Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead (Toad Witch Series, Book One) (21 page)

I swallowed hard and sipped my coffee.

Auntie Mae waved the dust rag at me. “You get out, Missy, while you still can. I don’t want to see no harm come to someone so young and pretty.”

After promising her that I would be extra careful around the cottage, I checked out and went shopping. Hardware store, grocery store and drug store. By the time I was done, I felt armed, rested and ready to tackle whatever other buggy surprises the cottage was hiding. But when I got home, the surprise that was waiting for me, knocked me on my ass.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The living room looked like a battle zone. Chairs had been knocked over, the couch was on its back, lamps were on the floor.

Scrawled across the wall were the words “Leave, Now!” In black marker. Indelible black marker. Ugly, indelible black marker on my nice, beautiful wall. The only thing left in peace was the end table with Grundleshanks’s tank.

I was so upset, I was shaking. Part of it was fear, but part of it was just anger. Was it Aunt Tillie? Or did some teenage pranksters sneak in while I was out? With the reputation this cottage had for retaliation, I found it hard to believe that it was local kids.

What if it was Aunt Tillie? What if she had figured out how to get in touch with her inner poltergeist? It was bad enough I’d let Mrs. Lasio drive me out of a home I loved, was I going to let a tantrum-throwing ghost drive me out of another one?

Damn ghosts. They think they can demand you to jump to their every whim. Just because they’re dead. Like that should infer some special privilege.

I shook my fist at the sky. “There is no way I’m giving up this place to a bad-tempered, cryptic, know-it-all ghost. You’re dead. I’m alive. I think it’s time that you move on to your new home and leave this one to me!”

Across the room, a fat, black Magic Marker rolled across the end table and bounced on the floor.

I stomped into the kitchen and paced around, inwardly cussing at the lack of Jack Daniels. If there was ever a time I could have used a shot, it was now. Then I walked back into the living room and opened my spine and my third eye so that I could ‘see’ around the entire room, maybe catch an energy signature, see if any entities were still hanging out on the ethereal plane.

(It sounds weird, I know, but the whole ‘opening the spine’ thing isn’t literal. It’s just a visualization, a method of tuning in to the edges of reality, or to alternative realities, to see the spirit world. You don’t literally slice yourself open).

My skin got all prickly, reacting to the energy. Definitely strong, but whoever it had been was gone.

It had to be Aunt Tillie. But why would Aunt Tillie desecrate her house, when she was so capable of just nagging me to death in my dreams?

Unless she wanted something concrete and scary to back up her threat, to show that she had learned to manipulate dimensional objects. And if that was the case, Aunt Tillie was the freakin’ Einstein of ghosts.

The thing about ghosts, at least, in my limited experience with them, is that they don’t automatically know everything and drop all their prejudices and peccadilloes once they die. Death is a process, like life. The way newborns have to learn how to manipulate their bodies and their physical environment, the newly dead also have to learn what they can and can’t do. That’s why it’s infinitely easier for them to appear in dreams, than it is for them to vandalize your wall.

I cast my sight out through the house again. Along with Tillie’s energy signature, there was something else…

Something darker and more malevolent…

But I couldn’t quite place where it was coming from.

It was the same feeling I had in the kitchen, in front of the cellar door.

I wondered if that was the mysterious Devil that Tillie kept referring to? Was it an entity that lived in the cellar? Was it the cellar itself?

Damn it. I hated messing around with the spirit world. The problem, fighting with ghosts, is that they’re not constrained by the laws of physics. And that automatically puts you at a disadvantage.

I pounded on my defaced wall. “No! Do you hear me? No!!! I’m not going anywhere.”

I righted the furniture and rubbed at the magic marker. It was dry.

“Couldn’t you have used something that washed off?” I hollered. “Now I have to repaint the wall and it’s not going to look as nice as it used to. And that’s on you, Aunt Tillie. Next time you throw a fit, you better stick around to move the furniture back. Or I swear, I’m gonna trap your ectoplasmic ass in a brass vessel. Then you’ll really have something to pitch a fit about!” I yelled, slamming a chair back into place.

In response, I heard a window shutter slam back and forth in the wind.

Okay, in all likelihood, I was probably talking to a ghost who was no longer listening. Damn, damn, damn. Gus would think this haunting was a hoot. And from the safety of two thousand miles away, it probably was. But it was kinda giving me the creeps.

Yes, I know, I’m a witch. I should be used to interacting with the unseen world. But late at night, when something goes bump, it doesn’t matter if you’re a witch or not. You’ll still be hiding under the covers. Well, unless you’re Gus. And then you’d probably throw a welcome party and set out a plate. But I couldn’t imagine anyone in this godforsaken town having the balls to party down with a ghost.

Although, that wasn’t a bad idea. It might even get Aunt Tillie to lighten up a bit. Maybe after I cleaned up the mess in the living room and repainted the wall, I’d be calm enough to think about throwing some kind of party in her honor. But right now, I was too angry to make Aunt Tillie the ritualistic Dumb Supper that’s usually served to the dead. Maybe later. Once I no longer wanted to throttle her.

After I finished pitching my own fit, I got down to work, cleaning and vacuuming the entire house. Tomorrow, I’d have to go buy paint for the walls, but for today, I did as much as I could before I tackled my treacherous bedroom. I stripped the sheets off the bed and dropped them in the washer, then vacuumed every inch of the room and bed, flipping the mattress, so I could get both sides. By the time I was done, there wasn’t a single cobweb or dust bunny or spider egg left.

After I was through, I called Gus and left him a message to ship me a case of Florida water and blue balls. As long as I was in a cleaning mode, may as well cleanse the energy of the cottage as well as its interior.

There were fresh sheets in the linen cabinet, so I made the bed and, within seconds, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, exhausted. A sleep that didn’t last anywhere near long enough.

Judging by the light in the room, it must have been close to dawn when I felt something touch my leg. I threw back the covers, terrified it was spiders, but the bed was full of snakes. Slithering, hissing, snakes.

I screamed and jumped to my feet. This country witch stuff was for the birds. Spiders, snakes, what was next?

I zigzagged to the closet, trying to keep from stepping on the snakes on floor. But when I opened the door to grab my shoes, I saw a huge mound of slithering, hissing snakes.

I slammed the closet door shut and clambered up on the window seat. There were snakes everywhere, slithering across the floor, across the bed. I opened the window and the window shutters, to see if there was a way I could climb down the outside of the house.

The sun was just rising over the lake and the colors were breathtaking.

Wait a minute… sunrise?

Over the western portion of the lake?

Since when does the sun rise in the west?

This was a dream. This had to be a dream.

I jumped down from the window seat and the snakes were no longer on the floor. Written on the bed coverlet, in blood, were the words “GET OUT!”

“Fuck you, Aunt Tillie.” I said. “I’m onto your game.”

I got in bed, pulled the sheets up over my head and closed my eyes, trying to go back to where I had been before this creepy dream started.

When I opened my eyes again, the room was dark. The sheets were clean. No blood, no snakes, no spiders.

In the corner of the room, the figure of a woman glowed with an otherworldly light. She turned and walked towards me.

I looked at her face. It was so familiar and so strange, all at the same time.

I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks. “Mom?”

She sat on the edge of the bed and gently brushed away my tears. “Hush, baby. It’s okay. I’m here now.”

“I missed you.” I was crying like an infant, but I didn’t care. She got in bed with me and held me in her arms.

“I’ve always been with you, dear heart. Now listen to me. I don’t have much time. Do not trust anyone or anything you see in this place. Everyone has their own agendas. Tillie will kill you before she’ll let you help Lisette. Lisette will kill you if you don’t help her. The danger for you is great. If you don’t leave, you will have to face them all on your own.”

“Who’s Lisette?”

“Your great-great-great-great-grandmother.”

“Is she the Devil that Tillie keeps mentioning?”

“One of them.”

I leaned against her and she stroked my hair.

“Mom, do you think I should leave?”

“Yes.” She was quiet for a second, listening to something only she could hear. “But it’s too late. Lisette knows who you are now. She’s watching you, plotting her move. You will have to face her sooner or later. Whether it’s here or somewhere else.”

She kissed my cheek. “Trust no one. Not even yourself. The danger is great, no matter what you do.” And then she vanished.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I gasped and sat up. This time, I really was awake. No snakes, no sunrise in the West, (just to make sure, I looked out the window), and no mom.

Obviously, I had underestimated this place. And Aunt Tillie. I had no idea a ghost could invade your dreams and so thoroughly, totally screw with your reality. It made me wonder if the dreams I had about the cottage to begin with, weren’t actually mine — or what I had fancifully assumed as the cottage looking for me — but planted in my subconscious by someone with an agenda. Maybe an astral-projecting Aunt Tillie warning me to stay away if she passed on?

I could ward the bedroom, to keep Tillie out of it, but anything I did to ward this room against spirits would also interfere with my mom contacting me again.

So I paced and mulled it over. I couldn’t actually guarantee that my mom would ever contact me again. But I was damn sure Aunt Tillie would screw with me again. And how long would it take before Lisette jumped into the mix? Mom or no mom, I needed to carve out a safe space for me to sleep, where I’d be protected from unseen entities and their agendas.

So I went downstairs, dug through my supplies, grabbed what I needed and headed back upstairs.

In the bedroom, I lit up a censor and dropped the tiniest bit of asafoetida on the glowing charcoal.

I tried to hold my breath, as I made sure the smoke got in every crevice of the room.

“The good stay in and the bad stay out. By air and fire, I banish you from this space.”

Man, the smell was nasty. Although nasty was an understatement. It smelled like sulfuric crap. No wonder it was called Devil’s Dung. Even though I was trying to hold my breath, the smell was still making me nauseous.

I had to open the window before I gagged. The second I was done with the incense, I quickly doused the charcoal with water, dumped the nasty mess into the toilet and flushed it.

Then I mixed four glasses of water with salt and placed a horseshoe nail in each glass. I put one glass in the east, one in the south, one in the west and one in the north.

“By earth and water, I ward this space and cleanse and claim it as mine. Allow in only those I invite.”

I picked up the sword I had made years ago, in a medieval weaponry class, and using a lancet on my finger, squeezed out a drop of blood and ran it down the blade. Then I swung the blade in a large, slow circle, around the room.

“By blood and iron this room is bound. So mote it be.”

I felt the cottage shake and I heard a low
boom
as if I had crossed the sound barrier. Just in case, I checked to see if my heels were growing roots, but so far, I had no foliage on me anywhere.

“Guess my work here is done.” I rested the sword next to the bed and finished washing the incense censor out in the attached bathroom.

I knew doing a warding that heavy was like using a canon to kill a rattlesnake, but I didn’t want any more nights like I’d been having. I needed at least one safe place for me in this cottage.

I put fresh charcoals on the censor, lit them, and loaded the glowing charcoals with sweet-smelling frankincense. I was hoping the sweet, heavy frank would chase the aggressively noxious remnants of asafoetida out of the room. But after a few minutes, I had to leave. Even with the window open, the dueling smells were about to make me hurl.

I quickly ran around upstairs, opening all the windows in the cottage, before I raced out the door to go paint-shopping. It was time to clean up after my spectral vandal.