by E M Graham
“Did she, I don’t know, get scared to death or something?” I wondered aloud. “Was she being tortured?”
He nodded. “That’s the general consensus,” he agreed. “However, we’ve brought in an expert on arcane subjects, because you know what the strangest thing of all is?”
I shook my head.
“Despite the burn marks, there was no trace of accelerant on her body at all,” he said. “Nothing flammable, no evidence. It was as if she was burned by lightning.”
I could feel the hairs on my arms prickle. Lightning. Or magic? I searched his face to see what he suspected, if he had any thoughts, any suspicions about my own birth.
“And you want to know something even more disturbing?” His eyes were totally holding mine now. “When we found the body, it was in perfect condition, barring natural deterioration and the fact that the corpse had been lying exposed to the elements since the death. No wild animals, no foxes or coyotes, no crows had been picking at her. Not even the gulls.”
He sat back. He was right, this was creepy and totally unnatural.
Something weird was happening around the town, I’d been feeling it for a while. Maybe it was the shifting weather patterns, maybe the increasingly strong winds were stirring up something best left forgotten. Or maybe it was unsettled magic.
4
I COULDN’T HELP MARK out with his investigation, but I still needed assistance of my own. I wasn’t going to get to Dad’s house with Edna’s help, that much was obvious but I could still check out Zeta and her store. This might be grasping at straws, for Mark said she was a wing-nut which could mean one of two things. Either she really was a crackpot, a delusional human desperate to believe in magic and all things supernatural, or else she was the real thing. A renegade Kin wanting to open up the supernatural powers of everyone, going out on a limb to defy the conventions of the craft. I thrilled at the thought of such boldness in the face of the Kin, and the more I thought about it, the more excited I became.
Today was Saturday, no classes for me. Alice was gone off on a boat-tour with her nerdy classmates, something about a walrus being spotted on the shores further down the coast. Walruses don’t live in Newfoundland normally, it must have got stuck on an ice floe off Greenland and floated down. She’d offered to take me along, but I’d declined. I get sea-sick in anything bigger than a canoe on a pond.
I set off walking downtown. I usually love this time of year, just before it turns to autumn. It’s a time for new starts, new beginnings, despite the impending death of summer, or maybe because of it. This past summer had been the hottest on record, days and days of hot weather so humid it pressed all the good out of you. I was glad to be coming into the cooler weather.
At first I just wandered, enjoying the fresh air. The old core of the city, with its original winding lanes and alleys and slums – much of that has been cleaned up, widened, straightened or just plain bulldozed down over the years, but much still remains. Dead end alleys, hidden corners and passageways just off the main drag – there’s lots of places for the forgotten side of life to lurk and thrive if you know where to look. The cardboard shelters, the unplanned nooks strewn with broken glass and needles and smelling of piss and worse... These are the evidence of the seamy underbelly, and all those hidden walls are ripe for graffiti.
It was in Birdshit Alley that I first noticed the graffiti, along that small angled staircase connecting Duckworth and Water, the one that never sees the sun. It’s shaded by a forgotten inner city forest growing in a fenced off empty back lot, a natural place for the starlings to congregate, so much so that you can’t hear yourself think at sundown when they’ve all come home to roost. And underfoot... well, that’s how it got its name.
The old stone and concrete walls lining this alley are also a natural place for passing graffiti artists, and after every summer there’s fresh work on show. It’s usually just trash stuff, stupid tags and dicks and things. But not this year.
This summer the art had taken a different turn. It consisted of a single symbol, hand painted over and over again, repeated until the black mat paint almost covered over all the colors of the previous years so that hardly a square foot of the windowless wall was untouched. Or I should say, it was two symbols merged into one. There was a simple Celtic knot, a continuous line defining the corners of a circle. I knew that symbol well – I’d seen it many times on the heavy silver chain around my father’s neck. It was the symbol for the Witch Kin.
Inside the square at the very center of the circle was a simple cross, or plus sign, like the international symbol for the Red Cross. By itself among the Witch Kin lore, this was the symbol for purity.
But juxtaposed as it was with the Celtic knot, there could only be one meaning.
It made my blood chill just looking at the repetitions painted over and over again, like a chant increasing in volume and pitch.
Purity of blood. Purity of magic blood.
Being a half-blood who grew up around Witch Kin kids, I knew there was prejudice in this town, always had been. The Kin were like that. But mostly it took the form of petty snubs to keep the halflings and non-magic Normals in their place.
But this graffiti. Even though it was on an alley wall hidden from view from the light of day – this was in your face, a simmering pot of hatred about to boil over. The matte black paint covered the wall like bacteria on a rotten carcass ripe to split open to the air.
I reached out my hand toward the paint, and the magic leapt out, burning my finger. Turning tail, I fled back to the sunshine and bustle and normality of Water Street and tried not to think about what I’d seen, and about what Mark had said about the dead body.
THE STORE I WAS looking for was located down on the west end of Duckworth, above the rum joints of George Street in one of those old rickety wooden buildings. ‘Zeta’s House of Magick’, it was called, and it promised to have spells for every need. Was this a sign that the Witch Kin were opening up their ranks to the Normals, cashing in on the interest in all things supernatural? Not bloody likely given the writing on that alley wall, but I had to check it out.
I walked into an atmosphere of incense and spices which covered up the smell of ancient mice and wood rot, and it was like entering a storefront in a Harry Potter book. Almost.
It was a tiny space. The shelves were crammed full of all sorts of arcane looking objects with handlettered signs describing the wares. I rifled through a basket of glass evil eyes from Greece, then my fingers wandered over to the books on display, where every subject under the sun was covered in a mishmash of colors and titles, with no apparent organization to the lot of them. Runes. Shapeshifting. Unicorns. A large poster of a pretty fairy sitting on a bluebell, fairy dust all around her, was on the wall above. Next to the books sat a display of Harry Potter flavored jelly beans. I sighed.
I could sense some power around the room, but it was hard to tell where it was coming from in the jumble, for there wasn’t much real magic here at all among all this second-rate plastic stuff. Disappointed, I was about to leave again when a clatter of beads from the curtain under the stairs announced the arrival of the store’s proprietor.
She wafted over to me, a tall blonde woman with generous proportions, dressed in flowing skirts and scarves and her hair all frizzed out. She looked to be about Edna’s age, although it was hard to tell through the heavy makeup.
“Welcome to Zeta’s House of Magick,” she said in a ringing baritone and she strode forward with her hand out to shake mine.
I hate touching strangers, so I held back, and merely nodded.
“How may I be of assistance?” She looked me up and down, then put her fingers to her temples and breathed deeply, as if tuning in to another frequency. “Ah, I sense you are a seeker.”
“Yeah, right...”
“Are you a witch?” She threw this at me so quickly I almost lost my balance.
Could she sense my half-blood? I automatically glanced around the space but of course we were alo
ne.
“If you are searching for answers and find yourself here, you may be a witch,” she told me. “Sometimes people don’t even know they have magical powers. Do you have a longing deep in your soul for the unknown? Do you feel disconnected to your true purpose? It is my role in this life to help searchers find meaning in their lives.”
She made a grand gesture with her arm towards a hand-printed cardboard sign hanging on the wall behind the cash. It listed all the services Zeta could provide and it was a very eclectic, wide-ranging menu, from spells and incantations, to potions and therapy.
“Take this,” she continued, pressing a business card into my hand. “We hold classes every second Thursday night here. We encourage all who are open to the supernatural to attend. Coffee and muffins provided, ten dollars entrance fee.”
“What – witch classes?”
“We delve into all things of the other world,” she said loftily. “I also help to find solutions for life’s problems through spells and other magical accoutrements, all of which are available for purchase.”
“Are... are you a witch? A full-blood witch?” No way, I didn’t believe it for a minute.
“I am a witch,” she announced proudly. “The daughter of a line of witches, in a tradition stretching back hundreds of years.”
In my experience, real witches didn’t advertise to all and sundry about their magical blood. Did her family know about this?
“Which Kin do you belong to?” I found myself whispering this, I was so unused to discussing this out loud.
“Kin? All witches are my kin, all women of power.”
“No, I mean, your father’s house.” Contrary to popular New Age philosophy, the Witch Kin were all very patriarchal in their organization and always had been. Although women of powerful families like Cate kept their own last names when married, lineage went through the father’s family.
“My father?” she asked, her face blank. “What does he have to do with it?”
That’s when I knew she wasn’t the real deal. Not at all. I sighed and turned to go.
“Wait!” she said, with a note of desperation in her voice. “You came in here for a reason. What are you searching for?”
I faced her again, thinking hard. If she would only shut up and leave me alone, I might find the source of the magic I sensed among all the flotsam on the shelves.
“My friend has a ghost terrorizing her family,” I said. “I was wondering if there was anything we can do about it.”
She made a great show of thinking deeply, shutting her eyes tight and breathing in noisily.
“Yes!” she exclaimed as her eyes opened wide again. “I have it! The very thing.” Zeta went behind the old wooden counter and turning her back to me, began taking down canisters and jars, opening them up and measuring tiny amounts onto a scale, humming as she went.
I took the opportunity to scan the tiny store again for the magic I had sensed within. A slight whiff drew me to the back corner of the store, over near where the beaded curtain hid the stairs to the cellar. It was there, in a basket full of oddments of metal and wood. I dug in, searching with my fingers tips till I felt the unmistakable tingle of magical power close by.
And then my fingers brushed against it, a warm metal like a disc or an old coin, but when I took it in my grasp it burned me, the heat searing through my fingertips like lightning. I dropped it quickly and brought my hand up to my mouth.
What was that? I was shaken. There was no physical damage to my hand despite that it was still stinging, but in that instant of the burn I had felt something else, too. No, not felt, but seen and experienced, as if I had been transported momentarily to a scene of darkness, too terrible to even contemplate. It had been a place of sadness and grieving, and it felt like a memory too intimate for comfort. I stepped back from the basket, for I wanted no part of that magic, whatever it was.
But I knew who had owned it.
“Okay, that’ll be twenty-five dollars.”
“What?” I straightened up and faced her, still confused by my reaction to the old coin in the basket.
“Taxes are included.” Zeta crossed her arms and set her mouth in a grim line.
“Twenty-five dollars! I’m not paying that much. How do I even know it’ll work?”
She held out the tiny sachet, not more than two inches square and made of rough cotton. “I made it up specially for you, it’s a custom spell. That doesn’t come cheap, you know,” she said. “Besides, I give you the incantation and all the instructions are included, everything you need.”
I blew the hair from my face with a puff. Alice was really going to owe me for this one.
Zeta placed the sachet and a preprinted sheet of instructions into a small paper bag.
She paused then spoke again. “There’s a twenty percent discount on everything in the store if you buy a membership...”
“No, thank you,” I said as I hauled out the cash from my wallet and took the package from her. I could hardly believe I was doing this, but I needed to get out of Zeta’s store and away from the terrible magic of that coin. I could feel it calling to me, wanting me to take it and use it and change my life forever. It scared me.
“It’s guaranteed to work, as long as you do everything correctly,” she called after me. “Read the small print. And don’t forget about our Thursday evening gathering...”
I let the glass door slam behind me. The woman was a fake, and I had the rotten feeling I’d just been had. She had no more magic in her than... than Mark did! Zeta had made it obvious that she didn’t know the first thing about the Witch Kin, let alone Alt Town or the supernatural which surrounded us. But... that coin...
It had been owned by my mother. I needed quiet time to process this.
I almost walked right into a couple of people on the sidewalk outside.
“Oh this is desperation, isn’t it?” That hated drawling voice.
I looked up at the tall slim figure dressed all in black, her long shiny hair framing the face which hadn’t aged a bit in the past ten years. Cate, my father’s wife, and she was sneering at me. Dad was by her side and had stopped in his tracks, looking up askance at the store’s sign.
“Magic should be left to those who have it,” she said. “Half-bloods have no business dabbling in things they don’t understand.” She flicked her hair and made to move on.
Dad stayed where he was. His gaze slowly came down from the sign to me, and his eyes hardened. Darn! Of all people to find me outside a magic shop. And worst of all, the magic inside wasn’t even genuine, except for that single disc of metal hidden in a basket of hardware. He turned away without even speaking to me, and followed his wife into the old Saddlery that sat on the corner above George Street.
I could feel my cheeks burning as I turned down the concrete steps to the street below and on to the harbor.
MY INNER WORLD had just tilted on its axis, yet outside it was still a bright mid-September day, the wind was calm and the sun glinted off the water in the harbor, what I could see of it between the huge ocean-going vessels lined up at the wharves and the tall iron fence.
Dad was on my mind. I know I always put up a big front about him, pretending not to be hurt by the disdain he showed me and the meanness of his other kids, but actually it gutted me. Usually I could keep those feelings hidden even from myself, squashed way down inside me but I lost it right there and then. I was overwhelmed and got lost in my misery and sorrow at Dad’s treatment of me. Maybe it was the run-in with him and his wife, maybe it was the peacefulness of the harbor that did it, maybe it was the mournful cries of the gulls as they hovered overhead.
I must have been really caught up in my angst that day, forgetting to put a damper on my Alt-thought, for when I turned around I found myself in the middle of it, barely teetering on the edge of a long finger pier.
Did I tell you about Alt-town? Well, Alt-town is sort of like a Gothic-punk version of St. John’s, only laid over the present in a mixture of the past. You co
uldn’t be certain, before you visited any spot in Alt-town, where you were going to end up.
For example, on Harbour Drive where I had been standing just moments before, all that road had been built up over time, reclaimed I guess you’d say from the water, with room enough for hefty parking lots behind the buildings. This was a recent development over the past century. As the years passed, the government and merchants had filled in the harbor with rock and rubble to extend the space, enabling them to put a wide road in behind the businesses that used to sit at the water’s edge over the original beaches, along with the parking lots.
But once upon a time, those old merchant stores and warehouses were built right on the beach, and each one had their own wooden finger piers sticking out into the harbor where their boats would rest and their back doors, the loading doors, opened right on to these piers.
In Alt-town, there’s no rhyme or reason to what stays or changes according to the modern version.
So in that flash of a moment, I found myself in Alt-town, in the same geographical location, but teetering on the edge of the rickety wooden pier in Baird’s Cove. One step in the wrong direction and I would have ended up in the filthy sludge of the harbor. It was already filling my nostrils with its stink.
I had to act fast while trying to keep my balance, forcing my mind to shut down the curtain to the Alt and bring me back to the normal world. It worked, fortunately. It doesn’t always. I leaned against the cold iron fence of real time, grateful for its presence as I caught my breath. That was a close one.
It took me a moment to calm down, but when I had, I realized something else weird was going on.
You know when you can feel someone staring at you, you just know it because of the way the hairs on the back of your neck prickle? I felt it then at that moment, and something more, like someone or something was trying to push into my mind, past the steel curtain which normally keeps me out of the Alt. It’s not a good feeling.
