The max porter box set, p.44
The Max Porter Box Set, page 44
Jammer J hurried out and Mrs. Porter followed. She stopped at the front door. “PB? Come on, now.”
PB glared at Max, but he couldn’t sustain the anger. His eyes glistened and he rushed off before a tear could drop down his cheek.
“Shit,” Max said to the empty kitchen.
For a full two minutes, he stood motionless, trying to understand how suddenly he felt the guilt of a father who had screwed up with his teenage son. It made sense that they had become protective of the boys, perhaps even in a parental way, and he had no doubts that they all considered each other family. But he never tried to be their father. Good or bad, those boys had fathers, and it wasn’t Max’s place to take the job over. He could be a mentor, a boss, a friend, and more, but not a father.
From the back of one of the top cabinets, Max pulled out a bottle of Noah’s Mill bourbon — smooth with hints of rye and vanilla. He poured two fingers and gulped it down. After coughing for a moment — he forgot that his secret bourbon rated 114 proof — he took a breath and shook his head clear. As the burn in his stomach spread into warmth throughout, he grabbed the laptop and entered his study.
Regardless of how poorly Max had handled the situation, the fact remained that PB needed to go to school. It was that simple. It had to be because Max needed to push that problem aside so he could refocus on his wife and the Mobley Coven.
He slapped the laptop onto his desk and yanked the top open. Those witches had taken too much of an interest in Sandra. No way would he let some coven take his wife away. She always said he had one superpower, and he intended to use it.
Max Porter sat at his desk and started to research the Mobley Coven.
Chapter 9
BY MIDNIGHT, Max had to look away from the screen. His eyes had dried out, his neck ached, and his lower back threatened to seize up if he didn’t stretch. Rolling his head in a circle and rubbing his shoulders, he walked into the kitchen.
Hours of searching the internet, of rethinking search terms, of reworking search parameters, of thinking he had finally found them only to discover a dead end — it all left his head throbbing. He poured a glass of water and nursed it by the sink.
Any witch coven that had managed to survive more than a generation would be difficult to find information about — actual witch hunts tended to make covens secretive. Since the Mobley Coven’s reputation suggested they had been around for several generations, they had to be even better at keeping a low profile. If they hadn’t hired the Porter Agency, Max would never have heard the name Mobley or known their address.
But I do have the name Mobley and the address of their current residence.
The name. Max hurried back to his desk. All the sisters carried the same surname — Mobley. Of course, they were not all actual sisters, rather they were sisters of the same coven. Since this sorority of spellwork behaved like a tight-knit family, Max thought it likely that some of them — the most devout — might legally have changed their last name to Mobley in a fit of loyalty.
After only a few keystrokes, he found fifty legal registrations of the name change in North Carolina over the course of several decades. With previous names in hand, Max traced back their lives through census information, birth announcements, obituaries, news reports, and numerous other sources he often used. Because the women involved in the coven never married, or if they did, they never took on a husband’s surname, the paths went back quite far with many less detours than he usually encountered.
Around two in the morning, Max had reached the end of the trail — Eunice Mobley. Born to Abraham and Elmira Mobley in 1877. They lived and worked on a small farm set between Winston-Salem and Kernersville.
“Now I’ve got you,” Max said.
He closed all the programs on his desktop and clicked on the Tor Browser. This browser utilized other computers in order to bounce and hide its identity. While not entirely anonymous, the Tor browser was a favorite among criminals, conspiracy theorists, and anybody who wanted to hide their activities from over-reaching governments. Also a regular user — witches. This was an entryway into the darknet, and if Max had any hope of finding details about the Mobley Coven it would be on the darknet.
Much of the darknet could not be searched. A known web address was the only reliable way to find information. But when it came to the world of witches, several search sites had been developed for their private use. Hence, the darknet.
Max had learned about this site from Sandra. Trying to ignore how that fact burrowed into his chest, he brought up the website and first searched for a Mobley Coven website. Several covens ran their own websites on the regular internet, but they tended to be more hobbyists or religious Wiccan than actual, spellcasting witches. Like much of the witchcraft information online, these sites leaned toward the practical, herbal, and New Age-types of things. A few sites Sandra regularly used had access to ancient texts and such but you had to know what you were doing to make real use of them.
On the darknet, however, the other kind of covens resided. To an extent. Not surprisingly, most covens kept off the internet and darknet when it came to internal matters. The real source of their history, spellwork, membership, and all other valuable information would be written on paper and bound in their grimoire — a coven’s book of family secrets. But that didn’t stop the researchers of the world from compiling whatever information they could get a hold of, and that was where Max struck gold.
On a darknet site called The Unrecorded History, several university professors from various disciplines traded research that they could not publish in journals without destroying their reputations and probably losing their jobs. But through one experience or another, they had come to know the reality of witches, spells, ghosts, and more. They needed answers and so they turned to each other for help.
Max clicked on a link appropriately titled Covens and found an alphabetical listing of over two thousand documented witch covens. Scrolling down, he found the entry Mobley Coven, clicked on it, and marveled at the first picture he ever saw of Eunice Mobley.
She stood in front of a barn with three other women — all appeared to be in their twenties. The caption read: Eunice Mobley (center) with three unidentified women. Thought to be near Greensboro, though not the Mobley family farm which was sold years earlier. Possibly near turn of century.
For the very late-1800s, Eunice looked scandalous. Her dress, make-up, and hair would have been more appropriate decades later during the Roaring 20s. The defiance in her eyes suggested she knew and didn’t care that people might see this photograph. But at the same time, the other women looked like they were having fun being naughty, that they knew this was a little secret dress-up and photo, and that the moment they finished, several of them would wish the photograph didn’t exist.
“So, even at the beginning, you could get some women to bend to your will,” Max said to the screen.
Reading through the history of the coven, he took notes so that he would remember what to share with Sandra and Drummond later. It whirled in his head like a gathering storm. He wrote furiously to keep from losing his momentum, part of him fearing that should he stop, should he close his eyes even for a few minutes, when he woke, he would find the website gone, spelled away into a darker net that could never be found.
It began with Eunice Mobley.
According to the scholarly research, Eunice showed a rebellious attitude from early on. She often would be found at the center of trouble yet blame rarely fell upon her shoulders. This tendency culminated in the drowning of Elizabeth Miner. While the death had been ruled accidental, journals and diaries of locals suggested otherwise. Many people thought that Eunice had been responsible. They thought it often enough and strongly enough that they wrote it down. The two girls were rivals for the affections of Johnathan Short, and as one diary put it: That girl has the Devil inside her. She’d kill her own kin if it meant getting a new dress or some other trinket she wanted. So there is no misbegotten thought of mine that she had some hand in poor Lizzie’s passing. I can only pray that the good Lord will see justice done where none can be found elsewhere.
Eunice must have figured out that the town had reached their boiling point with her. She left the Kernersville area and moved to the far end of Greensboro. While one town over did not really constitute “getting out of Dodge,” back then, even a short distance could feel far.
Much of her life disappeared from any record the historians could find with the exception of one photograph. It depicted her standing arm-in-arm with a short, unidentified woman. They both wore white nightgowns and stood in front of a window. Max studied the photo, attempting to pick out details of what lay on the other side of the window, but he could only see blurs.
The short woman also took his interest. She reminded him of one of the ladies in the previous photograph, but everything in this woman’s countenance held more strength, more power, more zest for life. Particularly, her eyes. They defined the term piercing and seemed to cut through his computer screen to prick his skin and draw a bead of blood. Not a woman he ever wanted to face. If she were alive, she’d be well over a hundred, and Max suspected she could still strike fear with those eyes.
When the trail of Eunice’s history re-emerged, she had a new interest in the occult — specifically witchcraft. Any books she could acquire, any person she could talk with, she sought them out. Over the next two decades, her interest turned into obsession and eventually, she stopped learning about the subject and began practicing it. Though much of those details were inferred from diaries and newspaper articles, Max agreed with the conclusions. It helped that he knew this woman’s legacy ended up with a coven still in existence bearing her name.
During Eunice’s early dabbling in witchcraft, however, nobody knew how she supported herself. She did not marry nor was their evidence of her prostituting herself. She held no employment, either.
“I know what you did,” Max said.
Considering where her life would lead, he thought she surely sold spells, potions, charms, and curses. Perhaps even accepted money to do some palm reading and other entertainment-type prognostication. It would have been done in secret. Between the Moravians, the Quakers, and the Hull family, any hint of witchcraft would have been met with harsh consequences.
That seemed the likely explanation for her next move. She left the southeastern edge of Greensboro for a cabin in the wooded northern section. Max pictured the spooky walk through the woods that the desperate would make until they found the solitary cabin. They would knock on the splintered door with a shaking hand, and when they entered, they would have no idea they had entered a spider’s web that would never let them free. Bargaining with a witch always brought pain.
Perhaps that existence went on for years. Somewhere along the line, however, Eunice grew weary of her position in the world. She wanted more. Of everything.
While the exact date of the founding of the Mobley Coven was unknown, the historians pinpointed it between the late-1910s and early-1920s. From the start, she insisted that all her sisters take her name. That helped narrow the years, but the biggest clue came from the reaction of people.
It was one thing to be a scary witch living off in the wilderness. It was another to have a coven, a private army of witches willing to follow commands with the blind loyalty of a cult. But by the mid-1920s, the Mobley Coven disappeared from Greensboro after an unexplained fire consumed the cabin and fears surrounding them also died out.
Until they next popped up in Winston-Salem in the 1940s. Presumably, the coven had continued to operate throughout the intervening decades, but it wasn’t until World War II that the witches began to ply their trade again in a noticeable way. Spells, charms, curses, fortune telling — there were plenty of frightened soldiers wanting supernatural insurance before they headed off to war. After D-Day, there were even more wives and girlfriends wanting the same.
This pattern repeated itself over and over. The coven would disappear from notice, still working but keeping to the shadows, until a major event — Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, 9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan — brought them out in full force. As one of the most powerful covens in the South, it did not surprise Max that they were in high demand.
One thing — one thing of many — troubled him. Why did the Hulls allow the Mobley Coven to exist? Until recent events involving the Porter Agency, the Hull family had controlled all magic in North Carolina. No witches practiced without the Hulls knowing about it and consenting to it. What benefit could they derive from permitting a coven to become powerful?
“Unless they didn’t know.” Max leaned his chair back, his fingers laced behind his head, and looked off in thought. Could the Mobley Coven have somehow kept their existence secret even from the Hulls?
The clatter of the front door locks snapped Max out of his musing. He checked the clock — 4:21 am. Sandra finally had come home.
He wanted to call her over to the study, show her what he had found, and most of all, ask her about the possibilities. She would know if a coven could simultaneously be well-known enough to have soldiers and lovers calling on them yet keep the prying eyes of the Hulls away.
Except Sandra’s tired footsteps clumped upstairs. Coupled with their recent argument, she would be too exhausted to listen without the conversation turning ugly. Max kept quiet.
Instead, he returned to his laptop, ready to shut it down and get some sleep. Probably on the couch. Yet he saw a late entry from a professor in California. She had taken all the known information about the cabin where the Mobley Coven had been founded and tried to locate where it might have been. She detailed her methods, and in the end of several long and technical paragraphs that left Max dizzy, she pinpointed a spot at 36° 07’50”N 79° 50’03.1”W.
Max copied the coordinates, shut down the darknet browser, and pulled up his regular internet browser. He input the information into a maps website. The result could not have been any weirder — the cabin had sat on land that now was part of the Greensboro County Park. In particular, the Greensboro Science Center and Zoo covered every inch of those coordinates.
He heard water running from the bathroom upstairs. Rubbing his dry and heavy eyes, he crawled over to the couch. Tomorrow, he thought. He needed sleep, and then tomorrow — well, in a few hours anyway — he would make things right with Sandra and go visit the Science Center. Before he could think any further, his eyes closed and his conscious mind shut down.
Chapter 10
A DEEP RUMBLE VIBRATED IN MAX’S BELLY. His eyes creeped open. His neck had locked at an odd angle from sleeping on the couch, and as he rubbed the muscles loose, his brain noticed that the noise of the rumble had a name — garage door.
Sandra!
Adrenaline swept through his tired body enabling him to dash across the house toward the front door. He threw it open in time to see Sandra driving away.
“You’ve really ticked her off,” Drummond said, rising up through the floor. “This might be a record.”
Slinking into the kitchen, Max poured cold coffee into a mug and tossed it in the microwave for a minute. “We’ll work it out. Marriages have fights. It’s no big deal.”
“Sure. If that’s what you need to think in order to keep going.”
Max slammed shut the utensil drawer. Holding a spoon like a shiv, he said, “I’ve been awake for less than two minutes. Let me drink my damn coffee.”
Drifting into the study, Drummond looked over the pages of Max’s notes that lay open on his desk. “Looks like you had a productive night.”
After sipping coffee three times, Max closed his eyes and sighed. The crick in his neck hurt whenever he turned it to the left, but otherwise, he felt passable. “I don’t know how productive it was, but at least I know more about the Mobley Coven. I figure this is all because of them hiring us, so the faster we finish the case, the faster we can put this behind us — get back to our lives.”
“I’m not sure it’s going to be that simple.”
Ignoring the burn in his mouth, he downed a large gulp of coffee. “Give me a few minutes to clean up and then we’ll go.”
“Where to?”
“Greensboro Science Center. The Mobley Coven started somewhere near there.”
Drummond’s brow wrinkled. “Why there?”
“Can we please not play twenty questions just yet?” Max stomped upstairs for a short shower.
Fifteen minutes later, he sat behind the wheel and sped along Route 40 East towards Greensboro. The drive would take about forty minutes, and though he tried to play the radio and appear deep in concentration, he knew Drummond would use this time trapped in a car to discuss matters. Sure enough, the ghost appeared in the passenger seat, cleared his throat, and gestured to the radio.
When Max turned it off, Drummond said, “You and Sandra are my partners, so I got to know what’s going on here. The two of you already fought it out about witches and all that. You were past this whole thing of having problems with her diving into it all. Why the sudden backtrack?”
“I’m not backtracking.”
“Sure looks like it.”
“If she wants to read and research the subject, I’m fine with it. I would never stand in her way of learning and studying anything. And I completely understand that when the subject is witchcraft, particularly the real thing that we have to deal with often, she might have to dabble a bit in practice. We’ve made good use of her spellwork, and I’m fine with that. But what’s going on right now is something different.”
“I don’t see it. All she’s doing is talking with witches. We all come into contact with real witches plenty. That’s partly why I urged you not to take the case. But that’s me. For you, why is it now a problem?”
“Because,” Max said, gripping the wheel tighter, “we’re married. We’re husband and wife. And while it might’ve been different in your day, here and now it means that we work as a team. But she’s not even trying to meet me halfway. Marriage is give and take. Except I give a little and she tries to take the whole thing.”
