The Witches Of Denmark (5 page)

Dad shooed the crew of six movers on their way, taking out a rolled wad of Grants to tip each one as they exited via the rear of the house.

“Well, should we spend the rest of our day unloading everything, or, perhaps this is the perfect opportunity to test the latest wand I’ve created?”

Grandpa posed the question when it appeared only the guys and Alisia were listening. Grandma and Mom were hard at work in the dining room and kitchen. But when my sis alerted Mom that our grandfather was about to engage in a disdainful act, the pair joined the rest of us in gazing up at the old man hovering above the upstairs newel post, his new toy at the ready.

“Georghe?
Georghe
, get down from there!” scolded Grandma.

“Florin… when did you become such a party pooper?” he replied, drifting closer to the chandelier. He smiled amusedly at us all, waving the wand made from the finest mahogany, its lavender tip beginning to glow. “I can tell that you, Silvia, and even Alisia are tired and could use a helping hand. Why not let me help out with a little fun, and then we can enjoy a quiet evening together?”

“Because it will be the beginning of mischief that will eventually escalate to big problems for us all,” said Mom, and supported by an emphatic nod from Grandma. “We need to live like everyone else—like normal people. We discussed this, Father, and more than once. ‘The best way to appear normal, is to
behave
normally.’ Remember?”

“So, you don’t want me to direct our things to their proper place and alignment in the house? It could save us hours of getting the energy flow just right, you know.”

“No!”
said Grandma, sharply.
“
Listen to your daughter-in-law, Georghe, and put that damned thing away before you hurt someone with it!”

“Not even an itty-bitty—”

His reply was cut short by a loud rapping on the back door. Mom and Alisia went to investigate. I was slightly disappointed we wouldn’t get to hear my grandparents’ Romanian accents steadily become more pronounced as they verbally sparred. Often, this was when Alisia and I would pick up some of the older Romanian words and phrases we might never hear otherwise.

“Who is it?” asked Grandma.

“I have no idea… an older woman with what looks like a pie in her hands,” Mom said, and I could almost feel the forced smile from where I stood, just outside the kitchen doorway in the foyer, with Dad and Grandpa trying to peek around my shoulder. She opened the door.

“Kitchen-back-patio door… open!”

“I really like that gal’s voice,” whispered Dad from behind me.

“The woman talking to Silvia?” teased Grandpa.

“No.” Dad sounded pained. “You know… the security alarm lady.”

“Ahhh… I bet Sebastian likes her, too, eh?”

“Huh?” I glanced behind me, where Dad and Grandpa eyed me playfully. “Oh, no… she’s too old for me, I do believe.”

“The British gal, or the nice old lady that your mother just let into the house?”

“Both.” My tone matched my father’s from a moment ago, drawing an amused chuckle from Grandpa.

“Actually, kiddo, I do believe you are twice as old as the one in the kitchen and at least triple the years of the other.”

“Very funny,” I grumbled, but smiling. Where would I be without Grandpa’s ever-present sense of humor? At least it provided something to hang on to, as the full relocation realization would soon hit me.

“…. Well, I saw y’all drive up and I just had to come over and welcome everybody to the neighborhood!” announced the woman, waving to the three of us males after setting down a jar of blackberry compote to go with the enticing cheesecake Mom sat down on the kitchen island. “My name is Sadee Dean… and that’s with two E’s instead of an IE or Y for Sadee! When y’all get settled, I’d love to have you over for dinner—my husband, Dan, and I live two doors down from here.”

She pointed to the east, up Old Dominion Road, and I recalled that all of the homes on this side of the street were sort of stately, though not near as grand as the mini-palace my folks and grandparents had landed us. Sadee Dean carried an infectious personality… so warm and bubbly, with similar energy to my grandmother. Her eyes were hidden behind thick prescription glasses, so I couldn’t tell the color. And with just a little gray in her dark brown hair that was coifed just above the neckline of her blouse, I would’ve guessed her age to be early sixties. She didn’t dress like an older woman, wearing faded Levis and youthful sandals.

“Well, would you look at these!” she enthused, moving over to the broomsticks. I doubt she detected the slight flinch from Mom and Grandma, nor the even slighter movement in the broomsticks, as they are attuned to their user, or ‘master’, like a living thing. “If you don’t mind me askin’, where’d you find ‘em?”

Grandma moved over and picked up hers and lovingly stroked it, motioning for Sadee to brush her hands across it.

“Both have been in our family for many years, and come from Romania,” she said, which drew a cautious look from Mom. “I don’t think they make anything quite like them in America.” Grandma chuckled warmly, while Sadee continued to pet the broomstick. Perhaps, she felt the thing’s energy. It must’ve been calm, since an irritated broomstick could well fly out of someone’s hands if the chemistry wasn’t right, or it ‘felt’ threatened.

“Well, I have never… never seen or experienced anything quite like this before,” said Sadee, gently pulling back her hand, as if suddenly aware of the broomstick’s potentially volatile nature.

“Thank you for what looks like a delicious treat!” enthused my mother, who genuinely seemed to like this lady with the weird spelling of her first name and a dangerous curiosity about broomsticks. “I bet it disappears tonight.”

Sadee blushed and told her softly that she hoped so.

“I’d like to introduce all of you to your neighbors. The good ones, that is.” She laughed. “Once you get settled, maybe we can arrange for a get together at our place, where Dan and I can introduce y’all to everyone…. Well, I’m sure you’d like some time to get familiar with your wonderful new home. The Clarkes were good people, and I’m sure you are, too. If you need anything at all, feel free to give me a holler…. Here’s my number. Dan and I will be happy to help you in any way we can.”

She handed mom a piece of stationary with her name and phone number written on it.

“Take care—nice to meet y’all!”

And just like that, Sadee maneuvered her way to the back door like she knew the place quite well, and was out of the house before Mom, Grandma, and Alisia could finish their “Nice to meet you, too” and goodbyes. As for the guys, I guess we knew better than to even try.

“That woman is an old soul… and a good one, too,” Grandma remarked, watching Sadee cut through the next door neighbor’s yard to reach her back patio, barely visible from where our house sat.

“And, she’s a damned good cook,” added Grandpa, after helping himself to a piece of cheesecake, but forgoing the compote.

“I like her, too,” said Mom, thoughtfully. She smiled, and my sister nodded approvingly, as if Alisia put the old gal through her own weighted analysis and came out with a favorable verdict. “In fact, I think I like her better than the others we met last week.”

“She seems nice,” Dad agreed, joining Grandpa in the preliminary attack on the ‘Welcome to the Neighborhood’ gift. “But, it’s going to take you and Mother some time to adjust to the reality of neighbors just dropping by, eh? But if that’s how people are here, it might be a good idea to adapt to how they are so we can blend in better. It could give us extra protection in case ‘you know who’ ever comes looking for us.”

“And if the older ones are the standard for this place, they’ll be dead and buried before anyone recognizes the fact that the Radus have barely aged,” joked Grandpa. “At least it could buy us a few years to decide where to establish our roots more permanently… either here or somewhere else.”

Chapter Four

As promised, the lady named Sadee didn’t introduce us to the wrong, or bad, neighbors. Those folks, and the local panhandlers, took care of that honor themselves.

The first incident happened roughly a week after we moved in to the new place. Alisia and I had been getting used to the broader neighborhood—both the upstanding areas and what is officially considered the ‘hood’—and had also started familiarizing ourselves with the town’s layout. Our first priority was to find the local Wal-Mart, the best grocery stores, and the retailers whose specialty was either new fashion clothing for her or the latest games and electronics for me. Along the way, we also discovered the horrid offerings of what is considered the restaurant industry in Denmark. For the latter, it was usually a case of the food being terrible and the service being passable, or the food being edible and the service being nonexistent.

“So, Mom and Dad… all the talk about good ole southern cooking and hospitality is a crock of shit.  At least in this wee little town, huh?” I joked.

I was preparing to join my sis outside in the front yard, where she had already started that day’s weeding assignment. Halfway through cleaning up the extensive gardens surrounding the house, we could look forward to more of the same when we took our act to the area surrounding the barn the next week. Then, the week after, it would be time to work the front of the property again, and back and forth until October, when the first frost would usually arrive in this region of the country.

“Not true,” said Mom, seemingly more at peace that morning than she had been in quite a while. Not since the ongoing war with the Mateis began to escalate in violence last year. “Gabe and I had a wonderful dinner at Sadee’s last night.”

“Amazing Creole fare,” Dad added, looking up from his first copy of the Denmark Gazette. The two were sharing breakfast—something they had also gotten away from in the past few years. Maybe moving to Denmark was a good thing? At least for them… glad someone was getting something gratifying out of it. “Sadee and the board members from the art school that sits at the rear edge of our property warned us about the restaurants in Denmark. Apparently, we’ll have to drive to Murray, Kentucky, or down to Jackson in the south, or even Clarksville to the east if we want decent food…. And service, since that also seems to be lacking here.”

To be fair, my parents hadn’t gone on the eatery tour with Alisia and me. That’s cool, I guess. They seemed to be having more fun with their new friends and exploring culinary experiments in their grand new kitchen—which apparently had rarely been used by the Clarkes, according to Sadee and the other ‘good’ neighbors. So, I suppose there was a compliment in there somewhere for my sister and me, since Mom and Dad trusted our restaurant reviews.

As for our grandparents? True to form, they had yet to relinquish their previous habits and still traveled elsewhere by broomstick. Since they hadn’t complained about the food here in town, they certainly hadn’t tried it. Or, perhaps they had found some local hole-in-the-wall diner that escaped the plague of apathy infecting the rest of the town’s eateries. Regardless, I could tell their frequent excursions greatly annoyed my mother, and pretty much my father, too. I overheard Dad tell Mom to give Grandpa and Grandma time, since in addition to the move, both were moving into their twilight years. It wasn’t unusual for Romanian warlocks and witches above five hundred years on this planet to suddenly feel restless. I knew Mom was biding her time, and would soon begin to work on Grandma to try and control Grandpa’s wanderlust.

Good luck with that, Mommy Dear.

Without any way to legitimately delay my role in the ruse to appear as two teenagers earning their keep by doing outside chores, I stepped out onto the front porch. I’ve come to especially enjoy the view from there, picturing what the house and neighborhood looked like before 1900. Four Doric columns, capped with hand-carved angels and some sort of flower, have supported the porch long before the iron fence and ornate gate came along, marking the entrance to the property. The house sitting directly across from us on Old Dominion is one of the nicer Victorians in the area, complete with a pair of turrets, intricate spindle work, and a widow’s walk atop the tallest roof. Honestly, if it had been up to me, or I had been deluded enough to spearhead a move to some rural town, then I would’ve insisted on a house that looked like this one. I’m a Victorian guy, remember? And the Queen Anne influence from 1880 to 1910 marked the finest examples of Victorian architecture. Just sayin’.

Not that I’ve changed my mind about the Cat Daddy place we were testing fate with, but my style preference is just a little later. Anyway, I was curious about the owners, since we saw an attractive woman once, and Mom waved to her. Apparently my parents met her at one of the functions Mom and Dad attended this past week. My mother said the woman, named Meredith, was nice and that her husband was an author who kept really strange hours. He sounded interesting to me, especially since he is supposed to be some popular horror writer.

If only he had been the neighbor keeping an eye on Alisia and I as we worked in the yard each day. Unfortunately, that guy lived to the right of our place, on Chaffin’s Bend. The owner of another older home, a sprawling one-story with loads of potential, he appeared to be a handy man by trade. At least his truck looked like that was the vocation; although the man, who appeared to be in his early forties, was almost always home. Home and keeping a watchful eye on us.