Auntie Oddity and the Magician’s Rope

By Frankie McDonald

Despite the threats of forced retirement and dissolution of a cherished supernatural collection, Witchy Hester “Auntie Oddity” Habbakuk braves the bureaucracy to combat an unscrupulous supervisor, and a sorcerer thief with the help of friends, spells, and a magic rope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Sep 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781977269737

Frankie McDonald

Frankie McDonald retired from 28 years of public service to pursue her obsessions with storytelling, fossil hunting, archeology, and art. An avid fan of sci-fi and fantasy, she currently resides in Hot Springs County, Wyoming, with a monster dog named Kitty.

Book preview

Monday Mayhem

Hester, you’re going to be late. Yep, going to be so late. Those stupid cherub sculptures lining the mahogany staircase would not shut up. Oh, gosh, Hester’s going to be so late.

All their little hard wooden curls wiggled as they conversed with one another in Italian, tiny wings clacking like castanets, a noise in unison not unlike hard rain on a window. Those the unnamed Italian sculptor adorned with pudgy, short-fingered hands shooed at me as I clomped down the stairs in my sturdy black work shoes. The rest just waggled their blocky heads.

"Andando ad essere in ritardo – in ritardo – si sta andando…" chorused up and down the stairwell.

"I’m not ritardo. I’m not going to be ritardo. You guys need to quit chirping at me," I complained.

Of course, it made no sense to talk back at them. Those fist-sized mahogany heads hadn’t the capacity to hold more than three seconds of attention before being triggered by the next movement in their vision.

Did you see 50 First Dates, where the girl goes to bed every night and her memory resets to the day of her accident, forgetting the days, weeks, years of events subsequent? Well, the cherubs were like that, only with a three-second reset button. You would make yourself crazy trying to have a meaningful dialog. I tried not to be crazy, limiting any response to a quick retort and moving on.

The stairs weren’t the only bizarre or ensorcelled item in the mansion. In fact, the entire estate was loaded with magical items – had been for generations. My name is Hester Hepzibah Habbakuk, affectionately Auntie Oddity, sometimes Auntie O, to my nephews. I am a witch from a long line of witchy families; Brockentanz on my mother’s side; Bishop and Southeil on Father’s. While Mother and Father were nulls, mundanes (No-Mage, maybe even qualifying as Muggles if you know the Harry Potter sagas), my brother Carlisle and I carried the active magic genes – not that it did much for me financially. I still had to earn a living.

Now, the staircase’s mahogany minions: They had been chortling at me every morning since I was about two years old. They might have been talking to me before that, but tiny toddler me just thought they were part of the background noise in the house until I was old enough to understand they were speaking real words. There were thousands of artifacts, books, and objects in the cluttered Cincinnati mansion of my family. Many of them had their own voice and chittered away at anyone who could hear them, not necessarily in so-called Standard English, hence much of my confusion as a child.

After sixty-one years on this old planet and specifically in that house, a five-generation American Habbakuk fixture, I mostly learned to ignore the little chatterers, but some days, especially those Mondays when I knew I had to participate in the weekly staff meeting at work, I needed no yapping wooden baby heads to add to my stress. To compound the dread, Monday meetings since the appointment of Tamsen Jancy, our latest chief curatorial administrator at the Aulusgelius Foundation, morphed from a weekly time-wasting irritant to a certifiable punishment from God.

But the best way to get through any Monday was with Sunday-night prep. I had my soup and sandwich lunch already made up and tucked in my sturdy metal vintage 1960’s Zorro lunchbox, stalwart survivor of many a recess fracas and school bus hooligan. Stuffed in my lunchbox to one side was a mix of oats, alfalfa sprouts, unsalted nuts, and dry cat food in a baggie for Gerber, my mostly hedgehoggy familiar (yes, I have a familiar; not sure what his supernatural origins might be. He just showed up one day and made himself at home). I also had two heavy thermoses, one with hot coffee and the second with cold lime water, in a cloth wine carrier bag. All of this stashed in the fridge every Sunday night, third shelf on the left, ready for a quick grab-and-go on Monday.

Despite the chittering cherubs, I was exactly on time. I checked myself in the mirror. Graying hair pulled up and held with hair pins, powdered nose, filled-in eyebrows over ice-gray eyes with a dark circle around the iris, wire-framed glasses – yep, just a usual chunky middle-aged woman heading off to work. I slid on my jacket, scooped Gerber up from where he scrabbled around in the kitchen table’s repository of papers and junk mail and stuffed him in a jacket pocket, which I knew would shortly acquire a faint smell of dog kennel.

Food, food, food, Gerber grunted as he dug around with sharp nails in the fabric.

Just wait, Greedy-guts. I’ll feed you at work, I replied.

He made a rude noise in response.

Play nice, I cautioned.

Patience was never Gerber’s long suit, but he quietly curled into a prickly ball. I grabbed the giant cloth tote bag, lunchbox, and thermoses inside, purse slung over the opposing shoulder. In my left, I carried my monthly bus pass, around my neck hung my work badge and keys to the Foundation employee entrance, Gerber in pocket. Yep, ready to go. And, no, I wasn’t late.

"No ritardo here," I snarked at the cherubs, bolted for the front door.

And the house phone rang.

Crap. I stomped the few steps back down the hall, shifted my tote, snatched up the wall phone. That’s the one ring I never ignore because I never get calls on the house phone at that hour unless it’s an emergency.

Yes? I’m sure the exasperation was plain.

Um, Hester? said the hesitant male voice. Habbakuk?

I knew that bass rumble. Dave at the gate?

He chuffed a laugh. Yes. It’s me, Dave Bleeker, Security.

Something wrong? I glanced at my wristwatch. I’m on my way in.

Yes. We need to talk. There’s something going on in the Archivum stacks and I don’t know what I should do about it.

All right, I said slowly. I have a staff meeting this morning, so let’s get together at break time.

Probably best if you come to the guard shack before lunch, Dave said. Too many people in the cafeteria. I have a bad feeling about this. If what I think is happening, I don’t want anything I say to come back and bite me.

I’ll be there, I promised. See you in a bit.

’Kay. He hung up.

I hung up. Then I looked at my wristwatch again and lunged for the door.

Not late, I yelled back at the cherubs, slammed the door shut, and ran to the bus stop.

The bus stop was only a block away from home and I didn’t have to transfer even once to be dropped off at the massive pseudo-Roman complex which housed the Aulusgelius Foundation, an institution largely funded in colonial times by the eccentric and self-styled Lord Timothy Dexter to buy himself a place in Boston society. Unfortunately for him, the Aulusgelius collection was not housed in Boston but shipped off to the Ohio frontier where construction of the Foundation building had already begun on the remains of a megalithic cavern structure. Now it was a facility as expansive below ground as above – and my work-home away from home for almost four decades.

I used to enjoy twenty unencumbered minutes planning for the day, reviewing whatever I was reading, or just zoning out. None of this applied to Monday mornings since the appointment of Tamsen Jancy and I had a bad feeling that whatever Security Dave wanted to talk about would lead right back to her. No specific reason for my suspicion beyond thinking she was bad luck’s version of a rabbit foot. Where she went, storm clouds followed.

Good morning. I nodded to the bus driver as I climbed the steps slightly out of breath. I knew his name was Santiago because it said so on his uniform shirt.

Morning, Miss, he replied with a rasp, shifting his bulk, and making the seat creak.

Conversation done.

He had sparkling white teeth under a pencil-thin mustache. The mustache was the only slender thing about him, Don Ameche in a fat suit, had been driving this bus route for fifteen years. I liked him. He kept the bus clean, stopped close to the curb, and kept an eye on who was at the bus stop when I got on or off.

Before Santiago, boring Boris occupied the driver’s seat for at least ten years, oozing a distinct body