Yvonne Navarro |
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The January Special Guest Story is by Yvonne Navarro Please feel free to visit Yvonne at: http://yvonnenavarro.blogspot.com/ |
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THIS HOUSE by Yvonne Navarro I wish I was back in the city, amid the noise of the traffic and people, the screams of dangerous children and the midnight gunfire. It is not really as quiet out here as people claim; there are small, insidious sounds that creep around doorways and wind their way into the ears of a woman alone in a big, dark house. The alone part doesn't bother me; this house does. It is not an old one, it is new. Barely a year old and cheap of construction, it moves with every ridiculous breeze and the creaks and moans it makes are only the pretentious lies of a character it does not have. The house where I was born was two hundred years old and full of the family and its magic. My mother is a white magic witch; I am a black magic one. Where she simpers and squeezes a living out of little potions of luck and love teas, I kill without hesitation. We have been apart for many years, our differences having finally sent me on my own after a nasty confrontation in the front parlor. I remember it grudgingly: it involved some trivial cheerleader who'd met an untimely and quite ugly death due to some rotted wood in the stands of the school's football stadium. There was a boy somewhere in the situation, too, and my mind's eye can still the sunwheat strands of his hair and the color of his eyes—that same incredible turquoise that television uses to tout tropical seas in vacation commercials. But it is not without its own annoyances. I've had to move four times for one reason or another and have become too well-known to use the family name. I've yet to invent a spell that could rid me of my own reputation though I've managed a number of cloaking concoctions to buy me the time to relocate—after a while, I just get too tired to take on everyone. This house is a first for me and a kind of bitter surrender, a rental under a false name rather than a purchase of my own. Cheap pre‑fab, like a new and flimsy cloak thrown carelessly over the shoulders in disregard of a familiar and snug‑fitting coat. I am as lost here as I was two decades ago when I stalked out of my mother's house and into the dusk of a Saturday Sabbath, as awkward in these freshly painted rooms as I was when I spun in indecision at the crossroads which offered me three different avenues of freedom and one path of return shame. Where would my life have led had I taken either of the other two? It's time to bring the house some character. Every dwelling has a spirit of its own, though most are silent and shy pulses, the metaphoric equivalent of the stars in another galaxy which are impossible for the human eye to detect without proper equipment. Like a newborn human, a dwelling has a soul and exists within the arms of its caretaker—the surrounding wood, brick and plaster—totally dependent on the decision of the outside forces as to whether it lives or dies. Most are "fed" and ultimately rooted by the energy of its occupants and live in harmonious anonymity, symbiotic human flesh and inert matter. Occasionally something richer rises from the house's depths, a presence that is vibrant and dark...and to me, so very preferable to the empty-headed, chuckling echoes that fill my tacky rental. The pain of those partings still burns, even tonight as I light the seven dozen candles surrounding the pentagram I've drawn in blood on the inexpensive linoleum floor in the kitchen. If anyone misses the scrawny wirehair terrier I caught digging into my trash last night...well, they should have had a collar and i.d. tag on it. Then I would've let it be. Mixed with the dog's blood is a good portion of my own, drawn from a deep gash across my left wrist using the thorns of a rose bush that hasn't bloomed. The one at the side of the house did quite nicely—stupid landscapers, how could they have thought the thing would flower, placed as it was on the north side and only fifteen feet from the shading wall of another house? Scrawny stalks still boasting quarter inch barbs, a witch's choice of knives. Actually, calling it a dwelling spirit and saying it's bound to the house isn't really accurate; as it matures, the spirit binds more to the ground on which the home is built—hence the seemingly spiritless multi-residence and office buildings that pepper the civilized world. One spirit divided by so many rooms is seldom felt, and only rarely will a phantom choose a particular room or group of rooms in which to brood. In truth, I don't care about the dwelling spirit of this place anyway. What really interests me is the possibility of adding a spirit. I've gone for the plain look in this new town, a loose bun and no make-up, and have started to prefer it to the siren visage of previous years; besides, romantic relationships have proven disastrous for me time and time again, and I have no urge to try it here. Despite the passage of time and our differences, I've kept a quiet surveillance on the rest of my family. At forty, I've become at peace with the idea that the family's bloodline will have to be carried on by one of my sisters and my brother—a tall and randy double for Pierce Brosnan who'll have no trouble finding a willing bride once he settles down. I'm sure my mother will be pleased at the ensuing horde of grandchildren. Pride, however...well, that can be a little tougher. I'd give nearly anything to see my mother again in person, to hold her hand—now softened by twenty-some-odd years—and smell the scent of her beloved violet candy on each calm breath she exhales. Witches don't live forever, no matter what people think; maybe a little longer than ordinary humans, but certainly not the hundreds of years that foolish so-called experts prattle on about. Witching families are very close and my siblings will always eventually follow where my mother goes, myself having been something of an anomaly when I got the bright idea of self-banishment all those years ago. Now instinct compels me to return...yet I cannot. My sense of self, my me, has been built from strands woven through the long and twisted genealogy of my family tree, a span traceable backwards some eight hundred years. In each generation can be found the great-grandfather, aunt or third cousin with that barely noticed smidgen of stubbornness and pride—all of which seemingly coalesced in my own unsuspecting personality as a child. I could no more have mixed a salve to make someone's bored lover return than she could have conjured the spell that sent that conniving little cheerleader to her splintery—and I still believe well-deserved—death. I've spent countless hours brooding about it, and can only assume that it was the dead part that mother couldn't deal with, the actual taking of another's life. After all, she'd certainly turned a blind eye to my often less-than-savory learning process as I grew. I'd started as a toddler who turned frogs and garden snakes inside out to satisfy her curiosity, then grown to a young girl with a reputation for making...odd things happen to the school bullies when they stole her lunch or candy money. Not once did mother try to stop me or offer any of the white magic alternatives that came as second nature to her and the rest of the family. At times, I think she rather liked the idea of having a dark witch in the family line—as far as I know, I was the first—and presumed us therefore protected against the minor jealousies of other white magic families. Perhaps she dreamed of seeing me married to someone in a more powerful darkside family. Reflection makes me wonder if that, too, had something to do with our final blow-up—not only had I...eliminated was the word she used—a human being, I'd done it over a teenaged boy she'd never met, a worthless mortal who had no powers or potential. As they track my steps around the basement, his eyes still move and are wide with fear and a clarity of thought he probably hasn't enjoyed in years. Odd how the optic muscles never seem to be affected by paralysis of the rest of the body. In any case, disposing of him will not be difficult; there are centuries old secrets that work much better than quicklime or burying and won't leave enough for even the most sophisticated forensics team to find. He should count himself blessed; ripping a soul free is a painful thing that my herbs will spare him, and he will not feel anything as he dies. Unlike the original dwelling spirit, the new spirit can be moved again and again, although as the conjurer, only I can do so—a fact which keeps me from the physical or spiritual revenge that might otherwise be inevitable. Eventual discovery is a certainty, but it doesn't matter; I will change what I have done only if I move, and then only to take the soul with me. |
Yvonne Navarro lives and works in the high desert of Southeastern Arizona, in a climate that’s supposed to be warm. Alas, leftover cold from Chicago seems to have followed her there, at least in the winters, and global warming is screwing up the rest of the year. Her novels have won the Bram Stoker Award and a number of other professional journalism awards. So far she’s had twenty solo and media novels and over a hundred short stories published.Her writing includes the genres of fantasy, horror, science fiction, thrillers, and whatever else she can try. She’s accumulated two rescue Great Danes (Goblin and The Ghost), a people- loving parakeet (Edwina Allen Poe), and an author husband (Weston Ochse), not necessarily in that order. Photo courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales You can find Yvonne's books here: MIRROR ME
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