The Descendants

by Kirk Kilgrave

  Logan started looking through his mom’s personal items. They ranged from toys she played with as a child, high school yearbooks; and a shoebox with small mementos that included handcrafted art to love notes she’d written to a boy named Jack, a few journals filled with recollections, stories, and poems. He didn’t find the letter from his father anywhere, so he moved on.

  “This one,” said Tyler, “is full of old pots and pans. I’ve got old books in here. Where could the letter be?”

  “Look through the books, the letter might be sticking out. Or it could be in an envelope. Also, check the sides and bottom of the box. If you don’t find it, look in any chests or stuff like that. It would probably be in something personal like a picture album, a folder or notebook, or something like that.”

  “Got it,” Tyler said.

  His breath left his chest, and he whirled toward his brother. “You found something?”

  “No, I’m saying, I get what you mean.”

  Logan’s excitement took a dive and plunged into disappointment. He turned away from Tyler and looked past a Rubbermaid container filled with old kitchen accessories that should have been tossed in the trash years ago, a bucket holding quarts of motor oil, and a metal box with a lock on it. His heart beat strong. “I found something.” It wasn’t fitted with a keyhole, but it required a combination.

  “Should I help?”

  “No. Keep at it.” Logan’s pulse beat in his temples as he spent a few minutes trying various combinations: his parents’ birthdays and the day of their wedding, but when he tried his own birthday, the lock opened. His fingers quivered as he lifted the lid.

  It was empty.

  That made no sense. Why lock it if it had nothing inside?

  He examined the felt on the upper and lower lids. He checked the lower portion and tried to remove the felt. It wouldn’t give way. He did the same with the upper portion, and the felt peeled away from the metal with a suction-type sound.

  A white envelope addressed to Logan in his father’s handwriting fell from underneath it.

  18

  Logan stared at the envelope. His mouth became dry and his hands grew slick with sweat. He flipped the envelope over, slipped a finger under the insert, and slid it across the length of the letter, tearing it open.

  He pulled out the note, thinking he should alert his brother, but he was too enthralled by the message to do anything but read it immediately. Besides, if he told Tyler, his brother would come over and try to read the letter over his shoulder. Under those circumstances, Logan would find it difficult to concentrate. He also wanted this moment alone with his father. After all, his dad had addressed it to him. Not his other children.

  Logan wanted to yank the letter out of the envelope, but he did the opposite, treating the paper like an ancient scroll, and unfolded it with the utmost care. The handwritten letter consisted of only two pages. Logan started reading.

  Dear Logan,

  I’ve dreaded writing this letter since the day you were born, but I’m sorry to say that I have no choice but to tell you a part of our heritage that I’ve always been ashamed of. Our ancestors were slave owners in New Orleans before the Civil War. Obviously, they had strong feelings about white superiority, and before the South lost the war, the Northern army destroyed their plantation.

  With no home and no way to support themselves in a place they no longer recognized, our forebears moved to Chicago to start over. As the decades passed, their roots in racism became even more entrenched as more African-Americans, who sought equality, moved into the city. As Irish-Americans, our ancestors were often looked down upon by other ethnicities and fought alongside blacks to find work.

  This brought about a lot of tension between both ethnicities. From late July through early August in 1919, race riots swept Chicago, and your great-grandfather, Abner, may have been an instigator. His involvement has never been officially recorded because no white participants were arrested during this violent conflict.

  At least that’s what I inferred from the letter my father wrote to me directly before his death, which occurred while I was still in my mother’s womb. His writing was vague, abrupt, and practically illegible, so I had to fill in a lot of the blanks without anyone to consult for historical accuracy.

  Apparently, Abner had fallen in love with a nineteen-year-old light-skinned black woman named Lucretia. It seems this woman had no romantic feelings towards Abner, and when he found her kissing a black man, Abner committed an atrocity that haunts me, even though I had been born decades after this incident. Your great-grandfather followed Lucretia to her home and confronted her about kissing this man. They argued, and to convince Lucretia of his love for her, Abner proposed. When she refused, Abner killed her three brothers.

  While Abner faced no repercussions from law enforcement, he discovered that Lucretia, who descended from ancestors that practiced voodoo, decided to take the long approach toward obtaining vengeance. Since Abner focused on Lucretia’s betrayal of kissing another man before seeking revenge upon her siblings, Lucretia did the same by placing a curse on Abner’s offspring.

  If Abner kissed another person, his offspring, upon turning nineteen years old would endure unknown terrors leading up to their death. I can only presume Lucretia selected the age based on the year this occurred and her age at the time of the kiss Abner disapproved of. She supposedly set this spell into motion to force the father to endure watching his children suffer without any way to end their torment.

  If a father reared no children or if they had yet to turn nineteen, the curse would turn upon the father. Even worse, a father’s children must not be told before their nineteenth birthday in an effort to demoralize them later in life. It would allow them time to experience this intimate caress before they were deprived of it without any advance warning. Taken from a long-term perspective, it is a simple yet effective way to break one’s will. If that detail goes ignored, the children will be marked for death, regardless of their ages.

  Before I was born, my father kissed a woman. I’m uncertain whether it was my mother or a different woman. But unexplained phenomena began to occur inside our home, things my father thought impossible, things that made him question his sanity. My father quickly fell into a deep depression and suffered from insomnia, lost his job and took to abusing drugs and alcohol. With no way to avoid the supernatural events that attacked him on a daily basis, my father shot himself in the head.

  For reasons he didn’t explain in his letter, my father thought that committing suicide would lift the curse from affecting his children…unless said children, in turn, activated the hex. According to my mother, who wrote a postscript, the mysterious paranormal activity ceased immediately after my father’s death. One thing is certain: every person in our family line has been cursed. That may sound absurd, but I assure you it is true.

  You once asked your mother why she and I never kissed. I trusted her with this curse very early in our relationship. I felt blessed that she accepted me despite this spell hanging over our heads, knowing that if either one of us slipped up, the curse would begin anew. The first decade of our relationship was all that I’d hoped for, with the exception of not being able to kiss the woman I loved. And then, a few months after you turned nine, I attended a Christmas party at work. A woman who had a crush on me spotted me under a mistletoe and stole a kiss.

  Soon afterward, mysterious phenomena occurred in the house around me. Lights would switch on and off, doors would open of their own accord, and I’d hear whispers in my ears in bed at night. Things slowly got worse. A lamp fell from the middle of a table and bashed me in the head. An invisible force pushed me down a flight of stairs. But when I’d turned my head away from the kitchen counter, only to find my tie lifted from my chest and inserted into the garbage disposal before it mysteriously turned on, resulting in the tie getting snagged around my neck and dragging me face-first into the sink, did I realize that I’d need to endure another decade of these afflictions before the cu
rse inevitably passed on to you…until your death.

  That is why I committed suicide, Logan. Not because I didn’t love your mother, you, Ashleigh, or the little one your mother is carrying, a boy I hope we call Tyler. Your mother didn’t agree with my decision, but I didn’t want to descend into madness, only to have your mother and our children witness such insanity. Besides, even if I somehow escaped these deranged attempts on my life, the curse would ultimately be passed along to my children. That I could not tolerate.

  I hope you understand that I didn’t want to end my life. I ended it to allow my children to live happy, well-adjusted lives…at least until they turned nineteen years old, whereupon their lives would become more difficult to navigate in a romantic sense. Despite this despicable hex, rest assured that you can still live a long life if you follow the rules I’ve outlined above. And do not let it prevent you from having children. They are one of life’s greatest joys. If you decide to take that journey, I implore you to speak with them about the cross we bear the moment they turn nineteen.

  I conclude this letter with a warning: unless you find a loophole or a method to break this curse, once you turn nineteen, do not kiss another person. If you do, the curse will pass along to you and your sister and brother. The only known way to halt the curse is suicide, but it is a temporary fix, since one of your siblings could then activate it upon turning nineteen, whereupon the cycle will continue…forever!

  With everlasting love,

  James

  Logan pried the letter away from his eyes. It took plenty of effort because his muscles had locked into place. His head pounded. Chills racked his body. Sweat had even developed on his brow.

  “I can’t find anything,” Tyler said from behind him. “How about you?”

  Tears entered Logan’s eyes. The letter he’d read shocked and disturbed him. It saddened him and frightened him. The story seemed implausible, but he and his siblings had been subjected to paranormal events. Because of his kiss with Eloise. They hadn’t been subjected to paranormal terrors, as his father’s letter had referred to, but they were definitely frightening.

  If he hadn’t kissed Eloise, even if it had been an accident, none of this would have happened. Now he understood why his mother had been so adamant that they speak before she left town, why she sounded so upset after not getting in touch with him while on board her cruise.

  “Logan?” Tyler’s footsteps swished through the fiberglass insulation, making his way toward him. “What are you looking at?”

  “A letter.” His monotone voice, stripped of all emotion and personality, sounded like it belonged to someone else. That made sense. He felt like his soul had departed and left an empty shell behind.

  “You found it?” Tyler asked in a tone a couple of notches higher than usual. The flooring thumped with his impending arrival.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Logan would have felt his brother looking over his shoulder, even if he hadn’t been breathing heavily on his neck. Only one thought battered his mind: the consequences of his accidental kiss would result in his death along with those of his sister and brother.

  “What’s it say?” His brother curved around and stood beside Logan. “Come on, what’s…whoa! Bro, you’re all white!” His breath quickened. “Are you okay? Did you lose a bunch of blood or something? Should I call 911?”

  Logan heard the panicked concern in his brother’s voice, but it sounded far away.

  “Ashleigh,” Tyler yelled. “Come quick. Something’s wrong with Logan!”

  19

  Wood groaned below them as Ashleigh grabbed hold of the ladder and then throttled up the steps. “What’s wrong?” Her wide eyes appeared a moment later as she panted for air. Seeing Logan, she stopped right below the hatch. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, staring at the letter but not seeing the words. All of them melded together. “I don’t know.” The letter had torn his heart asunder.

  Ashleigh turned to her little brother. “Did he hurt himself?” She removed her cell phone from her pocket, unlocked the screen, and swiped. “Should I call an ambulance?” She clambered up beside Tyler

  “I’m fine,” Logan repeated. “No ambulance necessary.”

  The wooden ladder creaked again. Moments later, Eloise’s beautiful face appeared below Logan. He recalled first seeing her at the library, about how he’d not wanted to bump into her, about how he didn’t want their first kiss to be an accident. It seemed his intuition had been right, although it been for the wrong reasons.

  He looked into Eloise’s eyes and, unlike his siblings, saw a carefree expression as she stared at the page in his hands. “Hey.” His mind returned to how she said he’d stolen the kiss from her, the same way the woman had stolen a kiss from his father at the holiday party. Neither he nor his father had actively pursued a kiss, but it had happened anyway.

  He couldn’t hide from the truth. Ashleigh and Tyler would soon find out, and they would be upset with him. That kiss had sealed his fate, and as much as he hated the idea that he’d been cursed to death, it paled in comparison to the guilt that afflicted him upon knowing that he’d burdened his siblings.

  Logan’s remorse quickly turned to blazing anger at that fucking bastard great-grandfather of his. What kind of lunatic feels inclined to kill people because a woman wouldn’t return his love? He wished Lucretia’s escape clause of suicide didn’t apply to Abner. The man deserved a much worse fate. He deserved to endure the same anguish that Lucretia had experienced.

  All the same, Logan felt it was ridiculous to direct his anger at someone who didn’t deserve more than a passing thought, albeit one filled with the utmost resentment. He couldn’t get upset with his deceased father, who’d given his life to save his children. The same went for his mother, who couldn’t tell Logan ahead of time and who actually tried to speak with him as soon as possible, only he’d forgotten to get back in touch with her before she left on her trip.

  For that reason, he had to blame himself. But that didn’t feel right either. The kiss had been an accident. Even if he’d known ahead of time about the curse, he couldn’t have stopped it from getting enacted. With nowhere to focus his anger, he felt it reaching a silent crescendo, but in the moments leading up to that turning point, Logan’s gaze rested on Eloise’s mouth. Those luscious lips that he wanted to kiss again. That he needed to kiss again. And just like that, the animosity that built inside him fizzled out.

  He could sit there and feel sorry for himself and his siblings, or he could do something about the curse. Try to break it. So it would never affect his family again.

  “You found it,” Eloise said in a curious tone. “Can we see it?” She extended a palm. When Logan handed it over, she gave it to Ashleigh and then waved at him to take her hand. “I’ll help you downstairs.”

  “That wasn’t a real kiss,” Logan said. “It shouldn’t have counted. It was a nice surprise, but we didn’t have a choice. It just happened.” When Eloise flashed him a quick smile, he took her hand. She gently pulled him toward her, and Logan let her lead him down the steps. “It would be better if we knew it was coming.” He looked over his shoulder at her as he made his way down the steps. “Don’t you think?”

  “I think,” Eloise said, “I really need to read the letter that is shaking in Ashleigh’s hands.”

  Logan touched down on the ground and now held both of Eloise’s hands as he looked into her warm, caring eyes. The barrier of uncertainty and the fear of rejection that had always hovered over him when it came to girls now shattered. He supposed a mark of death had that effect, forcing all trivial concerns aside in order to make way for the only one that mattered.

  Ashleigh let out a drawn-out squeal.

  Logan looked down. A shard of agony sliced away a piece of his heart. He didn’t need to check on her to realize that she’d begun reading the letter.

  “What’s wrong?” Tyler asked.

  He didn’t need to glance up to see his sister crying. He heard it in her voice, and in
his mind, he could practically see the tears shimmering in her eyes. If she endured what he experienced while reading that message, her heart felt like someone had reached in, grasped it, and squeezed it with all their might. And he hated that she suffered, hated that, unless he found a way out of this mess, she wouldn’t be able to lead a normal life.

  “No!” Ashleigh shouted. “That can’t be true.”

  “What’s your problem?” asked Tyler. “Just chill.”

  “No, I’m not gonna chill. This isn’t fair!”

  Tyler looked down at him with a scared but judgmental stare. “What did you do?”

  Logan opened his mouth to apologize, but nothing he could say would satisfy either of them.

  “Will somebody tell me what’s going on?” Tyler asked in a fearful tone that made his cheeks quake.

  Beside him, Ashleigh crumbled to the floor. Her face was bunched up in agony. On either side of her nose, tears clung to a jaw that shivered.

  “I’m sorry,” Logan said much too quietly.

  Eloise winced and turned an ear towards him. “What?”

  Logan tilted his head back, faced the attic, and placed a palm on either side of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said loudly, pushing the full breadth of despair into his voice. Despite that, his words felt inadequate.

  Tyler sat down beside Ashleigh and grasped the pages that had fallen from her grasp. He concentrated on the paper, but he winced and shook his head. He tore his gaze away from the letter and stared down at Logan with troubled eyes. “It’s tough to understand.”