Magical Murders

“Dang it!” a frustrated shout echoed off the bedroom walls belonging to a young man named Aaron Hastings. There was a bang as something was hit very hard with a piece of twisted plastic.
“Aaron?” a voice called from downstairs.

Footsteps on the landing told Aaron that someone was coming to his door. With a sigh of surrender, Aaron let his head come down, banging into the keys of his laptop with a plastic-muffled crunch. His bedroom door opened and his guardian, Pat Keys, was revealed standing there, eyeing the messy bedroom for a moment before she picked her way through the rubbish and clothes strewn over the carpet.

Pat Keys reached out and touched Aaron on the shoulder. “Aaron, what’s the matter, honey?” she asked the teen gently.

“Computer’s having seizures,” he mumbled back.

Pat Keys sighed. “Well, you’ve been working at it and banging at it for a while so I don’t see why it should have seizures,” she told the back of Aaron’s sandy-brown hair. “Why don’t you come down to have some cake? It’s fresh – just out of the oven.”

There was no response.

“Either that or clean up your room,” she added.

Immediately, Aaron made an effort to get up and head downstairs.

Pat held the door open and let Aaron past her before she glanced back into his bedroom once more with a look of doubt at the clothes and junk strewn across the room, hanging off the backs of chairs, on the bed, and out of the closet and the drawers. She glanced at the mangled plastic machine that had been the focus of Aaron’s frustration for the past several days and with a sigh, she closed the door behind her.

But when she turned to follow Aaron down the stairs, she realized that he hadn’t even moved for the stairs – in fact, he was staring out the window as several police cruisers screamed into the neighborhood and slid to a stop on his street, right in front of his house. The only thing that gave the two occupants of 422 23rd Way some relief was that the police weren’t stopping at their house – they were stopping on 467, just across the street.
And Aaron had seen what had drawn them to the quiet neighborhood before the cruisers had come and blocked his view.

A pale white figured lay deathly still on the grass in front of 467 23rd Way.


Together, Pat and Aaron grabbed their jackets, stuffed whatever shoes were at the door onto their feet and hurried out the door to see what was going on. The neighbors had the same thoughts as well and Aaron watched as he walked as neighbors that he’d known for years all turned out to see what all the ruckus was.

Aaron and Pat were the first to reach the scene, allowing them to see clearly what had happened. Almost immediately, Pat turned away, a hand to her mouth, her face almost as pale as the corpse that lay on the crisp frost-dusted lawn. Aaron watched as police talked to the owners of the house, kept people at bay, and kept the press that had arrived soon after away.

Suddenly, a microphone was jabbed under his chin and he was spun around to face the gleaming shiny glass eyes of the cameras of the media, all crowding around him, clamoring for news. “Tell me, young man, do you live here?” a woman in the front asked. He glanced down and saw that she was the one who had jabbed the microphone at him.

“Er, no, I live across the –”

“What’s your name?”

“Aaron, I –”

“Did you hear anything last night or the night before? Any gunshots? Suspicious sounds? Anything to hint at all that there was going to be a murder on your street?” the woman asked, her voice intense. Her dark eyes dared him to answer, to leave, to do anything. Aaron was uncomfortable – he had never had so much attention on himself before and now, it was overwhelming. And where was Pat?

“No, I –”

“Where were you the night before? What happened? Did you see anything?”

“I was home, but –”

“Okay, that’s enough, pack it up guys, get out of here,” a quiet voice commanded. Grumbling, the press eventually trickled away to find another victim for their interview. Aaron turned to find himself face-to-face with a man he’d never met before. His green eyes watched Aaron with a curious interest. Black hair was pulled back into a rough ponytail behind his head. The stranger wore a long black jacket.

“Thanks,” Aaron mumbled, swiping away a strand of loose hair away from his face.

The man smiled, raised two fingers in acknowledgement, and then seemed to vanish into thin air. Aaron blinked for a moment, but then decided it must have been the play of the winter sun in his eyes that made him imagine it and went to find Pat.