But Damien didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm. He stepped out of the car without another word and waited for me to do the same. We stared at the gloomy house for a moment before approaching the front door. The rain ceased as we arrived, but a howling wind remained, kicking up wet leaves and twigs all around us as we walked along the path on either side of which I noticed a collection of garden gnomes. The ones which hadn’t been stolen lay in pieces on the grass, some broken and others shattered. One such mangled garden gnome pointed an accusatory finger at the house.
Finally we reached the brown door. Damien didn’t have a key but he picked up a faux rock, turned it over, and located the spare key. He paused for a moment, staring at the way the light reflected off the metal, and pensive. What was he seeing?
“Damien?” I said.
He snapped out of it, retrieved the key, and put the rock back on the ground. Time seemed to slow to a complete halt as Damien slipped the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open. It groaned as it swung, almost in protest at being disturbed, and a stale, cold breath exhaled from inside.
Without skipping a beat, Damien stepped into the tomb-like house with his hands by his side and his fists clenched tight. I followed, doing my best to control my steadily quickening breath, and helped myself to a cursory glance of the front room, but a quick gust of wind pushed the door shut behind me with a loud smack and I almost jumped out of my skin.
“Shit,” I said.
Damien turned around. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, fine, that just scared me is all.”
I couldn’t see much of the house behind him—there wasn’t enough ambient light—but the darkness seemed to be moving, swirling, as if there were people in the house. My chest started to feel a little tight. I wanted Damien to get moving already, but remained motionless.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said, “But if we’re going to find answers they’ll be here somewhere.”
I shared Damien’s opinion. Somehow, I thought, we had to be here, doing this, right at this exact moment. Call it Fate, or a Calling, or even a Summoning. The conditions were right for us to be in the house right now, only I had no idea why we had to be here.
Careful and silent, we moved into the adjacent living room, mindful of our bodies in relation to any furniture we could trip over or knock over. Everything seemed to be exactly as it had been left; TV, couch, tables and lamps. I even saw Lilith’s altar in the corner of the room, sitting in the shadow of the large sliding window to the patio. It was a wooden podium with a fresh pinewood scent and seemed light enough to be portable. A crimson, gold-trimmed mantle had been draped over it. I noted a rectangular indentation in the cloth where a book should’ve been.
Every so often I would glance over at Damien to see what he was doing but he didn’t seem to know where to go. The memories must have been tough to deal with, though. A cold chill crawled up my left arm and caused my flesh to break out into prickles as if someone had dragged a cube of ice over it.
Fluttering curtains. Bedsheets.
In my mind the image of a bedroom was starting to form. A bed, thick curtains, dressers, slippers and night gowns; all the things one would associate with a warm, comfortable room to sleep in. I wondered where it had come from, but the thought didn’t seem like it was my own. It felt implanted somehow.
“Let’s go to the bedroom,” I said.
Damien didn’t argue and went ahead first, climbing the stairs to the second floor. The wallpaper on the staircase wall seemed discolored at points, as if pictures had been removed from their original place. Odd, I thought, since everything else had been left where it was. I thought about asking Damien what kind of pictures used to be on this wall but I doubted if he knew. The way he told it his sister had moved here and he hadn’t visited much.
The door to Lilith’s bedroom was ajar when we arrived and was creaking, swinging open and shut, with a stray breeze. Damien went to it and pushed, and the door gave way to a mess of a bedroom. The bed was undone, dresser drawers were untucked, and Lilith’s closet seemed to have thrown up its contents all over the bed and floor.
I rubbed my shoulders as I walked in to the room, noting the cold, and went for the window. A howling wind strong enough to rattle branches and shutters threatened to spill indoors if I didn’t close it, so I closed it and then got a good look at the bedroom. It was big—bigger than mine. It seemed like maybe she had knocked the wall to the guest room down and built a large bedroom with a king sized bed for herself.
Smart. Maybe I should do that, I thought.
Then I saw the photographs scattered over the bed and shut the random thoughts out of my mind. I picked a few of them up to examine them, but I did so carefully, as if they were priceless old documents stored in a museum. The first photo was a portrait featuring younger versions of Lilith and Damien, smiling, with the Golden Gate Bridge as a backdrop. I smiled with them. There were a few such pictures of the siblings in various parts of what I figured was San Francisco; eating at a restaurant, another of the pair on a boat, and so on. In one of the pictures the girl had a post-it note on her forehead with the word Lily on it.
“I had almost forgotten about that,” Damien said. He was standing over my shoulder. “She never liked the name Lilith, so she insisted we call her Lily instead. When we didn’t, she made post-its and walked around with them on her forehead for weeks.”
“She’s beautiful,” I said.
Lily had brown curly locks, tattoos on her shoulders, and perfect elfin features. She could’ve been a model! I found a few more photos of just her posing for the camera, but the distance between her and the lens made me question who took them. After digging through the pile I found my answer, and the answer set my heart running.
“Damien,” I said, shakily handing him the picture.
Damien’s nostrils flared. We both recognized the man in the picture; his plump lips and gap tooth were all over the news a few weeks ago. Frank, the primary suspect in what was, originally, Lilith’s murder case, stared back at us from the frame. Lilith pouted into the camera while Frank smiled widely. Still, someone else must have taken that one. But seeing Frank’s face again was shocking.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” Damien said.
I rubbed his shoulder. “His alibi was airtight.”
“That doesn’t mean anything; it just means he had people who could lie for him.”
“Did you know she had a boyfriend?” I asked still sifting through other pictures to find more of Frank.
Damien shook his head.
I handed Damien another picture of Lily. Another answer, this time to the question I had just asked. Lily’s lips were lovingly locked with another woman’s, though I didn’t recognize her at all. The photo, I noted, was taken in the Raven’s Glen town square. I recognized City Hall looming in the background. The photographer must have been Frank.
“What about a girlfriend?” I asked.
Damien took the picture and nodded. Maybe he knew or maybe he didn’t—he wasn’t being very clear with that—but he went silent for a while so I decided to let him be while I went around the room looking for anything else of importance and trying hard not to disturb anything.
My attention was soon pulled toward the open dresser on one of the long walls. Like a bloodhound with a scent, I reached into the drawer, pulled aside some clothes, and unhooked a clasp until a loose board came off.
Beneath it I found a diary; Lily’s diary.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I sat on the edge of the bed with Lilith’s diary in my hands while Damien tried to make sense of the photos. The thought of peering into her personal life left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I wasn’t presented with any other choice. The diary was dated, and the first entry was written in January of this year, meaning that she may have kept other diaries although I didn’t have a clue where they would be.
&nbs
p; Lily wrote an entry every couple of days, whenever she had a moment do to so. I admired her tidy handwriting and enjoyed the mundaneness of her life. Though Lily was a Witch, she did her best to keep her day-to-day affairs as Magick free as possible. In fact, I got the impression that her worst days usually coincided with times where she had decided to use Magick—out of need or convenience.
As I flicked through the pages, mention of a girl called Joanna and a man named Frank started to appear. Frank was Lily’s best friend, a Witch and an ex-junkie. According to the diary, her and Joanna were trying to get Frank off the drugs and succeeding. Joanna, I learned, was Lily’s girlfriend; Lily, like Frank, was gay.
The diary entries were light at first, detailing the move to Raven’s Glen, the daily struggles of suburban life, happy moments and fights, and even accounts of the first few rituals the Coven performed together. I had never met another real Witch before Damien came into my life. Everything was happening so fast.
Then I read something that made me float away on a cloud. But the feeling wasn’t a comfortable one. It was as if the room had started to elongate to the point where the words on the diary were no longer readable. I struggled to find my breath and shook my head, then came down from the cloud.
“Joanna’s dead,” read the diary, entry marked just a few weeks before Lily had died, “This morning they found her hanging from a tree in the woods. I’m devastated. I can’t cry anymore. I don’t feel anything now. My whole world is gone and I don’t know why. All I know is that I don’t want to live without her.”
“Damien,” I said, though I had to cough to clear my throat before the words came out. “Come have a look at this.”
He sat beside me and we shared the diary between us. The entries were hard to read, each like a blow to the gut—a kick from a boot. A ball wedged itself into my throat and my eyes glistened more with every turning of the page, tears threatening to spill over at any second. Diary entries were made every night from the moment of Joanna’s death, and they took a dramatic turn for the strange and the ghoulish as time went on.
Lily described seeing Joanna everywhere, from dreams, to supermarkets, to her bedroom window at night. Lights would go on and off around the house, doors would slam shut, windows would open and close and she would frequently return home to find her bedroom an upturned mess. Glancing at the disorder all around me I wondered what the bedroom looked like the last night Lily slept there, and if the activity had continued since.
“Open the last entry,” Damien said.
“I’m going to find her tonight,” the entry read, “If Joanna is trying to tell me something then it’s time I did what she was asking. Maybe that’ll bring her peace. I caught a Raven tonight and read its entrails; they told me to go to the spot where Joanna was found. I don’t know what I’ll find, but I can’t take much more of this.
I love her. I just want to be with her again.”
A strange weight descended upon my shoulders as I read the last line. Damien was oblivious to the change in the atmosphere, stuck as he was reading and re-reading the words, but something wasn’t right. It was as if the room was filling with water at a super-fast rate, and the pressure building from the sheer volume of the water was about to explode in all directions.
I stood bolt-upright, hands clenched tight, and listened to my heart hammering against my chest. Then I heard a crack coming from the window, and another, and another, then it shot open with a mighty moan and all manner of windy hell came screaming into the room. The door to the hall slammed shut, photos and clothes circled around the room caught in the tempest, and dresser drawers opened and closed on their own.
“Damien!” I said as I rushed toward the window. It was bucking up and down now, wildly and of its own volition. So I grabbed it and pulled, but my fingers were turned white and I wasn’t getting anywhere. That’s when I saw the face.
Like a breath of hot air on cold glass, a face was manifesting on the window right before my very eyes. Cold and grey and dead, the image was the likeness of Joanna, but her face was twisted with hate and anger and she was screaming and thrashing with a mouth as wide as a football and eyes as black as night. I thought it was going to swallow me whole, and for a moment—the briefest of instants—I would welcome death. Anything to spare my mind of the horror it was being subjected to.
“Get away from the window!” Damien yelled.
His voice snapped me out of it. I lunged for the bed and threw myself on it as the window came crashing down and locked without anyone touching it. Immediately the activity ceased; the wind died, the drawers stopped kicking, the bedroom door creaked open. All I could hear was my heart, and in the back of my mind, the Gods-awful wail of the banshee at the window.
“Amber,” Damien said, “Are you alright?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. It was like being in a nightmare, when you move your mouth to talk or scream but nothing happens for a time until you wake up and you sigh because it was only a dream. Only this wasn’t a dream. I wouldn’t just wake up from this.
Finally, I swallowed, blinked, and said “What… the fuck?”
Damien grabbed my hand. “I don’t know,” he said, “Let’s just get out of here.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I picked up as many photos as I could get, grabbed the diary, and headed for the stairs.
The whole house seemed different as we left. The air was so thick it was like being wrapped up in cellophane and all around us we could hear bumps and knocks, as if the house itself was trying to kick us out.
I couldn’t think, my mind coming up empty. I wanted to try and explain everything to myself, to encourage my logical brain to kick in and take over so that reason could triumph over fear. But the neurons weren’t firing and I knew I was fighting a losing battle. I didn’t imagine that face; that cold, dead, angry face. And I would never forget the terrible sound it made. It wasn’t a physical sound, not one I could hear with my own ears, but I heard it in my mind.
And somehow that was worse.
CHAPTER THIRTY
In our hurry we hadn’t bothered to check if the coast was clear when we left the house. So when we stepped into the front yard we were confronted by two tall, broad shouldered individuals; the Sheriff and his Deputy. The Sheriff was standing by the front door, towering over Damien and I while his deputy hung back a few paces. Both men were black silhouettes in front of the high beams shooting out of the squad car behind them, and both men threw long shadows across the yard and over the walls of the house.
“You two taking a stroll?” The Sheriff asked.
“Did we do something wrong?” I asked.
“We got a report of a couple of kids snooping around an abandoned house. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you?”
“Kids? Snooping? I—”
“This is my sister’s house,” Damien said, interrupting, “I have a key.”
“That so?” the Sheriff asked.
Damien nodded. “I can show you my ID too if you want. Lilith Colt lives here. I’m her brother Damien.”
“Lilith Colt is dead,” the Deputy snapped, “Her own brother should know that.”
“Maybe, but this is still her house and I have a right to be here.”
The Sheriff eyed us both, his expression as solid and unmoving as a mountain. Reading him proved to be impossible, not without Magick.
“If you’re going to visit a dead relative’s home then fine, but be quiet about it. This is a good neighborhood. We don’t need people causing a ruckus.”
Ruckus? “Wait, what—” I was about to speak, but Damien took my hand and squeezed it so I shut up.
“Sorry Sheriff,” Damien said, “We’ll be quiet next time.”
“Go home and get some sleep,” the Sheriff said, “Tomorrow I’d like for you to come down to the station so that I can ask you a few questions. Understood?”
“Alright. I’ll come in first thing.”
The Sheriff nodded, turned
around, and headed toward his car. The Deputy kept his eyes on us until the last, stepping into the car a few moments after the Sheriff had. I took a deep breath as the car disappeared, and then turned to Damien.
“What in the world just happened tonight?”
“I don’t know yet,” Damien said, “But you should go home and get some rest.”
“And you?”
“I will too. I have to meditate on this.”
“But Damien… what about Frank? We need to talk to him. I don’t think he had anything to do with what happened to your sister, or Joanna. They were friends, Damien.”
Damien shook his head. “I don’t think so either.” He sighed. “C’mon, go home, clear your mind and your aura from all this stuff and get some rest. I’ll come to the shop tomorrow and we’ll talk about Frank.”
I nodded and let go of his hand. “Let me drive you home at least.”
Just like our drive to Lily’s place, Damien and I sat in silence. We parted ways without more than a tired goodbye, which spoke volumes about the way Damien was feeling. I wanted to help, but I also didn’t have any energy left in me to help him with. So I conceded to letting him go home alone and went home myself.
Once home I locked up, ate some grapes, undressed, and took a bowl of water into my attic wearing nothing but my red ritual robe. I lit a few candles, drew a pentacle into the ground, and sat cross-legged in front of my circle of power. I brushed my hair out of my face and over my head, then slid the robe off my shoulders and let it fall behind me.
In my mind I called a beautiful orb of silvery light from the aether and asked it to envelop me in a protective cocoon. “I am protected by your might, oh Gracious Goddess, day and night,” I said, repeating the prayer under my breath. I dipped my right hand into the bowl and dripped some over my naked shoulders. The cold water trickled down my chest and breasts toward the ground, exciting my warm skin.
I continued for a while, uttering the prayer of protection and cleansing and allowing myself to get lost in my own movements. With wet fingertips I lightly caressed my tender flesh; arms, breasts, stomach, legs, and feet, and letting the tingles roll over me as I went. This wasn’t a sexual thing, it was meant to cleanse me of stress and anxiety and any negativity that may have hooked on to my aura from my visit to Lily’s place. I had done it before, but never had I felt the tiny vibrations I was feeling in my chest and hips tonight.