Well, I definitely didn’t want to find out if my Uncle Barnaby and I had similar features, that was for sure. As far as I could tell, he might even be the shadowed man who visited the haunted house the previous night. No way. I knew I’d have to speak to Chad, wanted to, and probably Chester too.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes mom, I’m very sure. I have no interest in looking up bio-relatives. I promise.” I grabbed a hair-tie off my nightstand and pulled my long brown locks into a messy bun.
“Okay, if you’re sure. I’ll call the lady back tomorrow and let her know.”
“I’m very sure.”
She had a look of bewilderment on her face. Maybe she thought I would be more excited to meet my dead mother’s brother. How could I tell her he may be someone I should fear?
She moved into the room and sat next to me on the edge of my bed. “Dinner will be done in a little while.” She moved a stray curl from my face and tucked it behind my ear.
“I had a late lunch.”
“Okay, I’ll make you a plate and put it in the oven till you’re ready for it.” She moved to hug me, but settled with a kiss on my forehead, and left the room.
Once I felt she had descended the stairs far enough to not overhear me, I punched the call button on my cell and closed the bedroom door. After about four rings, Chad’s voicemail answered. I didn’t dare leave a message. He never listened to them anyway. I ended the call and opened my message app, sending him a text.
HELP, Bio-uncle contacted adoption agency and wants to meet me!
After an hour or so, he finally got back to me. I thought he would have called, but his text beeped in.
Splitting wood . . . talk tomorrow. Stay calm!!
“Oh, well that’s easy for him to say.” I tossed the phone across my bed.
***
The woods smelled of rotting flesh and mildew on bark. Not the combination I would ever invite willingly into my senses. The sky was dark, and black birds flew over trees that had all died with the upcoming winter. The air was chilly and damp, and felt nothing like Pleasant Ridge. I felt the cold touching my bare feet, and a numbing pain developed in my toes from the frost that covered the ground.
“Hello?” I yelled cautiously to the traveling wind, but received no reply. I tried again, this time a bit louder. My only response was the birds, which had settled on the bare branches above, had started flying about in a frenzy. I could see they were ravens, as they flew in circles above me. The sky was grey and full of clouds. It felt like it could snow at any moment. I started to shiver with the prospect of it and wrapped my arms around myself for warmth.
The gown I had worn the night of my party hung down my slim frame and brushed against the leaves that crunched underfoot. The hem on the bottom lay ripped from the loose piece I had cut for a bandage. I looked at my hand to see the scabbed up scrapes from that night had reopened. Fresh droplets of blood trickled down my fingers and made little splashing noises on the dried up leaves.
“Where am I?”
A shadow up ahead grabbed my attention and quickly moved away from sight. I wrapped another loose piece of dress fabric around my hand and set off running after it.
“Wait . . . who are you? Where have you brought me?”
The figure was moving in such a way that it looked like it was floating, passing through the trees that stood in its path.
I couldn’t help it. My feet felt like they would break, so I screamed as loud as my lungs would allow, “Help me! Please.”
“With what?” The sound boomed overhead, as if it were coming from the angry clouds.
“I’m freezing for one. I can’t feel my feet.”
“That’s an easy fix . . . You’re not really here. Therefore, there is no such thing as cold.” The voice laughed at me.
“Wait . . . what?” I asked myself, even as I came up with the answer in my head. The frost bite feeling went away, and I didn’t feel the crunch of the dried leaves as I walked in circles, looking for the shadow.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Again, my only response was the constant squawking of the birds overhead and the whistling of the wind. Then the shadow rushed towards me like a bullet, and went right through me. I spun around to see what it was, and sure enough, the shadow of the man with the Charlie Mortdecai mustache and large top hat stared back at me.
“Who are you?” I repeated.
“I am family.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I wanted nothing of you. I was simply looking for my dear lost sister. The question is . . . who you are to my dear lost sister?” The shadow of a head shrunk down and took on the shadow of an entire man, complete with tailcoat, British oxfords, top hat, and cane. He stood there and began stroking his big mustache as he started to walk circles around me. “Hmm . . . tsk, tsk . . . sister has been a very naughty girl.”
“I’m sorry . . . I don’t know who your sister is. Maybe if you told me her name.”
“I am your uncle, so as I’m told.”
“Barnaby?”
“Yes, see you’ve heard of me!” He seemed very excited by this. “Has my sister been telling you all sorts of horrid things, then?”
“How do you know we are family? You don’t even know who I am.”
“You are a Crawford witch, that much I can sense, and since I know all of the other children born to the Crawford line, thus far there are zero . . . well, I conclude you are dear Gwen’s child . . . born in secret with that filthy traitor.”
“I was told she died when I was one, which is when I was put up for adoption. So she couldn’t have told me anything about you.”
“Hmm, I knew that, didn’t I? Ah, yes, yes . . . I had a peek at your folder on the old crone’s desk.”
“Nobody has told me who my father is . . . not once has anyone mentioned his name even.” I thought on that for a minute and anxiously chewed my lower lip.
“Yes, just like my dear sister. You have her hair, and her eyes . . . even her bad habits.” Barnaby turned and began moving through the fog that I hadn’t noticed creeping up around us.
“Is this a dream?”
“Of course it is.”
He never did mention who my father was, but he left anyway. The shadow that was my uncle evaporated into the air and was swept away with the wind. I looked around and shivered at the sight of more frost covering the dried leaves. The trees had opened up, creating a small clearing, hidden by forest. In the very middle was a headstone that stood two feet from the ground. I tried to make out the words on the surface, but could only see the picture of a black rose and a skull with Celtic knots engraved in different patterns all over it. When I placed my hand on the cold stone, the writing became clearer, as if it were just put there. Not much was on it, just a name and two dates . . . one was a birthdate, and the other was the date of death.
Isabella Crawford
April 13, 1929—April 13, 1999
I looked around, but it was the only thing other than trees in that place. I sat next to the stone and felt the sun peeking through the clouds above the trees.
***
“Hey, what are you doing?”
Michelle walked into my room from our shared bathroom, snapping me out of the daydream. She looked annoyed at something, no doubt her and her latest boyfriend split up, but I’d be damned if I’d ask. I couldn’t tell you if it was John or Robert this time. I kept losing track. Really, I just never paid too much attention to who she’s dating.
I took quick stock of myself as she peered at me with a questioning glare. I was sitting on my bed, legs folded in and hands on my knees. My phone still sat where I had tossed it moments ago, before the magical invasion. Talk about face time.
“Trying to meditate, so why don’t you go back to your hole you call a bedroom and leave me alone.” I jumped off of my bed and slammed the bathroom door. The only problem with that was my hand never touched the door.
“Grumpy much?” I hear
d my sister scream from the other side.
I held my hand in front of my face and looked at it, checking to see if there were any differences. It was just my hand. “The box,” I said, bolting down the stairs to the front door.
“Where are you off to?”
“Nowhere dad . . . just left something in the car.”
“Oh, okay.” He didn’t seem to really care what I was doing, since he never dropped his newspaper from the front of his face when he asked. He probably thought I was Michelle trying to sneak out.
I leapt off the front porch and headed for the Cooper, which was where I had left it. I pulled the key from my pocket and hit the button. Once the chirp sounded, I opened the door and searched under the front passenger seat for the box I had hidden. I knew if I had gotten out of the car with the box, even if it were in a bag, my mom would have done the twenty questions thing. Most of the time, Helen seemed like she was really interested in my life. Other times, she was just invading my privacy, and this was one thing I didn’t know how to explain.
I put the box back in the white plastic bag and locked up the car for the night, shoving the key into my pocket. When I got back to my room, I closed the door and quietly locked it. I suspected Helen and Michael would be going to bed soon, so the only one I really had to worry about would have been Michelle. I figured it was safe to say she wouldn’t be barging in on me again, but just to be sure, I locked the bathroom door from my side. Michael had let us each install an eyehook latch so neither one of us could barge into the other’s room. We had been at odds since puberty, so it was safe to say we had a bit of trouble with staying in our own rooms. Whether it was to pull a prank or steal clothes, it happened.
I pushed my desk chair in front of the door as well, as an extra precaution, and placed the box on the floor in the middle of my room. I let my hands slide across the length of the box to feel the velvet against my skin. It was one of the softest fabrics I had ever felt.
The hinges creaked a little when I lifted the lid. There, before me laid the chalice, wand, Book of Shadows, a white pillar candle, and the athame. The woman at the store had been very nice to let me buy the tools as a set. In the light of my room, I could see how the etchings on each piece matched the rest. I picked up the blank book and grabbed a black fountain pen from my desk. It was time to start recording my experiences, starting with Friday and everything that had happened up to tonight’s weird dream and the tombstone. I would have to remember the dream from tonight so I could explain it to Chad and his father tomorrow. I recorded the dream first so I didn’t forget any details. Then I went back and covered everything that had happened on my birthday, from the storm that gathered as I left school to the unexpected company in the haunted house, and even the spider coming to life.
As I wrote it all down, I couldn’t help but get a feeling that one encounter had nothing to do with the other. Barnaby showing up at the party and the spider began to seem like two different happenings. Barnaby hadn’t tried to hurt me when he thought I was his sister or in tonight’s dream, if that’s what it was.
The spider, on the other hand, looked like it wanted to eat me. The web felt as though it had been made out of barbed wire. I shuddered as I thought about those beady red eyes when the spider stalked down its web to get me. If Barnaby wanted to see me in person, maybe I should meet him and find out if he was a threat, so at least then I would know. It was a thought, anyway.
There was one other thing I wrote about before closing up the contents of the box for the night. That was how everyone had spoken of my parents, but only used one name when it came to my mother, Gwendolyn Crawford. The identity of my father was still very much a mystery to me. Perhaps I could get Chester to enlighten me on the subject.
As I slid the box into the bottom of my closet, my cell phone started to ring. I danced across the room to the familiar tune of Beetlejuice before grabbing it off the bed to answer.
“Hello?”
“Hello, sorry about earlier. Did you still need to talk?”
“Crystal?”
“Yes. I was with Matt earlier, at his place. His father wasn’t home, so we were taking advantage of having the house to ourselves.”
“How nice.”
“Don’t be like that. How was the shopping trip?”
“It was good actually . . . ”
I stayed on the phone with Crystal long enough to tell her what I had purchased on my shopping trip with Chad. Then I told her all about the dream I had with Barnaby, and the fact that he wanted to meet me.
“I’d say use your judgment. Or you could ask Chester. I think the rents are having a pow-wow meeting of their own tomorrow night. I could see if I can get us an invite . . . you know, as the new coven, questions and teaching and such. I know my mom’s not a fan of teaching us, but the rest of them are okay.”
“You mean a coven circle? I didn’t realize they still practiced.”
“Yeah, well Chester keeps them going. My mom has turned her back on magic and everything involved . . . she only goes to them so Chester doesn’t hassle her about it at her job. She enjoys being a lawyer, and can’t really afford for him to tarnish her reputation by being labeled a witch in public. He knows which buttons to push.” She giggled into the receiver. “Anyway, mom’s just walking in . . . gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Before I could say anything, a loud beep sounded in my ear and then there was silence. She had hung up the phone before I was able to say good bye. At that point, I was finished with the day. Even though I was dreading what would transpire in my sleep, I decided to go to bed. I hoped I could get through the night without dreams of long lost family, spiders, and witch covens.
CHAPTER SIX
When I woke up Sunday morning, I all but jumped out of bed and headed out to Chad’s house after grabbing a banana from the kitchen. Helen yelled something about a healthy breakfast, and not neglecting the most important meal of the day. I think I managed an, “Okay, mom . . . grabbing something at Chad’s house,” before slamming the front door behind me.
I had at least taken the time to shove my Book of Shadows under my jacket before running out of the house. There was no way I’d get to leave with the entire set, but in order to give Chad and his dad all of the information from my encounter with Barnaby the night before, I had to read it from the tiny scribbles I made in the book. I just hoped I could read my own handwriting. I’d written it small because I figured the amount of stuff I would have to write wouldn’t fit in the one book, but after some research on the subject, I realized that was the point. To have a Book of Shadows for every stage in your magic life.
I looked at the time on my cell phone, which read 8:37. That was good because Chester rose with the sun, as far as I’ve been told. Chad, on the other hand, may actually still be in bed. I located the hidden driveway between the two freshly manicured yards and ran to the small house concealed within the trees.
Chester was already outside. I could hear the thump of the axe as it hit its mark, and saw him swing again as I stepped around to the back of the small house. The main heating source for their home was firewood. At any given time of the year, I would find stacks and piles of chopped up wood spread from the back of the house and out about five hundred feet, and it was all redwood and birch. Chester always said if you placed the birch on the bottom and light it first, it would go up pretty fast, but get a good bed of coals and set the redwood on top. Apparently, that meant he’d have to check the woodstove a lot less during the day.
“Good morning, Chester,” I said after his axe hit its mark.
“Good morning, Elyse. Chadwick’s still asleep, but yer more than welcome to get his sorry butt up, if you’d like.” He laughed a little and swung again.
“Actually, I wanted to ask you something first, if you don’t mind?”
Chester hit his mark and left the axe stuck in the stump in front of him. He picked a cloth from his back pocket and wiped his brow.
“Okay, shoot.”
“That’s the recap. Where’s the question?” He leaned back on the log and kicked the caked mud from the tread of his boots.
“Well, why didn’t they want them together? What is it nobody is telling me?”
“Your father wasn’t liked very much . . . at least his family wasn’t. The Crawford family believed he used black magic to make your mother fall in love with him, and that he wanted to gain control of her coven and steal their powers. After your grandmother passed, it was even said he was the reason.”
“Why would people say that?”
“Because he was the last one to see her . . . secretly. Oh, Gwen said your grandmother was the only one who approved of them getting married, so I don’t believe for a second he had anything to do with it. She was sick is all.” He sat down, sensing a simple question would turn into an entire conversation.
“One more question.”
“Shoot.”
“Everyone has been super easy about telling me who my mother was . . . ” Chester stopped and corrected me.
“Is . . . not was. They’re alive and well,” he pointed out.
“Okay, who she is . . . her name. What’s my father’s name?”
“Oh, guess I didn’t realize I hadn’t told you . . . sorry about that. His name is Silas Sigmis.” He said her father’s name with a hint of dislike, and I silently wondered if all witches and their protectors had the same relationship as Chad and I did.
“Okay.” Finally satisfied, I turned around to leave, but stopped when I thought of another question.
“Do you know who Isabella Crawford is, or was?”
“Sure do.” He grabbed onto the handle of his axe once more and yanked it free of the stump. “She was the most generous person that I’ve ever met. She was wise, and loyal to a fault. She knew how to lighten up a mood, even if you didn’t want to be cheered up. Yup, Isabella Crawford was an amazing lady . . . and you remind me of her.” He took another swing and hit the stump, splitting it in two.
Immortal Slumber (The Crawford Witch Chronicles Book 1) Page 6
