A Curse So Dark

by Heather Davis

  I made my way through the kitchen and the living room, and then worked through the den with Dad’s stacks of books and piles of rock n’ roll memorabilia. This was his favorite room in the house, where he often spent hours reading or working on his computer at the desk near the window. There, I found nothing out of the ordinary, just embarrassing pictures of a much younger, longer-haired Dad with rough-looking musicians who needed a shave and possibly another stint in rehab.

  On the second floor, I squeezed under his dark walnut bed, finding only dust bunnies and random socks. I paused momentarily to pick fuzz from my hair, staring into the mirror above Dad’s dresser with a mixture of vindication and disappointment after the hours spent in a fruitless search. The front door creaked open downstairs and I heard the thumps of my sisters’ backpacks hitting the floor. I waited, listening as they argued about heating a frozen pizza for a snack.

  “Almost done,” I told myself. I didn’t want the twins to know I’d been looking, that I’d been tempted to believe the sheriff about Dad back-sliding into his old partier days.

  I slid open the dresser drawers quietly, feeling around for anything beneath the clothes. Dad’s cologne wafted up to me from the neatly folded stack of shirts. Pine trees, spice. It was almost overwhelming. I really missed him. I chewed my lower lip to stop from crying as I pushed the drawer back in and moved to the closet.

  “Last place.” I clicked on the overhead light in the closet, revealing shirts and jackets neatly arranged. Shelves above the clothes provided storage. One thing caught my attention—a gray shoebox with the worn lid slightly torn on the edge, as if it had been opened often. Hands shaking, I reached for it, pulling it from the Tetris-like pattern, careful not to disturb the arrangement. I didn’t hear any bottles clank as I brought it down—that was a good sign. On the top of the box, my mother’s name was written in my father’s looping cursive: Marin.

  I sucked in a breath.

  It probably wasn’t a hiding place of anything but memories, but I pulled the lid off anyway, revealing a bunch of newspaper clippings, legal documents, and an envelope with Mom’s name written again, in Dad’s handwriting. Inside were several sheets of paper—a letter, written but never sent. Three black jewelry boxes lay nestled below all the papers in the box.

  “Hey!” Fawn leaned in the doorway, one arm against the jamb. “I thought you were giving us a ride home today,” she said, brushing at a spot from the sleeve of the leather jacket. My jacket, borrowed without permission.

  I winced. It looked like pizza sauce. “Sorry, forgot to text you guys.”

  Fawn peered into the room. “What are you doing in there?”

  “I’ll be out in a minute, okay?” I slid the letter into my back pocket, then replaced the top and returned the box onto the shelf. I’d explore the rest of the contents later, but I did want to read that letter.

  Downstairs, Rose set the hot sheet pan onto the stove stop. We didn’t have a pizza cutter, so Fawn used a big knife to cut slices. She and Rose claimed that even frozen pizza tasted better than the cafeteria’s sad, droopy effort. Dad always kept a few in the freezer for them.

  “You skipped class this afternoon?” Rose said, lifting slices onto clean plates from the dishwasher.

  “For a good reason.” I found some sodas in the fridge for us and then sat down at the table. “I came home to look for evidence Dad might have been on a so-called bender. Not a single thing in the house. No booze, no drugs.”

  “You really thought he’d do that?” Fawn said, around a mouthful of hot pizza.

  “Not really. But that’s the sheriff’s theory.”

  Rose nibbled at the edge of her crust. “I guess it makes sense to go through all the possibilities. Rule them out one by one.”

  “I think that’s what the police are for.” Fawn dabbed at her face with a paper towel folded like a napkin. “They should be working harder on this.”

  “It’s only been a day,” I said, shooting Fawn a look. “Let’s try to stay positive.”

  Rose nodded. “Yeah, he’s gonna be back. He wouldn’t bail on us with our birthday coming up.”

  “He wouldn’t leave us, period.” I tore the crust from my slice.

  “But he is gone.”

  Rose gave Fawn a pointed look. “He’s not gone gone. Like Lily said, it’s only been a day.”

  Someone knocked on the window of the back door in a sharp staccato.

  I jumped in my chair, knocking over my soda. “Shoot,” I said, righting the can and trying to sponge off my jeans with paper towels.

  “It’s the sheriff,” Fawn said, peeking out the kitchen window.

  Still dabbing at my thighs, I went to the door.

  “Mmm, smells good in here,” the sheriff said, entering the mudroom. “You girls getting along all right?”

  “Yeah, you want a slice of pizza?”

  The sheriff’s radio squawked on her belt. “No, I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by. Listen, Lily... I had to let Social Services know that your parent is not in the home.”

  “No,” I whispered, glancing over my shoulder into the kitchen. But neither of the twins seemed to have overheard. “How could you do that?”

  “It’s routine.”

  My stomach hardened into a knot. “I’m eighteen.”

  “Yes, so you can fill out the paperwork to petition for non-parental guardianship. It’s a process. Your dad have a lawyer in town? Maybe Mr. Jones?”

  “Yeah, that’s my friend Alicia’s dad. I’ll go see him,” I told her, a new wave of worry washing over me. My sisters weren’t going to be shoved into the system, even temporarily. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to my family.

  ***

  “Everything okay?” Maggie asked me when I went into work a little while later for my shift. I knew she’d understand if I’d called in to cancel, but I needed to stay busy.

  “Yeah, fine.” Grabbing the cleaner, I sprayed the glass pastry case and rubbed it clean.

  “I know you’re worried sick about your dad, but if there’s anything I can do...” She came around and squatted next to me, taking the rag from my hand. “Or if you need to chat, I’m here.”

  Maggie always had a hippie vibe with her loose dresses and fringed shawls, but she was younger than I’d once thought. A year ago, I’d caught a glimpse of her driver’s license and saw she was still in her thirties. That made sense. There wasn’t a streak of gray in her hair and she had glowing, good skin that she claimed was due to organic skin care products she mixed up herself. Her curly hair spiraled down from a messy bun and whatever mascara she’d had on earlier had all wiped away in the heat of the kitchen. I could smell her lavender-patchouli perfume and got a faint hit of vanilla extract lingering from her cookie baking. Every day was a different specialty pastry or cake, but the cookies were daily.

  “Thanks. I’m just figuring things out,” I said, probably not very convincingly because the next thing I knew, Maggie put together my favorite drink––a mocha with extra whipped cream.

  She brought it out to me and pointed at a table near the window. “Go sit and relax. I can see you need to talk. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  I plunked down into a chair and took a sip of the hot mocha. A couple kids from school came into the shop, shaking off rain and laughing. They strolled to the counter and placed orders with Maggie. It’d be a little while before we could talk.

  Out on Main Street, rain pounded the sidewalks. People in slickers and waterproof jackets rushed by the window. It’s a funny thing about the Northwest, most of us don’t own umbrellas. We buy weather-resistant coats and deal with the elements. It’s just a part of living here, especially in the mountains. I sipped at the mocha as the weather continued to darken the scene outside. Only five o’clock and it seemed later. Or maybe it was my gloomy mood, that feeling of powerlessness and dread seeping into my bones.

  With Maggie busy making drinks, I pulled my dad’s letter from my jeans pocket. I hadn’t want
ed to read it at home. Didn’t want to chance that the twins might see me with it. It was enough that Dad was missing—they didn’t need to think about our mother, who’d bailed on us.

  The white envelope was yellowed at the edges, the ink faint. Marin Turner, it said. Dad had left space for an address below her name as if he’d meant to mail it eventually. But there was no stamp. No return address, either. He’d only gotten so far with it. He hadn’t known where she’d run away to, where to send it. Turning the envelope over in my hands, I felt a flicker of guilt. Dad had stowed it away in a forgotten box. Probably never meant for any of us to find it, let alone read it. But finally, my curiosity beat out my reluctance. I unfolded the papers, smoothing them out on the table.

  The letter was dated around the time Mom had left. My throat felt dry, tight. Was this Dad’s plea to get Mom to return? Should I not be reading this? I glanced up and saw that Maggie had more of a line now. She gave me a wave as if to say I should stay where I was, that she had the counter under control.

  So I began to read the letter. And the world as I knew it started to unravel.

  My Dearest Marin:

  I don’t deserve your forgiveness. What I’ve done is the very definition of unforgivable. I should’ve told you the truth all those years ago. You’re justified in being angry with me for withholding something so intrinsic to my very being. A part of myself that I didn’t feel you would accept. That I can hardly accept myself.

  It was wrong of me not to share the truth with you, but as the years passed, it became harder to face. Then, when our three miracles were born, the thought that they’d possess my unseemly characteristics drove me abroad to seek a remedy so that I could share my true identity with you. The remedy, as I’ve told you, are the pendants I’ve brought home. The lupine stones will keep the girls seem as normal as anyone else. As long as they have them, they are free of the moon’s call. They’ll live as humans, as I will now, and this will be a good life.

  But not if you aren’t in it, my love.

  Can you ever forgive me? Can you forgive Lily, Fawn and Rose for who they will become on the full moon of their sixteenth birthday? They’re blameless in this blood curse. It’s all my fault.

  Marin, my heart is in pieces. The idea that you’d learn my true nature and run from me was always in the back of my mind. And now the worst has happened and you’ve fled all of us. Please return, I beg you.

  Pioneer Falls is safe and welcoming. We have Protectors here––the North family––who have served wolves like us for a century. They’ll keep our secret as they have for others.

  I know I was wrong. I should’ve been honest. This curse was not my choice. And by my omission, it was not the choice of our children. But it is who we are. We are wolves. We are your family.

  Love,

  George.

  “Reading something good?” Maggie asked, wiping her hands on her denim apron. The line of customers had been efficiently taken care of.

  I blinked at her. The words of my father’s letter swam in my head. What did he mean, We are wolves?

  “Something of your dad’s?” Maggie took a seat across from me and peered down at the letter on the table.

  “Oh.” I gathered the papers up and folded them back up. “Just an old note I found.”

  Maggie let out a low whistle. “Must be a really old one, no one writes letters longhand anymore. I heard they’re stopping teaching cursive.”

  “Yeah.” I felt a little woozy. This couldn’t be real. This had to be some kind of story Dad was working on. There had to be some explanation for him spelling out a fantasy about us not being human. “Do you know anything about therapies, where you’d write yourself some kind of alternate reality?”

  “Huh?” Maggie cocked her head at me.

  “Something from one of your psychology classes in college or something? Do people do that, make up stories about the past so they can cope?”

  “Oh, all the time,” Maggie said. “I never knew my father, so I used to say he was an astronaut when people asked. Much better than the reality of learning he drove a beer truck.”

  “Sure,” I murmured as I slid the letter back into the envelope.

  To my horror, some of the things he’d written were resonating with me now. The pendants. How Dad had told me to never, ever take mine off once he’d given it to me on my birthday. And what did he mean about the Norths being Protectors? Cooper North seemed anything but protective. He’d said he wasn’t doing any favors for the Turners. Did that mean he once had? And then there were the strange wolves behind the shop last night. And the wolves in my nightmares all these years. Thoughts and questions kept popping in my mind.

  Maggie reached out and touched my arm. “Hon, maybe you should go home. I can see the stress on your face. You need rest.”

  I nodded and got up from the table. I put my dirty mug in the dishwasher, and then hung up my apron and got my stuff.

  We are wolves. The words haunted me as if they’d been spoken aloud in my ear. What did that even mean?

  I looked down at my hands as I slid them into the arms of my coat. I was just a girl. A young woman. But Dad’s words suggested we were animals. Animals that would turn at the full moon.

  “Were,” I said aloud. “Werewolves,” adding the prefix that Dad had left out of his letter to my mother. He was saying we were werewolves.

  I ran outside into the rain, letting the cold drops sting my face. My very human face. My father was a liar. A fiction maker. Someone who’d say anything to get the mother who abandoned us to return.

  That’s all it was, I told myself. But a feeling of inescapable dread hit me as my fingers traveled over my pendant, seeking out its grooves. For two years I’d traced that well-worn design––I knew it by touch––a circle within a circle.

  The full moon.

  Chapter Four

  Fawn ran down from the back porch to meet me in the dark driveway, not seeming to care about the rain. “Lewis’s mom was by. She invited us to dinner on Friday.”

  “Huh?” I shook off the funk that had settled over me since I’d read the letter. My head was still swimming with the fantastical story. My pendant, once the source of my comfort, felt heavier around my neck. The moon insignia, my father’s claims, maybe it was just coincidence. I didn’t want to believe the connection, even though it was there, plainly for me to see. It was easier to think my dad had lost it than believe this curse thing could be real.

  “Lily?”

  “Sorry. What about Friday?”

  “Dinner with the Carters,” Fawn said impatiently.

  “What? Why?” I grabbed my bag from behind the seat, and then locked up the truck. I ran to the back porch entrance.

  Fawn followed me, ignoring the rain speckling her denim shirt. “She’s worried about us and wants to have us over. She’s making lasagna.”

  Rose held open the screen door for us. “Any news on Dad?”

  “No,” I said, hanging up my coat. I didn’t know what else to do but act normal. I wanted to tell them about the letter, but what good would it do? I didn’t want them to worry, or to think that I’d believed we weren’t exactly human. I also didn’t want them to think Dad was a liar, or out of his mind or something. I decided to sit on the discovery for a little while, at least until I figured out what it all meant.

  Fawn blocked the kitchen doorway. “It’s one meal. With Lewis’s family. They want to do something for us. Please don’t make this weird.”

  “She makes good lasagna,” Rose said. “From what I’ve heard, anyway.”

  “Can we talk about this later?”

  “Just say yes,” Fawn said, her fierce look faltering. “It’s really nice of Mrs. Carter to do this for us, and it looks bad for me if you don’t go.”

  “She has a point,” Rose said, joining her twin in the doorway.

  I didn’t have much choice when the twins shared an agenda. “Okay. Tell her we’ll come,” I said, gesturing toward the human blockade.

>   Fawn smiled as the twins parted on the threshold.

  I headed to my father’s room. There had to be something in the memory box that corroborated his claim. Something more about wolves. I didn’t know exactly what a person saved that would show his children were supernatural. But maybe there was something. I made piles of the papers, separating them into birth certificates, photographs, and clippings of stories about Mom’s disappearance, including the obituary that had appeared in the paper after she’d been declared deceased.

  “If you’re snooping again, then I want to know what you found.” Fawn took a seat next to me on the bed.

  “Help yourself,” I said, gesturing to the stacks and sure I’d been through everything once.

  Fawn let out a bored sigh, but then spotted the small jewelry boxes. “What are those?”

  “The family pendants.”

  She reached for one of the boxes. “I wonder if ours are the same design as yours.”

  I put a hand atop Fawn’s. “Really? This is Dad’s gift for you next week. You’re going to ruin his surprise.”

  “He’s not going to know I peeked.”

  I waved my hand. “Fine. Be my guest.” Fawn and Rose would have their pendants soon enough. Maybe they’d also touch their fingers to them in times of worry. It’d become instinctive for me, but what if the stone actually was protection from something? At the very least, I’d trusted Dad’s insistence that I always wear it.

  Fawn opened one of the velvet boxes. “Oh, empty. Must be from yours,” she said, setting it aside and reaching for another one. “Um...”

  I took it from her. “What? This one’s empty too?”

  Fawn opened the third box and then closed it again with a click. “Yep. And this one.”