Got Framed for Murder in a Dementia Village | Part 5

 

Part 4 | Part 6

Next morning started with a somber ritual: a burial. It was Mr. Bohr’s, one of my fellow residents that lived with me on Building E. He died during the night from natural causes.

I had opposing feelings during the ceremony. The words said by a religious resident were mostly nonsensical, but the parts that were coherent effectively made me miss the old guy who played cards with the caregivers every day and screamed constantly. Yet, I couldn’t shake out of my head the fact that William didn’t receive a service like this. Even worse, Mrs. Rowen pretended as if she didn’t know who I was talking about.

The morning was cold, windy and a couple of minutes after the casket was put under the ground, which remained closed during the whole procedure, a lighting assaulted Morlden “Dementia” Village. This change in the weather and the cognitive detriment of the residents made sure that the graveyard was emptied in twenty seconds, with everyone continuing their lives as if nothing had happened and completely ignoring that a couple of them were brought to tears because of Mr. Bohr’s loss.

The idea of him just being forgotten so quickly by the whole community around him caused me an uncontrollable feeling of emptiness. I had never stopped to think about this aspect of a place like this. In theory it is pretty cool for cognitive held patients to live in a society tailored especially for them, but nobody talks about how fragile it is because the people in it cannot strength it.

I was left alone with my thoughts in the middle of the cemetery. Reaching my pocket, I took out the earphone I had just retrieved from the colony of stealing goblins that existed below this place and put it on my right ear.

“Luke,” I said with a low volume and hoping to not even get an answer. “Can you hear me?”

The device shrieked directly in my eardrum, almost drilling through it with its tiny sound waves. I repressed my instinct to throw it away.

“Yes,” Luke responded with a single cold word through the earphone that we had learned to master as a direct ghost-human communication system.

“I know you’ll get a little upset, but I really need your help with something.”

“Not really,” Luke’s voice sounded so calmed that threw me out of balance regarding my expectations. “It got me very upset.”

“I’m sorry, I know. But I need your help. William seems to…”

“Of course it’s William!” He interrupted me. “When it’s about him you are always ready to tackle it first, donate blood to him and you didn’t abandon him on its own when he was trying to find out why he ended here.”

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

“It’s not like that,” I assured him as convinced as I could. “He’s in trouble…”

“Mike’s also in trouble, since a lot of time ago.”

“The mute ghost?”

“I told you he needed help, but you refused to help us.”

“I accept my fault for that,” I said entirely meaning it. “After we help William, we take care of Mike’s situation.” I started speaking as fast as I could. “I owe him that, he sacrificed…”

“You’re such an asshole!”

I wasn’t fast enough. Luke disappeared before I could defend my case.

The rain stopped.

***

Just outside of the graveyard’s entry gates I was intercepted by an old woman. I knew her. She was the first resident I met, walking along the main avenue of this place in the middle of the cold night when I arrived here. I had heard her name before, Elisa.

I wasn’t in a chatting mood, but she was not leaving her prey easily.

“What happened?” She threw the bait. “You look upset, darling.”

I ignored her and continued walking.

She didn’t yield and, even with his limited movement and weak lungs, tried to keep up with me.

“Please, you seem troubled.”

“You wouldn’t understand it,” I replied without interrupting my way back to residence building E.

“Try me,” she said before quitting her pursue. “I’m very good with supernatural issues.”

Fuck.

My legs froze in place.

I turned and stared directly at the old, melting face of the lady that had been following me. She kept her glare in my eyes, and a sweet caring smile appeared in the middle of all her wrinkles. Chilling wind blew between us, difficulting the flow of our conversation through the cold atmosphere.

I approached her.

“What did you just say?” I questioned her.

“I have experience with supernatural issues,” she repeated crystal clear. “Let me help you.”

“How?”

Her grin grew.

“First I need my ring back.”

***

I couldn’t believe I had agreed to help her get her ring back. But, obviously, she knew what she was talking about, and that was something new in this place. Yet, I didn’t expect it to be such a hard thing to retrieve.

It turned out that the theft-prone goblins had taken it from her almost forty years ago, when she had just entered here. This posed more questions. How did she know about the creatures that live under her? She didn’t look older than eighty, so she probably became a patient here while in her late thirties. I decided to ask her those questions after I found my way out of the underground cave systems.

The plan had worked so far. She distracted the caregiver of her residence building A, while I swirled down his bed into the tunnels that the critters used to steal shinny objects. I crawled for a while before reaching the main cavern of the system.

The place where a couple of nights before a magnificent structure of glowing and reflective scraps imposed magnificently, now the whole floor was covered under two-inch layer of trash that had fallen from the mountain the gremlins considered a sacred landmark. It was me who caused the avalanche by retrieving my supernatural communication earphone that worked as an angular stone of the structure. But I didn’t regret doing it. Those fuckers had it coming.

What I do regret was that now I had to find a small ring in the abysmal ocean of stolen things. With the light of my phone, I inspected the whole place. Not a single cup remained unturned and all metallic utensils were tossed aside. A couple of hours later, accompanied by a pair of scratches and falls, I found what I was looking for.

I held in between my fingers a small golden ring. It clearly belonged to a person with tiny fingers. It was simple, not engraved and flourishless. It was just a simple golden ring with a red shinny rock on top carved as a D-8 dice. The jewel on top didn’t look like something I had ever seen before (not that I’m an expert), it appeared to be constantly melting.

Upon my return to residence building A through the tunnel, I knocked on the base of the caregiver’s bed.

The caregiver lifted the furniture that blocked my exit and helped me out of there. He asked me how I got there. I pretended to have dementia and that was enough for him. He left me alone.

I entered Elisa’s room. Have you ever gone to an elder’s room? Perhaps your grandmother? That’s exactly how Elisa’s room looked and felt like.

“I found it,” I informed my new associate.

She extended her hands towards me.

“Before, I have a couple of questions.”

Under that condition, she complied. The interview started.

“Why you ended here?” I asked.

“I was following a trace of my missing… mother all the way to here.”

That pause was creepy. She was lying. I indulged her.

“You found her?”

“No”

“How you know about the snatching goblins?”

“I’ve been trapped here for a long time. I learned to survive.”

“Survive?” I was getting lost.

“If you block your room’s door with a heavy furniture, they couldn’t come in to steal your stuff.”

“You seem very conscious and well held up there to be interned on a dementia village…” I told her, pointing at her head.

“That makes two of us.”

Her answer completely disarmed me. I gave her the ring expecting nothing to happen and all this to had been just a waste of time.

She snatched it out of my palm and placed it in her left ring finger.

The second the piece of jewelry touched her interdigital clefts (the connective skin between fingers), it glowed like it was a red star. It started accumulating a lot of light energy. Beans of light and projections of unknown graphs flew out of the weird looking rock. All the energy exploded in a shockwave of pure energy.

“What the fuck was that?” I asked after my eyes regained their ability to see.

The old lady in front of me looked different. I mean, she still had the same appearance as a wrinkled and fragile woman, but her body language was the one of a stronger person. She stood straight with her lump having disappeared. Even her voice was more powerful, like if her vocal cords were restored to new and her lungs were getting enough air at last.

“We don’t have much time before she notices something’s wrong,” she told me. “We need the key to your room.

***

We went to my room immediately. This time, I was having to walk fast just to keep up with the rejuvenated and strength-restored lady. We almost sprinted in the little inclinations of the park.

“So why do we need the key?” I questioned with the little air I wasn’t using to propel my body at her speed.

“It was given to you by Mrs. Rowen when you first arrived, right? In the main gates?”

I produced an affirmative noise.

“Then it is connected on a metaphysical way to the exit.”

She was crazy. But at that point, I didn’t dare to contradict her. I was way over my league.

We reached residence building E. Got inside my room and, from a drawer, I took a key attached to a giant blue acrylic plate with the number 5, which worked as the most impractical keychain ever. I was a little reluctant to give it to her, even when I didn’t care about it and it wasn’t as if it could be used to close the room from the inside, but I had just retrieved it a couple of nights ago. I ignored my irrational feelings.

Elisa grabbed it and placed it over her palm. She did a weird hand dance and the fucking thing started floating in front of her.

I’m already kind of used to this supernatural shit.

She started mumbling incomprehensible gibberish.

“Wait,” I interrupted her prayer.

She stared at me.

“You said that thing is connected to things it was close to, right?”

My new ally didn’t nod, but her eyes answered positively for her.

“Then it must be connected to William,” I assured based on a very limited magical knowledge. “He was a caregiver in this place.”

“Yes…” the magical old woman responded me with doubt. “But if I used this thing to track him, I’ll load it towards him.”

“And then you’ll not be able to track a way out of here,” I finished her idea.

She nodded at me with fear of my next words.

“Doesn’t matter,” I replied. “I owe him.”

She smiled with a mixture of contempt and frustration. Her hands kept on twisting around the levitating key. Her spell didn’t become more decipherable.

Once she finished her ritual, the key started floating out of her reach. Slowly, it waved through the air as it approached the window of my room that faced the interior of this village.

“Follow it,” the old lady instructed me as she leaped through my window with an agility that I didn’t even have in my prime physical years.

I trailed her as fast as my body handled.

The key floated all the way through the parks and streets of the Morlden Village. Residents and caregivers watched the scene with different reactions, disinterest and disbelief, respectively.

The magically charged thing led us all the way to the supermarket. We crossed the moldy bread aisle before reaching the storage area, which was behind a door disguised as part of the wall. Tumbling, as if it was actually stepping on each step, the key continued its path down to a sort of basement.

It was a closed and claustrophobic space. Black and grey were the only colors that were badly illuminated through sixty-year-old light bulbs that stayed more time off than on during their twinkling. Metal grinds under our steps creaked in a symphony with the rumbling pipes that cross the ceiling over our heads.

The key followed the creepy hall to its end. A metallic door, clean as if it was the only thing here taken care of in the last century, blocked the key’s way. The moment our magical compass touched the pristine door, it dropped to the ground without any warning.

I tried pushing open the big handle. Its temperature indicated to me that at the other side of our obstacle was a cold room. The monolithic blockage didn’t move, not even shook.

I glared at my partner in crime.

“I can’t open it with magic,” she responded my unasked question (maybe she was also a telepath). “That room is protected by a very ancient and powerful enchantment.”

Fuck. This will need a more… hands on approach.

“I have an idea, wait for me here,” I commanded.

***

I ran into the shed. As there was no need for it to be kept blocked anymore, it was just closed with a manual lock against cognitive held patients. Thankfully, I wasn’t one of them.

The place was surprisingly clean now. All the dust was gone, the light bulb was changed for a state-of-the-art LED one that prevented any shadow, and the unorganized tools and supplies were now marked and following a thematic order. It was supernaturally clean. Even if all the staff had been 24/7 cleaning this place, there was no way it ended up looking like this.

For my good luck, this new organized shed made it easy, almost intuitive, to find the Halligan bar I was looking for. The moment I touched it, the shed doors slammed shut behind me.

Fuck. This was just a waste of time.

I placed the tool in the gap between both doors.

The wood squeaked a little.

I pushed.

Doors held their position.

Placed my whole body into the task.

Doors gave in as if they weren’t even locked in the first place.

My shoulder hit the ground.

“Mrs. Rowen wants to talk to you,” Margaret told me after kneeling beside me.

“But…”

“No buts,” Paula closed the dialogue.

***

“Why were you in the shed?” Mrs. Rowen asked me once I was sitting in front of her desk in her office.

I regained my orientation. The same office as always. Mrs. Rowen accused me of some shit. The big ass safe box behind her. The missing picture of her, my grandma and three more women, all of them looking very familiar.

“I needed the bar to open the cold room in the supermarket.”

There was no need to hide my intentions. It actually paid off, as Mrs. Rowen failed at dissimulating her surprise. I had her well-studied.

“What you…”

“I know you keep William there,” I interrupted her.

“How?”

“Magic,” I answered her with the truth in a sarcastic manner.

That was my mistake.

Mrs. Rowen pressed the call button for Paula and Margaret, and ordered them to bring Elisa from residence building A.

I swallowed and did my best attempt at a poker face. Mrs. Rowen and I kept on staring at each other in silence for what was like five minutes, but felt like hours.

Elisa was brought by Paula and Margaret into the room. She looked as old and tired as she did before she wore the ring. Her lump stood in the way of her sitting properly and her arthritis hands trembled like an electric mixer. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry.

“Why you brought me here?” Elisa asked with what felt like genuine curiosity.

“How are you, Elisa?” Mrs. Rowen asked her with a sweet voice I hadn’t heard in a long time. “Everything has been okay?”

I stared at the scene in a confused silence.

“I’m hungry,” Elisa replied. “When are we going to eat?”

She looked at me waiting for an answer.

Mrs. Rowen examined the scene.

“Not know,” I replied. “I’m not your caregiver.”

“What’s a caregiver?” Elisa wasn’t over with her Jeopardy round.

“Don’t worry about that,” Mrs. Rowen indicated.

The manager pushed the call button inside her desk drawer.

“Who are you?” Elisa yelled at me.

The loud noise startled both Mrs. Rowen and me, she even left the drawer slightly open.

“No one important,” replied Mrs. Rowen standing up.

Paula and Margaret arrived again.

“Excuse me,” I pretended to be indignant instead of lost.

“Get Mrs. Elisa to her room,” the leader of Morlden Village ordered her henchwomen. “And make sure she gets something to eat.”

“What are we going to eat?”

Elisa’s outrage got calm once Paula and Margaret grabbed her from both arms and led her out of the office.

“Calm down,” Margaret did her part as the good cop of the pair.

They left the room and left me alone with Mrs. Rowen. The staring contest continued a little.

Mrs. Rowen, already standing up, quickly followed the leaving party, as if she just remembered something to tell them. She stepped out into her office lobby.

“Wait,” I barely heard her. “One more thing.”

Swiftly, I got to the other side of the desk.

“Elisa,” Mrs. Rowen continued talking. “How are your sisters?”

I opened the badly closed drawer, which meant I didn’t require a key to get to the inside of it.

“Who is my dear sister?” Elisa asked in a voice so low I am completing what I believe she said. “What’s your last name?”

I snatched a big key chain from the drawer.

“Forget it,” Mrs. Rowen indicated.

I stashed my loot on my pocket.

Steps approached the office.

I closed the drawer completely.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Rowen demanded to know.

“Just looking this metal safe,” I answered without turning back at her. “What you keep inside.”

“None of your business.”

She approached me.

I faced her.

Her eyes analyzed me thoroughly to get any clue of what I was doing.

I didn’t yield.

Neither did my opponent.

I took a leap of faith.

“I suffer from cognitive detriment, you know?” I asked her as I faked an almost parodically confused smirk.

“Just get out,” she ordered me.

I left.

***

Like half an hour later, I went to Elisa’s room.

She was waiting, thinking in her bed. The ring was on her finger. Her life force and young energy had returned to her.

“Oh, that was such a good performance!”

I lifted my hand hoping she would hi-fived my celebration.

She did it with no energy. As if she hadn’t returned to her strengthened magical self.

“What’s going on?” I asked her.

“I wouldn’t be able to open the door,” she replied with her head low, as if she was a kid being punished. “I’m sorry.”

Her reaction threw me out of balance for a moment, psychologically speaking.

“Don’t worry about that.”

She lifted her eyes to meet my friendly smile.

“We don’t need magic to enter,” I concluded my pep talk while holding the keychain I had stolen on my hand.

Elisa smiled back at me.

***

We returned as fast as possible to the cold room door in the basement of the supermarket. It was exactly as we left it an hour or so ago.

“Ready?” I asked her while holding in my hand the key that finally got in the door lock.

She nodded. Her body language showed concentration.

I got into the same mindset. Turned the key.

The cold room, as its name implies, was freezing, even for the standards of this Nordic village. There were packages of fruit, vegetables and meat so old that, even in a bellow 0° environment, were rotten and stank foul. Yet, the worst part was the center where complete animals were hanged up from the ceiling, with the minor fact that these animals were humans.

Elisa and I contained our impulse to gag and vomit. The multisensorial experience made it hard to pull that off.

“Oh, fuck,” Elisa broke the silence and her, until now, very polite use of the language. “This is a draining farm.”

I’m not completely sure what she meant exactly by that, but it was true. All the hanged bodies were connected through small hoses and catheters full of a weird smoke-like fluid that was being sucked out of the corpses.

“What are those things?” I asked Elisa.

While walking through the human flesh-made maze, I encountered myself with Mr. Bohr’s carcass. It looked dead, of course, but in amazing shape in comparison to the rest of cadavers. Something clicked inside my head: the coffin was empty the whole time.

“I think Mrs. Rowen found a way of extracting life force out of the dead.” Elisa answered in a vague manner that appeared to be going to be developed further, but she got interrupted.

“And you shouldn’t be aware of this,” Paula’s voice, which I had learned to hate, echoed inside the room.

“Please just come out,” Margaret added a little calm to the situation.

I hadn’t stopped searching for what we came here in the first time. It paid off once I encountered a dismembered corpse held up together with staples and twisted wires. It was an exploded body mediocrely frankensteined into a humanoid thing that, with enough luck, could be hanged as a skinned animal. It was William.

“Wait!” I screamed from the other side of the draining corpses.

I approached back to the entry, where Paula and Margaret waited for me.

Elisa, more frightened than me, also came out of her hiding cautiously.

“We’ll have to see what Mrs. Rowen decides to do with you two, sneaky bastards.”

“C’mon, Paula, Margaret,” I appealed to diplomacy, “you can’t be on board with this shit.”

Elisa lifted her hands at her chest height, and started micro moving them, barely discernable.

“It’s not fair for this people, some of them were even friends of yours,” I continued.

Margaret turned her eyes to Paula.

“Paula, perhaps he’s right,” Margaret told her friend.

“Don’t think so,” Paula responded as cold as the room without making eye contact with Margaret.

“Just…”

“You shut up!” Paula interfered with my futile attempt of providing arguments in my defense.

“Seriously, this was what we want?” Margaret questioned her partner.

Paula finally took her eyes off Elisa and me to focus them on her regretful companion.

“We know it won’t be easy.”

On my right, Elisa’s lips danced as if she was whispering a prayer.

“We knew that remaining young would require sacrifices,” Paula concluded.

“But this is inhuman. Not even dead we grant our friends peace,” Margaret protested.

Whatever Elisa was doing, I hoped it would be fast.

“And we will not find peace if we don’t do what Mrs. Rowen ask from us!” Paula’s frustration yell hurt all the eardrums that heard her. She turned back to me. “Now, you two are coming with us.”

Elisa said out loud a phrase that seemed like a mixture of Latin and her own made out dialect. A reddish shockwave flew out of her hands.

It travelled at the speed of sound.

Before Paula or Margaret could do something about it, they received the magical impact. They were thrown a couple of feet back and slammed against the ground unconscious.

“What was that?” I asked my very powerful ally.

“A forgetting spell, they’ll wake up in a couple of hours without remembering this.”

“You’re amazing,” I told her.

Elisa smiled.

“I need your help,” I started the weirdest solid I was ever going to ask. “Can you help get William down?”

He… (it?) was where I left him. At the other end of the room, William’s reconstructed corpse was hanged, and a dozen metaphysical catheters poked his skin.

“First, we take him down,” Elisa instructed me. “Once we remove the hose, Mrs. Rowen will notice it.”

I grabbed the barely discernable cadaver from the legs and lifted him up. Elisa understood my intention, and with a second to spare, attempted to take out the big hook that was keeping my past-away friend floating above the ground.

“So, what’s Mrs. Rowen doing to them?” I asked trying to avoid inhaling the stench.

I felt something rolling down my left arm.

“She has always tried to keep herself young…” Elisa started answering my question at the same time she continued her endeavor.

I lowered my sight to the floor.

“… Magical extraction has always been the best choice.”

She unhooked my friend.

In the dirty tiles below the corpse, A catheter was leaking out the half-sucked substance.

“Fuck,” I mumbled.

“Indeed,” Elisa answered. “It’s a pretty foul thing to do…”

“A catheter fell out!” I interrupted her.

“Shit!”

Carrying the wire-held cargo, we ran towards the exit. Elisa, even with her old appearance, was strong and helped with a load I wouldn’t have managed it on my own.

While crossing through the entrance, I dropped the stolen keys I had used to get us in. They landed in between Paula and Margaret’s sleeping bodies. Bullseye!

***

Elisa and I transported the corpse over our shoulders all the way to the graveyard. We did encounter more residents, but there is absolutely no way to disturb cognitively held people.

As soon as we went through the main gates of the cemetery, Elisa dropped William’s head.

The weight pulled me into stopping. I almost lose my balance.

“What’s happening?” I asked my aiding elder.

“I can’t,” she said looking down.

“What you mean you can’t? We’re already here!”

“Sorry, but I can’t go back to how I was.”

A thunder rumbled the whole village. The dark blue sky turned black. Rain stormed down on us.

“Please…”

“Sorry,” was the word with which Elisa interrupted my begging.

She left the place sprinting.

Two seconds later, after processing the loss in my team, I dragged the body through the muddy grass in between tombs.

Falling water was blinding my sight. With my forearm attempted to dry my eyes a little.

A shovel was nailed on the soil covering Mr. Bohr’s empty grave.

Thunders roared violently as the precipitation attempted to cause a flood.

I slipped with the watery dirt, which covered me almost completely.

I snatched the shovel and dug.

The storm slid the sludge I was getting out back into the hole.

Unable to see what was in front of me, I continued fighting the weather. My hearing was completely hijacked by the rumbling thunders. My hands had a very poor grip due to the smooth mud covering my whole body. My nose hadn’t purged completely the death smell of the slaughterhouse under the supermarket.

With surprising strength, I lifted the soil-covered and almost tore apart William’s cadaver. It was in my arms, as if I was getting my new wife into our new house. Well, fittingly, I was delivering William to his final home.

I threw the inert mass of burned flesh and cracked bones into the hole I dug.

Water covered almost half of William’s remains.

I nailed the shovel in the mud slope I was going to use to cover the hole. My body stopped responding. My shinbone ignited in a sharp pain that raced through my femur.

“Can’t let you do that!” Mrs. Rowen’s voice chilled my spine.

Without moving my legs, I was turned around by an external force.

Under the blinding rain, thanks to the backlight provided by lightning, Mrs. Rowen’s figure presented as an unstoppable force, stronger than nature itself.

“I know what you’re doing,” I screamed under an excruciating throbbing pain that started to flow through my every nerve. “Leave them rest!”

I couldn’t move. Something outside of me was holding me as a statue. And all the air in my lungs, which I had been able to get out in the form of a mad shriek, was over.

“I think I can,” Mrs. Rowen said in a calmed manner, but still hearable inside my head.

The water poured from the sky as if we were under an Amazonian waterfall.

Mrs. Rowen extended her left arm against me.

The intense and unyielding pain inside my body hit a second struck.

The agony blocked all my responses, almost making me faint.

A windblow of hope punched me from behind and got me into the battle again. My lungs filled with air. My leg muscles started moving forward. My mind was ignoring the pain.

I know I made a promise to never possess you again, but I was out of options, Luke told me directly in my mind.

I’m glad you broke it, I responded to him with my thoughts.

“You filthy creature!” Mrs. Rowen cursed me as I approached her.

She raised her other hand.

A new strike of uncompromising pain slammed my chest.

I shrieked.

My legs stopped.

Luke yelled in agony inside my mind.

The watery mud flowed through my feet.

“I didn’t want to get to this!” Mrs. Rowen informed us.

I’m sorry, Luke. For everything.

It was a hell of a ride, Luke answered inside my brain.

The pile of soil I constructed to the side of William’s grave/hole, avalanched down, covering the damaged cadaver.

William’s phantom-self appeared to my left. He was still in multiple pieces, holding itself together by the magic of the undead.

William’s smiling ghost exploded into pieces.

Mrs. Rowen appeared to be out of her depth.

William phantom’s pieces imploded together over Mrs. Rowen.

She collapsed into the ground. Comatose-like.

The water falling from the sky turned into mist. The lightning gave way to the bright afternoon sun. The blue pushed the dark clouds away. The immobilizing pain inside me went away with the weather.

I stood up without my central nervous system commanding it.

Luke flew out of my mouth as a refreshing burp.

William materialized in front of us.

I pulled out of my pocket the earphone that I use to communicate directly with the next life.

“Thank you, William.” I told the poorly assembled specter. “Thank you for getting her under control, for the goblin situation and in helping me find this.”

I gently tapped my earphone that allows me to communicate directly with Luke. Then, I pointed my right index at my old ghost friend. Luke was confused by that last part.

“William, this is Luke. He’s my ghostly sidekick.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” said the exploded ectoplasmic being while shaking Luke’s hand. “I’m grateful with both of you.”

Luke and I nodded.

William’s magically held parts fell to the ground and rolled into the beyond.

Luke stared at me.

“So, I’m your ghostly sidekick?”

“Don’t get over your head,” I warned him. “But I wouldn’t like a different one.”

Luke smirked. I followed his lead.

“How are we going to help the mute ghost?” I asked my best friend.

***

The next morning, I’m sitting, once again, across the desk at Mrs. Rowen’s office.

“What are we going to do with you?” She asked me.

“You could let me go,” I proposed her with a wide smile.

“I can let you go to another plane of existence.”

“You won’t,” I replied.

She glares at me with defiance.

“If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it already,” I explained her how to do her witchy job. “Not know why you need me alive, but I’m going to find out. Meanwhile, I suggest you let me do my thing here in Morlden Village.”

Defeated, Mrs. Rowen lay back in her chair.

“Leave my office,” she instructed me.

Happily, I compelled and followed her directions.

Outside of the staff quarters, as I strolled away, I placed my supernatural earphone on my ear. Luke floated out of the building.

“Did you find something in the safe?” I asked my partner in crime.

“It has a magical protection,” he answered me. “I found something on Margaret’s room.”

“How do you know Margaret?” It was irrelevant, but curiosity beat me.

“I was in your mind.”

“Fair enough,” I get back into the important stuff. “What did you come across?

“Under her bed, there was a witchcraft totem… A recently made one.”