I
ran as fast as I could and behind me, I could hear the creatures, whimpering,
snarling and panting. As I scrambled up the slope to the house, I glanced over
my shoulder and saw The Witch towering over me. My feet froze. I gulped as
lighting flashed brightly sourcing light onto her warty and ugly face. Her eyes
shone bright red right at me, as she wrapped her cold bony hands around my
throat. My feet were no longer on the ground and I could feel the air slowly
draining from my lungs. Beneath me, the creatures were awaiting their dinner.
With
every remaining morsel of my soul, the words “Please stop… I’ll help you…”
escaped my throat. The Witch, her eyes still pinned to mine, threw her head
back and cackled loudly. She smirked at me and released her grip on my throat.
“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”
I shut my eyes and screamed as I descended to my untimely death.
My eyes still shut, I waited and
waited for the pain to come, for the teeth to sink in, for my bones to be
crushed but there was nothing. I opened my eyes and the next thing I knew, I
was in my bed sweating and panting as if I had just completed a marathon.
BANG! The door opened swiftly. I
braced myself for the worst.
“Jake,
what’s the matter? Is everything all right?” questioned my mother anxiously.
Oh,
it was just Mom. I exhaled in relief. “Yeah, don’t worry about me. It was just
a nightmare.” I assured my mother. We said our goodnights and she went back to
bed. I was safe, this time. However, it was only a matter of time before The
Witch came back to get me. Now, I knew that I had to take matters into my own
hands.
During my walk to school, I passed
The Witch’s house. It was an old rotting house and all her windows were barred
and covered with black cloth. On the porch, her black humongous guard dogs
slept through the day. A chill ran down my spine and goosebumps formed on my
arms. The crystal clear image of my first encounter with The Witch clouded my
mind. It was exactly on the night of All Hallows’ Eve, a clique of girls from
my school were standing across the house giggling and pushing each other to
enter the house. Amongst the girls were Lydia, the girl of my dreams since
sixth grade and her big and burly boyfriend of two months - Brendan Philips.
“Don’t be a wimp Brad, just get in!”
teased Lydia as she motioned Brendan towards the rusted gate. At that moment, I
had been walking home with a small bag of goodies after a short trick-or-treat
session. I was dressed as Ash Ketchum – the main character from my favourite
game, the Pokemon series when Lydia and her friends spotted me.
“I bet Jake would enter Weird Old
Cathy’s place.” Lydia stated in a-matter-of-fact facade.
Moments later, ironically, I found
myself standing right in front of the corroded gate. Across the street, Lydia
blew a kiss at me. In my bravado spur of the moment, I jumped the fence and trampled
over a few dried up plants and scurried up the porch. The lucky stars were on
my side that night as the hounds were nowhere to be found. My veins were filled
with adrenaline and my heart was beating fast, sweat trickled down my brow as I
made a mad dash for the door. Inside the house, it was dark in what I could
make out as the hallway except for one dim source of light from the end of the
corridor. The place was covered in dust and cobwebs and a strange musk filled
the air.
I moved slowly and steadily but it
was as if every movement made was watched and every creak the floor made was
amplified. “Jake, you really are a gem. Look what you have gotten yourself
into!” I conversed mentally. Creak.
Creak. Creak. Went the floors. To my demise, my feet weren’t moving – I was
standing as still as a statue in the tiny room. My eyes travelled across the
place trying to find the source of the noise. Silence. Maybe it was just a
draft…
BAM! The door behind me slammed
shut. I turned around only to be struck on the head by something hard. After
that, everything went dark. Moments later, I regained consciousness and tasted
blood on my lips. Everything was blurry and all I could make out was the sound
of an old lady singing and the clink
and clank of metal against metal. I
brought my hand forward to wipe my lip only to find that they were tied behind
my back. When my vision restored, a tall elderly woman with long white frizzy
hair and dressed in black approached me.
“Hello
dearie, I’ve been waiting for you,” she said with a smile across her face
showcasing her rotting teeth. Subtly, I reached for my penknife I always keep
in my back pocket just in case of anything like this happened and began to saw
the rope behind my back.
“Listen
child, I want nothing more from you except your help.” She replied as her big
veiny eyes travelled across my face. When I didn’t respond, she continued
almost humming the words, “Bring me 5 drops of blood and a lock of hair from
your first love. You have 3 weeks to think about it. If you deny my offer, I
will hunt you down and behead you. Now, would you like some homemade broth?
It’s very delicious!” The Witch then headed towards her boiling pot of soup.
“I’m
sorry lady, I am afraid I’ll have to decline,” I said. My wrists were cut
loose, I stood up, charged towards the old lady and pushed her into the boiling
pot of liquid. Her head dipped into the burning hot mixture and it spilt all
over her. She shrieked in agony but I didn’t bother looking back as I ran for
my life. I collapsed to the ground gasping for breath when I had successfully
exited the place.
Suddenly,
my phone vibrated in my pocket causing me to leap up and squeal like a little
girl getting tickled – bringing me back to reality. On my phone was a text
message from an unknown number. I opened it immediately, curious to know what
the message contained - maybe it was from Lydia. Maybe my courageous act during
Halloween showed her that I’m more than meets the eye. I clicked the button.
The message read – “I’m waiting…”.
Confused,
I looked up from my phone only to find The Witch staring at me from her
windowsill. I took off sprinting like the Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt,
back to my house and entered the garden shack. Swiftly, I pulled down the
secret latch connected to a small wooden compartment in the roof of the tiny shack.
I coughed as the dust flew into my nostrils and contaminated my lungs. Behind
the compartment, sat a thick and dusty leather bound journal. The engraved
leather spelt the words:
LIBRI
Lucis
h.l anne
The
journal belonged to my great grandmother, I had found it a few years back. Both
my parents agreed to be rid of this in fear it might bring adversity to the
family. They threw it into the flame of my fireplace and there the journal
burned to ashes. When I checked on the fireplace a couple of hours later to
clear the ash, there sat – as if untouched and unaltered, the journal. So, I
adopted the book secretly and hid it from my parents. It finally came time to
put it to good use.
I
flipped through the pages of Libri Lucis.
There were so many spells to choose from, among them were “Charm of Transformation” and “Waterwalking
Conjuration”. The requirements for the charms were equally mysterious –
they ranged from “eggs of a male toad”
to “toenails from youngest sibling”. Carefully,
my eyes scanned each page until one spell caught my eye:
Divination
of The Unrest
Use: To put to rest once and for all beings of
the dark.
Things
needed: Sunlight, Guardian Amulet
Expose the creature to sunlight for 60 seconds.
Repeat the following chant 3 times.
Hilah rinh shahih
Lich thians ah havinth
Perish thou soul with the light of heat
And return thee unrest to thy keep.
On the following page, the “Guardian Amulet” was
attached to the page. It was a piece of leather string with a piece of ivory
hanging in the middle. I had my safety spell, now I just needed to retrieve The
Witch’s items.
The following day, I was forced by my parents to
attend school after the board had reported my truancy but that was the least of
my worries at this point of time. Before class, I went to unload my books from
the locker and I was approached by Lydia who was wearing a floral mini dress
that accentuated her petite figure.
“Hey Jakey, why didn’t you come to school
yesterday?” she asked looking at me intently with her big blue eyes. This was
so strange, Lydia was actually talking to me - an antisocial nerd that likes
Pokemon and somehow got involved in the Dark Arts, and the amulet started to go
warm. I told Lydia I was sick and we walked together to the Biology Lab for our
next class.
Surprisingly, she offered me a seat next to her
in the lab. I gladly accepted the offer like a dog being thrown a large bone.
Today, for the class we were dissecting a frog but Lydia and I paid close to no
attention to the teacher as he explained. We were too busy chatting and
laughing with each other. It was the best time I have had with a girl in my
entire life.
When it came time to start cutting up the poor
amphibian, Lydia and I giggled and laughed while we poked the lifeless creature
with our scalpels “in the name of Science” – as Lydia put it. In the midst of
fooling around, I accidentally cut Lydia’s wrist with my scalpel. Albeit small,
the cut was deep and blood spewed everywhere on our table. Afterwards, the
teacher attended to her, covered the cut with a cloth and ushered her to the
school’s nurse.
Regret flooded me as I stood in front of the
bloody science lab table. I was too busy thinking about Lydia when the amulet
started heating up again. Snapping out of my remorse, the amulet’s hint finally
sank in. I had to collect the blood from my first love for The Witch. Whilst
cleaning up the gruesome mess, secretly, I grabbed a test tube and scooped up
some blood from the tabletop, secured it with a stopper and put it into my
pocket.
After school, I saw Lydia by the water cooler in
the hallway.
“Hey Lydia, are you alright? I’m so sorry. I
really didn’t mean to do that, it was a total acci…”
Right then and there, Lydia kissed me. Her soft
tender lips against mine brought me to a state of euphoria. I closed my eyes
and felt as if I was melting just by her soft and gentle touch. Lydia broke the
kiss, smiled and said, “I’m fine Jake. Now, follow me.” She dragged me to her
parked Porsche. In the car,
we blared loud upbeat music on the radio and had a ton of fun singing along.
After that little bonding session in
the car, Lydia had brought us to a hair salon. Countless of giggles later, both
of us decided a short bob cut would suit her best besides giving her a
refreshing new look. As she was getting her hair done, I sat and spectated in
amazement, her long luscious strands of blonde hair falling to the ground.
Lydia then got up to go and get her hair rinsed and that was when the amulet
heated up once again. This time I was ready, I pretended to drop a piece of
paper on the floor near the pile of Lydia’s hair. As I bent down to pick up the
paper, I scooped some hair onto the paper, folded it and put it back into my
pocket.
In the car ride back home, I
realized I couldn’t keep my secret from her any longer – I trusted her, now
more than ever, I broke the silence and explained to her about The Witch and my
plans to fulfill my promise with her the next day.
“No Jake, you can’t go alone. I’m
going with you, it’s much too dangerous for you to go alone! What if you get
hurt?” Lydia insisted and persisted she tagged along with me the next day.
Although reluctant, I agreed.
It was the day of the final
countdown between The Witch and I. Across the street from the old house, Lydia
and I stood in silence. In my bag, I had with me “Libri Lucis”, the test tube of blood, the lock of hair, my penknife
and a torchlight meanwhile on my
neck, I had with me my ivory amulet. Once we were both ready, we entered the
house.
Despite it being broad daylight
outside, the inside of the house was as I remembered it – cold, dark and dusty.
A sudden gust of wind came in and echoes of The Witch’s cackles travelled with
it causing the amulet to radiate. All at once, our torchlights died off, all
the doors in the house started slamming violently and, the spine-curling laugh
of The Witch roared through the walls of the house.
Everything in the house came alive
and before we knew it, The Witch was standing right in front of us. I gripped
Lydia’s hand tightly and the amulet on my chest heated up like an oven. In an unexpected
turn of events, Lydia’s skin grew scaly and her eyes turned green. Swiftly, she
wrapped her slender long snaky body around my neck tightly and I was completely
thrown off guard. The Witch approached both of us slowly, extended a skinny
wrinkly hand and threw her head back laughing wildly.
“Good job my pet. Now where are the
goods?” the hag demanded. In one swift move, Lydia – or rather the snake, buried
her fangs into my neck, cutting the rope of my amulet with the sides of her
fangs. I kneeled to the ground inn agony, clutching my neck with my palm
helplessly. The Witch lifted a finger pointed towards my knapsack and out flew
the journal into her grey-hued hands.
“Here my masssssster…” replied Lydia
in a tone resembling a serpent’s as she slithered up The Witch’s arm with the
amulet. The Witch pleased with her faithful assistant, threw a rat upward. The
serpent jumped up, caught the rat in her mouth and bit hard – rodent blood
spewed all over her mouth.
Lying on the floor, The Witch walked towards
me, bent down and explained, “You see little Jakey, I just used you to get what
I wanted from your great grandmother, one of the greatest witches of all time.
The nonsense about your first love was just bait and now you’ve fallen into my
trap.”
The
Witch raised a blade above her head with both hands towards my forehead. Just
in the nick of time, I rolled away – leaving the hag stuck to the rotting
floorboard with her knife. I ran into a little room where I saw a fireplace
lighted up. I trashed the place like a madman as I heard the loud footsteps of
The Witch and her cackles nearing the room. Somehow, I managed to find a can of
gasoline and poured it over everything. The fire spread hot and fast but I was
trapped for The Witch was at the entrance of the door. Just like in Physical
Education class, I braced myself, charged and tackled The Witch at her
abdominal area. “Thanks Mr. Joe, I owe you one,” I said under my breath,
panting from all the adrenaline.
The
Witch lay on the floor and ordered “her pet” to aid her in my capture. I rushed
to the sides of the large hallway where we were all situated and started
tugging down all the curtains letting sunlight enter and fill the room. The
Witch hissed in torment and shrieked as smoke exited her pores. The snake was
about to leap on me, fangs barred when out of the blue, a beam from the roof on
fire fell on her, crushing her.
“Please
Jake, help me!” pleaded Lydia, now back in human form. I shook my head at the
girl I loved, picked up the amulet and journal lying scattered on the floor and
headed towards the squirming witch. I
opened the journal and began chanting aloud in the burning building, on my final
repetition, The Witch could take it no more, she charged at me with every ounce
of energy she had left. “Hilah rinh shahih. Lich thians ah havinth” I punched her
hard in her stomach and pinned her down to the ground. “Perish thou
soul with the light of heat”
I raised the amulet high above my head. “And
return thee unrest to thy keep.” The ivory tusk plunged into The Witch’s
heart.
“NOOOOOOO!!!” she
cried. Within a second, she became ash. The house was burning down fast - I
grabbed the magical items and dashed out of the house without a second thought.
Opposite the street, I watched as The Witch’s house burned down in flames. As I
walked home, I realized, the amulet was trying to warn me of the dangers all
along. I entered the house bruised, cut up and covered in ash and debris, my
mother stood before me with a shocked face.
Nonchalantly, I walked up the stairs and said to
her, “Toughest. Pokemon battle. Ever.”
______________________________
This was a story I wrote last year for the Scholastic Story writing competition. But since I didn't win, I thought I'd ought to share it with all of you. I hope you were as entertained reading the story as I was entertained writing it!
- Eeyeng Lim
