The Haunts

Levy strode down his childhood street. It was as if no time had passed. If everything around him had remained the same, he knew he had matured. He no longer felt ashamed or stigmatized for his life choices. Despite the challenges and problems he had faced, he felt free. Now, his clothing selection was a cross between leather and lace. He went all out when he entered the store with his father’s credit card, as he had just won the Jackpot. He went out in public wearing a Munroe Modern-style tartan skirt, some black ripped mesh net stockings, and a pair of Kick-Ass Union Jack Doc Martins. His top of choice had been a Sid and Nancy retro t-shirt, protected behind him by a long black leather trench coat where the backside and arms had little stud spikes that made him look like a badass Punk Goth porcupine. On his hands, he wore black lace fingerless gloves that complimented his dark metallic purple fingernails. His lips had black lipstick. To recapture the Siouxsie Sioux look, the makeup he used on his pale and narrow features made his eyes look intense.

Not too bad. He confidently mused as he passed by his old stomping grounds.

Teenagers and kids far younger stopped playing to watch him walk by. Parents and seniors that were outside with their kids or were at their windows caught sight of him and squinted as if he had the nerve to be wandering around. Some who appreciated his originality smiled, waved, and nodded at him politely.

But it didn’t take long for trouble to rear its ugly head as more brazen bullies with a chip on their shoulders drew forward to make trouble for him.

“How dare you come back here after what you’ve done?” One denounced him before throwing a solid, frozen snowball at him, narrowly missing his head. Levy scowled at the young kid, prompted by the older ones being too chicken shit to start trouble. Many he passed wore a look of discomfort and outright trepidation, as if he were the sole cause of all the problems in the neighbourhood.

You all should fear me, Levy thought, turning away. Just don’t project your fears onto me so that I’m your social scapegoat.

“Hey, queerio!” One local bully came up to push Levy so that he’d fall into the dirty snow bank beside the cleared road. But Levy was prepared for his assailant and brought his palm upside down on his jaw. The kid’s head snapped up and down into the snowbank as he fell. It was a trick his Mom had taught him to thwart bullies. But I was too nervous to try.

“You stupid jerk! You made me bite my lip!” The injured boy spat wet crimson spittle into the snow, giving his friend the evil eye. Levy didn’t break stride, and he gave the kid the finger without looking back. That’s when the other instigators lay him off, giving him plenty of room to go about his business unscathed.

Levy was sure that no one would dare screw with him now, not after all the shite he had been. All the neighbourhood bullies and the occasional bigoted adult would have to think twice before challenging him ever again. His being the victim of their cruelty and idle condescension was over. He was tired of the mistreatment, and he had finally made a stand.

As he passed by, the neighbourhood street lights illuminated the mail deposit boxes, and some fences still had postings of missing children and small pets. The old hag’s abductions made his head spin.

Inspecting the messages, he confirmed one thing.

“Most of these abductions happened while I was in the Haunts.”

Overhead, the sky darkened. By the time he got to his grandmother’s place, the sun had descended. All that lay before him were the skeletal charcoal remains of his former home, partially buried under a pile of snow and ice. He used his boot to kick through the charred rubble and searched through it for anything that reminded him of home. The fire had reduced it to a charred, skeletal pile of used wood. All of his things, from his hand-me-downs to items that he worked and saved up for, are ashes. As far as he was concerned, it was a clear sign she would stop at nothing to bring him misery. That was when the surrounding snow started out delicate and fluffy, but within an hour it had turned to a wet, cold slush that splattered and made everything around him slippery.

Levy slipped his hands into his jacket pocket and shivered as Corvus, still in his crow form, landed on his shoulder and squawked obstinately.

“Where else would I be? Everything I had is no more,” Levy yelled above the wind. “I had to come here and see for myself if it were true or not. I just can’t believe that everyone I’ve ever loved is gone.”

Corvus cawed once more and then took to the air, warning Levy that it was not the right time to mourn.

“You must go back to the store. The weather is getting worse!”

Levy watched Corvus disappear into the storm, then turned his attention to the ashes and burned skeletal embers of a beautiful house that once held laughter and love. Perhaps Corvus was right. Now was not the time to mourn, but to gather his wits, uncover his nemesis, and put an end to her madness. He walked through what remained of the house, careful not to fall through the main floor. There was very little left to recognize. The windows had all shattered, and where the snow hadn’t reached, the tempered glass and debris crunched underfoot like coarse gravel. He made it to the bedroom where his mother had sometimes slept, but then remembered that most times they found her curled up on the living room couch, sleeping through one of her favourite late-night shows. A thing she was synonymous with doing. There, he searched for anything that would jog his memories about the room. He imagined where her dresser was and the bed she sometimes shared with his grandma when she was too sick to leave alone.

He considered how his mother battled every day to keep everything in order only for the old hag to murder her. Expire in some freak house fire. This couldn’t be an accident. Levy got angry again. This was deliberate; this was personal. We knew this was personal and deliberate long ago; there’s no need to reiterate.

“I’m sorry, Ma.” Levy took the back of his hand and wiped the tears that slid down his cheeks. Crying in the winter wind was not a pleasing sensation, but an icy one. Nor did it do any favours for his mascara. Don’t include a joke here about his mascara. Don’t ruin serious scenes by adding off-topic comments. You sabotage the impact of what you’re trying to show your readers. “I failed you, ma, just like I failed Grandmamma and Sheryl. I was just too damn scared to stand my ground and find some way to defeat that bitch. But she is so damn powerful, and I still don’t know how I’m going to accomplish it. But I have no choice now. I’ll make her pay dearly for all the evil deeds she has committed against all of you, whom I have loved dearly. I promise you.”

From down the street came the slow sound of freezing snow being crushed under the tires. He turned and saw a squad car slowly encroaching closer to where he was. Maybe someone in the neighbourhood had alerted the police after he took out that bully? But he was also a suspect in Sheryl and his mother’s murder! Did it relate to the theft of his father’s credit card? But whichever it was, he had no chance in Hell to make others believe that some ageless evil hag was cursing him! that was once a goddess of storms, now disguised as a homeless bag lady that spent her nights going down quiet little neighbourhoods like these, stealing babies from their cribs, or taking people’s pets from their yards to eat. A fiend that sought revenge on Levy’s own family for historically worshipping her as their ancestral godmother and not returning the very gift she had given them for their glorification. Repeated facts we all know already! Delete!

“Shit!” Levy said and shivered. It wasn’t the chill that winter brings, but the nature of coldness that makes your ball suck upwards back into your body because something terrible was going to happen.

He figured that now was a good time to leave. Levy hurried through the burnt structure to the back of the yard where the old walnut tree had been, a half-charred relic that broke his heart. He stole a quick look back and noticed that the squad car had a searchlight pointed towards the yard. Luckily, the storm prevented the officer from seeing much of anything.

Levy looked back at the burned tree. The heat from the house fire must’ve hollowed it out on the side, enough so that he could fit inside.

He clenched his fist and pushed his way into the hallowed, charred remains of the tree that had been there in the yard for almost two generations. His grandmother, being a practising Wiccan, planted it after his grandfather had gone off to war. The rumour was that during a full moon at every solstice, she would sing and dance naked around the tree. Back then, he thought it was just a joke. But now, it didn’t seem so unlikely because she had always been one with nature. She expressed her desire to have her cremated ashes placed under the tree. Her wish granted.

“I’m sorry, Gramy,” he whispered low, “but if I am trampling on your ashes, please understand that I need a place to hide.”

He noticed the beam of a flashlight searching through the storm for him. Levy could hear the continuous crunching of heavy boots as they drew near. He squeezed his eyes shut as the little glyph that itched on his hand glowed faintly. Scared that it would attract attention, he pressed his palm against the burned wood. To his surprise, the opening beside him grew at a faster rate. The walnut tree was sealing him up! As the gap closed, he shut his eyes, trying not to hyperventilate. After a minute of slow breathing, he opened his eyes and tried to look around in the dark. The distinct sweet smell of sap and burnt wood assaulted his nose. His hand, where the glyph burned on the flesh of his hand, grew brighter, allowing him to find himself entombed alive in a dying tree.

“Levy?” a voice came from deep within the tree. “Honey, is that you?”

Levy blinked and found that he was no longer trapped in an old burnt tree but at the kitchen table in the house again.

“Granny, is that you?” Levy noticed he wore white gloves at the table. He looked up as his beloved grandmamma shuffled into the room, dressed in a knitted sweater she made that matched the one she made for her daughter, his mama. From her pursed lips, she balanced a cigarette. Her gnarled, arthritic hands gripped the walker as she made her way to the table.

“Who else would I be?” She coughed, allowing Levy to get her chair, and helped her sit down at the kitchen table. She patiently held her hands on the table, waiting until Levy took his seat.

“You’ve been gone for a long time now, Grams. I’ve missed you and think a lot of you.”

“Have I?” She looked around. The house went from what it was before she died to what it looks like now—a charred skeletal relic. She smiled. “I’d like to let you know that my generation fought so hard for change. We succeeded. Then we wanted the status quo to stay the same forever. But if anything time has taught me, it is that all things must progress, even in ways you can’t recognize or even disagree with. After all, it’s those events that force us to face the difficulties of living a full life.”

“I’m sorry about trampling on your ashes earlier.”

She shrugged. “I’m dead, so why should any of that matter?”

Levy bit his lower lip and asked, “Is Momma there with you? How about Sheryl?”

“Where is it you think we are, honey?”

Levy paused as his head became quite blank. At a very young age, they sent him to a preschool that was run by nuns. They talked of the almighty God and everlasting life. But as he grew older, he doubted them and believed less and less of an afterlife and the possibility of Heaven, Purgatory, and Inferno, or even of Dante’s Purgatory.

He wanted to believe something but never found that the duality of being physical and spiritual proved too complex for him to resolve, leading him away from Plato and Socrates’ ideas of the presence of a physical body with a soul. Hence, he simply reacted the way others had expected him to think of human existence. He did his part by attending Mass and praying (like some trained circus monkey) to appease his disgruntled parents. Deep inside him, however, the duality of man’s existence was a bunch of bull. After Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is dead,” Hegel added that God’s death “remains hidden and is merely an easily recognized component of the ordinary Christian cycle of redemption.” And now, his perception of the world has become more baffling than people’s reactions to his cross-dressing.

“Would it give you any solace if I said they were doing just fine? Even though there’s a chance, you know better than to submit to Christian Catholicism towards an afterlife?” His grandma smiled. Thick blue veins intertwined throughout the bones in her hands, all draped with gaunt, wrinkled, almost translucent flesh holding them together. “That’s not why I’m here. It’s not why you brought me back.”

“I brought you back.” Levy looked confused. “How did I do that?”

“Your imagination, for one.” She took another long drag from her cigarette before putting it out on the red ashtray that Levy noticed on the kitchen table. “When someone is unconscious, they forget stuff that happens before them, so I appeared here to fill in the gaps of memory so that when you come to your senses, you won’t freak out.”

Levy felt tears running down his cheeks. He took his white glove and touched the side of his throbbing head, and he discovered he wasn’t crying but bleeding. His eyes went from the blood on his hands to his grandma, one of the few people in the world he entrusted with his life. “What’s happening? Am I dying or am I dead?” The table and the rest of the surroundings frayed as if the entire dream was unravelling around him like a coloured yarn.

“You’re not dead,” she said, “but at present you’re handcuffed in the back of Sheryl Dad’s squad car, and he has a full intention of raining Hell on your parade.”

Levy closed his eyes and envisioned the outside of the squad car in a freak snowstorm of the century, something the radio in the squad car was forecasting. He saw Mr. Fellman, still in his officer uniform, with a look of absolute concentration. Behind him sat Cailleach Bhéarach’s smouldering shadow, seeping out of her and lightly brushing up against the driver like a lover.

“Don’t you worry, honey,” Mr. Fellman’s eyes darted to the occupant in the backseat. “I will make that son-of-a-bitch pay for what he did to our daughter. I promise you, he’ll never make it to trial or rot away in some comfy juvie detention centre.”

“You must first promise you will do this.” The old hag transformed into Sheryl’s mother and reached over to stroke Mr. Fellman from behind. The man closed his eyes and shivered at her touch. “Promise to Cailleach Bhéarach, my love.”

“I promise to Cailleach Bhéarach,” the man repeated back in a muddled tone.

The squad car hit a bump, and Levy opened his eyes to see nothing but darkness all around him. He hadn’t been in the hollowed-out tree after all. It didn’t magically seal him in like a tomb. He had been pistol whipped from behind, handcuffed, and then dragged to the back of the squad car and thrown in like luggage.

Levy moaned in the darkness, “Great, how do I get out of this one?”

It’s pointless now. Cailleach Bhéarach whispered in his ear.

Then he felt dozens of icy hands reaching out of the shadows to grasp him while a chorus of banshee shrieks filled the air. That the live world depended on him to stay in place. A sacrifice from the wraith of an ancient hag god. Levy shut his eyes and thought about the lost souls that swirled around the witch like ash, and he cried more for their suffering than for his own unimaginable doom.

It was then that he realized he wasn’t just fighting for his life but for those that had died at the hands of the sullied one, the fallen goddess of the perfect storm—Cailleach Bhéarach.