I

I stood, leaning against a cool, brick wall, looking at the necklace gleaming in my hand. It was nothing special, just a simple chain with a red gem surrounded by littler white ones.

I had no idea why my mother had given it to me, or why she had freaked out afterwards. I had never seen anything like her freak attack. Never. Not from a little kid and never in the two months that I lived with her while she slowly went insane.

I kicked a rock that was sitting on the sidewalk in front of me, it soared through the air and hit a person across the street.

The stranger was wearing a black hoodie. It was the stranger from before.

He started to walk over towards me, his pace rather quick. “Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hit you.” I yelled over to him, but either he was deaf, or really mad.

He didn't stop coming at me, and I saw a glint of something silver in his hand. Was it a cell phone? Was he calling the police because I kicked a rock at him?

Then it glinted again and I realized that it was no cell phone, it was a knife. My eyes widened and I turned and ran down the sidewalk, skidding around corners and pushing a woman out of my way.

Words couldn't explain the need I felt to get away, to run until I collapsed. So that's just what I did. I ran.

I ran until my legs felt like jelly and my lungs were on fire, but I didn't stop. I turned to check behind me, like they always did in the movies, and he wasn't anywhere to be seen. Of course I didn't stop running and I wouldn't until I reached home.

I turned onto my street, my breath coming in short gasps. My lungs were screaming. But when I turned that corner, I wanted to scream.

On the opposite side of the road, just standing there with his hood covering his face, was the man. I knew I could never outrun him, but I had to try.

I ran straight at him, and he seemed to move like the wind. I was inches from my front door, when I felt him grab the back of my shirt. I turned, wrenching myself free, and suddenly, an explosion blew him backwards.

Seizing my chance, I yanked open the front door and shut it, locking the locks behind me. I backed away from the door, never taking my eyes off it, so when I bumped into Grams, and jumped five feet in the air, she looked at me suspiciously.

“You look you've seen a ghost.” Grams said, shaking her head at me. When I couldn't say anything back, she made me sit on the couch.

With shaky breaths, and many glances towards the door, I told her what had happened with my mother screaming and the man chasing me. She put her arm around my shoulders and made me a cup of hot tea with honey in it.

“I'm sorry Peyton, I shouldn't have pushed you to go see your mother. This is my fault.” She patted my hand, then pulled it away quickly. “What's that?”

I realized she was talking about the necklace that was laced between my fingers. I had forgotten all about it, it wasn't even in the story I had told Grams. I left that part out.

“It's from mom, she gave it to me just before she had her meltdown.”

Grams stood up and backed away from me, her eyes locked on the necklace.

I stood as well. “Grams? Grams, what's wrong.” I took a step towards her, but she held up her hands as if warding me off. Suddenly there was a wall in front of me, invisible, yet it was there.

“Grams? What's going on?” I pounded my fists against the wall, causing them to hurt. “Help me Grams!” I hit the wall harder, but nothing was helping me.

“I am helping you child. Now be quiet.” She had set multiple candles around the room, and she lit everyone of them with a whisper. “Da mihi lumen.”

Every fiber of my being was shaking, as if something was wrong. Which in this situtation was quite an understatment. The room grew dark, as if every shred of light was being sucked out of being. Even the candles grew dark.

Grams was chanting in the strange language now, and the light began to come back to the room. Suddenly the flames shot high, burning inches from where they were supposed to.

I couldn't understand a word Grams was saying, it might have been Latin.

'Da mihi virtutem salvandi,

Exstingue tenebris intus,

Sanguinem meum sanguinem,

Expellat tenebras et ostendit lumen!'

I felt like I was being ripped in half, then it stopped, and the candles blew themselves out and once again the sunlight streamed in through the windows.

Grams stared at me in shock. “How did you do that? No one can resist the power of an older witch.”

“Witchcraft? That's what this is about? That's insane! It doesn't even exist!” I screamed at her, and when I tried to get my hand through the wall, I found it was gone. I took a teantive step towards Grams, but she moved away from me, like I was a person with a highly infectious diseise.

“Grams, I-”

“No, you stay away from me, I don't want you near me.”

Shock filled my body, this was the woman who raised me, and now she wouldn't even look at me. Fighting back tears, I ran to my room, locking the door behind me.

Why was she treating me this way? I wasn't the one with powers, which they used on their granddaughters. I was normal, or at least as normal as a person like me was going to get.

I buried my face in my pillows, and let my tears flow into the bedcovers. I cried until I thought I was going to explode and my throat had that tight feeling so that I almost couldn't breath.

And the only thing I could think of was, what did I do to deserve this? I turned over and looked at the silver necklace in my hand, its red gem shining from the fading sun out of the window.

Everything in my life before may not have been perfect, but at least it was constant. Grams was always there for me, and I went through my day with everyone talking behind my back.

But now everything was upside down and falling apart. My own grandmother thought I was evil, my mother is slowly losing what part of her mind she has left and dad is still in prison for murder.

Why couldn't I just be normal, with a mother and father who went to work and me and my siblings went to school, then we came home, did homework, and ate supper around a table together. But I guess normal was just to far away for me to reach.

I turned on my side and stared at the mirror that was on top of my dresser. I could see myself clearly in it, from my red-rimmed eyes, to the frown that was turning down the corners of my lips.

I shut my eyes against the image, I just wanted to be normal. Normal. Nothing else, I wanted to not be stared out when I left the house, I wanted people to stop talking about what a freak I was because of my parents, but most of all, I wanted all this witch stuff to fade into the black and never show itself again.

Thinking about what I wanted, I fell asleep.

In my dreams, and masked figure stood on the top-most point of a star surrounded by a circle. After chanting some words that I didn't understand, the shape began to glow a bright shade of bloodred. A murky outline of a person shrouded in a robe could barely been seen.

“She's here. I can get to her, and I can break her.”

“Make sure you can, because if you don't everything will fall apart.”

The scene before me disolved, and I woke up in a cold sweat, with the feeling that none of that was a dream.