Ghost of O'Leary House

Chapter Eighteen

David couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His mother had gotten into an accident avoiding the specter of an old woman who dwelled upstairs in his grandmother’s house. Grandma was seated across from him, hands folded around a cup of tea she’d made. He had one himself, but he felt too numb to even touch the steaming liquid. A thousand questions raced through David’s mind, each leaping to the forefront every time he opened his mouth.

“I know,” Grandma said, cutting him off before he could even say anything, “that it’s hard to take in. I tried to keep the spirit out of your life, seeing how easy it is to abuse, and how easily it can ruin your life.”

David looked down at his tea. “What, or who, is it?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer,” Grandma said, bringing her tea to her mouth to sip.

“How come?” David asked.

She set the teacup down before leaning forward on the table and sighed. “Because I don’t rightly know myself. I know it looks like my mother, who died using the book when I was much younger. She used the book to carve out a spot for us here in this town, making sure we never had any trouble from those that would cause it.”

“Like whom? Who would cause trouble?” David asked, growing more frustrated as the questions kept pouring from his mouth.

“The townspeople, for one. It was in the Great Depression, and we were viewed as outsiders and heretics, what with being Romani and all. A lot of people were looking to lay blame on somebody, and we were just the right sort to accept the burden of that blame, in the eyes of the townspeople. My father vanished one night, gone without a trace. He was found in the old barn we used to have, back when this was a farm, hanging from the rafters. It’d looked like he’d killed himself, but Mom was never certain.”

“The police didn’t investigate?” David asked, growing upset.

“They did, but back then you couldn’t trust many people, and the police were just an extension to that. So, my mother visited with other traveling Romani and put together a book of spells, writing down the various curses and hexes that we as a people knew by oral tradition. She wrapped the book in magic from the Far East and from the Caribbean before binding it to where only blood relations could read it. That was when the trouble started…”

Grandma leaned back in her chair, tea forgotten. “It was around nineteen thirty-four when it first started. Things around the house started to move, doors and windows would open and close all by themselves… we used to have cows you know, and they stopped producing milk. The chickens were laying rotten eggs and the animals were growing sicker with each passing day.”

David sat in stunned silence as she continued. “Right away my mother sold off the cows for meat, as well as the chickens. With what money she scrounged together we started planting herbs and roots, started up a doctor’s practice right here in this very kitchen.”

“You mean your mother was a doctor? To the people that most likely drove her husband to suicide?” David asked.

Grandma nodded. “We had no other choice. We sold herbal remedies and acted as midwives. I remember stirring up lavender and rose petal tonics for pregnant women while my mother read from her book, hand placed on their stomachs. The women found this odd, but with how often children died back then they were more than willing to allow us our little eccentricities.”

“By the time, the Second World War started we had a thriving business, and despite the rumors about us being witches at the tavern late at night, we lived comfortably. Mother expanded her knowledge of the arcane by questioning every Romani that she could find, sometimes taking trips to see them in distant cities.”

“Didn’t that seem risky? Leaving you alone like that?” David asked.

Grandma shook her head. “No, I was already protected. You see my mother placed a curse on every child we helped, along with every mother. Any harm that befell us would befall them. By then, the townspeople had learned the hard way not to mess with us.”

“How?” David asked, dreading the answer.

“Three young boys, about your age in fact, pelted me with rocks when I was out gathering roots and tubers for our garden. They called me a witch. When they returned to town, over forty-five different people were wounded as if they’d been pelted with rocks, including young children. Several died from it.”

“And nobody came after you?” David asked, amazed.

“How could they? Anyone that shared blood with any of the children we cared for were also under the curse, so any injuries that we received they felt as well. We’d acted as midwives for well over a hundred and thirty children, more if you count the ones that came to us in secret afterwards. And those children were gifted with beauty and charm, and virility.”

“Virility?” David asked, amused.

Grandma smiled. “We wanted this community to grow. And with each successful generation, the curse was passed on to the children. Each person that dies while the curse was upon them came back to us, though that was unintentional.”

“You mean they would come back as ghosts?” David asked, looking up at the ceiling to where the old lady resided.

“No, nothing as melodramatic as that. Just each death… invigorated my mother and me. Your grandfather was a man who came to try and find a bargain out of the curse, some loophole that would allow him to escape the trap that had been sprung on him. This was around nineteen fifty, and he was only a lad of eleven at the time. My mother told him that if he joined our family and married me when he came of age, she would lift the curse.”

“Did he?” David asked, enthralled by the story.

“That he did. Five years later we were married, and nine months later we had your father.” Grandma said, reaching for her cool tea.

“So, what does this have to do with the spirit? Why did it attack my Mom?” David asked after a few seconds.

“Ah, now here is where we venture into guesswork. I am not the Romani that placed this curse and set it into motion, so I can’t tell you all the details. But when she died, it was when she was adding spells to the book. The book only accepts blood as ink, and one day it simply bled her dry.”

David stared at his Grandmother in shock, to which she could only nod. “I found her in the garden, slumped over the book. Not long after that I caught glimpses of her moving around the house. I consulted the book and it said it needed a new master to control the powers that lay within the pages. So, I pricked my finger and signed my name in the front, and soon as could be I had control over my mother’s spirit.”

David blanched at the thought of this, but his Grandmother continued. “I found I could send her out to do things, spy on people, haunt their homes. She’s a vengeful spirit, one powered by the curse that binds this whole town together. She speaks to me, in my dreams, and gets me to set things up for her. She already wants me to start grooming you to be the next in line for our Grimoire.”

“Why me?” David asked, confused.

“Because you’re distantly tied to the curse, you’ve already initiated the first steps into becoming a witch, and you have a keen mind. Mother is proud of you in every way and wants you to succeed me when the time is right.”

“So, when I wrote in the book…” David asked, trailing off.

“I believe you were conversing with my mother, yes. She’s become more excited as of late and is venturing off on her own. Seeing as I have nothing for her to do, she’s able to go anywhere a cursed person dwells; your mother shared blood with you, marking her as a cursed soul in the Book’s eyes.”

“So, that was how she ended up harming my Mom?” David asked.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. And she’ll just get more aggressive the longer you put off fulfilling the contract.”

David sat in silence, his hand throbbing from where he’d touched the Witch-Hazel. The lotion his Grandmother had given him was doing wonders, but a dull ache still throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Looking up at his Grandma, he nodded slowly.

“I’ll do it,” he said, “I’ll fulfill the contract.”