“What do we do with them, Helen?” the redhead asks.
Sydney’s mother looks at us both and curls her upper lip into a nasty smile. “Put them in the pot with the other one.”
“Both of them?” the redhead asks.
“We could lock them in the basement, keep up the ritual for a day or two. Drain them until there’s nothing left.”
“That’ll take too long. People will come looking for them.”
“Just one then. The one with power.” Sydney’s mother, Helen, walks over and looks me in the eyes. Her own eyes are so bright I can’t see the whites anymore; they just glow solid red as if I was peeking through the vents on a furnace. “Is it you, fat girl? Are you the one who sees?”
I nod, looking into those evil eyes. Helen grunts and looks to Marlene. She whispers in Latin and the collar fades to a lighter colour. “Is that true, little girl?”
“No, it’s me!” Marlene shouts. “I’m the seer.” The stupid girl doesn’t realize what she’s doing. Once they figure out that I’m the seer they’re going to do to me what they’re doing to Tam. They’re going to drain my life into that clay pot. Marlene’s trying to protect me, but she’s only putting herself at risk.
“She’s lying. I’m the one you want,” I say. “I can see the glow behind your eyes, you evil bitch.”
“And I can see the little blue lights you’re draining from our friend that lead into your Urn of Durofa,” Marlene says. “I’m the one you want. Let my friends go.”
“Oh, you recognize it?” Helen says. “I made it myself. You have no idea how hard it is to source the blood of an albino child. Took me a couple months. But it was necessary because of you two.”
“Torturing and killing a teenage girl was necessary?” I ask. “Screw you.”
“That girl gave my daughter a black eye and one of you two stole something precious to me. When you smashed it, I felt the pain in my very soul.”
“What are you talking about, lady?”
Helen’s eyes flare red. “Little ball of metal and glass. Exquisitely intricate. You stole it and shattered it. Ring a bell?” She’s talking about the little brooch that was attached to Sydney’s talisman, that we shattered when we saved Dina. It had been extra, something the hex didn’t actually need, and we had assumed Sydney was using it to boost her hex’s power. “That little ball of glass was three centuries old, and contained the souls of many warriors. It was among the most powerful artifacts on this continent, and you smashed it like it was nothing. You cost me a lot of power, and now I’m taking that power back.”
“What are you going to do to us?” I ask.
“One of you will join your friend, drained into my urn so that your souls will replace the ones you cost me. I don’t have time to drain both of you, so the one with no power…” Helen looks to her accomplices, “...will drown in the sink. Maybe we’ll jar up the body parts that might be useful in the future. Are you both virgins?”
I can’t believe how casually she says it all. As if killing us is just a chore that must be done, like dusting or taking out the recycling. “So which one of you has the sight?” She walks to the back of the room, and opens a narrow closet door. She reaches inside and I hear the jingling of chains, and Helen pulls Sydney out into the room. Sydney isn’t gagged or hexed, but she says nothing, simply walking as her mother drags her over to us, offering no resistance.
“Sydney’s being punished for snooping in mommy’s things. She should not have gotten into my spellbooks, and she certainly should not have stolen my Soul Lantern. She should be going into that urn, just like your friend Tamara, but I love my little girl too much, so she gets to live. As long as she doesn’t get in any more trouble, right Sydney?”
“Yes, mother,” Sydney says quietly, looking at the floor.
“Now tell me,” Helen says, grabbing her daughter by the point of her chin. “Which of these girls has the sight?” Sydney stares at the floor. I can tell she’s terrified of her mother, and knows that by pointing me out, she’ll condemn me to eternity inside that clay pot, and Marlene to a miserable death in the kitchen sink. “Don’t make me angry, Sydney.”
“This one,” Sydney says, pointing at me. “Mindee. She’s the one who can see hexes.”
Helen smiles and looks me up and down, as if she’s trying to look right through me. “Kill the little one,” she says. Marlene screams and Helen turns up the hex and silences her screams again with a mere whisper. One of the other witches yanks on Marlene’s hair, and Marlene screams silently, her face wet with tears.
“Don’t let this happen” I say, looking at Sydney. “We go to school together. We’re just kids. Don’t let this happen.”
“Shut up,” Helen says. I ignore her.
“You were only trying to get back at Dina. You didn’t know that little brooch would lead to all this. Three people are going to die tonight. You don’t have to listen to her!”
Helen whispers in Latin, and I feel my mouth go dry. My throat burns, and my voice falters. I stare at Sydney, my eyes pleading. The grey-haired woman leaves Marlene’s side to open a bathroom door in the hallway, and starts to run the water. Marlene, held by only one captor now, fights and pulls against the redhead, but the older woman is too strong and Marlene falls to her knees, silently crying in anguish. Sydney’s eyes well with tears, and she lets out a cry, the sound of it almost shocking in the relative silence. Sydney shoves her mother toward me, and Helen bumps into me, but the spell holds me fixed in place, so she almost bounces right off me. I grab at her hair with my left hand, and throw a punch with my right. The first two knuckles of my hand crush Helen’s nose, and I immediately feel hot blood on my fingers. Her hand opens when she reaches for her nose, and the tiny little talismans she was holding tumble to the ground, where they shatter like glass Christmas ornaments.
I drop, and my feet hitting the floor is a surprise, so I almost fall over. As soon as Marlene realizes that she has a voice, she screams as loud as I’ve ever heard. “Hellllllllp!”
The other witch runs from the bathroom to grab Marlene and Helen clutches at my jacket like she’s going to throw me to the ground. I jerk back on her hair and pull her to the side, so that I can step toward the small table and pick up the clay pot. Blue light is still flowing into it, so Tam is still suffering somewhere. I raise the pot above my head, feeling a strange heat from within the hard, bumpy clay.
“No!” Helen cries. “That urn contains half of your friend’s soul. Break it and you’ll kill her.”
I look to Marlene, hoping to ask if that’s true but both of the other women have their hands over her mouth to stifle her screams. Marlene can’t give me any advice. “Let her go,” I tell the witches. “Let her leave the house or I’ll shatter it.”
There’s a moment where nobody dares to move, but Marlene pulls her arm away from the redhead until she lets go. The other woman follows suit, and Marlene runs to the door, and out into the night. Marlene’s a smart girl. She’ll head for a neighbour’s house and send the cops. But that could mean as long as fifteen minutes until somebody comes along to rescue me. All three of the witches are standing around me, but none dares to attack for fear that I’ll smash the urn.
“You broke in and attacked us. You forced us into self-defense. Nobody will believe your friend’s story about magic and following a trail of light here. The police won’t do a thing.” Helen is trying to intimidate me, and it’s working. “We’ll tell them you were insane. High on drugs. I bet they find hallucinogens in your system. We’ll tell them that I had no choice but to kill you. To save my daughter from you.” She sneers at me. “And everyone knows, insanity runs in your family.”
Helen pulls out a pocket knife and opens the blade. “Set the urn down and you live. Break it and the first thing I’ll do is bury this blade in your heart.”
I know she means it. I know she’ll try to kill me, but that doesn’t mean she’s guaranteed to succeed. But if I leave her alone with this clay pot intact, it is gua
ranteed that Tam will die. I have to take my chances.
I throw the urn at the floor as hard as I can. Helen screams and rushes at me, but she doesn’t reach me.
The urn shatters, and explodes. The force that comes out of it is enough to throw the other four women backward across the room, and Helen, who dove toward me, is flipped through the air, tossed backward and upward so hard she hits the ceiling. The force of the energy exploding saves me from their attacks, but I’m the closest to it. The clay explodes and unleashes not just Tam’s energy but also whatever power the clay itself contained, and that power throws shard of clay into my shins, kicks my feet out from under me, and tosses me backward into a wall so hard that my head punches through the drywall. I slump to the floor, see the other women scattered around the room. They’re hurt and confused, but conscious and talking. They’ll get up again in mere moments.
My eyelids are so heavy... It’s so hard to
...have to get...
I try to stand up but instead I tip sideways and hit my head against the floor.
The world is black and silent and so comfortably cold.
Part Three
A Fate Worse than Death
19
Date Unknown
I open my eyes, but at first I see nothing. Wherever I am, it’s dark and cold and miserable. There are leather straps around my wrists, and those straps tie onto heavy metal chains. I realize I’m lying on a cold cement floor. I grab one of the chains and follow it, crawling to a wall where the chains end, attaching to thick steel loops that are screwed tightly into the wall. I know that I’m in some kind of basement. It takes about ten minutes for my eyes to adjust enough to see that I’m locked inside a small room, maybe six by eight feet. I think most people would use a room like this as a fruit cellar, but obviously Sydney’s mom has other things to store. Like prisoners.
There’s one door, and the small crack beneath that door is the only source of light in the entire room. I scream. I’m glad that I still have a voice; it echoes off the walls, bouncing back at me, sounding terrified and hoarse, but it’s there. They haven’t hexed it away. I scream until my throat gives out, but there is no reply. I wonder if I’m completely alone in the house. I wonder how long I was out for. I wonder if I’ll ever get out of here again.
There is nothing else in the room. I have the clothes I wore into Sydney’s house, but my coat and boots are gone. The chains that bind my wrists to the wall are about two feet long, giving me enough room that I can set my hands on the floor, but not nearly enough room to reach the door at the far end of the room. Since the chains connect to the wall so close to the floor, I can’t even stand up properly.
I lay flat on my back, and squirm toward the door. I make it as far as I can, going until the chains are taut between my wrists and the wall, and lying this way gets me far enough that my feet reach the door. I begin kicking and banging at the door with my heels, pounding away at the heavy wood and screaming for help. Nobody comes.
When my hands are numb and my feet are sore and my voice can’t take another shout, I drag myself back to the wall where I curl up for warmth and stare at the door. Eventually, someone turns out the light, and the little sliver of hope beneath the door disappears, and I manage a few more screams before I give up.
At some point, I fell asleep. I wake up now to see light under the door, as well as a shadow. I pull my feet under myself, crouching with my back to the wall, And hear someone slip a key into a lock. The door opens, and the light is blinding. I can barely keep my eyes open to look into the silhouette that stands in the doorway. She holds two things, both of which she places at her feet. There’s a bottle of water, and a bedpan.
“If you need a bathroom, use this.”
I see the silhouette of short, spiky hair and realize that this is the redhead, the woman who was going to drown Marlene in the bathroom sink. “Where am I?” I ask. “What am I doing here?”
“We’re keeping you safe. Alive and safe. It’ll take some time to create a new Urn of Durofa. We can’t have your soul escaping before then, now can we?” She kicks the bottle of water and it rolls to my feet. “Drink up. You’re going to be here for a while.” She uses her foot to slide the bedpan closer to me. “Dinner’s in a few hours. Try to be quiet until then.”
She slams the door, I hear her lock it, and I’m left in total darkness again until my eyes can readjust. I try to resist the things she brought, but I’m desperate for both a drink and bathroom, so I end up using both. I slide the bedpan into the corner of the room, trying to get the waste as far away as possible, but soon enough the whole room smells like urine.
The redhead comes back a few hours later with a paper plate of food that she sets on the floor beside me. No utensils. She also offers to trade my empty bottle for a full one. Once we’ve done all that, she asks for the bedpan. Seeing an opportunity for some revenge, I pick up the metal pan, crawl closer like I’m going to politely hand it over, and then I throw the contents in the redhead’s face. She’s splashed with hours-old urine, and she screams in shock.
While the door’s still open, I scream “Help” as loud as I can, over and over, until the stinking, soaking witch retreats and slams the door again. I eat the food—a bologna sandwich and some apple slices—but keep the water for later. I think it might be a while before my caretaker returns.
It’s impossible to gauge how much time is passing when I’m trapped in total darkness. I feel like I’m sleeping more than I should, like I ought to be more vigilant and ready to attack whenever they come for me. But then, how will I know? They could have already cast a hex on me, and without a mirror, I’d never see it. They could already be draining my life just like they tried with Tam.
I know, at the very least, that by breaking that clay urn I saved Tam’s life. She might have threatened that breaking it would kill Tam but I don’t believe that. I can’t, because that would mean I killed her and somehow I know she’s safe. Maybe once they craft a new urn they’ll just attack her all over again, but I feel confident for the moment that my friend is getting better. The witches seem to value my soul more than Tam’s, since I’m the so-called seer. That means they’ll attack me first, and as long as I’m alive, that must mean that my friends are too.
Marlene got out. She would have called the police. The police would have to investigate. Maybe, somehow, the witches were able to drag me to the basement and lock me up down here, but as time goes on and I’m still missing, the police will have to come back. They’ll get a search warrant and tear the house apart until they find me. I’ll get out of this.
I wake to the sound of the door opening, and once again the light is blinding to my sensitive eyes. I can tell that this time it’s the grey-haired witch who has come to see me. She has another paper plate, this time my meal is bread with peanut butter smeared on top. She sets it by the door.
“I can’t reach that,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“I can’t reach it, it’s too far.”
I can’t see her face. My eyes are too used to the dark. She’s just a silhouette to me, but somehow I know that she’s smirking at me. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean I can’t reach it because my chains don’t reach that far.”
“I think you’ll manage.” The grey-haired woman kicks the metal bedpan in my direction. “There. You can reach that.” She slips back beyond the doorway and slams the door, returning me to the darkness.
I’m so hungry I have to try to get the food. I have to lie on my back and slide toward the door, my jeans soaking up the disgusting puddle I made when I attacked the redhead, and feel around with my sock feet. Eventually I find the plate, and using both feet to grasp it I slide it close enough that once I get back on my knees I’m able to pick it up with my hands. She didn’t give me another drink so the peanut butter sticks in my mouth, but at least it’ll stop my stomach from growling for a little while.
A few hours later the grey haired woman returns, this
time with a bottle of Gatorade. She holds it up and waits for my eyes to adjust, so I know what I’m looking at. “You can have this drink,” she says. “After you nicely slide that bedpan over here. You will not be splashing anything in my face, understand?”
I grunt in agreement, and begin to carefully slide the bedpan toward my captor. I slide it toward her until the chain pulls taut, and my hand can’t go any farther. “There,” I say. “It’s all yours.”
She takes a couple baby steps closer, and crouches to pick up the pan. She grabs it carefully with both hands, not wanting to spill the foul contents, and that’s when I shift all my weight to my right foot, pivot sideways, and use my left to kick the pan straight into her stomach. She lets out a surprised “Oomph” sound, and then I grab her by the hair and pull her closer, where I’m not so limited by the chains.
There’s a reason I was so careful to slide that bedpan across the floor. It was empty and I didn’t want her to notice that nothing was splashing inside of it. I had to keep it flat on the floor so she wouldn’t realize that. But now she sees. I pin her to the floor, straddling over her, and pick up the pan. I raise it over my head, ready to smash down on her defenseless face. “Gimme the key,” I say.
“What?”
“The key! Unlock me!”
“I don’t have any key.” She’s wide-eyes, shaking. Either I’m really scaring her or she’s a great actress.
“The key that gets these chains off my wrists! Get me out of here or I’ll cave your head in!” I sound like a lunatic, but that’s OK. She needs to believe that I am.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” she pleads. “Please!”
“Maybe your friends will,” I say. I swing the metal bedpan down hard. I don’t aim for the face, but for the top of her head. I want her unconscious, not to cave her face in. The sound it makes is awful, a metallic clang that absolutely chills me to the bone. Even though this witch is trying to kill me, and already tried to kill my best friend, I feel bad about knocking her out like that. The sound it made is still ringing in my ears, but she’s gone limp now. I climb off her and shove her farther back into the room, against the same wall where my chains are hooked to the cement. Now if the other two witches want to get her back, they’ll have to go through me.
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