Cursed (28 page)

The screech came from nowhere, yet it echoed all around them. Mason looked to the sky as Sarah screamed and grabbed his arm tightly. He didn’t see the large dark creature coming in fast from high above and behind them until it was nearly on top of Sarah. Wings spread wide, he wasn’t sure what it was until he saw the face. An owl.

As soon as he saw it, it was already digging its talons into Sarah’s jacket, trying to pull her up and away. Mason dropped the pot and used the shovel like a baseball bat, smacking the owl. The creature felt it, but did not fall to the ground. Instead it flew back off from where it came.

“
Run
!” Mason screamed, grabbing for the cauldron and chasing Sarah up the street. They were boxed in by the high walls of snow. The cold air cut at their lungs and icy, compacted snow beneath their feet made running treacherous. They heard a cry of anger and frustration again like they had earlier, only this time it was much closer. And angrier.

Sliding to a stop at the end of the street, Mason quickly looked around. They were under a streetlight and could be easily seen at a distance.
Columbus Avenue was ghostly quiet at this hour in the morning and even the plow truck drivers had finished and gone home by now. Not a sound in the air except the gusts and howling winds.

“They must have shoveled an opening on
Columbus for the mass goers.” He grabbed her free hand and pulled her out onto Columbus Avenue and around to the front of the small but richly ornate Catholic church. As predicted, there was an opening cut deep in the snow and they dove in, safely planting their feet on church grounds.

“We didn’t pick up any branches on the way.”

“Let’s hope the oak flooring works.” Mason started to make his way around to the back of the church. Some of the snow holding his weight, and then breaking through unexpectedly, plunging his foot down deep into the pure white covering. Sarah followed clumsily, trying to move as quickly as the snow would allow and not drop the contents of the bag. By the time she reached Mason, her breath coming out in haggard smoky puffs, he was shoveling away the snow to reach the frozen ground. Sarah took out the last of the salt and spread it in a circle around them and spread the remainder on the ground, dropping the oak on top of it.

Once the fire was started they lit the candle to anchor it to the bottom and filled the cast iron soup pot with snow which quickly melted to the water they needed. Sarah was reading through the spell, dropping the hair clippings and nail clippings from Mason as well as the clippings Mason had gathered from Selena’s room in 1881 and preparing the mistletoe they had taken from the lobby decorations. The fire was burning nicely and was warming them at the same time. She looked up as Mason, momentarily happy until she heard him mutter, “It can’t be.”

Sarah followed his gaze and saw a tall dark figure, striding up the street towards the church . . . and them. The high-heeled black boots and long flared cape-like coat was all they needed to know Selena was coming for them.

Selena threw back her head and laughed as she drew closer. She was fifty yards away but the malevolence traveled on the cold, still air and turned the laugh into a blood-curdling sound. She did not change her pace; instead she slowly sauntered, like a cat stalking its prey.

Under her breath, Sarah quickly asked if it was boiling yet. Mason shook his head to indicate it had not. Sarah moved slightly behind Mason to get a better look at the pot while Mason kept his eyes on Selena. From the light of the black candle in the middle of the water, she could see bubbles were just starting to play around the sides of the bowl.

Selena mounted the snow bank at the corner of the street with the surefooted ease of a feline. Placing her hands on her hips, she let the wind take the open coat making it dance behind her. In her position, she was higher than them and the street light put her face in shadow, but Mason knew all too well the evil smile that must be playing on those blood red lips.

“Well, well, well . . . I see my two little jailbirds have crept out for a dangerous stroll.”

At the same moment, Mason and Sarah spoke the name they each knew her by and in response they received that dreadful laugh.

The water began boiling and Sarah discreetly released the mistletoe from her hand. A light had turned on inside the rectory but none of them could turn back now.

“Just what do you think you are doing? Do either of you really think you can handle casting a spell? How droll.”

“What do you want from us, Selena? Haven’t you spread your evil enough with us?”

“Refusing me, Aiden, was your biggest mistake. You think you have suffered enough?” She let the question hang in the frigid air for only a moment before she spat, “You haven’t even
begun
to come close! You and that silly girl who knew nothing of life . . . and here she is again. The one woman who ever got in the way of a man I set my sights on.”

"Leave Sarah out of this.
She has done nothing to you!" Mason felt himself tense with the flood of adrenaline running through his veins. Clenching his fists he took a step closer.

Selena pulled something from her pocket and held it up.
Mason heard Sarah whisper
what's that?
. . . but he already knew, recognizing it, but couldn't stop to explain.

"My insurance policy, Aiden.
The one thing I took from my room before I had to leave that night." The green glass jar was held under the streetlight and although it was a distance and he could not see, he was sure there was a small paper tag with his initials scrawled on it.

He heard Sarah mutter something behind him but his focus was Selena.
"If you realized your curse was self imposed . . . that the pity you felt from others was manifesting itself as ugliness on that once beautiful body that would just in turn escalate the pity and turn you into a hermit, locked away for hundreds of years where no other woman would go near you . . . then I had to have a back up plan – didn't I?" She laughed, rejoicing at the irony of the curse she had set upon him. "And this is it; the contents of this jar. I still have a curse or two of my own I can use and no loving or compassionate look will take the spell away."

As Selena was bellowing, Sarah had whispered into Mason’s ear. “Repeat after me three times.”

Selena’s attention had turned towards Sarah and her cobalt blue eyes narrowed into slits. “I wasn’t sure at first, but there was something about you . . . I dug deeper and had to put up with your foolish friends and your prudish ways. But when I gave you the Christmas present –
I knew
. I don’t forget the surge of someone’s life force . . . and everyone is different. You, my sweet, had a very strong force – I had felt it once a long time ago as you reached for help out the stable window and then again at your office when your wrist touched my back. I knew then for sure and that my gift would have been my gateway back in. If you had just used it instead of tossing it aside this would all be so much easier.”

Sarah had been partially hidden behind Mason and although Sarah’s wide, petrified eyes were visible above his shoulder, Selena did not see Sarah murmuring the spell to Mason or Mason’s lips moving as he repeated:
This spell on me, I return to thee. To thee who has ill-wished me. So mote it be.

By the third time, they were saying it in unison, but that was when Selena caught on.

“How
DARE
you try to turn a spell back on ME!” She screamed into the night. Her anguish bounced off the brownstones and echoed along the still street. The sound of sirens could be heard in the distance. Mason knew those sirens and smiled at the thought of who was rescuing them.
The priest called in the fire brigade
.

As the wailing sirens grew louder, Selena tried to get them to leave the church grounds. “Are you afraid to come out here and talk to me Aiden? Are you
still
not a man?” She taunted but the sirens kept coming and they stayed within their salt circle on consecrated soil. More lights came on inside the church and all eyes were momentarily distracted.

“Sarah, come on over here with me. I truly want to keep you as a friend. I haven’t had a friend in so long, and it was nice, wasn’t it?” Selena tried cajoling Sarah off the church land, extending her hand. “Leave him and we will find you a new apartment, away from all those troubling memories. Put it all behind you.” The first fire truck pulled up on
Columbus.

The wind shifted and smoke crossed between them. A fireman with a thick
Boston accent addressed Selena. “Hey lady, what are you doing up there? Did you set this fire?”

Mason turned to Sarah, knowing it was their one chance before the wind changed direction again and the firemen could see over the snow pile. He pointed to the back fence and they both made their way quickly.

Mason pushed Sarah unceremoniously up over the fence and into the back yard of a brownstone. He threw his shovel over and jumped the fence. The red alternating lights flashing off the nearby brownstones and in the soft glow of morning skies felt strangely reassuring but then he heard the roar of Selena yelling at the police officers taking her into custody.

Risking a quick look over the fence, Mason was just in time to see the hose extinguishing the fire on church property and completely obliterating their tracks around it with the force of the water. The breath he had been holding escaped his chest and he felt a glimmer of hope that they would survive this night.

“We need to get back quickly. We are like sitting ducks until we get back home. Who knows if she will talk her way, or drain her way, out of this.” Sarah nodded, too winded and exhausted to say anything in return.

Plodding through the snow, Sarah tried to keep up as well as she could but was falling behind. Mason pulled her along, nervous about her but needing to get them out to the front yard where they could make better time home trudging along where the sidewalk would be. It was slow going and Mason spent half the time looking behind him to see if there was a dark figure trailing them or an owl ready to attack.

The sky was starting to turn a pale yellow as they reached the house and climbed the front stairs. Mason unlocked the door and they both slipped in quickly, locking the heavy mahogany door firmly behind them.

As soon as they w
ere inside Sarah collapsed, sinking to the floor.  Mason squatted next to Sarah and took her in his arms watching her lips tremble before she began to sob.

"She's going to come back for us, Mason.
She knows now." Sarah violently shook in fear and exhaustion. Resting his head on hers he could see all five candles still burning at the far end of the lobby. He closed his eyes and held her until the shaking stopped.

“It’s over, it’s over,
” he whispered repeatedly like he was casting his own spell.

The Jetta was finally packed and Sarah sat behind the driver’s seat waiting for Mason. It was one of those beautiful late winter days with a hint of spring that you can sometimes get in February. The temperature had turned a mild fifty degrees and the skies were blue and although snow was forecasted for later in the week, Sarah thought this burst of renewal was a good sign for bringing Mason home to meet her family.

After the incredible story Mason had shared, learning of her past and coming to believe in things she had thought only lived in children’s stories and Hollywood movies, and the harrowing and surreal night casting a spell she had found on the internet on sacred ground, Sarah had collapsed. Mason carried her three flights up to her room and let her sleep, standing guard in the living room. When her father arrived five hours later, Mason had greeted him at the door and found a very apologetic man. Ben had just hit a black cat who had run out from behind a snow bank in front of their house. He asked if it belonged to anyone that lived there and Mason had informed him that they don’t take pets and thought it was a stray. Ben had moved the cat to the sidewalk and Mason promised to call animal control.

Sarah thought about that morning, driving back to Connecticut with her father with him saying how horrible she looked and that it must have been the flu and then telling her the story of the cat. She almost laughed, giddy with the thought of how Mason had handled it and whether the cat could have been Selena or just another animal she conjured up.

Her mother doted on her for a few days and finally when it all began to feel like a strange, cold medicine-induced dream, she returned home to find the large round table moved to the back of the lobby and a floor length table cloth hiding the pentagon and candle stubs underneath. That moment made everything become real again.

Sarah drummed her fingers happily on the steering wheel as she remembered Mason coming to visit her when she got home. He had left roses for her in the apartment and she had been nervous to see him but as soon as she opened her door and saw the handsome man with the shiny black hair, eyes the green blue of the sea, and dimpled smile – and felt those muscular arms wrap around her – she knew she had fallen for him and that he would never hurt her.

As the residents returned to
Dunhill Street they had questioned who this new stranger was. Mason simply introduced himself to all as Aiden Murphy, the great nephew to Mason Brown who unfortunately had health issues that caused him to go into a nursing home in upstate New York. Although hard to say if there was a family resemblance to the hunched and ugly man who stayed in shadows the unique sea colored eyes would have connected him. No one questioned it, and all seemed quite pleased to have a strapping young man around.