Hunting Witches Read online

  ***

  The hotel had shitty Wi-Fi, and Mark’s laptop wasn’t listening to commands. “It just churns and churns and churns and I can’t even get online,” he whined.

  “We can use my phone as a hot spot,” Nika suggested.

  “Nah,” he said, closing the computer lid. “It’s nothing that can’t wait.”

  Nika, however, was burning up her data plan looking at real estate. “Housing in Bell Plains is stupid expensive,” she said. “Even a shitty little one-bedroom house is going for three times what rational people would ask.”

  “They can get away with it,” Mark said. “The town is growing, so is the housing market.”

  “I really think we should take a look at that Elders Keep place,” Nika said.

  “Bo said it was a dump.”

  “I liked what I saw when we drove through.”

  “You want to go there tomorrow and try to solve The Case of the Missing Apostrophe?” Mark laughed.

  “It’s not that far away from your work,” she said. “We might find someplace nice for less money.”

  “Money is about to not be the object,” he said.

  “Still,” Nika said, “there’s no sense in blowing it just because we have it.”

  Mark shrugged. “As usual, you have a point. Hey, speaking of ‘blowing it…’”

  Nika laughed. “You are about as subtle as a train wreck.”

  Mark raised an eyebrow. “Come on, babe. When’s the last time we had hotel sex? Our honeymoon?”

  “About that,” she said.

  “Well?” he said, slowly pulling down his sleep pants, which were decorated with dinosaurs.

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, cut the lights, big boy.”

  Mark stopped. “I thought, maybe, we could leave the lights on.”

  Nika fluttered her eyelashes and waved her hand in front of her face, like a fan. “Oh, Mister Pendleton,” she said, in her best Southern Belle accent. “You do think of the naughtiest things.”

  “It’s just lights,” Mark said. “I can probably think of naughtier.”

  Then she put his finger over his mouth, and it didn’t matter anymore.

  ***

  “Hotel sex is the best!” Mark exclaimed. “Good goddamn!”

  “I agree, sweetheart,” Nika said, “but if there’s any way we could keep the discussion to ourselves, and not involve all the people around us eating pancakes in this restaurant, I would appreciate it oh, so very much.”

  It was Saturday morning, and a conservatively dressed couple was staring at Mark and Nika like they had just pooped on their waffles. Mark smiled and raised his cup of coffee towards them, in salute. The couple looked down at their plates.

  “So, what are we doing today, Admiral?” Mark asked, the volume of his voice lowered.

  Nika picked up a newspaper from the empty chair next to her.

  “House hunting,” she said.

  “I thought you said the Bell Plains houses were too expensive,” Mark said.

  “They are.”

  “Even with what I’m getting paid?”

  Nika shook her head. “Honey, I’m glad for the money, but I don’t trust it. I don’t know how long it’s going to last, and we need to save as much of it as we can.”

  “You don’t think Dynagraph is solid?” Mark asked.

  “I think Bo is a delightful madman,” Nika said. “I think he’s got a good thing going right now. But I also know that if it falls apart, which a lot of upstarts do, he’s going to be fine. We’re not. So if we can hold back on our spending even just a little, we’re going to be better off in the end. Cutting back on housing costs is an easy way to do that, if we can find the right place.”

  Mark laughed and shook his head. “All right, Navigator. What did you do?”

  “We are going to spend our morning running around the charming little town of Elders Keep with a real estate agent, looking for a new place to live,” she said.

  “Were you planning on asking me about that?”

  “No.”

  Mark pursed his lips and nodded his head. “Well, all right. Can’t hurt to look, right?”

  “My thoughts, exactly,” Nika said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mark said. “Bell Plains, Elders Keep, wherever. It’s not Atlanta.”

  ***

  Penny Renfro was smiling too much.

  Standing in the driveway, watching the Pendletons plan their future, with their smiles of hope and far-away stares of romantic love, Penny clenched her right hand into a fist. Her bright orange acrylic nails stabbed into her palm, and the pain gave her something to focus on besides the adorable God-damned Pendletons. She was sick of tired of pretending to be nice.

  Now the black woman was snapping out of her reverie and they were getting back into their car, so happy, and they were waving at her with giant grins on their faces.

  Penny Renfro smiled back, waving with her left hand, so the Pendletons wouldn’t see the blood dripping down her right wrist. She watched them drive away, conflict and anger running all over her, a scream building in the back of her throat. It was important to have new people in the Keep. Her business depended on people moving into the Keep. Penny knew she was overreacting.

  But why these people? She had despised them from the moment they had shaken hands in front of the real estate office. She hated the sound of their voices, the way they looked at each other. As a professional, she would make sure the purchase went through as quickly and as seamlessly as possible. It wasn’t like she couldn’t use the commission. She kept waving as they drove away, imagining their cute little car with the sunroof exploding into a sweet cleansing ball of flame and petrochemicals, the screams of the Pendletons echoing off the empty houses, her own laughter reaching the ears of God, where it was taken as a living sacrifice, and was found acceptable.

  ***

  It had been three fast weeks of phone calls, faxed documents and sleepless nights. They had gotten approved for the loan within forty-eight hours, and the next thing Mark and Nika Pendleton knew, they were shoving their belongings into the back of a rented truck. It was a Wednesday night, and Mark was due to start his new job at Dynagraph the following Monday. Everything had fallen into place, right as it was supposed to.

  He had wondered about that, how the doors had opened at the right times and they had been in a perfect position to walk through them. He had tried to bring it up with Nika, but she shut him down.

  “Don’t even talk about it,” she said. “You’ll ruin it. You’ll jinx everything. Now, hand me that box. I need it to brace the bed frame over here.”

  Mark sighed and did as he was told.

  “This thing’s almost packed all the way up,” he said. “Where are we sleeping tonight?”

  Nika shrugged. “I guess in this truck.”

  Mark nodded. “Sounds good. That won’t hurt my back at all.”

  Laughing, Nika said, “We’ll sleep in the apartment on the floor. I saved out a couple blankets and some pillows.”

  “Sounds good,” Mark repeated. “That won’t hurt my back at all.”

  “Oh, come on, Paleface,” Nika said. “It will be our last night in the old place, and it’s the cleanest it’s been in years.”

  “Should I get some wine and candles?” Mark asked.

  Nika turned and pointed. “Look in the box right there.”

  Mark opened the box. There were twelve white taper candles, two bottles of Riesling and a corkscrew.

  “You think of everything, don’t you?”

  “I have to,” she said. “I live with you. More boxes, now! I want this thing packed and locked before we get dinner.”

  Mark handed her a couple of lightweight boxes marked BATHROOM. “Seriously, though, Nika, don’t you think it’s strange how…”

  Nika interrupted him immediately. “You need to stop. We’re never surprised when things fall through. How come it’s always such a shock when things work out?”

  Mark shrugged.
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br />   “You got a great new job. I got a beautiful new house. We both get to leave the big city, maybe put down some roots. We got what we wanted. Don’t question it. Just enjoy it without trying to pick it apart, okay?”

  “All right,” Mark said. “Think about where you want to go for dinner and I’ll get the last of the boxes.”

  ***

  They lay on the floor in the living room, candles half burned, shadows shifting on the bare white walls.

  “You smell like garlic,” Nika said.

  “I know, right?” Mark said. “I’m just going to revel in it. We had a great Italian meal on our last night in Atlanta, and you already packed our toothbrushes.”

  “A small oversight,” she said.

  “At least I didn’t eat clams,” Mark said. “You smell like garlic and bad fish.”

  “How is that different from any other night?” Nika laughed.

  “You’re gross,” Mark said, and they both laughed, the sound echoing through the empty apartment.

  “I’m going to miss this place a little,” Mark said. “Our first real place together. Lots of memories here, babe.”

  “It’s a chapter, honey. We wrote it, and now we get to close it. We did good things here. We had fun. We learned a lot. And now it’s time to move on. Make some new memories. Have an adventure. I’m ready. I think we’re both ready.”

  “Yeah, I’m ready,” Mark agreed. “So we should get some sleep. We’ve got to be in Bell Plains by two o’clock for the closing and then we’ve got to unload the truck at the new place.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “We’ve got a one-way trip to the future tomorrow.”

  “Who’s going to drive the truck?” Mark asked.

  “Oh, hell. I am. You have a hard enough time parking in an empty lot.”

  “I’m not a bad driver!” Mark retorted.

  “You’re not driving that big-ass truck,” Nika said, “and that’s it. And if you’re honest, you’ll realize that you are happy to be married to a strong independent woman who can haul ass down the road in a big diesel truck and not some mousy girl who can’t do nothin’ for herself.”

  “I’m glad I married you,” he said, and put his head on her shoulder. She wrapped her arm around him and pulled him close.

  “There’s a theory,” Nika whispered, “that when you’re in a place, the structure itself absorbs all the things you say, all the residual energy of the emotions expended here. It stays in the walls, the cabinets, the place just holds it. Some people think that if you had the right listening equipment, you could hear those things, those memories and experiences, and listen to them like a song.”

  “I like that thought,” Mark murmured. “I wonder what our song would be.”

  “’Free Bird,’” Nika said, and then she fell asleep.

  ***

  When morning broke, Mark and Nika were already up, dressed and in the process of hitting the road. Nika made a big deal of rolling up her sleeves before slipping behind the wheel of the truck. She even spent the morning singing “Eastbound and Down” and calling Mark “Bandit.” When she started the engine, she stuck her arm out the window and flexed it, moving it up and down like she was honking a truck horn.

  Mark shook his head, got into their tiny compact car and fired it up, the sound of its fuel-efficient four cylinder engine almost non-existent underneath the grumble of Nika’s diesel. Mark turned on the radio. The sound system in the little car was good, and it made Mark feel a little more masculine.

  With a slight grinding of gears from the cranky rental, they rolled out.

  For a moment, as they were putting Peachtree Hell behind them, Nika wished she had gone to the Varsity one more time, just for one last milk shake. Maybe they should have gone to Atlanta Underground instead of having that last Italian meal. Done something more distinctively Atlanta, something to show they had been there. Gotten a key chain at a Stuckey’s. Bought a couple of shot glasses. She wished for some kind of souvenir besides fading memories.

  Then, before she knew it, old Turner Field was behind them and they were cruising through the outliers. It was still pretty early in the day, so they weren’t losing much time when Nika pulled off in Dalton to get some more gas. Mark parked in front of the convenience store and strutted over to Nika, who had already begun pumping fuel.

  “What’s this shit?” he asked. “I’ve still got a good three quarters of a tank left over there in the itty bitty car.”

  “We gotta get me one of these,” Nika says. “Thing rumbles and shimmies so much, I might divorce you and marry it.”

  “That’s not fair,” Mark laughed. “Besides, I’m not sure they would allow that kind of marriage in Tennessee. That would be like marrying a robot, or a tractor, or something.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Nika asked. “At least the truck isn’t gay.”

  “Sick burn,” Mark said. “Hey, you want a biscuit? I’m going to grab a biscuit and something to drink from the gas station.”

  “You could get me a bottled water,” she said. “That would be fine.”

  “I’m on it,” Mark said and, whistling, he walked to the store.

  Nika checked her phone. Plenty of time and no calls from Penny Renfro. Good. That meant no delays, no cancellations, no last minute hurdles.

  The diesel pump handle clicked up under her fingers. Full tank. Nika spun on her heels and put the nozzle back into its holder. The LED screen asked if she wanted a receipt. Normally, she would have said no. It all shows up online anyway. But seeing as how they were In Transition, she figured she may as well hold onto it. It was possible that Bo would reimburse them for the fuel, and she also didn’t want to lose any transactions while switching from one bank to another.

  “Here,” Mark said, handing her a cold bottle of water and a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit.

  “I told you I wasn’t hungry,” Nika said.

  “I know the look of a woman who wants some damned breakfast,” Mark scoffed. “Now get back up in your truck, Jan-Michael Vincent, and let’s get some white line fever going.”

  Nika nodded. “Hell, yeah. Breaker one-nine and shit.”

  “Jesus, I can’t wait to return this truck.”

  “Go drive your tiny car, little man,” Nika cried, and she jumped back up into the driver’s seat, cranked the engine and slammed the door. Mark got into his wise purchase and followed Nika back onto the expressway.

  ***

  For about fifteen miles before Interstate 75 merges into Interstate 40, all the radio stations start to fade out. It’s a dead zone, like there’s a need for technology to give the human mind time to ponder what it is doing. Are you sure you want to go further North? You’re about to enter a whole different state. It’s not too late to turn around. Are you positive this is what you want to do?

  The air smells different, like dogwoods and forest fires, and even the sun seems to refract in odd directions, the sun burning green while the sky looks bluer than you ever thought possible. The road stretches out before you, endless asphalt, and you begin to believe there may be something at the end of it, something designed for you and only you.

  You remember for a moment when you were young and you tried to catch the stars in your hand. It’s that feeling again, that sense of wonder and curiosity, before days became dreaded things, blocks of drudgery, time to be killed.

  Then, before your mind can even register an answer, you’re at the ass end of Campbell Station Road, seeing signs for the Crosseyed Cricket campground and listening to Aerosmith on WIMZ, classic rock screaming through a transmitter just about strong enough to cover the whole damned state. Even with the chill, you roll down the window and spread your fingers against the wind. The bracing cold does nothing but reinforce your decision.

  This is where you are. This is how you live now. This place, with all of its mysteries and pockets to discover, is ready for you to claim it. In your mind, you plant a flag at the edge of a cliff.

  You’re home.

 
***

  Penny Renfro was smiling too much. As she stood in the lobby of the First National Bank in Bell Plains, three gigantic manila folders of paperwork in her sweaty hands, she had to force herself to remain professional. It didn’t matter how far away she went from the Keep. Penny could always hear the drums, pounding away in the back of her head like a fading migraine. The sound kept her connected to the town while simultaneously threatening to drive her mad.

  When Mark and Nika walked in, Penny shook their hands. “You’ve never been through a closing before, am I right?” she asked.

  Mark and Nika shook their heads.

  “Well,” Penny said, “crack your knuckles. You’re about to sign your names more times in a row than you ever have in your lives.”

  I hope you hate it, Penny thought. I hope you balk. I hope you walk away from this table and drive your asses back to Atlanta. I hope you change your minds and get the hell out of my town.

  “Let’s do this,” Mark said, and Nika nodded in agreement.

  The next two hours were a swarm of bankers and pens, bad coffee in squeaky foam cups and long detailed explanations of things the Pendletons would never remember. Checks were written, checks were given; representations of money circled the table like satellites. Penny was right, too. Everything was signed and re-signed in triplicate, and with every signature, the copying machine in the corner hummed and whirred, while another money manager fretted over every piece of paper that came out of it. Mortgages and escrow accounts and home insurance and words of warning mixed with words of encouragement and all through it, Penny Renfro signed and filed, signed and filed, totally lost in the rhythm of the process which was matching up with the pounding in her brain, like windshield wipers suddenly syncing up to radio songs in the car.

  Mark and Nika were hyper-aware, flinching at every shuffle of paper, every click of a pen. They were ready to sign anything placed in front of them. Forms, loans, a hyena: it didn’t matter. They were signature machines. And then, it was over.