Page 11 of Spellbound
“There was no sign of any kind of break-in, and the coroner said she’ d been dead for two full days.
She had another one of those Ouija boards in the room.
The police said she died from natural causes—an aneurysm, they said.
But the magistrates recognized it for what it really was.
She had been killed by magic…by power. It leaves a trace, as you know.
They ruled out my son right away, because he’d been a hundred miles away and in the company of other magistrates at the time of her death.
The magistrates managed to compel him and questioned him anyway, but he was completely cleared. ”
“What did Asher say?”
“Asher wasn’t talking. He’d wouldn’t speak and would just shake his head when anyone asked him questions.
He seemed to be in shock. They tried to probe his mind to find out what happened, but to their amazement, he threw them off.
He wouldn’t allow them to talk to him, and there was no way he should have had that much power at his age.
They tried to compel him, too, but it didn’t work the way they intended it to.
He’d simply go to sleep, and they couldn’t rouse him.
None of them could believe it. Finally, he began to talk to his father, and he told him he didn’t remember anything.
He stuck to that story and just kept saying that he’d woke up and found her beside him.
But then, he slipped up once and said he didn’t mean for it to happen.
That it had been an accident. Then he refused to explain any further.
Richard thought he must still have been in shock.
” She stopped talking again and started trembling.
Rosalyn came over to put an arm around her.
“Go on when you can,” I said softly, when her voice trailed away.
She sighed and nodded. “There’s not much more to tell.
As the others kept questioning him, Asher seemed to completely shut down.
He had been oddly calm and collected up until then, but as he was being questioned by the magistrates and even some of the Council members, he suddenly became really agitated, and he started crying and sinking deeper and deeper into what looked like shock.
He wouldn’t let anyone except my son touch him, and he hid his face and cried out when anyone else tried to.
They didn’t want to hurt him in any way, so they waited a while and tried to question him again, but it was a total disaster.
He did a complete about face. Instead of that odd calmness, suddenly, all he could do was cry and ask for his mother. ”
“But what happened? Who killed her?”
“He finally admitted that it was his power that did it. That’s how he put it—his power. Like I said, there were no marks on her, and Asher wasn’t able or willing to talk about how he did it or explain why. He was nine years old at the time.”
“He was nine? ” My mind was reeling. I tried to put myself in Richard MacGregor’s place, and I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even imagine how he must have felt.
“They kept trying to probe Asher’s mind, but they didn’t have any luck.
They brought in a child therapist and even a hypnotist to try to figure out exactly what happened.
Asher just kept saying that it was his power that had caused her death, but that was all he’d say.
No one wanted to admit it was possible for a child to deliberately kill his own mother, and one or two of the magistrates from other districts wanted him punished in some way.
Some blamed my son Richard and thought he should have known something was wrong with Asher and intervened before it was too late. A few even called for Asher to be...”
“Be what?”
Her face crumpled. “Put to death ,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Executed for the crime of killing a mortal.”
“But that’s not right,” Rosalyn exclaimed. “He was a child. How could they think that was any kind of justice?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think they tried to justify it.
He had so much power inside him and no idea of how to use it properly.
It frightened them. He didn’t seem to have a real sense of right and wrong.
Opal never spent much time with him, and my son had been gone so often.
A practitioner who goes off the rails has to be stopped, no matter what.
Even I knew that. If he’d been an adult who had refused to answer questions and didn’t provide any kind of excuse…
who refused to say why it had happened… that person would have been locked up and more than likely, they would have been killed.
There would have been no question. But no one had any real appetite for doing that to a young child.
They finally compromised and agreed to bind his power and wipe his memory of the event and then reassess things when he was older. ”
Rosalyn shook her head. “It still seems ridiculous to me. A nine-year-old child? He was clearly in shock. There are so many variables. So many questions.”
I shook my head. “I’m sure they did the best they could. I can’t imagine that anyone wanted to imprison him or…even worse.”
“No, a few of the magistrates did. They said they felt very sorry about it, but they thought it was the only way to be sure it never happened again.
The ones who advocated for it said committing murder for gain or revenge was warlockry and it could be habit forming .
They said he might grow to like it too much and become irredeemable, and that maybe something was wrong inside him—inside his brain.
It was like they thought he was a bad seed, because for them it was unnatural to kill your own mother, no matter how old you were.
I’d seen the reports. His behavior had been erratic.
And he had so much power it was frightening to all of them, I think.
He showed absolutely no remorse at all at times, and then it was like someone flipped a switch, and he’d start crying and asking for his mother.
Sometimes it would happen within the same hour.
They said they had to find a solution that would ensure he’d never do anything like that again.
And still, it took two of them to control him when they bound him. ”
“And there was no sign that anyone else had been in the house recently? Someone he might have known?”
Rosalyn broke in, frowning at me. “She’s already said no. Don’t you think you’ve asked enough questions, Ben?”
“No,” I replied coldly. “Janet, do you feel like going on? I only have one more question.”
She nodded. “Yes, go ahead.”
“Did he ever mention his mother again to you after that day?”
“No. Not that I remember. My son did bring in child therapists, who never seemed to help him.”
Janet fell quiet for a while. She had told the story calmly enough, but I could see that her hands were trembling now, and the retelling had taken a toll.
“My son was devastated,” she said. “Almost destroyed by what happened. He agreed to do the binding and held Asher in his arms while it happened. And he never mentioned even so much as the idea of magic to the child again. He sent him to me in Atlanta to get him away from that house. As for Asher, it’s not anything he ever talks about now.
By the time he reached his teens, and his friends would talk about Harry Potter, Asher would say it was all foolishness and not real.
He started saying that magic was nothing but a lot of…
well, he’d cuss and say terrible things. ”
She dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand and sighed.
“My son rarely came around anymore. I’ve always thought he never really recovered from what happened.
I think that may have been why he made such a careless mistake a few years later and got himself killed.
” She shook her head. “Everything about the story was tragic.”
I reached over to lay a hand over the one still clenched in her lap.
“Yes, it is, and I’m sorry I had to ask you to retell it, but I wanted to understand.
The power inside him has become unstable after being bound for so long, and it’s fighting to get out.
Something has to be done soon, or I think it’s going to start leaking out of him, whether he wants it to or not, or it might even burst out unexpectedly.
I can’t let this slide, Janet. I feel as if something is going to happen soon, and when it does, he’ll need some help navigating things.
That’s where I come in, because I won’t let him go through this alone.
If it’s the last thing I do, I need to find out from him exactly what happened to him when he was a child. ”