“Not what . . . whom.” I remembered his father telling me. Was he supposed to be my protector? Is that why he always seemed to be there when I needed someone?
When I was twelve, I had an accident on my bike. I rode straight into a bush when my shoelace got stuck on the pedal. He wasn’t there when I started my ride, but he was there to wipe my tears and kiss the knee I had scraped. I yelled at him for it and punched him in the shoulder, but immediately felt better.
“Hey,” he said when I got within earshot of him.
“Hey.”
“You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself.”
“I don’t know if I can. You know . . . ” I turned to see Crystal and Matt, hand in hand, walking towards us.
“Hey, party girl.” Crystal put on her best friend party face. “Are we gonna join in this thing or sulk?”
I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing and pulled her into a hug.
“Sorry, I think I’m having an out-of-body experience at the moment.”
“That’s okay, as long as the body still has some fun. It’s still your party, we can worry about the other stuff tomorrow,” she said, pulling me towards the haunted house. Chad caught up to us and grabbed my hand as we walked through, with Matt sauntering in behind us.
We knew what was around every corner. There was the girl dressed like Carrie, complete with a blood-soaked prom dress, who followed behind you for the first ten or so steps. Her arms hung at her sides, her chin was tucked in, and she wore a blank stare that had you wondering if she was about to stab you with an unseen object. Then, there was the zombie guy who banged on the side of a metal wall as you walked in deeper. Just when you thought he was gone, he jumped out at you when you turned the first corner. I’d normally be jumping out of my skin, but the prickles I felt earlier came back just before he pounced. I felt it again just before the psychopath with the chainsaw jumped out at us. Crystal screeched and grabbed my arm so hard I thought she was going to dislocate my shoulder.
When we were about halfway through, the prickling came back, and so did Carrie. She had a knife in her hand this time, and ran after us. She hit an invisible barrier and circled back around for the next group. The clown was new. He jumped down from the roof, through a hole I hadn’t seen. Just before he did, the prickle came back again.
“What’s the matter?” Chad whispered in my ear. I forgot he’d been holding my hand and realized he probably felt each time I tensed, right before each of the pretend attacks.
“I get that prickling feeling in the back of my neck right before someone jumps out at us. Like a warning or something.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, you don’t?”
“I’m not a witch, remember?” He squeezed my hand.
Crystal had let go of me once she was satisfied that I was joining in on the ‘fun’ and locked hands with Matt, who’d finally caught up to her. They were only a few feet in front of us, but after what should have been the last zombie showing, I couldn’t see them anymore.
“This is new.” I held Chad’s hand tighter when the prickling intensified.
“I don’t think this is part of the haunted house.” Chad pointed ahead where our friends should have been standing.
The figure stood over ten feet tall, or it hovered ten feet high. I couldn’t really see that it was standing on anything. It was a black shadow, intensified by the black lights inside the structure. It looked male, with a Charlie Mortdecai mustache and top hat. His eyes were luminous and bright green as he scanned us over.
I pulled at Chad’s arm, wrapping both of mine around it. He pulled me behind him, as if to shield me from the sight of the intruder.
“Ahh, Gwen. I knew you were alive and well,” the menacing voice boomed over the noise of the party behind us. “I think I might like to meet your new friend, dear sister.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I yelled from behind Chad. “My name isn’t Gwen.”
The man stretched his arm toward me and stroked my hair without really touching it. Chad pushed me back farther, out of reach of the shadow’s hand.
“Leave her alone. She’s not who you think.”
“A protector . . . ahhh, a Crawford protector,” he said after sniffing the air. “If she’s not Gwendolyn . . . then who is this unknown Crawford witch?”
The shadow loomed higher to look at me, even as Chad held me tightly behind him. The green in his eyes grew brighter and the twitch of his mustache made my stomach turn in fear.
“Another time perhaps . . . your young protector won’t be with you all the time, dear. We will meet again, maybe in a more corporeal setting.”
Just like that, he was gone. Matt and Crystal were standing in front of us, waving their hands past our faces as if we’d been standing there and staring off into space, in a trance.
“What the fuck was that?” I moved as fast as my feet would carry me through the rest of the haunted house, until I was once again in my own backyard.
I stepped into a patch of wet, soggy grass with my bare feet and continued to the front yard. I felt an overwhelming need to stand on the hard concrete and make sure I wasn’t going to sink into the middle of the earth. My hand grazed a spider web on a bush in front of the house as I headed for the driveway.
“Ouch!” I felt a scrape against my skin, which was not at all the soft feeling of the cotton webs my mother always hung.
“What is it?” Crystal yelled after me. She was, no doubt, still interested to know what my blow-up was about, but looked at the hand I held up, displaying several tiny cuts.
“That spider web felt like razors.” I held my hand higher so she could see the small droplets of blood that started to pool on my skin.
Chad and Matt raced to the driveway as I tore a piece of fabric from the bottom of my dress to wrap my hand. The blood was starting to slow, but I added some pressure to the cuts to be sure.
Crystal moved to the spider web and poked at it with her finger.
“It’s cotton,” she stated, grabbing a fist full of the decoration and pulling it from the bush.
The giant spider, attached to the top of the web, started to fall. I reached forward to grab it, and it began to run at me. Its eyes glowed red as it pushed forward with its hind legs, spinning its web.
“What the . . . ?” I jumped back, landing on the concrete steps.
A zap of light flew past my head from somewhere behind me. I couldn’t see where it came from, since my eyes never left the spider. In the moment the flash hit, it blinded me. Once I was able to focus again, I could see the spider had been shredded into a million cotton bits. All four of us turned to see Clara Blackwood smirking at the bottom of the driveway.
“Don’t tell me . . . the fifth?” I asked, even though I really didn’t want to know.
“Um . . . well . . . you see . . . ” Crystal was fumbling all over herself.
It was a well-known fact that Clara Blackwood and I had never gotten along. Our parents thought it was the cutest thing and liked to tell the story whenever the need arose, which was usually when they saw us about to start battling with each other again.
As they tell the story, we were five and Clara was the first girl I met on the playground the morning of our first day at kindergarten. My sister was included, of course. We were apparently the best of friends in the first five minutes that our mothers got to witness before we were thrown into the clutches of clicks in the classroom. Don’t be fooled, there are clicks in every grade, even kindergarten. They tell everyone that by the time they picked us up at the end of the day, Clara and I were each trying to pull the other’s ponytail off.
The way I saw it, the minute we were inside the building, Clara pulled my braid and told me I needed to get a new sister. According to her, Michelle was her sister, and I should just go back to where I came from. It was a popular phrase she still uses whenever she has the chance.
“Yup, that’s our fifth. That would be why we don’t know if w
e can perform the ritual. She would have to participate.” Chad held out his hand to help me off the hard ground.
“So . . . great protector, where were you while our poor High Priestess was being prepared as a midnight snack?” Clara mocked Chad as she walked up the driveway, and turned her gaze to me. “I see you’ve already gotten on someone’s bad side this evening, and on your first day as a witch, too.”
Clara circled the four of us like she was sizing her competition. She got so close to me that I could tell what flavor lollipop she was sucking on.
“Thanks . . . I suppose.”
“Oh . . . no need for that . . . we’re all on the same side, aren’t we? Hmm, yes well . . . ” She giggled to herself and disappeared inside the house. From the shrill sounds I heard shortly after, I could tell she had found Michelle and they had promptly descended to the nearest group of boys to torment.
“So, that’s why the name of our fifth was never mentioned?” I asked my friends, brushing the grass shards from my dress.
“Pretty much the reason,” Crystal said in her speedy, nervous voice and turned away.
“And while we’re on the subject again . . . ” Chad put his hand up to tell me to stop.
“What?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Someone is looking for your mother . . . and found you. Doesn’t that scare you even a little bit?” Crystal bounded forward and hugged me.
I pushed myself free and started the long walk down my driveway, to the street. It wasn’t really long, but enough to put distance between us and the rest of the people at the party. Hopefully, nobody overheard what we were saying.
“First off, you should know I don’t scare easily. Two, I’m more interested to know how a coven can be a coven without five witches. Shapeshifters and witches don’t make up a coven.”
“Where have you gotten your information from?” Matt’s expression was indignant. He was obviously hurt by my statement.
“I’m sorry, Matt. I am still trying to figure this all out, but nothing I’ve ever read or seen on TV shows a coven being anything other than a group of witches.”
“You know you’re not the only one who’s had a hard time with this,” Matt told me. “I didn’t know what I was either. For whatever reason, my parents thought it wasn’t important for me to know right away. So I didn’t know until the time came when I shifted after my brother took my guitar out of my room. I was so mad; my mom thought I was going to rip his head off.”
Crystal started laughing, as did I, but I tried to stop myself.
“What did you shift into?” I asked between sputters.
“A bear, taller than my dad.” He started laughing too, and so did Chad. “I thought my brother shit his pants, too.”
The air was cooling, a sure sign that the night had gotten past us. We hid in the neighbor’s rose garden across the street, convinced nobody would miss us. Until, of course, my mother started screaming for the birthday girl to blow out her candles.
The cake was a giant jack-o’-lantern with eighteen individual candles. When it was clear I wasn’t able to blow them out myself, Chad stepped in beside me to help, just as he always had. I realized then that no matter if he was a shapeshifter, protector, or a witch, he had always been there for me. I suddenly remembered that I forgot to ask a vital question, but I suppose we’d get to that eventually.
CHAPTER FOUR
I woke Saturday morning, hoping the events that happened the night before had been erased from my memory during the night. I wasn’t surprised by my first thoughts when I opened my eyes and saw the pile of gifts that sat unopened. After blowing out the candles on my cake, my mother had made me sit and open most of the gifts, dropped on the gift table by the DJ stand. I normally had just a handful of gifts; four that I knew would be there and who they were from. This time, however, the entire buffet table had been covered. After opening the sixth get well card and hearing the snickering from across the room, I moved on to the boxes wrapped in pretty paper.
The first one was a snow globe, something Chad knew I collected and that he got me every year. The second was lighter, and when I shook it, I didn’t hear anything moving inside. After the night of revelations, along with a witch ghost popping up in the haunted house, I was being overly cautious. Then I noticed the stares and whispers from the crowd watching me. I set the box down on my lap and removed the top without hesitation, letting a dozen or so foam snakes fly up from the box. They came up so hard that one hit me in the nose and effectively blackened both of my eyes.
I closed my eyes at the memory of laughter that poured through the crowd and around me, and touched a hand to my face to quickly remove it. A friend, not meaning to injure me, had thought a gag gift party was a good idea for my eighteenth birthday. The get well and sympathy cards were just a few of the gag gifts placed at the table. My father made them all identify each box containing something potentially harmful and made each one of them open their gifts. The rest sat in the corner of my room.
By the end of the party, there were shaving cream pies and glittered graffiti all over the yard. When Matt’s actual crème pie shot out of a box and hit my sister and Clara Blackwood both in the face, my father laughed so hard I thought he would need CPR. The night finally ended. For me, anyway.
I curled myself into the blanket and tried to hide my eyes from the glaring light sneaking through the splits of the curtains. I punched my pillow to a comfortable spot and sighed as my phone on the nightstand started to vibrate its way to the floor.
I submitted to defeat and threw the blankets so hard they flew off my bed and to the floor, altogether missing the end of my bed. Picking up the phone, I could hear the familiar sound of large combat boots walking up the stairs outside my room and placed it back on the stand.
“Give me a two second warning, would ya?”
“I did . . . you didn’t answer the phone.”
“When I said two seconds, I didn’t mean literally two seconds . . . more like five minutes.”
I ran to the door that led to the bathroom, grabbing the sweat pants I had on the night before.
“E, you told me to call you as I was walking in the front door.”
Walking through the bathroom, I could hear that Chad had made his way into my room and had firmly planted himself on my bed. When I walked back, fully clothed, he was smoothing out my pillow.
“It was a figure of speech.”
“This is a never ending conversation. Just set an alarm.” He moved out of the way so I could plop back down on the mattress and curl up into a ball on the corner of my bed. Chad came to my house every Saturday morning to get me. His father would be on the road with his buddies fishing, or whatever they did, and we would spend the day at his house.
As soon as I thought about what we would be doing today, the last twenty-four hours sneaked its way back into my head, eating away at the happy fantasy that had been my existence for the last seventeen years. Not that I could remember much from before I was one, but I’d imagine it was quite different than my life in the Anderson house.
“So, you coming or what?” Chad pulled at the edges of my pillow that were not covering my face.
“Sure, since Chester won’t be there. We can’t talk here.” I made a move to get off the bed and he held me back.
“Chester won’t be leaving this weekend.”
“What! Why not?” My eyes bulged out of my sockets more effectively than I had intended.
“Today is the first day of your training.” He stood and held out a hand for me to grab. “Chester is going to train you.”
“Wait, why can’t you train me?”
“Not a witch,” he said, pointing a finger at his chest. He seemed to be a bit annoyed with the fact of it too.
“Oh yeah, sorry.” I didn’t even convince myself that I meant the words as I spoke them. “Wait . . . neither is your dad.”
With a look of annoyance on his face, he motioned for me to get up, but let his hand drop to his side. I bounced off
the bed and headed to my dresser, grabbing an oversized hooded sweat shirt and dragging it over my head. Then I grabbed my tennis shoes and a pair of socks and motioned to the door.
The air outside was crisp, but I knew by midafternoon, it would be warm enough to shed my sweatshirt. As the sun went down, though, the air would again become chilly. We always said our weather was three seasons a day in the later months; spring in the morning, summer in the afternoon, and fall at night.
As we walked the six houses down the block to Chad’s little home, hidden amongst the trees, I noticed a few things that I may have seen before, but never really noticed. There were wind chimes that hung at every corner of the house, and although his house appeared before to be a part of the block, it didn’t anymore. The houses on the street all sat back, away from the sidewalk. Everyone had a horseshoe driveway and large pillars on either side of the front entrance. The lawns were well manicured, since the same landscaping company took care of the entire neighborhood, but there was something different about the Crain residence. The house was much smaller on the outside than I had ever noticed. It wasn’t as run down as I had thought either. Sure, it sat back and away from the road, but it also sat behind other houses and was raised up on a hill. The driveway was tucked between two homes that I guessed sat less than ten feet from one another, as if it were hidden on purpose, to hide the house.
The trees concealed the house on all four sides, but I only remembered them being around three. The entire home was secluded inside its own small forest of greenery. While the temperature wasn’t nearly cold enough yet to make all the leaves change colors and fall, the leaves on the trees surrounding this house were completely unchanged.
“What’s up with your house?” I spun around once we were completely surrounded by the trees, looking back the way we had come, but I couldn’t see the road or the gravel driveway that led to it.
“Nothing, it’s the same house. You just see it differently than the rest of the neighborhood does,” he said, looking down at his feet as he kicked rocks along the driveway to the front porch.
Immortal Slumber (The Crawford Witch Chronicles Book 1) Page 3
