Once you get in, you can’t find your way out even if your life depended on it. It was an elaborately decorated, well-stocked trap.
One left turn had changed my fate. Lady Luck finally smiled upon me as I stare at the familiar door at the end of the corridor with a fading sign.
Storage Room
Oh, thank heavens!
I stopped in front of it for a few minutes to catch my breath.
The doorknob was cold in my hand as I twist it open.
Before I was able to open the door fully, there was a loud sound of something falling coming from inside.
I wasn’t able to move my hand on the knob as horrible thoughts fill my mind. My heart thumped loudly in my chest as my mind begins to conjure up all the worst possibilities of what awaited me behind the door. My gut tells me to turn and run away. Screw the records.
But I know that’s not what I want to do. I steeled my nerves and proceeded to open the door fully.
The musty darkness welcomed me. I couldn’t make out anything inside.
There was another loud sound of something dropping hard on the floor.
Pale hands emerged from the darkness and pulled me in. I heard the door shut with a bang behind me.
What have I gotten myself into this time?
The faint scent of the fabric encircling me is vaguely familiar. The strong chest pressing against my body shook as a soft chuckle escapes this unknown person’s lips.
I slowly opened my eyes to see my new captor. I thought the room would still be dark.
I was wrong.
It was bright.
Bright enough to show me the torn boxes in the corner, the scattered and toppled books around, the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, the opened hatch on the floor, and the person who pulled me into his arms.
Tears stung my widened eyes.
Pale skin, gold eyes, and a casual grin.
“Darling, I know I’m gorgeous, but you don’t have to gawk at me,” his voice drew the tears right out of me and I instinctively step back, covering my mouth as I stare at the impossibility before me.
Is this another one of those dreams?
Am I going crazy again?
“H-how?” My whole body is trembling.
Is this real? Please be real.
The man approaches me with slow, light steps. A gentle smile formed in his pink lips.
“You’re not the only one who can come back to life, you know. That’d be pretty unfair, don’t you think, Lili?”
“B-bran?” my shaking hand reaches for his handsome face. I didn’t think I would ever see this face again. I need to be sure that he’s real and not just another figment of my messed up imagination. His skin was cold to the touch and the amused twinkle in his eyes as he watches me check to be sure that he’s the appropriate amount of undead, tugs at my heart.
“How did this happen?” I gasped.
“As I said, you’re not the only one. Though, honestly, this time, the master did all the work,” he shrugged.
“The master?”
I didn’t see him back in the mansion. I never saw him once in the brief duration that I was there.
“Yeah. The master,” the devious grin I saw so much of in the last few days dances across his face.
His eyes shift from my face and fixes on something or someone behind me, and I suddenly remember where I am.
Did Astair find us?
“Speak of the devil, and he shall come,” Bran nods.
When I turn around, my eyes meet the azure sky of his eyes. His pale yellow hair looks softer than I imagined it would be as they fall just above his thin brows. The top button of his neatly ironed blue shirt is undone, exposing his collarbones and his left-hand rests inside the pocket of his smooth trousers.
If Bran is gorgeous, this guy is on a whole other level.
He looks very familiar.
“Liliwen, don’t be shocked, okay?” the vampire held my shoulders and turned me to him.
I could see the mischievousness creeping in his smile.
“We’re here to… how did that guardian witch put it? Oh right. We’re here to kidnap you again.”
The lights suddenly went out and were seeped into total darkness once again before I slowly slip into unconsciousness.
Chapter 4
A Piece of the Past
“Pathetic little Catalyst Witch.”
The mocking words coming from a child standing right in front of me forces me to open my eyes. Three boys are standing across from a little girl, with clenched fists, knitted brows, and looks of unmistakable hatred and disgust on their faces.
The little girl is wearing a red shirt that speaks of the harsh encounter she’s had with these boys. There’s a long gash above her eye and on her cheek as well as smears of dirt all over her face. Her torn ragged pants expose her tiny legs that also bore bruises. She looks to be around nine or ten years old, yet these bruises look as though she’s gone to war.
One of the boys who looks much older than her picks up a stone and throws it to her.
From where I stand, I flinch as the rock sails in her direction, but she stays fixed with the hardest determination glaring in her eyes. The stone misses, and the boy frowns.
“Why don’t you just die, you piece of trash?”
One of the boys dressed in a blue shirt and brown pants digs the ground with his hand to get a handful of wet dirt.
He looks like he could be no more than seven or eight. Who taught him to hate like this?
Anger, bred from the desire to protect this poor little girl burns inside me as the group laughs when the dirt hits her face.
With a huff, she roughly wipes it off with the back of her hand and continues to glare at them silently.
Why isn’t she doing anything?
Fight back! I want to scream at her, but she doesn’t hear me. My words bounce off the glass barrier around me as I continue to watch from a distance, this great tragedy.
She doesn’t take any nearby stone or dirt to hurl at them. She doesn’t shout anything in her defence.
Instead, she only stands there in a kind of frustration that mirrors mine.
I can’t move from my spot to intervene. I can’t hug this brave little girl or shield her from all these horrific things
My frustration turns to confusion when I realise that it’s not that she can’t fight back. She doesn’t want to.
What is wrong with you little one? Why won’t you fight back?
I can see in the way her tiny hands ball up into fists that she wants to fight back, but I can tell in the way her hands bleed from her nails sinking into her flesh, that for whatever reason, she is determined not to. “Whatever happens, don’t let them turn you into one of them.”
A melodic voice echoes through my ears. It’s the voice of a woman. Her warm tones are soothing to me and gently brush against the surface of my mind like a feather, as I try desperately to find her.
When I turn my attention back to the brave little soul standing there looking helpless, her face is soaked with tears. She cries silently, perhaps too proud to wail, though in my heart I am waiting for her. Even from here, I can feel the overwhelming sadness she has been trying to mask, almost as though it were my own.
“Whatever kind of witch they mock you for being, don’t let them turn you into a bad one.”
Again, the words echo within me like a calm soothing the storm. I can feel warmth spread across my chest as the words bounce through within me.
I find myself weeping for her; releasing the sobs that should be coming from her. Her determination is inspiring. Despite the twigs in her hair, the mud on her face and the holes in her already tattered clothes, Ii can almost hear her telling herself to stand her ground.
“You are more than what they think you are.”
There is a waterfall cascading down my face in response to the constant reassurance of this sweet invisible woman. The love in her voice is unmistakable. If only I could see her. If only I knew who s
he was, or even where she was.
“Everyone wishes you were dead!” the shouter boy standing towards the back of their little pack yells at her, a scowl scrawled across his mean face.
But the hurtful words are contradicted with a voice full of love, “You are my wish.”
A shout comes from the distance, and the boys turn in unison. One of them whispers, “It’s sister!” They all scurry in the direction of the voice without giving much thought to the mess they’ve made.
The brave girl continues to stand, watching them run off until her trembling knees finally give in.
There, alone on the ground on her hands and knees her shoulders vibrate as sobs rip through her and she tries and fails to catch her breath, weeping at the cruelty she’s had to endure.
I can’t help but admire her. Even in my glass bubble, I cry with her, relieved that even for a moment, they’ve left her alone. We are both a crying mess.
I badly want to run to her and tell her that she did an amazing job. That though I don’t understand why she was incredibly brave and very strong for standing her ground and not fighting those bullies. I want to apologize for the stupid bubble separating us. For not protecting her, but she suddenly interrupts my chaotic train of thought with a sad confessionary tone.
“I did it.
I didn’t hurt anybody as I promised,” she sniffles in between as she speaks to God knows who. There’s no one else around, and I’m pretty sure she hasn’t seen me.
“Are you proud of me, Mum?”
Mum?
It hit me like a speeding truck.
She did all this… endured all this just to honour a promise she made to her mother.
A mother who’s already...
Gone.
The thought surprises me.
Why do I know she’s gone?
I search within the corners and depths of my mind for an answer that I was not ready to see. I find it sitting in the corner of my cob-webbed mind. The dark parts where the light never reaches.
The girl is me.
The girl in front of me, crying her heart out as she calls to a mother who can never answer is me.
I clutch my chest; the feeling of heavy despair pressing against my rib cage. A building pressure that only a loud wail can ease, and only fractionally..
If I stop crying, I feel a pending explosion inside me. An ominous hand climbing up to my throat, threatening to suffocate me.
“Liliwen! Liliwen!...Lili!”
I jolt from the bed, latent sadness still gripping me as the sound of my name pulls me out of the dream and brings back to reality.
“Breathe, Lili. Breathe.” A cold touch goes up and down my back, as I struggle, do just that.
The familiar vanity mirror still sits across the bed with the closet, still as elegant as it was, besides it. The window looks the same way it did the last time I was here, and the red velvet curtain dances gracefully around it.
“Welcome back.” His gaze is warm despite his chilling touch.
I still can’t believe Bran is here, alive and by my side yet again.
His savage death is still so vivid in my head.
That wasn’t a dream. I know it wasn’t a dream. Although the entire night was horrific… almost a nightmare, I still know it was very real.
“Is it...really you? Are you really... Bran?”
There’s a familiar familial affection that springs to his eyes as he smiles at me.
“Of course, I am silly. Do you know any other vampire with a face as good-looking as this?” Definitely, Bran.
No mistakes about it. I don’t know many vampires as full of themselves as he is… I doubt I know anyone else as full of themselves as he is, and I love him for it. He turns his face to show me his ‘good side” and urges me to examine his flawless face. “It’s a garbage face, really,” the snotty remark comes from a large man standing behind Bran. I hadn’t noticed him standing there before and now that I have my heart feels overwhelmed with relief. My last memory of him is a cruel one. I still remember the feeling of my stomach churning as I saw pieces of the werewolf rain down on me.
“Dain... Dain is also here?” I just can’t believe my eyes.
“Yeah. I’m here,” his voice is as deep as ever, but his response is so soft, so quiet, it’s almost a whisper, and he can’t seem to meet my gaze. My reluctance to accept this reality keeps kicking me in the gut. This cannot be real, can it? I must have fallen asleep on the storage room floor or inhaled too much dust or something. This cannot be real… but if it’s not, then these are perhaps the most powerful hallucinations I’ve ever experienced. Maybe my mind has taken me where my heart longs to be. This is the place… these people… I don’t know why, but my heart longed for them. These figments must be the signs of a mind traumatized by a brutish coven and a vengeful witch. The damage they’ve caused must be enough to break and scatter beyond the boundaries of reality.
I seem to know all the faces here… even the woman standing to my right with innocent brown eyes staring at me as if she’s trying to see through me. I don’t recall seeing her the last time I was here.
Her long brown hair bounces as she cocks her head to the side, worries etched into her delicate face.
“Are you feeling alright now? You were crying in your sleep.”
My fingers reach for my face to find evidence of truth in her words. The trail of dried tears below my eyes confirmed she’s right. It must have been a dream.
If that was a dream, then what is this?
“Did you dream of something?” Bran’s eyes shine with curiosity...
“I...I did.”
“What was it?”
I tell them about the girl and her wounds. For whatever reason, I included the part where I felt what she felt and how the tears streamed down my own face as hers did. I conclude with the confusing realisation that the dream was showing me a part of my past and that the poor little girl was me.
The room is suddenly filled with silence. There’s an owl on the outside perched in a nearby tree that offers the only sound filtering through the open window as the three stands, silently looking at each other, as though having a private conversation.
The look in all their faces is enough to tell me that there’s something important about this dream, and I want to know what’s going on. I’ve been kept in the dark for long enough.
“Well? Is anybody ever going to say anything or are we just going to stand around all night staring at each other?”Bran is the first to speak, though when he does, there’s a seriousness in his eyes that unsettle me. “It will probably overwhelm you, but there’s something we need to tell you now.”
I’m already overwhelmed. What more could he possibly have to say that will add to that?
The other two remained silent. Dain seems determined to look at anything but me, and the lady, standing by me, can’t seem to look away.
I can feel the tension in my body wind me up even tighter as I brace myself for what he’s about to say. I feel like I have to prepare myself for this.
The owl goes quiet, and in the dead of night, I stammer out the question I know needs to be asked.
“W-what is it?”
With a sigh, Bran nods then leans into to whisper, “The truth.”
Chapter 5
The Curse of the Circle
A cool breeze blows in through the open window. The clear blue sky slowly gives way to a rhapsody of the sunset. Orange and yellow streaks the sky in a dramatic exposition, mirroring the drama unfolding within me as I lay here, trying to wrap my mind around the things I’m hearing. None of it makes sense. None of it seems true. Yet somehow, I know inside me that it all is. “What you just told us means the ritual is working,” Bran explains slowly as though speaking to a toddler. I would be offended if I didn’t appreciate the pace. He really did need to go slowly.
“What ritual?”
“The Undoing Ritual,” the lady on the other side of my bed says sweetly, though with less caution than
Bran. I wasn’t sure what to do with that.
The undoing ritual… okay. If this was supposed to be an explanation, she was failing.
“It is the ritual we used to undo the spell that was cast upon you. You probably know by now, the Guardian witch was erasing your memories every year and replacing them with another set of fake ones,” her thin brows crease as she keeps her eyes fixed on mine, studying my reactions.
“They’ve been cruel to you and your mind. Your real memories have been repressed deep within you, which is the only thing they can do to your brain since it’s so powerful.”
“Powerful? Me? My brain? I… I don’t know what you mean.”
“You have the most powerful photographic memory at this time and ours. An erasure spell on any other person, on any other creature, on any other witch, would do exactly that. It would erase the memories and their pathways completely.”
“But not me?” I ask, still in complete surprise.
“Not you,” Bran smiles, and there’s a look of pride in his eyes.
“They cannot erase your memories. They can only repress them. They’ve had to resort to pushing them down into the depths of your mind where you can’t easily access them.” She smiles, though I can see the annoyance lingering in her face. She doesn’t like this coven at all, and something about that makes me like her even more.
“They made up things that would fill the space left by your real memories.”
I suddenly feel very naked. My hands reach for my head automatically. It’s like I can feel the way they pushed down my memories, the way they scooped the fake ones out and poured in another year’s worth of new artificial memories.
Bran puts his hand on my head and gently and pats my hair like I’m a kid. He keeps getting away with these otherwise offensive actions because, in this moment, this kind of reassurance is exactly what I need. The growing anxiety in me dies down with each pat.
“Do you remember what I said you are?” Bran asks, and I look up at him and nod. Even if I didn’t remember, the little boy from my dream had reminded me just a few minutes ago.
“A Catalyst Witch?” I whisper, and he nods.
Witch's Wishes: Short Stories - Book Three - Witch's The Cursed Circle Series (Witch's Cursed Circle 3) Page 3