Witchscape

by Y G Maupin

  “Your scarf says you mean business?” T countered. “Are you sure you’re not channeling Prince or Stevie Nicks?”

  Birdie swept her hair around like a magician’s curtain. “Stevie Nicks was my second choice for inspiration. I just thought the lace and chiffon skirts would make it hard for me if we needed to work with fire.” With that she produced a yellow fireball and bounced it from hand to hand. They oohed and awed at her talent.

  “I forgot you could do that,” Beryl said, as she walked in. “Guess what I can do.”

  The women sat around the bookstore discussing the shooting at the high school, the attempts on Beryl’s life and the deaths of Olive and Gerald Henderson.

  “So what’s the plan?” Sharon rocked on her heels antsy with nervous energy.

  Alice shook her head. “No clue. Not one tiny inkling to start from other than we’ve pared down the books that we thought might have some information, and even with that we haven’t gotten any leads or insight on if this is a new event or not.” Turning to Anjolie, she asked. “Has anyone ever mentioned being able to do this before?”

  The little girl shook her head. “Most of the spirits around that area are fairly young for the deathscape. I think the oldest ones I’ve seen are from around the civil war and they really weren’t interested in speaking to me no matter what kind of President we’ve had already,“ she added, rolling her eyes.

  T frowned. “Ok, so what caused this to happen?” Silence. She looked around at all of them. “What?”

  Twenty Two

  Detective Dan Pate was finished with his interviews at the high school and was going to make his way to the hospital now to interview the ‘miracle’ kid Clay Johnson, who was shot at multiple times with no bullets hitting him and the alleged perpetrator Coach Russell who did the shooting. He was brought down by a few members of the track team and their resource officer of the school. Dan had been on this force for seven years and before that he had been Texas Highway Patrol for five. He was glad to have made it to detective fairly quickly. Driving around the small town busting kids for smoking grass or pulling over hicks with expired license plates was something that would bore him too quickly. There were thefts of property along with destruction of property to deal with. Neighbor to neighbor squabbles that he deferred to the patrol officers unless it involved an actual threat where a weapon was brandished then he would take the lead.

  There were a few incidents of racially based vandalism as well as a murder at least once a year or so, either in the highest heat of the summer of right around Christmas. Always when people’s emotions ran high. Which is why he was struggling from the start to piece together so far if the coach was retaliating for a perceived slight or he just blew a gasket that day and decided to start shooting. That would be part of his questioning and observation as he drove down the interstate to the hospital. They had all the patients at the same hospital which was a godsend to Dan. He wasn’t interested in having to travel from hospital to hospital to catch them awake, or god forbid, in the middle of a sponge bath. One stop and the preliminary reports could be started from his end, as everyone else had given their statements the day of the incident.

  It had been Monday morning, after 10:05am when the second bell, the late bell, had rung for the third period. Coach Russell was observed by staff and students entering the staff room located near the front of the school adjacent to the administrative offices. He began firing nearly as soon as he entered the room. Not once did he speak a word nor could they be sure that he was deliberately targeting someone. So although he wasn’t spraying down random gunfire, he also didn’t care other than to kill at will.

  In the staff room, he shot Martin Fry, 27, substitute teacher and Cathy Waldo, 29, staff secretary. Both fatalities. The custodian in the area, Jeb Hanks rushed into the staff room, tackling the Coach to the ground but was unable to stop him from exiting the room. Jeb was not directly harmed in the attack but did suffer a mild heart attack in transport to the hospital to get checked out. Back out in the hallway, the assailant headed down the English department hallway where he encountered a student, Clay Johnson. The assailant fired approximately seven gunshots at the student, none hit. The assailant was promptly tackled and held down by three students and a resource officer, none of which were seriously injured other than elbows to the head or body punches upon restraining him. The resource officer was able to handcuff the assailant who ceased resisting and the first response police officers arrived within minutes.

  Two deaths and a community wracked with confusion and worry over the apparent meltdown of one of their own hometown heroes. This in addition to the odd murder suicide earlier that morning had Dan irked about the entire situation. Had this been a larger community with typical socio economic issues, he would see it as another day in the unfair life of the city. But this was out in the country. This happened where most people didn’t have to lock their doors and the craziest people got was drag racing and arguing with your neighbor because their dogs ate your chickens. This was not a drug heavy part of town where the murders took place. Just the opposite, these were pillars of the community with strong ties to it since its founding in 1854.

  The coach was born and raised here. Played football for the high school on the old field before they renovated and added the new one across the street. He was well liked by students and parents alike. No money problems to have been determined at the time, no trouble at home, no previous mental issues to speak of as reported by his distraught wife. This was just a broken cog in the wheel of the machine that went on day by day without fail.

  Pulling up to the parking spot reserved for the police, he checked in with the office before entering the hospital. He hated being here. He had spent too much time here the last eighteen months for personal reasons and he wasn’t thrilled to be back. The security at the front, recognizing him, waved him past and he entered the first elevator. This was a newer tower for the hospital, having been built two months ago and it was almost losing its new shine. The information placard on the back had already been vandalized and one of the floor buttons was missing. Arriving on the fourth floor, he turned to the left until he found the nurses station. Checking in with the head nurse on duty, he went to room 4006 where an armed guard was standing by. He peeked in through the window and saw a tall man, of heavy build, laying on the bed. He could see that he was handcuffed to the rail so Dan tapped on the door and stepped inside.

  “Hello. My name is Dan Pate, I’m a detective from Gilbert. I’m here to ask you a couple of questions. Are you up for that?” he asked. The man’s eyes flicked open. He was heavily sedated, the nurse had informed him. The coach had been rambling since the police had arrived and brought him in. He had said that his body had been taken over and he was unable to control the actions he was accused of having committed. He said something entered his body as he was entering the high school and forced him to walk to the staff room and shoot. She had mentioned that he had been hysterical and paranoid delusional as he was convinced there were more entities nearby to jump inside him again.

  “Excuse me, who are you?” A short Hispanic woman entered the hospital room with coffee. She didn’t appear to be hospital staff.

  “I’m sorry,” He held out a business card to her.

  She looked down and read it. “Detective Daniel Pate. Well Detective, my husband is not in any state to answer any questions at this time and especially not without his attorney present. So I would thank you to please leave,” she said, putting her purse down on the counter and turning to face him. Her eyes were swollen and red. Her hands were clenched into fists and her breathing was heavy.

  “I’m so sorry Mrs. Russell. I know that the last few hours must be difficult.” But she cut Detective Pate off.

  “Difficult? Are you kidding, its been a fucking circus here. My HUSBAND is accused of a school shooting where people were attacked and killed. He has never done anything nor would he ever do something like that in his life.” Her shouting turned to c
rying. Great wracking sobs as she doubled over, sliding into a squatting position. A patrolman poked his head in the door and Dan shook his head. The patrolman surveyed the scene and slowly closed the door.

  Dan lightly took her by the arm and led her to the chair at her husband’s bedside. She pulled a twisted Kleenex from her pants pocket and dabbed at her nose, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. Taking a deep breath she explained. “He was fine this morning when he left. I made him some coffee and he drove in to work on time. He kissed me goodbye like he always does and he played with our dog on the way to the car. We don’t have problems. We are good with money and don’t owe anything other than our mortgage. We love each other and that I know of, no, I’m sure of, there are no problems with seeing or talking to someone on the side.” With that, she looked up at him, almost daring him to prove her wrong. She continued. “We have plans for Spring break. We were going to meet up with some other couples at a cabin in Oklahoma and the guys were going to go fishing. He was looking forward to a wonderful break. That’s all he could talk about. That and the change ups they had to make on the baseball team to the starting lineup.”

  “You know he tried to shoot one of his players,” Dan replied, looking for a reaction.

  “They told me. They also said none of the bullets hit him and the boy is ok. I don’t know why he would have done that, he loves all his kids. He loves his job, his life, me.” She started to weep.

  Dan stood against the wall and looked at the sleeping man in the hospital room. Toxicology would be available soon. Maybe that would give them a little more insight on what was going on in Coach Russell’s head.

  T sat under the live oak tree on the right side of a matched pair in Alice and Sarah’s back yard. The shock of what they had revealed had been too much. She walked back toward Alice and Sarahs home, which was only a block away. They had all left their cars there and walked to the bookstore. She had paced and argued with herself that there was no way she was responsible for the tear in the veil that caused the spirits to come across with sinister intentions. It just couldn't be. She already had so much burden to bear with the loss of Jackson. Feeling overwhelmed she ventured to the back where their yard was dotted with large oaks. T always felt a connection to the earth, especially the trees. She had been sitting there for about twenty minutes following their revelation of the catalyst to the spiritual revolution. She sat with her chin resting on her wrists. It was the smallest she had ever felt in her life. She wanted the aftermath of that October day to be over, but it seemed to her that everyday more and more reminders were cropping up to dig at her heart. The cat meowed as it sidled up to her and flicked his jet black puff tail at her. She reached out to pet it but it startled and sprinted off towards the garden gate.

  “May I come sit with you?” It was Sarah.

  T shrugged. “Sure, as long as you’re not afraid that I’m going to rain hellfire down on you, too,” she replied, pulling up clover near the exposed roots of the tree.

  Sarah folded herself down neatly as an origami bird. They sat quietly for a few minutes listening to the intermittent neighborhood traffic, the chirping of the bluebirds and on occasional far away bark of a dog.

  “If I ran away, it wouldn’t change anything that I did. I can’t go back in time and undo what I did. I am who I am and because I can’t have real relationships, I try to compensate with magic. And almost every time that I make the effort with magic it ends up being a mistake and now this,” T spoke into her forearms. She was fighting tears of sadness and embarrassment.

  “Everyone makes mistakes. Some are big and some are small,” Sarah spoke softly.

  “Yes, but this need of mine to change how Jackson felt about me, not only killed him, but it’s created an opening for spirits to come and kill to live again. This is more than a simple mistake. This is a crime.”

  “Uh, no,” Sarah disagreed. “Who wouldn’t in their right mind do what they could if they had powers available to them? Using those very powers to save the love they shared? You only reacted how any other person in love would behave.”

  Standing up, T gestured to the house next door. “And them? Was it fair to them that their lives were cut short because of my need to be loved? What about their children? Who’s going to help them understand that their parents didn’t kill themselves on purpose, but a spirit that I helped bring across convinced them to do it? Or the two dead coworkers of mine that all they probably wanted to do this morning was get a cup of coffee and maybe engage in a little idle gossip? These people are dead and more are going to continue to die, because I don’t know what I’m doing with my abilities and I can’t love without hurting someone.” Sarah was silent as she sat cross legged on the grass, the cat in her lap. She let T continue. She needed to expel her grief if they were going to move forward. But she couldn’t tell her that now. Sarah could only sit and listen carefully. She had been doing that for almost all her life.

  “Do you know that it’s my fault that I was taken away from my parents?” T said finally.

  Sarah protested. “T, No. don’t say things like that. Your parents had personal problems with prescription medicine. That had nothing to do with you.”

  “Actually it did. What people don’t know is that when I was little and they were using, I would go to their prescription bottles and wish them full again. They would be popping pills all day every day. They had become so numb to what they were ingesting that it was taking more and more to even get them the high they craved. And then they couldn’t afford them anymore and I found my mother crying one night while she was searching around in the medicine cabinet, purses, everywhere, looking for a missed or spilled pill.” Here she paused. “They had sold my bike to be able to buy pills, so one night, while they were passed out, I took one of their pill bottles and filled it with cotton and water. I closed the lid so tight, so that the water couldn’t get out. And then, I buried it in the front yard.”

  “A bounty spell,” Sarah murmured. “But how?” she started.

  T shook her head with a sad smile. “I have no idea what I was doing then, same as now. It just came to me. Sometimes things would work, like the pill bottle. They never ran out of pills and twice they od’d while I was at home. One of the last times I couldn’t get my mother to wake up she had taken so many. So, I made myself breakfast and walked myself to school. I was eight. I left a dish towel on the burner of the stove and it caught fire. I remember being about a block from school and the fire truck speeding by. I didn’t know what happened. I just went to school and was in the school yard when the teachers found me and started screaming and holding me tight. That fire truck was for our house and they managed to get my mother out but they couldn’t find me. And they kept asking her where I was but she had no idea she was so out of it. That day was the second to last day I saw her before going to the foster homes for those three years. They needed to get themselves better and there I was feeding their addiction,” she said quietly.

  “T you were a child and what you were doing was done out of love,” Sarah replied.

  “So was the spell I created to bring Jackson’s love back to me,” she said, walking back to the house.

  “How long have you been practicing?” an excited Alice asked Beryl.

  Shyly Beryl blurted out, “Five years, but really only about two years. I started up again around Christmas, you know, yule,” she corrected herself. Alice waved that off.

  “You can call it whatever you want. Yule, Christmas, Kwanzaa. It’s really about what you believe and feel in your heart.”

  “Well a little baby in a barn sounds cute, but I have issues with the whole son of god thing.” Beryl said with caution.

  “Well…” Alice replied. “It’s a tale to help people feel better. To give them hope. Like Mithras was for the Romans. Anyway, where are the words coming from?”

  “I think it means to fly in Latin. Why would we use Latin for our incantations?” She was confused.

  Alice clasped her hands
in front of her face. “It all has to do with intention. What you feel here.” She touched Beryl’s head. “And here.” She tapped her chest. “And what comes out of here.” She touched her own lips. Sitting back she surveyed the woman. She was glowing with triumph. Leaning forward she whispered to her. “How long can you float? Are you able to fly? Like how high can you go?”

  Beryl quickly shook her head. “I’ve only been practicing at home so I’m limited to the ceiling of my living room. So far, I can only float. Really that’s all I’ve tried. I can float for a little over thirty minutes now but when I do it there isn’t very much else I can do. I have to stay focused on keeping myself up or I’ll stop spinning and then I’ll get dizzy and crash.”

  “Crash?” Alice was confused.

  “Yes.” Beryl nodded already feeling the pain of what it was like to fall. “I have to concentrate so there really isn’t anything else I can do at the same time. And the spinning makes me dizzy so...”

  “And you have to spin, is that right?

  “Well, that’s the only way I start to float up. I’ve never just had myself float up on my own.” She drifted off, realizing that she had never tried to just float. She just thought that it required her to spin. “I need more practice.”

  “Why haven’t you practiced at T’s farm? It’s far enough that no one would see you,” Alice asked.

  Beryl hesitated. “I’m kind of shy about showing anyone still. I don’t know about that. I kind of have stage fright.”

  Alice patted the other woman’s hand. “Don’t worry. We won’t make you show us. You fly when you’re good and ready.”

  T entered the house. Although it was early spring, it was warm enough outside to feel the coolness of the old building. She felt a headache coming on, which was a rare thing for her and she went to the liquor cart in the study. She knew the glass decanter held cognac but right now she was looking for something a little less refined and a little more potent. She tilted each cut crystal decanter, until she found the light amber liquid. Kentucky bourbon. She poured into a crystal tumbler and sipped deeply. She felt the liquid warm her body as it traveled down and settled into her stomach. This day had been too much. By all rights, she should be in shock from the school shooting, as well as Sharon. Everyone else was. T didnt know if feeling numb was part of being in shock. She needed to lie down. Reclining on the fainting couch with the powdery lavender roll pillows, T felt the alcohol in her brain. The headache was fuzzing over and her eyes were feeling drowsy. Before committing herself to sleep she drained the tumbler and set it down on the floor in front of her, Leaning back she promptly fell asleep where she dreamed of the strange man again.