“Come,” Ligeia said. She nodded her head to the side. I followed her. My movements were jerky and strange, like a doll, but I couldn’t stop. The nausea returned, and my mouth felt unbearably dry. After a few seconds, I was aware of everything in my body pulsing and twitching and moving together. My organs, full of blood and bile, shifted wetly together, squished inside my abdomen, protected by a cage of bone and fat. My stomach sloshed from side to side, filled with spit, and bile, and that hideous, liquid tea. I even felt the spongy tissue of my lungs breathing in shallow, jerky breaths. Suddenly, I wanted very much to stop thinking.
“You have to be aware of yourself at all times,” Ligeia said softly. She took my hand. “Do not be afraid, Monica. This is a procedure you must learn to accommodate.”
“It’s uncomfortable,” I said stiffly. My heart skipped a beat, and my stomach lurched. My center of gravity shifted, and, for a moment, the world around me plunged into a terrifying warp speed. Trees, and sky, and dead leaves spun round and round, faster and faster, until I felt rooted to the spot by an unearthly, centrifugal force.
“You can feel the Earth move,” Ligeia said. “Don’t fight it, Monica. Embrace this; embrace this and learn.”
I moaned lowly as Ligeia guided me to a clearing in the woods. Large, flat rocks were placed in a circle. This time, I needed no instruction. I walked unsteadily toward the rocks, lowering myself onto one at the center.
Sitting, the vertigo was almost worse. I kept my eyes wide open, unable to look away from the swirling blend of green, and blue, and brown all around me. My skin stretched and expanded with every breath, and I shuddered with the realization that my skin was the only thing keeping my body together. Instantly, I pictured myself melting onto the dirty ground, organs seeping out of my pores with blood, and sweat, and piss. I shuddered.
“Do not be afraid,” Ligeia said softly. She lowered herself down next to me. When I looked at her, the world stopped spinning. Her blue eyes seemed to be the center of the universe, her lined, worldly face, the face that guided the sun and the moon.
“I…” I trailed off, unable to compose my own thoughts into words.
Ligeia pressed my hand. “Just breathe,” she said softly. “Breathe in, and the world breathes with you.”
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. Then I felt it – the powerful air sucking into the sponges of my lungs, the stretched feeling in my chest when I was filled with oxygen. I felt my blood revitalizing and turning from blue to red with the infusion of air. I felt my whole body lift and sink with each breath until I was riding on a tide of highs and lows, all connected. There was no place where my body stopped and the Earth began. And with each breath, I grew more confident still.
“There,” Ligeia said. Her voice was low and filled with approval. “You are beginning to understand, Monica.”
I stayed with the coven for a week, drinking that noxious tea and training myself to become one with the Earth. The hangovers each morning were awful. Instead of feeling like one with the universe, I felt like a disgusting creature that needed to be put out of its misery. But Ligeia assured me the feeling would pass, and after a few hours, it did. Still, I looked forward to the day when Henrik would approve of my going home.
It didn’t take long. After seven days of hallucinations and seven nights of agonizing, sweat-filled sleep, Henrik came to me.
“You may depart us,” Henrik said. “But do not think we will turn a blind eye, Monica.” His eyes stared at me with heady disapproval. “I am proud at the work you have accomplished in such a short time. But in no way should you take that to mean that you are free from making the same mistakes again.”
I leaned over and vomited hot bile onto the grass, sputtering and wiping at my mouth.
Henrik waited patiently for me to finish. “You have a new handle on yourself,” he said. “And we expect you to keep control of that at all times.”
I shrugged, trying to play off how sick I felt. I was so exhausted and tired. I couldn’t wait to get home, take a long shower, and collapse into bed.
“I’ll try harder,” I said weakly. “That’s all I can do.”
Henrik smiled, but he still looked serious. “Yes,” he said heavily. “This is a tense time for our worlds, Monica. We cannot have you fail.”
I swallowed, grimacing at the taste in my mouth. “I know,” I said. “Trust me. I know.”
---
The next morning when I woke up, I was so happy to be home that I could’ve cried. My sheets smelled like fresh laundry and dirty hair, and I sighed, pulling the covers around me. The air in my bedroom felt cold, and I frowned when I realized the window was open.
I shivered as I climbed out of bed and pulled on a robe. When I got to the window, I gasped. A solid foot of snow was blanketing the ground, and icicles hung from every surface. ‘This is weird,’ I thought, closing the window and blowing on my frozen fingers. ‘It normally doesn’t snow until December.’
Downstairs, Jamie and Brian were cooking breakfast. Neither one of my parents seemed surprised to see me. I can’t say that I expected otherwise, but it still stung.
“Oh, hi there,” Jamie said. She passed me a plate of bacon without even looking at me. “Long trip, huh?”
I stared at her. “Yeah…” I trailed off, biting my lip. “Um, did I tell you guys where I was going?”
Jamie smiled indulgently. “Honey, you know you don’t have to do that! We trust each other in this family,” she said.
I narrowed my eyes. “How long was I gone?”
Jamie shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. She frowned, ticking her fingers. “A few weeks? Maybe a month or two?”
My jaw dropped. “What day is it?”
“It’s the twentieth.”
“Of September?”
Jamie laughed. “Honey, no. It’s December!” She laughed. “I think you and David smoked a little too much reefer!”
I sank against the back of my chair. I couldn’t believe it. Over a month had passed since I’d last been home! I shivered again, wrapping my arms around my body and hugging myself tightly. What the hell was going on?
Brian sat down next to me with a steaming mug of coffee. Even though the scent was totally different, I couldn’t shake my association with the hallucinogenic tea, and I coughed, trying to squash the urge to vomit.
Brian chuckled. “Bad hangover, huh? Coffee always helped me,” he said calmly.
I licked my dry lips. “So, Mom said I’d been gone for over a month,” I said slowly.
Brian looked perplexed for a moment, then nodded. “Yep,” he said slowly. “That sounds about right.”
“And you guys didn’t care that I was gone? You didn’t go around asking anyone what had happened to me?”
Jamie turned to me with a perplexed look on her face. “Sweetie, why would we do that? We trust you,” she repeated, emphasizing the word. Her eyes were glazed. “We trust you,” she said again, in a strangely toneless voice.
“That’s right,” Brian repeated. His voice sounded hollow. His eyes had the same blank, vacant look as my mother’s.
Tears came to my eyes, and I nodded quickly, pushing away from the table and running out of the room. My appetite was no longer there, the realization hitting me like a ton of bricks.
Jamie and Brian weren’t just typical hippie parents.
Henrik had been controlling them.
The entire time.
Chapter Five
Elizabeth
I was running through a dark wood, stumbling and shrieking with fright each time a branch lashed at my face. My heart raced and my breath was coming in shallow pants, but I couldn’t stop. I felt compelled to keep going, like there was something urging me on from behind, something I couldn’t seem to shake no matter how fast I plunged on.
The darkness was overwhelming. I’d never seen woods like this before in my life. The trees were thick and black and so dense that I had to run with my arms above my hea
d just so I wouldn’t stumble and fall.
“Ahh!” I screamed as my foot caught on a branch and I went sprawling to the ground. I hit with much more impact than necessary, scraping my knees and the palms of my hands on twigs and rocks. Pain shot through my body, but I could already feel myself getting back to my feet and running on.
My feet carried me faster and faster through the woods until finally I stumbled into a clearing. A pale, unearthly light shown over the ground, and I glanced up to see the moon, large and sunken in the sky. I gasped. The moon looked much larger than it should, almost like the Earth had somehow moved closer.
The clearing was covered with large, flat rocks arranged in a circle. My breath caught in my throat as a strange chanting reached my ears. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, and goosebumps broke out over my skin as the chanting grew nearer and nearer. I shivered, rooted to the spot. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t move.
A slow-moving line of people began to fill the clearing. Their chanting was atonal and alarming. It filled my senses with a strange feeling of dread as the people moved around me, swaying back and forth and walking slowly, almost as if they were drugged. I swallowed uncomfortably as the people moved around me, almost as if they didn’t see me standing there.
I tried to reach out and grab the sleeve of the nearest person, but they dodged away.
“Hey,” I said sharply. “What is this? What am I doing here?”
My question went ignored. The chanting grew louder, and the people all lifted their hands in unison to the moon, swaying and dancing in an eerie rhythm. A loud crack of thunder filled the air, and the chanting suddenly stopped. Everyone lifted their hands to their robes and pushed the hoods back, revealing a diverse group of old and young. They were all clothed in long, black robes, aside from one woman. She looked ancient; long white hair spilled over her shoulders, and her blue eyes shone with purpose.
“You have come,” the woman said. She was staring directly at me.
I froze. “What…what’s going on?”
The woman ignored my question. I turned around to see if she was speaking to someone else, but the woods had closed up behind me like a great vacuum.
“You are here to join us,” the woman said. She wasn’t smiling. She began to hum, and soon, the others resumed chanting. They moved in slow, jagged circles around the rocks and each other, anonymous and creepy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I shrieked. A cold chill ran through my veins, and I shivered. Suddenly, I felt my stomach twist and cramp with painful nausea. As I dropped to my knees, the chanting grew louder. I cried out in pain and opened my mouth to see a steady torrent of blood gushing from my throat. It spilled onto the ground, soaking into the dark soil and spreading around me in a wide circle. To my horror, I found that I couldn’t stop. Soon, I felt my body growing weak with the effort. The blood was pouring from me at an alarming rate, and I began to feel dizzy.
The strange woman raised her voice and screamed – a blood-curdling scream. Soon, the others began to shriek and wail, tearing at their robes.
“Help me,” I choked, spewing blood. “Help me! I can’t breathe! Someone, help!”
The screaming only grew louder, and then I fell to the ground, exhausted.
“Augh!”
I sat up in bed, my heart racing. Immediately, I began pawing at my face and chest, half-expecting to feel wet, sticky blood. But there was nothing on my skin, save for a fine sheen of sweat that had broken out in my dream. My room was dark, and the clock on my bedside table flashed three in the morning, on the dot.
As I lay back down in bed, I knew I was done with sleep for the night.
In the morning, I told Mom I was sick. It didn’t take much convincing as she looked at me and nodded.
“Stay home today,” Mom said. Behind her, I heard the whining of my younger brother, Aidan. To Aidan, Mom said, “Shush. Your older sister’s going through a lot of stuff.”
I swallowed nervously. “Are you going to stay home, too?”
Mom narrowed her eyes at me. “Elizabeth, are you okay?” She came closer, putting her hand to my forehead.
“Yeah,” I lied.
“You haven’t asked me to stay home with you in years,” Mom said. I heard the catch in her voice. “You’re growing up so fast, Elizabeth. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said weakly. “Just a bad night. I’ll be okay when I get some sleep.”
Mom nodded. “Okay, honey,” she said. She sighed. “Just call me if you need anything, okay?”
I nodded again, pulling the covers up to my chin and closing my eyes. My mom was barely out of my room by the time I fell asleep again. This time, I fell into a deep, dreamless slumber that lasted for hours. When I woke up again, it was early afternoon. The snow from the week before still hadn’t melted, and I felt the chill creeping through the thin walls of our house.
Shivering, I climbed out of bed and got into a shower so hot it burned my scalp. I didn’t care. I wanted to scrub the memory of that creepy dream from my mind. It had seemed so real, almost more like a vision than a dream.
I stayed in the shower until the hot water was gone, then got dressed and curled up in bed with my computer. I felt stupid Googling ‘witches,’ especially when the first dozen or so results were for so-called ‘magic shops’ and tarot cards. I shuddered again. The witches in my dream hadn’t been anything like the hippie women who worked at the herbal store in town. They’d obviously had some kind of dark purpose.
Just as I was about to give up, I saw a small, purple link at the bottom of a site on local New Hampshire history. Just reading the words ‘The Coven’ sent shivers crawling down my spine. I hesitated for a few seconds before clicking. Just what exactly was I doing, anyway? Witches weren’t real. They’d never been real. It had all been paranoia, a response to the religious fervor of the times.
‘You’re being stupid,’ I told myself. ‘Just read the damn page.’
With a lump in my throat, I waited for the text to load. It was one of those older sites, with animated font and old clip art moving from the top of the page to the bottom. I laughed out loud – it looked exactly like a site that my dad had built for my mom back when I was a little kid.
But when my eyes focused on the text, I felt a new shiver of fear.
“New England is home to a rich history of witchcraft. Despite the notoriety of the Salem Witch Trials in the late seventeenth-century, magical activity has yet to cease. In fact, many families in the Jaffrey area are descended from powerful, magical beings. Some even believe in reincarnation – the idea that a soul can live throughout the ages, in different bodies, in different lifetimes.”
I shivered as I read on. ‘This is so dumb,’ I thought with a sigh. ‘I’m home alone, and I’m freaking myself out for no reason. I need to get a freaking life.’
When I looked down at the page again, my mouth went dry. There at the bottom was a painting, identical to the one David had shown me in that old book. Monica, or someone who looked almost exactly like her, was standing in the middle of a circle of witches, smiling serenely as they moved around her.
Breathing hard, I slammed my laptop shut and reached for my phone. I still wasn’t ready to believe that witches existed. But there was definitely something going on, and I was finally willing to admit to myself that it didn’t seem entirely rational.
I texted Steven, asking if I could meet up with him after school. He took a long time to get back to me. By the time he replied, school was about to end. I got dressed in jeans and a heavy sweater, then raced over to the D’Amicos’ house.
Mrs. D’Amico let me in. She gave me a tight smile, and I felt another wave of guilt wash over me. I hadn’t seen her since that day at the hospital. Whenever Steven and I had gotten together since then, we’d gone out. I still felt really uncomfortable in the D’Amico house, but my need to talk to Steven was greater than my need to keep my he
ad down – at least, for now.
Andrea was sitting in the living room, bundled up like an invalid. She’d been out of the hospital for a few weeks, but she was still in a cast from her waist to her foot. Despite this, she didn’t look unhappy. In fact, she looked calm, almost serene.
“Hi,” I said nervously, sitting on the other end of the couch. “How are you, Andrea?”
Andrea gave me a pinched smile. “I’m fine,” she said. “The tutor that’s been coming has been better than going to actual school.” She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “I keep telling Mom that I don’t want to go back when my leg is healed.”
‘Please, God, let her stay homeschooled,’ I thought, wondering if that would improve things with Monica. Monica had been gone again – for over a month this time – and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Andrea knew something about her disappearance.
Thankfully, Steven came rushing into the room just as Andrea was about to ask me something else. When he saw me, he raised his eyebrows.
“Hey,” Steven said shortly. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” I lied. “I was hoping we could go somewhere, you know, maybe just for a drive.”
Steven looked uncomfortable. “I really shouldn’t leave right now,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder at Andrea. “Mom’s going out to the store.”
Andrea gave me a martyr-like smile. “Steven takes such good care of me,” she said. “Steven, would you mind bringing me a glass of water?”
“Can I have one, too?” I interjected.
“Sure,” Steven said. He darted into the kitchen and came back a few seconds later, holding a glass of ice water. He held it out to Andrea in a very tender way, almost like he was afraid she would break. “Here you go,” Steven said. “Tell me if there’s too much ice in that for you.”
I frowned. “Can I have one, too?”
“Yeah, sure,” Steven said. He jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Glasses are in the second cabinet to the left of the fridge.”
I frowned. Steven and Andrea talked in hushed voices while I was in the kitchen. I knew it was wrong to feel so irritated, but I couldn’t help it – why was he waiting on her like this? Couldn’t she sit on the couch for forty-five fucking minutes while their mom went to the store?
Touch of Fire (Into the Darkness Book 1) Page 33
