The Hag's Blood Incident

Chapter 3

     Dwelling on my debt to the Boogieman, I was brooding as I walked down the hallway to stop by our office. As I got closer, I began to hear laughter and talking spilling out into the hallway. It sounded like my young friends were working to repair the damage caused by the Hob and his gang last night. I smiled wanly, the sound of their camaraderie was enough to allow me to shake off the tough conversation I just had with Mister Spider, a little. I hate to admit it, but while I was meandering down the hall, I got lost in my own thoughts, daydreaming. I was caught between anticipation of working with the young people I was in business with and the morosity of owing my other friend combined with my regrets from last night and the excitement of my meeting today.

     I was a proverbial jumble of emotions. So, I was not expecting to hear two sharp little blasts of an electronic horn and a little old woman careening down the hallway at me swerving drunkenly on her electric scooter, dragging a broom behind her. I couldn't help myself. I uttered a short choppy bark of laughter before reining it back in.

     Old Lady Hargis was a large, older woman, in her late seventies. Her two bleary eyes, magnified by her two inch thick glasses, were almost pinched closed in concentration as she battled the handlebars of her power scooter. The floral print muumuu, a different version of which she wore almost daily, except on Sunday, that was reserved for church clothes, flapped around her swollen ankles as she stomped her feet on the floorboards of the vehicle.

     As she careened down the hallway it was easy to see why the old woman was having difficult controlling her vehicle. At seventy years old and highly arthritic, she was attempting to steer with one hand, drag a broom behind her with the other, all the while towing a miniature trailer full of trash bags and broken boards. Occasionally, she would remove her hand from her steering mechanism to honk her horn repeatedly.

     While attempting all of these things simultaneously, she was only being mildly successful at any of them. She was hardly collecting any dirt as she swished her broom, her scooter was swinging madly from wall to wall, while equally being extremely lucky to not collide with either of them, and her horn blasted a liquidy, failing honk of a dying battery. The only thing she had truly mastered with the death defying show was creating a swirling path through the dust in the hall.

     It was with great relief that I sighed when her scooter shuddered to a stop directly in front of me, its broadside facing me as if it were to open all its guns on me. Old Lady Hargis picked her bent and notched aluminum broom up off the floor and turned to confront me. "Who's that?" She challenged in a quavering voice, holding the handle of the tool in two hands in a defensive gesture. "Honey, you better step into the light, if you know what's good for you." She said with gentle warning. Followed by, "You better not be one of those damn kids." That part came out more harshly.

     I looked up at the ceiling and sighed heavily. The fact that it was fully lit in here indicated that Mrs. Hargis was having a bad day. "Hey, Mrs. Hargis," I said loudly. It occurred to me, however, that if she could remember that she had had problems with the neighborhood kids, she was at least holding on to some temporal memories, so maybe it wasn't as bad as it could be. "It's me Oliver Thomas." I continued at an exaggerated volume. Hoping for the latter, I kept talking. "Are you helping Arianna and Tim-tam clean our store today?" If it was the former, I hoped her granddaughter, Lilly, hadn't strayed too far away. "If so, I really appreciate it." I said with mock sincerity.

     Her eyes hardened the more I spoke.

     I might need help.

     "Especially after all the trouble last night." I finished up. That last part might have come out more wavery and desperately than I wanted as I scanned both ends of the hallway searching for Ari's friend.