I inhaled deeply, listening to the breeze in the trees and the chirr of crickets below. It was as though I could hear the sound of night—the sound of the very moon looming above and the sound of the bruise-like shadows beneath the bushes.
The right edge of my vision darkened. A streetlamp on the other side of the street had winked out. A man stood beside the iron post, staring. The overlapping spread of light from the flanking streetlamps revealed the muted gloss of black shoes with red outsoles and the frayed hem of denim, but otherwise, the shadows obscured his features, leaving him silhouetted against the Jackson family’s prized hydrangeas.
My heart flip-flopped, and I narrowed my eyes, a silent dare for him to keep standing there. He stepped further into the shadows. When he didn’t reappear beneath the next streetlamp, I squinted into the darkness. He couldn’t have just disappeared.
Forget it. I needed to center my thoughts on bringing in positive energy. Getting distracted during a ritual was dangerous.
I settled back into the room. Light spilled from my window to illuminate teardrops of water on the blades of grass below, and I sprinkled the myrrh resin, watching it plummet downward to carry the request for transformation.
As the first speck hit the ground, the offering bowls toppled, clattering against the altar. The remaining herbs stormed through my room. My altar candle extinguished.
I fumbled around, frantically grabbing at the dishes, unsure what was happening. The bottle of liquid eyebright tipped, its contents staining the altar to a darker shade of gray. Flecks of myrrh resin stung my eyes. I blinked, but the gritty substance blurred my vision.
What the—
Strong currents pressed through my window with unnatural intensity. The lights flickered. Through the chaos, I saw someone in the street again. A glimpse of a girl standing across the street. No. Four girls.
Just as quickly as they appeared, they were gone.
Maybe it’d just been a strange reflection in the dark windows of my neighbor’s house, but that thought didn’t stop the howling wind from swirling around me, assaulting my senses and stirring panic in my chest.
The bedroom stilled, but my heart did not. Leaning against my dresser, I took in the mess scattered across the bedroom.
A swarm of voices rushed into my mind. I spun around and glanced back out the window, but the streets were empty.
The whirring and rattling in my brain—that was gone. Instead, the haunting white noise passed in spurts, punctuated by voices, as though I was rapidly switching from one radio station to the next, never settling on one clear signal.
I shook my head to clear my thoughts and focused instead on the rustling breeze of early autumn and the cool scent of earth and leaves. I would clean the mess in the morning.
After closing my circle, I climbed into bed, listening as the sounds of evening ticked on. Televisions blaring. Babies crying. I lay awake until all of that faded, until all that remained was the hush of curtains whispering against my bedroom walls.
That…and the sound of my curse, pecking away at my senses with static-like crackles. Just as I started to drift off, I heard someone talking. I jolted upright. Voices echoed through my window, but it felt as though they were echoing through my mind, saturating my brain with strange vibrations and overlapped whispers.
I pulled my curtain aside. Four figures in brown hooded cloaks strolled down the street. The limited outdoor light revealed little of their features, but their eyes glowed in smoky purples and eerie greens.
The face of one of the cloaked figures contorted into something wolfish before quickly transforming back. My heart thumped, and the air in the room thickened until it felt solid in my lungs.
The figures glided down the road, their formation choir-like, their rhythm without sync. Shapes bobbing into the distance until all I could see were the backs of their hoods. As they turned the corner onto the main road, their unintelligible mutterings faded from my mind.
What was that?
But the longer I stood staring at the empty street, the more I questioned what I’d really seen. What if my problem wasn’t that I was losing my mind…but that I already had?
***
THE NEXT MORNING I sat at my kitchen table with a blend of white tea flavored with wild cherry bark and blackberries. I nibbled at an English muffin as I picked my way through the classifieds. Nearly every job for teaching history required experience. How was I supposed to get experience if no one would hire me without already having some.
I had to consider the real reason no one wanted to hire me. Death followed me everywhere I went. My dad when I was six, my mom when I was eighteen, and Mr. Petrenko two years before that. Even the cops considered me a suspect for Mr. Petrenko’s murder.