A Witch's Curse (14 page)

Could my life get any worse?

13

When she was in her room that night, she felt as if the end of the world were near. The day’s bad luck was seemingly infinite, and she did not want to take a risk with her sleep walking, despite how she had not done so in a while. She wanted to mourn for the rest of the week, but Rose had to repress that urge, for the first, and what she hoped would be the last, time in her life. One does not begin to know how horrible the need to cry is until they are forced to not do so.

I would have given up witchery a long time ago if I knew it would result in the curse of a town and the tendency to sleep walk. All seventeen year old girls have their problems, but not like this.

Rose called Melinda. There was no answer on the other end. It dawned on her that Lowenstein had a parent teacher meeting that evening. Begrudgingly, she sent a text to James. He called her back a few minutes later.

“
I need your help,” she said, trying her best to sound calm.

“
With what?”

“
I need you to sleep with me tonight.”

“
Oh my. Rose, count me in. ”

“
Not in that way,” she said. “Never. See, I sleep walk, James. I need someone to stay with me in my room, so as to ensure that I don’t do something stupid, like fall out my window, or accidentally invade a house. Do you understand?”

“
I never knew that about you,” he said.

“
Most people don’t. I need you to keep it a secret. Can I rely on you to keep me safe tonight?”

He took in a deep breath. “Okay, I’ve gotten my writing done. When can I-””

“
Right now,” she said.

A quarter of a half hour later he snuck through her window, bringing with him the odor of a distinct cologne. She could not help but notice how nice his clothing was, for he was wearing a shirt so silver that it resembled the color of an alluring cloud, and his hair was perfectly combed to the side. He was not richly adorned along with his mundane, pertinent gothic style this night.

“
You’re all dressed up,” she said.

“
I was supposed to go out on a date with Jessica Faulkner.”

“
I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was making you cancel a good time. Even if it was with a camel spider.”

“
Well, it’s been set up for tomorrow. I owed you one anyways, after my little outburst and piece in the paper.” He sat down on her bed and stared at her.

“
So tell me about your novel,” Rose said, hoping to start up a conversation. If there’s anything that could help her get to sleep, it would be him talking about the importance of his project.

A short while later she felt her eyelids growing heavier, and after she had laid down, blackness swept over everything.

14

She had dreams that night, although most of them were sporadic, coming to life and then fading away again. They were highly fragmented. In the only long lasting one, she had stepped out of her house and casually walked down the lane. Everything was perfectly normal. In the corner of her eye, she saw a grim reaper hauling a baby carriage made of barbed wire.

When she turned her head to get a better look, there was no one there - just the normal wall of the cemetery neighboring her house. She continued strolling along the chalky sidewalk before noticing a black van. There was nothing special about this vehicle, except that it had white writing on the back.

It gave the name of another girl who had died. She would not be able to remember who the person was, but the date was obvious. It said In loving Memory, from June twenty seventh to November thirteenth. The person who had passed away, now being commemorated on the back of the car, shared the exact same birthday as Rose.

She was woken up promptly when a dry and dusty hand touched her. Gazing around, she wondered what was going on. The shape of the person or thing that had contacted her was imperceptible. Its lanky body was draped in shadows.

Sitting upright, her eyes scanned the area, trying to take in all the sights that she could before her vision went out of focus. Fighting off the urge to go back to sleep, she then rubbed her eyes aggressively, seeing that she was closed in between two walls, both of which were lined with torches.

Foreboding began to sink in. Rose used all of her leg’s strength to back herself into a corner. Once her back hit the obstruction, the individual leaned forward, and she was able to finally see who it was in front of her.

It was a bare skull. Its flesh had long ago wasted. The sockets were so deep that they resembled bottomless ditches hollowed out by a frantic digger. The face before her was so unexpected that she could not help but scream.

Standing as quickly as was possible, she darted away down the winding and stone vestibule, feeling the cold concrete against her uncovered feet as it sent chills through her body. She reached a door and banged on it. She kicked it with her exposed heels, knowing that bruises were to form soon enough. Soon the large wooden entrance was opened, and it only took half a second for her to see that it was another spindly, brittle skeleton, staring at her with its sad and strangely sensitive smile.

She rushed by it in a dash, before finding herself in a very familiar outsized dining room. There were a dozen gaunt figures of bones, each of them standing up. Some were holding each other, as if danger was imminent. One by one they took immediate notice of her, each of them standing insert as mannequins. Whatever they were feeling was something she could not decipher, but her suspicion that she was unwelcome became a predominant feeling. Bounding to the corner, she tried to search for another gate, and after scaling the barriers with her hands, she found this to be an ineffective venture.

She turned around and stared the tribe of cadavers, all of which were approaching her slowly. Convinced this was the end, she grabbed a stray, dilapidated and cobweb covered cabinet in the corner. Holding it up, she knew they greatly outnumbered her.

“
Please don’t be scared,” one of them said.

Rose raised her head to get a better view of the one she thought had claimed this. It was the first time that they had spoken to her. The voice sounded thin and almost wheezy. Not so much high pitched as it was complicated, as if the sound had traveled through vessels of oceanic depths in order to flow through the mouth.

“
Why did you bring me here?” Rose asked. “Back to the under keeper’s house?”

“
You walked in on us,” the skeleton near the vanguard said, going forward.

At first, she took offense before rationally thinking it over. Rose had sleep walked again, and her friend had somehow not done his job properly.

“
I swear we will not hurt you.”

“
How can I be sure of that?”

The family took a few steps back, and for a second she could have sworn they were sniffing the air, with their heads tilted to the ceiling like a wolf setting up to howl. The candlelit chamber, no matter how many pyres were smoldering in that wafting assembly room, could not rid itself of the inherent darkness due to those who resided there, and each move they made looked like a great effort.

“
We may not have any blood ourselves, but we recognize the blood of someone. If it is memorable.”

Still clutching the cabinet, staring at them with an admixture of horror and curiosity, a part of her felt very sorry for them, in ways that she could not explain in these particular moments. She started to think about how their afterlife’s would not have been interrupted if her mother had not come back into her sphere of being again.

“
We know your mother,” one of them said.

Watching them closely, Rose could have sworn that expressions of sympathy crossed their features.

“
How do you know her?” Rose asked. “Because I hardly know her at all. She thought of me as nothing more than an accident who she couldn’t wait to get rid of, a burden upon her life. The only reason I spent so much awful time in her company was because she wanted to use me as a way to hurt my father, to make him worry about me. When around her, I was treated like the greatest regret she knew. Even the State said she was unfit to be a mother. You know her though, huh?”

Rose took in a deep breath, finding herself oddly embarrassed at how many feelings she had revealed to a group of strangers. Even if they were not typically human. “It figures that my Mom would be more affectionate to a group of skinless undead than she would to her own daughter. No offense.”

A few nodded in what felt like whole understanding, and she concluded that this meant they were not startled by her words. Rose finally set the cabinet down, deciding that now she was a bit more at ease. The one who gave the air of being the leader soon spoke quietly.

“
We know your mother because she used to summon us. She does not even know we are awake. It is an customary response of her having come to this town. We want to go back into slumber, but we cannot as long as she is here.”

“
Why?”

“
Your mother is a prevailing witch. It may not be fair, but she has sway over us, even when she has no use for us.”

“
Do you know where she stays? Or the place she lived in the last time she was here at Lake Pines?”

“
Near Ridgeline Cove, in a cave near the beach. That was the way she always described it to us. She swore that she would bring us there one day, threatening to smother us in eternal darkness if we ever offended her.”

“
Sounds like her all right. Is she there alone?”

“
No, she is with a cloaked man and a cat. She used to practice with a group of other witches.”

She paused for a moment, before formulating her next question. “What did these other witches typically wear?”

After receiving the answer, she absorbed the information and then ran her hands along the stones beside her, as if they would reveal a hidden switch which could then pinpoint her to a place of exit. Rose asked them directions as to get. One of them pointed to a solidly black painted door, a flap that was hidden by the infernal gloom. Motioning towards it, she turned around.

“
Thank you,” she said, before advancing up the cold flight of steps.

The only thing lighting her way were the burning lights in the bottom room she had just left. There was a leak hitting one particular step, and it was so cold in this narrow vestibule that the puddle it had formed now turned into ice. She skipped over it, and made it to the second story.

The figure of a man sitting down, apparently reading a book, could be seen in the corner. Rose was so thankful that his back was turned. She tiptoed from the way in, and made her way to an already half opened window. Rose put one leg into the sill, and then finally put the rest of body in. She was standing on the rooftop of the house, gazing down at the expanse of green lawn and black shadows beneath her. She crouched and then slowly inched her way across the red tiles, until finally on the ledge. The drop was not a long way down, and she felt she was tall enough to hang from it. She clutched both hands on the frame of the top, and then, with eyes closed, let go.

She hit the bottom. The pain was only minimal, the rough surface proving harder on her feet than anything else.

Rose made her way through the darkened path of the cemetery underneath the blazing paleness of the full moon.

15

Rose was standing in front of Alexis Harvey’s large and Victorian dressing mirror in the bedroom above the Realm of the Out of Print, looking into the glass, wondering if she convincingly resembled a coven witch.

The room was what one anticipated of Alexis. The curtains were bright crimson, and the mattress had a thick, comfortable scarlet blanket strewn over its exterior. There was a beige arm chair in the corner, and on the walls were hung everything from souvenir wooden antiques, such as masts from ancient ships, to paintings of mythic historic figures, ones Rose was almost positive that she had not read about in school or on-line. There was a gas lit lantern with an exterior made of old metal hanging in the hub of the ceiling. However, there was one solitary shaft of sunlight pouring in through the window, although night was easily only an hour and a half away.

Rose was going to infiltrate her mother’s group. In order to do so, she had to make sure her appearance was perfect for that group.

Lying to her Dad on this day had become obligatory, telling him that she was only going to an alcohol free, drug free, boy free party. After using her best acting skills, he fell for it, even though she wondered what would have happened if he really knew what was truly going on. If he only knew that tonight was going to be the day she was going to hear her mother’s voice for the first time in ages, he would have tied her down, telling her to go nowhere near that evil woman.

She was wearing a leine, a robe of rectangular linen sewn and pinned together. The clothing draped over her body. I could hide a freaking knife collection in here if I was morbid enough, she thought. It was decorated with fringes and bright borders, made from tapestry and other needle work designs. The fabric was a dark purple, and while Alexis swore to her that it was authentic enough, she was not so confident herself.

She had cut her hair and dyed it with an amethyst streak, which was highlighted due to the homogenously colored collar on the dress which went up past her neck. Explaining the change of hairstyle to her uptight father could very well turn out to be an issue, but she figured she would cross that bridge when she got there.