by Harper Lin
The Unfamiliar began to chant its poisonous incantation. I stepped closer and looked at its dead white eyes and dirty, scratched hands and face.
“Topher! I know you’re in there! I know why you did this!” I shouted over the Unfamiliar’s gurgling, diabolical gibberish. “I know what you’re feeling. I wanted revenge too.”
The words stopped. The white eyes looked at me, and the mouth, although still moving, was no longer making noise.
The real Topher was listening, and I was sure the Unfamiliar was afraid of me. It hadn’t wanted me there because I had the power to get through to Topher.
“I did, Topher. I wanted revenge. Why did my mother and father have to die? What did I do that was so bad I should be left alone? I didn’t even get to say good-bye.” My eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t help it. “I didn’t get to say ‘I love you’ one more time. Yes, I wanted revenge.”
“Revenge,” Topher hissed.
“And I thought about all the people who were mean to me. The people who were cruel and nasty, yet still they had both of their parents. Maybe I should be cruel and nasty too, right? Maybe that was what the world needed. Maybe if I just called for some help, I’d get it. It didn’t matter who from. Then I could have revenge. And once I got revenge, Topher, what would I have left?”
Topher shook his head like a dog after it gets out of a sudsy bath. His expression was confused and almost embarrassed.
“I wouldn’t have anything left. I wouldn’t have my parents any more than you’d get Tommy back. I wouldn’t get even with those mean girls any more than you’ll even the score with Mr. Park. You don’t want to do this, Topher. Death is a part of life. It’s the part that makes us cherish our memories.”
“No. No. No,” the Unfamiliar hissed.
“It’s the part that makes us value each day. To try to reverse the natural course of life is to hand ourselves over to the evil one. You’re just sad, Topher. It’s okay. It’s okay to be sad and angry. But if you don’t fight it, you’ll feel a part of you die slowly every day as hatred consumes you. Please.” I clenched my fists and stood up straight. “Fight it!”
“No. No. No,” it hissed. “No. No. No.” Its voice was quick, and it took three fast steps toward me.
I flinched a little but recovered and stood my ground. I looked into its eyes as a thin string of drool dripped out of the corner of its slackened jaw. For a flash, Topher’s gentle old eyes appeared.
“I see you, Topher. Don’t let it win. Tell it to go. Tell it to leave!”
Just as quickly, his eyes became strange again. It threw its head back and cried a pitiful, painful howl.
“Leave me.” The words sounded as if they were being choked out.
My heart broke for the old man. The hatred I felt for this evil spirit was palpable. It fed off the emotions of humans who were beyond sad, beyond hopeless. I wanted to take Topher’s hands and hold them, but I didn’t dare.
“Leave me alone!” Again Topher spoke, his voice slightly stronger.
I could only imagine the pain he was going through. Removing the Unfamiliar was like pulling one of those spiny, prickly weeds out by the roots. Their tentacles wove through the dirt, spreading out until they consumed everything around them. Nothing but sheer will would get them loose. Right now, that was what Topher was doing. He was pulling this weed from his soul, and it was hurting him for it.
“Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Now! Now!”
Suddenly he stopped. For a minute, I thought he was dead on his feet. I stared at his eyes, which had snapped shut. I looked for his chest to rise and fall with breath. Any twitch of his hands or face. But there was nothing. He just stood stone still.
“I’m afraid!” Topher cried to me. “I’m afraid.” He whimpered as tears dragged dirt down his cheeks.
“You should be,” I spat back, recognizing the trick of the Unfamiliar.
Taking one step back, I reached out my hands. Bea took one, and Aunt Astrid took the other. Like pulling a bent, twisted, rusty nail from a board, we recited the expulsion chant. The Unfamiliar contorted poor Topher as it tried to stay inside him. It scratched at his body and made him fall to the ground, writhing like a maggot in hot sun. But we didn’t stop. We chanted until our throats were scratchy and our palms sweaty from holding on to each other.
Finally, the Unfamiliar couldn’t take any more. Topher tossed his head back violently, and the Unfamiliar flew from his mouth until it became a long black serpent hovering over him in the air. Its eyes were a sickly orange color with black pupils, and it rolled its tongue around its face like a lizard licks its own eyeballs. It screamed.
“Gamodan! Ex! Enfinitu!” Aunt Astrid cried. “You will cease your actions here, monster of the darkest dimension! Leave this place of peace and slither back down the hole you dared creep out of!”
In its true state, the Unfamiliar crinkled up as if it were being burned. Folding around and over itself, it became smaller and smaller until it was the size of a golf ball. With a loud clap like a door slamming and the sound of glass shattering, it was over.
Topher fell to the ground, crying. Bea rushed to his side, and he looked at her with red eyes and wet with tears.
“I didn’t get a chance to tell him how proud I was of him,” he mumbled. “I just wanted one minute, just one more minute to tell him that.”
Bea put her arms around the old man.
To him, it was just a hug, an opportunity to literally cry on someone’s shoulder. To her, it was a chance to see some of his ailments caused by his grief. The Unfamiliar had filled his mind with so many whispers that it was probably clouded over like an extra membrane had developed around it. His heart was already grief stricken, but the guilt the Unfamiliar had poured onto him pierced his heart like thousands of tiny thorns. While Bea spoke gently, soothing his worries, she worked diligently to pull away the fibrous remains of the Unfamiliar’s brain haze and pull the barbs from his heart one at a time. With each passing minute, he became more peaceful until he fell asleep with Bea’s arm around him.
“What about Mr. Park?” Bea asked, jerking her head in his direction.
“He’s still out cold. I think they’re both sleeping,” Aunt Astrid said.
Bea nodded in relief. Non-witches recuperated from encounters with the supernatural by shutting down. In the morning, what they’d seen, heard, felt could be easily waved away as part of some lucid dream. Us Greenstones, on the other hand, would feel as if we had drunk moonshine straight from a homemade pressure cooker still, and that would stick with us for a couple of days.
Image Ruined
I called Jake to tell him that we had found Mr. Park and Topher. He and Blake arrived with an ambulance ready to take both men to the hospital.
Blake marched right up to me even though Aunt Astrid and Bea were both standing just a couple feel from me. “How did you know they were here?”
“I, uh, didn’t know they were here, Detective. As you know, my parents are buried in this cemetery, and I wanted to visit.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“We decided to come together,” Aunt Astrid interrupted. “I also wanted to say hi to my late husband when Cath couldn’t sleep, so we decided to make it a family outing.”
“With Bea?”
“She’s very supportive,” Aunt Astrid said. “We heard Mr. Park trying to get Topher to leave his grandson’s grave and go home. Mr. Park was telling him how worried Cody was, but Topher was just inconsolable. By the time we could see what was going on, Mr. Park tried to lead Topher away, but the old man jerked his hand away. When he did, Mr. Park lost his balance, and down he went. Hit his head. Topher just crumpled… from grief, I’d guess. You ever lose someone close to you, Detective?”
So it wasn’t the greatest story ever told. As I watched Blake’s eyes, I was positive if he didn’t slap cuffs on all three of us, he would string us up in straitjackets. But he didn’t do either.
After he finished wr
iting everything, he went over to Bea, who was sitting on the SMITH tombstone that just a short while ago we were all hiding behind. She was cradling her foot, and her toes had swollen to two times their original size. Jake knelt in front of her, talking to her quietly as Blake approached.
“Is that what happened?” Blake asked firmly.
Nothing makes you feel like a liar more than having someone check your story right in front of you.
“Yes, Blake. It is,” Bea said gently.
Without another word, he nodded, folded up his notebook, stuffed it into his shirt pocket, and looked at me. I wasn’t sure why his eyes roamed up and down my body, but I felt a blush rush over me. Placing one hand on my hip, I gave him my best what now look.
He didn’t say a word but turned back to Jake and Bea. “Better get that looked at.” He pointed at poor Bea’s gigantic foot. “How did it happen?”
“I was running to help and tripped over poor Mrs. Marconi over there.” Bea pointed at one of the flat rectangular tombstones. One edge peeked up over the grass just high enough to cause a person not looking to trip.
And what did Blake do after she said that? Did he turn to Aunt Astrid or me and ask if that were true? Did he study her up and down as if she were some kind of lying machine? Nope. He just nodded and gave me another once-over.
“We’re going to the hospital,” Jake said, sweeping all one hundred twenty pounds of Bea into his arms. Slowly he made his way between the graves, and I heard Bea giggling just a little as he spoke to her.
“Can I give you ladies a lift home?” Blake asked, looking more at Aunt Astrid than me.
“Absolutely not—”
“That would be nice of you, Detective,” Aunt Astrid said. “It has been a long night, and I just don’t feel like walking anymore.”
She slipped her arm through his, and I saw him ruffle just a little at being touched. He didn’t dare say anything to Aunt Astrid though, who began asking him a dozen questions about his job.
I thought about Topher and hoped that Mr. Park would have enough of a magic hangover that our story would sound like what really happened. An argument. A tussle. No attempts at raising another corpse. No minion of Hades taking over an old man’s body. The whole thing was nothing but a simple misunderstanding and bad footing.
Blake let Aunt Astrid sit in the front of the car where his partner usually sat. I sat in the back where the doors locked and couldn’t be opened from the inside. I felt like a teenager embarrassed of everything and anything. Within a few minutes, we were in front of Aunt Astrid’s place. Blake opened the back door, and I climbed out as Aunt Astrid made her way up her front porch steps.
“I’d be happy to take you to your apartment. It’s on the way to the station,” he said in that annoying just-the-facts manner. Even when he said he was happy, it always ended up sounding sarcastic. I never knew what he was really feeling.
“Uh, no. I’m going to sleep here. Truth is, I probably won’t be able to sleep much after all that.”
Blake nodded again as he looked at the pavement. “So you go to the cemetery at night on full moons. Why?”
I couldn’t believe it. He was still digging. I had to make my lie a good one.
“I told you—I couldn’t sleep. But the truth is, I don’t like people to see me get emotional. No one except family. Even though my parents have been gone for a good while, it still hurts. I just don’t want anyone to see me like that. So I go at night, and Aunt Astrid and Bea come with so no one will bother me. Strength in numbers, you know.”
“Yes, I do.” He looked at me. His eyes were intense, and in the dark, with just the full moon shining on one side of his face and Aunt Astrid’s warm yellow porch light lighting up the other side, I thought for a second he looked downright handsome. “Well, I’ll be in touch. There might be a few more questions.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t worry,” I said as I stepped around him to follow my aunt into her home. “I won’t plan on taking any long trips across the border any time soon.”
What was I thinking? Handsome… maybe. But then he opened his mouth and spoke. Whole image ruined.
Don’t Mess with Texas
The next morning, Bea hobbled into the Brew-Ha-Ha on crutches with a cast on her foot, signed with a big heart with arrows going through it and Jake’s name written in big letters inside it.
“I can’t believe it,” I said as she hopped behind the counter next to me. “You make a plaster cast look fashionable. How do you do it?”
Bea let out a sarcastic chuckle and bumped me with her hip.
My eyes searched her face. “Did you tell Jake what really happened?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And he said he’d convince Blake to leave Samantha Perry’s death unsolved,” she said.
“I think that might be kind of hard. Blake was grilling me last night after he dropped us off at Aunt Astrid’s house. He’s like a dog with a bone.”
“Oh, he dropped you off, did he?” Bea pulled a stack of napkins from behind the counter and stuffed them in one of the silver boxes along the counter.
I scrunched my eyebrows together. “What?”
“He kept checking in the rearview mirror as if he thought she might fall out of the car,” Aunt Astrid added as she placed a pecan pie on the pretty wire display on the counter.
“I don’t know what you two are talking about.”
They both giggled like schoolgirls, and I couldn’t tell what for. If Blake had been looking at me, it was because he didn’t believe what any of us had told him and was plotting how to catch us.
“Aren’t either one of you worried that he’s going to keep snooping around until he finds something? Something about us?” I said.
“Well, if he does, he won’t have anything from last night to help his case. I conjured a mirroring spell over that part of the cemetery. The other dimensions that cross over that area will bounce off each other, making it all look smooth and undisturbed. He won’t be able to find so much as a footprint. Not even his own.”
I took a deep breath. I was happy to hear that. Treacle jumped on my lap and purred.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “I can hear you now.”
Being unable to talk to me had been strange for him, and he became a little more affectionate now. I think a part of him didn’t take our communication for granted anymore.
Treacle’s wounds were fading. It turned out he’d gotten into a fight at the old orphanage. He’d been snooping around and ran into that nasty street cat who seemed to be the gatekeeper. Treacle found out from the street cat that the Unfamiliar was bigger and badder, but he couldn’t tell me when I had the protection spell on. I rubbed his ears.
Min’s smiley face peeked in underneath the open sign that hung on the front door. He knocked gently on the glass. Smiling, I waved him in.
“Oh, and number two makes an appearance,” Bea teased, making Aunt Astrid laugh.
“You two can shut up now,” I grumbled as Min opened the door and strolled up to the counter.
“Hello, ladies,” he said with a smile.
“Good morning. You sure are in a good mood,” I said, bumping Bea intentionally with my hip. “Considering…” Considering that his missing father had gone to the hospital last night.
“I’m just glad we found my dad,” Min said, understanding what I meant. “And that he’s safe. He’s going to be fine.”
“That’s great,” Bea said.
“That’s not all,” Min said. “I have amazing news.”
“Oh, then wait.” I grabbed one of the many eclectic coffee mugs we had lined up underneath the counter. The one I grabbed said “Mother, put the tea on.” I’d never quite understood it, but it seemed to fit in in our odd little shop. I filled it with hot water and picked out an Earl Gray tea bag that I dropped in the steaming water.
Min wrapped his hands around the cup and took the seat across from me. “I’m reforming the Wonder Falls nursing ho
me. I just got through talking with the director. We drew up the paperwork right then and there. I’m now on the board of directors, which consists of the librarian, a guy from the post office, and David Wayne of the law firm Wayne, Van Driska, and Associates.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s great! And not only am I on the board of directors, but my father has offered to provide some goods from his store every month at no charge.”
My face screwed up in a confused grimace, but Min shook his head as if he was in as much shock as I was.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But after I went with my mother to see him in the hospital last night, it was like we met a different man. All he would say was that he and Topher had a talk. That was it. Him and that hermit.”
I looked at Bea and Aunt Astrid, who shrugged and went back to wiping off the small tables at the front of the coffee shop.
“Did he say what they talked about?” I asked carefully.
“No. But I did hear him speaking in Korean to my mother. He usually only does that when he’s mad, but I could tell by his tone he wasn’t mad. It was hard to hear him since I wasn’t in the same room, but I caught the gist of it. He was saying something about being sorry and how things would be different. But after my mother left, her cheeks glowed.”
I couldn’t help but feel happy for Min. It was nice that whatever Mr. Park remembered about last night wouldn’t be an issue for us. I could only guess that he and Topher had resolved to put the past behind them. It must’ve been painful, carrying that secret for all those years. I wondered how Mr. Park could bear to see Thomas in this town, but maybe Topher didn’t allow them to see each other. Mr. Park would have had to respect Topher’s wishes.
“And, as if that isn’t great enough,” Min said.
“There’s more?”
“Yes.”
“Well, in that case.” I grabbed a cup for myself. It had the flag of Texas on one side and the words “Don’t mess with Texas” written in a rope on the other. After pouring in some hot water, I dropped in a tea bag for myself.
