Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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Abandoned Witch
Shadow Claw | Book 6
Sarah J. Stone
Contents
Abandoned Witch
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Abandoned Witch
Chapter 1
The mother’s life was at stake, but there was no way she would have gotten rid of her child. She had been trying for years and would not let go of the opportunity to have this child. Her daughter.
The pregnancy itself was a miracle. Being infertile, she and everyone else had lost all hope of her ever conceiving and having a family in the future. The woman didn’t understand her complications until she was twenty-two. And though she had convinced herself that it was not necessary to have a child for a happy marriage, she was still heartbroken that she could not conceive her own child. Her husband had been good to her, though, and loved her all the same. Her fertility did not determine the fruit of their marriage.
She’d missed her period for the first time in three years. She thought nothing of it until the whole week passed and she got sick. And when the doctor she had visited revealed the news to her, she could not believe it. It was so overwhelming that she had fainted right on the spot.
But it wasn’t all good news as she warned the mother-to-be that the child would be inexplicably dangerous to her body.
“Only one of you will survive if you choose to keep the baby,” she tried to explain to her, “And there will be no point in your death if you’re not around to take care of them. You still have time. Consider an abortion.”
She wouldn’t have it. She wanted this child. She’d spent too long in misery to let it go. Her husband thought she was insane. He couldn’t imagine a life without her. He couldn’t imagine raising a child alone. He tried his best to convince his wife to get the pregnancy terminated, but even then she did not budge.
And now she was screaming through the pain as she felt her whole body rip apart from the labor. Her husband could see he was losing her, and he held her hand begging for her to hold on. And she held on tight enough to turn both their knuckles white as she pushed, a scream ripping from her throat from the last of contractions.
She was embraced by the oblivion.
* * * *
Soft cooing filled the room as she came back around. Someone was dabbing a wet cloth at her forehead. She had been moved from the bath to a bed where she was hooked up to an IV and heart monitor.
“You’re awake!” one of the nurses cheered, “Finally! I can’t believe you made it, Linda!”
“I-I’m alive?” Linda croaked, turning her head slowly with all the energy she could muster to look for her daughter. Where was she? Did she make it? If Linda had made it, then her daughter hadn’t. The doctor had made it clear only one of them could survive. And she had begged them to keep her daughter and let her go.
They hadn’t listened to her, had they?
“So is our little one,” her husband, Kyle, said softly, happiness oozing off him in waves as he came forward with a pink bundle in his arms. Linda’s heart set off at the sight and she shot up in bed, feeling instantly dizzy. But she didn’t care. Her child was alive. They had made it.
It was an absolute miracle.
* * * *
They went home the very next day. Linda had to deal with a lot of post-pregnancy problems but she had recovered in health amazingly, and she’d recovered enough to try and take care of herself. The doctors still insisted on caution and sent a nurse with them. But with the way Linda was handling things, even the nurse was impressed and felt she really wasn’t needed, so she took to Linda’s health instead until she had completed her duration of the job with them.
No cry of hers was enough to put them off. It made them happy she called out for them, screeching in the middle of the night for their warmth. She was none a burden or any hindrance, but rather a catalyst to get work done quickly to spend time with her. It wasn’t long before Linda’s and Kyle’s families started to drop by and shower the little girl with blessings, gifts, and love. She was the apple of everyone’s eye. For all the other kids felt, they thought their parents would abandon them for the newborn. But before jealousy could ensure, absolute adoration fell over their hearts at the sight of her.
She was an absolute miracle of a child.
* * * *
The little thing grew up with too much love, and she had too much to give. She was the one everyone in class fought with each other for to sit next to at lunch. They fought to have her on their teams. They fought to be her friends.
The fighting led to bitter rivalries for the pettiest of things. And they were soon no longer fighting over her, but simply with each other with no proper reason to explain to the teachers. And with hatred for each other brought hatred within a few for the little girl, as they came to understand why such a conundrum was happening in the first place.
And within the next week, everyone was against her. The adults could not understand what was going on, but the little thing could no longer be left alone for fear that she might get severely hurt. Putting glue in her lunch, trying to push her off the stairs, knocking her off in P.E, and cutting her hair off in art class was not the way to go for six-year-olds. But the viciousness was abhorring, and the parents were indifferent to it. Perhaps they were jealous that their child wasn’t given as much attention as the little girl got, and felt she deserved such treatment.
No one deserved it, though. No one. And the little girl knew that. She was too young to understand, but she knew she did no wrong.
She threw a fuss when her parents tried to drop her off to school. She threw tantrums when it came to food. She let no one touch her hair to comb and tie up, and she hated stairs.
Linda and Kyle were at loss. They didn’t understand what to make of it until her principal called them up for a meeting. When they visited the school office and came to know of the injustices, havoc ensued. They were filled to the brim with rage, and soon, it was a war against the neighborhood.
The little girl was never left alone. Her parents’ eyes were on her and the other kids everywhere. The other parents pulled their children away from her, leaving her alone, no one to play with. She was heartbroken. She’d given away so much love only to receive so much hate. And she didn’t understand what to make of it. She’d never felt so lonely and sad before. She’d never felt
so unloved before.
Linda demanded her school be changed next year. Kyle agreed and instead picked up the whole family and moved away elsewhere, close to her cousins, who gave her all the love and attention she could’ve ever asked for. And no one hated each other. Or her.
Arguments would alarm her. Fights would make her cry. A feather of negativity would be enough to set her off into a full-blown rage of tears. She had no control over her emotions, and no capability to understand anger, sadness, or impatience. She had no tolerance for spite. She had none for evil. And her parents figured she needed a therapist to help her understand.
A few weeks later, she was off to a new school. But she was very cautious and quite carefully choosing who to extend her kindness to. And she experienced there what she had expected the whole time. Bullying.
It shouldn’t have been bad, but it felt worse. Because they were words used as weapons. Words that made her think too much and kept her up at nights. Words that fell like knives on her heart. Words she didn’t understand what she did to deserve.
But her therapist had made sure she became a strong and brave girl, so she pushed forward and endured it all. Even though it hurt so much.
It stirred a darkness within her she didn’t realize she had. She felt things she didn’t before, and did not want to. To hurt and to spite. To isolate her own self. She wanted nothing to do with people. She wanted to be left absolutely alone.
Her ninth birthday rolled around and her parents made sure to invite all the nicer kids they knew. The little girl was quiet, but did not refrain from enjoying the party. She was grateful for her parents’ thoughtfulness. She loved parties and strawberry cake.
“Linda, it would be so nice if you guys could attend Riley’s party next week!” one of the mothers chirped, “We’re holding it at the pizza place right around the corner.”
“Definitely! We’d love it,” Linda replied, and smiled at her daughter. She only smiled back weakly at her mother and quietly returned to her cake.
* * * *
“She doesn’t seem happy, Kyle.”
“She’s just getting used to the new place.”
“No, something is really wrong with her,” Linda hissed, “It’s not like no child goes through what she does. I think we need to call in her therapist again to teach her how to cope.”
“I think,” Kyle started defensively, “the little shits in this neighborhood need someone to teach them how to not be assholes.”
“Oh, and can we?” She rolled her eyes. Kyle only sighed and dialed the phone to book an appointment for Friday.
The party was quick to roll around, and the little girl had made Riley the nicest present she could think off. She knew Riley loved to paint, and so she’d gotten her the best acrylic paints and brushes she could find, wrapping them in orange, her favorite color. It was something Riley accepted graciously. The little girl only smiled at her emptily. She had drained out the last of her love on that present. Now she had nothing left in her heart but a darkness trying to poke its way in.
She did not feel like playing with the other kids. They were all crowding around Roy to play. And he was a very mean boy. She didn’t like him one bit.
“But that just means he likes you,” Riley giggled to her.
She turned hard, giving her a look she’d never really given anyone befor., “You don’t hurt other people you like.”
Riley’s face fell as the little girl moved away from the scene and walked toward the trees at the back of the yard to climb, so she could be away from everyone else. And away from Roy who had started to follow her around.
“Why are you climbing the tree?” he called up to her.
“To get away from you,” she huffed and settled herself onto a sturdy branch.
“You’re a monkey,” he laughed, “an ugly one.”
“And you’re an ogre, but no one is complaining about it either so I think it’s okay to be a monkey,” she said.
“An ugly one?”
“As long as it keeps you away from me.”
Roy didn’t know how to respond to her. Her remarks were very different from the rest of the children he knew. It was strange to deal with her, but he liked bullying her because it was hard to make her cry. And he would win if she cried. His daddy said so. He would get him a skateboard if he managed to make her cry.
“What if you fall off from up there?” Roy said.
“And on you? If it breaks your bones, then I don’t mind.”
Roy was started to feel disturbed. No one ever implied any sort of harm in this way before.
“Maybe you should break some yourself!” he said in rage and tried to climb the tree. He wanted to push her off, and he was good at climbing himself, albeit for the weight and flab that held him back.
“Get away from me, Roy,” she said calmly, “I wanted nothing to do with you in the first place.”
“Why?” he taunted, “I can go to whoever I want, and do anything I want.”
“Who says?”
“My dad does.” He smirked. The little girl frowned at him.
“I will hurt you if you come near me, so get away.”
“You can’t do anything to me.” He laughed as he reached her branch and started to pull himself onto it.
“Get away!”
“Make me.”
And she screamed. She screamed just as loud as when she would throw a tantrum. She screamed so loud that Roy cringed, battling between holding onto the branch and covering his ears with the same hands.
Some of the parents heard the commotion and tried to locate where it was coming from. It was the weirdest scream they had ever heard. One that echoed from everywhere, rendering their sense of direction absolutely useless. But Linda and Kyle rushed around in panic, recognizing it belonged to their daughter and trying to find where she could be.
The little girl screamed. She screamed and screamed until the darkness in her heart in the form of hatred she held for Roy shot out of her. And right at him.
Roy’s eyes widened as he saw the mass of darkness coming toward him, going right through his chest and disappearing within him. And his whole body froze.
From his arms to his blood, to the heart and lungs, the mind and bones, he froze. Unbreathing, he hung there like stone, eyes wide open looking at the little girl. His soul had been engulfed and fed on by the darkness that had shot into him, and it left and returned to the little girl when done, bringing to her a sense of peace and calming her down. She stopped screaming, looking at a frozen Roy. And she knew that whatever had happened wasn’t a very good thing.
What’s happened to him? she thought, a little alarmed. She started to move to get off the tree, but the adults soon found them, and she froze in her spot.
“Roy! Get off from there!” A man, most definitely his father, called out to him. He rushed forward past the rest and started to climb.
Kyle was quick to reach the tree and stood under the branch where she was sitting. He held out his arms and beckoned to her, “Come on down here, sweetie.”
She jumped and fell into her father’s trusty arms that held her tightly against him, “You better control that son of yours, Blake! He’s always after my little girl.”
“Roy…” he breathed as he looked at his son. He looked down, absolutely confused and petrified, “He-he’s frozen. He’s not breathing.”
“What’s happened to him?” his wife choked out, losing her breath, “Get him down here!”
“His arms are frozen!” he yelled at her, “He won’t let go! Roy? Roy, can you hear me?” he shook the boy’s body with a hand, but he immediately pulled away, face contorting in pain and horror, hardly able to say anything, “He’s so cold…”
“Blake, get down now,” someone said him, “Come on.”
“No,” he croaked, “Something’s happened to my boy.”
“We’ll figure it out, just come down,” another came to pull his leg, “We’ll call fo
r an ambulance. Maybe it’s some kind of shock or seizure.”
The girl’s father held her close and backed away from the scene, “Do you know what happened to him?”
She looked up at him and shook her head. He sighed and shifted her onto an arm, wrapping the other around Linda as Blake and his wife held each other and sobbed in worry.
The paramedics arrived in the next ten minutes, but could not figure out how to bring him down. His hands were frozen and would not pull apart from each other to make way for the branch to pass through them and lower him. They had to ask for a saw to cut away the branch and bring him down. He was absolutely cold. So cold that his blood had somewhat frozen in his system, along with his muscles. He was taken to the hospital, but they could find nothing, and do nothing to bring him back to normal. There was no brain activity, and no energy to show up in thermal scans. He was cold, and not even the temperature of his surroundings. But he was very much dead.
Chapter 2
No one could understand what had taken place, and neither could the little girl, but Roy’s parents were too grief-stricken to care and the blame fell on the little girl. Linda and Kyle were extremely upset at such an accusation and tried their best to defend their child, and the other parents felt it was just the grief talking and there was simply no way a kid could do such damage in the first place. But soon, as if some curse overtook everyone’s reasoning and rationale, they started to blame her.
Maybe they just wanted someone to blame. Maybe they just wanted an explanation to Roy’s death. But it made sense to point fingers at Linda and Kyle’s child since she was the one who was there, and if she couldn’t give answers then she was the answer. The culprit.
And she was isolated once again. And not just by the neighborhood. Heartbreakingly enough, her parents had started to believe the rumors, too. They came into her room every night to talk to her and ask her what exactly had happened to the point she’d feel anxious every night of them coming again. She couldn’t sleep peacefully. They’d keep watch over and she understood that it wasn’t to protect her this time. Her parents pulled away from society, locking themselves up in their homes and not meeting anyone’s face. The cousins, aunts, and uncles tried their best to bring the parents out from under their dark clouds, but it only seemed to pull the rest of them into it as well. And soon, even they couldn’t go on defending her.
Abandoned Witch (Shadow Claw Book 6) Page 1