The Possession of Anna Drake

4 - Life in Servitude

That was the last time I heard from my father. At least up until the present, wherever tomorrow goes, I have no idea, but the point is - he left. It didn’t matter that he loved me. What mattered was he got away from my mother.

Sadly though, in the drama that surrounded my mother, I was her next target. I had no idea how much my father put up with from her. That was until I became the target. She was relentless with her comments. Nothing was good enough for her.

She suddenly took an interest in how I dressed, spoke, and looked. For the first time, it seemed like she actually looked at me. Not in the way I wanted her to, but at least she noticed I existed. She also started taking more interest in Anna and our education.

Once my father was gone, and she had nobody to bother all day, she began to make random trips to the classroom. Griselda was never happy to see her and hated it even more when my mother requested time to teach Anna and me about Coven Law.

I was a bit shocked to learn she still had the intent of us being initiated shortly after we turned eighteen, but I also felt she was using it as a political stand. She knew there was a chance I could be voted out and another family in for High Priestesshood. There could very well be a child far stronger than me. It didn’t matter if I had achieved my ascension early or not. Both Anna and I would receive our gifts two years after the others.

Two years passed a bit quicker once my mother began her lessons. Anna and I were well prepared for graduation. Well, what my mother called graduation. She gave us our diplomas, sent Anna home, and me to my room. I’m assuming she drank a bottle or two of wine because she was already passed out on the couch by the time I made it down the stairs for dinner.

Anna had told me she was going to celebrate with her new boyfriend she met online. I could only imagine what she was doing. We weren’t out of the water yet. I still had three weeks till my eighteenth birthday, and Anna had two months after that. We were still bound in personal prisons until those days. I had lost my one escape from my mother. I had no idea what she had planned for me anymore, and it was almost disturbing. I feared for the worst.

My birthday was uneventful. My mother woke up, said nothing, and proceeded to drink her mimosa on the porch. It wasn’t that I expected an extravaganza of sorts, but I thought there would be something! Honestly, I thought she would release me from the binding of the anklet and throw me into the world face-first to fend for myself.

No magic release from my sentence happened the day of or the day after my birthday. Nobody came from the courthouse to remove the anklet. It just continued to monitor my every move. I did become frightened they had increased my sentence for one reason or another. I had done nothing wrong since they found Nidia’s body. I was going to carry that guilt with e for the rest of my life.

There was no questioning I was going to pay for what happened each night I went to sleep. I always dreamed of her, mostly of what she would have become. Could we have been friends if I didn’t end her life? Did she even know who I was? Did it matter what she thought of what I thought? I had killed the girl, and there was no taking it back.

It was the third day after I turned eighteen—four in the morning. I was lying in bed dreaming of a bright future when masked intruders grabbed me from my bed. Never in any of our customs do we have masked intruders enter a home and take someone. So, my first instinct was to fight., and fight, I did.

I took out two before the others began to drag me down the stairs and into the basement, where I was thrown into a circle outlined in salt and other ingredients meant to keep the onlookers safe. I had officially been tossed into my ascension party and at the head of the circle was my mother with her red velvet cloak.

You would think she would be thrilled to have such a special event bestowed upon me. However, she looked worried, maybe even a little sick. She was only doing what was required, and that was to take off my monitor and make sure I didn’t somehow murder another person. Members, after all, are far more critical than human children. Let’s not forget what Anna said. “Nobody is going to care you killed a human girl.”

Well, they did care, which was why they were all lined up behind the protective area because they thought I was going to be a homicidal lunatic once the monitor was removed. To be fair, I had thought it myself a time or twenty. What if I was meant to be a murderer? What if this was just the starting point of a career in killing? I could be the next Freddy or Jason, only scarier and real.

Nobody spoke to me while my mother stepped forward and cut the strap on the monitor. I had thought someone from the Sheriff’s office would have come down to do it. Then I chuckled and realized this is my mother we are talking about. She’s not going to let anyone in the law enforcement near me when I could easily wind up in a padded cell at the local crazy house.

The moment the strap was cut and the monitor fell with a clang to the ground, and I began to instantly feel the electrical current start to hum through my body. I closed my eyes because I had wanted the gift to have disappeared. It had been unused for eight years. I prayed for the “if you don’t use it, lose it” policy. It appeared that was not the case.

Then the humming became deafening, almost violent under the thin layer of skin. Suddenly eight years of pent-up electricity escaped from every crevice of my body. Fingers tips, toes, eyes, mouth, nostrils, ears; any place you would think had a direct line to the core of it all. I had thought the day Nidia died was the scariest day of my life. That was officially defeated by the way my first real burst felt.

If there had been no protection powders and spells in the room, I would have easily killed every single person who came to witness my release. At the same time, I had given them a reason to fear me. During ascension, it is believed that is the first full burst of magic in a new witch’s body. But to find the same damage could be done the second time, I’m sure I frightened a few members.

“Let it be known, Lizbeth Dupree is free from her bindings.” My mother’s voice was monotone, her eyes never moving from where they were targeted.

“Blessed be.” Came from waves across the Coven of pale faces.

I heard someone in the back get sick, and someone else coughed. This was nothing like the ascension party I thought I would get. It was by far the worst experience of my life that far. Eight years of being locked away and hidden to suddenly cast in front of everyone so they could watch me burn brightly before them. Yes, this was precisely how I had thought my first day of freedom would be.

I laid my head back on the concrete floor and looked at the ceiling. The members would start filing out of the room at some point, and I would be free to flee up the stairs to my sanctuary and cry myself to sleep. I was not happy with my freedom. In fact, I felt the safest with the monitor still in place. At least then, I knew I couldn’t hurt someone.

Then I thought of Anna and how far she had come since we were kids. Would she be the scary girl I was frightened of, even though theoretically she is the one who threw me under the bus? How was life going to be after that day? I had no idea. I didn’t know anything other than I was not magically inept as I had hoped and prayed. I was a walking accident, and I needed to learn how to control this magic before hurting someone else. Someone who did matter. Not that Nidia didn’t matter, she meant the world to me, but she was just another blip on the human map to my mother.

After the last member had left, I waited for a while before pulling myself from the circle and walking back up the stairs to my room. That was when I looked in the mirror to see what had happened to me. My hair had already been blonde before the whole event began. Now it was gray and frizzier from the electricity. My eyes were once a dark blue were now like ice. My skin, while still pale, had marks on it from where the electricity had burned its way out of my body. Scars I felt I would have for the rest of my life. My second ascension had changed me physically, and I had a feeling mentally as well. All those years of the power throbbing behind a barrier just to come out and alter me.

I fell to the ground in front of the mirror and cried. I had a feeling most teenage witches didn’t do that when they found out their gift. Then again, it had been decades since an electrically charged witch was in the Coven. I don’t even remember the woman’s name, but she was before my mother and obviously not a Dupree. I remember wondering if there was a potion I could take that would remove the power from my body. Could I reject the power that was bestowed upon me? Could I go back to the gods and ask them to give me something simple, like the ability to grow herbs quickly and efficiently like Mrs. Hollister or calm the waters like Mr. James. Was it too much to ask not to have such a rare gift given to me? It had already cost one person their life. Did I really need it costing someone else another?

Things did not get better after that.

Part of me wished my mother would come out of hiding and become the caring over dotting High Priestess she always pretended to be. This was not the case. If anything, she became more elusive. The morning teas with the ladies and the afternoon pie became an outdoor event. Off property primarily, she never left a note on where she was or when she would be home. I was left to my own vices. Not that it mattered. I had spent the last two years doing everything for myself inside the house. How hard would it be to start doing some of the same things outside the house?

I had some money, not much, but enough to travel down to the local grocer and purchase some food to keep in my room for days when my mother felt unable to send one of the many maids, cooks, or whatever else she was keeping inside the house down to the store for food.

It took me about three days to get enough courage together to venture outside. Nobody knew who I was. For all it mattered, I was just a visitor passing through. It’s not like the papers had reported my monitor was removed. I mean, really, hadn’t the story fizzled out enough for me to have a normal life. How far from the truth was I?

I put on jeans and a sweatshirt, grabbed socks and shoes, and made my way toward the front door. I was going to step off the property for the first time in eight years. I was going to do just fine. I went to the door, opened it, stepped out on the front porch, and realized I was shaking like a leaf.

The only other person who was around other than my family was Anna, and she still had two months until her monitor was removed. My chest tightened, and my hands began to get clammy. Suddenly the clouds above me turned a dark gray, and I knew if I didn’t go back inside the house, I was going to release a burst of electrical energy that would rival any of the others I had ever had.

I raced inside the slammed the door behind me. I began to sob as I slid down the paneling and sat there with my hands on my face. I was too frightened to face them. I knew what they all thought of me. They thought I got off easy.

“Why the waterworks?” My mother asked with a slur.

Since my father had walked out, she had been drinking far more than the norm. Her eyes were always bloodshot, and there was always a drink or two in her hands. She still looked immaculate in her pencil skirt and matching sweater.

“What do you care?” I mumbled at her as I hastily wiped the tears from my eyes.

“I care,” she lied.

I knew she was lying by the way her lip was curled and her white teeth were clenched shut. She was no mother of the year, and even her attempt at giving the smallest amount of interest in me was not enough to make me mommy’s little girl again.

“Tell it to the judge,” I growled as I stood up and raced up the stairs to the safety of my bedroom.

It was the one place she wouldn’t go. I’m not sure if it’s because there are pictures of dad all over my walls or the fact I felt nothing but disdain for her. I didn’t’ care that she was the High Priestess of the Coven. It didn’t make her mother of the year material.

“They would all have laughed at you,” she teased me through the closed door. “You might as well pack your things and move to the next town over.”

Her cruelty, as accurate as she may have sounded, only gave me tougher skin. I wanted to leave Evergreen Falls. I wanted to move far away from my mother and her Coven. I didn’t have the drive to be the monster she became. I wanted my father, but I had no clue where he was. She had never once been willing to tell me where he wound up after that night. It didn’t help. I had no idea who his family was, so that was even more of a mystery.

“Don’t you have children to punish somewhere else?” I called out to her.

“Psh! Child, one day, you will thank me for this. It will make you stronger. That way, when you take over, you will already have lizard tough skin.” She laughed, and I heard her heels tapping off toward her own room.

I knew she would wind up passing out from her morning drinks. She would sleep until it was time for afternoon pie, and then we would share two sentences on proper etiquette, and she would wander off to her room again to finish off the bottle of wine from dinner.

I found my father’s old laptop that night. It was nestled neatly in its case under the guest bed. I assumed he left it there for me. Maybe there were clues as to where he had gone nestled in the carrying case. I was sad to find nothing had been left for me.

Still, I carried it into my room and shut the door. It was well after dark, and my mother had already retired to her room. I booted up the older computer and waited. Anna had mentioned several screen names she had used during our lunch periods. Still, I had no idea what I was looking for.

After a few failed attempts and several eye-opening moments, I found one of Anna’s profiles on Witches.com, a site used to find others of magical roots. Her picture was quite revealing, and after a few attempts at making a profile of my own, I was in. I clicked on her name and began to type my message.

Things here are not better since the monitor came off. Instead, I feel they may have gotten worse.

I probably should have started my first message with the obligatory “hello,” but I felt getting right to the brass tax of my issue was the best course of action. I sat there for twenty minutes, waiting for a response. I was about to close the laptop when the messenger dinged.

Took you long enough. What’s life like on the outside?

I rolled my eyes at her response. I wanted to talk about how my mother was a mess, and all Anna wanted to know was what it was like to leave the house.

I wouldn’t know I haven’t left the house. Tried to go out today but had a near panic attack. Think I’m going to have to learn to control this power. Sucks, but I’m going to have to go to my mother for advice. I typed back.

A few more minutes roll by, and then another ding.

Two more months, and we can blow this popsicle stand.

I laughed softly to myself. She was right. We had only two more months, and nobody was going to hold us back from doing anything. We got to author our own story after that. It wasn’t that I was going to put Nidia on the backburner. But I had served my time for what I had done. I had to get out of the house and live my life for both of us. I almost felt like that was what she would want.

I closed the lid of the computer and hid it under my bed. Not that my mother would have done anything with it. She would first have to come into my room, and well, that wasn’t something she was going to do. However, I still wanted to keep the little device safe. I had a feeling it would be my lifeline until I was able to pull myself away from the house and walk out into the sunshine for the first time.