by Ayse Hafiza
“Because the power of our ancestors runs through your veins, they have chosen you. You will need to fight for us all.”
Frank’s brows creased at her word choice, they had all spoken about him being the leader of the coven, but at no point had anyone mentioned fighting.
“You’re our leader Frank,” said Audrey entering the room and taking a seat on the arm of her mother’s chair. “You are the leader of the island, of the Hamilton Coven and soon you will be the leader of the ancestors.”
“What does that even mean?”
“That you are pure of heart, and you can kill the last Oban witch.”
Frank sat up straight.
“Who?”
“The last witch, the one who is the most powerful.”
“But who is she?”
Audrey smiled, but the warmth wasn’t there anymore when she said, “The one who grabbed the woman you loved.”
Frank felt himself blush. If she was a mind reader, she should have seen that she was forcing herself on him and that although his body responded to her, she wasn’t the woman he loved. Audrey looked away from him, instead focusing her attention out the window looking into the distance.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Inside that mirror.”
“What?” he asked. Knowing they were having the open conversation that he craved.
“She keeps all of them captive,” said Mrs. Boswell.
“But what happens when I kill her?” asked Frank referring to the Oban witch but gulping at the same time. He wasn’t sure he could kill anything, but that didn’t stop him humoring these women.
“Then they are free and so are we.”
“What do you mean you are all free?” asked Frank.
“We are free to travel the dimensions,” said Mrs. Boswell.
“So, does that mean the Hamilton Coven won before?”
“No, it means they retreated to other dimensions, and they pop up every once in a while which is why the coven continues although they, or any other covens, haven’t risen for a long while. That tells us the Oban witches are planning an attack. Everything you need is in the book, they appear for you? The words inside?”
Frank nodded, he tried to pretend that he understood what these women were talking about, but he wasn’t sure he did, not at all. He felt his sense of fear start to bubble to the surface again. He wasn’t a fighter, it was the last thing that he would call himself. He knew he had hit his limit, so Frank made his excuses and quickly left.
He walked home alone, and when he got there, he went straight to his room to stand in front of the mirror. Inside that mirror was a witch who had stolen from him. The longer he stared at it, the more he felt his blood boil under his skin. How dare she steal what belonged to him.
Suddenly he was transported back twenty years as he saw her face fleetingly as if she was standing behind him resting her chin on his shoulder. The picture of innocence that was his Jane. She was there with him in his bedroom, and for a brief moment he thought the mirror was giving in and going to give her back.
He expected it, demanded it as the leader of the Hamilton Coven.
Then the image began to fade again a happy time that had never happened was stolen.
He got angry and punched the mirror. It cracked, and as it did he felt the presence on the other side of the mirror taunt him. Was that what the Oban witch was doing, taunting him?
9
Taunting
After dinner Roger gave them all an apple and asked them to eat. Frank mindlessly ate as the others took notice of his bruised right knuckle. He lied to them telling them that he had fallen on his walk. He knew that tomorrow the mirror would be flawless, so they would never guess nor need to know that he punched it. He sat silently, Sophie tried to catch his eye, but he wasn’t in the mood. Frank had unwittingly managed to get Audrey to back off, he would need to do the same with Sophie, somehow.
After dinner he sat in the living room in front of the fire and rested the side of his head against his palm on the armchair. They could all see he was distracted.
“Roger is planning to grow seedlings from the apple pips them plant them in a clearing, he’s going to grow an orchid,” said Sophie, testing Frank to see if he would engage with them.
Frank grunted. His mind was squarely on the mirror, and the image of his forty-year-old self with salt and pepper hair and Jane, the beautiful police constable in her twenties, her chin resting on his shoulder. He could almost feel her arms wrap around his midriff, as she pulled him closer. If he wanted her back, he needed to learn how to defeat and kill the witch who kept her captive.
He shook his head.
“Sorry guys I was a million miles away,” he apologized.
Paul smiled at him and Phil looked away.
“An orchard is a fantastic idea, we can make our own cider.”
The guys smiled at Frank, the commune needed to know they had their leader, and he had given up trying to empower someone else to do what was clearly meant to be his job.
The girls had been sent to bed while the adults sat in the room below, but Frank wasn’t interested in talking with any of them. He took his leave and walked up the wooden stairs. As he got to the top he could hear whispering, he smiled knowing the girls were meant to be sleeping. He walked quietly toward their bedroom and as he peeked in from behind the partially open door, he couldn’t believe his eyes, the girls were wide awake sitting up in bed. In front of them an apparition, a mist of white energy had been sitting on their bed and speaking to them. Frank gasped, and they all looked at him, the apparition quickly dissipated into the air.
“Girls are you okay?” Frank ran to them.
“It’s okay Frank, we know you see them too,” said Nevaeh. “Heaven was scared but I told her you see them too.”
“I see them, but I don’t communicate with them. I don’t talk to them.”
“But they are friendly!” said Nevaeh as she tilted her head to the side.
Nevaeh couldn’t see Heaven’s face, couldn’t see the fear in her eyes or her shaking her head to disagree.
“I see them because I am special. I don’t want you to speak to them, or to trust them. This is a very old house and we don’t know who’s lived here. We don’t know who they are or what they want.”
Heaven nodded, he could see that he was getting through to her.
“Promise me Nevaeh?”
The little girl let her head fall forward, he felt a little sorry for her, she only had her sister for company but that didn’t mean she should have been making friends with ghosts. Especially when no one knew what their intentions were.
“I promise,” she eventually said, but unknown to either Frank or her sister Nevaeh had her fingers crossed behind her back. Frank gave them both a kiss on the forehead, but even in the darkness of their room he could see the color of her aura, he knew she was lying to him.
“No one knows what they want Nevaeh, and that’s why we have to be careful,” he warned.
She nodded, and Frank decided that the next day he would find sage and smudge the house. It had been a habit of his, one he had left in the past after he saw his dead Mom’s ghost in their old house in South London.
Frank walked thoughtfully back to his bedroom and closed the door. He glanced at the mirror, it was already back in one piece, that was quick he expected it to be joined back together in the morning. Then he examined his fist which was still bruised. His frustration made him believe that punching the mirror was a good idea. He needed to show the mirror that it couldn’t control him via his emotions. He lay in bed as he thought about it, the mirror would always be able to manipulate him if he gave it the opportunity.
Lying in bed he scrutinized it, the damn mirror looked so innocent.
A short while later there was a soft knock on his bedroom door as he tried to drift off to sleep when he opened it Sophie stood in the hall. Seeing that she had come to him he wondered if the girls had told her what happened, but when
he noticed her sheer nightdress and through it her nipples, he knew the reason she had come to his bedroom. His first instinct was to close the door and send her away, but the slim shaft of light in the hall showed him exactly what she was offering.
The little voice inside his brain reminded him that he shouldn’t give the mirror what it wanted. If the mirror saw that emotionally he had moved on, it might loosen its grip on him. For one thing, sleeping with Sophie in front of the mirror made him unpredictable, and with that thought he opened the door wide enough to let her slip in.
When they were both naked he lay back and let her ride him, as he held onto her hips, he found his gaze glued to the mirror, seeing if there would be any backlash to his taunt. The mirror was inanimate.
Frank felt himself climax and his seeds spread.
If the mirror chose to taunt him, it didn’t mean that he couldn’t play it at its own game.
In the morning Sophie was the same as she had always been, gracefully moving around the kitchen and making breakfast for everyone while watching over her girls. Frank noticed Heaven was watching him, he wondered if she was speculating he would mention the ghost of the girl to her mom. Frank had no intention of bringing that up, but he was determined to keep a closer eye on Nevaeh because he couldn’t assume that she was as sensible as her cautious sister. Frank had been told by the ancestors that he could commune with the dead, and that meant if he really needed too, he would intervene and speak to the ghost children as the leader of the coven. He would command them to leave the living children alone and tell them that Heaven and Nevaeh were under his protection.
Quietly he drank his tea, neither himself nor Sophie would say anything about what happened the night before. It was no one’s business.
“I’m going to see Mrs. Boswell this morning,” he announced, standing up so fast his chair fell back against the flagstone floor of the kitchen.
Sophie simply nodded her acknowledgment.
Frank walked along the path until he got to Mrs. Boswell’s home. Her red car was outside, so without hesitation he approached and knocked on the door.
“Frank,” said Audrey opening the door in her toweling robe.
He couldn’t help but appreciate how stunningly beautiful she looked as she stood there, even with the teasing smile on her face. He tried to look away, but then at that moment he didn’t want to. Instead what Frank wanted was to have his way with her on the doorstep. When he looked into her eyes, he remembered she could read his thoughts. He chided himself again. He was insatiable, what was wrong with him, what had he unleashed inside? The night previous with Sophie he had remembered how fond he had been of sex in his younger years. It wasn’t hard finding someone to be passionate with when he used to work as a bartender, although those days were long gone. After Jane he had become an emotional recluse not allowing anyone near, especially when he lived in the commune. He hadn’t realized how deeply regressed into his own cave he had become.
He brushed past Audrey and for a few seconds his fingers lingered on the tie of her robe, he could have tugged at it and she would have been naked. But playful as he was feeling he walked past her letting it go and instead went into the front room where her mother sat in front of the television.
“Good morning Frank,” said Mrs. Boswell, looking up at him and then at her daughter who had a girlish grin on her face.
“Will you go put some clothes on!” she shouted, it wasn’t a request.
He made himself comfortable and for the first time he noticed her velvet armchair and floral wallpaper. It was his third time to the house, yet he hadn’t noticed any of it before.
“I need your help?”
“Anything for you Master of the Coven,” said Mrs. Boswell.
A half smile raised at the edges of his lips, that was his official title, Master of the Coven. He liked it.
“I need you to tell me all that you know about how to defeat the mirror because the Oban witch is beginning to taunt me.”
The old lady’s eyes widened upon hearing this.
“What do you mean?”
“She showed me my ex-girlfriend and then. . .well, I taunted her back.”
“What do ya mean you taunted her back?”
Although Audrey wasn’t in the room he knew she stood at the top of the stairs listening, he wanted her to know that where he was concerned, she was playing with fire.
“My housemate Sophie, I slept with her in front of the mirror.”
Mrs. Boswell gasped, and he wondered what the hell was wrong with him, she was an older woman so he should have been more candid.
“Well nature is nature, it’s good to scratch the animal urges at times,” said Mrs. Boswell.
From that one statement he knew exactly how entrenched the Wicca way was with Mrs. Boswell, why he had expected her to be shocked he didn’t know.
“So, is that what you came here to say?” asked Audrey reappearing with a short dress on which showed the whites of her thighs. Mrs. Boswell tutted at her, she knew her daughter and probably far better than Audrey realized.
“No, not at all.”
“So, if you are getting everything at home Frank why are you here?” asked Audrey.
He could see she was struggling to steady her voice. He hated confrontation, he realized that he should have been more measured to get them onside. He needed to explain it all better.
“Because I need your help. The fig tree spoke to me and passed me the power of the ancestors.”
Both the women moved closer to him as if they couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“Then I started to see ghosts in the house.”
The women looked at each other.
“Then the mirror taunted me, showing me her. . .Jane,” he said her name quietly. “So, I wanted to get my own back. So that’s why I did it.”
Audrey sat back a little as if she wasn’t sure whether she believed him.
He didn’t know why it felt necessary to defend the choice of which woman he chose to sleep with to Audrey.
“Okay so what’s your plan?” asked Mrs. Boswell.
“I think I need to enter the mirror, and I need to know all that our ancestors knew. I think I need to commit to being a witch.”
Mrs. Boswell clasped her hands together and had a huge smile on her face.
“You are the true Master of the Coven,” she said as she jumped up for joy.
Frank wasn’t sure if he should be celebrating, it felt a little strange.
Audrey walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek, her braless breasts hung near his shoulder, he decided then that he would really like the feel of her in his arms.
“Let me walk you back,” she said as she pulled him toward the front door.
The Singing Sands were empty of people when she removed her clothes and guided his hands over her body.
“Show me exactly what you did with Sophie,” she said in his ear as she bit the lobe.
And after years of abstinence, Frank had two women within twelve hours.
10
A Safer Path
Again, with his finger he had managed to penetrate the mirror, it became malleable, then it formed a ripple on the surface and he was able to get inside. In the middle of the night while the others were sleeping, he pushed his face inside and opened his eyes. Surprised to see his own bedroom, he raised his eyebrows, it was familiar. It was his bedroom, but almost a negative of a photo. Areas, where there should have been light, were dark patches and areas where there should have been darkness had light. Huge specks of a white substance like small down feathers of dust moved slowly in the stagnant air, and he couldn’t help but notice the eerie feeling he was having.
He hesitated, was he ready to step through? He knew he wasn’t. He wondered if it was an image like this that Jane had seen when the mirror captured her in the hallway of his family home in South London.
He shuddered. Even though Frank was living with ghosts, he found the reverse side of the mirror significantly
creepier. Inside the mirror a presence walked past his bedroom door, so he turned his head to get a better look at it, but instead of the mist of a figure, he saw an almost perfect high definition image of a woman in a long satin pink dress. As she walked past she was followed by the ghost of another woman. Frank knew they were both ghosts. He recognized them from the energies he had picked up from the images of women hanging from the fig tree.
The woman in black skirts walked behind the pink dressed woman, both turned their gaze and looked at him. They maintained eye contact and Frank could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. An involuntary shudder traveled along his back. He hadn’t wanted to alert anything to his presence. She smiled at him, a demonic grin pulled at the corners of her mouth stretching almost to the middle of the apple of her cheeks. Frank inhaled sharply as the ghost stopped, turned then ran for him with her hands reached out. He quickly pulled himself back into his bedroom and fell on the wooden floorboards with a thud. His eyes locked on the mirror expecting the woman to come through it. He wasn’t ready to fight not right now.
Deflated that the sense of confidence given to him by being Master of the Coven was not protecting him, he lay back on the floor after he was sure she couldn’t come through. Why did he feel fear? Had the maid been running over to him to drag him into the mirror? Millions of questions ran through his mind, all of which he could not answer. He knew he wasn’t ready, he was just full of bravado and unable to really take true control of the power he felt coursing through his veins. Throwing his jacket back over the mirror, he needed to recuperate.
The next morning, he headed downstairs and sat in the kitchen drinking tea while the girls drew pictures. Quietly contemplating his actions, he watched the humans and ghosts mill around in the kitchen and hallway. The house had so many secrets and it seemed that every time Frank flexed one of his supernatural muscles, there were even more secrets that the house would reveal. He was tired of it, and he wasn’t sure that being Master of the Coven was going to be enough.
