Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection Read online

  “No, it’s fine,” he said and plopped down into a chair two down from Hattie. “I’m already comfortable.”

  “Okay,” I responded and swore I heard Hattie chuckle again. “I didn’t know, I’m sorry.”

  “Well, now you do,” he scoffed. “I’m Professor Max Harkin,” he said in a tone that told me I was supposed to know who that was.

  But I didn’t. I had no idea who he was.

  “I’m Brighton Longfield,” I said. “What are you a professor of?”

  People liked when you asked them about themselves. I figured that would smooth over our rough introduction.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me,” he sneered. “Most people who have any interest in the paranormal have heard of me.”

  “Well, that would explain it,” I said. “I’m not particularly interested in the paranormal.”

  Hattie gasped and Cassidy dropped the gravy bowl she’d been setting on the table. It fell the last inch and tipped precariously, but did not spill more than a few drops. Cassidy made a weird sound like she was trying to stifle a laugh. She hightailed it out of the room and I thought I might have heard her belting out laughter in the kitchen.

  Professor Max Harkin turned bright red, and I couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or anger. “What are you doing in Coventry if you’re not interested in the paranormal?” he huffed.

  “I inherited my great-aunt’s house. Hangman’s House. Have you heard of it? And I’m not sure what the paranormal has to do with Coventry. I mean, my aunt believed in that stuff, but she was a few bricks short of a wall. I loved her to pieces, but she was off her rocker.”

  “She’s off her rocker because she believes in the paranormal?” Professor Harkin asked, and I could tell I’d hit a nerve.

  “No offense,” I said with a shrug. “Some things are just a fantasy, and my great-aunt’s took over her life. Not that I’m saying yours have too,” I said and bit my lip.

  “Young lady, I am a professor of parapsychology. I work for an actual university doing real science. What is it you do?”

  “I’m just here to restore Hangman’s House. Before that I worked in a call center. Nothing so esteemed as being a professor of parapsychology.” The last part came out a bit snarkier than I’d intended.

  “Well, I can see how that makes you an expert in the paranormal,” he said with a snort. “I, on the other hand, have been collecting data and evidence for decades. I’ve also helped dozens of people and families rid themselves of nasty hauntings that were impacting the quality of their lives.”

  “Oh,” was my response.

  “Oh?”

  “You take people’s money for ghostbusting,” I said and bit my lower lip hard because I was seconds away from calling him a total fraud and grifter. “It’s just that if you’d collected data and evidence for decades as you say, I would have thought you’d have proved the existence of the paranormal already.”

  After that, he wouldn’t even look at me. I supposed that was for the best. I could tell he was one of those professors that thought he was smarter than everyone in the room, and he wanted to make sure you knew it too.

  I ate quickly and then retreated to my room in the basement. All through dinner, at least the part I was still around for, Professor Max Harkin made a show of telling Hattie and Cassidy his most regaling tales of saving families from evil hauntings. Interestingly enough, both women looked completely bored and detached despite Harkin’s theatrics. I wondered if it was because he’d already told those stories a million times. He struck me as that type.

  Back in my room, the stress of the day finally hit me. All I wanted to do was crash into bed. I was suddenly so tired that I didn’t care if the bed was lumpy or pokey. Crawling under the covers in my dusty, dank room sounded fine by me.

  Since the room was in the basement, there was only one narrow horizontal window on the outside wall at ground level. There were blinds covering it, but they were still open. I was too short to grasp the wand to close them, and I didn’t have the will to start climbing on furniture to reach. I reasoned that no one was going to get down on their belly to look in my window anyway, and just left them alone as I crawled into bed.

  Chapter Two

  The first thing I noticed when I woke up the next morning was that those blinds were closed. I figured that I must have gotten up in the night to close them. While I had no recollection of doing it, I reasoned that perhaps the moonlight had woken me just enough to be annoyed. I shrugged it off and climbed out of the creaking bed.

  I rubbed my hip gingerly where a mattress spring had poked it all night, and headed for the shower. Nothing in my room was disturbed. I laughed at myself for even considering that someone might have broken into my room in the night stealthily enough not to wake me and closed my blinds for me.

  After I’d dressed and packed my things back into my bag, I stood at the door and listened for a moment. The last thing I wanted was to run into Harkin again. When I was satisfied that he wasn’t in the hallway, I opened the door a crack and peeked out. The coast was clear so I hurried out of the room and darted up the stairs.

  “There’s no breakfast,” Cassidy said when she noticed me hesitating in the kitchen. “But I made sandwiches. I can put one in a bag for you. Just don’t tell Hattie. She’d have a fit if she knew I was giving away sandwiches.”

  I almost turned her down, but I knew it would be a mistake to go to the house with nothing to eat. “Sure, as long as it doesn’t get you into trouble.”

  The distraction was welcome as I could hear Harking and Mama Hattie talking out in the room that served as the lobby. A few moments later, Cassidy handed me a stuffed brown paper lunch sack.

  “Just a sandwich?” I asked with a smile.

  “Shh,” she said with one finger up to her lips.

  “I need to check out,” I said. “This place is a little rich for my blood, though I do appreciate everything you’ve done. I’m going to do my best to get Hangman’s House livable today.”

  We walked into the living room area, and Cassidy stood behind the desk. “Well, come back any time if you need a place to stay,” she said with a smile. “But I highly recommend not coming back if you can avoid it.” She leaned across the desk and whispered that part. “Sign here where it says departure.”

  During the short drive back to Hangman’s House, I regretted not asking Harkin if he was in Coventry studying some sort of paranormal phenomenon. Not that it mattered. He was a fraud and anything he was investigating wasn’t real, but all the same, I kind of wished I knew why he was in town.

  I pulled into the driveway and parked behind the trailer. I’d have to drive around the U-Haul again when I hitched it up to return it, but I loathed to do any more damage to the already pathetic grass.

  My first inclination was to take everything inside so I could return the trailer, but I decided to leave it for one more day. I had to make sure that I could actually make the house livable before I carried everything in. Otherwise, I’d be stuck moving things twice.

  What I did need was my cleaning supplies. I’d packed them last because I knew no one had lived in Hangman’s House for a long time and it would need a thorough cleaning. I just hoped that was all it needed, but I had my doubts.

  I opened the door to the back of the U-Haul and grabbed my bucket full of cleaning products as well as my trusty mop and broom.

  When I paused at the front door, I looked up through narrowed eyes at the sign that said “Hangman’s House”. The name was creepy, and who knew why my family had called the place that? It was one of the first big changes I wanted to make. I’d have to take that sign down and probably put up another. That task had to wait until after cleaning. I could live in the house with a creepy name, but I couldn’t live there if it was still an uninhabitable mess.

  I’d like to have been able to say the morning flew by, but it didn’t. After I’d thrown open the drapes and opened all the windows, I donned a filter mask and got down t
o the business of ridding Hangman’s House of years of dust.

  The utilities were on, thanks to a call and hefty deposits before I arrived, so I took the chance of plugging in an old Electrolux vacuum I found in the closet. I’d heard the older models lasted forever, and it was true. The lights flickered ominously the first time I threw the switch, but after that, it seemed that the house accepted my use of its juice.

  I began to find that with a little dusting and scrubbing, Hangman’s House wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. It had just been neglected. Parts of the house where I could have sworn I’d seen potential structural issues and black mold were just dirty. Every moment I spent vacuuming up dust bunnies or scrubbing floors and counters with lemon-scented cleaner seemed to breathe new life into the house. If I’d believed in magic, I would have sworn that the lemon cleaner was some sort of potion. It was amazing what a little spit and polish could do.

  I’d even made my first trip to the basement where I found an old washer and dryer at the bottom of the stairs. They were old, but they still worked, so I stripped the windows of the drapes and began running loads of laundry. I didn’t venture any farther into the basement than the foot of the stairs where the machines were located, though. That was an adventure into the dark for another time.

  At some point, my stomach sent out a loud protest. Cassidy had sent two sandwiches, a single serve bag of cheddar and sour cream potato chips, three chocolate chip cookies, and two bottles of water. Unfortunately, I’d polished it all off already. The work I was doing was hard, and I’d burned through the food with my morning work.

  I looked at the clock and saw that it was coming up on afternoon. Stopping before the work was done didn’t appeal to me, but neither did missing dinner because I didn’t go to the store before it closed. My stomach rumbled loudly again, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to ignore it.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go to the store.”

  I quickly emptied out my bucket of water and put the Electrolux back in the closet. It was kind of a nice day out and I regretted that I didn’t have time for a leisurely stroll into town. But my new home was on the outskirts of Coventry, so I didn’t have time to walk.

  As far as I could tell, Mann’s Gas & Grocery was the only place in town to buy both gas and groceries. I pulled my car into a spot on the grocery side and made my way into the store.

  It was a small store and it didn’t carry nearly as many products as the store where I used to shop. I figured that was probably okay, though. I ate too much packaged garbage anyway.

  I made my way around looking for things that were easy to cook like a bag of potatoes and a dozen eggs. I found some ground beef and hamburger buns too before looking for the soda aisle. I was about at the point where I would have killed someone for a Diet Coke. Not literally. Maybe literally.

  When I was at one end of the soda aisle, two women came around the corner and stopped at the other end. The kept glancing over at me and whispering to each other. I caught what I thought was them saying the name Harkin, but I couldn’t make out anything else.

  I grabbed a twelve-pack of Diet Coke that I really couldn’t afford but I swore that I’d ration it out, and started to leave the aisle. Before I could get very far, I heard one of the women call out to me. She shuffled up the aisle toward me with the other woman following behind at a distance.

  “Hello,” she said in a tone that sounded like artificial sweetener.

  “Hello.” I stopped and turned back around to face the woman.

  “I don’t recognize you, dear,” she said. “You must be new in town.”

  “I’m Brighton Longfield. I just moved to town. My family is from Coventry, though,” I said.

  “Longfield, huh?” The woman seemed to be chewing the name over. “I can’t say I recognize that name.”

  “Ah, well, my Great-Aunt Maude Tuttlesmith left me Hangman’s House. I’ve just moved in,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you. I didn’t catch your name.”

  But the woman didn’t say anything else. Her eyes grew dark and she pursed her lips together before pushing past me and rushing away. The other woman shrugged her shoulders and quickly left in the other direction as well.

  I thought the whole thing was strange, but I tried to brush it off. Perhaps the woman knew Maude from back before she was institutionalized. I’m sure she didn’t make many friends with all of her rantings about witches, magic, and spirit conjuring. There wasn’t much I could do but pay for my groceries and head back to Hangman’s House to finish my work.

  When I checked out, I noticed a few people were staring at me as they pointed and whispered. Instead of letting it make me paranoid, I ignored it and took my groceries out to the car.

  A store across the street, Prue’s Chocolate Treasures, caught my attention. I didn’t have money to blow, but I really wanted some homemade candy. I promised myself that I’d only spend a couple of dollars as I crossed the street to the shop.

  I only made it about halfway across the street when the delicious scent of sugar, chocolate, and fruit hit my senses. It was one of the most delicious and intoxicating scents I’d ever had the pleasure to smell. It felt like a siren song intended to lure you into its clutches, but it was so sweet that I wanted to be lured. I drifted across the street with a new smile on my face and took in the candy fragrance one more time before I pulled the door open.

  Inside, that same sweet perfection felt like it had wrapped its loving arms around me. Everything about Prue’s Chocolate Treasures felt like a warm hug. The lights were soft but not dim. The décor was pastel but not childlike. There were murals painted on the walls of unicorns, rainbows, and clouds, but they were not cartoony. It was some serious artwork. The tables were round and each one was the color of a different flavor of saltwater taffy, and at the same time, they looked like something out of a high-art furniture catalog. The place just had a glow to it.

  I wished I had more than a couple of dollars to spend in the shop, but I knew as soon as I found a way to make a living in Coventry, I’d be a regular at Prue’s. The soft cozy feeling of the shop was completely shattered when I saw who was waiting at the head of the line.

  Harkin was there in front of the glass pointing at the strawberry nougats. Then the woman behind the counter, who I assumed was Prue, was putting them in a little pink box. She had a huge smile on her face, and I had to wonder if she was just really good at customer service or if she knew a side of Harkin I hadn’t seen. Or maybe she just really liked jerks?

  The more I watched, the more I got the feeling that it wasn’t good customer service. She had blush to her cheeks, and I could swear that the woman was batting her eyelashes.

  They moved down the line from standing in front of the glass case to the counter near the register. Prue, or who I assumed was Prue, was about to hand Harkin the box but instead, she set it down and leaned toward him a little.

  She smiled sweetly again and he leaned in a little too. I found myself drifting forward so that I could hear their exchange. It wasn’t that I wanted to be a creepy eavesdropper, but I found myself drawn into her enthusiasm for whatever she was about to tell Harkin.

  There was something about her, and I guessed she had that effect on a lot of people. The woman I assumed was Prue was what I would have considered a plus-sized beauty queen. She reminded me of that model that had become really popular. Angela? Ashley? It was something like that. Either way, Prue was just as beautiful and had a ton of charisma too. She was zaftig, and I could tell she had confidence in her curves. She did. Until…

  “So, Professor,” she practically purred. “You’ve been coming in here a lot while you’ve been in town. I was just wondering if there was something I could interest you in other than the strawberry nougats. I thought that perhaps you might be interested in dinner or maybe a drink?”

  I didn’t understand why she would want to go out with him, but I admired her spirit. Maybe it’s just that she didn’t know him that well because she’d only interacte
d with him in the shop. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, but he was full of himself. I didn’t realize how full until he started laughing at her.

  He laughed at her.

  “Prue, don’t be stupid,” he said when he got control of his amusement, and I felt my blood boil for her. “You know that someone like me would never settle for someone your… size. I was really only here for the strawberry nougats. I’m sure you understand as you appear to be a big, big fan of your own wares.” And then he began chuckling again like he’d just let us all in on the world’s funniest joke.

  Prue turned three shades of red before tears began running down her cheeks. The other two customers in the store with me just stood there with their mouths hanging agape like mine. We waited for something to happen.

  She looked like she was about to say something, but instead, Prue just turned and ran into the back. I didn’t blame her. That jerk had just humiliated her in front of her customers. If he wasn’t interested in her, that was fine, but he didn’t have to be cruel about it.

  I wanted to go comfort her. Prue’s sadness drew me in the same way her lighthearted charisma had, but I didn’t know her. I wasn’t sure she’d want a total stranger walking into the back of her shop uninvited to witness her crying in humiliation, so I stayed there in line.

  A few minutes passed, and she didn’t come back out. I glared at Harkin when he spoke. The jerk had the nerve to still be standing there waiting for Prue to come ring up his candy.

  “There’s no one here to ring up my nougats,” he said. “The service in this place is really going downhill.”

  That was it. I had to go. I noticed on the way back to my car that the other two customers left the shop shortly after me. Harkin left as I was starting the engine. He didn’t have his box of nougats.

  I drove straight home after that. When I was getting my groceries out of the backseat of the car, I noticed a black cat sitting on my doorstep. Well, calling him a black cat didn’t do him justice. He was far more like a mini panther. I’d never seen a housecat that huge before. His fur was thick and shone beautifully in the late afternoon sun. He was beautiful and obviously well-taken care of, and that made me wonder why he was sitting outside my front door as if he expected me to let him in.