The Possession of Anna Drake

10 - First Steps are Not Always Easy

“Ok, she just hugged you?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, for a long time too. She kept saying how Nadine wouldn’t blame me for something like this. I was a little girl and had no clue what I was doing.” I twisted the phone cord around my fingers and looked at the wall.

My mother had come out from her visit to find Nadine’s mother hugging me. They shared a few words and wound up in their own uncomfortable embrace as well. It took a good ten minutes to leave the park. Lots of gawking, and I was sure there were a few people taking pictures. I had a feeling my face would be plastered all over human social media by morning.

Once the scene had cleared and Nadine’s mother had left the park, my mother wasted no time in getting me back into the car and home. Once we came through the door, she insisted on drinking a bottle of wine and passing out in the most ungraceful fashion in the living room.

“I’m coming over,” Anna declared.

“Might as well the High Priestess is already sloshed and passed out on the couch.” I looked at the ceiling and then at the clock.

“Be there in ten.” She mentions before hanging up.

I took the time to check on my mother, covered her up with a blanket, and shut the sliding door to the living room. I didn’t want to risk waking her up. The last thing I needed was her to wake up and bust an artery screaming about how Anna was in the house for a non-coven-related function.

Anna didn’t arrive empty-handed. She walked through the door with a large bag and a bottle of booze. I wasn’t thrilled with her choice of items, but Anna was always a rebel.

“Hey there, bestie,” she said with a massive smile.

I rolled my eyes and opened the door wider for her to enter.

“Where’s Mommy Dearest?” Anna asked as she stepped inside the house.

“Still asleep in the living room,” I replied with a shrug.

“She going to be ok with me being here?” Anna asked snidely.

It was no secret how my mother felt about Anna and her family. However, her personal feelings had to be put aside when it came to the coven. She could dislike the Drake family as much as she wanted as long as she treated them no different from any other families. It’s coven politics, and I’ve spent my whole life listening to her complain about the various families. She loved the power. She just felt she deserved better members. My mother was the type of person to think she carried all the weight. I had seen what happened during Anna’s assertion. She hadn’t. Did that mean something?

“Earth to Liz,” Anna said as she waved her hand in front of my face.

I must have zoned out.

“Yeah, she can get over it. I’m still here because I can’t survive out there yet.” I rubbed my eyes and pointed to the stairs. “Let’s o to my room. She doesn’t go in there anyway.”

The trip of the stairs felt odd. I let Anna go ahead of me, and I followed. I didn’t feel like it was just the two of us on that staircase. I tried to look around Anna, but the large bag she carried was blocking my view. When I looked behind me, I swore I saw a dark mist, but it dissipated quickly. By the time we reached the top of the stairs, I had convinced myself I was going mad.

Behind my bedroom door, we were free to have an open conversation after Anna chugged half the bottle of booze and showed me the clothes she brought me in the big bag.

“Here’s the deal,” Anna reached in her pocket and pulled out a mirror and her lipstick. “We go in, have some fun, and then go home to sleep. It’s not breaking any rules; we aren’t lying about our ages. We are going to have fun tonight.”

Anna played with her brown hair and winked at herself in the mirror.

“How did you hear about this place again?” I asked as an uneasy feeling passed over me.

“Remember Roger?” she asked as she began to apply her lipstick.

“The guy from the gas station?” I raised my eyebrows.

Anna had told me about all the places she had gone since her assertion party. She met a guy at the gas station named Roger, one at the coffee shop named Greg, and some guy on the street named Seth. She had their numbers and was gloating about how each of them had asked her on a date. She swore she said she would only go if any of them had a friend her dear innocent best friend Lizbeth could go with.

I didn’t particularly appreciate how she painted me as an innocent friend. Maybe I wanted to be the thrill-seeking girl I was in my dreams. I had almost been betrothed. What had Anna done? Oh yeah, she’d actually kissed a boy. Maybe I was the innocent friend.

Once she got out about all the guys she had met, she began to talk about this club. It pops up out of nowhere every few weeks, and the only way you can enter is if you are a coven member. She tried to make it sound like a school dance we never had. A mixture of all the local covens in one spot. She called it social networking.

“He said this place was killer,” Anna explained as she continued to freshen up her face.

She was vane in so many ways. I had no idea why she so took me. We were nothing alike.

You should know the answer to this, Lizbeth.

“Killer?” I squeaked, trying to ignore the tiny voice inside my head.

“You know what I mean. Jeez, Liz, sometimes I wonder why we are friends.” Anna rolled her eyes before placing her mirror and lipstick back in her pockets.

“I don’t know if I want to do this,” I admitted.

“You are no fun, but you promised. We are free now. Let’s live it up. No more rules, remember.” Anna c****d her head to the right and waited for me to respond.

“No more rules,” I repeated.

“Where do you think you’re going this time of night?”

My mother was standing at the bottom of the stairs staring up at me. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes bloodshot. I didn’t know she was awake and Anna had already left. She didn’t want to be in the house when my mother woke up. Not that I blamed her, I didn’t exactly want to be there either.

“Anna’s,” I answered.

“Dressed like that?” She crossed her arms and glared at me.

I was dressed modestly — a black dress shirt and a skirt that came just to my knees. It was one of the most modest articles of clothing in the bag Anna had left behind. Besides, I had seen her wear far more revealing clothing to the grocery store.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I mumbled as I tugged at the hem of my shirt.

“Hanging around Anna has made you dress like a common streetwalker,” she scolded me. “If you plan to go anywhere, I don’t want to see any skin.”

“I haven’t hung out with Anna in ten years. How can this?” I trailed off and threw my hands in the air.

I knew better than to fight her when she made her demands. I marched back into my room, took off the skirt, and put on a pair of unflattering slacks.

“What time will you be home?” she asked as she handed me a sweater.

It wasn’t even cold outside.

“Tomorrow,” I answered monotone.

“Tomorrow?” My mother’s eyebrows lifted, and she pressed her lips together. “You could hardly last half a day today.”

“I’ll be fine, Mom. Anna will be there to keep me grounded.” I clenched my hands together in tight fists.

My mother let out an irritated sigh, as she always did when I proclaimed even the slightest bit of independence.

“Fine, be home as soon as you wake up. None of this sneaking in before lunch. We have a lot of work to do.”

“Yes, Mother,” I stated as respectfully as I could muster.

I knew the only way she would let me leave the house was if I agreed to every last one of her demands.

“Don’t do anything stupid, you have our family reputation to uphold.” She fixed my shirt and smiled this fake toothy smile.

I nodded because I knew if I said anything she would deadbolt the doors, and neither of us would be able to leave the house until dawn. She was petty that way.

I could have asked Desmond for a lift to Anna’s, but that night I wanted to take in the sites and smell of Evergreen Falls. I had managed an uneventful afternoon and figured I could handle whatever was thrown at me.

The walk to Anna’s took about ten minutes down a dirt road. There were no other houses between hers and mine: only a cornfield and a cluster of weeping willows. I never cared much for the cluster of trees. In the darkness, they gave off an eerie shadow. If the wind blew just right, you could almost see shadows moving behind the branches. They give me the chills. I tend to walk faster through the wooded areas. I know there are unnatural creatures who live among the trees.

Anna used to say she had seen a werewolf, but I personally believe it was a large dog. Werewolves were creatures in movies, not half-man half-dog beings who lived in The Weeping Forest. I had brushed off Anna’s declaration, even when she was adamant what she had seen was real.

After the trees is another cornfield, this one belongs to Constance North. She was an older woman, one of the Coven’s oldest witches, to be exact. She had lived in Evergreen Falls her entire life. The house and the land she owned were her fathers, who bought the acres from Patrick Longfellow back in the early twentieth century. The Longfellow pastures were directly across the street and had suffered in a great fire several years earlier. While vegetation was slowly returning, it still looked like a haunted graveyard with blackened trees and ashy soil.

During the day, Evergreen Falls is like any small Midwestern town. We have harvest days, fall parades, and the people come together to decorate the largest Evergreen tree every Christmas. Which just so happens to be on Constance North’s property. I had only ever been to the tree lighting once, and it was before Nadia’s death. The parents all remembered while the children may have forgotten who did time for the young girl’s murder. I had learned the consequences of my release in the park earlier that day.

It did not matter the circumstances; Anna and I would always be seen as murderers even if Nadia’s mother had forgiven me for the unfortunate demise of her young daughter.

“You aren’t going anywhere dressed like that.” Anna laughed as I took her front steps two at a time.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing,” I grumbled.

“Everything,” she replied. “What happened to the clothes I gave you this afternoon?”

“The dark lord had her say.” I moaned.

Anna and my mother were always going to butt heads when it came to my fashion sense. One wanted me to be modest. The other thought I should show some skin and have some fun.

“Come on; I think I have something that’ll fit.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me inside her house.

Anna lived in a double-wide trailer situated on twenty acres of land. Her father kept sheep, and her mother worked at the local Dollar Store. Anna was far from rich, but she had something far more valuable than money; she had a family who loved her.

Take my mother, for example. After my father left, she went on a spending spree and redid the whole house. I hadn’t seen him since the day he had left. So, while I lived in a large house with rooms we never used, we were far from a loving family.

“Your mother is such a b***h,” Anna stated as she began to pull clothes from her closet.

I knew why she wanted to go to this new club. Anna loved men, and I loved Anna. Not in the sense that it sounds, I loved Anna like my sister. I planned to accompany her to make sure she didn’t get into trouble. If Anna drank too much, I would be there to drive her home.

“She means well,” I mumbled.

I couldn’t make excuses for my mother’s behavior. She was a controlling b***h whose only thought was about herself and how she could further her magic claim. She had her own Coven. What else could she want?

“Your mother never means well. She has something against you, not sure what it is yet, but she’s the one who is keeping you from finding your happiness. I don’t know the last time I saw you smile.” Anna grabbed a black dress and tossed it at me. “Try this one.”

“I smile,” I objected softly.

Truth be told, I couldn’t remember the last time I felt happiness. It must have been the day before Nadia died because I had no recollection of joy any time after that. Then again, who would be happy with an ankle monitor and an overbearing mother?

“When?” Anna raised her eyebrows.

“Let me think,” I begged as I began to pull the baggy pants from my body.

The dress fit nicely, but it was a bit too short and a little tight. Not that it mattered. If Anna thought it looked good, it was what I was wearing for the night.

“No reason to think, Liz, you know damn well you have never been happy about anything,” Anna accused as she turned me from left to the right admiring her handy work. “This will do nicely.”

I watched her face as it contorted a bit. If anyone knew what was inside my head, it would be Anna.

“What are you wearing?” I asked as I picked up my clothes from the floor and folded them.

“Something red that should get some attention.” She laughed loudly as she pulled a dress from her closet, similar to mine.

The only difference was the color and the fact hers was sleeveless. She had the body to pass it off, though. One thing about Anna, she matured faster than I did. I still had yet to come into any real assets. Not like the one’s Anna and my mother had, that is.

“Let’s get going before my dad sees us,” Anna said as she rolled her eyes.

“Did you not tell them?” I raised an eyebrow.

“We are eighteen now. Do we have to tell our parents everything?” Anna scoffed.

I looked at the floor and tapped my finger on my hip.

“Actually, it wouldn’t be bad if someone knew we were together. We don’t know anything about this place.” I felt like a buzz kill.

Why did I have to be the logical of the two?