Late Night Service Calls: The Witching Hour

Here’s one I wrote that won’t be in Generational Tales. It was selected to be published and was produced on a podcast (Haven’t asked them if I can link yet) Let me know if I should write more!

Another day, another dollar… I guess. The call had come in at exactly two-twenty-two in the morning. My dispatcher on the other end of the line said something about a woman having issues with her tractor on a… goat farm. I’d obviously rubbed my eyes to try and wake up a bit at the thought, but yes, you heard that right, a goat farm, in western Canada. I didn’t even know there was such a thing if I’m being honest.  For those of you who may not be aware, Canadians usually eat somewhere between absolutely zilch and nada goat meat per annum. And I’ve obviously heard about goat-cheese pizza being eaten by the ritzy folk out in the far west but never have I heard of anything to do with goats or their products being consumed or used where I’m from.

​Anyway, after my initial surprise at the idea, I’d rolled out of bed and thrown my coveralls on. Now normally, I’d have a bit of a sluggish pre-coffee-and-cigarette start on these late-nightcalls, but tonight, I was surprisingly spry, even before the caffeine had hit my belly. Maybe it was premonition or something? Regardless, I poured a heaping mug of cold brewover ice, laced up my boots, and fired up the old service truck.

​Aaand here we are. You’re all caught up! Exciting… right! I bet you’re all just tickled pink at the idea of hearing about a mechanic’s late-night trip to fix a tractor at a goat farm aren’t ya? Well, boy, I tell ya, I’m sure glad to be your entertainer of choice on a night like tonight. It’s going to be a weird one, I can just tell. As I drive the sixty-six-point-six kilometers to my destination I just can’t help but replay the dispatch call in my head. It all seemed so… fishy. ‘A’, dispatch had said “She”. I mean, I’m obviously not opposed to a woman running a goat farm, you go girl, it’s just… not the norm, ya know? ‘B’, It was a goat farm, we’ve already covered why that seems out of place. I guess some of us might eat mountain goat if we were hunters and got a tag, but it was pretty unusual to see a whole farm. Hell, in my twenty-six years on this earth I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a goat with my own two eyes. And ‘C’, there were just too many damn coincidences: The goats, a woman, the fact that I’d get there around “Witching Hour”. Too many co-ink-E-dinks if you ask me, but I digress, it was the job. I could quit, I guess; call up my dispatcher and say I have a “bad feeling” about this one, I’m sure that would go over swimmingly.

​I squint in the darkness as I pull into the farmyard under a great wrought iron and lumber sign which read “Blasphemous Billy’s Goat Farm” …seemed appropriate. The pens were on the left, and a dilapidated red barn sat with a slight lean at the end of the lane. The tires of my old truck come to a halt just outside the main doors and I shut the ignition. “Fuck me, this is weird.” I say to the steering wheel as I take in my surroundings. I’ve developed a bad habit of talking to myself over the years of working alone out in the fields in the middle of nowhere, so you’ll have to get used to that.

​The aforementioned pens on my left were teeming with bleating, black-pelted Billy goats of varying sizes. I swear one of the ones by the fence looked as if it had a third eye on its forehead. I nearly shit myself when a sudden rapping on the passenger side window assaults the quiet and rips me from my thoughts: it was an old woman; she smiles and waves in the dark before scurrying around the front of the truck. I sigh a what-in-the-fuck kind of sigh and hop out to greet her.

​“Well hello there,” She croaks and it sounds like her lungs were stained as black as the goat’s pelt from a life of cigarettes, “You must be the mechanic.” I roll my mind’s eye. What gave it away? The great big decal on the side of a fully kitted service body, or my coveralls with the “Lost Lake Mechanical Services” tag on the chest. I replied with a nod and shook her frail little hand. As I do I feel that her fingers have been cut even at the tips. Now she’s got the witches’ mark too! God damn what am I doing here? Well… maybe not damn that guy… might need him out here soon. I chuckle at the thought, and the old lady raises an eyebrow, she speaks in a more serious tone, “The tractor’s just this way… I’ve tried everything but I just can’t seem to get the darn thing started.”

“Alright, let me grab my laptop and I’ll be right in.” I reply. Let’s get this shit over with. Laptop in hand I allow the old lady to lead me to the door, she grabs hold of the crook of my elbow to steady herself as we go. We reach the rotted-out man-door at the side of the barn, and a motion light floods us. That, my friends, is when I notice the granny is wearing some weird kind of robe or cloak or something wrapped tightly around her slim frame, and around her neck was, drumroll please, a pentacle. Yep, that’s right, the star-in-a-circle symbol of paganism and wiccan beliefs. I was dealing with witches here, no doubt now. I need an excuse to get the hell out of here, but all that comes out is a mumble of, “Oh.. I… erm.. forgot my tools.”

​“Don’t be silly young man! Just step in and take a look at this old girl first. You can worry about your silly tools later.” She croaks out, her grip tightening, the long, sharpened nails of her forefinger and pinky digging into my forearm. She swings the door wide and, with not enough resistance, I step through the threshold.  

​The iron-like smell of old blood is the first thing I notice. The second thing, a literal bloody pentagram drawn onto the floorboards of the barn with black-wax candles and cloaked figures at each point. In its center lay a three-eyed billy goat not unlike the one I’d seen outside in the pen. “Nope, fuck this.” I say outright and turn to leave. I go for the door and find the old lady had chained and padlocked the fucking thing while I was taking in my surroundings. I’m screwed now folks!

​The old lady hustles around me and takes her place at the center of the pentagram. Without skipping a beat, her companions kneel and begin to chant as she pulls a long, curved blade from within her robes. This is it. They’ve called me here to be dinner for some kind of demon, just as I had suspected. She too knelt and grasped the throat of the goat. You can probably imagine what happened next. I’ll spare you the direct details but just know that it involved bleating and chanting and a golden chalice and... blood. So. Much. Blood.

​I just stood there while it all happened; I leaned against the wall and watched; I mean, what else was I supposed to do? My ass was locked in there, and with my condition and my medications I couldn’t really feel fear or excitement so I just kind of... chilled. Chilled and watched as the now blood-covered old lady stood above the goat carcass and locked eyes with me in the dim candlelight. Then, to my absolute horror, far more horror than I felt when watching the goat be slaughtered, the old woman threw open her robe to reveal her naked and hairy body beneath. She tilted her head back and shouted, “Take me, young mechanic! Take me and we shall spawn the son of Satan!”

​I threw up my hands to block the sight of dangly bits that were far too dangly, and hairy bits that were far too hairy. I nearly vomit as I speak in an unusually calm tone, “I’m good, actually. In fact, maybe we could get to the part where I fix the tractor and get out of here?”

She stared at me, puzzled, as if she was genuinely awestruck at my utter lack of emotion at the whole scene. Her arms dropped to her sides and one of her followers hopped up and whispered something in the old hag’s ear. She looked down, her face turning red and covering herself with her hands, “Oops!” she says in breathy tone. She squats down and dangly bits nearly hit her knees. With two hands she grasps the edges of the chalice and drinks the blood greedily. It spills down her front and onto the floor as she gulps it down. Quite the unorganized lot, I think, usually witch covens are pretty put-together. Obviously this lot were a bit on the amateur side of things when it came to demonic summoning.

She stood once more, and smoke from the candles began to swirl and grow around her. She cackled out a final raspy cackle as her body was enveloped in the darkness. When she emerged, I nearly shit a brick. She was drop dead gorgeous. No more dangly bits, no more hairy bits, just smooth manicured skin and perfection. Well shit, I might be in trouble here. Of course, I wasn’t actually in trouble. I’d dealt with this kind of thing before. Who hadn’t dealt with a siren witch or two in their lives. Could I even call myself an Ag Mechanic if I hadn’t? All I had to do was avoid her eyes and I’d be good. Which, and I’m sorry to cut the story short here, is exactly what I did.

All-in-all it turned out to be a pretty uneventful night. There was an exchange of words. She grew angry when I wouldn’t “take” her and spawn the devil’s son. She grew even more irritated when I told her they’d completely forgotten that a ritual such as this needed to be completed on either a full moon or a solstice to work properly, and that last I’d checked, it was neither. Then she got really pissed when I told her that regardless of how she looked now I just didn’t think our personalities really meshed and made some comment about us “Seeing other people” and whatnot. Eventually they’d simply let me go. I’m pretty sure they ordered a pizza or something after I had left and were hoping the delivery boy might fall for it, poor kid. I throw on some tunes and cruise down the highway home.I’m sorry it was such a short one tonight. Usually there’s at least some action on these callouts but there was no chance in hell I’d be getting into any “Action” on this one. It was all good though, and I hope you enjoyed the little tale of tonight’s callout. I sure did! After all, they’d locked me up in there for nearly three hours, all of which would be overtime with a callout fee, so I felt pretty good about it. Another day, another dollar.