by Nicole Lee
“I found this real great place downtown,” he said to her suddenly. “It’s a cross between a Starbucks and a home kitchen. They let you make your own food, and I have a recipe for apple pie that I’ve been meaning to make. I probably can’t do it though, because my cooking skills aren’t always good. Would you be interested?”
“It’s a date.”
“Then we can go out to dinner.”
Rose giggled. “Who is to say we’ll even be in the mood to have a meal after we’ve stuffed ourselves with dessert ahead of time?”
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those calorie counting freaks.”
“No, but I’m not a hedonist either.”
“Everyone should have at least one day out of their lives where they indulge without guilt. I mean, this is our last year of High School, Rose. We could have an entire lifetime of working boring dead end jobs ahead of us. We might as well have a good time while we can. I’ll see you at the Picture Gallery coffee joint at two forty five?”
“Deal.”
October 13th
Dear Diary,
A religious conversation between me and James happened a few days ago, before I met my mother for the first time in so many years. He said he didn’t believe in God. I said that I was unsure, but it is still good to keep your options open.
“Come on Rose,” he said.
Even after I became a practitioner, I tried my best not to give up my faith. I admitted to him that I struggle.
James shared a theory. He asked me to imagine two people sitting across from one another. One is a Christian and the other is an atheist.
The Christian poses a question. "If there is no God, how come we have such complex eyes and bodies? Can all of that possibly be an accident? Have you ever even looked at the stars?”
The atheist replied, “The cosmos is infinite and ever growing. Let's say everyone in the world breaks coffee cups all day. Picture billions of people throwing mugs on the ground every second. Eventually there would be seventy thousand people who end up with seventy thousand pieces of broken china which is in the shape of a well-cut triangle, lined up perfectly in a straight line. That would be an amazing circumstance, but not unlikely in the long run, nor is miraculous or mystical within the context I just gave. It‘s an explanatory event. So who‘s to say we humans can‘t be a happy accident?”
I thought about the story that James told me. I still yearn to believe in a celestial architect. Yet what James or Melinda aren’t aware of is how I know I live in a place where a witch could cast a curse on somebody and get away with it until karma sets in. The idea that one always gets what they deserve sooner or later, whether it be good or bad, has always made me believe that there is some intrinsic fairness, no matter how small or even unbalanced it comes across in the order of things, and that principle of one‘s actions coming back around cannot be an accident described by science.
I do feel like someone is watching over me, and it’s not in a comforting way, at least not lately. A lot of strange things have been happening, and I know it’s because of my mother. She is searching for me. One of her allies has been following me. If she makes herself known, I will be ready for her. That is something I am sure of.
The place where she met Grady that afternoon was a cross over of a caffeine stop and an easy bake. Thankfully it was not that busy, so the kitchen quarters belonged entirely to them.
Rose occupied herself with cutting the apples and trying to blend the chopped pieces together so as to make a decent sauce that was neither overpowering or too light. She mixed in sugar, flour thickening, and cinnamon.
Grady was in the corner doing his best to make a decently firm dough in the pan. She could tell that he was nervous.
Rose stared through one of the many windows surrounding them and noticing that snowfall was beginning to form outside. It felt good to be in a warm environment with the living, rather than a frigid crypt with the undead. For the space of what would be an afternoon, she could at least pretend to be normal. No tears of fire rolling from her eyes because of overwhelming sadness, no attempts at being a paranormal spy, nothing involving being followed by the man in black or sleep walking. Not until tomorrow, at least. Turning around, she saw that Grady was no longer working on the pie, but rather staring at her whilst being completely still like a photograph.
“Are you ready?”
“Of course,” he said, grabbing the powdery tin container lying dormant on the surface behind him.
They stood close together while mixing the necessary ingredients.
He put his arm around her while they waited for the oven to heat up to the proper temperature. When it came time to place the dish on the rack, they separated themselves, especially when glancing up and noticing that the owner was looking at the two.
He donned a tattered Guns & Roses shirt. He was freakishly tall and twenty pounds overweight. He had still been polite to them since they walked in.
“You two are the nicest customers I’ve seen come in here all week,” he said. “Tell you what, feel free to take any drink you want from my freezer over there. It’s on the house.”
They smiled. While Rose’s first inclination was to decline out of sheer politeness since most businesses were struggling in general, she knew it would be bad-mannered.
The worker behind the main desk then said that he was going to do some chores in the back. As soon as he had gone, the stereo system in the shop was turned on, and airy sounds flowed from the almost invisible speakers hung in the corners. The orchestral noise of plucked strings, wood and brass winds, ancient keyboards and lyres flooded the room. Grady retrieved two cokes and sat them down on the counter. Rose could not help but think of how her body would never forgive her for the levels of sugar she was about to soak into her blood stream.
Grady ran his hand down the left side of her face, brushing back some of her hair over her ear.
“I know we weren’t apart for very long,” he said. “Yet I still missed you a lot.”
“What did you miss?”
He laughed faintly before answering her. “I missed your hair, and how it’s color changes depending on what light you’re in.”
The timer read that there were exactly seven minutes left until the pie was fully done. The owner came back out, and they pulled the treat out of the oven. They ate it in under half an hour.
After finishing the pastry, they went out to a restaurant whose specialty was Hawaiian food, with Grady promising how he would get the rather princely and outrageous bill which was sure to await them after they finished.
After their host seated them, Gina, Jessica and Emma walked in. They were dressed in J-Crews and Ann Taylor’s. They also wore black beaded necklaces and strawberry colored earrings which glistened in the light of the dining hall.
She just prayed that the host would not sit them next to the occupied table near where they were. Sure enough, her greatest fear came true. The trio of girls positioned themselves at the slab. For a while, they tried to hide their faces behind the large plastic and gold rimmed menus, but it was not long before they began whispering amongst themselves, and she knew what it was they were probably saying.
“What’s wrong?” Grady asked, staring at Rose concernedly across the table. He had not seen them come in, due to how his back was to the main door.
“Nothing,” Rose said, more out of self-affirmation with the hopes of calming herself down.
Finally, Emma sat up and walked over to where they were. The two others carried chairs and sat themselves at the same place. The servers, standing near the kitchen, gave them puzzled looks.
Emma said, “Grady, you shouldn’t be dating her. We found a book of spells that belongs to this freak.”
“What were you doing going through my locker?” Rose asked, feeling a venomous anger rising from her core.
“What are you doing keeping my man?” Gina asked, an arrogant smile crossing her face.
“We should be. And you shouldn’t be seeing t
his catty Satanist. You could wake up one morning and find out that you’ve impregnated the woman who will give birth to the Anti-Christ.”
Rose sighed, rubbing her temples carefully, not even bothering to look around anymore to make sure that she was not about to cause a scene.
“Yeah,” Jessica said with a rueful grin. “Why don’t you ride a tornado out of here. Just don‘t take my little dog with you.”
“Listen Gina,” Rose said. “If you choose to apologize, I’ll accept it. Yet if you want a fight, I’ll give you one. You’re the typical bitch that good girls like me have to deal with, and I’m tired of it. So what do you say?”
Gina was about to give a comeback, before Grady surprised them all and stood up, directing the three to go outside the same way a rancher does his cattle.
Five minutes later, he returned and the cheerleaders were gone.
“Did I scare them off?”
“Sort of,” he said. “I did too, though.”
“What did you say?”
“I know a secret about all three of those girls that no one else does, and if I started telling people, it would kill their social status.”
“What is it?”
“All three of them are fans of Dungeons & Dragons. Huge ones. They play up to five times a night, when they’re not out on dates with the other guys from the team.”
Rose found herself trying to suppress a laugh, before bursting out into a complete cackle. It was the first time in her life that she had given a sound resembling an actual witch.
By the time the waiter came around with their food, it tasted immaculate. Each and every forkful was tinged with victory.
That was before the emergency fire alarms went out, causing the sprinklers in the ceiling to unleash a flood of water throughout the room.
They would receive news the next day that one of the cooks had accidentally spilled grease all over the floor of the refrigerating domain, and a fire erupted.
After they had escaped the irritating disaster situation, he drove her home. The incident was not even mentioned. Bad occurrences happening in areas they were at was now a normal event.
Remembering that she did not like being dropped off in front of her house for fear that her father would catch them, he parked in the same place he had the night they walked through the graveyard.
When he stopped the car, he held her hand firmly.
They both stepped out of the vehicle, and laid down on the front hood, gazing upwards at the stars.
“I want to spend more time with you,” he said.
She felt the same way. Yet the bravery it took to admit this was something she could not summon at that moment.
“Can I ask you questions about you being a…you know.”
“A witch,” she said. “Don’t be afraid of the word. I take pride in it.”
“Okay,” he said. “What is it made of? What do witches do for fun? Do you have gatherings in the meadows at midnight and drink the blood of baby tigers from the skulls of hyenas?”
“Not often,” she said. “Giraffe’s blood is much better.”
“So is everything I’ve learned from pop culture growing up a lie, or is it something else? When you die, do you melt?”
“I wish,” she said. “I’d love to kill myself in the perfect location, and maybe melt in the girls locker room at school to make all the snoots slip and fall on me as they’re trying to leave.”
“Morbid. So what they say about witches having a grim sense of humor is true.”
“Maybe. Look, I’ll be the first to say that I don’t know much about the organizations of magic. There‘s a lot of them, but I‘ve never been part of an actual den.”
She wanted to tell him about how this was a lie. She was now a narc in a real coven for the first time in her life. Not the ideal way to be initiated into a group, yet that was her place in one. Then again, she did not want to spill her life to this boy, despite how she felt to the very bottom of her soul that he was trustworthy.
“Have you ever cast spells?”
“All the time,” she said.
“Have you ever cast an evil one?”
She turned her head sideways to stare at him. “Getting a bit personal, aren’t we?”
“Well, it shouldn’t be too hard to answer if you‘re innocent.”
“No,” she said. “Well, one time I gave Gina, Jessica and Emma a pretty wicked case of the flu, but in all fairness, I think I’m paying for that through karma.”
“I can’t blame you,” he said. “If I had any ounce of your power, I wouldn’t use it wisely. There are so many guys at our school I’d like to lay into with a real bad spell, give them a lisp for the rest of their lives. I guess all I need are my hands to do that, and not a wand. Oh, that reminds me. Do you carry a wand?”
“I’ve seen two do that,” she said, referring to Alexis and Hemera, although Rose did not want to reveal the name of her instructor just yet. “As for myself, it’s not for me. It‘s pretty detrimental to what we‘re actually trying to do. Witchcraft should rely on the spirit, not external objects. By the way, just to save us a lot of time? Yes, you can turn someone into a frog. No, I don‘t own a cauldron or a voodoo doll or have a pet snake. Nor a spider. I also hate cats, especially lately for personal reasons I, um, can‘t disclose.”
“What about a Ouija board?”
“I believe in them, but their power is too much for me.”
“Interesting,” Grady said. “You’re so much different from that local witch. Everyone always warned me about her being a hag.”
“Lay off Ms. Harvey,” Rose said.
“Whoa, who? I was talking about that crazy Grandma reaper lady. Gerdur.”
Rose felt the hairs on the back of her neck position themselves into fine, tall standing strands.
The name was recognizable.
Politely, she asked him to repeat who she was.
“Gerdur.”
Grady shared how rumor had it that she would collect bugs until they died, then litter their remains on her front porch just to attract other bugs. She would catch them and repeat the process. Gerdur was purportedly living on government welfare checks.
“Good night Grady,” Rose said, sliding off the automobile, feeling her feet land on the tough, cold cement.
“Was it something I said? I hope you know I was kidding in asking you those questions, I never really thought you drank-”
“I know,” she said, giving him a lively beam. “No offense taken. Yet I have a call to make. I would never cancel a date unless it was an emergency. You said that lady lives in Lake Pines?”
“Yeah.”
“Any clue where?”
“No,” he said. “I’d stay away from her. Is there something you need to tell me?”
“Some day,” she said, turning around and walking in the direction to her house.
The wandering there was one that seemed unhurried, and she thought it had something to do with how the epiphany befalling her seemed to be so devastating that it slowed time down. To make matters worse, she noticed that the street light allowing luminescence upon the boulevard was dimming dramatically, and it looked as if things could fade at any moment, causing a bit of horrible darkness to arise on the entire thoroughfare.
Once inside her house, Rose tried to look for any signs of her father being awake - a rumpled couch, the remote placed in a certain corner where it should not have been, a cigarette burned half way. There was nothing. That gave her clearance to make as much noise as she could while searching out for what she needed.
Rose grabbed the cell phone from its charger before heading upstairs. Once she was in her room she dialed Harvey’s number, knowing that her tutor would be well awake at this time of night. After the first few rings, she finally answered.
“Oh Rose,” Alexis said. “I’m so glad it’s you. You won’t believe this. I’ve found a copy of Burgess’ The Piano Players, signed by the man himself.”
“That’s great,” Rose said, tw
isting her own collar with a single finger nervously, trying to avoid hastily jumping onto the real reason she was calling. “There’s someone I want to talk to you about. Her name is Gerdur.”
There was a long pause on the other end. Rose could picture her educationalist giving a chilly look at the wall in front of her, almost dropping the receiver while staring into nothing.
“Oh my. I haven’t heard that name in fifteen years.”
“But you have heard it?”
“Please, she’s a regular part of Lake Pines folk lore.”
“She’s something more, isn’t she?”
“Yes. She’s real. So what about her piques your interest?”
“How well do you know her?”
“Better than what I would have wanted,” Alexis said bitterly.
“Do you know where she lives?”
“Yes.”
“I want her address.”
“You would only get that out of me if you threatened to burn down my bookstore with lighter fluid and a flamethrower.”
“Here’s the thing, I’ve heard her name once before a long time ago. I know my mother knew her. Listen, this could be our only chance of breaking the bad luck that’s been cast on the town. This crazy woman probably knows more about Hemera’s powers than either of us combined, because she not only knows her, but I think they had a feud. Don’t get me wrong, my mother spoke badly about everyone, but never another witch - particularly an old one. There had to be a reason, and I want to find it out.”
“Understand something,” Alexis said, almost choking on her own words. “Gerdur is one of the most spiteful people I’ve ever encountered, let alone out of the witches I‘ve had the displeasure to meet. She’s pure evil, if rumors are true. One tells of how she lured a young man into her dwelling with the promise of food, only to torture and kill him. So I demand you to wear the bracelet, just in case. Now, about her location. Do you know where Veil beach is?”
