The Keeper's Curse (2 page)

“
What the –”

She
looked behind her and screamed again. Everything in the living room
– the only way for her to understand it – was defying the law of
gravity. The mirrors, the pictures hanging on the walls, the china,
the ornaments – they were all swirling in a vortex, driven by what
looked like a black cloud, light coming from inside it. The
intruder got up and bolted out of the house at the sight of it,
while she could only tumble backwards. This couldn’t be
happening.

Still,
the dark shapes continued to fly through the air, destroying the
living room. One piece of broken glass flew by her and scraped her
knee. A few seconds later she could feel the pain and smell the
iron of her blood, making her gag.

She
turned away from the sight, rolling onto her side and curling into
a fetal position. She shut her eyes, but she still couldn’t block
out the crashing sounds. Any moment now something would hit her; if
she was lucky it would be something small, but it could be the
television, the couch –

“
Emmy!
” shouted a comforting but
powerful voice from afar. Her head shot up, she saw her mother at
the top of the stairs. So fast she was almost a blur, her mom sped
down the stairs, grabbed Emmy’s arm, and attempted to pull her
up.

“
Come on, we’ve got to go!” she shouted over the wind and
crashing.

Emmy
shook her head wildly. “I can’t! I can’t –”

“
Yes you can. Now get up.”

With her
mother’s help she got back onto her feet. Her legs wobbled so much
she had to be steadied, but she made it up the stairs taking three
at a time.

Her mom
pushed her through the hallway. Emmy didn’t protest or scream or
cry - she barely even carried herself; it was all done for her. She
was led to her parents’ bedroom where her father was just getting
out of bed, slipping on his glasses. The bedlam could still be
heard from downstairs.

Before
Emmy could speak, her mother spun around with a fierce look in her
eye and without a word, she pulled out a circular object Emmy could
barely see in the dark and yanked it down onto Emmy’s
wrist.

“
What are you –” she began when she heard a tremendous crash
beneath on the lower floor. Only when she heard the ringing in her
ears did she realize it was over. The violent clatter had ceased,
leaving the three of them alone in the dark and breathing
heavily.

Her
father turned the night lamp on, squinting at his two breathless
girls.

“
Annalise, what the hell –”

Her mom
burst into tears. Emmy wanted to do something useful. Hug her
mother, tell her father what happened. Anything. But she couldn’t.
All Emmy did was stand there, useless, focusing on the ringing in
her head.

Annalise
wiped her face with her arm. “It happened, Charles. It happened.
She manifested. We have to go.”

A silence
followed where he darted his eyes back and forth between his wife
and daughter. After a few moments his eyes filled up with
tears.

“
No,” he said, raising his voice like it was a
question.

After a
few more sobs Annalise replied, “Someone broke into the house, I
think. It must have set her off. I could only keep her on frenum
for so long.”

Emmy,
nonplussed, kept quiet, feeling the palpable tension in the air.
Something was very, very wrong, but she seemed to have lost her
voice. She began fiddling with her fingers, feeling something bump
against her wrist and noticed what her mom had put on her. It
looked like a simple glass bracelet, nothing special at all. She
raised her head, focusing on her parents again.

Her
father began shaking his head manically, blinking the tears away.
“Stay the night. Please.”

“
I can’t.” Annalise’s voice broke. “They’ll be here any
minute.”

Charles
looked away to the bare wall they had never painted. Emmy wanted to
ask what was wrong, why he was acting as if someone had just
died.

“
But it’s so sudden,” he said.

“
I told you it would be.” She took a deep breath and turned to
Emmy. “Your suitcase is in your closet. Go pack anything you want.
Make sure it’s the important stuff. Things that are irreplaceable.
You have five minutes.”

Emmy
didn’t argue. To do that would require thinking, and she couldn’t
afford to do that right now. She flung open the door and closed it
just in time to hear her father shout out, “You can’t go! I thought
we’d have more time!”

Still
shaking, she flicked the light on, dragged out her suitcase, and
took a good look around her room. Things that were irreplaceable,
her mother had said. She found herself looking at her room in a way
she had never done before. She noticed the paint peeling off in the
corners of the walls that hung posters of things she no longer
cared about. Her duvet had holes in it. Clothes she hadn’t worn in
weeks covered the floor like camouflage. She didn’t understand why
she couldn’t stop staring at it all.

Snapping
out of it, she did as her mother said and began throwing everything
she could get her hands on in the suitcase. Her clothes were top
priority, but she didn’t forget her plaques from cross country
running, or her gifts, or her photographs, or her favourite
psychology textbooks, or the list of her favourite phobias, or her
collection of journals. Within no time (definitely less than five
minutes) her suitcase was bulging. She looked around, a cold
feeling of dread creeping into her. She didn’t know where she was
going. What if she had packed the wrong things?

Out of
time, she flicked the light off and dragged her suitcase back to
the master bedroom where she found her parents on the edge of the
bed. Her mother was crying on her dad’s shoulder; he had his arm
around her.

She
didn’t want to invade their privacy, but she must have not been
quiet enough because they both shot up at her presence.

Annalise
wiped her eyes and tried to smile but ended up with a grimace that
could have broken glass.

“
Alright, time to go now, sweetheart. Say goodbye to your
father.”

Her jaw
dropped. He wasn’t coming?

Her
father started crying again, taking Emmy’s head in his hands and
burying it in his chest. The old, musty smell of their house
permeated him, making her eyes burn. Why was she crying? They had
been robbed, what was the big deal? Nobody was hurt, or killed, no
matter how much her parents were acting like it. She knew something
else had happened, but...that couldn’t have been real.

She felt
her mom’s firm hand on her shoulder. “We have to go
now.”

She
didn’t want to know where they were going, so she didn’t ask. The
three of them walked out of the master bedroom, Emmy heading
towards the staircase to go downstairs.

“
No, honey, not that way.”

They were
heading in the opposite direction, towards her brother’s old
room.

Alex. She
hadn’t seen Alex in five years.

The room
was used as a storage closet now. They made their way through the
boxes until her mom stopped at the far end where the old dumbwaiter
was. It had been boarded up for so long Emmy had almost forgotten
its existence, being told that it had been broken since before she
was born.

Without
hesitation Annalise clenched her fist and smashed right through the
boards that had closed it off. Emmy’s eyes widened. The splinters
clattered to the floor, the sound echoing as if for
emphasis.

There was
not, as she had always been told, a dumbwaiter on the other side of
the boards. Instead there was a small corridor made out of
mouldy-smelling wood, and at the end of this corridor emanated a
milky, yellow, glowing light. She squinted to get a glimpse of what
was causing it, but it was too bright.

Her
parents started to cry again. They lead her through the corridor.
She was morbidly curious as to what was at the end of this hall, so
she kept walking with only an occasional nudge from her mom. Her
heartbeat sped up the closer she got, her pupils contracting more
and more, and by the time she reached the end, she saw it
clearly.

Against the wall a bright gold sceptre was positioned into
the ground at about her eye-level, and perched on top of this
sceptre was a glass ball. Extending from the sceptre was a collar
of gold encircling the ball, holding it still, and engraved on the
collar, all the way around, was the word
Methelwood
. Narrowing her eyes until
they were nearly shut, she was able to make out what was inside the
glass ball and gasped.

It was
like a snow globe, in the sense that there was a little scene
inside, but unlike a snow globe, the scene was alive and moving. On
the brink of the glass wispy clouds visibly stirred, but never
quite left the perimeters of the ball. Most of the glass ball was
shrouded due to the clouds, but she was able to make out flecks of
mountains on the edges and a few treetops. She could just faintly
hear the noise of wind and bird calls.

The
technology was impressive, but she didn’t quite understand. What
was this used for?

“
Come, give your father another hug,” Annalise
commanded.

Emmy
turned away from the globe and obeyed since she didn’t know when
she was going to see her father again. He squeezed her tightly only
for a moment, then pulled her back to look her in the
eyes.

“
I love you,” he said, enunciating clearly to make sure she
understood. “If I could do it all over again I would still choose
this. I would still marry your mother. I would still choose you and
Alex. I would choose you over a lifetime with anyone else. Do you
understand?”

She
didn’t, but she nodded anyway. Her vocal cords were growing tighter
and tighter, nearly frozen.

Her
parents exchanged another “I love you” and embrace. Reluctantly
Annalise tore away from him, grabbed Emmy’s arm, and turned towards
the globe.

Before
Emmy could give her father one last goodbye, Annalise cupped the
globe with her hand, and the world fell away.

Her body
turned to jelly as she was dragged into what felt like an
implosion. From what she could gather, she was being pulled inside
the globe. The only thing holding her steady was her mother’s arm.
The world began to swirl around her like a manic merry-go-round in
a prismatic kaleidoscope of colours. Her stomach heaved, emptying
its contents. While she was aware she was on her feet, she felt the
sensation of falling, vertigo, and lack of air, causing her to
throw up a second time.

After a
minute or so it finally stopped, and she yanked her hand out of her
mother’s. She didn’t realize how weak she was without her because
for the third time that night she fell to the ground, shaking
uncontrollably.

Her
mother fell to her knees beside her, her face tearstained. Emmy
looked down, noticing the red and black tartan carpet beneath them.
She raised her head, looking around. They were somewhere else. Not
her house. The place was unrecognizable, but she knew all she
needed to know. She was no longer at home.

“
I’m sorry,” her mother cried. “If I had warned you, you
wouldn’t have come.”

Emmy
couldn’t speak, but her eyes must have indicated that she was only
wondering one thing. “He couldn’t come with us, Emmy,” said her
mother.

Emmy
scrunched up her face, pleading silently with her mother who only
gave her a look of desperation. Emmy started to cry before her
mother confirmed what she already knew.

“
I’m sorry, Emmy. You can never see your father again. You
can’t go back home.” She smiled bitterly. “This is your home
now.”

Chapter 2

Methelwood

When
Emmy’s eyes adjusted, she noticed they were in a dome-shaped room
reminiscent of a hotel lobby. To her left was a pair of heavy oak
doors with golden knockers, and on the right, a grand staircase
with plush, dark, red carpet. At the top of the staircase a hallway
tunnelled so that Emmy couldn’t see the end of it. She rolled on
her back, seeing the sky through the ceiling made of glass, and
realized vaguely that wherever they were it was no longer the
middle of the night. It was sunset.

“
Get up,” her mother’s harsh whisper ordered.

Emmy
opened her mouth to ask what had just happened, but her throat was
still frozen, and all that came out was a whistling sound. She
seemed to have lost her voice.

She heard
footsteps behind her and suddenly realized they weren’t alone. Two
enormous men headed towards them, clad entirely in black, but this
was not what got Emmy’s attention. They had the strangest faces she
had ever seen; the edges of their faces were sharp enough to cut,
and had eerily bright eyes with luminous, almost transparent, skin.
They looked, Emmy had to admit, exactly like her mother.

“
Greetings from Methelwood,” one of them boomed from the other
side of the room. He spoke in an accent Emmy had never heard
before, comparable only to that of an Irish lilt with a lisp.
“What’s your business, Madam?”