Page 13 of Fatally Yours
A grim silence fell over us as she continued. My stomach flipped as she completed the ring, enclosing us and his grave in the center. Were we really doing this? Was August looking down on us and laughing at our foolishness? Or was he looking up at us from…
My eyes pinched shut. I didn’t want to think about where he went after he passed—if he went anywhere at all. I was never sure what to believe. Heaven, hell, nothing—it all seemed meaningless when you left your loved ones. I only hoped that he was happy if he could be.
“This is important. Do not step out of the circle until it’s over,” Mandy said. We stayed silent, letting her work as she pulled out another set of items. A handful of candles were grasped in her hand. Most were white, but there was one that was a nauseating deep red.
She lined them around the rim of the salt until the only item left in her hand was the red one. She gave me a look and placed it in front of August’s headstone before taking out some chalk and drawing an inverted pentagram on his grave. The act constricted my throat.
His name illuminated like that while we did such a ghoulish thing made a slimy feeling crawl over me. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to scream or cry, but I let it continue only because I was desperate, and desperate people did reckless things, like trying to bring someone back from the dead with a flea market black magick ritual.
She dug through her pack again, pulling out some herbs and powders that I hoped she had just obtained at the grocery store. She sprinkled some pinches of each on a few candles, then she pulled a bundle from her pocket and lit the end, wafting it around in the air. Still, we all kept our mouths shut, either stunned or dumbfounded.
Finally, she finished with the herbs and the bundle and snuffed it out on the top of the headstone, making me wince. If this didn’t work, I would have to come back and scrub that and the chalk off once I finished melting down from disappointment. My forehead began to feel damp, and I used the back of my hand to wipe away a bead of sweat crawling down my face.
My stomach felt like it was filled with insects, probably not unlike what August was experiencing right now. I hoped that my legs wouldn’t give out, or I would slip into unconsciousness from the stress of this situation and break the circle. Because if I believed this was going to work, then I should also think that the last thing I should do was disturb the salt, right?
“Okay, now make sure you stay in the circle, or we could be fucked,” Mandy said. All three of our heads bobbed as she went for her pack again. Reaching inside, she revealed an old hand mirror resembling something from long ago.
“Now I have to break a silver mirror over the grave,” she added. Once more, we shared an unsure glance. All three of them looked at me as if asking for my approval.
“G-go ahead,” I croaked. Was that my voice? It couldn’t be. It was much too weak. I didn’t sound like myself at all. Mandy held the mirror out in front of her and used a stone grasped in her fist to shatter the glass. The shards fell right in the center of where he was buried. My heart leaped to my throat as the moonlight glinted off the fragments.
She set the remnants of it over the shards and then pulled a weapon from her pocket. It wasn’t anything we could get locally. This was a dagger—something you only saw in bizarre occult movies when dumb teenagers and young adults did stupid rituals like we were doing now.
“Damn, I don’t want to cut myself,” Wes exclaimed, drawing me from my thoughts.
“Quit being a baby.” Mandy held out her hand and drew the blade across her palm in a swift motion. Beads of red oozed from the wound as she held her fist out, sprinkling her blood over the broken mirror. “Now you guys do it.”
Scott took it first, wiping the knife on his pant leg before repeating the action. His lip twitched when he did so, but he stayed silent as he walked over and dripped above the mirror. Wes did the same before the weapon was passed to me.
I stared at it momentarily, feeling like it was shoved into my gut, before finally taking it from him. I could see the hint of scarlet along the tooth of the blade, making my stomach flip as I wiped it on the hem of my shirt. No longer was the pale color of my shirt pristine. Now, it was stained with the blood of my friends.
Taking in a shuddered breath, I finally lowered the knife to my palm, curling my hand around it as it pulled it from my grasp, making me hiss. It made me feel pathetic to know I was the only one who made a noise of protest when I completed the action, but what was done was done. I felt another round of tears threatening to fall from my eyes as I stepped up and spilled my blood over August’s grave. It was poetic, wasn’t it? A lover exsanguinating themselves over the body of the deceased? It was something he would sing about. Maybe he would—if this worked.
After the gruesome act, Mandy pulled out another item from her pocket. But this wasn’t packaged with labels like the others. This was a crumpled bag that looked like it had been in her backpack for the past six months.
“Bone dust,” she said, unfurling the top and plunging her hand into it without hesitation.
“H-human bone?” Wes’ voice cracked with his inquiry.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.” Her face was unreadable, making me question the validity of her statement. Even through the darkness, I could see his face pale.
Mandy powdered the mirror with the dust and tossed it toward her backpack. It landed beside it, and a little cloud of powder fluffed up as it nestled itself between the blades of grass. After that, she pulled a silken,red cloth from her pocket, unfolded it, and laid it over the mirror shards, blood, and bone dust.
“Lighter, please,” she said, sticking her palm out. Wes fumbled around before stuffing his hand in his pocket and giving it to her. I noticed that his arm trembled as he pulled back. She flicked her thumb along the striker, and a small flame illuminated her face. Her expression was as stoic as I had ever seen her, sending another chill down my spine. Something was going to happen tonight—I could feel it.
The grueling anticipation was killing me, and I couldn’t tell if I wanted to cry, throw up, scream, or some combination of them all. Before I could decide, Mandy crouched down to the cloth, and her hair frizzed as the wind picked up ever so slightly. The flame licked at her hand as she remained emotionless.
The fire met the cloth, and in a few breaths, it was alight. Something sizzled and popped, and a low, high-pitched squeal hissed from the center, but I wasn’t sure if it was our blood being gobbled up by the heat or the fragments of the mirror threatening to crack. Either way, the noise only set me more on edge as my teeth pressed together, hoping, praying, that something wonderfully frightening would occur.
Mandy stood beside me, took my hand in hers, and recited something under her breath. I recognized a few words as we stood there hypnotized by the fire.Resurrect, grant,andpleastuck out to me, but we dared not interrupt her. As the flame disappeared, all that was left was a white crumble of ash and scorched shards of sparkling silver.
Wes and Scott’s heads swiveled around, looking to see if anything had happened as she finished the hex. Mine followed soon after, and I hoped to see the ground shift beneath us or the sky open up and August descend from it like an angel. The prickle in my stomach turned to a roar as everything remained the same—motionless.
“So… what now?” Scott asked. Mandy released my hand, and her shoulders dropped, making my heart skip. If she were confident, she wouldn’t appear so defeated. Which meant this didn’t work, August wasn’t coming back, and all of this was for nothing.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought he was supposed to, like… crawl out or appear next to us or something.”
“Does it say what’s supposed to happen?” Wes asked.
