Standing, I stare at the many who have fallen needlessly for Deon’s pride. Some with faces so clawed, they are unrecognizable. Others are missing vital chunks, leaking fluids darker than blood from their open cavities. I don’t want to think about what they may look like waking from their grave of soiled carpet, much less trekking through the woods to Grandma’s house.
“We will cloak them. No mortal will know.”
I look to where the blonde is standing on her second stair. “That’s getting really annoying,” I tell her.
“It saves time,” she returns with a shrug.
“Fine, let’s do this so we can do the whole car thing again.”
I’m still staring at the shambles around me, nude and stretched in such fragile ways it tears a part of me. I wonder who is waiting for them to return with Deon? Did they know when they crammed into the many cars to arrive, they wouldn’t be going home? All of this over a witch with a forbidden trinket, a source of power so powerful it was never meant to have escaped hell.
“Tick tock,” Jedrek whispers behind me.
Closing my eyes, I pull open the locked door I keep the magic behind inside of me, or at least the door I try to keep sealed. I feel it stir, stretching its many tendrils like an octopus testing the area around it. I feel those tendrils wrap around my heart, my mind, and a part of me I didn’t know it could stir. It pulses with those organs, wanting to become a part of me like they are. It whispers to me such delicious things; I want to let it.
“Control,” Jedrek whispers into my ear.
The image of my mother stirring a bowl of cookie dough knocks on my thoughts. I can see her as she was that day I came home from school. Her white blouse was ruined with the blood from her face where she had pulled her own eyes from their sockets after seeing what she had done to my father.
The tendrils relax their grasp, and I breathe a shaky breath before pushing it out into the fallen around me. Jedrek has made a point to stand behind me, far from the bodies I am focusing on. At first, it’s little twitches, arms or legs jumping with a spasm, heads jerking with tremors before they fully awaken. Sixteen men and women stand facing me, waiting for whatever it is I ask of them to do, but they are empty shells. There’s no true life in the husks before me.
“Change,” I tell them, not really thinking it would work.
Some crouch low. Others bend as if to touch their toes before the many shades of fur erupt from where skin once sat. Their wounds look so much worse. On their human bodies it was unnerving. On their wolf form it’s a different type of horror, a more pronounced desecration with whole muzzles missing and ribs sticking from shaggy fur.
Despite the change in form, it’s the same empty feeling while they stare at me. I may have what’s left of their bodies, but luckily the power which animates us has slipped away. Hopefully somewhere far enough away to not be bothered by the display I may need to make with them.
“Go to Great Hexpecations,” I tell my new undead army.
Silently they shuffle away, following the command I gave them and any command I may ever give them. When the last grey wolf makes its way to the door, it turns, looking over its shoulders, raw with exposed bones and tendons. There’s a light in those warm brown eyes. It’s questioning me, as to why I am doing what I have asked them to do. I can feel the wordless question in my heart before it turns to follow the others.
“Why is that one different?” Jedrek asks me, as if I have any idea about half the shit I’m doing.
“Because she’s the direct blood line of the Ripples. Her name was Isabell,” the annoying blonde tells the room. “Roman will be most upset over this.”
I imagine Roman will be most upset over it all, but I don’t correct her. That would invite conversation and conversation is something I am over having.
I thought this house would hold answers. I thought I’d find my missing pieces stitched together by an invisible lullaby. Instead, I’m leaving with more questions, more holes and dark memories stalking just beyond the shadows of my mind. Behind shadows thicker than anything Jedrek could summon, a woman who had once sung me to sleep with lullabies waits. Except, in the end, she too, had just been a reanimated shell.
Neither of us spoke on the drive to the address on the little paper. Correction. I didn’t speak. Jedrek wouldn’t shut up. He commented on every make of car, billboard, song on the radio and even threw in random facts, as if any of it mattered to me. I’ve had enough relationships to know, the only time someone talks this much about random facts of life is because they are afraid you may ask about specific facts of theirs. We haven’t spoken a word to each other, but he won’t stop speaking all of his words to me. Even as we pull alongside of another house of visitation, his syllables never slow.
“Did you know the style of this house is called Tudor?” he asks, building up to another lesson fact I have no mental stamina to sit through.
“Great! Let’s go kill a witch?” I ask him with a smile so false and wide my cheeks hurt.
I don’t exit the car gently. The door slam is as much for my benefit as for the period on the conversation. I don’t even care if whoever it is we are arriving for hears me.
“I think we may need to take this one a little slower than our normal pace,” he tells me, rushing to grab my arm before I step on the lawn.
“Why?”
“You’re doing that whole thing again where you are looking but you’re not seeing,” he says, gesturing with his hand in front of me. “Nice green lawn under the heat of summer? Do you hear a single bird singing or dog barking? Should we even remark on how bright the paint on this house is compared to the rest of the houses? As if it was just done yesterday?”
Reluctantly, I stop to look at the neighborhood. These houses were once the pride and joy of those who built them, but those days, or families, are long gone. Yards are dry patches or choked with weeds. What started out as well thought out paint schemes are now faded regrets. There’s not a sound among the many structures. There’s no life, and yet somehow the house before us looks fresh and brand new.
“Maybe she just keeps up with the place?” I suggest, not always willing to jump to the magic assumption. “There are people who find pride in what they have. Take care of it. Fix it. Keep things going.”
He leans in close with his eyes still for the house before us. “Are you still talking about the home?”
“Of course!”
At least I think I am and to prove that I am, I walk right through the lawn and then double over with pain.
Jedrek sighs. “Tried to warn you.” He strolls easily through the thick grass. Once again offering his hand to help me stand. “This is getting to be a pattern.”
“Fuck off,” I mutter through the pain and the amused expression on his face.
The yard seems the length of acres as it tears through my stomach. Every step takes more strength than I knew I had within me. The grass feels thicker with each step, tugging to secure my feet, rooting me in these waves of pain forever.
“Almost there,” Jedrek offers, trying to hide the worry from his voice. “Soon as we get to the porch it will stop.”
“How do you know?”
“Because there is also no driveway or walkway. That pretty little yard is a barrier spell against witches.”
“Why witches?” I ask, trying to focus on our conversation and not the feelings of my guts being scrambled.
“If she was truly banned, no longer protected by her house, then she’s free game for any harm she’s ever done. No witch makes it in that coven without making a few frenemies along the way.”
“Sounds delightful.”
Jedrek lifts me, carrying me the last few steps. When he places me on the first red bricked step of the porch, the pain slides away. It pulls from my body instead of being an instant stop, leaving behind an ache to remind me of what awaits me when we’re done.
“Better?” he asks, leaning over to look at my face.<
br />
“Yeah. Better.” I nod, trying to tell myself I don’t need a hug from the arms which were wrapped around me only hours ago. I almost convince myself it’s true. Almost.
“Maybe I should go in first?” He’s still bent over to read my floating expressions, trying to gauge which personality is headed his way.
“All you,” I pant, still fighting through the dull ache.
He makes an exaggerated face of shock but takes the steps ahead of me. The cement porch is pressure washed white. The wooden door gleams with a polished look. Even the little row of windows at the top of it are free from dust or dirt. I’ve watched GiGi take a toothbrush to our home and never has it looked as crisp as this house does, but there’s one thing ruining the perfect projected image. The smell.
I know that smell. I know it for many reasons, most I don’t talk about, but I know it. It’s the smell of a rotting body, fresh and most likely bloated and moist from sweating the putrid juices of the internal organs.
Jedrek turns to me, wondering if I smell it too. I cast him an expression of ‘no shit’ before leaning on the porch railing. Shrugging to keep our silent game of charades going, he kicks the door open, if not completely off its hinges.
It was a mistake. The type of mistake I have been making most of my life. What could have been a gentle entrance, easing our senses into the hot oven of a house which sits cooking whatever is dead inside of it, he ruined with ego and misplaced confidence. Now, the waves of it rush to the porch like an angry sea, battering us with the strength of it. It sticks in my mouth, lodges in my nose and even coats the walls of my throat causing me to gag.
“I don’t think she’s going to tell us where Johanna is,” I tell him, not letting the irony of the situation escape me.
Groaning with frustration, he storms into the house. My stomach is begging me not to. It’s been through enough, but my brain, the one normally shy to enter the fray, is listing all the reasons I too have to follow him into the house.
The first step is the hardest, that motion to defy all logic. The second step is slightly easier. The third your body caves, understanding you’re not going to listen to its advice, anyway. By the fourth step I’m fully in the house, standing at the base of the wooden stairs with their runner in front of me, and to my side, a room Jedrek is standing in, still and waiting.
“She’s over there, isn’t she?” I ask him, draping my arm over my face to secure my nose in the safety of my elbow.
Jedrek makes a sound of agreement. It’s the emptiest sound I have ever heard from him. My mind races with what condition she must be in. It paints a thousand rotting shades of her skin, to the list of insects devouring her. My mind spares no details. It hides no idea, no matter how unlikely it may be. It prepares me for everything, or so I thought.
She’s resting on an ornate chaise. Her black hair is spread around her like a demonic halo, framing a face so deformed, and covered in crawling insects, it takes a moment for my eyes to bring what I am seeing to focus. Where her eyes once were, are now long furious rows, ripping open her face from her eyebrows to her cheeks. On either side of her mouth is also a long gash almost reaching the rows from her eyes. Her scalp is missing sections of hair. It’s been pulled so hard there are missing pieces of her head. The bugs are so numerous, feasting in the mutilation, her skin almost seems to move as they burrow deeper into their meal.
“Explains the smell,” Jedrek says to me, noticing my losing battle against it.
“Any idea why she looks like this?” I ask and then quickly add, “If you say because she’s dead I swear I will punch you.”
“Foreplay? Here?” he gasps, sitting on the chaise and patting a spot beside him. “If you insist.”
His patting has made the body move, tilting the head to almost appear to be staring up at me. When a giant bug crawls from a socket, my stomach expels everything which was in it all over the hardwood floors.
“Could have just said no,” he tells me, overacting a bruised ego with an eye roll and forcing himself off the chaise. “This is classic beauty gone wrong. Or right. Depending on what the deal was.”
“The deal?” I don’t bother to stand fully erect. My stomach is still taking bets on if it’s done or not.
“A mortal would normally sign a contract stating for five to twenty years, depending on how good of a mood the demon is at the time, they would be beautiful. The kind of beauty mortals do stupid things once achieved, like make porn tapes and swear their ass is real. After the allotted time is reached, poof, mortal goes insane, killing themselves and most times others too. That part is kind of a bonus for the demon.”
“Oh,” I say not sure what else there is to say.
“Most likely, since I know of no contract enacting this little beauty of a curse,” he turns to me, his face beaming, “no pun intended, I’m guessing this is the work of our little naughty girl.”
“If when the curse is up, the demon collects the soul, what is she collecting from the deaths?”
“My littlest witch, you are a genius!” He kisses the top of my head after he claps, rubbing his palms together with excitement over whatever my question meant for him.
“Power?” I ask. “If a witch dies under her curse, she collects their power.” My words are soft, the type of pitch when one talks out loud to solve a problem. Our problem just keeps growing. “Which is why she could clear the Torte’s home so effectively. She’s killing witches for their power.”
“Ask her where she is,” Jedrek suggests.
“Who? She’s dead.”
“Exactly.”
His smile is one of a challenge and a dare, doubt filled that I will take him up on his offer, but excited to see if I will try.
“She’s too gone. Who would want to return to that?” I ask, rudely gesturing to the state of the woman’s body.
“Don’t ask. Command.” He takes a few steps back, retreating from the direct line of the magic. “Force her to come back.”
“Seems rude,” I whisper like a child being bullied. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“We are wasting time. Demons are disappearing, a family is waiting for you to help them and who knows how many others are just waiting time bombs for her to use. What is ruder? Sitting back because you don’t want to bother a witch who sold her soul for a few years of beauty or waking the bitch to ask her how to stop it all from happening again?”
“You suck at pep talks,” I tell him adding a middle finger to solidify my words, but he’s right and that’s the real reason the middle finger was added.
Fighting past my stomach’s refusal to stop the war, I coax the dark tendrils out of their cage. They answer, slithering inside of me, easing down my stomach and whispering their words of bravery in my mind.
“Take it right to the edge, Harper, but no further,” Jedrek warns, feeling the ripples of magic edge towards him, curious to taste him again.
I search for her in the beyond, seeking her little light as souls appear to me. I feel her light before I see it. It’s rushing away, hiding and blending with the other souls she passes to conceal her. She’s ashamed of the life she lived and the death she allowed. There is no desire to return to this realm.
The magic knows what to do. With the patience of a predator, it waits for her to run a little too close, and when she makes that mistake, she is snatched by green wisps encasing her. They drag her to this side, thrusting her so forcefully into her rotting cage the body bounces with the merging.
“Tell me your name,” I command of the writhing corpse.
She fights me, trying to flee back to the other side.
“Tell me your name!”
Her mouth opens, spewing forth the many insects which have taken haven in the dark cavity. “Nia.” The voice is nothing more than a dry whisper.
“Where is Johanna?” I ask Nia, clinging to the thread of connection we have made.
She starts to twist her body again, sendin
g the bugs everywhere around her.
“Where is Johanna?” I ask louder, tugging on the magically created leash wrapped around her.
She stands, lurching her body forward in one impossible motion. Bugs and damper things are expelled towards my face, knocking me weak. The husk laughs. The dry sound taunts me.
“Where is Johanna!” I scream, and it’s my turn to play.
My magic shoves its fingers into her skull. I pull from her every moment she wished to hide from, displaying them for her and me to see. Her body vibrates, rocking from my magic robbing her, invading her mind to gain what she is fighting to tell me. I watch the moment they met. Nia, a shy mouse of a woman and Johanna a temptress of possibilities, but Nia tries to block the image of Johanna from me, wrapping her in a hazy fog. The deeper I push, the clearer she becomes. I watch as Nia signs the parchment scroll with a moment’s hesitation before being coaxed into it. I watch Johanna place the silver locket with a fragile chain around Nia’s neck. There are instructions given and Nia nods before leaving the room. Forcing myself deeper into the memories, I memorize everything about the outside of the mansion Nia exits. I see through her eyes the white stucco and the numbers of the house proudly displayed next to the door. When I have what I need, I withdraw my magic, dropping the broken shell of the woman to the ground.
I know she’s still in there. I can feel her shame still rolling around in what’s left of her. If I left her now, she would forever be trapped, wasting away until there is nothing to hold her. Then this house would be her grave. She would roam the halls, searching for some means of escape for eternity.
“You are free to return to the other side,” I tell Nia.
There’s a soft sigh when she flies from her body once more. I can see the little spark swirling, unsure of where to go, but it doesn’t carry any interest for me. The missing locket does.
“It was a silver locket. She took it off and this happened. She clawed her own face when she saw it once more, no longer hidden by the magic. Her mouth, which she always hated, she used a butter knife to “fix it’.”
The Little Lies (The Great Hexpectations Series Book 1) Page 16
