Pumpkin Coffee at Madame Toffee's

 New pumpkin flavors through October, the sign outside read. Next to an image of a woman in a witchy Halloween costume sipping a latte out of a tiny orange pumpkin. The little shop- decorated with autumnal squalor year-round- had a line of patrons out the door and down the sidewalk to try the new flavor while Madame Toffee tended to customers with a handful of employees.

       The older woman wore her usual attire of some gypsy-pagan cross with rings and necklaces displaying different old-religion symbols. I was more a fan of tea brewed by myself than coffee from a shop so I wasn’t a usual customer of Madame Toffee’s, but most of the small town would claim that her brew- especially the seasonal flavors- were better than breathing. The pumpkin brew was taking the community by storm.

       I passed the small shop as a group of four college girls walked out, “Oh my god!” one of them exclaimed, almost making me jump, “I can't get enough of this coffee!” the others around the girl agreed as they departed the café in the opposite direction I was going carrying massive cups of pumpkin cold brew.

       It was crisp Saturday in mid-October as the leaves turned a fiery red and orange and the air was just cool enough for me to wear a black leather jacket with a band t-shirt and jeans. The perfect weather for a walk and a cigarette. I was heading to meet a new friend at a brewery.

       I arrived at my destination and chose a seat at a small patio and ordered a chai tea after scooping an ashtray for the table. Celine arrived five minutes after.

       Celine was an interesting character I had met two weeks prior at a going-away party for a mutual friend. I’m not much into energies and all that, but there was a certain feeling of interest I got from her. Like her aura had something different about it- I don’t know, it’s hard to put into words. Celine was an actual practitioner of Norse paganism and one of her professions was teaching former white supremacists the true nature of the ancient Scandinavian beliefs. Her other attributes included a few magic rituals, astral travel while sleeping and dealing with supposed spirits and ghosts.

       The woman arrived in a black sweater with shining combat boots. Her hair was cropped neatly and combed to the left side of her head. We greeted each other with a quick hug as she ordered a coffee for herself.

       “Man,” Celine spoke in her usual happy manner, “This place is dead.”

       I shook my head and agreed as I looked across the area of vacant tables around us, “Yes. The whole town would rather get Madame Toffee’s.”

       Celine shuddered and made a sour face when I spoke the name, “I don’t like that woman. I’ve come across her at different gatherings and her brand of magic doesn’t suit me right.”

       “I didn’t even know she practiced magic, but I get what you mean, there’s always been an odd feeling around her,” In a town of two thousand people, it was hard not to come across members of the town at least a half-dozen times each year. Also, as I said, I wasn’t too much into energies or anything (despite being told that I had a sensitivity to the paranormal) but there is a certain level of intuition around certain people that causes uneasiness.

       “Yeah,” Celine began, “She does, but it seems a little more sinister than what I’m comfortable with. That kind of magic is too quick of a gate for deviant spirits to come around.”

       “Maybe that’s her secret to success,” I joked. Celine took it a bit more seriously.

       “There is something odd about that. I mean, I know her family has had that mansion for ages and that she was born into money, but to be that successful from a coffee shop, I don’t know. I’ve been sensing an oddity lately,” Celine explained, “It happened back in August during one of my practices. It was weaker than, but it’s been growing heavier ever since, I can’t explain it, but I feel like Madame Toffee might have something to do with it.”

       Now, I was raised a Catholic, and even though I hadn’t been to mass since I was nineteen (I was twenty-three at the time), I still had a level of distrust when it came to dark magic and “Satan’s Forces”, but I usually didn’t pay much to that kind of stuff. I just kind of figured that Madame Toffee skipped out on taxes somehow and added nicotine or something to her coffee to make it so addictive. Turns out, Celine was on to something.

A few days after our meeting, when late October began to show the signs of the end of harvest, I got a call from Celine. She sounded nervous.

       “Hey,” I answered.

       “I need to talk to you,” was all she greeted with.

       I was taken aback. Normally, Celine was loud and happy, but now she was downright demanding in this sentence, “Where?” I asked.

       “Anywhere, I’ll just come to your place. Are you home?” She asked in choppy sentences.

       “I will be in ten minutes,” I began to feel uneasy at how horrified she sounded.

       “Alright, I’ll meet you at your apartment, hurry home!” Celine exclaimed before adding one last sentence before hanging up, “And stay the fuck away from Madame Toffee’s!”

       I walked back home at a brisk pace, so much so that I was perspiring lightly by the time I got back. Celine’s black jeep was already there.

       We got inside and I poured two cups of chai with coffee and sugar for the two of us. When Celine began.

       “I had a friend fly in to help me figure this stuff out. So we bought a few coffees from Madame Toffee and performed a ritual with two others over it. It’s worse than I thought.”

       “Celine,” I spoke. This was a little out of hand now, “It’s just coffee, the woman just uses some kind of tactic to make hers more popular.”

       “Yes! She does, Charles, this is serious,” her eyes showed real terror.

       I covered an eye roll and asked what this was all about.

       “There’s magic in the coffee,” I almost blurted an obnoxious laugh, “This is dark, though. Like really dark, one of the women had a panic attack when we investigated it and we had to quell her to sleep. The woman refuses to even talk to us now. She saw something.”

       I attempted to not sound like too much of an ass, “What did she see?”

       “The coffee is addictive but there’s something in it to summon an evil spirit.”

       “Celine, do you know how this sounds?”

       “Charles shut the fuck up and listen! You always said you needed to see something to believe it and we are in DEFCON 1 now. Here’s your proof.

       “So what is the coffee summoning?” I said.

       “The coffee itself doesn’t summon anything,” Celine replied like she didn’t explain it as just that. “It is a way to keep people controlled. She wants to use the town to summon a demon.”

       “A demon?” I asked. As a Catholic, I knew about demons- even had a slight fear of them, to be honest- but this was just a little too much like a B-movie plot to me. Celine reached into her back pocket and shoved a folded stack of papers into my chest, telling me to read.

       The papers were an article printed off some cryptid website about a jack-o-lantern demon. The just of it was some entity, called Puimin. According to Gaelic folklore, Puimic was a demon with a head like a jack-o-lantern that fed on the souls of unlucky townspeople during the tradition of Samhain. The last bit was about a certain event in which a small town, named New Galway back in 1914 in which a wealthy landowner summed the spirit that wreaked havoc on the crops the following year and led to the disappearances of many of the inhabitants of the town. New Galway was the original name for our town before it was changed to Shamrock in 1925. The person who summoned the demon was named Michael Toffee- Madame Toffee’s great-great-grandfather.

       “Madame Toffee is attempting to bring this spirit back to finish her relative’s work,” Celine said when I put the papers down. I still didn’t believe it fully.

       I started to say something when Celine check her phone and interrupted, “I have to get back to my friend that flew in. She says it’s urgent. Meet us tonight at the Tea House and if you have any religious artifact that you can wear, keep it on.” She left in a haste before speeding home. I shook my head but found an old crucifix my grandmother had given me years ago and put it around my neck. At some point, I fell asleep and encountered an odd nightmare.

       In the dream, I was lost in the middle of the woods under a full moon as floating jack-o-lanterns followed me. Glowing yellow eyes and jagged smiles crudely cut laughed in horrible cackles as I pushed through the dense thickets of the forest. At some point, I tripped on a root.

       The wicked faces of yellow and orange approached me, their snickers growing louder. Instinctively, I reached a hand out as the pumpkins stopped. I woke up with a snap and checked my phone before realizing that I was going to be late for meeting Celine and her friend. I quickly threw on a pair of shoes and headed out the door.

       Madame Toffee’s was busy but I could have sworn the woman looked watched me the whole time I was in view from the window. The chill of those dark eyes following me was like ice injected into my veins.

       Celine scolded me slightly when I arrived late. Her friend sat silently but immediately; I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The woman had to be about ten years older than Celine (who was thirty-one) but she wore her age with grace. Long red hair and lily-pad green eyes that looked like an emerald light in her face that was fair-skinned and blemish-free.

       “This is Juniper, the friend I told you about.”

       I stuck my hand out with a, “How you doin’?” as Celine introduced me.

Juniper touched my hand lightly as she shook it and said in a glossy voice- that was still involved, “You have a great power inside you.”

I felt my face grow hot as I let out an, “Uhhh.”

“Charles isn’t big on that stuff,” Celine explained to Juniper, “Even though he really is since he’s always wanting to talk about it. But you’re right, I knew as soon as I met him that he has celestial power within him.”

Juniper shook her head in understanding then turned to me with a beaming smile and spoke politely, “You are capable of great things if you hone your power, love.” She paused in thought, “You have more power than anyone I have seen in a while. You’re a star seed, aren’t you?”

I sighed this time, “So I’ve been told.”

“Alright,” Celine interjected, “We can discuss this stuff later, but we have to get to business. Juniper, tell Charles what you told me.”

“I searched deeper after Celine left to talk to you and I got into contact with one of the Vaettir,” Juniper began, “It told me that Toffee is planning to summon her demon on Halloween night.” The woman explained further that since Halloween fell on a full moon this year, it would be the closest that the spirit world would be to our world for a long time and that the mind-control spell in the coffee would be used to make the townsfolk sacrifice each other and act as some massive coven to bring Puicmin to our realm. “He’s close the old one told me,” Juniper concluded, “We have to stop it as soon as Halloween begins. We have four days to prepare.”

Celine explained the battle plan.

       I met Celine and Juniper at eleven forty-five outside of Madame Toffee’s mansion on October 30th. The house looked like a wicked face, the windows- tinted with red curtains- all felt like many evil eyes of some monster watching us as we snuck into the place.

       My backpack was full of crosses, a bible, and holy water to fight the nefarious spirit and the two women carried charms and objects of their own. We entered the basement.

       The underground room was lit with all kinds of candles and odd images that Celine explained were used for dark magic. A small altar containing an old leather-bound book on the top occupied the middle. A small cough made the trio of us jump and turn around. At first, it looked like a shriveled old man on his deathbed. We approached the figure slowly and realized the reality was far worse than an old man.

       It looked like a person- sure enough- but the head. The head was horrible. It looked like a jack-o-lantern made out of wrinkled flesh. It was orange and the eyes were nothing more than glowing yellow triangles. A wicked female laugh echoed behind us.

       “You silly, silly idiots,” Madame Toffee said cruelly, “He’s already summoned. He never left, he’s just weak. Our poor old spirit has been lying in this basement for over a hundred years, waiting for one of us to give him his strength back. Tonight is finally the night that I will get that honor.”

       Juniper almost said something before Madame Toffee interrupted, “It’s too late, midnight is only two minutes away and the townsfolk are already gathering outside. Their blood will get him out of bed.”

       That was when we heard the dull hum of shouting happen. We could hear shouts and pounds as the brainwashed people tried tearing each other apart. The first drops of blood seemed to drip from the ceiling of the basement. We knew that the first few people had been killed.

       The pumpkin-faced demon slowly rose out of bed like a person coming out of a coma. I could see now that his body was made from a mess of vines with dead leaves poking out here and there.

       “Rise! Rise, dear Puicmin!” Madame Toffee shouted, “Now is the time I complete my ancestor’s work!” She fell to her knees as the demon approached her. Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks. For a moment, the figure just stood over her. A thought crossed my mind that despite the situation, the figure looked incredibly comical with its massive head sitting atop its thin body.

       Madame Toffee raised her eyes to look into Puicmin’s face and began to ask a question when it reached a slender hand up, shriveled leaves dotting the fingers. It reached the hand into her chest and pulled something glowing white out. It was beautiful but one couldn’t look directly at it without having their eyes burned out. The demon studied the glowing white light in its hand momentarily before sticking it into the jagged hole that constituted the mouth. The figured swallowed the soul with great relish and sighed happily.

       “Charles, the holy water!” I heard Celine shout from far off. I dropped the backpack off my shoulders and dug my hand into the pocket for the vial of holy water I took from the Catholic church the next town over. I began throwing droplets onto the figure as the other two began chanting some sort of incantation. The water seemed to sizzle and steam as it hit the vines of Puicmin’s body. It shrieked in pain each time I threw more at him.

       I dove out of the way just in time as the demon attempted to grab for me. I threw another bit of water at him. The monster directed his attention to the praying women. Before they could react, Puciman held Juniper in his left arm with the right arm raised, he began to lower it- going for her soul to devour.

       I didn’t have time to think. Didn’t even have time to realize what I was doing but lunged onto the thing right before he was able to reach into Juniper. The branches scratched my arms as I felt dead leaves crumble away. I hit the floor hard. A loud shriek rang out behind me as I picked myself up.

       Puicman was writhing on the ground, smoke rising from within the tangles of vines. Within moment’s he was only a pile of ash.

       “Wha-what the fuck?” I asked while examining the black burn mark that Puicman had been just before.

       Juniper and Celine looked at each other then back to me smiling. “Told you that you had great power,” Juniper said.

       “A harmful spirit like that cannot be touched by someone like you. Someone from the cosmos,” Celine said after.

       “What?” I asked dumbly.

       “Puicman was from the ground, something impure,” juniper explained, “Your soul is from the stars. The type of burning light that could scorch anything in this world. You are celestial.”

       I shook my head. I had too many thoughts going right now to worry about some mystic whatever. “What about all those people?” I asked.

       “A few died and it will lead to some investigation that’ll go nowhere, but the rest are heading home, the spell is wearing off. By the time they wake up tomorrow, nothing will seem out of the ordinary until the bodies of the deceased are found. Trick or treating and Halloween parties will still be happening later tonight,” Celine told me.

       “What about us?” I asked.

       “We have some training to put you through,” Juniper said, “You need to learn more about your inner energies.”

       I rolled my eyes but followed them out.