CHAPTER 2
THE GRIMSBANE TEXT
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Lauren spent four hours inside the room writing away what she could about the incident in the language that any Parasitic Supernatural Being can't read -the Grimsbane text. The PSBs were cursed by a witch lineage -Grimsbane -not to read or understand that particular language. The Grimsbane family members had to bond their powers to form the curse that would stop the PSBs in reading or understanding that particular language. It was the only way to save themselves and other people from the PSBs. When the six Grimsbane witches were done with forming the curse, 5 of the elder witches died as their power drained from their body because the curse was too much for them to handle. Only one of the young witches survived and she hunted down the PSBs all her life. She tricked them with the new language that her family had formed. That was an easy distinction to find the PSBs as they flinched at the sound or sight of that language.
These stories were still told in different shapes and forms to kids, but who would believe that there were PSBs lurking out there and perhaps that they were on the verge of extinction.
Lauren wrote all that she knew about Verona and about PSBs in her diary in the Grimsbane text. She had a hope that someday people would know her... even if her soul goes extinct. The mere thought of her soul going extinct made her cry hard with shuddering sobs.
As she finished writing, she was ready to get out of that room. Her thigh was a mess. She had used her shirt's sleeve to wrap her thigh, but it had only stopped the bleeding and not her pain. And it definitely didn't heal. The PSB who fed on my dad's soul's energy would have been healed. She thought to herself. She would be fully healed by now from when my dad hit her head against the wall. She was bleeding, but she would be all healed by now.
As she stepped out the room and shut the tiny door behind her, she whispered the password -'ti laes nerual mi'. The wall moved to hide the door. The fountain that was burbling was swallowed under the floor again after she whispered the password.
She knew that her dad's body would still be lying there. Just as she left. His boy was lying there in the bloodstained floor. He had reached mortis and his discolored veins were well visible. Decomposing and disgusting, it was, but Lauren couldn't hold her weeps in her throat. They escaped into the air and she couldn't stop the convulsive shivers in her body. She still couldn't see her father's soul floating anywhere. Maybe the energy in his soul hadn't renewed fully yet. But Lauren was certain that his soul wasn't extinct. The fact that killed Lauren emotionally was that she cannot give her father a proper burial. She dragged his heavier-by-the-minute body, to the stairs of the basement. It's just a body that dad lived in. It's his soul that deserves respect. Dragging his body like this isn't disrespectful. She kept repeating in her mind through her sobs and rolled him down the stairs into the basement and she shut the basement door. She could feel it in the air that danger was waiting outside and she can't stay indoors forever.
Lauren knew that Verona would go for Wyatt. It was the only way to lure Lauren out. Lauren prayed that he wasn't hurt. Wyatt and Lauren were supposed to get married next month.
"You are lying." Lauren tried to be in denial but it wasn't working.
"Well, come and see for yourself," she scoffed. "Do you think I am not capable of making a ghost possess Wyatt? Let me remind you, Lauren; I can rule ghosts." Her voice was overflowing with rage, pride and evil.
That was exactly what Lauren was afraid of. That was exactly what Lauren was trying to get Verona out of - evil.
"You can come till the threshold of the house and see for yourself. I can't harm you anyway," she challenged Lauren.
Lauren walked to the threshold of the room only to see Wyatt's head hanging droopily in his neck. He had no idea of what was going on.
"Ahhh... yes, I drugged him," Verona admitted. Wyatt was an addict and had been to the rehab a couple of times but he lived clean after. But looking at the way his head was drooping and dangling proved that he was not himself.
Wyatt's sun kissed pretty face wasn't his anymore. He was a zombie but with a horrid energy drained ghost inside him. Wyatt had loved her even after knowing about her family. So, if Lauren died, he would know what to do or he would at least know the reason. Lauren had the audacity to stretch her hand outside to touch Wyatt's face. That was enough for Verona to pull her out but something stung her hand that she flinched and as she flailed, she failed to pull Lauren out.
Lauren retracted her hand at the realization of what could have happened. She still was looking at Wyatt. This is exactly the reason why I didn't want to marry him. I didn't want him to die in the middle of all this. Lauren tried hard to keep her tears at bay but her efforts were in vain. Verona pulled Wyatt toward her and held the same knife against Wyatt's neck. After all that had happened in the past few hours, Lauren had forgotten that this was a possibility.
"I'd let him go unharmed if you step out," Verona said with a tone that almost sounded like she hated to do this.
"Your promises don't weigh the same anymore. Let him go." Lauren pleaded. The knife was still stained with the blood of her father.
"Step out or I'll sink the knife in."
Lauren could physically feel as if the knife were against her own throat now. She had to shut her eyes for the reality to sink in for a minute. Her dad practically built the house for her protection and now she had to willingly step out of it to save the love of her life. She was just too weak to feel any rage now. Once she stepped out, there awaited a definite death. She took a step out and she definitely felt that her dad's soul was frantic somewhere near her but invisible. She left the threshold and stood on the porch.
"Let him go. You have me. Just let him go," she said with a throbbing pain in her thigh and her heart decided to jump betwixt the lungs. "Please ask the ghost to leave his body."
"I will." She retracted the knife from his throat. "Just not so soon. I have a visit pending. We're going straight to visit Ashlyn and her husband... tsk tsk my lover."
She pulled Lauren by her hand and the three of them teleported into the night straight to Auroville Villa in a matter of seconds. It was something that Verona could do even when she was pure but only for a few inches.
***
Howard Bookman woke up to a wail that shook his bedroom floor. Howard was what you could call a neighbor for Ashlyn and Lyndon. Lyndon Stone used to be news reporter and now a senator. Quite famous for his looks. Watching the news, surpassing his angular features would require some getting used to. Another wail woke up Howard's wife, Molly.
"What was that?" she asked Howard. "Should we call the cops?"
Another yowl blasted their ears, more animalistic and rawer. They called the cops.
Edric Bookman, their son opened his parents' bedroom, "should we go check on them?"
"Go back to your room," Howard commanded.
"I'm scared," whimpered their daughter, Irsia Bookman. She had come rushing to her parents' room without her blue contact lens. For a girl who was head-over-heels for the color green, it was odd that she hated her sea-green eyes.
"Just both of you stay in your rooms. Cops are on the way. It's almost dawn," Molly said in a pacifying tone for the sake of Irsia. "Edric, take your sister to her room and don't even think about stepping out of the house," she warned.
He gave his mother an annoyed look and went back to his room. He came back relenting and dragged his sister by her arm.
Once Irsia settled in her bed, he said, tartly, "I can't believe you are a freshman in high school and you are still scared of the dark."
Irsia didn't respond to that but kept looking at the closed window of her room. The window looked at Auroville Villa. The house where the senator and his wife lived. She didn't notice Edric walk up to the window. "Don't open it, please, don't open it," she shrieked.
Edric gave a short jesting laughter. "I won't. Go back to sleep." He walked to the door and flipped the light off.
"Edric...." Irsia shrieked again. This time more desperate.
He laughed. A full-on laughter erupted and he flipped the switch on. "That was so funny."
"It's not funny," she was on the verge of breaking into tears. "Can you stay here? Just until the cops arrive."
"Are you crying?" He quelled a laughter, turning on his sister's computer. He just wouldn't admit to stay with her until the cops arrive. Not plainly.
Next morning, it was all over the news that Ashlyn Emerson Stone and Verona Driscoll were murdered by Wyatt Emerson. Wyatt also had injured the senator, Lyndon Stone and Lauren Shine to the point that there wasn't any guarantee that they would make it alive. Wyatt was in jail. The local news announced that a funeral was arranged by Ashlyn's twin sister, Aislyn Emerson.
Rumor had it, Aislyn never visited her brother Wyatt in prison. She wished he were dead. She had even paid the hospital bills for Lauren. The Driscoll family had a hard time believing that their sweet adopted daughter Verona was murdered. Verona was buried in the Driscoll's family crypt.
The saddest and grim news was that Wyatt had killed his own sister who was on her third trimester. He had stabbed her to death. It felt forbidden and repugnant.
End of Author's POV
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