The Haunted National Park: A Tale from the Peter Wood Multiverse

The snoring woman who was stationed at the campgrounds’ help center was given quite the start when, out of nowhere, several small children and a witch all flopped onto the floor with a loud flood in a flash of green light. The green-light system should have teleported them to the receiving green-light station just outside the parking lot, but for some reason, the system overshot the target and sent them to the nearby help center. A short few minutes later, some of the campground staff came around to see what was causing their co-worker to scream. They found the bunch of them lying there on the floor and began tending to their wounds in the center’s small medical win.

“How are you?” Peter asked the Witch, a little while after they were tended to. He had found her standing outside the help center looking at a poster that was posted on the bulletin board just outside.

“Oh, I’m fine, thank you.” The poster that the Witch was looking at was another one of those warnings to children with the picture of the evil-looking witch and her army of ghosts. “I get the idea. They’ve been using me as a way to keep little ones in line I see. Clever. While I obviously don’t enjoy being made out to be a monster by MAG-PAR, I must admit, this was somewhat clever. They’ve turned their failure to capture me into a positive via this new line of propaganda. They’ve even gotten you paranormals to pick up on it with these posters. I assume there are other posters out there like this?”

“Um, I think so. Look, uh, there’s something I think I should tell you. It’s about when you went into hiding in the rangers’ station—”

“Peter?” A man called out. “Is that you?” The voice was coming from down the trail towards the cabins. The man it came from had short, white-blond hair. “There you are, kid! I just got the call from the camp staff that you and a few others were here.”

“Uh, hi, Uncle Casper.” Peter’s uncle was one of the many sleuth scout troop-masters that had been watching over the young scouts and running the events of their camping trip.

“Do you mind explaining to me what you lot were thinking, sneaking off into the night like that? What if something—or someone picked you guys up and carried you all off somewhere without us knowing? And on that note,” he turned towards the Witch. “Who are you exactly?”

The Witch didn’t answer at first. Instead, she looked him over glaringly, as if she were trying to gauge whether or not she could take him on in a fight if it came to it. Finally, she said, “My name is Esmeralda Fritzler.”

“Oh, you’re a Fritzler.” Uncle Casper’s shoulders lowered slightly. “What were you doing with the kids?”

“The children found their way to the rangers station that I was staying at just up the mountain about half an hour from here. They woke me up from my…nap.”

“I see. Well, I’m sorry to hear that my scouts disturbed you from your sleep tonight, Mrs. Fritzler. You can rest assured knowing that they will all be spoken to about this in the morning.”

“Oh, it was no trouble at all. It turned out that I had…overslept. So, really I should be thanking them.”

“Hmm.” Uncle Casper began looking at Mrs. Fritzler intensely. “If you don’t mind me asking, are you by any chance related to Angelina Fritzler?”

“Angelina?” The Witch’s voice cracked and her eyes widened. “You…you…how do you know of her? Is she here, right now?”

“Well, yes.” Said Uncle Casper, his eyebrow raised. “Or at least, that’s how the story goes. As for how I learned about her…well the earliest memory I have of her was when I came here for sleuth scouts many years ago and saw her statue.”

“What? Many years ago? Statue?”

“Wait, you mean that statue that’s in the middle of the cabins?” said Peter. “That’s Angelina?”

“That’s the one! Mrs. Fritzler, I remember reading somewhere that sometimes members of your family come to the campgrounds to visit that statue. Guessing by your reaction, though, I take it that you’ve never actually seen it yourself? Come then. As thanks for returning the children, allow me to give you a quick tour of the cabin area where the statue is.”

Uncle Casper then led the two of them down the dirt road and away from the help center. Peter couldn’t help but feel uneasy about the whole thing; his stomach was turning and churning because he had forgotten about that statue by the cabins. He didn’t realize it was anyone who had anything to do with the Witch.

When they arrived at the snow-covered cabins, and the statue that they all circled, Peter looked uneasily at the Witch, Mrs. Fritzler, and waited for her reaction.

“What? What is this?” The Witch laughed. “This isn’t my Angelina. This woman must be at least twenty years old.”

“Actually she was twenty-four years old.” Said Uncle Casper. “So you’re not related to her then?”

“No. No, I believe you have me confused with someone else.”

“Hmm. Strange coincidence then. Although mind you, I didn’t think the name ‘Fritzler’ was very common in the Wizardlands. Are you sure you aren’t related?”

“Well I mean she would know if she were, wouldn’t she? Said Peter, breathing easily once more. “C’mon, Uncle Casper. It’s late, and the Witch—I mean, Mrs. Fritzler, probably wants to leave now before a snowstorm starts or something.”

“Snowstorm?” said Uncle Casper. “I don’t remember hearing a forecast about any snow tonight.”

“Oh, well you never know what could happen. Never trust the weatherman, I say. Sorry again to bother you, Mrs. Fritzler, but you should probably start heading off now.”

“No wait…now that I think about it…she does look familiar. Just a little bit anyways…something about her nose. What did this Schmidt do exactly, Casper? Why would paranormals of all people hold up a witch in high enough regard to make a statue for them? Especially after what MAG-PAR has done during the war?”

“I’m sorry, do you mean Magical Parliament? And by ‘the war’ you mean the Secret War? Well, the reason we hold her statue here is that she did so much to end a lot of the fighting and battling that went on between your parliament and ours. And she wasn’t a witch. She was a paranormal, just like her father. It was her mother that was forced to leave them when Magical Parliament began cracking down on paranormal-magical relations. The story goes that her mother—a leader amongst the rebel wizardkin fighting against ran away to this park to hide out after she burned down the wizardkin school—”

“Wait no, stop…that is my Angelina! But why does she look so much older? She’s only eleven years old…” The Witch placed a hand over her mouth and gasp as she looked over the plaque that was attached to the base of the statue. When Peter looked over it himself, he suddenly felt very, very cold.

Angelina Lillibet Fritzler

Advocate and Leader for the Pro-Paranormal/Wizardkin Relations Movement

Daughter and Mother

Lived 1853-1877

Died in the Haunted National Park Looking for her Mother, The Witch of Windsor

“Why…why does it say that? Why does it have those dates?” Mrs. Fritzler’s voice cracked. She was shaving visible now and was slowly pulling out her wand. “She’s dead? My baby girl? No, no, no, no…”

“Mrs. Fritzler, it’ll be alright.” Said Peter.

“How could she be dead?” The Witch screamed. Tears were starting to well up in her eyes. “How could she be twenty-four? This is a mistake! That’s not my daughter! Why does it have those dates on the plaque when it’s only 1864—”

In a blink of an eye, the Witch whipped around and pointed her wand straight between Peter’s eyes, its tip glowing a bright purple. “You…you and your friends woke me up, back at the station. You never told me what the date was, though. You never said…what year it is, though…”

No one said anything. Peter tried to move backwards, away from the wand but found he couldn’t. His legs were frozen in place and they felt like they weighed a thousand pounds.

“What year is it, boy? Tell me now.”

“Now hang on a second there,” Uncle Casper rapidly shoved his way in between them. “You really think you can point your wand at one of our scouts—at my nephew? What makes you think you have any right to—”

Uncle Casper, having been lifted off his feet and through the air to the left of Peter, slammed into the wall of a nearby cabin. He slumped in place when he hit the ground unmoving. Before Peter could call out to him, the Witch was in his face once again.

“What. Year. Is it?!” Mrs. Fritzler demanded.

“It’s…it’s 2014. You fell asleep one hundred and fifty years ago.” Peter waited for a reaction.

At first, the Witch’s face was frozen in a neutral state. Then she started laughing; a burst of crackling, hollow laughter. Then the laughter gave way to a gut-wrenching sobbing, all the while her hair was starting to smoke again. At last that smoke burst into a bright, emerald green fire that shot straight up into the air, as the Witch’s sobbing turned into a scream that echoed through the woods and made all the lights in the cabins turn on one by one.

“I’m going to burn them!” the Witch screamed, stomping her foot. She repeated those words and kept on stomping her foot, waving her lit wand around like a lunatic. And every time she stomped her foot, a cabin would burst into emerald flames, forcing those inside to rush on outside and into the cold, with they themselves whipped into a screaming panic as they tried to figure out what was going on. “I’m going to burn them! I’m going to burn then! I’m going to burn every single last one of those good-for-nothing warlocks, and their precious parliament, down to ashes!”

Then something hit the Witch from the side and sent her tumbling down and slamming into the base of her daughter’s statue.

“You stay away from him.” Came a woman’s voice. “Peter! Peter, come here!” The woman in question was Emma Bell, Uncle Casper’s assistant scoutmaster. Behind her was a small crowd made up of camp crew as well as other sleuth scout leadership.

“Uncle Nelson,” said Peter. “He’s over there, she knocked him out.”

“Alright, someone please take him back up to the help center! Don’t worry, Peter, we’ll take care of him. Just make sure you hurry and—get down!”

Emma shoved him out of the way and to the ground as the ground in front of them rolled towards them as if it had been rolled into a massive wave of dirt, rocks, and snow. The Witch continued to magically hurl waves like this at the adults as they scrambled to use their powers to try and contain the pandemonium she was creating.

Not waiting for any further warnings, Peter forced himself to his feet, turned back to the path he had just come down from minutes ago, and ran off into the night—back up to the Help Center.