Fingernail Story
Matthew Ryan Fischer
The 13th floor was labeled as 14, even though in all
actuality it was really still the 13th floor of the building, and
everybody knew it. The 4th floor was listed with an “F” instead of
the number “4,” as if death would really care one way or the other how the
button was labeled. The ceiling fans were set with timers so they wouldn’t run
all night, in order to prevent the winds from carrying someone’s soul away. The
7th and 8th floors were the most popular floors in the
building and were never vacant very long. The men and women who visited knew
what they did and didn’t like.
Room 444 was often the last room filled. Room 444 was almost never
requested. When he was in Los Angeles, Wyatt always liked staying in room 444.
He never knew what he was going to find, but he always found something
interesting.
There were fingernail clippings left in a small pile underneath
the bed. Wyatt had a bad feeling as soon as he was in the room, but he couldn’t
place it. Nothing seemed wrong. Nothing seemed unusual. It wasn’t until he was
lying on the bed that he figured it out. It was like a mystical Princess and
the Pea. Wyatt threw back the bedding and when he couldn’t find anything he
pushed aside the bed. And then he found the nail clippings. There were a few
dozen little shards from a variety of different types of nails—men’s, women’s,
children’s. Some were painted, some were dirty, and some were broken or chewed.
There was no way of telling who or where they came from. Without
knowing that, Wyatt couldn’t determine their purpose. It was bad. He knew it
was bad. His biggest fear was that someone somewhere was dead. But he didn’t
know for sure.
There were a lot of myths. A lot of different versions as to what
the nails were good for and what a proper witch could do with them. If they
were left behind, Wyatt had to assume they were used to cast a spell on someone
that stayed there, or that was going to stay there. He hoped to God that he
wasn’t the intended target. He didn’t see how he could have been, as his
arrival was unannounced and his trip was spontaneous, or at least he thought it
was. He could be dealing with a seer, but they didn’t usually deal in curses.
It was probably safe to assume that no one had subtly directed him to this
location at this time. He was probably in the clear.
That didn’t mean someone else wasn’t in danger.
Wyatt looked out the window—it was still light out. He would have
to wait. The fingernails were probably cut after dark, so they would have to be
disposed of after dark.
The minutes seemed to crawl. Clock-watching never once made a
clock move any faster, yet somehow it seemingly always made existence drag.
Somehow clock-watching bent the space-time in the room, and not it a good way.
Wyatt told himself he’d have to look into that on a different day. Perhaps the
clock was invented as a magical spell of some sort. Not likely, but perhaps. It
didn’t matter right now. Right now he had bigger concerns.
The sun set. The darkness rose. Wyatt washed his own fingernails
and cleaned them extensively. He returned to the middle of the room and sat
cross-legged in front of the fingernails pile. Slowly, quietly, he recited the
words:
“Monday for
health;
Tuesday for
wealth;
Wednesday for
news;
Thursday, a pair
of shoes;
Friday, for
sorrow;
Saturday, true
love tomorrow;
Sunday, for evil,
and a week with
the devil.”
Wyatt
didn’t know who first wrote the words, but they had been passed down to him and
he believed they held some power. He said the words because he didn’t have
anything else to say that he could trust.
Wyatt
collected the fingernail cuttings and began his work. He cut each clipping into
three parts, not always equally. They didn’t have to be even, they just had to
be split into threes, or so the stories went. He worked slowly and carefully,
making sure he found each clipping and cut them appropriately.
He
kept one nail apart from the others. It was the cleanest nail of them all. An
unpainted woman’s nail. It was too clean. It was undamaged. It had to belong to
whoever did this. Wyatt took that nail and set it apart from the others. It
would have to be dealt with later.
Wyatt
took the other clippings and put them in a glass jar that he had. He lit one
match and used that to light a whole book of matches and then dropped them into
the jar with the nails. The nails burned. It wasn’t the best disposal, but it
would work on such short notice. He would bury the remains later and make sure
to try and cast something over the ground. He probably hadn’t saved anyone, but
maybe, just maybe he had prevented further tragedy. Or at least he hoped he
had.
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