Cursed (27 page)

"Are you suggesting we get to the Mass?"

"I'm thinking it will need to be later after everyone is gone. Priests and parishioners may not take too kindly to our setting a fire on church property – even if it is to stop a witch." He grinned a little and Sarah responded with the same grin as conspirators and partners in this and he knew they were in this together all the way.
Maybe after all this time, the suffering would finally end tonight.

Mason looked at her list and finally said, "Maybe we should do a few of these spells and not put all our eggs in one basket. Just in case we choose one and get it wrong. But, Sarah, that would mean we would be tinkering in magic ourselves. Are you okay with that?
”

Sarah's eyes were wide and she looked scared in the flickering candle light. He knew she was trying to act brave by finding these remedies, but do they really want to play with black magic? He had concerns about exposing Sarah to Zoe or Selena or whatever the foul witch was calling herself, but if it meant breaking this spell for good and sending her away to keep Sarah safe, he would muster all the bravery he could tonight.

"We don't have a choice, Mason. These last forty-eight hours I have come to believe in a lot of things, things I would never have given any credence to in the past, but I don't feel we have any choice and need to fight this with the only tools available to us." She looked at her computer screen. "If I could have found a more rational way of facing this, believe me I would tell you. But banishments and spells and magic of all kinds are the only things I could find.”

They laid out their plan at the counter, deciding on which to do and making a list of what they would need. One item that Sarah thought would be problematic was a black candle but Mason hoped he could find one in
apartment 2A. The man that lived there had a contemporary black and white decor and he thought he had seen black candles on the dining room table one time in a fancy silver candelabra. Another was for several pounds of salt but they figured by searching every apartment they might be able to come up with enough.

They decided to check the
Baldwin's apartment for herbs and mistletoe, which was a requirement for one charm that they luckily had in the building for Christmas.

With their list made, Mason picked up the green bottle and flashlight. The jar's contents rattling, he poured the items onto the counter, carefully pulling the hairs and fingernails to the side.

Sarah gathered up the few small personal pieces of Selena and put it in an envelope to hold aside for later. Mason then returned the nails and bent pins to the container and excused himself for the bathroom to fill the jar and initiate their plan.

“Mason?” He heard fear in her voice as she stood behind him. The light wavered on the doorknob from the flashlight she held. Turning the keys on the large brass circle he selected the one for the Baldwin’s unit.

“It’s okay, Sarah.”

Mason entered the apartment and found his way in the dark to the kitchen with Sarah following closely behind, her hand on his back. They quickly opened and closed cabinets until Sarah found the salt and dried rosemary. As she added these to the bag they had brought to carry her notebook, two white candles and salt shaker from her apartment, Mason held up more white candles. “Found more candles.”

They moved off to the apartment across the hall and as Sarah searched the kitchen, Mason went on a hunt for the black candles.

“Damn it!” Mason’s voice sounded tired and exasperated. Sarah appeared next to him, shining the flashlight towards the middle of the table. A holiday arrangement of silver and white ornaments filled a shallow bowl.

“Well, it must still be here somewhere.” Frantically she swept the room with the beam of light. Mason steadied her arm and she looked back to him, immediately calming and finally smiling. “I’ll go get the salt.”

Mason began exploring the china cabinet looking for the black candles and wishing he had brought the second flashlight with them. Sarah could be heard rummaging around in the kitchen as Mason went to work pulling out table clothes, vases, and other odds and ends from the china cabinet. He felt around blindly with his hand until he felt a waxy cylinder. Wrapping his fingers around the candle he pulled it out and held it close to his face but couldn’t see well with only the moonlight coming through the windows.
It looks black.
Feeling around he found two others, and then a fourth.

“I have it,” Sarah called out. Mason strode to the kitchen and held the candles under the light and smiled. Two black and two white.

“How much salt?”

“Not enough. Not yet anyway.” She looked at the candles in Mason’s hands and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank goodness.”

They moved on, creeping down the marble stairs that led to the lobby. Moonlight splashed in through the front door window and spilled across the marble floor below. Their footsteps echoed in the high ceilinged foyer as they descended. “I don’t like the feeling I have down here.”

“Why are you whispering?” He whispered back.

“I’m not sure. I just feel like someone is listening to us.”

“No one is in the building, Sarah. I’m sure of it. Let’s just go through 1B and get what we need.”

Apartment 1B held a jackpot; a new unopened box of salt, perhaps even enough for what they needed the salt for. Locking up 1B they quickly crossed the foyer to Mason’s apartment door at the back. Once inside Mason grabbed his box of salt and Sarah lingered in the living room. Returning with the box he stopped short as he noticed Sarah staring up at the paintings on the wall. Shining the flashlight upward, she moved from painting to painting. In the bizarre upward glow of the flashlight, Mason observed her facial expressions as she went through multiple changes of recognition and confusion, delight and fear.

Mason cleared his throat causing Sarah to jump a little and then shake herself free of her inner thoughts. “I still can’t get over this, Mason. I look at these and they are so familiar yet . . . that feeling is replaced with looking at something entirely new. I know from experience I can’t do this,” gesturing to the painting on the wall, “but if I
were
to paint, this is
exactly
how I would stylistically envision painting the scene.”

“Catherine was quite gifted, and although I am convinced there is some of Catherine still with you, you are your own person and uniquely special, too.”

Sarah looked at him, searching his face and finally a hint of a smile on her lips. She placed her hand on the middle of his chest and he knew she must feel his heartbeat hammering away.

“Thank you, Mason. You are a very sweet.” There was a twinkle in her eyes and he sensed a slight flirtatious lilt in her voice like Catherine had used with him.
I can’t fail her this time
.

“Let’s give this a try.”

Sarah nodded and slid her hand slowly off his chest, “Where? We need to leave these candles going for hours.”

A look of dread crossed his face but he quickly came to a resolution. “The front lobby should work. The floor is marble and there is nothing that can catch fire if a candle falls over.”

Sarah and Mason took the bag with the boxes, canister and salt shakers with them to the front lobby. At the other end, near the front door was the large round table under the chandelier but at this end they had space. “You might be better at doing this than I would be.”

Sarah took the salt he was offering and opened the various spouts, pouring the salt onto the floor in the shape of a pentagon. She used almost all the salt; as she finished the last line with the salt shaker remnants, she was glad she had not decided to draw a larger symbol on the floor. She had saved one small container aside for later.

Sarah consulted the notebook where she had jotted down her notes. At each of the points, she sprinkled Melanie’s dried rosemary flakes. Mason stood by the door to the back hall, watching Sarah and feeling a sense of excitement and dread.

Each corner of the pentagram needed a white candle, a few drops of candle wax were burned and dropped on the floor and a candle was set in the melted wax to allow it to remain standing straight up. They worked quickly together and when all five candles were in place they began to light them.

Pointing in her notes, Sarah gave instructions. “We need to start at the top, light the candles one by one and say these lines together after each are lit.”

Mason lit the first one and took Sarah’s hand. In unison, their voices weaving together in the moonlit lobby, they spoke the breaking spell together. “By the dark and the light – Your spell ends tonight.” When all five candles were lit, and the verse repeated after each lighting, they stood back and looked at the glowing pentagram.

“I have chills. Wonder if she knows what we are doing.” Mason didn’t answer – he had had the same thought.

“In one hour we need to blow these out and do it again only that time we need to let them burn all the way down and leave in place for a week.”

He stared at the flames. “’Tis going to cause some talk when they all return from holiday.”

“Let them talk.” Sarah looked up at him and smiled encouragingly. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Okay, what’s next?”

Sarah consulted her notebook. “I think we should try this reverse spell, just to make sure and to keep her away for good. We need to make it to the church but . . . I’m a little scared about going out there.”

Their gazes both sought the front door window and the cold darkness beyond. “It’s going to be morning soon, Sarah. It’s now or never.” He looked over her shoulder at the notebook she held with the flashlight trained on the notes.

“We need a black cauldron? Like a witches' cauldron?”

“A black iron pot should work.”

They got to work, gathering what was needed and then dressing for the snowy trek to St. Matthew’s at the end of the block.

The candles had burned for their first hour and they blew each out and started anew with the top point, again reciting the required spell, their voices spiraling and echoing together.

“I don’t feel comfortable leaving this.”

“You said yourself it’s on marble, what harm can it do?”

Mason closed his eyes and could see the fire again. Flames leaping across the roof of the stable, embers dropping on the dry hay, smoldering and catching fire. The crackle as it ate away at the wood and beams supporting the structure and how it sucked the air away and replaced it with the black thick smoke that had filled his lungs.

Mason’s eyes snapped open as he tried to shake the images off. Zipping his coat, he immediately noticed how much better it fit without being hunched over.

Sarah pulled her hat down over her ears, the dirty blond hair spilling over her black down jacket. She picked up the bag and nodded her readiness to Mason.

For a moment they stood quietly at the front door, peering as far up the street as they could see. “The cry we heard earlier sounded like it was far away.” He reassured both of them, although he wondered if the act had actually put Selena on notice that they were fighting back.

Slowly opening the door the freezing wind hit them in the face. They blocked the cracked opening with their bodies and quickly slid outside, more quickly than they would have liked, in fear that the wind would blow out a candle.

On the front step, they looked back in and saw the slight glow beyond the round table, although they could not see whether all five candles had remained lit.

Mason was carrying the black cast iron soup pot he had retrieved from storage in the attic as well as a snow shovel. He had found some extra pieces of untreated oak flooring in the basement that they has used in the house many years ago and had given it to Sarah to bring along in case the oak tree branches proved to be too damp. He had been feeling more positive about this deed until he set foot outside, and now the feeling of dread invaded him again. When he looked out to the street, he realized why.

“Sarah, stay close.”

Without hesitation, she grabbed on to his arm. “What’s wrong?”

Holding the railing as they descended the snow covered stairs; Mason hurried to the end of the walkway and scanned the street. It was gone.

“The filigree burner. It’s gone. It was right out here on the street where we threw it.” Taking one last look around now that they were standing at the end of the front walk, they then
scaled the huge snow pile along the street. The sidewalks hadn't been cleared and their best hope was the street.

Mason climbed the snow bank and juggling his pot and shovel, held out his gloved hand to help pull Sarah. She struggled in her Uggs and slipped a few times but made it up. As they stood at the top of the snow bank, they could see further up the street to the warm orange streetlights along
Columbus Avenue, illuminating the side of St. Matthew’s.

Still holding her hand, Mason looked down the steep wall of snow created from the side of a large snowplow blade. He gingerly made his way down the steep bank onto the snowy pavement and delivered them both safely to the ground. Walking along the middle of the snowy valley, he glanced at the sleepy brownstones lining the street that seemed to exude an almost surreal sense of calm. People were inside sleeping; the few children who lived on the street were most likely waiting for Santa’s arrival with the proverbial sugar plums dancing in their heads and the stockings hung. And he and Sarah were heading to the church to perform a spell breaking ritual to send a half witch, half demon creature back into the darkness from which she came. He looked down at Sarah as they walked and could tell she was having similar thoughts. Or was she? How would he feel if he realized he had a past life? A life that brought him back to the same place to finish what had started?