Anyway, the footage then showed the boys approach the pool. Brad fumbled with the tie to the cover in one spot, with his gaze fixed straight ahead, not even looking at what he was doing. Then Aiden pushed the cover back enough for them to get in. He gave Brad a boost into the pool, and once inside, Brad helped Aiden in.
Then, the footage showed them pulling the cover neatly back into place.
All the footage was reviewed between the time the boys disappeared under the cover, clear up to when they were discovered. To see if there was more to the story somehow. But, there simply was not. Not that they knew, anyway.
I was distraught the entire weekend. My parents kept trying to comfort me, Alexia tried to comfort me. And to seek comfort; after all, the situation had been mighty awful for her as well. I felt desperate to tell somebody but how could I?
By Monday I was a complete mess. My parents wanted me to stay home from school. But I wanted to go. I wanted to be with everyone that I still had left. I wanted to hear what people were saying. I wanted to see if an opportunity to tell what I’d dreamt just happened to present itself.
School that day was exactly as you’d expect it to be. There wasn’t much actual work done. There were counselors on hand for anyone who wanted it. All the teachers talked in that hushed lilting way that you talk to little children when they cry. No one expected anything of us, just let us be together. Until my last period.
Mrs. Bellworth. My math teacher. Brad and Aiden had both been in this class with me, so it made what happened all the worse.
Mrs. Bellworth was a horrible person. Really. Just the worst. No one liked her. She was absolutely the sort of teacher who delighted in making students miserable. Even so, everyone just expected her to be kind or understanding in the wake of the loss of her own students.
Instead, she assigned 17 pages of homework to be completed by Wednesday. She made some very weak remarks about how the loss of Brad and Aiden was terrible but that they would want us all to succeed, and as seniors, we shouldn’t blow off our work as it could threaten our ability to graduate in just three short weeks.
Everyone was stunned.
I was furious.
I had never hated a single soul in my entire life. But, I was so wound up with a bundle of raw and frightening emotions that my mild annoyance of the lady grew into a roiling, seething, rage. I didn’t think I would do the homework. I didn’t care if I graduated at that point. For a few blissful hours, I forgot about other worries of mine and let my hatred of Mrs. Bellworth consume me.
That night, I dreamt of her.
It was State Route 76, the freeway outside of town that anyone in our area would take if they wanted to travel into a bigger city. It was the dead of night, but even so, there were cars on the freeway.
For some reason, I was standing in the middle of two lanes of traffic that whizzed past me. Once again, I was watching this as some sort of omniscient being.
The fly on the wall, so they say.
I stood there with my shoulders hunched, breathing fast and heavy. My face looked psychotic with rage; my eyes crazy. My eyes were fixed on a car coming up the freeway that was slowing down. It pulled onto the berm across the lanes of traffic from where I stood. I grinned.
Mrs. Bellworth stepped out of the car.
She was dressed in a nightgown and she almost appeared to be sleep walking. She stood on the edge of the road, toes on the white line. Cars whipping past her began to honk even though none had honked at me, and I was actually in the middle of the traffic.
I lifted my hand then, palm up, and beckoned to her.
Her blank pale face was pointed at me but it didn’t seem like she was actually looking at anything. Then she gave the slightest shake of her head, almost imperceptible. Like she was in there somewhere and was fighting my influence.
But, in the end, she stepped into the road. Almost instantly, she was smashed by a semi truck and her broken devastated body launched into the air. Then it slammed back down in pieces.
By now, I’m sure you can figure out the next thing that happens in this story, can’t you?
School was canceled the next day. The suicide of Mrs. Bellworth was simply too much tragedy in such a short time for school administrators to manage. But the town was once again ablaze with talk of the terrible incident.
The unfortunate moment of Mrs. Bellworth’s death had been captured on film as people on the freeway had seen her alongside the road and turned on their cameras out of curiosity. No one expected her to do what she did. There were many onlookers questioned as well, and of course the poor truck driver who ended her life. It was unanimously agreed upon that it was a clear cut case of suicide.
No one mentioned anyone else in the road who was on foot. No high school kid standing in the traffic smiling malevolantly. But I was there.
Soon after news began to spread about Mrs. Bellworth that morning, I decided to go see Harriet. My parents, concerned about my mental health, tried to stay home from work, but I managed to convince them to leave. Then I headed to Harriet’s house on foot.
As soon as she opened the door, she looked instantly confused. “Blake?” she said. She looked around a little bit, probably to see if Alexia was with me, because why would I be there otherwise. “What are you doing here?”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
She frowned and stared at me for a few seconds, seeming to debate whether she wanted to let me in or not. Then, she stepped aside and I stepped into her house.
It was cool and dark inside. The place was small but every bit of it was full of strange little trinkets and oddities, black carpet and wallpaper, black furnishings. Apparently, Harriet’s whole family leaned pretty hard into the whole goth thing.
She stood awkwardly in the middle of the small living room. “What’s up?” she asked.
I surprised myself by beginning to cry.
“Blake!” she exclaimed. She fidgeted a little like she wanted to step toward me, maybe comfort me somehow. But she stayed back. “What’s wrong? I mean, besides the obvious.”
“I think I killed them!” I blurted out.
Harriet’s spine straightened and she got even paler. Her eyes darted around nervously.
“Not on purpose, I mean!” I cried, realizing I’d scared her. “I mean, not really. I don’t know.” I groaned wretchedly and raked my hands through my hair so hard that it hurt.
Seeing me in such anguish made Harriet decide to trust me, I guess. Her shoulders relaxed a tiny bit and she finally invited me to sit down. Seated by my side on the couch she said, “OK, slow down. Start from the beginning.”
I told her everything. Every horrible detail of my nightmares. The deaths of my close friends. And Mrs. Bellworth. The deaths that I had somehow led them to. Harriet never took her big dark eyes off me as I wove my terrible tale. After I was done, she remained quiet for a while as she pondered all I’d revealed.
Finally, she answered me. “I think it was the moonwater.”
I stared at her blankly, not even knowing what she was talking about at first.
“You remember,” she said. “On Beltane. You drank that moonwater and I think it… Unlocked something in you. Remember The Devil in your one card draw? The warning that your shadow self may come out to play?”
My blood ran cold as memories of Beltane rushed back to me. I’d been so caught up in what happened to Brad and Aiden, I’d completely forgotten the tarot and the moonwater. It was an insane notion. But, all of this was insane, so it actually made perfect sense.
“You said that Brad and Aiden had annoyed you all night. And Mrs. Bellworth… Well, let’s be honest, we all hated Mrs. Bellworth. Maybe your shadow self… Handles people that cross you.”
I began to panic again. I was hyperventilating and I bowed my head to try and stop the dizziness threatening to turn my stomach. Harriet rubbed my back trying to soothe me, but instead becoming anxious herself.
“Harriet,” I cried. “I don’t care how mad I might get at someone, I would never hurt someone! I would never want someone to DIE!” I bawled like a baby. “Especially not my best friends.”
Harriet had begun to cry too. It was weird to see the ice queen emotional. “Dude, I know! You’re a jock but you’re not a monster!”
“What do I do?” I wailed.
After more silent pondering she said, “I think you should test yourself. See if you can control it.”
“What? How?” I asked.
“Let me invite the rest of the coven over to hang out. At some point, see if you can mentally make me do something.”
I shook my head violently. “No! No way, Harriet. Absolutely not.”
She cringed. “I don’t mean make me kill myself, idiot. I mean just… Something. I don’t know. You can’t tell me ahead of time. Just something that it’ll be obvious that it was you and not me. Get it?”
“I guess so,” I agreed glumly. I’ll admit, I was curious too at the full scope of whatever was going on with me.
Soon the coven had gathered in Harriet’s back yard. We just played it off like I happened to be the first one to show up when everyone wondered why I was already there. It was weird to consider, but it seemed like I was an actual member of the coven now, not just boyfriend of Alexia. It was starting to look like I was the one that actually had… Magical powers. So, I guess it made sense.
We hung out and talked for hours. I couldn’t think of what to attempt to make Harriet do. Nor did I have a clue how to make her do it, even if I did figure it out.
But, eventually, the conversation turned to the recent deaths. To our friends. To our teacher.
Alexia sat in the grass, the sun glistening on her hair and her shining cheeks. She spoke of the lost people with tears slipping down her cheeks. She was so full of love and kindness then and we all stared at her as she spoke sweetly and eloquently of all of them.
That’s when I figured out what to try. I started fiddling with a blade of grass just to make completely sure that Harriet wasn’t paying any attention to me at all. Then, I mentally sent her a command.
“Oh, Alexia,” Harriet snarled. “Go to hell.” She snapped rudely and then instantly clapped her hand over her mouth and glared at me.
The group fell silent and we all stared at Harriet.
“Harriet?” Alexia said sadly. “Why would you say that to me?”
Harriet still hadn’t taken her hand off her mouth and was staring at me with big frightened eyes. Finally she removed her hand. “Was that it?” she asked me.
I nodded sheepishly. I felt awful. But it had to be obvious.
Alexia was now crying harder so Harriet slid over to her and put an arm across her shoulders. “We have to tell you guys something,” Harriet said.
After the two of us had explained the whole thing to the coven, everyone sat across from us, deathly still, and staring at us. No one said anything for a long time.
Alexia broke the silence by saying, “You told Harriet this?” to me. Her eyes were big and full of hurt and sorrow. It was my turn to slide closer to her and I wrapped her in my arms.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “Something just told me to come to Harriet first. She seems like she knows a lot about all this stuff.”
“Hey,” Carter snapped. “We all know about this stuff, alright?”
Minsy smiled and nodded, cute even when everything sucked. “Yeah, we all have our own specialties.”
Vesper frowned. “Well, yeah. But I don’t know what any of us is supposed to do about this!” she exclaimed.
The coven launched into a huge animated discussion and I began to feel slightly like an outsider again. After all, I knew nothing about calling corners, mugwort, sage, calendula, grimoires, or any of the other weird stuff they were talking about. But, at the same time, it was kind of amazing listening to them. Obviously there was far more to witchcraft than I’d ever imagined, and it was a little encouraging to watch five people who seemed to know so much about it hatch a plot.
After a while, it was decided we’d all go our separate ways. They’d each collect their individual witchy items and after we all ate dinner with our families, we agreed to meet back up at the city park. There was a neck of woods behind the park where people always said people met up to have Satanic rituals.
It turned out that people did go there for rituals, just not Satanic ones. Who knew?
The coven dedicated themselves to casting magic upon me to remove the moonwater curse.
When we reconvened in the park and stole into the trees just before dark, I can’t deny… The experience was magical in every sense of the word. Even if I still don’t fully understand it or if I ever do.
They each had a backpack over their shoulders which they dropped onto the ground as they formed a circle around me. They stooped and began unpacking a myriad of things. The whole thing had strangely ominous undertones.
There were candles, fragrant plants, bells, bowls, vials of water… They each had books that they consulted as religiously as one would a Bible. I asked a couple half hearted questions and was ignored, so I shut up and went with the flow.
As the last bit of daylight slipped away and colored candles flickered all around me, Minsy poured salt in a circle that closed us all in together. There was an intense period of chanting. Something about watchtowers, with candles lifted into the air. After that the rest went by in such a dizzying blur, I don’t remember much of it.
But I remember the lightning striking.
They were done with whatever spell they’d supposedly cast upon me and they were doing something they called “banishing.” They later told me that they called the corners, the so-called, “watchtowers,” at the beginning of the ritual, and they had to banish them at the end. It was just like saying thank you and goodbye. It apparently involved individually saying goodbye to each elemental. When they said goodbye to the element of fire is when a purple bolt of lightning shot down from the sky and struck dead into the center of our circle.
Its raw energy blasted us all backwards forcefully onto our behinds in the dirt. There had been a metal pentacle in the center of the circle which was now blackened and smoking from being struck by the lightning.
We all stared gaping at the pentacle.
“Oh my god, it’s real,” Alexia whispered, scurrying forward and ever so slightly touching the pentacle. She yanked her hand back as it was obviously hot to the touch. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” she muttered, leaping to her feet and dancing in a circle. “It’s real. Magic is REAL!” she was shrieking now and laughing.
“Of course it’s real!” Carter called over her ruckus, sounding annoyed.
“Alexia, stop!” Vesper cried. “We have to finish closing the circle! Calm down!”
Alexia tamed her own excitement only enough to complete the last short steps to wrapping up the ritual, although it now seemed rushed and all the care and passion was missing. After the ritual was done, and they’d picked up their supplies, packing them back into their bags, Carter asked, “Alexia, what did you mean when you were wigging out? You didn’t already think magic was real?”
Her eyes twinkled, more beautiful than I’d ever seen her look before. She grinned and giggled it was almost like she was high. She was high. High on magic. “I guess I didn’t believe it all the way,” Alexia replied after some thought. “Not really. Can anyone ever truly believe in something before they know it for a fact?”
I didn’t particularly like the way he was looking at her with slightly narrow eyes. But she was so happy go lucky, she didn’t seem to notice she’d peeved him, so no one said anything else.
As we walked out of the woods and then hurried to leave the park, where we weren’t supposed to be after dark, Harriet asked me to test it.
I didn’t even know what the heck they’d done to me while they’d held hands, burned things, and said their whispered words. But I knew they wanted to try to turn me back to normal. So, I obliged.
“Go to hell, Harriet,” said Minsy. She clapped her hand over her mouth and tears sprang to her eyes.
“Sorry, Minsy,” I said. I hadn’t meant to upset her.
My shoulders slumped, everyone’s slumped a little. Everyone except Alexia. She seemed delighted that my strange new “ability” wasn’t gone.
“Try something else!” Alexia cried. She pointed at a tree with a low hanging limb that seemed like it would soon break and fall. “Make that tree limb fall!”
I doubted that would work. That seemed outside the scope of my curse. But, to my amazement, I looked at the limb and with a sharp crack it crashed to the ground.
“YES!” Alexia screamed. Everyone else murmured in awe. “We made it STRONGER!” she gushed, grabbing me and pulling me into a rough hug. She jumped up and into my arms, wrapping her legs around my waist. I stumbled, unprepared, but luckily recovered my strength in time to catch her and keep us both from falling.
“Why would you want it to be stronger?” Carter demanded, really angry now.
“Yeah, Lex, we’re trying to help him!” Vesper agreed. “This is horrible.”
Alexia dropped out of my arms and began jumping around, pumping her arms up and down like they were wings. “Are you kidding me? He has REAL power. This is incredible. He can do ANYTHING he wants to!”
Minsy began to cry for real. “Alexia, how can you say that? Terrible things are happening. Blake doesn’t want to hurt anyone, you’re acting weird!”
“Magic is real,” Vesper agreed. “And we suck at it. We just made it worse!”
The rest of the way home the coven and I fretted and worried. Only Alexia was happy, and her joy could barely be contained.
The coven tried again the following day. This time Carter had driven us all to a secluded spot where he used to go swimming as a kid, out in the country. Directly following that spell, on the way back to town, I let out a deep sigh and the back tire on the car blew out. We careened off the road and into a ditch. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but it was clear that once again, their magic was off the mark. I had only grown more powerful.
The next day, Carter pulled me aside after lunch and said that he wanted to try something on me without the rest. At least without Alexia. He said that Alexia’s excitement might be messing up the effectiveness of their attempts to rid me of my curse. Minsy, Vesper, and Harriet, also discreetly contacted me with various offers of solitary magic. It was all very strange, and felt a little unfaithful to Alexia. But, I was desperate to rid myself of my magic and willing to try anything.
Unfortunately, all attempts made were unsuccessful as far as we could tell. The poor coven appeared to be bad witches. Not bad natured. Just bad at it. Everyone promised to keep working and keep studying tirelessly until we figured things out.
That weekend, I was walking into a gas station when a scroungy looking older man body checked me on the way out the door. I was shocked by how brutally he shoved past me. My whole body spun on its axis until I was facing his back as he stormed away. Anger flared up as blood, making my cheeks hot. “Hey man, watch yourself,” I snarled.
The dude spun around and bared yellow decaying teeth and spat at my feet. I clenched my fists as he turned once more and continued walking away.
Then, my shoulders fell and all the life seemed to drain out of me. The anger had come on strong and by surprise. I hadn’t been able to control it. In my heart of hearts, I knew what would happen. I didn’t even know the old guy. He was a jerk, but I didn’t want anything to happen to him.
I stayed awake for two days. We were well into Monday of our final week of our entire high school career and I was incredibly drowsy in science class. It was the only class that none of the coven was in to help me stay awake. Soon, I drifted off to sleep.
In the dream, it was night time. I was standing in the middle of an old country road. Crickets chirped and tree frogs croaked, pale moonlight lit the pavement. But all was otherwise quiet and dark. Until after some time, I saw one light appear ahead in the distance. As it drew closer, I could hear the loud pipes of a motorcycle.
In my mind I was screaming for the motorcycle to stop, but of course, it did not. It kept coming, and coming, and when it was mere inches from where I stood, it blasted straight into the air as though it had hit a mine. It must’ve shot sixty feet high with the rider flailing and soaring. It might have felt like flying to him for a moment.
Until he hit the ground.
I woke up with a start back in science class, and everyone laughed. They laughed because I was crying.
That evening, the coven and I all but scoured our town looking for the guy. We thought maybe if we could find him, warn him somehow, then we could save him. But of course, we didn’t know him. We were high school kids who didn’t know how to find a sketchy old gas station drunk. I hung around outside the gas station myself until it closed, and of course, he never showed up.
I slept peacefully that night. After all, the evil nightmare curse had already been set into motion. Just as we expected, there was news the next day of a fatal motorcycle accident out on one of the county roads. No one in our circles knew the guy so the same sadness did not take over the school, or even diminish the excitement of our pending graduation.
I became a neurotic wreck. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to talk to anyone or go anywhere, for fear of accidentally getting annoyed about something. After all I knew, even the most mild of annoyance could cost someone their life until we sorted this mess out.
But, graduation weekend came, and I couldn’t avoid going out. There was no way my parents were going to let me bail on graduation, or on the massive party they had planned for me afterwards. The coven came to my house before we all had to get ready and did a spell on me to keep me calm and peaceful. I was almost afraid to let them do anything to me at that point, for fear of them messing up. But at the same time, I couldn’t exactly do nothing.
Graduation took place at our school football field. As anyone would expect, the place was swarming with people and I was terrified. However, the ceremony went really well, and I felt happiness for the first time since I’d had the first nightmare. The whole place was full of happy excited energy. There was good music, good speakers. It would’ve been impossible to be in a bad mood, even if you were under the influence of black magic. We made it through the whole ceremony and out of the stadium without incident.
I had driven myself and Alexia and we were planning on meeting everyone back at my house for the party. But the parking lot was an absolute madhouse. I began to feel nervous again among the throng of people and the crush of cars. We finally got in my car and were in the line to exit the parking lot. We were almost up to the exit when someone slammed into me from behind.
The car lurched forward. Instinctively, I reached across Alexia to keep her from hitting the dashboard, which made me not pay attention to myself. We weren’t hit hard enough to deploy the airbags, but were hit hard enough for me to bash my face into the steering wheel.
I could feel blood trickle on the bridge of my nose almost immediately.
“You’re bleeding!” Alexia screamed. I looked at her, shocked. I had never seen her angry, especially not so angry so quickly.
Thankfully, I wasn’t angry. Just relieved everything was ok.
“It’s OK, baby,” I said softly.
I started to lift my foot from the brake but she shrieked again. “No, it is NOT ok, baby,” Alexia snarled at me. Before I could say a word, she got out of the car and stormed to the car behind us.
I sat there for a moment paralyzed, staring straight ahead. I knew that if you have a fender bender, of course you have to get out and see if anyone is hurt or your car or whatever, but considering my current lot in life, I didn’t even want to look at whomever had hit me. I pretty much didn’t care if my car was like, trashed, I didn’t want to know who hit me.
What was she doing?
It was like she was trying to make me mad. I could hear her behind me screaming at the people in the car. I heard several male voices, all talking over one another, trying to calm her down. I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying, but they were apologizing. I squeezed my eyes shut. I rolled down my window.
“Alexia,” I called. “It’s fine, come on let’s go!”
“Yeah, come on, be cool, Lex!” said one of the voices. I laid my head against the steering wheel. I thought I recognized the voice. I placed my hands over my ears.
“BLAKE GET OUT HERE!” Alexia screamed. She was completely unglued, I could tell just by the sound of her voice. Horns were honking. I could hear others beginning to gather.
“Come on, Alexia! Let’s go!” I cried. “Please!” My voice broke on that word. I couldn’t believe what she was doing. She continued to yell and create a scene. I couldn’t seem to do anything except keep my head down and my ears covered.
Then, all of a sudden, her car door was yanked back open and she was basically shoved into the car. It was Carter. He’d come upon the scene and dragged Alexia away like an angry fighting dog.
He gave me a panicked look. “Get her out of here. See you at your place.”
I floored it and soon we were out on the road. I was shaking so bad I could barely handle the car.
“It was-”
“ALEXIA!” I roared. “Don’t. Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know!”
“Jackson Alvarez-”
“STOP!” I yelled, sobbing now. But it was too late. She’d already said enough for me to know everyone in the car. It was a kid from the football team and he always traveled with the same dudes. The same pack of four. I don’t know why in the world she wanted me to know. She knew what would happen.
I genuinely wasn’t mad though. Anything but. But, I couldn’t promise there hadn’t been some instant knee jerk second of anger right when the car impacted. I was absolutely sick. Sick. I knew what was going to happen, and so did she.
“How could you do this?” I said, whispering now.
She turned around in her seat and smiled, suddenly completely calm and back to her normal self. She stroked the tears from my cheek. “Sorry, baby,” she said with a loving gaze. “Didn’t mean to get all worked up.”
My parents allowed the entire coven to stay the night after my party in honor of my terrific life event. Of course they had no idea how dearly I needed my friends there.
At first we debated on doing new magic. But, they had no idea what to even try. I told them I didn’t want to sleep so maybe we could do some stay awake magic. I never wanted to sleep again. But in the end, we decided that there was no point in delaying the inevitable. If it was going to happen, it would happen eventually whether I tried to stay awake or not. So off to sleep I went.
In the nightmare, I sent the car full of newly graduated teens, decent kids who had a lot to offer the world, through the guardrails on a bridge and down deep into the black depths of a river.
And of course, we know how this story goes. Another four members of our class, in just the span of a month, lost to a senseless tragedy. Authorities never did fully determine what had caused the crash. Investigation after the fact revealed the car appeared to have been in good working order and toxicology showed the boys had been sober. The three of them who were found, anyway. Jackson Alverez never was found, lost forever to the depths of the river.
I became despondent. My parents were a little surprised how hard I took it. After all, I hadn’t really even known the guys who died in the water. But, on the other hand, it had just been so much, and they didn’t think too much of it either.
What they didn’t know was that I was considering suicide.
The coven knew what I was thinking and one of them stayed with me almost all the time. They were forever doing little spells and chants over me for healing and protection. I didn’t leave the house. I didn’t watch tv or the internet. I talked to nobody but them.
One week later, Carter was spending the night with me and we’d both long since fallen asleep. After all, spending the night with a guy who won’t turn on the tv or leave his room is pretty boring. But at close to three in the morning, I got a text from Alexia.
It said: Come over. I can fix it.
Bleary eyed from both sleep, and from the fact that I cried almost non stop by then, I just slipped out of bed and then out of my room. I didn’t even respond to her text, I just went.
She didn’t live that far from me so I walked. I was almost there when she sent another text. It said: Come to the back gate.
When I arrived, I stood outside the gate for a while, having a hard time getting myself to go inside. After all, the pool was still in there. The one where this nightmare had begun. But eventually, she quietly pulled the gate open as if she’d somehow known I was out there, suffering on the other side.
Inside the yard, she had already cast the circle and lit the candles. She was dressed in a lacey black dress and had heavy black makeup around her eyes and on her lips. There was also some sort of strange black symbol drawn on her forehead. I’d come to recognize a lot of the symbols the coven used in their witchcraft. Like pentacles, pentagrams, various different runes… But this strange symbol was completely foreign to me and I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off it.
She led me to the circle. The flickering flames reminded me of the firelight from the night of Beltane. The last time I’d felt happy. I began to cry.
“All you have to do is step inside, it’s the witching hour,” Alexia whispered. She sounded different than I was used to. Her voice was raspy and womanly, like she’d aged ten years that day. She gave my arm a gentle push. “I’ve been studying and working on my own. I’m ready now. To take it away from you. Go.” She pushed again. “Step inside the circle. Do it, Blake.”
I did it.
I was broken and desperate. I couldn’t quit staring at the black symbol on her face. Maybe it was my fractured mind playing tricks, but it seemed to writhe and wriggle like tiny snakes on her flesh.
I don’t remember the ritual. I don’t know what she did to me that night. Snatches of it come back to me in nightmares sometimes. Whispered words in a foreign tongue. Touching skin. Sighs and the moving symbol on her head. But as soon as part of it comes back to me, it vanishes again into the dark recesses of my mind.
But whatever she did, when we stepped out of the circle, my power was gone. I tested it right away by attempting to bust the light bulb out of her back door light. It didn’t work and I collapsed onto the ground. Weeping. Relieved. Whispering thank you. To what or who? I don’t know. Alexia. God. The Devil. I didn’t know who I was thankful to, I just was.
Alexia kissed me at the gate and sent me on my way, alone and in the dark. I walked home feeling like I was walking on air, free of my curse. I assumed that Alexia had somehow vanquished it.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that Alexia had managed to take it away… By stealing it. The power wasn’t gone. It had just been transferred to Alexia.
The very next day, Carter died.
His house caught on fire. The family made it out, but Carter ran back into the flames to get his dog, or so they thought. He didn’t make it out.
The joy I’d found by killing my curse came crashing down with the loss of my friend. It was unbelievable. But, it wasn’t my fault. There had been no nightmare. It was just a freak accident. More tragedy on top of tragedy in the worst summer in our town’s history.
But by the end of the following week, Vesper, Minsy, and Harriet were all dead too.
They were found in the forest behind the park. The very same spot where the very same girls had tried to help me. They were inside a circle of salt, and all their wrists were cut. Harriet’s phone had captured the whole dark ritual, a sucicide pact. They’d set up the phone and filmed it on purpose. Again, I never saw the footage, but I heard about it. Authorities called it a clear cut suicide. Some sick and twisted ritual among misguided young women who’d been through a lot of pain and suffering with all the recent loss in the community.
But, I knew the truth.
The entire coven was dead. Except for me. And except for Alexia.
It was storming hard when I showed up at her door. Her dad wasn’t home, and I was glad.
“What did you do?” I said in a ragged whisper.
She was dressed all in black again, with the heavy black makeup. She looked beautiful, but like a different person than I had fallen in love with. She stepped aside and beckoned me in the front door. I stepped out of the rain and into the gloom of her quiet empty house.
“It had to be done,” Alexia said.
I cried for what felt like the thousandth time. I had cried more in the last couple months than I ever had in my whole life put together. “What are you talking about?” I pleaded. “You had to kill our best friends? Why?”
“Because, they were witches too. They would’ve learned. They would’ve grown. They might’ve stopped me. I had to stop them first.”
I spent a troubled afternoon with her. That was all she said about the coven. That was the only thing she ever said again about them. We pretended that life was back to normal. I wasn’t cursed anymore. And she wanted the wicked magic, so I guess it wasn’t a curse to her.
What could I do?
I couldn’t tell. Who in the world would believe me? There was absolutely no way to prove what Alexia was doing. What terrible evil she was capable of. And I certainly couldn’t stop her, could I? If she thought that I wanted to stop her, she’d stop me first. She made that clear.
Plus, when I looked at her, it was hard not to still see the person I loved so deeply. I didn’t feel I had any choice. So I did nothing. I stayed with Alexia. I did my best to keep her happy.
She took a few months break from killing. And when she resumed her black magic, she took it out of town. Day trips to find victims elsewhere. But, she always kept me in the know. Showing me new articles about violent deaths and brutal freak accidents. She’d giggle and take an almost childish delight in sharing the stories with me as though she were a preschooler proud of a bad drawing.
I was too depressed to go to college that fall. My parents were disappointed but they understood. I promised to attend in the future, and hoped I would. But, at that time, I felt trapped. I felt like I couldn’t leave Alexia. I felt afraid to leave her. We spent that entire year that we should’ve been away off at college, at home instead. Doing nothing much other than destroying the lives of innocent strangers.
It seemed like an agonizingly long time, but finally, Beltane came again.
Alexia wanted to have a party, just like the one we’d had the year before. She planned it meticulously, just as she had the prior spring, almost as if she’d completely forgotten that every single person who’d been there was now dead.
I went along with her like a ghost by then. I did everything she said. Everything she wanted. I came to her house on the evening of Beltane. We sat by the fire. She made me strum a guitar, even though I didn’t know how. She pulled cards from a tarot deck one by one, flipping some into the flames and others into the scummy pool water. I stared into the fire and said nothing until finally, around 4 am, she took me to bed.
I woke that morning after a blissfully dreamless sleep, to the sound of Alexia screaming.
She was downstairs, and I rushed down the steps to see what was wrong. She was alone in the kitchen, shrieking, crying hysterically. Her dark makeup had run and smeared all over her face. Her long black hair was messy and wild around her gaunt face. I only just that moment noticed how thin she’d become.
She was thrashing in a cupboard, pulling out food stuffs and hurtling things onto the floor.
“What’s wrong?” I mumbled.
“It’s gone,” she said, her voice shaking and unhinged. “My power. It’s gone.”
My heart began to speed up. It was the first sense of excitement I’d had in so long. It was the first time I remembered that I was even alive in a long time.
“Here it is!”
She pulled a bottle out of the cupboard. Something that had apparently been hidden behind other things in the cupboard. It had grimy pink water with flecks of something floating in it and a stone in the bottom.
Moonwater. She’d made more.
My whole body hummed and vibrated with warm energy. I stared wide eyed at the bottle and at her as she ripped its lid off and began to gulp it. She choked and sputtered dirty water down her chin, but kept drinking.
But it didn’t matter. Beltane was over. My curse was over. It was too late. She could drink all the moonwater she wanted.
It wasn’t going to work.
I left Alexia sobbing on her kitchen floor that day. I thought I’d go straight home and apply to college again. Try and see if I could get the process rolling and still get in by fall. Get out of this town. I planned to never see Alexia again.
And, I didn’t see her again. Not in person. Only in the news. You see, she had developed a taste for killing. For harm. For darkness. Even though she lost the magic, she didn’t lose the urge. Since she couldn’t kill people safely from the comfort of her own nightmares, she just did it the good old fashioned way.
She walked into the gas station. The same one where that poor grumpy man had made the terrible mistake of knocking into me. She pulled out a 38 in full view of the camera and she blew the cashier’s head off.
Alexia is in a hospital for the criminally insane now. It’s where she belongs. Bonus because, she might’ve actually been able to get parole some day if she’d only gone to prison. But where Alexia is now, people don’t leave. Not alive anyway.
I got away and I’m living my life. For a long time I felt happy and safe, but not long ago, it was Beltane again. It had been a couple years since I even thought of May first as anything other than May first. But that particular Beltane, a thought popped into my head.
What if you could make moonwater in a hospital for the criminally insane?