The Cursed Blood

onto his deeply lined face, and he engulfed my tiny fingers in his own and shook it.
“Pleased to finally meet you. I’m called White Owl – and perhaps a few other things.” He patted me on the head, scuffled my unruly mop of hair and indicated a chair for me to sit at his side.
I obliged and was even offered a colorful striped knit blanket to ward off the October morning chill. He pulled it from his lunchbox like one of those mundane magicians pulling seemingly endless strings of handkerchiefs from a top hat or sleeve. It was in that moment as I covered my lap that I noticed the strange, wide eyed look on Gramps’ haggard face as he stood there, mouth open a bit, staring after the exchange in muted, disbelieving silence.
“A little bird tells me you had an interesting encounter. Tell me about it,” he asked as he sipped at his thermos cup of steaming cocoa while absently scratching behind Manx’s ears with his free hand. The happily begging and panting Witchound’s head all but in his lap, watery eyes rolling back with one paw wiggling and working the air in contentment.
“It was just the Clampetts being themselves trying to scare the boy.” Gramps waved dismissively. “Nothing to get all worked up about.”
“Not you,” White Owl corrected sternly. “Young Ben, when you came into your power in that parking lot, tell me, what did you see?” Before I could answer he stopped me with a raised hand. “I need you to think, carefully and tell me everything. The smallest detail could be important.”
At this I noticed Gramps turn serious. We had yet to talk about this, although he kept saying he meant to, as his estranged son hadn’t been all that specific as to what I’d seen when the Oldfable spell had slipped from my eyes.
“It was a family in a Volkswagen bus.”
The old man nodded seriously, patient and stony faced as he sipped at his soda. “I see. What was strange about them?”
“They all had white hair and shiny eyes like crystals. And pointy teeth. That’s about it. Is that important?” I asked, excited that I may be able to help in some way by telling them this. Both older men, however, had gone quiet and very still. White Owl’s eyes had narrowed, and he was nodding to himself as if this confirmed something he had been worrying about.
“Tell me, did they see you?” This question drew a sharp glance from Gramps. He leaned unsteadily against one of the four thick log beams supporting the porch’s roof. A red oil lantern hung from each of the beams in the cradle of a hammered iron hook. I remember him looking a little pale, shaky, and sick as he waited for my answer with the rapt, horrified look one would imagine of a condemned prisoner preparing to be marched out to the gallows.
“Yes,” I replied with a frown, memories of that night swimming before me with a mixed accompaniment of feelings. I never had gotten to put on that werewolf costume or eat any of that candy corn. They were likely still in the bag, probably on the kitchen table where Mom had left it in the mysteriously frantic rush to call Gramps and get me to the lodge. On the way, there had barely been time to stop for food, as Dad had insisted it was essential that we keep moving and not spend too much time in any one place until we reached Craggmore Lodge’s gates.
I remember our last meal together had been a rushed, quiet, and sad affair. Consisting of sodas, burgers, and fries at a deserted McDonald’s whose only other occupant was an old man sipping at his coffee.
To this very moment I can still picture it clear as day as for some odd reason he had kept adding sugars to the same cup, stirring it, taking a sip then grumbling, shaking his head disgruntledly as he added more then took another unhappy sip, as if he’d been stuck in some odd loop.
As I child I marveled that the tiny seniors discount cup held that much coffee, as he had been there before we arrived and was still sipping away and adding sugar packets well after we left. Now, myself a much older, more experienced, and darker thing, I can’t help but feel for the old ghost. Life can be hard; and while there are plenty of fates worse than death, I assure you some after lives of the departed can be nightmarishly bleak.
Especially when one is so obviously and tragically unaware of the metaphysical change in one’s status, and like many souls with unfinished business or deathly dementia (a term for the departed spirits who live in an unending loop completely ignorant of their death, and reduced to a hellish redundancy, essentially stuck in a postmortem ethereal rut), this old ghost was lost. Reduced to a hiccup in time waiting for the universe to take a breath and gift him a slice of peace that was unlikely to ever come.
I even went back to visit one year in a fit of macabre nostalgia and found him right where I’d left him—though I could offer him no peace, we had an odd but helpful conversation nonetheless as he ripped into packets of sugar and told me things I had to hear. I still go back every now and then, just for conversation and coffee with one who has become a very old friend.
So, back to the tale at hand, eh?
I told Gramps and White Owl about the little girl in the car seat who had waved at me, how the father had noticed me and how frightened he’d seemed as he frantically rushed to get his pregnant wife to pile into their bus, and how they’d peeled out of the parking lot as fast as they could with what I could only describe as sheer panic and terror.
As I sat there staring at