I stayed with her until college and was even in her wedding when she finally remarried. We kept in touch, but then she relocated to Texas and our communications lessened. I haven’t heard from her in years.
Dad’s family…I knew and didn’t like. But Mom’s side was a mystery, one she’d always tell me we’d talk about later. I saw pictures from her childhood and thought she must have lived the most glamorous, exciting life. My grandpa was a pilot, and my mom traveled the world with him.
Her own mother died of cancer when she was young, so it was just her and her dad, taking on the world. I’d seen a handful of photos of them in all sorts of exotic locations. I knew my grandfather only through his work. The plane he’d flown. The trouble he faced while in the air. The famous people who boarded his plane.
And that was it.
I didn’t know anything else. Aunt Mary, who owned this house, was my grandfather’s younger sister. Why she never came up in conversation was beyond me, though I do remember my mom saying she was “off her rocker” more than once.
I move a heavy box to the floor and peel back the cardboard of the one beneath it. It’s full of old romance novels, ones that apparently didn’t make the cut for the upstairs library. Continuing to quickly look inside each box, I find most are full of junk too old and crusty to be garage-sale worthy. I’m not the kind of person who stops a project once it’s started. I wipe dust from my face and grab another box from a new row, expecting it to be heavy like the rest.
But it’s empty.
So is the one next to it. And beneath it. That’s strange. The boxes were neatly arranged in rows in one of the storage rooms, with the last row being against the exterior basement wall. I move two more empty boxes and discover they’ve been stacked around a small table, but it’s the wooden box under the table that grabs my attention.
I take a quick look behind me at the repair man, who’s busy taking the old furnace apart, and take the flashlight off my belt. The lighting is dim down here, and I’ve moved farther away from the overhead light.
Cobwebs stretch over the lid of the wooden box. Brushing them aside, I flip open the latch. My heart starts to beat rapidly. The hinges creak and the wood groans, not having been opened in years. Slowly, I open the lid, eyes wide in wonder at what I might find.
It’s another box.
“That was anticlimactic,” I mumble to myself, and shine the light in. This next box is prettier than the first, which was more utilitarian than decorative. I reach in and pick up the smaller box. It’s heavy, much heavier than I expected. And it’s also locked. I think. If that crazy steampunk-looking thing is indeed a lock.
Tucking the box under my arm, I slip back upstairs and into the kitchen and turn on the lights.
“What the heck?” I mutter, examining the lock. There’s no place for a key, and, upon further inspection, it looks more like a puzzle. I spin a dial and a sharp piece of metal shoots out, stabbing my fingertip.
“Son of a bitch!” I pull my finger back, wiping away a drop of blood. Did the thing malfunction or— “No way.” I lean in, careful not to get too close in case something else pops out at me, and look at the needle. There’s a tiny hole in the metal, and I watch as a small drop of my blood rolls inside.
I bring my finger to my mouth, sucking away the blood. The lock clicks and something inside moves, sounding like metal sliding across metal. The gears spin, and suddenly the lid pops up.
Knowing better than to reach in barehanded again, I use a spoon from the kitchen to pry the lid off. It falls with a clatter onto the wooden table, and I step in, eyeing what appears to be a leather-bound journal. I poke it with the spoon.
Nothing happens. Still, my throbbing finger tells me not to reach inside. I get another spoon and awkwardly pull the book out. It’s the only thing in the box. It’s on the small side, no bigger than an average fiction novel, and the leather is worn and scratched. Slowly, I unwind the leather tie from around the book and open it.
I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe for the lights to dim and a breeze to blow my hair back dramatically like it does in the movies, but I wasn’t expecting this. I wrinkle my nose and flip through the pages. Everything is written in what I think is Latin and there’s no clue as to what I’m reading. A journal or diary? There are no dates at the top of each page, and hardly anything to separate one entry from another.
I flip through the pages, and a neatly drawn vegvisir catches my eye—an Old Norse symbol believed to help the bearer find their way when traveling. My knowledge of the occult is impressive, or so I always thought. I know a good deal of magical symbols, what they mean or represent, and their origins. The symbols were just symbols before, marked on bodies or the site of crimes to illicit fear, or to appease what I thought were false deities.
And now…now I’m not so sure everything was false.
“Ma’am?”
I jump, almost dropping the book. Dammit. I don’t startle easily. I shouldn’t startle easily. Not in my line of work.
“Yeah?”
“I found what was wrong.” He holds up a part of the furnace that means nothing to me. “I might have a spare in the truck. If not, I’ll call a guy I work with and see if he has one. It’s an old part and we might be able to order one. I just replaced a unit like yours with a newer one before I came here and kept some of the working parts. Lucky, right?”
“Yeah. Lucky.”
I go back to the book the moment he goes outside, madly flipping through the pages. It’s full of other occult symbols I recognize. I don’t let myself get too excited, but I have a feeling this is a book of shadow.
I shift my gaze to the ceiling, imagining Jacques and Hasan up on the roof. If this book is full of magic spells, then maybe, just maybe, I can break the curse after all.
12
“God, I’m such an idiot.” I rub my temples, looking at the mess I created in the kitchen. Why I thought cleaning out the cabinets was a good idea is beyond me. Seeing that I have no other choice than to pick this shit up, I stand and step over a pile of rusted pots and pans from my “throw away” pile.
The repairman is still working away on the furnace downstairs in the basement, and I have about an hour until sunset. Having flipped through what I think is a spell book probably fifty times, I needed to do something productive to keep occupied, and cleaning the kitchen sounded like a good idea at the time.
On the surface, everything in the house appeared clean. There was no clutter, the counters had been wiped down before the house was abandoned, and the cabinets were in good condition. Upon further inspection, I found a lot of the dishes to have been lazily washed, the pots and pans to be old, rusted, with flaking Teflon making it not safe to cook in anymore. Not that I cook.
But I think I’m going to have to start.
I stack the old pots and pans in an empty box I brought up from the basement and slide it to the back door. I washed most of the plates and silverware yesterday and finished the cups and glasses today. This kitchen must have been impressive at one point, and my mind drifts to Great Aunt Mary. Did she host dinner parties at this house? Her friends would have come in and looked around in awe.
A bigger question burns inside, one I desperately wish to know the answer to. Did she know about the gargoyles? The house was built roughly a hundred and twenty-two years ago. How the hell did four gargoyles from the Templar time period get here? Maybe they were bought as art pieces, set on the house to make it stand out more than it already does. Digging into the history of the house is yet another thing on my ever-growing list.
“Ma’am?” The basement door opens and the repairman steps out, moving into the kitchen. He eyeballs the giant mess I’ve made. “You’re all set.”
“It works?”