Taming the Darkness
Book Four of the Creatures of the Night
By: Tisha Wilson
Prologue~
Miriam Sweeney stood at the kitchen sink braced up against it with her head sagging between her shoulders. It felt like someone was physically ripping the heart out of her ribcage and blood was running down her chest, pooling on the floor at her feet. Four days. Her little brother had been missing for four days, and now the police were gone.
The house was quiet. After days of volunteers and police buzzing around, waiting for a phone call or a ransom. There was nothing. They posted amber alerts, blared his photo on every news station, everyone in their neighborhood searched the streets with flashlights. Cameras were in her parents' faces day and night, and now…
It was like someone turned the lights off. The police and FBI were still on the case, but they were working quietly out of the police station instead. The news crews moved on. The search parties moved on. The rescue aid workers moved on.
There was still mention of this missing boy in the nightly reports. Other news had seeped in and taken over. This was a nightmare. She could hear her mother wailing endlessly from their bedroom.
When she wasn’t sleeping, she was crying, pleading to have her son back in her arms. Things like this just did not happen to them.
“Forgive me Grandma Maggie. I’ve let the family down,” she breathed.
More tears slipped from her face to the sink. She grabbed a dish from the sink without bothering to wipe her eyes. Things like dishes shouldn’t have to be washed when the world had gone so terribly wrong. The floor should not need vacuuming. Showers shouldn’t have to be taken.
Dinner should not have to be cooked or eaten. Things shouldn’t have to return to normal. Not when a boy as sweet as Thomas had disappeared from the playground at school. No one should be allowed to breathe again until he was found.
Silently she said a locating spell to herself. She hadn’t received the gifts from her grandma Maggie to ignore them in this hour of need. She rebelled against her grandmother’s teachings during her teen years and even when she’d gone off to college. She often thought magic was only for kids and old fools.
When her grandmother passed away, however, all her knowledge, as well as the knowledge of the generations before, deposited directly to Miriam’s soul. It was real in a way she couldn’t deny after that. Still, she remained wary of using her new found gifts, other than times like these. She would use anything right now.
She’d use the police. She would pray to the heavens. She’d seek out a psychic. She’d give her last dying breath to see Thomas safe again. A bubble of anguish floated to the back of her throat and threatened to overtake her good sense yet again. If she thought about it too much she’d fall to the floor and cry herself sick… again.
The worst part was not remembering the last thing she said to her little brother. She stopped washing and clutched a soapy bowl to her chest as she tried her hardest to think of those words. Ever since she’d come home from college, he’d been under foot. She needed to stay with her parents until she found a job as a librarian. He wanted to know everything about UCLA.
He wanted to know about the clubs she sometimes went to, the people she met, her volunteer projects and traveling to Canada for the summer with her friends. He snuck into her room. He touched her things. He went through her phone without asking.
He wanted to help her with the laundry. Wanted to help her wash the dishes. He was around so much then that right now, the kitchen was excessively quiet. The kitchen table held a half done volcano science project. She could almost hear Thomas’s excited laughter as he and her father worked on the project.
“Ria! Come over here and help us,” he would encourage as his father ruffled his red hair.
A smile would stretch wide across the boy’s freckled face as his bright green eyes looked up at her.
“I have to finish the dishes,” she’d say.
“Here, Ria. Let me help ya.”
He’d run over and stand so close their arms touched. At nearly eleven years old, he’d been on that edge between boy and man. Hugs and family time were things he still enjoyed. Miriam turned away from the phantom scene and looked out the window.
She screamed and the bowl slipped out of her hands. A shadow ran past the window. Her heart was hammering as she peered out into the night.
“What is it, Ria? Are ya all right?”
Her father’s large hands wrapped around her shoulders and she shook her head in chagrin.
“It’s nothin’ Da. I just thought I saw a thing run past the window. It’s just me imagination.”
Her brogue was always thick when she was at home with her family, or when she was stressed out. Her father sighed heavily as he pulled her into his arms and placed a kiss to the crown of her red curls.
“You scared the life out of me, Wee One.”
“Da. I’m not a wee anythin’ anymore.”
“You’ll always be my Wee One, no matter how old ya are, Lass.”
They were silent for a while as they both looked out the window. She looked at his reflection in the window. Thomas Sweeney Sr. was tall and slender with black hair and green eyes. He was an accountant. A successful one, but still… he was plain.
He enjoyed doing plain things like being at home with his children, or working in the garden behind their house. She always wondered why they lived in California at all. She could see her father and mother nestled in some little mountain hamlet where there was a church steeple overlooking the green hills and quiet homes. The answer was in her mother and father’s joint love of flowers.
They lived in Pasadena, the flower capital of the world. Pasadena really was like the rose garden of California. It was where they got the majority of the flowers for the tournament of roses. What football and flowers had to do with each other, she would never know, but it was a big deal to Californians.
“I want him back home,” Miriam said sadly, veering away from her thoughts about flowers and football.
“Me too, dear girl. Me too.”
“I’m going to perform a returning spell in the back garden,” she told him.
“I thought you already did that two days ago,” he said
“No. That was a locating spell. I wanted him to be found. Now I want him to come back home to us.”
Her father sighed. She knew he hated she knew the craft, but he also believed his children should choose their own way in the world. He wouldn’t stop her if she suddenly wanted to believe in what he called ‘mumbo jumbo’.
“Just keep the screen on the fire pit. I don’t want to be gettin’ fined.”
“Da. You can’t have a wild free fire with a screen,” she objected.
He rolled his eyes and released her.
“Just do as I ask, Wee One. I dona need trouble right now. Please.”
She shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. He might not say it, but he thought it was stupid and she wouldn’t argue with him at a time like this. She bent down to pick up the pieces of the bowl she dropped. Maybe she’d go out into the field not too far from the house so she wouldn’t have to bother him with it. The fire had to be free to call Thomas to them.
The stars were bright and clear. Miriam could smell the ocean not too far off. She began to chant as the kindling lit in the fire pit in the middle of the field. She stood up and felt a breeze stir her robes and long red hair. The wind swayed her back and forth. The words she’d learned as a little girl matched the rhythm and beat of her heart.
She spoke the words until they were a Celtic song. The voices of her ancestors chorused out of the cosmos to match hers. Though she couldn’t be any further away from Scotland before she started heading back this way, she could hear the pipes. The smell of those distant sacred shores blew a special wind to her and breathed into her body a power she alone didn’t have.
Calling on the ancestors, she removed a pouch of herbs from the golden braided belt of her gown. She was wearing her grandmother’s green satin dress, passed down from ancient times, beneath a heavy gold robe. Her song continued as she tossed the herb bag into the fire and a blue flame flew up to the sky. Something about this night was different than any other night she’d come out to do magic.
It usually took longer to get to this level of magic. The magic was strong and her words spoke into time and space itself. It never happened to her like this before. She’d always felt something but this… her eyes rolled up in the sockets and it was as if she was not in her own body.
The words became hollow echoes, summoning something, something from the shadows. Something from darkness itself. She wanted to stop now but it was too late. Whatever it was, she was calling it forth and it was obeying her. It was somehow attached to her brother, to his energy. If she stopped calling the darkness, then her brother would be lost too.
What if her brother had been murdered and she was calling forth his murderer? Whatever it was, was running towards her song, towards her light. The light swirled up and around her. The stars swirled around her. It felt like she lifted off the ground as her very essence escaped the confines of her body.
She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Then, it was there. Whatever she called, was here. Silence was sudden as her chant stopped and she was released back into her body. She collapsed beside the fire and felt something wet trickle from her nose.
She lifted her fingers to her nose and pulled her hand back. It was blood trickling from her nose. What had she done? She looked up sharply when she heard the tall grass surrounding her stir. Reaching for the small hand shovel she’d brought along to dig the pit, she swallowed hard and felt more than saw something approaching.
The grass stirred again and then parted. What stepped out of the darkness froze her instantly on the spot, the shovel slipping from her fingers. It was tall and it stood on two legs. It was hairy but slimy at the same time. It smelled like death.
It had a snout like wolves and eyes like a man’s. The main thing she noticed was the sharp claws and rows of ugly deformed teeth. They could do a lot of damage to her. The scream seemed to be trapped in her throat as she looked way up at the horrible creature. It wouldn’t matter if she hit it, ran, or screamed at this point.
Nothing and no one would be able to help her. The thing pulled something from behind it. She gasped, the scream dying in her throat. She started to rush forward. Thomas made a whimpering sound as he stood perfectly still, his hand clasped in the paw of the big ugly dog thing.
He was shaking with fright and tears sprang to Miriam’s eyes. What could she say? What could she do? This had to be a dream or a nightmare. The creature put its other hand out to her. She looked at her brother’s small freckled face.
She’d called him back. She had called him back home, but how could she save him? How could she kill this… thing? How could she free her little brother? Not with magic. The type of magic she performed did not include death spells.
If they did she would strike the deformed dog dead where he stood. She stood up and squared her shoulders. Even if this was a dream, she was not going anywhere without her little brother. Against every instinct she had, she went forward and put her hand into the creature’s slimy paw.
No one heard her single scream as she was ripped away from the warm fire and into the dark night.
Book Four of the Creatures of the Night
By: Tisha Wilson
Prologue~
Miriam Sweeney stood at the kitchen sink braced up against it with her head sagging between her shoulders. It felt like someone was physically ripping the heart out of her ribcage and blood was running down her chest, pooling on the floor at her feet. Four days. Her little brother had been missing for four days, and now the police were gone.
The house was quiet. After days of volunteers and police buzzing around, waiting for a phone call or a ransom. There was nothing. They posted amber alerts, blared his photo on every news station, everyone in their neighborhood searched the streets with flashlights. Cameras were in her parents' faces day and night, and now…
It was like someone turned the lights off. The police and FBI were still on the case, but they were working quietly out of the police station instead. The news crews moved on. The search parties moved on. The rescue aid workers moved on.
There was still mention of this missing boy in the nightly reports. Other news had seeped in and taken over. This was a nightmare. She could hear her mother wailing endlessly from their bedroom.
When she wasn’t sleeping, she was crying, pleading to have her son back in her arms. Things like this just did not happen to them.
“Forgive me Grandma Maggie. I’ve let the family down,” she breathed.
More tears slipped from her face to the sink. She grabbed a dish from the sink without bothering to wipe her eyes. Things like dishes shouldn’t have to be washed when the world had gone so terribly wrong. The floor should not need vacuuming. Showers shouldn’t have to be taken.
Dinner should not have to be cooked or eaten. Things shouldn’t have to return to normal. Not when a boy as sweet as Thomas had disappeared from the playground at school. No one should be allowed to breathe again until he was found.
Silently she said a locating spell to herself. She hadn’t received the gifts from her grandma Maggie to ignore them in this hour of need. She rebelled against her grandmother’s teachings during her teen years and even when she’d gone off to college. She often thought magic was only for kids and old fools.
When her grandmother passed away, however, all her knowledge, as well as the knowledge of the generations before, deposited directly to Miriam’s soul. It was real in a way she couldn’t deny after that. Still, she remained wary of using her new found gifts, other than times like these. She would use anything right now.
She’d use the police. She would pray to the heavens. She’d seek out a psychic. She’d give her last dying breath to see Thomas safe again. A bubble of anguish floated to the back of her throat and threatened to overtake her good sense yet again. If she thought about it too much she’d fall to the floor and cry herself sick… again.
The worst part was not remembering the last thing she said to her little brother. She stopped washing and clutched a soapy bowl to her chest as she tried her hardest to think of those words. Ever since she’d come home from college, he’d been under foot. She needed to stay with her parents until she found a job as a librarian. He wanted to know everything about UCLA.
He wanted to know about the clubs she sometimes went to, the people she met, her volunteer projects and traveling to Canada for the summer with her friends. He snuck into her room. He touched her things. He went through her phone without asking.
He wanted to help her with the laundry. Wanted to help her wash the dishes. He was around so much then that right now, the kitchen was excessively quiet. The kitchen table held a half done volcano science project. She could almost hear Thomas’s excited laughter as he and her father worked on the project.
“Ria! Come over here and help us,” he would encourage as his father ruffled his red hair.
A smile would stretch wide across the boy’s freckled face as his bright green eyes looked up at her.
“I have to finish the dishes,” she’d say.
“Here, Ria. Let me help ya.”
He’d run over and stand so close their arms touched. At nearly eleven years old, he’d been on that edge between boy and man. Hugs and family time were things he still enjoyed. Miriam turned away from the phantom scene and looked out the window.
She screamed and the bowl slipped out of her hands. A shadow ran past the window. Her heart was hammering as she peered out into the night.
“What is it, Ria? Are ya all right?”
Her father’s large hands wrapped around her shoulders and she shook her head in chagrin.
“It’s nothin’ Da. I just thought I saw a thing run past the window. It’s just me imagination.”
Her brogue was always thick when she was at home with her family, or when she was stressed out. Her father sighed heavily as he pulled her into his arms and placed a kiss to the crown of her red curls.
“You scared the life out of me, Wee One.”
“Da. I’m not a wee anythin’ anymore.”
“You’ll always be my Wee One, no matter how old ya are, Lass.”
They were silent for a while as they both looked out the window. She looked at his reflection in the window. Thomas Sweeney Sr. was tall and slender with black hair and green eyes. He was an accountant. A successful one, but still… he was plain.
He enjoyed doing plain things like being at home with his children, or working in the garden behind their house. She always wondered why they lived in California at all. She could see her father and mother nestled in some little mountain hamlet where there was a church steeple overlooking the green hills and quiet homes. The answer was in her mother and father’s joint love of flowers.
They lived in Pasadena, the flower capital of the world. Pasadena really was like the rose garden of California. It was where they got the majority of the flowers for the tournament of roses. What football and flowers had to do with each other, she would never know, but it was a big deal to Californians.
“I want him back home,” Miriam said sadly, veering away from her thoughts about flowers and football.
“Me too, dear girl. Me too.”
“I’m going to perform a returning spell in the back garden,” she told him.
“I thought you already did that two days ago,” he said
“No. That was a locating spell. I wanted him to be found. Now I want him to come back home to us.”
Her father sighed. She knew he hated she knew the craft, but he also believed his children should choose their own way in the world. He wouldn’t stop her if she suddenly wanted to believe in what he called ‘mumbo jumbo’.
“Just keep the screen on the fire pit. I don’t want to be gettin’ fined.”
“Da. You can’t have a wild free fire with a screen,” she objected.
He rolled his eyes and released her.
“Just do as I ask, Wee One. I dona need trouble right now. Please.”
She shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. He might not say it, but he thought it was stupid and she wouldn’t argue with him at a time like this. She bent down to pick up the pieces of the bowl she dropped. Maybe she’d go out into the field not too far from the house so she wouldn’t have to bother him with it. The fire had to be free to call Thomas to them.
The stars were bright and clear. Miriam could smell the ocean not too far off. She began to chant as the kindling lit in the fire pit in the middle of the field. She stood up and felt a breeze stir her robes and long red hair. The wind swayed her back and forth. The words she’d learned as a little girl matched the rhythm and beat of her heart.
She spoke the words until they were a Celtic song. The voices of her ancestors chorused out of the cosmos to match hers. Though she couldn’t be any further away from Scotland before she started heading back this way, she could hear the pipes. The smell of those distant sacred shores blew a special wind to her and breathed into her body a power she alone didn’t have.
Calling on the ancestors, she removed a pouch of herbs from the golden braided belt of her gown. She was wearing her grandmother’s green satin dress, passed down from ancient times, beneath a heavy gold robe. Her song continued as she tossed the herb bag into the fire and a blue flame flew up to the sky. Something about this night was different than any other night she’d come out to do magic.
It usually took longer to get to this level of magic. The magic was strong and her words spoke into time and space itself. It never happened to her like this before. She’d always felt something but this… her eyes rolled up in the sockets and it was as if she was not in her own body.
The words became hollow echoes, summoning something, something from the shadows. Something from darkness itself. She wanted to stop now but it was too late. Whatever it was, she was calling it forth and it was obeying her. It was somehow attached to her brother, to his energy. If she stopped calling the darkness, then her brother would be lost too.
What if her brother had been murdered and she was calling forth his murderer? Whatever it was, was running towards her song, towards her light. The light swirled up and around her. The stars swirled around her. It felt like she lifted off the ground as her very essence escaped the confines of her body.
She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Then, it was there. Whatever she called, was here. Silence was sudden as her chant stopped and she was released back into her body. She collapsed beside the fire and felt something wet trickle from her nose.
She lifted her fingers to her nose and pulled her hand back. It was blood trickling from her nose. What had she done? She looked up sharply when she heard the tall grass surrounding her stir. Reaching for the small hand shovel she’d brought along to dig the pit, she swallowed hard and felt more than saw something approaching.
The grass stirred again and then parted. What stepped out of the darkness froze her instantly on the spot, the shovel slipping from her fingers. It was tall and it stood on two legs. It was hairy but slimy at the same time. It smelled like death.
It had a snout like wolves and eyes like a man’s. The main thing she noticed was the sharp claws and rows of ugly deformed teeth. They could do a lot of damage to her. The scream seemed to be trapped in her throat as she looked way up at the horrible creature. It wouldn’t matter if she hit it, ran, or screamed at this point.
Nothing and no one would be able to help her. The thing pulled something from behind it. She gasped, the scream dying in her throat. She started to rush forward. Thomas made a whimpering sound as he stood perfectly still, his hand clasped in the paw of the big ugly dog thing.
He was shaking with fright and tears sprang to Miriam’s eyes. What could she say? What could she do? This had to be a dream or a nightmare. The creature put its other hand out to her. She looked at her brother’s small freckled face.
She’d called him back. She had called him back home, but how could she save him? How could she kill this… thing? How could she free her little brother? Not with magic. The type of magic she performed did not include death spells.
If they did she would strike the deformed dog dead where he stood. She stood up and squared her shoulders. Even if this was a dream, she was not going anywhere without her little brother. Against every instinct she had, she went forward and put her hand into the creature’s slimy paw.
No one heard her single scream as she was ripped away from the warm fire and into the dark night.