Illustration by Andy Paciorek
HONORABLE MENTION, Spring 2024
The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award
BY GERARD J WAGGETT
The yellow tie with the maroon triangles hung from a solid gold spoke in the back of Henry’s closet. Henry’s aunt had picked it out during their last trip to Rome. She bought it specifically for him to wear during their audience with the Pope. The triangles symbolized the Holy Trinity. Maroon honored the blood Jesus Christ had shed for humanity. The yellow just looked nice with his blue suit. Since Henry was wearing it when Pope Francis conferred his blessing, he assumed that the tie had to have been blessed as well. As he removed it from its spoke, he envisioned the Crusaders unsheathing the swords Urban II had blessed.
Henry’s wife had come home from a party drunk and passed out on top of the covers. She did not wake up when he entered her room. She did not wake up as he looped the tie around her neck. She did not wake up until the strangling began. The second her eyes popped open, he demanded, “Where’s the doll? Where’s my aunt’s doll?” It didn’t occur to him that Madlyne couldn’t answer if she couldn’t breathe.
“In Henry Osgood’s mind, this was self-defense.” Beth said, “He was trying to save his aunt from a curse that he believed his wife had placed on her.”
That rationale didn’t make sense to Charlie Deacon. “Wasn’t the aunt already brain dead?”
“She was,” Beth admitted, “but Henry couldn’t accept that. He still can’t bring himself to end her life support.”
“It’s a very painful decision.” Judge Buckley had gone through it with her own husband.
Beth asked, “Did the Senator know the Osgoods?”
“If he did,” the judge replied, “I would have recused myself.”
“I didn’t mean to imply . . . Anyway, Madlyne Osgood had convinced Henry that she caused his aunt’s car accident. She knew all about his childhood. She knew he believed in witches and was terrified of them. She taunted him with this voodoo doll she made. The police found it hidden away in one of her shoeboxes.”
Charlie could not listen to one more syllable of Beth’s ghost story. He stood up and reminded her, “When you were playing for the good guys, you hated victim shaming. You called it—and I quote—‘the cheapest defense tactic in the world.’”
“I’m not saying Madlyne Osgood was an actual witch.” Unlike her client, Beth did not believe in witches. In ghosts, kind of, but not in witches or werewolves or vampires. “The fact that Henry Osgood does believe is evidence of his mental illness. That’s what I’ll be trying to prove.”
“Unfortunately,” Judge Buckley said, “it will still sound to the jury and the world like you’re saying that Henry Osgood had the right to kill his wife because she practiced witchcraft.”
To avoid a trial where that argument would be made, Judge Buckley had summoned Beth and Charlie to her home. When her husband died, she inherited his house, one of the larger single families in Louisberg Square. She was hoping that a few cocktails and a warm fire would ease their path toward a plea bargain.
“She’s being unreasonable.” Charlie complained about most defense attorneys, but in this case, he was not exaggerating. “I can sleep at night with the insanity defense, but she’s demanding no commitment for any length of time, only home treatment and only doctors of his own choosing.”
Beth needed to clarify her position. “Those are my client’s demands. He refuses to go back to any kind of facility. And can you blame him? This man has already lost years of his life locked away in mental hospitals—after being raised in a Satanic cult. His mother had him drinking human blood when he was four years old.”
Lydia Buckley’s heart broke for that little boy. She could also sympathize with the adult carrying around such horrific memories. But as a judge, she demanded justice for Madlyne Osgood.
This case worried Judge Buckley for a number of reasons. The word “witch” would turn this trial into the sort of news story that winds up on Inside Edition.
“From a purely selfish perspective, I don’t want to see that happen. My face is no longer what one would call photogenic.” She blamed decades of job stress for the landscape of wrinkles.
Beth never liked her own face, too long for a woman of her height. She assured the judge, “You are still very attractive.”
Judge Buckley didn’t care for that word, “attractive.” Before Beth left, she needed to issue an unofficial gag order: “I would consider it a personal favor if you did not reveal your witchcraft defense until opening arguments.”
“You don’t want to be held in contempt of living room.” Charlie never tired of cracking that joke. “Just remember The Legend of Footless Joe.” Footless Joe was the nickname given to Detective Sergeant Joe Harvey, who once tracked dog shit onto Judge Buckley’s white carpet. Not intentionally, but it wouldn’t have happened had he complied with her no-shoes rule. The judge charged him one thousand dollars for the steam cleaning. When he refused to pay more than a hundred, she stopped signing warrants for him and his partner. But three months later, when Joe lost his left foot to diabetes, Judge Buckley donated five thousand dollars to help with his medical expenses.
In the hallway, while Charlie was putting his shoes back on, Beth noticed his socks, one black, one navy blue. Of course, she felt the need to point this out to him. “They don’t match.”
After checking for himself, Charlie replied, “They also don’t matter.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “I went to this seminar back in August. These jury experts discussed the odd little details that matter to jurors. In court, I wear a wedding ring now because married lawyers are presumed to be more trustworthy.”
“That’s really sad,” Charlie said. “Before you started defending murderers, you never felt the need to rely on tricks.”
Instead of bringing up Charlie’s history of courtroom grandstanding, Beth asked him, “Are you running New York next weekend?”
“Eric wanted to, but I’ve been too swamped to train.”
Beth had run four Boston Marathons with Charlie and his now husband Eric. Because of their thick auburn hair and wide brown eyes, Beth and Charlie had often been mistaken for a brother/sister team.
Beth’s first marathon had left her legless. Eric and Charlie had to carry her up three flights of stairs. Tonight, Charlie couldn’t even be bothered holding the door for her.
While chasing him down the front steps, Beth tripped. Over what she didn’t realize until she landed on the flagstone walkway. A black cat was sitting on the third step from the top. The cat was staring down at her, and the longer it stared, the more it convinced Beth that the damned thing had tripped her on purpose.
Henry Osgood took note of Beth’s cane and asked, “What happened to you?”
She told him the truth. “I tripped over a cat.”
“Was it a black cat?”
Henry wasn’t surprised when Beth replied, “Yes.”
“That was Madlyne trying to scare you away. She doesn’t want anyone helping me.”
Hearing Henry say those words out loud made the thoughts running through Beth’s mind sound even crazier.
Because of the twisted ankle, Henry did not require Beth to kneel beside him while they prayed. For a man his size and age, Henry got down on his knees and back up again with relative ease. Every meeting had to begin with a minimum of one Hail Mary and one Our Father. Some days they recited an entire rosary. Beth was torn about charging him for the time. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the money. Henry had inherited enough to hire any law firm in the City of Boston, firms with far more experience and resources. Henry chose Beth because she knew all the words to a perfect Act of Contrition.
Like Judge Buckley and Charlie Deacon, Henry did not approve of Beth’s strategy. “I am not insane. Telling the jury I am is lying.”
“What about Thou shalt not kill?” Beth asked. “Isn’t killing a much bigger sin than lying?”
Henry told her, “You are allowed to kill to protect yourself or your family or your country. It used to be legal in Massachusetts to kill witches. Did you know that?”
“Are you talking about Salem?” Beth asked. “Those men and women were innocent.”
“No, they weren’t. That’s one of the lies they’ve snuck into history books.” Henry had learned that from his mother’s friends. “Most of them were descendants from those witches.”
From the beginning, Henry had been insisting that he needed to take the witness stand. The man was convinced that he could make the jurors believe in witchcraft, but Beth worried about Charlie’s cross-examination. Charlie would ask about far more credible motivations for premeditated murder: the overly generous prenup and Madlyne Osgood’s infidelity. Today, Beth was seeing a certain wisdom in letting Henry speak. It wouldn’t matter what Charlie brought up. No juror could listen to Henry Osgood and not conclude that the poor guy was insane.
“After the trial,” Henry asked, “will they give me back my tie and my aunt’s doll?”
The tie Beth understood, but . . . “Why would you want the voodoo doll?”
“I need to destroy it,” he said. “It’s the only way to wake my aunt up.”
By the time jury selection began, Beth no longer needed the cane, but she brought it along anyway. According to her seminar, disabilities made lawyers more sympathetic. During the trial, she planned to give her able-bodied adversary reason after reason to jump up and object. Eventually Charlie would remind jurors of the bullies they hated most, the ones who preyed upon the weak kids.
One potential juror, the gray-haired woman in the orange pantsuit, concerned Beth. Laura Lee Coombs was a retired middle school principal from South Boston. Beth could not say what she disliked about Laura Lee Coombs, but the seminar last summer had encouraged her to listen to gut instincts.
She told Henry, “I’m going to use a peremptory challenge on her.”
“Don’t do that.” Henry wanted to keep the woman. He liked the cross pinned to the lapel of her jacket.
Another juror he saved because he’d seen the guy or someone who looked just like him at church last Sunday. It wasn’t the most sound of reasons, but it made as much sense as Beth’s instant aversion to the guy.
A woman with long black hair was brought in with the next group of potential jurors. Pointing a none too subtle finger at the woman, Henry ordered Beth, “Use one of those challenges on her.”
Beth didn’t want to do that. The woman, Cynthia Green, ran programs for teens suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar depression. If anyone could recognize Henry’s mental illness, it would be this woman.
Henry didn’t care about any of that. “You need to get rid of her now.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Beth asked.
“That’s Madlyne.”
“Madlyne’s dead.”
Henry knew that. He wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t delusional. “But she’s come back. You told me you saw her that night when she was a cat. She attacked you, didn’t she? Now she’s inside that woman. I can see Madlyne behind her eyes.”
Beth had never met Madlyne Osgood, so she couldn’t see what Henry was seeing—but she did have to admit, Cynthia Green was staring at her with the same smug satisfaction as the cat that had tripped her.
Of course, Henry wanted to begin the first day of his trial with a prayer. Beth loved that idea. She couldn’t imagine a better image for the jury to see when they were led into the courtroom. But Henry couldn’t be kneeling on the floor. That would look staged. Instead, she instructed him to clasp his hands and bow his head.
Charlie was not paying attention to any of this. He was sitting at his table, doodling red triangles all over the top sheet of his yellow legal pad. Even more disturbing, he had not yet put on his tie.
“Are you all right?” Beth asked.
Without looking up, he said, “I’m not sure.”
Before she could question what that meant, the jury filed into their box.
“Mother of God.”
“What is it?” Charlie asked.
She told him, “Take a look at the jury.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Five of the men were wearing yellow neckties. The shades and the patterns varied from juror to juror, but they were all yellow. Juror #4, Jephrey Smith from East Boston, was sporting a bright yellow ascot. The women were wearing yellow scarves, plain but knotted in front. The only two not in uniform were the alternates.
As soon as Henry opened his eyes, he screamed. He screamed the word No over and over while the jury sat there staring at him. Laura Lee Coombs was not just staring, she was smiling. And her cross was nowhere to be seen.
Beth had to stop Henry from running out of the courtroom. She used her cane to block his way.
“Sit down and don’t look at them. Go back to praying,” she suggested.
But Henry couldn’t pray. He couldn’t pray when he was upset. “It’s Madlyne.” He was sure of that. “She’s possessing all of them.”
Beth had watched some pretty convincing documentaries about demonic possession, but she had never heard of a ghost possessing twelve people at the same time.
“She’s not just a ghost. She’s the ghost of a witch. They are very, very powerful.” Henry had learned that during his childhood in the cult.
Beth turned to Charlie. “Why is the judge late?”
Charlie had no idea.
In addition to tough sentences, Judge Buckley prided herself on punctuality. Beth worried that something bad might have happened. Every kind of accident imaginable popped into her head until the bailiff finally announced, “All rise!”
By the time Judge Buckley reached her chair, both Charlie and Beth were standing before her.
“In my courtroom,” she reminded them, “lawyers ask permission to approach the bench.”
Charlie apologized on behalf of both himself and Beth—“but you need to take a look at the jury. You need to see what they’re wearing.”
The judge put on her glasses to do so.
“That is very strange,” she admitted, “even for this case.”
“I am requesting a mistrial.”
“Me too,” Beth added.
“It’s nice to see the two of you in agreement on something. Maybe you can finally agree on a plea bargain while I speak to the jury. I would consider it a personal favor,” she added, “if you could reach one by the end of the day.”
“I’ll make that happen,” Charlie promised, then walked out of the courtroom without his legal pad or briefcase.
Henry refused to accompany Beth to Charlie’s office. He needed to be in a church. He needed to get there now.
After greeting her at the door, Charlie remained on his feet. Gang members had looked Charlie square in the eye and threatened to kill him. One drug dealer vowed before God that he would decapitate Charlie’s mother in front of him. Once, when he and Beth were still working together, Charlie had been run off the road by members of a Neo-Nazi organization. These incidents had rattled the man—but never before to the point where he couldn’t sit down.
Beth placed his briefcase and legal pad on top of the desk. She then assured him, “I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Charlie did not suspect her or even Henry. “It’s something else.”
“Something? Do you mean something . . . supernatural?” Beth wanted the ever rational, ever skeptical Charlie Deacon to laugh at her question.
Instead, he brought up his husband. “You know how every trial Eric buys me a new tie for luck.”
Beth loved that tradition.
“I’ve never believed in luck, good or bad, but the tie he gave me this morning . . . it was yellow with maroon triangles. And it’s from Italy,” Charlie added.
“He didn’t know, did he?”
“How would he know?” Charlie snapped. “I never discuss cases at home. And Henry’s tie has never been described in any detail anywhere in the media.”
Beth told him, “Please don’t yell at me. Not this morning.”
Charlie apologized, then admitted, “I was so mean to Eric. I couldn’t tell him why I couldn’t wear the tie, so I told him it was ugly. Then I asked him—and these are my exact words—‘What in hell possessed you to buy me a yellow tie?’”
“Did he say why he picked it?”
“He said it spoke to him. So then I berated him for wasting money when we’re saving up for a baby.”
Beth had not heard about any baby plans.
Charlie dropped into his chair but only for twenty seconds. “I don’t know if he’s going to be there when I get home tonight.”
Beth knew Eric well enough to say, “He’ll be there.”
Charlie had his doubts. “I wouldn’t be there if he spoke to me like that.”
That Beth could believe.
Unfortunately, there was more to Charlie’s story. “I went to take a look at Henry Osgood’s tie. I needed to know if it was the same tie Eric gave me, the same designer.”
“Was it?”
Charlie couldn’t answer Beth’s question. “The evidence box wasn’t there. And there was no record of who signed it out. If there isn’t something or other going on here, then we’re looking at tampering on a level beyond . . .” Beyond what he could bring himself to say.
“What do we do?” Beth couldn’t count the number of times she had asked Charlie that same question in this very office.
Charlie saw only one solution. “I’m giving you the deal you’ve been after: house arrest, doctors of his own choosing . . . What else was there?”
Beth reminded him, “The judge won’t sign off on a deal this light.”
“After this morning,” Charlie felt pretty sure, “she’ll sign off on any deal that removes this case from her courtroom. So go tell the strangler that he is literally getting away with murder and then—and I’m saying this as your friend—end your dealings with him as soon as legally possible.”
Before Beth left, she wanted to be clear on what she was hearing. “Are you saying we’re friends again?”
“Being friends would be much easier,” he said, “if you would come back where you belong.”
Beth did not find Henry at Saint Joseph’s or Arch Street or the Paulist Center. She even checked the chapel in Mass General. While she was there, she also checked the emergency room.
Late that afternoon, Charlie called her with the news. Henry had not gone to church. He had grabbed a cab to Logan and bought himself a one-way ticket to Rome.
“How was he expecting to get on the plane?” Beth asked. “He surrendered his passport.”
Yes, Henry could have gotten a fake one. He had more than enough money, but he would have seen that as lying.
Charlie couldn’t answer Beth’s question “because it never got to that point.”
While waiting in the terminal, Henry had asked, then begged several of his fellow travelers to pray with him. At least one of them recognized him from the news. When TSA showed up, Henry agreed to be handcuffed but refused to let go of his rosary beads. “They’re my only protection,” he said. He then showed the agents that he wasn’t lying. The second the beads were pried out of his fist, he stopped breathing.
Charlie warned Beth, “You don’t want to watch any of the videos.”
An older gentleman in a light gray suit answered Judge Buckley’s door. Beth recognized him as Juror #11, Louis Mayhew, a pharmaceutical rep from West Roxbury. He was still wearing the yellow tie.
“What are you doing here?” Beth asked.
“Is the judge expecting you?”
If the man was not going to answer her question, she felt no obligation to answer his. And she didn’t need a reminder to take off her shoes.
Beth followed the trail of voices coming from the candlelit dining room. Louis Mayhew’s fellow jurors, all eleven of them, were seated around the table drinking red wine. Judge Buckley was standing at the head of the table. By candlelight, she looked a good 20 years younger. She put down the glass she was raising when Beth appeared in the doorway.
“You should not be here,” the judge said.
“I came to tell you that Henry Osgood is dead, but you already know that, don’t you? Is that what you’re celebrating?” Beth asked.
A voodoo doll was lying on the table in between the two candles. Henry’s yellow tie had been knotted around the doll’s neck. By morning, the doll and the necktie would be returned to the evidence box, which would miraculously reappear exactly where it was supposed to be.
“You killed him.” Beth was staring at the judge, but her accusation included everyone in the room.
Speaking for the group, Judge Buckley said, “We executed Henry Osgood after you sentenced him to death.”
“How did I sentence him to death?”
“Your witchcraft defense left us no choice. You were going to argue that Madlyne Osgood’s murder was justified because she was a witch.”
“Was she one of your . . .”
“Madlyne Osgood was a greedy little whore who was just playacting.” Beth had never heard the judge use that kind of language before. “She got what she deserved, but a not-guilty verdict would have set a dangerous precedent. It would have turned the clock back to 1692.”
“That’s why you killed Henry?”
“It was him or you,” the judge replied.
“We should have killed her too.”
Jephrey Smith in the bright yellow ascot agreed with Laura Lee Coombs. “She really has seen too much.”
Before the jury began deliberating her fate, Beth headed for the front door. Louis Mayhew was no longer there. Neither were her shoes.
Pain shot up her left leg and then her right. It started in her heels and burned like wildfire all the way up into her hips. She hit the hardwood floor hard.
Judge Buckley came padding down the hallway in a pair of electric blue house slippers. As she got closer, Beth noticed the sequins and the embroidery. She also noticed the shoes the judge was holding in her left hand. Beth’s shoes. In the judge’s right hand was a paring knife.
“What did you do to me?” Beth asked.
Judge Buckley turned over the shoes so that Beth could see the heels. Thumbtacks had been jammed into each one.
“The tacks can be removed,” the judge explained, “but once the heels have been sliced, you’ll never walk again.”
“I’m not joining your coven.” Beth would not pay that price, not even to save her life.
Judge Buckley informed Beth, “We have our thirteen members. What we need from you is confidentiality. We need you to keep our secrets the same way you did for that would-be witch-killer Henry Osgood. Can you do that, Beth? Or have you run your last marathon?”
No one except Charlie would believe Beth’s accusations of witchcraft. Making them would destroy her career. As for Judge Buckley knowing the jurors, it was Beth’s word against one of the most respected judges in Boston. An investigation, if one were even launched, might unseat Judge Buckley but not without overturning all her convictions. Dangerous criminals could get released. Some of those monsters Beth and Charlie had risked their lives to put away. Beth reviewed all these points as she made her way home barefoot.
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In addition to 11 books of soap opera trivia, Gerard J Waggett has published several crime stories in Mystery Magazine (formerly Mystery Weekly Magazine). The latest was a Sherlock Holmes adventure. In late 2022, his one-act play “Elizabeth” was published in the premiere issue of Dracula Beyond Stoker. Last spring, Archer’s anthology Dark Mirrors included his horror/science fiction hybrid “Operation Rat Poison.” Waggett’s flash fiction story, “He Loved His Mamma And His Mayonnaise” was the winner in the Winter 2024 Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition. “The Witchcraft Defense” was inspired by a trip Gerard took to Salem with his friend, the Honorable Katarina Stipec, who had recently been appointed to the bench in Puerto Rico.