Page 20 of Spellbound

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s just it. He didn’t. That’s something you made up in your head. Your father was highly respected and a talented practitioner, and you need to stop slandering him.”

I rolled my eyes as I turned away. “Whatever you say.”

He put a hand on my arm, and I felt a kind of weakness in my legs. I suddenly began to wonder why I had turned away from him and where I was going. I turned and looked back up at him. Was he doing this? Why did I suddenly want to sit down?

“We need to talk about what happened to you when you were younger,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down and give me a few minutes of your time?”

“When I was younger?” I said, dropping onto the side of the bed. “Why don’t you say what you really mean? You want to talk about my mother.”

“Yes.”

I heaved a sigh, but I was mostly irritated.

My mother again? I didn’t talk about my mother, damn it.

It was like the room went suddenly dark around me like the sun had gone behind a big cloud.

I realized that I was absolutely furious.

I stormed back up to my feet and brushed past him as I went into the living room.

“I don’t understand what my mother has to do with a goddamn thing,” I called back to him over my shoulder. “All that happened a long time ago, and sorry, but I don’t want to talk about her.”

Almost as soon as the words left my mouth, the rage began taking over, but the same weakness hit me again, even harder this time. So hard that I stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t suddenly been beside me, his arm slipping around my waist.

“Let’s sit down for a few minutes and talk about this. You’ll feel better if you get all of it off your chest, don’t you think?”

He was compelling me again, and I wondered why I was getting so excited. It was embarrassing in a way. In a more reasonable tone of voice, I said, “No, I don’t…that is, I’ve never liked to talk about any of that, but if you think it might help...”

The minute those words were out of my mouth, I knew he must be influencing me again and it made me furious.

“Wait . No, I don’t want to talk about it.

Why won’t you take no for a fucking answer?

I’m trying to explain to you that my mother is not a subject for conversation.

” He touched my forehead and again all of that anger melted away.

“I understand,” he was murmuring in my ear. I sagged a little and let him take more of my weight. “But you’ll talk to me , won’t you? I think we need to get some things cleared up, and then we don’t have to talk about them ever again.”

Her memory was dim, to be honest. It had been a long time ago since she’d passed away, and I’d tried hard over the years to put her out of my mind.

Those memories of her weren’t pleasant ones, but mostly, I’d succeeded.

Some days I didn’t even remember what she’d looked like, even if I tried really hard. And I didn’t try.

All of that period of my life, including her death, had been wrapped up in her…

well, mental illness, for lack of a better term.

She was always so emotional about things, it seemed, and she took turns hugging me and kissing me and then yelling at me and berating me and locking me in my bedroom or the storage room, sometimes for hours.

My father was little help, because he was so rarely at home.

He was off on one trip after another and when he did come home, all they did was argue.

I didn’t tell him things she had done, because I didn’t want to make the arguments any worse.

I used to hear them fighting and shouting when I was in my room.

I had convinced myself over the years that most of what I experienced when she passed away must have been glossed over by my father’s wild imagination—or maybe I should say his own psychosis—and what he thought had gone on.

Because I thought now that they’d both been crazy and their craziness had fed off each other’s.

Even my eccentric grandma thought that magic “ran in our family” and that she was some kind of a witch, too. It was embarrassing as hell, and I never wanted to hear another wild story about fucking “witchcraft” ever again.

I managed to shove away the compulsion again and turned to glare at him.

“Stop doing that!”

If I’d known that was what I was walking into here in North Carolina, I’d never have agreed to come. My mother’s death was best left in the past where it belonged, and what the fuck was Ben thinking bringing it up like this?

“If this is about so-called witches, then I’m sorry, but you just need to leave. I’ve left all that in the past, and I never want to talk about any of it again.”

Even now my grandma still thought she was a witch, and I knew she performed little “rituals,” and so-called “spells,” that she claimed would bring good luck or money or healing—not for herself, but for her friends.

She “read” their tarot cards and even did so-called love spells.

It was all part of why my friends considered her to be eccentric.

I had, too, to be honest, but I always thought she was relatively harmless.

It was even kind of funny sometimes and my friends got a kick out of it.

It was fine, I guess, as long as she didn’t try her so-called spells out on me.

As for her son, however, my late father—I was embarrassed to say he had fancied himself some kind of full-blown witch or wizard or whatever.

It wasn’t anything I ever discussed. Like ever.

It was way too embarrassing. Then again, he had died when I was in the ninth grade, so the subject of him rarely came up anymore.

The whole thing was just too weird. It was too much.

It was one thing to have a crazy grandma, who fancied that she had witchy “powers,” like all those girls on TikTok, but quite another to have a father who had suffered from a full-blown psychosis.

To be honest, I was afraid they both had a kind of hereditary madness that ran through that entire side of the family.

I actually congratulated myself on not having it—at least not yet.

I was vigilant about not indulging in recreational drugs at all—I didn’t even like taking the pain pills I took now and planned to get off them as soon as I could, because I was afraid drugs might be some kind of “gateway.”

I banished any kind of thoughts and behaviors that could land me in a mental institution too.

For example, I didn’t read about aliens or believe in alternate universes or crazy right wing conspiracy theories or even ghosts.

Not really. I never watched all that stuff on television and turned the channel if it came on.

I tried to be a practical, logical person.

In other words, I was hyper-vigilant that some incipient craziness or eccentricity didn’t one day just show up inside me out of nowhere.

Maybe that was why this irritated and infuriated and frightened me so much.

I didn’t need any of this shit. To find out that these people my gran had brought me to stay with had the same delusions as my family had—it was alarming as hell.

Maybe I should have known. Rosalyn was grandma’s sister, after all.

And now I’d agreed to be here for months with these people.

“What is it you think I’m doing?” Ben asked, standing too close and reaching for me again.

I shoved him away. “I-I think you should probably leave,” I told him. I couldn’t take the chance. “I-I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t talk about all this. I don’t want to.”

“I’m afraid you’re not in charge here, Ash. And I’m not leaving until I speak to you in an official capacity.” Ben said. His voice had totally changed, and it was harder now.

A sudden anger flared up inside me. “Official? Oh really? I’m sorry, but what the hell? You have no authority over me. I’m trying not to be rude here, but I don’t have to do anything you say.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“Okay, damn it. This is your family’s cottage, so if you won’t leave, then I will.”

I turned toward the porch, intending to just walk out and stop arguing with him. I had no plans after that, because as soon as I got outside, I remembered that my grandma had the damn car! That’s all right. Then I’d fucking walk out of here if I had to. I’d hitchhike to town.

He followed me out to the porch, as I tried to leave, but I didn’t actually go anywhere, because Ben had no intention of letting me.

He made a hand gesture, and my knees sagged, and I fell back into him.

He put an arm around my waist and turned me back inside.

I looked up at him, feeling that lethargy again, and I hated it, but was helpless against it.

We went into the kitchen and over to a kitchen chair.

The chair scooted politely out for me to sit in it, with no one touching it. Was I hallucinating again?

I sat down, but when I tried to jump back up again to leave, I felt something hit me.

It took my breath away for a few seconds.

If I could have moved my mouth, I’d have shouted out my shock and rage, because that’s about the time as I felt something clamp down on my muscles, paralyzing them.

I have to admit I panicked a little. Okay, a lot, because had they infected me with their craziness?

Had they drugged me at breakfast? I was furious, and I put every scrap of anger and frustration into the look I gave him, because I couldn’t say a word.

It was like there was a clamp around my throat too. How was he doing this?

Had Ben hypnotized me in some way to make me think I couldn’t move or even speak? I thought he liked me. And had my grandma allowed them to do this to me? A sharp sense of betrayal hit me hard.

The voice inside my head was loud this time when it came. Face it. You’re alone in this. You always have been.