Incantations, page 5
Viviana's face went dark for a moment. “No mention of a dark-haired girl? A teenager?”
“No.” The description of the teenager pulled at something in her subconscious. “Who is the girl?”
“I'll tell you what I can in a moment,” Viviana said, changing tack. “You want to talk to Lillian badly, don't you?”
Angela nodded her head.
“There is a certain amount of danger to this. Communicating with the dead always has its risks. They lie. They trick. Sometimes who you call isn't the one who answers. And some questions you wish you knew the answers to, you find you didn't want to know at all.”
Angela nodded and sat up a little straighter. “I understand. This is something I have to do. Not only for me but for finding justice for Lil.”
“Sometimes that's all any of us want is justice,” Viviana said. “This is what we're going to do. I'm going to show you a way into their world. However, once you're there, I can't help you. You're on your own. I have gifts which can help me to help you, but otherwise, my talents are useless.”
“Why are they useless?” Angela asked. “Don't you have experience doing this?”
Viviana glanced away before looking back at Angela, and her face was dark again. “Angela, what's in that house now isn't just dead. It's pure evil."
2
Angela took in the words Viviana had spoken. Pure evil. The thought of communicating with her sister seemed a foolish idea. But it wasn't something she was willing to let get in her way.
I'm going to find out who killed you, Lil. I promise you.
“What am I dealing with, Viviana? You keep talking about this house as if it's a person. A house can't do harm. That's crazy.” Angela fidgeted on her chair and pushed her hair back over her ear. “Isn't it?”
“Houses have been known to take on the energy inside them. Sometimes it's a good, positive energy.” She looked down for a moment, then back into Angela's eyes. “Sometimes it's not.”
“So, tell me about it,” Angela said. “My house. 129 Walsh.”
Viviana looked tired. “Maybe it's better if —”
“No,” Angela said flatly. “I need to know. Please.”
“There's a lot of history there. You have to understand that, first of all. And the house didn't always have the influence it does now. The evil inside of it.” Viviana took a deep breath as if deciding whether to go on. “You know of your parents. I don't have to go into all that. Your memory is fuzzy about your past, but you know enough. If I push you too far into trying to remember certain things before you're ready, your mind could snap.”
“Like the memories from my childhood the accident took from me?”
“Exactly those things,” Viviana said.
“Okay,” Angela said. “Go on.”
“The Greenlee family owned the house before your family did. The father was a doctor. He and his wife had one son.”
“What happened?”
“It wasn't long after they moved in, the good doctor was found molesting a girl. The beautiful, dark-haired babysitter. He said he had no memory of it. His wife didn't believe him. Who would? He put a gun to his head late at night while his family was asleep.”
“Jesus,” Angela said.
“Yes, and that wasn't it for the family. His son took his own head off with a shotgun a few years later. Right there in the little shed behind your garden. Because he thought his girlfriend was breaking up with him. His girlfriend killed herself a short time later at her home, presumably out of guilt. But it still feels related to the house.”
Angela shuddered, remembering the splash of red on the shed wall which had looked like dried paint.
“The owner before them was a drug dealer. He had a wife and four kids. The dealer had skimmed money, and some thugs came after him to teach him a lesson. The lesson became permanent as they hung him from the tree overlooking the garden.”
Angela started at that, flashing back to what she thought had been a hallucination.
“Sound familiar?” Viviana asked. She didn't look surprised.
“I may have seen something,” Angela said. “I thought I was going crazy.”
“Trust me, dear. You're not crazy. Shall we go on?”
Angela nodded her head.
“Some say the men who came to the house intended to kill him all along. But I don't think so. I think they came there intending to hurt him. To get their money back. But the thought to kill him was put there.”
“By the house?” Angela asked.
“By the house.” Viviana leaned forward. “Make no mistake. It wants people to kill. When the dealer's wife came home, minus the two older boys, she took the two youngest and brought them into the little shed.”
Angela wasn't sure she wanted to hear the rest.
“The mother grabbed a large paving rock from the garden path and killed her two children. She tried to kill herself, but the police showed up first. It's lucky one of them didn't draw his gun and shoot the woman. And then himself.”
Angela knew the woman wasn't joking. The thought of anyone killing their child made her want to vomit. “That's horrible.”
“It is,” the older woman agreed. “But, the most horrible part of all is the part I've been dreading telling you.” She shifted uncomfortably and looked scared.
“What is it? Tell me.”
Viviana took another deep breath and sighed it out. “From 1900 until 1971, the house was owned first by my great-grandfather, and then by my grandmother. I lived there with my grandmother from the time I was a baby. Me and my sister.” Her voice caught. “I was fourteen when grandmother died. My sister, she was already dead.”
This information caught Angela off guard. “I'm so sorry. I know what it feels like to lose a sister. But you grew up there? What's going on, Viviana?”
“I did grow up there. And that's partly the reason I'm helping you. Because it's what my sister would have wanted. Even so, it's also the right thing to do. My grandmother was a horrible woman. And perhaps that's not even the right word. She was evil. She killed so many children. And would have killed me. It's beyond a full explanation at the moment. I don't have a lot of time. Nevertheless, my grandmother is linked with the house in ways which defy rational thought.”
“Are you serious?” Angela asked. “Your grandmother killed children? Who is she?”
Viviana looked truly frightened. “She's the old woman your sister saw going in the basement.”
“Your grandmother is the Summerhaven Witch? What was her name?”
“We don't say her name. Ever. And if I were you, I'd forget most of what I've already told you. It's dangerous. The important thing here is I think I can help you communicate with Lillian. However, you have to be willing to pay a price. It's not easy, and it's not safe to open doorways for the dead.”
“I understand,” Angela said. She didn't understand most of it at all, but it was a chance to talk with her sister. What more did she need to know?
“What are you ready to pay?” the old psychic woman asked. “What are you willing to do?”
Angela looked down at her swollen stomach for a moment, worried about her baby. Then, she screwed up her nerve.
“Anything,” Angela said.
3
Viviana got up and went to an alcove in the back of the room. Angela heard her rummaging around. A few minutes later Viviana came back out with a flat object wrapped in a cloth. After placing it in a bag, she gave it to Angela.
“This is what you'll use,” Viviana said. “Wait until you get home to open it, and you must communicate clearly what you want from the other side. Like I said, there are forces which want to trick you and to hurt you. You have to be strong and ask for only what you wish to receive.”
“Are you sure you can't come and do this for me?” Angela asked again.
Viviana shook her head. “Even if I could, I wouldn't,” she said. “This has to be a personal thing. The best chance of getting your sister to come to you is through yourself. My presence there would only bring forth the things you never want to communicate with. Ever.”
Angela shivered at these words.
Viviana spent the next half hour going over the instructions for calling the dead. Angela took them all in as best she could.
When they were done, Angela picked up the bag and thanked Viviana Talbot. She gathered her things for the walk home. Viviana saw her off at the door, warning her again to be careful. But there was no careful when dealing with forces which couldn't be controlled, was there?
Viviana stood for a long moment at the window, watching Angela walk down the sidewalk toward home. There were many things she hadn't yet told the poor girl, but it was for the best. For now.
She looked to the sky, already dark, but getting ever darker by the minute.
It looked like a storm was coming.
In more ways than one.
4
Walking into the warm, wet evening with the flat package bundled in its cloth and bag, Angela started toward home. The sky seemed extra foreboding because of the things they had discussed.
She glanced at work. Good thing the manager, Mr. Henshaw, wasn't out at the moment. Angela called in sick, the first time since she'd started, to have this meeting with Viviana. And because her mind would not relax enough to allow her to concentrate on anything else until this was over.
A low rumble of thunder emanated from the west, and the rain started to come even harder.
You'd have to be a fool to be out in this, she thought. Guess it makes me a fool.
She headed down toward Walsh and had to squeeze her eyes tight against the wind blowing fat raindrops into her face. The bag felt extra heavy. It was as if God Himself was warning her not to do this. Even so, it was already too late. Not God, not Viviana Talbot, not Mr. Henshaw, not even Big Donnie Tremblay could stop Angela from what she was about to do.
Reaching the old Queen Anne Victorian, which loomed large against the bleak sky like a desolate shadow, Angela stopped at the yard. She looked up at the window to Lil's room. She couldn't be certain, but it looked like the curtain fluttered.
She walked up the steps without managing to slip, and she fumbled for the key to the front door with shaking fingers. Finally fitting the key into the lock, she opened the big oak door and let herself into the house.
Angela heard “Never Can Say Goodbye” playing from the upstairs radio, even as she entered the door. The melody was especially haunting in this weather. She felt painful prickles break out on her arms which had nothing to do with the rain.
Walking over to the kitchen table, she placed the bag down and the music stopped. She heard the underlying creak, creak, creak from the basement, but it went silent as well. It was as if the house was waiting for something.
Angela shook off the umbrella and hung it on its stand. Her hands were already drying from the heat inside the house. She flexed her fingers and pulled the package from the bag. Setting it on the table, she unwrapped the old, tattered cloth. She had to stifle a gasp.
It was a rich, ornate, beautifully carved Ouija Board. The wood looked extremely durable, like ash. The planchette, inlaid with silver, was equally as beautiful. Angela turned it to its proper side and placed it in the middle of the table.
As soon as she placed the planchette on the board, thunder struck from outside. The windows rattled, and Angela thought she heard a sob from upstairs.
The dead were waiting.
In the second post of this blog series dedicated to the strange, supernatural happenings at 129 Walsh, we are going to explore the timeline before Tony Atkins bought the house in 1978.
This blogger still doesn't wish to get too far into the life of the original owner, Esme Delapaz, as that will be the topic of our next two installments. And we will cursorily get into the rumors she was a witch, as many townspeople have claimed. She will be mentioned in this blog post as far as she was involved in the lives of those it concerns.
We will instead focus on the grandchildren of Miss Delapaz. Bianca and Viviana Talbot. And her one daughter, Mariabella.
Bianca was born in the early spring of 1955 to her father, Gustave Talbot, and mother, Mariabella Delapaz. Gustave was a young thirty-three-years-old compared to Mariabella's thirty-nine years. Even so, Mariabella was a classic beauty with dark hair, hazel eyes, and golden caramel skin. It was an older age for certain to have a child, but Mariabella was sheltered for most of her life. Her mother Esme didn't trust anyone around her daughter. And Esme was persuasive.
Mariabella met Gustave at the market where she shopped and Gustave worked. She fell immediately for his handsome face and the way he had of flirting with her. They started meeting in secret down by the ocean. It was there on the sandy beach, one early summer night in 1954, Mariabella conceived her first child. As soon as she stepped foot inside the house that morning, Esme was waiting for her. And she knew. Esme always knew.
Esme was furious with Mariabella. She threatened to abort the child. Mariabella went into her room, packed up her few possessions, and snuck out the following night to find Gustave and talk him into running away with her. He took his meager savings from the market, and they fled to Canada. Their daughter Bianca was born the next spring.
They made do with what they could, and Gustave found work with a local lumber camp as a logger. The pay wasn't great, but it was more than he was making as a grocer. The downside was coming home every night with bleeding, calloused hands. Even so, they managed to have another baby two years later. They named their second daughter Viviana. Both girls had dark hair and hazel eyes, like their mother.
The winter after Viviana was born, Mariabella was devastated. She had her suspicions for some time. Gustave admitted to falling in love with the young and attractive daughter of his boss at work. Many late nights he was supposedly working had been spent in the arms of his mistress. He left Mariabella and the two girls with nothing.
Heartbroken and with no other choice, Mariabella bundled the two girls up. She took what little money she could earn to move them all back to New Hampshire. Back to 129 Walsh. Back to Esme.
Upon hearing the news of what Gustave did to her girl, the old woman may or may not have had a hand in what happened the next day. There was a chainsaw accident. It seems, according to witnesses who were there, the chainsaw “turned itself on in Gustave's hands and turned itself toward him.” The mess, and fright to those around, was considerable.
Mariabella took the news harder than anyone would have thought. She hung herself in the basement, leaving the two girls in the care of Esme.
Foolish girl.
The years passed, and Esme was hard on the girls. Especially Bianca, who she openly blamed for the loss of her Mariabella. After all, if Mariabella had not gotten pregnant with the girl, she would never have left home in the first place. If Esme had her way, the girl would have been aborted from the start.
More years passed and the girls became teens, as children are wont to do. They also became interested in boys, as girls are wont to do. And more often than not, history has a bad habit of repeating itself. Young Bianca became pregnant at fifteen. Esme wanted to know the name of the bastard foolish enough to lie down with her granddaughter, but Bianca refused to give the boy up. Esme said she could find out easily. Esme had her ways.
In the end, it didn't matter who the boy was. Bianca was confined to the basement. Esme would tie her up and punish her with what she called “cleansings.” They were beatings, make no mistake about that. The girl's skin was raw from the bindings the old woman used. She was bruised and bloody from the lashes she would get from various objects of torture.
All through this, she kept her baby. It grew inside her stomach as the beatings continued. No one knows Esme's reasons for letting this happen, as she could have aborted the child, if not done something much worse. Some say she wanted the baby to be born to complete some sort of ritual.
Bianca's sister, young Viviana, would sneak down at night and take Bianca bits of food and sips of water. She would curl up with the girl on the raggedy old mattress in the corner and promise her it would all be over soon. They would be free.
Neither of them knew what the price of freedom would ultimately be.
PART II:
THE FEY
CHAPTER SIX:
INCANTATIONS
1
There were candles in the kitchen drawer. They were black, the outsides of them slippery and waxy. They all had a faint aroma which reminded Angela of licorice.
She placed them around the kitchen and around the Ouija Board, lighting each of them in turn with a long kitchen match. A breeze wafted through the kitchen, guttering the flames, but not blowing them out.
The sound of rain hitting the windows made it a somber atmosphere. Apparently, the thunder had proven to mean more than an ominous warning as sheets of water washed down the panes of glass. The sound of sobbing from upstairs returned, as well as the creak of the invisible rope downstairs.
Great, Angela thought. Gear up for it, you bastard. Do your worst, because tonight I am talking to Lillian. And we're going to find out who killed her.
She sat down at the table. The board sat in front of her. The silver and wood inlaid planchette lay on the board. It seemed like a thing alive as if it would start to move in your hand when touched. Angela picked it up anyway and placed it on the board, over the familiar pattern of letters in the middle. Numbers stood out below the letters, and at the top was a simple “YES” and “NO.”
Time to begin.
She placed the tips of her fingers on the sides of the planchette, barely touching the piece, as Viviana had instructed her to do. Before Angela had left the shop, there were a lot of instructions the old psychic had given. Some were confusing, but Angela would come to these as she needed them.
Clearing her throat, she felt the light from the candles surrounding her. It was comforting. There was a certain warmth in the light, despite the frigidness which had come from nowhere.
“No.” The description of the teenager pulled at something in her subconscious. “Who is the girl?”
“I'll tell you what I can in a moment,” Viviana said, changing tack. “You want to talk to Lillian badly, don't you?”
Angela nodded her head.
“There is a certain amount of danger to this. Communicating with the dead always has its risks. They lie. They trick. Sometimes who you call isn't the one who answers. And some questions you wish you knew the answers to, you find you didn't want to know at all.”
Angela nodded and sat up a little straighter. “I understand. This is something I have to do. Not only for me but for finding justice for Lil.”
“Sometimes that's all any of us want is justice,” Viviana said. “This is what we're going to do. I'm going to show you a way into their world. However, once you're there, I can't help you. You're on your own. I have gifts which can help me to help you, but otherwise, my talents are useless.”
“Why are they useless?” Angela asked. “Don't you have experience doing this?”
Viviana glanced away before looking back at Angela, and her face was dark again. “Angela, what's in that house now isn't just dead. It's pure evil."
2
Angela took in the words Viviana had spoken. Pure evil. The thought of communicating with her sister seemed a foolish idea. But it wasn't something she was willing to let get in her way.
I'm going to find out who killed you, Lil. I promise you.
“What am I dealing with, Viviana? You keep talking about this house as if it's a person. A house can't do harm. That's crazy.” Angela fidgeted on her chair and pushed her hair back over her ear. “Isn't it?”
“Houses have been known to take on the energy inside them. Sometimes it's a good, positive energy.” She looked down for a moment, then back into Angela's eyes. “Sometimes it's not.”
“So, tell me about it,” Angela said. “My house. 129 Walsh.”
Viviana looked tired. “Maybe it's better if —”
“No,” Angela said flatly. “I need to know. Please.”
“There's a lot of history there. You have to understand that, first of all. And the house didn't always have the influence it does now. The evil inside of it.” Viviana took a deep breath as if deciding whether to go on. “You know of your parents. I don't have to go into all that. Your memory is fuzzy about your past, but you know enough. If I push you too far into trying to remember certain things before you're ready, your mind could snap.”
“Like the memories from my childhood the accident took from me?”
“Exactly those things,” Viviana said.
“Okay,” Angela said. “Go on.”
“The Greenlee family owned the house before your family did. The father was a doctor. He and his wife had one son.”
“What happened?”
“It wasn't long after they moved in, the good doctor was found molesting a girl. The beautiful, dark-haired babysitter. He said he had no memory of it. His wife didn't believe him. Who would? He put a gun to his head late at night while his family was asleep.”
“Jesus,” Angela said.
“Yes, and that wasn't it for the family. His son took his own head off with a shotgun a few years later. Right there in the little shed behind your garden. Because he thought his girlfriend was breaking up with him. His girlfriend killed herself a short time later at her home, presumably out of guilt. But it still feels related to the house.”
Angela shuddered, remembering the splash of red on the shed wall which had looked like dried paint.
“The owner before them was a drug dealer. He had a wife and four kids. The dealer had skimmed money, and some thugs came after him to teach him a lesson. The lesson became permanent as they hung him from the tree overlooking the garden.”
Angela started at that, flashing back to what she thought had been a hallucination.
“Sound familiar?” Viviana asked. She didn't look surprised.
“I may have seen something,” Angela said. “I thought I was going crazy.”
“Trust me, dear. You're not crazy. Shall we go on?”
Angela nodded her head.
“Some say the men who came to the house intended to kill him all along. But I don't think so. I think they came there intending to hurt him. To get their money back. But the thought to kill him was put there.”
“By the house?” Angela asked.
“By the house.” Viviana leaned forward. “Make no mistake. It wants people to kill. When the dealer's wife came home, minus the two older boys, she took the two youngest and brought them into the little shed.”
Angela wasn't sure she wanted to hear the rest.
“The mother grabbed a large paving rock from the garden path and killed her two children. She tried to kill herself, but the police showed up first. It's lucky one of them didn't draw his gun and shoot the woman. And then himself.”
Angela knew the woman wasn't joking. The thought of anyone killing their child made her want to vomit. “That's horrible.”
“It is,” the older woman agreed. “But, the most horrible part of all is the part I've been dreading telling you.” She shifted uncomfortably and looked scared.
“What is it? Tell me.”
Viviana took another deep breath and sighed it out. “From 1900 until 1971, the house was owned first by my great-grandfather, and then by my grandmother. I lived there with my grandmother from the time I was a baby. Me and my sister.” Her voice caught. “I was fourteen when grandmother died. My sister, she was already dead.”
This information caught Angela off guard. “I'm so sorry. I know what it feels like to lose a sister. But you grew up there? What's going on, Viviana?”
“I did grow up there. And that's partly the reason I'm helping you. Because it's what my sister would have wanted. Even so, it's also the right thing to do. My grandmother was a horrible woman. And perhaps that's not even the right word. She was evil. She killed so many children. And would have killed me. It's beyond a full explanation at the moment. I don't have a lot of time. Nevertheless, my grandmother is linked with the house in ways which defy rational thought.”
“Are you serious?” Angela asked. “Your grandmother killed children? Who is she?”
Viviana looked truly frightened. “She's the old woman your sister saw going in the basement.”
“Your grandmother is the Summerhaven Witch? What was her name?”
“We don't say her name. Ever. And if I were you, I'd forget most of what I've already told you. It's dangerous. The important thing here is I think I can help you communicate with Lillian. However, you have to be willing to pay a price. It's not easy, and it's not safe to open doorways for the dead.”
“I understand,” Angela said. She didn't understand most of it at all, but it was a chance to talk with her sister. What more did she need to know?
“What are you ready to pay?” the old psychic woman asked. “What are you willing to do?”
Angela looked down at her swollen stomach for a moment, worried about her baby. Then, she screwed up her nerve.
“Anything,” Angela said.
3
Viviana got up and went to an alcove in the back of the room. Angela heard her rummaging around. A few minutes later Viviana came back out with a flat object wrapped in a cloth. After placing it in a bag, she gave it to Angela.
“This is what you'll use,” Viviana said. “Wait until you get home to open it, and you must communicate clearly what you want from the other side. Like I said, there are forces which want to trick you and to hurt you. You have to be strong and ask for only what you wish to receive.”
“Are you sure you can't come and do this for me?” Angela asked again.
Viviana shook her head. “Even if I could, I wouldn't,” she said. “This has to be a personal thing. The best chance of getting your sister to come to you is through yourself. My presence there would only bring forth the things you never want to communicate with. Ever.”
Angela shivered at these words.
Viviana spent the next half hour going over the instructions for calling the dead. Angela took them all in as best she could.
When they were done, Angela picked up the bag and thanked Viviana Talbot. She gathered her things for the walk home. Viviana saw her off at the door, warning her again to be careful. But there was no careful when dealing with forces which couldn't be controlled, was there?
Viviana stood for a long moment at the window, watching Angela walk down the sidewalk toward home. There were many things she hadn't yet told the poor girl, but it was for the best. For now.
She looked to the sky, already dark, but getting ever darker by the minute.
It looked like a storm was coming.
In more ways than one.
4
Walking into the warm, wet evening with the flat package bundled in its cloth and bag, Angela started toward home. The sky seemed extra foreboding because of the things they had discussed.
She glanced at work. Good thing the manager, Mr. Henshaw, wasn't out at the moment. Angela called in sick, the first time since she'd started, to have this meeting with Viviana. And because her mind would not relax enough to allow her to concentrate on anything else until this was over.
A low rumble of thunder emanated from the west, and the rain started to come even harder.
You'd have to be a fool to be out in this, she thought. Guess it makes me a fool.
She headed down toward Walsh and had to squeeze her eyes tight against the wind blowing fat raindrops into her face. The bag felt extra heavy. It was as if God Himself was warning her not to do this. Even so, it was already too late. Not God, not Viviana Talbot, not Mr. Henshaw, not even Big Donnie Tremblay could stop Angela from what she was about to do.
Reaching the old Queen Anne Victorian, which loomed large against the bleak sky like a desolate shadow, Angela stopped at the yard. She looked up at the window to Lil's room. She couldn't be certain, but it looked like the curtain fluttered.
She walked up the steps without managing to slip, and she fumbled for the key to the front door with shaking fingers. Finally fitting the key into the lock, she opened the big oak door and let herself into the house.
Angela heard “Never Can Say Goodbye” playing from the upstairs radio, even as she entered the door. The melody was especially haunting in this weather. She felt painful prickles break out on her arms which had nothing to do with the rain.
Walking over to the kitchen table, she placed the bag down and the music stopped. She heard the underlying creak, creak, creak from the basement, but it went silent as well. It was as if the house was waiting for something.
Angela shook off the umbrella and hung it on its stand. Her hands were already drying from the heat inside the house. She flexed her fingers and pulled the package from the bag. Setting it on the table, she unwrapped the old, tattered cloth. She had to stifle a gasp.
It was a rich, ornate, beautifully carved Ouija Board. The wood looked extremely durable, like ash. The planchette, inlaid with silver, was equally as beautiful. Angela turned it to its proper side and placed it in the middle of the table.
As soon as she placed the planchette on the board, thunder struck from outside. The windows rattled, and Angela thought she heard a sob from upstairs.
The dead were waiting.
In the second post of this blog series dedicated to the strange, supernatural happenings at 129 Walsh, we are going to explore the timeline before Tony Atkins bought the house in 1978.
This blogger still doesn't wish to get too far into the life of the original owner, Esme Delapaz, as that will be the topic of our next two installments. And we will cursorily get into the rumors she was a witch, as many townspeople have claimed. She will be mentioned in this blog post as far as she was involved in the lives of those it concerns.
We will instead focus on the grandchildren of Miss Delapaz. Bianca and Viviana Talbot. And her one daughter, Mariabella.
Bianca was born in the early spring of 1955 to her father, Gustave Talbot, and mother, Mariabella Delapaz. Gustave was a young thirty-three-years-old compared to Mariabella's thirty-nine years. Even so, Mariabella was a classic beauty with dark hair, hazel eyes, and golden caramel skin. It was an older age for certain to have a child, but Mariabella was sheltered for most of her life. Her mother Esme didn't trust anyone around her daughter. And Esme was persuasive.
Mariabella met Gustave at the market where she shopped and Gustave worked. She fell immediately for his handsome face and the way he had of flirting with her. They started meeting in secret down by the ocean. It was there on the sandy beach, one early summer night in 1954, Mariabella conceived her first child. As soon as she stepped foot inside the house that morning, Esme was waiting for her. And she knew. Esme always knew.
Esme was furious with Mariabella. She threatened to abort the child. Mariabella went into her room, packed up her few possessions, and snuck out the following night to find Gustave and talk him into running away with her. He took his meager savings from the market, and they fled to Canada. Their daughter Bianca was born the next spring.
They made do with what they could, and Gustave found work with a local lumber camp as a logger. The pay wasn't great, but it was more than he was making as a grocer. The downside was coming home every night with bleeding, calloused hands. Even so, they managed to have another baby two years later. They named their second daughter Viviana. Both girls had dark hair and hazel eyes, like their mother.
The winter after Viviana was born, Mariabella was devastated. She had her suspicions for some time. Gustave admitted to falling in love with the young and attractive daughter of his boss at work. Many late nights he was supposedly working had been spent in the arms of his mistress. He left Mariabella and the two girls with nothing.
Heartbroken and with no other choice, Mariabella bundled the two girls up. She took what little money she could earn to move them all back to New Hampshire. Back to 129 Walsh. Back to Esme.
Upon hearing the news of what Gustave did to her girl, the old woman may or may not have had a hand in what happened the next day. There was a chainsaw accident. It seems, according to witnesses who were there, the chainsaw “turned itself on in Gustave's hands and turned itself toward him.” The mess, and fright to those around, was considerable.
Mariabella took the news harder than anyone would have thought. She hung herself in the basement, leaving the two girls in the care of Esme.
Foolish girl.
The years passed, and Esme was hard on the girls. Especially Bianca, who she openly blamed for the loss of her Mariabella. After all, if Mariabella had not gotten pregnant with the girl, she would never have left home in the first place. If Esme had her way, the girl would have been aborted from the start.
More years passed and the girls became teens, as children are wont to do. They also became interested in boys, as girls are wont to do. And more often than not, history has a bad habit of repeating itself. Young Bianca became pregnant at fifteen. Esme wanted to know the name of the bastard foolish enough to lie down with her granddaughter, but Bianca refused to give the boy up. Esme said she could find out easily. Esme had her ways.
In the end, it didn't matter who the boy was. Bianca was confined to the basement. Esme would tie her up and punish her with what she called “cleansings.” They were beatings, make no mistake about that. The girl's skin was raw from the bindings the old woman used. She was bruised and bloody from the lashes she would get from various objects of torture.
All through this, she kept her baby. It grew inside her stomach as the beatings continued. No one knows Esme's reasons for letting this happen, as she could have aborted the child, if not done something much worse. Some say she wanted the baby to be born to complete some sort of ritual.
Bianca's sister, young Viviana, would sneak down at night and take Bianca bits of food and sips of water. She would curl up with the girl on the raggedy old mattress in the corner and promise her it would all be over soon. They would be free.
Neither of them knew what the price of freedom would ultimately be.
PART II:
THE FEY
CHAPTER SIX:
INCANTATIONS
1
There were candles in the kitchen drawer. They were black, the outsides of them slippery and waxy. They all had a faint aroma which reminded Angela of licorice.
She placed them around the kitchen and around the Ouija Board, lighting each of them in turn with a long kitchen match. A breeze wafted through the kitchen, guttering the flames, but not blowing them out.
The sound of rain hitting the windows made it a somber atmosphere. Apparently, the thunder had proven to mean more than an ominous warning as sheets of water washed down the panes of glass. The sound of sobbing from upstairs returned, as well as the creak of the invisible rope downstairs.
Great, Angela thought. Gear up for it, you bastard. Do your worst, because tonight I am talking to Lillian. And we're going to find out who killed her.
She sat down at the table. The board sat in front of her. The silver and wood inlaid planchette lay on the board. It seemed like a thing alive as if it would start to move in your hand when touched. Angela picked it up anyway and placed it on the board, over the familiar pattern of letters in the middle. Numbers stood out below the letters, and at the top was a simple “YES” and “NO.”
Time to begin.
She placed the tips of her fingers on the sides of the planchette, barely touching the piece, as Viviana had instructed her to do. Before Angela had left the shop, there were a lot of instructions the old psychic had given. Some were confusing, but Angela would come to these as she needed them.
Clearing her throat, she felt the light from the candles surrounding her. It was comforting. There was a certain warmth in the light, despite the frigidness which had come from nowhere.
