An Ignorant Witch

by E M Graham

  Finally, I won out and wrenched it off me through pure force of will, flinging it to the floor where it lay senseless and limp once again with a few strands of my hair in its fist like a trophy. I looked back up at the chair and in my fear and outrage forgot to put on my Alt blinders.

  The malevolent old bat in the chair cackled with glee when she saw the scratches on my face. A wind was starting to whip around the room, taking papers and dust and the petals of silk flowers up in its maelstrom, even the heavy drapes were stirring. I could feel myself being pushed backwards.

  “Who are you?” I was yelling at her, or it. “Go away, leave Alice in peace!”

  Like that was going to work, ever. The thing just kept cackling and rocking away while she sent me a stream of psychic spite so powerful it felt like acid being thrown at me. My hair was whipping in front of my face, blinding me.

  I tried something I’d seen in the old movies me and Edna used to watch sometimes. With one hand clutching my hair to keep it out of my face, I stepped forward and let her have it as I held up my other hand.

  “In the name of God and all that is holy, leave this place!”

  Did I mention that Edna was an atheist and refused to let me go to church as a kid? She wouldn’t even sign me up for Brownies and Guides, she hated organized religion so much. So God could be forgiven for not being on my side that day.

  “You! You get out of my house!” The cackling had stopped now and the entity was no longer gleeful. A terrible rage overtook her ancient wrinkled face but the roar could have come from the depths of hell itself, and the wind rose to hurricane speed as the lamps and end tables went flying and careening around the room. I ducked as the cable box detached from the wall and flew past my head.

  There’s only so much you can do to help a friend, so I was out of there in half a second flat, banging the front door behind me and not stopping till I found Alice underneath the highway overpass across the road, huddled into the shadows of the concrete. She was crying, yet even through her tears she could see how shaken I was.

  “What is it in there?” She was whispering as she scuffed at the weeds and grass growing in the cracks at the pillar’s foot. “What’s in my house?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to tell her my guesses, but she had to know.

  “It’s an old woman, and she’s really angry. An old wizened woman, but she scared me. A lot.” I leaned against the pillar and stared at the bridge crossing the river. The smell of diesel and salt wafted up on the gentle fall breeze.

  “Oh.”

  This made me look back up at Alice, for that one sound held a lot.

  “You know something about this, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe. Did the old woman... did she look sort of like me, the way I’d look a hundred years from now?”

  I nodded slowly. Yes, the specter did have that look of Alice about her, come to think of it.

  “It’s Nan Hoskins, it’s got to be,” Alice said, her voice as mournful as the gulls crying over our heads. “Shit. Gran always warned us this would happen.”

  2

  “Gran always said her mother-in-law was too nosy to die,” Alice said, with her hands shoved glumly into her jacket pockets. We were heading towards the footbridge over the river. “Should have seen it coming. At her wake, when everyone was sitting around having a good time on the rum, she sat right up in her coffin and gave them the old hairy eyeball. Gave them all some scare, I tell you. They still talk about it.”

  I looked over at my friend, appalled. Dead people sitting up in their coffins? Jesus, and I thought my family was strange.

  She caught my look. “Well, they were in a hurry to bury her, I guess,” she said in a defensive tone. “She died just before the May 24th weekend and everyone wanted to head out around the bay for the first week of summer. They didn’t bother with the undertaker’s stuff, just put her in the coffin she’d bought on sale twenty years before and had the party.”

  “Wait now.” I stopped mid bridge. “You can buy coffins on sale?”

  “It may have been secondhand,” Alice mumbled. “I don’t know the details. Anyway, the doctor said it was rigor mortis setting in, nothing spooky, they were just in too much of a rush to see her off.”

  She’d decided to come home with me till her mom was off work, as she didn’t want to be home alone. Understandable. We continued up Topsail Road to my house on the hill.

  “What I don’t get is, if it is Nan Hoskins, why show herself to you and not me? I’m her own blood, after all.”

  I’d never told anyone about my abilities. Well, except Aunt Edna of course, and she had caused a huge fuss and swore me to secrecy for my own safety. However, I figured it was okay to tell Alice – after all, I’d known her most of my life and she didn’t seem too surprised to hear her great-grandmother was haunting her house.

  “I can see ghosts,” I began. “And talk with them.”

  We paused at the bottom of the long dirt driveway leading to Richmond Cottage. The iron gates had long since rusted away and weeds were taking over as I was the only one who ever used it. Aunt Edna and her boyfriend drove in the back way off Shaw Street, the old tradesman’s entrance to the estate. It was a lot easier to keep shovelled in winter.

  “That’s gross,” Alice said after she had thought about it a while. “Are they all like Nan Hoskins?”

  “Nah. Most ghosts are peaceful, or sad. Sometimes they don’t even know they’re dead, sometimes they’re just really confused.” I glanced over at her, and plunged in. “I grew up with a ghost, her name’s Maundy. She tries to bully me, but she’s harmless.” Not like the fury of terror in Alice’s house.

  “You told me about Maundy years ago, but not that she was a ghost,” Alice said in a rather wounded tone. “I thought she was your cousin.”

  “She is, or was, sort of. Related to me somehow, I guess,” I said. I’d always been aware of Maundy, I think we first met when I was three years old and wandered into her room. In life, she had been the niece of my great-great grandfather, so I don’t know what that makes us – four times removed? Five? I can never figure it out. “But would you tell people you can talk with ghosts, if it was you?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “What’s the big deal? You can talk with ghosts, that’s sort of cool if you think about it.”

  The big deal was what I hadn’t told her, my half-witch genes and the other stuff I could see. That shit really wasn’t so cool.

  “Hey, your ghost, what’s her name – Maundy?” Alice said, brightening. “Maybe she can help with Nan Hoskins.”

  I shook my head. “No, she’s way too self-involved. She won’t even leave her room.” I didn’t tell her I had learned the hard way never to take Maundy’s advice on anything. Ever since the year she’d tried to make me dress like a girl and not a rapscallion, and I spent the whole of my second grade in those long flowery dresses I’d found in an old trunk. Jesus, I really looked like a dork in those school photos. It just wasn’t the look for me. In fact, I’d found over the years that things worked better if I acted in direct opposition to the spirit’s suggestions.

  We’d reached the top of the hill and went round to the back door. Edna’s battered red Civic wasn’t there and the place was locked up secure. Not that anyone would ever try to break in – the old mansion was way too spooky looking, and besides, there was nothing worth stealing in here – but her boyfriend Mark was a cop, and he was always on at her to keep the place locked. She must finally be taking heed.

  As I waited for the kettle to boil, I thought aloud to Alice.

  “I’ve been in your house dozens of time,” I said.

  “Hundreds.”

  “Yeah, maybe. So why is Nan Hoskins only showing herself to me now? She died before we were born.”

  She gave a shudder. “It’s weird. You never saw her before at all?”

  I shook my head as I poured the hot water into the mugs. Her house had always had a creepy feeling, but I’d assumed th
at was because it was so dark, huddled against the south hills as it was and never getting sunlight in there. I honestly hadn’t thought it was any more haunted than other houses of its age – you know, with the residual emotions that hang on in any family home over the years.

  Alice squeezed her teabag and dumped it into the bowl which held other used bags, long since dried out. I needed to make a trip to the composter.

  “I don’t suppose you can get rid of her?” she asked in a tentative voice.

  “What, like an exorcism or something?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it? She’s your great-grandmother.”

  “I don’t care, I want her gone.”

  “Maybe she’s appearing now because she wants to tell you something.”

  “Oh, yeah? And what did she say to you?”

  Alice had a point. Nan Hoskins was more like a screaming demon than a spirit with a message from beyond.

  “Gran always hated her, she made no bones about saying how happy she was when Nan finally kicked the bucket. She went before I came on the scene, but they lived together for years in that house, right from when Gran married into the family.”

  An idea struck me. “Where’s your Gran now?”

  “Living in St. Pat’s, the nursing home. You think she can help?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Why don’t we go see her after classes tomorrow?”

  “I have an afternoon lab,” Alice said. “I’ll be out of it by five o’clock.”

  We made arrangements to meet in the library the next day, then Alice went back down the road to fetch her mother getting off her shift. I took my tea up the back staircase to my bedroom to sit and ponder in my favourite spot, the window seat overlooking the large unkempt garden.

  This mansion, or house, or ‘cottage’ as it was formally known as – it’s like a Tardis house, if you’ve ever watched any of the Doctor Who series. It looks real cute and small on the outside to someone looking up from the road below, but inside it stretches on forever. Part of the trick is caused by the long floor to ceiling windows at the front of the house. They give the optical illusion of a compact space within, and it’s only when the viewer draws closer that they realize the main entrance is dwarfed by the French windows which are a good fifteen feet high. We didn’t use those front rooms any more, they were impossible to heat in winter.

  In fact, much of the house was closed off permanently those days. I used to love wandering through the library and drawing rooms as a child. Yeah, there were residual ghosts all around there, too, but it was pretty clean of supernaturals. It had been a happy home at one time.

  Likewise the gardens had been left to revert back to their natural state, the ancient oaks and chestnuts providing a solid wall against the world. The vegetable plots at the back had long since become an unexpected urban woodland for the neighborhood kids. The City was always on at us to fence it off, but what was the harm? Aunt Edna tried to keep a small garden for growing food in the sunny spot at the back, but she usually forgot to water it until everything had either died or bolted, depending on the weather.

  My favourite place outside was the statue garden off to the side of the formal drawing room. The French doors once opened onto this courtyard walled with cedars and with a single fountain in the middle. The copper fish was all green now and no longer spouted water, while the garden doors were nailed shut, but I could still gain access through the old garden gate. It was like another world in there, and it was all mine.

  I only ever shared that space with my older half-sister Sasha. We used to play hide and seek down there among the statues when Jon, our father, would bring her to visit, and we used to play magic games down there too. All that ended though when things came to a head between Mom and his wife Cate.

  You see, Dad had a traditional marriage arranged for optimal alliance and merging of two big houses. This is what the Kin do, and it’s one way they’ve held on to their power through the centuries. Mom was the mistress he fell in love with. After all the fighting began between Mom and Dad, well it was about that time Mom went away and never returned. I wasn’t allowed to play magic anymore after that.

  As I sat on the cushion of my window seat and looked down upon my old domain, my mind was working hard. The sudden appearance of Nan Hoskins was a puzzle, and the fact that she chose to show herself right after Benjy’s disappearance was not a good sign. The two events had to have a connection. But what was it?

  THE NEXT DAY I hung out at the library for a few hours, waiting for Alice to finish her lab. She was such a nerd – I could never convince her to skip her time with the microscopes and algaes and what not. Unlike myself, of course. I planned to have a long and undistinguished career of professional student, doing only enough work to prevent them from kicking me out, compliments of my dearly dreaded Dad. It was the closest I would ever get to a trust fund, unlike his other, legitimate children.

  The Newfoundland Studies section was always where I gravitated to. They wouldn’t let you go behind the desk and browse through all the stacks of old papers and books, only staff were allowed back there. I sometimes idled with the thought of actually getting a job there, just for the privilege of hanging out behind the scenes, however I never got round to filling out the application.

  A search in the computer showed a few mentions of the Southside Hoskins clan in the archives. Yep, they had been parishioners of the old St. Mary’s Church, the one torn down in the ‘sixties along with a bunch of houses in order to widen the road.

  I came upon an old article from the time of World War II that discussed a new shooting range on the Southside Hills. The writer seemed quite outraged that the local people were disregarding the bans and traipsing all over the fenced off area to pick their berries that fall, heedless of getting shot by the troops doing their rifle practice. Hah – I’d bet Nan Hoskins was leading that brigade of scofflaws. No one would dare shoot her.

  While I was poking around the electronic records of the archives, my thoughts moved on to the reign of Nan, along with her family’s secret blueberry patch. As an outsider, I’d never been allowed to accompany Alice on the yearly excursions of berry picking, but that had never bothered me because I could feel something creepy happening up on that mountain.

  And I don’t mean the vampires in that big scary house with the turrets and gables down the street from Alice. This feeling came upon me the few times I’d ventured up the path by the Fort Amherst lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor, the path that led straight up the hill to the Southside Barrens at the top. Physically, it looks like the top of any large hill or mountain on the Avalon Peninsula, I guess – all rocks and bogs and scrubby pines growing in the direction of the prevailing winds, and completely open to the sky above. But I always knew there was something very, very wrong up there.

  The tops of those hills felt like fairy. You know that mucky, sticky feeling like honey that’s almost dried on your skin and won’t come off no matter how much you lick it? My skin would feel dirty and grimy just being up there. And the hills smelled of fairy too, to me at least. Normals probably wouldn’t catch it, would think it was just the poo plant down the road wafting up in the summer breeze, but I knew for a fact there was no smell like fairy.

  Think about the forgotten package of hamburger meat at the back of the fridge leftover from when it rained on the day of the barbeque that time, or the rat who expired unseen in the bedroom wall. Think about the salt flats on the Bay of Fundy mixed together with the street gutters in Mumbai. Or better yet, visit a dead whale beached on the shores of an abandoned outport, and that will give an idea about the smell of the fairies.

  People have the wrong idea about the fae, I blame Walt Disney and urbanization. Too many people don’t live close to the land anymore. They’re so busy living their lives surrounded by concrete and lawns and their SUVs with GPS and AWD, they can’t see the world outside their narrow scope. The fairies have been around since time immemorial a
nd folk were justly afraid of them throughout history.

  I will tell you they are not cute, or pretty, or sweet or anything nice. They don’t float around on little wings spreading magic dust to grant wishes or to make you fly. Fae are a rotten crowd who are just plain mean with cruel withered hearts, and they excel in torture.

  “Hey.” A bag plonked down on the table next to me, making me jump. “What’re you looking up?”

  Alice bent over for a better view of the screen. “Really? Fairies in Newfoundland.” She made a scoffing sound and rolled her eyes.

  This from a girl whose dead Nan was terrorizing her.

  “Haven’t you ever heard the legends?” I quickly exited the screen and gathered my stuff.

  “Nobody talks about that foolishness anymore,” she said. “C’mon let’s go before Gran goes back to bed.”

  We made our way out the glass library doors.

  “I can’t promise you much, you know,” she warned me as we crossed the campus in the direction of the nursing home. “She’s a little, uh...”

  “Senile?”

  “Dementia is what they call it. Losing her memory, at least about the recent stuff,” Alice said. “She seems to be living in her youth, or at least years ago. She thinks I’m my aunt.”

  St. Pat’s was a big nursing home, formerly run by the Catholic Church until Eastern Health gobbled everything up. I don’t know why her grandmother ended up here because Alice’s family had always been Anglican. Still, the staff were really nice, and it had a gorgeous chapel right inside the nursing home itself.

  Alice pointed out her grandmother down the long corridor. The woman was headed for the center lounge where the TV blared, and we hurried to catch up to her. Even this early in the evening she was dressed in a flannel nightie sprigged with roses with a shapeless pilled cardigan over it for warmth. Her feet were clad in thick socks and sneakers to prevent falls.