A Witch's Curse

by Nicole Lee

  “Five miles west of here,” Rose said. “I went there once with Melinda when we were younger. We hoped to meet boys, and all we met were sharp rocks and crawdads instead.”

  “Yes, it’s a dreadful place. Gerdur lives there in a cabin near a dilapidated pier. It’s unmistakable, because it’s the only house visible for miles. Be careful, though. She used to be enamored with wolves. They protect her.”

  “Thank you so much, Alexis. I’ll talk to you two days from now.”

  “Oh, and Rose? Bring a bottle of whiskey with you. If you don’t she won’t even bat an eye in your direction lest it’s to ridicule.”

  After they hung up, Rose went on-line to look up directions for turning out a fake identification card.

  18

  Veil Beach was an extensive stretch of land, and its size magnified as the evening became darker. The waves did seem larger here than any other shoreline she had ever been on. They crashed, howled, whipped, and broke themselves near where she was walking, spraying her hair with its frigid waters. Only an insane person would choose to build their private residence here.

  Rose jumped across a large rock onto another one, struggling to maintain balance. Falling off and into one of the damp and deep pits would have been terrifying. Thinking of what beasts could have lived in those trenches sent a shiver through her body.

  Rose continued to hike on its pebble filled trail, keeping her right hand clenched around the flashlight she was lucky enough to have brought along in case the night were to swamp the small, stone made coast.

  When shining it towards particular areas merely out of curiosity, as well as to ensure that she would not step on anything harmful, she took notice of how many insects crawled out of the natural pieces of gravel, everything from spiders to strangely evolved mussels. Even in this place close to the public, there was no sign of human life for many acres. Pollution did not exist here.

  A glowing bluish dusk then set in, but even this azure cape was nowhere near close to being murky in its coloring so as to camouflage the cabin in the distance. She paced towards it, cognizant of faint growls in the distance, the sort of urgent vocal rumbling within nearby shadows that no mere human, not even the greatest impersonator, could emulate.

  It took a small while to notice how there was a single towering torch located a few yards away from the ramshackle cottage, which Rose was now only a dozen feet away from now. Its fire was a bit more smoldering as opposed to burning, and its sapphire traced lucent stems of smoke rose from the pyre, each one making their way to the heavens. Sighing, Rose knew that any hope of being covert was permanently not possible due to the light source.

  Trying to avoid thoughts of being shot or torn to bits by whatever pack of animals were in the distance, Rose walked onto the creaky and cobweb draped porch.

  Reaching a hand out, she prepared herself to knock on the door, trying her best to catch her breath. She was cold and shivering. Just an invitation inside to a warm location would make this task seem worth it. Finally banging her hand on the decrepit doorway, she took a few steps back, waiting for any kind of a response.

  After knocking a few more times, the feeble mail slot, whose edges were jagged and eaten by parasites, opened. Rose could see two eyes peering at her. Both of them were different colors. One was blue and the other brown.

  As soon as the niche opened, she could have sworn that the echo of a snake venomously hissing rose from behind her.

  “What do you want?”

  “My name’s Rose.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Yet. My last name is Whelan.”

  “Oh, I see. So?”

  “I know who you are, Gerdur. I wish to talk with you.”

  A screeching ensued, a laughter comparable to a crow’s released scream of happiness after finding a fresh cadaver on an abandoned highway. “Little girl, if you have come to rob me, you are in dire need of godly assistance.”

  “I swear that I’m not here to steal anything,” Rose said quickly. “I would never dream of it. I want to get some information from you concerning my mother. Her witch name is Hemera.”

  A long stillness, added with what Rose momentarily thought of as being hushed tension, fell between the two.

  “I knew Hemera better than my own sister,” Gerdura responded. “Still, whatever you are searching for is rendered useless by coming here. I have not spoken to her in ages. Go away, adolescent. Bother someone else. I get young loners like yourselves begging at my doorstep every year, wanting to learn the dark arts. You would never comprehend as an amateur, if you dabble at all.”

  “I also know Alexis Harvey,” she said in a last ditch effort, throwing her backpack down onto the grimy terrace and unzipping it. “I know you and her may not have always liked each other, but she shared with me something you are a great appreciator of.”

  Rose held the full bottle of whiskey up to the slot, doing her best to make sure that the front label was visible.

  The entry swung open.

  “Come on in child,” Gerdur said with a wide smile. “My house is yours.”

  Rose was almost traumatized at how perplexingly beautiful Gerdur was. Her height left nothing to be desired, and her slim waist accentuated the expensive black velvet dress she was wearing, equipped with a classy cloth belt. Her hair was straight and darker than nightfall. Her eyes were green, and her skin as fair as any highly paid actress. Gerdur had a voice that sounded hoary and cantankerous, and yet her looks were envious.

  At least, on the outside. Rose had always read about people who could change their appearance. Yet the idea of meeting such a powerful individual had never crossed her mind. She was already wondering if Gerdur’s vocal chords had also possibly transformed, if she had distorted them at all to be more menacing..

  Rose made her way into the room, as equally amazed at how different its interior was. Instead of finding something like a prison, which is what she expected, there was a warm chamber with a plush beige rug. The walls were a coffee color, and two couches were situated in the main living space. An oven and a few tidily organized bookshelves sat in the corner.

  As it turned out, the woman’s pipes had not altered; she was in a gorgeous skin vessel with an aged sound distinguishing the way she conversed. Rose thought about how this would take some getting used to during the course of their chat.

  “Please make yourself at home, but I would love to have that bottle.”

  Rose handed the bottle over and promptly sat down at the dinner table, which was smoothly laminated. She watched Gerdur as she grabbed a couple of sifters.

  “You will join me for a drink, won’t you?”

  “I wish I could,” Rose lied. “Yet I have things I have to do tonight, if that’s okay.”

  Gerdur nodded. “You may not drink now, young lady, but give it time. Before you know it, the stresses of life will catch up with you as it does us all, and you will be clinging to bottles of alcohol the way a shipwrecked sailor does an escape boat.”

  “Maybe I’ll join you then,” Rose said.

  Gerdur then sat down across from Whelan, a tumbler full of the brown libation in hand. The olden one abruptly sniffed the drink before taking a long sip.

  “How is it?” Rose asked, trying to make small talk.

  “My dear, this makes me feel better than the day I married the most handsome man in all of Scotland.”

  “Does he live here?” Rose asked with a faint smile.

  “No. I drowned him long ago. Some men are unaware of the proper ways to treat women. You will learn that also as time comes to pass.”

  Rose shifted her eyes uncomfortably to the table top. A hearth in the corner became ablaze. She turned around to see if anyone had started it, and discovered there was not a single person there. She shivered, and then faced the ancient witch again.

  “I take it Alexis is the one who told you about my beverage of choice? I will not even touch a drop of anything unless it’s this.”

 
“Yes,” Rose said.

  “Harvey used to despise me. I should make people hate me more often, if they send me students with such wonderful peace offerings.” Gerdur then finished the first drink, and reached for the bottle to pour a second. “These are always available in case I should be in the mood, but I run through them rather quickly, if you understand.”

  “Loud and clear,” Rose said. She was glad Gerdur was enjoying the alcohol, for finding the proper fake identification became a surprisingly laborious task.

  She waited until the owner of the cabin had been to the bottom of a few more filled tumblers, before finally deciding to ask the question.

  “How did you know my mother?”

  Gerdur clicked her tongue and set her drink down, despite not allowing her fingers to uncoil from the cup. She leaned back in her chair.

  “You truly wish to know?”

  “Yes,” Rose said.

  “Me and Hemera were like sisters who were born from separate kindred. Though we did not meet each other until well into womanhood, it was easy to determine the similarities in our very independent upbringings. Our studies in elemental magic ran the same course. The year she became infatuated with water, so did I. When learning to manipulate the flowing of air, I was doing precisely the same thing, only on a different continent. We met our husbands at the same time, and learned concurrently that they were not worthy of us. I killed mine.”

  Rose flinched for a second, before trying to push the new fact to the back of her mind.

  “The first time I met your mother was at a Christmas party in the seventies. This was back when I deemed humans to be worth my time. Imagine that! The notion of knowing someone born from the same mold as me did not seem promising then, but that is what happened. We discovered an abundance of mutual reverence for one another after nearly battling. She was with a man I was interested in, but that is a different story. Once we brushed the dust of anger off ourselves, it was all up hill.”

  “What did you do together?” Rose asked. “What did you see in her?”

  “She did not suffer fools gladly,” Gerdur said, a smirk forming. “She was the first enchanter I had ever known who was willing to forsake the rules of Divine Law.”

  “What is that?”

  “It states that if you do something bad, then negative things will befall upon you.”

  “Then it’s karma,” Rose said.

  “Call it what you wish. She was the first one I had ever met who thought magic was a right and not a privilege. It was something one could abuse and do so without any, how do you say, dismal repercussions. Of course she was wrong. Yet this was very appealing to me. Your mother had a reckless tendency towards absolute mayhem that I think of now as being blindly conceited, yet still very admirable for its purity alone.”

  Gerdur took another sip and set it down slowly, admiring the liquid in the glass. The golden libation’s scent filled the cabin. She then averted her eyes from the treat and stared at Rose.

  “You asked me what we did. I would answer that by saying there is no short comeback to such an inquiry. We brewed potions together, discovered entire cities that we had never explored before. Many nights we drank this right here, at the nearest pubs. I would be lying if I said I did not respect your mother’s beauty. Her ability to make men fall in love with her over nothing was always a trait I found to be admirable. The subject that always bored her the most was love spells. You can understand why, for she had no use with such summons. Why should she? We still dabbled in things we ought not have.”

  “Like what?” Rose asked.

  “Things we, in all of our knowledge of the Occult, presumed to be myth weren’t.”

  “Such as?”

  Gerdur laughed a bit, setting the container on the top of her hand in a moment of buzzed whimsy. “You know that old story of Lucifer being in the company of witches, and usually enjoying it?”

  Rose gulped.

  “I think you get the idea.”

  “No, I don’t. Explain.”

  “Since you asked for it.” Gerdur leaned in. “Satan is a real creature, as among us now as the air. His powers are omnipotent, and his reaching across the globe is greater than you can imagine. He has the capability of possessing anyone innocent at any time. This is the reason that when we were in his presence, he could not control us. We were a little too destined for hell already. He could not govern our souls.”

  “You met him.”

  “He didn’t take the presence of a man,” she said. “Yet I refuse to believe that the king of malevolence could ever be a female.”

  “What did he…she, look like?”

  “The body he took was sublime.”

  Rose pondered this for a second, before deciding to move onto the next question.

  “Did you ever know that the spells you and my mother may have cast could have caused harm to others?”

  “We wished curses upon many enemies.”

  “I don’t mean like that. I’m talking about bad luck thrown into the lives of ordinary people - ones you may not have even met.”

  Gerdur smirked. “I should have known. You’re hardly ever at home, correct?”

  Rose nodded.

  “So, I take it you’ve seen your mother’s effect on coming here.”

  “So you knew she was in Lake Pines as well. She brought a curse between me nad her with her. That would be a problem enough, but it‘s effecting everyone who lives here.”

  “Of course. I know a lot of things. I even see your future.”

  While Rose was naturally tempted to get onto this subject, she decided to stick to the topic at hand. “That’s great. Yet what I’m wondering is how can I stop the awful events that have been happening within our town since she showed up. Surely there’s a way to prevent it.”

  “You have to forgive-”

  “I know about that already. It’s not possible. I can’t let go of my grudges towards her. I have tried, Gerdur. I’ve even lost sleep over wanting to make myself excuse her, pardon her, let her off. It’s not happening, and the reason for that is simple. I hate her.”

  Gerdur took in a deep breath, looking behind her for a second. Rose saw a pair of brightly lit yellow eyes pass the window behind her.

  “It is not possible for me to truly understand how to stop the blight that has been placed at this corner of the earth. It has even hurt me. Two of my wolves have died - one drowned in the lake, and another was killed by a bear. Such ill happenings have never befallen me in such a tranquil place as here. Except for when snotty kids your age come to my door and bark.”

  Rose wearyingly leaned back in her chair, trying to let the words sink in. “I thought I heard your pets. Are you one of those crazy old animal hoarders or something?”

  “You do not want to cross me. Because if you do, then you’re also crossing them.”

  “Please help me,” Rose said. “There’s chaos happening out there. Half of my school has burned down since she decided to come here. Everyone is going out of their minds. Innocent people are dying. I know the town means nothing to you, but as you said, there’s already been an adverse reaction in your life because of her. How do you know it won’t escalate and end up doing something worse to all of us?”

  “I don’t have an answer beyond how I know that one way of eliminating the spiritual nuisance is to absolve your mother. However, I do know someone who can help you. Though I must admit that she can only give you eight minutes of her time.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Gerdur tilted her head back, a balking smile forming. “Bloody Mary.”

  Rose almost rolled her eyes. “I didn’t know you liked bloody mary’s. I thought whiskey was your favorite. I take it you need one to give me the valid name, right?”

  She laughed, raising the cup high in the air. “No, although you’re welcome to bring me more of this anytime you want. You can be my best friend if you do that.”

  Rose thought, no thank you.

  Gerdur continued: “
I am deeply puzzled that you have not heard of Mary Worth.”

  Rose had recognized the name in a vague way, like she could have read it in one of her books. “Who is she?”

  Fulminations formed in the invisible amplitudes outside of the chalet. The sounds of them cracking against wet soil filtered through the walls. Rose cringed at how much light filled the windows with their thrashings. The thunder was far more menacing on this night than any other Rose could bring to mind.

  “You haven’t been invited to many slumber parties in your life, have you, my withered Rose?”

  “I prefer to be around boys,” she said.

  “Bloody Mary Worth is from the other realm, naïve one.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She is not living. She is dead, a ghost. You have to send for her with a beckoning at midnight exactly. All it takes is a mirror and a little knowledge as to how to properly manage her attendance. You need to say her name thirteen times exactly into a reflecting glass darkly. Only you should not do it at home.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she has a tendency to plague whatever house she is called in. As I said, it is considered a nice trick for bored teenage girls who have nothing better than to antagonize the spirits during a sleep over. Many have paid the price. Some mortals were once young and beautiful, but after meeting Mary, they looked like they had crawled out of a den of barbarians after being tortured for years. You need to go somewhere that cannot be weighed down with negative energy. A cemetery, for example, shan’t be harmed by her making herself known on its grounds, for any necropolis has already had its fair flow of wraithlike specters. She would probably give you much more insight if you were to sit in a mourning chair.”

  Rose cringed. She had always seen that stony bench length seat, and had always held out hope for the notion that life would never be so cruel as to force her to one day sit there. She had grown up next to the graveyard for most of her life, and it was never out of the ordinary to see an old woman perched on the stool, crying frenziedly, her tears wetting the evening air as the elderly would place her face in her hands, trying her best to conceal the hysterical weeping from passing walkers.