by Safa Shaqsy
“The darkness has always been in you darling”, Laura muttered. “It has always been a part of you as it was in your brother”.
Nora stepped closer with a frown and a bothersome look on her face. “My what?”
Laura cackled aloud and turned away as she returned to the kitchen to get herself some ice for her bleeding and sore nose.
“She is only trying to get into your head… nothing that bitch is saying is worth listening to”, Naomi warned her friend.
Nora tried to agree, but the manner in which Laura had said it seemed to bear so much sincerity and the feeling that she knew what she was talking about.
“You are the only child”, she had heard her parents say to her over and over and again. “In fact, you are our miracle child… we weren’t sure we were ver going to have a baby again”.
She could very well recall her mother’s words every time the woman spoke on how they labored for a child.
“I am sorry”, Nora whispered. “I am sorry about Daren, and I am sorry about everything so far”.
She turned to look at Naomi, whose face swelled with tears as she wept profusely and intensely.
“We killed him, Nora! We killed him!’ Naomi shrieked.
She opened her arms to receive her friend, but Naomi simply walked away, seemingly too hurt to engage or entertain any form of assistance from Nora at the moment.
“I am sorry”, Nora continued to whisper.
They were the only words she had to offer as her world not only grew colder, but lonelier by the passing second. She could not help but wonder what might happen had she not chosen to buy the cards online. She wondered if things would still be normal with her friends goofing around and her father constantly slating her on her Islamic practices not being top notch.
Suddenly, in Nora’s world, the things that bore importance and seemed to matter just some days back suddenly didn’t any longer. The world was getting colder, and her was frosty as hell.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Footsteps echoed louder than words around the living room. Everyone with the exception of Lama who still wasn’t ready to leave her room was present. Muzin eyed his daughter from where he sat, while Laura treated her broken nose from the day before. Naomi looked white and pale with worry but kept her words unaired while she shot Nora some nasty looks.
She upped herself from her seat and walked to the telephone.
“What are you doing?” Muzin asked the girl with his legs crossed and his temple leaning against his hand.
Naomi looked in his direction and replied, “We need to find him… he might be out there and we need to find him”.
Her eyes bore bags underneath them, as did Nora’s. The latter had barely slept through the night, only managing some minutes when she closed her eyes and prayed everything happening was nothing but a serious nightmare. Unfortunately for her, when she parted her eyes open, things remained exactly as they were.
“The cops cannot help us… we cannot bring in more people into this than we already have”, Nora spoke out in rather heightened tone.
Naomi shot back at her. “Of course you wouldn’t want us to find him! You are responsible for this… you and that crazy aunt of yours!”
Laura smiled but soon winced in pain as the bleeding nose threatened to burst open again. Naomi returned to dialing 911, but the phone wouldn’t come on as she watched the lights on the telephone flicker on and off. The lights in the room soon followed, taking a rather bizarre electrostatic appearance before the bulbs began to pop one at a time.
“Get away from the telephone!” Nora yelled.
Naomi tossed it down and stepped backwards as fast and as best as she could, as they watched the telephone wire melt away as if it had been scorched in a furnace. She turned to the front door and watched the bolts suddenly jam into place, as Nora seemed unsurprised by the bizarre occurrence.
“We have to continue”, Nora muttered.
Muzin shot to his feet and flailed his hands in the air. “I will not be a part of this… I have lost too much already and I will not lose a third family member!”
He began to storm away before halting by the hallway leading towards the bedrooms.
Nora got to her feet. “Who is the second family member you lost?” she asked.
The coincidence between what Laura had said the night before and what her father had just mentioned, seemed too related not to be true.
Muzin looked at his daughter, let out a loud sigh, and looked away. “It doesn’t matter now… I will not lose you too”.
Naomi shot to her feet and yelled. “Of course, it does matter! First you lie to me and keep me in the dark about my mother’s death, and now my world is falling apart with strange things, events and bloody Onamegas!”
Muzin looked towards Laura, almost as if he was trying to tell her how much she was responsible for the entire ordeal, just before he slipped out of sight and away from them.
“I shouldn’t have come here… we shouldn’t have come here, had Daren not found that stupid deck of cards in his backpack”, Naomi shot to her feet and walked to the window.
Nora stepped closer but kept her distance, as they noted the absence of the troubling looking creatures around the house earlier.
“Are they gone?” Naomi asked without looking at her friend. “Are they all gone?”
Nora wished she could give an answer that would calm the lady down. For some reason, she could feel their presence around, lurking far away from where they could see them, but present enough to swarm in should the need demand it. She shook her head and turned her back on Naomi.
“I never asked for any of this, and I am sorry”, she whispered again.
Naomi made no move to acknowledge her friend’s plea. Nora took the silence with a heavy heart, and began to walk away.
“Muzin! Nora! Help! Help!” the loud cry came from the bedroom, and more specifically, from Lama’s room.
Laura jumped to her feet, as Nora headed in the direction without giving it a moment’s thought. They arrived by her room and stopped by the door at the sight of Lama holding out her bloodied hands for them to see.
“He was in here… that thing… your friend!” she screamed.
Muzin came running into the room not long after, panting with soap on his face as indicative of the fact he was having his bath.
“What did this to you?” he asked as he drew closer to his wife.
The wound bled profusely, almost like a lion had mauled her.
“Daren”, she simply muttered, weeping as she winced in pain.
Muzin shot his daughter an accusatory look, causing Nora to walk away immediately. It was bad enough that her best friend wasn’t speaking to her, but her father adding salt into her injury wasn’t something she could stomach.
“I am putting an end to this thing once and for all!” Nora mumbled to herself.
She returned to the dining room and armed herself with the deck as she headed down the staircase leading to the basement. She paused and turned back around to head over to the kitchen to pick seven candlesticks and a match box, before returning to her previous destination. Naomi spotted her friend acting oddly and decided to tail her, but Nora had moved too fast and slammed the basement door in her face before she could breach it.
Hammering her weight into the door, Naomi called out. “What are you planning on doing!? Open the door, Nora! Open the door!”
Nora leaned into the door and whispered in response, “I cannot sit and watch while you guys continue to suffer for my actions… I have to end this right now!”
Her words didn’t sound as convincing as she had hoped it would, and her heart weighed in pain more than she could let on.
“I really don’t know what I’m doing, but I have to try”, she confessed.
Naomi gave no response, prompting Nora to head over to the abandoned table and chair Lama had tossed down there some years ago when she began decorating the house anew. It was her way of cementing her presence in the new ho
me, and casting away memories of Nora’s mother as best as she could and Nora hated it to the depths of her heart.
She set herself up with a chair and dragged it towards the table. Carefully, she set the candles into place and lit them one after the other, hearing her own heart beat aggressively, while the dusty air in the room thickened.
“Keep your calm and get this done right… keep your calm and get this done right”, she muttered to herself.
With the candles set into place, and the room as silent as a graveyard with nobody around to interrupt what she was about to do, She took out the cards from its deck and held it together in her left hand on the table. It suddenly felt lighter than it had been on the first day she handled it, but Nora didn’t care for such oddity at present; all she wanted was answers.
Nora pictured it all in her head; all that had happened and all that haunted her for the past few days.
“If you can bring them all back, I want you to show me”, she whispered to herself.
Everything around her suddenly seemed to stop, while her fingers began to tremble as she hoped to read her own cards. One after the other, she placed them on the table in the familiar cross she read with, while her heart raged and her stomach weighed heavily as if it could not stomach what was to come.
Reading one’s own card is often against the rules or at least it was what she read online through the times she was attempting to learn how to read tarot cards. Definitely frightened beyond words, and unsure of what would turn up, she reached for the first card and flipped it over without looking at it. With her eyes still closed, she did the same to the second, and third and continuously until she had flipped all her own cards upside down to show their faces.
The candles began to blow out one after the other, and Nora parted her eyelids to see what she had drawn for herself. Her face drew blank and her eyes narrowed in vision as she leaned closer towards the card in hopes she wasn’t seeing what exactly was before. She had drawn a pair of reddened eyes and what appeared to be dark mist or vortex.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed as the wall opposite her slowly began to chip away.
Nora slowly got to her feet, drawn to the wall as it crumbled before her to reveal nothing but darkness inside of it. Something about it felt wrong, but her heart yearned to know what exactly it was, as she felt her legs develop minds of their own as they carried her forward, absent thoughts and absent proper reasoning.
“Nora!” she heard the voice whisper from within the darkness.
It was unmistakable and she didn’t need to hear it for the second time to know whose it was.
“Mother?” she asked, knowing too well it was the woman calling.
Loud bangs emanated from the bolted door behind her as her father’s voice echoed aloud while he threatened to break the door down.
“Whatever you’re doing, don’t do it!” the man yelled. ‘Please, Nora!”
She figured Naomi had gotten their attention and brought them over.
Her Aunt Laura’s voice came calling through too. “You are breaking the rules and there will be consequences!”
Nora didn’t care; she wanted answers, and if her mother’s voice was anything to go by, the woman seemed to want her inside the vortex.
“I am coming mother”, Nora whispered. “I am coming”.
She reached out for the darkness, slipping her hand through it first, before allowing her body to follow. The world behind her suddenly got consumed, and nothing about it remained as she fell endlessly, through the darkness and without any assurance that she would ever stop falling.
Yet, her mother’s voice continued to call out to her. “Nora! Nora! Nora!”
***
Muzin shoved harder than he had done before, ramming his shoulder into the door and feeling it budge badly as the shunt behind it broke away from the wooden frame. He stumbled into the room, accompanied by Naomi and Laura. They had just arrived as the wall began to seal itself, with Nora long gone inside of it.
Laura raced over to the wall but arrived too late as it solidified immediately. “This is bad!”
Muzin shot to his feet while he groaned in pain from his fall. “Where is she? Where is my daughter?”
Laura pointed to the wall, without words to spill and without the strength to make her snide comments either.
“I am responsible for this”, Naomi cringed and took some steps back. “I caused this”.
Muzin looked at the girl who slowly crouched and folded herself into a ball in the corner of the room.
“Where did she go?” he asked, in trembling tone and teary eyes.
Laura walked over to the table and took a look at the cards Nora had read. Her gasp alerted the duo and her the sight of Laura groping her chest in worrisome look made Muzin feel like dying inside.
“She has gone back”, Laura replied the man’s question.
Naomi got back on her feet and moved closer to the table with odd looking cards which bear no reasonable meaning to her lying on it. “She has gone back where?”
“Back to where it all began”, Laura replied.
Muzin and Naomi looked lost still, while they watched the lady begin to pack the cards back into their deck.
“Don’t we need the cards to bring her back?” Naomi asked.
Laura paused and looked back up. “We don’t want whatever is coming back through that wall, trust me”.
Muzin charged towards Laura and grabbed her aggressively by her arm, causing the cards to spill to the ground. Laura put up a fight as best as she could, but she remained no match to the man as he fumed and pinned her into the wall with his hand around her neck.
“I don’t care what comes out from that wall, but I want my daughter back and you will find a way to make it happen!” he fumed.
Laura stared the angry father back in the face and did her best to remain unperturbed, but Muzin wasn’t in the mood to play around obviously. He yanked at her arm and led her back to the table, shoving her into the seat as he laid the deck of cards into her hands as Naomi bent down to pick those that had fallen to the ground.
“I will not do it”, Laura said adamantly.
Muzin leaned closer to the pesky lady, eye balls reddened and his lips twitching as he replied, “She means everything to me, Laura, and I will go to hell and beyond if you don’t find a way to bring her back this instant”.
Naomi placed the fallen cards on the table and looked out the small window overseeing the yard from the basement. First, she caught sight of someone’s legs hurrying out the front door, before seeing the familiar face to be Lama.
“We might have a problem!” she called out to Muzin and Laura as she caught sight of Lama’s face clearly.
Muzin hurried over and looked out the window with a loud gas emanating from between his lips.
“They’ve spotted her!” Naomi pointed out, pinning her finger towards the creatures previously lurking in the shadows of the woods around the house.
Muzin jtted out the door and hurried towards the front door, while Naomi followed him. The front door was opened, and Lama had gotten some feet down the porch’ stairs when Muzin came running towards her.
“Lama!” he called out, sounding frightened and absolutely scared. “Please! Come back in!”
Lama shook her head and turned around to look at her husband. “We cannot become captives in our own home and our own world!”
Naomi came to a halt by Muzin, while she scanned around and took note of the Onamegas slowly crawling out from their hiding place.
“Those things are coming for you!” Naomi warned. “They are coming for you!”
Lama smiled, looked back at the woods and spotted some of them scurrying around.
“Haven’t you seen how they shy away from the sunlight?” Lama asked. “They cannot harm me, or at least not with the sun beaming down on them”.
Muzin shook his head as his eyes watered. “Please, don’t do this”.
Lama shook her head in response. “All I want is
my life back… I want to go out and be me without having to worry about some damn card or the fact I can get devoured by some dad boded”.
Naomi watched as one Onamega hurried out from its hiding spot and into the sun, but suddenly burnt into crisp and absolute ash in the process.
“See?” Lama chuckled. “They cannot touch me provided the sun is up and out”.
He creatures growled and hurried about in the shades and darkness of the woods, while Lama proceeded towards her car. She whistled gladly and seemed unnerved by the fact demons and beasts alike were hovering around. She simply wanted some form of sanity and the ability to live her life as it used to be.
Muzin stepped towards the porch stairs, but Naomi held him back by his hand. “Look”.
She pointed at the sky above as Naomi neared her car. The clouds had slowly begun to gather and strangely so, while they sheltered the sun from reach and slowly blinded it from existence.
“The sun is going out”, Naomi whispered.
Muzin took note of the terrible sight and yelled, “Lama!”
Lama had just stuck her key into the car’s door when she realized the warmth and hotness she had marveled in within the past few seconds was no more. Droplets of water began hammering into her hand, causing her to look up into the darkened clouds as rain began to fall.
“Oh no!” she muttered, realizing the doom about to come.
“It is as Nora had read in the cards”, Laura broke through with her voice.
Muzin motioned to head down and towards his wife, but the Onamegas had already swarmed out from their hiding spots as they rushed towards Lama’s car. Lama looked at Muzin with nothing but regret mixed with an ominous smile on her face as the first beast attacked her and dragged her to the ground. Muzin remained where he stood, shocked and too frightened to make a move or even move a muscle.
The creatures dragged her around, yanking her from side to side, while Muzin decided he wasn’t going to look away from his wife.
“Daren”, Naomi muttered in tender tone, causing the others to look in her direction.
