Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (29 page)

She breathed in steam, be-ringed hands wrapped around the mug,

which he’d found exactly where she said it would be. He’d found the tea and kettle there, too, and other kitchen things, which remained in the box, largely untouched. Michael sipped from a mug that had

been chipped in the moving process; to his annoyance, he’d saved the good mug for the witch.

“You can’t stay here,” Michael said.

He’d rehearsed the words in the pre-dawn light, lying in bed

before coming downstairs to make the witch her tea. In his mind,

the witch had accepted them, and everything had been perfectly

reasonable. Normal. In the bright sunlight, with the witch looking at him over her mug, he wavered.

“Look, you don’t even know anything about me. I could be an axe

murderer!”

“Are you?”

“Well, no, but . . . ”

The witch’s cat leapt onto the counter, a stream of black ink defying gravity. It twitched its tail, smug. Michael wanted to ask how long the witch planned to stay, and what her name was. Would she split the

mortgage payment? Did she have a job? Did she expect him to take turns cleaning out the kitty litter? But the witch’s even gaze dismissed all his questions before he could voice them. Maybe a witch
should
live here.

If last night was any indication, the witch mostly kept to herself.

He’d certainly slept much better, as in sleeping at all, once she’d A. C. WISE [221]

arrived. It was as if the house had been holding its breath, waiting for her, and when it finally relaxed, he could, too.

“Is there a problem, Michael Remmington?” the witch asked.

The question came so suddenly, Michael choked on his tea. He

was certain he’d never told her his name. This morning, her eyes were amber. She no longer smelled of cinnamon, but of salt; it made him think of storms and shipwrecks.

“No. Yes. I mean . . . Look, I don’t want a roommate. Or a cat.

I just want to live a normal, quiet, happy life. In
my
house.” He left unspoken the word
alone
.

The witch narrowed her eyes, as if she’d heard the part he hadn’t

said. The cat pushed its head against Michael’s hand. Instead of

shooing it away, he scratched it behind the ears. This time, there was no mistaking the purr.

A stray leaf, snatched by the wind, smacked into the window,

making Michael jump. He had no reason to feel guilty. His name was on all the legal documents for the house. The witch had crashed into his life, invited herself in. He didn’t owe her a thing.

“Look . . . ” Michael said.

“Thank you for the tea.” The witch set her cup down.

Her eyes had shifted color again, taking on the hue of burnt

wood. Michael could almost smell smoke in the air.

“Give me your hand.” The witch held out her hand, palm up. Her

bracelets rattled.

She looked younger this morning, no more than thirty-five, at a

guess, but Michael was tired of guessing.

“What? Why?”

“So I can be sure you’re not an axe murderer,” the witch said. Her smile suggested she might be laughing at him.

He gave the witch his hand. She traced the lines, and her eyes

turned pale violet, inexplicably making Michael think of dragons.

The witch pursed her lips. She said, “Hmmm.” He couldn’t tell

whether it was a good thing, or a bad thing.

A line of concentration appeared about a third of the way across

the witch’s lip, like an old scar. Like a sudden flash of lightning in the dark, Michael knew things about her—all true down in his bones.

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The witch had drowned in 1717, and burned to death in 1691. In

the 1800s, she’d died with a rope around her neck. In 1957, she’d been murdered—a kitchen knife to the gut, and blunt force trauma to the head combined.

Michael sucked in a sharp breath.

“It’s all true,” the witch said, without looking up.

Could she feel him in her head? Or was it like a broadcast, and he just happened to be tuned into her frequency?

“Sorry.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, and then, “I’ll be staying until at least Halloween.”

“What happens on Halloween?”

She let go of Michael’s hand, blinking eyes gone the color of

pumpkins. There was a flicker of disappointment in her gaze, as

though she couldn’t understand why he regularly failed to keep up.

The connection broke, taking the witch’s deaths, spooling away from her, with it. Which was just as well, because Michael knew somehow they’d been headed for a knife made of stone, and a blood-covered

altar, and he suspected there were things in that death in particular he didn’t want to see.

“That’s up to you.” The disappointment in the witch’s eyes turned

to something else, something deeper and sadder that made Michael’s skin crawl.

An apology rose, and he clamped it down. Nothing about the

witch made sense. He pressed his lips tight. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard her sigh. It reminded him of leaves pulled from branches by the October wind, of shortening days, and snow piling

up behind the clouds.

“What do you want?”

Michael didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until the witch smiled,

brief as a moth’s wing. But the sadness hadn’t left her eyes. She held up a hand and ticked off points.

“I want to live in this house. I want tea every morning at seven,

with toast on Wednesdays. I want not to die until I’m good and ready.”

She lowered her hand. “The rest I’m still figuring out.”

Ink threaded the gold of her eyes; Michael fought the urge to shiver.

A. C. WISE [223]

He wished the witch would stop looking at him. But when her

gaze moved away, going to the window, he felt lost and unanchored.

The witch’s eyes were green again. They reminded him of a toad

he’d caught by accident in third grade. He’d given it to his teacher, who’d explained patiently that toads were much happier living

outside than in classrooms, and would he please release it back into the wild.

“You should unpack now,” the witch said.

Her voice was very quiet, but it still made Michael flinch.

He stared at her for a moment before realizing the words were a

dismissal. Since he couldn’t think of a good retort, he obeyed.

Michael didn’t know where the witch went during the day, and he

didn’t ask. He could picture her flying around the neighborhood on a broom, or transforming into a flock of birds. He could just as easily see her curling up in the attic reading books on economic theory.

He still didn’t know her name. He didn’t know anything about her

really, and sometimes he amused himself by making up little stories about what she was doing at the exact moment it occurred to him to wonder—horseback riding, bowling, waltzing with the Zombie King

of Austria on a floor made of crystal teeth. It annoyed him when he caught himself doing this. He constantly had to remind himself that the witch was an unwelcome intruder in his house. He couldn’t let

himself get used to her. He couldn’t let her settle in and simply take over his life. Things just didn’t work that way in the real world.

In college, he’d tried to picture what his life would be like after graduation. He’d long since given up on the high school fantasies of being a rock star, or an astronaut. He was tone deaf, and he’d barely passed intro to calculus. He didn’t know exactly
what
he wanted to do with his life, but nowhere had his life plans included living with a witch. Magic was for fairy tales. Real life was bills and deadlines, not spells and potions.

Yet, the witch stayed, and life went on as though she’d always

been there, an inevitable fact as much as the bills and deadlines. He gave the witch’s cat the name Spencer, one of several dozen secret names he imagined the cat had accumulated over its lifetimes, as

[224] FOR THE REMOVAL OF UNWANTED GUESTS

cats do. Michael only ever saw the witch at seven in the morning,

and then again after dusk, as though she ceased to exist in-between, which he knew was as just as likely or improbable as every other

scenario he’d dreamed for her.

On a Thursday afternoon, Michael found himself at the foot

of the attic stairs, listening intently. He didn’t know what he was listening for, but it never came, so he climbed the stairs. The witch’s door stood open. It was just past three.

Afternoon sunlight, already burning to deep gold, slanted

through a window set angle-wise in the slope of the roof. What the light illuminated was certainly nothing that had been in the attic before. Either the witch had snuck things in without making a sound, or magicked them into being from dust bunnies and dead spiders.

A rocking chair sat tucked under the angle of the roof, next to a

white-painted dresser holding a single, season-incongruous daffodil in a slender vase. A braided rug lay on the floor between the dresser and the bed, and the bed was covered with a neat, white duvet. There was a dress-form in one corner, a carousel horse in the other, an

empty birdcage hanging from the ceiling, a cello leaning against

one wall, and seven identical pairs of shoes lined up beneath the

second window. A sea chest footed the bed, and Spencer sat on it, tail twitching impatiently in response to Michael’s wonder.

From the cat’s perspective, Michael imagined, it was all so obvious.

A chandelier hung, unlit, near the birdcage. The crystals caught the afternoon light, casting rainbows, and tinkled softly. The only thing Michael didn’t see in the room was the witch’s suitcase.

If he came back tomorrow, he truth-in-his-bones-knew the room

would be different—there would be an easel, a fish tank, a music box, an accordion, and a plethora of bookshelves. Spencer jumped lightly from the chest, and wound around Michael’s ankles. Where the cat

had been sitting there was a leather bound book, swollen slightly, as though the pages had been wet and dried in crinkled waves.

The cat slid past Michael, leaving him alone in a room that suddenly seemed to contain less air than it had a moment before. He shouldn’t, he knew he shouldn’t, and he still watched himself reach out, his hand hovering just above the leather cover. His fingers touched down. He’d A. C. WISE [225]

been expecting an electric shock, but nothing happened. The cover

was soft, like worn velvet; the book was just a book.

He let out a breath. Still knowing he shouldn’t, he flicked the

cover aside. The book fell open near the middle, as though its spine had been broken there again and again. The pages were handwritten, the script thin and spidery, the ink brown.

For the Removal of Unwanted Guests

Midnight frost, one cup, melted

Trametes Versicolor, one handful

One each: tail feather of raven, crow, and owl

Six windfal apples

Soil from beneath a ripe pumpkin

Candy Corn, the proper kind

Michael’s breath caught. If he didn’t know better, he might think

the witch had left the spell, the recipe, whatever it was, there for him to find. It was a trick, a trap, it had to be. He glanced around, expecting to find the witch in the doorway, her eyes the color of steel.

But he was alone. And that was almost worse somehow.

With his pulse racing, Michael slipped his phone out of his

pocket, and snapped a picture of the page. Then he slammed the

book closed, turned, and fled down the stairs.

On Sunday, he went apple picking. The place he chose also had pick-your-own pumpkins, which made at least two items on list from the

witch’s book easy. On the way home, he planned to stop at the store and buy candy corn. That was half the items right there. And that

frightened him.

Driving home, jumpy and unsettled, Michael couldn’t keep his

eyes off the rearview mirror. He expected the witch to come bearing down on him at any moment, all blood and fire and vengeance. He

pictured her in a storm cloud, lightning in her hair, her eyes the color of rain. He almost went off the road twice, and when he finally pulled into the driveway and killed the engine, his hands were shaking so badly he could barely pull the keys from the ignition.

What was he doing? The witch wasn’t bothering him; he barely

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ever saw her. Why should he want to get rid of her? And what made

him think a spell from a water-logged book would banish her? Fight fire with fire, and magic with magic.

Even if he could gather all the items, what was he supposed to do

with them? Brew them up in the witch’s tea like a potion, and trick her into drinking it? And if he did, what then? What if he chased her out and she died again? She had drowned and burned and hanged

already. All she wanted was tea, to live in his house quietly, and not to die again. Was that so wrong?

He carried the items upstairs, and hid them under his bed. His

heart wouldn’t stop racing, and he couldn’t get his breathing under control.

When he came back downstairs, he found the witch organizing the

utensils in the kitchen drawers. Under the butter-warm light, her black clothes looked like an incredibly deep, dark red. The honey strands in her hair stood out. He couldn’t even imagine what color her eyes must be. Spencer brushed against Michael’s leg, and he nearly screamed.

After a moment, he scooped up the cat. Spencer purred, rubbing

Michael’s neck with its head.

“You’re lucky,” the witch said without turning. “She never lets

anyone pick her up.”

So, Spencer was a she.

“She’s the one that found this place, you know.” The witch’s tone

was conversational, but there was a hint of melancholy underneath

it, wistful. “I could smell it, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. She led me right here. She’s got a better nose.”