Poison Orchid

Chapter 2

“Isis ,Isis…..wake up….What happened? Isis?,” it was Aunt Rossetta’s anxious voice but she could not wake up. Something cold and heavy was pressing down on her lids. She couldn’t feel her body even.

A splash of cold water on her face and suddenly Isis woke up. And she started screaming her hearts out. Rossetta was momentarily stunned at her behavior but she tried to break Isis out from her hysteria. Rossetta started slapping her and shaking her, but to no avail. Finally after a few minutes when no sounds came out of her throat Isis started dry heaving but nothing came out.

Rossetta was so afraid. She had only seen this incident happening once in her life and that was more than two decades earlier. She felt that not only Isis looks like her mother but has inherited her powers as well. The power of walking on the line of life and death. The power of communicating with spirits. The power of waking up dead. A curse that their family had to bear for an eternity.

It as an unnerving revelation that Isis was a Necromancer. The darkest power that only few witches are born with. A power that many want to wield but comes only to one sister of their bloodline in each generation. They were hunted after and had very short span of life. Rossetta had no offspring of her own but she had loved and reared Isis like her own child. And under no circumstances will she behave like her mother. Like she had turned out her sister twenty five years ago when it was found that Cattaleya was a necromancer too. No, Rossetta might not have given her birth but she was her mother.

She sat beside Isis as long as she slept on the bed not leaving her side for even once. Because she feared for her life. If Isis went through the same bout again then she might lose her mind and not be powerful enough to sustain this ordeal once more. But trained for healing she could feel that death had touched this room and was close-by.

As she felt Isis stirring beside her, Rossetta helped Isis sit up on the bed.

“Aunty….”Isis could say no more before she started sobbing hysterically. Rossetta knew that she could do nothing else at this moment other than offering Isis comfort. Finally when she stopped she spoke in a very small voice which was very unlikely of her.

“They killed her.”

“Whom?”, asked Rossetta.

“Naomi. They tied her up. Raped her. And tore her throat with teeth.”

“And how do you know this?”

“Because it happened with me also..”

“What do you mean by that it happened with you? What happened to you? Who did this?”

“Naomi showed me.”

“That girl who went missing a few days back? How did you come to know what happened to her?”

“She came to me. She asked for my help. She showed me how they killed her.”

“How did she show you? And how did she come in? Did you hide her somewhere?”

“No Aunty. Her ghost came to me. I don’t know what she did but somehow I was in her body at the time when she was in the final throes of her life, I felt how she was tortured and killed. I can’t explain that to you.”

“I know you can’t explain that to me. Because you do not know what has exactly happened to you. But I know that you could have died today. And what you did was reckless.”

“ She would not leave me alone. I asked her to but she was standing in the room all the time. Aunty I’m not going mad , am I?”

“Never even deign to think that you are going mad. You are the descendant of the High Priestess of Ansukhnamun. You are the most powerful sorceress in existence at present times. You have no idea what power you wield within you. What do you think Isis, why I am not surprised? I am not surprised because you are your mother’s daughter. You are the daughter of Cattaleya Haronti.”

“Sorceress? Haronti? What are you saying Aunty?”, said a shocked Isis.

“I had thought that this day would never come and I would never had to say these things to you. But you unfortunately are cursed by the night, eternally. And you cannot run away from your heritage.”

“Cursed? Me? I don’t understand any of these things. Please tell me you are joking. I can’t take this anymore Aunty.”

“ Do I seem like joking to you? I don’t think so. It is time, dear girl, you have to learn about yourself and your powers because until you do that you are going to die. Why do you think a ghost came to you and asked for your help?”

“She said only I can help her. But I don’t..”

“Only you can help her because you are the only one last living soul in this earth who can see her in her corporeal form. She has left her body but her spirit lingers. She could come to you because her death was so brutal.. Was it not?”

“Yes, yes it was. How do you know?”

“It usually is, they are the ones who cannot pass over from our realm to theirs because they are bound to this earth with an unthinkable amount of violence and brutality. They know that can’t feel pain anymore but they are not in a state to accept it.”

“What am I?Who am I?”

“You will get this answer but you need to discover this for yourself.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this long? You lied to me right? My mother did not die in a car accident. Tell me damn it.”

“Mind your language when you are speaking with me young girl. You at this moment are in position to understand what your mother had gone through her entire life, and till what lengths I had to go to save you from dying.”

“Who killed her?”

“That is for you to find out Isis. And I am sure you will do that but before that you need to know about your own self. Because a person with no way and no revelation of her own is like a beacon which attracts all kinds of wrong attention. The time has come for you to learn and control about your powers. Because tonight what happened to you was only a glimpse which made you aware of your separate existence. You will have a life which is separate existence from the one you have been living until now. You have to train to be capable of coming into your powers. Or you are susceptible and vulnerable to lose yourself to void.”

“What is exactly that supposed to mean?”

“That you have to study more than your school books and practice the craft.”

“What craft? Witchcraft? I’m a witch? Holy Heavens…I can’t even think that I am a witch.”

“The sooner you come in terms with this fact the better it is because you don’t have much time left.”

“Time left for what Aunty?”

“Time till the Fall. The Samhaian Feast. Your birthday. I should have understood it before when Cattaleya had told me that you were born of Samhaian just after midnight.”

“Understood what? What am I? A freak? Who can see ghosts?”

“Don’t underestimate yourself or your clan like this by saying all this stupid rubbish things. You don’t know so don’t speak. But first before that I need you to learn how to defend yourself.”

“Defend myself? From whom?”

“Defend yourself from what happened today. So that it does not happen again.”

“Okay. That will be really great you know? I had never felt anything like this.”

“What you are going to face in your entire life will be far more frightening and gruesome than this Isis. And it is going to come soon. So if you are not ready for it you will drown and crash in the overwhelming fear of unknown.”

“What to do then?”

“Empty your mind from any kind of thoughts and stop thinking.”

The moment Isis closed her eyes she was back in the woods with her hands tied, helpless to do anything other than scream and get tortured.

“No, under no circumstances are you to open your eyes. Drown those thoughts by your will power. You are strong . This is battle of wills Isis. We priestesses are known for our strength of mind. You have to drown all your thoughts under a deep wave. Your mind is the ocean. The thoughts are the waves. You need to make it calm. The water should be still. It should not move.”

Isis kept on picturing whatever Aunty Rossetta was saying. She knew that Aunty wanted well for her and she was not in a position to feel what she had endured an hour earlier. Isis did not even know when had her mind become empty of everything.

“What do you see?” asked Rossetta

“Darkness.”

“Look into it carefully. You will find something more.”

“It is a tunnel. It has stairs.”

“Go inside and keep on saying what you see. You should not stop.”

“The walls are stained with moulds and are greenish. Water is dripping down somewhere, and it smells like wet rust. There is a small light at the end of it. The stairs are slippery. It is really very dark Aunty. I’m going down the stairs. I can see a door at the end. It is an iron door heavy one. Water is trickling down the door’s body. It has a skull shaped knocker on it. “

“You don’t need to go inside that door. Come out from where you are.”

Isis slowly opened her eyes. The light seemed to be too much for her eyes which were accustomed to darkness, so she squinted at the light.

“Now picture your mind within a brick wall. Your mind is locked down in a brick cube. Can you see that?”

Isis nodded her head.

“Now trap the brick cube inside a steel box. And close down the steel box inside the gates. Lock it with a key and keep it somewhere you can find it. Under no circumstances, any kind of provocation by any spirit are you too open that door. You can open that door only to receive knowledge and while using it.”

“But Aunty, I need to help Naomi. You don’t know what kind of torture she has endured.”

Rossetta thought that you yourself don’t know Isis how much your mother had suffered to protect you and now you are thinking about throwing it away with abandon for a girl. I can’t let that happen.

“You can help her when you are ready. Right now you need to sleep. It is already past midnight and you have to go to school tomorrow. I shall turn down the lights and I need you to sleep.”

“What if she comes again?”

“She won’t. Your mind is locked down.”

Assured Isis went to sleep. She was already too tired and exhausted. It did not take sleep long to claim her in its dark kingdom. But a thought lingered in her mind about Naomi. She could not shake the feeling that it was her responsibility to help the poor soul.

Rossetta put off the light and went downstairs. She still found the newspaper lying at the foot of the couch. She picked it up and found that it was the news of Naomi Redd going missing. Rossetta had an errant spirit of a young girl touched by violence. And this moment she had no idea how to keep the spirit away from Isis. She had never felt so helpless in her life because she was dealing with something which she had no idea how to deal with.