Witchscape

by Y G Maupin

  Angry, he whispered as he grabbed her by the upper arm and marched her out of the main entrance. “Just what do you think you’re doing? You can’t be here. Not just because it’s against protocol, but the bodies haven’t been moved yet.” As he spoke, the coroner’s office wheeled in two stretchers. Watching them wheel by Sharon held her breath. There but for the grace of all the gods go I, she thought, opening her eyes to see her husband still fuming.

  “Fine. I understand. I’m not trying to make you mad. Do you know if it’s ok for us to go?” she asked. Randall, just sighed and gently kissed her lips.

  “Yes, you can go. I just don’t know what time I’ll be home tonight.” He began. Sharon quickly kissed him back.

  “It’s ok because I’m going over to the bookstore. Just call me when you start driving home. I need to talk to Alice and them.” Randall went to argue, but stopped when he was called over the radio.

  “Fine. Just stay put, don’t go driving around town anywhere.” He leaned in and whispered. “I still think something weird is going on around here and I don’t want you involved, do you understand?”

  Solemnly she looked into his eyes and nodded. If you only knew, she thought and left the building.

  Twenty One

  “When I was still in the Deathscape,” Anjolie recounted in front of the women. “There had been talk that there was an opening made by a woman who was heartbroken enough to kill her lover.” Sarah and Alice quickly gave each other a look. Anjolie continued. ”They had said that she had struck him down because he had refused her. That it made her so angry, that she had invoked the gods, who are among the spirits, to come on the earth to bind them together. They showed us who it was. So many were curious to see a woman who would kill the one she loved and call the spirits,” she said, excited to have so much attention. “When I looked through to the other side I knew who it was. I’ve seen all of you many times when I’ve come to see Anesta.” She said looking up at her grown twin.

  “But did they say why they needed to kill to come across? Why not just come across as you do?” Alice asked, her lawyer mind breaking the statement down.

  “Because T had already made the first kill and the first spirit went over. Once that started, it only took a few tries to see what worked and the rules were explained. No children could be killed. Only adults counted. If you had any ties to them it was easier to make the jump,” she explained. “And also, why come and be a spirit which many could already do, when you could come, take a life and be given a new one?”

  Alice sat up. “Well. When we go over this with T let’s leave out how she made the first “Kill” she added, with finger quotations. “I don’t think that will go over well with her.”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah intoned. “Sounds too much like T was made a scapegoat for something that was already in existence. It just sounds implausible to me. I don’t know.” Sarah shrugged.

  “I hate that this is a game to them. People are being killed for them to return. Can they be killed once they come over?” Alice asked Anjolie.

  “Yes. Once they are here we are assuming that they are completely human and susceptible to death again,” Anjolie replied.

  “Can you pick who you come back as or what?” Sarah asked.

  “Not that we’ve seen. It’s a random thing where you end up. From what we’ve observed, after the person dies, something happens to the spirit.” Anjolie looked confused at the memory. “They start looking wavy and then they get sucked into something and poof, they’re gone!”

  “Wavy?” Anesta asked.

  “Yeah. The edges around their body don’t look like ghosts or spirits. They start to fade a little and glimmer away. That’s what it looks like to me.”

  “How many have you seen? Have they all been in this area?” Alice continued her interrogation.

  “There have been many that have made the jump but I haven’t seen them all. Also, spirits that cross over don’t have to stay in this town. They go wherever they are from, especially if there is someone that they can pick to take their place.”, Anjolie replied. “But I don’t know how many. I couldn’t really tell, I’m not always looking.”

  “Why haven’t you decided to come back? Take a body, be alive again?” was the next question Alice had.

  Anjolie looked at each of them. “I don’t think I want to yet. I don’t know if I’m ready. Also, I’m scared.”

  Despite being dead for over twenty years, and observing humans from the other side all this time, at heart Anjolie was still a little girl. Not being alive to experience human interaction and the consequences of them, she was not familiar with adult relationships and what it meant to feel stress or anxiety.

  “Also,” she added. “I don’t think I can make someone kill themselves and I don’t think I’m strong enough to embody someone to make them kill themselves either. I’ve seen a lot of people die. Accidentally and on purpose, but I’ve never been the cause of it. I’m not ready yet,” she repeated.

  Anesta leaned over to look around Alice. “Oh my.”

  Birdie had arrived ready to fight. She was all in black, except for a beautiful purple scarf, that wove around her graceful neck like a supernova. From the tips of her doc marten high lace boots, to her spiked epaulets on her black leather jacket, she was invincible in her mind. Hands on her hips, she paused at the threshold and flourished fire from her fingertips. “Let them just try to kill us.”

  Carla trudged along the highway. She had seen all the first responder vehicles whizzing by but she was determined to make it to the opposite side of town. The seedy side that in life she had tried to forget. Carla had been born a hick. Every day of her young life she was reminded just how much of a backwards and slow family she had along with being a hick. She on the other hand knew that she was more than what they aspired to, which usually involved dealing meth or some kind of tattoo career.

  When she was very young she started with stealing money from her mother’s purse. That money was used to buy candy to treat the other kids as she deemed them to be worthy. From there, they were desperate to sit at her side at lunch and always let her kick first at kickball. They idolized the power she wielded but she wanted more than just candy. She wanted what the other kids had. First it was a backpack. That was easy to convince one gullible girl in first grade to trade with her. It lasted a week, as the parent came in and demanded to get her child’s precious backpack back. Carla made sure that the little girl suffered for the shame Carla had felt at being made to empty it out to return. There were little items, like glitter pencils and chocolate snack cakes, but that was just a day by day past time for her. By fifth grade she had graduated to stealing her mother’s cigarettes to sell or giveaway, depending on the return friendship she had wanted. Some kids were worth the giveaway, they looked at her with wonder in their eyes as they practiced lighting and holding a lit cigarette without burning their fingers. Walking home, one could see a ragtag group of elementary children furtively trying to inhale and look cool. That also didn’t last very long, days if that, before a concerned mother picking her child up from the corner across the street witnessed Carla passing out cigarettes to the other kids. Her first reaction was to go to Carla’s mom, who was never home. She only got a surly “thanks” from Carla’s older brother but nothing came of it.

  The next day Carla was back on it. She never let anyone get in her way. By junior high she could sneak you fifths of alcohol. She was very popular by then. She let boys feel her up for a chance to say that they were dating and she improved her social standing. Those connections lasted about as long as a few days, until the new boy with the cooler clothes came around and then, bye bye sucker. By high school she had become a steady babysitter, which is where she was getting some of her alcohol purchased for her by guilty dads that she let sneak a peek. She never told. Oh she knew it was wrong, but the payoff to her was greater than any psychological damage a counselor or mentor could diagnose. Her babysitting money was small potatoes. She needed more
cash as the fashion stakes in high school were higher and snooty people, especially jealous girls had no problem calling you out for your second hand last season coats and boots.

  Carla made her way up from the small town boutiques to the trendy stores at the mall. At first, paying her brother to take her and later getting her boyfriend of the week to drive her. If she didn’t have a ride she would hitch. She didn’t care about the risk, the ends justified the means to her. Trudging now through the back roads she left the sidewalks behind and was left to wade through the emerging tall grass. She saw a snake slither past her and she smiled. “I’d make a clutch purse out of you,” she said out loud, but her spirit form saved her from any danger. She could have walked in the middle of the street, it wouldn’t have mattered but it was still weird to her to do so. She may have been a rebel all her life but that didn’t mean she was stupid, even as a spirit.

  She came up on the junction between the back road and where it curved back to meet the interstate. Crossing the small field she came to an outcrop of single wides that had broken plastic ride on toys and trampolines out front. When she had agreed to marry Todd, because she had pressured him into it, she hadn’t invited any of her family to their destination wedding in Turks and Caicos. She didn’t really care. She had the dream wedding with the dream dress and a dream honeymoon with a guy that knew how to play the game and played it even harder than her.

  Although Todd came from money, he was from the part of the family that was given money to stay away. His side of the family preferred not having drunken outbursts or fistfights at the country club from his hotheaded reactions so they paid him to keep busy with whatever business venture he had running at the time. He had almost finished College until he had been caught selling exams to athletes on scholarship. The athlete got to stay on and finish to go on to the pros, but Todd was shown the proverbial door. That didn’t matter much, he had only been doing it to please his mother. He would rather have gone into Real Estate, so he took his exam and after two tries he was able to get his license.

  He was a tough cookie that never gave up and was always on the prowl for the next best property to showcase. He and Carla had met at a snobby wine tasting event where he had been invited by the host and she was the date of one of the attendees. They fooled around in the men’s bathroom before being asked to leave by the host’s wife. Carla was her son’s date. bmwThey laughed as they made their way out, taking a small statue from Italy with them. Carla sat the satyr between them in the front seat of Todd’s BMW as they sped away. He would be their lucky charm from now on.

  There were five mobile homes ahead of her, three on the left and two on the right. She didn’t know who lived in the front two but the back three she knew were her mother, her brother and her Aunt Trudy. She went to where she thought she would have the most luck in getting someone killed, her older methed out brother, Craig. When she walked in through the screen door she found him exactly where he would be, passed out on the couch in front of the TV. Criminal Court was on, afternoon programming had the effect of putting anyone to sleep, even more so, if they had been hitting a bong all morning.

  Craig was of the belief that pot was helping him with his medical difficulties that prevented him from getting or keeping a job. He felt he was doing the community a service by being a small time pot dealer anyway. Sometimes he dabbled in Oxy, but after Carla had died, his number one client was no longer around to supply the cash. He was stuck selling dime bags to high school kids or meth to the bikers that frequented that side of town.

  She riffled through the stacks of unopened mail that sat on the counter. Looks like you’re stealing mail again, she thought to herself as she fanned out the envelopes made out to different names and addresses. With a great sweep of her arm she pushed them off the counter. Craig did not stir from his slumber. She looked around to see what she could hit him over the head with. She went into the kitchen and searched the cabinets. Nothing. Everything was either lightweight aluminum or plastic generic Tupperware. She checked the bedrooms. That was a mistake. One room only had a mattress on the floor with a dirty ashtray next to it and the other room had nothing but greasy boxes. She swept back into the front room where her brother lay snoring, unaware of his impending death. She spied a guitar in the corner. Surprised that it hadn’t been pawned she lifted it. The black lacquer was shiny but all the guitar strings were missing. Definitely stolen, she thought. Raising it over her head to bring it crashing down on his skull she was stopped when a gray cat jumped onto his chest and turned around to face her.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The cat spoke to her. The cat spoke to her? She put the guitar down and stared at the gray feline.

  “He is under our protection, therefore he is not eligible to bring you over. You’ll have to find someone else in this trash town to kill but Craig is not for you. He belongs to us.”

  “What?” was all the astonished spirit could spit out.

  “You seem like there’s intelligence in there somewhere. Let me spell it out for you. He is not for you. He is ours. If you try to kill him we will send you back and make it hard for you to return. Do you understand?”

  “But how? Why?” she continued, losing the irony of her arguing with a cat over her brother's stoned body.

  “That doesn’t matter. It does not concern you. Know that we are all around and we protect those that we have need of. We need him, so for now he enjoys the safety of our guardianship. It’s best if you leave now. Like I said there are plenty of takers in the quarter mile radius of this trailer. Pick someone else and leave.”

  Carla slowly backed away and moved to bring the guitar up. The cat hissed and its mouth opened up to reveal the most gruesome demon creature peering from between its jaws. There were flames and writhing large snakes flickering and sliding inside the felines gaping mouth, but in the center was a small figure of what appeared to be a blue hued demon.

  Taken aback, Carla rushed out and back among the tall grasses. Now that had been something completely different. Never in her wildest drug fueled dreams or in her nightmares after she had died had she ever seen anything like that. Even in the deathscape there was no talk of demons. But that, yes that took the cake for all she had seen.

  She was still stuck and it was quickly becoming boring without Todd. As much as she had taken into convincing herself that she was better off without him, she missed the prick. “I wonder what and where he is. Probably turned into some rich bitch getting it daily from her tennis instructor.” She hated him now for leaving her behind. She made her way back to the gravel road and turned left towards the interstate. “Talking cats,” she muttered ,and went on her way.

  Sharon and T walked into the bookstore to find Birdie sitting on the counter, dressed like Mad Max and playing with fire. Anesta and Sarah were talking to a little girl and Alice was on the phone. Putting it down, she rushed towards them, they all did, with tears of joy and hugs and kisses.

  “Oh blessed be, I was so scared to hear what happened at school today,” Sarah cried, kissing and hugging both women.

  “It was horrible, just horrible.” Sharon shook her head. “I don’t know if I could go through something like that again,” she said, taking a glass of wine from Alice.

  “Well you’re going to have to accept that eventuality,” Birdie warned. “It’s going to be a war. All signs point to it.” She nodded.

  “What?” sputtered Alice. “You don’t know that, Birdie! The best we can hope for right now is a peace accord with the spirits. A truce. A peaceful talk between their world and ours. There has to be an agreement or it will be utter chaos as it's rapidly starting to become.”

  “How are we going to have a peaceful talk? We don’t know if they’re an organized group,” T responded, amazed at the leap into action. “We don’t know if they have a leader. What their true agenda is. We don’t know how long they will want to continue or if they’re open to negotiating.” She walked over to the front door to look at the window.
It was starting to become her habit.

  “Wait. Has anyone heard from Beryl?” Anesta asked.

  “She’s on her way,” Sarah replied. “She had to stop at the pharmacy. She’s still not feeling well.”

  “Let’s get to it,” Alice began, rubbing her hands together.” I just got off the phone with Godfrey and he’s agreed to leave his shop for a few days to strategize with us and brainstorm. So, he’ll be staying with us as well,” She informed Sarah as an afterthought.

  “The more the merrier,” she replied, raising a wine glass and taking a seat.

  “And who is this?” Sharon said ,bending down to look at the little girl.

  “That is my sister, Anjolie. Say hi, sister.” Anjolie waved and then shook her head.

  “No? That’s ok, I used to be shy too when I was your age,” Sharon said and then stopped. Technically, this little girl would have been her age, had she not drowned at the age of ten. Sharon straightened up. “Well, I’m glad you’re here either way.” Awkwardly, she made her way to the couch perpendicular to the one facing the entrance.

  “What’s up with your outfit, Barbarella?” T asked Birdie, sizing her up. Birdie straightened herself to her full height and stuck out her chest.

  “Like it? I’m ready for a showdown if we have one. We witches need to look tougher if we want the bad spirits to know we mean business.”