“Onto the floor with you, Mr. Pen,” she said, turning her attention to the pen. She pushed with her mind and the pen rolled and then dropped to the floor.
“I’m pushing you now, eraser.”
The pen and the pencil were so easy this time. However, the eraser was still kind of tough.
“Onto the floor!”
She pushed hard with her mind. She squinted her eyes, willing the eraser to move, and fall to the ground.
The eraser slid a tiny bit. Her breath quickened in excitement. She caught it and took a slow deep breath in and out.
“Eraser, onto the floor!”
The eraser slid and then it popped off onto the ground.
She turned her attention to the hairbrush.
“Roll, roll to the ground hairbrush. Roll to the ground with the pen and the pencil and the eraser.”
The hairbrush wobbled back and forth.
She pushed with her mind.
“Come on, move, move to the ground.”
The hairbrush wobbled back and forth, barely inching along. She looked at the broken hairs being left behind on the coffee table.
“Come on, hairbrush,” she said, trying to coax the object into motion. “You can do it!”
She closed her eyes and pushed the hairbrush with her mind again.
She heard a soft thud and knew something had fallen onto the floor. She laughed and clapped her hands as she opened her eyes and stared at the objects strewn all around her.
How quickly it happened this time. She was about to stand up when the air grew cold.
“Who’s there?”
There was no reply.
The room grew colder still, and she could see her breath. The darkness fell into the room. Dorothy stood up and walked away from the couch. The curtains were drawn in the parlor so she couldn’t see out the windows and therefore no one could get in.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Dorothy asked as she nervously paced around the room.
No answer.
The temperature plummeted even more, and she drew her arms around herself, rubbing her sides for warmth.
Then Dorothy felt that strange disconnect she had felt before; her legs so dark and heavy, thick ropes pulling her down. Her top half light and bright, floating away.
She put her hands on her head, shivering from the room temperature as waves of heat swirled by.
“I don’t want to be torn in two,” she said, her head pounding.
Darkness filled the room as the pencil, pen, eraser and hairbrush flew through the air and landed back where they’d started, on the table.
“Who are you?” she asked. “I know there’s someone here, I can feel you.”
The room filled with the sensation of thick air, as if fog were made from cotton candy. It felt as if the air itself was pressing against her, pushing against her, spinning and swirling, pulsing into her as the headache grew. Just as it had before. She put her hand to her forehead. She squinted in the darkness. Dark forms within the darkness shifted.
“What do you want?” she asked. “I didn’t call you.”
Laughter came from the corner of the room.
“You call me with every breath you take,” said the deep voice.
“I haven’t called you and I’ll never call you again,” Dorothy said.
“You can’t resist my call. You know why I’m here,” he said.
“I know that you shouldn’t be here and...” Dorothy sighed walking in a circle.
“I know... but I wish you were here,” the voice said from another side of the room.
Dorothy stood, the air growing slightly warmer and the hot breezes slightly cooler. She breathed softly, watching the shadows within shadows, walking slowly around the room in a circle.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered. The words echoed around the room. A tear formed in her eye.
“I haven’t missed you,” she retorted.
“How cold you’ve grown,” he said.
She sighed, rubbing her arms again, gazing from one corner to the next.
“I’m only cold because you made me that way. You chose to make me cold and miserable. You chose to take away everything that I loved,” she said.
“I didn’t take away what you gave up. You took it away on your own. You knew the consequences.”
“There are always consequences...” Dorothy muttered.
“You had your chance and you didn’t want to take it,” he said.
“How can you say that?” she said.
“All I wanted was love,” he said.
“You... you wouldn’t know love if you saw it. Besides creatures like you can never truly love.”
“You don’t know,” he said. “You’re very judgmental.”
“I do miss you,” Dorothy said, her lip quivering, tears welling in her eyes.
“Then why do you lust for another?”
Dorothy paced back and forth, the darkness swelling again, her headache growing bigger. She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of red wine. She drank it deeply and poured another.
“You’ve shown this isn’t working,” she finally said.
“What you consider cruelty is what others consider reality or a fact or a way of being. You can’t handle it.”
“Please,” Dorothy sipped the wine and returned to the living room. She stood facing yet another corner, this time armed with wine.
“You say you want great power but how hard are you willing to work for it?” he asked.
“I’m working right now. I’m working so hard I managed to push all these items off the coffee table within seconds.”
“Did you? Did you really?” the voice was condescending. A new chill flooded up Dorothy’s back.
“Was it really you who pushed them off?” she asked.
He laughed.
“It was me,” Dorothy said firmly.
“How do you know it wasn’t me?” he asked.
“I know it wasn’t you because I would have felt you doing it. That is how I know. That is how we all know. You had nothing to do with me holding my new powers.”
“Maybe but you do need me,” the shadow laughed.
“I needed you once but not anymore. Go haunt someone else.”
“I can’t be haunting you if I’m not dead.”
“I’m sorry you came here for this, but I don’t need your services. Please go,” Dorothy said.
“But wouldn’t you want some help from me? I can help you with the movie star.”
Dorothy placed her empty glass back onto the counter before she turned and spoke.
“I don’t need help with the TV star. I can handle him all on my own.”
“Oh, you can, can you? Does he even know you exist?”
“He will know I exist at some point,” Dorothy said firmly. “Well, in fact, he does know I exist because I ran into him at the gym!”
“When did you ever go to the gym?” he retorted.
“You don’t have to be nasty about it. Just because I haven’t gone in a while doesn’t mean I’ll never go again. I was walking by the gym and he walked in.”
“Big deal.”
“He saw me and now he knows me, well, of me. I exist.”
“Oh, you sound just like every other starving fan. A quick glimpse and eye contact and you think the world is yours. How much you still have to learn, Dorothy.”
“Believe me, if I want it, I will get it.”
“What are you going to do? Levitate him?”
“I don’t have to levitate him. He’ll love me one day.”
“So you went from wanting to bang him to now you want to love him? Have you even met him? Do you even know how big his ego likely is from being a big famous TV star? Don’t you think that’s why his wife left him?”
“I don’t know why his wife left him or why he left her. I don’t know anything about their relationship except what I read on the internet and we all know that most of that’s not true.”
“No, you don�
��t know what’s true.”
“I’ll be careful. What you wish for and all.”
“You’ll never succeed,” he said. The room was cold again. Shadows flittered in the corner of the room until they formed a human darkness
The shape of a tall, fit man emerged from the shadows. Dorothy gasped. He had furry brown goat legs and large curved goat horns. His revealed face was a smooth chiselled jawline, clean-shaven and handsome. He stared at her with soft eyes and a half-smile.
Dorothy stared at his golden eyes, his naked chest. She stared at his lips and remembered their kisses on her. She remembered those large warm hands cupping her breasts, his lust overwhelming her, revealing pleasurable sensations she didn’t know could exist.
She also remembered the darkness and the despair that followed her long after she was with him.
“You must go,” she said.
“You want me, Dorothy. You know you want me. Let me remind you.”
He stepped closer.
The room spun, whirling wisps of heat lacing through the cold, the articles that she had been practicing with levitated around her. Soon her crystal balls were levitating around her in the room along with the crystals spinning in the golden eyes of the creature before her.
“You conjured me; you have to take care of me.”
“That was long ago. Why haven’t you found anyone else?”
“I’m trapped here by my desires and trapped by my connections to you. I can never be really truly free.”
“Where are the people who love you? There are people who want to go to the...”
“They have to call me,” he reminded her.
“But they can call you as I called you. I can’t be the only one who ever called you.”
“You have been the only one strong enough to call me and yet you don’t want me,” he said, his voice dark and angry.
“Please go,” she said. “I don’t want you; you don’t want me. We’re stuck together cuz of that spell I tried so many times to undo. The spell that never gets undone.”
“Only you can do that,” he said, his eyes turning from golden to red. The room grew hot, and flames licked from the floating crystal balls.
“Are you strong enough to stop their fall?” The shadow laughed as he waved his hands.
One by one, each ball fell quickly to the ground. One by one, Dorothy caught each one in the nick of time. Even the giant one. It wasn’t easy to catch that one and she had to use both her physical strength as well as her mental strength. As she put the last ball back on the stand, and wiped each one down, she realized that he was gone, and the room had returned to normal.
Chapter Six
Knight of Swords: Be careful with impulsive decisions.
Dorothy walked along the boardwalk, the crisp salt air splashing her face. Lucy had summoned her, and she didn’t want to be late. The last few hours of her shift had kept her in anticipation. However, an audience with Lucy meant going home and getting changed no matter how late the hour. Every minute that passed was excruciating but at last she was showered and dressed. She hurried along, her boots skipping along the cobblestones towards Lucy’s house.
I wonder what she wants!
Dorothy had only been summoned by Lucy a few times in her life. She didn’t think she was “in trouble” as she had just seen Lucy and the spell had been cast for her birthday. However, a one on one with the most powerful witch in North America, perhaps the world, found her both nervous and excited.
Lucy had likely sensed Dorothy working on her skills with a newfound passion, Dorothy hoped. Passion for working on anything was not usually in Dorothy’s wheelhouse.
Sophie answered the door and took her coat.
“I’ll show you to her room,” Sophie said.
Dorothy was led up the stairs to one of Lucy’s offices. Sophie announced her with a curtsy and left.
“Come here, my dear,” Lucy said as she patted the empty space on the couch beside her. “I need you to help me with something.”
Dorothy looked at the large crystal ball on the coffee table in front of them. It was perched on a medium-sized garish ornate brass stand. As Dorothy studied the curves of the design, she realized that they were tiny renderings of monkeys holding each others’ tails. There were stars and swirls, circles and whirls on the pedestal.
The crystal ball itself seemed huge for the stand and table. In fact, Dorothy was sure it had swelled larger since she had entered the room. A low hum emanated from it, vibrations tickling the tips of Dorothy’s fingers even from where she sat. Dorothy was drawn to the ball, gazing at it hypnotically.
“It a beautiful ball, isn’t it?” Lucy smiled. “Not everyone can gaze upon it, not everyone can survive the messages it shares.”
Dorothy continued to gaze upon the ball, sliding from the couch until she crouched beside it.
“I am eager to see the messages the ball has for me,” Dorothy smiled. She reached one of her hands out and slowly brought it down. Cold crystal vibrated beneath her fingertips. A chill ran through her, deliciously teasing her veins until she was throbbing with desire for more; more to fill her pussy and her mind.
The ball grew warmer as she placed her other hand against it. Lucy watched with a smile.
“I know you have been practicing, learning how to manipulate objects... and minds.”
“How can you tell?”
“I feel the pull of my coven. We are all woven together, joined by a giant spider web of patterns that interlace with each other. Strands build and break over the years. Your corner of the web has been building many new and interesting paths.”
“I’m growing stronger.”
“And you will be stronger still. You must be,” Lucy said as the crystal ball swirled with foggy clouds that mutated into glittering colours. Passion surged through Dorothy and she gasped. She let the waves of desire and temptation wash across her.
Lucy spoke again, startling her.
“Evil has come to town. A fresh evil, an old evil.”
“Evil... there’s always evil...”
“Not like this. This is one we need to banish.”
“Who is it?” Dorothy asked, still staring into the ball. Her thighs quivered but her mind was growing darker as she listened to Lucy.
“I’m not sure yet,” Lucy said softly. Her pause made Dorothy tear her gaze from the ball’s delights and look into Lucy’s eyes. They were bright, like glimmering glass, yet Dorothy sensed something dark beneath them.
Anger. No, not anger. Perhaps fear.
“Neither one, darling,” Lucy said. “We must hunt down this creature and banish him or rather, it, out of Hermana.”
“And if we don’t?”
“It won’t be pretty.”
“How do you know if you don’t know who it is?”
“I’ve felt this before, many times, so I know it’s back once more. Wanting souls, the souls of innocents, of virgins, of lovers, of unsuspecting gentleness. It wants to sour the human race further, and Hermana is only one stop of many.”
“Evil has always walked the earth. You don’t have to look far to see that.”
“But we must keep it from Hermana at all costs.”
“This evil is different?”
“You know from your training that there are different levels of evil. Yes, the evil to which I refer is dreadful evil.”
“Are we having a coven meeting about it?”
“No. Don’t tell anyone. I’m only sharing the information with those of you seasoned enough to withstand the effects of those vibrations.”
Dorothy felt her face grow warm. She stood taller, proud that Lucy considered her seasoned.
“Natasha?”
“Yes, Natasha,” Lucy nodded. “Natasha is already aware.”
“If and when I share with other members of the coven, I will have her come to you first, so you don’t have to guess... or read minds,” Lucy winked.
“I can’t read minds,” Dorothy said. “I’m not sure if I
want to. Reading thoughts through crystal balls or tarot cards is as close as I want to tap into anyone. It’s too much of a burden, to know all the secrets.”
Lucy laughed long and loud. Her laughter was surprisingly strong, considering her frail state.
“Oh, Dorothy, stop the bullshit. I can see right through you; you ache to master the Ancient Knowledge partly so that you can read minds and so much more.”
Dorothy blushed.
“Dorothy, you can read minds far more than you know. And you know that much as well. Now, enough chatter. I want to give you something.”
Lucy reached down beside her chair, and after fumbling for a bit, held up a handmade broom.
“For me?” Dorothy asked.
“Yes, for you,” Lucy nodded. “You’ll need it, trust me.”
“Oh, Lucy,” Dorothy hugged Lucy.
“Careful, Dorothy, or you’ll break me,” she chuckled still holding the broom.
“Lucy, this is so amazing. I can’t believe it,” Dorothy said. “How does it work? Is there anything I need to know?”
Lucy smiled.
“The words to activate it are;
Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, and light,
Send this broomstick into flight,
Moonglow goddess, Venus rise,
Mercury flows as we ride the skies.” The broom twitched in Lucy’s hand, raising it up. Lucy patted the broom.
“Not now. I was just demonstrating. Broom rest,” Lucy commanded.
The broom rested calmly in her hand once more.
“That’s it?” Dorothy asked.
“That’s about it,” Lucy nodded. “In fact, once you’ve ridden a few times, you won’t have to say anything at all. It will know you and obey your commands even if you don’t say them out loud.”
“Wow, is there anything around here that can’t read minds?” Dorothy said as she took the broom from Lucy’s hand, holding it tentatively as she stared at it.
* * *
Dorothy left Lucy’s house, her mind spinning as she headed out to the beach. She walked along the sand, or rather, glided across the worst parts, until she reached The Finger. She looked around. Only when she was satisfied that she was alone, did she stop to examine the broom that she held in her hand.
The night was dark, with only a bit of a glow from the moon reflecting on the undulating waves. Dorothy let her eyes grow accustomed to the light. She imagined she was a cat, letting in the reflections and bending them so that she could see more clearly.
Taurus: A Hearse of a Different Color Page 6
