On my last day in the North Carolinian wilds, Heather ties a Tiger’s Eye pendant around my neck and kisses me on the forehead. Her hands are dry from frequent washing when she cups my face with them to take one last look at me, but the soil from the garden clings to her fingernails as stubbornly as she clings to me.
“You look out for yourself, you hear me?” She blinks away tears from her eyes and brushes her thumbs over my cheeks. “And remember what I told you.”
Surround yourself with light. Don’t let in what isn’t invited. State your intentions clearly.
I nod because my throat feels too tight for words. It all sounds so easy when Heather says it. And in the warm summer sun of Spruce Creek, I almost believe it.
Twenty-four hours later, I get off a plane in Düsseldorf to grey skies and a perpetual drizzle. I make it to the baggage claim area before the darkness slinks up to me like an old acquaintance. I can see it waiting, hovering by a concrete pillar next to customs. My hand searches for Heather’s pendant but I’m cold and tired and lost in a sea of strangers—all with places to go and people to see and no patience for a girl trying to set her boundaries.
The darkness slips into my shadow as easily as taking a breath.
“What in the world were you doing in North Carolina?” the customs officer asks as he opens my suitcase. His tone is far too jovial for the fast, practiced movements of his hands. The lumpy sweater Ash knitted for me spills out in mismatched purples and greens.
“Visiting friends.”
The truth is a little more complicated than that but I’m not about to spread out my personal life for him to pick through like he picks through my luggage. He probably draws his own conclusion based on the looks he gives me as he pulls packets of dried herbs from in between my folded jeans.
“What are these?”, he asks, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. All joviality is gone from his voice.
“They’re herbs,” I say, my stomach in knots. “Just mint and rosemary and stuff.”
He points at a large sign behind him on the wall. “You can’t bring those in. Pre-packaged foods only.” He looks me up and down. “That includes spell ingredients.”
“It’s for cooking,” I say, feeling my face flush. I stuff my clothes back into my suitcase, trying to cover its exposed innards with Ash’s massive sweater. The customs officer doesn’t respond, dropping my herbs into the big black trashcan next to the table. The darkness surges at my anger like a flame finding sudden kindling.
Lara is waiting for me in the taxi-only lane outside the terminal, dismissively shushing an irate taxi driver as I wheel my suitcase out the rotating glass door. She looks so much like our mother that I stop dead in my tracks. The resemblance only intensifies when she flips off the taxi driver and impatiently ushers me to put my stuff in the trunk. There’s no time for anything more than a quick hug and another profane gesture before she drives us out of the illegal parking space and down the street, following the signs to the Autobahn.
As soon as we merge into our lane, Lara starts talking—a constant stream of information while gesturing with one hand to emphasize her words even while driving. I keep my eyes on the charm wrapped around the rearview mirror to keep myself from staring at her. It’s a simple protection spell, the colors of the braided yarn washed out from the sun, but it’s still doing its job. The darkness has receded to somewhere in the back, curling up between the two booster seats and copious amounts of toys and stuffed animals.
“Achim is looking after the kids today but he has to leave for work at five, so we have to hurry.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say, sinking a little deeper into my seat. I wish she’d turn on the heating, but I feel too awkward to ask for it. Lara doesn’t seem to be cold at all, peeling off her cardigan mid-drive and almost swerving into the other lane. “The plane lost some time on the flight over, I think.”
Lara clicks her tongue, dismissively. “Nonsense. It’s Achim’s own fault. He’s known for weeks that you’d be coming today.” She has no time for excuses or social niceties. Motherhood has turned her into a sharp thing, cutting away the excess wherever she finds it.
“So,” she says when the silence stretches too long. “How is Evangeline?” She almost stumbles over the name, as if it’s a foreign object in her mouth.
“Uh…” There’s a small piece of quartz hanging from the braided yarn, swaying back and forth with Lara’s driving. “We broke up a while ago. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Maybe. Sorry. There’s been a lot going on, with the kids and selling the house…You know.”
“Right. No, of course. No problem.” I haven’t told her, but I feel silly admitting that now. What was I supposed to say? That Evangeline left me not two weeks after I moved across the Atlantic for her? I don’t need my family’s belated pity for that. It’s not like any of them were thrilled about the idea in the first place.
“But you stayed in that…What would you even call it? A coven?” Lara says it with the same emphasis Mom would have used. It’s almost uncanny. I know what she thinks. New-age hippie bullshit. Just another American fad sweeping up the European youth. There’s a hashtag for it on Instagram, so it must be vapid nonsense.
I’m pretty sure Heather doesn’t even know what a hashtag is.
“A farm,” I say. “Spruce Creek is a farm.”
Lara takes the next exit, slowing down the car just enough not to get us thrown out of the bend. “Is that what you want to be now? A farmer?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know.” I’m annoyed at the shame that creeps up my spine. Here, in the confines of Lara’s very sensible car on this very sensible German road, it all seems like the silly dream of a little girl. I try to remember what the sun felt like on the back of my neck. The soil between my fingers. How the whole world shrunk to the tiny seedling in my hands.
We drive for just over an hour before leaving the metal headframes and concrete walls of the Ruhr district behind us, trading the ghosts of the coal industry for an expanse of fir trees. Mist clings to the brown treetops where the last hot summers have left them dry and dying. I don’t remember it looking quite as bad when I left. I mean to ask, but Lara has fallen into a rant about Fenya’s new kindergarten teacher and I don’t want to interrupt.
By the time we reach the house, the sun has gone down—leaving the street in the bleak greys of a premature evening.
“Are you sure you’d not rather stay with us?” Lara asks as she pulls up in front of the driveway. She leaves the motor running. Achim will be waiting already.
“No, it’s fine. I can get an early start with sorting through my stuff.”
“The realtor is coming on Monday. It doesn’t need to be perfect by then but everything…unseemly should be out of sight.” She pauses, the meaning of her words hanging heavy in the air between us. “You said you got some help for that little problem?”
I can feel the darkness swell in the backseat, but I can’t tell if it’s my anger or its own. “One of the women at the farm taught me a few things. We worked on it a lot the last couple of months.”
“Oh, is she your new girlfriend?” She puts a slight emphasis on the word—as if to prove to me she doesn’t shy away from it like Mom did.
“No, she is…” I’m halfway out the door and I don’t even know where to begin explaining who Heather is. “A friend.”
Lara looks at me for what feels like the first time since I walked out of the airport. “Well, call me if you need help with anything. And don’t forget breakfast tomorrow. The kids are excited to see you.”
I nod and close the door. As soon as I’ve heaved my suitcase out of the trunk and slammed the lid shut, Lara speeds off—leaving me and the darkness behind.
Mom has been dead for five years, but the house still smells like her. I stand in the doorway, keys in one hand and my suitcase in the other, and try to get used to the lingering presence of her. I could chase it, follow the scent down the rabbit hole, but I know where that would lead me.
I don’t have the time to grow attached now. If Lara’s realtor is to be believed, the house will be sold within the month. Now that she and Achim have finally decided to move out of their apartment and into something bigger, they’ll be happy about the quick sale. Strangers will soon live within these walls, their lives bleeding into the foundation of the building. The house is hungry for it, I can tell. It’s been standing empty for too long.
The living room is a collection of ghostly shapes—Mom’s furniture hidden underneath white sheets. I wonder if they plan on selling it as well. The thought of someone else sitting on our mother’s couch feels strange, almost violating. But Achim is looking to build somewhere out in the new development, and construction is definitely going to be more than what the price of Mom’s house could cover.
My chest feels tight, my shoulders heavy with the darkness draped over it. I move on to the kitchen, the still-beating heart of what our mother left behind. Out of pure habit, I run my fingers across the sigils carved into the doorframe.
Health. Good fortune. Kind words.
They were wishes before they were anything else, mixed in with the notches where Mom used to measure Lara’s and my height.
Even in the low light of a rainy evening, the kitchen exudes a familiar warmth. The mismatched dining set is just as I remember it, the yellow curtains have lost none of their color, but the fridge has been turned off and there’s no food in the pantry. Even the rows of dried herbs are gone, leaving empty hooks behind. Lara has been busy. I consider ordering in, but all the menus on Mom’s corkboard are five years out of date.
I check my phone twice. No message from anyone at Spruce Creek. It’d be noon there now. They all must have been awake for hours.
Maybe they’re busy. Maybe phone service is bad again.
Or maybe they’ve forgotten all about you already.
I shake the darkness like a persistent mosquito, but it just finds another vulnerability to sting. It feels stronger here, more present.
Of course it does. It wanted me back here all along.
If all else fails, stay busy. I can almost hear Heather’s voice as I repeat her words to myself.
Lara has sorted through most of Mom’s stuff already. The study that used to be a guest room that used to be my bedroom is almost empty—shelves stripped off books, and closets left with only the hangers. One wall is still painted in the patchy pigeon blue I picked out when I was fourteen. I know somewhere underneath the second layer, I’d find Emily’s handprints—right where she pressed them against the wallpaper, her eyes full of mischief. We wrote our names with the brushes meant for the corners. Big hearts and stars. Sigils we had copied from dodgy internet forums or adapted from those in my mother’s grimoires.
To keep secrets safe. To never be lost for words. To stay friends, forever and ever.
I snatch the box Lara has left for me on the desk and leave without another glance while the darkness giggles in my left ear.
I set up shop in the living room, in front of the cold and cleaned-out fireplace, with one of the last bottles from Mom’s wine cellar. Most of the contents of the box wander straight into a big blue trash bag—old schoolbooks and diaries with only one or two entries. I only keep a couple of pictures that I tuck into the side pouch of my backpack before taking out the trash.
Lara didn’t need me to come all the way back to Germany just for this.
“I don’t want to touch your stuff,” she said on the phone, the kids screaming in the background. “You have to decide what you want to do with it yourself.”
I knew she wasn’t talking about old books and pictures collecting dust on top of Mom’s closet though.
It’s not that easy, I wanted to say. But I don’t have any excuse. We both know that I hoped Mom would take care of it after I moved out. Maybe deep down, she thought I’d come back one day. That I’d clean up my own mess and we’d all have a good laugh about teenage naivety and silly mistakes over tea and biscuits. Now, I’ll never know.
I sleep curled up on the couch that night, the white sheet tossed to the side. I press my face into the cushions against the backrest and keep my back to the long shadows that creep from the corners of the room. The Tiger’s Eye grows warm and heavy in my sweaty hand.
“You know, most teenage girls try to summon the forces of darkness at some point or other,” Heather said and poured me another drink. We were sitting out on the porch, the late evening air heady with the smell of flowers and sunbaked dirt and the sharp tang of mosquito repellent. Evangeline had been gone for two weeks.
“It’s a power thing.” I had read all the think-pieces on the topic. “Or something like that.”
“Maybe.” She handed me my glass back, the whiskey shining golden in the porch light. “I just mean to say, it’s not your fault that some of that shit stuck to you like flypaper. You’re warm. Open. Somewhat motherly.”
I laughed. “My mother would have loved to hear that theory.”
Heather didn’t seem to find that so amusing. There was an expression on her face, some kind of pity I couldn’t bear to look at. It didn’t matter now. Mom was dead and Lara had given her the precious grandchildren she had always wanted. Enough daughters to carry on the proud family traditions. It didn’t matter that Lara hardly practiced anymore or that Achim scoffed at the thought of letting the girls learn even the simplest of spells.
“Some entities will always be attracted to that,” Heather said, her voice soft. “Some people, too. Not all of them deserving.” She didn’t have to say Evangeline’s name for me to know what she was talking about.
“I don’t think I can rid myself of all the blame for that.”
“But you don’t have to put it all on you either.” Heather took a sip from her glass. “That girl you told me about…”
“Emily.” I shouldn’t have. I could feel embarrassment creep into my whiskey-warmed cheeks. The tale had slipped from me that first night after Evangeline had packed her bags and left for California. My tongue had been heavy with drink then, too. I had never told anyone about Emily. Especially not a group of people I hardly knew, twenty-four hours after they had all witnessed me getting unceremoniously dumped in the farm driveway.
“Emily,” Heather repeated, letting the word sit on her tongue like a spell. Perhaps it was. The others whispered about Heather and her words—the way she could spin an enchantment with less than a turn of phrase. Somehow here, with the night alive all around us, it wasn’t so difficult to believe she’d be able to curse or bless someone with a name alone. I wondered if Emily could feel it, all the way across the Atlantic—a shiver running down her spine, a cold whisper in her ear. Would she still remember the sign of warding I had once taught her?
“She’s not one of those people,” I said quickly.
“Maybe not. I don’t know her. But you’ll excuse me for being just a little bit biased.” She smiled and the warmth in my chest had little to do with the booze. “I hope one day you’ll be able to see yourself as all of us see you. Until then, I’m happy to remind you.”
I wake to five missed calls and several texts, most of them from Lara. I slept through breakfast with her and the kids. Her texts grow from annoyed to concerned to disappointed as I scroll through them.
Shit.
I feel bad but the shame is a familiar one. There’s a reason why Lara never asked me if I wanted to be godmother to one of the girls. They deserve someone who does more than call twice a year, for Yule and Beltane.
The other texts are from people at Spruce Creek, filled with contextless anecdotes and assertions that they miss me. Ash has even sent a picture, their grinning face taking up most of it, with Heather and Andi waving from the porch in the background. Prida sent an update on the raised beds we built the week before I left. A wave of homesickness hits me with such force that I have to put down the phone and get up from the couch. It’s ridiculous. I can almost hear Mom’s voice, as if some part of her still lingers in these walls. I only spent three months at Spruce Creek. Hardly a place I have any right to call home.
And still, my heart longs for it. My stiff and cold limbs do as well—for the sun and days filled with work. Planting spells, incantations whispered into the seeds in my cupped hand. To be around people who understand me, who look at me and don’t just see who I was or who they wish me to be. Who are patient enough to let me figure out who I am.
But how can I go back, with the darkness still clinging to me like a shadow?
Outside, a watery sun bathes the garden in pale grey light. It must have rained in the night. I pull my coat tightly around myself as I step out onto the terrace, but the cold still finds a way to creep in. Shivering, I take stock of what is left of Mom’s pride and joy. Once, there used to be a herb garden here. A vegetable patch, too—close to the fir trees to the left. But both had to give way to a proper yard and flower beds years ago, even before Mom’s death. One doesn’t make a name for themselves with hedge witchery. Power is found in books, not in dirt and soil.
A narrow stone path curves around the grass and farther down the hills, vanishing between the rhododendron bushes. I know what lies ahead. My feet grow heavy as I follow the path, but I can feel the steady touch of the darkness like a hand pressing against the small of my back.
We found the incantation in one of Mom’s books, the grimoires she kept on the back of the shelf—far from the hungry eyes of teenage girls.
The good shit, Emily called it. I watched her as she thumbed through the pages. She brushed her hair behind her ear, the silver stars of her earrings glinting in the moonlight. I knew a full moon wasn’t necessary for most spells, but Emily had insisted.
“Like in the movies,” she said as we hatched our plan. “Like proper witches.”
I flinched at the word and for once was glad she wasn’t looking at me. It was weird to hear an outsider say it out loud, even when they didn’t follow it up by spitting on the ground.
Outsider. God, I sounded like Mom.
“Hurry,” I said instead. “It’s so bright out, she’ll spot us from the house immediately if she wakes up.”
“Well, we’ll just have to be really quiet then, won’t we?” There was a wink and a grin and I could hear the blood rushing in my ears.
We scurried down the garden path, past the rhododendron and into the shadows of the tall fir trees. The gentle slope of the garden turned into something steeper here, a winding path between overgrown flower beds. Dark slate lined the soil, thin sheets with edges as sharp as knives. One wrong step, one slip, and the blood we’d shed tonight wouldn’t be in sacrifice.
The old garden shed sat awkwardly in the darkness, pressed against the wooden fence and its dark slate roof covered in moss and lichen. The door never really closed, always standing slightly ajar despite the heavy cobblestone we put in front of it. There were two windows to either side, their glass dark and dusty with pollen. I had never liked the look of any of it.
“Perfect,” Emily announced, setting up right next to the shed. “What are you waiting for? Your mother will never see us all the way down here.”
I took the book from her, scanning the page she had settled on. “This is heavy stuff. I’m not sure—”
“Annika Waldrich conjured something similar last month and she’s completely fine.”
“Since when are you hanging out with Annika Waldrich?”
Emily shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it matter? She said it totally worked. That thing did all kinds of favors for her.”
“It’s a demon.”
“Oh, come on.” She bumped her hip into mine. “I thought your kind doesn’t call them that.”
We didn’t. But it was the closest word she’d understand.
Outsider, Mom’s voice whispered in my ear. She doesn’t know anything.
“Don’t worry,” Emily said as she handed me the knife. “I’ll be right here the whole time.”
The shed stands as I left it, an unshapely thing huddled under fir trees. Still the door gapes, darkness oozing out of its open mouth. It’s the same thing that bleeds from me, the same rot eating its way through the wooden walls and window frames. My mouth tastes like bile when I take the last few steps down the path, the soles of my shoes almost slipping on the rain-slick stones. There’s a pit in the center of my chest, something hard and formed with fear. I touch the Tiger’s Eye, just to make sure it’s still there. The darkness sighs, expands in anticipation.
I half-expect to see my blood still splattered on the ground, dark blotches on the cobblestones. But rain and time has washed away all signs of our little ritual, leaving only faint chalk markings on the wall of the shed, where I copied them from the drawing in Mom’s grimoire all those years ago. When I press my fingers against them, the wood gives like a soggy sponge. Moldy splinters trickle to the ground.
I wipe my hand on my jeans. The darkness snickers.
Surround yourself with light.
I try to imagine it around me. Warmth spreading from the crown of my head until it covers all of me. A boundary set.
Don’t let in what isn’t invited.
How do you keep out what is already inside you? How do you get rid of what has grown from your own heart?
“You cut it out,” Emily says as she hands me the knife.
It’s not really her. I know, because the real Emily is living in Munich with her husband and toddler and because the real Emily doesn’t wear star earrings anymore. Or grins that make my heart beat faster.
“Don’t worry,” the thing that isn’t Emily says. “I’ll be right here the whole time.”
In front of me, the wall of the shed keeps crumbling, soggy wood rotting and falling away. There’s something behind it, pushing—gently at first but then with more and more force. A pulsating pressure, a steady beat.
It’s a heart, I think. Some fleshy muscle growing and expanding.
No, a tumor. Something rotten and wrong, metastasizing into bulbous growths. Black ooze trickles from its flesh, pooling around my feet. It’s been lying in wait all this time, festering in the dark corners of the shed. Waiting for me to return what it planted in me.
“It has grown in you too, hasn’t it?” Emily’s voice is a whisper in my ear—hot foul breath on my skin. “You’ve fed it well and good, haven’t you? All that rage, all that anger. All those swallowed words.”
I should have crushed that custom officer’s hand for touching my things. I should have cursed Evangeline’s name for leaving me stranded in a foreign country. I should have taken that knife and taken it to skin other than my own.
Mom’s disappointment. Lara’s annoyance. Emily’s refusal to even look me in the eye.
I don’t want to be warm or nurturing or nice. I don’t want to be a soft, pliable thing—someone to bend and accommodate. I want to be sharp, full of edges and spikes. Dark slate jutting out of the ground. Hooked thorns digging into skin. A black thing growing inside a garden shed.
The small, hard pit in the center of my chest aches and aches and then, like a seed opening in the earth, it breaks.
I stumble backwards, my legs as heavy as lead, until my back hits the wooden fence behind me. The darkness reaches for me, groans with the effort. Something clatters to the ground, metal hitting stone. The knife, slipped from my grasp. I don’t remember taking it.
The thing that isn’t Emily laughs. It still wears her face, but her teeth are long and sharp and not at all how I remember them.
“I invited you,” I say and my voice breaks with disuse. I swallow against the lump in my throat, willing the words to come out as I mean them. “I brought you into this world.”
“With blood and promises.”
I remember it all. Dark red dripping onto the stones. The shadows pulled from the night like black gossamer. Emily’s eyes growing wide, the slow shift of her excitement into horror as she realized what I had called forth for her.
It didn’t have the stench of rot then but smelled of dark, wet earth and seasons changing. It was the shadows between the trees when you realize the sun has gone down and it’ll be fully dark before you get out of the woods. The lurch in your stomach when you lose your grip on the top branch for a second and see yourself broken at the foot of the cherry tree. A deep dread settling into your chest, your own mortality spinning on the edge of a knife.
It whispered then too, as it reached for us with long dark fingers. Promises and possibilities. Secrets that I had kept curled up under my tongue for so long, unraveling in the space between us.
I looked at Emily and I knew that I had lost her. I didn’t need to hear the words the dark thing whispered in her ear to see the fissures in our foundation, the cracks widening with every second.
I swallowed the darkness as I swallowed the shame. Anything just to make it stop. I didn’t know it would fester in me like this. But in that moment, would I have cared?
“I didn’t let you go properly last time,” I say now, the wooden fence digging into my back. “I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You kept us,” the darkness hisses. “You fed us.” The face that vaguely resembles Emily morphs into something else, its skin rippling like a disturbed pond. I see them, reflections in dark water.
Evangeline. Mom. Lara. Heather. Myself.
“I’m sorry.” I take a step forward slowly, as if dragging my feet out of thick morass. Then, another. “This is no place for you. For us.”
The darkness recedes from my advance, pulling away from my outstretched hand. It slides into the dark mass behind it as easily as it once slid into me. The reflection of my face wanes and dissolves into the black. Perhaps it will forever be a part of the dark. Just as much as the dark will be part of me.
The mass shudders as I place my hand on it, its pulse as fluttering and panicked as my own. A hand that can sow seeds. A hand that can rip a seedling from the ground. The choice is always mine.
State your intentions clearly.
“You’re free to leave,” I say. “As am I.”
By the time I walk back to the house, it has started to rain once more. It’s the kind of perpetual stubborn drizzle I remember from my childhood—a damp cold that doesn’t care about umbrellas and raincoats. I lift my face to the grey sky, letting the water fall on my skin.
I think about calling Heather but it’s Ash’s number that I dial once I reach the safety of the roofed terrace. It’s only when I hear them answer with sleep in their voice that I remember the time difference.
“Sorry, I can call back later.”
“No, no. I’m glad you called. I’m already up.” I hear the sound of blankets and the familiar creaking of their bed frame and can’t help but smile. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I think I am. Or I will be. I don’t know. Too early to tell.” I wait for the dread, the slithering dark at the edge of my vision. But the shadows are just shadows and the anxiousness is all me. It has only been a few days, but I’ve missed Ash—the sleepiness in their voice, their quiet laugh. “They nearly confiscated your sweater at the border, by the way.”
“Is that so?”
“I guess your choice of colors was too offensive for their German sensibilities.”
I can hear them laugh on the other end of the call. “I guess I’ll just have to make you a new one when you get home. I’ve practiced my cable stitch.”
Home. They say it so easily, so naturally, and I feel it falling into place like a puzzle piece. “I would like that,” I say as I look out over the garden one last time. “I would like that very much.”
| T. R. Siebert is a speculative fiction writer from Germany. Her short fiction has been published in Flash Fiction Online, Escape Pod and Fusion Fragment. When she’s not busy writing, she can be found attempting to grow vegetables on her balcony or looking at pictures of cute dogs. Tweet at her @TR_Siebert. |  |