aimed the slingshot and fired off, missing, something delicate breaking behind the boojum. Her heart hammered in her chest, boomboo
mboom, making her shake. But the sound made the boojum turn even as its straps and apple-granny claws dug into her bedspread. She found the first piece of string she'd tied to her mirror and pulled hard.
Stuck.
She bit her lower lip, and the boojum smelled the blood. The longest of the straps whipcracked over her bed and lashed at her shoulder, shredding her shirt, biting into the skin beneath. Its yammering rose to a triumphant shriek, and more straps stabbed into the bed, lifting it halfway over in a single spasmodic movement. P.J. scrambled away, careening off her bedroom door, jerking the twine again; this time, the mirror flipped. Her hand fell on the second part of the business, and she smiled just a little. She was past the boojum, its wrinkled face and raisin-colored eyes tipped just over the edge of the bed, looking for her. She reached over and turned the big mirror, letting it catch her reflection in the shadows.
She yanked the knob on the closet door, pulling it open. When the boojum dived for her in the silver mirror, it had to pass over the closet's threshold.
P.J. wanted to close her eyes, but she knew that if she did, the mojo wouldn't work its business. She saw the whole thing. She wouldn't let herself smile when the closet boojum closed its zipper teeth and empty clothes arms over the tooth fairy. She wasn't that mean.
When it was done, the closet boojum went back to perching on the hanger rod, just a shadow among the clothes. She pushed the door closed with the broom handle, and hung the mojo on the knob. A single tooth lay on the floor. P.J. picked it up, and put it with her special things. She hung the mirror back up, tired by the end of it all.
P.J. climbed into bed, pulling the remains of the covers up, surveying the battleground, letting the shivers begin. For a moment, the moonlight and shadows and cloth looked like a black and white cat, but when she touched them, there was nothing at all.
Mark has had a lifelong love of horror that started at the age of 6, when his father took him to see Alien in the theater; he hasn't been the same since. He began writing horror fiction at the age of 12, and parlayed that into creating roleplaying games throughout high school and college. He's since returned to writing horror, and has no plans to stop any time soon.
Mark lives in the wonderful city of Austin, Texas, with his wife Jennifer and four cats... all of whom are far too intelligent for their humans' good
MEKOOMWESO’S REVENANTS
By Esther M. Leiper-Estabrooks
It is disquieting, sinister in retrospect, the letter that brought me to my sister Melissa’s house in New Hampshire. Yet shouldn’t Raymond, her husband, have warned me if he held suspicions at the time of her miscarriage? I thought he was considering the benefit to me as a recent widow, for whom a change would be wise; then again, maybe not!
Even in Virginia, it was chilly on the late-winter day when I read “Dear Sarah,” in Raymond’s firm script. “Dr. James suggests a warmer climate for Melissa, but I believe her spirit also needs fostering. To our sorrow she miscarried, and feels a great weariness, thus I‘m taking her away to Atlanta and my family, hoping to cheer her with new faces and vistas. Would you enjoy being a caretaker here in New Hampshire for a while? We don’t want the home left empty and will pay your expenses and more. This good deed will, I trust, prove a pleasant change for you, plus a boon for Melissa who’s feeling very low.
“She has not touched her paints since the loss of the baby and refuses to; indeed, grows wild if I mention them. Her favorite hobby gone in a blink! Frankly, Sarah, I don’t understand, for I know what her talent meant. On the practical side while this request is short notice, yet the
wood supply is sufficient till spring and the house is at your convenience, should you wish a change. Indeed, Melissa would be happier knowing the place neither empty nor exposed to strangers.”
Certainly I was intrigued by the invitation. Since my husband John’s recent passing, I’d felt directionless. The recession scotched my teaching job, though John had left me enough to get by. Still, in coming north, perhaps I could gain some perspective and look toward the future. At least I’d liked the North Country town of Peterson, based on my one previous visit.
Yes, last autumn I’d enjoyed spending a week at Melissa’s white frame home with blue shutters, a place removed from neighbors, and with a backyard that swept from lawn to a wild tangle of growth merging into mountain slope. I could understand how she needed respite from her miscarriage, while I could use a change from the locale of my widowhood. There was also the lure of Indian legends, for the Abenaki tribe had once lived in New Hampshire—mostly gone now, or intermingled with white folks. Having once been a full-time teacher, I tried to absorb all I could to awaken my students’ interest, plus to satisfy my own love of lore and legends.
Now as I unpacked, my thoughts swept back to the week last summer we’d shared. Melissa was overjoyed with her prospect of a baby, and we renewed our closeness. Her lawyer husband Raymond, though friendly, was preoccupied with a case, so we two had a week of being close again, giddy and girlish. Indeed, my sister bloomed: brown hair gleaming, and eyes dancing, as she tugged me from my car on arrival. Her house proved comfortable and artistic, though much of our time we spent outside in sunny weather.
Not yet clumsy with pregnancy, Melissa was excited by her extended garden which kept her busy, so she insisted I must see it first. I expected practical rows of tomatoes, beans, and so forth, but was mistaken. We were raised as city girls, and I’d stayed one, so was unprepared for the sheer space behind her home. Past a band of lawn and colorful border of flowers, wild acres swept up to granite crags and a far skyline. Sumac and alders struggled past glacial boulders where blackberry vines tangled against scraggly pines. For me, the land seemed like wilderness. But Mel’s creativity shone through it. Sensing an animal hidden in every granite shape, by cunning use of paint she had transformed various boulders into outlandish creatures—just as if a Fairy Queen—and a fey one at that—had waved her wand. A grinning frog, nearly four feet high, squatted amidst briars. Behind that, a bobcat-shape crouched while a wolf drank from a rain-water pool. The trompe l’oeil was so vivid I almost felt frog skin and animal fur. Indeed the vivid forms seemed poised ready to move; a silly fancy!
But my practical self was worried; Why such an outlay of time and effort! Shouldn’t Melissa concentrate on coming motherhood? Aloud I asked, “What does Raymond think?”
“He doesn’t see the stones as I do, alive,” she replied. “He suggested I find some temp job for now or at least offer art lessons.” She tittered, “How unnecessary! We’ve money enough, and why marry a lawyer if not to have a nice life? Of course I’ll be tied down with the baby, so I plan to accomplish as much as possible now.”
“Your child will inherit quite a kingdom,” I remarked, gazing up the slope toward a far, craggy peak, and Melissa giggled, quite pleased with this ambiguous statement.
Next, on that serene morning, she took me to her basement work room filled with paint cans and gardening tools. I perched on a straw bale while she showed off gallons of acrylics, brushes of all sorts and sizes, and tucked in one corner a computer with photos on the screen; these depicted briar-hugged rocks as they appeared before, then after, their bizarre transformations.
“Yes, I’m obsessed,” Melissa declared cheerfully, though I detected an undertone of defiance. She pushed back a lock of hair. “When I stare long enough, each boulder reveals its inner shape to me, and the way to transform it. I sense the mass and bulk somehow; just where its shadows are cast, plus the mood of the enduring land; night and morning, late and early.”
“You’re a little pagan,” I’d laughed fondly. But I felt uneasy.
Now, in the present, I soberly folded Raymond’s letter; read many times since I journeyed up to this alien North Country in mud season, and became a solitary guest in their home. Had I been wise? Could I count this as an odd vacation; time to get in touch with myself, so if the locale didn’t suit—or they wished to return sooner than planned—I could simply move out?
> But how silly to worry about the possibility of leaving when I’d barely arrived! Indeed, I had immediate, practical chores to deal with. For a start, I must daily bring in more wood for the cast iron stove, so there would always be a handy supply; and should shop as much as possible at the local “Mom and Pop;” for good will and to meet neighbors, plus write to Melissa with more candor than I chose to say by phone. Party lines were long outdated, yet small town folks had a mysteriously efficient grapevine and of course I was gossiped about as a newcomer.
I couldn’t pinpoint rudeness, but the villagers proved reserved. I was an outsider, and their clannish attitude, I speculated, had started Melissa on her own solitary hobby of decorating stones. By no stretch could I imagine her playing weekly Bingo or view Raymond serving as a volunteer fireman. Yet the fire station was the most popular clubhouse for town men, while most women belonged to the Rebeccas, the female equivalent of the Oddfellows club, and lived for Bingo night.
Though I’d settled at the beginning of March, there were still several months of cold-time to cope with, so mentally I prepared for blizzards and loneliness. Yet snow, oddly, did not come. Instead the landscape was locked in by frigid fog banks and occasional vague flurries that whirled about, but refused to settle. Frost penetrated ever deeper, while the air smelled iron-tanged. The local weekly reminded readers of “sure” weather signs grandfolks swore by, concerning height of wasps’ nests, behavior of crows, and so forth. Still, oldsters I observed gathered at the country store seemed uneasy, plus hushed when I came near, as if discussing matters not revealed to an outsider.
Indeed, frozen fog persisted onward from my arrival like a vast gray hand pressing on the landscape and my soul. Sometimes it parted to reveal nearer hills, yet always returned by nightfall. The temperature hovered in the teens, with roads heavily salted against glare ice. Rumors flew in the local Mom and Pop store, not told to me, but apparent in hushed whispers that ceased if I drew near.
