The Son of the Blue Mountain Witch

By Carl Reader

Gwendolyn Gladys Gavin, the hideous and quirky Blue Mountain witch, has a young son she doesn't much like, and she lets him know it in no uncertain terms, such as informing him she might still abort him, even though he's already born. She has that sort of power. Of course, being a witch requires some very absurd and questionable behavior, such as cooking and eating the men you meet in a bar and temporarily killing off children so that their parents pay you to bring them back to life. These things Gwendolyn does with relish, and you might even laugh at her while she does them, so the abuse she heaps on her son isn't all that bad in comparison. Thomas Gavin understandably develops some personality problems, which she takes full advantage of. Since Gwendolyn loves her destructive profession, things get worse, as she develops her craft and engages an entrepreneurial spirit to wring every last buck out of her witchcraft and its various enterprises. As all this is taking place, Thomas falls in love with a girl she's killed and brought back to life, but even that simple grace of loving is denied the harried couple. Gwendolyn uses both her boy and the girl to further her empty murderous enterprises, bamboozle a town and create a vast financial enterprise based on her lust for money and power and the suffering of her hapless son. She asserts her power over Thomas and the world she hates in ruthless and sometimes hilarious ways, and creates an empire that astonishes the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl Reader
• Release date: May 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311692764

Carl Reader

Carl Reader trained as a journalist at Temple University and has worked as a reporter, photographer and editor in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Montana. He's published short stories in literary magazines and on the Internet and has self-published a children's Christmas story called THE TWELFTH ELF OF KINDNESS.That book was partially published in Russia under the Sister Cities program. He's also self-published a novella called THE PERSECUTION OF WILLIAM PENN, which has been well-received in several college libraries. He works as a professional photographer and freelance writer.

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The Son

Of the

Blue Mountain Witch

By

Carl Reader

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Carl Reader

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All characters in this book are purely fictional. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

The Son

Of the

Blue Mountain Witch

By

Carl Reader

1

Thomas Gavin first suspected his mother was a witch during a trip into the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. He often went with her to pick wild herbs and mushrooms for her potions and powders and poisons, traipsing along silently by her side, or just behind her, a quiet little man with big eyes and short arms plastered to his sides, as she bent over with difficulty, looking five times older than her nineteen years, and mumbled to the plants while ignoring him. It seemed peculiar that he never heard them answer her, not once, but there she was, talking to the plants constantly and then listening for their responses.

Let me see … yes? Oh, a venom … and a toxin … good, you are very good. You … a love potion. Bah. Over here … insanity … death ... Ah, all at my fingertips! Wonderful!

Why do you talk to the plants, mother? Are you –

She spun around furiously to face him.

Don’t call me that! I hate that name. I never wanted to be your mother! Call me Gwendolyn, as everyone else does, and no one will know you’re my son.

Can I –

Shut up! Be quiet and don’t step on the mushrooms. Act as though you’re more than just a worthless little child and never call me that disgusting name again! I brought you into the woods because I thought I might lose you here, but you keep following me around.

I’d like to –

Quiet! Never talk unless I demand it. And don’t cling on to me. I hate it. Go away!

He learned his lesson, and after that walked behind her on tiptoe. It was as though he had disappeared, both in the woods and then when they went home.

It was only when he was silent that she seemed pleased.

During those summer days in the mountains with the woman who did not wish to be known as his mother, the impression formed in him that she was a sorceress when sudden thunderstorms sprang up after she mumbled words at the plants. Lightning crashed around them when she spoke, as if her words were spells. He thought she caused the deafening flashing thunderstorms with her mumbles, and when the downpours came, he shivered, drenched, in fear not so much of the lightning and noise but of her. It seemed to him that she controlled all of nature. He once heard her talking to the air, as though she saw an invisible being next to her. She was telling the invisible creature that she first learned about the enchantment in herbs when she was looking for a supernatural one with which to cleanse him from her body after she became pregnant.

This dirty little thing inside me, how I loathed it, she said to the sunshine and wind. It’s become that.

She pointed to him.

The unseen being did not answer but remained as empty air. She went on. She said she to her invisible friend that she discovered parsley tea would do the trick, but then added that she changed her mind about disposing of him midterm for some unknown reason, and thus she claimed before the imperceptible spirit that she allowed Thomas to slip into this world unwanted.

Unfortunately, I did. It was the worst mistake of my life … he …Thomas?

Yes, mother?

Not mother! Gwendolyn!

Gwendolyn, he corrected.

You’re so stupid.

I’m sorry.

Yes. Ah, well, I guess there have to be some stupid creatures on earth. Do you like being alive?

She sat down on a pile of leaves and munched on a red mushroom. The unseen being had disappeared from her mind.

I have often thought that if one wishes to enjoy life, one must be nasty, for only nastiness can survive the cruelty of the world.

So far I like life. It doesn’t seem so bad. I am beginning to wonder.

Good, good, wonder about goodness. You don’t sound very certain, and still you talk too much. Use fewer words. Are you cruel enough to live, or not?

I am, oh, I am, I promise I am. I love this horrible forest we live in, and its cruelty. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here with you, Gwendolyn, in this awful place. Please don’t make me go away.

He thought she almost smiled, but then a scowl darkened her face.

I think you are a despicable child, simply rotten, and I’m not convinced I made the right decision about letting you live, she said. You seem to have no value and are a little slow of mind. If I had to do it over again, I might make the decoction I discovered and then and drink it. Poof, you’d be gone.

I’d be gone? It seemed awful beyond words. "Then you can do such things."

Of course I can, and don’t talk so much. You have wondered if I’m a witch, I can see the question in your eyes, so yes, I am, and although I am still learning the trade, I think I will be quite good at it. You might also have figured out that I can still change my witch’s mind and go back in time and do things over again with you, wash you away from inside me even though now you are born. I could go back to my youth and I could make you disappear out of my body just like that. Poof and away, and there you go! There would be no more Thomas.

It didn’t seem a very favorable outcome for him, even though it might take place in the past. When he thought about what she was saying, he was so distraught at the possibility of not existing that he trembled and begged her.

Please don’t, he said, falling down to clutch her knees. I’ll be cruel, if that’s good. I’ll be as cruel as you want. I would not like to be poofed.

Of course he knew nothing about being cruel at this point in his young life. He barely understood what the word meant. Heat lightning flashed through the forest, and she smiled, stood up, pried his arms from around her legs and turned from him to dig a root.

For now you can stay with me, she said, until I figure out what value you have to me.

Unlike most witches, his mother was beautiful when she went back to her youth from old age and took on her girlish form. Then she had long raven hair falling almost to the ground as she picked herbs. Sometimes when she turned her green eyes sideways to him, threatening him to back away from her with a mean squint, he would think he saw a long wart on her nose. He would stumble backwards, still in shock that he might yet be poofed out of existence. He fell over that day she admitted to being a witch, having tripped over an inconvenient mushroom. She barely noticed his fall, but continued to pluck the little green lives from the earth for her witch’s brews. She was stunning, he thought, as he sat on the ground among the mushrooms, but despite her beauty she still had no man and he had no father.

Other meaner little boys might have plotted some revenge on their witch-mothers for such a life-altering threat as returning to the past and washing them from their bodies, but Thomas was kindly at heart and as devoted as a saint to Gwendolyn Gladys Gavin. He gathered himself up after tripping over the mushroom and brushed himself off to follow her, noticing that in the process of falling on it he had crushed the mushroom. Pieces of it stuck to him. An odd goo leaked from the fragments of the fungus. When he tried to brush the sticky pieces off his legs and stomach, the fragments stuck to his hands and he had to bend and brush them off on the ground. Remembering she had warned him not to destroy any plant, he panicked at the thought of being caught defying her. He hurried to catch up, wondering if he had invoked some dangerous spell or poison by crushing the mushroom. He could not wipe his hands on his shirt fast enough, although he did notice she no longer had the wart on her nose. She was the picture of pure, youthful beauty. That was a good sign, when she transformed from old to young, but he shivered with fear when he realized she could even change her physical appearance whenever it pleased her. That was very dangerous.

Poison and potion … poison and potion, she mumbled as she walked along, her nose pointed to the ground. Thomas! Watch where you’re walking! You little idiot! You little idiot boy!

And one other thing.

That day he figured out that she was evil.

*

When he was just out of diapers, she brought him along with her to ride on her broomstick. It was night and there was a full moon. She told him he had to clamp on to the broomstick with his legs wrapped around it; his tiny arms were barely able to clutch her slender waist. Off into the sky they went. He wondered if this was how she was going to kill him. She cackled wildly at the hilarious fun they were having, but the wind snapped her cape into his face painfully or covered his head so that he couldn’t see a thing and her pointed cap seemed to push aside the stars as they flew. If not for the threat to go back in time to her youthful pregnancy and cleanse her body of him, he might have forgone the terrifying pleasures of riding on a broom with her, but he thought as a child that it was his duty to do whatever his mother said. After all, there was no one else in his life.

Rides on the broomstick meant one thing: she was going after a man to eat.

Mamma is hungry tonight. Oh, your mamma is hungry tonight for a big, strong man. Come along with me and let’s fly to where the men are.

There was a bar a mile down the mountain from where they lived in a tiny cabin in the woods next to a bubbling, hissing, sulfurous stream. After flying wildly around near the moon for several hours and getting themselves worked up with the broomstick, she with feral pleasure and he with stark fear, they’d inevitably wind up at the saloon, where she would drink little glasses of whiskey with him on her knee and espy each man who entered. He, of course, could not drink along with her, so after a while she told him to wait outside and watch the broomstick to make sure it didn’t fly away by itself while she found someone to feast on. It’s all part of becoming a witch, finding a man to consume, she told him. Shush, don’t say a word. Occasionally, she’d come out with a tiny shot glass of Jack Daniels, tilt back his head and pour the whiskey down his throat to keep him warm. He thought she was poisoning him, getting rid of him, but he knew it was his duty to swallow the burning liquid without complaint. He stuck out as an incongruous visitor at the drinking establishment in every season of the year, but he tried to remain silent and inconspicuous, as he told him to. In winter he’d sweep the snow off the porch for hours on end, pretending he worked there, as one large bearded workingman in flannel and dungarees after the other stumbled by him and into the club, where his mother lurked in ambush, waiting for her victim of choice.

It was comfortable on the porch most seasons, but in winter it was freezing outside, and more frightening than the stormy woods. This might be her plan, to turn him to ice and thus dispose of him.

Can we go home yet? he asked one night after his shot of whiskey, tired and cold and not quite able to whisk the many snowflakes off the bar’s porch with any great skill.

But mama is still alone.

She was slurring her words and stumbling.

I’m so cold out here, and I don’t want to die. Please let’s go home, mamma, please.

Mama, now you’re calling me mama? I told you not to do that, ever!

Seemingly stricken with horror at the suggestion she was his mother, red and trembling with rage, she tore the broomstick out of his hands and flew off by herself into the night sky. She was leaving him to walk the mile home alone in the snowstorm.

I am hungry, I tell you! All I want is a man, a man, a man … she screeched as she flew in circles high above him. That’s the only thing I want to eat tonight, just a man, a good, tasty man, one flavored by whiskey.

Then she flew off and he was alone in the dark.

That journey home at midnight was one of his most frightening experiences ever, for as he listened to his own footsteps crunching on the snow, catching snowflakes on his tongue for water, he knew there were many other witches in the forest, witches who did not like his mother because of the competition she presented. Her potions were said to be stronger and better than most could make, and her sales were skyrocketing. Yet he made the passage unscathed. The supplementary witches must have been busy as the bar tempting victims for themselves instead of lying in ambush for him in the forest, and so he was saved. It was quite a courageous thing to do, walk home among the witches.

I can carry out all the spells that my mother can, he said out loud at every odd noise, the hooting of owls and the whistling of wind. I have her powers, too.

This was how he subdued the forest that night, with his courageous lies.

He never complained again or attempted to go home early from his mother’s evenings out. Normally, when she’d find a man, she’d toss Thomas and the broomstick into the back of the man’s pickup truck and give the boy a painful, bouncing ride home. Several times after his initial complaint she abandoned him without a word, accompanying her prey in his truck and leaving him to go it alone. She told him to fly home himself on the broomstick. He was not very good at it. He crashed often, and swore never to complain to his mother again about her promiscuous habits.

After all, she was his mother, and he loved her, and there was no one else in his life.

And as a witch, she was becoming more and more powerful.

2

Several seasons later, on one autumn evening when she assumed her old and weary appearance, she said she would show him the trick of turning a frog into a prince.

The secret to this silly and pointless but useful transformation, my little man, is that you must have a tired frog who can not resist, she said.

A tired frog?

It should be autumn, as it is now, for if it is spring all the frogs are too energetic and resist the enchantment. Nothing can be done with them early in spring. But when your frogs are tired, and ready to rest for the winter inside the earth, then you can work your magic on them.

She held up a squiggling creature before his mouth.

This is a tired frog.

I know, mother.

Kiss this delicious tired autumn frog’s lips now, my little prince, for magical reasons.

I … have never done such a thing as kiss a frog, ma … I mean Gwendolyn. And I thought it was a princess that was supposed to kiss the frog to turn him into a prince.

Tut, tut. These are details you are not ready to think about. How can we turn a frog into a prince if we don’t have a princess to begin with? You must do what I teach. You’ll harm yourself if you think too deeply about any trick. Simply kiss the frog as you’re told and you’ll know the secret.

With great reluctance, and with only a slight eagerness to learn how to turn a frog into a prince, he bent forward and kissed the startled frog on the lips.

The strangest thing happened. He was looking up at where he had been standing next to his mother, but where he was supposed to be was an empty space, and his mother was laughing with delight and clapping her fingertips together.

Oh, there, there. It worked. Now you are my little frog, Thomas!

I am what?

Thomas was speaking in an odd, croaking voice.

You are a frog now. Don’t you feel differently? I asked, how could I ever teach you to turn a frog into a prince if the frog was not a prince to begin with? You, my little prince, are a frog and must live as a frog for a while before we find a princess to love you and transform you into a boy again with a kiss.

He tried to follow her strange logic but could barely do so.

What? I’m a frog. No! I won’t be one!

It looks as though you have no choice in the matter now. Too late now to quibble.

She was correct in that assertion, for he had no clue as to how to transform himself back into a little boy. He most definitely was a frog.

How long do I have to live like this? I don’t want to be a frog waiting for a princess. This is not one of my ambitions.

Now you know how it feels to be cursed as a prince. So. That helps. One winter should do the trick. At this time, please go outside and dig yourself a little hole in the earth before it freezes and sleep in it until spring when you can come out again to be kissed.

I have to sleep in the ground until spring?

Yes, of course. That’s what frogs do. No go on.

Another objection was on his lips, but when he attempted to voice his objection, nothing came out but another croaking sound. It was as though, as an amphibian, he’d lost the ability to speak. It’s a well-known fact that frogs do not enunciate well. Thomas Gavin deduced that since he was now a frog he no longer had much say about his condition. Knowing his mother, and how awful she was becoming, he might as well accept his new condition: it was pointless to resist a witch. It came rather natural to him simply to leap down off the table, hop across the floor and go outside as instructed, although he resented it and did need help from his mother in opening the door, since frogs do not open doors, either. Once outside, he was astonished at the rush and waves of feelings that came over him. It was a high joy to be a frog outside in its natural surroundings. Everything was clear and pulsing with life – the full moon, the painted trees, the very cooling air itself – all of it was alive in a way it never was alive when he was a little boy. He felt free. It was as though his boy’s senses had been intensified by twelve, and he felt the world as he had never felt it. Nature was intoxicating, joyful. He loved his new feelings and couldn’t stop hopping. He hopped away from Gwendolyn as quickly as possible.

But, still, he was a frog in autumn, and in autumn frogs dig down into the earth and hibernate in the dark frosty soil. Soon a great sleepiness came over him, He found a soft spot in the forest floor and worked furiously to create a hole in the earth for himself before the chilling air froze his blood in his veins. With his last bit of manic energy, he backed into the hole and pulled the earth he had scattered down over his head.

The final thing he saw that autumn night was the bright full brilliant moon, the greatest, fullest, most brilliant frog-moon he had ever seen, a shimmering plate of silver that truly awed him. As he fell asleep, he thought how wonderful the feelings of a frog were, and he was pleased.

In the dark, he dreamed of his mother and how he had ridden near