Alister
The ride was quiet. There was a rare kind of stillness that settles in after too many questions and too few answers. The engine hummed beneath my feet as we sat at the back of the bus, and the scent of rain and old vinyl clung to the air like memory. Outside, trees blurred past—bare branches reaching up like desperate hands. Like they wanted something too.
The page in front of me depicts the same ritual circle that we found in Keith's house.
Why did he kill himself?
There are a dozen surface-level answers: grief, regret, madness. But people don't just snap for no reason. Something builds. Pressure. Hope, maybe. A dangerous kind. The kind you cling to even when everything else is gone.
I remembered the women's clothes, folded with care in a rack. Looking out of place in a messy home. The picture frame on the bedside table of him with two others.
His siblings. I recall from the news. How they died while robbing someone. Three bodies were discovered that day. One of the victim, and those two intruders.
That wall...the one covered in markings—desperate scribbles like a scream trapped in ink.
Bring them back. Give them back to me.
Those words were carved into the wall. Like he needed to make the pain permanent. Like it wasn't real unless he bled for it.
Wait...
I stare down at the illustrations on the page. A gravestone is drawn at the top. In the corner, a faceless human shape.
"Resurrection?" I mumble to myself.
Could he understand the writing? Or maybe he didn't. Just guessed like I did. Interpreted it the only way grief knows how—through longing.
But if he did know what it said…If he read every word clearly, understood the meaning, and followed it perfectly—and it still didn't work?
Then that's worse.
Whatever the case, he's dead now. Our one link to the truth, gone by his own hand.
A faint motion from the side catches my attention. I turn.
Clara's beside me, head tilted forward as sleep tugs relentlessly. She's trying to stay awake but failing. Her head bobs forward before she jolts upright with a sharp inhale. It's clear that exhaustion has taken hold.
She looks smaller in my jacket. She wanted to give it back, but I told her to keep it and return it later, after being washed, as she has tainted it with her headache-inducing perfume. It absolutely had nothing to do with the fact that without it, she'd be walking around in partially soaked clothes that stick to her figure.
And as if she wasn't distracting me before when she was awake, now she even intends to do it while asleep.
I suppose it can't be helped.
I reach out my hand, placing it on her other cheek, and guide her towards my shoulder. Her skin is cold from the rain but soft and fragile in a way I don't often associate with her. She doesn't flinch nor resist.
I feel the tension leaving her body as it finally surrenders. She subconsciously nestles in, curling slightly toward me.
"Not a word." I warn Helena as she hovers beside me.
She smirks. "I didn't say anything." But I know fully well what she's thinking.
Today has been...a rollercoaster. And it has me conflicted about everything.
When she defended me against the kidnappers, the anger I felt at her for not following my instructions to get out and seeing me as someone who needs saving.
No one asked her to always show up when I'm at my lowest. Why fight for me when I never asked her to?
I didn't need her help—even when she shot the crowbar, I had caught hold of the chair leg. I could have handled it.
But she came anyway. She always comes. Running, even when she has no idea what to do. Looking worried as if I'm someone worth protecting.
...Why act like you care? I know you're a selfish and spoiled person deep down. And why are you trying to rip me open and look into my past when I'm trying so hard to bury it? It's not like you'll find anything pleasant. What are you even trying to find? A sad backstory to why I do what I do?
You'll only find ugliness and brutality.
To you, maybe it's something tragic.
To me, it was evolution.
I sigh and glance down at the book again, running my thumb along the rough edge of its cover. The letter 'L'—etched in gold—glares back at me like an accusation.
"I'll ask you one more time." I say, carefully, to not be heard by the people around me or wake Clara. "Are you sure you don't remember this book?"
"Not ringing any bells. Sorry." Helena shrugs, the picture of indifference.
I glare at her. "How are your memories still not returning? Or maybe they are, and you're hiding them from me."
"Believe whatever you want. I just want this curse to end so I can be set free." She raises her arms in a lazy stretch, as if this entire situation is just a passing inconvenience.
I groan and lean back.
"This is hopeless." I mutter, taking out my phone. "Now the library is our only chance."
My fingers move across the screen, skimming articles, forums, even old blogs—anything tagged with witchcraft, spellbooks, occult texts. Most of what I find is noise. Recycled theories, dramatized nonsense, aesthetic rituals for bored suburban teens. A few seemingly legitimate threads poke through, but none of them mention this book. None even scratch the surface of the symbols inside.
My eyes drift forward to the row a few seats ahead. A young boy tugging on his mother's sleeve. She reached into a worn tote bag and pulled out a plastic bottle filled with bright yellow liquid. She hands it to him, and he takes it eagerly, gulping it down like it was liquid gold.
I leaned slightly to the side. "Where do you think all these artifacts came from in the first place?"
Helena doesn't answer immediately. Instead, her eyes lower to the book in my lap. A page we'd paused on showed a sketch of an old-fashioned quill, resting beside a distorted pentagram. I turn the pages and stop at the one that had been troubling me the most. An item I could have sworn I remember seeing on someone. It's a tacky little thing and looks like a kid's...
I almost drop the book as realization hits me like a brick wall.
I remember now. Where I've seen this and who owns it.
I let the grin form on my face, knowing that things are going to get messy. Finally a solid lead.
"Maybe...they were created through these rituals?" Helena answers, frowning thoughtfully. Right, back to the discussion.
I nod slowly, staring down at the faded ink. "These might be instructions. Not just for using artifacts—but for making them."
"Seems likely."
"It does." I murmur, flipping the page. "But what I'm curious about… is whether these objects are born out of nothing—or if they used to be ordinary things that got imbued with magic from these rituals."
"What are you leaning towards?"
I paused, mulling it over. Then I reached into my backpack and pulled out the half-empty plastic water bottle.
"The latter option, perhaps." I said. "Since it kind of aligns with a theory I've come up with."
I hold the bottle up between us.
"Imagine this is an artifact." I say, giving it a shake so the water inside sloshed. "And the water inside it? That's the magic."
She watched silently as I twisted the cap off.
"Now, If I were to… suppose, crush it in my hand, let out all the water, or cut it in half—like I did to those other artifacts—it becomes useless. The magic disappears."
I tipped the bottle back and drank the rest in one long gulp. The plastic crackled in my hand as it emptied.
"There's no magic in it." I said. "It's basically junk. Just like these things were before the rituals. Just like anything before someone decided to pour meaning into it."
I held it up again, letting her see the emptiness.
"Now," I continued, "say I refill this with juice instead of water." I glanced forward at the boy, still sipping happily. "It's useful again. It serves a purpose. But it's not the same. It's changed."
She looks at me, her eyes narrowing slightly. "So you're saying… artifacts are just vessels. That the real power is what's poured into them?"
"Exactly. And if Clara was right about that gemstone having broken into two empty vessels, then that means someone might have imbued them with a different kind of power. Something that's not part of its original function."
Helena's presence flickers beside me, watching intently. "Are all these just for adding magic to things?"
Each item appears to have its own specific pentagram. A unique seal. I furrow my brow and flip through the pages. A few of them don't have any pictured artifact. Just a ring of symbols and a block of text written in that same crooked, unintelligible script.
"Not every ritual seems to be tied to artifacts." I murmur. "Keith. He was trying to perform a resurrection. If we assume this book contains things like spells, hexes, and curses... then it's obvious that ours might be cursed by someone who intended on causing harm." I finish.
I suppose that much was obvious from the start.
But before I can say anything else, I feel Clara shift beside me. Her body tenses, and then it's like something snaps inside her. She starts to squirm in her seat, her hands fidgeting as her breath quickens.
Her head burrows into my shoulder, face pressed against the fabric of my shirt like she's trying to hide from whatever horror her subconscious is conjuring.
Dying in dreams all the time. I can't decide who has the short end of the stick here.
I sigh and flick her forehead, trying to wake her up. At first, she doesn't respond, but then, her eyes snap open, and she sits up with a jolt, wincing. She blinks rapidly, trying to clear the haze from her mind.
"Did...you just flick my forehead?" She asks, voice groggy.
"Do you always moan in your sleep? You were making the other passengers uncomfortable." I say, with annoyance. I'm fully aware of how childish I sound, but I don't care. I would rather not give her the opportunity to tease me.
She blushes instantly and looks around in panic. Her glare returns to me when she finds no one paying attention to us.
"Liar!" Clara remarks as she leans on the window, her round cheek squishing against the glass. "God, I badly need a smoke right now." she mumbles, eyes already starting to droop again.
"Should we meet at the Central Library at 1 p.m. tomorrow?" I ask, just loud enough to snap her back before sleep fully drags her under again.
She groans. "No, I have an event to go to with my mom. Maybe 3 p.m.? But… I don't think I can be out the whole day, though."
"Make up a good reason then." I say, glancing out the window. "Shouldn't be that hard with your lying and deception skills."
She rolls her eyes so hard I'm surprised they didn't roll out.
Then my phone buzzes.
I glance down—and immediately regret it. Stephanie. It was only a matter of time before she did something since I didn't answer her calls.
That can never be good.
I open the message and find a photo of her and Zach posing for a selfie, both of them throwing victory signs like they've just won a battle I didn't know we were fighting. The lighting's familiar. Too familiar. Then I spot it.
In the background, perched on the upper shelf behind them, is a small Japanese lucky cat statue.
My shelf. My house.
Before I can fully process that, another image arrives. Stephanie again—this time with Zach holding the black stray cat I rescued from the theme park. They're smiling like tourists on vacation, completely at home.
I grit my teeth, my fingers tightening around the phone.
Then the third photo pops up, and I nearly shoot upright in my seat.
Stephanie. Sitting on my bed. My duffle bag of knives right next to her, unzipped. And she's holding one of my blades—in her hand. Her expression is full of playful malice as she strokes it across her neck. That smirk screams that she knows exactly what she's doing.
This… this infuriating piece of—
"What's wrong?" Clara's voice cuts through, and I immediately shut off the screen.
"Nothing." I say too quickly.
Her gaze sharpens, suspicion flickering in her sleepy eyes, but she doesn't press.