Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel

by A. W. Jantha

  Dani clutched Max’s forearm the whole time, and though her nails were clipped too short to dig into Max’s skin, he could feel the press of her fingertips through his jacket. It almost made him feel bad about the whole thing, but he reasoned that she’d go to school the next week with the best story in her class. Really, he was doing her a favor.

  They exited the graveyard, and Allison led them all the way down the street to the corner with the stop sign. She took Dani’s right hand in hers, and Dani still clung tight to Max’s wrist, and a fluttering feeling stirred in his belly. It was almost like he was holding Allison’s hand. He’d never thought about whether or not she’d get along with Dani, but he liked that she did and he liked that she tried, and he liked that she took them to the crosswalk to teach Dani good road etiquette.

  A stone wall bordered the sidewalk. It was made of big river-tumbled rocks stuck together with crumbling mortar and stitched even more securely with creeping ivy.

  “Legend has it that the bones of one hundred children are buried within these walls,” said Allison, running her fingers along the time-polished stones.

  “Oh, great.”

  Allison let go of Dani’s hand as they approached a wrought-iron gate. “You ready?” she asked, looking from Dani to Max.

  Max nodded, pressing Dani against his hip in case she tried to book it.

  “Tights,” she muttered, meeting his eyes.

  He nodded.

  Allison looked at them both like they were on something, but she pulled an old key out of her sweater and unlocked the gate.

  The three of them stepped through it, and something small and dark shot across the path in front of them.

  Dani jumped and, short or not, this time Max felt the bite of her nails.

  “What was that?” she hissed.

  Max dragged her forward, taking her torso with him as if her feet were rooted to the ground. “It’s just a cat,” he said, then knelt and pointed at a fallen tree to show her. Two yellow-green eyes caught the light of a distant streetlamp.

  “It’s not just a cat,” said Allison. “It’s the cat. The one that warns you not to go in. It’s been here as long as I can remember.”

  “How long do cats live?” Dani whispered urgently.

  Max felt around in the fallen leaves and picked up a pebble. He chucked it toward the glowing eyes, prompting a yowl.

  The cat disappeared.

  Dani and Allison both looked at Max, disgusted.

  “I didn’t think I’d hit it,” he said.

  Dani sighed and looked at Allison. “Max failed out of baseball camp,” she said, sounding resigned. They started up the buckling path.

  “I did not fail,” said Max.

  “Fine. Max came home crying from baseball camp.”

  “That was a long time ago. How do you even remember?”

  “My blackmail book,” said Dani.

  The walkway petered out long before they reached the house, and the three of them were forced to tromp through a thick carpet of dead leaves. Max stepped down on a spindly fallen tree, applying all his weight to make it easier for the girls to pass. Allison steadied herself on his shoulder as she did, which made Max swallow hard.

  The house ahead of them was smaller than Max expected, but somehow it seemed to loom above them, as if its spirit were far bigger than the collapsing wooden porch and broken eaves. Max eyed it, feeling uncertain. He knew he was the one who’d suggested this field trip, but he was beginning to think the place would cave in on them—or at least give them all tetanus.

  The low wooden steps creaked as Max climbed them.

  “I don’t think we should go in,” said Dani.

  Max gave her a look and she rolled her eyes.

  “Sure,” she said. “Whatever.”

  Allison produced a second key and unlocked the door. The sound of the deadbolt disengaging was loud and final.

  Max looked back at Dani, who was chewing her bottom lip as if debating whether to walk home by herself. Finally, she sighed and tromped up the stairs. She muttered something about “stupid crushes” as she flipped a switch on her plastic candy bucket and lifted the jack-o’-lantern’s glowing face. She led the way into the house, closely followed by Max and Allison.

  “I can’t see a thing,” Dani said.

  “There’s a light switch around here somewhere,” said Allison.

  Max took Dani’s makeshift flashlight and peered around.

  When Max had biked past the previous weekend, he’d thought the house seemed creepy in an old dilapidated way, but now he realized that it was sinister in a far different manner. The air inside was both stale and a little too still—the way a house feels when everyone is playing hide-and-seek. Still, yet tingling with nerves. Still, yet anxiously watching.

  A ticket counter at the front of the room displayed dusty tchotchkes, including postcards of Salem, and stuffed bears with patterned capes and tiny brooms, and—

  “Found a lighter,” Max said, plucking a Zippo from the display case. The silver lighter was engraved with a witch silhouetted against a full moon.

  He struck it and hurried over to the wall to help Allison locate the light switch. It was an industrial thing that had only been installed in the past decade or so, but when they flipped the switch it didn’t work.

  “Try the breaker box,” said Allison, pointing. Max opened the metal panel and turned every breaker off and then on again. This time, the lights throughout the room popped to life.

  The main part of the house was one big room with wood floors and wood walls and a high wood ceiling. There was a loft on one side of the house, which reminded Max of the small loft in his own room. A broom was mounted near the loft, with a helpful plaque identifying it as a witch’s broom, in case visitors weren’t sure about the house’s shtick.

  There were other signs of a modern influence, too. In addition to the electric lights, narrow piping ran around the perimeter of the ceiling, each branch ending with a spigot: sprinklers in case the old tinderbox went up in flames, Max realized.

  Also, the layout of the room was that of a museum, not everyday living. The furniture had been moved back from the middle of the room to make way for a series of displays that had become overrun with spiderwebs in the absence of regular cleaning. On one wall was a huge curio cabinet loaded with bottles and jars. Nearby, a set of cast-iron pots and pans hung from hooks in the ceiling. Everything had a small plaque with a glaringly obvious explanation.

  “Here’s the original cauldron,” Allison said, pointing to the squat iron pot hung above an empty circle of stones. “Upstairs is where they slept,” she said, gesturing to the loft. She came around to a display case featuring a large leather-bound book. It was the biggest book Max had ever seen, as long as his forearm and thicker than the width of his hand. The cover was held together with wide, angry-looking stitches, and swirls of tarnished silver helped reinforce the corners and the spine. Along the right edge of the cover was a strange pucker of leather—almost like the closed eye of a rhinoceros, or of a person who spent far too much time in a tanning booth. A loop of silver surrounded that, too, the far edge of the metal turning into a latch that would have kept the book shut if there had been a padlock.

  Allison leaned down to read the information card. “‘It was given to her by the Devil himself. The book is bound in human skin and contains the recipes for her most powerful and evil spells.’”

  She snuck a glance at Max’s sister.

  “I get the picture,” Dani said.

  Allison laughed. “According to town records, this went missing after the Sanderson sisters were hanged. They found it in another woman’s house just a few days later. I guess she wanted to try it out for herself.”

  Dani shuddered. “How many witches does Salem have, anyway?”

  “None anymore,” Allison said, squeezing Dani’s shoulder. “Present company excluded,” she added, and tugged on the tip of Dani’s hat. The little girl smiled.

  “What’s th
at?” Max asked. He crossed to the far corner of the room, where an ancient-looking cast-iron stand supported a tall cream-colored candle. Its surface was decorated with complicated etchings of trees and fire and, at the base, small humans running in fear. But they had nowhere to run since they always ran into one another.

  “Oh.” Allison pitched her voice low. “It’s the Black Flame Candle.”

  Max looked at the nearby plaque. “‘Black Flame Candle. Made from the fat of a hanged man. Legend says that on a full moon, it will raise the spirits of the dead if lit by a virgin on Halloween night.’”

  He looked around the quiet old museum. There was no one there but them, and this seemed like the perfect way to make their night more memorable. It would give Dani something else to tell her friends—and Allison, too. He liked the idea of Allison telling her friends about him, even if it was about him doing something silly.

  “So let’s light this sucker and meet the old broads,” he said, pulling the lighter out of his pocket.

  Dani, looking aghast, shook her head vehemently.

  “Wanna do the honors?” Max asked Allison.

  She was smiling but looked unimpressed. “No, thanks,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  It was the eye roll that threw him. Did that mean she wasn’t a virgin? Did he care?

  Out of nowhere, a screeching cat leaped onto the back of his neck. Its claws were sharp needles, and there were so damn many of them. Max fell to his knees, shouting. He wrestled it off and dropped hard onto his shoulder. The startled creature slunk under an old chest of drawers. “Stupid cat!”

  “Okay, Max,” said Dani. “You’ve had your fun. It’s time to go. Come on, Allison.” She took Allison by the hand, and the two of them headed for the door.

  “Max, she’s right,” said Allison. “Let’s go.”

  But Max had finally caught his breath. “Oh, come on,” he said, not ready to head home just yet. He liked Allison, sure, but she was also the only person who’d given him the time of day in Salem, and he couldn’t make it another two years there if he didn’t have friends. “It’s just a bunch of hocus-pocus.”

  That made Dani put on her mom voice: “Max, I’m not kidding this time,” she said. “It’s time to go.”

  Max shook his head at what a little kid Dani was being. Sometimes she acted so mature that he forgot, until moments like these, that she was only eight.

  He opened the Zippo and held it to the candle’s dusty wick.

  “Max, no!” shouted Dani. The candle caught instantly, and Max grinned. But then he saw what a strange flame it was: it flickered yellow and orange around the edges but had a cool black heart.

  Max’s expression changed to one of concern. “Uh-oh.”

  One by one, the light bulbs around the room burst in flashes of brilliant white. Each time, Dani squealed, her hands covering her eyes. Allison let out a quiet, frightened sound as the last bulb shattered and left them in the dark.

  A breeze picked up, tumbling Dani’s hat from her head. She uncovered her eyes and looked up, amazed. The heavy ironwork chandelier creaked loudly on its chain. Allison pulled Dani closer to her, and Max began to cross the room toward the two girls. A brilliant green light shot through the gaps in the floorboards, and the wood began to tremble and jump, threatening to rip away from the nails keeping it in place. Allison and Dani screamed, jumping toward the nearest wall. Max tried to steady himself by grabbing on to some nearby furniture, but it felt like the whole house was shaking—and like the floor could very well decide to open up and drop them all into some unknown world.

  Max was deciding whether to attempt a running leap at the door when the house stilled and went dark again. The three stood quiet for a moment, as if they weren’t sure whether it would start all over again.

  “What happened?” Max finally asked, breathless.

  Dani picked up her witch’s hat and shoved it back onto her head. “A virgin lit the candle,” she said.

  There was a sharp pop, and one by one the lights in the chandelier relit—this time with real flames. Around the room, candles came alive with a soft whoosh. Beneath the huge cauldron, an equally large fire roared to life, and the kitchen hearth fizzed as if someone had thrown in a handful of lit sparklers. The sparks quickly caught the display tinder and burst into a warm fire.

  The air cracked open with a delighted cackle, and Allison and Dani dove away from the front door just as it blew open, its knob slamming into the wall.

  Max had hidden, as well, ducking under a heavy dining table near the spell book’s case. When he lowered himself to the ground and looked up at the door, his eyes grew wide.

  Three women were silhouetted in milky moonlight and framed by the open door: the first with long blond hair and a narrow waist, the second with two wild swoops of hair near the crown of her head, and the third with dark wiry curls twisted into the shape of a crooked cornucopia.

  The woman in the middle marched into the house. She wore a floor-length emerald dress with a high collar and a creeping black pattern that seemed determined to smother the green. A gold clasp cinched the dress at her waist, and her underskirts were a brilliant blue. As she came into the light, the unnatural red of her hair became obvious. “We’re home!” she declared.

  Max felt dizzy. This can’t be happening, he thought. They can’t be real. He glanced in Allison’s direction, but she was out of his line of sight. Was it a prank? A weird Salem-centric way of getting back at him after he made fun of Halloween? But he recalled the way the Black Flame Candle burned.

  Beside the woman in green, the other two women clasped hands and began to dance and jump about, giggling. One—the blond one—wore a low-cut rosy dress with filmy sleeves that gathered at her wrists. The other wore layers and layers: an orange dress beneath a red vest and a matching wool cape. Her tartan skirts were intersecting lines of black and gray and, depending on the light, a dozen other colors.

  “Oh, sweet revenge,” said the redheaded witch. “You see, sisters? My curse worked perfectly.”

  “That’s because thou art perfect, Winnie,” said the brunette, touching her elder sister’s shoulder. She means Winifred, thought Max, remembering Miss Olin’s story. Winifred Sanderson.

  The three witches laughed, and Winifred hurried across the room, her brunet sister trailing her.

  The blond witch waited until they’d gone, then popped up onto her toes and reached into the rafters over the door. She was tall and thin, and her hair flowed in gentle waves down her back and over the creamy skin of her chest. She grinned as she found the thing she’d been feeling around for. She pulled down what appeared to be a length of twine.

  “My lucky rat tail!” she crowed. “Just where I left it.”

  “But who lit the Black Flame Candle, hmmm?” Winifred asked, crossing toward the strange flame. She paused, fingers on her lips, then noticed the case with the huge spell book. She gave a delighted gasp and hurried over to it, tapping her long nails on the glass.

  “Come on, sleepy head!” she cooed. “We have work to do. I missed you—did you miss me, too?”

  The brunet sister sidled up behind her. “Winnie,” she whispered.

  “Yes, Mary?”

  “I smell children.”

  “Sic ’em!”

  The three witches slipped into line, with Mary leading. She sniffed the air eagerly.

  “It’s a little girl,” she declared.

  Behind her, the blond Sanderson nibbled the tip of her rat tail. Max knew that they were headed right for Dani, but he didn’t know what to do. He spotted her crouched behind the old ticket-taking counter, chewing her bottom lip. He gauged the distance between himself and Mary, wondering how long he could keep the sisters occupied if he leaped out of hiding.

  “Seven,” Mary said, sniffing again. “Maybe eight. And a half.”

  “Let’s play with her!” trilled the blonde.

  “You’ll frighten her, Sarah,” said Winifred.

  Sarah began to sing softly. “Com
e out, little children; I’ll take thee away—”

  Dani raised her eyes to the ceiling, pleading with some higher power to help her.

  Winifred closed a hand over Sarah’s mouth. “Come out, dear,” she said. “We will not harm thee.”

  “We love children!” Mary agreed, slamming a hand on the counter.

  Winifred gave her an ugly look, but it was quickly wiped away when Dani popped up in front of them.

  “I thought thou’d never come, sisters,” she said, adopting the worst British accent Max had ever heard.

  “Greetings, little one,” Winifred said warmly.

  “ ’Twas I who brought you back.”

  “Imagine,” said Winifred. “Such a pretty little”—she swallowed thickly—“child.”

  Sarah giggled.

  “And she’s so well fed, isn’t she?” said Mary, going around the counter. “Plump!” she exclaimed, poking Dani in the ribs. Dani shrieked. “Plump!” Another jab, another squeal. “Plump! Shish ke-baby!”

  Winifred rescued Dani just as Max was about to barrel across the room. “Tell me, dumpling,” she said, placing Dani’s hand on her arm as she led her deeper into the house, “what is the year?”

  “Nineteen ninety-three.”

  Winifred pushed Dani into an ancient straight-backed dining chair.

  “Sisters,” she said eagerly, “we have been gone three hundred years.”

  “Well, Winnie, how time flies, huh?” said Mary. “When you’re dead?”

  The sisters all laughed, and Dani laughed, too, clearly hoping to please them. She kept going after they had finished, until her eyes landed on Mary’s hungry face. Then her laughter died into a nervous chuckle. “It’s been great fun,” she said, getting up. “But I guess I’d better be going.”

  “Oh,” Winifred said, pressing her back into the chair, “stay for supper.”

  “But I’m—I’m not hungry,” said Dani.

  “But we are,” said Mary with a dangerous smile.