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.”