Authors: Nicole Lee
“
They are also forewarnings of something?”
“
Yes. It is a sign that the evil presence is near. Or already here.”
Rose shuffled her feet, and then peered upwards again. “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what is an evil presence?”
“
Have you been reading the paper’s? Shootings, stabbings, armed robbery. The crime rate has doubled within the past month. Lake Pines is at its most chaotic since the civil war.”
Rose thought about it for a second. The only source of mainstream media she had the time to browse through was the internet headlines she often saw appear when heading for her email’s inbox. She thought most of it to be depressingly bleak, while local news was always boring and inaccurate.
“
So what does it all mean?” Rose asked. “If the souls of the departed are coming back, and our town is going out of its mind, how does it relate to us?”
“
Something is wrong here,” Harvey responded. “I’m not sure what it is.”
“
There’s something else I should say. Have you seen a man dressed entirely in black, usually with a cat by his side? this guy is pretty menacing. He’s not dressing in black clothes from goodwill. There’s something legitimately creepy about him. I’ve seen him twice now, and both times it looked as if he was staring directly at me.”
“
No, I’ve never seen anyone quite like that here.”
Alexis went to the back and pushed aside crates and cardboard boxes. She reached down and then plunged her entire arm in darkness, retrieving what appeared to be a thin iron chain. After brushing it and blowing some of the grime off of the strap, she turned around and walked towards Rose.
“
Here’s this mixture inside the jewel. Don’t give me that look. I know you already distrust my potion making, but what can it hurt? I’m giving it to you for free. Douse it on your windowsill. It should keep demons, both visible and undetectable, from entering. Try your best to avoid the graveyard.”
Rose nodded, a little crushed at her criticism, and then headed for the flight of steps.
10
Melinda and Rose sat next to each other in English class. During downtime, every student began speaking to one another, and the teacher ceased to care how loud the room became.
“
How did your date with Grady go?”
“
It was amazing, even though Jessica Faulkner ruined our time.” After she had explained the events of the night before, she had to stop herself from spinning the entire tale. They then planned potential revenge plots upon the trio of cheerleaders.
The bell rang loudly like an angel ascending from the ethereal spiritual firmament, a messenger of peace and liberation.
They walked out into the hallway.
The three evil girls that Rose and Melinda had been verbally lacerating with each other sneered at them as they walked by, and the two returned the favor.
James met up with them during the fifteen minute break.
They stopped and sat by the flag pole. Jessica, Gina and Emma were in the distance, obviously trying to keep their voices lowered.
“
Who’s going to be at school tonight to watch the football game?”
“
I am,” Rose said.
“
Grady Bell is dating our own lovely Rose over here. Wasn‘t sure if you knew that or not, James.”
“
Funny,” James said.
That night, the weather channel had reported how the temperature was supposed to be sixteen degrees. Rose, James and Melinda brought their own coco packets and even blankets to the top of the bleachers with them, getting comfortable underneath the universe of faultless stars above. The team, The Pine Lake Warriors, ripped through the red flag like Trojan soldiers preparing to defend Troy. They sprinted out on the already frosty blades of grass, stomping and clearly energetic. Grady was number seven. He looked up at the bleachers, where Rose was sitting with Melinda. He pointed at them and smiled triumphantly, almost as if he had already won the game.
During this action, the opposing team, a group called The Vikings who were dressed in gold and blue, also ran out onto the glacial and white lined pasture.
At their arrival, the cheerleaders standing on the dirt in lines began clapping while victoriously exclaiming their spirit in song.
“
Let’s go warriors, let’s go!”
Melinda began mocking the cheerleaders. “One two three four, which one of us is the biggest whore?”
Both teams lined up in their offensive and defensive positions, looking completely still while their minds raced at a million miles per hour. Once the ball was snapped, Rose tried her best to keep her eyes on Grady, despite his fast running speed. He attempted to hand the ball to the running back, who was unfortunately tackled without further ado. Quickly, he called a pass to a receiver as if it were life and death, throwing the ball in an immaculate spiral. Although he failed to make a touch down, he still cleared a good number of yards before being brought to the frigid jade lawn.
Rose, who had never even sat through a football game on television, often finding it rather redundant and monotonous to watch, was perplexed when she discovered something. The quarterback is not a mere player, but rather the leader of the team. He is an army general trying to lead his territorial forces to the smoldering yet triumphant ruins of conquest, the place every general dreams of. Even through his protective visor, it was discernible that his eyes scanned the entire wide land before him, hoping to find the perfect person to pass the ball to during the run times. He was a swift combatant.
The game was going moderately well. Passes, runs, punts, field goal attempts, kickoffs and free kicking’s all went accordingly. Before they knew it, hours had passed, an overtime was put into place due to how both sides were, amazingly, tied.
A coin flip was tossed to determine which team would gain possession of the ball. During this tense moment, Rose saw something strange out of the corner of her eyes. Two rows of people over, there was the man in black. He was stroking the fur of a feline, one whose coat had the same color of his attire. This menacing forewarning of something bad happening was all too familiar.
Rose clutched her amulet, feeling a sense of gloominess rising over her aura. She was so busy fretting that she had missed the result of the quarter, not knowledgeable of who fate had deemed to be luckier than the other at the outset.
At that moment, a player on the field, number eight on Grady’s team, was thrown high in the air by the opposing team on accident, landing directly on his neck.
“
He’s bringing bad luck to the field,” she said out loud, clutching the piece of jewelry connected to her necklace so hard that it its design was embedding itself into her palm.
“
What?” Melinda asked.
“
I’ll be right back,” she said, hurriedly standing up, making her way past the crowd of people, many of them fellow students, parents whose faces she had never seen before, and older graduates who were siblings of the athletes. When she was only four people away from the man dressed in blacker clothes than any darkly attired murky wraith, she looked down and noticed a familiar woman staring at her.
This supposed stranger wore a long, dismally dim flowing robe, one that was clearly sewn out of an expensive fabric.
Where have I seen that face?
She was about to say something to this outsider, held mesmerized by her glare, when there was a sound similar to a ship crashing erupting behind her.
After turning her body about to get a view of whatever chaos was exploding, it was then she saw the local scoreboard, the size of a tower, releasing a showering of sparks. Its fiery releases hissed while the large structure collapsed onto the field.
Everyone was screaming, and Rose no longer cared about the woman or the mysterious man. Instead, Grady’s well being was the only thing on her mind. A widespread exodus was already occurring on the bleachers, and Rose tried her best to reach the ground without being trampled in the wake of countless pupils attempting an escape from the bedlam. The surmounted overlie was now gushing forth its interior electrical fuses onto the landscape like a frozen cobra whose evacuations of blood stained the dirt it was resting in. When Rose reached the area, she saw the dust settle after the toppling. She could hear the players clearly now, many of them cursing loudly with unmentionable phrases of stress induced obscenity.
A hand rested on her shoulder. She turned around and saw that it was Grady. It was wonderful to know that he was safe, for now. The two embraced.
Even amidst this particular situation, she could hear Gina go ‘yuck’ in a tone reeking of disgust in the distance near the front of the seating’s.
“
Sam’s trapped under the scoreboard,” he said. She peered in that direction and gave her best effort to search for human life, and sure enough, a player on his team was pinned to the green terrain.
The roar of an ambulance’s siren blared in the distance. A hundred emergency calls had been issued on people’s cell phones after seeing one of the star and prized athletes being crushed by the edifice. The field was soon swamped with medical staff, an unreal site of trained health assistants in white hospital scrubs and firefighting overalls, sprinting across the football field with every bit of nimble and muscular grace that had been presented by the players only moments ago. In addition to them, two camera crews flooded the aisle of the stands, screaming out sentences with a cross between enthusiasm and horror into their microphones. It would be another hour before they learned what they had to do in order to get Sam to a safe bed in a ward. They literally had to saw him out, and rush him to the nearest parked truck.
“
I was so worried about you,” Rose said.
“
You were? Really? I always knew you to be a softie.”
“
Don’t be so proud.”
Despite his initial arrogance, she was legitimately relieved that he was out of harm’s way. They held each other’s hands and, much to her satisfaction, walked past the three cheerleaders, who seemed as if they were not flustered at all by the events. She gazed upward to see if the man, or that specific woman, was still there. The two figures had both completely disappeared.
Her father, when she entered the room, hugged her so tightly that it cut off her oxygen. Apparently the news of the incident had been all over on local television and radio. Since he knew where she was, he was desperately worried.
“
Of course something like this happens on a night when I fail to remember to give you the cell-phone,” he said.
“
Everything fine, Dad. Sam is who we should worry about.”
Her father nodded, closing his eyes as if in deep contemplation for a second.
“
But hey, speaking of phones, can I use ours? I need to call Melinda to make sure she made it all right.”
This was another fabrication of the week. She knew Melinda was doing fine, for it was someone else she needed to reach, but she could never let her Dad know that she and Alexis Harvey, the local weird woman, were on good terms.
“
You can,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “It better be Melinda, though. Promise me it’s not a boy.”
She found herself wondering for a second if her father had seen her and Grady hugging on any local reports as seen on channel thirteen. She moved into the main bedroom, and dialed Alexis’ number. Rose tried to keep her voice as low as possible.
“
Ms. Harvey? Are you watching the local news?”
“
Yes. I can’t believe the scoreboard fell down-”
“
I was there.”
“
Are you all right?”
“
I‘m doing okay. But I wasn’t the only one who was in the bleachers. The black cloaked stranger was there, along with someone else.”
“
Who?”
She held her breath. “I think my mother was there tonight.”
“
That’s not good,” Alexis says. “That’s not good at all.”
11
“
Was your mother ever a witch?”
“
Yes.”
“
That explains why you’re so good at what you do. It’s hereditary.”
“
I guess. I never told you because I didn’t want you to think I was unoriginal.”
“
Here’s what this means,” she said, ignoring her point. “When a witch does not get along with her fellow necromancy supportive mother, that spells doom.”
“
Why?”
“
The bond between a parent and child is sacred, Rose. When that bond is broken, the magic heightens the discord a hundred fold, thereby rendering it more lethal than what it would otherwise ever be for someone who was not involved with the supernatural arts. The Salem witch trials themselves were a product of love lost between a mother and daughter, both of whom were practitioners.”
“
So…all these horrible events happening in the town are my fault?”
“
No,” Alexis said. “They’re your mother’s fault. She’s come here knowing well that it would bring Lake Pines a negative fate. You two should never be in the same area together, especially if you loathe one another.”
“
So what can I do to end it all?”
“
Somehow make her leave town. A banishment spell should do it.”