The Warlock of Mystic

Chapter 1

One

There was no way this house wasn’t haunted.

The old Victorian at the end of a gravel driveway was located on one of those large plots of land where the neighboring houses were still visible, but not right on top of you. In fact, I doubted anyone would even hear my screams through the dense trees.

The autumn leaves were stunning, I’d give my grandmother’s house that much. There was something about seeing the place in the fall that made it extra spooky.

I’d visited this house a handful of times when I’d been between apartments or living arrangements.

Lori—my grandmother—had a guest cottage out back and she’d let me crash a few times while I figured things out.

The last time I’d been back was for a brief weekend this past summer.

It had been sunny then. Beautiful blue Maine skies with wildflowers poking up around the front porch.

But those wildflowers had long since shriveled up and the house looked exponentially creepier this cloudy October evening. Honestly, I was into it. It felt appropriate.

The town of Mystic was well known, after all. A town that was basically a roadside attraction, if Maine were at all on the way to anywhere.

The portal to another realm it had come to be fondly known as.

People insisted on seeing weird things here.

That there was magic in the air. That people went missing—despite there being no concrete evidence to that fact.

Of course it was all horse shit, but tourists still flocked here nonetheless, eager to experience magic or stumble across the supposed “other world.” The locals leaned into it as well; the whole town was basically on theme and October had to be their bread and butter for tourism.

Before I even had a chance to turn off my car, my phone rang.

“Mom?” I answered, not bothering to look at the caller ID. No one else would be checking in on me.

My mother’s voice came out staticky through the speakers of my old car. “Did you make it all right?”

“Literally just pulled up now, Mom.”

Even though I’d told her time and time again I wouldn’t share my location with her, I swear she somehow had it. She always had a knack for knowing exactly where I was.

“Is she there? How’s the house?”

“Still as old as the last time I was here. And I haven’t knocked yet, but it looks like she might be out.”

“I told you to wait until you heard from her,” she huffed on the other end. “What if she’s out of town? On vacation or something?”

“On what? A singles cruise? She’s pushing eighty and still runs her own business.”

“She could still travel, Josie. Don’t assume.”

“Well, I know how to get into the guest cottage. It’s fine.”

“Still…” Her voice faded off. I wasn’t entirely sure what point she was trying to make.

That I was being impulsive by driving out here? Too spontaneous?

She didn’t really have a leg to stand on if that were the case.

My mom had always raised me to be a free spirit.

Go my own way, follow my own path, and all that jazz.

She was a dancer turned mostly choreographer slash occasional singer, and was always bouncing wherever the wind took her to make things work.

But it was precisely now, when I had no money to my name and an unstable future, that I kind of wished she’d pushed me to be an accountant or something practical. Some job where I could sit in a gray cubicle, zone out, and collect checks bi-weekly like clockwork.

“I still think you should have crashed with me while you figure things out,” she continued.

“In your studio apartment where you’re sharing a bathroom with Kevin?”

“You don’t have to say his name with such disdain,” she said, her offense evident.

“I didn’t,” I insisted, even though I did hold a tiny bit of resentment toward my mom’s new boyfriend.

He was ten years younger than her. An unemployed bartender she’d met while they’d both been auditioning for some off Broadway play.

He dressed like he still wished he were in his twenties and always smelled of stale beer and body spray.

“It would be too cramped and I need to work.” A slight lie. I did need to work. I just wasn’t right now.

Life of a starving artist and all. I hadn’t realized that phrase was quite so literal until a few nights ago when I ate my last packet of tuna that I’d dug out of the back of a junk drawer.

The past few years I’d been able to make a (somewhat) steady income painting commissions.

Nothing crazy, but along with the art shows I attended, it was enough to scrape up rent every month.

But recently even those streams had dried up.

There were tons of artists in New York and sometimes it felt like in order to actually be successful, I had to network and schmooze. Two things I’d never been any good at.

Now, I was broke. Like really broke. I’d been living month to month in a furnished apartment that had more roaches than working light switches and shared a hallway bathroom with three other people. I could no longer afford even that.

Out of options, I’d called Lori. My father’s mother who I’d only come to know better during my adult years.

The first time I’d called her to crash on her couch a couple of years ago, she offered me her guest cottage and she’d claimed I’d always have a place to stay with her.

I doubted she’d realized when she extended the offer how many times I’d be taking her up on it.

“Of course, you’re welcome to the guest cottage,” she’d said when I asked her about staying indefinitely. “You already have a key. Come any time.”

I wasn’t scheduled to arrive until November when my lease was up. But enough tenants complaining about a gnarly bug infestation at my apartment complex had forced my sleazy landlord to return my last month’s rent check and send me on my way.

Which was how I’d come to arrive at my grandmother’s house nearly a month early. I’d tried calling her last night and the whole drive up but I hadn’t heard back.

Maybe it was delusional to drive the two hours from Brooklyn, but I did have a key. She wouldn’t tell me her door was always open if she didn’t mean it, right?

“Well if it’s locked you turn right around and come back here, okay? I hate the idea of you on the road late at night,” my mom said.

“Sure, Mom,” I said to placate her, knowing full well that if I couldn’t get into the house for whatever reason, I’d be crashing right here in the driver’s seat of my car.

I got out and slammed the door shut, leaving behind my meager earthly possessions in the backseat and trunk.

It was mostly art supplies and a handful of threadbare sweaters I’d become emotionally attached to, as well as a bunch of paintings I’d done over the past year.

They were my pride and joy but you wouldn’t know it with how I had them sporadically rolled up and stuffed into the trunk.

Some were spilling out of a large plastic portfolio.

I’d never been able to afford one of those nice leather ones.

“Let me call you back when I’m settled.”

She started to protest, but I hung up before she could argue.

I approached the creaking porch before taking the steps up. The screen door fell off the hinges when I pulled it open and I set it to the side, making a mental note to try and fix it for her. I knocked before peering through the dusty window in the middle of the door.

It was dark. Empty.

“Hello?” I called, but the house remained still.

Not home. I should have figured as much. Maybe she was still at work.

I had a few fond—albeit sparse—memories with my grandmother.

She was an eccentric woman. Into woo woo, hippy medicine.

She was an energy healer and owned her own crystal shop on the main street just up the road in Mystic.

I wasn’t sure if she’d decided on the career path because of the town’s spooky tourist allure, but she certainly did pretty well for herself.

Plenty of travelers wandered in throughout the year—interesting characters dying to visit the little east coast town and see if any of the rumors were true.

Lori was actually quite famous—I mean, in the semi-local capacity. People would travel states and miles to get a crystal from her. The energy queen, some called her.

I absentmindedly fiddled with the onyx around my neck that she’d given me. At one point, I’d been convinced it was my good luck charm. Lately, I wasn’t so sure.

The red pickup truck she drove that looked straight out of a vintage Christmas advertisement was gone. That was a good sign, at least. She wasn’t lying on the floor inside incapacitated or anything.

I walked back to the car and grabbed one of my suitcases and as many paintings as I could carry. Using my arms as a traveling coat rack, I dragged everything across the stone walkway.

Thunder rolled through the clouds. I looked up in time to see the first thick raindrop fall from the dark sky.

“It’s moody as shit out here,” I grumbled, pulling the suitcase around the side of the house to the guest cottage that sat behind the property. It was a small, two story building built to mimic the Victorian appearance of the main house even though it was constructed some time in the fifties.

I shifted the rolled up painting further up the crook of my arm and jimmied the key into the lock. The door groaned loudly as it pushed open. As I took in the space, a huge sigh of relief escaped me. I dropped everything and pulled off my tennis shoes.

A small wooden staircase was right off the entry. To the left was a sitting room. The cramped kitchen was in the back and the bedrooms were upstairs. It reminded me of a dollhouse, especially since the ceilings were only seven feet tall.

“Huh,” I said aloud as I ran my finger along the banister, shocked when it came back without even a spec of dust.

The last time I was here I’d had to spend a complete afternoon cleaning all of the cobwebs off of every nook and cranny.

My grandmother said she never went in here and given the state of her main house, she was not the type of person to clean for guests.

She had what I liked to call a mild hoarding tendency.

In the living room, I examined the ancient wooden coffee table. Even stooping down to eye level.

Huh.

Nothing. Not even the thinnest layer of grime.

“Strange,” I muttered before lugging my suitcase up the stairs. Maybe she had hired a cleaner since I’d last seen her.

I groaned with the effort of lifting my suitcase to the top of the staircase before walking past the first room on the right.

It was technically the larger of the two bedrooms, but I absolutely adored the view from the back room.

It faced the trees and I liked to pretend I was in some magical treehouse.

It was small. To be fair, it was basically the size of the apartment I’d just vacated, but I still had to squeeze by the giant dresser to get into the room. Why the hell was vintage furniture so damned big?

I unzipped my suitcase and made quick work of unpacking my things into the, thankfully, empty drawers underneath the window.

Rain raged outside. The whole thing would be a bit eerie if I wasn’t so exhausted. After I’d found out about the infestation yesterday, the last twenty-four hours had been a frenzy of packing and getting out of that hellhole as fast as humanly possible.

Something that sounded like a soft thump came from somewhere in the house. I froze as I was putting my last sock ball into the top drawer.

I waited, sure it must be an old pipe or something. Then, another thump. I rushed to the door.

“Hello?” I called out, cursing myself for never taking that self-defense class my mom was always trying to sign us up for.

Silence even louder than before met my ears.

I waited to see if the thump would return but after counting to sixty and hearing nothing, I forced myself to believe it was the plumbing. Lori never kept up with things as tedious as house maintenance. Of course it would creak and crack. I’d have to get used to it.

I’m all settled, I texted my mom as I raced back down the stairs. I picked up a small plastic bag I’d left abandoned by the front door that contained a few packs of instant ramen and took it into the kitchen.

I stopped at the threshold. The wooden cabinet next to the fridge had been left open. Goose bumps pricked the back of my neck.

Was that open the whole time? I hadn’t really checked the kitchen when I’d first stepped in but something about it still felt off. Like someone had been in here recently. I walked over and shut it.

Ignoring the weird feeling, I pulled out an old kettle, ready to make dinner, head upstairs, and pass out.

I was more than ready for this fresh start.