by A. W. Jantha
This time, when Dani tried to get up, Mary and Sarah each caught her by an arm and lifted her, kicking and screaming, toward the cauldron at the heart of the room.
“Hey!” shouted Max, springing out of his hiding place. “Let go of my little sister.”
“Roast him, Winnie,” Mary growled.
“No,” Sarah breathed, touching Winifred’s arm eagerly. “Let me—let me play with him.”
Winifred heeded Mary rather than Sarah and shot a bolt of bright, branching lightning at Max’s chest. He lost consciousness briefly as he hit the ground but woke to a pain snaking through his whole body. He groaned.
“Max!” screamed Dani.
Winifred threw her magic at him again, dragging him across the floor and pinning him to the wall.
“I haven’t lost my touch, sisters,” she said, cackling. “See?” She flung him about to face her.
Max gasped at the feeling of knives in his bloodstream. The pain was sharp and sudden and made him think that his heart would give out. He tried to cover his chest, but his hands were pressed against the wall by an invisible force.
Sarah nestled into his neck. She smelled like wet earth and orange pomanders and honey.
“Hello,” Winifred said to him. “Good-bye.” This time her green lightning bolts lifted him from the ground. His body skimmed the wall, moving slowly to the ceiling. He couldn’t see straight—could hardly keep enough wits about him to continue to breathe. He whimpered, but the sound was drowned out by the electric crackle and hum.
Mary held Dani tightly as the little girl shrieked her brother’s name over and over again.
“Mary,” Allison said, and as soon as the witch turned, she struck her over the head with the broom she’d retrieved from the wall display. As the brunet witch stumbled around, Allison grabbed a frying pan from the rack and slammed it over her head, making her hair even more crooked.
“You leave my brother alone!” Dani shouted at Winifred, then struck her with her bag of candy. She lashed out at Sarah, as well, for good measure.
Max crumpled to the ground, weak and exhausted.
When Dani crouched down to tend to him, the black cat reappeared and leaped onto Winifred’s neck. It flexed its claws into the softest parts.
“Get him!” Winifred shrieked, spinning about. “Get this animal—get this beast off of me.”
“Max, let’s go,” Dani said, pulling at his jacket. He forced himself up and stumbled after her toward the door, where Allison waited for them. He was about to join them when he realized they couldn’t just leave the Sanderson sisters inside. They’d find their way to town eventually, and he didn’t want that horrible lightning magic let loose on anyone else. The witches still struggled to get the cat off of Winifred, who spun wildly about.
“Get out!” he shouted at the two girls. “Go, go, go!”
The witches finally flung the cat off of Winifred.
Max stopped short before reaching the door. How do you kill a witch? he thought. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy did it with a bucket of water—but he didn’t have a bucket.
Then he remembered the sprinklers.
When he was sure the girls were gone, he hoisted himself into the sleeping loft and rose on unsteady feet. “Hey!” he called, drawing the witches’ attention up. “You have messed with the great and powerful Max and now must suffer the consequences. I summon the Burning Rain of Death.”
The sisters tried to puzzle out what he meant, talking over one another.
“Burning what?” asked Sarah.
“Burning Rain of Death,” repeated Winifred.
“What does he mean by—”
“Rain, did he say?” asked Mary.
“I don’t know. Burning—”
Max drew out the lighter again and snapped it. When the flame popped up, the Sanderson sisters gasped.
“He makes fire in his hand,” muttered Winifred, impressed.
Max lifted the lighter toward a spigot on the sprinkler system and waited until they all began spouting water throughout the house.
The Sanderson sisters screamed, rushing away to try to escape the falling water.
Max leaped down from the loft but slipped in a puddle, falling hard on his back.
The cat jumped onto his chest. “Nice job, Max.”
Max gasped, recoiling. “You can talk.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” said the cat. “Now get the spell book.”
Max couldn’t move but wasn’t sure whether that was from shock or a broken spine.
The cat batted a paw at Max’s face. “Come on,” he ordered, “move it!”
With that, Max shoved himself to his feet and grabbed one of the posts that held an information card for the witches’ cauldron. He used it to shatter the glass to the spell book’s case and pulled it out, ignoring the shards of glass that dug into his skin.
The witches were too afraid of the water to chase him, instead cowering in an alcove near the kitchen.
“My book!” cried Winifred. “He’s going for my book!”
Max dashed to the door and down the front steps, the spell book clutched to his chest. He could hear Allison calling to him, and he followed her voice down toward the street and through the property’s front gate.
Inside the house, Mary and Sarah wailed.
“I’m dying,” Sarah cried, her blond hair and red dress soaked and dripping. “I’m too pretty to die.”
And yet they weren’t dying. Winifred drew a palmful of water to her mouth and tasted it.
“Winnie!” shrieked Mary in warning.
“Shut up!” Winifred spat back. “It is but water.”
Mary tasted a few drops for herself. “Most refreshing,” she quipped.
Sarah extended her tongue. “It is!” she said, then tried to swallow as much as she could.
“You idiot,” Winifred said to Mary. “The boy has tricked us, and he’s stolen the book. After him!”
Before they left, Winifred rescued the Black Flame Candle and stuck it in a tall kitchen cupboard, safely away from the strange metal clouds in the ceiling that spilled rain all over her mother’s furniture and carpet.
Then the Sanderson sisters ran through the old wood, as they had not done in three hundred years. They arrived at the front gate, and the three of them stopped, elbow to elbow.
“ ’Tis a black river,” said Mary.
“Perhaps it is not too deep,” said Sarah.
Winifred grabbed her roughly by the arm and flung her ahead of them. Sarah shrieked, leaping, but when her heels touched the ground they didn’t fall through.
“ ’Tis firm!” she exclaimed, gathering her skirts and doing a skipping dance on the asphalt. “ ’Tis firm as stone.”
“Why, it’s a road,” said Winifred, joining her sister.
Mary took a few careful steps to join them.
“Sisters,” said Winifred, drawing attention back to herself as usual. “My book.”
They began to walk down the road together but were interrupted by the keen of fire trucks and ambulances. Red and white lights flashed through the sky, lighting up the witches’ faces.
The sisters screamed in fear and turned, desperate for the comfort of the wood.
Max, Allison, and Dani took a long way through the wood that the cat seemed to know by heart. It led them weaving through trees, stitching over and under fallen branches and the leaning columns of half-rotted trunks.
In the distance, Max could hear the eerie whine of emergency vehicles, no doubt called by the sprinklers going off on what was still considered public property.
The group, still led by the cat, emerged at the edge of the road. He leaped off the curb without even looking, and Allison and Dani followed him without having to be asked.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Max said, pulling up short. “This is the graveyard.”
“Yes, it’s the graveyard,” said the cat, as if Max were one of the most annoying people he’d ever met—and perhaps he was. “Witches can’t step foot her
e.”
Max looked at the girls and waved a deflated hand at the cat. “He talks,” he said.
“At least he’s not trying to electrocute us,” said Dani, which Max thought was a fair point.
“Is this a Halloween thing?” asked Allison. “Did the Sandersons cast a spell on you?”
The cat slipped through the gate without deigning to answer. “Follow me!” he called. “Over here.” He paused, waiting for Allison to pry open the gate. She did, and they filed through and into the abandoned graveyard. Max was careful to shut the gate after them. If there had been a lock, he would’ve bolted the thing and taken the key with him.
“I want to show you something,” explained the cat, “to give you an idea of exactly what we’re dealing with.”
They threaded through the quiet trees of the graveyard. The tombstones weren’t arranged in careful rows, as they were in most graveyards Max had seen. Instead, they appeared in clusters or alone in unexpected places. Some parts of the graveyard even looked more like a park, with benches and fountains and the occasional mausoleum.
They walked for what seemed a long time, until they arrived in a clearing. They stopped at a tombstone near the edge of the woods.
“‘William Butcherson’?” Max read, crouching near it.
“Billy Butcherson was Winnie’s lover,” said the cat, “but she found him sporting with her sister Sarah. So she poisoned him and sewed his mouth shut with a dull needle so he couldn’t tell her secrets, even in death. Winifred always was the jealous type.”
Allison looked at the cat in wonder. “You’re Thackery Binx,” she said.
“Yes.”
“So the legends are true,” she added.
He paused, perhaps unsure how to respond. “Well, follow me,” he finally said, leading them deeper into the graveyard. “I want to show you something else.”
“Teenagers again,” grumbled one of the men who had arrived in the noisy red vehicle. A stream of such men had rushed into the Sanderson house, and now they were filing out in a more orderly fashion.
“Every year they break into that house and do something stupid,” agreed the man walking back to the street with him. Water dripped from his helmet. The captain had made him climb up and fiddle with the sprinkler system when they found the house empty.
“I hate Halloween,” said the first man.
Sarah, crouched in the bearberry bushes next to her sisters, bit her bottom lip as the two men walked by. She’d never been acquainted with a man who looked quite so dashing in suspenders and oversize trousers. She stretched her neck, risking being spotted to keep the gentlemen in her line of sight a little longer.
“Who—who—who are they?” stuttered Mary, ducking farther into the bushes as if she could balance out her sister’s derring-do.
“Boys,” said Sarah wistfully.
“Perhaps they are the keepers of Master’s red vessel?” Mary asked hopefully, eyeing the vehicle at the bottom of the road. A contraption near the top threw off red-and-white sparks. “His demon drivers?”
“They are witch hunters,” corrected Winifred, sounding disgusted. “Observe,” she added, “they wear black robes and carry axes to chop the wood to burn us.”
Mary made a frightened sound. “Hold me?” she asked, snuggling her red-haired sister.
Winifred batted her away.
Sarah, meanwhile, was snacking on a spider she’d discovered on a nearby vine.
“Sisters,” hissed Winifred. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear.” The fiery vehicle had refilled with the witch hunters and tore away. “The magic that brought us back only works tonight, on All Hallows’ Eve,” said Winifred, getting to her feet and brushing off her skirts. “When the sun comes up, we’re dust.”
“Dust?” asked Mary.
“Toast.”
“Toast?”
Winifred turned to her two sisters. “Pudding!” she shouted, throwing up her hands.
Mary shrieked, and Sarah shuddered then leaned toward Mary and whispered, “Do we like pudding?”
“Fortunately,” said Winifred, looking off into the moonlit woods, “the potion I brewed the night we were hanged would keep us alive and young forever.”
Sarah beamed and hopped excitedly.
“Unfortunately,” trilled Winifred, turning on her heel and pushing past her sisters toward the sagging porch, “the recipe for that potion is in my spell book, and the little wretches have stolen it. Therefore, it stands to reason—does it not, sisters dear—that we must find the book, brew the potion, and suck the lives out of the children of Salem before sunrise. Otherwise, it’s curtains. We evaporate! We cease to exist!” She gave each of them an accusing look. “Does thou comprehend?”
“Well, you explained it beautifully, Winnie,” Mary rushed to say. “The way you sort of started out with the adventure part, and then you sort of slowly went into the—”
“Explained what?” asked Sarah.
Winifred pursed her lips and then seemed to make up her mind. “Come!” she shouted, shoving open the door of the house. “We fly.”
Eventually, Binx took Max, Allison, and Dani to a small gravestone whose inscription was nearly invisible in the low light of the full moon. Max knelt to get a better look, running the tips of his fingers over letters and numerals time had sanded down. The gravestone marked the burial of a beloved daughter and sister who had died October 31, 1693. The name read: emily binx.
“Because of me, my little sister’s life was stolen,” said Binx, studying the grave marker.
Max sat down, wrapping his arms around his knees. He could hear the wistfulness in Binx’s voice. Max had never seen a cat look sad before, but Binx’s expression was unmistakable, even with a muzzle and whiskers. Dani knelt down across from Max, and Allison perched on a weather-worn rock between the two of them, Winifred’s spell book tucked safely in her lap.
“For years,” said Binx, “I waited for my life to end so I could be reunited with my family, but Winifred’s curse kept me alive. Then one day, I figured out what to do with my eternal life: I’d failed Emily, but I wouldn’t fail again. When the three sisters returned, I’d be there to stop them. So for three centuries, I guarded their house on All Hallows’ night, when I knew some airhead virgin might light that candle.”
“Nice going, airhead,” said Dani to her brother.
“Hey, look, I’m sorry, okay?” said Max, getting to his feet. He paused, then said hopefully, “We’re talking about three ancient hags versus the twentieth century. How bad can it be?”
“Bad,” said Binx.
Allison drew back the cover of Winifred’s heavy spell book.
“Stay out of there!” shouted Binx.
Startled, Allison slammed it shut. “Why?” she asked, looking up.
“It holds Winifred’s most dangerous spells,” said Binx. “She must not get it.”
Max grabbed the book from Allison and tossed it on the ground. “Let’s torch the sucker,” he said, striking the silver lighter. He held it to the pages of the book, but the flame reared back as if a force field ensconced the thing.
“It’s protected by magic,” said Binx.
The sound of cackling broke the air and the group turned. The three Sanderson sisters hovered above them, each perched on a wood-handled broom. Sarah, on the left, wore a rich purple robe and a tight bodice the color of pressed wine grapes. Mary, on the right, was dressed in dowdier clothes, but they were the crimson of blood drops on snow. And Winifred, in the middle, wore forest green trimmed in faded gold.
“‘It’s just a bunch of hocus-pocus!’” Winifred quipped. “Sarah. Mary,” she said, gesturing at her sisters. They veered off on their brooms in either direction.
Sarah went straight for Max. “Brave little virgin who lit the candle,” she crooned, “I’ll be thy friend.”
Allison snatched up a dead branch and brandished it at the witch. “Hey!” she yelled. “Take a hike!”
The dried ends scraped at Sarah’s ski
n and cloak and she winced and cried out, peeling away.
Winifred smiled at her book, still on the ground where Max had left it. “Book!” she called to it. The thing lifted off the ground and began to float toward her. “Come to Mummy!”
Binx leaped on top of it, and both he and the book clomped back to earth.
“‘Fraid not!” he called.
“Thackery Binx, thou mangy feline,” Winifred said, sounding almost impressed. “Still alive?”
“And waiting for you,” said Binx.
“Ah! Thou hast waited in vain. And thou will fail to save thy friends, just as thou failed to save thy sister.” She pointed the end of her broom at him and dove.
“Grab the book!” shouted Binx.
Allison nabbed it, and the group bolted away from Winifred. They ran for the protection of the trees, but Mary cut them off, grinning as she bore down on them. They dodged her and she sailed past, no doubt circling to reassess.
Max pulled Dani close to him, sheltering her with one arm. “They can’t touch us here, right?” he asked Binx.
“Well,” said the cat, “they can’t.”
Dani turned to him. “I don’t like the way you said that.”
The Sanderson sisters, still perched on their brooms, reappeared out of the woods. Sarah licked her strawberry-colored lips. Winifred grinned widely and guided her broom closer to the three friends. Max realized that they’d returned to where they’d started—the grave of Billy Butcherson.
“Unfaithful lover long since dead,” Winifred incanted, gesturing with unnaturally long knotted fingers, “deep asleep in thy wormy bed.”
Allison clutched at Max’s arm.
He wrapped his other arm tighter around Dani.
Her small fingers dug into his skin through his jacket.
“Wiggle thy toes,” chanted Winifred, “open thine eyes, twist thy fingers toward the sky. Life is sweet, be not shy. On thy feet, so sayeth I!”
The ground began to tremble, and the earth over the nearby grave split, soil flying up as if it were boiling water. A coffin shivered out of the cut in the ground.
“Max,” Dani whimpered. “Max.”
He pulled her away from the grave. His pulse pounded in his ears and his whole body went slick with sweat.
