Salem's Witches (Neitherlands Book 1), page 11
“Don’t we have a cult and a designer to investigate?” said Laura. “Let’s get on it, then.”
6
Sarah neared Neutral Church #27 while enjoying a beautiful, dark afternoon that announced yet another storm to come. She took in the sights of people preparing for it while the particular, humid smell of impending rain assaulted her senses, and the whole city grew quiet.
As she neared the church she was welcomed with a certain noise, one quite like that made by a crowd, growing louder and louder. As she turned the last corner to reach the church, she saw the crowd gathering at its front and causing the ruckus.
At first, she thought it odd that so many people had showed up for Miss Bostwick’s funeral: As far as she knew, barely anyone knew of the woman’s existence. Having hundreds of people waiting outside the church for their turn to pay their respects was unexpected, almost miraculous.
Then she noticed they weren’t queuing. They were just standing there chanting, brandishing signs, and occasionally throwing things.
“What is this?” she whispered to Laura, only to find out that her dear friend Veronika had chosen to ask no questions, instead going against the crowd head on. She followed her.
“What’s going on here?” said Veronika to no one in particular.
An old man took a step forward from the crowd, grabbed a sign from a bunch lying in the streets, and attempted to give it to her. “I shee more people are coming!” he said, a loud whistling leaving his mouth with each word. On second look, he was missing several teeth. “Thish ish good! We’ll show those heathens one shall not mess with da shursh!”
Veronika took a step back, refusing to take the sign. Before she could say anything and risk attracting the anger of the full crowd, Sarah approached. “I’m sorry, mister, but can you tell us what’s going on here?”
“We are proteshting, that’s what we do! We musht show our complete rejecshun to thish woman’s way of life.” He smiled at Sarah. She wished he hadn’t.
“What do you mean?” said Sarah, “Are you—”
“I can’t believe you people are actually picketing a funeral,” said Veronika, who had apparently been in a state of shock far too short to keep her from getting in trouble. “A funeral. You’re. Picketing. A. Funeral. This is the lowest I’ve ever—”
“Why are you picketing this funeral in particular?” said Laura, casually positioning herself between Veronika and the old man. “Is there any reason, or did you just look around and say ‘Well, this one is as good as any!’”
“Thish woman!” said the old man. As the conversation progressed, his eyes had turned bloodshot, thereby ending his resemblance of a gentle grandfather who told his grandchildren tales and making him look more like the kind of madman who wrote tales using his grandchildren’s blood. “She ish the blight of the world! She shpoke ill of our organishashion and she desherves to burn for ethernity in the flames of—”
“What if this organization you speak of?” said Sarah, already aware of its name. The list of suspects, after all, had but a single entry.
“Why the Church of Quackology, of courshe! We have come here to let the whole of the Nheitherlandsh know that the threashery of thish woman shall not be allowed!”
“Didn’t this woman die while in your church’s custody?” said Laura.
Veronika had, curiously, remained silent during half the conversation. The whole thing stopped being so curious when Sarah realised Veronika wasn’t talking because she was far too busy visibly fuming with rage. Her jaw was clenched, as were her fists, and if you paid enough attention you could hear her breathing sound like a pressure cooker.
Now they didn’t just have a crowd picketing a funeral. There was also a bomb ticking down.
“That she did, yesh, just to shmear our names!” said the man, while Sarah tried to calm Veronika down by giving her a back massage. It didn’t work. “She planned it all, all of thish witsh Shianeew!”
“And there’s that name again,” said Laura.
Sarah, knowing she couldn’t defuse the bomb, poked Laura in the shoulder. With just one look at Veronika, Laura seemed to understand the gravity of the situation.
“Now, I would love to stay and chat, but we have…things…to do…inside the church,” said Laura, taking a few steps backward. “I must wish you good luck with your endeavors, and—”
“They are witsh the enemeee!” the man yelled.
Within an instant what had been a relatively peaceful, if absurd protest, turned wild. It seemed as if each of the attendants carried rocks, pieces of paper, or amulets, for all of them were almost instantly flung at the witches. Not content with just throwing things, the protesters, as they are prone to, also screamed all kinds of obscenities at the witches.
Laura ran away from the crowd immediately and, her survival instinct taking over, Sarah also began to run toward the church.
A moment later she remembered Veronika and turned around to find her still standing there, fuming more than ever, perhaps ready to take on the crowd all on her own.
She wasn’t going to allow it.
Risking life and limb in what was the most exciting, danger-filled moment of her life Sarah ran back, grabbed Veronika’s waist and, against her friend’s wishes, pushed her toward the church.
Veronika gathered herself after Sarah pushed her all the way into the church. She spent a few seconds taking deep breaths and trying to deal with her own anger while her friends closed the doors to keep the mob from entering. For a moment she expected to be able to go back to normal and forget the amount of crazy she had just witnessed.
Then the sweet smell of what seemed to be all the roses in the city hit her. Followed by the decoration.
The neutral church had originally been conceived as a space where followers of any deities could gather and hail their gods without foreign images interfering with their worship. When rented out, it was often decorated based on the beliefs of the event organizers.
Currently the church was decorated for a wedding.
There were flowers everywhere, ribbons adorned the pews and windows, and a huge floral arch covered the altar. On top of that, a horrible altar to regular Johnny #37 from The Fetish Dungeon served as the main attraction.
To make things worse, Jane, the insane woman from The Fetish Dungeon who had turned her not-quite-husband into a deity of sorts, stood there, waving at them. “Do come in!” she said from atop the altar, “Welcome to the happiest day of Annabella Bostwick’s life!”
There were several things Veronika didn’t do at this point: She didn’t scream and run around the church destroying the decorations. She didn’t walk up to Jane and kick her in the shins. She didn’t pick a fight with Annabella Bostwick’s mother, who sat on one of the pews dressed as a bridesmaid, and she also didn’t grab a table and throw it through the stained glass window, to open a hole through which she could conveniently escape.
She didn’t do any of these things because her friends immediately held her and did not let go of her no matter how much she thrashed around and tried to break free. Had she been allowed to, she would have done all things described and then some, because the amount of craziness she could stand for a day had been surpassed by recent events and, therefore, it was only fair she herself went just a bit crazy.
“Veronika, calm down,” Sarah whispered. “You’re in a funeral. No matter what happens here, there’s no excuse for anyone in a funeral to scream and run around the church destroying the decoration, kick the priestess in the shins, pick a fight with the deceased’s mother, and grab a table and throw it through the stained glass window, to open a hole through which one can conveniently escape. So don’t even think of it. Right now, you’ll have to calm down and act as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening.”
Veronika tried to calm down as she walked with her friends toward the altar. At that point, Annabella’s mother had risen and was staring at them, standing by Jane’s side.
“Welcome to Annabella’s wedding,” said the woman once they reached the altar, where Annabella’s casket also rested. “We hoped more people would come but, alas, my daughter sadly wasn’t the popular kind. Maybe if she had been, she would have married an eligible bachelor and this wouldn’t have happened. Now, who are you?”
“We are Salem’s Witches,” said Sarah.
Veronika, whose jaw had clenched due to the stress of all the rage in the Neitherlands burning inside her, just smiled. She was aware her strained smile made her look like a madwoman, but she was more concerned at the time with not acting like one. Sometimes in life one has to make concessions in order for things to go well.
“I’m glad to see my daughter had at least three friends with such a remarkable presence. I heard screaming out there. Was the crowd cheering you on?”
“That’s…exactly what they were doing,” said Laura. “They were cheering. Us. On.”
Annabella’s mother smiled. “I’m glad. Those people…their ruckus has made this wedding much livelier. I wonder why they haven’t entered. Do you know why?”
Veronika could have told her why, but that would’ve implied opening her mouth and risking letting her know of several other things that were really wrong.
“I think they are…unmarried. And jealous of Annabella’s opportunity. Very jealous,” said Sarah. “So they’d rather not come in, you know.”
“They’ll appreciate it if, once this is done, you go out and do a bouquet toss for them,” said Laura. A wicked grin appeared on her face, and Veronika’s mood lightened at the idea, if only for one moment. “It’ll be a riot.”
Mrs. Bostwick smiled. “I’ll consider it then. Fancy seeing my daughter?” She directed them toward the casket. “I reckon we did the best we could with what we had.”
Veronika went to the casket with her friends by her side. At first it felt awkward, going to the casket of a person they had barely met, in order to pay their respects, almost as if they had no business there. Nevertheless, her friends led her and soon enough she found a good reason to be there.
Annabella was wearing a bridal dress.
Veronika took a deep breath and tried to not mind the fact that Annabella’s mother had had the gall of having her join a religion she didn’t believe in post-mortem. She tried to ignore the fact that her funeral had been decorated like a wedding. She tried to ignore Annabella’s mother wearing a bridesmaid dress. She tried to ignore the pictures of John, whom she apparently was to marry. She tried to ignore—
“Excuse me, but what’s going on here?” she said, unable to keep ignoring anything on the list anymore and deciding to instead ignore her ignoring altogether. “Did you really dress your daughter as a bride and make a mockery of a wedding ceremony for her funeral? Do you think this shit is funny?”
“A mockery of what?” Jane was apparently more appalled by Veronika’s comment than the mother of the deceased. “This is an official ceremony and I expect respect! You can’t just come in and laugh at our beliefs. That’s unbelievably rude! While you’re at it, you might as well scream and run around the church destroying the decorations, come to me and kick me in the shins, pick a fight with Annabella’s mother, and grab a table and throw it through the stained glass window to open a hole through which you can conveniently escape!”
“I’ve been wanting to do just that since I arrived at this circus, so don’t push your luck!” said Veronika. “I just can’t believe this is what a woman whom I’ll admit I never quite met but who seemed decent enough gets as a send-off after mysteriously dying while being held hostage by a cult made up of people with dubious morals!”
“If you didn’t quite know her, why are you trying to tell us how to send her off?” said Annabella’s mother. She had, at some point, produced a cigarette and was smoking it. “Don’t you think that as her mother I would know best what my daughter wanted? I believe that deep in her heart she wanted nothing but to marry a good man and be his wife forever, and that’s exactly what I mean to give her.”
“When was the last time you spoke with her?” said Sarah, casually and not at all trying to pick a fight.
“This one time,” said Annabella’s mother, still smoking. “At some point before she died. She was an adult already, I remember.”
“Right.”
“Don’t try to act as if you knew her better than I did. You did not. Now, will you lot be respectful, or will you please leave our funeral? My daughter is about to marry and I’m beyond myself with excitement. Don’t ruin this day for me.”
“We should sit,” said Sarah. Rather than wait for Veronika to follow her, she motioned to Laura and they both dragged her to one of the pews. As soon as they sat, Jane took to the altar and started the ceremony.
“Ladies and…well, ladies. We’re here today to join our dear Annabella in holy matrimony with our one and only John, the one man who never lets us down and…”
About an hour passed.
“Now, if there’s anyone who opposes this marriage, please speak now or forever hold your peace,” said Jane. She directed a stern stare at the witches, one that said something among the lines of “Stay shut, or else.”
A hand went up in the air. It was Laura’s.
“Since nobody seems to have raised any objections,” said Jane, “we must—”
“Excuse me, but I must ask…what proof do you have of the existence of John?”
Jane stared at Laura as if she had asked for proof that food is necessary to live. “What proof could anyone need? John is a force inside the heart of every woman in the Neitherlands. If you look inside yourself, you will find him. If you concentrate on who loves you, you’ll see he is and has always been there. He waits for all of us women patiently until we are ready to enter His house for eternity.”
“What about women who are, let’s say, not interested in men?” said Laura. “Do they marry him too?”
“John’s love is eternal and for all women.” Jane was still using her preaching voice. “Women who aren’t interested in men, they just haven’t met John. He is the absolute Mister Right, and any woman who looks inside herself will find her heart filled with love for him.”
“What about men?” Laura was attempting to inquire even further into what these people believed. All two of them. “Does he also marry them?”
“What is this?” asked Jane, aghast. “To even suggest that our John would marry another man. Such heresy!” She raised her voice. “John is here for women, and only women. I do not know what happens to men nor do I care, but I am completely sure they are not eligible to receive John’s love.”
“Isn’t this kind of…sexist? I mean, as I can hear you say, John is a deity who loves women, and only women. He also loves all women, regardless of whether those women think they love him or not. And even if a woman doesn’t love him, he will still love her and she will have to learn to love him. But if you happen to be a man, then nobody cares? It sounds…quite horrible, I must say.”
“This is not the moment for a theology lesson.” Jane retired her preaching voice and replaced it with a much fiercer tone. “We are in the middle of a wedding so, unless you lot can come up with an actual reason to prevent it, it is time we seal the deal.”
“Now I don’t want to come around bearing bad news, my friends,” said Veronika, much revitalized by Laura’s feistiness, “but there’s only one issue that will keep this wedding from happening.”
“Which is?”
“It’s the bride. You see, she happens to be…dead.”
Silence overtook the church. The elephant in the room had been mentioned, and it was time for those attending to perform all kinds of mental gymnastics to keep themselves from acknowledging it.
“How can you say that?” yelled Annabella’s mother. She got up from the pew and took a few steps toward them. “To call my beautiful daughter a dead person, during her own funeral? This is beyond reproachable!”
“All of John’s brides live in him, and they shall live as long as their marriage lasts,” said Jane.
“I’m glad Jane here knows the truth about things,” added Annabella’s mother. “All of our lives are but the preamble to the bliss that will be our eternal marriage to John. Do not offend those who marry him by calling them dead!”
“So the fact that she’s lying cold inside a box is a mere formality?” said Veronika.
The women stared at her, both of them taken aback. “Why are you so rude?” said Mrs. Bostwick. “We invited you to this nice celebration of my daughter’s future, and you act like this?” She stood face to face with Veronika. “Just, what kind of bitter, hateful woman are you to come and try to destroy other people’s happiness? Is your existence really that miserable?”
Had Veronika been more perceptive, she would have noticed her friends were staring at the scene with the air of somebody who has seen the situation coming from a mile away, all the while wondering how it was that this hadn’t happened before. She wasn’t, however, so she took said expressions of schadenfreude for support.
“You act as if I was the only one here who sees this for what it is. Why, I believe my friends have a lot to say about this circus too. You just wait, they’ll let you know how ridiculously insane this is, and how you both are little more but nutcases!”
Neither Sarah nor Laura said a word; they knew to pick their battles.
“As you can see, they’ve gone mute with horror at the tacky display of kitschiness that this whole travesty of a funeral is!” Veronika, raised her voice, turning the discussion into a shouting match. “In fact, I’m sure if Annabella were alive, she’d have a few choice—”
Mrs. Bostwick slapped Veronika. It happened as those things often do—suddenly, unexpectedly, and doubtlessly deservedly.
Veronika wasn’t one to not react to offenses, yet that was exactly what she did… for a second or so. After the novelty of having been slapped for what felt like the very first time in her life[17] passed, she slapped back.
