Witch Eyes (2 page)

two

There was a moment where time seemed to fracture, a
crystalline snapshot of the world where Uncle John
had started raising his arm, his face full of fear and alarm. Where motes of sunlight lay poised above me, and the westerly breeze was tangible and tangled up against my skin. It was as if the world around me had called a time out.

Then the landscape expanded into something larger than four dimensions, the binding boiled itself down to an alphabet of magic, and the visions swallowed me up.

So many hunters, tracking weary feet on sullen soil brown with disappointment and impotence. The animals avoided this place of strange magic; ancient ways worked into the stone down to the very bedrock. Silver songs under the full moon, dark music of the fallen things when the sky grew dark. And a man, hiding and running and running and hiding. His fear soaked up into the roots like water.

The sunglasses were meant to keep my powers in check. With the ability to see the world as it truly was—not the filtered world that most people saw, but the true world—I soaked up everything like a giant sponge. Everything that has ever happened in a place, to a person, or because of an object leaves an imprint. The stronger the emotion, the more violent the death, the darker the spell, the impression will be likewise as strong.

My eyes—my power—was also my curse. Witch eyes, my uncle called them. A “gift.” I was “special.”

Sometimes being special wasn’t a good thing. It was every short-bus nightmare come to life. Normal people had eyes that stayed a solid color. Blue. Brown. Hazel. Their eyes weren’t on some sort of permanent screensaver, always moving and shifting around, never the same shade twice.

Every time I unleashed the power of my vision, it was only a matter of time before I was overwhelmed. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of memories were in a place, and all of them funneled into me all at once. For as long as they ravaged through me, I’m at their mercy.

But my eyes also had another use. Magic had its own distinct presence in my visions, and spells had their shapes and forms. To look at the magic was like swallowing it up with my brain, dissecting it until I understood exactly what the spell did and why, and storing that information for later.

I could duplicate almost any spell I’d seen, but spells were fragile things, and they couldn’t hold up after being poked and prodded by my brain.

My eyes tore through the binding circle like it was no thicker than a blade of grass.

One hundred twenty-two hours. Seven thousand, three hundred forty-one minutes. Four charms buried to prepare the path, eleven spells to empower, thirty-nine pieces of quartz all mined from Arkansas, four candles hand-dipped by the woman who was so desperate she’d do anything. Ordered and neutral and everything has a face the facts he’s outstripped you with caramel drums pounding at dawn bursts of thundering waterfalls that used to filter through here.

Faster and faster, images and memories and distances pulsed in front of me as the spell unraveled and laid its essence down in supplication. The fire shot up around me, rivaling the sun, and then was snuffed out. Beyond the spell, I saw the field for what it was.

Lavender air wafted down the path he shouldn’t have taken if he knew what’s good for him leaving me for that dark angry sun red hate working here everyone’s so rude with their cowboy hats and expensive jade ambivalence like anything really makes a difference anyway, you’re never getting out of the darkness.

“Focus on the spell,” someone called out, their voice ringing like it was coming from down a dark hallway. But their advice was sound. I looked, and remembered, and felt.

Seven layers to the spell, seven different elements and in different numbers. Frequencies and patterns and words and lines that draw a picture in the air. I could see how all the pieces fit together, and how they’d been so carefully arranged. Magic was normally paint by numbers, but this was very nearly a masterpiece. It was the design that caught my attention and allowed me to focus until John could react.

Blessed quiet settled over me, and my eyes settled behind darkened shades. “You cheated,” my uncle whis
pered, his hand against my head.

I counted my breaths, getting to twenty before I tried to move. Or think. I realized something was pressed against my nose, and my eyes closed involuntarily. Another nosebleed? My gift came with a price. Headaches were the le
ast of it, then nosebleeds, then migraines, and then unconsciousness.

I tried to sit up and started coughing instead. It was like I’d suddenly inhaled a tobacco farm. “Not such a badass spell after all.”

He started rubbing my back like I was a toddler needing to burp. “I should make you put it all back together,” he said. “Any idea how long that took me?”

“Seven thousand, three hundred forty-one minutes,” I managed, through another round of coughs.

“Migraine?”

I closed my eyes and focused. Usually, the migraine came blistering forward, like a flag corps in a parade. But there wasn’t anything at the moment. “Nothing yet.”

“Good, because I’m not carrying you back to the house,” he said, grabbing my arm and helping me back to my feet, before adding, “Slacker.”

“You’re just mad everything fell apart so quick.” I kept my hand on his shoulder as we headed back toward the house, my eyes on the ground watching every step I took.

“That spell could have held a demon for days. The point wasn’t to use your power to break the spell apart,” he said, his voice again taking on that chiding tone I hated. “It was to try doing it the hard way. To try to rely on yourself, instead of your gift.”

“But you say that like I’m going to wake up someday without the curse. It’s always going to be there.”

My footing grew surer the closer we got to the log cabin. We’d lived in Montana since I was thirteen, moving away from the hellacious summers in Arizona where I’d grown up. In Montana there was actual snow, and trees, and rain. We still lived in the middle of nowhere, but at least we were hermits with actual weather.

Uncle John stopped suddenly, and I almost ran into him. “You know what using the witch eyes does to you,” he said, looking away from me. “That’s why we have to work so hard at containment.”

As long as something can create a filter between me and the visions, I can look out at the world like everyone else. Sunglasses are the only real option—the dark lens focuses my attention. If I wore regular glasses, it would be almost impossible not to look out of the corner of my eye, or at things just outside the lens. Once the visions started, it was harder and harder to pull away.

“I get it.”

“Do you?” He shook his head and chuckled. “Your grandfather would have beat the ever-loving piss out of me if I’d ever tried to take the easy way out. Nothing worthwhile came without adversity.”

We climbed the stairs and headed inside the covered deck. “You don’t talk about him very often.”

Uncle John looked back at me, almost as though he was remembering I was there. “No sense in dwelling in the past. Nothing there but bad memories and regrets.”

I hesitated, wanting to push but afraid of shattering the moment. He didn’t get in one of these sharing moods very often. “Like … like my dad?”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off by the shrill ring of the telephone. I watched his face close up, all those secrets about his life before me locked back up in the vault.

“I’ll get it,” I said, hurrying into the house. Just as much to get away as anything else. Family was one of those things that Uncle John got funny about. I knew he didn’t get along with his father, and I knew my dad was his brother, but that was almost all I knew. My dad hadn’t wanted me, was going to give me away, and Uncle John stepped in and took me himself.

“Hello?” I cradled the phone against my ear and reached for the refrigerator door.

Static hissed on the other end of the line.

I repeated myself, louder this time. “Hello?”

There were faint sounds in the background, the only reason I even knew someone was actually on the other end of the line.

“Hello!”

Another few seconds and no response, and I slammed the phone back on the cradle.

“Another hang-up phone call,” I said, once he finally followed me into the kitchen. Almost on cue, the phone started to ring before cutting out halfway through, and then was silent.

He brushed past me, glancing into the open refrigerator. “How’s your nose?”

I tentatively touched underneath the nostril. “No more bleeding. Why?”

“Good. Can you run down to the store and get some more milk?”

“Sure,” I said automatically, before realizing something wasn’t entirely right. The gallon of milk in the fridge was almost full, for one thing. And Uncle John’s eyes were unfocused. “Everything okay?”

He blinked, and turned back around. The door closed behind him. “You run to the store and I’ll order us a pizza. How’s that sound?”

Now the false enthusiasm. I grabbed a twenty-dollar bill out of the change jar we kept by the door, but by the time I was slipping my shoes back on, Uncle John had vanished into the house.

That was weirder than normal
, I thought on my way out the door. And that was saying something, considering I’d been raised reading grimoires instead of Grimm’s fairy tales.

three

Even though we lived in a remote area, our house was just off the main road and there was a convenience store just a few minutes away. Dark had finally settled in as I walked, and I found myself thinking about school.

Being homeschooled had always been a burden. Regular schools were dangerous on a realistic level—one accidental spell and my secret would be out. And with my vision problems, it would only get worse. Every time the two of us rented some high school movie about growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, John would look at me and nod, as if to say
see, you wouldn’t want that life anyway.

I did, though. A normal school, a normal life. Our magic lessons were year-round events, six days a week, rain or shine. Homeschooled kids didn’t have football games to go to, parties to attend. John didn’t like people, so it wasn’t like we were social around town. He kept to himself, but I wanted more than that. I liked talking to people. Hiding out in the middle of nowhere wasn’t my idea of a life.

Before I knew it, I’d arrived at the convenience store, and stepped from the dirt path onto old, worn concrete. A giant, fluorescent chicken presided over the parking lot.

I slipped inside, murmuring a thank you as an older woman with sad eyes and blonde hair stepped out and held the door.

The store was busy: a couple of older men hung around the register, a mother with two small children was fighting w
ith them about candy, and two girls all in black had surrounded the coffee machines.

I walked through the aisles and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, preceding a shiver down my spine.
Just an air vent
, I tried to tell myself.

Someone was staring at me. I could feel it. Most of the locals still saw me as the “weird kid” or the “disabled kid.” The one who never took his sunglasses off, even inside.

One of the fluorescent lights above me flickered, a
heartbeat-like sound that buzzed in rhythm. There was murmuring from the next aisle; words I couldn’t hear. I peered up over the top of the aisle, but couldn’t see anyone.

You’re being paranoid, Braden.

Maybe I was. But I’d be a lot less paranoid once I had the milk and was back outside. I hurried down the aisle, and that’s when it happened.

I slipped, or I tripped. My legs went one way, my body went another, and my glasses were ripped in a third. I pitched
forward, my elbow smacking against one of the metallic shelves, and I just barely caught myself before my nose slammed against the ground.

The aisles rippled around me, and I realized, too late, that the visions were starting. Shapes and colors that shouldn’t have existed slipped into my sight as the veil dropped and everything came into focus.

There was a moment where the visions began to start, thrusting themselves forward with their stories and pictures … and then something changed.

Black and white tiles were marred with spots of blood. My vision started to narrow, homing in on just those droplets until they were puddles, then lakes, and then oceans below me. The ocean turned to glass, then became a reflection of me staring down into it.

That’s when the images began.

A normal vision is a thousand conversations, five hundred sonnets, ten thousand songs, and every sight and sound and color all flooding forward at once. This time what I was seeing was different. New. It was like a slideshow.

Flashes and shapes pulsed before and after each other, in some sort of sequence. Uncle John running as something slithered after him. A forest. A clock counting down. A lighthouse. A woman,
standing on a rooftop over a sleeping city, her face completely shrouded in white lace. Things digging themselves out of the
ground.
Lightning. A sign.
Welcome to Belle Dam.

A voice superimposed itself over the vision.
I want the boy.
Uncle John waving his hands as he ran, looking directly at me before the thing—the monster—finally overtook him. It was like watching the strings on a puppet get slashed, the way he fell to the ground.

And then the monster turns and faces me, and the voice returns.
Finally
, it said, with disquieting delight.
He’s ours
.

Shock and fear allowed me to free myself from the vision. I scrambled on the ground for my glasses, eyes closed. My fingers wrapped around the plastic, and relief pressed up against the fear.

What
was
that?

This wasn’t how the witch eyes worked. They didn’t show me random images, they showed me people, places. This was like … some sort of portent. A warning. But the certainty of what I saw was something in my bones. I
knew
it was true, and real, and on its way.

Something was coming. Something that was going to kill my uncle before it came for me.

Forgetting about the milk, I picked myself off the ground and hurried out of the store.

¤ ¤ ¤

The parking lot and main road stretched before me, but once outside I glanced to my left. Tucked back against the woods was a path that led all the way to the rear of our house. Right now, the last thing I wanted was to be out in the open. So I hurried into the woods.

All along the way, I was whispering misdirection spells while fingering the silver chain around my neck. It was a Christmas present. A circle of silver could help restrain a witch’s power, in theory, helping them maintain control. But silver was also useful in truth spells, and illusions like the misdirection spell were a way of bending the truth.

I slipped in the back door, about to announce myself when Uncle John’s voice cut through the house. “I told you it’s not going to happen!” I crept along the covered porch, inching my way toward the kitchen. “I don’t care about what’s going on in Belle Dam. Things change. Braden’s not going anywhere.”

Belle Dam? The image of the Welcome sign flashed into my mind. Gooseflesh erupted along my arms.

“Whatever my brother’s gotten himself into isn’t our problem. I’m his family now. You’re not taking him.”

My father? Was he in Belle Dam, too? “I don’t care what he’s saying now,” John roared, close enough that I jumped. “Braden isn’t suited for that kind of life, Lucien. He hasn’t had an episode in weeks, and we’re keeping it that way.”

The phone was slammed into its cradle. Hard, raging breaths were still coming from the kitchen. I waited.

What was I supposed to say? “Hey, Uncle John, what’s going on? I had a vision that something’s coming to kill you. Oh, by the way, I know my dad’s in Belle Dam.”

That wouldn’t go over so well.

I sat down in one of the plastic patio chairs we kept out here. He hadn’t left the kitchen yet, so I pitched my voice over my shoulder. “Who was that?”

I was disappointed I couldn’t hear the sound of his startlement. “Braden?”

Mimicking his tone, I replied. “Uncle John?”

“It was nothing,” he started, “just a phone call from an old—”

I interrupted him. “I heard you.”

He appeared in the doorway, but I kept looking out into the backyard. Along the path I’d watched him run—running from who knows what.

“Braden,” he said again. “It wasn’t anything important.” He tried changing tactics. “What happened to the milk?”

“You never talk about Belle Dam.”

“Of course I don’t. I—” He realized his slip almost immediately. “It’s nothing. Just an old town with a lot of bad blood.”

I turned to look up at him. My uncle. Growing up, he’d never allowed the illusion that he was more than he was. He never let me call him Dad, Pop, or any other variation in between. He’d accepted he was my uncle and nothin
g more.

“What’s he want with me? Why now?”

There was no response. Uncle John’s eyes were trained on the dark outside.

“It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” I pushed. “If they decided to come and take me?”

“That won’t happen.”

“But what if—”

“It
won’t
happen, Braden.” He had that “stop pushing” tone to his voice.

The headache had started slowly, so inconspicuous I didn’t notice the growing tension behind my eyes at first. It had probably started some time after the vision, but now that I was in a dark, quiet room, it was making its presence noticeable.

It went from minor discomfort to painful stabbing in my brain almost immediately. My hands were sweaty and gross, my heart was pulsing so hard I thought my head would explode, and a thousand knives were finding fresh places to stab my skull.

This was going to be a bad one.

Uncle John noticed too. Before I even realized what the whirlwind of activity around me
was,
he had picked me up and taken me into the rec room. It was the only room in the house with no windows, and no light—the safest place for me once the migraines came.

I leaned into the couch once he settled me down, and through the haze I heard the sounds of all the lights being shut off, one by one. I drifted, wanting to whimper but not remembering how. The migraine started spreading down into my shoulders, and from there into my arms. Later into my legs.

The only thing that existed was the pulsing pain. Even thinking was too difficult. Someone lifted my head, put something in my mouth, told me to swallow. Then a glass was pressed to my lips, and I did.

Eventually, the red haze started muting into vermilion, then into burgundy. Then back to black. Sleep didn’t come quickly, but it eventually came.

It was bliss.

¤ ¤ ¤

It was still dark outside when I woke up. I moved gingerly at first, but the migraine seemed to be completely gone. I slid my glasses on and sat up, no longer tired.

A few hours ago, everything had been so different. And now my vision, and the phone call … where was Belle Dam even located? That was the first thing I needed to know.

I crept through the house, despite the fact that Uncle John would have slept through almost anything. The computer was in his office, which was really just a room with a desk in it. I booted it up, then waited, eventually typing Belle Dam into a search engine.

“‘Belle Dam is a town in Jefferson County, Washington,’” I read aloud. Population eight thousand. One high school. One community college. Harbor. Lighthouse.

I scrolled down the page, finding a picture of the lighthouse during the day. The angles and proportion were all wrong—I couldn’t say for certain if it was the same one from my vision or not. Only that it could have been.

T
he visions had told me that something was going to be coming for me, and that Uncle John would
be in the way. But what? I hadn’t been able to see what it was exactly. Or who it was.

I knew Uncle John well enough to know that he wasn’t going to listen. The more I kept pushing, the less he’d listen. But something
was
coming. Something that would kill hi
m to get to me.

Unless you get to it first.

Could I do that? Just … leave? There had to be something I could do. The vision showed me that Uncle John was completely overmatched—whatever it was would tear right through him. And as long as I stayed here, it would get closer and closer.

He’d do the same for you. Uncle John gave up everything for you.
That was all the motivation I needed.

I shut down the computer and snuck up the stairs. In my bedroom I scanned the bookshelf above my bed, pulling down my journal. “You shouldn’t have made me write everything down,” I whispered aloud, flipping to the slumber spell he’d shown me a few months ago.

It was supposed to work like a sleeping pill—making it easier to fall asleep and stay that way. Every time I cast it, the spell always came out too strong—instead of a gentle lull of magic, it was like a sledgehammer taking effect almost instantly. We’d never figured out how long the spell would last, always reversing it before that happened. But now, it was a blessing in disguise.

I hesitated outside my uncle’s room. Was I really going to do this? He was going to be so pissed when he woke up.

I cast the spell. Packed a bag. Tried not to look back.