Cursed: Paranormal Women's Fiction (Mid-Life Haunts Book 1) Read online

  “Really, how ironic is that? You couldn’t find a place teeming with more life than Manhattan, and yet that’s where she died!”

  It was ironic. Or it was the duality of existence. Life within death; death within life.

  Reluctantly, I nodded and began walking again. It wasn’t far, the distance between my Prius and the front steps, but in those uncertain moments it felt like miles.

  2

  When my great-great-granddaddy met and fell in love with my great-great-grandma he was told to buy up a certain tract of land on the side of Grand Haven Mountain. He was told it was the heart of the Appalachian mountain range and that by marrying into a family of witches he was agreeing to become part of their guardianship of the land.

  Sometimes, I wondered how a man like that would have taken the news. Magic isn’t commonly experienced by the bulk of humanity. Back in his time they weren’t actually burning witches anymore, but the average person was still unsettled by any whiff of magic they came across. My matriarchal line had escaped Europe at the peak of the Inquisition and kept a low profile ever after. Only those marrying into the family knew the extent of their secret.

  Magic, so I was taught from an early age, was Earth generated. An energy that was no different to the Life Force itself. All you had to do was look at a germinating seed or a gestating child to realize the magic that drove them.

  Women were particularly susceptible to magic, possibly because it was they who were the creators. My ancestors felt drawn to the mountains of my home as soon as they reached the Americas. But until the prophecy was uttered they didn’t understand why.

  Along with the ability to heal, encourage the growth of plants, and know when certain events would occur, like the birth of a child or a damaging storm, they could sometimes predict the future. The predictions were carefully handed down from mother to daughter until they came to pass. So it was that my great-great-grandmother heard the prophecy that I would someday fulfill.

  The heart of the mountain must forever remain pure. If an innocent protector became tainted, that taint would spread to the land she nurtured. A tainted heart could die and take all else with it. Only when the taint was removed could the heart beat anew.

  My mother belonged to the first generation that didn’t equate innocence with virginity. She herself lived a wild youth until she eventually met my father, settled down, and brought him home to our mountain. She definitely was no innocent, sexually or in any other way, so she assumed the dire prediction had been wrong. She hadn’t tainted the mountain by her promiscuous ways. Predictions could be wrong. The future was not set in stone.

  So, though I was told of my heritage and encouraged to develop my unique talent, my own form of magic, Mom never told me the prophecy. Not until the evidence of it became obvious, as the land around us began to die.

  “What have you done?” she’d screamed at me that long ago day when she’d come into the kitchen bearing the dead and shriveled tomato plant.

  “Done?” I’d cried back in utter bemusement, although a niggle of doubt nipped at my gut even then.

  I hadn’t been raised to value virginity, but I did value my body. Sex had never felt right to me. I was too young to be driven by my hormones. There was only ever one boy I wanted to give myself to, and even I knew I had no chance of attracting his attention.

  Jake Killian was the captain of the high school football team and only dated cheerleaders. I was no cheerleader. I was too young and shy, and not nearly athletic enough for such an activity. I’d like to say I was the brainy type, but I didn’t even have that going for me. I tended to just float along in the middle of the pack, not tortured for being different, nor acclaimed for being special.

  But my girlish dreams were filled with kisses and touches from Jake Killian. Tall, sandy haired, broad-shouldered, green-eyed Jake Killian. Some people just had ‘it’, the X factor as it was now labeled. And Jake had always had the X factor. He was going places. Everyone said so. He would get a football scholarship to a great college and go off to make a name for himself away from Grand Haven.

  And because my adoration was so great, giving in to the attentions of anyone else would have been like accepting second best, in my eyes. Better to go without than accept someone inferior to the ideal. There was safety in yearning for the unreachable.

  He was eighteen and ready to leave for college the summer I finally had my chance with him. I was sixteen, torturously shy, and knew without a doubt that I wasn’t even on his radar. But I let my best friend talk me into going to the seniors’ bonfire that night.

  I got drunk for the first time in my life. I let the confidence it gave me take me into his sphere.

  The details always remained fuzzy. I think I tripped over his outstretched feet and his friends laughed at me. Jake pulled me to my feet and led me away from their jeers. I was so mortified.

  In my drunken haze, it seemed like he was just being nice. I thought he was worried that I was drunk and might get myself in trouble. So I let him drive me home. And I let him make my dreams come true. In my driveway, in his car, with Mom asleep in the house nearby.

  It hurt. A lot. He wasn’t gentle, and when it was over he dismissed me as if it had been nothing. As if I was less than nothing. It was so unlike him that I was sure I must have done something terribly wrong. I was inexperienced, after all.

  In tears, I staggered inside, his cutting comments still ringing in my ears. I felt used and dirty and… tainted. I didn’t use that word at the time, but after hearing the prophecy, it seemed to fit. Bitterness filled me like battery acid and only got worse in the following weeks when Jake made a point of ignoring me every time I saw him.

  I suppose I should have been grateful I didn’t get pregnant. But, in all honesty, I didn’t even think a thing like that could happen to me. I didn’t feel grateful about anything. I was eaten up with rage and hurt. I hated Jake Killian. Hated him!

  And that was when things began to die. In my mom’s herb and vegetable garden first, then the flower gardens and grass around the house. That was when Mom put the pieces together and came gunning for me.

  When I confessed what had happened, Mom told me the prophecy. It took us a while to conclude that losing my virginity was not what had tainted the land. That wasn’t how I lost my innocence. No, it was experiencing the bitterness and rage, which had been alien to my nature up until then, that tore away my innocence. My sweetness and trust.

  And because I couldn’t just stop feeling the way I did, Mom did the only thing she could think to remedy the situation. She sent me away to live with her sister in Miami.

  It wasn’t technically rejection or abandonment. After she got over accusing me, she took responsibility for what had happened, never truly blaming me for what I’d done. The only way she saw the problem being overcome was for me to leave. The taint had to be removed and my feelings were that taint.

  It boggled her mind, I think. She’d given me the ‘talk’, but had never made a big deal about anything but being safe. It had never entered her head that losing my virginity would be a big deal to me. To her, the first time was just a rite of passage into adulthood, no more. She never thought it would matter so much to me, or that I’d be gutted so much by what she saw as a young guy’s typical asshat behavior, to be tainted by bitterness and rage over it.

  But having to leave was still abandonment. I was sixteen, a very young sixteen, still two years to go before I graduated high school. I didn’t really know my aunt, and while Mom didn’t condemn me for the situation, Aunt Lucy had no such compunction.

  Aunt Lucy was Mom’s younger sister, so she’d grown up knowing about the prophecy, of course. She was a gifted healer from an early age and went into nursing. Her life followed a fairly conventional path, considering her upbringing. Except for quietly telling her kids what gifts they might get, she kept magic on the down low. I don’t think her doctor husband, Wayne, even knew what she was.

  Mom rang and wrote, but her contact was perfun
ctory and distant. And every time I heard that more of the land had succumbed to the plague, I felt even more guilty.

  And acted out. That was not what I called it back then. I called it getting even with Jake. Proving something to him, even if he never found out what a wild child I’d become. How good in bed I became. How many boys wanted me.

  Even now I cringe to remember how stupid I was back then. As if Jake would even care. And all I did was prove what an idiot whore I was. Especially when I fell pregnant. I didn’t even graduate high school before I had Hilary. I had to go back and complete my last year at community college.

  At least there was no talk of me giving the baby up for adoption. With our genes, leaving a baby to fend for herself, not knowing what she might be capable of, was the worst sin imaginable. Motherhood was as great a duty as guardianship of the land had been. They would never think to give that role up.

  So, Aunt Lucy gave me a roof over my head and helped me look after my baby until Paul came along. When he asked me to marry him, she as good as shoved me out the door, though I could have refused him I suppose, it never entered my head. I might not have loved Paul, but my still bitter and broken heart couldn’t have loved anybody. So he was the best of a bad deal, in my mind.

  Did Paul know I didn’t love him? I doubt it. He didn’t work that way. People were just pawns in his personal game of chess. I doubt he even loved Michael as anything more than a status symbol, a sign that he had met yet another life marker set for him by society and his own parents.

  Was I bitter where Paul was concerned? I suppose so. The taint that Jake had set in motion all those years ago was still alive and well in my soul, as well as in our land.

  My land.

  For the first time since Mom died the truth of that realization hit home. I not only inherited Channing Manor but also the responsibility for the land. Land that I’d damaged beyond repair. Damage that, left unhealed, could end up destroying the whole world.

  I couldn’t just walk away from this. Clearly, leaving hadn’t stopped the rot as Mom had hoped. No, something more was required. I just didn’t know what.

  In my mind Jake Killian was in my past. I’d moved on. He’d been a dick, more than a dick, but he had been young and obviously as impressed by his reputation as everyone else. Gods didn’t need to care about mere mortals, did they? Hadn’t the legends proven that well enough. And I hadn’t said no.

  So, as far as I was concerned, I’d overcome the hurt he gave me. I’d moved on to have a lovely daughter and then a rich and generous husband. It should have been enough. But the land kept dying, and I just didn’t know what more I could do to remove the taint from my soul and my land.

  But what I’d set in motion would become my daughter’s responsibility, and her daughter’s, if I walked away. I couldn’t just turn my back on my responsibilities. I had to find the answer. I had to!

  Hilary had opened the front door while I was lost in my own thoughts. She stepped across the threshold first, a soft gasp telling me all I needed to know. My daughter had been captured by the wonder that was Channing Manor. Because, as lovely as the exterior might be, it was nothing compared to the interior. The elegant grandeur of beautifully executed workmanship and design that always drew appreciative gasps.

  “Oh, Mom, this is amazing!” Hilary gushed, clapping her hands together in delight, her eyes dancing.

  I couldn’t help smiling. She wore her emotions proudly, expressing each and every one with gusto. One word that would never be leveled at my daughter was indifferent.

  “I did tell you as much,” I said, never tiring of my maternal ‘told you so’ voice.

  “Michael will just die when he sees this place!” she gushed, then realized her lack of tact and blushed brightly. “Okay, poor choice of words. But still, he’ll love this place. You know what an aesthetic eye he has. I’d think he was gay if not for the line of girls he’s been hooking up with ever since he was fifteen.”

  “Fifteen? Oh. My. God. Hilary, I didn’t need to know that. He’s my son!”

  “A horndog son. And I wasn’t much older than he was when I popped my cherry. And I know you weren’t, either. So what’s the big deal?”

  I didn’t know. But somehow imagining my little boy having sex just didn’t sit well with me. Even now, at eighteen going on nineteen, and ready for life as a frat boy, I didn’t like seeing him in that light. I just hoped I’d managed to instill the need for at least some respect for the girls he took to his bed. But with a dad like he had, I doubted it.

  Could I really blame Jake for the way he treated me, when I knew my son had likely done much the same thing to any number of girls? That night he’d been drinking, and I’d probably thrown myself at him. He couldn’t have known I was a virgin who’d been crushing on him forever. I was just one of many girls who crossed his path. Our hook-up was no more than a minor crime of opportunity.

  Yet his disgust and loathing had cut me deeply that night. It had been so out of character with the Nice Guy image he projected to the world. Not to mention his rough handling of me had likely just been one step away from assault. If I’d had the wherewithal to say no, would he have stopped? I doubted it. I prayed my son was never that cruel.

  The sound of our footsteps echoed hollowly on tiled and polished wood floors as we wandered from room to room on the first floor. Mom had kept the place in immaculate condition, I had to admit. The furnishings and decor were a little dated, but everything was in perfect condition and utterly tasteful. No money was spared in its maintenance.

  Many years ago Mom had used her green thumb to begin a range of natural healing products. Luckily, she’d already started manufacturing her products in the Philippines before news of the possible toxic waste dump on her property got out. Still, it took a lot of good PR for her line to weather the storm I set in motion.

  I’d inherit that, too, wouldn’t I? Or maybe it would go to Casey because, as the eldest, I would get the house. That thought was a new one. Until after the funeral and the reading of the will, I couldn’t be sure just how well off I would now be. Maybe I wouldn’t need Paul’s money after all. That would be good for my ego. Being a cast-off trophy-wife did nothing for my self-esteem.

  I felt a cold chill pass over my skin. Shivering, I looked around for the source of the cold. My particular gift had never seemed much like a gift to me. Unless I wanted to set myself up as a medium, feeling the presence of ghosts was not a lucrative magic to have.

  A witch's gift could manifest at any time, but most gained theirs around puberty. I started sensing ghosts at about five, and it was probably why my dad didn’t hang around much longer after that. It was one thing to have a wife who made healing salves, it was another to have a daughter who felt dead people. And because of his reaction, I learned to keep what I could do a secret.

  Of course, Grand Haven had been home to our family for generations. Few locals didn’t know about our penchant for magic. As soon as I started school I saw the way the other kids looked at me, waiting for me to make a broom levitate or a frog turn into a prince. Eventually, though, they got sick of watching my ordinariness, and I got on with being as normal as possible.

  Maybe it had been my heritage that had made Jake react as he did. He might not have realized who I was until he got me home. Channing Manor was one of the better homes in the area and he would immediately have put two and two together when I directed him to my door. He had changed when he reached the house, hadn’t he? Up until then he’d been kind and brotherly towards me.

  Why was I starting to obsess over Jake Killian’s motivations again after a quarter of a century? It was ancient history. He probably didn’t even remember that night. He certainly wouldn’t associate the toxic disaster on our land with that time. It was several years before it became noticeable enough for the townsfolk to start worrying. He was off at college by then. Or so Mom told me. When I left I cut all contact with Grand Haven. Even my girlfriends were forgotten. Part of my shame.

 
“Oh, Beep is excited to be here!” Hilary said with a surprised little laugh as she placed her hand on her belly.

  Hilary had an affinity with babies. She had planned to become a midwife. But when she fell in love and married a soldier on R&R in Austin the year before, she fell pregnant immediately. After that she was more than satisfied with focusing on her own gestation.

  If any of the women in our family was made for motherhood it was Hilary. She’d known the moment she’d conceived and knew long before the ultrasound confirmed she was having a girl.

  Clay was on his second tour in the sandbox. He had no plans to re-up. He and Hilary had yet to decide what would happen when he came home, but if I could make a go of Channing then maybe they’d choose to stay. Of course, unless I could fix what I’d broken, that would not be a possibility. No man would want to raise his family in a place of death.

  “That’s one of us then. The one that can’t see the disaster outside,” I muttered, glancing around with more focus.

  Would my mom still be hanging around? If she was still feeling guilty, then I imagined so.

  Why I continued to try to see with my eyes the ghosts I could only see in my mind, I have no idea. Muscle memory, I suppose. Not once in my life had I actually seen a ghost with my eyes. I sort of felt them, or knew them, might be an even better description. I sensed their identity and any information they chose to share with me. Sometimes it was only their name and what they needed from the living. Sometimes it felt like they just wanted validation that they still existed. There could be nothing worse, in life or death, than being ignored.

  Maybe my firsthand experience with being ignored was what made me so open to the ghosts I experienced these days. When I was young, before Jake, before the disaster that changed my life, I was probably a lot less empathetic. Now, though, I rarely let a spirit pass me without acknowledging their continued existence.