About Us
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Issue #6, March 2005:
Death's Folly,
by K.B. Liomas
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A Bite of the Apple,
by Larry Centor
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Bubblegum Girl,
by James Monticone
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Witch Kingdom,
by Vera Searles
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Herman,
by Brian C.Petroziello
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The Kid Catcher,
by David Choate
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Witch Kingdom
by Vera Searles
Do you remember where you were on the day Disney World disappeared? Edwina
Puckle does. In fact, she still believes it was all her fault.
Edwina was a librarian, but in her secret heart she yearned to be a witch. At age
forty-two, she was resigned to spinsterhood, and what better way to spend her next
forty or fifty years than as a practicing witch? And Edwina had even bigger plans.
She knew there was money in magic, if you did it up big and splashy.
There had never been any history of witchcraft in Lyletown, Georgia, but the library
was full of books on the subject. After studying for fifteen years, Edwina felt ready.
One day she decided it was now or never, and sent the following ad out over the
Internet:
WANTED: witches. Come out of your broom closet and show the tourists
what magic really means. Join me in creating Witch Kingdom,
the South’s newest theme park, and we’ll make Disney’s place look like a church
carnival.
Three people answered the ad. The first to show up was Annalee Belch, a nineteen
year old from Hazelnut, Kentucky. She stood on Edwina’s doorstep in her bare feet,
her liver-colored eyes darting around furtively.
“What’s your specialty?” Edwina asked, shooing the girl inside and sitting down
opposite her with a pencil poised over her clipboard.
“Specialty?”
“Yes. For heaven sake, girl, what do you do? Some witches do curses and spells.
Others raise the dead or make things fly or spit fire. What do you do?”
Annalee shifted her skinny bones on the chair. “I’m a whistler.”
Edwina sniffed. Annalee was obviously some poor hayseed child with no
education. Edwina had read every book ever written on the subject, and there were
no whistlers. What was a whistler, anyway?
As if in answer to that question, Annalee took a small reed from her purse and
placed it behind her front teeth. Softly at first, the melody began, a strange tune with
little ups and downs and backs and forths. As the music continued, things began to
move. Edwina watched the lamp lift from the end table and slowly turn in the air in
time to the music. The vases on the mantelpiece floated down and fell in behind the
lamp, forming a sinuous procession. From the kitchen came the cups and saucers,
and from the bedroom, Edwina’s nightshirt and slippers joined in. Everything
danced past slowly and sensuously, and the lilting tune pulled Edwina’s eyelids >
closed.
* * *
“Miz Puckle?”
“Hm?”
Someone was shaking her. “Miz Puckle?”
Edwina came awake and found herself staring up into the liver-colored eyes of
Annalee Belch. “Do I get the job, Miz Puckle?”
Edwina blinked and looked around the room. Everything was where it belonged - -
the lamp on the table, the vases on the mantelpiece. Annalee was no longer
whistling. “Yes,” Edwina said, rubbing her hand against the dimness in her
forehead. “Yes, of course, you’re hired. I’ll put you at the entrance, so people will be
hypnotized immediately.”
While she was making notes on her clipboard, someone else came to the door. It
was Doramay Creely, a pear-shaped housewife from Wisconsin. She had eight
children, and wanted to get away from it all.
“This is no vacation,” Edwina told her emphatically, pushing her glasses up on her
nose. “You have to be a witch.”
“I am,” Doramay insisted. “Watch.” She stuck out her tongue, and a flame flew onto
Edwina’s nose. It didn’t burn, or hurt, or anything, but in it Edwina saw a flock of
demons doing things to themselves and to each other.
“That’s disgusting,” Edwina sputtered and closed her eyes. The flame leapt back
across the room and went out. “You’ll have to sign a contract that doesn’t allow you
to perform unnatural acts,” Edwina said.
“But I can’t control what they do.” Doramay sat down next to Annalee Belch. “But I
can do other stuff instead. Watch.” She touched the tip of Annalee’s chin, and
Annalee’s hair rose from her head and hovered in the air above her.
“Hey!” Annalee yelped, feeling her bald pate with her bony fingers. “Gimmee back
my hair!”
Doramay touched her chin again and it was done.
“You’re pretty good,” Annalee said. “Hey, can you give me bigger bosooms,
like that movie star - - “
“That’s enough,” Edwina interrupted. “Not until after she signs this contract.”
She pulled some papers from her clipboard. “I’ll put you in a booth where people
can buy magic tricks. The harder the trick, the higher the price.”
She was scribbling figures and dollar signs when someone else rang the
bell.
A round black man stood on the doorstep, smiling through his missing front
teeth. His dirty tee shirt hung loosely over his bloated belly, and his cut-off shorts
seemed to gap in all the wrong places. “You send ad for witch?” the man asked.
“Me witch-doctor. My name is Mogambi Tailoo, but call me Lou.” His smile grew
wider. “You the boss-lady?” He pushed past Edwina, all the while talking. “Who
are these nice ladies? Hello, I’m Lou.” He shook hands with both women, then
settled himself into Edwina’s recliner. “Your ad say we make big bucks. How?” He
folded his hands across his belly and waited for an answer.
“Can you do magic?” Edwina asked, holding her clipboard protectively
against her bosom. From the corner of her eye she saw Doramay and Annalee
both leaning toward the new member of the group with obvious entrancement.
“Magic?” Lou asked, his shiny black eyes crinkling with amusement. “All >
magic. Black magic. White magic. Devil magic. Voodoo magic. You want
someone killed? You want to speak to dead husband? You want baby?”
At this last question, Annalee giggled softly, twisting herself like a shy pretzel.
Edwina said, “Those things aren’t exactly what I’m looking for, Mr. Lou. I need some
flashy tricks to lure the tourists to our theme park. My father left me a nice piece of
land over by the Interstate that’s a perfect spot for Witch Kingdom. Anyway - - if you
can come up with something less - - frightening? And more - - entertaining?”
“What do they do?” Lou asked, jerking his thumb at the two women.
Annalee started to say, “I’m a whistler,” but Doramay jumped up quickly. “Watch.”
She raised her palms above Annalee’s head and said some strange words: “Koola
vy mulka, koola vy soom.”
Feathers - - red, green, blue, purple - - began to spread all over Annalee. She
looked like a human peacock.
Lou clapped his pudgy hands. “Pretty chicken,” he said.
“Hey, cut that out!” Annalee screamed, jumping up and standing feather to eye with
Doramay Creely. “Get them feathers offa me!”
Doramay took a step closer. “Maybe you’d rather have fur,” she said, blowing a
stray feather from her nose.
Edwina could tell Lou was enjoying himself. He smiled as the two women glowered
at each other. “Get her back to normal,” Edwina commanded. “Save the tricks for
the tourists.”
The feathers disappeared and the women separated. Lou’s face fell. “Cat fight
always good for swell show. I can put voodoo on, then they kill each other, but not
real dead, come back from grave like zombies.”
There was a small silence while Edwina figured out what he meant, then shook her
head. “No violence,” She said. “We must be good witches.”
“Are you good witch?” Lou asked, sticking his thumbs into his belt, which made the
gaps even larger. “Your ad says make Disney church carnival. Can you do it now?
Let’s see.”
“It’s just an expression,” Edwina said. “It’s business competition. They have the
Magic Kingdom, we’ll have Witch Kingdom. We’ll let the tourists decide which kind
of magic they like best.”
“Ours!” Annalee shouted, then covered her mouth with her hand.
Lou pressed on. “If you’re witch, boss-lady, what can you do? Show us.”
“Who, me?” Edwina clutched the clipboard with both hands. It now occurred to her
that she had read books for fifteen years, but never actually performed any
witchcraft. A few times she had drawn pentagrams on the kitchen floor in chalk,
because it mopped up easily. On index cards, she had copied all the ingredients
and recipes for potions, and all the words and symbols for incantations, curses and
spells. She kept them in a little file box on the kitchen shelf, next to her food recipes.
But she had never slit open a skunk’s throat, or cooked up a stew of rat-tails and
snakeskins to make poison for killing enemies. Edwina had no enemies. Come to
think of it, she didn’t have any friends, either.
The three were watching, waiting. “I’ll have to go look up something in my
files,” Edwina said lamely, and went into the kitchen. While she shuffled through her
cards, she heard the others talking.
“She’s no witch,” said Lou.
“I know,” Annalee agreed. “I sensed it right away.”
“A real witch wouldn’t have to look anything up in her files,” Doramay said.
“She’d do it, like that!” She snapped her fingers.
“She has no power,” Lou said. “Power comes from spirit, inside. Power
makes things happen, not files.”
Annalee sighed. “Poor soul. She so wants to be a witch.”
Edwina felt the blood rush to her face. They felt sorry for her! Words and symbols
swam together on the cards. She steadied herself by holding onto the table.
“Let’s give her power.” Lou said. “Let’s make spell, hokay?”
“Okay,” Annalee said. “I’ll whistle.”
“I’ll use the satanic ritual for power,” Doramay added.
Edwina sank down onto a chair, dropping the cards all over the table. Fifteen years
of study, of copying every curse and spell, and she couldn’t come up with some little
witchery on her own. They thought she needed help. Well, she’d see about that!
Flies buzzed in her head as she fumbled around with the cards. Words blurred and
lifted from one card to another, until Edwina finally came to the spell for making
things disappear. She stared at the words. “I wish I could make Disney World
disappear,” she whispered. “Then they’d see I’m a witch.”
From the other room came whistling, and Doramay’s voice repeated strange
phrases. Was Lou beating a drum? The hollow sounds shivered Edwina’s bones,
and the words on the card leapt up at her. She mouthed them quietly, while the flies
buzzed louder, the whistling grew sweeter, and from within herself, Edwina felt a
dance of black shadows along the pathway to the magic in her soul.
* * *
The silence awakened her. She was face down across the table, her glasses
crooked, the cards scattered to the floor. When she went into the other room,
everyone was gone. The only sign that anyone had been there was a blue feather
on the mantelpiece, and the recliner had widened to accommodate a bigger person
than Edwina.
She heard the news later on the television. The reports about Disney World
vanishing into thin air attributed its disappearance to the sudden opening of the
largest sinkhole in Florida’s history. It went down without a trace, but all the tourists
and employees were saved. They followed a strange, barefoot creature who led
them away with her whistling, just before the Magic Kingdom went under.
Edwina never saw the three witches again. She pushed her glasses up on her
nose, tore up all her recipes for magic, and began studying card tricks.
The End
Published by Fools Motley Magazine, 2005. All rights are property
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