by Zizi Cole
On a table in the middle of the room were two objects. A bleeding, beating heart and a head. The head was missing its eyeballs. Jake’s head was staring sightless and eyeless at me. A sob tried to escape me. I backed up against the wall and the eyeballs brushed my cheek. I jumped away.
I looked around trying to find a way out of this hell. There was a dark doorway. I ran over to it. I could make out stairs. I started up the stairs to a door. The door was laying down. That’s when I realized where I was. I was in the wine cellar behind the house. I tried to push the door open, but it wouldn’t budge. I could hear the chain and lock rattling on the other side of the door.
I went back downstairs. I looked for another way out of the cellar. I couldn’t find another exit. I needed to calm down and think. I took a deep breath. I studied the room. The ceiling was about seven feet tall, and the room was approximately ten feet long and ten feet wide.
I saw my mother’s image appear in the corner. She motioned me over to her. I walked over. She had something with a leather cord in her hand. She opened her hand to reveal the amulet that she had given me as a child. I looked at her, confused.
“Put it on quickly,” she instructed in a rushed voice.
I took the amulet from her and slid it over my head. The stone was smooth and felt warm against my skin. I gently caressed the amulet.
“Momma, how do I get out of here?” I asked her quietly.
She disappeared. I looked around for her. I got the feeling I wasn’t alone. I could hear his heavy breathing. I turned and he was standing behind me. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I could tell he was smiling.
“Nowhere to run this time, little mouse,” he whispered in a deep raspy voice.
I thought his voice sounded eerily familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I glanced around the room. He was right, there was nowhere for me to run to get away. This was going to be the dream where he finally caught me. I backed into the corner as he slowly reached for me. As his hand got closer, the amulet was getting warmer.
Suddenly everything went white.
I woke up with a start. When I sat up, I had a weight on my chest. I looked down and the amulet was on my neck. The glowing was starting to fade. That was interesting. I touched the amulet. It was warm like it had been in the dream. The question I had was, how did it end up on my neck? I also wondered if it would protect other people besides me.
I got out of bed and tiptoed down the hall to Jake’s room. I opened the door and crept across the room. I stood at the side of the bed watching him sleep. I wondered how many more opportunities I would have to be able to enjoy seeing his face relaxed.
I crawled into the bed with him. I gently touched his face and kissed him on the lips. I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I needed to be with him. That this might be the last chance I would have. I knew that the feeling was probably an overreaction, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom.
He opened his eyes lazily and looked at me. He didn’t say anything, just smiled and kissed me back. He wrapped his strong arms around my waist and pulled me closer. We were touching from chest to knees. The only way we could be closer was if I climbed inside him, and that wasn’t a horrible idea.
I pulled back from the kiss just far enough so I could ask him what had been on my mind.
“Can I stay with you tonight?” I asked. I felt butterflies flitting in my stomach. I was afraid he would tell me no and send me on my way. He just looked at me for a long moment. “Please?”
Jake didn’t answer. Instead, he smashed his mouth against mine in a hard, passionate kiss. I wrapped my arms around his neck and tried to get closer to him. He groaned in my mouth. His hands roamed up and down my back, then slid down to my butt, and he squeezed it, pulling me closer.
He suddenly rolled us so that he was laying on top of me. He broke the kiss. We were both panting. He rested his forehead against mine like he was trying to get himself under control. I didn’t want his control. Tonight, if it was going to be the only one we had together, I wanted him out of control. I moved my legs so they were hugging his hips. I wrapped my legs around his. I stroked his back, feeling the hard ridges. I wanted to remember every inch of his body.
I lifted my chin to kiss him again. He pulled his head back so my lips didn’t have the chance to connect with his. He looked me in the eye. I was trying to keep my composure when he asked, “Are you sure, Lex?”
I nodded. “Yes. I want you. I need you.”
That seemed to break the last thread of control that he had. He kissed me hard and pressed his pelvis hard against mine. Feeling him touching me like that made me catch my breath. I gripped his shoulders hard, digging my nails into them, encouraging him to continue.
Sometime later, we were cuddled together, with the blankets tangled around us. I could feel the hard planes of his chest pressed against my back as he breathed deeply. I knew he was awake because of the feeling of his fingers gently tracing shapes on my hip. No words were needed for the moment. We were laying in a comfortable silence.
I felt him lean forward to kiss me lightly on the shoulder. I shifted enough to give him access to my neck as well. I felt his smile against my shoulder. As he ran his fingers up my side and over my ribs, I sighed. This must be what it was like in Heaven. Only, our heaven was to be short lived.
I woke up with the first rays of the sunlight peeking in the window. I stretched and felt Jake move closer to me. He wrapped his arms around me and put his cheek on me. I smiled and hugged his arms.
“Good morning,” he whispered into my ear.
“Morning,” I whispered back.
He opened his mouth to say something else, and I gently put my hand over his mouth. Then I whispered, “Let’s just lie here and watch the sun rise. I want to see something beautiful before the darkness covers us again.”
He nodded and we watched the sun rise in a warm embrace. I loved watching the sunrise. I would wake up early almost every morning to watch the colors spread across the sky. It was a peaceful, beautiful time. The world was still and beautiful. It reminded me that there was beauty and grace in a life that could be dark and depressing.
When the sun was fully up, Jake kissed me on the cheek. “May I speak now?”
I rolled my eyes for effect. “I suppose.”
“I really hate to ruin the mood, since you seem so happy this morning.” Jake started with a grimace. “I’ve been looking for Michael.”
I sat up and pulled the blanket up to my neck so no skin was exposed. I had a feeling I wouldn’t want to hear this conversation naked. Jake handed me his t-shirt and my panties from the floor. I got dressed quickly.
“Anyway,” he continued. “I haven’t been able to locate him, which you knew. The interesting part is, he hasn’t been seen since you left New York. I figure that he probably tried to follow you home and has been intercepted, or something happened to him along the way.”
He paused. I knew he was trying to come up with a way to word what he wanted to say next without me feeling guilty or even more freaked out than I already was. “I think the heart you got in the mail yesterday was his. My suspicion is that your “stalker” for lack of a better word, took care of Michael for you and sent his heart to you as a present. This guy is obsessed with you and his actions are escalating.”
I nodded. “I was thinking the same thing when I saw the heart in the box. I knew it was Michael’s before I read the note. The note just confirmed it.”
“I also heard back from the agent that I sent the picture of the sigil on your neck to. Agent Turner said that it was the sigil of Asmodeus, also known as the demon of lust. Whomever is doing this is trying to get you to develop feelings for him. He’s wanting to claim you as his possession.”
“So, whoever this is, he’s using a demon to try to possess me?”
Jake rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s looking that way. I wish I had better news for you, darlin’.”
I reached up and touched the amulet.
I looked into Jake’s brown eyes and instantly knew what I needed to do. I took the amulet off and slid it over his head. Jake looked down at the amulet, then looked at me confused.
“It’s for protection,” I explained. “Please just keep it on at all times until this is over. I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you and I think that it will keep you safe. Especially since this, uh, stalker seems to have some kinds of magical abilities. If he can dream jump, who knows what else he can do? I want you to be safe. Promise me you will keep it on.”
Jake leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. “Anything for you. I promise.”
22
I still couldn’t get the feeling of dread to pass. It seemed like I’d had that feeling for days, but nothing happened. With each uneventful day that passed, the feeling got stronger. I knew something was going to happen but I didn’t know what. The last couple of days, I hadn’t even had a nightmare. That scared me more than anything.
I was pacing the living room and Mia was sitting on the couch watching me pace. I was trying to figure out what was going on. I was also trying to think outside the box to find the book Momma told me about. I tried to think of places that she would hide something she wouldn’t want me to find when I was a kid. I stopped. Daddy’s study! No one was ever allowed in there except him and Momma unless you knocked first and he allowed you entrance. When he was gone, he locked the door.
I took off to the study and turned the knob. The door opened quietly. I stepped into the room and looked around. No one had been in here since Daddy died. In my mind’s eye, I could still see him sitting in his chair with a knife sticking into his heart. I closed my eyes and shook off the feeling. When I opened my eyes again, it was just like it had always been. I started looking at the books on the bookshelf. They were all legal books. I walked across the room and a board squeaked. I checked out the bookshelf on the opposite side of the room. This was the shelf he had dedicated to memorabilia. It had pictures of our family throughout the years, pictures of sports figures, one of him shaking hands with the governor of Missouri, and other random pictures that made me smile.
I crossed the room again and the floor squeaked again. I stopped. When did that floorboard start squeaking? Had it always done that? I started to move the rug out of the way when Mia entered the room.
“Hey psycho, what are you doing?” she asked, leaning on the doorjamb with her arms crossed.
“Hey bitch, why don’t you stop making fun of me for a moment and come over here and help me move this damn rug. It’s heavy.” I grunted.
Mia rolled her eyes as she crossed to me. “You know it would help if you pushed the desk and chairs out of the way, right?”
I looked up at her. I hadn’t realized the desk was on it. “Oh, yeah, let’s do that then.”
Together we moved the desk and each one of us took a chair from the rug and put them against the wall, out of the way. We got down on our knees and rolled the rug up exposing the floor boards underneath. We sat back and looked at the floor.
“Do you wanna tell me why we’re redecorating the study?” Mia asked.
“There’s a squeaky floorboard,” I told her.
“Yeah, that explains everything,” Mia remarked sarcastically.
“I know I look crazy. If I told my therapist everything, I’d be locked up right now. Just roll with it, okay? Look for a board that’s sticking up or loose,” I told her.
I leaned forward and started pressing on boards. The third board I pushed on compressed a bit. I glanced at Mia and her eyes widened a little. I started trying to pry the board up with my fingers, but I couldn’t get a grip on it.
Mia pulled a knife out of her back pocket and flipped it open. “Here, let me.”
“Where did you get that knife?” I asked.
She looked at me with the knife pointed to the floor. She grinned, “I always carry a knife with me. Never know when I’ll come across cake that needs cut... or a creep that needs shanked.”
I chuckled. Leave it to Mia to go from one extreme to another. The girl did love her cake, though.
I watched her carefully slide the knife between the floorboards to pop the loose board up. The board came up easily. We looked at each other and glanced down into the hole where the board had been. Inside was a blanket. I reached in, praying there wasn’t a spider in there somewhere, and pulled the blanket out.
I unfolded the blanket. Inside was a book. Not just any book, though. When I touched the leather cover, I felt a warm and comforting energy slide up my arm and into my heart. I opened the cover of the book and a folded piece of paper fell out.
I handed the book to Mia and picked up the paper. I carefully unfolded it to find my mother’s careful handwriting.
My beautiful daughter,
If you are reading this then one of two things has happened. I have explained everything to you and unbound your magic, or something has happened to me and I can no longer be with you in the physical form. I am hoping for the first. I am sorry for having to bind your magic, but it was the only thing that I could do to keep you safe. Your magic was attracting entities that you were better off not having to deal with it. You were too young.
As you became a teenager, I didn’t want to burden you with something that you would always have to be careful with. I wanted you to live as normal of a life as possible. I wanted to see you happy.
I have been having a feeling of foreboding for days now. I want to be prepared for anything. I couldn’t tell you until the time was right and you were ready. I didn’t think you were ready as soon as you came home from New York, but I plan on telling you in the next couple of days.
Please don’t be mad that I kept this from you. It is your destiny to have this magic and you will use it to do great things. Always remember what I said about knowledge. Knowledge is power.
Be knowledgeable, stay brave and strong, and always be kind.
I love you always, sweet girl!
Love,
Momma
I read the letter over and over again. It was written the day before her and Daddy were murdered. I looked at Mia with tears in my eyes. She took the letter and read it. She handed me the book and the letter.
I flipped through the pages of the book. It was written in old looking handwriting. The pages were slightly yellow, but well preserved. The book wasn’t what I had expected. It wasn’t just spells, although there looked to be a few. The book contained information about the supernatural world. It also had remedies for colds and other ailments.
While flipping through the pages of the book, a page that appeared to be written with a quill caught my attention. The page looked older than most, and it was slightly faded, but well preserved. I read the page quickly. I read it two more times to make sure I read it right. I looked up at Mia, who was watching me intently.
“Did you know this?” I handed her the book to let her read the page.
Mia looked up at me with her eyebrows pinched together. She looked back down at the book and read through the page again. When she finished, she checked the back of the paper, and the next few pages before looking at me again. “I had no idea. I don’t even know what it means, if you want the truth.”
“It sounds like a prophecy or something.” I took the book as Mia offered it to me.
The words on the page sent a chill down my back. I looked over them again, still not believing what I was seeing.
From two sisters, two cousins there will be.
One borne with magick to see,
One borne with magick from beyond the veil.
Shall face perilous deterrents should they prevail,
They shall have magick unlike any has seen.
That passage had to be what was so important that my mother haunted me from the grave about finding the book. When I read it, I knew that it had to do with Mia and myself, but I wasn’t sure what it all meant. The passage didn’t sound good. The words caused goosebumps to erupt swiftly up my arms and a chill to race down
my spine.
I looked back up at Mia and shuddered. “If this is a prophecy, it doesn’t sound good.”
She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. We will figure out what it’s talking about. Your mom couldn’t be the only person that knew about this.”
“Mia, what do we do now?” I asked softly. I could feel the tears rolling down my face.
She hugged me. “Until we figure out who’s torturing you and killed your parents, I think we need to keep it somewhere safe. It should probably be somewhere that’s a little easier to access than under the floorboards. We had to move too much stuff to get to it. I’m curious about what’s in it, too.”
I nodded. She was right. We needed to keep it safe, but we also needed to be able to access it if we needed to. I picked it up and walked to the book case. I reached for the first book on the third shelf and pulled. The stack of books swung out revealing a wall safe. I quickly opened the safe and put the book inside. I reset the safe and replaced the books.
Mia put the board back in place and stood. She stepped on the board to push it back into place. We arranged everything back where it had been and examined our work. Everything looked exactly like it had when we had originally entered the room.
I walked to the desk and pulled out Daddy’s keys. I found the key to the office and took it off the ring. I went to put the keys back when I noticed there was one missing. His house key. It was a good thing I’d had the locks changed. Maybe that was why I hadn’t had anymore unwanted surprises inside the house. I set the keys back in the drawer and decided it was about time to go through Daddy’s desk. I knew it had to be done eventually, but I decided that it could wait until everything was settled.
We walked out of the room. I shut the door firmly and locked it. We went into the kitchen and I took out two snifters and the bottle of Jack Daniels. I poured two fingers in each snifter and slid one over to Mia.
