The Keeper's Curse

The Keeper’s
Curse

By Diana
Harrison

Copyright 2012
Diana Harrison

Smashwords
Edition

Smashwords
Edition, License Notes:

This ebook is
licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be
re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share
this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy
for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not
purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please
return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the hard work of this author.

The following is
a work of fiction. All people, places, and events are purely
products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual
people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc.,
http://www.gobookcoverdesign.com/
.

*

For
Mom and Dad,

Who
let me pace in the living room until I wore the carpet
out.

*

Prologue

It was
never a good omen to end up in the hospital on your birthday. Until
she died, Emmy would not forget when it happened to her.

She had
just turned eleven on a muggy day in March. The hot weather, fit
for June, had luckily blown in for spring break. Her friends were
still buzzing with post-school excitement, wanting nothing but to
play outside, so she asked them – a group of raucous, dusty-faced
boys – if they wanted to celebrate by playing some soccer behind
their school. They agreed immediately. She ended up in the position
of goalie, figuring it was probably not a good idea to get too
banged up before for the birthday party her grandparents had so
thoughtfully prepared for her. Of course nobody wanted to play
goalie so she knew she would be teased, but just for today she
would keep her sharp mouth shut. It was worth it; her mom and dad
would murder her if she came home with a black eye
again.

Nobody
had remembered to pack any drinks, so Emmy had to stand in the heat
between the goalposts, wiping away the sweat and moisture from the
air intermingling on her forehead. Her best friend, Jesse, stood to
her left playing defence, itching for the ball to come his
way.

“
Want to switch?” she asked. She was bored; she hadn’t had the
opportunity to block a single goal yet.

“
Not really.”

Groaning,
she leaned against the goalpost, letting her eyes wander down
towards the russet gravel beneath her. She would have enjoyed
playing a one-on-one game with her brother so much more, but since
he got accepted into that enigmatic boarding school, it was out of
the question. She had written to him, begging him to come to her
party, but he had insisted the school kept him too busy. In every
letter he had given some excuse along those lines, so she hadn’t
expected him to show up. Since he had left the previous year she
had not seen him once, and sometimes wondered if he was ever going
to come home.

“
Hey, Goldilocks! Pay attention!”

Emmy
snapped her head up in time to see a cluster of boys heading
straight towards her in a stampede of legs and powered dirt. Before
she had the chance to hunch down into position, Sam kicked the ball
low and hard, and hit Emmy right in the forehead. She fell
backwards into the gravel.

“
Way to go, Sam!”

“
Idiot – Mrs. Rathers is gonna kill us!”

“
She’s fine,” Sam defended himself. “She gets hit in the head
all the time. Hey, Goldilocks, get up!”

Emmy
groaned, trying to reply, but she was having a hard time being able
to move. Red spots started staining her vision, and there was a
buzzing in her ears that wouldn’t subside. Strange. Sam hadn’t hit
her ear.

And that
was when she first heard it.

It wasn’t
a buzzing at all, but whispers emanating inside her head, a
susurration brushing against the edges of her mind.

“
Hey Emmy, are you alright? Time to get up,” Jesse said,
leaning over to nudge her shoulder.

She shook
her head to clear the whispers away, but they didn’t stop. She
tried to make out what the words were, but couldn’t recognize any
of them. Soon she didn’t have to try. They began to chant louder
and louder until she wondered if the whispers really were coming
from inside her head.

“
Do you hear that?” Emmy asked.

Jesse
raised his eyebrows. “Hear what?”

She
closed her eyes, sparks of colour exploding behind her eyelids. The
whispers started to mesh; she couldn’t catch any words, if they
were even words at all. Not caring how childish it was, she covered
her ears with her hands.

“
Emmy? Emmy! What’s wrong?”

She was
just about to try to answer him when a sharp, blinding pain cut
across her chest and let out an involuntary scream
instead.

Somewhere
off in the distance she heard Jesse shout at the boys to go get
Mrs. Rathers.

Emmy
tried to answer Jesse, but the pain reached a peak and she could
only scream louder, arching her back in agony. She looked down at
her chest, sure a laceration would be there, but her shirt wasn’t
even torn. Nothing.

“
I’m ... bleeding,” she said in between gasps.

Jesse
shook his head, grabbing her hand. “No, you aren’t.”

The
frantic colours on the inside of her eyelids were started to come
together like an inkblot, making shapes that were recognizable to
her until finally, she could see a true picture. They came in
flashes: an ancient fireplace; a blood-stained wall; candles on a
stone floor arranged in an obscure pattern in dark room; a thin,
wide-eyed face.

The only
thing connecting her to the world was Jesse, the pressure of his
hands on her trying to push the arch of her back down.

Finally
the whispers in her head sharpened, and she caught two words: “I’m
sorry.” It was a woman.

And just
like that, the pain that felt like she was being torn open
vanished, the voices disappeared, and her breathing steadied. When
she opened her eyes this time the images were gone, and in their
place were the boys huddled around her, their mouths open in
horror. She rolled over onto her side to look at Jesse, the edges
of his face fuzzy.

“
P – please tell me you heard it,” she panted.

“
I didn’t hear anything,” Jesse said, trying to keep his voice
level. “Sam hit you in the head and you fell over and started
screaming like crazy. He must’ve knocked you pretty
hard.”

She was
about to protest this when Sam arrived back with her mother in tow,
in nothing but a bathrobe. Before Emmy could explain, her mother
scooped her daughter up off the gravel and into her arms. As her
mom carried her back towards the house, Emmy buried her face in her
chest. She felt awful. Her mother was so overprotective already and
would not take this lightly. She knew that if the boys told her
parents what happened, and they would, she would be sent to the
hospital to be examined for both her physical and mental health
state.

Her
mental health.

She
wanted to ask Jesse one more time if he had heard what she had
heard, but from his bleak expression that seemed to only carry
concern for her, she was pretty sure he hadn’t.

Despite
this, she knew what had happened. She had never felt pain like that
before in her entire life, and it couldn’t be possible to imagine
something you hadn’t experienced before, was it? She was still
breathing heavily, her skin prickling from the pain, but by the
time they got her to a doctor she would have returned to normal.
She knew everyone would deem her crazy, and soon she would start to
believe it herself. Maybe she was crazy, maybe she
wasn’t.

Emmy had
to wait a long time to get an answer to that.

Chapter 1

The
Glass Ball

“
Don’t you think I’m getting a little old for
this?”

Jesse
grinned. “If you’re not too old to sneak out of the house, you
can’t be too old to climb back in through the window,” he declared.
“It’s common sense.”

Although
Emmy begged to differ, all she did was grin back. At one o’ clock
in the morning, she would come up with a retort later. They both
had school the next day; if her parents caught her outside she
would be skewered and roasted alive. By not letting her go out, she
reasoned, her parents were stunting her maturity so she had no
choice but to scale the wall and climb back in through the window.
Clearly their poor parenting forced her do to this, which didn’t
reflect on her at all.

“
You aren’t going to get into too much trouble are you?” she
asked.

He
shrugged. “Nah, they probably didn’t even notice I left the house.
Anyways, I better leave you to your beauty sleep. With your grades,
you need it more than I do.”

Emmy made
a face at him. “Thanks. You can go now.”

“
Anytime,” he said, turning on his heel and waving goodbye.
She watched him sprint back down the street, into the darkness, a
shadow in only a few elapsed seconds.

She began
making her way up the lattice lining the side of her house that led
up to her bedroom. She had forgotten to bring her gloves, so her
fingers clamping onto the wood were numb with cold in seconds;
Christmas break might have been over, but winter sure wasn’t. The
heavily humid Montréal air not only made the summers hotter, but
the winters colder, and although she had lived there all her life,
Emmy had never quite gotten used to the drastic temperature
changes.

When
Jesse had said he wanted to do something fun before their second
semester of grade ten started, she thought he had meant something
cozy and indoors. Going to a party with kids she barely talked to
wasn’t really her idea of a good time, but she ended up enjoying
herself more than she thought she would. Jesse was always trying to
get her to expand her circle of friends, making a special effort to
get her to talk to more females. She had ended up talking to the
girls that normally scared her (on a dare by her friend Miles), but
had been pleasantly surprised by how nice they were.

When she
levelled with her bedroom window, she wedged her arm into the tiny
crack she had left open for herself, and slipped through as
silently as she could. No one was waiting in her room to bawl her
out, so she figured the coast was clear. She slipped into a pair of
pyjamas, and without turning any lights on, tiptoed down the stairs
to get herself a glass of water before bed. But just as she opened
the fridge door, she heard something clatter from behind
her.

Without
volition she squeaked, jumped, and spun around. She saw someone – a
dark silhouette in the middle of the living room outlined by the
moonlight shining through the gauzy curtains. It took her a split
second to realize why he was there. A thief. The shadow stopped
moving when she gasped, tilting his head in her
direction.

She knew
she was supposed to run, but her legs were paralyzed, so she did
the next best thing. She screamed.

This was
not what she should have done. When the man in the dark bounded
towards her Emmy’s senses snapped back to life and her legs started
working again. Nearly tripping over the carpet, she ran towards the
staircase but wasn’t fast enough. The man caught her, and they both
toppled over onto the floor.

She
struggled as best she could and attempted to scream again. He
covered her mouth with his hand, but she had enough sense to bite
him. Her mind raced so quickly a coherent thought couldn’t form and
became trapped in a circle of panic, not knowing what to do. A
fully grown man was on top of her – she wasn’t strong enough. There
was only one thing she could do ...

With all
the strength from the adrenaline pumping through her, she kneed him
right in the crotch. To her amazement, he rolled off of her.
Shaking, she got up and began to sprint to the stairs, when she
heard a series of noises. Clashing, smashing,
shattering.