The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding

by Alexandra Bracken

  “Why would they have to do that?” I asked.

  “Malefactors exist in our world as spirits, which means they can’t be harmed physically. To trap a malefactor in a human body is to render it mortal, and the only way to break a contract with a fiend is to kill it.”

  “So they got Alejandro—”

  “Alastor,” Nell corrected.

  Well, excuse me for not knowing whatever fancy-pants name the imaginary creature had.

  “So poor Al got trapped in someone’s body? Whose?” I would be the first one to admit that most of this was sailing clear on over my head, but I got the feeling that if you were going to kill a fiend—hypothetically, since, you know, not real—you probably had to kill whoever he was trapped inside of.

  Uncle Barnabas shrugged. “Some expendable servant girl.”

  Oh no.

  “Ugh, are you serious?” I asked, instantly taking an eraser to every nice thought I’d ever had about Honor. Another small, awful thought slithered up to me and sank its fangs in. “But the girl…she survived, right?”

  Uncle Barnabas shook his head.

  “How did she die?” I whispered.

  “How did they normally kill witches in that day?” Nell asked darkly.

  Oh no.

  “I mean…hanging…drowning…stoning…?”

  Don’t say fire, don’t say fire, don’t say fire—

  “They burned her at the stake,” Uncle Barnabas said.

  I put my hands to my face again, moaning, “Oh nooooo.”

  Here’s the other thing you need to know about Founder’s Day and the bonfire: they don’t really mark the day when Redhood was settled, but when the family’s luck turned around and the settlement was renamed. The legend that gets lost in the shuffle of pretty ideas about renewal is that Honor started the bonfire with some sort of object they believed was cursed. And once it was gone…

  “Oh noooooo.” Even the bonfire was awful. There was officially nothing good about Redhood except the Silence Cakes. And knowing the truth about my family, they were probably originally made from the hearts of babies, not pumpkin leaves.

  “Don’t pretend like you’re actually upset,” Nell said icily. “Aren’t servants invisible to you people? Only good for how well they polish the silver?”

  Anger flooded me. “You don’t know anything about my family. And yeah, I’m upset! She was an innocent person, and she shouldn’t have had to die because some guy got scared and made a terrible mistake—”

  “Guys, guys,” Uncle Barnabas said. “We’re all in agreement. It was a terrible act. The important thing is what came next. Nell, perhaps you’d like to explain?”

  She was still giving me a shifty eye, as if she was trying to find a lie in my face, but she nodded. “Somehow, the casting was messed up. When the servant girl and the malefactor were near death, Alastor warned the family that he would survive the fire and bide his time until he could return to this world, reborn inside of one of Honor Redding’s descendants. When he regained his full power, he would take back everything he had given them.”

  No, but this…this was too strange. This was unreal.

  And what happened to that book wasn’t?

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “What do you mean, he could return? How could he do that?”

  Nell shifted uncomfortably, and seemed reluctant to explain. “A witch’s magic is tied to her bloodline, and a spell only lasts as long as the witch’s descendants walk the earth. We think he fed on the servant girl’s pain and fear and what was left of his power to retreat into the Inbetween, a shadow world between life and death. As long as one of Prufrock’s heirs was alive, Alastor was barred from returning unless he wanted to die.”

  “How many are left?” I whispered. “How many of her descendants?”

  “None,” Nell said. “The last one died thirteen years ago.”

  “Oh, well, then, I’m only twelve,” I said. “It can’t be me.”

  “Your birthday is in two weeks, is it not?” Uncle Barnabas asked gently.

  It was. It was.

  My heart slammed against my ribs. Every inch of my skin shivered with panic, pricking painfully with realization.

  “Goody Prufrock explained that it would likely take a full thirteen years of feeding off the energy of his host for the malefactor to regain his strength and escape whoever that might be to gain his vengeance against the Reddings. Have you felt tired over the years? Did you experience any unusual weakness?”

  I couldn’t breathe. I just nodded.

  “Your grandmother went through and tested all of the extended family herself as they reached thirteen, checking to see if the curse was upon them, growing more and more certain that Prufrock’s theory was correct, and that the timing would align the way she predicted. The family you saw in that dungeon all believe that destroying the malefactor will save them from ruin, and they’re desperate to protect themselves and their wealth. You and your sister were the only ones left to be tested. Your parents had always refused, thinking the whole thing was an absurd myth, but the wily old woman knew she was running out of time before the malefactor might make an appearance.”

  “What was that book?” I asked. My palms were drenched in sweat, but I didn’t want either of them to see me wipe them off. “That was the test, wasn’t it? I could read it, and Prue couldn’t.”

  “That was Goody Prufrock’s grimoire—her book of spells. It was enchanted in such a way that no fiend would ever be able to open it, let alone destroy it.”

  “And when I touched it, and it caught fire—when the words appeared”—my mouth was racing faster than my brain—“it proved to them that—”

  “You,” Nell finished, “are one doomed Redding.”

  I was no stranger to lies. In fact, I think if you were to line up all the lies I’d been told in my life, the ugly chain of them would probably stretch from Redhood to Jupiter. Every day I had to deal with little lies from my cousins, like when David convinced me that eating broccoli would make trees grow in my stomach. Big ones too, from Mom and Dad, like, Oh, Prosper, of course your grandmother loves you, and you will get better, and the enormous panther you see in your dreams isn’t real. By now, I could spot a lie the second someone spat it out.

  But the longer I stared at Uncle Barnabas, the longer I waited for my internal lie detector to start beeping, the slower the blood ran in my veins, until it seemed to stop completely.

  “Is he going to faint again?” Nell leaned close, peering at my face.

  “He won’t faint,” Uncle Barnabas said, patting my back. “Though I imagine you’re very tired after your ordeal. We’ll leave you now to—”

  Ordeal. Try nightmare.

  “Wait,” I breathed out. “Wait!”

  You know, I might not have been the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but I got what they were saying. Some part of my brain knew what they were implying, even if I didn’t see how it was possible. My family had tried to destroy the malefactor by trapping it in a human body. They screwed up. The malefactor said it would come back for vengeance. They wanted to get rid of it again. To do that, they had to get rid of me before he could escape and ruin them. Human host. Dead meat.

  “Does this mean that they’re not going to stop until I’m dead?” I only had to see their faces to get confirmation on that one. “Oh. Great.”

  “You don’t have anything to be afraid of,” Uncle Barnabas said, putting on a fake smile. “Not while you’re with us. Unlike the rest of the family, I’ve never believed that killing the carrier was the solution. Hence, why I’m no longer invited to the Cottage.”

  “How do you fix it?” I asked. “How do I get it out?”

  The idea that I had some kind of pest…some parasite crawling around inside me, hiding in my bones, made me feel like a million ants were roaming beneath my skin. I started scratching my arm, even though it didn’t itch.

  Uncle Barnabas stared at me for a second, smoothing a hand over his low ponytail. I got an answer
—just not from him.

  Ye might ask me yourself, came the cold, prim voice in my mind, thou mangled sheep-biting scut.

  Over the past twenty-four hours, a few things about my family had finally started making sense.

  Grandmother’s hatred of me and all of my cousins, for one. Why she never wanted to talk about Uncle Barnabas. What exactly was in the dungeon. You know, typical family stuff.

  And now that I was standing in front of the cracked floor-length mirror, its clawed feet near my own toes, I had a very new understanding of where that superstition about mirrors in Redhood had come from.

  I followed the fiend’s instructions exactly. Find a candle and light it. Find a mirror, and stand in front of it holding the lit candle. Continue to stand there. Easy enough.

  “Is it him?” Uncle Barnabas asked, trailing behind me to the mirror. “He’s speaking to you now, isn’t he? What is he saying?”

  Well, that was kind of the problem. It sounded like the thing-creature-fiend-whatever was speaking English, but he was tossing in words and phrases I’d never heard before. Like “beslubbering tickle-brained mouldwarp.” I wasn’t sure what that one meant, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted to repeat it out loud. Which worked out great, since it seemed like Uncle Barnabas was totally happy having a nice conversation with himself.

  “Fiends travel between our world and theirs using mirrors,” he was saying, his eyebrows drawn together, “but a powerful fiend like a malefactor has to be the one to open those portals between the realms. I assumed they only communicated through dreams—at least, that’s what my research has told me. I didn’t realize a mirror could be used for a conversation as well…fascinating.”

  I let him ramble, staring hard at my reflection in the mirror. Nell had plopped a fat white candle into my hand that smelled of wax and honey. She lit the black wick with a snap of her fingers.

  I jumped so high in the air, the flame went out and she had to relight it.

  “Chill,” she said. “Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sorry I don’t speak Fortune Cookie. You’re going to have to—”

  “Well done! Well done!” Uncle Barnabas elbowed me to the side and beamed down at her. It was like a cloud finally moving away from the sun’s face. Nell grinned back at him. “You’ve been practicing with elemental magic! Have you mastered any of the—”

  The two were chatting in excited voices, flinging around words like “cunning one” and “pocket spells” and “charms.”

  Me? I was a little more interested in what was watching me from the other side of the mirror’s filmy surface. Only Toad seemed to see it too. He half clawed, half flew to the very top of the armoire, spitting and hissing in disgust or fear.

  The flame flickered between my hands, then caught the cracked glass with a brilliant flash of white. I winced and looked away. By the time my heart started beating again, our reflections had disappeared, and the mirror’s surface had turned into some kind of window.

  A white fox sat still and silent, its fluffy tail sweeping back and forth across the darkness that hovered around it from all sides. It was a tiny, pale thing, more bones than anything else. I felt the weirdest need to squat down and be level with it—just so I could get a closer look at its eyes. One was a bright, bright blue. The other was as dark as the center of the burning candlewick.

  “Wait…” I began, finally catching the attention of Uncle Barnabas and Nell. They moved in unison, leaning around my shoulders. I almost laughed at the way Nell gasped and my uncle started muttering, “What? What? I don’t see anything—”

  “Are you…?” I began, slowly cracking my knuckles to try to ease some of the tension building up in me.

  “I am,” came the reply. The words fluttered around the attic, winding through the space like black, shimmery silk. Even Uncle Barnabas must have heard them. His face went a ghostly shade of gray behind me.

  It was the exact same voice I had heard in my head both a few moments ago and at the Cottage. The accent was refined and all proper, but it sounded like someone my age, not an adult. Not to mention, the words were slipping out of a fox’s mouth. “I would say it’s a pleasure to meet thee, Prosperity Oceanus Redding, but truly, I only anticipate the delights of destroying thy happiness.”

  A few steps to the right of me, Nell crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes at the mirror. “Is that right?”

  The fox paid her no mind. It smiled, revealing a mouthful of ivory teeth, each sharper than the next.

  “Why is he talking like that?” I asked Uncle Barnabas. “It sounds like he swallowed a Pilgrim.”

  But he only shook his head, his mouth opening and shutting with a little gobbling noise.

  Nell took a step forward. “It sounds like…” She shook her head and said slowly, “What does thou know of…um…thy circumstances?”

  “Does the lass speak the good speak?” The fox’s tail swished again. “Or shall I deign to use your fouled-up form of an already wretched language?”

  “The, uh, second option?” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “You don’t have to talk like Shakespeare?”

  “I have been awake as you slept this day past,” Alastor said, his voice oozing with pride. “I have listened, with great horror, to thy manner of present-day speech, and I have already mastered it, as thee can see.”

  “If you say so, pal.”

  “How…how fascinating,” Uncle Barnabas managed to squeeze out. He leaned in closer to the glass and poked at it. He jumped back, like he was all surprised to find it was solid. “Yes,” he murmured to himself. “Yes, he would speak an old form of the language until he fully acclimates to ours. Fascinating.”

  I set the candle on the floor and sat beside it, crossing my legs. I was surprised that I felt so calm when I was staring at definite proof that Uncle Barnabas and Nell hadn’t been lying.

  I took a deep breath. This was going to be so much easier than Uncle Barnabas let on. The fiend was trapped inside me, which meant he had no chance of hurting Mom, Dad, or Prue for now. That made my legs feel a little more solid.

  Not going to lie, it also helped to see a fox, not some slobbering brain-eating monster, watching me. His fuzzy little head was cocked to the side, and a small black tongue darted out over his button nose. It was actually…kind of cute?

  Alastor wasn’t anything like the drawings. He didn’t have pointy wings, or a pitchfork, or a scaly tail that curled with his dark delights.

  The white fox didn’t blink as its eyes shifted back to me. This time, when he spoke, it was only to my ears. Ye—you, rather, should see me in my true form, peasant. By the end of it all, you will accompany me Downstairs, and I shall show you terror.

  You can hear my thoughts? The blood rushed straight to my face. All of them?

  I know everything about thee, Prosperity. Everything inside thee belongs to me. I am joined to thy shade. I know all of thy fears, thy desires, thy jealousy—where thou hides thy collection of small porcelain ponies…

  I turned to look back at Uncle Barnabas. “Is there any way to shut him up?”

  Uncle Barnabas picked up the candle and blew it out with a single breath. As the flame died, so did the image of the white fox. “That work?” he asked.

  Behind us, Toad was mewling frantically, as if trying to get our attention. I heard a thud and assumed he had jumped down from his perch. The scratch of nails against the floorboards faded beneath the rumble of laughter in my ears.

  Hear me, boy. I have heard the things you and that man have planned for me, but this thou—you—must know. I have lived for over eight hundred years, and nothing, save the end of this world, will bring me more joy than ripping thy family to shreds and scattering every bit of their fortune to the winds.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Try it.”

  Test me, and you will learn precisely how fragile the human heart can be. But…you are already acquainted with this knowledge, are you not? Imagine h
ow easy it will be to undo what healing has already passed.

  Prue.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded. Fear and anger slammed into me. I gripped the sides of the mirror, shaking as hard as I could until the shelves around me were rattling with the force of it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Nell yanked me back. “Cut it out! What did he say to you?”

  I tore myself out of her grip and stormed over to the couch and its nest of blankets. I snatched up the darkest, sturdiest plaid and stalked back toward the mirror to cover it. Before I could, Toad’s yelping turned to a furious yowl. His tiny fangs flashed as he practically unhinged his jaw to snap them around Nell’s foot like a trap.

  “Ouch! Toad! What’s the matter with you?”

  His tail flicked toward the mirror, frantically pointing.

  The stupid white fox was gone now, but the reflection of the attic still hadn’t returned to the mirror’s dusty surface. In fact, there seemed to be something else moving inside of it, something dark, growing closer and closer. The surface of the glass rippled like water, and even though my brain was screaming at me to stop, I reached up and brushed a finger with it. When I pulled it back, it was coated with what looked like silver paint.

  But then the distant shadow wasn’t distant at all—and it wasn’t a shadow, not any longer. Its dark robes swirled as it spiraled up, as if climbing out of a dark well. I saw a flash of red mask. The thing bobbed, hovering just in front of me. Its head cocked to the side, curious.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Prosper…” Nell began, her voice tight with fear. “Duck!”

  “What are you—?” I started to say. But just as I began to turn the red mask flipped up, revealing five sets of teeth. And then, suddenly, the creature wasn’t inside the mirror.

  It was crashing through it.

  In art, there’s something called negative space. It’s the blank space around the subject of whatever is the focus of the work. Sometimes it creates its own image, one more interesting than the original subject.