Amaryllis & the Pixie, Chapter 14

Welcome back!

This is the final few days of my Substack Whimsical Words existing before I end it… assuming I figure out how to end a Substack. Technology isn’t my strong suit.

Here’s a horror story, free to all subscribers:

From the Roof

“You won’t believe the creep I met at work today,” I tell my cat Minnie Maude.

The large black and white Maine Coon jumps down from the picture window dominating the front of my living room. She pads across the hardwood floor and jumps onto the couch next to me.

I plump up a pillow and lean against it. Minnie Maude props her front paws on my lap and gazes up at me. “This guy came into the bookstore giving off terrible vibes. I mean, I was shaking. I asked him, ‘Can I help you?’ He turned to me and stretched his mouth into a big smile.”

Minnie Maude begins purring loudly and climbs into my lap, where she turns around a couple times before curling up, still purring.

I pet the cat but grimace at the memory. “He drifted toward the counter and had this slimy drawl. Bet he thought he was so suave. He said, ‘I’m just browsing.’ But instead of looking at books, he leaned his arm on the counter and grinned at me. Next he kept following me around the shop, asking personal questions—like, ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Usually if I say yes, they give up, but he didn’t. I kept shelving books, and he kept pestering me.” Minnie Maude has been gazing at me as though she understands every word.

I hear scrambling above and tense my shoulders. Minnie Maude stops purring, and we both look up. In a corner, beyond the cream-colored stucco of the ceiling, something alive rustles. My heart flutters, and I take a deep breath. I picture bats in the attic or a monster residing in the dust and cobwebs, but I shake my head.

Minnie Maude and I look at each other. “It’s a bird or squirrel on the roof. After all, that big tree is outside nearly every window in the apartment.” Minnie Maude blinks at me with her Maine Coon coolness and turns back to the ceiling. I picture the flat roof of the apartment building, with its Spanish tiles. I glance back up, listen to more rustling, and realize there must be a low attic up there. “Okay, it’s a squirrel in the attic.”

“I kept telling myself to be nice to customers. While he was following me around the store and talking at me—even asking me if I have any kids, as if to prove that he thinks the only important thing about women is that we date men and give birth—I was shaking convulsively and my heart was pounding wildly. The worst vibes!”

“Mrrrrl.”

I rub the cat’s chin, and she slowly closes her eyes. “I hoped Gloria, the store manager, would notice and do something. Remember the shoplifter I told you about? He gave off terrible vibes, too, but not as bad as this creep’s.”

The rustling sounds like scurrying diagonally across the living room ceiling. Minnie jumps down from my lap, and we follow the noise into the dining room, where the rustling halts over the chandelier. We wait, necks craned. Minnie Maude stands on the dinner table and stares with bulbous green eyes. Her fluffy black tail swishes, knocking over a candle. I ignore the candle and focus on listening.

“I guess that’s it.” I relax my shoulders, pick up the candle, and turn toward the living room.

I hear a thud like something landing on the roof. Gasping, I turn back to stare at the dining room ceiling. The scratching sound is louder now, accompanied by flapping and… a loud shriek, like a gigantic owl.

Minnie Maude’s hair stands on end, and she puffs out to twice her size. She leaps from the table and runs and hides under the couch. My heart hammering, I back away to the living room’s wide threshold, where I stand staring up at the ceiling. The chandelier’s crystal drops chime faintly and shake. I remain frozen on the threshold, eyes on the chandelier. Waiting.

I stand silently for five minutes. Deep breaths. The noise distracts me from Bad Vibes. I take a deep breath in through the nose…pause… and exhale through the mouth.

Minnie Maude follows me back into the living room. “What do you think that was, fluffball?”

I sit on the blanket-covered couch, where I pick up the book I’d been reading. “It must have been a bird.” Minnie turns to me. She lovingly blinks back and jumps onto the couch beside me and rubs her head against my arm. “A very large and noisy bird. Squirrels don’t disappear on the middle of the roof.” I pet the cat.

Minnie Maude sits next to me and looks a question at me. “If that creep shows up again, next time I won’t put up with it.” I immediately doubt myself and dismiss it as all talk.

The cat curls back up in my lap but doesn’t resume purring.

#

Two days later, bells jingle and my heart flutters in panic before I even glance up to see Bad Vibes walk through the bookstore’s glass double doors. At the cash register with a customer, I struggle to concentrate on counting change. My hands shake.

Another customer approaches the counter and asks about a book, so I walk to the books-in-print computer in the corner by the door. Customers can stand near it, and Bad Vibes does so. While I look up a biography, he watches me. “Hi, Devon.”

My fingers shake on the keys. I speak coldly and don’t look at him. “Hi.” I frown at the screen, but I can still feel his energy.

“When do you get off work today?”

With another heart flutter of panic, I don’t reply. My breath and heartbeat are faster than usual. I picture him waiting in the parking lot. When the list of Charles Manson books prints out, I yank it from the printer and hand it to the customer.

I hear rustling coming from above, like at my apartment. The customer says, “Squirrel in the attic?”

I shrug. “I’m not sure this building has an attic.”

Jen, a supervisor a few years my senior and with long hair and glasses like me, comes behind the counter while Bad Vibes continues staring at me. Jen looks at Bad Vibes. “Can I help you?”

“Oh, no, thanks. I just came to see Devon.” I grasp the edges of the computer in front of me, where I begin scanning in new books. “Nice to see you again. Bye-bye,” he says slowly, silkily, as he begins drifting away.

“Bye,” I growl.

As soon as the door closes behind him, I swing to look at Jen. “I could quit my job because of that creep!” Still shaking, I know my anger isn’t acceptable at work, but I can’t keep quiet any longer. I expect he’ll keep returning.

Jen nods. “Ah, I get it. I didn’t know whether he was someone you knew or what.”

I throw up my hands. “Oh, no, I never saw him before a couple days ago. He showed up and wouldn’t stop harassing me! And did you hear that? He came here today just to harass me!”

“I’ll warn everyone in case he comes back. I know what you’re going through. There’s no reason why you should put up with this. We will protect you. Why don’t you go and tell Gloria.”

No customers occupy the store, and I head to the back room, open the door, and step inside. On the phone, Gloria stands in front of a counter full of books and papers. The store manager looks professional in her orange blazer over a black dress and a long bead necklace, in contrast with my homemade tunic and patchwork skirt. The back room feels cooler than the store, and I exhale slowly. Gloria hangs up, and I tell her about my harasser.

Gloria puts the paperwork down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. You should’ve said something Tuesday. I assumed you knew him, since he was touching you and everything.”

I wring my hands. “Well, you know, I kept telling myself he’s a customer.”

“There comes a point at which they’re no longer customers,” Gloria says. “He stepped over that line. If he comes again, you can duck into the back room and take a break.” I exhale, loosening my shoulders. “He probably will. But we’re here for you.”

I stand breathing with my eyes closed. I’m accustomed to supervisors chastising me and feel a combination of shock and confusion because they’re on my side.

“While you’re here, Devon, could you take the trash out? Maybe it’ll help get your mind off this.”

I nod and eye the mound of boxes by the back door. I grab the key from its hook and slip it into my pocket and then pick up a load of flattened boxes, place them under my arm, and with my back shove the heavy door open into the alleyway.

The chill and wind take my breath away. I imagine pummeling Bad Vibes here, between the one-story brick walls of our shop and the cell phone shop. I imagine I’m wearing a black trench coat and dark glasses and pound his face in, turning it into a bloody mess. Shaking the violent image out of my head, I feel guilty.

I tread along the narrow alley, turn a corner, and approach the large green dumpster. Confident the boxes are too large to blow away, I drop them on the pavement while I pull out the key to the dumpster’s padlock. Without the lock, people could steal stripped books, illegal to sell after the front covers are torn off and returned to the publisher—or people could dump in their trash or recycling, leaving no room for the store’s. It wasn’t windy when I came to work, but now the wind throws my long red hair back out of my face.

I place the little key into the padlock and turn it before sliding the padlock onto the pavement. I sense movement and look up at the store roof, from the corner of which I observe an enormous black wing flapping. It resembles the wing of a giant raven. The creature on the roof beats its wing over the side and flaps it up and down, up and down.

While I watch and hold my breath, a sharp cry rises from the creature. Still looking up, I bend to fumble around on the pavement for the padlock, but I can’t find it. I glance down—it’s at my feet—so I scoop it up with trembling fingers. I manage to lock the padlock.

I scan the roof and shove the key into my pocket. No bird in sight.

I only looked at the ground for a couple seconds. All I know is that bird sounded exactly like the creature above my apartment.

#

It’s been a week since Bad Vibes asked me when I get off work.

I frequently leave the apartment’s back door open, so Minnie Maude can run on the back stairs. She wasn’t brought up as an indoor cat, but it’s too dangerous to let her roam outside. I feel bad about keeping her inside the apartment all the time.

Now I lounge in the living room with incense burning on the coffee table and a book open in my lap. I’m propped on cushions and face the enormous front picture window. Between two brick apartment buildings across the street, the sky is dark blue with hovering gray clouds. I think I hear something from the back of the apartment, so I look up from my book.

I turn from the window and glance around the room: at the coffee table with incense and piles of books and magazines, the secondhand couch across the room buried with blankets and homemade pillows, the little end tables covered with candles, books, mail, and porcelain cats. I return to my book and read about a ghost in a hotel, and I shiver convulsively; in the story, a gray wrinkled hand reaches out of a door and grabs a bystander’s arm.

When I finish reading the ghost story, the hair stands up on the back of my neck. I shake all over, and my heartbeat seems faster than normal. I look around, expecting to see a ghost, and I turn toward the dining room, where the oval thrift store table and mismatched chairs I rescued from dumpsters reside under the chandelier. Pillows cover the window seat, and my desk stands beyond the table.

Minnie is curled up on a beanbag, though I thought she was on the back steps. She raises her head and stares toward the open French door down the hallway. The cat jumps up and trots to the back door, through it, and onto the landing. I see nothing unusual, and the bad vibes have faded, so I return to the book. I know I should be filling out grad school applications, but ghost stories are more fun.

I read for at least another half hour, when Minnie utters a low growl, and floorboards creak in the dining room. I yank my head up, and a huge gust of wind pounds against the front window. The panes rattle. My heart flutters, and I jump.

In a glance, I see the midnight-blue sky full of moving clouds and the few treetops swaying. Minnie growls again. A hand grabs my left wrist, and the book falls from my lap onto the floor with a thump and fluttering of pages. I gasp and look up at Bad Vibes.

I’m shaking and hear scrambling above. I open my mouth and shriek, while I vainly attempt to yank my arm away. Bad Vibes shakes his right leg, to which Minnie Maude’s teeth are attached. I hear his voice, but my scream drowns out his words. He grabs my other wrist and shoves me downward despite the growling and hissing cat.

I’m still screaming when I hear gigantic wings beating outside my front window. Bad Vibes releases my right wrist and puts a hand over my mouth, while I thrash back and forth to shake him off.

A blur of enormous iridescent and black feathers and an unfathomable wingspan fills the window frame. The gigantic bird crashes through the window. The screen tears, the glass shatters, and the wood frame splinters and breaks.

The raven folds its wings enough to fit in my capacious living room, as it glides straight for Bad Vibes. He backs away and stares at the giant bird, and I easily slip my wrist from his loosened grasp. I sit up. He backs off toward the large archway between the living and dining rooms. Minnie Maude, fur standing on end, slips under a couch.

The raven’s claws click across the floor, toward Bad Vibes, who halts under the archway between the two rooms. His lower jaw drops as he stares at the giant bird. I rise and stand on the couch with my back to the wall. My fingers grasp for the sill of a long and narrow stained-glass window.

The raven lunges. The great bird’s beak punctures into the man’s stomach, pecks at him over and over again, everywhere, turning him into a bloody mass of entrails and torn fabric and bones on the wooden floor.

My heart fluttering, I watch and knock books from the windowsill and onto the couch. A pool of blood spreads across the wooden floor.

The apartment is silent except for my own gasping breaths. I watch the bird turn around calmly and wobble gracelessly through the center of the living room, step onto the coffee table, hop onto what remains of the windowsill, and with spreading wings soar out the window. The bird vanishes in the sky.

The wind ceases. The sky and trees are still again, and the bird is nowhere in sight.

When I finally turn from the damaged window, I expect to see blood and entrails, but the décor looks almost as before the bird arrived. I see no pool of blood, no bloody bird prints on the coffee table, and no pile of gore. Instead, I see a pile of gray ashes on the floor, where the bird tore apart my stalker. Besides the window, the only other evidence that something happened are the books on the couch and a long incense stick that no longer burns.

With my back still to the wall and my breath heavy, I slide slowly downward, staring at the pile of ashes on the wooden floor that the gore no longer stained. I close my eyes and take a deep, shaky breath. I sit down and exhale slowly.

I recall how every time I hear or see the raven, it distracts me from my anger, as does focusing on my emotions instead of brooding about the object of my aversion. The distraction typically defuses my anger. I exhale and watch as Minnie Maude peeks out from under the other couch. “Mrrrrrp?” Her eyes are dilated, and she stares at the window.

I exhale. “Sorry, darling, but no more walks on the back stairs.”

Back to Amaryllis & the Pixie:

Chapter 1:

Chapter 13:

https://open.substack.com/pub/whimsicalwords/p/amaryllis-and-the-pixie-chapter-13?r=5m2is&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Amaryllis & the Pixie, Chapter 14

Virginia is trotting ahead along a narrow dirt path along the coastline, as she sniffs around for the scent of the pixie Elestren, which she got from the stone table in the shed at Kerensa’s castle.

And what a castle that was, Amaryllis thinks, despite the breathtaking outdoor scenery now surrounding Virginia and her. That’s the trouble with living in the Americas—no castles. Certainly no castles in Portland, Oregon, unless you count Pittock Mansion, an early twentieth-century mansion inspired by French Chateau style, complete with towers topped with pointy roofs. But no, in Oregon Craftsman homes are generally considered ancient. And then there’s the Disney House, owned by members of Walt Disney’s family, a beautiful and colorful Victorian house, probably from the 1880s—which is also considered extremely old in Portland—or perhaps a bit later.

Amaryllis shakes these thoughts out of her head and reminds herself: this would be an excellent time to focus on the present moment and the near future—the near future meaning when they come across the pixie. Amaryllis’s focus goes to their surroundings. The scenery is breathtaking: rocks everywhere as they tread along a narrow dirt path on a slope overlooking the ocean. Seagulls shriek overhead. Amaryllis thinks she saw the heads of sea lions surfacing in the water near the rocky coastline.

Amaryllis turns to watch Virginia’s back—her pale fur a couple feet ahead. Her tail is thrust straight behind her, as it so often is when she’s walking around the house and muttering. This is Virginia in Exploring Mode. Her sister Vita more often displays her thinner, black tail sticking straight up in the air, which Amaryllis understands indicates that a cat is happy and confident. Always a good sign. But Virginia’s straight-behind tail is also a good sign, coming from a place of curiosity. It’s not a good time to pet her—as cuddly as Virginia is, she isn’t in the mood to cuddle when she’s walking like this.

Watching Virginia and listening to the seagulls and the gusts of the ocean water, Amaryllis thinks of the pixie. She says to her familiar, “Clever pixie, rescuing herself like that. But since I had that dream, I do wish we can meet her and escort her back to her people.”

Hmm, the land of the pixies. The kingdom of the pixies? Amaryllis didn’t know of such a thing. As a witch, she was drawn to the Land of the Fae and had visited a few times previously, and she’d read many books on the Land of Fae and on Fae folk. But the realm remained enigmatic. Humans, or mere mortals, have plenty of theories about Fae, but could we ever really know the Land of Fae without getting trapped there? Amaryllis thought it was contradictory in a way that you weren’t supposed to eat or drink anything in the Land of Fae—which meant you could risk getting dehydrated or even starving to death if you stayed there too long.

Simultaneously, however, witches like herself tended to visit the Land of Fae to collect magical herbs for spells and the like. Amaryllis was certainly guilty of this tendency herself. It was fine to use the herbs—consume them—as long as you didn’t do it while you were still in the Land of Fae. If you ate or drank anything in that realm, you’d find yourself trapped in that land. Amaryllis thought it a bit lucky that consuming those herbs in our own realm didn’t mean we were barred from ever setting foot in the Land of Fae again. It was so one-sided.

Amaryllis keeps her eyes peeled for faerie circles. Portland and other parts of Oregon had plenty of mushrooms, too. All that rain led to not only beautiful flowers and green trees, but also a great many mushrooms, sometimes in unfortunate locations like growing on cars. Certainly moss grew on cars. But so many mushrooms also mean the occasional fairy circle. Sure, scientists had a different explanation for those fairy circles—a perfectly logical and scientific explanation—but Amaryllis knew from experience that they led to the Land of Fae.