Dire Woods

John Joseph reached out and gingerly poked the macabre charm that used to be his aunt with his blood stained wand. There seemed to be no life left in it. He wondered if he should pick it up, but he couldn’t make himself touch it. Who knew what foul magic it contained. He flipped it face down and pushed it into the dirt. Clutching the bracelet in one hand and his wand in the other, he stumbled towards his friends.

Mrs. Wickaby sitting upright, was holding her head gingerly. Emily was getting to her feet beside her. The bog cat wasn’t moving.

“Bounder?” John Joseph whispered, “Please, boy, you have to be okay.”

He reached a trembling hand to touch the cat‘s still head. The bracelet, forgotten, dangled from his fingers. As he gently stroked the cat’s pelt, it gave a low moan and the charm bracelet started to shudder.

“What now?“ John Joseph hollered, as he tossed the bracelet into the pine needles beyond his feet. The glowing silver figures were moving in sharp, convulsive jerks. Tiny arms and legs stretching and growing.

John Joseph grabbed the bog cat under its shoulders and tried to pull it away from the rapidly expanding huddle of bodies. Beneath his hands, he could feel Bounder starting to change. His fur was falling off in great lumps, his limbs contorting and shrinking.

.”What has she done to you!” he shouted, holding his friend tightly in his shaking arms and burying his tear stained face in Bounder’s rapidly diminishing ruff. “What has she done to you now?”

“Whatever she did to them is ending, John Joseph,” the old woman whispered in his ear. “Just look.”

Them?

John Joseph raised his head, opened his eyes and stared into his arms. He was holding a man. A handsome, older man, with a shock of silver hair.

“Grandpa?” he squeaked.

“Glad you finally recognized me,” the old man said weakly, in a rough growl. “Took you long enough.” Then he hugged his grandson in a grip worthy of a bog cat.

“It gets better!” Emily shrieked from beside him. “Look, John Joseph, just look.”

He turned to follow her frantically waving finger. Where the glittering charm bracelet had landed was a huddle of rather disheveled bodies. Mrs. Wickaby was doing her best to sort them out and assist them to their feet.

A wizard’s hat poked through the throng, two rumpled, grey heads followed. John Joseph stared in wide-eyed amazement as an achingly familiar form rose above the others. It was his father, tall and dark. Cradled to his side, her brown curls limp, was his mother.

“Dad?” he asked querulously, “Mom?”

“John Joseph?” his father exclaimed in a creaky voice, “Is it really you?”

John Joseph scrambled through the crowd and grabbed his parents in a muscle-wrenching hug.

“Yes, it’s really me,” he answered into his mother’s tangled hair.

His father’s hand stroked his head as his mother clutched him tightly to her chest.

John Joseph had given up all hope of ever seeing the people he loved ever again. Now, to have not only his parents back, but his grandfather as well, seemed overwhelming. Grandfather! They didn’t even know about him.

“Grandpa’s here too!” he exclaimed, through the tears that were flooding down his face. “He’s alive!” John Joseph scanned the crowd wildly. His grandfather, grinning broadly, strode towards them.

Whoops, hollers and questions filled the air.

Mrs. Wickaby took control, as usual. “Time for all your questions and explanations when we’ve got some food in our bellies,” the old hedge witch assured them. “We need to get to St. Francis Academy. The wizards need to know what’s been going on and personally, I’m starving…”

The group made their stumbling way through the woods to the school. Mrs. Wickaby and her granddaughter held hands, while John Joseph and his reunited family walked arm in arm. A trio of people that John Joseph had never seen before stumbled behind.

Finally, they tottered up the great front stairs.

“Open up!” Mrs. Wickaby bellowed, pounding on the massive wooden doors. “Open up!”

The great door opened slightly. Mr. Kilamo, the headmaster, peered through the crack cautiously. Mrs. Wickaby pushed the door open and barreled past him.

“We need food, Kilamo, lots of food, in your main sitting room, if you don’t mind. Your questions can wait until later. We’ve got quite a few to ask ourselves.”

The headmaster, mouth gaping, hollered at some servants gawking from behind him. He led them into a large, comfortable room with a fire blazing on the hearth. The motley group arranged themselves on the assortment of over-stuffed chairs while servants appeared from the back door with platters of bread, cheese and fruit.

“The best we could do at short notice,” Mr. Kilamo said. “I hope it’s okay.”

Mrs. Wickaby eyed it dubiously, “I had hoped for something a little more substantial,” she answered with a snort. “But it’ll have to do.”

“What’s going on?” asked the obviously bemused headmaster, as he plopped into a leather armchair. “Should I be alerting the rest of the staff?”

“I think the danger’s over for the moment,” answered the old hedge witch. ’You can inform the others of what’s happening when we figure it ourselves.” She plucked a slab of cheese off the platter. “Now for some sustenance.”

The assembly dug into the plain fare like they were starving. John Joseph ignored the food. Mrs. Wickaby could wait, but he couldn’t. There were just too many questions that needed answering. “It was the bracelet, wasn’t it, that charm bracelet Aunt Angerona always wore? She was drawing on it somehow.”

“You got it in one,” his father mumbled, his mouth full of bread. “It was the last thing I saw before I was frozen. That thing seemed to suck the soul right out of me.” He shuddered violently. “Where she found the despicable thing and how she knew how to use it, well, we‘ll never know.”

A rather tatty old wizard, glasses bent and broken, harrumphed from a sofa by the window. “My doing, actually. I feel it might be necessary to apologize.” He giggled nervously.

“Wizard Thornbottom,” his grandfather whispered into John Joseph’s ear. “He runs a local antique store in Haven.” He turned his piercing gaze on the clearly agitated wizard. “What did you do?” he asked.

“Well,” the wizard answered. “I found the bracelet on one of my jaunts.”

“Tomb-robbings you mean,” Grandfather grumbled.

“Really, Charles, where I found it is of no consequence. Let’s just admit that I did!” he spouted.

“Then how did my daughter get her hands on it?”

If possible, the unkempt wizard looked even more uncomfortable. “She stopped by a while ago to do some shopping, just some casual shopping,” he sputtered. “Well, you know how gorgeous she was and how persuasive.” He glanced around him nervously. “She is dead, isn’t she?”

“Well, she’s not moving,” John Joseph answered.

Wizard Thornbottom looked highly relieved. “Well, we got talking,” he admitted, his cheeks coloring. “She complimented me on my skills for a little bit.” He stopped again and sent the group a beseeching look. “She was unbelievably beautiful, you know, and she seemed so interested.”

“Get on with it, you old fart,” Grandfather interrupted. “She flattered you atrociously. And?”

Wizard Thornbottom sucked in his cheeks and continued. “Well, she seemed so impressed by my knowledge that I decided to show her a certain bracelet I’d discovered,” he admitted. “I was explaining it to her and before you could say Hocus Pocus! she was holding the damn thing in her hands and I was a silver bauble! It was terrible!”

“What exactly does this bracelet do?” Mrs. Wickaby asked, holding the silver chain in her hands.

The group screamed en masse.

“Please, Mrs. Wickaby, put that thing down!” John Joseph’s father bellowed.

The old hedge witch looked highly affronted. “I’m not going to use it!” she assured them. “But I sure as heck wasn’t going to leave it lying around on the forest floor.”

Wizard Thornbottom, tea splattered across his robes continued. “Just put it down, my dear, please put it down. It contains a highly volatile charm.”

“Little late for caution,” Mrs. Wickaby mumbled.

The old wizard sneered. “It contains an extremely powerful spell that robs a wizard, or witch of her powers, transferring them to the person who holds the bracelet, leaving the shell of the ‘donor‘ as a charm hanging from it‘s links.” He shuddered once more. “As long as Angerona held the bracelet in her hand, those powers were added to her own.”

“So when she dropped it?” John Joseph asked.

“She lost control,” Wizard Thornbottom stated.

“But she didn’t just lose control,” Emily objected. “She shriveled up into nothing!”

Not nothing. John Joseph figured it was time to explain about his aunt, “Excuse me, but.”

“Just a minute, John Joseph, I’ve found something.” Mrs. Wickaby prodded the silver wristlet on the table cautiously. “See here,” she said, motioning to the glittering links. “There are only three charm hooks.” She pointed at the disheveled group and started counting. “One, two, your parents, John Joseph, three, Mr. Thornbottom and four, five,” she nodded towards two strangers huddled on a loveseat by the door who hadn’t yet introduced themselves.

“The Tuckets,” the gentleman responded. “Wizard and witch. We were on holidays when we met her at a pub in Wimzy. The rest is a blur.” Mrs. Tucket started weeping into her napkin.

Mrs. Wickaby prodded the chain once more. “I think she over extended it in her quest for power. When she lost her grip, well, she paid the price, didn’t she?”

“But there were more charms there,” John Joseph exclaimed. “It was full of them!”

The old woman grimaced. “I think they were just replicas of the people she’d killed,” she responded in a hushed voice. “Her trophies. They disappeared with her power.”

“So, Mr. Inkblot,” John Joseph whispered.

“Yes,” the old hedge witch responded, “and many more.”

He felt his grandfather shiver beside him. Grandpa.

“But what happened to you, Granddad?” he asked, his aunt forgotten. “You became a bog cat.”

“That was four years ago, John Joseph,” he answered, glaring at Wizard Thornbottom. “She didn’t have the bracelet yet, did she?”

The old wizard shook his head, his glasses wobbling.

“I agreed to meet her at her the lake in private,” Grandfather continued. “She said she had something important to discuss with me.” The old man shook his grizzled head. “She only wanted me to change the will. When I refused, she transformed me into ‘Bounder’.” He hugged his grandson tightly. “I was sure you wouldn’t recognize me and bog cats aren’t exactly welcome in the town of January, so I headed off. For the past four years, I’ve just rambled around Dire Woods, hoping to gather information about what was going on at home whenever I could.”

“Speaking, of home, I think it‘s time we went there,” John Joseph’s mother suggested. “If there are more questions to be answered, we can always do it later. Right now we need to straighten out whatever mess that sister-in-law of mine has left us, and on a personal note, I could do with a warm bath.” His mother and father got to their feet.

John Joseph knew they couldn’t leave yet. There was something they had to know and he was the only one who could tell them.

“Mom, wait a minute,” he said and he turned to face the room full of people. “It’s about Aunt Angerona. What happened to her, I mean.”

“Well, she disappeared didn’t she?” said Emily. “She’s just gone.”

“You mean there wasn’t a body?” exclaimed Mr. Thornbottom his head swiveling madly from side to side. “You didn’t actually see her dead? Why that monster might be anywhere!”

John Joseph shook his head emphatically, “No, no, she didn’t disappear, Mr. Thornbottom, she was turned into a charm, too. When she lost control of the bracelet, it didn’t just release everyone else, it turned her into a tiny, silver charm herself. I left her lying in the dirt below a tree. I forgot all about her. 


Chapter 31

“You what?” Wizard Thornbottom bellowed. “You left that psychopath lying in the woods?”

“Well, she wasn’t exactly herself,” John Joseph explained. “I mean she didn’t even have a body. She was just a tiny, silver charm and to tell you the truth, I didn’t even want to touch her.”

“But she could be re-forming as we speak! That woman is capable of anything!” The old wizard glanced nervously over his shoulder. “She could be outside right now, you fool, just waiting to pounce!”

“Excuse me, you worthless charlatan,” Grandfather Alabaster interrupted, “but my grandson just saved your pathetic little hide. If he forgot to tell us this one bit of information, I find it highly understandable under the circumstances. In my opinion, if there’s anyone to blame for the current situation, it would be the idiot who gave my daughter the bracelet in the first place.”

“I didn’t give her the bracelet,” Wizard Thornbottom protested. “She stole it from me!”

“Well, if you hadn’t been grave robbing,” Grandfather Alabaster said.

“Enough, you two, enough!” shouted Mrs. Wickaby. “This isn’t about who’s to blame or who should have done what. We should be celebrating being alive, not screaming at each other. As for Angerona Alabaster, she evidently overloaded the bracelet in her quest for power. When she dropped it, she lost control and got caught in her own twisted trap. She’s as powerless as a blade of grass.”

Wizard Thornbottom looked vaguely chagrined. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I got a bit carried away.”

“Definitely,” agreed Grandfather Alabaster, “maybe I did too.”

John Joseph was actually feeling a little worried. He’d seen some pretty perky blades of grass in the last few weeks. “I could go out and grab her for you,” he suggested.

“I’ll come too,” Emily said.

“No,” grandparents and parents bellowed in unison.

“You’re not going anywhere without me, lad,” Grandfather Alabaster said.

“Me neither,” Mrs. Wickaby exclaimed.

“Why don’t we all go out for a bit of walk,” John Joseph’s mother suggested. “Mr. Kilamo could get the kitchen staff to fix us up a more substantial breakfast while we’re gone. I guess the bath will have to wait.”

“Excuse me,” said Wizard Tucket from his bench by the window. “While we appreciate everything you’ve done for us, would it be all right if my wife and I started for home? Our family hasn’t heard from us in months. They’ll be worried sick.”

“Any reason they should stay, Mrs. Wickaby?” Mr. Kilamo asked.

The old woman smiled gently at the unfortunate duo who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. “You can head off whenever you wish,” she assured them.

The Tuckets thanked everyone profusely and quickly headed for the doorway.

“Couldn’t get out of here fast enough,” said Wizard Thornbottom.

“Can’t really blame them, can you?” asked Mrs. Wickaby.

For once, Wizard Thornbottom didn’t have a response.

Headmaster Kilamo gave the kitchen staff instructions about breakfast as the group made its way through the hallway to the front door. John Joseph took the lead; he knew exactly where he’d left his aunt. As they walked through the woods, he started to feel himself panicking. What if she isn’t there? What if she’s disappeared? What if Wizard Thornbottom was actually right and she was standing under that tree waiting for me! By the time they got to their destination, he was jumping every time a bird chirped.

He saw the glint of a charm right where he’d left. There were scorch marks and footprints on the ground surrounding it.

Most of the adults approached cautiously. Wizard Thornbottom hugged a tree from a safe distance. John Joseph stood alone in a shaft of sunlight. He’d seen more than enough of his aunt. It was Grandfather Alabaster who reached down and gently plucked his daughter from the dirt. A single tear inched its way down his cheek.

“She may have been a rotter,” John Joseph’s Grandfather said, “but you have to admit that she was an extremely talented one.” He smiled gently as he brushed the soil from the charm. “And she’ll always be my daughter, no matter what.” He wiped the tear from his cheek and went to slip the charm into the pocket of his jacket.

Wizard Kilamo touched him lightly on the back of his sleeve. “She’ll have to be kept at the academy, Charles. She’s too dangerous to be tucked into a dresser drawer.”

Grandfather Alabaster didn’t argue. John Joseph figured that he knew as well as he did, that his aunt was capable of just about anything. A shiver ran up his spine as he remembered how she’d last looked.

He felt a familiar arm tighten around his shoulders and the shiver disappeared.

“Well, it’s over John Joseph,” said Mrs. Wickaby, the old lady’s eyes alight with their familiar sparkle. “Life’s going to seem a little tame after all we’ve been through, isn’t it?”

“To tell you the truth, Mrs. Wickaby, I could do with a little tame,” said John Joseph, with a smile. “At least for a little while.”