The Beast Cometh Read online

  The Beast Cometh

  by

  Constance Barker

  Copyright 2018 Constance Barker

  All rights reserved.

  Similarities to real people, places or events are purely coincidental.

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  Chapter One

  It simultaneously felt like a long time had passed and no time had passed since the party celebrating the 150th anniversary of our little town of Stillwater. It had only been a couple days in reality, but if you had asked me at the time, I wouldn’t have been able to give an accurate answer. It could have been minutes, and it could have been years. Stillwater was not a special place. It was a small town, insignificant in most ways that matter to most people. Everyone knew each other and every teenager couldn’t wait to leave. It was the kind of town that history buffs dragged their children to for a long weekend and it seemed idyllic to those who only looked on the surface level. It wasn’t the kind of town you would expect to host a myriad of the supernatural. Though I was a witch myself, I knew I was only scratching the surface at what Stillwater really hid in its depths. Not two days ago, I had thought that my sister Fern, our good friend Becky and myself were the only three witches in the area. Not even a few months ago I had no idea that Becky had power. I considered myself at least somewhat privy to the secrets of Stillwater, but my own understanding of the town seemed abysmal compared to that of Hazel’s. Hazel was our dear friend, a mother-like figure to all three of us, really to the entire town. She was the heart of the diner where most people spent their free time - and a witch as well. A powerful one at that.

  It’s hard to know what exists and what doesn’t when you're a witch with a talking cat and friends with three ghosts. The line between reality and mythos was already very blurred in my life and it only got blurrier as Hazel taught us more about the world that we were a part of. She had only barely started as well, and I could imagine that there would be a lot more to come. For now we could only focus on what was necessary to know because we didn’t have much time. There was something coming, something terrible. If you scratched beneath the idyllic surface of the town's history, you probably wouldn’t discover the supernatural or the paranormal. What would be discovered would be just as bone chilling. It was clearly a town with secrets. Every half century that passed, people went missing and then turned up dead...catastrophes would level the town. And even in-between those years, I couldn’t deny that the supernatural and paranormal didn’t have a hand in some deaths along the way. Even in the last few years I’d seen lives taken as a result of something or someone with powers, even as a mistake.

  I tried to not become slightly bitter about my powers as I thought about it. I was finally beginning to understand my sister Fern’s reluctance to embrace her powers. While I dilly-dallied making my life easier by using spells to do household chores, there was a far darker side to magic, one that I didn’t fully understand. I was beginning to though as Hazel taught us more. All magic had a give, but it also had a take. To every positive, a negative. It was all about balance and restoring that balance to the ethos. Despite this, and my new reluctance towards my own powers, I would have no choice but to use them soon. Whatever evil was brought by the comet was coming and soon.

  “Mazie?” I heard Becky’s bright voice ask. I hadn’t been paying attention to what she'd been saying, which I felt bad about as I focused on her face. She looked pleading and confused, her wide eyes staring at me.

  “Sorry?” I said it as a question, hoping that she would understand my mind was on other things.

  “It’s okay,” She replied, her face breaking into a smile. I knew I was forgiven for not paying attention to her. Becky was aware of how chatty she was, and as much as I adored her, I didn’t have the energy required to hear her all the time. “I had only asked what you thought about Jimmy Jack.” Her ears turned red as she whispered this to me. I looked around for a moment confused, because I had thought he was sitting with us.

  “Did he leave?” I was startled, wondering how long ago he and Fang, his father, had left. Subsequently how long I had been lost in my own little world.

  “Uh-huh,” Becky said, giving me a wry smile as she nodded. “Where’d you go in that head of yours?” She asked shaking her head.

  “I’m not sure I even know,” I joked, not wanting to bring up the impending trouble we all knew was coming. I admired Becky’s ability to keep herself from getting dragged down by it. She was worried too, we all were, but she was also excited about her budding romance with a certain moonshiner's son.

  “So, what do you think?” Becky asked, she sounded like a school girl with a crush. It warmed my heart to see her so happy. She was flushed pink, embarrassed to have brought it up, but still desperate for an answer from me. I would think it would be obvious, Jimmy Jack had been an acquaintance of mine for a long time. I wouldn’t exactly call us friends but we liked each other well enough and I hadn’t been subtle with my encouragement of them pairing off.

  “I’ve known Jimmy Jack since he was a kid, he’s nothing but softness and kindness, just like you. You two are perfect for each other,” I said. Becky beamed at me, and it was true. They were perfect for each other, in appearances they were total opposites. Becky was a small, sprite-like thing who bubbled positivity and brightened every room and face she came across. Jimmy Jack was a tall, hulking thing who only smiled every once in a while but when he did you could see he was all sunlight.

  “You really think so?” Becky asked. I was often surprised by her youth, it was easy to forget that she was younger than me. More like a younger sister than anything else, I wondered if what she had really been asking for was my acceptance or permission in a strange way. I nodded with a smile, trying to match her enthusiasm. I was happy for her, but all my emotions were outweighed by my concern. “I’m a little worried though, Fang doesn’t seem too happy about it. He keeps on giving us these looks whenever we're together. Like he thinks I’m not good enough or something,” Becky said with a sad shrug.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that. Fang isn’t happy about anything,” I reminded her with a comforting pat on the shoulder. Fang was the grumpiest thing I’d ever met and the only person he seemed remotely happy around was Hazel.

  “You’re right,” Becky agreed easily. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve never seen a happier couple,” Amber chimed in, though she sounded more sarcastic than sincere. Becky either didn’t notice the sarcasm or decided to ignore it.

  “Thanks! I don’t think we’re really a couple or anything, but I do like him and we have been out,” Becky blushed. They had gone out just the night before, and had spent most of the ball together after we rejoined it. We were unexpectedly reunited with Hazel at the ball celebrating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the town. It was then that we discovered that she was a witch as well, and a member of the mostly fabled up to that point witches council. After the shock of this, we still had to go back to the party, and pretend as though nothing had happened. Becky was the most capable of this and had spent a majority of the evening on the dance floor with Jimmy Jack.

  “Great, I am very happy for you,” Amber said clearly wanting to change the subject. “Now can we focus on the election people, please?” She said exasperated. I guess the subject had gone too far off track and for too long for her to be polite, not that she was ever polite
for very long.

  “There’s not much more that we can do,” I replied annoyed. “It’s only a couple days away, everyone in town has made up their mind who they're going to vote for.”

  “I think Mazie’s right,” Fern chimed in. I had almost forgotten that she was there, she had been so quiet up to this point. Though I couldn’t really know that for sure, considering I hadn’t even noticed that Fang and Jimmy Jack had left as well. “It looks like the race is over and all that’s left is the vote.” She sounded confident, but I could see in her eyes that she was nervous, unsure if she would win or not.

  “We don’t know that,” Amber snapped. She had appointed herself the campaign manager for Fern’s election as the Sheriff of Stillwater and hadn’t rested for a moment since Fern decided to run. I was certain that Fern would win at this point. The current Sheriff wasn’t exactly anyone’s favorite person and everyone knew that he was at least a little bit corrupt. Hazel had ‘gone missing’ or so we thought not long ago. The search for her was what we all expected to win the election for whichever party found her. In the end she hadn’t gone missing, but only a few were privy to that information. To the rest of the town she had gone missing and Fern had been the one to find her. It practically sealed the deal, I could almost tell that some townspeople had already dubbed her Sheriff in their minds.

  “We’re pretty sure of it though,” Hazel said, bustling over to our table. The diner was busier than usual, everyone in town seemed to be there and even more tourists than usual. The citizens of Stillwater were happy to have the diner reopened. After Hazel went missing it had been closed for a while and I think they missed it more than they realized. The tourists were probably curious to eat at the restaurant of a woman who had recently gone missing as though Hazel herself was one of the many tourist attractions of Stillwater.

  “I’m happy to have you back,” Amber said. I didn’t believe her completely, not sure that Amber was capable of caring about much more than herself. “But, it’s no guarantee. We need to be out there still, until the very last minute, knocking on doors and convincing people to vote for Fern. I for one, don’t care to leave her win up to chance,” She said snidely, casting a sneer my way. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at her.

  “It's not up to chance...we've campaigned hard,” I replied icily. My gut was already telling me that Fern was going to win the election, though I still found it difficult to decipher instinct and desire. I didn’t like the implication that I didn’t care about Fern’s campaign. Had I been able to I would have gladly been the one to run it. Amber’s reasons for wanting Fern to be the Sheriff were not altruistic, she was only angry with the current Sheriff for pointing the finger at her when a man wound up dead in her store. In the end, it was Fern and I who discovered the truth. That he was a witch hunter and he was trying to find Becky, and that his death was in the end an accident. Amber didn’t know the fine details, but she had been incensed by the Sheriff’s inability to manage that case, and believed it would be in her best interest if he wasn’t Sheriff anymore.

  “I think we have to let campaigning be,” Fern said with a tone of finality. Amber looked incensed, her mouth agape and her eyes glowering. “I wouldn’t want to alienate what votes I do have by annoying them with more knocks on their doors,” she added with a small smile in Amber’s direction, clearly trying to calm her down at least a little.

  “Fine,” Amber said, gritting her teeth. “If we’re all done here then.” She snapped her binder closed and stood leaving without another word. The door slammed shut as she stormed out dramatically. I chortled at her tantrum. If I didn’t try to find the humor in Amber’s many childish ways, I wouldn’t be able to stand being around her for more than a moment or too.

  “Since she is finally gone,” Hazel said shaking her head with a chuckle. “I need you three to come to my house this evening. It’s not long now,” she said ominously. “And we need you to be prepared for what comes.”

  I nodded gravely, clearly Hazel’s mood and thoughts were more aligned with my own than my other companions. Fern was concerned as well, but she did still have her mind on the campaign. Sheriff Brown, the current Sheriff, was in the middle of trying to discredit Fern once again. He had not so subtly accused Fern the other day of concocting Hazel’s entire disappearance. He had since been implying it to the more well-to-do members of Stillwater’s social ladder, hoping to sway their votes. The whole thing made him look desperate and weakened his campaign if you asked me and most of the town. It worried Fern though, there were aspects of Hazel’s sudden disappearance and reappearance that weren’t exactly explainable. Right now the story was that Hazel had hit her head accidentally the morning she went missing. She had given herself a concussion and in her confusion she left town, only to be right as rain a few days later when she returned after being tracked down by Fern. It wasn’t exactly a strong narrative, and the Sheriff wasn’t wrong about it being a concoction of our own making. In our defense, we couldn’t really tell them that she had to meet with an ancient council of witches because a comet was coming that would destroy the balance of power in Stillwater bringing darkness and terror to the town. I think that would be a much harder pill to swallow.

  “What is coming?” Becky asked, her eyes narrowed. She had learned that Hazel was her grandmother at the ball. She had been an orphan, estranged from her family her whole life, but she had been drawn to Stillwater a few years back now. At first we had thought it was just the power emanating from the town that had drawn her in, but now we knew it was more than just that. She had been able to subconsciously feel power similar to her own, related to her own. Hazel didn’t know where her daughter, Becky’s mother was, and promised to help her look once the big bad that was coming was gone.

  “We weren’t able to figure it out last time,” Hazel replied sounding sorry. “It stopped not long after the anniversary. This time it will be stronger though, fifty years ago it was only an echo of the comet that inspired so much terror in Stillwater. This time, the comet actually passed by. It’s made us stronger, but it’s also made what’s coming stronger, much, much stronger.” She said darkly.

  Chapter Two

  I wanted nothing more than for the day to be done so that we could be at Hazel’s, well, maybe I wanted time to sleep a little bit more than that. Becky and I had to work that afternoon which felt like a sick joke if I’m honest. It was hard to care about giving museum tours to tourists when you couldn’t help but imagine that they might all be dead or missing soon. Still, I had to go and at least pretend to care. I was looking forward to this evening. I had never been to Hazel’s house and had a million different imaginations of what it might be like in person. I barely even knew what part of town she lived in, let alone what her house looked like. More than that, I was ready to learn more and to work. Hazel said that she would start showing us some new spells that might help protect us against whatever demons were coming. I was more interested in learning how to fight them, but Hazel assured me that would come soon enough. I was anxious waiting for whatever was coming to strike, not that I wanted it to but the waiting was far worse than anything else. It wasn’t made any easier by the million other distractions going on in my life at the moment.

  “You look exhausted, Mazie,” Becky said for probably the third or fourth time that day. She wasn’t trying to be rude or mean, she was just concerned.

  “I am,” I agreed. It had probably been more than a few weeks since I had a decent night of sleep. First with Hazel missing, I was too worried to sleep, and now I was too anxious to sleep. Not to mention, mine and Fern’s house guests were not making it any easier to get a good night of rest. “The ghosts are not exactly quiet house guests,” I said wryly.

  “I wouldn’t expect them to make good guests, no,” Becky said with a laugh. Our trio of ghosts, Colonel Augustus, Mary Jane and Little Timmy had also felt the effects of the comet. They had become some kind of hybrid ghost-human thing, where they were very much so human in nearly every as
pect except for the fact that they were definitely dead and would soon return to their ghostly forms. When that would happen was a very good question. For the time being, they were cooped up in mine and Fern's home. The last thing we needed was for them to draw attention to themselves, and being that they were straight out of the 1800s it wasn’t a difficult task. Keeping them happy being cooped up was, however, a very difficult task. Moody was even less enthusiastic about it than the ghosts were.

  “They’re terrible,” Moody chimed in. She was our incredibly talkative and moody house cat. I had never heard her pass up an opportunity to complain about something or other, but I didn’t disagree with her on this point. “The old one with the stupid looking mustache ate my liver treats the other day!” She practically growled. I had agreed to take her to work with me that day to get her out of the house and away from our friends for a little while. I worried that she might lose it and attack one of them soon.

  “He didn’t!” Becky exclaimed stifling her laughter. She looked at me for confirmation, not trusting Moody to give an accurate report. I nodded, holding back my own laughter, remembering the moment. “He did?” She asked, prompting me to share the whole story. We had nearly arrived at work by then and soon Moody would have to go back to acting like a normal cat, or at least not talking.

  “The idiot thought they were specialty crackers,” Moody said with a sigh. “It is not funny either, no one ever buys me anything nice and I am certain I won’t be getting more anytime soon,” Moody whined. I rolled my eyes at the feline, she was a very spoiled and well taken care of cat. I knew just as well as she did that she got more than enough liver treats. It was evident in the size of her very round stomach. Her distaste for our guest wasn’t helped by Mary Jane asking if she was pregnant. Regardless of Moody’s insistence that it wasn’t funny, both Becky and I were howling with laughter as I imitated the Colonel’s face when Fern told him that the treats he had gorged himself on were meant for cats.