Chapter 27 A House Disturbed #3
"Listen to me," she whisper-yelled. "I am going to leave.
You are going to keep your mouth closed about seeing me.
Because you're right." She tilted her head up, put on her best look of cruel intimidation.
"You do not want to mess with me. But you already know that, don't you?
" she said tilting her head. "How's school going for you?
" Her face and voice were leeched of emotion making something heighten along the young girl's skin.
She watched the girl's face go from angry to shocked and white.
This was wasting her time. The sound of something slicing cut the air and she looked back at the girl to see her pulling a chef's knife from the wooden block.
She laughed.
"Honey. Seriously? I have something much darker on my side," she said as she clenched her hand, calling forth something, any magic she'd wrestled to her will over the last year, to come forth.
But this house, this damn house was strong and its protection spell was holding fast against her power. She needed to get out.
A knock sounded on the front door. They both froze.
Then Bess was about to open her mouth and do something incredibly stupid so she grabbed the copper bowl and threw it with all of her strength hitting her in the face, the sound of her bones meeting metal and then the back of her head hitting the refrigerator thwacking through the air.
The girl sank to the ground, no muscles awake in her body to hold her up.
She smiled.
She could get into the forest, protected, and plant the rest of the evidence to frame Ursula and Eloise, sealing their fate. She smiled as she gave the kitchen one last glance relishing in the knowledge she would be back. But as she turned the handle it wouldn't budge.
"Come on," she murmured as she whispered those dark magic words and tried again.
It was a dutch door so she grabbed a heavy glass bowl to smash through the top window of the door but as she went to slam it through the window something sharp and piercing punctured her ankle causing her to drop the bowl with a scream.
When she looked down and saw a fat raccoon she yelled as the raccoon lifted on its back legs and hissed at her.
She growled kicking out with her right leg, sending it across the kitchen and smacking violently against a wall sliding down to where the animal now lay in an unmoving heap on the floor.
"I'll fucking slice you from teeth to tail if you get up, you trash rat."
The doorbell chimed, the sound annoyingly sweet and whimsical and her heart pounded.
She needed to move quickly. She grabbed a vase and threw it, only for the door to swing open in perfect timing to knock the glass like a bat hitting a ball straight at her smashing the glass which hit her face, a large thick piece smacking into her nose with a crunch.
Her shrill scream was muffled by her hands covering her heavily bleeding, and what she suspected, broken nose. She threw curses when she looked up to find the door once again closed.
The doorbell chimed and then there was a loud, firm series of knocks.
The already broken window with its jagged glass was her best option so she picked up a chair to clear out the sharp pieces.
Once they were cleared she set the chair down and climbed onto it so she could climb out of the window.
But as she did a great gust of wind so thick it should have been visible hit her, holding her firmly in place as her hair was whipping around her face, pieces of glass getting stuck in her sticky blood.
She was trying to get her bearings with her eyes closed tightly then finally got down from the chair and backed up.
"What the hell is this, huh?" she yelled into the house, the wind drowning out her words until it died down. But she was out of time because she heard boots and voices, at least three of them, as they announced themselves.
As her mind was frantically thinking, something slashed through her thoughts as her eyes caught on something.
Something swung from a cabinet knob, its thin string catching moonlight and making her pause. Everything paused.
But it couldn't be. She reached for her neck in a move of muscle memory grabbing onto nothing. Because what used to hang around her neck, what she had lost years ago, now hung from a brass fox knob with her initial carved into the heart.
Her heart thumped. She knew what it meant and the taunt of it hit her hard, made her want to scream.
She reached for her lost locket in a blind rage but the moment her fist clenched around it, the silver burned hot into her flesh making her drop it and cry out with a quick step backward.
Her talisman of dark magic wouldn't let her touch it.
What had they done? The rage inside of her was liquid and running fast.
The girl was still unmoving on the floor.
Did she find her locket? The locket that held the magic of this place.
It would be fitting. The girl's idiot uncle was the one who gave her the necklace.
The necklace she held in her hand all those years ago as she cast her first hex in the graveyard deep into the night he told her that he wasn't in love with her.
Her young, foolish heart shattered, the pieces leaving her thinking she would never feel whole again.
But then she cried out to the ancient magic and something inside of her twisted when the magic answered, meaning to soothe her but she grabbed it in her fist and turned it black to use it to hex him.
Hate can turn pure things evil. She made sure he would never know love, that women would go crazy, as crazy as she felt that night, around him.
The darkness had saturated the magic and her locket carried inside of it the beginning of her new life. The one where she had power. The one where she didn't need to fear not being loved or wanted again, because if anyone tried to reject her, harm her, push her away she could retaliate.
But she'd lost it. Years ago. The house turned on her. The lost souls rallied against her as did the town.
The officers were getting closer, bringing her back to this cool evening trapped inside The Lost Souls House.
This house should be hers. The magic here should be used by someone who understands its power, not a group of silly women who play witch and laugh around a graveyard with their hopes and pointy black hats. There was a visceral lump of anger in particular that they were together in their silliness.
One moment of absolute rage blinded her as she knelt down to the young girl, whispering words, dark words, into her ear.
She felt the girl's breath quicken, then slow.
And slow more and more until there was no breath left.
Her skin started turning. Life was leaving her.
Cassidy hovered over her watching it like a god.
She stood looking down at her without an ounce of remorse. Served the girl right. And her uncle. She hoped Jenson would be the one that found her.
She looked at the locket, knowing that they'd used her magic against her. Turned out they weren't as stupid as she thought. She would admire them, except for the fact that all of this had taken an unforeseen turn against her and she was running out of time.
She cursed as she heard the officers announce themselves at the front of the house and in her adrenaline-infused brain she thought to try the back door one more time, which to her astonishment opened without trouble.
One last glance into the moody, lifeless kitchen where a young life was lost and an animal would wreak havoc no more, she smiled at her work.
"Stupid house," she muttered as she stepped into the cool night.
Suddenly something hard hit her across the face, making her cry out as her head snapped back.
When she stood, a hand held to the pulsing pain of her cheekbone she looked down to see a ripe peach at her feet.
With a frown she looked up just in time to duck as another peach was launched from the tree straight at her.
She cursed again and ran across the patio until she was in the grass, running through the garden which was three shades darker than it had been when she came making it difficult to find her way.
What made it even more difficult was the garden itself as rows of old black magic irises popped up guiding her off of the path and into the heart of the garden.
By the time she realized her folly, a dark green vine of english ivy wrapped around her ankle, the tickle of it pulling her attention to the ground but before she could extract herself it tugged harshly, pulling her feet from under her and taking her to the ground in a hard crash.
"Fucking hell!" She held a hand to the back of her head where it landed against a hard root and then she ripped the ivy, hearing the crack of the vine with a satisfied smirk.
She lifted her hands and uttered a few choice words, causing the natural world around her to pause and shudder as she pulled into her veins a dark power of which this world was never supposed to play with.
She felt it fill her and the cruel smile of her lips was obscene as anything within touch started wilting, curling in on itself, and falling dead.
The black irises burned from the inside of their stems, fire bursting out and incinerating them until they were nothing.
She laughed but the mirth was short-lived when two strands of star jasmine grabbed her ankles and as she bent to rip them off something coiled around her arm catching the movement and then there was a thin black rope that snaked around her waist. When she reached for it with her free hand she was jerked forward as a thick and spiced vanilla smell poofed into the air in an offering as the star jasmine released her to the black willow tree.
It had matured greatly in size since the night it sprang up.
What she had sent to be a dark warning to Eloise betrayed her by wrapping three and then six of its whip-strong branches around her pulling her up and into its canopy, wrapped tightly like a garden mummy.
When she opened her mouth to yell, a strand of the willow tree lifted a plump peach and shoved it into her mouth gurgling her curse.
And there was where the officers found Cassidy Parker, cradled in the heart of a strangely black, but very alive, willow tree, tressed-up and mute, a peach in her mouth like a roasting pig.
Seven smiling souls watched as the uniformed men got her down and one soul grabbed the hand of the tallest officer to cajole him back into the kitchen where the girl and raccoon lay lifeless.
At Violet's touch, the officer looked down at his hand, then up to stare directly into her face. She smiled in surprise and pulled.