Category : Stories

Sub Category : Horror

Michael didn’t know everything about me. Not even a fraction from what I was, what I’ve been through. People were infantile to believe that if they know your favorite movie and date of birth, they already know you. That they could read you, as an open book. 
For years I ignored certain part of myself, of my immortality, but it was time for awakening, to call for it again.
Till boys were busy to cut and recorder the songs, I take the road directly to the airport and a plain to Ocean city. Weather wasn’t at my favor, so I had to wear the most black from all my black clothes, even to wear an umbrella. In this case I had luck, I was a rock star and I could afford to look weird.
 I succeed to escape just with one group of fangirls, who started screaming when I passed them, after that I reached the exit and left the airport. At right I found cars for rent, so I payed for a limo with black windows and drive to my goal.
 
I knew the price would not be low, not this time. I didn’t come back here at least from seventy years. To wake up old demons usually takes a high price.
Ocean city was a resort town at the ocean’s beach, always crowded with tourists and sunny, it’s people reached 12 000 without counting those who lived here temporary. I used to hunt here once, but I made too much noise back then, so I had to find another place for myself.
 Houses were ordered in tidy lines around the beach, like a domino. Kilometers only the same view – straight roads and concrete, nothing more.
I was driving on 8ht Avenue, passed 19th street, 20th and 21th, here even streets were named by their order.   
 
When I reached 22th I took right turn near the Real estate agency, just opposite of it was small house with brown roof and narrow stair to the porch. Yard was empty, the broken wooden rocking chair was the only thing on the untrimmed lawn. I left the car and get out of the car.
I wish not to do that, but what choice do I had? To come right here everything and everyone already betrayed me. I couldn’t count on physic to help Mike, nor on religion, waiting for a miracle. Once the situation requires it… 
 I pushed the ware door with broken locker and cross the small yard, sun ray was terrible hot today, I rested when I reached the penthouse.
I knocked on the old white door, honestly I never expected her to open, that’s why when I heard the key turning, after the turned yellow lace curtain moved on the window at right and she came at the doorstep, I felt that déjà vu I wanted never to experience again.
 
She was always short, but now she shrunk even more 1,50 or less, and the humped back made her even shorter.
Her skin was turned darker and wrinkled, as it tried to fit at one way too small face. Her jaw was shed and now the chin was too masonry. Her eyes were blurred, hair was hidden under a black and white cloth, where I could see it, it was absolutely grey. It was Marissa, the witch from the coastline.
Even after all those year she recognized me, I felt how she never expected to see me, her skinny hand start trembling, lying at the door frame. Her jaw moved as she was about to say something, but then freeze.
“What are you doing here?”
Her voice was different that I remember, aged, but I could sence that sound from her youth.
“I need your help.”
 Marissa didn’t let me in; she looked at me from a distance and aggression, like everyone dared to enter at her property, neighbor or the postman. I couldn’t see a newspaper anywhere actually; nobody was coming here to visit her. I was looking at her and was sure that she was keeping a silver knife behind the door.
“What help are you mumbling about, Alex? I don’t owe you anyth…”
“Please, listen to me” I said and put my hand at the door. “Let me in, the heat is unbearable.”
She was watching me. Once she used to have feelings for me, I had no doubt I awakened them, coming here with the same look.
 
I’ve met Marissa at the thirty years of last century, hunters nosed me out and I asked her to make an amulet for me, which cost was way too high. Even back then she tried to keep me insisting that if I stay it would be safe for me, that she can keep me alive. He was twenty years old then, already learned the skills. In time she was slowing down her aging for sure, because now she looked like seventy.
 
She still looking at me for a while, I knew she never let someone at the house unless for a session. Now I was coming just for that. But she had to know I could pay for it.
“What are you bringing to me?” Marissa asked, knocking at the door with her fingers.
“Myself.”
After that she let me in.
 
 
 
The old house was even smaller from the inside. It was dark, possible cloth and canvas decorated the walls under the low ceiling, all written with symbols. From the ceiling were hanging tangles with glass eyes, crow feathers and skulls. At one of the shelves there was an altar with red candles, bone from a leg of a black cat as I guess, and a Solomon seal. The air bring the smell of bitter herbs and typically stagnant clothes, over the door swing grey spider web.
 
“Come” she said.
Her workshop was the place she crafted all of her magic, but it was only a living room, also small and dark full of everything.
Checked blue drapes were hiding the windows, at the table at right there were leather bags with magic, I also could see personal stuff like hairbrush, cloth and wound balls of hair. Obviously someone couldn’t earn her favor.
“Sit.”
She pointed at one of the wooden chairs with round back. I got the end one, I wanted to see the most of what she was doing. Coming here doesn’t mean I trust her.
“Drink?”
I shake my head and she chuckled with unpleasant voice.
“What is all that about?” she said after sitting at the chair against me and took her chaplet made of black beads. The cover of the table was renowned with symbols, some of them I recognized as enokian, symbols for protection.
 “I need your help. It’s about someone else…”
“Oh, who is this time?” she wouldn’t let me finish. “I hope she is worth it.”
“It’s not a woman.” I said, staying with straight back, looking at her. I was hoping there was no silver blade, pointing at me from somewhere.
“I never expected you to get involved with a man” she was turning the chaplet at her hooked fingers.
I clenched my teeth the way she could see them to show her it wasn’t fun.
“It’s my friend. He is having progressive loss of vision.”
“Let him go to a doctor.”
She moved her shoulders and her black shirt outlined even more her skinny body.
“I haven’t come here for fudge!” I got angry and put my both hands on the table. At that gesture she shake. “No clinics and no doctors could help him. He is too young to lose his vision. Too alive to lose half part of himself. He doesn’t deserve that. 
I bowed my head, Marissa was looking at me and probably realized I have already offered him to turn him, also his answer.
“You’ve changed, Alex.” She told me. “You are different. I never expected you to care about another human being, to seek my help so you could help someone else.
“I never knew you were living by the expectations.” I retored.
 
Maybe I was wrong and I had to deal with her different way. I had to play with her, to lie her, to promise her something, no matter it was obvious I would never keep my part of the deal. Instead I entered here and told her everything, the way it was. Maybe I truly became stupid with years.”
 
“Help me” I said again. “You are my last hope.”
At one hand my appearing here after all this time was a bad sign. Marissa wasn’t a fool but I could sense how she came alive seeing me. And what she would get in return, she just could not deny.
“Alright” she said. “Get comfortable. It will take a time.”