The Broom
A Great Lakes Grimoire Story
Kerrie L. Hughes
Madison, Wisconsin
A tall, slender young woman with strawberry blond curls, a heart-shaped face, and oddly large aqua eyes waited under a canopy in front of a two-story triangular building.
It was located on the corner of State and Broom Streets and had a For Sale sign on the door.
The boarded-up windows were plastered with posters directed at the large population of college students.
The unseasonably cold rain whipped a wind off the nearby lake, making her wish she’d worn more than jeans, a light jacket, and canvas shoes.
She shivered and fiddled with the charm bracelet on her wrist. Gray days reminded her of her mother; she loved a dreary afternoon and the smell of a cold wind. Eilonwy preferred sunny mornings.
A tall young man with sandy-blond hair and similarly large eyes, but more blue than aqua, joined her.
He wore jeans, boots, and a black leather biker jacket and was carrying a blue motorcycle helmet and leather gloves.
He looked like their father, but was more like their mother in his enjoyment of stormy weather, and often rode his bike without a care for the elements.
“Taran, there you are. I don’t suppose the Realtor called you? She’s late,” Eilonwy asked her one-year-younger brother.
“She did. I just came from her office, I have the keys,” he said while holding out five keys on a ring.
“That’s odd, why would she trust us?” Eilonwy asked, even though she suspected it was because her brother was effortlessly charming.
“She told me the building is haunted,” he answered with a grin.
“Why are you smiling?”
“She also told me the owner doesn’t want to deal with it anymore, he wants to sell it, and it’s in our price range.”
A whoosh of air came down the pedestrian-only street, and Eilonwy shivered.
“Let’s get inside and I’ll explain.” Taran opened the front door, let her in, and then closed the door and latched it behind them.
Eilonwy found the light switches and flipped them on. The building was as triangular inside as it was outside. A counter split the middle of the room, kitchen on the right, customers on the left. “This isn’t as dirty as I expected it to be,” she commented.
Taran put his helmet and gloves on the counter and pulled folded papers out of his jacket.
“The history I researched says the place was built in 1888 and has been everything from a shoe store to a pharmacy. It’s called flatiron style, whatever that means, and an Italian family bought it in 1964 and turned it into a restaurant.
They lived upstairs, but it’s since been converted into seating space. ”
Eilonwy sniffed the air. “I can still smell the spices in the walls, smells delicious.”
“The owner retired and gave it to his daughter, who continued the business until she mysteriously disappeared in ’94,” Taran continued.
“Is that who’s haunting the place?”
“The Realtor, her name is Penny, said she thinks so because once the restaurant was sold and converted into a used bookstore, strange things started happening.”
“Like what?”
“She wasn’t sure, but heard it was mostly noises, moving objects, and a vague sense of unease.”
“That doesn’t sound bad. Did they do a sage burn and cast out?”
“I didn’t ask. She was wearing a Christian cross, so I didn’t bring up witch stuff. She just told me this place has a higher-than-normal turnover.”
“I remember this being a sandwich shop a few months ago, and a bakery before that.”
“It’s also been a clothes boutique, a candy store, and an art gallery. Nothing seems to last longer than a yearlong lease.”
“And now they want to sell?”
“Yup.”
“This is too good to be true.”
“Most people don’t like ghosts,” Taran offered.
“True.”
“But we’re witches who know ghosts can’t hurt you,” he boasted.
“They mostly can’t hurt you,” Eilonwy corrected.
“If it were of the Faefolk, we would already know.”
Eilonwy frowned. “Don’t say the f-word or you’ll attract their attention, call them ‘fox’ or ‘foxen.’ ”
“Right, sorry, this was more your and Mom’s thing rather than mine.”
Eilonwy was quiet for a moment. “It’s been nearly two years since she died. I still miss her.”
“I miss her too…and Dad.”
Eilonwy didn’t say anything; she didn’t trust herself to keep the secret about their father’s whereabouts.
“Do you think he’ll be able to come back soon?” Taran finally asked.
“I don’t want to think about that right now, we should stay focused. What’s upstairs?”
Taran put a smile on his face. “Let’s find out.”
They walked past a row of window booths, the kitchen, and a handicap-accessible bathroom to the staircase on the back wall. There was a side exit door directly across from the staircase that led out to the sidewalk.
“I like the downstairs layout,” Eilonwy said as she climbed behind Taran.
He stopped at the top, where a café table, resting on its side, blocked the landing. “Hang on, I need to move this.” He lifted it upright and pushed it aside.
Eilonwy came up behind him and found the light switches by a door with a pebbled glass window and Bathrooms painted on the glass in gold lettering.
“Wait, don’t turn them on all at once. Penny said you can only turn on two at most, or the circuit breaks, then you have to reset the fuse.”
“So, we need to have an electrician come in,” Eilonwy said as she flipped on the lights numbered 1 and 2.
“She said they’ve had several electricians here, but no one can find the problem.”
“That seems odd, and expensive.”
Eilonwy scanned the room. A door adjacent to the bathroom door also had a pebbled glass window and Private in gold letters.
The room was redbrick with oak floors and a tangle of tables and chairs piled in the middle.
All the windows had deep sills, wide enough to sit on, with heavy, olive-green curtains tied back from them.
“The curtains are ugly, but I like the windows, and the view.”
“Let’s check out the office,” Taran said. He unlocked the right-side brass doorknob and pushed the door open.
It was a narrow room about ten feet wide, with two windows and a long bench seat across the back. A surprisingly clean cornstalk broom lay on the seat. The rest of the room was bare brick, but only five feet deep at the door and three feet deep at the far end because of the triangular outer wall.
“There’s nothing in here except a broom,” Eilonwy said.
They stepped inside, and Taran looked behind the door. “There’s a mirror on the wall.”
“Don’t look into it,” Eilonwy said and pulled him away.
“Why?”
“A mirror behind a door is strange, and it smells like candle wax in here. Can we turn on a light?”
Taran summoned his witch light: “Luminare.” A blue orb the size of a child’s kickball appeared a few feet above him, glowing as brightly as a flashlight. “There’s nothing, only an electrical socket.”
“Let’s look in the bathrooms,” Eilonwy said as she left the office.
Taran unlocked the left-side brass knob and pushed the door open all the way to the wall, where he latched it at the bottom with an attached kick stop.
There were four doors in this hallway, the farthest one on the left labeled Men, the one adjacent to that labeled Women. They were each a one stall with a sink and a baby-changing station. The doors to the right were solid with no signs.
“Let’s check these,” Taran said as he unlocked the door across from where they entered. It was filled with bathroom supplies, toilet paper, and paper towels.
“This is a very shallow closet,” Eilonwy said, moving some rolls of toilet paper aside. “Look at this, the back wall is wood rather than brick.”
“Do you think there’s another room behind it?”
“Maybe, let’s check the last door.”
Taran unlocked that one and swung it open to reveal a small landing and a staircase that went down to another landing, then down to a fire door labeled Exit.
“This is a curious landing,” Eilonwy observed. “I saw from the outside that there’s a small, recessed balcony above the exit door.”
“That would suggest this wall has something behind it.”
“Or it’s the back of an apartment that belongs to the next building?”
“It might explain the shallow closet,” Taran suggested.
“Ghost hunting aside, let’s check out the kitchen before we commit to anything. I like the place, but I’m concerned about the electricity.”
Just then all the lights went out and the hallway grew cold. Eilonwy and Taran both looked back and saw a mist emerge from the supply closet. It moved past them, through the hallway, across the outer room to the office, and came back out with the broom.
Taran and Eilonwy went into the seating area, illuminated only by the gray day outside.
They watched as the broom danced back and forth, sweeping the floor clean.
The tables and chairs untangled themselves, one by one, and moved across the floor.
Five small café tables, each with two chairs, assembled into neat settings around the room.
The broom stopped in front of the siblings, the air freezing as they waited. The mist formed into the barest shadow of a human against the darkness. A translucent hand reached out to Eilonwy’s face.
Eilonwy put up her palm and stated firmly, “Move away,” as she splayed her fingers in an outward gesture.
The ghost moved back a few feet, then tried to advance again.
Eilonwy continued. “My bracelet is made of a silver that will disperse you if you try to enter me.”
The hand moved toward Taran, but he raised his arm to show he also wore a silver bracelet.
The mist stopped, threw the broom down, and disappeared. As it did, the tables and chairs all slammed into each other like they were magnetically attracted.
“Well, that was interesting,” Eilonwy said.
“What do you want to do?” Taran asked.
“I want to get my ghost kit from home. You get this place’s blueprints from the Realtor. Then we’re going to camp here until we figure out what this is.”