He removed the lid covering the cake, sliced a piece with a knife from a drawer next to the sink, and plopped it onto a glass plate from a cupboard. After returning the lid over the cake and putting the knife in the sink, he took a fork from the drawer and headed to the plush cream sofa in the living room.
He sat in the middle, facing the glass coffee table and an empty IC Lite Berry beer bottle next to a black remote control for the giant flat screen TV attached to the wall facing him. He fetched the remote and turned on a broadcast about twentieth century pop music. He ate his cake and watched TV until his fork fell from his hand, bounced off his lap, and headed for the floor.
He stopped its descent midair.
“Hey, kid,” a thick male voice said, intruding on Lenny’s magic moment.
Lenny snatched the fork and looked up at blue jeans holding up a potbelly inside a black HISTORY IS TO DIE FOR T-shirt heading his way. Above the shirt and directed at him, Henry James’s thirty-year-old whiskered face bore a frown.
Henry was an adjunct history professor at New Cambridge University who received lower pay than tenured professors and no health benefits, which made him attractive to Lynelle’s caring personality. All her life, she had taken in unfortunate stray animals … and Henry was no exception.
“Whatcha want, Henry?” Lenny asked.
“Don’t get snotty. I’m your ride. Where’m I taking you?”
“Down the road from my place.”
Lynelle stood next to Henry, looking anxious. “Be careful,” she said to Lenny.
“I have my pendant,” he said.
“Well, I need gas money,” Henry said. “I wanna take Linnie out to eat after the movie.”
“Lynelle,” Lynelle said, scowling at Henry. “I hate being called Linnie and you know it.” She shifted her weight to one leg and sent Lenny a pleading look. “If you hear any howling, go home.”
“I’ll be okay. Besides, we can’t stay locked up at home with the doors and windows locked and barred with salt every night of July fifth.”
“It terrifies me to know that this curse is real, that it’s dangerous, and that it can kill us if we get too close to it.” Lynelle frowned and bit at her lower lip. “Maybe you should stay here and go home with Dad after the restaurant closes.”
“Aw, that’s not fair. It’s my birthday.” Fires of anger gathered inside Lenny. It stung that his birthday was the day of the witch’s curse put on Reginald and Cathleen Myers and their descendants.
“Geez, Lyn, cut the kid some slack,” Henry said.
“My name’s Lyn-elle. Get it right.” Then she said to Lenny, “Lindsey and Leanne are spending the night with Reverend Anthony’s girls, where they’ll be safe.”
“Well, I’m not nine or seven, and I have my pendant.” Lenny reached into a pocket and pulled out some paper money. He handed the bills to Henry.
“Thanks, runt,” Henry said, snatching the money from Lenny’s hand. He counted the bills and said, “My history professor job has led me to some interesting books about local history. Did you know that some people believed they could fend off a witch’s curse with a witch’s bottle?” He crossed the room, removed a clay vase from atop Lynelle’s bookcase, and dumped out the change and buttons inside onto the coffee table. He handed the vase to Lenny. A medieval face was carved along its neck.
“During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries here, people who thought they were cursed put their toenails, fingernails, urine, and hair into these bottles. They would bury them in their yards near their homes to ward off curses and hexes and other evil stuff.”
“Ew,” Lynelle said, scrunching her nose. “Are you saying that thing had urine in it?”
Henry laughed. “Not this one,” he said to her. “I made this in a college art class.” He looked at Lenny. “What’s important is that like your pendant, if you believe that this bottle will ward off curses, it will.”
Lenny peered inside the bottle. “So, if I put my fingernails, toenails—”
Lynelle snatched the bottle from him. “Uh-uh. This stays here.”
Henry winked at Lenny. “Come on, kid,” he said. “Time to go.”
Lenny followed him down the stairs, his tennis shoes and Henry’s boots clomping against the wood.
“Be careful,” Lynelle called out before Henry and Lenny headed out into the cursed night.
* * *
AS SOON AS Henry dropped Lenny off in front of the Lybrook’s house at ten o’clock, Lenny scampered across the front yard and around the side where the brook separated the house from his great-grandparents’ property. No moonlight broke the cloud cover, so he squinted at the field where a grand mansion once stood almost a hundred yards away—the place where Margga had killed his great-grandfather.
He paused, certain he had seen the figure of someone standing on the other side of the brook. He scanned the darkness as he hurried to the flickering flames of a campfire behind the Lybrook house.
Dave and Amy sat side by side at the fire, roasting hot dogs on a stick. Three angular tents were set up behind him.
“Grab a stick and some dogs,” Dave said, seeming to awaken from a trance the fire had put him in when Lenny approached. Amy saw him, patted her sleeping bag and told him to sit next to her. He did, sandwiching himself between brother and sister, all the while smelling hot dogs and wood smoke and Amy’s perfume that smelled like oranges.
Despite the humidity and the heat from the fire, Dave and Amy wore sweatshirts. Lenny wondered about Vree while he snuck a glance at the lighted attic window.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Dave said. “Take a look at the property next door and tell me if you see anything.”
“Like what?” Lenny asked, peering straight ahead at his great-grandparents’ old property.
“Dave thought he saw ghosts,” Amy said. She gave him her whittled stick and a hot dog to roast. “First Vree, and now him.”
“They were dogs,” Dave said; “three of them as plain as day. One looked like a Rottweiler, but the other two were shadowy. All three vanished into thin air right before you came.”
“You saw a Rottweiler and two shadowy dogs?” Lenny almost dropped his hotdog while he fumbled to pierce it with the stick. “Was the Rottweiler black with red eyes? And did you hear any howling before you saw it?”
“No … no howling. But—”
“That’s good.”
“Why?”
Lenny looked again at the property. “My great-grandfather and his two hunting dogs were killed there … frozen to death on this night, long ago by a witch who once lived in the house you’re living at right now.”
He waited for derision from either Dave or Amy. Not many people believed in witches and ghosts, but Dave and Amy were silent.
“During the same night, the witch pushed my great-grandmother to her death at the cliffs here on Myers Ridge.” Lenny glanced at where the trickling brook separated the two properties. A half-mile away to his right, the brook fell into a steep-sided gorge called Widow’s Ravine. “Because of her crime, some witch council sentenced her to death. Now, every night on this date, she and my great-grandparents return here so that she may apologize to them for her actions. Instead, she refuses, and has cursed their descendants to die on this night. If we hear the howl of her hellhounds, we must run to the nearest cemetery and look for flames. Otherwise, we’ll die. Flames in cemeteries are sacred symbols that mean life.”
He kept his gaze fixed on the old property. Dave and Amy were silent while he scanned for any ghostly activity. Then, Amy sucked in a breath and said, “That would make a better Halloween story than a day-after-July-Fourth story.”
Lenny’s shoulders sagged. “It’s not a story; it’s true,” he said. He returned his attention to cooking his hotdog, and ate it without a bun or any dressing, just the way he liked them.
Meanwhile, Dave and Amy grew silent again. Dave kept his attention on the property next door until Lenny asked about Vree.
“She’s such a
baby,” Dave said, throwing the remains of his hotdog into the fire.
“I get so tired of her wanting us to feel sorry for her,” Amy said, watching sparks rise into the night sky. “Just because she was struck by lightning and was in a coma, we’re supposed to treat her with kid gloves.”
“She’s the reason Dad died,” Dave said. “If she would have celebrated her birthday with us, she wouldn’t have been speeding to get the yard mowed for her stupid birthday party the day after. Then she wouldn’t have run over my ball glove and stalled the mower. And Dad wouldn’t have been struck by lightning pushing the mower to the garage.”
Lenny’s brows drew together in a scowl. Dave and Amy were being unfair to their sister.
He threw down his stick and stood. “I’m going inside,” he said.
“No one’s home,” Amy said. “Everyone’s on the road looking for Vree again.”
Lenny stopped and stared at the window of the room where he and Vree had seen Enit Huw. He turned and faced Dave and Amy. “I don’t know what all happened to Vree when she was struck by lightning,” he said, “but she’s different from us.” He thought about how he had stopped his fork from falling to the floor at his sister’s apartment. “She has special abilities that you and I don’t have. And that frightens her. But not as much as the witch next door.”
Amy groaned. “Not more witch tales,” she said.
Before Lenny was able to reply to her unkind comment, a stick snapped behind her tent and caused him to look. A dark shape floated around the tent and into their midst.
Chapter Fifteen
AT 10:20 P.M., Sarlic laid Vree next to the fire. He was almost certain that neither the boys nor the girl could see him. And by their expressions, he knew he had frightened them when he entered their camp and they saw Vree ‘floating’ above the ground.
He stayed with Vree until the boy with brown hair knelt at her side. Sarlic recognized him from the blueberry patch.
“She was actually floating,” the other boy said. He had a cast on his arm and the arm in a sling.
“I think she was carried,” the first boy said. He lowered his face next to Vree’s. “She’s breathing.” He patted her cheeks. “Verawenda, can you hear me?”
Vree stirred.
Sarlic crossed the yard.
“Leave her alone,” he said to Margga who stood near the brook and watched.
“I have the spell,” she said, showing him the lighted red sphere in her hand. “I can kill her now, take her power, and leave my imprisonment. It’s win-win for me and you … and your people.”
“She has no power for you to take,” Sarlic said.
Margga gaze fell on him. “What?”
Sarlic had never lied before. But he had seen it done among humans many times. He hoped the liar he spoke to wouldn’t see through his lie.
“She was fixing our engines and something went wrong. The ship drained her powers and nearly killed her. I had to carry her home.”
Margga stared at the place where Vree lay. “I sense magic still in her,” she said. “But it is weak, like you say.”
“It will likely take several days for her to be well again,” Sarlic said. “You will have to wait until next year to take her powers from her.”
“No,” Margga said. Her face contorted. “No, no, nonononono. I refuse to live this way another year. I will take what little she has left and hope it’s enough.”
“And if it isn’t?”
Margga glared at Sarlic. “You stupid, meddling space creature. This is your fault. All you had to do was bring me my book. But instead, you took the girl to your ship so you could fly away and leave me cursed to this place forever.”
She drew back her arm and released the spell at Sarlic. It struck him in the chest and exploded in a brilliant red flash. As he fell, Margga held up her hands. The red energy flew to her palms. She manipulated the energy until it was a sphere again.
Then she cast her sights on Lenny and Vree. With perfect aim, she could hit and kill both of them with her spell.
* * *
LENNY LOWERED HIS face next to Vree’s. “She’s breathing,” he said to Dave and Amy as they gathered around him. He patted Vree’s cheeks. “Can you hear me?” he asked.
Vree stirred, mumbled something, and fell back into unconsciousness.
Lenny placed a hand against her forehead.
The world around him vanished.
He fell into blackness, turning over a couple of times until he was on his back. The lumpy ground beneath his back pressed hard against his vertebrae. A snakelike arm coiled around his throat and squeezed.
He kicked and thrashed, fighting the source of the pain against his throat. It lessened the more he pushed up against the weight on him. He pushed until the blackness left and the thing on top of him skittered sideways.
A crimson spider’s giant, bulbous body moved away from him, its eight spindly legs tapping vigorously over the barren yellow ground beneath a blue-violet sky.
Vree rode the creature’s shiny, hairy back, her arms around its throat (if that is what it was), and pulled with all her strength. The spider stumbled and cursed, attempted to twist and roll free, but could not break Vree’s grip.
“Kick it in the butt,” Vree shouted.
“What?” Had he heard right?
“The butt,” Vree said. “Kick the spider in the butt. I can’t hold on much longer.”
Lenny scrambled behind the creature and tried to do what Vree had instructed, but the spider dodged his kicks.
“Hold still,” he said moments before he missed again. He fell this time and fell twice more before the spider stumbled and dropped its globular abdomen and backside close to the ground. Lenny took aim and managed to land a hard dropkick to the spider’s hindquarters. The creature hissed loudly as it lifted its back. Then its legs collapsed and it fell to its abdomen, which made a loud crunching sound.
Vree lifted her right arm over the spider’s head and brought a fist crashing down, splitting the head nearly in two. Dark, oily liquid spilled from the huge lesion.
She leapt from the dead spider and watched it for several moments before it vanished. Then she turned toward Lenny and revealed a scratched and concerned face to him. Her wounds looked superficial, but Lenny went to her to get a closer look.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” Vree said, letting him look her over until obvious discomfort set in. She stepped away and looked at the cloudless, blue-violet sky. She had on a black Pirates T-shirt and wore blue jeans shorts. Her shoes were green Keds with white polka dots. His clothes, however, were a swirl of attire that kept changing every second.
“Where are we?” he asked, looking away from his dizzying change of clothes.
“Of all the times I’ve had this dream, you’ve never asked me that.” Vree peered at him. “Then again, the guy who saves me is always faceless … until now.”
She smiled.
Blue trees sprouted from the ground as far as they could see and grew around them. “Come on,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”
“Where did you say we are?” Lenny asked. A fairytale forest of blue trees with orange leaves surrounded him and Vree.
“Another one of my nightmares,” Vree said. She pointed to a narrow path that developed in front of them. “Hurry. Let’s go.”
Lenny followed. Brush and smaller trees grabbed at their arms and legs as they went, limiting their progress. With every step, the path vanished behind them and Lenny asked, “Is this really happening?”
“Hurry,” Vree said. “Before the others get here.”
The woods were quite deep in most places, almost swallowing them in its darkness. Lenny hoped that Vree knew the way out because he knew he was lost in the foreign landscape.
They stopped next to a blue tree with white pears while Vree seemed to gather her bearings. Lenny heard faint noises coming toward them. He scanned the path as far as he could see and looked at every tree an
d bush near them, but he saw nothing.
He turned once, and when he looked back, Amy and Dave stood between him and Vree. He saw that they wore long, matching Pittsburgh Penguins sweatshirts because they faced him, looking at him, but seeming not to see him. They turned back and faced Vree when she said, “Take the lead, Amy. Dave, you follow. I’ll bring up the rear. Now hurry.”
Vree followed her siblings, leaving Lenny behind.
He shouted at Vree and told her to wait, but she did not pay attention to him. He ran after her and caught up to her minutes later when she and the others stopped at another blue tree with white pears.
“Is this the right way?” Amy asked.
Vree told her to hush. Amy did and Lenny heard noises again, but this time much clearer and louder.
To his horror, he saw them, three giant snakes—one black, one red, and the other one yellow—slither out of the brush and come at them. They were ten or eleven feet long, and despite their size, they came quickly and circled them and backed Amy and Dave against the pear tree. Vree stood her ground and so did Lenny.
“Oh God, Vree, I’m scared,” Amy cried out. Her fear could have shattered Lenny’s heart. Vree told her to be brave.
Dave, however, bolted and ran past them. He tried to pick up a fallen branch, perhaps to use as a weapon, but the black snake sprang at him, butted him in the chest and knocked him on his back. The snake rose partway up and opened a large, alligator-type mouth with rows of shark-like teeth. Two white fangs in front of its upper mouth sprang forward and outward like spears before the creature slammed its snout and those fangs into Dave’s chest.
Dave screamed. The snake pulled its fangs from him and raised its head for a moment before it attacked again, this time tearing away Dave’s shirt and stomach with its rows of sharp teeth before it slithered over his body and coiled around him and hushed his cries of anguish. It stayed there, its black body pulsating inches from Amy’s feet. Dave’s blood had splattered her sweatshirt and blue jeans, as well as her hands and the face she covered when she started to scream.
Lenny stayed very still and watched the other two snakes circle them as though trying to decide which one of them to strike next.
Margga's Curse: A Vree Erickson Novel, Book One Page 12
