Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel

by A. W. Jantha

  The coffin lid burst open and a corpse dragged its way out. He grunted, shaking earth from his matted hair.

  That’s when he spotted Max, Allison, and Dani, who were watching him with horror. Billy Butcherson jumped, startled by their presence. The kids screamed and rushed away.

  Billy looked around, confused, and spotted the gravestone behind him. He sighed.

  “Hello, Billy,” Sarah said, waving.

  He smiled through the stitches keeping his lips sealed tightly shut.

  “Catch those children!” shouted Winifred. “Get up! Get up! Get out of that ditch!” Billy pushed himself out of the broken bits of his final resting place. “Faster!”

  Binx led his human companions through the woods, ducking under fallen branches and weaving between various tombstones and mausoleums. “In here,” Binx said, stopping near what looked like a storm drain.

  Allison helped Dani slip through first and then jumped in herself. Max spotted Billy Butcherson scrambling through the woods and grabbed a nearby branch, dragging it back as far as he could. When Billy was close enough, Max released the branch and it flew forward, knocking Billy’s head from his shoulders.

  Max whooped, but the headless body started toward him again and Max hurried into the drain.

  Allison helped him to his feet at the bottom.

  Dani stood nearby, coughing hard.

  “You okay?” Allison asked her.

  Dani grunted.

  Allison handed the Sandersons’ spell book to Max.

  “What is this place, Binx?” Max asked, tucking the book under one arm.

  “It’s the old Salem crypt,” Binx replied. “It connects to the sewer and up to the street.”

  “Charming,” Allison said wryly.

  “We need to find my parents,” said Max. “They’ll know what to do.”

  “Your parents?” asked Binx skeptically. “Adults always show up too late.”

  “Max is right,” said Dani. “Mom fixes everything.”

  Binx seemed to take Dani’s word more seriously than Max’s. He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “We might as well try,” he said. “I don’t have a better idea.”

  “They’re at Town Hall,” said Max. “Can you take us there?”

  The cat gave him a look as if to say, Am I an immortal cat who’s been living in the same town for three hundred years?

  Just then, Max noticed a skeleton suspended from the vault’s high ceiling. “Uh, don’t look up, Dani,” he said.

  “Don’t worry,” she replied. Her eyes had been steadfastly focused on the ground since they’d arrived. “I won’t.”

  “Relax,” Binx told them. “I’ve hunted mice down here for years.”

  “Mice?” groaned Dani. “Oh, god.”

  But they had to choose between that and an undead colonist with a mandate to capture them, so rodents it would be.

  Winifred groaned when she saw her reanimated ex scrounging in the dirt to find his own head.

  “Ah, crust,” she said. “He’s lost his head.” She launched herself and her broom into a tight, angry circle. “Damn that Thackery Binx!” she cried. “Damn him!”

  Beneath her, Billy bleated through his mouth stitches.

  “Which way did they go?” Winifred asked, guiding herself closer to him.

  He couldn’t speak, of course, but he didn’t point the way, either. She realized he must have gotten directionally confused when his skull went spinning. She looked around the graveyard and noticed a tunnel entrance partially hidden by climbing vines. The twigs around it were broken as if they’d been repeatedly trodden on.

  “Billy,” she snapped, turning back to his desiccated corpse. “Listen to me.” His skin and spine crackled and popped as he forced his head back onto his body. “Follow those children, you maggot museum, and get my book. Then come find us; we’ll be ready for them.” She drifted backward, offended by the intensity of the dislike in his eyes. “Quit staring at me. Get moving down that hole.” With that, she led her sisters back over the graveyard fence, muttering “Damn. Double damn!”

  Winifred landed lightly on the walk beyond the graveyard gate. In the distance she could see the bell tower of the small graveyard chapel, its delicate lines and single bell outlined white by the pale moon.

  As Winifred hurried to the fence, she felt a shock of remembrance from having walked that precise path before. She’d stood there and clutched the gate and watched a graveyard wedding take place more than three hundred years before—had watched another Sanderson say her vows in the only place where Winifred and her sisters didn’t dare intervene.

  “They’re here,” Winifred said. She could’ve meant the children, or she could’ve meant the wedding party. For a moment, even Winifred wasn’t sure.

  The fence was wrapped with tendrils of dead and dying English ivy, and as she pressed her fingertips to the rough bodies of the vines, she imagined her own mortality and shuddered. It brought her back to the year 1993 and to the task very much at hand. “The children,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “And that flea-riddled cat. I know they’re here, but where are they?” She turned her face toward her brunet sister. “Sniff them out, Mary.” She ignored Sarah entirely, who had started to climb the gate—but to what end, if they could not step foot on hallowed ground?

  Mary clenched her fists and breathed deeply. “They’re, they’re...She pressed her face against the iron bars and gave a plaintive sigh. “Oh, I can’t. They’ve gone too far. I’ve lost them.”

  Winifred snatched the lobe of Mary’s left ear and dragged her away from the fence. “I’ll have your guts for garters, girl,” she said, shoving her sister away. “Confound you!” Mary clutched at her aching ear, sniveling. “Very well,” said Winifred, almost to herself, “we must outwit them. When Billy the butcher gets here with my book, we shall be ready for them.” She turned back to her third sister. “Sarah! Let us start collecting children.”

  “Why?” asked Mary softly.

  “Because, you great buffoon,” Winifred said, wondering why the Devil had cursed her mother with so many senseless offspring, “we want to live forever, not just until tomorrow. The more children we snatch, the longer we live.”

  “Right,” Sarah said brightly, pointing at Mary. “Let us fly.”

  “Fly!” agreed Winifred.

  “Wait,” Mary said, causing the other two Sandersons to turn. “I have an idea.” She plucked the brooms from her sisters’ hands. “Since this promises to be a most dire and stressful evening, I suggest we form a calming circle.”

  “I am calm!” said Winifred.

  “Oh, Sister,” Mary said gently. “Thou art not being honest with thyself, are we? Hmmm?” She leaned in, as she might to a little girl. “Come on. Give—gimme a smile.”

  Winifred allowed a bashful grimace and then hopped into place, starting the calming circle. Mary and Sarah followed suit, each placing a hand on Winifred’s shoulders. It wasn’t a real spell circle, perhaps, but it made Winifred’s younger sisters happy—and on very rare occasions, that was magic enough.

  Allison and Max let Binx lead the way through the dark, dripping tunnels that snaked beneath the streets of Salem. Dani did a better job of keeping up with him, perhaps because she knew he’d do a better job of catching any mice or rats than Max would.

  When he decided his little sister and the sarcastic cat were out of earshot, Max cleared his throat. “So,” he said, not daring to look at Allison, “about earlier. I want to apologize.”

  “For lighting the candle?”

  “Um. No, but I’m sorry for that, too.”

  “For ignoring us when we said it was time to go?”

  “Uhhh.” Max scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Yeah, sorry for that, too.”

  “For your Rico Suave stunt with the phone number?”

  “I knew you were upset about that.”

  “I wasn’t upset about it,” Allison said. “Just embarrassed. For you. You know, you don’t h
ave to be someone you’re not just to ask a girl out.”

  There it was, sitting between the two of them: the specter of Max asking Allison on a date. Because that’s what the whole thing boiled down to, right? He’d been too chicken to catch her in the hallway, just the two of them, and tell her that he liked her and wanted to buy her ice cream, if she was okay with that idea. Instead, he’d escalated and escalated and now three undead witches had put Dani on a dinner menu.

  Max knew it, but he didn’t know how to answer Allison. He didn’t know what to do to make things right.

  “Yeah, I get that,” he finally said. “But I guess I wanted to apologize for what Dani said earlier. About—well, about you. It was embarrassing, and I’m sorry she did that.”

  “What did she say about me?”

  “About your costume. About your, uh.” He stopped talking and gestured lamely at his chest.

  “You mean how she told me you’ve talked about my boobs?”

  Max blushed. “Yeah,” he said in a small voice, thinking that he’d rather be lost in those tunnels and facing death by sewer alligators than having that conversation.

  “You don’t have to apologize for her,” said Allison. “Dani didn’t do anything wrong. You might want to apologize for yourself, though.”

  Max cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said, for what felt like the hundredth time. “I—uh. I am sorry. I was an idiot. Like, a total idiot. But I wanted to tell my friend back in California about you, and he got bored with me talking about other stuff, so I thought—” He cleared his throat again. “But yeah, it was dumb. And it was my fault, not his or Dani’s. I do get that.”

  “Thanks,” Allison said, uncrossing her arms. Max snuck a look at her face and determined she meant it. “I appreciate it. It’s just a little weird, you know?”

  Their footsteps echoed lightly off the walls as they continued following Binx’s shadowy lead. Up ahead, they heard Dani telling Binx something about space travel.

  “I know,” Max said. “And I do know you’re so much more than your—um...” He blushed, realizing he was about to make the same mistake all over again.

  Allison laughed aloud this time. “You really aren’t quick on the uptake, are you?” She laughed again, and the sound of it bounced along with their footsteps, making Max’s heart flutter.

  “So what other stuff?” she asked.

  “Hmmm?”

  “The other stuff your friend didn’t want to hear about. What was it?”

  Max wet his lips. He didn’t really want to tell her such personal stuff, but then again it was about her, so it was hard to use that defense. Besides, he had already gotten in a mess by saying the wrong thing.

  “Like, the vase you made in sculpture class last week was sick. All those dots of blue and white in the glaze? It was awesome. And when Nancy fell asleep in chemistry and you slipped her the answer when Mrs. Jackson called on her? That was really cool of you. I like that even though you’re the best person in the class, you don’t rub it in.”

  Allison smiled, eyes downturned as she carefully picked her way around a pile of mushy leaves. “Yeah, well,” she said, “Nancy’s parents are getting divorced; she deserves a break. Also, I am not better at chem than everyone else. Charles is.”

  “Charles is just louder,” said Max.

  Allison tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You really noticed all of that stuff?”

  “Yeah,” said Max. “I hope it’s not creepy.”

  She laughed again. “It’s not,” she said. “I like those things about me, too.”

  “I just like that you work so hard. I don’t know what you want to be when we, you know, grow up or whatever. But you are going to be it, Allison. You don’t give yourself any excuses. That’s—well, it’s attractive.”

  “Thanks,” Allison said again. Max could hear her smile in that single, simple word.

  He waited for her to acknowledge that he admitted he liked her, but she didn’t—not directly. Instead, she said, “I like the way you treat Dani. You were a total idiot back there with the candle,” she added quickly. “But I can tell how much you love her. You’re more you when she’s around. More humble. I like that.”

  “She’s got a lot of dirt on me,” he joked, shrugging. “Plus, she’s smarter than I am, and she’s eight. It’s hard not to be humble.”

  At that, Allison grinned. “What I meant was, I wish you acted around other people the way you act around her. It’s a good look on you.”

  Max scrutinized Allison’s face, but it was too dark to tell exactly what she was thinking. He opened his mouth to ask, but Binx’s voice cut through the dark, making them both jump.

  “Here we are!” called the cat. “Up and out!”

  “Think soothing thoughts,” said Mary in her most centered voice. The sisters grasped arms and leaned into one another, revolving in a slow circle. “Rabid bats,” she suggested. “Black Death. Mummy’s scorpion pie.”

  With that, they broke apart and arranged themselves in a line, each sister lifting her face to the full moon.

  “Mother,” they breathed in unison.

  A massive vehicle rolled up and stopped right in front of them. A set of doors near the front folded open with a mechanical gasp.

  Inside, a man, perhaps in his forties, perched on a tall seat behind a set of controls. He took a look at the sisters and gave them a lecherous grin. “Bubble, bubble,” he said, “I’m in trouble.”

  Winifred blushed. “Tell me, friend, what is this contraption?”

  “I call it”—he spit a wad of gum through the window beside him—“a bus.”

  Winifred stroked her cheek with a two-inch fingernail. “A bus,” she repeated. “And its purpose?”

  He opened his arms to welcome them in. “To convey gorgeous creatures such as yourselves to your most”—he paused, drawing a fisted hand toward his chest—“forbidden desires,” he finished meaningfully.

  Winifred giggled. “Well,” she said. “Fancy.” She glanced at her sisters and back at the swaggering driver. “We desire children,” she said.

  He laughed loudly at that. “Hey, that may take me a couple of tries, but I don’t think there’ll be a problem. Hop on up.”

  Winifred led the way, as was the Sanderson practice. Sarah sidled onto the driver’s lap.

  “How does it work?” she asked, planting two hands on the wheel in front of her.

  “Oh, gumdrop,” the driver said, “it’s already working.”

  The door hissed shut and the bus trembled back to life. He helped her guide it onto the road. Sarah squealed, clapping, and the bus veered into the opposite lane.

  The driver sat up straighter and grabbed on to the wheel.

  Sarah wrested it back for herself, and as she did, her head bobbed into his field of vision.

  A black cat appeared in the middle of the road, as if out of nowhere, and Sarah gunned the accelerator.

  The bus clanked, one set of wheels bucking up a couple of inches, and then dropped back into place and kept going.

  “Whoa!” said the driver, peering around her shoulder. “Speed bump.”

  Sarah pressed the button in the middle of the wheel, delighting in the high-pitched toot of the bus’s horn.

  “Binx?” called Dani, distressed. Seconds before, Max had lifted off the manhole cover overhead and started to climb out of the drainage tunnels, but he had ducked back down, shouting “Look out!”

  Now the cat was nowhere to be seen.

  Max hurried to push the heavy metal disc off again. He pulled himself up and then helped Dani and Allison climb out, too.

  “Oh my god,” Max said when he spotted Binx’s flattened body in the middle of the road. He didn’t react quickly enough to block Dani from seeing.

  She cried out and buried her face in Allison’s sweater. “No...she sobbed.

  “It’s all my fault,” Max said, starting to pace.

  Allison took his wrist. “Max, it’s not your fault,” she said.


  Dani grabbed on to his sleeve. “Look!” she said.

  The three of them watched, amazed, as Binx’s sides inflated like a balloon, as if he were taking a very deep breath. There was the sound of air filling desperate lungs and the soft snap of bones realigning.

  Binx rolled over and looked up at them, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I hate it when that happens,” he said.

  Max, Allison, and Dani exchanged looks.

  “What?” said Binx, bowing into a stretch. “I told you: I can’t die.” He took a step toward Dani. “Are you all right?” he asked, studying her small face.

  She nodded energetically. “Yeah,” she said with a tear-streaked smile.

  He darted over to bat at her shoelaces. When she giggled, he took a step back, seemingly satisfied. “Okay,” he said, his yellow eyes peering into her pale green ones. “Then let’s go find your parents.”

  Winifred and Mary sat across the aisle from each other at the back of the bus, ignoring their sister Sarah’s shenanigans. Outside, creatures milled about, going from house to house in the strangest clothes.

  Mary leaped to her feet. “Stop!” she yelled.

  The bus screeched to a halt and everyone turned to her.

  “I smell children,” she said, grinning.

  “Marvelous,” said Winifred, standing, as well.

  Sarah hopped off the driver’s lap and hurried toward them.

  “Hey, cupcake,” the driver said, grabbing her arm. “Don’t I get your phone number? Your area code? You want my route schedule?”

  Sarah simpered. “Oh,” she said, batting a hand as if suddenly shy. “Thou wouldst hate me in the morning.”

  “No, I wouldn’tst!” he insisted.

  Winifred gathered up her satin skirts and hurried to Sarah’s side. “Oh, believe me,” she said to the man, “thou wouldst.” She extracted Sarah’s arm from his grip and gave him a warning look.

  “Party pooper,” he grumbled.

  Winifred turned up her nose at him and led her sisters off the bus.

  Ahead of them stood a small house whose yard billowed with crimson smoke. Pitchforks jutted out of the soil.