How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend (Necon Modern Horror Book 9) (2 page)

“What do you wish for more than
anything?” Brenda asked.

Angelique picked up her mother’s
rag doll and held her close to her face. She closed her eyes. “I wish–I
wish my mother would love me.”

“We could do that, Angelique. You
and I together could do it.”

“You think so. Really?”

Brenda nodded. “She’s your mother
so she already loves you. It’s just locked away inside of her. We can make a
gris-gris to open her to you.”

“Even though we’re here and she’s
in North Carolina?”

“Distance don’t mean a thing.
We’ll need something that’s been close to her.”

They both looked at the doll.

“And I have a handkerchief of
hers in my suitcase,” Angelique said, hugging her mother’s doll.

Brenda rubbed the sliver key on
the chain around her neck. “Good, then we’ll make the charm tonight. I think
some of my mother’s toys are over there. Let’s check it out.”

Brenda put the conjure ball back
in the dresser. They spent the next two hours going though the trunks, trying
on clothes, and setting up old dishes and glasses for pretend meals, until
their grandmother called them for dinner.

That night they sat on the back
porch eating ice cream while Brenda’s father had some friends over after
dinner. Jazz played in the background as the adults talked and laughed in the
living room. The lightning bugs drifted above the grass and herb garden like
stars while the girls ate their ice cream. Crickets sang from the bushes along
the back of the yard.

“Make a wish on the next
lightning bug and it’ll come true,” Brenda said.

“Is that more magic?” Angelique
asked.

“Naw, just a saying, but it
couldn’t hurt.”

They both whispered wishes and
laughed.

Brenda stood up from the wicker
chair and peeked into the kitchen window. No one was there.

“Want to make that gris-gris for
your mother now?” she asked Angelique.

“Tonight?”

“Why not? It’s as good a time as
any.”

“What if something goes wrong?”
Angelique asked.

“First lesson in using the power:
your intent makes the magic. It’s not a complicated spell anyway.”

“I don’t know about this–”

“Of course you don’t. That’s why
I’m going to teach you. Come on.”

They entered the empty kitchen
through the back door. Brenda found a small brown paper bag in the cabinet and
sprinkled sugar in it.

“We’ll put it together in our
bedroom,” she whispered.

They walked quickly through the
dining room. Larry and his friends were in the living room, laughing and
talking over the music. The girls dashed up the stairs. They tiptoed past their
grandmother’s room, where they could hear her talking on the phone.

In the bedroom, Brenda put a
bracelet with little bells on the doorknob. “So we can hear if someone opens
the door,” she said.

She put the desk lamp on the
floor and used the two bedposts to make a tent out of a sheet. They crouched
under the sheet.

“Spread the handkerchief on the
floor,” Brenda said.

Angelique laid the delicate
square on the floor. It was white with white lace roses along the edge and her
mother’s initials sewn in yellow on a corner.

Brenda pulled a light wood box
from under the bed; it had a sun painted on it. She took the silver chain with
a heart and key from around her neck and unlocked the box.

“I thought that was just a charm
necklace,” Angelique said.

Brenda winked at her and opened
the box. It was filled with yarn, bits of material and things that jangled at
the bottom. Brenda took out a ball of red yarn, pulled about twelve inches off,
and cut it with a small pair of scissors from the box. She took a little pad of
paper and pen out of the box and handed it to Angelique.

“Write your mother’s first name
nine times, real small.”

Angelique wrote her mother’s
name, in careful strokes.

“Now fold the paper up as tight
as you can and put it in the middle of the handkerchief,” Brenda said. She held
the paper bag open. “Take a little sugar and sprinkle it in the handkerchief,
to sweeten her to you.”

“You have the doll?” Brenda
asked.

“Yes.” Angelique got the doll
from her dresser drawer.

Brenda handed her the scissors.
“Cut a tiny piece of the dress and put it in the handkerchief.”

Angelique looked at the scissors
and the doll.

“Come on, Angelique. Think of it
as an experiment, we just need a little bit.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. She cut
a teeny piece of material from the inside hem of the doll’s dress and put the
threads into the handkerchief. “Just as long as we don’t have to sacrifice an
animal or cut ourselves for this.”

Brenda laughed. “You don’t know
anything, do you? You don’t use blood for a love spell. Fold the handkerchief
up.”

“Now wrap this yarn around it
nine times and put nine knots in it – to hold it forever.”

When she was done, Angelique
stared at the small package they made.

“You’ve made your first
gris-gris.” Brenda tapped it. “The last step is to sleep with it under your
mattress.”

Angelique slid it under the
mattress. “Will it work?”

“Of course, between your power
and a perfect gris-gris, it’ll work.”

Angelique laid the doll on her
bed. “How long will it take?”

“You can’t put a time on
something like this.”

The doorknob jangled and they
both jumped.

“Brenda?” Her father knocked on
the door.

They took a deep breath in
relief. Brenda locked the box and slid it back under her bed. “Come in.”

“What’s this, camping out?” he
asked.

“No, Daddy, just swapping
secrets.”

He smiled, a little too wide, as
he leaned against the door. “That’s good.” He turned to leave and swung in a
circle. “Oh, your grandmother wants you two to help her in the kitchen.”

“Okay.” Brenda put the lamp back
on the night stand.

Larry turned and walked away.

Brenda made a sign like drinking
with her hand. They both giggled.

“He’s funny when he drinks. It
doesn’t take much. That’s why he doesn’t drink the hard stuff. Does your dad
drink?” Brenda asked.

Angelique nodded. “He likes
scotch and soda, two ice cubes. I make it for him when he comes home from
work.”

“Really? You ever tasted it?”

She made a face. “Yes. I like
white wine better. That’s what my mother drinks.”

“Your mom lets you drink?”

“She gives me a little wine on
special occasions, so I can develop my tastes.”

Brenda threw the sheet back on
the bed. “I’ve tasted beer. It’s all right but I like cherry soda better.”

On their way down the stairs,
Angelique said, “Shouldn’t we check with Grandmom about what we just did?”

“No,” Brenda said quickly. “We
don’t want to bother her about something this small. Okay?”

“Grandmom doesn’t know you’re
doing magic, does she?” Angelique asked slowly.

“Shhhh–do you want it to
work or not?”

Angelique nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

They helped clear the table and
wash the dishes. Most of the time one of Larry’s friends sat in the kitchen
talking to their grandmother about problems with her husband. After they
finished drying the dishes, the girls went to bed.

In the bedroom, with the lights
out, Angelique asked, “Is it going to work?”

“Don’t have any doubt. It’s
important to be confident.”

“Okay. Goodnight.”

The rest of the week Angelique
tried not to ask Brenda about the gris-gris for her mother. Every night she
checked under her mattress to make sure the little white bundle, wrapped in red
yarn was still there. They played video games during the day and met with
Brenda’s friends to jump rope and window shop. At night Brenda showed Angelique
her favorite computer sites on spells.

Friday evening the phone rang.
Their grandmother called Angelique from the yard.

“It’s for you,” she said, handing
the phone to Angelique.

“Hello, Mother.” She told her
about the fun things they did, leaving out the magic discussions. Her mother
sounded about the same. Angelique gave up all hope.

“Talk to you next week,” she
said, ready to hang up.

“What?

“Oh. I love you too.” She stared
at the phone after her mother hung up.

“She said she loves me,” she
said, hugging her grandmother.

“Well, of course she loves you,
honey.”

“But, she’s never said it before.
Never.” She ran out of the room to the yard, grabbed Brenda and swung her
around. “She loves me. She said she loves me.”

They danced in a circle until
they collapsed on the grass, out of breath.

“It worked, Brenda, it worked,”
said Angelique.

“Of course it did. I had no
doubt.”

The first half of the summer went
fast. Between playing, Brenda taught Angelique what she knew about magic. They
found spells online for making someone leave, to cure different kinds of
sickness. They made a list of the kinds of objects carried in a nation sack. As
they played and shopped, they collected unusual rocks from the park or
feathers. Every now and then, they would find some interesting piece of metal
or glass on the ground and added it to their box of magical material.

They gathered ingredients for
small spells, but never put the whole spell together. They saw Mrs. Johnston
every couple of weeks; she stared at them from across the street and whispered
to herself, but she didn’t talk to them again.

Angelique never saw their
grandmother doing magic, but every now and then someone came by the house and
Grandmom gave them a package wrapped in brown paper. She once saw her
grandmother take a small pale blue bag out of her blouse, rub it and put it
back. Brenda said that her was her nation sack, where she carried special
things for protection.

Every time Angelique’s mother
called she told her she loved her, and even said she missed her.

One hot July day, Brenda and
Angelique came in the house laughing, after a day at the park, and found their
grandmother in the hallway on the floor. Her chest was covered with a dark
cloud of squirming snakes. The girls screamed and the snakes melted away.

Brenda ran to her grandmother’s
unconscious body and shook her, yelling, “Grandmom!”

Angelique ran to the living room
and called ‘911’. The ambulance came quickly. Grandmom’s friend from next door
rushed in when the medics arrived. She called Larry’s school and left a
message. Brenda stayed by her grandmother’s side as they carried her into the
ambulance.

“I need to go with Brenda,”
Angelique said.

“Go ahead,” the neighbor said.
“I’ll watch the house. Larry will be there as soon as he can. I’ll be praying
here.”

Angelique glanced across the
street before getting in the ambulance and saw Mrs. Johnston standing in the
shade of a tree, pointing and smiling. When she looked out the back window of
the ambulance the old woman was gone. Nausea gripped her stomach. Could that
woman have had something to do with this?

The medics had an oxygen mask on
their grandmother, but she was still unconscious. Brenda crouched on the floor,
held her grandmother’s hand, and cried softly. Angelique tried to talk to
Brenda, but she pulled away.

At the hospital the doctor made
them stay in the waiting room. Brenda held Angelique’s hand but still wouldn’t
talk. The waiting room was filled with men, women and children clutched in
little groups. Most stared at magazines or the droning television hanging from
the ceiling. The sound of wheels rolling through the corridor broke through the
whispers of people comforting each other.

Angelique stared at the door,
waiting for someone, anyone, to come in and tell them how their grandmother was
doing. Brenda stared at the floor.

Larry walked in, out of breath,
as if he had run to the hospital.

“Are you girls alright?” He
hugged them both.

“Is Grandmom going to die?”
Brenda whispered.

“No, your grandmother is the
strongest person on this planet. I have to talk to her doctor. I wanted to make
sure you two were okay first.”

“We’ll be fine, Uncle Larry,”
Angelique said.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He dropped his backpack and rushed out of the room.

Brenda wrapped her arms around
herself and started rocking back and forth. “She’s going to die. I can feel her
– slipping away.”

Angelique could also feel the
wrongness, like air being sucked out of the room. “Somebody is doing something
bad to her. You saw those snakes back at the house, right?”

Brenda nodded her eyes puffy and
red from crying.

“Somebody, I think the old woman
from across the street, did bad magic against Grandmom. I saw Mrs. Johnston
when the ambulance drove away. She was smiling.”

“But-but Grandmom’s protection
should have kept her safe,” Brenda whispered.

“I know, but somehow it didn’t.
Those snakes weren’t real, but we saw them. Do you remember reading that
sometimes you can see spells working through animal spirits?”

Brenda nodded.

“We can do something about this.
We have to do a spell to stop it.”

“Maybe,” Brenda said. “Maybe we
can.”

“We’ll pray now and later we’ll
do more.” Angelique put her arm around Brenda and closed her eyes.

Someone tapped Angelique on her
shoulder.

“Uncle Larry, how is she?”

“They think she had a stroke. We
have to wait and see. The next twenty-four hours are very important.” He took a
deep breath. “I’ll take you girls home, then come back here.”

“I need to see her,” Brenda said.

“We can’t right now. She’s in
intensive care,” Larry said.