When Witches Wake

by Hilary Foxhill

  Emily’s phone buzzed on the wooden floor and the sound jolted her awake. She found herself laying on the couch, fully dressed. Sun shined in through her living room window and she cringed at the light, squinting her eyes. Her head felt like it was being stabbed with ice picks and her mouth was dry and chalky. She groaned in pain and her phone buzzed again, scooting across the floor as it vibrated. She reached down and picked up the phone. Texts from Jeremy.

  “What the fuck?” she gasped. She unlocked her phone and read the texts.

  "Hi Emily, it’s Jeremy. I got your voicemail from last night. Sorry I missed your call, but I’d totally be down to meet up and talk."

  "I hope you’re okay. You sounded pretty strange in your message. Just let me know when you’d want to meet and we can make it happen.

  “Oh my God,” she said. Her stomach sank and she felt like she might be sick. She had zero memory of calling him, of leaving any voicemail. She struggled to piece the night together, but had no recollection of anything she might have said to him. She remembered drinking a couple glasses of wine and listening to music, and after that her memory was turning up blank.

  What a joke, she thought. First I can’t get these crazy images out of my head and now I can’t remember something that actually happened in real life . Her stomach turned and she got up to stumble to the bathroom. She draped herself over the toilet just in time and threw up purple liquid until she was only gagging. Her head pounded. She hadn’t been hung over in years, and this felt much worse than she remembered it being in college. She poured a large glass of water and chugged it down along with two ibuprofen. For a brief moment she felt so sick that she had forgotten about how embarrassed she was. That embarrassment came rushing back and sat right on top of how ill she still felt. She brushed her teeth, got undressed, and crawled into bed. She decided she had to wait to deal with the Jeremy texts until she felt better.

  Emily slept for four hours. Her empty stomach growled her awake, and her dry and thirsty throat pulled her out of bed. Her hangover had lessened a bit, but she still felt off. Like she had a bad cold. Her head was foggy and she had a slight headache. This is ridiculous , she thought. I just need to get it over with. She text Jeremy back.

  "Hi Jeremy. Sorry about the phone call…

  I think we do need to talk. When can we meet up?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  KAREN SAT ON a restaurant patio eating dinner and drinking a glass of wine. She was waiting on a date and she had been waiting for almost an hour. At this point it was safe to say he wasn't coming, which was fine. She wasn’t really into the guy that much anyway. He was probably too young for her. At least she was going to get a good meal out of the evening. Her phone started ringing from inside her purse. There he is , she thought. She pulled out her phone and was disappointed to see Christopher's name on the screen.

  “Hello Chris,” she said, loudly chewing her food.

  “Karen,” he said. “How have you been?”

  “Oh just dandy,” she said. “What’s up? Is Emily okay?”

  “I don't know,” he said. “I know you told me you were worried, and I had been getting worried about her too. I spoke to her yesterday and she told me she has been having recurring dreams.”

  “Yes, she told me she was having weird dreams,” she said.

  “Did she tell you they were disrupting her sleep and that she has been having them while she is awake?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Did she tell you anything else about them?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But it got me thinking of the dreams she used to tell us about when she was little. Do you remember?”

  “Of course I remember. The entire house would lose sleep over those dreams.”

  “Right,” he said. “But they never seemed to last more than a week or so. And she never complained of seeing them while she was awake. She eventually just stopped telling us about them, I don’t know why I assumed that meant that they stopped.”

  “Okay. What are you getting at Chris?” Karen asked impatiently.

  He was silent for a moment, as if he was trying to decide how to say what he needed to say. “I was thinking about it last night, and I just wanted to see if there is any way you might have anything at all to do with this.”

  “What exactly do you mean, Christopher?” she asked.

  “Well, I know you used to dabble in uh, the old ways as you called it.” He heard her sigh on the other end of the line and started speaking faster. Her lifestyle was a major factor in the dissolution of their marriage and he blamed much of it on her odd fascination with the occult and witchcraft. “Emily had told me that you were asking her a lot about her life and what she was doing, and what her plans were with a bunch of different areas of her life.”

  “I was. I’m worried about my daughter and the life she is leading,” she said.

  “What is wrong with the life she’s leading?” he asked.

  “She isn’t happy. She isn’t in love. She isn’t fulfilled,” she explained. “She seems miserable about every aspect of her life, and she doesn’t deserve that.”

  “She told me that you asked her to move to Ireland and live with you,” he said.

  “Of course I did. And she didn’t accept my offer.”

  “How would moving to another country improve her life?” he asked.

  “You know what Chris? I don’t have to explain this to you,” she said. “Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?”

  “Yes, actually. I mean you never really answered me,” he said. “Did you have anything to do with her dreams? Are you practicing again?”

  “Again? You're implying I ever stopped. You wanted me to keep it to myself while you looked the other way. Plus, what I do in my life is none of your business, and it would be a great relief for both of us I think if you finally accepted that,” she said.

  “I don’t care about what you do Karen. I care about Emily. And anything that has to do with her is my business,” he said.

  “She is my daughter, and I am free to help her in any way I want to,” she said.

  He laughed, sounding frustrated. “So you did do something?”

  “I didn’t do anything that would hurt her Chris. I would never do anything to hurt her.” She was talking loudly now and people walking by the restaurant were looking at her as she walked by. She didn’t notice.

  “Like her mother moving to another country wouldn’t hurt her?” he said.

  “Are you ever going to stop nagging me about that?” she asked.

  He ignored her and pressed her again. “What did you do , Karen?” he asked.

  “I just did what I needed to do to help her find her path. She needed a guiding light, and I tried to put that in place for her. Just a little cosmic nudge to find out who she is,” she said.

  “I should have known. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said, his voice full of disappointment. “I’m sure that is what this is now. Your little cosmic nudge is wreaking havoc on her life. That is what you are best at,” he said. “Are you going to tell her that you stuck your nose in? That you meddled in her life that you're barely a part of?”

  “Why would I need to tell her anything?” she asked. “What I did has nothing to do with her not getting sleep these days.”

  “She didn’t tell me what these dreams have been about. But you remember how they worked before don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes. She said they showed her what was going to happen before it happened.” She was beginning to get nervous that he was going to prove her wrong. “But Chris she was a little kid with an overactive imagination.”

  “Right. Even with your belief in- whatever it is you believe in- you still didn’t believe your daughter. Well isn’t it a funny coincidence that you put some little spell of yours on her to help her find her path, and she gets bombarded by dreams that are probably telling her what's going to happen. In an attempt to push her there and shoving it down her throat so much that she can’t get any rel
ief,” he said. He was furious. “I’m tired of picking up the pieces for you. You need to fix this Karen.”

  She sat at the little iron table and stared at her plate, not knowing what to say. “I just don’t understand how anything I did could be connected to this,” she said.

  “Do you not believe in what you did? If you didn’t think it would work, why did you do it?” he asked.

  “I did think it would work,” she stuttered. “I do think it will work. It’s going to fix things for her, I know it will.”

  “How dare you do anything like this without even speaking to her about it? Without asking her for her permission. Or even asking her if she wants your help at all,” he said. “This conversation is over. You are going to tell her what you have done, and you are going to fix this.”

  “Chris,” she said.

  “Just don’t,” he interrupted her. “If you don’t tell her, I will. And that is the last thing you need right now. Your relationship with your daughter is hanging on by a thread as it is. If you don’t come clean with her, I wouldn’t be surprised if she never speaks to you again.” He hung up the phone.

  Karen was stunned. He had never spoken to her like that, and he had never hung up on her. In the years they had known each other he had almost always been surprisingly calm and collected with her. He had been so kind and apologetic that at times she found it pathetic. It was one of the things that turned her off about him- that he never got angry with her. She was also stunned at the idea that she was the cause of Emily’s stress right now. She had done a spell, yes. Two spells, actually. But she was very specific and she focused the purpose of her spells. For Emily to find her true self, and for her to find her true love. Originally, she had thought that the spells could be one in the same, but in order for the spells to be as specific as possible, she split them into two spells. It was unlikely that Emily’s true love would overlap with her true path or calling, and she wasn’t going to risk leaving that up to chance and missing a major point of doing the spell in the first place.

  She paid her bill and started walking home. She would call Emily and find out more about what was going on. If it sounded like it could have anything to do with her spells, she would tell her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  EMILY PULLED UP to Jeremy's house and parked across the street. She sat inside her car, nervously watching the house. It had been almost a week since she made the plan to meet here. Each day since had been a mixture of excitement at the possibility that she would finally get some answers, and terror that she wouldn’t get anything more than a giant dose of reality. It was very likely that this guy was just trying to hit on her. For all she knew, he was a total creep and she was walking into a murder house. And if he did end up being perfectly normal, it could very well be that she was in fact the crazy one. But she had made the decision that she had to do something. The dreams were getting too intense, and they were beginning to interfere more and more with her day to day life when she was wide awake. Even calling it wide awake would be an exaggeration. She was barely getting through each day without falling asleep at work. This was it. She was here and she had come this far. She couldn’t turn back now. All she’d be going back to would be a path to institutionalization. May as well go have coffee with a strange man first, and see if anything worthwhile comes out of it.

  She got out of the car and crossed the street, taking a good look at the house as she approached. It was a beautiful two story house that appeared to be built in the early 1900’s, like most of the other homes in the neighborhood. The siding was a dark bluish-gray and the old windows were trimmed in a muddy brown. The front yard was coated in leaves that created a blanket over some ground cover landscaping. Short ornate iron fencing was placed in the front two corners of the yard, and dry brown vines twisted up and around it. Shepard hooks hung in various spots in the front yard, holding large wind chimes that clicked and clanged as the breeze hit them. The sound was calming and melodic. As she approached the front steps, she noticed three small wooden chimes hanging above the front door. Each was made by small twigs arranged in strange geometrical shapes. The house had a large three season porch. The black iron storm door was ajar, and Emily couldn’t find any door bell. She stepped inside the porch. The sound of the wind chimes dimmed and she found relief from the wind, but not the cold. The porch was painted a cheerful yellow color, with tapestries like the ones she saw at the bookshop hung in various places. Small white string lights were messily hung around the edges of the ceiling, and shoes of various sizes and styles were lined up on a mat next to the front door. A large utility bucket sat next to the mat of shoes with large feathers peeking out of the top. She peered inside and saw what looked to be turkey feathers, still attached to the rear end of a turkey. Scattered on the window sills were various small animal bones.

  Bones. Okay. Totally not weird, she thought to herself, sarcastically. The front door opened and she jumped backwards, startled.

  “Emily, hi!” Jeremy greeted her with a huge smile. He was wearing the same flannel shirt he was wearing when they met at the bookstore, or at least one very similar.

  “Hi,” Emily said. She pulled her hair behind her ear, nervously.

  “I heard you come onto the front porch so I figured I’d just come on out. I hope I didn’t scare you.”

  “Just a little bit,” she admitted. “I was admiring your little bone collection.” She gestured to the window sill.

  “Ah!” he laughed. “Yeah we have a thing for animal bones. It’s weird, I know. We just find them though. We don’t kill them of course.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Why don’t you come on in out of the cold?” He stepped out of the doorway onto the porch and swept his hand into the house, leading her in front of him. She stepped inside and the floral smoky smell from her dreams immediately hit her nose. She perked up and instead of feeling scared and irritated at being reminded of her dreams, she felt like she was following a map and getting closer to finding the treasure. Maybe it was the right choice to come here after all.

  “You have a beautiful house,” she told him. And she meant it. She looked around in awe, trying to take in every detail. Dark wood floors spanned the house, with large rugs anchoring each room. She could see three where she stood in the entryway. The living room to her right which connected to another room behind it, and an office to her left. A large staircase loomed in front of her, next to the hallway that ran alongside it and back to the kitchen. The doorway to each room had a velvet curtain hanging open on a hook in the wall.

  “Thanks, make yourself at home,” Jeremy said. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

  Emily was thirsty, and the mention of a drink reminded her that she forgot her water bottle at home. But she didn’t know Jeremy well enough yet to accept a drink from him. The thought of her never leaving the house alive crossed her mind again. “No, thank you. I’m okay,” she answered. She sat on the couch and sunk down more than she expected. She now had a better view into the next room and she noticed each wall was painted a different color. She spotted four large pillars against the wall that were covered in wax. Besides the pillars and a rug on the floor, the room was empty.

  Jeremy sat on the large armchair across from the couch. He leaned back and spread his legs apart slightly, getting comfortable. Emily tried to scoot forward to the edge of the couch, and she sat straight with her ankles crossed. They looked at each other and sat in silence for a moment.

  “So where should we start?” he asked.

  She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I’m not really sure where to start. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about this, and I’m starting to feel a little crazy.”

  “Crazy is relative,” Jeremy said. They were both silent again.

  “Okay, I’m just going to tell you. I have been keeping in for too long and I really think I’m losing my mind.” She looked at Jeremy and he noticed the bags under her eyes and the tears starting to form. “The dreams hav
e started flashing in my head while I’m awake. No. Not flashing. I’m transported into them almost every time I close my eyes. And when I’m in them, I’m completely aware that I’m dreaming. I’m an active participant in the dream. And I’ve had them so many times now that I know what’s going to happen.” She cut herself off. “Except for one newer one. I haven’t had it enough to know what happens next.”

  “And that’s why you came into the shop? To try and figure out the dreams?” he asked.

  “Yes. There are parts of the dreams that seem to focus on magic. I guess witchcraft, from that book you showed me.”

  Jeremy sat up straight, listening intently.

  “I had been writing down the dreams for months, but once they started replaying in my head when I was awake I felt like I had to do something.” She looked away from him and down at the floor. “Honestly I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I don’t know how you can help me. I just felt comfortable with you, and I figured I had nothing to lose.” She rubbed her hands together, anxiously.

  “Well, I’m not sure how I can help either. But maybe you could tell me about what makes you think you have magic in your dreams and I’ll see if any of it makes sense to me,” he said.

  “Well, the main dreams I have been having- the ones that seemed to have started it all- begin with me in a room, naked. I’m waiting for something and I hear drumming and chanting. As time went on more moments came together in the dreams, and I’m with a group of people in a room. It’s just lit by candlelight. The room is smoky and we’re all naked. It smells like your house, actually.” She was experiencing a strange combination of relief and nervousness as she opened up about the dreams. She knew they were absurd, but it felt so good to finally get them out of her head.

  “My house?” he said. His put his hand on his chest. “Probably incense I guess? We do burn a lot of it.”