“Your energy gets all weird when you lie,” Regan tells me with a smile. “But whatever, keep your dirty secrets. We all have them. You need to know all sorts of types will come for you now. Some will come for your help and some will come to use you. You need to be aware of the difference.”
“Should I join the coven?” I ask, not prepared for their answer.
“No!” both GiGi and Regan shout at the same time.
“Covens are for witches with no house. They are the odds and the broken who need someone stronger than them to keep them in line for their own good and the good of the community. You are your own house. There is no one more powerful than you,” Regan says with arms in full motion of animation.
“You know what covens are good for? Chick flicks and dick jokes. Never been a fan of them. It’s one thing when a girl has two or three friends to complain to when a guy hurts her. Imagine twelve or more, with power and anger issues. No thanks,” GiGi declares with her normal flourish.
“Don’t you technically belong to the Ripples?” I ask, with small hints of shade.
“I belong to their house, yes. It’s not something I’m proud of but there aren’t a lot of options for us. We can do the coven route where you become almost a clone of each other once linked. You can try it solo, but I’m not good at being alone. My power is energy. I need to be around people. The Ripples offered protection. For witches it’s either belong to a house or be abused by all the houses.”
“The devil you know,” I quote the classic quote and she nods in agreement. “If I’m a house, couldn’t I create my own?”
Regan giggles the same way as when Jedrek was missing parts of his face. “Easy there. You’re going to be something, but right now you’re kinda in limp mode. Everyone knows by now, you and Jo are your house. To mess with one means to mess with both.”
“I’d be more afraid of the old lady,” I loudly whisper with amusement, but also honesty.
GiGi smiles and blows me a kiss.
“What are you going to do about the last item?” Regan asks me.
I chew my bottom lip, wondering how much I should share in this girl chat we are having. Should I do as Jedrek suggested? Should I risk my own life?
“I’m going to do whatever I have to do,” I answer in the same riddle fashion they use so well.
“Save the family? Or save yourself?” GiGi asks with a look of knowing.
I don’t lie to GiGi. I can’t. She knows my every facial tick and tone of my voice. She knows what my fidgeting means and what my silence screams. I say nothing, sipping my cold coffee as if it were a life vest. If it is, it’s a vest for the people on the Titanic. It’s not going to save me. Not really. I’m still going to drown under the gaze of her all-knowing eyes, but maybe it will slow it, drag out the death so I can lie to myself about what is about to happen in the morning.
Just a little lie. Just the littlest of lies. What’s the harm? What could possibly go wrong? Tonight, I will lie. Tomorrow, I will find the truth when I visit Miranda.
I can hear the music from Bella’s room floating down from her opened upstairs window. With the cooling temperatures, everyone’s window is open. It makes spying so much easier in the upscale neighborhoods. Not watching the neighbors, Dear. I’m just sitting by the window enjoying the breeze.
With Johanna gone, and the magic returned to the rightful owners, I can feel this house again. I can see the elderly couple who owned it before the Tortes, coming and going as life has one doing. I can hear the many conversations of the land, with the many who have owned it. I can also feel the soft tickling of magic like mine. My magic has perked its head, listening to see what can be heard.
Still unsure of what to say, I knock on the heavy wooden door before someone calls the cops for me standing here so long. The wait seems forever. I fidget with my hair, fluffing the red curls in hopes to not look like a matted mess. I pull on my grey shirt and brush off invisible lint on my black pants. There’s so much time, I knock again, thinking maybe the first one wasn’t heard, but still nothing.
Bella’s music continues to rain down on me with its perky pop vocals. Someone is home. Or should be home.
Closing my eyes, I push the perked magic through the front of the house. I use it as my eyes, sensing and feeling its way around the home. It doesn’t go far, before it finds what I was afraid it would find.
If magic had a smell, this house would wreak with it. It’s heavy, like a burden and not a casting. There’s sadness and something darker, something which still covers my childhood memories. There, under it all, is a touch of madness. I’ve run out of time.
Testing the front door to find it locked, I do what any uninvited guest does, I scale the tall privacy fence and make my way to the back door, fully expecting to hear sirens at any moment.
The side garage door is unlocked, and with extreme caution, I push the door slowly to expose a garage not nearly as perfect as the house. One car still sits, waiting for the next grocery run or work trip. Shelves are disorganized against the far wall. Everything from sports to holiday boxes are arranged like a game of Jenga. When I don’t hear the screaming of a house alarm, I take my first steps.
My magic may be slithering around with no flair or worry, but my mind is listing all the many reasons this is stupid. When the door to the house is also unlocked, it is practically screaming to not do what we both know I’m going to do. It’s reminding me how my mouth will cause so many problems for me in jail. Like always, I don’t listen. I take the first steps into a very still house.
There’s a moment when I debate calling out, announcing myself just in case I have mistaken the husband’s degree of firearm proficiency, but the house is silent. Other than the music rolling down the stairs, there is nothing. Not a sound of any life from a television to a microwave joins the female vocals above me. There is no conversation. No sounds of movement. There is just silence and somehow it is suffocatingly loud.
“Bella?” I call up the stairs.
When nothing is returned, not even an adjustment to the volume of the music, I begin my slow climb. These stairs don’t complain the way mine do. There’s no wooden creaking or moaning as I slowly make my way up to the second floor. The wall beside me is framed with rectangles holding smiles, and for the first time I see Becky. There is no question her and Ben are twins. Every framed moment of their lives they are wearing matching outfits down to even their crooked smiles. I can see how her death could fracture a family.
“Bella?” I call again when reaching the hallway.
Still there is no response. At least not verbally. Clothes have been thrown around the hallway. They lay with their many colors like scattered fall leaves blanketing the ground. Doors are wide open, spilling forth their room’s items. The framed art along the wall is tilted as if it’s been roughly bumped one too many times.
I shouldn’t be here. I should leave now. This isn’t my problem. Not really. Bella wanted her sister to be put to rest. If I just wait it out, it will happen all on its own. Yes, Miranda may go insane and kill half her family before she dies herself, but the main problem will be solved, right?
All these thoughts are racing through my mind, fighting to be the first thought, the main thought which will convince me to turn around and leave. They almost do. If it weren’t for that soft little noise coming from a room ahead of me. A sudden noise amid all the silence which encourages my death threat filled antics.
The sound came from the same room as the music. Its door is open, showing a room stuck between childhood and adult. The pink walls and many decorations showcase a growing change in taste and design. The queen-sized bed boasts of white sheets and a pink gingham comforter. Teddy bears line the wall the bed rests on, staring at me with black button eyes catching the overhead light when I enter. Other than being filled with disorganization, there is nothing obvious about why such a mess has occurred in a normally very organized home.
“Bella?” I whisper
, hoping what I heard was a mistake.
The sound comes again. The same soft sound of something only slightly moving. A sound which leads one to creep around, straining to hear clues of from where it came.
I’m looking for blood, a pattern in the scattered clothes, something to hint at what has happened or what is waiting. There’s nothing, and the one brain cell of self-preservation I have, has me stop and call out again with hopes nothing is waiting to jump from a closet to kill me.
“Bella? It’s Harper,” I add, thinking it will do any good.
I’m shocked when it does.
“Miss Harper?” a small voice under the bed whispers. It’s so soft I doubt for a moment I actually heard it, and just imagined it with hopes of an explanation. “Miss Buckland?” the little voice comes again.
I kneel slowly, praying that my knees are strong enough to lift me in a hurry should I have to run from what is calling my name. With my heart feeling lodged in my throat, remembering every horror movie I have ever watched, I lift the edge of the thick comforter to stare into the wide eyes of Bella.
“What are you doing under there?” I ask the visibly scared teen.
“She’s lost her mind,” Bella whispers.
“Who?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Mom!” Becky hisses. “She was tearing apart the house looking for the pink dress for Becky which matches Ben’s pantsuit. She kept saying how they had to be perfect. When I told her we gave Becky’s clothes away a long time ago, she lost it. She started hitting me,” Bella pauses, and I watch as the memory overcomes her before she can push past it to talk again, “and hitting Dad. She kept dragging Ben around like a rag doll despite Dad trying to take Ben from her. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“You hid under your bed?” I ask, trying to keep my voice sympathetic.
“She was tearing apart all the closets,” Bella says, trying to not sound like a little girl who is in fact hiding under her bed.
“Where did everyone go?”
“Mom said something about having to make everything perfect, and when she wouldn’t let Ben go, Dad went with them. I think he was more afraid of what might happen to Ben than Mom.”
Knowing what I know, he’s most likely correct.
“But she didn’t say a place?”
Bella shakes her head. “Maybe I can text Dad? I wasn’t sure if they were really gone or if they were coming back. I’ve been under here waiting to figure out what to do.”
“I think you should text your dad. See if he can tell you where they are.”
Bella stares at me with eyes overflowing with hope. “And you’ll go save them?”
I nod, not willing to put the possible lie to words. I don’t even know where they are, or what she may be doing. I can’t honestly tell her, out loud, that I will save them. Nor which ‘them’ I may not be able to save at all.
Bella slides from her hiding spot, watching every little thing for the monster she’s imaging to be lurking behind it. Finding her phone on the nightstand amid the many random items, she quickly pushes the buttons with a speed I’ve only seen teens possess.
We are both holding our breaths, waiting for the screen to light up with a response, a clue, something to give me an idea of what I am facing. With each second feeling like hours, Bella begins to tap the phone’s pastel cover as if it will make the words appear faster.
“Maybe he’s busy?” I offer seeing her body tight with anxiety.
“Maybe he’s dead,” Bella says, and the first tear slides down her high arch of a cheek.
Before I could stumble my way through some form of encouragement or sympathy, the little screen lights up and we both exhale for different reasons.
“He says they’re at the cemetery. There’s an open crypt past Becky’s grave. He wants me to go there.”
Bella is already shoving her feet into the tennis shoes closest to her upon reading the request. I don’t point out they are two different shoes. I do point out how it may be a bad idea to go.
“You stay here. I’ll go check it out. See what is going on,” I offer, trying to make my voice neutral with my request.
“No way!” Bella shouts, suddenly over the under the bed routine. “He may need me.”
“To do what?” I ask with more bite than I meant. “Bella, if your mom has lost her mind, you could get hurt. I will go and you stay here safe in case they return before I make it there.”
“I can’t just sit here. Can I sit in your car? I won’t get out until you tell me it’s safe, but at least I’ll be there.” Bella is pleading with me, and when she doesn’t see me moved by her needs, she adds, “I promise, Miss Harper. I won’t be in the way, but I can’t stay here not knowing.”
We both know she’s not going to stay in the car and we both know she is not going to stay here, but we both play along like we don’t know any of the above.
“Fine. In my car,” I sternly tell her. “No hero moves.”
“I’ll save those for you,” she smiles a genuine smile and my stomach drops with it.
“Your mom,” I ask remembering something said, “where does she spend most of her time when she’s home?”
“In the creepy shed out back,” Bella tells me. “She used to lock herself away in her bedroom. Then it was the basement. Now, it’s in the backyard. I’ll hear her get up in the middle of the night when she thinks everyone is asleep to go out there.”
“Show me,” I tell her with less of a question and more of a command.
“What about Dad?”
“Few more minutes won’t change the world,” I tell her, exiting the room.
Actually, a few minutes may change everything, but it’s something I’m willing to risk if I can find some answers of which to arm myself with before heading into a new flavor of crazy.
I didn’t really need help finding the shed. Like the house, the backyard is landscaped with everything in its place including the stone path to the little wooden mini-replica of what we just left. The lock on the door, for that I do need her help.
“Four. Four. Five. Six,” Bella tells me, watching to see if their universal code works here too.
It does and somehow that’s less comforting than if it hadn’t worked. Seeing as it is the home’s address, it speaks volumes for the safety of their little world. What I am about to show Bella will ruin that forever. What the other members of her family have already seen, their illusions have already been shattered.
It always amazes me how the mind can ignore the scent of death. Standing this close to the closed doors, I should have picked up on its delicate fragrance. The many planted flowers’ perfume should not have been able to cover it, but they did somehow, resulting in the gut punch of the scent when we open the doors.
“What the hell is that?” Bella asks when the rolling stench almost topples her.
“Your sister,” I tell her, without any band-aids or cozy words to help soothe her suffering.
The room is dim, hiding away its shame from the rays of the sun. I can make out the pile of blankets in the far corner. Clothes and toys are scattered around the dirty floor, but it’s the irregular dark patterns beside the toys which keep my attention.
As I make my way near them, I fear what their silent message will mean for this family. I worry every fear I have danced with is now a fact, red and bold before me.
“Is that oil?” Bella asks from the safety of the doors.
“Sure,” I tell her with a flat voice. “Oil for the body.”
“Your jokes are worse than my dad’s,” she remarks with an attempted scalding. All it’s done is remind her of what is at hand. “Can we go now?”
We can. I don’t need to know every inch and detail of what has happened behind these wooden walls. I know enough about what hasn’t happened. What hasn’t happened is a little girl being left to rest in her grave. I know this same little girl had to be fed, and whatever functions of her life, still kept going.
She was playing, eating, and sleeping, for some time here. All of it only a few feet away from the family she once called her own.
I once understood the need to keep those who were stolen away from us close. I can’t stand here in judgment of what Miranda has done. I can shake my head over what she has done to recreate these moments. She’s risked so much for a few days of lies. Lies built around magic and a desire to hold a piece of her once more. That piece may just cost her everything.
“You remember what we agreed on?” I ask Bella as we both stare past her sister’s grave from the safety of my car.
“I remember,” she tells me with a voice shaking with fear.
“You going to actually do it?”
Bella is polite enough to not answer, letting the truth hang in the air between us. She may have promised then, but now as we sit with her family’s dirty secret upheaved and displayed before us, she’s not so willing to keep to the same offer.
“Just at least don’t come running into who knows what unarmed.” I slip her the little secret I keep in the glove box. “There’s only one number programmed into that phone. When the woman answers, tell her the shit’s hit the fan.”
“A phone? You’re handing me a phone? Why not a gun or something? I have a phone!” Bella shouts with her emotions spilling over from the stress of the day and the stress the day still holds.
“Yeah, but your phone doesn’t have GiGi’s number in it.”
Bella’s jaw still hangs open, staring at the phone before she asks, “Will she bring a gun?”
“By all the Gods, I hope not,” I honestly tell her, leaving the safety of the car.
She’s saying something, but through the metal door and the glass of the windows, and mostly my indifference to know what it is, I don’t hear her. I have already let my walls down, allowing my magic to seep through my skin, escaping from the cage in which I keep it locked and hidden deep in denial. It touches every wilting flower, plays with the sagging bows drenched in remorse, and calls to those lost to years of dusty slumber. The dead know I’m here, and even as familiar as I am to them, they don’t know this new me or what she now brings. I can feel them waiting, watching with their ancient eyes to see what may unfold this night.
The Little Lies (The Great Hexpectations Series Book 1) Page 20