Behind a rusty iron gate and tired brick wall crouched the witches’ house. It had been given to the oldest by an uncle who’d won it in a poker game, or maybe he’d won the money to buy it in a poker game, the details were sketchy by now. The oldest witch had lived in the house since she was a child; the other two, her daughter and granddaughter, had lived in the house all their lives. It was like a crumbly old pet—smelly, calm, affectionate, incontinent. They swept and mopped the tile floors twice a week. Whenever a leak sprung, they hired a plumber or a man to patch the roof, or put out a bucket, more buckets every year.
For the past few years, the neighborhood had been changing. Up and down the street fancy shops arrived—imported cheeses, custom suits, fine wines. Their old neighbors—the butcher, the seamstress, the man with the terrible limp who repaired things—sold out and moved away. The witches were asked many times if they would sell, and for increasing amounts of money. Their answer was always “no, never.” Their house was now the only house on the block that anyone actually lived in, and when the stores closed in the evening, everything became quiet and black. Except for the witches’ house.
They stayed up all night cackling, the television blaring. Walking past, you could hear them from the street. Maybe they were just laughing at the shows.
The oldest witch had huge eyes and dull black hair. She looked as if she’d been born surprised, and would die that way, too. The second witch, her daughter, was fat and shy and greased her black hair into shiny waves that tumbled down her back. The third, the granddaughter, wore spectacles, and though barely out of high school, already had one stubborn white hair that she plucked daily from her chin. She worked at the gourmet coffee shop a few blocks away.
Every night, all night, they watched their favorite television shows—baking shows, shows where lemurs clung adorably to vines, their eyes as round and shocked as the oldest witch’s eyes. The witches’ favorite was a soap opera in which the heroine, the wife of the president, is accused of assassinating her husband and goes into hiding in the slums. She must become a terrorist to save her life and country, because government corruption goes to the top and beyond—yes, cartels, multinational corporations, even extraterrestrials!
They snacked on bowls of crunchy cereal with milk, and roasted crickets on crackers, and they drank endless cups of tea—mint, oregano, orange blossoms and rose petals, horsetail and ferns and mushrooms. They baked banana bread, they gossiped, they sewed one another’s lips closed, then broke the stitches open again.
The witches practiced curses and spells, turning cherry blossoms into mosquitos, and cockroaches into cookies, and cookies into maggots. They vowed revenge on anything and anyone who might someday hurt them.
The oldest witch became ill and refused to go to the doctor. She didn’t trust them. Her skin turned yellow, her back ached, everything tasted of metal. Her legs shuffled like awkward broomsticks. When I am dead, there will be only two, she thought. This was wrong. The youngest must have a child, then everything would be all right. But how to go about it? Thus far, men had been unreceptive to her granddaughter’s charms, though perhaps it was the other way around. She began to sprinkle a little something in her granddaughter’s bowls of cereal, nothing strong or wicked, just a little boost, a little love vitamin. But her granddaughter didn’t always finish the cereal. Often it was the fat witch, always hungry and afraid of waste, who finished what the youngest didn’t. She ate every last soggy flake, then drank the sweet milk from the bowl.
One afternoon, the fat witch went into the garden to gather rose hips and saw something on their gate—a sign. She had to open the gate and step onto the street to read it: FOR SALE. Below this, a phone number. Alarm bells rang in the fat witch’s head. This had to be a mistake. Maybe the sign was meant for the building next door. Idiots. With her garden shears, she cut the wires that attached the sign to the gate, snapped the sign in half, and threw it in the trash. She didn’t tell her mother or her daughter. She didn’t see the point of worrying them, because worrying was her job.
The fat witch worried on their behalf, so that the other two were free to go about making mistakes. She herself was very careful; she’d only ever made a few. Once, she burned the banana bread. Another time, she cast the wrong spell on a person, and that person shriveled up and died. Horrible. She couldn’t fix it; she didn’t know the spell to bring someone back to life. Her body swayed like a ship when she walked, and the tiny self inside clung to the mast and trembled.
A few days later, the sign reappeared. The youngest saw it first, on her way to work. She ran inside to tell the others. It was bolted to the brick wall, so high one needed a ladder to reach it. The three witches didn’t own a ladder.
Couldn’t they turn the sign into jelly and watch it drip away? Unfortunately, they knew no such magic. They were old-fashioned witches, who mostly dealt in love and betrayal. The oldest cast a spell that transformed trees into matchsticks, but the sign was plastic and didn’t budge.
They phoned the number on the sign. Explained that a mistake had been made. That the oldest witch owned the house and had no intention to sell. The sign must come down immediately.
“Hmm,” said the haughty voice at Quince Realty. “Excuse me a minute.” The witches heard labored breathing and shuffling papers. “Ah, yes, here we go,” said the voice. “A gentleman has title to the property. He’s paid the taxes for five years, you see. He brought in copies of the receipts. I’m afraid you’ll have to take this up with him.”
Taxes? Receipts? A gentleman?
“What’s his name?” demanded the youngest, ready to conjure a curse then and there.
An exasperating pause. “Mr. Andreas Smith.”
The name meant nothing, yet this complete stranger had managed to claim their house. It seemed impossible, a nightmare from which they would suddenly and simultaneously awake.
“There’s been a mistake,” said the youngest witch. “The house was given to my grandmother by her uncle. All three of us have lived here always. We don’t want to sell. We won’t sell. We want the phone number for Mr. Andreas Smith.”
“That’s confidential,” said the voice, “I’m sorry,” and hung up.
The witches borrowed a ladder and a hammer from the nice man at the wine shop, and the youngest climbed up while her mother steadied the ladder from below. The oldest witch mumbled incantations of safety as the youngest pried the sign off the wall. They scurried into the house and, on the other side of the sign, the blank side, painted words in red nail polish: NOT FOR SALE, NOT EVER. Reattaching the sign was a problem. They’d broken it free of the bolts, which were still embedded in the brick. Eventually they hung it by winding red yarn round the sign and the bolts. The sign was crooked, but so what.
By now, the youngest was so late for work that she might as well not go. The three sat in the living room, perplexed about the mysterious sign, the unhelpful telephone call, and anxious about their hasty solution, which might not be a solution at all.
“Do you have the deed?” the youngest asked her grandmother.
“Deed.” The oldest witch spat out the word. The fat one quivered. Her mother never had been good at paperwork. Surely there was a deed, or had been, once. Perhaps it had been used to kindle a fire on a chilly night. Maybe a spell had been written on the other side. Her mother believed in the old ways, the ways of blood and handshakes, in which a piece of paper means nothing unless it has been blessed or cursed.
They ransacked the house. Searched each and every drawer, every box, every cupboard and shelf. A single piece of paper is so thin. It could have slipped behind a piece of furniture or fluttered out an open window. It could be hiding, or it could be gone. They searched all day and didn’t find it.
That night, they didn’t cackle at the television. They didn’t even watch it. The fat one ate three bowls of cereal, the other two weren’t hungry. What should they do? The oldest wanted to hunt down the false owner and turn him into something small and helpless, a centipede or a sponge. She could take care of it in an instant, with nothing more than the right kind of seeds—if they could find him. The youngest said they should forge a deed. The fat one thought they should go to City Hall to find out if there was another copy of the deed and, if so, whose name was on it; it might be their name, it might be someone else’s. Depending on what they learned, they could proceed—forgeries, curses, potions, etc. To be extra careful, they would bring an amnesia cake, to feed to people they met, to cover their tracks.
Cream and butter, vanilla and eggs and soft powdery flour, and just before the batter went into the oven, the oldest witch stirred in the sweet and special herbs. It was the best amnesia cake they’d ever baked. They emptied out the purse that contained the youngest witch’s tips, which they’d been saving up for a new stove, and counted out what they hoped would be sufficient for a bribe.
In the morning, they bathed, braided insects into their hair, and walked up the grand steps of City Hall. They stood in one line, then another, and another after another, until they were told that the records office was in another building altogether.
Stairs, hallways, echoes. The witches were uneasy in this mysterious world where paper was king—and not just any paper, but thick, official, embossed, and stamped, with tiny print and elaborate language. The stories of their favorite television shows—ephemeral, colorful, scandalous, sexy, violent—these had no place here. Here everything was muffled and concealed under a blanket of carefully calibrated dullness.
At last they reached the Office of Records, a room as gray and dull as any of the others they’d passed. People stood in a long line before a small window. The fat witch and the old witch sat in empty chairs, while the youngest stood in line, which was just the way to get a number so that you would know when it was finally your turn.
Everyone waiting looked cowed and hopeless, except for one, a gentleman in a black suit and white shirt. He wore neither a tie nor socks, but the ends of his moustache were waxed impressively. He hummed to himself and scribbled in a little notebook from time to time, as relaxed as if he were in a nice bar with a glass of brandy.
The oldest witch disliked him immediately. A dandy without socks! His shoes must reek. She didn’t trust people who dealt in paperwork. The fat one admired his shiny, black moustache. She wondered how he got the tips to curl so crisply and if the same product could be applied to the ends of her own hair to similar effect.
The youngest got their ticket, 1081, a number not designed to encourage optimism. She noticed the moustached man, too, thought him handsome, and wondered what it would be like to kiss those lips. Lately, she’d been filled with urges like these. Would the moustache tickle?
His nonchalance convinced the oldest witch that here was a paper demon. She’d heard of these all her life but had never, until now, had the bad luck to encounter one. Keep your distance, she thought, waving her hands up, down, and crossways, weaving a web of protection around herself, her daughter and granddaughter. For all they knew, this moustache was the one behind their strange troubles with the house. Paper demons sprinkled lies as though they were confetti, and in the ensuing chaos, neighbors never again spoke, marriages ended, entire families split apart.
The fat witch admired the moustache’s professional calm. Clearly, he was an expert of some sort, besides being handsome. Perhaps he could help them. The youngest wondered this, too. Maybe he could help, and afterwards, they could reward him with a large slice of the cake and a kiss. None of the three witches spoke her thoughts aloud to the others; it was not a safe place in which to do so.
The oldest decided that a fly circling the room was spying for the paper demon. She slipped a finger under the wax paper that covered the cake and drew out a crumb. When the fly landed on her finger a few minutes later, she smiled as it nibbled the crumb and fell to the floor in a daze.
At last, their turn. The man behind the thick glass looked plump and ordinary, even harmless, though he probably wasn’t. “Yes?” he asked.
“We seem to have misplaced the deed to our house,” said the fat one. “The address . . .”
“Proof of residency,” he said. “Electrical bill or some such.”
The youngest rummaged in her purse and extracted a tattered bill.
He studied the bill for far longer than seemed necessary. Was now the time to offer the small wad of cash concealed in the fat witch’s fist?
“Just a moment,” he said, and disappeared. He was gone for a long time. The youngest wondered whether she would be fired from her job at the coffeehouse (she’d already missed two days of work), and if she was fired, whether or not she cared. The fat witch twirled the ends of her oiled hair and tried to remember where she’d read the spell for invisibility. If worse came to worst, she thought, maybe she could cast a spell of that sort over the house.
The fly crawled unsteadily across the floor toward them and the oldest witch lifted her foot and stamped it flat. More dejected people arrived and stood in line to receive a number. The man with the moustache whistled a little tune.
The bureaucrat returned, his face stiff. “I can’t help you,” he said.
“Why is that?” asked the youngest witch.
The fat witch slid her fist toward the small opening at the bottom of the window, let him glimpse a bit of the cash. His eyes gleamed.
Their electric bill slipped out the window, the cash slipped in.
He coughed and cleared his throat. “I can’t find any record of this property,” he said. “None whatsoever.”
“But that’s impossible,” said the youngest witch. “We live there. We pay for the electricity!”
But the oldest witch thought it made perfect sense. Maybe her uncle had simply conjured up the house one day. He’d been a whimsical man. Why not create such a gift for one’s favorite niece? It explained a few things: the lack of shadows, the way the hens occasionally disappeared though they were too fat to fly and the yard was completely fenced. She felt this was splendid news. After all, how can one sell a house that doesn’t exist?
“Thank you for your help,” she said to the bureaucrat. “Slice of cake?”
The fat witch put a piece on a paper napkin and slid it through the window. Manufactured smiles, thank-yous all round. As they left, they tried not to look back. Was he already eating the cake? If all went well, he’d forget he ever met them.
The moustache was still there, watching them. He found them interesting, three old-fashioned women, all in black—especially the young one, a pretty girl who didn’t know she was pretty, he could tell by the dip of her neck. Girls like that were grateful for attention, and they talked. He’d gotten all sorts of useful information from girls like that. He would keep an eye out for this one.
On the walk home, the witches squabbled. “If the house doesn’t exist,” said the youngest witch, “and I was born in the house, then was I really born? Maybe I’m not even alive.”
“Don’t be silly,” said her mother. “I gave birth to you myself. I nursed you until my nipples bled.”
“That moustache lurking about back there,” said the grandmother. “I didn’t like him. Dangerous.”
“Now there you’re wrong,” said the fat one. “You suspect everything and everyone. It’s why we have no friends. He seemed quite intelligent to me,” she continued. “Calm, experienced. Someone who might be able to help.”
The youngest liked this idea. “What if I seduced him?” […]
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Rosaleen Bertolino’s short stories have appeared in a variety of fine publications, including New England Review, failbetter, Bellevue Literary Review, Orca, and many others. Her debut collection, The Paper Demon & Other Stories, was published by New Rivers Press in 2021. Born and raised in the Bay Area, she now lives in central Mexico, where she is co-founder of the monthly reading series Poetry & Prose Café. More information at www.rosaleenbertolino.com
“The Paper Demon” originally appeared with New Rivers Press.