The slight form in the bed barely resembled a body at all, more like skin and bones. I looked closer before recoiling in horror.
“It’s…a…a…child.” I could barely get the words out.
Luke walked over to the edge of the bed and gently reached out and touched the child’s forehead. “Her name is Anna. She’s seven years old, and she has cancer riddling her body.” His eyes met mine. “There’s nothing they can do for her.”
The little girl twitched suddenly.
I stepped back.
“She’s in pain--excruciating pain all the time.” Luke pointed toward one of the IV bottles. “The doctors can give her morphine, but it’s not enough. It doesn’t dull the pain. The dose they would need to get rid of the pain would kill her.” He looked at the closed door. “Her family wants to help her move on. She can stay like this for weeks, maybe a month, but there’s no hope. With our help, she’ll move directly into the light. We can help her spirit pass through this life into the next.”
It was a child. He was asking me to take the life of a child. I took a step back my head shaking violently back and forth. “No, no, no, I can’t do this!”
“If you close your eyes and concentrate, Colina, you can see her spirit is on the brink.” His voice was low and soothing. “You’re not killing her. Her spirit is already almost to the other side. She just needs our help to push her across.”
“I can’t…” My hands went to my face. “You want me to murder her.” My cheeks were damp. I hadn’t realized I was crying.
“It’s not murder, its compassion.”
“But I’m doing this so I can gain power. I’m not doing this to help her. I’m doing this to avenge my family, to help you save Darla.”
“Do your motives really matter? Her family has asked for our help. We’re here. Does it really matter why? She needs to move on. By helping her, you’re also helping yourself, is that so wrong?”
Tears were streaming down my face. “I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can. You’re strong. Look at what you’ve survived. You’ve lived when the rest of your family has died. You’re still here, and so is Darla. But for how long?” Anger blazed from his eyes. “How long until those men kill my sister. They killed Sarah, they murdered your mother, your father and your brother.” He unclenched his hands. The anger left his face, and he reached out to me. “We’re the only ones that can help this girl and her family. They’ve asked for our help. If we walk away, she’ll continue to suffer. Her family can only sit and watch her suffer. Do you really want that?”
I wanted to go to him. I wanted to feel his arms around me, but I didn’t move.
He lowered his hands and said in a gentle voice, “Sit down.” He gestured to a chair in the corner. I’ll get everything ready for the spell. You just sit down and keep breathing. Okay?”
He was talking to me as though he thought I was going to bolt out of the room at any minute. And he wasn’t wrong. Every cell in my body shouted at me to get out. To walk away. But instead I sat in the chair.
I watched him move around the room. He placed five black candles around the foot of the bed.
I looked at the girl. Anna. Her name was Anna. I wondered if I’d ever be able to forgive myself for doing this. Killing, even in mercy, went against everything I believed in. Against the very essence of the person I was. Used to be, a voice whispered in the corner of my mind. But I was no longer a healer. I had slowly morphed into a death dealer, and now I was about to become a killer.
Luke took a small volume, bound in black leather, out from one of the bags and gestured for me to join him.
I didn’t think I could get out of the chair. My hands were trembling so hard I clenched them together in front of me. It took every ounce of will power I had to force myself to my feet. I had no choice, I had to do this. I took one step and then another until I stood by Luke’s side.
“The protection pouch. You need to take it off.”
I took off the pouch and put it in my pocket.
Luke handed me the book.
I took it from him. I could feel it slightly vibrating in my hands. He’d said books had power, spells surrounding them. I looked down at the pages. They were yellowed with age. “I don’t know Latin, I can’t read this,” I said, holding it out to him.
He took the book from my hands, leaned over, unzipped one of the bags and pulled out an orange plastic tube.
“Is that the devil berry ointment?” I asked, my voice shaking.
He nodded and flipped open the tube. He leaned over me, squeezing the tube. I watched as a thin line of white cream came out of the tube and spread across the back of my left hand.
“Rub it in.”
I didn’t move.
“Colina, I can’t touch the ointment, you have to rub it in.”
I took a deep breath and began slowly rubbing the ointment into my skin. It felt cold and sticky against my fingers.
He pushed the book back into my hands. “I’ll help you pronounce the words.”
Before I could answer, the door burst open. A woman rushed into the room, tears streaming down her face. In her hands she held a gold necklace, and from the necklace dangled a gold heart.
“I forgot to give her this,” the woman said, making her way to the bed. She fastened the necklace carefully around the girl’s neck. “There. She loved my necklace. Inside there’s a picture of her when she was a baby.” The woman reached out and brushed the hair from the Anna’s face. “They said you won’t cause her any pain. Promise me my baby won’t be in any more pain.”
“I promise,” Luke said, his voice low.
The woman’s eyes were bleak. “What choice do we have but to do this? The doctor gave her as much morphine as he could this time. She’s unconscious, but I know she still feels the pain. Her body twitches, her face contorts in agony.” The woman’s voice came out in a sob. “She’s in so much pain. We just want it to stop.”
She leaned over and kissed Anna on the forehead. “Goodbye my angel. Mommy will see you again. One day I’ll be with you on the other side. Wait for me in peace, my love.” And with those words the woman took a step away from the bed.
She started toward the door but then she stopped and turned back toward the bed, her hands suddenly reached out as though she was going to move forward and embrace the girl again. But instead she shook her head, and another sob escaped from her lips. “You promise there’s no pain?” she whispered, looking at us, her eyes wide and full of…what was the emotion?
It was loss. I recognized the look. I had seen it enough times in the mirror in my own eyes since my family’s death.
Luke looked over at Anna. “I promise no more pain.”
The woman nodded her head and walked out of the room. She never looked back as the door closed behind her.
Luke turned to me and handed me the book again. “Her mother wants us to do this. Her mother is begging us to end the girl’s pain.”
I looked over at him. What choice did I have but to do this? I couldn’t find the words to answer, so I just nodded my head and took the book from his hands.
Luke came to my side and read the first word. I repeated each word, trying to articulate it the exact way Luke said it.
I focused on the words, not on what I was doing. If I stopped and thought about what was about to happen, I might not be able to continue.
I followed along, and as I did my body felt hot, feverish. I felt a heat rising up through my limbs, crawling slowly up my neck toward my face. Something was not right. I felt strange. The room suddenly seemed too bright, and the words began to blur on the page. I blinked and blinked again trying to clear my vision. The words began to move, starting to slide off the page. They slid down toward the edge of the book, and ever so slowly, they began to fall like a small waterfall onto the floor. Where they landed a pool of black ink formed. It expanded as more words fell and began to quiver. Before my very eyes, the ink pool stretched and changed. It morphed into the shape of
a caterpillar.
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. Was what I was seeing real? Was it a hallucination? The black caterpillar rose up onto its legs and crawled across the floor and disappeared under the bed. I turned toward Luke. Did he see it? Was it real and, if so, what kind of spell was this that we were creating that changed words into bugs?
Luke’s eyes never left the book. He repeated another word, and I tried to open my mouth and copy what he said, but nothing came out. I opened my mouth again, but my throat was suddenly incredibly dry, so dry the words could no longer escape. My throat constricted and with the loss of breath I began to panic. My heart pounded in my chest. Fear raced through me and as it did a pain burst out from the center of my forehead. The white-hot pain spread across my head. It was so intense I dropped the book and fell to my knees. I instinctively cradled my head. Gray shadows edged in and my vision became blurred, and that was when I heard the laughter.
I looked up, seeking the source of the laughter. Anna was standing by the bedside. No, wait, it wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her. I looked back at the bed. She was there, hooked up to the machines. I could hear them beeping.
The laughter again. My eye swung back to the girl standing by the bed. It was Anna, but she was strong and healthy. Her hair ran in red curls down her back. She gave me a wide smile and tried to step away from the bed, but she stopped, and a frown crossed her face. She seemed unable to move, frozen in that one spot. And that’s when I noticed a glowing silver cord between the two bodies. The cord ran from the center of the healthy Anna and into the middle of the bed-stricken Anna.
The smiling Anna tried to move again, and as she did the silver cord flexed and stretched, but then bounced back intact.
“Colina, can you hear me?” Luke’s voice came from somewhere far away.
I tried to cry out, “Yes,” but no sound left my lips.
“You have to help her move on. Do you see the cord? The cord stretching between Anna’s body and spirit? The cord of life?”
“I see it.” I shouted the words, but I had no idea if he could hear me or not.
Luke’s voice sounded urgent. “You have to sever that cord in order for Anna to move on. Do you see the fire?”
It was there, a small flame burning in the darkness.
Luke’s voice whispered across the darkness. “You need to make the fire higher, hotter.”
As I concentrated on the flame, it sparked up and expanded and with it my body began to burn. The fire slid up and down my limbs. Flames flickered off my skin.
“Now send the fire toward the cord. Focus on the cord and burn it through,” Luke’s voice commanded.
The flames grew hotter, and I became alive with fire. It pumped through my heart--it ran through my veins, it fueled my blood. And as my hands reached up the flames shot out.
Orange and red encircled the silver cord. It burned brighter and brighter until finally the cord broke. Anna’s spirit was now free. The healthy Anna leaped away from the bed. I heard a loud shout of excitement and the sound of singing filled the room.
Suddenly the world spun around and around, and I was being dragged down. Something pulled me into the dark abyss. I stood at the mouth of a great stretch of darkness. Within the darkness things called out to me.
“There you are girly. I’ve been looking for you.” I recognized Wanda’s voice, the spirit that had possessed me.
I was in that place again--oblivion.
I felt Wanda’s presence edging closer to me. “You thought you could get away from me, but I found you.” Wanda cackled. “I knew I would if I kept looking hard enough. I’ve always been a wily one, alive or dead. Anything I wanted bad enough, I would and could get. And girly I want to live again!”
“No.”
“Now, don’t be difficult. No one’s here to help you this time. It’s just you and me, girly. And that’s the way it should be.”
“Leave me alone,” my voice commanded. My words shook through me, and I felt myself rise up. I wouldn’t stay in the shadows. I refused to be forced into that dark place again.
Wanda’s presence shrank back. Her voice was silent, but the darkness was still there. It was a great expansion of ink black which spread before me. This time I heard a growl. There was something out there. I felt something slowly coming my way.
I waited for words to form, or a voice to say something to me, but there were no human sounds that I could distinguish. The noises were unearthly--snarls and snaps, like maybe from dogs or wolves? And then an awful sound. A dragging, slinking, thumping. I’d have backed up, I’d have fled, but there was nowhere to go.
And then, in a flash, I was standing in the pantry in my house. I watched from between the wooden slats as the knife came down and sliced across my father’s throat. I watched the blood gushing from his wound. A hatred I had never felt before filled me. And with the hatred a fire blazed inside me.
Another flash and I was in the woods, running, my heart pounding. I could hear the footsteps behind me, chasing me. They would catch me. I saw the water in the moonlight and heard the waves of the lake splashing against the shore.
Sarah. The word slid across my mind.
“He needs you.” Sarah’s face was before me in the lake’s waters. “You can’t leave him now. He needs you more than you know.”
Then I was back in oblivion, and that otherworldly thing coming closer. Whatever was now next to me, I suddenly felt certain it came out of the very depths of hell. When it touched me, its darkness slid inside me. I felt the blackness ooze into my veins and move into my blood.
I screamed the words, “No! No! No!” and as the words echoed flames came, and I was on fire again. The flames inched higher until they consumed me. Red heat blazed up against the blackness.
I opened my eyes. I was on my feet, barely. Luke’s arms supported me, holding me tight.
“Are you all right?”
I couldn’t speak. I was so relieved to be away from the darkness that I sobbed and threw my arms around him.
We stood there, together, for a long time.
I took a deep breath, and I pulled away from him. I looked over at the bed. “Anna?” I whispered.
“She’s moved on. You helped her move on,” Luke said quietly, his face full of concern.
I walked over on shaky legs and looked down at Anna’s body. Her eyes were wide open. Sky blue eyes filled with emptiness. She exhibited no signs of life. I had killed her. I waited for a dread to fill me at the words. I waited to feel the pain of killing someone seep into my soul. But I realized, as I looked down into Anna’s lifeless body, that I felt nothing, I felt completely numb. I should be feeling…what? Sadness at the girl’s passing, happiness that I’d helped her pass onto a better place? Anger at the injustice of her death? Instead I felt absolutely nothing and that suddenly frightened me even more than the darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
Here Come the Draugrs
I had survived the three terrifying rituals. They were finally over. Was I relieved? I wasn’t sure what I felt. Before I could delve too deep into my current emotional, or was it more accurate to say emotionless, state, Luke took my hand, and we walked out of the room. Anna’s family greeted us.
Her mother’s eyes were full of tears. “Is it…is she…”
I realized I was having a hard time meeting her gaze.
“She’s passed on to the other side.” Luke’s voice was full of compassion.
The family, faces stricken with grief, made their way into the room and left us on our own in the hallway. But we weren’t entirely alone I suddenly realized. A group of people were mingling at the other end of the hallway and in the midst of the group was the woman who’d confronted and cussed at us earlier. The woman suddenly spotted us and pointed in our direction. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could read the expressions on the faces around her. Whatever was about to happen, it was not going to be pleasant.
“It might be a good idea if we found another
way out. I don’t like the look of that crowd,” Luke said, his grip tightening around my hand.
The crowd, which was starting to look more like a mob, began to move in our direction. Luke pulled me with him, and we high tailed it down the hallway in the opposite direction. We picked up speed as we went and by the time we hit the flight of stairs we were jogging. At the bottom of the stairs, we went through another set of doors and Luke pulled up.
“We’re in the basement.” Luke gestured to the left. ”We’re right next to the parking lot, once out the door we’re only a few feet from the car.”
I nodded my head and sucked in a lungful of air. I hadn’t been prepared to run a marathon around the hospital.
Luke started down the hall. “Wait here, I’m going to check to make sure there isn’t another welcoming party waiting for us outside.”
I leaned against the wall, more like sagged against it, watching, waiting for him to let me know it was safe to leave.
I didn’t realize at first what the noise was. It wasn’t until the buzzing sound increased a few notches that I noticed it at all. The sound was coming from a room to my left. My legs started down the hallway before my mind caught up with what I was doing, and I found myself standing in front of a set of large metal doors. Above the doors in bold black letters was the word--Morgue. Before I could truly process what was going on, I had pushed through the doors and gone into the room.
Why had I come into the morgue? I could speak to spirits now--the last place I wanted to be was in a room full of dead bodies. I looked around, expecting to have a face or voice pop out at me at any minute. The air in the room was chilly, cold enough I could see my breath. The space was enormous. Small metal doors with metal handles lined one wall. I realized I was looking at the drawers where they kept the dead bodies.
What the heck was I doing here? What strange urge had propelled me through those doors? I should turn around and march out, but instead my feet seemed glued to the floor. I twisted around and took in the rest of the room. Against another wall was a large sink. I shuddered at the visual of what might go down that drain. Blood? Tissue? I force myself to look away. Shiny black tile covered the floors, and four metal tables about waist high stood in the middle of the room. White sheets covered two of the tables, but the sheets weren’t lying flat against the tables’ surface. Something was under each sheet. Dead bodies. Dead bodies were lying on the tables.
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