Witch Haven Bay

A Witch Haven Bay Thanksgiving Gothic Tale By Christine Esser, writing as Tina Esser The Fog Harbor Hotel looked more abandoned than rented that Thanksgiving afternoon. The old hotel sat at the end of Breaker Street; its once-grand neon sign flickering just enough to suggest it wasn’t ready to die yet. A small film crew had taken over the lobby — five people, three cameras, and exactly zero working outlets. They’d come to Witch Haven Bay to film a documentary about the 1948 Winter Festival Fire and the rumors of a musician’s ghost still drifting through the harbor. But right now, they weren’t thinking about ghosts. They were thinking about dinner. Specifically, how the only diner in town — Sadie’s — had run out of Thanksgiving plates before they called. “You should’ve ordered yesterday,” Sadie had scolded over the phone. “We’re a town, not a miracle factory!” So now the crew was huddled around a coffee table, staring at their meager feast: a few bruised apples, stale cra...

 The tuxedo cat with bright blue eyes woke to the sound of cameras. Not just any cameras—these were the rapid-fire clicks of a press line, the frantic staccato of people trying to immortalize a moment before it slipped past in a cloud of perfume and exhaust. Hollywood Boulevard always smelled the same to him: hot asphalt, car exhaust, and a faint hint of magic that still clung to him like a forgotten coat. He stretched across the warm hood of a parked sedan, flexing his claws one by one. When he yawned, three tourists pointed—not at him, of course, but up the hill. “Look! The sign!” No one ever pointed at the wizard trapped as a tuxedo-black cat whose blue eyes still saw too much. Once upon a time, he’d signed his name as Elias Pike, master of wards and illusions. Now the world saw only another stray slipping between studio alleyways. He didn’t correct them. Cursed wizards did well to avoid attention. Still… the magic hadn’t entirely left. He felt it when the spotli...