A Witch's Curse (19 page)

Turning around, she saw that all three were now chasing her, their snarls audible through the thrashing wind. She pulled out her wand and tried to focus on the defensive spell Harvey had taught her long ago.

Within a second one of the wolves was punched backwards, its legs flailing underneath it before landing in the lake. There were still two more coming towards her, and now that she was sedentary, she found herself trying to focus that same energy on the remaining couple.

It was no use. One of the wolves, its fangs bared and dripping with its saliva, floundered its arm upwards. Its claws came in her direction, their sharpness glinting in the moon light‘s pallor. She moved swiftly to the left, dodging the blow, but her wand fell out of her hand, landing in between two oversized rocks. Rose leapt to in between the animals, knowing she was going to get hurt in a very bad way if she did not act fast. She retrieved her implement, and then raised it against the two, uttering an incantation. Soon, both of them were struck so hard by a blast of wind that they were removed fifteen feet away. Rose herself slid several inches in reverse, shocked at the impact that her hymn possessed.

Knowing she now had a chance to outrun them, assuming they needed recovery time from their wounds, she turned around and sprinted along Veil beach, lunging over massive rocks that stood in her way. Before long she was climbing the same slope she had used to enter the shore, seeing her car visible in the distance. Reaching the top and feeling out of breath, she put her keys into the lock and turned frantically. At first the latch would not open, so she had to reenter the metal device and twist until the familiar clicking noise was perceptible.

She sat in the car seat and turned the ignition on, inspecting her body for any signs of bleeding. There were none.

While then pulling the vehicle out, looking both ways to make sure there was no oncoming traffic, she heard a scratching. Turning to stare through her window, she saw that it was on the wolves hysterically biting, scraping and licking the glass frame.

Rose pressed the pedal harder, before making her way out onto the empty road, going way past the speed limit until the animal had faded away from sight in the rearview mirror, disappearing into the background’s mist.

Rose went to her locker the following morning. She opened up the door and reached for one of her textbooks. It was only a matter of time before she felt something wet brushing against her fingers. Looking down, it became apparent that her fingers were stained crimson. She tried to pull herself together, demanding herself not to scream. There was no use in causing a scene if it was nothing more than a practical joke pulled on her by an enemy.

She pulled up a piece of paper, one that looked as if it could have been white at one point but was now manila because of age. She looked at it closely, sniffing the ends of her fingers and then, knowing it may not be the smartest move, tasted them.

It was blood. She peered closely at it and saw that it was a letter, using human intestinal fluid as its ink. She read the words and saw that its message was direct.

R.W. - this is a notification for you. I am in the town’s main plaza near the Marriott. If you are not there in an hour, one of your classmates will die. I am waiting.

Rose stuffed the note back in her locker, closing the door and then leaning against it with her back, taking in a breath. She walked away from the hall, knowing that this could be a stupid move, but she had no other choice. There was an appointment with a potential killer. Maybe it was Gerdur, she thought, in need of some more liquor.

Walking off the student grounds, one of the school monitors yelled at her.

“
Do you have a signed slip?”

Ignoring the person whose words seethed with hate, she walked on, getting into her car as fast as she could and then driving out of the lot. The first three lights were green, which gave her a great sense of respite, despite how tense and uptight she was.

Her cell-phone rang. She grabbed it, afraid of who could be on the other line.

“
Hello?”

All she heard was static and the distant humming of vehicles in the background. Her minutes had run out on the cell.

She parked in an alleyway close to the hotel, and then stepped out to make her way across a series of cobblestone steps. Soon she was in the heart of the square.

The black cloaked man was standing next to a bench. The person behind him was Gina Radcliffe. She seemed mortified. In her hand was a phone, which explained who had called her. The adversary’s face, masked in shadows, seemed to be hiding a cruel smile. Rose thought that the person dressed in a black robe stood out in a hugely negative way on a day like this. There were bikers out getting in their cardio, couples going for a walk and tourist shoppers staring into the windows hungrily. Everyone was normal except for him.

She approached them and found herself only a few feet away from the stranger.

“
What are you doing?” Rose asked.

“
I want to know who you are. You remind me of someone I’ve met.” His voice sounded like a rodent which had just lost its teeth.

“
Who?” Rose asked, hoping her cover was not blown.

“
I cannot tell yet.”

“
What are you doing with her?” Rose said, pointing to Gina. She was standing in one place, completely inert and frozen faced, except for the way her mouth curved, which hinted at panic.

“
She is a great gift,” the man said. “I had to pick the one student that everyone loved, otherwise I couldn’t make sure if she meant anything to you. Of course you are so weak, it wouldn’t have mattered who I had chosen. You’re name is Rose. A mere mortal. Yet not, isn‘t that right? There’s something about you we don’t know.”

“
I’m your boss’s daughter,” Rose said. “Not sure if you knew that.”

Complete silence filled the square.

“
I will see you soon.”

With that, the rival wrapped his hands around Gina, and threw her onto the curb of the street. Rose glanced in that direction and saw that a bus was making its way towards them.

Rose ran over to where Radcliffe now was and grabbed her, throwing her down on the sidewalk as the vehicle skimmed past them, spitting out exhaust onto the trail of black skid marks it was leaving behind in its trail.

Gina stared at her with awe.

“
Hi,” Rose said. “I just saved your life. You’re welcome. By the way, your captor’s vanished, so I hope you‘re happy.”

“
Eww, what are you doing here?” A pause ensued. “What am I doing here?”

Rose rolled her eyes and stood up. “I didn’t expect you to remember anything. Let‘s just say that you passed out last night at whatever party you were attending, and some cabbie, feeling sorry for you, dropped you off here. Does that work?”

Gina stared at her blankly.

“
It’s happened before, right? Have a good day. See you at school tomorrow, camel spider.”

Rose would have offered her holy water, but she knew Gina would not have taken it seriously anyways. Turning her back, she walked back to the campus.

On the drive back to school in her black car, she called Alexis.

“
I saw him again.”

“
Who?”

“
The black cloaked man. He’s become such a nuisance. He threatened to kill Gina - the girl that I’ve always told you I didn’t like? Yeah. He knows I’m Karen’s daughter, although I think he already had that bit of info.”

“
What did Gina make of it all?”

“
She had amnesia or something. Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you something…traffic is becoming annoying. I wish there was a quicker way of getting around, if I‘m going to be saving lives and all. Er, Miss Harvey?”

She knew this had to be worded carefully, despite not having much time to formulate the proper way to make such a strange curiosity sound practical.

“
Can we witches really fly on broomsticks, or is that just an urban legend?”

Alexis paused for a second. “Of course. You’ve seen me alter the way people think forever in a heartbeat. Did you think we couldn’t pull off what is quite literally the oldest trick in the book?”

“
Just curious. That’s good to know. How did we come to ride broomsticks? Why not something a bit more retro or hip, like, say a lion with wings under our command…or something?”

“
Ah, you never cease to impress me. Brooms are essentially wands with many magical carvings on them - only the old practitioners needed a way to disguise the symbols, and brooms seemed to be the best way to do so. It was easier than constantly hiding what was obviously a wand underneath a pile of twigs every Monday morning.”

“
Uh huh,” Rose said. “Can you make me one?”

19

Rose and Grady were standing outside of the cemetery gates in each other‘s arms, gazing at the enormous twisting black entryway before them, its wrought iron exterior encircled by a wall of brick and mortar.

Layers of moss seemed to grow before their eyes on the spindly apertures. She wondered just how they were going to make their way in. It was clear that this was going to be a struggle, since the barriers were now higher than they had ever been, due to a reconstruction as ordered by Barkwood, who owned the property in clearly a zealous way.

“
I would think that breaking into a burial ground for the second time at eleven forty seven at night would be the perfect thing to do on Halloween,” he said. “Now I’m starting to have my doubts.”

“
It’s not the time for that. You have to remember that it’s Halloween for me all year round. You might as well get used to it.”

“
True,” he said with a deep breath out. “I can’t believe they built more cement on the gates. He really doesn’t want people trespassing.”

“
We’re the ones who provoked him to make the gates higher.”

“
That‘s how great we are. We’ve already achieved literal landmarks. Lucky us.”

“
Grab that rock in the corner.”

Grady turned around and saw a large stone the size of his head lying in between two flower pots. He crouched down and gripped it, before walking up to the opening. He banged it against the front sleek and bar shaped lock. The circular gadget fell off onto the ground, landing in a pile of lifeless shrubbery.

He pushed the two slabs open with a single push.

They walked through them and into the graveyard, following a path to the mourning chair. It was a spindly bench built with similar patterns architects utilize when shaping gargoyles.

Grady sat down first. Rose had to retrieve her father’s shaving mirror before placing herself beside him. After she retrieved the small hand held reflecting glass, she lowered her body onto the seat.

“
You do know it’s bad luck to sit in a devil’s chair, right?”

Rose had heard that term before. “In mourning chairs in cemeteries around the world, witnesses have claimed to see Satan sitting in them.”

She could have sworn that the color of his face transformed into a pallid shade.

“
I didn’t want to force you to do something bad,” she said. “My life has just turned into absolute chaos every since my mother showed up. This could be our last chance of defeating her. She’s too powerful for me to face her head on. If we can’t get answers from this Worth, then there’s no chance for all of Lake Pines. For our lives, even.”

“
Did Gerdur mention God?”

Rose did not see this question coming. “Why?”

“
Because if she said that demons exist and Lucifer can inhabit the world in some way, then that means there’s a Heavenly Father out there. This world is screwed, but I would think it would be balanced. In that regard at least, right?”

“
Grady, I don’t know. My only thought was to get out of there as soon as possible with as much information as I could gather, and not on means of theology. No offense.”

“
I can’t blame you,” he said.

“
Do you believe in Him?” Rose asked.

Grady looked at the dirty land for a long while, before raising his head and staring at the tombstones and depressingly bleak memorials around them. “I try.”

“
You’ve summed up my feelings,” she said, raising the mirror. “Are you ready?”

He agreed that now was the time. She held up the glass and stared directly into it. He held Rose’s hand to ease her, although after everything she had been through this semester, she was not worried.

“
Mary Worth,” Rose said. She uttered it again, and then finally a third time.

On the fourth repetition, odd things began stirring.

A gale struck the grounds, pushing back maple trees lined around the edges of the catacombs.

By the time she had said it a fifth time, the branches on the softwoods began falling off, flowing along with the small whirlwind that was bearing down upon the dark charnel acres. The potter’s field was beginning to resemble a tornado incident with each minute.

“
Mary Worth,“ she said, the thirteenth invocation escaping her lips.

It felt as if the night had become darker, like all of the house’s sprawled out in the far-off hills were no longer lit up, awaiting kids who were trick or treating. Shadows plummeted from the celestial sphere above and fenced them in.