Night of Jinxes, A Moonlight Dragon Short Story (3 page)

I peeked through the beads first,
though, just in case I spotted something in motion. Despite my
sneakiness, it was no dice. Everything appeared nice and
quiet.

Sure it was.

I pushed through the curtain with
Melanie right behind me and picked up the camcorder. I depressed
the Record button to stop it and then angled the viewfinder so my
friend could see it, too.

"Ready?" Feeling just a bit more
excited than scared, I pressed the Play button.

I expected about two hours' worth of
boredom. We got something else.

"Holy cow!"

"Yeah," I agreed with Melanie. "Holy
cow."

The interior of the shop showed up
clearly in the video. Everything on the shelves were still, just as
they were now. It was what moved within the shop that shocked us. A
ghostly figure danced up and down the aisles. She was transparent
and didn't have facial features that we could make out on the
screen. She held the hem of her dark dress, revealing bare feet, as
she moved around the shop. Her hair was as white as snow or maybe a
pale blonde, falling past her hips. Though she moved smoothly and
elegantly, like she was an accomplished or practiced dancer, the
hairs rose on my arms as I watched her.

"I guess I should have checked first
to see if this camcorder was haunted," I muttered.

"You've got a ghost in here! Is it
part of the shop?"

"I have no idea. I'm hoping it's only
part of the camera."

We watched the video for several
minutes. The ghost didn't seem to tire, so I fast forwarded it. The
ghost danced manically and then abruptly disappeared.

"Whoa." I rewound it until she was
back on the screen, then pressed Play again.

She was dancing as usual, but then ten
seconds later she suddenly stopped with her back to the screen.
Then, to my extreme discomfort, she turned around and faced the
camera. Even lacking a face, I could tell her attention was on the
camera. She began to walk toward it, as if curious, but then rushed
at it with clawed fingers.

Melanie and I cried out and leaned
backward as the screen filled with white mist. My heart was
pounding as I stared at the screen and the now-empty shop
view.

"Where did it go?" Melanie
whimpered.

Very, very slowly, I turned my
head.

"Thank god." I slumped. "I thought it
might be behind us."

"What?!"

Melanie spun, too, but fortunately she
didn't find anything creeping up on us either.

"Well, this was something I regret in
a big way," I drawled. I studied the camera for a long minute. "I
need to know if this ghost is in the shop or in this camera." I
aimed it at the shop and pressed Record.

I watched the viewfinder, cringing, as
I panned the camera over the interior. Nothing. Absolutely
nothing.

"Anything?" Melanie
whispered.

I turned to her and the viewfinder
filled with her worried face—and the ghost standing right behind
her.

"Ahhh!"

My fingers flexed and the camera fell
right through them. It hit the floor and shattered into dozens of
pieces.

"Well, damn," I said as I stared at
the wreckage. "Now I'll never know if there's a ghost in here or if
it was only on this camera."

"Try your phone!"

I did, and nothing unusual showed up.
Was the ghost merely hiding? Or had it gone the way of the
camcorder?

"I don't like mysteries," I declared
with a scowl.

"I guess it's true what
they say," Melanie said, looking haunted. "Ignorance really
is
bliss!"

~~~~~

After the scare with the ghost, I
needed some concrete answers.

"This thing came in recently," I told
Melanie as we stood before the bowl filled with sand. "The timing
is too perfect. It must be connected."

"What does it do?"

I lifted the glass lid and dragged my
fingers through the sand grains. "This."

The granules shifted, wiping out the
furrows I'd made and replacing them with a word: ASK.

"Is there something in this shop that
wants to hurt me?" I asked aloud.

The sand rippled, like there was a
gopher beneath it, displacing the grains. Then the sand reformed
into a word: YES.

"Perfect!" Melanie exclaimed, then
hunched her shoulders at the look I gave her. "Okay, not perfect,
perfect, but at least we'll get an answer now."

"Unless it's lying to me or trying to
trick me." Both were serious considerations.

"What item wants to hurt me?" I asked
the sand bowl.

More shifting granules. Then:
GIFT.

I thought about it. "That's no help. I
haven't received any gifts lately that weren't flowers or
food."

"I swear my goodies weren't cursed!"
Melanie quickly told me.

"Yeah, right. Calories and fat are a
curse, you know." I sobered. "Maybe it means something that I
received for free?"

That seemed likely, but it also
narrowed down my list to about twenty things, including the bowl of
sand and its buddies in the hat box. Magickal beings ditched things
at Moonlight on a regular basis, apparently aware that I was dumb
enough to take them without questions.

I looked down at the sand again. "Can
I prevent it from hurting me?"

The sands formed a new word:
REMOVE.

Big revelation there. I capped the
bowl with its lid.

"Alright, enough of this. We need to
go big or go home. We need to hold your Night of Jinxes,
Melly."

She clapped. "Yay! This'll be
exciting."

That wasn't exactly the word I would
have chosen.

"I need to set the mood," I told her.
"Hold on." I ducked into my studio and came out with a couple of
bed sheets. "Help me pin these up."

Together, we pinned two bed sheets
over the front windows. The fabric wasn't opaque enough to cast us
into complete darkness, but it was enough to turn Melanie into a
short, shadowy figure by my side. It was now officially
spooky.

"Just in case some things only operate
in the dark," I explained to her.

Melanie edged toward the bead curtain.
"And activating all the curses?"

Instead of replying, I reached into
that rumbly core behind my breastbone where I felt that my sorcery
lived. Normally I willed it to take the form of Lucky, my dragon.
But this time I didn't give it shape, I just sort of...let it bleed
out of me. I could see it as a faint glowing mist, but I knew that
Melanie wouldn't. She kept looking at me, waiting for me to
respond.

"Anne?"

"There," I said, as my sorcery began
to climb the shelves and slowly rise up over the items resting
there. "I'm infusing everything with magick." My heart was racing.
Was this the craziest idea ever or the cleverest? "Let's duck back
behind the curtain now and see what happens."

~~~~~

"Your plan might make me sneeze,"
Melanie whispered from where she lay on her belly beside
me.

We were stretched out on my duvet
which I'd spread on the floor of my studio. Each of us held small
hand mirrors which we had thrust through the bead curtain so we
could see what—if anything—occurred within the shop.

"Maybe the warden will be by soon with
some Benadryl," I whispered back. I felt like a prisoner watching
for the daily mail cart as I angled my mirror this way and that,
trying to catch something in motion.

"What do you think is going to
activate first?"

I shifted the mirror, aiming it at the
shelf with the six items I'd taken in the night before, including
the bowl of sand, all items that could be considered gifts since
their owner hadn't demanded payment in exchange for them. None of
the items seemed to have become activated by my sorcery, though. I
muttered a curse beneath my breath. I wanted this to be over and
done with.

But though my main suspects looked
innocent enough, something else had begun happening. "Check out the
second lowest shelf on the far shelves!"

It was an old toy fire truck, made of
metal and weighing what felt like fifty pounds. What kind of kid
had been strong enough to push that thing around? Guess kids were
tougher back in the old days.

Most of the red paint had been scraped
off the body of the vehicle but the wheels were intact. The upper
torso of a fireman would periodically pop up through an opening in
the roof of the car as you pushed the vehicle along. He was popping
up right now, even though the fire engine wasn't moving. Also, the
formerly smiling, friendly fireman was now a skeleton and the rest
of the fire truck was in flames.

"Holy—Anne, that's gonna burn down the
shop!"

"It's supernatural," I murmured,
trying to keep cool even though I was shocked. "See how the flames
are tinged blue at the edges? And nothing around it is
affected."

Melanie nodded eagerly. "That's kind
of cool, then. Did you know it did that?"

"No." And that worried me. I thought I
had just about everything in my inventory pegged. If I'd missed a
flaming, skeleton-driven fire truck, what else had I
missed?

Eventually the flames died down and
the skeleton regrew his skin and became the nice fireman again, but
I'd never look at it the same way again. I practically felt
betrayed by it. But I didn't have to dwell on it for long. One of
the mini-Chinese vases was overflowing with blood.

"Ugh," Melanie grunted when she
noticed it, too.

"No biggie," I assured her quietly,
"it's not real. I've never had to clean up anything around it,
so..."

"Maybe it's better that you don't know
what any of these things do," Melanie suggested.

I was beginning to think she had a
good point.

She and I startled as the zombie
nutcrackers on the counter began to chatter as though they were
yelling at each other. I relaxed when I saw they weren't going to
do anything else. But then the cameos started in and they actually
were yelling.

It's coming! Anne Moody,
it's coming for you!

It lives with
you…

Anne Moody, prepare for
it!

They were annoying enough when they
were only moaning to me but now, with them shrieking, I gasped and
covered my ears with my hands.

"What is it?" Melanie asked, pushing
up onto her knees. She couldn't hear the cameos. No one else
could.

"The cameos," I gasped. "They're going
nuts."

It's coming! It's
coming!

Coming for you!

Anne Moody,
prepare...

"Argh, I can't take it!" I jumped to
my feet and burst through the bead curtain with Melanie just a few
feet behind me.

At the counter, I slung open the
jewelry case door and sent my dragon inside. Lucky, although taking
the size of a cat in order to fit inside the case, widened his
mouth enough to gobble up the tray, cameos and all. I'd never tried
this before, and to my amazement and relief the harping voices
became a low, indistinguishable murmur while they sat within
Lucky's closed mouth. It wasn't something I could maintain
forever—non-magickal people would see this magickal dragon sitting
there and question what was up—but for now, it would keep me
sane.

"Thank god," I sighed, slumping
back.

"Anne," Melanie whimpered, "look!" She
pointed out at the shelves.

A woman's hand attached to an arm was
sliding along the shelves. It originated from somewhere behind
other, larger items, so I couldn't tell what curse had born it. The
hand and arm both were filthy, as though they'd clawed up through
the soil of a grave. Its long nails were mostly broken and jagged.
What bothered me most about the thing—beside the fact that it
existed at all—was the tension in the limb. Cords of muscle and
tendons strained beneath the dirty skin as the hand crept along, as
though it were angry and looking to seize hold of something, or
someone.

Would the rest of the woman climb out
of the shelves, too, once she'd found what she was looking for? Or
would she yank her victim into the depths of where she had come
from?

"No way that's been in here all this
time," I choked out, equal parts horrified and angry. "No
way!"

Melanie yelped when the two porcelain
dolls leaped off the shelves, landing on their faces on the floor.
Their soft, short limbs moved, pushing the dolls slowly across the
floor, heading toward us...

Something began to laugh. It was low
pitched and masculine. But then a pair of higher, girlish voices
joined it.

"What's doing that?" Melanie cried
out, backing against the counter.

"I don't know," I muttered. "It sounds
like it's coming from everywhere. From—" I swallowed, "—multiple
things."