If Celia
Durant had any neighbors, the banging on her front door would have surely
aroused the entire neighborhood. It took
mere seconds for Celia to determine that the knocks were not of a friendly
nature, but when she heard the voice of Mary Saint accompanying them she knew
that any problem she encountered was one that she could handle. She strolled out to the foyer where the front
door was located, Moses only steps behind her.
Flinging the door open, Celia was ready to give her late-night visitor a
piece of her mind when a fist came flying through the darkness, hitting her in
the face and knocking her to the floor.
Celia was not the owner of a glass jaw by any means but the surprise of
the punch coupled with the emotion behind it caused her to lose her footing.
Moses bent
over to help his wife up as Mary Saint barged into the house. “What have you done to my son?” she asked,
clearly prepared to act out physically again if she received an answer she
disliked.
“Mary, calm
down,” said Moses, doing his best to lower the tension between the two
women. If the daggers in Celia’s eyes
were any indication, his good-cop routine was not going to work on these two
like it did on his daughter.
“Don’t you
dare tell me to calm down Moses,” said Mary, “What did you do to Levi, Celia?”
“Your brat
got what was coming to him, Mary. I have
warned him about hanging around my daughter.
His inability to heed those warnings was the signature on his death
certificate.” Celia sneered at the look
on Mary’s face as it went from anger to dread.
It had just sunk in that there was no going back from this, that Levi was
a zombie and that this woman was the person that cursed him.
“Celia,”
whispered Moses, “what did you do?”
“What I
should have done months ago,” said Celia, still smiling at her own handiwork,
“that boy will be defiling no one’s daughter anymore.”
“What will
Sonia say about this? You know how she
felt about that boy,” said Moses, trying to return reason to the situation.
“She is
seventeen Moses. She will get over
this.”
“You and
your witchcraft are doing more harm than good now Celia, I’m going to go and
tell Sonia. She should hear this
firsthand from you instead of finding it out in the morning when she goes to
meet him again.”
With that,
Moses left the two women to their bickering and went down the hall to his
daughter’s room. He knocked softly on
the door. If for some reason the
commotion in the foyer had not woken her up, he wanted to do it as gently as
possible in light of the news that he was about to break to her. Moses slowly opened the door and whispered
Sonia’s name. Upon walking into the room
he noticed the empty bed and the open window.
Fearing the worst, Moses ran out of the room to tell his wife.
-----------
All of the
anger that Mary Saint harbored toward Celia Durant could not break the grasp
that Celia had on her. Celia had a hand
on either side of Mary’s face, her thumbs planted firmly on Mary’s eyes. Celia was not trying to gouge the eyes out,
she had much worse for Mary Saint in store.
She was simply holding Mary in place, quietly chanting a curse in a foreign
tongue. Upon completion she pushed
Mary’s head away and stood up, wiping the dirt from her knees. Mary screamed and grabbed her face. She could feel the skin starting to sag, to
die, even though it was still attached to her face. Was this what Celia had done to her son? Was that shell of a human what she was going
to become, just like Levi?
-----------
Moses ran
into the room to the sight of Celia standing over Mary triumphantly. The moaning woman on the floor clutched at
Celia’s legs, trying to pull herself up.
The jarring face of death and decay that greeted Moses as Mary looked up
at him made him stop and collect himself before announcing Sonia’s
disappearance. While Celia was not
surprised at this, she did realize the potential for disaster that this
situation had and quickly ran out the door.
Moses followed closely on her heels, both leaving the slowly decaying
woman to die on their floor.
No comments:
Post a Comment