Oliver Crum and the Briarwood Witch Read online

  Oliver Crum and the Briarwood Witch

  Oliver Crum Book 1

  Chris Cooper

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Enjoy the Book?

  About the Author

  Oliver Crum and the Briarwood Witch

  Published by Dreadful Media

  The characters in this work are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Copyright © 2019 Chris Cooper

  All rights reserved.

  Enjoy the book? Please consider leaving a review at goodreads.com or amazon.com. Every review helps. To receive news of new publications, events, and exclusive offers, please sign up for the Dreadful Media Newsletter on our website. WWW.DREADFULMEDIA.COM

  Special Thanks

  Benjamin D. Smith

  Emerson Kasak

  Pete & Ro Maurer

  Petra Gisela Sørensen

  Chapter One

  Ticktock.

  The grandfather clock stood at the front of the room as a solemn reminder the workday was less than halfway done.

  Ticktock.

  The large metal pendulum swung back and forth, taunting him with the promise of another passing second.

  Ticktock.

  The rhythm pulsed behind his eyes.

  Oliver hated the clock—no, he loathed the clock. The ticking wooden tower was a symbol of his perpetual servitude. He had resigned himself to sitting in his cubicle for eight hours a day until his life fell away and he became nothing more than an old bag of bones.

  Tick.

  A crash came from the other side of the room and pulled Oliver out of his existential crisis. Maurice had flipped over in his desk chair and was lying on the floor, clutching his chest. The man was in his midfifties, smoked like a chimney, and now found himself in the throes of a massive heart attack.

  Several employees gathered around him, unsure of how to help, while the receptionist called 911. An intern pushed through the crowd, holding a white bottle of some sort, and knelt down next to him. She twisted off the cap and put a tablet into Maurice’s mouth.

  “Chew!” she yelled.

  But Maurice couldn’t chew. In fact, Maurice couldn’t do anything, wouldn’t do anything ever again, aside from stare vacantly up at the ceiling. The intern backed away from the lump of peach flesh protruding from a tangle of dark-gray suit, and for a moment, Oliver felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room. The cluster of coworkers stood in shock.

  After fifteen agonizing minutes, the ambulance finally arrived, and the entire office staff shuffled outside to the parking lot to watch the paramedics cart Maurice away. The edges of the pale-blue cloth draped over the man’s body fluttered in the cool breeze.

  “Do you believe it? Just like that.” Tony snapped his fingers, drawing a few glares from those around him. “Dead!”

  Oliver believed it because he’d seen it happen. The poor guy had keeled over while answering an e-mail. An e-mail—of all the pointless things! The message was still on Maurice’s screen when he crashed to the floor—something about an incorrect invoice number.

  “Think they’d let me have his chair?” Tony asked, interrupting Oliver’s train of thought. “It’s one of those with the lumbar support lever, and my back’s been killing me.” He chuckled at his ill-timed joke while the others around him groaned.

  Oliver clenched a fist. He shot a spiteful glance in Tony’s direction and felt the onset of indigestion burbling up his esophagus. He swallowed hard, trying to squelch the burn.

  “All right, all right, everybody back to work. And if you didn’t clock out before coming out here, I expect you to take it out of your lunch time today.” Mr. Sally held his arms out to his sides and gestured for everyone to go back inside. Oliver’s boss was a solid foot shorter than he but had a temper to make up for his stature. The man was all about the bottom line, and not even an employee’s death would give him pause if it meant lost productivity.

  The office quickly returned to normal, but the white noise of the ringing phones and shuffling paper couldn’t drown out the thoughts swirling in Oliver’s head. How can everyone just go back to work as if nothing happened? He did his best to finish the engineering drawing he’d been working on but caught himself staring repeatedly at the empty cube across the aisle. A smattering of framed photographs sat on Maurice’s desk, images of family picnics, birthdays, and graduations. Office policy restricted how employees could decorate their cubes, but Maurice had still managed to fill his with reminders of why he showed up to work every day. Who would tell his family? Oliver winced at the thought. Surely not Mr. Sally.

  After several minutes of staring at the blinking cursor on his screen, Oliver walked to the break room for a cup of coffee, hoping to clear his mental fog. As he opened the door, he heard someone sniffling on the other side. Jeanine, the office secretary, quickly tried to compose herself.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, sitting across the table from her.

  “Oh, sorry. I’m fine,” she said, balling up a tissue and concealing it in her sweater sleeve. Her horn-rimmed frames had fallen to the tip of her nose, and she slid them back into place with an index finger. “Maurice started here the same year I did. We worked together for nearly thir—”

  The break room door swung open.

  “The phone’s ringing off the hook out there. Do I have to answer it myself?” Mr. Sally asked.

  “I’m so sorry, sir. I was just on my way back.” She snorted and shuffled to gather her things.

  Mr. Sally looked at Oliver. “And shouldn’t you be on your way too?”

  Oliver avoided eye contact. “On my way,” he affirmed, slipping out of the chair and heading toward the door. What a slimeball.

  The train ride home was packed, and Oliver felt like a sardine crammed in a metal tin with a hundred other strangers. Fortunately, his height allowed him to stick his head out above the crowd, and his hair caught the subtle breeze from the train vents oscillating above him. He wondered where all the passengers were headed. Are they all returning from their menial jobs to tiny cookie-cutter apartments like mine?

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” he said under his breath, drawing a sympathetic smile from the woman sitting next to him.

  “Drury Street.” The barely intelligible words spurted from the PA system.

  The crowd swelled toward the door as the shuffling masses tried to squeeze between stationary passengers clinging tightly to metal poles and hand grips, trying hard not to be carried away by the mob. Oliver spotted a narrow path
way and sidestepped out of the train. The clomp of hundreds of shoes against the subway tile created a hum that echoed through the station. The pull of the crowd carried him up the stairs, where it spilled out onto the city sidewalk and quickly dispersed.

  Oliver’s studio apartment was located in a dreary stone high-rise, which blended into its stormy-sky backdrop. He entered through the revolving door just as rain began to fall. He dried his feet on the forest-green carpet and checked his small mailbox. The once-lavish lobby had fallen into disrepair after the owner had sold the building to developers who subdivided a large chunk of the luxury apartments into studios. Oliver hadn’t seen them, but one of the maintenance guys mentioned the owners had even split two floors into microapartments—basically hallways just large enough to fit a few belongings and a bed. He was fortunate enough to afford the studio although that might not be the case for much longer if rent continued to climb.

  Although the building contained two elevators, the one that went to the lower levels had been out of order for weeks. Five flights of stairs stood between Oliver and his small studio, and the climb seemed longer and longer every time. When he reached the fifth floor, he fumbled for his keychain, which had become tangled in his headphones. He slid the key into the deadbolt and had to practically break the key off in the tumblers to get it to open. The landlord had promised to fix the lock months before and was now no longer responding to Oliver’s phone calls. He was greeted by a butterscotch tabby who brushed her coat against the hem of his pants, leaving a trail of orange behind. Nekko was a whale of a cat, and Oliver found it hard to believe he had once been able to hold her in the palm of his hand.

  He set his messenger bag on a small writing desk underneath the only window in the apartment and pulled up a chair. The city skyline disappeared into the mist although he could clearly make out the cars on the bustling street below. For the most part, the city had been good to him. He had been lucky enough to land a job right after graduation, and at twenty-four years old, Oliver had all the consistency and comfort one could ever desire. A local bookstore sat one block down from his complex, and he frequented the Chinese restaurant directly across the street. If he was lucky, he could make it all the way down to dinner and back without having to speak to a soul, aside from the hostess at the restaurant. He liked her. One day, while waiting for his sweet-and-sour chicken, she mentioned she’d been a doctor in China. Oliver wasn’t exactly sure of a career plan that led to a Chinese doctor working as a hostess, but he enjoyed talking to her all the same.

  Movies stacked the wall next to Oliver’s bed. Countless disc cases and a stack of VHS tapes were arranged in alphabetical order. At precisely nine p.m. every night, Oliver chose a movie from the collection and passed out in front of the fluorescent glow of his small TV. The routine wasn’t thrilling, but he had come to depend on it as a way of providing a momentary escape to another world that offered a bit more mystery and adventure. He specialized in horror films but watched everything from Ingmar Bergman to Woody Allen. The walls of the apartment were even lined with old sketches from some of his favorite movies.

  During his first few months at the firm, Oliver would occasionally will himself down to the art-supply store after work to buy a poster board and sketch a life-size character for his wall. The boards started to form a mural of sorts, and he’d even begun to tie the pieces together with decorative filigree. At first, sketching had provided him with a creative outlet, but he stopped altogether when the job became too tiring. The drawing of Vincent Price seemed to look upon him with a glint of judgment in his eye every time Oliver passed the neglected sketchbooks on his way to the TV.

  Oliver slid his worn copy of The Devil’s Backbone into the VHS player and settled into bed with the cat curled up next to him.

  Chapter Two

  The beige ceiling tiles slowly came into focus as Oliver lay on his back on the cheap frayed carpet of his cubicle.

  “Take him out back,” Mr. Sally said, leaning over him, his bulbous nose pulsing red. He snapped his fingers at Tony and gestured for him to take Oliver away.

  “I’m fine,” Oliver replied. “I just need a little help getting up. I must have slipped.”

  “No, no,” his boss corrected him. “You’re dead.” Mr. Sally motioned again.

  Oliver could feel himself being dragged. He tried to wrench himself free from Tony’s grip, but some invisible force fused his limbs in place, preventing him from fighting back. The cement scraped against his backside as Tony pulled him outside and over to the old dumpster. Wispy clouds filled the blue sky above him, and he stared upward, trying to identify the fluffy patterns and momentarily forgetting his predicament. With one great heave, Tony somehow managed to lift Oliver into the dumpster, and the bright sky was consumed by darkness.

  Oliver held on to the last fleeting moments of sleep as Nekko walked on his small intestine. The cat, growing impatient with his lack of response, began to knead his bladder.

  “All right, all right! I get the point. I’m getting up,” he said, swatting the cat off him.

  As he rolled over, his entire body ached with exhaustion. The paranoid nightmare was the cherry on top of his sleepless-night sundae. Still, the dream must have been his mind’s way of dealing with the thought that had been nagging him—he couldn’t let himself meet a similar fate as Maurice. He was miserable, and something had to change.

  Oliver took a deep breath. “You’re being dramatic,” he said aloud. “Millions of people have it way worse than you do. Get over yourself.” The affirmation seemed to calm his nerves, and he rolled onto his side to check the time.

  The flashing screen of the alarm clock greeted him. The power must have gone out again. His grogginess evaporated immediately, replaced by dread, and he reached for his watch. I’m late!

  Oliver rolled out of bed and ran to the bathroom to ready himself for the day. The heavy thuds against the bathroom door indicated Nekko’s breakfast time was long past.

  His dress shirt flapped in the wind as he rushed down the stairs and onto the platform of the train station. Tony had been late a few weeks before, and Mr. Sally chewed him out in front of the entire office. Oliver’s cheeks flushed at the thought of his boss’s chubby finger wagging in his face. In the midst of his imagined predicament, he missed his subway stop. It’s official. I’m dead. He had no time to wait for the train back, so he decided to run the last few blocks to work.

  Although he tried to regain composure before walking into the office lobby, his tie was tied approximately three inches too short, and his dress shirt was drenched with sweat. Jeanine looked up from her desk and gave him a grim “good morning.” If he kept his head down, he might just be able to slip in without being noticed. He sneaked down the hallway and around the corner into the cube farm. The boss’s office had a large picture window overlooking the floor, but fortunately, Mr. Sally was preoccupied with a phone call. Oliver power walked to his cubicle and set his bag down. He turned to look at his boss once more, caught the corner of Mr. Sally’s gaze, and ducked into his cubicle to wait for the threat to pass. After a few tense seconds, he peeked his head out over the cube wall. This time, his boss was standing on the other side of the glass, staring directly at him.

  The sound of Mr. Sally’s Italian loafers shuffling against the carpet filled Oliver’s heart with dread. He didn’t bother to sit back down—sitting would have done no good. He simply stood and watched his boss approach, finger pointed in his direction.

  “How dare you!” Mr. Sally said. Oliver had been right about the finger wag.

  “Sir, I’m—” he started.

  “No!” his boss yelled. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. You’re an adult, aren’t you?”

  He said nothing, but his boss waited for a response.

  “I asked you a question,” he said.

  “I…” Oliver was petrified and couldn’t get the words to leave his lips.

  “Being an adult means that you show up on time. You are an adult, are
n’t you?”

  Spittle flew from his boss’s lips and speckled Oliver’s cheeks. He wanted to wipe it away but dared not move.

  “Now Maurice is out of the picture, we’ll all have to pick up the slack. His replacement won’t be here for another week at the earliest, and we don’t have time to goof off in the meantime.”

  Oliver glanced at Maurice’s cube, or at least what had been Maurice’s cube. The pictures and personal items had been removed, and all that remained was an empty desk. Tony must have taken the office chair. The man’s entire existence at the company had been wiped away in a single morning.

  “Are you even listening to me?” His boss’s voice was becoming raspy from all the yelling. “I think Maurice would still be more competent than you.”

  The last line caught Oliver’s attention. He stared down at the squat man glaring up at him. Mr. Sally’s forehead was flush with anger, and his nose was lined with thin red varicose veins from years of afternoon scotches. Maybe Oliver was shell-shocked from Maurice’s death or perhaps just delirious from the lack of sleep followed by the pavement-pounding dash to work, but something in him snapped. At that moment, everything else faded away except for Mr. Sally’s voice, punctuated by the staccato notes of the ticking grandfather clock.

  Tick.