Ancestral

by Kirstie Keatings

  At some point in all of her dodging, Adam ran back in with the sage stick and a lighter, handing it over to her as he ran, grabbing the wand from her before she could protest and drawing the spirit's gaze to him instead. With little choice but to do what he had set up for her to do, Lila lit the sage, holding the smoking bundle out and drawing a pentagram in the air. Shouting out a spell in Gaelic, the words sounded a little odd in her accent but were nonetheless effective. Choking out the incantation throughout a cloud of dust, she had just enough time to see the spirit yell out in rage before fleeing the house, right through the open window.

  As it left, it screamed out a warning, the sound seeming to flood the house and even inside her mind, making her cry out in pain, unaware of anything else. “You are fools! You have no idea what walks amongst you! You will not survive!” it screeched, seeming like more than one voice, like a thousand crying out all at once, so loud that she would not have been surprised had her ears begun to bleed.

  Chapter Three

  The aftermath of their encounter with the spirit was, at least to Lila, akin to what soldiers must feel when they were in the vicinity of a bomb going off. Her vision was skewed, her ears rang so loudly she felt her eardrums would perforate any moment. On top of this, a sudden exhaustion brought her to her knees, where she found Adam ready to catch her, already on the floor. She didn't remember him falling, and she couldn't hear what he was saying, the trilling noise in her head far too loud to allow any other sound.

  It felt like she only closed her eyes for a moment, but when she opened them again, she was surrounded by Sadie, Troy and Elsie. Elsie had her hands laid across Lila's forehead, her eyes closed as she muttered in a stream of Gaelic, too fast and too quiet for Lila to decipher. Moments after Lila regained consciousness, Elsie smiled, still chanting, obviously sensing that she was awake. Groaning softly, Lila looked up into their worried faces. “What happened? Where's Adam?” she asked, wincing at the volume of her own voice, which made her head pound.

  Sadie reached out, her face tear-streaked, to stroke her hand down Lila's arm, as if reassuring herself that Lila was real and not another apparition. “He's okay, we had to force him to go lie down, he was so worried about you. You've been out all night, Lila.” she explained, looking guilty. Lila could understand why – it was Sadie's mother who had attacked her, though it wasn't either of their fault she had. Sitting up, Lila winced and bit her lip.

  “Sadie... that wasn't your mother. Not really. It was whoever killed her, speaking through her. I'm sorry you had to see that. I won't try it again. It was stupid.” she sighed. “But we can help them. If we cleanse and destroy that athame, they'll be free.” Lila was still speaking gently, as if Sadie were a child rather than someone her own age. Sadie nodded mutely, though she looked anything but all right, clearly blaming herself for the outcome of the encounter.

  Sighing gently, Lila swung her legs around to put her feet on the floor, swaying lightly in her seated position. She could see now that she was in a bed, possibly Sadie's, where someone must have put her last night. A quick touch to her forehead alerted her to two stitches just below her hairline on the left side.”That's from the glass.” Elsie explained. Lila frowned, trying to remember glass specifically, but it was all a blur. “Oh.” she answered, trying to pass it off that she knew exactly what Elsie was talking about. From off to the side, Troy chuckled, rolling his eyes.

  “Come on, Sleeping Beauty.” he teased, slipping an arm under her shoulders so that she could use him for support. Raising to her feet, Lila realised she needed that support more than she thought she would. In an instance of vertigo, she felt nausea roll up her body, culminating in a burning sensation in the palms of her hands, leeching the warmth from everywhere else. Gripping tight to Troy's shoulder, she let it pass, then they began the walk down the hall. “See, glass.” he coaxed, as if he were talking to a child. She resisted the urge to punch him playfully. “Shut up.” she blushed, feeling embarrassed at her dim answer earlier.

  He was right, though. The entire upper landing was strewn with glass, porcelain, dust and debris. It seemed like every single breakable thing around them had shattered in an explosion, one that pulled it all inwards rather than bursting out. Even the window was broken into a million pieces. “Wow, what happened here?” she asked, causing everyone to go silent, searching her face to see if she was serious. Elsie in particular looked like she was searching for a concussion. “Relax. I'm joking.” she reassured them, giving a small triumphant smirk at turning the tables. Even Sadie laughed softly, the tension breaking. Good.

  Picking their way through the hall, Lila couldn't help but feel like she was walking across a battlefield, the shattered pottery and glass making her think of fallen soldiers. She shuddered; her thoughts were tinged with prescience, a feeling she'd only experienced once or twice before, in her youth. She was torn between accepting it as she knew she must, or dismissing it as an after effect of being so close to death recently. Even as she allowed the latter notion to cross her mind, she shook it off. No, it was more likely that her link to her ancestral magick had re-awoken her gifts from childhood.

  Despite her concerns, she chose not to tell her companions, figuring that they really had enough on their plates already. If it came to it, she'd bring it up, but hopefully their efforts would stop whatever her premonition applied to. The future was rarely set in stone, and if there were no chance to stop it, she wouldn't know that until it came to pass. Telling other people rarely ensured that things would change. On the contrary, sometimes telling people could put the future into motion as they tried to avoid the ultimate outcome.

  She only hoped she could find a way to stop it.

  Chapter Four

  Somewhere along their procession from the bedroom to their cars, they had agreed that Sadie would drive Lila's car and leave her own behind; it wasn't safe for Lila to drive in her current condition. She said very little, but got into the passenger seat when Sadie told her to, reaching out to squeeze the blonde's hand as she put it on the steering wheel. “Hey, Sadie... are you really okay? You can talk to me, you know.” Lila tried to project comfort and reassurance to the other girl, but she wasn't sure how well it came across with her own anxieties so close to the surface.

  Sadie shook her head, clearing her throat more than once as if the words were stuck there, her body trembling lightly beneath the skin. Lila waited, knowing that Sadie would indicate whether or not she was able to talk about it. After a long pause, she looked over at Lila. “I knew that she was gone, my mother I mean. How could she not be? They used an athame, whoever they are. I just wasn't ready to face it. I buried my head in the sand, thought that you'd be able to handle it as a Spirit user. I mean, of course I know that wielding Spirit doesn't make you a master of the dead or anything like that, but you can tap into it.. that sixth sense.” she tried to explain. Lila nodded.

  “Yeah, I get it. You're not far wrong, if that makes it any better. I do feel the spirit world. That's a power and a curse. Everything that comes from that side of death will work for us – mirrors reflect the soul, so we can use that to communicate, we can pull the dead from their rest, like I did with your mother – I'm so sorry, by the way – and send them back there. We can also be overcome by it, be dragged into death against our will. A lot of coma patients are actually spirit users whether they realise it or not.” Lila explained. “It's also pretty difficult to make it through life without coming across as plain old weird.” she gave an anxious laugh.

  Sadie smiled softly. “You're not weird.” she soothed, waiting until Lila had removed her hand before reversing the car out of her driveway. No doubt the others were wondering what had delayed them – they hadn't moved, though. “Though you might want to curb that wicked crush you've got on Dyzek, I mean seriously.”

  “What?!” Lila gasped, eyes wide. “No way. Nu uh. I don't fancy him!”

  “You don't? Awesome. More for me.” Sadie chuckled, sniffing loudly once as she shook off h
er melancholy. It was at this point that Lila realised Sadie had been fishing to find out if Lila had a thing for Adam or not, not pointing out something she'd observed. Laughing, Lila shook her head. “Wow, Sadie. Just wow.” Sadie grinned in response to the teasing, then leaned over without taking her eyes off of the road, clicking Lila's seatbelt into place. “Safety first.” she warned, smirking.

  Shaking her head, Lila reclined in her seat. She couldn't get a handle on Sadie, who seemed to breeze from one emotion to the next as easily as blinking. She had the feeling that, in reality, the other girl's emotions ran deeper than they seemed to, and that it was only her exterior she had control over. It was understandable, though. None of them were a hundred percent after the death of their parents, it always lay just in the recesses of their memories. Sadie had just had a more recent encounter with her parents death than all of them. It made Lila wonder how she would be feeling right now if it had been Moira, pulled from the other side to attack her new friends. It was good that Sadie had left the room, she decided. If she hadn't, she might have tried to stop her mother being sent back and there might have been more of them on the other side of death. Or was that just Lila? She couldn't imagine being okay with seeing her mother like that. Then again, she had the constant connection to the other side, and couldn't be sure that sending her mother back over would end their connection, not when the woman's magick resided within her.

  For Sadie, and indeed the others, it would be different. They could observe the moment of death and contact the dead, but feeling them was something different entirely, and she wasn't sure the coven leaders, with their affinities to elements bound to the Earth and life itself, could truly feel the vacuum left behind when corrupt souls touched your own. The last time she had done so, it was after one of her own coven members, Frank Wallace, had been murdered by a civilian using his own athame. Of course, the burglar who had broken into Frank's home hadn't known what he'd been doing. He'd simply seen the man putting away a particularly impressive looking blade and had taken it, using it to kill the witch when he'd been discovered. He clearly hadn't been counting on the fact that corrupt souls rarely rest easy, and even though he'd gotten away at the time, Frank's soul had hunted him down and had possessed the burglar's home, his 'poltergeist' activities resulting in the burglar killing himself.

  At this point, Frank's soul had appeared in Lila's home in front of her and her mother, seeking to corrupt his brother and sister witches. This had resulted in almost a week of terror for Lila, who had been six at the time, as her mother and father hunted down the murder weapon and cleansed it, but not before Lila had felt the press of an unclean soul against her own. The thought was still enough to make her shudder, though it was now tinged with the hint of a blessing, the sign of thanks Frank had left when he was finally able to move on to his next life.

  It reminded her that no one, not even if they were evil in life, wanted to be a lingering soul, to upset the balance between life and death. There were many different classifications of souls who stuck around – there were the corrupt souls of witches; these were rare, as the murder itself had to be carried out with a sacred object like an athame, and most witches were exceptionally careful about where they kept anything which could be used in that capacity. These souls could only be dispatched to their next life by a practising witch with an affinity for spirit. Then, there were the dark souls who had once been human and had let evil into their life. For them, it was impossible to let go; they were often consumed by their mortal 'purpose' and convinced that they could continue as they had done in life. These were the cause of most poltergeist activities in the world today, and any medium could get rid of them as long as they knew how to tap into their powers, however latent the witch gene may be in their particular family tree (all mediums were spirit witches, though they might not be aware of this and often chose to define themselves by the modern neopagan religions). These were the only forms of malevolent spirits, but they weren't the only ones who lingered.

  More often than not, Lila's interactions with the spirit world were more benign; there were the souls who had died abruptly, and didn't realise why they were dead. For these souls, a kind of amnesia sank in so deep that they barely remembered who they were – it was impossible for them to move on as they simply didn't know what unfinished business they may or may not have. The guidance of a medium was essential, but without a tie to their life, they wouldn't move on easily. To be truly effective, the medium also had to be a clairvoyant, or at least be working with one. This would help break the barrier of amnesia for the spirit and help them choose to move on, but if this failed it was also possible to force a spirit to move on through use of a spell.

  The final kind of spirit knew exactly who they were, and could often be the most difficult to deal with. They were the souls who couldn't let go of their families, or of some aspect of their life, and who clung on through sheer determination. Over time, their need to protect and guide their family could manifest in poltergeist-esque activities, if they took offence to a particular person, for example. These almost always needed to be forced across into the next life, but occasionally chose to move over, usually after their family asked them to leave so that they could get on with their lives and know that their loved one was free in their next existence.

  Lila had been so lost in thought that she hadn't realised they'd even left Clinton, never mind that they were nearly in London. Where had the time gone? It took an hour to get between Clinton and London, and she'd been so out of it, she'd missed most of the journey. Only the changing sensation of passing into a city stirred her out of it, and her movement drew Sadie's attention. “Morning, Sleeping Beauty.” she smirked, catching Lila's eye in the mirror. Lila groaned; it seemed like that nickname was catching on. Thanks, Troy. “I wasn't asleep, I don't think.” she answered, frowning and trying to remember.

  “I know that.” Sadie answered, a quick frown crossing her features. “You don't remember talking to me?” she asked. Lila shook her head, and Sadie whistled. “Damn, you weren't kidding.” she observed, making Lila frown in turn. “You told me you were across the border, or something like that. Into death – that you wouldn't remember doing it. I asked if you were nuts. You didn't answer that, by the way.”

  “Sadie.” Lila quipped; the other girl had a habit of getting off track.

  “Oh, yeah, well – anyway. You said that if you couldn't get the dead to come to you, you would go to them. Said you were going to speak to some ancestor or other and that I should listen very carefully to what you said.” Sadie continued.

  “And what did I say?” Lila asked; other spirit users had the ability to write things down, often referred to as automatic writing, but she had never mastered the skill. Maybe she'd have to change that now that she was apparently making the trip across into Death even without thinking about it.

  “Uhm, something about the massacre being a blood rite.” Sadie admitted.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. You said that we had to perform some ritual at the coven sites and then back in Waterloo. I wrote it down.” She tapped a piece of paper taped behind the steering wheel.

  “Don't worry. I pulled over in a lay-by to do it.” Sadie reassured Lila, seeing the concerned look which instantly formed on her new friend's features. Lila gave a sheepish grin, reaching out to take the paper from the dashboard.

  Looking down at it, she frowned again. Something about the ritual made her skin crawl, but it was indeed a Spirit spell, so no one but her own coven and ancestors could perform it. It involved opening each site to the spirit world, and was simple enough, but she couldn't think why it would have anything to do with the current situation.

  “The ancestors told you that they themselves would have to come forth from death to help us battle whatever is coming, but they wouldn't tell you exactly what it is. Said it was their responsibility to clean it up, that if they told you too much they'd be violating some sacred something-or-other.” Sadie seemed to explain exactl
y what Lila was wondering about. The dark-haired teen looked up at Sadie, giving a half-shrug.

  “Yeah. That sounds like the ancestors – cryptic and ultimately unhelpful, all while dressing it up as some kind of higher purpose.” she smiled wryly. “Well, if this is what they told me to do, we should do it. They aren't exactly the kind of people to mess about. I'll have to send someone to yours to do it, since we already left. It's not really the kind of thing I want to go back for.”

  Sadie nodded thoughtfully, then pulled a face. “That was scary, by the way.”

  “What was?”

  “You. When you first went over, all I saw was you sitting there, and you were so still, I reached out and touched you – you were literally freezing. I'm not talking about, 'oh holy Hell we live in Canada in winter and it's freaking freezing', cold.. I'm talking about the kind of cold that feels like you're going to pass out as soon as you step into it.” Sadie shuddered. Lila noticed that the heater was turned up to full and she smiled. “Sorry. I should have warned you not to touch me; Death can affect my physical body as long as I'm tethered to it, which I'd have to be to speak to you.” she explained. “I wasn't in any danger, though. I never leave my body without warding myself mentally. It's the only way to make sure it's me coming back.”