Zelda’s Occult Shop
Zelda’s was crowded, for an occult shop. Julie peered uncertainly through the smoked glass of the front door, her breath making a vaporous fog on the glass as she gazed into the murky shop. She adjusted her scarf against the coldness that was creeping down the street, as the late afternoon’s warmth gave way to the lengthening shadows of evening that had begun their long march up Market Street.
She saw two other people mulling in and out of the three dimly lit aisles of the shop. It seemed to be the kind of place that was dusky at all times of the day or night. The fact that there were no clocks on the walls— no clocks in the shop anywhere— served to enhance the feeling that, at least while you shopped at Zelda’s, time stood still.
“Greetings!”
She jumped at the voice that greeted her as she entered the store. There was no one near her to have said hello. She turned back and looked at the door.
“Greetings!”
Trip mat. Must be a trip mat, she thought, a little foolishly. She looked down and spotted the ancient looking floor covering. Stepping on it again, she got another “Greetings!” She felt a bit silly, being startled by the cheap effect, but then again, this was an occult shop, wasn’t it? All possibilities were open.
She turned, nearly bumping into one of the two other patrons, a woman with a long red scarf. She was clutching a piece of paper in one hand and hugging her purse close to her body with the other as she made her way up the center aisle at a brisk pace towards the exit.
“Excuse me!” she said to the woman’s back as she hurried by.
“’Scuse me,” the woman answered in haste under her breath, not looking up, as she hustled across the trip mat and out the door.
Flustered, Julie loosened her scarf and shook her head at the woman’s rashness, sending a cascade of long blond hair spilling over the collar of her coat as she moved on into the main aisle of the store.
On the wooden shelves around her were all sorts of “mystical” odds and ends, dusty from sitting untouched, or just plain dusty with timeless age. To her left were the pre-made concoctions: love potions, hate potions, wealth-building potions, luck potions. All manners of potions. On her right side, for the more adventurous, were the raw ingredients for the making of potions: frog’s legs, bat’s ears, lizard’s tails (“On Special This Week Only!” a sign proudly advertised in a meticulously hand-written script). All neatly preserved in what appeared to be little formaldehyde-filled jars. An anatomist’s dream, but they were for concocting, not for dissecting. The dissecting specimens were behind the counter, or so another carefully lettered red magic marker sign directed the patrons.
She picked up one of the jars on her right and looked in. Its contents were looking back. She exhaled as if she’d been punched in the stomach. It was billed as a human eye, and it was blue. Skeptic though she was, she put it down nervously. Probably just a glass marble, she soothed herself as she walked down the aisle and further into the shop.
Julie had found the handbill folded neatly in half and tucked under the windshield wiper of her Accord. She had just come from a particularly long and painful therapy session with Dr. Cardigan, and consequently she was running late getting back to work.
She had experienced the most eerie feeling that she was being watched, right there at her car, right there in Dr. Cardigan’s parking lot. So much so that the hairs on the back of her neck had risen, and gooseflesh had erupted up and down her arms. She hadn’t dared to look at the handbill until she had actually gotten back to the relative safety and privacy of her office.
It was as expected, one of those annoying advertisements that the owner of some new store called “Joey’s Pizza” or “Jack’s Junkyard” will pay a kid a dollar a dozen to stuff under as many windshield wipers as he can, as quickly as he can.
Only this handbill was from a store called “Zelda’s Occult Shop,” meticulously hand-scribed in bright red magic marker. It had a tiny red smidge on one of its edges that might have been from the red magic marker— the creator of the sign smearing it during the flyer’s creation. Or maybe its deliverer had, in haste to hustle the flyers, received what would have probably been a painful paper cut. She winced to herself at the latter thought.
Down at the end of the duskily lit aisle was a statue, painstakingly carved out of a dark brown wood that looked liked mahogany, and finished in a deep, hand-polished liquid brown. It was naked from the waste up, devoid of even hair. Its stomach was so arrestingly huge, so out of proportion to the rest of the statue- that it invited a laugh- and a pat- at its sheer largeness.
It also had an enormous, mischievous grin plastered on his hardwood face. It looked like a Buddha—
“Hotai,” a voice said mechanically from the statue.
Julie nearly jumped out of her skin, for the second time in as many minutes. She looked incredulously at the idol, feeling foolish at her jumpiness.
“He called Hotai.” The man stepping out from behind the statue repeated it as if for the hundredth time that day.
“Hotai,” Julie echoed, relieved. She did not like mysteries; they made her nervous, even for a skeptic on a fool’s errand in an occult shop. She was beginning to feel inane at her uneasiness, vaguely aware of the absurdity of her mission.
She had thought it unusual at the time, but as she recalled, she hadn’t seen any advertisements placed on anyone else’s windshield, which was odd, because she was parked smack in the middle of about thirty-five cars. Dr. Cardigan was a popular therapist, especially with the Young Upwardly Mobile Married Scene, or “Yummys,” as Dr. Cardigan called them with his sickeningly condescending sense of humor.
She had been seeing him for about two and a half months, and with this last session they had been hotly and heavily working over the roots of her emotional turmoil and the subsequent problems with reality they were causing her. According to her Patronizingly Proficient Psychologist, her problems were manifesting in an all-consuming, ferocious jealousy of her husband, Carl. No shit!
It was Dr. Cardigan’s professional opinion— that is to say, Dr. Cardigan felt, and was intent on proving— that her groundless jealousy stemmed from an unreasonable paranoia rooted in her childhood memories of her mother, or some such tripe like that.
She, however, clung to her convictions that the bastard was cheating on her, and what’s more, was cheating on her nearly all of the time.
“Yes! He a god, and he bring you luck if you pat tummy!” The man patted the Buddha, demonstrating. He was a pudgy miniature of the statue, except that he had a mat of thick black hair on his head, going to gray at the temples.
She had the wicked urge to pat the man on the stomach, but resisted, patting the corpulent god statue instead.
“Make wish! Make wish!” The man insisted almost comically on queue, hopping back and forth from one foot to the other, all the world as if he’d had to go to the bathroom for the last three years.
He was so childishly exuberant in his insistence that she obliged him by closing her eyes and making a wish. It wasn’t too hard to come up with one. After all, that was why she had come into Zelda’s in the first place.
In the darkness behind her closed eyelids, she envisioned Carl and his blond-haired slut. Julie knew from following her the kind of car the woman drove, and where she went every day when she wasn’t with Carl. Christ, she thought the woman might even be seeing Dr. Cardigan as well! She’d have to mention that to the Good Doctor at her next session, and see what the condescending bastard made of that.
In spite of it all, she knew she still loved Carl. She knew that he still loved her as well, still wanted her. All she had to do was get the slut out of his life. Out of their lives.
In spite of Dr. Cardigan’s professional opinion, this was more than just a case of jealousy and paranoia. She had seen the slut, seen her with her own eyes. And that was why she was here at Zelda’s occult Shop. That was why she was contemplating a wish she could make that would remove the slut from their lives and make everything right again.
And not for the last time, she wished that the slut would just simply be swallowed up by time itself.
The man stopped his hopping when he saw her brow furrow with the effort of her concentration. He touched her arm, causing her eyes to shutter open. “Be careful what wish you make,” he intoned in an ominous voice. “Much magic in Hotai wishing! Nothing bad! Nothing bad!”
“Wha—”
“Bad come back! Warn you! Bad come back! Twice as bad!”
But she had already made her wish. She shuddered unconsciously as the little man backed away from her to the main counter.
“Oh, I too late again!” He wrinkled his face in self-loathing. Reaching under the counter, he produced a handbill and proffered it to Julie across the dirty glass top. “You take! Payment for wish! Must put advertisement under one windshield, for one wish! You take!” He pushed the flyer into her hand.
“That’s it? My wish? But I—”
“You go now!” The little man dismissed her with a curt wave. “Come back soon!” He stepped away and disappeared behind a curtain.
What a waste of time, she thought to herself disgustedly, fingering the flyer’s edges self-consciously. Maybe Dr. Cardigan is right— maybe this is all just paranoia. I need to call him in the morning, she thought sullenly. I’m getting worse.
She winced as she cut her finger on the edge of the flyer. She looked down at the handbill with its meticulously hand-written advertisement, and a nervous smile played across her lips. How deliciously ironic it would be if I fulfilled my part of the wish that requires me to hand out this flyer by putting the very wishing flyer itself on the slut’s windshield!
The store had only one other person left in it as she turned to leave. Clutching her purse protectively to her body, she marched briskly up the center aisle with a purpose, trying to get out of the murky store that now seemed to press in on her from all sides.
She heard the door mat chime it’s “Greetings!” as another person— a woman— entered the store and was in her turn baffled by the trip mat.
“Excuse me!” the other woman said to Julie’s back as she hurried by.
“’Scuse me,” she answered in haste under her breath, not looking up as she hustled across the trip mat and out the door.
Flustered and excited, Julie re-wrapped her scarf and tucked the cascade of her long blond hair back into the collar of her coat as she moved out into the lengthening shadows of evening that had begun their long march up Market Street.
© Ray Cattie
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