The Firefly Witch Read online

  “Sure.”

  She leaned toward me. “It’s sort of confidential. I know you’re a reporter, but--”

  “For you, I’m off duty.” To prove it, I got up and shut the door.

  She smiled again. It wasn’t fair, expecting me to stay coherent when she did that. She said, “Thanks.”

  “So. What’s up?”

  “Do you know what a coven is?”

  “A witches’ organization, right?”

  “Close. More like a church congregation for people who believe in Wicca. I’ve started one here, and we’ve been having circle meetings in the old yellow-fever cemetery. Not in the graveyard itself, but in that big clearing back by the wall. You know where I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyway, it seems that someone’s been vandalizing the place, and of course everyone thinks it’s us. But it’s not, and I need to find out who it is.”

  “Vandalizing how?”

  “Switching the tombstones around.”

  “That’s kind of subtle for your average vandal.”

  “I know. I’d like to go through your back issues, see if there’ve been any other reports of similar disturbances there. There’s a catch, though, and that’s the favor.”

  “Catch?”

  “I need you to read to me.”

  My mouth went dry again. I was afraid I’d forget how to read if she got much closer. “How far back do you need?”

  She smiled a third time. I was on the ropes. “How far back to you go?”

  The Weakleyville Press was founded in 1915. We kept the past five years’ worth of back issues in a big vault upstairs; the rest were microfiched at the town library. We started in the vault and, sure enough, found two items mentioning damage in that cemetery. In both cases tombstones were switched around. And both incidents occurred in the fall.

  “You read very well,” Tanna said as I washed the newsprint off my hands.

  “Thanks.”

  “No, I mean it. Not everyone does.”

  I dried off. “You think that was good, you should hear me do coupons.” She giggled. “Do you want to go to the library?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Only I want to look for something else, too. Any kind of traumatic death, unsolved murder, that kind of thing. Where the victims were buried in the cemetery.”

  “I think everyone who’s buried there died of yellow fever back in the 1800s.”

  “Maybe. But I bet if we look hard enough, we’ll find someone who didn’t.”

  And we did. The last burial in the place, in fact, before it was declared an historical site. In 1944, Dennis Lee Belew killed himself by the novel method of tipping his chair over backward so that his neck snapped against the edge of a kitchen counter. The suicide note, printed verbatim, blamed ongoing shame at being declared 4F in World War II. The issue had an October date.

  “Dennis Lee Belew,” Tanna repeated, the blue light from the microfiche screen on her face. “Having a hard time sleeping peacefully, eh, Dennis?”

  “What?” I asked.

  Tanna turned to me. Suddenly I was extremely conscious of her nearness, the heat of her skin seeping through her clothes. Her flannel shirt hung open just enough at her neck that I could see a hint of her cleavage. She bit her lip again.

  “I have a confession to make,” she said softly. “I didn’t really need your help. The college assigns students to help me for their practicum credits. I just wanted an excuse to talk to you again.”

  “Yeah?” I said. My voice didn’t crack, a minor miracle.

  “Yeah. Do you believe in anything like fate? Destiny?”

  “Does Murphy’s Law count?”

  She smiled. “You’re going to think this is silly, but I dream about you a lot.”

  “Me?” I said, trying to appear cool even as nervous sweat trickled down my back.

  “Yes. Not...polite dreams, either?”

  “You mean I’m rude in them?”

  “Yes. Very rude.” She licked her lips quickly. “But...it’s the kind of rude I like.”

  Our faces were very close now. It was eerie, looking into her eyes and knowing she couldn’t see me. I felt her hand very lightly touch mine.

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Tully?” she whispered.

  ***

  The night wind was cold, not bone-chilling like in winter but a damp, fetid cold. It didn’t blow but kind of pushed, lifting the stray curls of Tanna’s hair away from her face and twisting them. She put her hand on the closest tombstone and leaned against it.

  A hundred years ago, the yellow fever cemetery had been three miles from the heart of Weakleyville; now, it was barely a hundred yards from the nearest convenience store. The city left a thick border of trees on three sides, though, and if you ignored the traffic noises, you could imagine you were still far from town.

  I’d visited this place dozens of times growing up, and it never felt spooky, even when we’d dare each other to run through it on Halloween night. But it did now, as if the people buried here whispered their grievances on the cold autumn wind.

  “Can we do the morgue next week?” I asked, and stuffed my hands in my coat pocket.

  She laughed. It shimmered in the night like steel wind chimes. “You know, if this was summer, I’d be able to see you.”

  “Then you wouldn’t be out with me.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m a grown woman, I’m trying to move beyond just the physical.”

  “Er...thanks.”

  She laughed again. She took out the ponytail holder and let the wind blow her hair over her face. The bare branches in the trees all around us rattled as if approving.

  “Why exactly are we here?” I asked.

  “Waiting for Dennis,” she said. Her hair was wild now, like the mane of a forest animal. “The chill in the air wakes the ghosts off the ground, you know.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant, and I didn’t enjoy the creepy feeling the old cemetery suddenly generated. But I also knew I had a beautiful girl alone. I stepped up behind her and put my hands lightly on her waist.

  Tanna leaned back against me. She felt solid, strong. I’d expected her to feel fragile. She put her hands over mind, then turned to rest her cheek on my shoulder. I knew she felt my, ahem, physical response to her nearness through my jeans, but she didn’t seem uncomfortable with it.

  “Did I ever tell you about the fireflies?” she asked.

  “Kind of.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, when I was a little girl, about seven or so, I started being able to see little flashes on summer nights. It was the fireflies. I tried telling my parents, but they thought I was just imagining it. Until I started seeing their faces.”

  “That must have been weird.”

  “Yeah, it was. I didn’t even know I was seeing at first, I didn’t have anything to compare it to. Then, when I realized what it was, I was afraid everyone would think I was strange. The blind kids wouldn’t like me, and neither would the kids who could see.”

  “You don’t seem very insecure now.”

  “I have good parents. And good friends.”

  The wind abruptly gusted and sent a great swirl of wet, dead leaves around us. I closed my eyes against the grit, and when I opened them Tanna faced me. She turned her face up toward mine, and moonlight shone off her big eyes. Her skin seemed very white, and her hair was almost black.

  She kissed me. Actually, ‘kissed’ doesn’t do it justice. It was like pressing my lips to an electric outlet, except in a good way. She put her arms around my neck and pressed her breasts against my chest. My toes actually curled.

  When I pulled away, the night seemed very still. I looked in her eyes, “Can you see me?” I whispered.

  “No,“ she sighed. “But I’m pretty good at feeling my way around.” We kissed again. “Now let’s go find Dennis.”

  With my flashlight, I scanned nearly twenty tombstones before we found him. Dennis Lee Belew. He’d been twenty-four when he died, a “beloved husband a
nd father” according to the marker.

  “So you think the ghost of this guy is moving the tombstones around?” I asked. “Why would he do that? How could he do that?”

  She shrugged. “Attention. Frustration. Ghosts are complicated, and there’s all different kinds. Just like people. And just like people, what they’re capable of will surprise you sometimes.”

  She knelt by the tombstone and reached into her coat pockets. She withdrew two squat candles, one black and one red, felt down the tombstone to the wide base, and placed them there out of the wind.

  “You’re about to be introduced to the ways of Wicca,” she said. “Would you light the candles for me? Blind people don’t do fire very well.”

  “Introduced to what, exactly?” I asked as I lit the candles.

  “This is called scrying.”

  “Do you need a handkerchief for that?”

  “Not crying, scrying. It’s a way of focusing magical and psychic energy. Some people do it by looking into a bowl of water, or a crystal ball. I have a different way.”

  I didn’t say anything, and she offered no further explanation. I lit the candles as she asked.

  She faced me, suddenly grim and serious. “This is what I am, Ry. Wicca teaches you to tune into the world around you. I’m going to be a parapsychologist when I graduate, and I’m also a psychic. It’s the only belief that accepts all that as a blessing.” She held out her hand to me, and I took it. We stood.

  “Listen,” she whispered, “I don’t know anything about you, really. But I feel things. I feel that maybe you and I--

  This time I kissed her. I think I had the same effect on her that she’d earlier had on me. We stood very close for a long time. My life shifted under me in those moments. My world grew bigger, full of wonders I’d never imagined possible. And big enough for two.

  “Show me your magic,” I whispered. I’d never meant anything as much in my life.

  And she did.

  With my help, Tanna drew a circle on the ground around Dennis’s plot. She used our class rings to represent the Wiccan god and goddess, and placed them between the candles. Then she knelt before them, right atop Dennis’s grave.

  She whispered, yet somehow the wind brought her words to me clearly. “Goddess of the moon, you of all power, I am here in your honor. God of the sun, source of warmth and light, I am here in your honor. Help me help others.”

  The atmosphere inside the circle changed. I shivered. Goosebumps wiggled down my arms.

  Tanna put her hands on the ground. “Dennis,” she said sharply. “I know you’re here. We need to talk.”

  Nothing happened. Tanna concentrated silently on the ground beneath her. Then, suddenly, she gasped. I jumped. The air around us got much colder. “Well, hello, Dennis,” she whispered.

  I didn’t see anything, but I genuinely felt the ghost’s presence. And the urge to get the hell out of there. But I didn’t run this time.

  Tanna talked to the guy like a teacher chastising a student. She told him his life was over, he was dead, and it was time to move on. She paused often, as if he disagreed, but I heard nothing.

  Later she told me what he said. His spirit was restless because he didn’t actually kill himself. He’d written a suicide note, then changed his mind. He believed his family would think him an even bigger coward for committing suicide. He fell over accidentally and broke his neck.

  In the end, she convinced him. I guess. The cold went away, at any rate.

  I know how this sounds. It’d be easy to say I was under the ordinary “spell” of a beautiful, sexy girl who paid attention to me. The rest could be just mumbo-jumbo. But I know what I felt swirl around and through me that night. It wasn’t ordinary. It was genuine magic.

  She was quiet afterwards. We drove to a truck stop, the only place in town open that late, and had a bad breakfast. Even in the harsh fluorescent light, hair tangled from the wind, she was breathtaking.

  I took her home. She’d rented a room from a nice couple whose son had grown up blind, so they were familiar with her issues. I kissed her goodnight on the porch.

  We didn’t make another date. We didn’t have to. The same chill that woke the ghosts brought us into each other’s warmth.

  And a year later, I proposed. On Halloween.

  ~II~

  LOST AND FOUND

  When you’re dating a witch--and I mean a real one, not just some temperamental chick--nothing should surprise you, especially frantic knocks on your door at one a.m.

  “Yeah, yeah, hold on,” I mumbled as I looked through the peephole and saw that unmistakable red hair. I undid the deadbolt and opened the door.

  Tanna Woicistikoviski wore a long black dress with flared sleeves, the dark color offsetting her fire-red mane. She looked damn near panicked to death. “Hey,” I said sleepily, “what’s wrong?”

  She looked at me. This was something she could only do in the summer, as the rest of the time she was blind. But on summer nights, as long as fireflies were nearby, she could see, an ability that so far proved impossible to isolate or explain.

  “Thank the Goddess you’re here,” she cried, and ran into my arms. She trembled violently and gulped down great mouthfuls of air. I was completely nonplussed; we’d been dating since the previous fall, and in all that time I’d never seen her this scared. I shut the door and guided her to my couch, where I surreptitiously nudged a pillow over the duct-taped patch.

  “What is it?” I asked. “You want a Coke, or a beer, or--”

  “A beer!” she gasped. I quickly got her one, and she drank a huge swallow. Then she sat in silence, still trembling.

  “Isn’t a black dress hot in the summer?” I said, just to make conversation.

  “Yeah, it is,” she said, preoccupied, and whipped it off over her head. She sat there in nothing but black lace under-things, drinking. I could tell by the intense look on her face that she hadn’t even thought about it.

  Her near-nudity suddenly made me quiver. We’d been dating, like I said, for months, but we still hadn’t slept together. I know, I know, and she was even a practicing Pagan. But everything else--and I mean everything--was so perfect that I really didn’t mind. We were very passionate, and if the ultimate expression of that hadn’t happened yet, well, I could wait for the right time. But still, with her sitting there right in front of me, all soft and curvy and...I had a hard time concentrating.

  She suddenly realized what she’d done, looked up in surprise and kind of laughed. “Ohmigod, I’m sorry, Ry. I feel so comfortable with you, I just--”

  “No, no, don’t get dressed on my account. But what happened?”

  She pushed a mass of red curls out of her face. “Wow. Where do I start? I think the most amazing thing in the world happened. I think I met the world’s first ghost.”

  ***

  From the personal journal of Tanna Woicistikoviski:

  I am a witch. That one thing defines me. If, as Howard Hawks posits, you are what you do, then every aspect of my life passes through my status as a student of the Craft of the Wise.

  I am 25 years old, and a graduate student in parapsychology. This, too, is part of my craft, understanding the nature of the Invisible World and its effect on the Visible one.

  I am in love with a good, true, and strong man who doesn’t know he is any of those things. I will become part of his life, because I always have been. He doesn’t remember; I do, misty memories of warm embraces from earlier lives that I long to relive. But my Lady, who looks down with the face of the Moon, tells me to wait. So I wait.

  I have to write all this down, to state what should be obvious to me, so there will be a record. Tonight, my identity was taken from me. It was at my request, and with my permission, but with a totality that still terrifies me. I knew thoughts that weren’t mine, and feelings that tore open my heart as another’s had once been torn. I was released, returned to myself, but not without the sure knowledge that my greatest challenge lay before me: to give this spirit,
possibly the first restless spirit of humanity, some kind of peace.

  And survive.

  ***

  As the beer took hold, she calmed down. “I-I had this...assignment from my teacher in the Craft, Lady Nighthawk. You’ve heard me talk about her, right? I had to find a sacred place, where spirits naturally congregate, and open myself t-to whomever might be there. I th-think she wanted me to learn how the spirits felt, since my path is to help them. But....” She shuddered and drank some more. “I found something more powerful than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life, a spirit as old as...as the world. It was a woman, and she was young, and she was spurned for...for being.” Tears filled her eyes. Huddled in her underwear, she seemed small and vulnerable, a new look for her in my experience.

  “I still don’t understand what happened. Where were you?”

  “I found this old abandoned church, down on Alabaster Street. You know, the one by the convenience store? It’s all overgrown and everything?”

  “You went in there alone?” I knew from my job at the paper that the place was routinely vandalized and used for some pretty unsavory activities.

  She waved her hand dismissively. “That’s not important. I was drawn to it, it was where I needed to be, understand?”

  No, but I didn’t say anything.

  “I could feel it was holy ground, a place of the spirits. It was probably why they originally picked that spot for a church. Anyway, I went in, put up my circle, and waited to see who would come.”

  ***

  Journal entry (continued):