Stuck with a Spell (5 page)

Holy schmoly! The UPS driver was going
to get a real workout this week.

“
Got it. I’ll start by
making those reversing mirror-box spells,” the Captain said finding
the printout with the how to’s for making the protective
boxes.

“
Hell’s bells! Don’t we need
a couple of those damn Voodoo dolls for those things?” I
asked.

I grabbed the printout. Sure enough.
There was the picture of the box filled with junk to ward off
Liza’s spells.

“
Oh yeah. We do. And I ain’t
goin’...”

“
I’ll tell ya what, we’ll
flip for it,” I said, taking out a quarter from my pants
pocket.

“
Fine. Heads,” Captain Allen
said, looking just as anxious as I must have while the quarter spun
toward the hardwood floor of the kitchen.

“
Tails it is, my friend.
Looks like you’ll be going to Liza’s to get the dolls.”

“
Fuck me.”

“
Pretty much,” I said, so
relieved it was him headed to the coven and not me.

I
was always glad to see my Captain, but never more so than
right now, I thought, rushing to Liza’s back door to let him
in.

“
Oh, I’m so glad you’re
here,” I said, throwing my arms around his neck and planting a kiss
on his snow-dusted cheeks.

His face and neck turned to a color
more in line with his red scarf than his tanned skin. Shucks, if I
hadn’t embarrassed him.

“
I’m glad to see you too,”
he said, stomping off the snow from his boots on the large rug in
Liza’s mudroom, “but I’m not too thrilled to be here.”

“
Understood,” I said, and
boy did I.

“
This old gal is totally
nuts. I don’t like you being around her,” he said, hugging me close
to his chest as if he were a wee bit leery of letting me
go.

“
She’s nuts, I’ll give ya
that. But I don’t think she really means any true harm. Well, not
to anyone except Darryl,” I said, not doubting for a minute that
she’d one day finish off that jackass.

“
Yeah. Right. Speaking of
Darryl, and Hank too,” the Captain said, clearing his throat and
looking around to make sure Liza wasn’t within earshot, “I’m going
to need a few of the dolls that look like Darryl and any others
that look like Hank too.”

I lowered my head and gave him the look
as in if you want my help, you’d best be tellin’ me more than
that.

“
Don’t give me that look.
I’m just trying to get you out of this mess, and I need those damn
dolls.”

Luckily, Liza had gone to take a nap in
her room. She’d claimed that with an afternoon of rest, she’d be
able to get a fresh new perspective on what she’d done and perhaps
gain clarity on how to undo it. We could only hope her beauty rest
led in that direction.

“
Well, fine. But let’s make
it quick before Liza wakes up and catches us. C’mon in here. She
keeps the dolls in a special display case.”

“
How quaint.”

I shook my head and snickered at The
Captain’s snark. He was totally my kinda guy with my kinda ‘tude
too.

“
Give me three of those
Darryl look-a-likes. And oh shit, there’s a few more Hanks too,” he
said, carefully taking out the dolls.

“
For the love of Buddha! I
only had one wedding band, so I didn’t even look for more Hanks,” I
said, shocked at the three more Hanks.

Liza had made rings out of gold braid
and made nooses for the three extra dolls in Hank’s
image.

“
Now what are you going to
do with these?” I asked, nervous as all hell to hear the
answer.

“
Well, something very nice,
I assure you. To prevent more harm from coming to them, we’ve got
to do what we’ve got to do,” the Captain answered.

Can’t get much more vague than that, I
thought. But I trusted him more than anyone else.

“
Hey, there’s one that looks
like Nicky. Should I take that too?” He asked.

I thought for a moment...about all of
the deadlines Nicky had missed, about him calling me Allwitch,
about his propensity for escort services and more.

“
No. Just leave that one,” I
said, thinking karma was bound to catch up with Nicky Blane sooner
or later.

Captain Allen raised his eyebrow but
didn’t say a word about my decision.

“
Now then...I need plain,
basic dolls that we can make symbolic of Liza.”

“
Oh no. You’re not going to
hex her!”

“
Relax. We’ve got to have
three in her likeness too for my reversing boxes. Here, these will
do,” he said, taking three of the six dolls laying next to Liza’s
sewing machine.

These dolls hadn’t been dressed up yet
to resemble any others we saw in her case.

“
Okay. What else?” He
muttered, rummaging through the items on the sewing table. “I also
need something that either belongs to or will symbolize her to put
on the dolls.”

Not finding anything to his
satisfaction in her sewing supplies or in the quantity he needed,
he looked around the living room next. It didn’t take long for him
to focus on all of the boxes of shotgun shells.

I opened my mouth wide and started to
speak, but before I could get anything out, he gently closed my
mouth with his large cold hands, then reached into one of the boxes
and removed three shells.

“
I’m making what’s called
reverse mirror protection boxes.”

“
What’s that?” I asked,
giving up on trying to stop him, figuring whatever he was up to
Liza probably deserved it.

“
If you know who jinxed you,
they can always do it again, right? So, you’ve got to bind-up your
enemy in a mirror-box spell. These little beauties will bind up
your enemy and make sure that everything evil they do bounces back
to them, hurting them each time they try to hurt someone
else.”

“
It’s negative
reinforcement, so to speak.”

“
Good way to look at it,
Ace. I’ve got to smash a few mirrors, glue the pieces to the
insides of a box, arrange the doll in Liza’s likeness in the box,
sprinkle it with red pepper and sulfur powder and chant the
spell.”

“
You have a
spell?”

This couldn’t be good. We already had
spells we were trying to undo. We didn’t need to cast
more!

“
I do now. But I can’t say
it till I prepare the box and right before I bury it in the
cemetery and pay the spirits a dime to hold down our little
Liza.”

“
They only charge a dime for
that?”

“
Evidently.”

Damn, if I wasn’t going to go get a
roll of dimes for future use.

“
Okay. I gotta run. I’ll
call you when the box is ready, and if you’d like, we can bury it
together.”

“
Perfect. I want to hear
this spell.”

“
I thought you might enjoy
that.”

He turned to leave, but stopped right
as he was about to exit the living room and go back into the
kitchen.

“
What? What’s the
matter?”

“
What the hell is
that?!”

I followed his gaze, and there, crammed
into the corner of Liza’s sewing area was a small table holding
two, tilted black candles, that had at one time, when lit, dripped
wax on two photos, one of Darryl and one of Hank. She’d printed out
a photo of Hank from a feature the New York Times had done on
him.

Reaching the table at the same time, we
picked up a handwritten recipe card that accompanied the candles
and photos.

“
The Three Nights of Hell
Spell,” I read out loud. “This is a black-magic spell. To be used
only against one’s most dangerous enemies. When cast once, it
causes three days of pain and nightmares. If cast a second time,
the victim will be seriously injured. If cast three or more times,
the victim will surely die.”

My hands trembled causing the notecard
to slip to the floor.

“
Is she on night one, two or
three?” Captain Allen asked, his eyes wide open just like
mine.

“
I have no idea,” I said,
suddenly feeling rather faint.

I reached for the table’s edge just as
the Captain looped his arm through mine to steady me.

“
Well, we’d best find out,”
he said. “Time to wake up Sleeping Beauty.”

“
L
ook,” Liza said, sitting back on the couch between Captain
Allen and I after we’d dragged her out of her bed, “all I did was
tweak the Three Nights of Hell Spell.”

“
Don’t you think that’s a
little dangerous?” I asked.

Actually, more than a little, I thought
to myself.

“
It hasn’t been...until
today...with the extra energy from the gasoline
explosion.”

“
What do you mean by
tweaked?” the Captain asked.

And I so hoped he got an answer to that
question. I’d asked the same one earlier and got
nowhere.

“
I was just going for the
three nights of pain thing. Not the death after night three. I used
my own jingle instead of what’s on the card.”

I held the card in my hand and read the
spell to myself, too damn afraid to read it out loud in case that
would cast it again. It said:

“
As I do this candle
spell,

Bring mine enemy three nights of
hell,

Candle black, black as night,

Bring him pains of flesh tonight!

Lesions on his skin will grow

Afflict him with a painful blow

Sores and pain afflict him now,

For three nights he will wonder
how,

Dukes of darkness, Kings of Hell,

Smite mine enemy, bring him hell.

A creepy energy moved up and down my
arms giving me goose bumps. Surely, I was imagining things. I do
have a rather over the top imagination. So yeah. That had to be
it.

“
Let’s hear your tweaked
version,” Captain Allen commanded.

“
Okay. Fine. No harm can
come of it anyway because we’re not using the candles with the
photos,” Liza said.

Then she chanted:

“
As I do this candle
spell,

Bring mine enemy and my friend’s enemy three
nights of hell,

Candle black, black as night,

Bring them pains of flesh tonight!

Lesions from burns on one’s skin will
grow

While the other, afflict him with a painful
neck blow

Sores and pain afflict them now,

For three nights both assholes will wonder
how,

Dukes of darkness, Kings of Hell,

Smite mine asshat enemies, bring ‘em
hell.

Finished with her cantation, she still
had a wicked sparkle in her eyes, although it appeared much more
dim than when she was in full spellcasting revelry.

“
What about the last part?”
I asked. “This card says you finish by lifting the
curse.”

“
Well...I haven’t done that
part yet.”

“
Do it...now,” directed
Captain Allen. “Or I will arrest you.”

“
On what charges?” She
asked, the wicked sparkle back in place.

I’ll have to admit, I was wondering
that too. How do you arrest someone on suspicion of witchcraft? It
wasn’t like we were in Salem Massachusetts in 1692. But yeah, I
wasn’t dumb enough to ask.

The Captain didn’t answer, and didn’t
look the least bit flustered or concerned at all that he had to
vouch for his threat.

“
Okay. Okay,” Liza said then
sighed. “You really need to lighten up.”

She went over to the small table, lit
the two black candles, let the wax drip on Darryl and Hank’s
pictures, then tore up the photos and said:

When three nights of pain have been
endured,

I lift this curse, rest
assured.

Darkness leave them, go
away.

The curse is lifted now,
today.

“
I don’t know why y’all’s
panties are in such a pinch,” she said, while blowing out the
candles. “I need three different photos of each one before I can do
the death part of the spell. And, I’d only found that one press
shot of Hank.”

“
What a relief,” I
said.

And yes, I was being a total smart ass.
By now, I was more than ready to bail on being her
understudy.

“
I betchya you had
everything you needed on Darryl’s behalf,” the Captain added,
unable to keep a grin from stretching across his lips.

“
I sure did,” she said, damn
near salivating. “But I have to cast the spell three times in the
same month for the death part to work. Lucky for him, I didn’t know
that till yesterday. So, in that regards, the bastard’s safe.
Well...till next month.”