Bergamot & Sulphur
Chapter 14: Candied Ginger
This chapter was written for the October 2020 SPN Coldest Hits challenge: A Graveyard Smash – write a fic involving the campy, cheesy monsters from Hollywood's Golden Age of horror. This was not an intended chapter for Bergamot & Sulphur, but I am pleased to include it.
There was a mummy down in the cellar. And an aristocratic vampire dining on something wine-red and runny in the parlor. From the attic came the tale-tell crash of lightening and mad laughter, and all the lights in the old manor home flickered like frightened ghosts. In the pond out back in the neglected garden, a swamp monster blew bubbles, and somewhere out in the night, under the baleful eye of a full moon, there was a desolate – admittedly melodramatic – howl. It was answered by the bloodcurdling, familiar snarl of a hellhound. Juliet had the werewolf on the run.
A noxious, roiling cloud of amethyst and emerald fumes belched up from the cauldron as Crowley doused the brew with tap water from the sink, and moved the cauldron aside to make room on the stove for the tea kettle. He collected a mug from the cabinet and dusted out the cobwebs with the sleeve of his hunter jacket. It was going to need to be dry-cleaned after this anyway. At least there hadn't been any demonic spewing of pea soup. Though, by the look of him, Dean still might be sick before the night was over.
A dramatic clash of thunder rattled the panes in the window and sent the shutters banging against the house, and in the distance, the graveyard resting high upon the hill was bathed in a stark pallor. Two silhouettes could be seen out in the night, bent to their odious task. The corpse of the lauded producer of the golden age of Hollywood monster movies would still be rather fresh, the maggots and worms not yet at work. Devoted followers and admirers continued to stack the creaking porch of the manor with heaping sacks of popcorn and candy in tribute.
The kettle began to shriek. Among the clutter of glass jars containing eye of newt and dead man's toes, there was a jar of ginger root. A few slivers of that with a sprinkling of fennel seeds was sure to settle even the sorest of gluttonous stomachs. Crowley swept aside the prodigious pile of candy wrappers and set the potion down on the table in front a piteously moaning Dean.
There we are, Crowley said in his best Karloff impression. Boris says to drink up.
There is a Hocus Pocus reference in here. A ride on a flying vacuum for whomever finds it first.