“You think witchcraft is even possible? Like casting spells?” Tyler asked.
“You got me driving out here and it better not be to show off your pregnant girlfriend.”
“But you don’t, right? Believe?”
“In witches on broomsticks and magic potions? As you said, I’m in advanced classes, not one of those morons in the tech program. Ask one of those kids and they’ll probably whip out a voodoo doll or something.”
“You think Delaney’s just a coincidence? I was at the bowling alley for God’s sake. Someone was there and took a ball and killed my sister.”
“How would they even know when she was going to cross under that bridge?”
“She’s been going to SAT Prep for weeks. Someone could have been clocking her.”
“Your brother’s on Ritalin or some shit, yeah?”
“So?”
“Take some. You’re getting all paranoid. If someone had been following her, writing down at what time she did what then how could that even relate to some evil curse a psycho bitch conjured? It doesn’t make sense. Ydidake senou need to take this slow. We shouldn’t have come here. You’re bound to do something stupid.”
“Careful around this curve. It’s coming up. There it is.”
He stopped the car at the foot of their grass yard, almost exactly where Tyler had been when Sasha’s mother watched from the downstairs window.
“Not exactly the boogeyman’s house.”
No lights were on upstairs and a red light was flickering again in the same downstairs window, which did create a certain spookiness, but the bright white porch light was on and it nearly washed out the red flashes. Just another house among hundreds, maybe thousands. How many other people in this neighborhood believed in witchcraft and even practiced it? Did Sasha’s mother participate in a coven?
“Her light’s not on.”
“She’s probably slaughtering the family cat in the basement.”
“Not funny.”
“Are you going to wait all night?”
“You said this was stupid and I’d do something rash.”
“No, I said you are acting rash and bound to do something stupid.”
“But you want me to go anyway?”
“No point in doing something stupid if no one is around to watch.”
“Thanks.” Tyler got out of the car.
He stood in the dark with the red light beckoning to him from the downstairs window in Morse Code fashion. What was the translation?
Welcome back. Are you scared? Do you want to run away? Don’t you dare. You think your sister’s death was bad, just wait to see how bad this can get. Turn away now and you’ll see just how ugly this can be. You’ve been chosen and now you’ve got to embrace it
.
The bright light above the porch had no secret voice attached. Tyler walked toward it and tried not to glance at that red window, which he did every other step. He had to get his thoughts straight. He couldn’t start fumbling with his words the way he had feared he would with Sasha’s bra. He had to be cool and focused with just the right amount of conviction. He had to make her fear him but not so much so that she was genuinely frightened. She’d probably ask Mommy to conjure another spell.
He waited at the front door for several seconds before knocking. The last time he had been here he hadn’t known what to expect and ended up with blood on his face. This time, he still didn’t know, but he wasn’t about to be taken by surprise.
After the next knock, the door swung wide so suddenly that Tyler stepped back to the edge of the top step and had to waggle his arms like a cartoon character to prevent falling backwards. Sasha’s mother stood in the doorway, bathed in black. The red light from the downstairs flickered over the side of her face. Her long hair was as it had been on Saturday: dangling in clumps around her face. Darkness masked her eyes, though her nose jutted from the shadows like a thick worm protruding from the soil. The porch light was angled toward Tyler like a spotlight, distorting Sasha’s mother even more.
Tyler cleared his throat in dramatic fashion, hoping that would break the tension and give him more confidence, but instead it only made him realize just how unwise this decision had been. He should have listened to Paul. What could he say?
I need to talk to your psycho daughter. And oh, by the way, what was with that blood you threw in my face?
Better yet:
.
“Is Sasha here?” he asked.
A low moan dropped from the woman like smoke rolling off a fire.
“Excuse me?”
The moan morphed to a growl that stretched out and out. She was preparing to cast another spell. He squinted at her sides but the darkness hid her hands, hid in fact most of her body, like she was merely floating in the doorway and her body was somewhere else. Downstairs, perhaps, stuck in a trance before some evil altar. She was in the middle of some kind of out-of-body experience. She could kill him and wake up to find his body on her front porch with no memory of what had happened. Some evil spirit was using her now, manipulating her to do its will.
“I need to go,” he said and started down the porch steps.
“You must accept your fate,” she said in a voice full of dirt.
He stopped at the bottom step, turned to her. Even more than before, she now appeared to float in the doorway. When she spoke, the red light reflected off her teeth to fill her mouth with blood.
“You did what you shouldn’t have and now you must accept it or your life will not be harmonious. You will forever be unbalanced until you embrace what you have done and how you must deal with it.”
Tomorrow in the sunlight or even minutes from now in Paul’s car speeding away from here, this would seem ridiculous. He would laugh about Sasha’s crazy mother who walked around in black robes and spoke like she was a villain in some fantasy movie. Witchcraft was a bunch of bullshit, anyway. He’d be able to tell himself that later, but right now his mind wouldn’t listen. The dark had thickened and pushed in, even dimming the porch light. He had made Paul drive over here because he was convinced that this woman was somehow responsible for what happened to Delaney and now he was completely convinced. This woman might be fucked in the head, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a genuine witch.
“Why did you kill my sister?”
A pause. “It has been cast. The universe will conspire for it to work.”
“What? You cursed me?”
She laughed in a low, grumbling way that made Tyler’s skin prickle.
“Why? Tell me why?”
The laugh grew louder.
“I didn’t do anything to Sasha. She”—
you raped me
—“wanted it. This is not my fault.”
“Fault doesn’t matter now,” she said. “It’s too late to change anything. It has been cast.”
“
Uncast it, then!
Take it back. Stop all this shit or you will be sorry.”
No response. He had sounded far more dangerous than he felt.
“There is only one way,” she said. “You must come inside.”
“So you can throw more blood in my face?”
“Perhaps.” Then she was gone and the doorway was empty.
He turned to Paul who had stepped out of his car and was leaning his arms on the top, head resting in his joined hands. He was having a great time watching, no doubt. Tyler gestured toward the open door. Paul shrugged and then held out one hand, palm open like a gentleman allowing a lady to cut into a line. Some help hehruSome he was.
Someone had come out on the front porch of the neighbor’s house, which was partially obstructed with trees that hadn’t started blossoming yet. The person lit a cigarette and sat down. He had come out to watch the show and missed out. Tyler waited for a word or two from this person, a warning or something (
don’t you dare go in there, boy, that lady’s crazy as a rabid bat
), but the guy just smoked quietly. Typical night in Trailer Trash Town.
Paul waved at Tyler with his cell phone open in his hand. The small blue light from the screen was a smeared flame on the canvass of the night. Tyler touched the cell phone in his pocket, already on vibrate because of the wake, and nodded. That calmed him some. A phone was a rational thing, a logical product of a sane world. It might also be a lifeline if things turned ugly.
He went back up the steps, stopped outside the open doorway. He had been in this house in the middle of the day only a few days ago. The house was completely bland and average, at least upstairs, but now the darkness swirled and distorted the structure of the house the way fog can distort roads in the morning.
Witchcraft or bullshit, he had to go inside because he owed it to Delaney. If her death had been because of his action, then he had to right the wrong. Or punish the avenger.
He entered the house and turned toward the descending stairs where the flickering red light called to him in a secret language.
* * *
This could be a trick, of course. The woman might be duping him, trying to get him into her lair so she could cast another spell or throw more blood on him or maybe cut off his dick and stick it in a jar. He took out his cell phone and opened it before him to use as a flashlight. The blue light did nothing to fight against the red pulsing from somewhere downstairs, but it comforted him. He gripped the phone a bit too tightly and clung to that blue light like it was a magic force field that would protect him. When he reached the bottom of the steps, the blue light dimmed as it was programmed to do after several seconds of non-use.
The red lights were candles flickering in a smaller version of the candle holders Catholics prayed before in church, the votive candles in small glass holders before a cross on the wall. Instead of a cross on the wall, a large picture of a naked woman was set against the far wall above the candles. The woman appeared to be floating, or flying, as bolts of lightning shot upward toward her and across her body. Three long white candles were set beneath the picture at equal distances from each other and their light reflected off the pale body of the naked woman. White flowers that looked red in the light (bleeding flowers) were set at either end of the altar, which was probably a long card table with a black sheet over it. On the sheet, a star had been painted. Had she purchased that or created it herself? Maybe she made the star using White-Out. That was an even more disturbing image than buying them off some witchcraft website. A woman crazy enough to make all this shit on her own could be the perfect person to actually figure out how to cast spells.
Sasha’s mother had walked to the far corner of the room, which was empty save for the altar. Black curtains hung from the walls and even from the front window, though those were parted as if she knew he would be coming and she wanted him to watch.
He approached the altar and lowered his cell phone, but kept it open in his hand. Two metal bowls were also on top of the altar, one empty the other holding liquid that might be blood. He couldn’t be sure in this light. Next to the possibly blood- thsibly bfilled bowl lay a white-handled knife with a long blade that had been shined to a terrific gloss.
The front door swung shut.
“Is Sasha here?”
The woman groaned as she had before, stretching it out into an impossibly long syllable. The phone in his hand vibrated. A text from Paul: U OK? Tyler wasn’t sure. No one was coming down the stairs. Maybe the wind had blown the door shut. Yeah, right, wind on a windless night blowing from inside a house out.
“Are we alone?”
But the woman was lost in her perpetual groan that sounded hollow like someone screaming underwater. She moved to the altar in smooth steps that made her appear to float. She stopped before the altar and sank to both knees.
More vibration and another message: ???
He responded: wait.
“I want you to remove whatever curse you put on me.”
The groan peeked and faded away like a howling wind that moved on to other places. “You do not believe,” she said.
“You cursed me.”
“You can not see what is really going on. You are lost in your fears.”
“You said there was only one way to end this.”
She nodded, faced him. The red candlelight bathed over her and deepened the smattering of dark blemishes painting her face. It could be ceremonial make up or maybe she beat herself as a sign of submission before her gods. “There is only one way, but you are not ready.”
“What is it?”
“Marisa,” she called, “come.”
Someone was behind him so quickly that Tyler almost screamed. He backed away, hit the wall. Someone with a black blanket covering him or her like a little kid using a sheet to play ghost had appeared out of nowhere. Had this person been down here the whole time? No, of course not. That was crazy. Whoever this was had been upstairs, hiding. He or she shut the door and waited for the cue.
The black blanket was a knitted thing with thousands of small holes, which made it easy for the person to see to walk around. The feet were bare, white blots on a black lake. As the person neared the altar, the spaces in the blanket filled with stark whiteness. Before he could realize what he was seeing, the person knelt behind Sasha’s mother, who stood and turned to face her, and then lay down. The black blanket pulled up high on the feminine legs, stopping just above the knees.
Sasha’s mother held one of the bowls before her, dipped one hand in it, and then sprinkled the liquid over the person on the floor. While she did this, she recited something that sounded more like guttural noises, yips and grunts, than actual words.
The person on the floor spread her legs and arms to resemble an asterisk. The blanket pulled up even higher. The legs were completely bare. Was she even wearing underwear? In spite of the gooseflesh speckling his body, Tyler grew aroused.
Sasha’s mother turned to him, bowl in hand. “This is the only way. You must erect a proper altar. Only then can the spell be changed.”
The phone was vibrating again.
Sasha’s mother bent down and pulled the blanket back, revealing her naked daughter. Sasha’s body was impossibly white, now splashed with red gashes from the candles. Her large breasts hung to either side of her chest. Her hair lay splayed out from her head and her face wases.her fac completely expressionless. Is that how she had looked last Friday?
You raped me
.