by Ian Fortey
“This was a bad idea,” Fix said. Vincent grunted again. Sometimes Fix was not a lot of help with his observations.
The women picked Vincent up and carried him into the house. Whenever he tried to struggle from their grip, Abigail would free up a hand and punch him square in the face. He felt his nose break on the first hit. The second one convinced him to stop moving, as the pain caused his vision to blur. He could already feel the blood running down his face.
“I hope you weren’t planning on a long visit, Mr. Donnelly,” Abigail said. They walked down a hallway and stopped at a thick wooden door. The women dropped him and Abigail produced a key, unlocking an ancient lock on the door.
“I just came to help,” he wheezed, spitting out blood.
“Well, you can help yourself to the cellar,” Abigail said. She pushed the door open. The room beyond was black. Vincent could see old, wooden stairs leading down into nothing. Abigail leaned down next to his face, her lips almost touching his ear.
“Only two other people have ever been put in this cellar before. It’s been here for over three hundred years. Just two people, can you believe that? As far as I know, they’re still down there somewhere. Do say hello when you meet them. If you can still speak.”
She planted a foot in his back and kicked him roughly, forcing his body through the doorway. He rolled down the stairs, his head slamming against wooden steps more than once, and pain spiking in his ribs over and over again as he fell.
He hit a dirt floor and coughed. It was not cold, but warm and moist. The door above him closed and he was plunged into total darkness.
He sat still in silence for a long time, feeling pain in his head and chest. Breathing hurt, thanks to the position of one of his ribs. He could still feel blood flowing from his broken nose, running down his face in thick, sticky rivers.
“Can you get up?” Fix asked.
“I don’t know,” Vincent said. He didn’t really want to. Not yet, anyway. He could just rest where he was for a while. Until the pain went away.
“You should try. We shouldn’t stay here,” Fix said.
Vincent moved his arm. Pain shot through his ribs again. He gasped and put his palm on the dirt floor. He tried to push himself up. The broken ribs were agonizing. He slumped over again.
“I’m sorry, Vincent. I wish I could do something,” Fix said.
“It’s okay. I’m sorry I got you stuck here,” Vincent answered. Fix was forever at the mercy of Vincent. He was more trapped than Vincent was.
“Well, we’re a couple of sorry individuals. I don’t want you to die here, though. There’s got to be something we can do. Maybe Selena can help,” Fix said.
“Got a mirror?”
“Not as such, no.”
“Think that’s the limit of her skill. Guess I should have let her do the talking.”
“Next time,” Fix said. Vincent laughed.
“Yeah. Next time.”
Vincent rolled onto his back and stared up at the blackness above him. The air was stuffy and hot, like a windowless room in summertime.
“What now?” Fix asked.
“Pass out, maybe,” Vincent said. It was very hard to breathe. The pain and the thick, humid air made it all too uncomfortable. He closed his eyes.
“I’ll listen for anything coming, I guess,” Fix said. Vincent didn’t answer.
***
“Do the others know he’s here?” Mary-Ann asked as Abigail closed the cellar door.
“They do,” Abigail said. “They’re finishing up at the bakery. It’s a busy day.”
“I can’t believe he just showed up like that,” Mary-Ann said. Abigail shrugged.
“He’s a fool, I suppose. But still dangerous. He was skilled enough to overcome Selena. We can’t forget that.”
“I never will,” Mary-Ann agreed, placing her hand on the cellar door. “He felt so much like her. It was like he was her.”
“I know. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
“What kind of spell can do that?” Mary-Ann asked. Abigail walked back down the hall towards the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of iced tea from the refrigerator.
“Not one I have come across,” she answered. “But I aim to undo it.”
Mary-Ann looked at her sister.
“To undo it?”
“He stole Selena’s power. Killed her and took the very essence of who she was. It is a... violation!” Abigail said, spitting the word out. “That power belonged to Selena. But if she can’t have it, neither will he. We will take it from him and let our sister return to the Earth whole, as the Goddess intended.”
“Then shouldn’t we take him out of the cellar?” Mary-Ann asked.
“Whatever for?” Abigail said, finishing her tea. Mary-Ann looked back down the hall.
“He’ll die down there,” she said.
“No. He’ll just wish for death. I’ve made sure he’ll survive, like those who came before,” Abigail said.
The cellar in her home had once been a normal cellar. But not every woman in Burnham accused of witchcraft was like Maggie Huxley, an innocent woman who was persecuted by the ignorant. Some, like Eloise Crawford, had been very accomplished witches.
Eloise, who owned Abigail’s home long ago, had placed an enchantment over her own root cellar in order to punish a man who had wronged her and several other women. For her, it would forever remain a root cellar. In fact, it would remain so for anyone not being punished. But if she wanted it to be more, then she just had to unlock the door with the correct key. And then it became a living nightmare.
The vast darkness below was an adaptive, living curse. It would seep into the minds of its victims and give rise to their deepest fears. Not illusions, like some spells. Not parlor tricks or psychological games. It made them real, birthed them from the very life force of the victims they would grow to torment. So even if someone were able to fight or flee into the endless abyss, their life force would still drain away ever so slowly, as it was given to the nightmares that chased them.
Abigail knew that the first man had been trapped down there by Eloise. And another person had fallen victim a century later, but Abigail did not know who it was or why he was sent there. They were both still down there, in a state somewhere between life and death. Drained almost to the point of death, but not fully gone. The enchantment could keep a victim alive for centuries. Maybe even forever. Vincent Donnelly would suffer the same. At least until Abigail could devise a ritual to take Selena’s power from him.
Her sisters would be willing to help. They felt the pain of Selena’s loss as keenly as Abigail herself did. They would be as horrified as she was when they felt what she did in Vincent Donnelly. It was so much worse than she had thought. It was like the man had swallowed Selena’s very soul.
What her sisters could not know was what she intended to do with Selena’s power. She loved her dearly and missed her more than she thought possible. But simply losing all that power was foolish. It made no sense. Not if she could take it for herself.
If Abigail could replicate whatever Vincent Donnelly had done, she could make all of Selena’s power her own. Combined with her own abilities, and the power she had been granted by Maggie, she would be unstoppable. Then she could do what Selena had died trying to do.
Selena had left all those months ago with a single mission. She had been in contact with someone who claimed to have access to incredible power. Selena was tight-lipped. She did not tell Abigail the details. Not for lack of trust, but for fear. Selena had told her what she was doing was dangerous. High risk but high reward. Access to primal magic that they had only read about in the most ancient tomes. The First Magic.
Though the entire coven revered the sisters that came before them, none of them were ignorant of the pain and suffering that paved the way for them to be the women they were. None were blind to the deaths that the town of Burnham celebrated so egregiously. It was a legacy that Sele
na sought to unweave.
To teach the people of the present the atrocities of the past was a noble endeavor. The people of Salem had at least put some effort into that. They had acknowledged the women who were victimized. But Burnham had chosen the path of cruelty and deceit. They chose to celebrate torture and pain. Selena planned to take it from them.
Abigail did not think such power existed. She had never felt magic that could rewrite the past. But Selena insisted she had discovered it and could master it. And when she did, she would be able to reach back across the centuries and pluck women like Maggie Huxley from the fate they never deserved.
She could save the lives of the twelve women who were murdered by the town of Burnham and bring them to the present. She could save Maggie from dying alone in that cave. She could correct the wrongs of history. The people would still wallow in their own ignorance. But no one would have truly died. And then, in the present, with the help of their coven, they could set about enlightening the town and changing its celebration of cruelty.
The others were concerned about Selena’s plan but she had assured them it would work. The future would not be changed by her influence in the past. She would take each woman and replace her with an illusion. The people of the past would be none the wiser. And the women would live.
Abigail could succeed with Selena’s plan. Whatever power Selena had been promised was lost, but Abigail did not need it now. Maggie’s, Selena’s, and her power combined would be the foundation for all she needed. Then she could syphon off the rest of the ignorant people of Burnham and the callous parade of miscreants who came to revel in the misery of the past. Every tourist who ate one of the treats from her bakery had a kernel of her power fused to their insides just waiting to explode and suck the life force from them.
With enough power, Abigail could reach back through time. And she wouldn’t just be able to save her sisters of the past. She could lay waste to everyone in town who dared raise a hand with murderous intent towards the innocent. She would show them the true power of a witch. And their final moments would be wrought with pain that echoed throughout time.
“You know a ritual?” Mary-Ann asked.
“I have read some of Selena’s books. I think we can reverse what this man did and let our sister have peace.”
“We’ll need to gather some things to prepare,” Mary-Ann said. Abigail nodded her head.
“Yes. At the next full moon. In the cave. We’ll take him there and tear what he’s stolen away. I want to make sure Vincent Donnelly regrets ever coming to this town.”
***
The fire burned brightly against the darkness of the sky. The pyre had been built high and the flames rose taller than a human, dancing with an eerie life of their own. The altar was cast in shadows, which made it look as though phantoms were racing about it in the firelight.
“What an absolute mess,” Selena said.
Vincent sat up and winced. His ribs still hurt. His face throbbed. Even here, he was in pain. And he didn’t even think this place was real. The field was the same one he remembered. The one where he had awoken that day; where Selena had been killed.
The fire had never been lit in his own memories before, only Bogdan’s. It was always the way it had been when he woke up. The day after what had happened. A burned fire, with bones in the ashes. Five dead bodies. The altar.
“Why is she so strong?” Vincent said, getting to his feet.
“She’s a witch, you fool. And you followed her right back to her house like a puppy dog.”
“You could have warned me that she was like this. Or said something,” Vincent said. The pain was less here in the memory, or whatever it was. But it was still present.
“I thought we’d stay in the bakery. Surrounded by glass. Where I can actually be seen and heard,” she said.
“I was just trying to help,” Vincent said.
Selena looked the way she had when he had first seen her as a reflection, not as she had been in the field. A robe with her hair flowing over her shoulders. No bloody stab wounds across her body.
“So you keep saying,” Selena said. “And look what it got you. What it got us, I might add.”
“What did it get us?” Vincent asked.
“The Everlasting Nightmare. If you’d just let me speak for a moment, I could have shown Abby I was here. And now we’re both cursed until my sisters devise a method to punish you further.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re both about to experience endless terror and anguish, I expect. So, thank you for that. Where’s your friend?”
“Dezzy?”
“The other one. Fix.”
“Oh. He’s never here. When I go to... wherever this is.”
“Smart man.”
“I don’t understand. What happens in here?” Vincent asked. The fire crackled and a spark shot out. Selena stepped back as it smoldered in the grass.
“This happens,” she said. The smoke from the burning ember rose from the grass. It bulged and swirled until it formed into the shape of a man.
“What is this?”
“Your nightmares, Vinny. Thanks for bringing me along,” Selena said.
The smoke-man stepped toward him. It became solid. Took on color. It took another step and features appeared on the head. The face became familiar. Too familiar.
“Dalca,” Vincent said, stepping away from him.
“You cannot escape me, can you, Mr. Donnelly?” Bogdan said. His eyes burned with blue fire. His smile was cruel and monstrous.
Vincent tried to see the threads of necromantic energy that were keeping him alive, but there were none. There was no sign of anything animating him at all.
“You’re not really here,” Vincent said. This had to be some kind of illusion. Bogdan laughed out loud and raised a hand. It glowed with white and purple energy. The surrounding ground erupted like geysers. Hands clawed their way free of the soil, some rotten, some barely more than skeletal.
Bodies pulled themselves out of the ground. Directly in front of Dalca, the hulking form of his brother emerged. Not Constantin Dalca as he had been in life, but the monster that his brother made him in death, a Frankenstein’s monster of body parts animated with necromancy.
Vincent could feel no actual necromancy animating any of them. He had no power to stop them as the dead crawled forth, surrounding him in the field.
“This isn’t real,” Vincent insisted.
“Is it not?” Dalca said. His brother reached out a massive hand and grabbed Vincent by the shirt, lifting him from the ground.
“It’s real, Vincent,” Selena said. “It’s a curse. It’s meant to torment. To torture. For eternity, if need be.”
Dalca turned his head and looked at Selena. His grim smile was just as wide as it had been.
“Witch,” he said. Selena rolled her eyes.
“This is Vincent’s nightmare, leave me out of it.”
Hands from the earth clutched at Selena’s ankles. She scowled, trying to pull herself free as another of Dalca’s abominations shuffled toward her.
“Oh, wonderful job, Vincent. You kill me, then get me cursed and tortured. I’m so glad we met,” Selena said.
Constantin carried Vincent to the conflagration and held his body to the flames. The heat seared his back, and he screamed, feeling his skin begin to sizzle from the heat. The dead eyes of Constantin Dalca stared into his own. The hulking body, a patchwork of other people’s body parts, quivered as the big beast laughed.
“Stop! Please stop!” Vincent yelled. Selena struggled to free herself from her undead captors. Bony fingers dug into her flesh and tore chunks of it loose. Blood poured from the wounds across her robes.
“It doesn’t stop, Vinny. That’s the point. The Everlasting Nightmare,” she said. A skeletal finger raked across her face, and she hissed.
“Non visum spectaculum!” Selena yelled. Vincent fell to the ground in front of the
fire as a pillar of blue energy consumed Constantin from the inside out. The same spikes rose from the earth to destroy Bogdan and the other monstrosities, even the fire itself. The burn on Vincent’s back remained, though, along with the pain
Vincent gasped on the ground, barely able to support himself on his hands and knees. His face was slick with sweat and his back felt like it had been scorched off completely.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Fixed your problem. Temporarily,” Selena said. “I’m trapped with you until someone lets us out.”
“But you can stop it,” Vincent said, wincing as he looked at her. Blood ran from a deep wound in her face.
“I can turn it down, like a thermostat. But it will come back. We’re behind a door that locks from the other side, and my power cannot undo that. How the same man damned me twice, I will never know.”
“Yeah. Sorry,” Vincent said, slumping to the ground. The pain he felt was too real. He didn’t know how anyone could endure this without dying.
Selena walked over to him and crouched by his side. She stared down at his face, slick with sweat and pale, as he struggled to breathe through the pain and broken bones.
“Why did you really come here?”
“To get you out of my head. To find out who I am,” he said. Her expression darkened. She grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head up so she could lean in closer.
“Why did you kill me?”
Vincent sighed heavily. He looked her in the eyes, his own stinging from the discomfort, and the smoke, and the frustration of it all.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember you. I don’t remember any of it,” he said. She let his head go, and it hit the ground.
“Four Winds, you’re telling the truth, aren’t you?” she said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Vincent said. It was only the truth as he knew it. The truth of the last few months of an entire life. He was just as Dezzy said, a baby. He had no past. Whatever came before was unknown to him. And if he was a monster, he had no way to address it. No way to have any sort of reckoning because he knew nothing about it at all.
