A story from the Shadow Elm Memoir.
The person I’m calling Tallulah began as a single palm reader at a traveling carnival. She used her limited telepathic and impressive precognition abilities to deliver fortunes to customers. Eventually, the psychic left the Carnie life and opened up a magic supply retail store in the southeast that provided various spiritual, psychic, and occult services. Many people sought out and believed in her gifts. But the skeptics accused her of a fraud or some religious quack. The locals pegged her for a devil worshiper and even torched a 7-foot plastic Halloween devil demon in her store parking lot.
If my memory serves me, it was a mild Labor Day the first time I entered her store. The sky was clear and pleasant for a late summer day. An old-fashioned bell (mounted to the shop door) rang behind me. I thought this type of bell was supposed to announce the arrival of a new customer, but Tallulah was nowhere in sight.
The store was empty except for high shelves of spell ingredients in various glass containers, dusty book racks of ancient textbooks and occult magazines, and an out-of-place Keurig Coffee maker. I laughed at the daisy-printed couch in the corner beside the cash register. Two purple velvet accent chairs faced each other on opposite sides of a round folding poker table. It looked like it had been a while since anyone had used this furniture.
Someone decorated the walls with black-and-white pictures in dusty wooden frames of animals like owls, wolves, and snakes. Someone attempted to write the store’s name in graffiti smoke letters on the wall behind the cash register, which reminded me of an airbrushed Myrtle Beach t-shirt.
I was early for my appointment with the psychic, so I just wandered the store. I saw dead beetles, sage, and several other unfamiliar spices in small to large-sized glass containers on dusty shelves. I picked up a copy of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, flipped straight to a dog-eared page, read, “Double, double toil and trouble Fire burn and cauldron bubble,” and placed the book back on the rack. Next, my eyes caught a sign above the coffee maker that said, “Help yourself to some witch’s brew (dark coffee).”
There was a large cauldron on the floor beside the coffee maker. I estimated it to be three feet in diameter. Curious, I flicked the cauldron and wondered how many spells this cast iron had seen.
“Good midday, Larry.” Tallulah suddenly came into sight, startling the dickens out of me. I jumped off the ground because I swear she materialized out of nowhere. It was like she appeared out of thin air or like a genie about to grant me three wishes. If Tallulah was indeed a witch, she was not of the green variety from The Wizard of Oz.
She was before me, a tall forty-something with pale skin, brown hair, and green eyes. I remember her attire very vividly. She wore a tangerine orange tunic, black sandals made by Keen, a pair of sterling silver dream catcher earrings, and a purple scarf tied around her neck.
“Happy midday,” I said after reeling my skeleton back into his skin, “I didn’t hear you walk up.”
The psychic apologized, “Sorry for scaring you. I was in the back watching a Designing Women rerun. Julia Sugarbaker, played by Dixie Carter, is my favorite. Did you know she was married to her show boyfriend in real life?”
I told her I had never watched an episode of Designing Women and asked if she heard the bell.
Tallulah said, “Oh the bell, I forgot about that thing. No, that wasn’t it. I heard the echoes from your sudden tap on the cast iron cauldron.”
I cocked my head like a confused rooster trying to understand how Tallulah didn’t hear the bell ring but did hear my flick on the cauldron, which I barely did. She is a peculiar bird.
We walked over to the corner of the shop where the furniture was to start the fortune-telling. We took seats in the velvet chairs. She asked me if I had brought the items as directed.
I pulled a green Ziploc sandwich bag from my pocket and placed it in Tallulah’s hand. She held up the bag toward the store’s overhead lights and closely examined its contents with one eye shut. Then she unzipped the bag, dumped a folded newspaper article, and used tissue onto the poker table.
“I followed your instructions down to the specific. You said you needed a newspaper article about something back home and tissue with my blood,” I attested.
From the jump point, this was spooky and strange. I almost didn’t come this day, but I had come too far not to see this through. She told me I did well.
Then she arranged the newspaper clipping on her left and white blood-spotted tissue on her right. I watched her get up from her chair and walk to the other side of the magic store. She returned moments later, bopping around and awkwardly carrying a white thermal beverage carafe and a large, empty green artisan ceramic mug.
Now seated at the table, Tallulah picked up the newspaper, draped it over the cup, then picked up the carafe and carefully poured steaming black liquid into the mug. The fluid flowed through the newspaper like a coffee filter.
Tallulah stopped pouring and switched out the newspaper with the nose’s blood-stained tissue. She started pouring again, and it was amazing how the hot liquid didn’t rip the newspaper or the thin tissue to pieces.
After this pour, the psychic picked up the mug and took a swig of the newspaper and tissue-stained black beverage. I see and hear the weird concoction swishing around Tallulah’s mouth, which is quite disgusting. Then she rotated her head away from my direction and spat the liquid out.
There was more unconventional behavior, but nothing about this process was normal. But whatever! I was waiting with anticipation for my future.
Her eyes rolled back into her head. She looked like she was about to faint but instead told me absently, “I see myself watching Green Acres. During a commercial break, I hear a voice from my shop that says the date is November 15.”
This point is where I need to tell you that the reason I sought out Tallulah was to find out when my death would be. Not because I have a life-threatening condition but strictly out of dumb curiosity. This information gutted me. I was thinking that’s only four months away. I was hoping for more time. I never should’ve gone through with this. My entire insides were on the floor. I was distraught at the moment about my mortality.
Here is some life advice. Listen to my words: NEVER ask a medium or psychic about your death.
I wanted to question the accuracy of Tallulah’s vision, but I knew deep down that her premonitions eventually came true.
Tallulah affirmed, “Yes, that is precisely what I saw,” but continued to explain that what she sees eventually comes true, but it has limitations, being that she can’t always pinpoint the exact time.
I agitatedly admitted to her that for me to come and ask her to use her abilities to foresee my death was a huge mistake. I was responsible for my massive, unpleasant situation. There was an awkward pause between the psychic and me when I asked her if there was anything to do to live longer.
Tallulah nodded and said, “Okay if that’s what you wish. I can help you with that.” She got up and walked backward to the back room. She returned with one of those United States road maps and unfolded it on top of the poker table. Next, she asked for a piece of my hair for the spell to work. Okay, she was definitely a witch of some sort. I pulled a strand of hair from my head and placed it on the map. She cupped the follicle in her hands and shook them like a pair of dice. Then, she opened her hands and blew the hair with her breath. We both watched it shoot up upwards and fall on the map. She pointed to the location on the map where the hair fell and said, “That’s where you’ll find your answer.”
I grudgingly looked down at the map, where my hair fell in North Carolina. I cursed myself for putting myself into this predicament. I’m going there to find a way not to die, and I just graduated from college. I’m supposed to have much more life ahead of me.
Tallulah looked at me to assess my emotional state. She knew this discovery was significant for me. She took my right hand, kissed my palms, and said, “I know you’re upset, and I’m sorry.”
I thanked Tallulah for the expression, but she didn’t need to apologize. It was my dumb self who initiated all this. Then, I told her I needed to get to North Carolina.
After paying, she escorted me to the entrance door and said, “Well, then Godspeed, Larry. I wish you the best of travels, and remember that Mark Twain said travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
She walked outside the store with me and waved at me while I drove off. She looked sad. She probably thought this was the last time she would ever see me, which it wasn’t. I went back to her store several more times. The best gifts for your supernatural friends are from an actual magic store.
All this time, my friends and family thought I moved to North Carolina for a new job. Well, it was because I thought I only had a few months to live, and that’s where Tallulah’s hair spell sent me to find a way to stay alive. That was a very long time ago, many November months ago. Well, I still need to kick the bucket. I still get anxious in November. I stopped obsessing over what was supposed to keep me alive. I always think this will be the year Tallulah’s vision comes true.
I miss her. She died a few years back, an old and happy witch. Her magic was my first encounter with the supernatural.
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