Thorn to Die

“Oh, calm down.” Krista pursed her lips and placed a manicured hand on her bony hip. “It was only flirting. And you’re going to pay that alimony. You know why?”

I peered over my boots at Carter’s reddening face. He’d dropped his hands to a defensive position, in front of his chest. Grammy Jo had never understood why Carter married his dental hygienist. Blythe said it had something to do with the size of her assets. Either way, I’d never really liked Krista Green and right now was no exception.

“You’re going to pay that alimony,” Krista continued in a hiss, “because you don’t want this whole town to know the truth about you, Carter Green.” She stabbed a finger at his chest and he took a step back, fear trickling into his frown. “That you’re not just some rich philanthropist with a golden heart. No, they’ll get to know the real you. That’s why you’re not going to fight this alimony agreement. You’ll pay up and I’ll shut up.”

At that moment, Butch hollered my name. Krista and Carter both turned toward me and caught me staring at them over my poorly laced boot. My face flushed with embarrassment as Krista’s eye’s narrowed and Carter went ghostly pale. I mumbled a poor excuse for an apology, grabbed my woolen jacket, and stumbled down the field toward the rest of my coworkers.

“Coming, coming,” I wheezed.

Already, the costume was trapping in the heat, cooking me like a stuffed sausage over the giant grill that Raven had returned to work on. I waved at her as I found my place in the line of soldiers. She stood in the middle of the grate, looking less than pleased, and nodded her head at me. All during lunch she’d been complaining about Butch’s demands for the upcoming festivities. Fix this, fix that.

It’d taken her nearly all morning to get the old bathrooms up to snuff. It would take several more hours to patch the new canon-sized hole in the stage floor. But first, she had to make sure the giant grill pit would work for the hundreds of pounds of meat that would be sizzling come this weekend. I shuddered at the thought. Nothing made me craze a soy burger more than the thought of that grill firing up.

“How long has it been since you last cleaned this thing?” Raven yelled at Butch. She had her hands on the hips of her skintight black jeans. A tan tool belt circled her waist. “It’s not going to work with all this gunk in here.”

Butch huffed and threw his pointy chin toward the sky. “I don’t know. Can’t you do it?”

Never the one to get his hands dirty, Butch was notorious for pawning off that kind of work to other people. But Raven wasn’t just anyone. She didn’t take that kind of crap.

“Butch Hall.” She stomped off the grill, grabbed a shovel, and marched in our direction. Butch shrunk into himself, grimacing at the sight of her wielding the tool. “You will get in there right now and help me clear it out. You’re never going to get a good heat going with all that junk clogging up the pit.”

He held out a weak wrist and sucked in his cheeks. “Are you sure you can’t do it?”

“Do you want a working grill for your big event or not?” She shoved the tool into his hands, nearly pushing him to the ground. “Get to work.”

If I was him, I wouldn’t ignore her. Raven didn’t often say much, but when she did, it was best to listen to her. Especially when it came to machinery and fixing things. Thankfully, Butch wasn’t totally daft. He jumped to attention and scurried after her, yelling over his shoulder at us to begin practice without him. Everyone around me sighed in relief and began to relax. I dropped the heavy coat on the ground and stretched in delight. Practice would be so much better without our manager around, barking orders. Maybe we’d finally get a thing or two done.

“Alright,” I said clapping my hands to capture everyone’s attention. “Who needs a coffee break?”

About a dozen heads nodded and we all split different ways. Kat and I cautiously approached the grill pit as Butch dug his shovel into the ashy remains caked in the bottom. No way was I going to miss this. Butch Hall getting his hands dirty. We needed documented proof of this event. We needed photos.

As I pulled my phone out with its handy dandy built in camera, Butch tossed a shovel full of ash into a red wheelbarrow standing nearby. He paused to wipe a dusty hand over his forehead and then struck the shovel into the dirt again. The ashes had to be nearly two feet deep. There was no telling how long ago the grill had last been cleaned. Maybe never. It’d been installed in this field when I was a kindergartner. Almost twenty years of soot and ash had built up nearly to the metal grate that sat on top.

With my camera in hand, I raised it to shoot. Butch had sunk his shovel again into the dirt and already managed to coat himself with a thick film of dirt. I took a picture just as he was raising his shovel to the wheelbarrow. He’d managed to get a good hunk of the gunk to break away from the pile. It tumbled from his shovel into the barrow with a loud clunk. I smiled at the picture that appeared on my screen. I’d remember this day forever. Raven needed to come around the Reenactment Park more often.

Just then, a piercing scream caused me to nearly have a heart attack. I looked up from my phone to find the source of the noise. Butch – with his mouth stretched open in an O and his eyes equally as huge. He was staring at the wheelbarrow and screeching. In a fit of panic, he kicked it over and threw his shovel, barely missing Kat with the wooden part of it.

“What the…?” Raven came around the other side of the grill. “What’s wrong?”

“There…there…it’s there.” Butch pointed at the tipped wheelbarrow. “Right there.”

She met my gaze with a skeptical tilt of her head. We followed his finger and rounded the pit until we could see the contents of the rusty little wheelbarrow.

Gray ash and soot spilled out onto the browning grass. The remnants of a few burnt logs had rolled out as well. But the thing that captured our attention was the smooth and round object that had frightened my manager. No bigger than a football, it sat upright in the middle of the mess, smiling up at us with a mouthful of sharp and perfectly aligned teeth. Two gaping holes stared at us where eyes should’ve been.

It was a skull. A real life skull. In the middle of Uriville’s one hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration.

My pocket began to heat up as if someone had shoved a branding iron down my pants. I stripped off my costume pants to reveal my jean underneath, dancing as if I had fire ants in my pants. Maybe they were fire ants. It felt like they were stinging my skin. I shoved my hand in my jeans and pulled out whatever was burning my thigh. With a few curses uttered under my breath, I held the red hot offender out and slowly unfurled my fingers.

Laying in the middle of my palm was the blood magic charm, glowing bright red.