Dark Black Magic

Chapter One

Skyler

I woke up to my Grandmother yelling at my Grandfather to leave the house.

My initial reaction was to roll over and bury my head under the pillow as it was too early in the morning for this.

Below I could hear my Grandmother pacing around her bedroom, muttering loudly in Welsh. I didn't understand the language, but I didn't need to, listening to the sharp tone of her voice.

"You've been dead fifty years, Marvin! Why can't you leave us alone!" Her voice echoed through the floorboards.

The smell of burning sage crept into my room, and I panicked.

Grandma should have known better than not to burn sage. The smoke upset her lungs and caused her to have terrible coughing fits.

I had brought her a sage room spray and cinnamon besom to use in place of a sage smudge stick, but the old woman refused to use either, claiming the old ways were the best.

My Grandma didn't do old age well.

I lifted the trapdoor to my attic room and called out, "Do I smell sage burning?"

Grandma appeared in her bedroom doorway, brandishing a smoking stick of sage. She zigzagged it through the air and over the doorway. She muttered a few words about banishing dark energies from the house.

"Grandma, please put out that silly sage stick and open a window before you give yourself another coughing fit."

"Skyler, when I married your grandfather, I vowed to love and honour him until death do us apart. Well, death has happened, and he needs to bloody well part."

"I think it's sweet that Grandpa still visits you."

"Sweet? He left me with a baby to raise and a mortgage to pay. If he wanted to be useful, then he shouldn't have gotten drunk and driven off the mountainside."

It had been over fifty years since my Grandfather had hopped in his truck after a couple of beers and never returned. They found his vehicle hanging in the branches of an old spruce tree like a Christmas decoration.

My Grandma had been twenty years old when they pulled his dead body out his car. She had just celebrated her birthday as young bride in a new country with a new baby and now she was a widow.

Her family back in Wales sent her money to help her get by, but times were hard and over time she began to resent her husband's decision to drive so recklessly that night.

"Grandma," I began, feeling like the adult in the house. "Please put out the sage. You know the smoke upsets your lungs."

She ignored me and continued wafting the sage through the house.

"He creeps about the place like a house spider. He frightened me half to death last night, at the foot of my bed, babbling away about his mother's scrying bowl. Like, I know where the bloody thing is!"

The bowl was a treasured family heirloom that had saved my Grandfather's family during the Great Depression. My Great Grandmother had travelled across states, divining for rich men and poor men alike.

I spotted it on her dresser, overflowing with white ash and cigarette ends.

"It's on your dresser. You've been using it as an ashtray."

She glanced over to her dresser and shrugged, "Ah, well, it's an easy mistake to make."

"Grandma. You need new glasses."

"Oh, poo-poo. There is nothing wrong with my eyesight. It's your grandfather who is the problem. He needs to find something better to do with his time than mithering over his mother's bloody bowl."

She extinguished the sage stick and emptied the ash and cigarette ends into a waste basket.

"I'll throw this in the dishwasher," she shrugged.

"Please don't. I'll take it to the creek and cleanse it in spring water. Then I will leave it out to charge in the harvest moon."

Grandma waved a dismissive hand, "Do what you will. Although, if it's a harvest moon tonight, could I ask you to bless the pumpkins? They are not doing so good this year. They're so small they could be mistaken for oranges."

The pumpkins were pitifully small. They had suffered with the rest of the garden fruit and vegetables this year due to the lack of rain.

"Sure, I can do the blessing tonight."

"Good, you can try out one of the blessings that my troll friend gave me. Did I mention he has a son? A very good looking son as his mother was a siren?"

I cringed inwardly. Grandma was always trying to set me up with her troll friend's son.

"I'm fine, Grandma. If you could leave the blessing on the kitchen table then I will perform it later."

"Did I mention that this troll own a witchcraft store, which his very handsome son runs? I think we should pay a visit to the store when we are next in town."

"I'm good for supplies. The forest gives me everything I need."

"Except a man."

"Okay, this conversation is over." I said, closing the trap door and retreating back into the room.