Lenora's Grimoire

Chapter One

Cherish had just barely blinked the sleep from her eyes, grabbed her coffee from the cabinet, and turned to start her coffee pot, when the shrill noise that had roused her from sleep echoed through the house again. She was sure of it now—it couldn't have been her alarm that pulled her from the warm comfort of her dreams.

She scanned her cramped kitchen, counters littered with cups that were stacked in separate piles of clean but not yet put away, or dirty—since the sink was too full of dishes from the last few nights. Sunlight was peeking in through the window above the sink, creeping across the floor. Nothing seemed out of place, and nothing was moving, and Cherish relaxed a little. At the very least, the noise wasn't coming from inside the house, which meant she was in no immediate danger.

Regardless of her regained sense of safety, she was starting to feel like she was losing her mind. There had been a noise—she was sure of it, since she'd grappled for her old clock not minutes before, certain the noise was the insistent shriek of her alarm—but to her surprise, it was only six thirty, and much too early for her alarm to have gone off.

She was still perturbed about being woken so early—and by what? Raccoons again?

Cherish frowned, trying to ignore that possibility. She'd spent most of her Saturday morning cleaning up garbage from the front yard, after they'd stopped by Cherish's Trash Can Buffet.

Cherish poured water into her coffee maker, reached for her coffee grounds—

There was that noise again—high pitched and shrill.

Cherish winced at it; it almost sounded like an injured baby bird.

At least that would be better than raccoons, Cherish supposed, shuffling over to her door and peering through the peephole, out onto her small front yard. She could make out the daffodils lining the walkway from the fence to the front door, the cedar tree off to the side—but other than that, nothing looked out of order.

She frowned and unlocked the door to take a better look. Swinging the door open, she scanned her front yard once more, looking for any movement on the ground that would indicate what she'd heard had been a baby bird, and she could rescue it and go back to her morning ritual—coffee, shower, cards.

She saw nothing. She shook her head and stepped back inside to close the door, when the noise sounded again. Cherish covered her ears. It was louder, for sure, which meant it was coming from outside, and was definitely not a baby bird—but when she dared herself to look around the yard once more, she couldn't find any plausible source it could have come from.

Scanning the yard once more, her eyes fell on the cedar tree to the left of her front door. It had been planted almost eighty years before, and yesterday, it looked happy, vibrant, and green—but now . . .

Cherish frowned. All of the branches had turned a brownish red hue—and the trunk of the tree looked as though it had shriveled inwards, as though it had been struck by some vicious, overnight disease.

Cherish most definitely could not blame the raccoons for that.

The high pitched, shrill noise continued, and Cherish realized it was coming from the tree. She took a step back inside, startled by the realization. Trees didn't just make noise like that!

Trees didn't make noise at all, the last time she'd checked.

She looked both ways—up and down the sidewalk, to see whether any of her neighbors had woken to investigate the noise. She didn't see anyone—which both relieved and worried her. If no one else saw her awake, she could pretend the whole thing never happened, but it could also mean she was going crazy.

She debated for a second going back inside, shutting the door behind her, making coffee and ignoring the tree altogether, but she hesitated. Something deep inside her, some nagging subconscious voice, told her not to ignore the tree.

Warily, she stepped outside, towards the tree, hand outstretched. Her stomach felt tight and uncomfortable as she nervously reached out to the tree. At the touch of her fingertips to the bark, the tree let out a soft, quiet whimper. It seemed to shake beneath her fingers, almost like a small animal.

"Uh, hi, tree," Cherish said. She was trying to keep her voice low, in case one of the neighbors was awake after all, and had decided to step outside to take in the peace of the early morning air. "Are . . . are you okay?"

In response, the tree let out a loud wail that shuddered through the trunk, shook off some of the dead branches—and then fell silent.

"Tree?" Cherish swallowed. The tree obviously looked dead, but it had made noise—right?

Whether it had before or not, it certainly wasn't making any noise now.

Cherish took a tentative step back from the tree and hurried inside, not bothering to shut the door. Sure, she'd dealt with odd things in the past—nothing burning a candle and chanting intentions couldn't solve—but never, never had she had a tree full on scream at her like that.

Was it an omen of death? Had she missed something glaringly obvious in her daily readings the last few mornings in her haste to get out the door and to the library on time? She would have noticed if the tree had been dying the last few days—she would have seen it when she'd come back from work, at the very least.

She shivered at the poking memory in the back of her mind—a looming, black shadow, flicking against the candlelight in the attic of her mother's home. She shook her head and tried to push it away before it could do her any harm. Out of sight, out of mind, she thought to herself—and now was definitely not the time to be focusing on spooks of the past.

Her thoughts felt all jumbled inside her head like a scrambled pile of puzzle pieces. She took a deep breath, trying to convince herself she wasn't going crazy, and tried to make sense of the thoughts.

One of them was stubbornly rising to the forefront of her mind, demanding to be heard.

Call. Grandma. Now.

(A/N) Final Chapter Word Count: 1053