4. We Four Kings （of the Hardware Store Are）
We Four Kings (of the Hardware Store Are)
The moment Jasper turned the key in the ignition, George Michael’s voice filled the car with his doleful tenor: “ Last Christmas, I ?—”
“ Nope .” He jabbed the radio off. “You did nothing of the kind, Georgie my boy.”
Connecting his phone to the car, he scrolled to his personally curated playlist: That Old Man Bach Sure Slaps . The magnificent precision of the Brandenburg Concertos was just the thing to help him work through this mystery in a rational way.
Back in his office, that liquor license was still sitting on his desk, mocking everything he thought he knew about the northwest corner of the county. Come on, 278 West 113th Street ? He’d personally cataloged every road in that region. The very idea that he might have missed so much? No. No way.
Absolutely not.
Naturally his GPS selected this moment to go on the fritz, insisting there was nothing but protected forest ahead for miles. But Jasper didn’t need technology to do his job, thanks very much. He had his own mental map of the region, carefully constructed over years of meticulous research.
As the forest grew more dense, the naked branches wove a skeletal tunnel overhead. Jasper drove on, and drove on, and drove some more... and in time he began to wonder if he’d made a mistake.
That liquor license was probably just a clerical error, right? God knows typing mistakes are a dime a dozen in my line of work. Maybe they just got the zip code wrong? They could’ve meant New Windsor, I guess? They have numbered streets there...
Yes, that must be it.
This is nonsense. I should turn around, head back to the party, maybe even risk one of Anita’s ? —
The trees suddenly parted, revealing a covered bridge spanning a frozen creek.
The bridge’s barn-red sides and mansard roof spoke of mid-nineteenth-century construction, though to Jasper’s keen eye, the exposed structural elements suggested at least one renovation, perhaps around the 1920s.
The craftsmanship was actually rather extraordinary.
Jasper parked and got out, his hands shaking slightly as he approached the bridge. He knew every historical structure in the county. He’d written papers about them. He’d given lectures to the local chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution. How could he not know about this bridge?
The mortise and tenon joints were properly maintained, showing none of the separation one usually encountered in structures this age.
Even the roofing material appeared to be original, though how it had survived so long in New England was beyond him.
He ran his hand along one of the vertical posts, appreciating the quality of the wood.
“What else have I missed?” he whispered, equal parts wonderstruck and horrified.
Back in the car, he drove slowly across the bridge and found himself transported into what could only be described as the bastard child of a Norman Rockwell painting and one of those year-round Christmas shops.
The homes were textbook examples of nineteenth-century domestic architecture: Greek Revival, Italianate, and Second Empire styles all maintaining their original details with impossible fidelity.
However, while the construction looked perfect, the (garish, to Jasper’s eye) house colors were worth a strongly worded letter to the County Preservation Society: sage green with cream trim, dusty blue with white colonettes, warm yellow clapboard with forest green shutters.
This was wrong. All wrong. Not just the historically dubious color choices but the existence of the houses themselves.
Jasper had never seen them before; of this he was unshakably sure.
An entire town that he’d never visited or even heard of?
It couldn’t exist. He’d have known about these homes.
Hell, he’d have written his dissertation on them.
He drove past a row of Greek Revival townhouses that had coordinated their twinkling displays into what looked like a Busby Berkeley production number, with lights dancing in synchronization across their identical porticos.
A particularly lovely Carpenter Gothic cottage had what appeared to be a small army of animatronic reindeer prancing along its widow’s walk.
A bit further down the street, an eighteenth-century saltbox home boasted a collection of elvish ice sculptures that somehow hadn’t melted despite the afternoon sun.
( Must be some new synthetic material , Jasper told himself firmly.)
Most outrageous of all, across from the town green sat an otherwise stately Victorian mansion festooned with twinkling lights on literally every surface; it resembled a landing strip for absurdly festive aircraft.
( Incredible how the colored lights are so bright, even in the daytime, Jasper thought.
He couldn’t help but be impressed, despite his distaste.
The things they manage with LEDs these days. .. )
Jasper pulled over to snap a photo of the absurd building with his phone.
But when he looked at the image, there was nothing but a sort of speckled grey mess.
He took another photo, and another. All the same.
They looked like a test pattern on an old television, back in the days before twenty-four-hour programming.
So my phone is broken, now, on top of everything else. Fantastic.
He sighed, locked the car, and decided to take a look around.
Main Street was everything that New England towns were advertised to be, from the brick buildings with their cast-iron storefronts to the gazebo on the town green.
But if Jasper hoped this little field trip would be a break from the holidays, he’d severely miscalculated.
Christmas had mounted a full-scale invasion.
Garlands and ornaments adorned every lamppost and doorway, while the shop windows competed to create the most elaborate holiday displays.
On one side was Spellbound Books, its windows featuring some sort of winter wonderland theme. Down the street was All Who Wander, a travel agency whose facade maintained its original 1880s pressed-tin details. Henrietta’s Music Store, with what appeared to be a viola in the window, playing itself .
He took a steadying breath of crisp December air.
Time to get some answers. After all, he was a professional.
He had multiple degrees. He’d written his master’s thesis on New England architectural preservation, for crying out loud.
And yet somehow he’d apparently overlooked an entire town?
Didn’t speak well for his graduate program, that’s for sure.
All those college loans couldn’t have been for nothing. There had to be a logical explanation... right?
Across the street, an elderly man was sweeping the sidewalk in front of a hardware store, whistling “We Three Kings” with impressive accuracy. Perfect, thought Jasper as he approached. Nothing like a longtime resident for gathering intel .
“Excuse me, sir?” Jasper adopted his most professional demeanor despite the existential uncertainty gathering in his belly. “This may seem like an odd question but could you tell me how long this town has been here?”
The old man looked up and his mouth curled into an enormous grin. “Well, well! Ahoy there, stranger! C’mon over. My name’s Earl but you can call me Twelve!” Then the man turned toward the store’s porch entrance, bellowing, “Hey, Earls! Come see what the cat dragged in!”
Jasper barely had enough time to wonder why the man was shouting his own name and in plural before another gentleman emerged from the store, looking older than the first. And another, older still.
And a fourth, who may as well have been Father Time himself.
They all grinned (a bit wickedly?) at the new arrival.
Oh dear, Jasper thought. I should have risked the rum balls.
“Coffee with a little something extra?” The youngest of the old men held out a steaming mug to Jasper. “Best thing for a December afternoon.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t...” But somehow Jasper found himself settled into a rocking chair in the center of the store, warm mug in hand. His first sip was a surprise: not just coffee, but coffee with rum. (Apparently there’d be no avoiding rum today.)
Jasper opened his mouth to object but quickly thought the better of it.
If you want the information, he told himself, you better accept the hospitality.
In any case, far more surprising than the booze was the hospitality itself.
Jasper had grown up not far from here, and he knew the classic Yankee response to strangers: cold shoulders and colder silence.
Instead, he was on the receiving end of grins and backslaps and spiked coffee.
It was like Steel Magnolias but with men.
“So tell me...” Jasper took a second, more cautious sip. “Are you... um, are you all named Earl?”
“Yes, indeed,” said the eldest of the old. “I’m Earl the Ninth, but everyone calls me Nine. This here is my son, the Earl the Tenth, aka Ten, then that there is his son Eleven, and of course the young scalawag over in the corner is my great-grandson, Twelve.”
Twelve laughed. “Be fair, the actual young scalawag is my boy, Nate.”
“Sure, but my great-great grandson ain’t here at the moment, which makes you , at age sixty-one, the young scalawag currently in the room.”
“Your names are Nine through Twelve...” repeated Jasper slowly. “But your great-great grandson is... Nate ? So he... what, he didn’t want to be Thirteen?”
“Can ya blame him?” said Twelve with a wink. “Say, how’s your grog, there? Can I get you a warm-up?”
“No no, I’m good. Tell me, is everyone in your town this welcoming to strangers?”
The Earls exchanged glances.
“Well. We believe in hospitality, I suppose you could say,” said Ten.
Nine nodded. “Seems only right, given our history.”
“What history is that, exactly?” Jasper tried to keep his tone casual, professional.
But inside, his archivist’s heart was racing.
An entire town’s worth of untapped historical records?
The academic papers practically wrote themselves.
The ladies at Daughters of the American Revolution were going to flip their perfectly coiffed wigs.
“Well now—” Eleven settled back in his chair “—that’s quite a tale. Goes back to Salem—the true Salem, mind you, not that tourist trap they’ve got going now.”
“That’s right.” Nine picked up the thread. “You see, back in the bad old days, when the witch trials started, the true witches of Salem had a choice to make. They either?—”
Jasper nearly choked on his coffee. “I’m sorry—did you say true witches?”
“Yes, true witches,” Nine shot back.
Twelve chuckled. “Try and keep up, Jasper.”
“Anyway, they could’ve stayed, fought the witchfinders.
And that idea was discussed at the time, or so I’m told.
But instead, they picked up and ran. Founded their own town, Oak Haven.
So, they saved themselves. Which was good, cause wouldn’t any of us be here if they hadn’t.
But unfortunately, they did leave the innocent gals to their fates. ”
“Weren’t even witches, those girls that got hanged,” Ten added softly. “Bridget Bishop, Sarah Good, Alice Parker, all the rest. Poor things, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“That memory is the burden we carry here in Oak Haven.” Nine nodded. “It’s the original sin , if you like, that we all live with.”
“Sorry but, uh...” Jasper took a gulp from his mug for courage. “I’m still stuck back on the witches are real part of this story. How do you expect me to believe?—”
“Tell me, Jasper. Have you tried to take a picture of anything since you arrived?”
“Um. Yeah.”
Nine winked. “And how’d that go?”
“Have any trouble locating Oak Haven with the GPS on your car?” asked Ten.
“Or,” added Eleven, “have you tried looking us up on the, uh, the Wiki-whatchamacallit?”
“Or Yelp,” offered Twelve, a bit mockingly. “Checked us out on Yelp, have you?”
Jasper’s mind raced. The missing street records, the unlikely architecture, that violin in the window... “Are you saying there’s some kind of... spell ? What, like there’s some magical fairy dust protecting the town from auslanders ? Am I in Brigadoon all of a sudden?”
“ There he is.” Twelve grinned. “There’s our grouchy little archivist.”
Eleven smiled too. “Good of you to join us, Jasper.”
“What does that even mean?”
“The forgetting spell keeps us hidden from the outside world,” explained Nine patiently. “Outsiders who visit Oak Haven forget the town as soon as they leave. And the spell has been updated for this here digital age—no selfies, no satellite images, no Google Street View.”
“But...” Jasper’s hand trembled slightly as he set down his mug. “None of this is possible. You do understand that, right? That this is impossible? I mean, I’m the county archivist! I should know about this place. I should have records, documentation...”
“Records are just paper.” Eleven’s eyes twinkled. “Paper burns. Paper gets lost. Paper forgets .”
“Never! Paper absolutely never?—”
“And people forget,” interrupted Twelve. “Every outsider who visits Oak Haven? Ziiiip! They go all smooth-brained, the minute they leave town.”
“Which is why,” Nine continued, “we take in the folks who need forgetting. Oak Haven takes refugees, runaways... even retired pirates.”
“I’m sorry...” Jasper picked up the mug and drained it. His professional composure was hanging by a thread. “ Pirates ?”
“Oh sure!” Nine gestured at his boys. “Me and the boys here are all descended from the Great Sea Wolf, Earl of Anglia, Terror of Tortuga. Reformed himself, married a witch, opened this very hardware store. We’ve been helping folks start fresh ever since.”
“Let me get this straight. Oak Haven is a magical sanctuary town, protected by spells, founded by Salem witches trying to make up for abandoning their innocent neighbors?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“So tell us...” Twelve leaned forward like he was ready to start a conspiracy of two. “What are you running from, Jasper?”
“Nothing.” He frowned. “Unless you consider me a refugee from an office Christmas party. But I still don’t understand.
If secrecy is so important to you all, why are you just.
.. telling me all this? You do understand that I’m a representative of the county government, right?
Aren’t I the last person you’d want to be so candid with? ”
The Earls burst out laughing. Nine actually slapped his knee. “Oh, that’s a good one!”
“What’s so funny?”
“Well—” Eleven wiped a tear from his eye “—seems a bit late to worry about government oversight. Considering this is your sixth visit in as many weeks.”
The empty mug slipped from Jasper’s suddenly numb fingers. “ My what ?!”