The Witches Of Denmark Read Online Free Page A

foolishness, and sometimes it has been with their very lives if they try to live like kings and queens.
    I will leave Wheaton alone for now, with a brief mention of a fond memory of Grandpa and me flying up to the famed college’s chapel bell tower last fall, and re-hanging the bell upside down. It caused quite a stir among the students and staff, from what we understand, given the location of the bell and the enormous weight involved. Then, just before a crew was scheduled to fix it a few days later, we returned with Alisia in tow to change it back to its original position—all captured on film by my sis for YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Great fun, though Grandma stepped in to stop Alisia from posting the footage. What a shame.
    Why Denmark? Of all places on God’s green earth, why move to a tiny town in Tennessee that until two months ago, I had never heard of? Well, none of us had heard of it. Except for Grandpa. Grandpa said Al Capone once told him about the place, back in the days of Prohibition. If drinking, buying, and selling alcohol didn’t get you arrested, it could get you killed just as much in the south as the north, according to him… but not as well publicized.
    Anyway, when the latest Matei vendetta made it far too dangerous to remain in the Chicago area, Grandpa mentioned how he wished for a hideout like Capone once had in Denmark, Tennessee. Obviously, it was more figurative than anything, and moving south was at first dismissed. Las Vegas sounded like a better choice, since blending in with a steady stream of tourists seemed much safer. But, after Grandpa became more and more convinced that the initial idea might be some heaven-sent omen, my folks made arrangements to visit the town of Denmark, check out the available real estate, and… voila! The rest snowballed quickly. When our house in Wheaton sold nearly overnight in a soft market, it seemed like everything—other than Alisia’s and my fractured hearts—supported the move.
    My one hundred and twenty-fifth birthday will be here two months from now, in September. I hope by then to discover a genuine silver lining from this move…. Maybe it will come from the fact I look closer to a nineteen-year-old these days. Dad and Mom told me the night before our move that I no longer had to participate in the middle school/high school circuit—a tour that my poor sis must still deal with for another, oh… thirty to forty years would be my guess. It sucks for her, but hell, I’ve been in high school from the time Elvis Presley first made the airwaves, and on up until Miley Cyrus lost her damned mind. Sixty frigging years of name changes, hair color changes, pretending to ride a bus across town—or even pretending certain homes were where I lived when walking the supposed mile or so home with buddies who now draw social security checks.
    Why in the hell would we put up with such a torturous exercise, one might ask? Believe it or not, I have sometimes wondered that myself… but in the end, it has always been easier to try to ‘fit in’ when we can. Less questions and less noticing that my sister and I haven’t aged much over the years. Of course, none of us have aged much during the past one hundred years. Occasionally, Alisia and I have been able to sit out a decade or two from school, disguised as young men and women living as boarders in our own home. Pretty humorous, except when it has sometimes meant ‘bewitching’ the neighbors who had become suspicious.
    We won’t spend much time on the eras my parents and grandparents have witnessed in full. But I realize anyone reading this account will want pertinent information, such as birthplaces, birthdates, etc. My father, Gabriel Radu, was born in Poland, while my grandfather and grandmother were on the move from Romania. Things had become too dangerous for them in their homeland, despite witches and witchcraft being held in much higher esteem in Romania than anywhere else in the world. My