A cautionary tale with a modern twist?
Written by:
Jolene Rice
Michael Raven
Judy’s attention was refocused by the miasma of woodsy smells that was all far more earthy in tone than what seemed absolutely necessary. It reminded Judy of her grandmother’s root cellar on the family ranch back in Montana, except for a cloying floral overtone to it. That root cellar had terrified her as a child, and Judy had always hated it when her mother would volunteer her to wash a load of laundry in the clangy-bangy washing machine her grandmother kept down there when they visited. The cellar always smelled like wet dirt and Judy imagined that some kind of creeper lurked down there in the semidarkness of the single bare bulb, waiting to grab her and drag her into the hidden depths of the shadows within.
Judy shuddered at the memory and wondered just how resolved she was to see this through. It was not so late that she could not just turn around go back to her Honda and drive the hell away.
“Jane, is it?” You have an appointment scheduled for one-fifteen?”
Judy hoped that one of the cunning woman’s “many and varied skills”, several pages worth of which were on her website, did not include mind-reading. She could not recall having seen that listed, but Judy had not really been looking through the other talents Margaret professed. She had largely stopped looking when she saw that Ms. Butterfield made “tinctures and potions intended to draw the attentions and affections of specific individuals, or in general.”
“Umm, Judy, actually” stammered Judy.
“Oh my! I’m sorry about that, oh deary,” said the woman who was far too young to be calling most people, let alone Judy, “deary”. “And Peggy will do nicely. I use Margaret on the web page because it has a more mystic quality to it, but my regulars all call me Peggy.”
Peggy was a young waif who hardly appeared old enough to drink, let alone to have gotten her claimed accreditations and licenses, with her ash-blond tresses just hanging past her shoulders — which were quite bare under the spaghetti straps that held up the paisley-patterned sundress she wore. She was barefoot, and had obviously been out in her garden at some point earlier in the day, judging from the amount of dirt that covered her feet. Judy found it scandalous that Peggy seemed to be conducting business, not only with dirty bare feet, but it was also quite apparent she was doing so without a bra.
“Come in! Come in!” Peggy said. “Come tell Granny Peg what we can concoct for you.”
Without waiting, Peggy turned and started walking toward a steel pole barn behind her tiny home, leaving Judy, slack-jawed, in front of the small abode.
The sign above the front and only door leading to the small home read in a stylized mystical font: “Welcome to my humble hut.”
Part four
