Wiccan

I sat on the edge of my bed and stared into the large mirrors that are my closet doors. I was alone in my shitty one bedroom apartment in Tustin, California. My bedroom windows were small and the sunlight never seemed to pour in, no matter the time of day. I studied myself in the long mirrors, my brown hair piled on top of my head, my oversized sleep shirt falling over my hips and thighs. I sat cross legged with my hands in my lap as tears silently flowed down my cheeks, I had just hung up with my sister.

She had a miscarriage; a brutal one.

Only a week prior and she told me, “I can’t feel this baby like I felt my last one.” This scared her and rightfully so. The baby’s heart stopped beating about a week before my sister found out she miscarried and she literally sensed it. Her husband and her had been trying for over a year to have a second baby.

I was crying mostly out of anger, my sister had been through so much heartbreak and trauma in her life and she was only 24 years old. I was furious with the hand she’d been dealt. I slid off my bed onto the floor, I clasped my hands and closed my eyes. I started to pray for my sister and suddenly I found myself crying even harder but out of pure rage. How long have I been praying to this God and how long had she been going through this pain? I stood, walked across my room and grabbed my laptop.

My old roommate practiced witchcraft and used to tell me all about it. She talked about intentions and how she really only uses natural elements in her practices. I never really paid that close of attention because it was so polar opposite of what I was brought up believing. But for some reason in this moment I was being pulled in that direction. I typed “Wiccan” in my search engine and pressed enter. That’s what she used to practice. As my eyes skimmed down the page, so many things caught my eye, bindings, hexes, white magic, black magic, protection and healings spells.

There was one person in particular that I wanted to protect my sister from, it’s going to sound cliche but it‘s her ex mother-in-law, Lacey. She was a real evil bitch and I wanted her to feel pain like she’d been causing my sister. I was high on fury. I started down a fantasy road of hexing this bitch. I knew I was playing with fire and a fire I had no knowledge about but my wrath blinded me from clarity.

Just like in the “The Craft” I found instructions on how to bind someone and cast them and their evil presence from your life. That was exactly what I intended to do. I rummaged through my closet looking for any ribbons I had. I read about candle magic and ribbon magic and since the only candle I had in my place was an old birthday cake scented one from Bath and Body Works I decided to go with ribbon magic since the other option didn’t seem too witchy. At the bottom of an old jewelry filled shoe box I found a black ribbon and in the bottom of another shoe box where I kept old photos I found one of Lacey with her arm around my sister. I could still hear my sister’s sobs from earlier bouncing around in my head. I tore my sister out of that devil’s reach and set her aside, I started wrapping the black ribbon over her face first, as if I were suffocating her. I chanted the spell I found on the Wiccan site over and over as I wrapped the ribbon until she was smothered in darkness.

“By air and earth, by water and fire, so be you bound as I desire. By three and nine, your power I bind. By moon and sun, my will be done. Sky and sea, keep harm from me. Cord go round, power be bound. Light revealed, now be sealed.”

I even chanted “ I bind you Lacey, from doing harm. Harm against other people and harm against yourself.” Yeah I stole it from “The Craft” but I thought it couldn’t hurt so I threw it in for good measure.

For the next 2 months I continued practicing my new found obsession with witchcraft. This might sound crazy but I actually felt as though power rippled through me. I had also heard from my sister that things were looking up for her and her family.

Maybe it was just a coincidence.

Feeling better than ever I decided to upgrade my life and move into a more spacious and luxurious apartment.

A few days after I decided to leave my shitty apartment I took a drive to my soon to be new apartment. It was storming and some asshole in a big dodge truck was tailgating me. I looked up into my rearview mirror for the fifth time in thirty seconds and I saw someone sitting in my backseat. I swerved off the side of the road and slammed on my breaks. My chest was heaving and I spun around to check my backseat. Nothing. Just a figment of my imagination. I tried to picture what I saw in my mirror but it seemed like it was just a silhouette of a man. I slumped over my steering wheel trying to clear my head. Once I felt my breathing slow I continued on to go see my new apartment.

The apartment was even more beautiful in person so I signed the lease, the only thing was was that it wasn’t going to be ready for another two months. That meant I had to put my things in storage and move home for the duration.

Two days after I signed my new lease I arrived at my sister’s house. She was so excited to have me stay with her and help her with the kids. I have to say it was great to see her in such high spirits and I was happy to be home.

After a long day of travel I decided to head to bed early that night. She set me up in the guest bedroom and I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I started to wake because I was having a nightmare that there were rats in my bed. It was so real I could feel the movement around my feet. Suddenly I felt the pressure of the bed shift behind me. I felt someone lay down next to me. It wasn’t out of character for my nephew to climb into bed with someone in the middle of the night but the person behind me felt big, bigger than a four year old. My heart was racing and I’ve never felt fear settle so deeply in my core. My head was screaming “RUN” but my body mechanically turned over to see who was lying next to me. Its yellow eyes met mine and they were a drastic contrast to its pitch black face, I wasn’t sure if it was its skin or clothes. When its mouth started to open my body jolted itself out of bed and I ran for the bathroom slamming and locking the door behind me. I remained in there until the sun came up.

The next morning my sister asked me if I was okay and why I was running through the halls at 3am last night. I told her it was just a nightmare from being so exhausted and to be honest I’m not even sure what happened.

A few days went by and I couldn’t stop thinking about that nightmare. It hasn’t happened again but I always get an uneasy feeling before I fall asleep.

That night I laid in bed with my laptop on my chest as I watched season two of The Umbrella Academy. Three episodes later it was almost midnight and I really needed to pee. When I got back into my room I noticed that one of my candles had gone out. This was unusual because they’re the tall skinny candles that never seem to go out unless you blow them out yourself. I walked over and checked my window to make sure it was shut tight; it was. Weird. Maybe the wick is short. I relit the candle and walked back into my bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. Coming back into my room I started to climb into bed when I noticed the same candle went out again. I got up, relit it once more and stood there watching the flame for probably more than five minutes. In my trance of watching the candle burn, I heard the tv in the loft down the hall turn on. It sounded like it had been turned to the wrong channel because the static was blaring. I didn’t want it to wake my sister so I ran into the loft to turn it off, but when I got there the room was pitch black and the tv was in fact off.

“I’m losing it.” I said aloud to myself.

I was just exhausted and my nightmare from the other night had freaked me out, is all.

As I walked from the loft back to the guest bedroom I stopped at the end of the hall because I noticed a light was on downstairs. My sister had probably gotten a midnight craving. I started down the stairs to go join her when I noticed where the light was coming from. It was coming from a lamp in the dining room that no one ever really uses. My stomach sank and that uneasy feeling started to creep up in my throat. Everything was telling me to go back upstairs. I slowly inched down another step and started to open my mouth to call for my sister when the top of a dining room chair came into view.

Someone or rather something occupied that chair, it had it’s back to me and I froze in fear.

I knew it had sensed me. I couldn’t get myself to move as I watched its torso turn in the chair. I knew what face I was about to see. I saw it in my bed the other night. What I thought was a nightmare was in fact very real. It’s pitch black body had made a full one 180 degree turn in my sister’s dining room chair while its legs still faced its original direction. If it were human, it’s back would’ve broke, its scaly body seemed to be composed of rubber. Its soulless eyes had me in a trance and it knew it. It smiled at me. With black gums and teeth so white and so sharp I wondered how its own mouth wasn’t bleeding. It held my gaze while its legs finally aligned with its torso, it’s long fingers held onto the back of the chair and it pushed itself to its feet. This thing held my gaze as if it were physically forcing me not to move or even blink. Its smile somehow grew wider, so wide I thought its jaw would detach from its face. It walked toward me, fully lit in the glow of the dining room lamp. This was what was in bed with me the other night.

It reached the bottom of the staircase and I could see in its eyes that it had won. I belonged to it now. It controlled me. I could feel it already living inside me and it hadn’t even touched me yet. Tears streamed down my face as I watched it get on all fours and crawl up the stairs toward me.

By the grace of whatever God is real, a scream ripped through me and out of my lungs waking the whole house. The creatures face distorted in anger as it came face to face with me. It finally broke eye contact as it looked up at my brother-in-law barreling down the stairs toward us. He grabbed me by my shoulders and asked me what was wrong. I was in hysterics and couldn’t get a word out, all I could do was point in the direction it came from. When I turned around it was gone. The dining room chair was still out of place and the light was still on, that’s how I knew it was real.

My sister and her husband stayed up with me for the rest of the night and I broke down explaining everything to them. They thought it would be a good idea to get spiritual healers to come cleanse the house first thing tomorrow morning. I agreed.

My sister called a variety of spiritual healers, from those who also practiced Wiccan to people from our church. When they arrived they didn’t want to hear what had happened until after they cleansed the house and could feel the energy for themselves. My sister, her family and I stood outside on her driveway waiting for the healers to finish. They were in the house for over an hour but once they were done they met us outside and said that the negative energies were expelled.

One woman who introduced herself as Aggie and that she also practiced Wiccan started to explain that most of the negative energy sat in the second bedroom on the right upstairs. My room. She also said they felt intense energies coming from the dining room. It made sense that the bad juju would be coming from my room but why the dining room that no one ever went in? As she continued to tell us how they expelled the evil presence in my sister’s home she rested her had on my shoulder and when she did she stopped mid sentence and turned white as a ghost. She stared into my eyes and asked…

“What have you been practicing?”

“I..I don’t know.” I stammered back.

That was the truth, I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d been practicing I just jumped in with two feet and had every intention of helping my sister. Well I guess not every intention, I also wanted revenge. So that’s what I told her. I told her why and how long I’d been practicing.

Aggie took me aside and said I needed to be cleansed, she said that when she first touched me she saw something dark attaching itself to my back and if I continued practicing with dark intentions that it would eventually consume me.

Cleansing me took a lot longer than cleansing the house. I had to go over to Aggie’s house once a day so she could rid me of anything evil that was latching onto me. She said I had opened a door without knowing and the more I practiced with impure intentions the more evil could come through that doorway. I don’t know if it’s all in my head but after every session I felt as though something had been lifted off my body.

Two weeks later I finally finished my sessions and I promised not to practice carelessly anymore. I probably wasn’t going to practice at all for awhile. All of the weird instances stopped following me and I felt like me again.

When I got back to my sister’s after my last session my nephew begged me to play hide and seek. I counted to 20 and started to search. I called his name over and over and I could hear his giggles coming from upstairs. When I got to my bedroom, there he was hiding under my covers.

“Gotcha!” I said as I ripped the blankets back and started tickling him.

Once he got his giggles under control he sat up, looked at me and said,

“Why is there still a bad man under your bed?”