Louis and I walked the beach swinging metal detectors, hoping for treasure which we rarely found. Today was a strange cold day at the beginning of August, and the sun was barely awake. My detector beeped desultorily, disinterested. I reached down and found a valuable man’s wristwatch. “Hey! Lu! Look at this. Is it real?” He trotted down the beach and examined the watch. He nodded; it was. He knew things like that.

“Lucky man.” He said and went back, pacing slowly, swinging his electric wand. The detector wheedled out a long buzz. Lewis dropped to his knees. Digging in the sand he came up with some jewelry. He whistled and tossed it from hand to hand.

“Watcha got?” I called out. He showed me a heart-shaped locket. It didn’t open. He looked at it like he’d seen it before.

“Is it yours?” He shook his head and handed it to me, giving me the gold heart. He didn’t want it and wouldn’t talk. “Noel had it. It’s from a man I used to know named Dias. Careful. Might be magic.”

I dropped it in my pocket and thought I’d work on opening it later. The hinges were jammed. And there is no such thing as magic. I forgot about it for a couple of days and then set to work. WD 40 didn’t open it. I expect it was real gold. I pried it open against my better judgment, but the hinges didn’t break. A thin slice of mirroring crystal in front of some internal foil art, a crafter inset, was an odd image. Not an ordinary mirror.

Janis, my cat, jumped on the table and sent the locket down on the ground, then batted it around like a soccer star. She carried it in her teeth through the door, blown open at the wrong time, so I chased after her. She’s an indoor cat. Eventually she dropped the little charm, looked at me and pounced again. But this time she disappeared. I shook my head. Did she enter that tin foil world, like that cat food commercial where everything is more beautiful than the real world? Not possible. I reached for it to put it back in my pocket and fell through the mirror after the cat. There she was, just a few steps away. I hurried to pick her up, but she was quick.  She led me on into the woods. This is nuts!

We wandered together for the better part of an hour, maybe two, when she let me cradle her in my arms. She climbed my chest and put paws on either side of my neck, nestling under my chin, purring loudly. She did that with my wife. I wanted a way back home. Saying a prayer to God knows who,  I opened the locket and we accidentally fell through into our ordinary lives. I put the locket away, thinking about Alice in Wonderland. But I am not a foolish child before the Queen of Hearts. This is nuts!

I fixed us both snacks. Strangely hungry, I ate a second sandwich made with Lu’s festival bread, now gone stale. Janis went over to the rug and threw up a hairball. Nice. I’d get that if I did the dishes before Delores came home.

As I settled in my chair for a needed nap, someone banged on the door.

 “Gary Sherman, this is the police!”

They kept banging and shouting. That made no sense at all. I didn’t ask for an explanation and let them in. That was a mistake.

Officer Reynard and Officer Cuomo shot rapid-fire questions, demanded my ID, where I had been, and why I had disappeared. A woman officer, Kim Yabay, gave me softness, asking if I remembered, if I was hurt, if I knew where I was. She was very kind, but no one listened when I said I’d not been away. Then the investigative officer came in, all business. Not to be toyed with. Officer Dias dismissed the others. He pushed me down on the couch and told me to sleep. I was tired, so that was easy.

I heard him play my mobile messages. How did he get my phone? So many messages for a golden afternoon. Cross ones from my boss demanding I return his call if I wanted my job. Finally, he said he would call the police. He was angry as if I had been absent for a couple of weeks. That was nuts! When I woke up, Officer Dias sat in my chair.

“You back, Sherman? Care to answer some questions?” I didn’t, but seemed to have no choice.   Did I know Louis Nyugen? Had I been with him? Did I know where he was? Did I kill him?

That last question slammed into my chest. NO!  Is Lu all right?

“No.” Officer Dias said. “He’s dead. Did he give you anything?” I immediately thought of the locket, but it wasn’t his. And it wasn’t mine.

“Dead! No! What happened?” I heard my wailing. I was on my feet, but Dias forced me down again and made me still with a pointed finger.

“I ask the questions. What did you do to him? Where is he? Where is the locket?”

Like a robot, I reached into my pocket and handed it to him. “Lu gave it to me. He didn’t want it. Said it was from you.” He reacted to that. Same Dias from the East Coast. What’s going on here? He pocketed the locket, and he made a call.

“He doesn’t know anything, Boss. No, nothing to go on. He was out in the woods with his damned cat. What? …..You found him? I see.”

Dias looked at me. Scowled. “Your friend really is dead. The tide washed him in. You didn’t say you were out in the boat.”

“I wasn’t. What is this? I’m gone an afternoon, and the world goes crazy.”

“Two weeks, Bud. You were gone 2 weeks. And your friend drowned a few days ago. What do you know about that?”

The police put me in 1 North, the psych unit at the hospital. I was under guard because I knew nothing. The doctors questioned me every morning. The police every afternoon, and I never said I had moved through the worlds like the cat commercial because that sounded crazy. When I asked Officer Kim Yabay if I could speak with Nicodemus Dias, she looked strange before she asked. “Who?”

She didn’t know Cuomo and Reynard either. Maybe I was nuts. I’d ask Lu; he would know. But he was dead. Killed over some woman back east.

The police lost interest because the woman named Noel was out of their jurisdiction. Doctors released me because I figured out the answers they wanted. My wife looked at me as if I came from a different world. Janis the cat winked twice, and a sea eagle perched in a high tree. They knew I was nuts. I was also unemployed.

For more details: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/dorothy-abrams

Dorothy Abrams, known as Anemone Webweaver in the magickal community has practiced and taught Witchcraft, paganism, and core shamanism since 1984. Co-founder of the former Web PATH Center, a pagan church and teaching center in Clyde, New York USA, Dorothy served as priestess and teacher weaving the Web of community among local pagans as they celebrated the solar and lunar sabbats. Material for Identity and the Quartered Circle and her other non-fiction titles on pagan thought and practice are compiled from her original seminar materials in eclectic Wicca I-IV, healing, tarot and shamanic intensives. The Wiccan seminars guide students from the introductory level through initiations as healer, storyteller and sage. The shamanic intensives guide students through the practice of drum trance journeys all the way to soul retrievals. With her partner late Merlin and other members of the Web PATH she practiced Reiki and chakra healing. She taught an introductory course on A-mazing Tarot at the local community college When Merlin crossed to the Summerland in 2022, Webweaver moved to a small village in the Finger Lakes and gathered some friends together to celebrate the seasons. . They have called themselves the Brookside Witches.