The Haunted National Park: A Tale from the Peter Wood Multiverse
Chapter Eight: The Witch Doesn't Know

“Don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Well, we don’t ever really hear much about Snapdragon, but what I don't know is that when something really bad does happen to that school, we usually hear about it. And when it comes it to instances of the wizardkin school actually getting burned down, almost completely, there’s only one instance I can think of, and there was a lady involved who had a daughter named Angelina just like her.”

“Alright well, who is she?”

“I don’t remember her real name, but the nickname people gave her at the time was The Witch of Windsor because that’s where she and her family were from before the Ministry of Wizardry broke off from the Dominion and what we now call Paranormal Parliament. And when they did, they declared themselves to be the new Magical Parliament and forced the Wizardlands to do the same. A small few of our wizardkin were granted special permission to stay in contact with their paranormal family members—like mine and Mindy’s grandfather—but most were banned from ever coming in contact with them.”

“Right, so I think I get it now.” Said Peter. “I’m guessing when people started standing up to Magical Parliament, she was one of the people who did?”

“Yeah, but she was terrible, Peter. A lot of people died because of her. That day that she was trying to get her family back from Snapdragon, she made sure that all the MAG-PAR officials there died awfully when she found out it was meant to be a trap. And doing that much damage to a school as powerful as Snapdragon isn’t supposed to be easy, but she and her dragon did it mostly on their own. Because of that day, the Witch of Windsor is one of Canada’s most infamous witches.”

“Whoa...so, both her daughter and husband were paranormals right?”

Lily nodded. “When Mrs. Bumble talked about her in history class—”

“Hang on,” Peter said, cutting her off. “History class? How long ago did all this happen? It couldn’t have been that long ago.”

“Peter look around you! The magazines on the coffee table are dated from the year 1864, the year that the civil war happened. And that civil war she keeps mentioning was the Secret War that we learned about in class a while back. There were tons of thick cobwebs around the station when we got her and around the Witch herself when she was passed out at the table in the staff lounge. And look over there!” she pointed at a calendar on the wall by the fireplace. Sure enough, it had the year 1864 marked on it in big, bold numbers, and it was turned to the month of October with the word “snapdragon” hastily written onto the fourteenth.

“I take it that’s the day that the school was nearly burned down? So that sleeping potion didn’t just know her out for a few months like she thinks.” Said Peter, now getting to his feet. “The Witch has been asleep for—”

“Just over a hundred and fifty years…” Lily finished.

A loud shriek and a crash caused Peter to jump back dangerously close to the fire and caused Lily to leap off the couch and run behind him, shrieking herself. The ruckus had been caused by the Witch who had begun smashing apart her tools and shoving her things off the tables with great effort as tears streamed down her face. And her hair was smoking as strands of it closer to her scalp were caught on fire. Peter looked around hastily, his eyes landed on a large jug of milk that was on one of the shelves of the open fridge, he hopped onto one of the tables, and then dumped the milk onto the Witch’s head causing her to gasp and stop dead in her tracks.

“Sorry!” said Peter. “Sorry, it’s just that your hair was on fire so I was just trying to put it out.”

Rather than say anything, the Witch just stood there, dripping with milk and staring at him with her mouth agape. Then very quickly, her look of outrage and indignation softened. She then removed her glasses, then almost just as suddenly as the first time around, she broke into tears and started sobbing again.

“No…no, I’m the one who should be sorry.” Said the Witch. “It’s just…I’ve wasted so much time out here, in this awful park. Now I wake up and I replace out that my terrible brew of a sleeping potion put me out for months, And after all this time I still don’t know where my daughter or my husband is! I want to just leave, but those dead lackeys of MAG-PAR won’t let me out of here. And even if I do leave I have no lead to go off of. My last one led to my people’s school for witchcraft and wizardry and, well…”

The Witch then paused and stared at Peter and Lily before saying, “I’m sorry. None of this is your problem. You just got wrapped up in my mess, and—and I’m sure your own parents are worried sick about you all by now. Come, I’ll just quickly clean this up with a wave of my wand and we’ll head back on out of here and join the others—”

A loud boom sounded from somewhere outside the room accompanied by sharp shouts and screams.

“What was that?” said Lily.

“It’s the others!” said Peter. “Come on, let’s see what’s going on out there.”

When the three of them made it back to the visitor’s room, they found that the room was now splattered with giant gobs of gingerbread dough. Mindy and Oliver, however, were standing in the middle of it, completely untouched by whatever explosion had occurred.

“Is everyone alright?” the Witch asked the two of them.

Mindy nodded, her face red. “We were just trying to fix the alchemy project…but I think I added the wrong ingredients.”

“Gee, you think?” Peter muttered.

“It was kind of cool, though.” Said Oliver. “It started to fizz and bubble and then one of the bubbles kept growing and growing until it looked like it was gonna pop. We managed to get out in the hallway just before the thing exploded, though.”

“I don’t know what made it do that, though.” Mindy fussed. “All I added was some ratweed, some ginger, some of the candy bar, some Nth metal—”

“Look, the project!” said Oliver. “It’s moving!”

What remained of the alchemy project was indeed moving; the gingerbread substance that Mindy and Oliver had created was now spreading across the floor and up the walls, burrowing into either like mould with super-speed. Luckily it wasn’t headed in all directions, though, so Peter, the Witch, and the others dashed to move out of its way, screaming and shouting, as it turned everything it touched into gingerbread. They finally found refuge on top of the sofa on the wall opposite the windows as well as the armchair by the TV—both of which went miraculously untouched.

When the cracking and fizzing of the gingerbread mould finally died down, the light above them had gone out having been turned to gingerbread, and the only source of light coming into the Visitor's Room now was a single light in the hallway in front of the hallway.

The Witch was the first to test the new floor, and once they all climbed down off the furniture, they breathed a cautious sigh of relief.

The sound of something being smashed caused them all to jump and look at what was now a gingerbread front window. A massive rock had been tossed through it and was now laying still on the floor. Peter looked at the hole that it had left in the gingerbread, and in it, there was a pale, see-through hand now sticking through it grasping for anyone or anything that might have been within reach, while also struggling to avoid touching the gingerbread itself it seemed.

“Finally,” laughed the ghost woman to whom the forehand belonged to. She turned back to her fellow dead and said, “Finally! The magic is starting to become brittle. Come! All of you! Break through what’s left of the barrier and end our unfinished business for MAG-PAR after all these years!”

“Brittle?” the Witch croaked. “But how did—wait.” The Witch then rounded on Mindy, her hair starting to smoke. “What did you say you put into the alchemy project? What kind of metal was it, girl?”

“It…it was just a little bit of Nth metal—” Mindy muttered.

“Stupid girl! My magic doesn’t work on Nth metal! My protection spells that I put on the grounds will fail now and the ghosts will get in! Where did you even get Nth metal from all the way out here?!”

“It was in the supply packs that the park staff gave us at the campgrounds. I’m sorry, I…I didn’t know!”

A few more large rocks came tearing through the gingerbread. And while they just barely missed hitting anyone inside, they also went tearing through the walls behind them, causing that entire wall to crumble. The bunch of them were now exposed to the open, cold air, and the pale moonlight that was bathing the clearing that the ranger station was sitting in. And standing before Peter and the others—just hovering an inch above the snow-covered pasture—were a sea of glowing, emerald green eyes belonging to a massive swarm of grinning ghosts that stretched back past the tree line, just waiting to come in.

Everything started to happen too fast for Peter to keep up with all that was happening; he was being dragged back towards the hallway by someone as the Witch began firing several spells at them with her wand. Several sections of the building began to collapse around them, as the gingerbread station could no longer support the weight of the furniture on the second floor—many of which nearly missed Peter’s head.

When they stopped at the front door, Peter said, “What’s going on? We can’t go out there, they’ll kill us!”

“We’re not going outside.” Said Mindy. “We’re taking the station’s green-light.”

“You’re joking. A shack this old has a working green-light?”

“Well there’s no telling if it’s working now that half the place has turned to gingerbread,” said Oliver. “But it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

“Children!” The Witch came flying around the corner and into the hallway. “What are you doing? Come with me, quickly! We’ll all of us go hide out in my fridge—”

Another sound of gingerbread crumbling came from behind her. Peter looked past the Witch to see that the walls on either side of the hallway in front of the staircase had just opened up to reveal two more large crowds of ghosts that had found their way in, effectively cutting them off from both the staffroom and the Witch’s fridge inside of it.

The Witch cursed. Spell after spell she hurled at them, and as his friends beckoned for her to come towards them—while making hopeless attempts of their own to use their powers to stop the dead’s advance, Peter looked up and began shouting at the light bulb above them.

“Green light!” At the sound of Peter’s voice, the light of the bulb flickered from its warm yellow glow to a bright and vibrant green light. When it settled back into its natural state, Peter tried again. “Green light! C’mon, come on…GREEN! LIGHT!” The light bulb smoked and flickered for a second more, before making a final switch to that solid green light.

With the green-light now fully active, everything caught in its glow that was on the floor slowly began to rise off of the ground, including the children and the witch.

“What? What’s…what’s this? What’s happening?” said the Witch, her head spinning in all directions as she looked for whatever was behind her slow rise into the air. “Children? Children, what’s happening?”

“Green-light!” said Peter, ignoring her, just as the ghosts slammed into the magical barrier that the Witch had conjured up at the last possible minute. “Take us to the campgrounds. Get us out of here!”

The green light that was bathing them then began to grow brighter and brighter. And as the light pulled them into the glass bulb and across the light-grid to safety, time slowed down and space itself seemed to stretch so that the hallway and everyone in it looked like they might have been in a fun-house mirror. Peter managed to get one last look at the now properly haunted gingerbread station and then turned to face the light completely as the whole structure collapsed entirely under its own weight.