504: Witch Repellant
Synopsis
Walking back from the hospital through the snow around noon, Denny reflects on how good it feels to have comrades again, people he can trust with his life. One memory keeps returning to him, though: the night in New Jerusalem when he and Billy went in to rescue Delilah from Ike Watson, and the monsters, death and destruction he saw there.
Back at the Last Lighthouse inn, the group catches Dom up. Under Command of the Wizard, Garibald John Daly said he was sent by "Constance," and that Fiona is "in the stars." They also found that he was on the same train from Arkham. Daly's black dagger has a strange sheen on the blade, and Simeon's occult knowledge identifies it as a "Scorpion Sting," the standard dagger carried by the enforcers of a secret society, usually coated with poison. Its star motif is similar to the stars on the symbol of the Order of the Scorpius, though not in the same pattern. The note from Daly's pocket reads: "Two new strangers. No Turner. No Major. Find Grayson. No word for two weeks. Hawthorne Inn? Train pass. records?" The group also remembers the policeman shouting "we've got another one" when Daly started foaming at the mouth, and Dom tells them about his vision of Hannah Baker getting off the train in Salem.
With several leads open, the group splits up for the afternoon as the snow picks up. Dom, Billy and Timeon head for the train tunnel and the depot, while Simeon and Ezra Denny visit the Witch House and the hospital. They agree to meet afterwards and go to the Hawthorne Inn on Washington Square together, which their innkeeper, Emily Marnsarn, has told them about.
Simeon and Denny reach the Witch House, the old Jonathan Corwin house on the corner of Essex and North Streets, with its black facade and three steep roofs like witch hats. It is now Ye Olde Witch House Antiques, run by a shopkeeper the group comes to call Maloney. He explains that Judge Corwin conducted many of the pre-trial examinations of the witch trials in the house and sells Simeon a bottle of witch repellent, made with wolfsbane, witch hazel and a secret ingredient, for $1.25. At first he claims the name Devereux rings no bells, but Denny's psychology shows he is holding back. Paid with a five-dollar bill and talked round by Simeon, he opens up. The Devereux were a prominent Salem family for a long time, and old rumor has it that the witch trials were really the work of a Devereux who was never caught, while the blame fell on scullery maids and farmers' daughters. Whenever anything bad happened the Devereux seemed to be involved, but nothing ever stuck to them. Devereux Street in the north of Salem is where they lived, in a mansion that was already abandoned before it burned in the great fire of June 1914. He warns them not to mention the name around town, says some people have questions about the fire, and points them to an old fisherman who claims to have seen things that night and is always drinking at the Widow's Wake.
For $20, Maloney shows them two relics from his storeroom which he says were found near Devereux Street after the great fire: a charred, barely standing desk and an empty, not particularly old briefcase. On the desk Denny finds the burnt-off remains of a carved symbol, part of which looks like a sideways winky face, and later a second partial symbol near the bottom of its left side. Simeon recognizes the symbols on the briefcase's combination wheels, which open nothing, as classic alchemical symbols. After much haggling, Simeon buys the briefcase, with the desk thrown in as a package deal to collect later that evening, and tells Maloney they are staying at the Hawthorne Inn. As Maloney leads them out of the storeroom, the Keeper asks Simeon for a POW check, and Simeon fails it.
Funny Moments
- "So let me get this straight. Simmy got Mitch shot in the back." Simeon blames a voice in his head named Alex.
- Dom's recap: they were followed by a man named "Ghirardelli Chocolate," who was sent by "Constance Venus."
- "Find Grayson" must mean Goodman Gray's son, Goodman Grayson.
- Timeon keeps his loot in his "D&D bag of holding."
- "It glows green when Mitch killers are around. Don't be a Mitch."
- Timeon continues the list of people he has killed, "Jack, Jerry, Justin, Raymond, Roger, Roy, Wallace, Xavier," and saves the rest for later.
- The witch repellent, and the question of what its secret ingredient is.
- The shopkeeper's name settles on "Smellone Maloney," "which is my game."
- The relics also include a rubber chicken. "That's not a magical rubber chicken."
- The haggling over the briefcase ends with a five-second countdown and a desk nobody wants as part of a "package deal."