HomeWhich Hazel?
by Peter Caunt
It all happened on Halloween just after the game started.
Alan had settled down with a pre-dinner can of lager when there was a knock at the door.
“Can you get that Hazel? They’re about to start.”
“I’m up to my elbows in pumpkin pie, can’t you pause the TV. It’ll just be kids Trick or Treating.”
Alan took another swig of lager, “It’s not the same if it isn’t fully live. Harry might text me with the score, and I won’t have seen it. Can’t we just ignore them?”
There was a pause that Alan recognized.
Hazel called out, “I left some chocolates by the door. Just give them a handful and they’ll go away.”
He swept up the chocolate wrappers from the sofa and dropped them into the bin on the way to the door, “Kids these days eat too many sweets anyway. Bad for their teeth.”
As he opened the door, the first think that struck him was the empty gums. “I said the sweets would rot their teeth.”
Then there was the hair. It was not so much dragged through the hedge backwards as a cross between Wurzel Gummage and a porcupine. The warty face was matched only by the putrid smell that hit his nostrils.
He called over his shoulder to Hazel, “You didn’t tell me your mother was visiting.”
"What?”
“Sorry, never mind.”
He looked the figure up and down, “So. A bit old for this aren’t you? Though, that’s the best costume I’ve seen in a while.”
“Impudent knave, you must let me into your domicile or you will pay the consequences.”
“Full marks for staying in character. A lot better than the usual high pitched whine of ‘Trick or Treat’”
He grabbed a few of the remaining chocolates from the dish and proffered the delights, “Here you are. Don’t eat them all at once.”
She slapped his hand aside and the sweets flew into the air like magic dust from some fairy godmother’s wand. Although that was where any resemblance finished.
Alan’s hand was wanting to slam the door, but his brain did not seem able to control any of his limbs.
“I seek the one they call Hazel.”
Alan closed his mouth, “I’m sorry?”
“It is time for us to take her into the coven so that the full power of three may be once more fused from its disparate parts.”
“Well she’s a bit busy at the moment. Making Pumpkin pie. And I’m needing to get back to the match. So..”
He tried to close the door, but had to put his hands over his ears when the denizen at the door let out a high pitched scream.
"So what’s going on?” Hazel had abandoned her baking and was standing in the hallway.
Alan turned round, but all he could do was shrug.
"You are Hazel?”
“Yes. Do I know you?”
The cackling hurt Alan’s ears again.
“Ha, ha, ha. Do you not recognize your own mother?”
Alan’s jaw slowly made its way towards the floor.
"You were abandoned as a young baby for your own safety. Now you must come back into the coven to fulfill your destiny.”
“I think you’ve got me mixed up with somebody else. My mother is alive and well and living in Grimsby.”
Alan covered his ears again.
“Ha, ha ha. I have come from far away to seek you out. Far away from a land of magic to find you here in Acacia Avenue.”
Hazel smiled, “Ah that explains it, this is Acacia Close. Acacia Avenue is round the corner. You want Hazel Hag-Bindweed I expect. She’s at number 57.”
The Hag’s face turned even darker, but then disappeared leaving only a smell that Alan could not identify, but which he thought he would never get out of his clothing.
Later, after one of the best Halloween suppers Alan had had in a long while and a successful win for his team, he was dozing on the sofa when there was another knock at the door. Hazel looked at her watch, then carefully got up from the sofa.
As she was holding out the few remaining sweets to the figure with green skin and a bolt through his neck, it opened its mouth, “I come seeking the one called Alan. I am his father.”
Hazel called over her shoulder, “Alan, wake up. This one’s for you.”
I am retired and live in North Yorkshire, UK. I write mainly short stories and have had about twenty published so far, in a variety of genres. I’m currently struggling to get that first novel going. Contact Peter.
