Catalpa's Curse

by Terri Reid

  But, it seemed, one horror would not give up so easily.

  In the corner of the room, the space between the tall, narrow closet door and the wooden planked floor was suddenly illuminated with a muted, red glow. Almost immediately after the appearance of the glow, the cast-iron doorknob on the closet door stirred, angling to one side and then the other. It moved slowly, deliberately, but cautiously, so nothing would awaken the dreamers.

  Finally, the latch slipped out of its slot, and the door slowly opened. The light disappeared and, in its place, a shadow slipped from the confines of the closet, pouring darkness into the dimly lit room. The darkness pooled on the floor, then oozed and bubbled like liquid tar as it rolled silently towards Donovan’s bed. Reaching the side of the bed, the shadow began to transform into a solid being, stretching up and looming over the sleeping man. As the transformation finished, the planes and curves of something resembling a face moved into place. The chin was narrow and long, the nose flat and wide, the cheekbones stark and pointed, and then suddenly gleaming red eyes blazed out from newly created eye sockets and cast a hue on Donovan’s face.

  Donovan stirred in his sleep, tossing his head restlessly as if he could sense the darkness next to him. He moved his arms, and the handcuffs rattled in response. In unconscious frustration, he yanked on the cuffs again, trying to get away from the disturbing feelings.

  A low growl came from the inside of the shadow, and then it bent, slowly encapsulating Donovan’s arms in its depths. A moment later, a muted clang sounded, and the handcuffs fell away from Donovan’s wrists. The shadow moved to the end of the bed, and the leg cuffs opened in the same manner.

  “Donovan,” his name was whispered urgently inside his head. “Donovan, awake!”

  Waking from a deep sleep, Donovan slowly opened his eyes to the darkness surrounding him. “Where…” he started to murmur, but before he could finish his words, the shadow loomed over him. Slowly the darkness enveloped him, moved through his skin, and sunk into his body.

  Donovan shuddered, then sat up and took a deep, satisfying breath. He looked down at his unencumbered wrists and flexed them with pleasure. “Much better,” he whispered, his voice mirroring the voice that had just ordered him to awaken.

  Then he turned his head and looked across the room at Cat, sound asleep on her bed. His eyes glowed red, and his smile widened. “Much, much better,” he whispered and then he slowly licked his lips. “I’m going to enjoy this very much.”

  Donovan was inside a nightmare, trapped inside of a body that had been taken over by something else. He looked down at his hands and saw that the handcuffs were gone, but when he saw his hands flexing without his direction, the panic turned to terror. He watched, through the red hue of his vision, his focus turn toward Cat and heard the demon’s delight.

  “No!” he screamed internally. “No! You will not touch her!”

  Mocking laughter greeted his plea. “We’ll both touch her,” the voice inside his head taunted.

  Donovan tried to stop his body from moving, but he watched in horror as his legs slid off the bed and slowly moved across the room.

  “No!” he screamed again, his alarm echoing in his brain. “No, you can’t do this!”

  “Oh, I can do anything I want to,” the demon responded. “You invited me in, and now your body is under my control.”

  Donovan’s body stumbled, the demon not used to being inside a flesh and blood entity, and his movements were slow. But Donovan could see that they would be beside Cat’s bed in just a few more slow steps.

  He has my body, he thought, but not my mind.

  Fighting through the fear, Donovan concentrated on linking with Cat. He pushed through her sleepy haze and connected with her thoughts. “Run!” he screamed. “Cat, run! The demon has control over me! Run!”

  Cat’s eyes opened, and she stared at Donovan in confusion.

  “Donovan?” she stammered as she shook her head.

  “Cat, darling,” the demon murmured. “I’m in so much pain, help me.”

  “RUN!” Donovan screamed into her thoughts.

  Eyes widened in shock, she crawled to the back of the bed and slid away from him. “Leave him,” she commanded.

  The demon laughed harshly and waved Donovan’s arm to the side, moving a dresser across the room to bar the door. “Not until I’ve enjoyed myself with you,” he replied.

  Cat tasted fear as she remembered the image she’d seen in Donovan’s mind, then she immediately remembered what her spirit guide had told her. The demon had used that to create fear. He was playing with her. He was manipulating her.

  Fear turned to anger, and she faced him.

  “Go to hell,” she raged.

  She took a deep breath, waved her arms, and recited the spell.

  Seal and cover every break,

  From this room, the air I take,

  And send it far away from me,

  As I wish, so mote it be.

  Suddenly a small, lavender cyclone appeared in the center of the room. It rotated quickly, pulling the air from all corners of the room and sending it up through a darker, purple swirling vortex and out of the room. Blankets, pillows, and sheets danced around the room, caught in the powerful winds. Lamps toppled, pictures were pulled from the walls, and knickknacks flew from dresser tops and shelves, joining the swirling gales.

  Donovan gasped as the air in the room diminished and struggled to stay upright. In his already weakened condition, his vision began to darken almost immediately, and he could feel the demon’s power diminish as his body began to lose consciousness.

  I’m dying, he thought, Cat’s only escape was to kill me.

  He teetered on the edge of darkness and reached out to her mind once more. “Cat,” he whispered. “I will always love you.”

  Then everything went dark.

  Chapter Forty

  As soon as Donovan hit the floor, Cat stopped the cyclone, and the door burst open, the powerful thrust shoving the dresser violently to the side. Ignoring the door, Cat hurriedly knelt at Donovan’s side and placed her hand on his neck, relieved to find a weak, but steady pulse.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Henry asked, climbing over the debris scattered around the room from the cyclone’s winds.

  Gasping for breath, Cat held up her hand, asking Henry to give her a moment, while she caught her breath. She bent over, her hands on her knees, while she drank in huge gulps of air. Finally, she straightened and turned to Henry. “Somehow the demon was able to enter the room and Donovan,” she said.

  “And Donovan what?” Henry asked as he walked around the room, examining the area.

  “The demon was able to enter Donovan,” she clarified. “He took over Donovan’s body.”

  “But, that’s impossible,” Finias said from the doorway. “I put wards throughout the house. There’s no way he could have entered.”

  Cat shrugged. “Well, something didn’t work,” she replied. “Because if Donovan hadn’t warned me…” She shuddered as she thought about the vision she’d seen.

  “Wait, he warned you?” Finias asked, as he too stepped over the overturned furniture strewn across the floor and made his way to Cat. “How did he do that if the demon was controlling him?”

  “He reached out and connected with me through his mind,” she replied. “We used to do it all the time when we were…”

  She paused, looked down at the unconscious man next to her, and sighed. “A long time ago,” she finished softly.

  “That would take a very strong link,” Finias said, kneeling next to her and Donovan. “A remarkably strong link. He saved your life.”

  She nodded. “I know,” she agreed.

  Finias placed his hand on Donovan’s shoulder and closed his eyes. “I can’t feel another presence in him,” he said, then he opened his eyes and looked at Cat. “What did you do?”

  “I sucked all of the air out of the room,” she said. “I thought if Donovan were unconscious, the demon
wouldn’t have a whole lot of power.”

  “Why didn’t you pass out too?” Henry asked, from the corner of the room.

  She smiled slightly. “I was always the winner at the how-long-can-you-hold-your-breath contests,” she said with a slight shrug. “You never know when random skills will come in handy.”

  Henry turned from Cat to the closet. He held his hand up and whispered a short incantation. Suddenly the closet glowed red. “It came through here,” he said. “There are still residual traces on the floor and the doorknob.”

  Finias stood up and walked over to Henry, examining the space. “I don’t understand how it could enter,” he said, mystified. “I thought I blocked every entrance.”

  Henry leaned back against the wall and nodded slowly. “Maybe he isn’t entering the house,” he said slowly. “Maybe he’s part of the house.”

  “What?” Cat asked.

  “I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on the Spiritualism Movement in the United States, and I found that one of the more popular spells during the spiritualism revival was a binding spell,” Henry explained. “Generally, it was used in a positive manner, like a binding spell to ensure a happy marriage. But there were cases when something was bound to a place.”

  “Like they were imprisoned in it?” Cat asked.

  Henry nodded. “If they did it correctly,” he said. “But, if they didn’t do it right, then the house could be bound to the demon and not the other way around.”

  “Giving him easy access to the house because it becomes part of him,” Finias inserted. “Which explains how he by-passed the wards and charms.”

  “But how can we know for sure?” Cat said.

  “We need to find the records of the group that accidentally summoned him in the first place,” Henry said. “And see if they tried to undo their mistake by binding him.”

  “What the hell did you do to Donovan?”

  Cat, Henry, and Finias turned to see Joseph standing in the doorway of the room.

  “It’s a long story,” Cat said. “But even more pressing, what are we going to do with him now?”

  Chapter Forty-one

  “Well, it’s obvious he’s not safe here,” Finias said, gazing around the destroyed room. “And he’s not going to stay unconscious for much longer.”

  Joseph picked his way across the room, carefully stepping over the debris, and knelt next to the unconscious man. “Well, he’s not safe in his apartment or his offices,” he said. “I hid cameras in both spots to track what he was doing.”

  “You did what?” Cat exclaimed.

  Joseph turned to her and shrugged. “He was acting weird, and I was worried,” he said. “And with the deadline of Samhain closing in, I didn’t want to waste any time.”

  She sighed and nodded in understanding. “So, what did you find?” she asked, her stomach clenching with concern.

  “It’s not him,” Joseph said. “He’s not into evil and power, but he’s being unconsciously influenced by it.”

  “I don’t understand how that can happen,” Henry said. “Evil just can’t take us over; we have to let it in at some point.”

  “Well, yeah, he did,” Joseph said. “At the last ceremony, when they were trying to kill Hazel. Donovan thought he could be a spy; pretend he was with them and then help us. But that’s not how it works. Once you let them in a little, they take a lot more than you realize.”

  “What did your cameras show?” Finias asked.

  “I saw Donovan doing a lot of things when he was in a semi-conscious state,” Joseph replied. “Almost like he was sleep-walking. And tonight, when he got the gun, he wasn’t even looking at the desk drawer when he pulled it out and stuffed it into his waistband. It was like something else was controlling him.”

  “Well, something else was,” Cat said. “Just like tonight.”

  “Okay, so we go back to the initial question, where do we take him, and how do we get him there?” Henry asked.

  “Rowan has some herbs that can cause a trance-like state,” Henry suggested. “We could give him those and move him to Willoughby house.”

  “So, drug him,” Joseph inserted, then he turned to Finias. “You seem to have more experience in these kinds of things. If we drug Donovan, does that make his body incapable of possession?”

  Finias shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not,” he replied. “As you mentioned, you caught Donovan in a trance-like state doing things for the demon. If the demon gets in his body, he can control it, even if Donovan is sound asleep.”

  “And since the demon has been in there at least once before,” Cat added. “It’s easier for him to get in there again.”

  “So, we change him into something, that even if possessed, is harmless,” Henry suggested.

  “Like what?” Cat asked skeptically.

  Henry shrugged. “A mouse or a hamster,” he suggested.

  “If Fuzzy didn’t eat him, then Esmerelda certainly would,” Cat replied, referring to their wolf and their cat. “It’s got to be something a little bigger than that.”

  “A puppy,” Finias said. “Although he could still bite, he could be more easily controlled, and he wouldn’t be in danger of being devoured by your wolf.”

  Cat paused and stared at Finias. “How did you know that we had a wolf?” she asked.

  Finias momentarily froze, then he smiled and shrugged. “You must have told me about him,” he said easily. “How else could I have known?”

  “How else indeed,” Joseph muttered softly, and Henry sent him a startled look.

  But Cat, missing Joseph’s comment and Henry’s surprise, just nodded and smiled. “Things have been so crazy in these past few hours, I suppose I don’t know what I’ve said,” she confessed.

  “I agree a puppy would work,” Henry added. “Especially if we put him in a crate to confine him while you drove home.”

  “Me? Drive home? By myself?” Cat asked, surprised. “I thought that one of you would…”

  “Oh, well, if you need one of us to come with you, we certainly will,” Joseph inserted.

  She shook her head quickly. “No. I mean, no, I guess you don’t need to come,” she stammered. “I’m sure that I can handle…”

  “Yes, that’s what we thought too,” Henry interrupted. “Especially if he’s in a crate.”

  “Okay, well then, let’s get this done, and I’ll get home,” Cat said. “No sense wasting time.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  The cute, little black Labrador Retriever puppy was still sound asleep when Henry placed it on a blanket inside the doggie crate Hazel had sent over. “He’s still crashed out,” he said softly, as he locked the carrier door. “But even if he wakes up, he won’t be able to get out and cause any trouble.”

  “Will he still have his powers when he wakes up?” Cat asked as they stowed her overnight case into the back seat of her car.

  Henry nodded. “Yes, he will,” he explained. “But because he’ll be in a puppy body, it’ll take him a while to figure out how to use them. By that time, you should be safe and secure behind the walls of your home.”

  “You’re sure the demon is no longer within him?” Cat asked. “I don’t want to bring anything inside that could harm my family.”

  “There’s no demon now,” Henry said, placing his hand on the puppy’s side and checking once more. “But, before you bring the puppy in, why don’t you sprinkle some holy water on it. If the demon has snuck in while you were traveling, you’ll be able to find out right away.”

  She nodded. “Good idea,” she replied, and then she met his eyes. “You were so concerned about me coming over here on my own tonight. Why aren’t you concerned about me traveling back home on my own?”

  “Truth?” Henry asked, glancing over his shoulder to make sure they were far enough away from the house that no one could hear them.

  “Yes, truth,” Cat said firmly.

  “There’s just something about Ellis that has both Joseph and me concerned,” he confe
ssed. “I feel like he’s hiding something and I’m not too sure whose side he’s really on.”

  “But he’s helped us so much,” Cat argued quietly.

  Henry nodded slowly. “Could be,” he agreed. “But it also could be that he set us up. He told us the demon couldn’t enter the room. He told us that you would be safe. He put you in the room with Donovan.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Could be that he’s just as surprised as we are that the demon got through or, it could be that it was part of his plan. Anyway, we figure having both of us staying close to him will make you and your family safer in the long run. Besides, both Rowan and Hazel will be monitoring your ride home and will be at your side in a moment’s notice.”

  After depositing the puppy and the carrier on the passenger’s side seat, Henry opened the driver’s door, so Cat could slide in. Once she was seated behind the wheel, he leaned forward, one hand on the roof of the car, the other on the top of the door, and looked down at her. “Now, don’t speed and don’t run any stop signs,” he teased, then his face sobered. “Let us know when you make it home, okay. And don’t take any chances. If you feel nervous, let us know, and we’ll be there immediately.”

  She nodded. “I will. I promise,” she said, sliding the key into the ignition and turning on the car. “And Henry…”

  Henry paused before closing the door.

  “Be careful,” she ordered.

  He smiled at her and nodded. “Yes, I will,” he said. “You too.”

  He closed the door firmly, and Cat backed out of the parking spot and drove across the parking lot to the road.

  What the hell has happened to me?

  The question came directly into Cat’s head from the seat next to her. She glanced over, and the puppy was looking at her.

  “I’m taking you back to Willoughby Farm,” she explained. “That’s the only place where the demon doesn’t seem to have access to you.”