Yellowstone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

“Tell us a story, Aunt Audry.”

“A story?” Audry Bruchenhaus breathed a little hard as she hiked up the slope in the meadow, lagging with her niece and nephew behind the larger group of adults in her family. She brushed some of the loose strands of her bushy brown hair out of her blue-green eyes, gazing across the open forest scenery. The view was breathtaking, with its yellow wildflowers and flagged pine trees. All sorts of grasses covered the slope, and there were scatterings of tiny wildlife crawling and flying over them, through them and under them. But even that beauty can be wasted on children who were bored of walking and walking and walking toward a campground they themselves did not select.  

“Yeah,” her twelve-year-old nephew, Skyler, chimed in while hefting up his pack. “And make it a scary one.

“But not about bears!” declared her niece, Maris (who was nine), with her long wavy pigtails flying behind her, as she jogging up the path next to her aunt to get close. And for good reason. They were in the bear country of Yellowstone National Park, and sightings of bear tracks and scat had been seen during their entire hike by everyone. All of them had bear spray nearly in hand.

“Ok. Not about bears,” Audry promised. “Do you want one about lions? I’ve also got a good one about a hyena pack we encountered in Africa.”

“Not about animals!” Maris whined, tugging hard on Audry’s arm. “Not while were out here.”

“I’m here to protect you.” Audry patted her legally-registered, safety-approved, tranquilizer gun which she used when doing her wildlife rescue work. Audry was finishing up her PhD in wildlife conservancy, now aiming to find work with a conservancy group as soon as she was done. She had been all over studying methods for animal rescue and conservation—mostly Africa and North America, though she did have one month in India once, and another in Sichuan Province in China, curious about the panda conservancy. Thing was, her expertise was in the predators, like bears and wolves. And she had tons of poacher stories as well as stories of near misses with dangerous animals, of which her niece and nephew were usually connoisseurs—though apparently not today.

“Tell us that story about that witch you lived with,” Skyler said, grinning while panting to keep up with the group ahead, just ahead of Audry and Maris.

Audry nearly lost her footing on the slope. She halted as he caught herself with a more secure step. “Where did you hear about that?”

Skyler shrugged. “I overheard Dad talking about it with Grandpa.”

Coloring, not just from the heat but also due to the return of some pretty freaky memories, Audry shook her head and continued onward. “That… is a whole different kind of scary.”

“Please!” Skyler begged,

“Please!” Maris grabbed her wrist.

“What? Do you two want nightmares?” Audry audibly moaned, eyes moving up to the happily blue sky and fluffy, friendly clouds overhead.

Skyler and Maris exchanged glances and said together, “Bears are scarier.”

They would think like that. Bears were, after all, more real than witches.

Audry had never really believed in witches, even after she had met one and moved in with her. The entire idea of magic was ridiculous. And though at one point in her life she had read supernatural romances, as it was the trend and they did contain a bit of excitement she did not see in her regular day, she had long out grown them. The problem was, her witch roommate had convinced her of one thing—people who claimed to be witches were dangerous.

“Ok, so the story goes like this.” Audry shook her head, sure she was going to regret this. “I met Silvia Lewis, a self-proclaimed witch, at Green Club when I was at NYU. She was this creepy goth chick—”

“What’s goth?” Maris asked, squeezing Audry’s hand.

Nodding to her, Audry remembered that she had to keep this simple. They were kids. “Uh, people who like to dress up in an old spooky way. They wear lots of black and red. And their clothes make you think of Halloween.”

“Oh…”

“Anyway,” Audry thought in her head of ways to simplify the story, yet make it interesting enough for Skyler who did not like being talked down to. “Silvia was in our club, and I really didn’t spend much time with her at all back then, and I probably would never have gotten involved with her if it were not for my ex-boyfriend Harlin.”

“Oh, Harlin the sleaze,” Maris said, nodding heavily as one who was in all the know about him—which was ridiculous as Maris was only six when Audry had broken up with him. Audry stared at her. Shrugging, Maris ducked back. “That’s what Mom calls him.”

Shrugging also, Audry said, “Ooookay. Um. Anyway, Harlin was indeed a sleaze bag. And Harlin used to date her when he and I were… you know, on the outs.”

“What?” Skyler gaped at her with disbelief. “You mean, he went back and forth between you two?”

Audry shrugged, pinking at the cheeks. “What can I say? Back then I was a glutton for punishment.”

“Because he was a sleazy charmer,” Maris interjected with a nod—probably what her mother also said.

Blushing, Audry nodded. “Yes. But anyway… point is, when I finally broke up with him, Harlin started to stalk me.”

“What does that mean?” Maris asked, finally in a realm her mother did not talk about.

“That means he followed her everywhere,” Skyler snapped, huffing. “Now shut up, and let her tell the story!”

“Don’t be a meanie!” Maris ducked around Audry to get away from Skyler who stuck his tongue out at her.

“Hey.” Audry lifted up her hands, as Skyler chased after his little sister, swaying from the battle whipping around her waist. “If you two are going to fight, I’ll just end the story right now.”

“No!” They both whined, lurching to stops like kids playing freeze-tag.

“Ok, then.” Audry then continued up the hill while they still made faces at each other but, thank heaven, stopped fighting. “Now where was I?”

“You were being stalked by the creepy slime ball,” Skyler summed up.

“Yes.” Audry nodded, getting back into it. “So, Silvia decided to help me keep away from Harlin, as she felt the same way about him. Now, Cousin Vincent was visiting at the time, and he and I went to the police station to get a personal protection order on the guy. You know, legal stuff to stop him, so I could call the police on him if he got too close to me. But anyway, the point is, when I was preparing for this party in New York that Vincent needed a date for—and because he could not get a date a last minute he brought me….” Audry halted, thinking. “Ok, ok, um, I lost track… uh, Oh yes. Vincent needed a date for this thing, and I ended up being it. And I had to dress up all fancy like because it was one of those high class rich-folk parties your Great Grandparent Bruchenhaus go to for networking among other rich folk. So, Vincent found a fancy hair salon where I could get it done up all Cinderella-ball-like, and wouldn’t you know it, Silvia worked as a hairdresser—secretly.”

“I thought you said she was a witch,” Skyler said. “This isn’t scary at all.”

Audry huffed. “I’m getting to it. Back then, I just thought she was a creepy, but sexy Goth girl.”

“Ooooh!” Maris wagged a finger up at her aunt. “Dad says we shouldn’t say ‘sexy’ when talking about people. We should say ‘handsome’ or ‘beautiful’.”

“He says ‘sexy’ gives the wrong idea,” Skyler put as an explanatory aside, nodding.

Audry shrugged. “Ok… But uh, she didn’t dress ‘beautifully’ if you understand my meaning.”

Skyler smirked, nodding.

“She kind of wanted to give the wrong idea.” Audry chuckled, thinking about it. Of course, Silvia dressed less sexy the more they had spent time together. Fact was, Silvia had lightened up a great deal since they had become roommates, no longer Goth. Audry wondered how she was, now that she was married. It had been a while. Audry had gotten the postcard from Las Vegas where Silvia and her beloved Randon Spade had eloped. None of their friends or family would have supported the wedding so they had snuck off together. Audry hardly knew Randon at all except that he was a friend of a friend. He had seemed decent, though. He was a veterinarian.

“Are you going to finish the story?” Maris tugged on her arm.

Coming out of her reverie, Audry chuckled. “Sorry. Um. Let me see, uh, anyway. Silvia confided in me around then that she was a witch—but not just any witch. She was a witch who wanted to leave her coven.”

“What’s a coven?” Maris asked.

“A group of witches,” Skyler said, giving her the stink eye.

“It’s a bit more than that,” Audry explained.

They both gazed up at her.

“Silvia said the coven in her town was actually a powerful organization that controlled her hometown, a bit like the mafia. It went under the guise of the Ladies Aide Society and the Junior League.”

Their eyes widened on her. They knew about such women’s organizations as their Great-Grandmother Bruchenhaus was part of one. Such organizations were filled mostly with wealthy women who were busybodies who sometimes did good, but often just bullied people to conform to their social mold. That was what their mother said about it, anyway.

“If the coven wanted something, a selected witch had to go do that thing or get that thing.” Audry shook her head. “Silvia said her mother was ordered to marry her father by orders of the coven because he had an important job in a powerful globally-influential company. She even suspected that her father’s first, previous, wife was killed during childbirth so her mom could take her place.”

“No way!” they both said.

“Yeah.” Audry nodded. “I met her half-brother who is older than her not even by a year—the son of the first wife. And he said his mother died in childbirth, and his father remarried right away so someone could take care of him. But that is so weird. I mean, wouldn’t it have made more sense to just get a nanny? But anyway… his stepmother, who had three kids with his dad, starting with Silvia, was unable to control him in the way the coven had wanted. So in the end, she divorced him with some excuse, taking her three kids with her, whom she also trained in witchcraft.

“The thing is, Silvia said that no witch is allowed to leave the coven, ever.” Audry nodded to them as she finally got to the point of the matter.

They silently walked up the hill, taking in this information. Their eyes rested on a pair of deer antlers at the side of the path. No skull. Just the antlers. Skyler picked it up, letting Maris feel it also as they continued on.

“But she was trying to leave, right?” Skyler murmured, stroking the white bone. “You said so.”

Audry nodded. “Yeah. Now here is where it gets weird. You see, Silvia and I share another mutual acquaintance—someone whom I bumped into on occasion, including at that time—which was completely unintended. I’m sure you’ve heard from your Great-Grandma Bruchenhaus and possibly Cousin Vincent, that I happen to know H. Richard Deacon the Third.”

Skyler and Maris nodded, exchanging smothered glances. It was mostly likely their Great-Grandma Bruchenhaus had said something to her son (their grandfather) about how Audry ought to marry the guy—never mind that he was ‘new money’. It had been one of the briefest conversations she had had with her grandmother, way back when she had been temporarily engaged to another ex-boyfriend. Her grandmother did not care that Audry had a distaste for rich men, new or old money. Audry did not want to have anything to do with Society life.

“It turns out that Silvia and he grew up in the same town and went to the same schools—well mostly. He did spend a short time in a New York private school.”

They nodded, eagerly listening.

“Well, anyway, Rick decided to—”

“Rick?” Maris queried, confused.

“Oh!” Audry blushed. “He, uh, goes by his middle name. He likes to be called Rick. Well, anyway—”

“But why?” Skyler asked. “What does the ‘H’ stand for?”

“Aunt Audry likes men with names that start with H,” Maris declared, with her chin lifted.

Audry blushed more. Technically, that was only accurate for two of her past boyfriends. Harlin and Hogan. Her other exes were not H names. “The H stands for Howard. And his old friends used to all him Howie. But he doesn’t like it anymore, and he stopped using it after his mother divorced his dad.”

“Oh.” They both stared.

After a short pause, Audry said, “Anyway, Rick Deacon decided to support Silvia’s choice to leave her coven by providing her an apartment off the books. And I decided to help her.”

“Oh…” They both nodded.

“The thing is,” Audry said in a hush, “Rick warned me against moving in with her. He thought it was a bad idea. He warned me that professed witches were dangerous.

“Well, despite what he said, things were fine with her and me for a good while. Silvia learned vegan cooking, and I ignored most of her silly witch stuff. It was mostly herbal remedies and silly superstitious stuff anyway.” Audry chuckled. “Later, I went to Africa for some more work toward my PhD, and when I got back, Silvia was doing great with her work at the hair salon—totally non-witchy. And all would have been well, if only…” Audry sighed, shaking her head. “One day, she just started to leave notes for me, leaving the apartment early, coming home late. And I soon found out that she actually had not been home at all, but was sending messages through friends from her work. And then… I saw them.”

“Them?” Skyler asked. “Them what? Them who?”

Nodding slowly, Audry said, “The witches from her coven who had come to New York City to hunt her down.”

Both Maris and Skyler drew in breaths.

“We’re here!” called from the group ahead—probably her brother Doug. Audry could not tell for sure. His voice was so much like their father’s.

She paused her story, gesturing for her niece and nephew to hurry up to the camp as undoubtedly the others would want help unpacking the tents and setting up the hanging food cache.

“You’ll finish the story later?” Skyler begged, jogging backwards on the path.

Audry waved, nodding. “Sure thing.”

It was just her immediate family hiking together on their annual summer campout, not a large group. Every year they picked a different place in the world for a camping trip, and this was their first in Yellowstone. They would have gone earlier, but they wanted both Maris and Skyler to be a little older and more responsible as it was bear country, and they did not need any ridiculously thoughtless behavior going on while in such dangerous territory. Of course they were also counting on Audry to make sure of their safety. Both kids would sleep in her tent, along with her ‘animal rescue’ gear. They did not trust bear mace to be enough of a deterrent when two little children were romping around.

When Audry reached the camp, after dumping off the tent and her pack with Skyler, she helped her older brother Doug to collect firewood. Skyler had been charged to pitch their tent by himself for his scouting badge, so Audry had to make do with being helpful in another way. Jean, Doug’s wife, was assembling their mess kitchen next to the fire pit. Audry passed along the packed veggies and fruit she had been carrying, but Jean was taking out the pre-chopped meat. Jean was a former vegan, much to Audry’s dismay.

Her sister-in-law (who was a nurse) was mostly vegetarian still, but she had reintroduced fish and eggs into her family’s diet three months ago, having decided her family was getting deficient in necessary natural ‘good’ fats, especially for growing children. She was currently praising the good of bone-broth from free-range grass-fed animals, something Audry thought abhorrent. Luckily, Jean was politely respectful in that she had arranged two types of meals—vegan for Audry, and for the others the more carnivorous fare. Admittedly, Audry was still struggling with being total vegan, as she too enjoyed dairy from time to time, and eggs. But the departure of her brother’s family from the kinder way of eating was disappointing.

When she had collected enough firewood, and they had gone to the creek to fill up their depleted canteens and water bladders with the fresh stuff, Skyler and Maris were back on her heels, demanding for the rest of the story.

“Where did I leave off?” Audry asked, sitting down next to where her father was constructing the start of a cook fire.

“The witches found her!” Maris declared.

Skyler nodded. “In New York City.”

“Ok.” Audry rubbed her hands together, thinking of where to go from there. “This was when I just came back from Africa with my latest and last boyfriend—”

“The dirty louse, Hogan Orwell!” Maris declared, arm up and pointing to the sky.

Maris’s mother, Jean, smothered a chuckle with a cough.

Audry shot her a dirty look. “We are going to have to have a talk about the gossip in our family.

“But anyway, I was back in New York to finish off that part of my PhD and planning for the rest of it. It was just after a huge beach cleanup. And Silvia was making herself scarce—though I did not know why at the time.” Audry nodded to herself. “I saw the first one spying on me near my apartment. But she did not look like a witch—or what I thought a witch was supposed to look like.”

“What does a witch look like?” Skyler asked.

Shrugging, Audry said, “I thought they would all look like Silvia. You know, gothic, spooky, loose.”

Maris looked confused. “Loose?”

Her mother cleared her throat, shooting Audry a furtive warning look.

Audry rolled her eyes. “The kind of girl your mom does not want you to be.”

Jean smothered a grin with a tiny nod.

Maris shrugged, peeking to her mom who had been taking out all the plastic snap-lid containers for the assemble-your-self kebabs they planned to have to begin the assembly line. She also had tin foil, chocolate, marshmallows and bananas for something else.

“So what did this witch look like?”

“Well…” Audry contemplated it. “She was loose. Your mom is going to hate me for saying this but, the best description of this woman is ‘hooker Barbie’.”

Skyler choked on a laugh, hoping his mother did not see or hear him. But his father halted in stacking the firewood next to the pit where his grandfather had also stopped in construction of his mini wood teepee.

“She wore lots of pink leather,” Audry explained, “A miniskirt to all miniskirts, and these plastic, high heel pink clogs. And her fingernails were these fancy manicured things. Oh, and like, superstar makeup.”

“How did you know she was a witch?” Maris asked, tilting her head to one side.

Audry nodded to her. “At first, I didn’t know.”

“There’s no such things as witches,” Jean interjected, heaving an irritated breath.

Nodding to her, Audry replied, “With all due respect, these women were self-proclaimed witches. I’m not saying they’re like Harry Potter magic wand waving, or even all that stuff from TV. But they believed in this stuff that they called witchcraft.”

“Why are you telling them this story?” Jean then asked, hands to hips.

Skyler moaned. So did Maris, seeing their mother was going to put an end to it.

Unapologetically, and frankly, Audry said with a shrug, “They wanted a scary story that wasn’t about bears—or any animal. And they requested this one.”

“Come on, Mom. Please!” Skyler clapped his hands together, begging. “Let her finish the story. It is just a story.”

Sighing, Jean shot Audry a look that said it all. She was not to terrify her kids. Keep it friendly.

Audry shrugged. It wasn’t like the kids were going to all of a sudden believe in witches after this. But she looked to her brother and said, “I’m just telling about why I left New York—one of the reasons at least.”

“It has to do with witches?” Doug came up and sat next to Skyler, pulling Maris onto his lap for her comfort, though Maris wasn’t scared yet.

Audry nodded. “Partially. You know the other reason.”

And he did. She had nearly been raped by her ex-fiancé, Hogan. Yet even then, the plan to leave had already been in effect. Audry had left New York City mostly to get away from that crowd. Not the witches. But those friends and acquaintances of hers connected to Silvia and Rick. It had simply been too much. The witches had merely been the tip of the iceberg, as well as the straw to the camel’s back. The witches were comprehendible. The others were not.

“Tell the rest of the story,” Doug begged. “I want to hear it.”

“Yay!” Maris said, fists in the air, while her mother rolled her eyes and gave up.

“Ok.” Audry smiled at him. Then she went back into her head for the tale. “So, I met the one witch. At first, she was just following me to find Silvia. But I didn’t even know where Silvia was. Later, I saw that Barbie lady had two friends with her. One looked as normal and ordinary as any girl I knew. And the other one… Have either of you seen the movie Hanna?”

“I have,” Skyler declared.

Maris shook her head.

“It was too scary for you,” her father said, hugging her.

“Ok, well, the other girl looked at lot like Hanna from the movie, really pale with flyaway hair but with wild, crazy eyes.” Audry shuddered, thinking about the last time she had seen that girl too, right before Audry identified her in a prison lineup. “The thing is, I had no clue who they were until Silvia’s brother Daniel showed up, looking for his sister. Silvia sent him an email calling for help, as she knew the witches were after her.”

“Why were these witches after her?” Jean asked, unable to restrain herself, though it was with a degree of disdain.

“She was trying to leave the coven,” Audry explained.

Skyler and Maris nodded.

“And no one is allowed to leave the coven,” Skyler added.

His mother’s eyes widened on him. She then looked to Audry with a degree of panic.

“So,” Audry said, continuing on. “Daniel arranged for her to meet us at the police station and—”

“How did the witches find her?” her brother Doug asked.

“Uh…” Audry frowned on this. She never really liked the explanation they had given her. “Well, according to Silvia, witches know how to… scry for someone. That is, it is a kind of magic spell where they use a map, something personal from the person they want to find, and a hanging crystal or pentagram.”

“Then how come they did not find her earlier?” her brother asked, seeking the obvious holes in this logic.

Shrugging, Audry replied, “Uh, Silvia claimed to have enacted a kind of counter-spell, called shadowing. It works best with a willing extra-person called a shadow, and a safe location. And she claimed she had made me her shadow—only I wasn’t a willing participant, so it was a weak shadow. Our apartment was the safe location.”

Her brother raised his eyebrows.

“Look,” Audry said, levelling with him, “I’m not saying I believe in any of this. Only…” she stared in to space. The second time she was a shadow for Silvia, it had worked—but that was when she had suspended disbelief and had agreed to be it. To this day, Audry could not explain how it worked—as even the witches truly could not see her except when she presented herself to them.

“The point is,” Audry shook that thought out of her head, “Daniel and I ended up making arrangements with the police and… well, Rick Deacon who was there—to move Silvia and I to a safe house.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Doug lifted up his hands. “Hold on! Wait! You are saying that your last apartment was set up by H. Richard Deacon the Third?”

“Daaaad!” Maris moaned “You’re spoiling the story.”

“Just a minute, sweetie,” he said to Maris. Looking to Audry, he waited for the answer.

Rolling her eyes, Audry’s shoulders slumped. “Technically, my last two apartments in New York were set up by Rick Deacon. Same reason.”

Doug pulled back, staring at his kid sister.

She averted her eyes. “Anyway, all of this was going on while I was also dealing with finding out that Hogan was scumbag philanderer while also being engaged to him.”

“Oh. Then,” Grandpa Bruchenhaus said. He had halted in his fire building, also listening intently.

Audry sighed. This was inevitable. “So, as I was saying, I was being stalked by witches who wanted to find Silvia. In fact, we were being stalked—Hogan, me, and Great-Grandma Bruchenhaus—by the pink Barbie one. Her name was Danna, by the way. And by that time Silvia was helping out with our friend and her new baby, so Silvia wasn’t even with me anymore.”

“Which friend?” her father asked, curious.

“Jessica.” Audry sighed. “Jessica Cartwright, once Mason. You never met her. But… and this is kind of funny, she was the cop who arrested Harlin Nichols when he was stalking me.”

“Oh…” Doug nodded in approval. “She was your roommate for a while to, wasn’t she?”

Shaking her head, Audry grinned. “No. We just spent so much time together that it just seemed like that.”

“I spoke to her on the phone a couple times.”

“Yeah, well, she married Rick Deacon’s best friend.” Audry then laughed, amazed how much she had gotten entangled in that man’s associations. “And they now have a kid. Her daughter should be a year old now. They even gave her my middle name.”

“What’s her name?” Maris asked.

“Ivy Chandra Cartwright.” Audry smiled at her.

“Boring!” Skyler hung his shoulders. “Where’s the scary part? You said this was going to be a scary story.”

Looking to him, Audry nodded, thinking the entire thing had been pretty scary. But she had to finish this tale. “You’re right. Where was I?”

“You were being stalked by that pink witch,” Skyler supplied, sounding annoyed.

“Right.” Audry nodded again. “Ok, so I called the cops.”

“Oh, and did they come in time?” her father asked.

Skyler nodded, wanting to know also.

“Here’s the thing,” Audry said, “I actually know a few policemen in New York who gave me a direct line. And the reason why, which I did not tell you, was that they were trying to catch some murders who had killed two women and a cat already.”

“And a cat?” Doug smirked, raising his eyebrows.

Ignoring him, Audry said, “And they suspected the murderers were these witches.”

Jean drew in a breath. So had her brother.

“Basically, I was bait for them,” Audry explained. Skyler’s eyes went wide. “They did not tell me I was. Except one of them, Officer Matthew Calamori said I would not like their methods. They had already impounded my car, saying those witches bugged it—and later they sold it at an auction without my permission. So I lost my car—”

“That’s why the new one,” her father murmured, nodding. “I never thought you’d give up your limping hatchback.”

“Well, why would I?” Audry protested. “I loved that car! Besides, I took it to a shop and it ran great afterwards. All fixed. And at a fair price too.”

“That sounds more mythic than witches,” her mother muttered, joining Jean in food preparation. She started to assemble the fruit and veggie kabobs, leaving the meat ones for Jean to do.

Shrugging, Audry continued with the story. “All the same… But anyway, the point is, I was used as bait without my knowledge. And as that pink Barbie stalked us, the cops got their evidence for harassment so they could take that witch in. So, two down. –Oh! I forgot. They caught the normal one at the university first. She was asking questions about me on campus, stalking me there, and I called it in. They picked her up in no time for trespassing. It was the third one who we did not know where she was. And she was the crazy one.”

“Aren’t they all crazy?” Jean murmured. “They think they are witches.”

Audry decided not to argue. “The last girl, we had no clue where she was. And it turned out, she was the one who had gone nuts and killed those two ladies. Silvia herself said that neither Danna nor that other girl were that nuts. But the one that was loose…?” Audry shook her head.

“But anyway, around this time I found out what a scumbag Hogan was, and I broke off the engagement.” Audry nodded to her parents who nodded back. She had to set the timeline at least. “Then I went to Tanzania, while Vincent tried to clear out my stuff from the apartment—but didn’t get it all. But while I was in Tanzania, I realized I really needed to come back stateside and go into my Western US wildlife research instead. So I came back early.”

She regarded Skyler and Maris again who seemed a little bored, especially as the adults had commandeered most of the conversation. “When I got back, I convinced Vincent to help me get the rest of my stuff from that apartment. I still had the key.

“Well, Silvia was there with her new boyfriend, who is now husband, Randon Spade.”

“Randon Spade?” Jean repeated, marveling at the sound of the name. “What is he? A detective?”

Audry laughed, shaking her head. “No. A veterinarian. And he’s really nice.”

Jean nodded in approval.

“But he is also a friend of a friend… but anyway we—”

“What do you mean?” Doug asked, curious.

Sighing, Audry looked to him. “He also went to Gulinger Private Academy with Rick Deacon.”

“Small world,” her father muttered, going back to building the fire. Her mother had nudged him, waving the kebabs for his face.

“Wow.” Doug did not have much more to say than that, really.

“But anyway, when Vincent and I saw them there, also packing up stuff, Randon and Vincent went upstairs to deal with furniture while Silvia and I were dividing and packing our dishes and kitchenware.”

“Boring!” Skyler slumped.

“And it was raining,” Audry added.

He just shrugged more.

“In fact, the power was cutting off and coming on again during the storm,” Audry added. “Making it dark half the time.”

Skyler sighed, waiting for more.

“That’s when I realized I had left my tranquilizer gun and all my other stuff in the ottoman. So I went to get it out.” Audry paused. “I also went to get a flashlight, just in case the power went out.”

But her nephew was unimpressed.

Sighing, Audry decided to just finish the tale. “But anyway, after a lot of cleaning and talking about what she and I were going to do next, the power did that whole flicker on and off thing—and the next thing you know, in the doorway where no one was standing just a second before, suddenly was the third witch, now standing there. She was drenched, and she had a wicked knife in her hand.”

They all drew in breaths.

“She came at Silvia with it, screaming at her, calling her a traitor,” Audry said. “But…” she patted her tranquilizer pistol at her hip, “I had this already on the counter. I grabbed it and shot her twice. And the witch fell before she could get to either of us with that knife.”

Skyler let out a breath. So did others.

“We called our police friends, and they came quickly and took her away.” Audry shrugged. “I stayed at a friend’s house that night. Two days later I moved from New York City, hopefully to never get entangled with people like that again.”

“That’s not a very scary story,” Skyler said, huffing.

Leaning in close to her nephew, Audry whispered, “The really scary part I’m just going to tell you. No one else. You see, that Hanna girl—she was actually a twin. Her crazy sister is still out there somewhere. And that witch coven… they will never give up looking for my old friend Silvia to punish her for leaving the coven.”

He shuddered.

“Is that scary enough?”

He nodded.

“Good.” Audry sat up and smiled at her brother who had heard the entire thing, but had covered Maris’s ears so she could not.

Audry got up to help with dinner. When she saw it the kebabs were practically all assembled and there was nothing for her to do, Audry went to see the tent Skyler should have set up.

It was a decent sized dome tent, fit for five, but they used it for three. Their sleeping bags were rolled out, and their bags were in the correct places. All food was out of their packs and crammed into the hanging food cache. When she returned back to the fire ring, she saw her father finally got the fire started.

On the air, she heard a wolf cry, and she shuddered.

Not that she disliked wolves. Quite the reverse. She loved them. But in the recent years her life seemed to tangle up into controversy whenever wolves came up. Wolves, these days, linked her back with that crowd. And she wanted to avoid that crowd at all costs.

That crowd was Rick’s crowd of friends and associates. That crowd was attached to the supernatural. To psychics. To witches. To people wearing red crystals and suits of armor. To the inklings of magic possibly being real. And being among them was like being Alice, unknowingly stepping onto the edge of Wonderland.

Audry didn’t want it. She wanted reality.

“Can you tell us another scary story?” Maris tugged on her arm. “A different one?”

Sighing, Audry let her niece pull her back to campfire. “How about one about wolves?”

Maris shook her head. “No animals!”

Shrugging, an idea came to her. “Ok… How about one about a man from New Orleans who was under what is called the ‘Rubber and Glue curse’?”

Her niece nodded vigorously.

“A friend of mine told me this story, and he says it’s true, but I don’t believe it.” She sat next to her father who was now admiring the fire as it blazed up, admiring even more his wife who had set a wire grill over it with the kebabs, and was currently tucking in tinfoil-wrapped banana treats she had just assembled. “See, I don’t know how long ago this was, but down in New Orleans there were lots of gangs, and one really annoyed witchdoctor.”

“Witchdoctor?” Doug laughed, raising his eyebrows. “You don’t know this witchdoctor do you? Another ex?”

Shooting him a dirty look, Audry said, “No. This is a story a friend from that group told me.”

“That group?” Doug angled his head, not quite knowing what she meant.

Realizing she had said it out loud, Audry amended, “Another graduate from Gulinger.”

He raised his eyebrows again. Sitting down next to her, he said, “Those folk from that New York school sound like a bunch of weirdoes.”

Nodding, Audry agreed. “Which was one of the many reasons I had to get out of New York.”

“Tell us the story, Aunt Audry!” Maris demanded.

With permission, checking with a nod to her brother and his wife, Audry began: “Once there was a boy who grew up in New Orleans. He was a skinny black boy whose brother was in a gang and was part of a lot of gang warfare that really upset a local voodoo witch doctor….”

Another wolf cry let out.

They looked to the sky, listening.

“Hey!” Skyler pointed at it. “Full moon.”

“That,” his grandfather said, rising to gaze at it, “Is a waxing gibbous. Tomorrows will be the full moon.”

“…And the witchdoctor was so fed up with them that he decided the most heinous punishment against them….”

“What is a waxing gibbous?” Skyler asked him.

“That means the moon is fat and getting bigger,” Grandpa Bruchenhaus said.

“…So he grabbed this boy and cursed him so that whatever bad stuff people do to him, will bounce off, and hurt them instead.”

“Oh!” Maris exclaimed. “Like: I am rubber. You are glue. Everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”

“Exactly, only in this case it is everything they do to him. So anyway, the kid goes home and….”

“Would wolves come into this camp?” Skyler asked his grandfather.

He peeked to Audry who was in the middle of her storytelling. “Well, according to your aunt, no. It is not likely. There are packs around Yellowstone, but wolves are naturally shy. As long as they have enough food, there won’t be a problem.”

“… the gang is upset with him when they find out where he had been all those hours. His brother starts to beat him up, but… you know the curse. All the punches and hits just hurt the guy punching and hitting. He even lost a tooth.”

“Oh!” Maris gasped.

“… The other gang members even got in on it—until one guy stabbed the kid. But you know who got hurt?”

“The guy with the knife!”

“That’s right! It just bounced right off and….”

“But wasn’t there a drought this last winter?” Skyler said. “The ranger said they did not have as much water this year, and they said not to feed any wildlife.”

“That’s just the camp rules.” Grandpa Bruchenhauses rubbed Skyler’s head. “If we stick to the rules, we’ll be fine.”

“Which animals in the park are the most dangerous?” Skyler asked, pushing himself to be scared.

His grandfather rubbed Skyler on the head again. “Don’t you worry about it.”

“But which?”

“…made the other guy bleed. But those guys in the gang were really stupid, because they did not learn from that. They kicked at the kid and threw stuff at the kid, and they got hurt by it….”

“Bears, I suppose.”

“So if bears and the other animals got into a fight—”

“Well, wolves travel in packs. A bear would back away from a pack of wolves, but with all their fur and fat, they would be harder to kill. Then, of course, are the cougars.”

“Cougars?”

“…So in the end they threw him out. The kid ended up begging on the street, starving. People who tried to shoo him away only got hurt trying to shoo him away.” Audry shrugged. “In the end, the gangs kind of killed themselves off by attacking the kid.”

“That’s spooky,” Maris murmured. “What happened to him after that?”

Audry shrugged. “Well… according to the guy telling the story, he said the US government picked him up and put him into a private institution to keep everyone else safe….”

“Yep. You know, pumas. Mountain lions. Same thing. But they hang around rocky places. Not places like this. Like they told us. This is bear country.”

“Oh.”

“Aunt Audry?” Maris asked, as others perked up to listen. “Is this story true?”

Audry shrugged. “I don’t know. But the guy who told me the story said it was. In fact, he said he was the kid.”

Maris drew in a breath. “No way.”

Skyler came up. “Are you serious?”

Nodding with another shrug, Audry admitted, “I’ve met a lot of weirdoes in my lifetime—all in New York City.”

“Which is why you left,” Doug reiterated, confirming it.

Audry laughed. “Which is exactly why I left.”

“Tell us another scary story,” Skyler said, coming up to her.

She eyed him with one eye closed. “Are you aiming for nightmares?

He shook his head. “No. But I heard you know lots of crazy stories.”

“Oh, really?” Audry angled a side look at her brother, Doug, who most definitely heard her gripe about certain weird things she had gotten entangled in. “Like what?”

“Well,” her brother said, grinning. “Tell us the one about the werewolf.”

Moaning, Audry, looked to the tree cover. “He’s not a werewolf! That’s just a stupid rumor!”

“Well then, tell us the rumor.” Doug grinned mischievously at her.

With a dirty look, Audry adjusted in her seat. “Fine. I read about this story online first, then later I heard it told to me by Silvia—”

“Your old witch roommate,” Maris chimed in.

“Yeah.” Audry nodded to her.

Sighing, she tried to muster up her storytelling voice to remove all contempt for the story itself. It was all nonsense, and it had caused a world of trouble for the people who it gossiped about, including some near-death experiences for them being shot at monthly.

“Ok, I’ll tell it how Silvia tells it. She says it comes from her hometown. And, by the way, it is also about a witch.” Audry paused as Skyler emitted a short moan. “This witch really hated this one priest who apparently had slighted her. And so she decided she wanted him dead. But to prevent the murder from being traced back to her, she

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 09.10.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7554-7906-2

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