Sigils and spells, p.80
Sigils & Spells, page 80
I looked up. The window above the sink was perfect for looking out and into the front yard. I flinched when I saw him. I spun around, but no one was there. “Who’s here? Who are you?”
It suddenly smelled like cigarette smoke in the kitchen. I sniffed the air, but couldn’t see or feel anything. I gulped. I pulled a paper towel and wrapped the finger. It was like a paper-cut but a little worse since it was plastic. It stopped bleeding and I returned to my task.
The plastic was gone. The directions were there next to the materials, including a screwdriver and plyers I hadn’t gathered to begin with.
“I’m crazy,” I admitted. “I’m losing it.”
“Maybe you’re just ready to find it, Darlin’.” That accent made me a bit bold.
“Right. Like you haven’t already found a server named Susie.” I huffed and puffed as I carried my supplies to the front door. That lock was already missing. “Okay. I see. You want to be sure I know that this isn’t going to stop you from being here.”
“It’s my home.” I was sure that was Tex.
“It’s my home!” I shouted. I didn’t care who he was. This was my home.
“Everyone knows that.” A lady walking her dog stopped and looked at me like I was nuts. “You already crazy?”
I was flabbergasted by the question. She nodded and waved me off like I was a lost cause and kept on walking. I stepped out and noticed she lived two doors down from me. I might go talk to her. She stopped midway up her walk and looked at me. I smiled. She flipped me off!
Maybe I would not go talk to her.
I walked back to the door and proceeded to figure out how to install a lock. I had a graduate degree in literature with a minor in journalism and no matter how many times I tried to get this damn thing to work, it would not.
I stepped inside, slammed the door, and the lock fell out and clanged on the floor. I sucked in a staggering breath and let out a decent scream.
When that was done, I let my tensed fingers ease from their fisted position, my shoulders rolled into a relaxed posture, and then I opened my eyes. I blinked. I looked at them and they looked at me. I looked around, and as I tried to convince myself I was not straight up off the rails, I noticed the photos on the bookshelves. I didn’t say anything, but I did look at the three men as I made my way to the shelf.
I looked at the photo of a man in a uniform. I asked it, not them, “Finley Carter?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Oh, that was the first voice in my head, but that was not in my head. It was coming in through my ears like any other sound.
“So, you must be—” I picked up the picture of the handsome cowboy in the hat, boots, holding onto the horse next to him like he was in love with it.
“They call me—”
“Tex,” we said that together. I continued, “Yes. You have quite the reputation.”
He didn’t say anything and when I looked over, he just winked. I picked up the last photo of a tall, lean, beautiful young man in a tuxedo next to a piano, smiling like he was on stage at an award show. He said, “Andy.”
“You don’t sound like you’re from New York.” I looked over at him.
He shook his head and said, “Brooklyn, but I was educated in private schools. Your accent isn’t exactly Alabama either, yet that is where you’re from, right?”
I felt my mouth drop open with the shock.
He sighed as if bored with me and said, “I’m just going to eat her. This is—”
“You. Will. Not.” An arm swung out and Finley stopped Andy’s forward motion. “Go back to the basement or go hunting. You can’t kill her.” He looked at me and then said, “Not right away anyhow.”
“Gee, thanks.” I placed the photo back and asked, “What are you, exactly? Because according to that picture you should be dead.” I pointed at Finley. He was gorgeous and no where near thirty much less ninety.
He squinted as if doing the math in his head.
I let him take a moment to decide his age and said to Tex, “You are not as old as him, but sure you are not as young as me.”
“Twenty-one, Darlin’. Ask anyone.” Tex offered as he winked.
I wanted to poke his— “Wait, why aren’t your eyes all red and glowing?”
“Gee, Andy. You don’t look a day over nineteen.” He folded his arms and glared at me.
I folded my arms and glared right back and said, “Gee Andy, you voted to murder me, remember? Sorry if I could care less what you think at the moment.”
He threw his arms up and said, “She thinks I’m a monster. Don’t you?”
I shrugged. He didn’t look like a monster. He looked like a sweet, artistic, and lost soul to me.
Finley warned, “Andy.”
That sweet, artistic soul looked every bit like a monster within the blink of my eyes. He moved so damn fast I would have jerked, flinched, something, but I froze like any good deer trapped by headlights as Andy, the piano playing, tuxedo wearing, monster turned into my worst nightmare. Nosferatu. The black and white movie version. I couldn’t even scream. I could, and did, piss myself. I felt that and then I felt nothing at all.
CHAPTER 4
I heard the sheets rustling and opened my eyes. I looked up and at the man sitting on the bed next to me. Finley. He pushed the fallen lock of my hair back and tucked it behind my ear. He had a sweet smile on his handsome face and I failed to keep my own lips from curling up in response.
Finley said, “Andy’s a bit sensitive.”
“Noted.” I pushed up to a sitting position and looked down at myself. I was clean and in a t-shirt and underwear. “How did–”
“I took care of you.” He tilted his head. “I’ll always take care of you. If you let me.”
“What about the others?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Despite how it looks, we do want this.” He pointed between us. “This connection to…reality, I suppose. I’m not sure what she did to us, just that it affects us the same in some ways and differently in others.”
I nodded. “I’ve always had…imaginary friends, so this isn’t strange to me. The fact that you are grown men; however, and that one of you wants to kill me is…new.”
He chuckled. “Well, Andy wants her back. Tex and I.” He shook his head. “We want you.”
His eyes turned red and his features harsh as he spoke beyond my shoulder and said, “You are not welcome here!”
I could feel her presence in the room. I needed to do something about that because the mild-mannered, handsome man that was being gentle with me a moment before was taking on that same monster-like feature that Andy had.
I got up and ran out of the room. I had one thing that I picked up on impulse today, sage. I noticed it and my gut had clenched. It was more than I wanted to spend, but I had read many books and watched a variety of videos on how to smudge as a means of clearing a space of unwanted energy.
I accidentally set one of the apartments I had lived in on fire once trying to cleanse the place of unwanted energy. Turns out, that doesn’t work for the living the same as it does for the dead. Well, sort of. We did have to move after that, but ultimately, once Carmella had another man and another place to stay, I was with her again.
I gathered the sage and a glass bowl. I crumbled the sage leaves into the bowl and as I did, I pulled one thing into my mind. I set my intention to remove the female spirit from that room, from my house. I lit the sage and acknowledged I only had my hands so I moved my hands over the smoke and once those were cleansed, so to speak, I pulled the smoke toward me, going through the rituals the best I could remember them from the texts I had read.
I stood and beginning in that kitchen space, I used my hand to fan the smoke and spoke my gratitude as well as my request to remove the female energy from my home.
By the time I got to the bedroom, the bowl was hot, burning my palm, and the sage was almost gone. I could not see Finley, but I trusted my intentions not to harm him. I had not gone to the basement as my goal was to get to this room since that was where I seemed to find her. In my bedroom.
Once the sage was burned completely and I had no more smoke to spread, I put the bowl on the sink counter and looked at my hand. “Shit.”
I ran my red and swollen hand under the cool water from the sink. It should have burned a lot worse and sooner, but it was as if this house no longer wanted that woman in it either. As if someone or something was also carrying this bowl with me. Only, there was no sign of Finley or Tex for the rest of the evening, the next day, or even week.
At the end of the week, I finally carried a load of laundry to the basement. A space I had been dreading since arrival. I turned on the lights, but it was still dark, shadowed. I was afraid to smudge this space since the last smudging left me feeling alone.
The washing machine sounds filled the air and I placed the basket on the dryer next to it.
“You didn’t get rid of me.” Andy. Of course, it was Andy.
“I didn’t try to get rid of any of you. Just her.” I insisted. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know.” He stalked forward with the grace of a beautiful predator. “One minute they were here, the next, they were gone.”
“But you’re still here.”
“You didn’t bring you’re little smoke salad down to my space.” He indicated with his arm and the lights went brighter. I gasped. “It’s just an upright. Nothing special, but it was how she convinced me to stay.”
“You wanted to leave?” I asked and moved toward the piano. His space was huge since it was the entire basement. I only knew there was a washer and dryer down here. No one would come down the stairs to get pictures. Said the lights never worked.
“I don’t know what I wanted.” He moved toward the piano. “Death, maybe. Freedom from the addiction.”
I listened carefully, knowing he could turn on me at any moment and neither Finley nor Tex would be around to save me.
He played his long, graceful fingers over the keys and made beautiful sounds with them. I didn’t interrupt him. I just listened. Once he finished, I said, “You’re very talented.”
“Was.” He spun around on the bench and faced me. “I’m dead. At least, I think I’m dead. I should be dead, but…here I am.”
“Alone.” I understood then that I had taken what family he had left from him during that smudging. “Like me, but you had them.”
He nodded. “Now. Now I have to figure out what to do about all of this.”
I tilted my head and asked, “About all of what?”
“You, them, me. Is she even still out there?” He asked. “Where did you put them?”
“Put them?” My eyes went wide. “I only asked to remove the female presence from this house.”
“And you didn’t bother to find out that it was a female presence that tethered us here in the first place.” He crossed his arms. “So. You can either bring them back and live. I can end you and possibly be stuck with your spirit like I am his.” He pointed and I turned to see the journalist, but he was like a ghost, an apparition, not a solid form like Andy. “Or, you can help me get his ass over the line and then figure out how to finally end my existence. I just don’t want to give up a cage I am familiar with for a worse fate. Understand?”
I gulped. Nodded. “Okay. I uh…need to do some research.”
“Fortunately,” he said. “We have plenty of books about it.”
CHAPTER 5
Fortunately for me, the good doctor was meticulous in her notes.
“Well, well, well.” I stood outside, over the space in the garden that now had two little vines springing up and out of it. I called out to my house-bound friends, “I think we got it.”
So far, I had no help for the ghost situation, but my monsters. Well, those creatures were not apparitions. They were real, eternal, and that bitch had tied them to her after turning them into what she wanted them to be. In fairness, it was Finley who set her on the path since his counseling records began after she moved into the home and discovered the vampire living there.
I spoke to the dirt and the two vines and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to send you with her. I’m going to get you out.”
I went to the shed and grabbed a shovel. Once I had the vines, roots and all, I moved them to a safe place. I needed to find the last one. Andy. I could kill him with her right now. Send them both into the next realm or wherever she would be going, but in the past week, working with him to find a solution to the missing monster problem, I…really liked him.
Andy was actually closer to my age in both metamorphic and mental years. He grew up with messed up parents and while wealthy beyond any need, he only needed someone to care about him. That was how she trapped him. His heart. Their hearts. The woman endeared them and then bound their spirits to her.
They may never be able to go grocery shopping with me, but they could live as flesh and blood…mostly, inside this property. They just needed to feed now and then.
Hence the missing journalist that Andy murdered and buried back here somewhere. Again, details to be dealt with another time.
“Where are you?” I moved to my hands and knees and used a hand rake to skim over the soil. I didn’t want to hurt him and I was no longer willing to let her keep any of them. “Come on, Andy. Help me here. Fight. They got to the top and they aren’t even in the house anymore. I–” I looked at the house and yelled, “Andy! Come outside. Come to the garden.”
“Hell no.” He stood in the doorway. “I wouldn’t go to that garden when she was alive. I’m not–”
“Get your ass over here. Now!” I held up the two vines. “This is their life source. You have one here too. She is deep in this dirt thanks to her resting here as she ensured her eternal place as your keeper.”
That got him moving. He cautiously stepped forward into the moonlight. “You’re sure this is going to work?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t, but what choice did we have. This was the way it looked in her grimoire. I wasn’t using them to keep me young. In fact, the short time I had been in this town probably aged me considerably. One week on the job, I had ten students in my class. I had more homework to do than to grade and I found that lucky rather than sad. “I’m exhausted. Come on. I just need to find you and then I can save you a–”
I fell backward onto the dirt. The deep vines began wrapping around me, pulling me under, “Andy! Help!”
He ran forward and reached for my hand. I could hear her cursing me in my ear, “You will not take them from me!”
“Andy!” I screamed for him as my head went under the surface. Immediately, panic began to set in. I could not breathe. I could not see. The taste of earth was filling my mouth, the scent and the substance my nose.
At my back, a push began against the pull. I felt as though I was going to tear in half if something didn’t give and soon.
Finley’s voice and the request came through again, “You know what we need.”
My heart. My heart was what they needed. Not my soul. Not my life. Just my heart. I could not speak, nod, move as the darkness began to smother me and the vines continued to push and pull my body.
What did I have to lose? My life? I was about to die anyway. My mind cleared and I relaxed, submitted to my circumstances, and said, “It’s yours. I give you my heart.”
With what felt like a complete punch to that organ, I could have sworn I saw three men standing over me before I could see nothing at all.
Andy said, “You’re filthy. You know that?”
My eyes blinked open and I looked up to find him reaching toward me.
“What happened?” I asked and put my hand at my chest. I still felt like a whole person. Dirt fell as I stood with his help.
“You saved us.” Andy smiled. “And I saved you.”
Finely said, “All by yourself. I’m the one who told her on day one what we needed. If she gave it to us then, she might not have come close to joining us.”
“Joining you?” I asked, and looked down at my feet. I was still in the garden, but I didn’t feel the same darkness lurking there.
“This is where our…bodies reside. She…buried us here.” Finley looked at the dirt. “I only wanted to be a mortal man again. To die. To forget what I had done to get home to my wife, my life then. I…became something when I was over there. We…had to eat.”
I nodded. I had read his file. He had returned with a bloodlust that his young wife could not live with. The doctor had promised him peace. She made him her servant.
Tex moved in next to me and said, “Well, it could be worse, Darlin’. I’ve spent more than one lifetime charming my way through feedings. I won’t have to sink so low anymore.”
She had used his charm to bring those girls to the house so he and Finley could feed once she had him under her spell. When he was no longer human, capable of moving about as a typical being, she murdered him and put him in the garden with Finley.
“Then me.” Andy smiled. “I was her prized possession for a long time.”
“You are no one’s possession, Andrew.” I reached for his hand. “But I am grateful to be yours.” I looked at Finley and then Tex and said, “And yours. All three of you. All my life I had imaginary friends. I cared about them, missed them when I had to move and they couldn’t go with me. And now. Here I am.” I stepped toward the house and then spun around to face them as I said, “Living with monsters.”
I knew there was a lingering spirit that had to be given peace, but tonight, in the small, gloomy town of Winter, a new garden was about to grow. I gave them my heart, and now, I would give them my body.
Read more Tales from Winter in 2024
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