Enchanted, A Paranormal Romance / Fantasy (Forever Charmed) (7 page)

Mandy tried to clear her head as she realized that she was trying to convince herself of something that half of her didn’t want to believe but that the other half of her was screaming all made perfect sense. She couldn’t really argue with the screaming side of herself. It did make sense in a place where nothing else seemed to make sense. Suddenly Mandy realized that she had gotten off track here weighing the possibilities about the two Ophelia’s. The real news in the note was the emanate danger Mary was supposedly facing. Mandy turned back to her laptop to dig for information on Mary Nasson.

Mandy typed Mary Nasson’s name back into the Google search bar. As she scanned through the matches, she saw many sites boasting the epitaph from Mary’s grave, but lacking information as to a definite cause of her death. She went to other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo, and found a couple of clues. One site mentioned that Mary was executed, another more specifically reported she was hanged.

Mandy’s stomach was churning. It was impossible to sort reality from fiction among these sites. Some sites gave Mary the glory of being the “Witch of York”, while others claimed it was merely a legend made up to attract tourists to the little town. As she scrolled through the various pages, Mandy saw multiple pictures of Mary’s grave. There was a headstone with the inscription as follows:

A stone marker was standing at the foot of the grave like a book end. Enclosed between the headstone and footstone another stone slab was laid on top of the grave. Mandy thought this was odd. As she perused the pages further she saw that the reason for this strange setup was due to one of two things: some sites claimed it was to keep Mary’s spirit from wandering the graveyard at night, other sites gave the more logical explanation of it being a “wolf stone”.

As far as Mandy could tell, a wolf stone used to be a common thing back in the days of Mary. Family members were expected to tend to the upkeep of cemetery plots. In cases where the surviving family members couldn’t or wouldn’t, a wolf stone would be placed on top of the grave, as per Mary’s. The stone would keep animals from digging up the remains. Some of the sites Mandy came across claimed that Mary’s husband, Samuel, had loved Mary very much, but had moved away. The wolf stone was placed on her grave because he would no longer be able to tend to it.

Mandy shuddered and rubbed her arms, trying to warm them and chase the chill away. Either explanation was hideous in Mandy’s eyes. The thought of having to keep someone in their grave terrified her, as did the thought of some wild animal rooting up people’s remains. Mandy tried to push the disturbing images out of her mind. Her head was spinning with all the events of the night. A yawn overtook her and she realized it must be very late. She looked at the clock on the computer screen. 11:44 p.m. Mandy was overcome with the urge to sleep. She had to be to work at 8 the next morning.

Mandy folded up the old letters and stacked them back together. The page containing the flowers she hadn’t really gotten a good look at yet, nor the letter signed Lavinia. Then there were those pages with the strange looking recipes. She regretfully accepted these items were going to have to wait until tomorrow after work. Mandy felt like the mysterious artifacts were going to drive her mad. She was going to have to piece them together somehow and find out who this Mary Nasson really was. But it was going to take time.

Another yawn escaped Mandy’s mouth. She quickly washed her face and brushed her teeth catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She stared at the reflection for a moment, pondering the night’s events. If she was really a descendent of Mary, if Mary really was a witch, what did that make her? What if she had unknown abilities?
Ha! Yeah right, get real!
Her brain scoffed at the thoughts. If she was a descendent, then it was almost like history was staring at her from the mirror. Mandy wondered if she resembled Mary.
You are jumping to conclusions
, she told herself.

Mandy went back to her room, crawled under the orange and purple comforter, pulling it up around her to keep the warmth in from the cool night. She shut her eyes and was gone.

* * *

Chapter 6

“Mandy,” a soft voice whispered close to Mandy’s ear. Mandy heard it, but she wanted to sleep a little longer so she decided to ignore it. She was still so tired she felt as if she had just gone to bed. Mandy knew it must be morning and that she must have slept through her alarm clock since her mom was trying to wake her up. “Mandy,” the voice persisted.

Mandy groaned and pulled her pillow over her face. “Mandy,” said the voice again. Mandy felt the pillow be pulled away from her eyes. She knew the charade must be up, she would have to give in to the day now. She forced her eyelids to open a bit in a squint, prepared for the morning light to be bright and painful, but instead darkness met her eyes. She rubbed her hands against her eyes and half sat up in bed. It was still dark, she was not imagining that.

Mandy looked around quickly, willing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She could see no one in her room. There was no light coming in from out in the hallway or further in from the house, no light shining in from the windows. She was surrounded by the pitch black, alone in her bed except for the voice. She felt a scream rising in her chest but it would not come out. Mandy felt paralyzed with fear.

“Mandy,” the voice was very faint now.

Mandy had the sudden urge to pull the blankets up over her head and hide, but she knew that was pointless. She summoned all of her courage, which wasn’t very much and said to the disembodied voice, “What do you want?” She was almost more terrified to hear the answer than to hear the whispered voice again.

“Come,” it breathed.

Mandy was certain of one thing: she was definitely not getting out of her bed willingly. She grabbed hold of her blankets and pulled them up a little higher and tighter to her body.

“Now,” it instructed.

Suddenly a gust of air blew in though Mandy’s open windows. It was cold, the summer nights always cooled off drastically. Coolness blew in right off the waters. The wind seemed to wrap its icy, invisible arms around Mandy, embracing her in its powerful nothingness and pulling at her unrelentingly.

Before she could scream she was somehow not in her bed anymore but out in the dark night. Her house was gone. Her bare feet felt the crisp grass beneath them. The land was flat. There seemed to be a house in the shadows but Mandy couldn’t make it out clearly. The lonely moon peeked out a little from behind some silver clouds, silhouetting a few tall yet crooked looking trees. They reminded Mandy of skeletons, all bony and knobby, the branches pointing like long, skinny fingers. Mandy followed the outline of the branches to the end, realizing suddenly that something was looped on one of the bigger branches. She took a few steps closer, squinting in the darkness, trying to make out what the object was.

It was dangling. The wind whipped around Mandy and gave the object a push as well. It began to sway a bit from the gusty breeze. A break in the clouds soon allowed the moon to show itself completely, illuminating the horror before Mandy’s eyes. A corpse it was, dangling from a rope tied about the tree branch. The head was at an awful angle, unnaturally bent to the side. It was dressed in outdated clothing in muted tones of brown. A blouse and long skirt. The breeze pushed it again, making it swing gleefully.

This time the scream did find its way out of Mandy. She screamed and screamed, staring in unparalleled fear at the traumatizing sight in front of her eye. She wanted more than anything to back away, to run away, or to at least look away or close her eyes, but she couldn’t. It was as if her body was not under her control anymore. She continued to shriek until finally she located her legs and they began to respond to her commands and move her away.

Mandy ran blindly, not caring which direction she went so long as she got away from this horrid place. She had only gotten a few paces away when she tripped over something, perhaps a tree root poking out of the ground. She fell on her stomach and found herself staring at something directly in front of her. It was a large gray stone. A slab. A headstone. Her eyes began to read the carving even though she knew what it said before she did so.

The scream gurgled up again in Mandy’s throat. She squeezed her eyes shut and let the scream surround her in the dark night until her throat felt like it would collapse in on itself.

“Mandy!” Another voice, louder this time, more urgent and forceful. “Mandy, Mandy! Wake up!”

Before she could sort out what was happening she felt her mother’s hand on her arm, shaking her gently. The scream cut off in Mandy’s throat. She hesitantly opened her eyes and took a cautious look. She was in her bedroom. Her mom was bent over her, a worried look on her face. Mandy gasped and gave a sigh of relief. It had just been a dream, but it had seemed so real.

“Mandy, are you all right? What did you dream?” Mandy’s mom asked anxiously. “I’ve never heard you scream like that. Actually, I’ve never heard anyone scream like that. It was blood-curdling, bone chilling. I was ready to fight off alien abductors!” Her mother giggled nervously.

Mandy forced a half smile to try to calm her mom down a bit. “Um, I don’t know, Mom. I can’t really remember what I was dreaming. I just remember being scared.” Mandy shrugged at her mom. She did remember the dream of course. In fact she was pretty sure she would never forget that one no matter how hard she tried to. “Sorry I woke you. I’m fine though, really.”

“You sure, sweetie?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. You can go back to bed.” Mandy laid down and pulled the blankets up over her shoulder like she was going to go back to sleep. Her mom gave her a quick kiss on the forehead.

“Night, hon. If you need me call me! I’m right down the hall,” Mandy’s mom said as she stepped out and closed Mandy’s door.

Mandy rolled over and looked at the alarm clock on her nightstand. The red numbers glared coldly at her. It was only 2:30a.m. She had lots of time to sleep still, she just wasn’t sure if she would be able to. The images from the dream kept replaying through Mandy’s mind over and over again. It had felt so real Mandy had trouble convincing herself even now that it had only been a scary dream. She was thinking about all of the weird things too much that she had witnessed since moving here.

Okay, so what, Mandy?
She tried to reason with herself.
You found some old letters and they may or may not be written by someone who was a reputed witch. You may or may not be related to said witch. It doesn’t matter because you know there’s no such thing as witches! People liked to blame their problems on anyone they can. People accused people of witchcraft as scapegoats. It’s nothing to be scared of. You don’t even know how much of any of this is true anyway. Go back to sleep!

Mandy sighed. She was right. And she was crazy. Crazy to be considering believing in witchcraft, crazy for talking to herself. She was going to have to make sure to cover this up. She tried to fill her head up with anything besides witches and weird letters and headstones. She thought about work tomorrow. She thought maybe she would see if Ally wanted to do something. She should try harder to make friends before school started. School. Another feeling of dread filled her up. She’d be the new girl. Yes, she decided, she had better try harder to make friends now. She thought about the group of kids she had hung out with. That seemed like a million years ago when really it was only a few hours ago. They weren’t so bad, really. Mandy started to feel sleep closing her lids finally. Then one face drifted into her mind on a cloud. Lucas. He had stared at her so oddly, so openly. She was going to have to ask Ally what was up with him. She tried to focus on what his problem with her could be but she couldn’t concentrate. A deep sleep over came Mandy and she sank into the pillow, blissfully unaware for the time being of anything real or not.

* * *

Chapter 7

The harsh, high-pitched beeping of the alarm clock screamed in Mandy’s ear, jolting her awake. She fumbled around groggily for the snooze button wondering how it could possibly be 7 a.m. already. Suddenly the terrifying images from her dream swept through Mandy’s mind, causing her to shudder. She shook her head, trying to clear it, and reluctantly got out of bed. She grabbed her pink polo shirt, the standard Dew Drop’s attire, and a pair of jeans and headed to the shower.