Page 6 of Wicked Magik

The tombstone stared back at me.

Alicia Henri Murose

A Loving Mother

Master of her Craft

“The body is but a vessel.”

I pushed back a tear and made sure the dark mascara didn’t smudge under my eye.

“Yeah, yeah. The spirit is what is important. Then why did you hurt your vessel huh? Why did you let your spirit leave?”

The wind swooped and whistled around me, sending a flurry of crisp, golden leaves from the forest floor spiraling upward, tangling playfully in my hair. The biting chill pressed insistently against my back.

I turned my head back to the mansion and saw the lights flicker in the distance. I was a good way away but I heard voices along the wind that continued to surround me.

Whispers on the wind that came from the forest.

I’ve never walked inside, no one did. There used to be a fence here when I was a child behind these other old headstones but now there wasn’t. I lifted my brow and stood.

I stepped several paces away and looked up and down where there used to be a divide and I saw that the fence had been cut and torn away.

“What the actual?” my voice trailed when I jogged down the forest line and saw tire tracks.

The sun was on the horizon and the moon was quickly rising, a full one.

Voices carried on the wind grew louder and they were coming from within the forest.

I bit my lip.

Am I going to be the crazy girl in a horror movie that goes trampling through the forest at night to chase the voices? Or am I going to go back to the mansion and act like I didn’t see anything?

Chapter 3

Vesper

Ifollowed the whispers inside the darkness of the forest.

I always clung to the shadows when I lived in the mansion, retreating into the darkness like a phantom. I remained with my mother, cocooned in our own secluded universe. When she departed from the living world, my withdrawal became even more profound, enveloping me in an abyss of solitude.

Going inside the darkness here made no difference. I had made a promise that I would move on and wasn’t this a step in that direction? Was I actually living now?

The gentle breeze pushed me. The lights from the mansion faded. I reached for my phone in a hidden pocket on the side of my leggings to turn on the light, but then I thought better of it.

I didn’t want anyone to know I was coming.

I wasn’t in complete darkness, not with the moon overhead, but the surrounding temperature dropped considerably and not only that, my surroundings were changing.

Mist and fog swirled densely around my feet, curling like ghostly tendrils on the forest floor. The leaves, which should have been clinging steadfastly to their branches, were now sparse and scattered, creating a patchwork of bare limbs against the overcast sky.

I wasn't far from the mansion, its silhouette looming in the distance like a shadowy sentinel. A soft, dark blue moss carpeted the bases of the towering trees, lending an eerie, otherworldly hue to the undergrowth. Above me, vines draped themselves in tangled knots, resembling a chaotic jungle canopy, their long, sinewy lengths swaying gently in the damp breeze.

I had walked for a few minutes and I already saw what caused the tire tracks. It was a gardening vehicle with a small trailer hooked to the back. It was left abandoned with supplies in the back.

The voices became louder and the flickers of firelight came from the distance, it wouldn’t be a problem finding them now.

I trekked further south, where more strange foliage of dark red and green covered the land. Some of these shrubs curled up and around the trees, giving great places for me to hide.