Chapter 5 An October Breeze of Villainous Intent
HAVING SAID GOODBYE TO GRANDMA’S freaky yet slightly charming head, I depart for Salem’s central train station.
The night air’s growing chillier—that’s fall for you—and within a few minutes, I’m surrounded by a swarm of goths, which is Salem for you.
Usually I like scrolling on my phone while I walk, but it’s nighttime.
Also, since it’s the first weekend of October, the shops have littered the sidewalks with Herculean pumpkin displays and treacherous cobwebs.
It would be safer to jaywalk into oncoming traffic.
I duck beneath a shop awning to send Jane a voice message, letting her know I’m heading home.
Prior to signing for our walk-up apartment in Midtown East, we really only spent one weekend together at EFG’s epic orientation retreat to Busch Gardens.
From the little I’ve seen, Jane’s personality is flatter than a paper doll’s.
Ergo, she is flawless. She hails from the New Jersey suburbs.
She fondly remembers visiting the Olive Garden with her family for birthdays.
She doesn’t like spicy food, has a knack for B-list celebrity sightings, and visits Target for fun.
She listens to K-pop, like me, but not too much.
She doesn’t do anything too much. When we first met, she was drinking coffee from the hotel canister and couldn’t tell me if it was good or not.
Most incredibly of all, she exchanged phone numbers with a bland, wall-faced guy at our first orientation breakfast.
I have so much to learn from her.
The rest of my walk graces me with an absence of eventfulness. That is, until I’m buying my ticket for the next southbound commuter train and the music in my earbud speakers cuts out for an incoming call.
“Hey, Bhauldeen.” I say the lawyer’s full name with emphatic correctness.
That should put him in a favorable mood.
“Great timing. I finished packing up the good stuff in Grandma’s estate and set aside what she designated to Mom.
I left the keys under a yard flamingo—the one wearing an Egyptian mummy headdress, not the nun. Everything should be good to go.”
“Not quite,” he says.
So much for getting on his good side.
“I know you think I have to stay here to guard Grandma,” I edge in before the floodgates of recriminations creak open, “but I think her spirit will feel light and frothy about what I’ve set up. I’ve hired a junk removal team to come next week to—”
“It pains me that I have to do this,” Baldy says over me. “I’m sorry, Samantha.”
A shot of dread punctures the bland, agreeable balloon I’ve had floating inside me all afternoon, and the feeling drops straight to my toes. It’s a cold, frosty terror, like I’m about to be subjected to the ice bucket challenge.
“Sorry about what?” I ask, suspicion leaking into my voice. “Baldy?”
“Iggo Spiggo Diggo Biggo. Tiggo, Liggo bee dud Driggo. Doop.”
“Are you having a stroke?”
“By attempting to leave prematurely, you neglect your responsibilities to your grandmother.”
I climb the platform staircase, lugging my suitcase behind me. “I just told you, I’m getting very ascendant vibes from her right now. And very subpar scatting vibes from you. I really don’t know what genre you’re going for, Baldy, but I suggest you workshop it with someone else.”
“Doop Doop,” repeats Baldy, his tone ominous now. A little… otherworldly, if I’m honest. “It is done. When your grandmother’s soul ascends, the magic will remove its hold on you, allowing you to travel where you please. Until then, Samantha, you shall remain.”
I look around, hoping against hope I’m being live-stream-pranked for TikTok content.
No luck. I fight to keep my breathing normal.
The air is villainously cold. The other passengers, ignorant of my dilemma.
According to the digital sign above the platform, my train arrives in five minutes.
And I have to board that train. I have to.
Grandma didn’t have any real magic. I’ve got no reason to believe Baldy is truly activating some binding on a magical will. Clinging to my cringey hope, I pull my bag close to my chest and say, “Nice try. You nearly had me, Baldy. Better luck next time.”
“Excuse me?” he asks.
No. I’m done with this.
I bang at my earbud until I’ve hung up on him. BTS’s “No More Dream” floods back into my ears. Fighting a raw, shaky feeling, I turn to the tracks. Passengers cluster like drunken vultures near the platform edge, which means my train must be about to arrive.
Good. That’s good.
I’m not going to fall victim to your bizarre ploy to keep me here, Grandma Rose: I’m getting on this train.
I can make out its headlights in the distance: they’re like concert lights sweeping through an audience before the main act comes onstage, and I can’t think of a more glorious sight.
I feel my breath catch, my knees going weak.
Oh no. I… don’t feel like I can stand.
The train pulls up to the platform. My heartbeat syncs with the chorus of the song. I tug my suitcase forward.
At once, my knees buckle. And I fall like a heap of laundry with my suitcase toppling over me, the handle smacking the back of my head and knocking out an earbud, to add insult to injury.
I stay that way, a human puddle, three feet from the platform, as the train screeches to a stop. The doors hiss open.
Why can’t I get up? Why must my legs fail me now, of all moments?
Weirdos, predictably, pour out of the train. They awkwardly pick their way around my undignified form. Should I ask one of them to help me up? To throw me onboard with my luggage?
Is it worth it, to force them to make eye contact with me when I am basically indistinguishable from a wrung-out towel?
I can’t even move my mouth to ask. Also, I think drool is trickling down my jaw.
One by one, passengers step onto the train.
I’m forced to watch as the last one hefts a bag with a skeleton print up the carriage steps.
One, two, three, four… and then there’s no one else.
A yellow-light-backed hole looms before me, like the light of heaven held out to a dying man.
It’s calling to me. Get on, Sabby. Come on.
Then the doors clamp shut. The machinery grouses as the engines pick up. Only as the train whirs past and air whooshes against my eyeballs does my nausea subside. My breath normalizes. And I regain a sense of having bones.
All too late.
“No,” I whisper, because my jaw has remembered how to work again.
No. No no no no. The words resound in my skull. The train moves on, abandoning the platform for more heavenly locales, leaving me here in hell. I swear that’s what this is, because I feel the flames licking at my newly reusable feet, scalding me as they incinerate my hopes and dreams.
If I can’t be in New York by morning, it’ll be a disaster.
If my senior—the person who is supposed to be my direct supervisor—thinks I’m ghosting on my first day on the job, I’ll be let go.
Worse, I’ll be blacklisted from every major accounting company worldwide.
And then what? I worked my ass off to be a top-three student in high school, despite spending over a year living on friends’ couches.
I worked part-time catering jobs during college, crammed into student housing with awkwardly touching beds.
I single-handedly carried our group projects to completion.
I got an A in Intermediate Accounting 1!
And I abandoned my mattress for weeks, applying for internships.
I can’t let all of that toiling and misery go to waste.
All one has to do is look at Mom to see what happens to a Spük woman whose dreams of normalcy are thwarted.
It can’t be too late to bargain my way out of this.
“Call Baldy,” I demand of my phone after plopping my earbud back in. It rings too loud in my ears.
He picks up, and I start talking before he can say anything.
“What if I paid you to make a teeny-tiny amendment to the will? Would it take a hundred bucks? A thousand? I can set up a payment plan with you,” I say, fighting to sound calm and measured and businesslike.
The bad news is, it sounds more like begging.
Okay, so it is begging. I’ve used up all my savings and was planning to live on credit until getting my first paycheck from EFG.
But maybe there’s a chance. “I can ask my mom. Not that she has a thousand dollars on hand. Pesos, maybe. Could I send you pesos?”
“Samantha, the will’s terms are clear, and you accepted them. I will visit soon to discuss next steps.”
Baldy hangs up, and it takes everything in me not to shake my fist at the sky—a sky snuffed out of stars, and moonlight, and any sign of hope whatsoever.
I want to let the tears prickling at my eyes embark on a feeble journey to my chin.
I want to weep like a destitute medieval maiden who’s had her beet harvest stolen by a villainous rogue.
Instead, because I’m in public, and because I’ve already sacrificed all my normalcy capital by temporarily turning into a human puddle, I refuse to become more noticeable in my shame.
I instead resign myself to mentally screaming at Grandma Rose as I crawl to a bench where I can lick my wounds.
Another vile October breeze flutters past, prompting a shiver.
I squeeze my hands together, annoyed at the crisp fall note in the air.
I can practically hear Grandma Rose cackling from above—where, I continue to suspect, she’s already ascended, unbeknownst to Baldy and this indecently magical will.
Less than an hour after my train leaves for Penn Station without me, I’m back staring at the feature-flush facade of Grandma Rose’s house.
Even in the dark, it screams for attention: the two-story home is crammed onto a triangular lot, shaped and painted like a pink piece of pie.
Mom never could explain the decision-making behind this.
I always assumed someone liked strawberries.