A Witch's Curse (12 page)

“
Perhaps you could help me?”

“
Of course I will.”

Rose sat down, feeling a lightness overcoming her. “Why would she show up now?”

“
I don’t know. We’ll have to find out. One more thing. Forgiveness towards your mother is something you should think about. It won’t solve the problem we have, but it could lessen the danger a great deal.”

Rose paused. “I’ll think about it.”

“
Please do. If the curse that your mother’s brought with her, which is not only causing all of the bad luck we’ve encountered but also the emerging of the dead from their graves, then we could all meet the end of our lives.”

After they said goodbye and hung up, she walked back out into the living area, where her father was now watching an episode of Heroes. Everything had turned back to normal. Or so it seemed.

“
I’m going to bed,” she said.

“
Sleep well, but before you do, there’s something I wanted to tell you.”

“
Yeah Dad. What is it?”

He shifted uncomfortably, his eyes turning upward to the ceiling for a second. “Never mind. Sweet dreams. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She nodded, bidding him the same good wishes, and then walked upstairs. She turned on the light switch, discovering a face in her window.

She wanted to scream in abject terror, before seeing that it was Grady. She walked over to him and opened the pane, grabbing his hand and allowing him inside.

“
You should at least text me before deciding to climb up the tree in my front yard and staring into my bedroom. There’s something creepy about that.”

“
Well, you didn’t have your cell on you, and I didn’t want your Dad coming across something I were to send.”

“
Aren’t your family worried sick about you after tonight?”

“
I took a shower and went to bed. They think I’m under my covers right now.” He brushed past her and made himself right at home, laying down on her bed as if he were in an apartment they had shared for a months. “Listen, I didn’t thank you tonight for coming down on the field to make sure that I wasn‘t hurt.”

“
You would’ve done the same for me,” she said.

“
This is going to sound random, but bear with me. How many absent days have you had?”

“
One,” she said. “I don’t even think it was documented in their archives, because that’s how invisible I am to some people.”

“
Let’s skip class and go somewhere tonight. What do you say?”

“
It’s only fifteen degrees outside.”

“
We both have warm clothing.”

It was true. He was dressed in a sort of tweedy gray coat that was almost Dickensian in comparison to the usual sports related attire he normally donned.

“
Where do you want to go?” Rose asked. She was still set up for the cold, in a thick and tan dyed jacket.

“
The beach four houses away from here,” he said. “My car’s parked only half a block from where we’re at. We don’t even have to get out and walk, I just want to look at the lake at night with you. Is that a problem? We‘ll stay up late tonight and sleep in tomorrow. I think we deserve a break after what we‘ve gone through today.”

Rose thought about this in great detail as fast as she could. While cognizant of how she had to form a banishing spell, that could wait tomorrow, and skipping class would actually give her more time to focus her energy on completing a focused incantation.

“
Yes,“ she said.

They slipped out of her window, carefully making their way down the tree, branch by branch.

Once they had reached the bottom they ran to his vehicle. Once inside, the heaters were on high, and they drove to the shoreline.

Strolling onto the sandy plain, the lake resembled what she could imagine the floor of heaven to be, with its vapory blue of afternoon’s past now appearing as a black swell.

She almost tripped on a rock, coming close to landing in the below zero waters. Her date caught her arm, pulling her upwards.

“
Be careful there,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what to tell authorities when trying to explain to them how I found your dead body washed ashore after spending most of the evening with you.”

“
Your pillow talk is much more romantic,” she said.

Grady held her close as they walked along a curving part of the shore, before finally returning to the water. When they were so near that its ebbing and tiding surge almost touched their shoes, they lightly dipped their fingers into it so as to feel how frigid the abyss was. Holding one another while peering upwards to the sky, they were both equally amazed at how close the illuminating dots seemed.

A black and white bird landed on the water, quick as the snap of a whip, before raising itself and then flying even further into nearby shadows.

“
That was an osprey,” he said.

“
Why would I care?”

“
Because I’ve been in your room,” he said with a snort. “You collect tomes on mythology and anything ancient. The osprey has its place in the world’s great parables. In one of the Greek legends, a jealous king turned into an osprey so as to attack his daughter, who fell in love with a ruler of Crete.”

“
That’s not very flattering to the osprey then, is it?”

They walked on, gripping each others hands whilst strolling along the widespread sands, extended before them as a stretch of desert chilled by a local overflowing of the range’s old and thawed out ice caps.

There was a cluster of lights in the distance, signaling the existence of towers, hotels, and casino’s still active and vibrant with energy. A port even further in the remoteness, insofar as what looked like a good twenty seven miles away, was glowing a greenish hue. In addition to all of this, a policeman’s patrol cruiser was out on the lake, its headlights coming into view within the dimness prevalent on the other coast.

They sat down on the sand and laid by each other’s side.

“
My Mom’s cheating on my Dad,” Grady said. The words did not contain any hint of hurt. They were merely spoken with the same grandeur that a mechanic possesses when discussing a faulty engine.

“
I’m so sorry,” Rose said, trying to hold him closer, although it was impossible. They were in each others arms, and yet it still did not seem close enough to provide the sort of emotionally placating ease she longed to give him .

“
Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not a surprise. Sure it still hurts, but it doesn’t bother me. I just hope they get divorced.”

“
That’s awful news to hear.”

“
Well, not everyone’s family life can be as perfect as yours.” Grady gave this comeback with a wink, before pulling her in nearer.

Yeah, she thought, kissing him. Right.

12

Since she did not have to be at school the next day, Rose dedicated herself to learning about expulsion spell casting.

She locked her door, sat on her bed while the heater vent in the corner kept her warm, and studied. No television or internet allowed; just coffee and dusty leather bound digests related to witchery.

Rose had always held it in her mind, even as a practitioner of magic, that the best way to evict somebody from your life was to do it verbally or even physically, assuming one was pushed. Yet this was different, and she had no other choice in the matter. Using books that Ms. Harvey had given her, in addition to plowing through her own past volumes until her eyes strained and her mind felt as if it were about to pummel from her very head, she did her best to find the best possible charm of division to use. One was as simple as writing your enemy’s name on four pieces of paper and saying an affirmation out loud, one including the person you are hoping to get rid of in the mantra, while flushing each individual piece of writing down the toilet. As amateur as this was, it did not work, for she did not actually know the names of her enemies. Simply writing ‘the black shrouded one’ would not have been specific enough according to the laws of the supernatural, and even her mother had two or more names. There were all sorts of protection hymns and purification chants listed in the resources, not to mention endless ways to deflect pessimism and overcome antagonism, which rather bitterly reminded her of nu-age help pamphlets sold in the usual bookstore for any gullible person to buy.

“
Rose?” Her father’s voice drifted from downstairs.

She cussed under her breath silently, knowing the deal was up. She was caught skipping school, and was agonizingly aware that whatever consequences coming her way would not be pleasant. She did not want to have to sweep the driveway again.

She ran downstairs and could not see her father anywhere. He came in through the front door, appearing to have checked something outside.

“
Something told me you were home,” he said.

“
I didn’t expect you to be up so early.”

“
Usually I’m not, but I’ve been feeling a little weird. You can sit down, hon.”

She did as was told, and thought it best to not tell him the truth. “I stayed home because I’m recovering from the scoreboard incident last night.”

“
I don’t believe you,” he said.

She was stunned, feeling as if the iron hand of his power over the house was going to come crushing down on her with all of its might, grounding her from everything - no prom, no cell-phone or television or films on DVD or nights with her friends. Nothing to look forward to on weekends except common drudgery like mopping and scrubbing floors, or worse yet, cleaning out his garage. He had only done it once before in her entire life, admittedly. Her father was a sweet, kind man who most usually loved her with the sort of affection that is rare in human life outside of the functioning and decent parent child relationship. Yet when he rarely was angry with her, the storm of contention was menacing, and its residual effects on her life could last quite a while.

“
I also don’t care,” he said. “You deserve a day off. You’ve been racking your brain preparing for the year ahead of you, and I imagine it hasn’t been easy. I was in High School once, and I remember the pressure.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, feeling much better. “Thanks. Is that why you called me here?”

“
No,” he said, his voice almost dropping to a murmur. “I need someone to tell me I’m sane. That I’m imagining things.”

“
Why?”

“
Because my eyes must be playing tricks on me.”

She got up from her chair and rested her hand on his forehead. It felt perfectly fine, with no signs of a feverish bout ready to hit. She sat back down again, peering into his eyes and searching for some kind of an answer. She knew this was not going to be easy for him.

“
Dad, you can tell me what happened.”

He gazed out the window for a second. “No one’s there now, but…”

“
Yes?”

He turned to face her again. “I saw your mother standing in our driveway.”

The following morning she was left alone in the house. Damian’s shift was later than usual. Or he was deliberately exhausting himself, falling into his old patterns of being a workaholic so as to intentionally divert himself from all disturbing matters afflicting his existence, since his nerves were almost as frayed as hers. Rose felt sorry for him, because at least she had an idea of how whatever was going on had some ties to the mystical, undetected forces people encounter everyday and choose to ignore, whereas her father was already beginning to diagnose himself as mad.

Ordinarily she enjoyed having the place to herself upon waking up, simply due to how she could be left alone with her thoughts, the kind of uncertainties and hopes which swirled constantly around in her mind. Sunrise was not often her favorite part of the day to begin with, because a sort of antisocial mood usually took her, making her rather objectionable company around others. On this particular day she found herself too anxious and worried about the matters at hand to enjoy the usual solitary reassuring peace of being isolated to collect one‘s thoughts before the schedule kicked into overdrive.

While sipping her tea, she turned on the television and sat down on the black reclining chair. Her makeup was applied, and the backpack in the corner was already loaded. Everything was ready. A need for having all of the recent pressures off of her shoulders for only a second at the very least overcame her, and she decided to channel surf, knowing that her only obligation was to walk out the door and drive to the place she had to be. Already, she was slightly concerned about whether or not the teachers would be upset with her skipping class.

The first mistake she made was turning to the local news.

The second was watching in open mouthed horror at all of the recent coverage.

A thirty two year old man, Mr. Lewis, who was known amongst the youth for his conservative dressing and passivity, had been arrested after his wife told authorities that he was the one responsible for the recent burning of The Chief’s Land Motel Resort. He was judged to be a little eccentric by more than a few people, but there was nothing overwhelmingly strange about him. Most pegged him as boringly dull. After he served his time for starting the fire, he went out and hired a hit man to kill his ex.

After she was murdered by the infamous hired hand of a Mafioso member, both the husband and the trained killer were convicted to life in prison. This had all happened only a few blocks away from where Rose and her father lived.