The Package

Another letter arrives at my store.

I run a shop crammed with spellcasting ingredients and cursed objects, so people do regularly drop off trash they consider suspicious, but usually they also ask for me to pay for, say, some milk jug they swear made their dog sick by paranormal means. These letters are peculiar not only for the anonymity but their regularity--I've received about one a week, each with a dated photo and a slip of paper with a single word: REMEMBER.

I clip the photo on a clothesline with its sisters on the shelf behind me, then turn my attention back to the only customer in the store.

Sarah is a regular windowshopper, dipping in once a week to turn some curio in her hands and make idle chitchat. This store attracts a lot of browsers, but I don't mind--I particularly don't mind Sarah. She's interesting and cute, often sporting a breezy dress and playful makeup that makes her girly despite her short hair and unusual height. I'd probably have asked her out if her one ring--always the same ring, a chunky, golden engraved thing--didn't prominently sit on her ring finger.

Sarah looks at the shelf quizzically. "What's with the pictures?"

Good question. The photos are completely random: the view from a balcony, a cat with pupils dilated to a glassy black, an overturned trash can. Today's is of a set of dice. If someone doesn't come to claim them soon, maybe I can sell them off as magically manifesting items to the most persuadable of my clientele.

“Who knows? Someone's just been sending them here. Their idea of a joke, I guess. Or they’re casting a curse on me.”

"A curse, huh? That doesn't scare you?"

I puff my chest. "You can't run a shop like mine if you're scared of little people doing little things. You wouldn't believe the kinds of weirdos I've seen."

"Oh?"

"Just the other day, someone asked if I could get a Hand of Glory for them. Forget why they even need such a thing, but where do they think I'll get a thief's hand?"

"Maybe they want you to make one," Sarah says teasingly.

"Now that's the sort of thing that makes curses stick," I drawl.

It's five, and as I close up the shop, I notice a brown-paper package at the storefront, also unmarked. I bring it inside, undoing the string and wondering when it could've been dropped off. I must have really dozed off. I pull out my phone to check the app for my security feed when a news alert catches my eye: a local homicide. Garrett Lindberg, 35, found dead in his apartment, his feet nailed to the floor.

Wait, I know that name. Yes, Garrett Lindberg, with his shuffling walk and a gut that just kept growing over the five years he'd been coming to my shop. Old Garrett, who purchased charms, and pickled salamander tails, and...

And bone dice.

I whirl back to the shelf. I didn’t look closely enough before, but the dice in the photo are yellowed and speckled, exactly like a set I sold Garrett earlier this year. Hastily I strip off the paper on the package in my hands to find a timer, set for 26 hours 22 seconds and counting down. The message this time reads, REMEMBER, OR YOU'RE NEXT.

—-

Two kinds of people end up at a shop of curses: those who fear nothing, and those who fear everything. I’d always fancied myself the former, but as I watch the dark waters of the bay, clutching my new prepaid phone in one hand and a plastic bag of witchy ingredients in the other, I reassess my location on the spectrum of courage.

No point in taking chances. I set the heap of photos on the ground, surround it with salt, cloves, and a string of garlic for good measure, and burn each of the ingredient rings. The fragrant, orange fire breaks up the grey night, but I find myself no less wary of the shadows it casts than of the flat darkness of before. I wave a sage wand over the photos and myself, and I hang evil eye amulets all over me under my puffy jacket. Then, with no little reluctance, I toss my old phone into the bay. Any sound of a splash is swallowed by the water crashing against the pier.

I put the photos back in my backpack and fastwalk to the nearest bus stop. By the time I switch buses, I’m wearing a different cap, a different jacket. I feel like an idiot, but better safe than sorry. I mean, Garrett's feet were nailed to the floor.

I stop at the first hotel I see, an average three-star chain. The part of me that's married to my wallet begs to look for a cheap roach motel, but I absolutely should not stay in a room where any stranger on the street could walk up to my door and knock on my window.

When the frosted automatic doors open into the foyer, my shoulders relax for the first time since the news alert. The lobby looks so normal, with frames of swirly colors on its cream walls, its coffee station, and receptionists that look, if not reliable, then at least like the type that preferred landlines over leylines.

One receptionist, a middle aged woman with round glasses, square face and square teeth, beckons me with a cordial smile. I ask her for the cheapest available room.

“We have a single bed for 100.”

Garrett’s nailed feet feel a little less visceral. “Can you do 70? I mean, it’s past 8, who else is going to drop in?”

She peers over her glasses at me. "What would you know, someone checked in a few minutes before, and she’s probably thinking the same thing. She still hasn’t decided on getting a room." I follow her gaze to the lobby to see none other than...

"Sarah?"

Sarah looks up from where she's sitting. "Taylor..." Even though she wears the same outfit and makeup from earlier today, she's barely recognizable in demeanor. Her wide eyes and drawn shoulders make her look like she's just escaped some freezing rain, though it's a muggy summer night. As I approach her, I notice what she has clutched in her hands: another package, in familiar brown paper tied with string.

The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. "Where did you get that?"

Her eyes shift from side to side, and she fidgets with her ring. "S--someone gave it to me on my way back. Said I should deliver it now, or I wouldn't like what I'd find at home."

I take the offered package from her shaking hands. The front has my name, and the hotel's address. What the hell?

Sarah echos my thoughts. "What the hell is going on? What did you get me involved with? Why did you drag me into it?"

"I didn't! And I don't know. I don't know any more than you do." I sit in the chair beside hers before opening the package. No photo this time, just a cheap black box and another message identical to the previous one: REMEMBER, OR YOU’RE NEXT. Inside the box is a severed ring finger. “Holy shi—!!” I almost drop the box and hastily clamp it tight in my hands as everyone in the lobby turns to stare at us. “Holy shit,” I hiss under my breath.

Sarah’s covered her mouth with both hands. “Is that real—?”

“Holy shit.” I’m like a broken record, but nothing else comes to mind. “What the hell is this? Whose is this?”

“Is this a part of some ritual? You thought someone might be trying to curse you…”

Right. A ritual. A curse. Shit, those reasons didn’t make this any better, but at least I knew something about them. "There aren't really curses where you plant an object on someone who's unwilling. I think..." I show her the message, as well as a handful of the photos. "I think it's more of a threat. Could it be their next victim?"

As I catch her up, her gaze turns thoughtful, a little more like the sociable regular I know. "So these photos are related to previous victims?"

"Maybe. I tried looking it up while I was on the bus, but how do I connect any news about a murder with a picture of a trash can? Though there was someone I knew who posted photos of a cat like the one here, and she seems to be missing... Still, I don't even know if the police would take me seriously with this."

"They might!" Sarah frowned. "But I bet whoever's sending this is watching for if you go to the police. That's how it is in TV shows, anyway."

"R-right..."

"But once you figure out what this person wants you to remember, maybe that'll be enough to convince the police."

I didn't like seeing her freaked out earlier, but I’m also a little resentful of how quickly she's perked up. My life's on the line, you know? "I guess so. It's not like I'm not trying to figure it out."

"It's pretty cryptic...just photos and one you-know-what. I wonder why they didn't just send you another photo this time?"

"Just to show me they're serious?" But she has a point, because carrying around a finger and then asking some random girl to deliver it sounds a lot riskier than slapping a photo on my storefront.

"That could be possible." She glances at her phone and gets up. "Well, I better head back before it gets too late. Keep me posted!"

"You're going to go back home? What if they're waiting for you there?"

"I did what they asked, right? Besides," she says, her expression turning sheepish, "whoever it is obviously knows about this place too, so it's not really any safer here."

Ah. Right. I contemplate the brown paper with my name and the hotel's address on the front. "But there could be safety in numbers, and if we split a room--"

The doors are already closing behind Sarah, who gives me a perfunctory wave back. I grumble a bit but return the wave. The headlights of an approaching car balloons her silhouette against the frosted doors. The warpage of the shadow transforms from simply large to different, as though someone else has taken her place. I approach the doors, but when they open, she's already gone.