A Cursed All Hallows' Eve

  “The Mastema had come to a ritual circle all drunk on wine or black magic,” her grandfather just continued his story despite her protests, as if no one else had spoken.

  Luca could see from the set of his jaw and the stiffness of his hands he was wound tightly, tormented by the memories. “They captured several of those in your parent’s coven. A few had escaped and come for someone to help them. They knew the police were a compromised group under the control of the Mastema, so they came here for your Mammie and me.

  “We had raced for the clearing in the woods, but all that remained was fire and blood. They had terrorized them somehow. No one seemed capable of a full explanation. Your mother had been severely beaten, she lie tied in the circle just inches from where their fire raged unattended, when I dragged her body away from the flames. Your father had been cut several times, deep wounds, with his own athame, I guess. It was left sticking out of his chest. These were fatal wounds, though neither of them were dead yet.”

  Her grandfather’s voice broke. Luca was sure the choked emotion rose from the remembered image of his son and the daughter-in-law he had loved as they were on the last night of their lives. He could imagine the vivid images in his head still created their own physical pain in her grandfather now, all of these years later. He waited for her to reach out to her Poppie, to comfort him, but she didn’t. She just stared at him like she had never known him at all. Her malady shown by the way she slumped in the chair letting her head fall to her shoulder. Even with her hair covering her tear-streaked face, the current of their affliction grew to a force Luca knew he would have to reckon with soon.

  After a brief pause, the old guy continued through intermittent half-sobs he did not even attempt to hide any longer, “Your father begged of me with his last breaths to never tell you. They would not have the Mastema coming for you someday, too. We were to protect you from magic, the good and the bad, at whatever cost. Your Mammie and I practiced in secret, although I knew how badly she wanted to teach you about what she saw as a gift. Your beautiful mother, lying where I had dragged her to your father’s side, had grabbed your father's hand and nodded her agreement without ever opening her eyes.”

  Kamillia lowered her head, cradling her face in her hands, her hands and brought her elbows down to rest upon her knees. She folded her body over her lap so fluidly it appeared to no longer consist of bones.

  A moment of déjà vu hit him, which he shook off. Given he knew nothing of his past, there was no point in entertaining such an absurd idea that they’d known each other in past lives. He could see from the rise and fall of her back her breathing was faster than it should be. Her stress affected her, especially after all her body had been through tonight. Mentally, she was on overload as sure as she was physically wrought.

  He addressed both Kamillia and her grandfather to offer his suggestions, “Why don’t we leave it for now. We can let Kamillia rest with her own thoughts for a time. I do not think she will be attacked again tonight. The original source of the negativity has receded from the room.” He cringed when he thought of the unfavorable level that had been built back up in the room by other means. “In the morning, Kamillia can ask her questions with a fresh mind and body. We can give her any proof she may need then.”

  He had wanted to touch her, to comfort her in some way; but he didn’t dare overstep his bounds at the moment. She needed some time and some rest. As if she heard his thoughts, Kamillia raised her head to look at him through her watery eyes. She looked so frail; and although he had only known her hours, he could tell it was not a common way of being for her. Every ounce of her being rejected what seemed to be attacking her now.

  She stood on her own, and he hovered behind her, bracing to catch her if she swayed in any way. She nodded at him once before she walked around the table with slow, robotic movements. Grabbing her clothing bag, she left her computer behind.

  Luca followed when she disappeared through the doorway of the kitchen into some other room in the house.

  “No,” she said to him in a solid tone without turning his way, “I need to be alone.”

  “Yes, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t get light-headed on the way.”

  “I am fine. I can yell if I need you.”

  As she walked away something in him burned. He felt like he had been dismissed, like she had seen him as a nuisance instead of her protector. He tried to shake it off as he went back to the kitchen to tell Poppie he would need the room next to hers to watch over the energy surrounding her as she slept.

  Chapter Three

  Luca lie there in a rustic, yet warm bedroom which suited him fine except for the smell of old, dusty neglect which seemed to permeate each piece of furniture. Despite his attempts to keep his thoughts from her, he had found her image floating through his mind numerous times. On top of that, he could not filter out the images of the incident she had been put through tonight. The flashes kept returning like bile to choke him, rousing his fierce need to protect her.

  Instead, he over concerned himself with the bedspread, a light quilt rich with shades of barn red and hunter green. Bears and paw prints, as well as canoes and pine trees fell in to fulfill the design. At one time the furniture had clearly been painted to match and then sanded to give it that old look, which had now been perfected by actual aging. The walls had been simply white washed with a rough wooden molding trimming the door and the windows. The wash also ran the baseboards and bordered where the wall met the ceiling. It was a nice blank slate for a sign from the other Watchers to appear on. He couldn’t help wondering when a sign would come to tell them what to do next.

  Glyphs were the way the Watchers sometimes communicated with each other over long distances or between realms. Appearing as burnt symbols on the walls, invisible to humans, they usually came when events required a decision to be made. Guidance. The sign would either confirm they were on the right path, or serve as a warning.

  Uncomplicated in design and meaning, nevertheless, noticing them and heeding their message was of dire importance. Depending upon the way a line curved and its placement on a main horizontal line, the message could be to go or to stay while its length indicated increments of time. A second curved line indicated the present amount of danger.

  A slight knock on the door startled him, and as he leapt for the door he wondered why he had not heard anyone’s footsteps in the hall. He opened the door with a woosh of air and almost gasped aloud.

  Kamillia stood in the entryway, her thin cotton sweat pants accenting her curves despite the boyishness of the outfit. Her t-shirt hugged over all the right assets to leave him straining all the more in his damn jeans.

  “Are you all right?” His heart skipped a beat, fearing they had tried to attack her again in some way while he was not beside her. “I knew I should have never let you out of my sight. I am sorry. I thought I was close enough to sense the energy.”

  “I am fine. I just have a few hundred questions for you, though. Sorry to wake you at this hour, but they could not wait.”

  Luca moved aside, stifling his sigh of relief while gesturing her into the room. She walked right past him and plopped onto the bed. No inhibitions whatsoever. He swallowed deep, pushing back the instinct to shake his head. An ache moved from his groin into his stomach. His reactions to her, while arousing on some deep level, scared him in lieu of his focus for the mission just the same. He knew what this meeting was going to require in order to explain the magic to her.

  He just hoped if called upon to teach her how to use it, he could maintain a proper, or at least appropriate distance from her at the same time. Magic was such a personal matter. It intimately connected those endowed with its gifts, but if the use of the power was taught the energies shared merged together binding the two to each other forever. This was usually not a problem. A friendship unlike any other would be born of it. However, this time, he feared stepping up their connection in any way could be his undoing, lest his urges be given any leeway at all.
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br />   “I know you are still questioning the magic.”

  “That, and so much more. I trusted my grandfather completely. He has never lied to me in my life. He has taken care of me above and beyond what was required of him. I love him so much, as I loved my Mammie.”

  Luca paced the room rather than sitting beside her on the bed, but the break in her voice snagged his attention more than her words. When he turned to her, he curled his fingers into fists at his side to keep them to himself as the buildup of tears made her eyes glisten.

  “Your grandfather?” He was shocked to hear her address him so. “Don’t pull away from him now, Kamillia. He is still very much your Poppie. I am so sorry so much has been thrown at you in such a short time. You are right to trust in him, though. He told you the truth when you needed to hear it. Imagine a secret sealed on a deathbed being your last line to your child. Did he have any other choice but to keep it? He was raising you for his son, in place of his son. It was a decision made by all in haste, but it was all bound up in the love of three generations. Your parents could not have foreseen such events as today. I am sure they had your best interests at heart at the time, and fear had to have played a powerful motivator. But, you surely understand why he never broke his final promise to his only son. And, it does not take much to see how much he came to love your mother, too.”

  “She was amazing, my Mammie. I called her Mammie. It fit, I guess, because it was so close to mommy, which is more of what she was to me. I have no memories of my own parents.” She continued on as if he hadn’t spoken, looking past him as if he weren’t in the room. “She taught me so much. We spent hours together. No matter what the job needing to be done, it didn’t need done so fast or in such a way that a child couldn’t help. She taught me to cook, to knit, to clean, and everything else I ever needed to know. No matter what I asked of her, she told me without embarrassment, without glossing over the truth. She was always brutally honest with me even at times when I could tell my poor Poppie, who was outnumbered in the house, was uncomfortable with her level of honesty.”

  When a smile broke through, momentarily detouring the tears that had just begun to spill over onto her cheeks, he thought himself safe from the internal struggle he had of how to comfort her. He had to keep her trusting him while maintaining a decent amount of space between their two bodies. He wouldn’t strengthen the trust factor any by coming on to her.

  “I could see him like that... uncomfortable with the female conversations, I mean,” he added intending to show he had been listening.

  He sat down cross-legged on the floor at her feet, giving himself off the proximity and action that spoke of caring while still not touching her.

  “Yes.” She laughed again and it comforted him immediately. So much so, he wanted to grab her and hold her to him to celebrate in the relief washing over him. “But, like I said, she was always honest with me, always. But now, I am supposed to believe, both my Poppie and Mammie, who I thought had never lied to me before, have lied to me my whole life. They both lied to me for my whole entire life…my whole life, Luca.” Her repetition of the fact came with the softening of her voice. Maybe she though if she said it enough, it would somehow make sense. “She practiced behind my back, what I don’t know, but she never passed on her knowledge of whatever it was. How can I believe it of her? Does it change…?”

  She dropped her head to cradle it in her hands, covering her face as her sobs really started. He couldn’t hold back any longer. He trailed his hands over the silky strands of her hair as her body moved in sorrow. Before he knew it, she sunk to the floor, falling into his lap. He wrapped his arms around her, and he felt her tears soak through his shirt as he pulled her in tight to his chest. Surely she was a sad and desperate woman to fall into the arms of a stranger, and the idea of that hit home like a brick thrown into his gut.

  His heart beat against the constriction of his chest. The confusion and fear and hurt were all around her. He put his own positive energy out there, trying his best to ease her pain. He also tried his best to ignore how she sat on his lap with her ass pressing against his groin. This was only a slight bit more difficult than overlooking the way the side of her rounded breast rubbed against his chest with every sob. Damn, he had never had such a tough time being a mortal man before. His body’s desires overrode his emotions and hindered his self-control. Still, he felt he knew her, as if he’d held her before today.

  She scrambled from his lap all of a sudden, as if she could hear or sense his impure thoughts.

  “I am so sorry. I should not have taken advantage of you that way. I just needed a friend, and well, you are here. I’m sorry. You are not here to have to cater to my every whim. Sorry.”

  She took a few small steps away from him as she spoke, her actions prompting a tighter control on his inclination to jump up and wipe the tears from her face. Her poor skin had reddened even more from her blushing than from her crying. So, instead of heading the distance she created, he stood to meet her; and despite all of the warning signals going off in his head, he cupped her face in his hands.

  “I am here for many reasons. You have just absorbed a lot of information. You are reacting as you should. I can be a guard and a friend, if you allow it. Hey,” he lifted her chin with a crooked forefinger instinctively knowing her gaze should follow. “Look at me. I would be worried if you didn’t react this way. A lesser woman would have crumbled long before now.”

  “Thank you.” She finally looked at him then.

  He could feel the emotions wrestling in her mind pouring baser energy over him, made more profound by his touching her so intimately.

  “Ask me your questions, Kamillia. Maybe I can help to ease some of your anxieties. I have a feeling you are going to need all of the positive energy you can muster soon.”

  “You mean the Mastema are still after me? I’m obviously still in some kind of danger, or you would have left by now. But, how will my being happy or sad affect what they can do to me?”

  “The magic your Poppie speaks of is powered by emotions that are in line with the loving basis of the universe. I can teach you to use it in your fight against them.” Didn’t take you long to offer, did it?

  “Magic again. I am supposed to believe my parents are like the fictional characters I write about? They could think a thought and light up, make things happen like you and my grandfather seemed to do earlier. I just can’t get that out of my head. I saw it. I witnessed it, and yet still I can’t comprehend at all this demon and magic thing that you two claim is real.”

  “Is it really so farfetched, given you read minds to gain inspiration for your stories?”

  Kamillia gasped as soon as the words left his lips, an expression of sheer shock crossing her face. “How do you know that? No one in this entire world knows that. I never even told my pets, lest I be overheard and sent away in a white jacket with my arms tied behind my back.”

  When she wrapped her arms around her middle he was not sure if she was physically showing her words or feeling sick again.

  “Imagination was revered in this house, but things like magic and witches were strongly deemed fantasy. Wait, so that was all some cover-up while they practiced these things in reality? I was made to fear telling anyone my secret, even them, because they were keeping secrets from me? As I grew up, it didn’t take long to see that some writers were already assumed crazy on some level. But wait, I’m getting off topic. Back to the question at hand. How could you know that about me?” Her anger punctuated his slip of tongue.

  “Let us leave how I know for another time. You are already so overwhelmed with information. Let’s sort through what you have already been told first. You don’t believe in the magical forces out there? You do not believe some people are gifted to be able to harness beneficial energy and use it to heal or manipulate?”

  “No! But…” her voice faltered, “my Poppie has never lied to me. Or, at least, I thought he had never lied to me.” She turned her face slightly away from hi
m as she bit on the side of her lip.

  He followed the line of her gaze and watched as she dug her toes through the carpet on the floor.

  “I saw you two light up,” she continued, “like light bulbs over me while I was being controlled or diseased somehow. I know it was more than just some medical issue. I could feel its hold on me like some heavy, thick fog was glued around me and infiltrating me, shutting down my body.” She clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides. “Damn, why is this happening to me. Why did they lie? No, if there is magic then prove it to me so at least I can get by that!”

  He said nothing, just forced himself to step back from her, separating their bodies and lessening the temptation to wrap her in his embrace. He raised his hand level with her face and dug down deep inside him to the potential energy there. He focused the power to his hand, envisioning a white ball of light until it physically formed in his palm, swirling with the energy lighting it.

  ***

  Kamillia wanted to reach out and touch the entrancing ball. She could feel the energy, like static electricity, swirling to her from it. Deep inside her something stirred. It was the same energy with a slightly different edge that made her get off of Luca’s lap just moments ago. The confusion of it all still warped her thinking.

  She remained lost in her scattered thoughts but startled when the ball of light suddenly disappeared. His warm hand ran down over her arm, causing her to gasp out loud.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just getting worried. It was like you were in a trance.”

  “I am just...not sure…” She groaned at the way she tripped over her words. It was all getting so jumbled, making her head physically ache.

  “Listen, it has been enough for today. Why don’t you try to get some sleep? Maybe everything will be clearer in the morning.”

  “Yeah, I guess I could use the escape.” She walked to the door, not wanting to leave but too tired not to force herself to do so. She was just baffled enough to want to run away rather than deal, which wasn’t like her at all. So disturbing in and of itself.