Hazel - Spooky Month

The apothecary was rich and warm with the fresh scent of cinnamon and nutmeg. The bell chimed happily overhead as I stepped through the door, and the fire crackled within the hearth. The bubbles that rose from the cauldron were a comforting sound, and while Hazel’s apothecary leaned on the side of busy when Fall finally arrived, I never ceased to stop thinking of it as a home. Hazel had created such a space that warmed you from your toes up, and welcomed in even the most bedraggled stranger. 

“I’m back,” I called out.  It had been a few days since we had really spent time together, most of her interactions being quick ones of passing as she brewed some of the more sought after tonics and I went through the market to check on the lanterns.  Once or twice she had mentioned that there were some muddy footprints in the front lobby that had been bothering her because she didn’t know which customer was able to stomp their way in and out without her seeing, but I hadn’t paid much mind to it. The market was rainy and the path right outside Hazel’s gate was a squelching mess.

Now, I wondered if I should have paid bit more attention. If her little anecdotes here and there was her way of yelling at me that she was uncomfortable. I didn’t, however, and would now have to deal with the consequences. Because when Hazel got uncomfortable, she got weird.

The cherry wood floors had just been refinished. No one would know it with the state they were in now, however. Seeds and stringy bits of a fleshy yellow orange pulp was smeared across the floor. I followed the massacre, as it strained across the room, catching sight of a discarded shoe and a knife.

“Hazel?” I began hesitantly.

“Right here!” She popped up from the little hollowed out portion of the shop where we normally played games. It wasn’t that she was lying particularly flat, it was just that she had a giant pumpkin in the way. The gourd was the size of her and far wider, covering her entire body unless she stood upright.

“You're carving a pumpkin?” I was stating the obvious. I knew I was. But what else was I supposed to say.

“A trojan horse pumpkin,” she said.

I looked back across the shop, noticing now the failed attempts of other pumpkins. They were all smaller in stature but had been equally gutted. When I looked back at her, she held her butcher knife up high before swinging it downward into a great plunge.

“I don’t know how to respond to that,” I told her, listening to the scraping sounds of the dying pumpkin.

“Listen,” she said. “I’m not doing this anymore. Every day I’m mopping up those boot prints. Every day I get that floor spick and span and then the mud comes back. Every. Day.”

“Okay, that’s annoying, yes. But how did we get to pumpkin carving.”

“Because,” she said, sticking her tongue out as she switched directions of the knife. “I’m going to carve this for the season. Then, I’m going to crawl inside of it and wait for the muddy thief to arrive.”

She wasn’t joking. I knew Hazel’s joking voice and this was not it. No, the girl was now carving out the flesh with even more gusto, a glint in her eye that was murderous.  I took a few more steps forward, coming to the edge of the sunken room. “Honey, you’re not making a lot of sense. I love you, but you got that look in your eye.”

“What look?”

“The same look you got when you wanted chickens. The same look you got when you planted eighty-two plants of basil. The same look you got when someone suggested that your tonics were sub-par.”

She whipped her head up towards me, hair wildly falling in front of her eyes and poking out from her temple. “My tonics are not subpar.”

“I know, baby. I’m just saying you’re a little scary right now.”

The eye of the pumpkin popped out. I could already see that she had the mouth cut into a jagged grin and what looked like a nose put together. “This is going to work,” she told me. “The muddy person will not even suspect.”

“Okay, but, I mean, what do you plan to do if this plan does work? Pop out of the pumpkin and say boo?”

“Yes!” she cried.

That was how I found myself a few hours later, watching from the backroom as the love of my life doused all the candles in the main area and then climbed into the pumpkin. While she had been mumbling to herself about rude customers, I had cleaned up the actual mess left in the apothecary. Hazel was having a one-sided conversation about whether the pumpkin should be lit from the inside or not. In the end, she felt it would give away her position, so instead she put a few lit flames around the pumpkin without it being close enough to burn.

And then we waited.

And waited.

Hours went by where she sat in that pumpkin, shifting slightly as it began to get uncomfortable and just the slightest bit aromatic. I sat and watched from the stairwell, the door only open a sliver. Because even though I doubted anyone would be able to see me, Hazel didn’t want my presence to deter the great mud caper.

I was just about to call it, my own ass hurting from sitting on the wood steps for so long, when the back door opened. My eyes widened, and for a moment I was able to convince myself that this was in no way real. Her plan hadn’t actually worked. But there the person was, walking across the room in the dark, boots leaving muddy footprints on the ground. The person walked closer and closer, something big and heavy in their arms, and it took everything in me not to fling open the door and demand to know what they were doing here after hours.

Hazel beat me to it. The top of the pumpkin fell off, and she jumped up from the inside with white seeds in her hair. “BOO!”

The person dropped what they were holding and stumbled back. This was my cue to come rushing out and turn on the gas lanterns.

Malcolm stood before us, a pile of wood at his feet. “What the hell?” he was staring at his sister with condemnation.

“Malcolm?” She scrambled out of the pumpkin, going to his side. When she tried to hug him, he gently extracted her from him, flicking off pumpkin pieces. “What are you doing here? I’m trying to stage a coup!”

“A what?” He just looked all the more confused. “Hazel, what the hell are you talking about?”

I glanced at the wood at his feet. At the fire that was always going. Then back to Malcolm. “Hey, Mal? How many times a day do you come in here and stoke the fire?”

His brow furrowed, still confused by his sister's actions. “At least twice. Why?”

Hazel blinked. “You’re the one leaving muddy footprints on my floor?”

He turned back to her. “Yeah. You told me last week to get out when I tried to clean them. Because according to you, I upset the closet sprites.”

At that, Hazel looked a bit bashful. I could see the dawning realization coming over her face.

“What the hell is going on, Haze?” he asked. “You specifically asked me to bring you wood because the shops gotten so busy this week.”

“I…. did,” she confessed. “But I forgot about the cleaning thing so I thought you were a no do-gooder.”

“One, that’s not a word, and two, why does that allow you to jump out of a jack o'lantern like some jack-in-the-box freak and scream at me?”

“I’m sorry, okay?”

I rubbed at my eyes, feeling the smile crease each corner. The siblings continued bickering with each other, Hazel trying to justify her actions while also showing off how big the pumpkin was because of course it was from her garden. Meanwhile, Malcolm threatened to never do her a favor again and told her she needed to drink some sort of memory tea if she was going to do this shit.

“Where are you going?” Hazel asked as I turned to head upstairs.

“Oh, I took all the innards of that pumpkin. I’m going to go make a pumpkin pie.

Hazel smacked Malcolm. “You’ll get over this. I have to make sure that my kitchen doesn’t get burned down.” She rushed past me then, muttering about the last time I made pie and how the edges were burned. I looked at Malcolm apologetically.

“Want some pie?”

He began gathering the wood up, stoking the fire. “She owes me eight pies after that.”

“With the size of that pumpkin, it won’t be a problem.”

Sighing, Malcolm got the rest of the wood stacked before he turned to leave. He walked past me, both of us sharing a secret smile over Hazel antics. The door closed behind us then as we made our way upstairs. Neither of us saw the second set of boot prints. Neither of us saw the way the pumpkin winked.