Alondra, p.9
Alondra, page 9
Winona runs to her mom and starts bawling.
“It’s okay, Winona,” says her mom. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not!” Winona cries. “It isn’t, Momma! I’m afraid. He’s gonna hurt them! Auntie Kenosha is so nice. Just send her away. He’s gonna hurt all of them!” Then she looks, teary eyed, at me.
The two witches return.
“It’s time,” Alondra says.
“Melanie,” Kenosha says, reaching out. “Melanie, come with us, child.”
Melanie slowly shakes her head, still staring eerily outside.
“Melanie, you must come upstairs with your sister and us,” insists Alondra.
Melanie shakes her head again.
“Go with them, dear,” says her mom. “You have to follow them—”
“Fuck you!” the little girl cries, whirling around with wild eyes. I jump. “I won’t!” I haven’t seen the girl say a word since we arrived. “Winona pushed me! She pushed me, Momma. She pushed me down the stairs to kill me! Keep me away from that bitch or she’ll hurt me!”
The walls start shaking as if there’s an earthquake. Then a gush of wind shakes the windows. The trees are bending from the sudden gale, and branches scrape against the glass. Then it starts to hail.
“I hate you!” screams Winona to her sister. “I can’t stand you, Melanie!”
Winona runs toward her. I think she’s going to strike her sister, but instead she runs around her to the window where Melanie was standing. Then Winona starts violently bashing her forehead against the glass window. Melanie turns and stands beside her, staring outside, ignoring her sister as if she’s not even there.
Kathy bawls, with her head in her hands, on the couch. “Oh god.” Mitch runs over and grabs Winona’s head from the glass.
Alondra and Kenosha rush to the girls.
Alondra gets on her knees and says quietly to the children, “Lux alba.” She waves her hand over each child’s head calmly. “Lux. Shh.” Kenosha echoes it. “Lux. Look to the light. Lux alba. Lux alba.”
Then Melanie starts bashing her head against the glass too.
Kathy screams.
“Stop it, Melanie!” Winona screams. “Stop doing that! They’re trying to help you!”
Then Winona falls on her knees and bursts out laughing. She’s laughing hysterically. Her eyes roll back and she seems drugged. But she keeps guffawing.
“Lucifer!” cries Melanie, pointing at Alondra. “Abaddon.” Her countenance is like that of an adult. “Abaddon. Abaddon. Abaddon. Go play with your cock, pussy-loving cunt bitch. Go fuck yourself in the depths of your hell!” Then she spits in Alondra’s face.
Winona leans on her side and starts crying.
I run over to help Alondra, but she throws her hand up, stopping me.
“Lux alba,” Alondra repeats calmly to Melanie. “Lux. Lux alba.”
“You have no faith!” Melanie cries, squinting right into her eyes. “No belief in God! You and your sinners spend your days under the light of Satan. One day he’ll drag you to hell. Devil worshipper. Let Lucifer guide you to the stygian light of everlasting damnation and sheol. You’re a witch! A fucking cock-sucking witch!”
“Shut up, Melanie!” screams Winona, standing up. She looks like she’s gonna charge her sister again. “I hate you!”
Kathy finally jumps from the couch to grab them, but Kenosha says, “Stay back. You promised you would not interfere.”
“Somnos,” Alondra says calmly, waving a hand over Melanie, trying to calm her. Alondra closes her eyes tightly. It almost seems like she’s trying to calm herself. “Somnos. Sleep now. Somnos.”
“No!” Melanie’s voice turns guttural. And for a second, I think the little girl’s eyes turn white, like Alondra’s eyes the night of the poltergeist.
Winona starts laughing again. Then the house shakes.
“Somnos,” Kenosha repeats, kneeling with Alondra before the children.
“I ask that this spirit leave this child,” Alondra says. “Sleep, Melanie. Sleep. Sleep now. Calm yourself and sleep now, child.”
Melanie collapses onto the floor.
“Get out of here!” cries Winona. Then she growls. The growl echoes along the walls and sounds like a lion.
“Quick, hand me my book, Lee!” Alondra cries, pointing to the couch.
Winona growls again. She pushes Alondra, and Alondra is thrown back a few feet. My heart’s pounding. I rush over and grab the book and practically throw it at her.
“Somnos! Somnos, somnos Ekimmu requiem!”
Alondra gets up on her knees and touches Winona on the forehead with the book. Oddly, Winona is thrown to the ground as if Alondra struck her. She falls unconscious like Melanie.
Kenosha and Alondra lift Melanie into their arms. They approach the stairs. “She and Winona need to go to their room,” Alondra says to their parents, cocking her head back. “It’s inside of Winona now. I can deal with it in her room upstairs. Stay down here like we warned you.”
Winona awakens and sits up, eerily staring out the window at the dark, misty backyard like Melanie was doing for the past hour.
“My god!” Kathy cries, looking up from Mitch’s arms. “But how can you help? You haven’t even entered her room yet!”
“We’re going to try,” Alondra says. She looks at me from the corner of her eye. Then she turns and she and Kenosha carry Melanie up the stairs.
“Venite foras, Ekkimu,” Alondra calls.
Very weirdly, Winona turns from the window with a blank stare and follows them slowly up the stairs.
11
EKIMMU
It stopped hailing, but the wind picked up. The windows are shaking and tree branches are still scraping against the glass. Of course, the electricity is out. That’s what happens in haunted houses. Right? And all hell, literally, is breaking loose upstairs. For the past hour, I’ve heard inhuman guttural noises mixed with animal growls, children’s screams, and—a couple of times, far worse—Alondra desperately shouting out my name. That really creeped me out. It sounded like she was in pain. And that reminded me of when Jane was calling for me in Bentmont—only this time it was Alondra, the witch who’s supposed to be leading this exorcism. Her cries were mixed with odd, perverse profanity coming from the children. I’ve also heard Alondra shouting and fighting Kenosha. It’s almost as if the spirit is possessing not only the children but both witches.
The fact that I can’t go up there and can only hear the bedlam is driving me crazy. I think it’s driving the parents crazy too.
Pieces of the ceiling have cracked, and dust is being kicked up around the living room. And I’ve seen strange balls of light float outside, among the swaying trees, in the midst of the thrashing gale.
Right now, I’m nervously playing with my fingers by the fireplace. I’m not looking at the couple on the couch. I wouldn’t know what to say. I think they’ve finally figured out that I don’t know any more than they do. We’re mutually ignoring each other.
I’m so worried about Alondra. She’s a witch, obviously. I believe now. I get it. She’s a witch. So…can I just go?
The house quakes again.
I don’t want to be here.
More crashes and screams.
I really don’t want to be here.
A pile of branches, or a part of a tree, crashes against the window the girls were staring at. Some of the glass cracks. That gets Mitch to finally jump up and check the window.
Then… Silence. Complete silence. The howling wind stops. The bedlam upstairs quiets. Everything stills. Kathy looks at Mitch, afraid. But again, not a word is spoken.
A green cloak rushes down the stairs. It’s Kenosha. She looks exhausted.
“Can I talk to you for a moment alone, Liam?”
That sounds bad. It reminds me of when I was in the hospital once, when my mom was sick, waiting for word about her condition. I nod, jump up, and head with her into the dark kitchen. The kitchen is lit only by a few candles.
“It’s quiet,” I say to her. We stand near a lit candle on the kitchen counter.
“For now.” Kenosha nods, looking up. “Alondra is calming the children.” She’s talking in a whisper. “Everyone’s exhausted. The children, me, Alondra, and even the demon. It’s just a break.” She turns and leans against the kitchen counter. “Ghosts feed off the living. If the living are asleep, they have no power to manifest themselves, except in dreams. Dreams can be easier to deal with.”
I nod as if I understand what she’s saying. Then I listen to the silence. I don’t like it if it’s a precursor to a lot more noise.
“You recall I’m the leader of my coven in New Orleans?” she asks with a nod.
“Yes.”
“She likes you, doesn’t she?”
“I guess.”
Kenosha smiles. “She wants to share with you our arts? That’s why she brought you here?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I challenged her. I didn’t believe she had real power. Well, she already proved herself with a ghost haunting. But this…this—”
“Hmm,” she says with a chuckle. “Do you believe now?”
I nod.
“Your care for each other is getting in the way of this exorcism. The Ekimmu is using it against Alondra. It’s torturing her with images of you in pain. And she, from the illusions, is believing you’re hurt. It’s all I can do to calm her down. And the spirit knows that if it can confuse Alondra, it can defeat us. Alondra is far more powerful than me. I’m spending more time working on her mind than I’m spending on the Ekimmu and its possession of Winona.”
“It seemed Melanie was more possessed than Winona.”
“Winona’s the focal agent,” she replies, shaking her head. “The ghost resides in Winona. I questioned the parents. Every supernatural event only occurred in the presence of Winona…but…” She takes a deep breath and pauses for a moment. “There’s something else. Did Alondra tell you about Abaddon witches?”
I shake my head.
“It’s a myth, of course. It’s the name for evil witches. Devil worshipping witches. Witches who’ve turned to only left-sided backward magic. The worst ones are known to have turned their whole covens. They work secretly. Occult. Alondra’s convinced that it was an Abaddon witch that killed her parents. She doesn’t buy that it was an accident or even simply a murder. That’s one of the reasons she became a witch when she was a little girl. She hunts them, but neither she nor I have ever seen an Abaddon witch. And I have told her for years that her parents died a natural way.
“Liam, no one has ever seen an Abaddon witch. But Alondra keeps searching, convinced they are out there. She’s not just hunting ghosts, she’s hunting these Abaddon witches. And recently, she’s started using left-sided magic to reveal them.” She searches my eyes as if trying to read my mind. Then, as I remember the girl on the upside-down pentagram on Hilltop Bluff, she nods as if she sees the image too. “The evil witch is a myth. Between you and me, it doesn’t exist. But her obsession with finding one could actually create one. Especially with Escoba’s book and her power. That book contains Escoba’s power. Escoba is the source of my circle’s power. It gives her my coven’s power as well as Hawthorne’s.” She hesitates to tell me more. Then she forces a smile. “Many of us believe that her obsession is causing her a great deal of pain. Specifically, it’s creating manifestations like this strange demon in Winona.”
“She told me she wasn’t only helping to rid people’s homes of ghosts,” I say with a nod. “She told me she was searching for the evil that hurt her family. Yes. But what are you trying to tell me? That she’s responsible for Winona and this haunting?”
“I don’t know for sure. Not intentionally, of course. But the ghost residing upstairs is not a ghost. It’s a devil possession. My fear is that Alondra summoned it herself, unknowingly, with left-sided magic in her search for a poltergeist. In other words, she’s conjured the exact thing she’s trying to hunt. Alondra and I can cleanse a house of a ghost. I have the power to do that alone. But a demon, an Ekimmu, is another thing. Even Falconsong might not have the power to rid a house of that. The best way to do it would be to harm the witch who summoned it.”
Just when my mind is spinning over the possibility that this girl is telling me that the only way to stop this haunting is to hurt Alondra, I’m disturbed by a tearing sound. It sounds like wallpaper being ripped from the ceiling and walls.
“It’s waking up.” She shakes her head, looking up. “A demon was planted here, Liam. A demon from a witch. Alondra might have finally found her Abaddon witch—sent to her by her own power.”
“So what?” I ask, sounding much more annoyed than I intended. “You have to hurt her to get rid of it?”
She slowly nods, looking up. There’s a crash. The thump and bang sounds like something heavy, like a dresser, crashed down on the floor. There’s a scream, but this one’s from downstairs. It’s Kathy. The mom’s sobbing.
Kenosha is staring at the ceiling. There’s another crash. It sounds like furniture has been pushed over above us. Kenosha shakes her head. Then she smiles at me, which is weird. “You like her a lot, don’t you?” She nods. “So be it. We can use your love to end this. Come with me. I need your help.”
I follow her down a hallway, away from the stairs, to a first-floor bedroom. The room is empty except for a bed. And it’s dark, which I don’t like—considering all the sounds we heard coming from upstairs. It looks creepy. But for some reason, I find myself staring into the dark room with her for a long time. And for a moment, it’s oddly pleasurable, as if it’s a break from the bedlam in the house.
Then there are more cries. This time it’s the children. And then I hear a scream. It makes my skin crawl because it’s Alondra, hollering as loud as she can, “Lee! Lee! Oh my god, not you!” Alondra’s sobbing while crying out my name. “Stay the fuck away from him! I warn you!”
“My god, what’s going on up there?” I ask her from the hallway. And for a moment, I feel sick, almost as if I’m going to throw up. I think the stress is so bad that it’s making me nauseous.
“The spirit is entering her head,” Kenosha says, grabbing my arm and pulling me faster. “Quick! I need you to come upstairs and show her that you’re okay. It will break the illusion that the demon is hurting you. If she sees that you are all right, her mind will return.”
I pull away from her. “But both of you said I shouldn’t ever go up there! What do you mean, you want me there?”
There’s another scream. Then the sound of a hundred voices crying out, suffering. The whole house shakes. And the howling wind outside is back. The windows are shaking again.
“What’s going on!” cries Mitch. “I thought it was over. I have to go up to make sure they’re okay.”
“No, Mitch,” Kathy says. “We can’t—”
A hundred screams cry out from the ceiling. It’s as if hell itself has opened upstairs and an entire crowd of ghouls is wailing in pain.
“I need you upstairs now,” Kenosha says frantically. “Everything you see up there will be an illusion. Don’t trust your eyes and ears. Alondra herself has the power to stop it. She’s stronger than any of us with my coven’s book. But the demon has entered her mind. Show her you’re all right. Stop her with your love, and I think we can get this to end.”
It’s not up for discussion. Kenosha runs upstairs first.
When I hear the door open, I hear a scuffle. The children are screaming as if there’s a fight. Then I’m terrified to hear Kenosha cry out in pain. I rush up behind her, but the steps are shifting, shaking, and moving from side to side. I’m not sure if it’s from the magic upstairs or from the weather outside shaking the whole house. I hear another window break downstairs. The gale is terrible. It’s as if there’s a tornado outside.
I trip and fall. Then I push myself up and climb to the top of the stairs. In all the darkness, there’s a bright light coming from the crack under the door of one of the rooms at the end of the hall. I rush there and throw open the door.
How can I explain what I see? The light from the room is so bright that I have to cover my eyes. That’s similar to the last haunt. But this isn’t a group of witches spinning. An area nearly the size of the house takes up the space. I know that’s absolutely impossible but, somehow, it’s here. And in the center of this giant chamber, bright light is turning like a slow vortex. And in this light, the two children are hovering in the air. Circling around with them are floating objects from the room: a doll house, some balls, clothes, even the bed. Kenosha is struggling, pinned like an x to an invisible wall. It’s in a position similar to the wooden planks I saw that night when that naked girl was roped on Hilltop Bluff. She’s pinned at the distance where I’d expect the walls in Winona’s room to be, but I can only see fog behind her. And she’s upside down.
“I’m sorry,” Kenosha says in tears, staring blindly forward. “I’m so sorry, Alondra. Please, forgive me.”
I don’t see Alondra until I look down. In the center of this vortex is a witch crouched in her black cloak. She’s sitting like an immobile onyx, curled up, with her head in her arms. She is the only thing immobile in the whole room. Allie is repeatedly reciting under her cloak: “Spiritus. Venite foras. Spiritus. Spiritus. Venite foras.” And under the black witch is her book.
The word spiritus surrounds me. I hear it uttered over and over as if by a whole group of witches. The words turn like the light vortex, echoing forward and even backward, in reverse. Meanwhile the children are yelling down at Alondra as they continue to circle in the air above. Then they cry to me too, asking anyone to help them down.
“I invoke the power of Escoba Hawthorne,” Alondra says in a strangely calm, but loud, voice. “I…” Alondra lifts her head from her cloak and gazes right at me. Her eyes are pearly white.
“You brought him here? You fucking bitch!” Alondra turns her head to Kenosha. “How dare you! You want to fight me!”
