by A. W. Jantha
Dust goes everywhere, including up my nose.
“Poppy, what are you doing?”
I stand up, hacking and spitting. My parents are in the open doorway, Aunt Dani in front of them dressed as the Queen of Hearts with high, drawn-on eyebrows, dramatic blue eyeshadow, a huge red wig, and an extravagant dress. Mom’s platinum blond wig looks more frazzled than at the party, but the blue lightning bolt across her right eye and cheek is in perfect glittery condition, and her short, structured black dress didn’t rumple at all on the car ride over. Dad, his Hollywood sign headband still snapped over his dark hair, is standing by an open circuit breaker box, which explains why the lights wouldn’t work earlier. There must have been a power surge.
I can’t believe I thought...
“Oh, thank god,” I say, breathing hard and letting out a little laugh. I feel so stupid for thinking my friends and I actually brought back witches from beyond the grave. Then again, I have no idea how to explain what just happened, or how Isabella got the spell book.
Isabella also gets to her feet and hides the spell book behind her back.
Mom crosses her arms over her chest, and when I see the look on her face, I consider ducking back behind the overturned table.
Instead, I clear my throat and turn toward my aunt. “Aunt Dani, this is my friend Isabella. And Travis is hiding behind the table.”
Travis and Aunt Dani often riff for hours over family dinners, but now he sheepishly lifts an arm and gives my aunt a microscopic wave.
I kick Travis.
He only shakes his head. “I told you,” he says through clenched teeth, “I’m not about to die for you.”
Aunt Dani glances over her shoulder at my parents. Then she reaches up and drags off her Queen of Hearts wig, revealing her fair, honey-colored hair tied back in a bun. She pulls it down, shaking out the shoulder-length waves. “That thing was giving me a migraine, anyway.” She crosses the room to shake Isabella’s hand. Isabella’s other hand is awkwardly behind her back, hiding the heavy spell book. It occurs to me that this is the weirdest meet-the-family scenario ever.
After Aunt Dani greets Isabella, she leans toward me. I stare into her calm green eyes outlined in smoky makeup, and catch a whiff of vanilla, which tells me she’s been frosting cupcakes. That explains why she was so late to my mom’s party. She glances at my parents, and in a stage whisper, she says, “They’re angrier than they look.”
I stare at my aunt, whose brick-red lips are turned up in a secretive smile.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I hiss.
Mom clears her throat and puts her hand on her hip. She looks around the house, then back at me, and shakes her head. “You came here tonight, of all nights...” she begins.
“We—we can explain,” I say.
Mom cuts in. “You don’t need to explain. I overheard Katie Taylor telling her friends how lame it is that you went to get spooked at the Sanderson house.” She pauses. “Not that I think you’re lame, but I am still upset with you. And just what have you done to this house?”
I look back at my parents, searching for the right words. I really don’t know how to explain what happened, but I’m sure there must be some non-supernatural explanation. I’m not about to go down the same paranoid rabbit hole as my family. “There was a windstorm,” I say. “But you’re here now, and everything seems...fine?” Even I hear my voice go up an octave at the end.
“A windstorm? In the Sanderson house?” asks Mom. “On the night of the blood moon?”
Travis stands up then, quickly surveying the debris strewn around the room. “Mrs. Dennison,” he says, “Mr. Dennison. I am so sorry—there was a cat and...we were afraid it was lost, and we chased it through the gate without even realizing where we were, and...”
It’s super obvious he’s cobbling his lie together one piece at a time.
“Do you know how surprised we were to end up in here?” he continues. “I’ve never personally been so surprised.”
Mom looks shaken by the talk of a cat, and she takes Dad’s hand. “Poppy, what exactly did you do?” she asks me, studying the wreckage.
I almost wish the green glow beneath the floorboards would return to swallow me whole. “We may have found the spell book and tried to summon the dead, but it didn’t work,” I say. “I’m sure it’s just...drafty in here. Or something.”
“The spell book!” Mom gasps. “Where is it?”
Isabella pulls it out from behind her back. “Trick or treat?”
“Where did you find it?” Mom whispers, shocked.
Isabella carefully stoops and places it on the floor, then slowly backs away from it, but doesn’t offer an answer.
Dad puts his hands on his head. “What were you thinking?” he asks me. His voice has that shaky, frustrated tone that tells me Aunt Dani is right: he really is angrier than he looks.
“I guess we weren’t?” says Isabella, looking to me for backup.
What do I say? That we came here on Halloween night to prove that their story about the Sanderson sisters and a talking cat isn’t remotely true—and, by the way, jury’s still out?
“Poppy, haven’t we taught you anything?” Mom says. “This is the only thing we’ve ever asked you not to do—and you go behind our backs?” She’s angry, but there’s also an edge of hurt to her voice. “You put your friends in danger, too. Do you realize that?” She eyes the book and turns to Dad. “Oh, Max, I have a very bad feeling about all of this.”
To my right, Isabella shifts uncomfortably, and hot blood rushes to my face.
“Okay, okay,” Aunt Dani says, hands on hips. “Max. We didn’t exactly heed the warnings about coming up here to flip through books and let virgins light candles. I seem to remember that I was the one overruled twenty-five years ago about coming to this creepy house.” She glances at me and says out of the corner of her mouth, “You didn’t let anyone light a candle, did you?”
I shake my head ever so slightly, and Aunt Dani lets out a small sigh of relief.
“That’s not the point,” says Dad.
“That’s exactly the point, Max,” says Aunt Dani, rounding on him. “Tell him, Allison.”
Mom cups my cheek in one of her hands, searching my face, and I feel a horrible sinking feeling settle in my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I know we shouldn’t have come.”
“Oh, Poppy,” she says gently. “We’re just glad you’re all okay. We love you so much and couldn’t bear—”
And then Mom’s expression turns to one of shock, and she’s gone.
And then Aunt Dani is gone.
And Dad, striding across the room, disappears mid-step.
“What—” I start, reaching into the empty air, but my voice catches in my throat.
A pair of disembodied hands with freakishly long nails appears in front of us, gnarled fingers clawing at the air like they’re prying open elevator doors. The hands struggle to widen the fissure in the invisible veil, and the air seems to part further, a green glow flickering around its edges.
I see an emerald dress with white laces crisscrossing up the front, revealing a narrow length of royal blue silk. I hear an indignant huff, and then the tear opens wider still and a woman squeezes her way through, nearly tripping as she extracts one leg and then the other, her long green skirts getting caught in the narrow opening between worlds. When the woman turns to us, I see that her face is flushed and her mouth is smudged scarlet across her bottom lip and Cupid’s bow. Her eyes are crazed and triumphant, and her red hair is a violent cloud above her scalp. The glowing green rip seals shut behind her.
Beside her, from a new vibrant slit, the manicured hands of a second woman grab on to the edges of the air before the tear can seal itself shut. A tall black boot emerges, followed by flowing red-and-purple skirts. Their wearer—a beautiful woman with loose blond curls—steps out and claps with excitement, jumping from one foot to the other as the shimmering doorway closes.
A
third, plumper woman forces her torso through the last flickering green opening. She grins at us with a crooked mouth, then waves at the blond woman to help drag her fully into our world. Her dark hair is sculpted like a witch’s hat over her head, and she’s dressed in a rust-colored bodice with heavy plaid skirts. The brunette clutches at the blonde as she slides through the parted air, and then the space behind her seals with a pop, leaving no hint that it ever existed.
The women look around, grinning. They are wildly impossible and yet somehow perfectly placed, as if they never left this ramshackle house.
My heart stops beating for a moment, and a lump rises in my throat.
This can’t be happening. But a larger, more terrified part of me can’t quiet the chorus running through my head. They’re real. They’re real, they’re real, they’re real.
“What the hell?” I breathe.
But neither Travis nor Isabella has an answer for me. Travis quickly grabs the spell book and hides it behind his back. Luckily, only I seem to have noticed him do so.
My family’s story was true.
And now Mom and Dad and Aunt Dani are gone.
The redhead takes in Isabella, then me, then Travis, and she moves down the line, her grin growing wider and wider and pushing against the edges of her face.
“We’re ba-aaack,” Winifred Sanderson sings.
With a swell of sinister delight, the house fills with the sound of the Sanderson sisters’ cackling.
The witch is back.
Winifred, Sarah, and Mary Sanderson stand before me, the first beaming, the second preening, and the third licking her lips like she’s ready for an early Thanksgiving feast.
Aunt Dani has always been especially descriptive in her retellings of their harrowing Halloween night, and the sisters look exactly as she described—especially Winifred, who seems to tower above the room, wielding her confidence and authority like a weapon. Her cheeks are flushed, maybe from the October cold, and her wild eyes can’t seem to settle on a color as they comb over the three of us. “What have we here?” Winifred croons. “Something...tasty?”
Travis grabs my wrist and tugs, but I can’t seem to move. I’m scared out of my mind, but I’m also angry that my family is gone and that these witches are here grinning like they’ve just won the resurrected witch lottery. Which I guess they kind of have. As my blood pressure builds, I feel a crackle in the air. The hair on the back of my neck prickles. Somehow, the feeling brings me courage. You must be coming into your powers, Travis had joked. And yet...No.
I don’t take my eyes off Winifred. From my parents’ stories, I know that she’s bound to be the mastermind of it all. “What did you do to my family?” I demand.
“Do?” Winifred repeats in a needling voice. “Why, I’ve been in Hell, sweet girl—where your family is now.”
Hell.
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Winifred continues. “There’s not much to do there.”
“No doing at all,” Sarah says sadly. She prances over to prod Travis’s biceps.
He snatches his arm away from her, eyeing the blond witch suspiciously.
Images of demons with tridents and torches flash through my mind.
What have I done? I never thought I was putting my family in danger. I thought that the spirit board and coming here tonight was all just a fun joke, and now...and now my family’s in...Hell?
“If there was any doing,” Winifred continues, “it was you, my dear. We heard your siren call from the other side.”
“It was a lovely invitation,” agrees Mary with a goofy smile, clasping her hands over her heart. “Sweet girl,” she adds, parroting Winifred with a lick of her lips.
Winifred raises both hands and strikes a pose. “So, here we are!” she announces. As her arms drop back to her sides, her words gain a sharp edge: “Now, where’s dinner?” She eyes me, and I know it’s meant to intimidate, but it barely registers. I’m still stuck on the fact that my reading that stupid spirit board is what catapulted everyone into this hot mess in the first place.
“I didn’t mean to bring you b-back. I didn’t even know you were real! And now, my family. Are they... ?” I pause to take a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to read that spell,” I say in a voice that I hope makes me sound confident and a bit dangerous. “You tricked me!”
“Not I,” says Winifred. “No. It was my book. Boo-oook! Where are you, my darling?”
“Your book?” I quickly cover. “What book?”
Winifred looks around the house, squinting. “I know my dear sweet book is here. It called upon us with its spell and tricked you into reading it. You’ve got it, don’t you?” She eyes Isabella, then me, and last Travis. “Ah, yes.” She grins. “Time I show you my favorite trick.”
“A trick! A trick! A trick!” says Sarah, clapping gleefully.
“You horrible—”
I don’t get to finish my insult before lightning crackles through the whole house, the green-tinged forks of it striking everything in their path. I’m lucky Travis has better reflexes than I do, because the lightning leaves a smoldering black spot on the floor where his feet were seconds ago. I quickly realize my red vintage coat has caught fire and hastily shrug it off.
There’s a tremble in the air and all the light bulbs burst at once in small showers of sparks. The few bulbs on a candelabra erupt into eerie flames, leaving us in a murky half-light.
“Here’s a trick for you!” I shout, and press the shutter release on my camera.
The flash blazes in Winifred’s face, and the witches wince and shield their eyes. Winifred strikes out without seeing, and I use my camera to protect myself.
It goes flying from my hands and lands with a gut-wrenching crash as I push Travis ahead of me, toward the front door, with Isabella racing just steps behind us. I feel awful leaving my family...wherever they are, but we’ll have to figure that out when there aren’t three evil witches about to fry the hair off our heads.
We’re down the path and on the dark deserted street before I stop to catch my breath. My parents must have had a spare set of Sanderson keys, because the gate is unlocked.
“You okay?” Travis rests a hand on my shoulder. He has the spell book under his arm.
I look at him and freeze. “Isabella!” I shout, surveying the empty street. “Where is she?”
Travis looks around. “She was right here a second ago....Wasn’t she?”
I turn back toward the Sanderson house.
The windows crackle with a green-white light.
Then everything goes still.
This is all very, very bad.
“She’s still inside. We have to go back for her!” I insist.
Travis grabs me by both arms before I can dash back onto the Sanderson property. “If we both get electrocuted, we can’t help anyone, including and especially your family,” he tells me.
Your family.
His words slam into me. Hell, Winifred said. My parents are in Hell. “But Isabella,” I say. “We have to help—”
There’s a distant cackle and the sound of hurried footsteps.
I pull Travis closer to me, ducking into the bushes at the side of the road.
The sisters spill down the walk and look up and down the road.
“I remember this wretched town,” Winifred says, stepping into the middle of the street. “Back on earth for a third time,” she crows. “What Mother would say if she could see us now.”
At that, the three witches step forward together, lifting their faces to the moon. “Mother,” they sigh.
“Perhaps she can return, if things go according to plan. But first, we have things to find, sisters.”
“The spell book!” shouts Mary.
“The blood moonstone!” chimes in Sarah.
Mary takes another sharp sniff. “I smell children, Winnie,” she says, grabbing the arm of the red-haired witch.
“Hush, Mary,” says Winifred, brushing her off. “The whole world smells like children
. It is Halloween night, and we’re in for a treat.”
She turns toward town and hurries down the asphalt road. “Keep up, you whiffle-whaffles! We haven’t time to waste!”
“Whiffle-whaffle! Whiffle-whaffle!” Sarah crows, hopping back and forth as she bobs her head, clapping her hands gleefully. She stops to beam at Mary. A second later, they both take off after Winifred, gone.
“Come on,” I say, tugging Travis back through the gate. I’m desperate to see if Isabella’s okay, and I pray she either stayed hidden or escaped another way.
The creepy candelabra lights are still on inside the house, which makes it look less frightening as we jog up the steps, but once we’re through the door, I take a deep breath. I’d known the place would be trashed after that whirlwind, but coming in cold it really doesn’t look like anyone could’ve survived this. Furniture is overturned and broken glass is everywhere. Dried herbs and pickled unknowns are scattered across the floor. Even with all the evidence strewn in front of me, I can’t believe that the story is true. It’s always been true.
“Isabella?” I call in a low voice, afraid that even though the witches are gone, they’ll somehow hear us. I can hear my own heartbeat, loud in my ears. This can’t be happening, I tell myself. And yet, clearly it is.
“Neon, neptunium, nickel,” Travis mutters to himself as he picks over the fallen debris. He was an anxious kid, and his dad taught him to recite the periodic table of the elements to deal with stress. “Niobium, nitrogen...Oh, hell no!”
I find he’s discovered a shattered jar oozing a green liquid and what looks like tongues.
Across the room there’s a whimper and the sound of something scrabbling against wood.
I point to where a tall cabinet is tipped against the wall, its two front legs angled over the floor.
“Are you for real?” Travis hisses. “This is the part of the movie where you peek under a cabinet and a zombie wolverine jumps out and eats your face off.”
I ignore him. My ankle boots thud louder on the floor than I’d like, but I try to tread as softly as possible. I lean down to peer beneath the cabinet.
