8. Zombie
Zombie
Milo
My eyes blink open. Everything is blurry and white. I blink again. Still blurry. Blink. Still white.
Dragging my tongue over my teeth is gross, and my mouth feels like something crawled in there to die.
“Ugh,” I croak out loud. Great. Blind and a zombie.
I roll my head in a circle. Owww.
Oh, but wait, not blind.
The pale-blue morning sky is just visible through my bedroom window, and its bright light floods my ceiling, catching on the dust-laden spider threads that dangle there.
Far too quickly for comfort, I lift my pounding head and stare down the length of my body. My legs are still crossed and my jeans unbuttoned. Slowly, I untangle my painfully pretzelled legs, and pins and needles shoot through my feet and calves as I make my way to standing.
Unsteady, I tread on the lip of the side plate and kick at least half the salt and charred mugwort ash all over the floor.
Under Zombie Milo’s boot-pocalypse, a candle also snaps.
Holding my hands out for better balance, I wonder how the Iberian ibex can scale an almost vertical cliff face to lick salt from the rocks with just hooves, when I can’t even make the six or so steps into my bathroom without destroying everything in sight.
When my sleeve catches on the handle of the bathroom door, I crash into the sink, and grab hold to steady myself. I came in here to brush my teeth, but now that I’m up and moving, I realise I really need to pee.
Urinating when you can’t feel your legs from mid-thigh down is an… experience.
Not bothering to fasten my jeans, I turn to face my reflection in the mirror.
Things are bad. My hair looks almost silver.
I’ve always had white hair, my mom did too, it’s a Family Line thing, but it’s never looked so…
I poke and pull at a few of the longer strands, tucking my chin into my neck to see them directly.
Doing that forces my tongue against my teeth, and I gag.
Fishing my toothbrush out from under a roll of toilet paper, I try to squeeze the last of the toothpaste onto it but it’s no use; the tube is empty.
My shoulders sag dramatically—I was supposed to buy some yesterday. I shove the brush into my mouth anyway.
“Ugh,” I groan again. But this time, not because of Zombie Milo—because it feels so good.
A minute later, I flip the toilet lid down and sit to take off my boots and socks. When I’ve wrestled my way out of my jeans and underwear, I chuck it all outside the bathroom to sort for laundry later and turn on the shower.
“Oooh, cold, cold, cold.” Hopping from foot to foot, I cower in the corner away from the stream of water until it heats.
Edging closer, I wait until the water is likely hot enough to take off the top layer of skin before stepping under it. This is exactly what I need to wash away the last of Zombie Milo and ease some of the aches and pains from sleeping cross-legged on a hardwood floor all night.
As I comb my fingers through wet and knotty hair, my mind travels back to the spell. Was any of that real? It felt real. The damp grass wiped the chalk dust from my boots, the salty ocean air filled my lungs, and Sarah’s request for my help had been heartfelt and genuine.
Preoccupied, I pour a handful of shampoo into my palm—no, I probably shouldn’t be using the stock I’m supposed to sell, but it seems silly to have an apartment filled with boxes of shampoo and then buy different bottles to use.
Lathering my hair, I wonder how any of it was even possible. Sarah Blackwood had introduced herself as a witch from the sixteenth century. Which is madness because that would make her… four hundred and fifty years old. But she didn’t look much older than me, and I’m twenty-four. No, twenty-five.
Despite our age gap, she was really nice and super interesting to talk to—even though her story was a sad one.
Sarah had been travelling the area to sell healing potions and decided to stay on in the town to help the residents with a few ailments.
She also told me about an ingenious invention to help make sea water drinkable because there had also been a drought recently.
When she’d done as much as she could, and it came time to leave, she found she couldn’t.
Sarah described it as like being surrounded by an invisible wall that had appeared overnight, as if by magic.
She’d walked its perimeter, trailed her hands over it the whole way around, but never found a gap nor a break.
Not only that, but she said no one else in the town could sense it, and each day when they woke up it was as if their day had reset, leaving them with no knowledge of the previous one.
I pause, my fingers buried in soapy hair. These people have lived the same day over and over for almost five hundred years. My mouth hangs open.
Shampoo suds sting my eyes at the same time as others pool in my mouth.
Ewww, yuck.
And owww, my eyes.
I scrunch them shut and step back under the stream of water. Blinking, I rinse my eyeballs. Then my mouth. Then my eyeballs again.
Through blurred vision, I hunt for the conditioner, but each bottle I investigate is the wrong colour or shape. With half-cleaned hair and a twice-cleaned mouth, I shut off the water, step out, and wrap the towel around my waist.
Wiping the steam from the mirror reminds me that I need to shave, and as I rummage for my shaving cream, I wonder how the residents of the Lost Colony are still alive. This whole situation doesn’t really fit inside my brain.
I let out a long sigh. In part because I can’t work out how to even begin processing this, and also because I can’t find my shaving foam, but mostly because I have now found my conditioner.
I flip the cap. The company I get these products from also make skin care, so I really don’t see that there can be a lot of difference between their conditioner and shaving cream.
I hold the bottle in my hand for a moment—thinking—then squeeze a fair amount out and slather it over my jaw and neck.
Imagine doing this every day for five hundred years…
Oh, but wait, the colonists wouldn’t have had the benefits of aloe vera products either. Their poor skin!
Beginning my shave, I think about that more carefully, because Sarah also told me that she’s the only person who notices anything is off.
Whenever she’s walked with another resident to the magical boundary, and whenever they’ve reached out to touch it, they’re both instantly transported back into the heart of the township, and her companion has no knowledge that they’d been somewhere else only a second before.
In the almost five hundred years she’s been there, trying to find a way out, I’m the only other person she’s spoken to who can see the magic as she does. And that makes me, “A most powerful warlock.”
I snort at the memory and cut myself with the razor.
Paying a little more attention, I carefully shave my upper lip and around my mouth.
Ultimately, Sarah and I both agreed that some kind of time-loop spell must have been cast on the entire town of Roanoke, and it felt nice to be able to talk craft with another witch.
I haven’t done that since I was a teenager and was still in the Academy.
I miss it. I used to be good at it, one of the best in my class…
I run my razor under the tap and splash my face until all the slippery conditioner is washed away.
What neither of us could work out, though, is who would be strong enough to cast such a spell—or would even want to—on an unsuspecting town.
I’d told her the rest of the world knows about their disappearance, but that, to us, it was only the people who’d disappeared.
I explained that the buildings were still there, just empty, and that now the whole site has been preserved and rebuilt to help educate people on how life was during that time.
Sarah’s a good listener. I mean, clearly it was a lot to take in, but she took it well. Of the two of us, it was me who struggled the most to understand.
What would I do if I woke up one morning unable to leave my neighbourhood? What if no one else around me noticed anything was wrong? Would I be able to live like that for five hundred years?
And the only question Sarah had asked… was would I please help her set them free?
Despite having no clue how to do that, I agreed. How could I not?
Steam billows out into my apartment when I open the bathroom door, and I step over my heaped laundry as I make my way to the drawers beside my bed.
Pulling on clean underwear and some socks, I wonder who I could ask for help.
The moment I speak to anyone about it, they’re going to know that I cast a spell—and that I shouldn’t have done that because I’m not insured.
Ray would keep my secret. He might even have some suggestions for what I can do.
Hunting for my phone to call him, I lift up the covers and drag the sheets off my bed, but I can’t find it.
Turning in a circle, I check the nightstand—no.
The floor by the bed—no.
The top of the drawers—no.
Then I see it… on the floor beside the Cairngorm Quartz, because I’d used it in the spell last night.
Tiptoeing between the various piles of things, I tread over to collect it, then let out an exasperated sigh. Because of course the battery’s almost dead.
Returning to my bed, I plug it in, then dial Ray’s number. When it goes to voicemail, I check the time—a little after 10:00 a.m. I send him a text instead.
I did a spell last night and discovered the Lost Colony at Roanoke Island. Call me. XoXo.
Tossing my phone on the side, I wedge myself into a pair of skinny-fit, ripped grey jeans before choosing a T-shirt to wear.
Unable to do much more for Sarah until Ray returns my call, I stare down at the mess of items all over my floor. I should probably clean this up, but my gaze sticks on the almond croissant that rests on top of the paper bag on top of the giant crystal in the middle of the pentacle.
My stomach rumbles. I don’t remember anything about spell casting making food inedible. Stooping, I bite off a good third in one mouthful. It’s a little dry and a lot flaky, but it tastes fine and I’m really hungry.
As I chew, I marvel at how strong my intuition must have been last night. Somehow, despite not having practiced magic in years, I combined different elements from multiple temporal spells and managed to solve the mystery of what happened at Roanoke all those years ago. That’s pretty cool.
I take another bite.
Maybe now I’ve shown it’s possible, Sarah will be able to do something similar from the inside. She did say she would take a “fresh look through her grimoires with this new perspective—one that’s confirmed her suspicions and left her more confident of her sanity.”
I open my mouth to take another bite, when the loud buzzing of my phone on the nightstand stops me. Leaping over the pentacle and avoiding a couple of T-shirts, I snatch it up when I see Ray’s name on the caller ID.
“Miles!” Ray says, breathless. “I saw your missed call. Listen, I can’t talk, not right now. There was an explosion at the coven earlier.”
My jaw falls open, and the croissant falls to the floor.
I want to ask what happened, if he’s okay, where he is, if anyone’s with him, and if he needs anything. But my words are stuck in my throat, somewhere under a half-chewed lump of sweet pastry. A fine tremble threads through all my muscles, and I grip the phone tighter.
“I’m okay, Milo. I promise. A bit dinged up and I’ve got a splitting headache, but otherwise fine. There were casualties, though. I was here talking to the Coven Leader about you, and so I’m a witness now and can’t leave until the Witches Council clear me to go home.”
His words trickle through my mind like the grape molasses I was reading about last night—slow and thick, coating all my thoughts in something heavy and sticky.
An explosion? Casualties? The Witches Council?
“Look, I’ve got to go. Probably shouldn’t have called you, but I didn’t want you to worry if you found out from someone else. I’ll call you later.”
The phone still in my hand, I stare out the window at the bright morning sky. How can such a beautiful day exist when this just happened? Casualties, Ray said… Doesn’t seem right.
It had been a beautiful sunny day when Great Aunt Anabelle had died too.
Shaking my head, hoping to reset that train of thought onto a better track, I think about Ray. He’s not far from here, looking up at the same sky… because he said there’d been an explosion, so probably he won’t be in the building…
Maybe it’s okay that it’s nice weather, then. Maybe that little bit of comfort is okay, if it helps make today just a bit less shit for him. But maybe if he had a friend right now, that would be best of all.
Nodding to myself, I scan for my boots, and when I find them poking out from under yesterday’s jeans, I stride over, yanking the charging cable from the phone when I do.
Stepping into my boots, I zip up the side.
The laces are just for show, because who really wants to be dealing with that every time you take a pair of boots on and off?
Swiping my jacket from off the little table where I must have dumped it when I got home yesterday, I manage to get one arm through the sleeve before there’s a loud knock on my room door. I freeze.
No one ever knocks on my room door—not even Ray, and I just spoke with him. None of the neighbours in this building are like that either, it’s just not that kind of place. There’s a buzzer on the main door, but I don’t even think it works.
Another knock, louder this time. Aggressive.
Trying to be quiet, I tiptoe closer to use the little spy hole, but before I can take a second step, the door is kicked inward.
The handle gouges out a chunk of drywall, and the door bounces back into the frame before being held open.
Reflexively, I move backward and take in the stranger standing in my doorway.