by Scott Tracey
I repeated myself, louder this time. “Hello?”
There were faint sounds in the background, the only reason I even knew someone was actually on the other end of the line.
“Hello!”
Another few seconds and no response, and I slammed the phone back on the cradle.
“Another hang-up phone call,” I said, once he finally followed me into the kitchen. Almost on cue, the phone started to ring before cutting out halfway through, and then was silent.
He brushed past me, glancing into the open refrigerator. “How’s your nose?”
I tentatively touched underneath the nostril. “No more bleeding. Why?”
“Good. Can you run down to the store and get some more milk?”
“Sure,” I said automatically, before realizing something wasn’t entirely right. The gallon of milk in the fridge was almost full, for one thing. And Uncle John’s eyes were unfocused. “Everything okay?”
He blinked, and turned back around. The door closed behind him. “You run to the store and I’ll order us a pizza. How’s that sound?”
Now the false enthusiasm. I grabbed a twenty-dollar bill out of the change jar we kept by the door, but by the time I was slipping my shoes back on, Uncle John had vanished into the house.
That was weirder than normal, I thought on my way out the door. And that was saying something, considering I’d been raised reading grimoires instead of Grimm’s fairy tales.
three
Even though we lived in a remote area, our house was just off the main road and there was a convenience store just a few minutes away. Dark had finally settled in as I walked, and I found myself thinking about school.
Being homeschooled had always been a burden. Regular schools were dangerous on a realistic level—one accidental spell and my secret would be out. And with my vision problems, it would only get worse. Every time the two of us rented some high school movie about growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, John would look at me and nod, as if to say see, you wouldn’t want that life anyway.
I did, though. A normal school, a normal life. Our magic lessons were year-round events, six days a week, rain or shine. Homeschooled kids didn’t have football games to go to, parties to attend. John didn’t like people, so it wasn’t like we were social around town. He kept to himself, but I wanted more than that. I liked talking to people. Hiding out in the middle of nowhere wasn’t my idea of a life.
Before I knew it, I’d arrived at the convenience store, and stepped from the dirt path onto old, worn concrete. A giant, fluorescent chicken presided over the parking lot.
I slipped inside, murmuring a thank you as an older woman with sad eyes and blonde hair stepped out and held the door.
The store was busy: a couple of older men hung around the register, a mother with two small children was fighting with them about candy, and two girls all in black had surrounded the coffee machines.
I walked through the aisles and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, preceding a shiver down my spine. Just an air vent, I tried to tell myself.
Someone was staring at me. I could feel it. Most of the locals still saw me as the “weird kid” or the “disabled kid.” The one who never took his sunglasses off, even inside.
One of the fluorescent lights above me flickered, a heartbeat-like sound that buzzed in rhythm. There was murmuring from the next aisle; words I couldn’t hear. I peered up over the top of the aisle, but couldn’t see anyone.
You’re being paranoid, Braden.
Maybe I was. But I’d be a lot less paranoid once I had the milk and was back outside. I hurried down the aisle, and that’s when it happened.
I slipped, or I tripped. My legs went one way, my body went another, and my glasses were ripped in a third. I pitched forward, my elbow smacking against one of the metallic shelves, and I just barely caught myself before my nose slammed against the ground.
The aisles rippled around me, and I realized, too late, that the visions were starting. Shapes and colors that shouldn’t have existed slipped into my sight as the veil dropped and everything came into focus.
There was a moment where the visions began to start, thrusting themselves forward with their stories and pictures … and then something changed.
Black and white tiles were marred with spots of blood. My vision started to narrow, homing in on just those droplets until they were puddles, then lakes, and then oceans below me. The ocean turned to glass, then became a reflection of me staring down into it.
That’s when the images began.
A normal vision is a thousand conversations, five hundred sonnets, ten thousand songs, and every sight and sound and color all flooding forward at once. This time what I was seeing was different. New. It was like a slideshow.
Flashes and shapes pulsed before and after each other, in some sort of sequence. Uncle John running as something slithered after him. A forest. A clock counting down. A lighthouse. A woman, standing on a rooftop over a sleeping city, her face completely shrouded in white lace. Things digging themselves out of the ground. Lightning. A sign. Welcome to Belle Dam.
A voice superimposed itself over the vision. I want the boy. Uncle John waving his hands as he ran, looking directly at me before the thing—the monster—finally overtook him. It was like watching the strings on a puppet get slashed, the way he fell to the ground.
And then the monster turns and faces me, and the voice returns. Finally, it said, with disquieting delight. He’s ours.
Shock and fear allowed me to free myself from the vision. I scrambled on the ground for my glasses, eyes closed. My fingers wrapped around the plastic, and relief pressed up against the fear.
What was that?
This wasn’t how the witch eyes worked. They didn’t show me random images, they showed me people, places. This was like … some sort of portent. A warning. But the certainty of what I saw was something in my bones. I knew it was true, and real, and on its way.
Something was coming. Something that was going to kill my uncle before it came for me.
Forgetting about the milk, I picked myself off the ground and hurried out of the store.
¤ ¤ ¤
The parking lot and main road stretched before me, but once outside I glanced to my left. Tucked back against the woods was a path that led all the way to the rear of our house. Right now, the last thing I wanted was to be out in the open. So I hurried into the woods.
All along the way, I was whispering misdirection spells while fingering the silver chain around my neck. It was a Christmas present. A circle of silver could help restrain a witch’s power, in theory, helping them maintain control. But silver was also useful in truth spells, and illusions like the misdirection spell were a way of bending the truth.
I slipped in the back door, about to announce myself when Uncle John’s voice cut through the house. “I told you it’s not going to happen!” I crept along the covered porch, inching my way toward the kitchen. “I don’t care about what’s going on in Belle Dam. Things change. Braden’s not going anywhere.”
Belle Dam? The image of the Welcome sign flashed into my mind. Gooseflesh erupted along my arms.
“Whatever my brother’s gotten himself into isn’t our problem. I’m his family now. You’re not taking him.”
My father? Was he in Belle Dam, too? “I don’t care what he’s saying now,” John roared, close enough that I jumped. “Braden isn’t suited for that kind of life, Lucien. He hasn’t had an episode in weeks, and we’re keeping it that way.”
The phone was slammed into its cradle. Hard, raging breaths were still coming from the kitchen. I waited.
What was I supposed to say? “Hey, Uncle John, what’s going on? I had a vision that something’s coming to kill you. Oh, by the way, I know my dad’s in Belle Dam.”
That would
n’t go over so well.
I sat down in one of the plastic patio chairs we kept out here. He hadn’t left the kitchen yet, so I pitched my voice over my shoulder. “Who was that?”
I was disappointed I couldn’t hear the sound of his startlement. “Braden?”
Mimicking his tone, I replied. “Uncle John?”
“It was nothing,” he started, “just a phone call from an old—”
I interrupted him. “I heard you.”
He appeared in the doorway, but I kept looking out into the backyard. Along the path I’d watched him run—running from who knows what.
“Braden,” he said again. “It wasn’t anything important.” He tried changing tactics. “What happened to the milk?”
“You never talk about Belle Dam.”
“Of course I don’t. I—” He realized his slip almost immediately. “It’s nothing. Just an old town with a lot of bad blood.”
I turned to look up at him. My uncle. Growing up, he’d never allowed the illusion that he was more than he was. He never let me call him Dad, Pop, or any other variation in between. He’d accepted he was my uncle and nothing more.
“What’s he want with me? Why now?”
There was no response. Uncle John’s eyes were trained on the dark outside.
“It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” I pushed. “If they decided to come and take me?”
“That won’t happen.”
“But what if—”
“It won’t happen, Braden.” He had that “stop pushing” tone to his voice.
The headache had started slowly, so inconspicuous I didn’t notice the growing tension behind my eyes at first. It had probably started some time after the vision, but now that I was in a dark, quiet room, it was making its presence noticeable.
It went from minor discomfort to painful stabbing in my brain almost immediately. My hands were sweaty and gross, my heart was pulsing so hard I thought my head would explode, and a thousand knives were finding fresh places to stab my skull.
This was going to be a bad one.
Uncle John noticed too. Before I even realized what the whirlwind of activity around me was, he had picked me up and taken me into the rec room. It was the only room in the house with no windows, and no light—the safest place for me once the migraines came.
I leaned into the couch once he settled me down, and through the haze I heard the sounds of all the lights being shut off, one by one. I drifted, wanting to whimper but not remembering how. The migraine started spreading down into my shoulders, and from there into my arms. Later into my legs.
The only thing that existed was the pulsing pain. Even thinking was too difficult. Someone lifted my head, put something in my mouth, told me to swallow. Then a glass was pressed to my lips, and I did.
Eventually, the red haze started muting into vermilion, then into burgundy. Then back to black. Sleep didn’t come quickly, but it eventually came.
It was bliss.
¤ ¤ ¤
It was still dark outside when I woke up. I moved gingerly at first, but the migraine seemed to be completely gone. I slid my glasses on and sat up, no longer tired.
A few hours ago, everything had been so different. And now my vision, and the phone call … where was Belle Dam even located? That was the first thing I needed to know.
I crept through the house, despite the fact that Uncle John would have slept through almost anything. The computer was in his office, which was really just a room with a desk in it. I booted it up, then waited, eventually typing Belle Dam into a search engine.
“‘Belle Dam is a town in Jefferson County, Washington,’” I read aloud. Population eight thousand. One high school. One community college. Harbor. Lighthouse.
I scrolled down the page, finding a picture of the lighthouse during the day. The angles and proportion were all wrong—I couldn’t say for certain if it was the same one from my vision or not. Only that it could have been.
The visions had told me that something was going to be coming for me, and that Uncle John would be in the way. But what? I hadn’t been able to see what it was exactly. Or who it was.
I knew Uncle John well enough to know that he wasn’t going to listen. The more I kept pushing, the less he’d listen. But something was coming. Something that would kill him to get to me.
Unless you get to it first.
Could I do that? Just … leave? There had to be something I could do. The vision showed me that Uncle John was completely overmatched—whatever it was would tear right through him. And as long as I stayed here, it would get closer and closer.
He’d do the same for you. Uncle John gave up everything for you. That was all the motivation I needed.
I shut down the computer and snuck up the stairs. In my bedroom I scanned the bookshelf above my bed, pulling down my journal. “You shouldn’t have made me write everything down,” I whispered aloud, flipping to the slumber spell he’d shown me a few months ago.
It was supposed to work like a sleeping pill—making it easier to fall asleep and stay that way. Every time I cast it, the spell always came out too strong—instead of a gentle lull of magic, it was like a sledgehammer taking effect almost instantly. We’d never figured out how long the spell would last, always reversing it before that happened. But now, it was a blessing in disguise.
I hesitated outside my uncle’s room. Was I really going to do this? He was going to be so pissed when he woke up.
I cast the spell. Packed a bag. Tried not to look back.
four
The bus jerked back into motion. It was the middle of the night, a full day after I’d left Montana—and my uncle. A pair of older women sat right behind the driver, whispering to themselves. It didn’t sound like Spanish, but I was too far away to figure out what it was. A couple of college kids were still working their way toward the back, trying to find a seat.
I squirmed down. Just pretend you’re sleeping, I whispered to myself. Ignore them. Every time we stopped, I was sure that someone was going to get on the bus and call out my name. Or that they’d look at me and know somehow that I’d run away.
The shorter of the two took a seat in the middle, but the other one kept moving down the rows. He started to pass my row, and I exhaled with relief. Just like that, the motion in the aisle stopped, and I glanced up. He was staring down at me, with brilliantly light eyes that almost seemed to shine.
And then he swiveled around and sat himself in the chair next to me. There were two open chairs across the aisle, but it was like he knew I didn’t want anyone to sit there.
I shifted against the window, pulling the top of my hood down over my eyes a little further. Twice already, someone had tried talking me into taking off my sunglasses. My tongue kept fumbling as I tried to tell them why I couldn’t. Usually, I had Uncle John there to do it for me.
Trying to explain anything to the Adonis in Abercrombie sitting next to me? Damn near impossible. I shifted my head a little so that I could study him. It was bad enough that random college guy sat down next to me, but did he really have to be model-hot?
My uncle seemed to believe that no one could really know they were gay until they were “an adult.” Like once someone turned eighteen, a switch was flipped in their brain and suddenly everything changed. Being gay wasn’t something that we talked about—he didn’t like the subject. He didn’t exactly hate it, either—it just made him act all funny.
The first time I told him I thought I was gay had been a few years ago. What I thought would be one of those television moments where the parent smiles and nods knowingly turned ugly real fast. His face had gone white at first, and then just as quickly flushed red.
“You’re not … that. You don’t even know what you are yet.” He had very nearly started snarling. “Do you even understand the kind of potential
you have? How important you are? You do not have the luxury of wasting your life.”
Abercrombie didn’t say anything at first. This was a good thing. It gave me time to acclimate myself to him sitting just a few inches to my right. To try and focus on something other than the way his lips had this permanent smirk—almost a sneer—to them.
There wasn’t much to see in the middle of the night except streetlights zooming past. It was easy to zone out on the bus. With the lights down low, nearly everyone took the opportunity to have an hour-long nap, before the next rest stop reared its ugly, unwanted head.
“You’re heading to Belle Dam? Me too.”
I shifted to see Abercrombie leaning over, staring at my bus ticket. I’d left it tucked in the seat pouch in front of me, the destination boldly printed on the front.
“Visiting family?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” I muttered in reply.
Abercrombie shifted closer to me. I could smell something like sweat and cologne, a musky smell that went straight to my head. I pulled myself even further into the shirt, drawing the sleeve up to my face. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Belle Dam’s not a good place for people like you.”
I straightened up, my skin going cold from the inside. I tried to keep my voice steady. “People like me?”
“People like you,” he agreed. “Which side are you on?”
I wondered if this was some game, to trick me into talking to him. “What are you talking about?”
“The feud,” he said, still keeping his voice low. He made it sound like I should already know what he was talking about. “You’re either bowing down to Jason Thorpe, or you’re sucking up to Catherine Lansing. So who is it? Who convinced the naïve little teen to come to town?”
“What are you talking about?”
He stretched his arms out in front of him, linking his fingers and pushing them forward until they started to crackle like popcorn. “The feud,” he reiterated, like I was slow to catch on. “You’re either a Montague or a Capulet.” When I didn’t immediately say anything, he rolled his eyes. “Romeo and Juliet? What’s the education of this country coming to?”