He had to look.
He paused at the closed closet door, steadying his hand on the knob before pulling it open.
A rack of coats blocked the interior. Holding the candle back from the fabric, he shoved the coats aside.
The space was empty. As he studied the white plaster walls and the wood floor, he gazed at a large discoloration on the floorboards.
He hunched down and held the flame closer. The stain was long ago hardened. Little bubbles had formed in the brown-red mass.
He touched a finger to the hardened spatter.
Standing, Jesse tried to make sense of the stain. He glanced at the ceiling, and then held the candle high. A matching stain, darker in color, marred the white plaster.
Something had seeped through the floor from the room above. The boy’s room.
Jesse didn’t think. He took the stairs quickly and pushed into Stephen Kaiser’s room before his daring left him.
He opened the closet, casting aside the hangers filled with the young man’s jackets and shirts.
On the floor, at the back of the space, stood a large trunk with a padlock. A dark stain spread out from the chest, besmirching the polished floor surrounding it.
The stain matched the one from below. A red-brown color that was likely sticky at one time, but had grown hard. When Jesse leaned close, he saw tiny bugs trapped in the hardened ooze.
He searched for the padlock key on the bookshelf and the bedside table not expecting to find it, but still disappointed when it didn’t easily reveal itself.
He sat on the bed and gazed at the trunk for several minutes.
The mystery of the trunk perplexed him, and he’d forgotten about the girl running down the stairs. But a movement in the corner of his eye startled him and brought the vision back.
He stood, waving his candle to the darkened corner of the room where he’d sensed movement. Nothing stood there, and yet he felt eyes watching him from the emptiness.
With a rush of breath, he left the room, briefly entertaining the thought of returning to the parlor to sleep.
He dismissed it the moment his feet hit the first floor. He bypassed the parlor and went to the washroom. He’d noticed a wooden box of tools in the room earlier that day. He grabbed a hammer from the box.
As he returned to the third floor, the air grew thick and stale. A bead of sweat rolled from Jesse’s hair toward his eye, and he swiped it away.
He set the candle on the floor next to the chest and hammered the padlock. The sound rang loud and metallic in the silent room. The brass trim on the chest gleamed in the flame, and Jesse watched it as he slammed the hammer again and again into the lock.
By the time the lock snapped and fell away, Jesse’s shirt clung to his body. His breath came out in fast, steady gulps.
He laid the hammer on the floor and sat on his butt, his legs bent to keep his feet from touching the stain.
Eyes fixed on the trunk, he mopped his face with his damp shirt.
He didn’t want to look inside until his heart had slowed and he had control of his body once more.
When he reached for the chest, his hand shook.
He flung the lid open.
Dark fabric was bunched in the top of the trunk.
Jesse grabbed a corner and pulled it away. It clung to something inside.
As he jerked it free, Jesse saw with horror a mass of dark hair clinging to the blanket. Beneath it, more hair partially concealed a human skull.
Jesse staggered back, dropping the blanket and knocking his candle sideways.
Before the flame could light the fabric on fire, Jesse fell on it, slapping the flame out and casting the room into darkness.
Chapter 21
Liv
“Eternity of Darkness,” Stephen announced after he’d spent an hour buried in George’s book, reading every curse it contained.
Liv arranged a circle of stones on a patch of hard sand.
“We can’t do that one,” she told him. “That’s a death curse. We’re not going to kill her, Stephen.”
“I thought we were going to kill her,” Stephen mused, the cunning twinkle back in his eye.
Liv looked up and frowned, unable to read if he was serious or not.
“I liked the sulphurous odor curse,” Liv offered, completing the circle.
“You want to make her stink?” Stephen rolled his eyes.
Liv stood and walked to where Stephen sat on a stump.
She flipped the pages toward the front of the book.
“Or this one sounds interesting.”
She pointed to a curse titled Night Haunts.
He read it, though Liv knew he’d already read all the curses, likely more than once.
“Mildly intriguing,” he admitted.
“Then it’s decided.” She leaned over the book. “I’ll get the bat poop; valerian has to be collected on the full moon. You can join me if you’d like. The curse bag needs to be made from a personal item that belongs to the recipient. You’ll have to get something of Veronica’s.”
Stephen sat up, nodding as she talked.
“I’ve seen her around town. She always wears that ridiculous yellow scarf.”
Liv shook her head.
“She’ll recognize it. We have to make it from something personal she won’t immediately recognize. Or we can dye the scarf with blueberries. Okay, yeah, get the scarf.”
“Yes!” Stephen stood from the stump and paced away. “If this works, Liv. We could try other spells, we could…”
“Stephen, we’ve got to copy this spell down so I can get the book back to George. He may already know it’s gone. He-”
“Let me take it home,” Stephen insisted, picking up the book and holding it against his chest. “Please? I swear I’ll bring it back tomorrow. I’ll copy the spell tonight.”
Liv looked at Stephen’s pleading eyes, pale and sparkling. She bit her lip, knew she should say no, and nodded instead.
“Okay. But you have to bring it tomorrow. Don’t forget.”
“Cross my heart,” he told her, slipping the book into his bag. “Now let’s get on with this invoking Freya business.
Stephen
They worked in silence for an hour. Liv had told Stephen how to erect the pyre and where to place the herbs. She drew the symbols from memory, strange circles and arrows that he wished he understood.
“What?” Stephen had looked up to find Liv watching him across the clearing.
She smiled curiously and shook her head.
“I’ve never done anything like this with anyone other than George. And here you are in your tweed coat and polished loafers, building a pyre with me so we can invoke Freya.” She laughed.
“I’m bored with the ordinary world,” he told her.
Stephen had courted the extraordinary his whole life. It started with a book given to him by his grandfather, his mother’s father. The man tucked the book into Stephen’s hands, the one and only time they met.
It was the day of his father’s funeral. They had laid Stephen’s father out in the parlor. Family and friends Stephen had never met arrived to pay their respects. His mother’s parents, he was surprised to see, were modest people with drab clothes and lined faces. His grandfather had tired but soft, inviting eyes. He spoke in a slow, soothing voice, and when Stephen went to shake his hand, the man squatted down and pulled the boy into a hug. Stephen had seen the look of distaste on his mother’s face across the room.
The book his grandfather gave him, The Magus by Francis Barrett, had fractured Stephen’s world. He realized that another force existed in the world embedded in the stones, the water, and the bones of man. The book had ignited in Stephen an obsession with the supernatural, and he’d searched for it ever since.