The Forgotten

Once we pulled into my driveway, we rushed inside.  I slammed the door and ran to the kitchen to grab the salt.  

"Anthony, come take this thing off of me.  I can't find the clasp!"  I shouted, but when I turned around he was there already in the kitchen.  

"Okay, alright, calm down."  I turned around and squatted down just enough for him to see well around my neck.  

"It's not here."  He told me, sounding confused.

"What? What do you mean?  It was there when you put it on!"  I said, and my tone was a bit harsh.  

"Stop getting so upset.  Just calm down, alright?"  He said rubbing my shoulder reassuringly.  

"Why do you have the salt?"  Anthony asked me, with the most curious expression.  

"Something my aunt and mother taught us when we were little.  It keeps away dark spirits and energy."  I explained, trying to remember if there was anything else I was forgetting.  

I rushed through the living room, tossed my phone and keys on the table, and then over to the front door.  

"Hey,"  Anthony was right beside me.  I could tell he was only trying to help, but at this point I was too nervous, no, too afraid of whatever Sofie was planning.  

"just please tell me what you're planning."  he continued with a genuine plea.  

"I can't, not until I know we're safe."  I said as I opened the door.  

"Safe?"  A familiar voice came from just outside the house.  Not at all who I was expecting; Sofie stood just outside my door.  

"Salt?  What are you planning on doing with that?"  She laughed, as she pushed through me and into my house.  

"Get out!"  I yelled at her, shaking salt in a circle around me and Anthony.  

"Oh, come on.  You really think a firm tone and a little salt are gonna stop me now?  You've gotta be kidding me.  I mean come on, you come from a line of Pagans.  Surely you can do better than all this."  Sofie said condescendingly.  

Sofie pulled a crystal, similar to the one bound around my neck, from her pocket, clutched it tightly in her hand, and blew on it.  A gust of air rushed so heavily at the house that all of the windows burst, blowing all of the salt out of the house and slamming the door so hard that it, too, burst into splinters.  

"What do you want with him?"  Anthony asked, sounding intimidated by the look she shot him. 

"Oh, he has something of mine."  She said pointing at the crystal pendant hanging from my neck.  

"Actually you have something of hers."  Sofie pointed over to my couch where, out of a swirl of dark colored light, Michelle's resting body appeared.  

"Michelle!"  I yelled, and started toward her.  Sofie held out the hand that was still clutching her crystal, and it was as if I had walked into an invisible wall.  

"What do you want with her?"  I demanded an answer.  A grin slid across Sofie's face, she looked so confident it disgusted me.  

"She's my sister."  The words escaped Sofie's lips so softly, but hit my ears like pins being pressed into the drums of them.

"Well, half-sister, that is."  Sofie went on.  

"YOU took her from the hospital?"  I asked her, my voice was cracking.  I couldn't believe what I had just heard.  

"Yes.  You see, that crystal--"  She said as she pointed at it, and before I could look it was no longer bound to me, but instead it was in her free hand.  

"This crystal, is bound to a curse."  She said as she undid the clasp that had previously disappeared.  

"You see, once I heard that my sister was in an accident, and that you were the driver---Well I had to take care of things."  She said as she took a few steps closer to where Anthony and I were standing.

"I cast a curse with this crystal, one that would make you feel pain in everything you touched.  A curse that would bring pain to the people that you cared about.  Just like the pain you brought on my sister."  She smiled with her explanation.  

"Really, I have Anthony to thank for everything."  Sofie was standing in-between Anthony and myself, facing him.  She poked at his chest, and stepped closer, each time forcing him to take a step back.  With each step she poked him, yet again, thanking him each time.  

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"  She said excitedly

"What did I do?"  Anthony asked.  

"Leave him alone!"  I yelled.  

"You did that!"  Sofie viciously pointed in my direction.

"You made him feel!  Made him passionate!  You made him love you!  Although, I'd say it's all a little stranger than I would've imagined."  Sofie said, then turned around to face me.  

"You see, you were doing everything just fine, bringing everything crashing down around you.  Manipulating, even killing your friends, which was just what the curse was designed for!"  She now placed the necklace and pendant around her own neck.  

"But as I watched you, deteriorating, I realized the only way to bring my sister back was to re-curse this crystal, to absorb the original curse.  Funny how magic works, isn't it?"  Sofie stood there swirling the crystal around her neck, in between two fingers.  

  "Everything that's transpired in the last year, really I've been in such control.  I cursed Alana to go mad the night we met.  The night you thought she was meeting someone else.  Oh, how I had hoped it would make you put her out of her misery.  I wanted you to destroy yourself.  Then I started to look more closely.  I saw you, secretly desiring for Anthony, so I worked a small spell for that to move along.  Really that it was simple."  Sofie really was a snake, and I had no idea.

"You see, I wasn't going to win.  I had no way to bring my sister back.  The curse I cast on you, it took so much of my power, power that I still haven't regained.  So I needed the power that the curse had caused you to be saturated with."  Anthony started to move back towards me, but she shoved him back up against the wall.  

"Once I saw you, and how pathetic you were, it all became clear to me.  I had to re-curse the crystal to absorb the initial curse, now, that was the tricky part.  I knew that you were starting to gain control of it, that you were becoming lucid again.  All I had to do was convince you that I wanted to help you before you helped yourself.  So I swayed you into believing that the only thing you had to lose, was him."  I was truly astonished at what she was telling me.  She had planned everything out so well.  

"You see I was counting on you opening up to Anthony, counting on you to show him.  Once you put that crystal on, all you had to do was show someone you cared about all the darkness you had materialized into the world.  Once you did, all of that power, all of the life energy you stole from your friends, was imbued into the crystal.  So in a sense, I held to my promise, and I helped rid you of your worries."  Sofie stepped closer to Anthony.  She traced his arm with her index finger.  Then shook her head and turned back to me.

"You see all those years ago, when I left after freshman year, it was to go live with my dad, in Salem.  What you don't realize or seem to understand is, I went to track down your family.  You and I were never friends, but Michelle told me everything about you.  She was in love with you, and you fed her everything I needed to know.  What a coincidence that my dad was living in Salem right down the road from one of your family members."  Sofie chuckled, and shook her head to herself.

"Michelle was a bit of a skeptic when it came to witchcraft, but I was determined to learn it, and your family taught me.  I never imagined how much power I could really have, but here I stand ready to destroy you with your family secrets."  Sofie's glare was fixed on me.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  I knew my family was Pagan, but I never really bought into such things.  I never thought curses were real, I thought it was more a bunch of superstition.  

"It was an accident, the whole thing.  I never meant for Michelle to get hurt!"  I tried to explain, tried to reason with her.  

"That's just it, I'm not just doing this because of the accident.  You were everything she wanted, but she was never enough for you!  You'd rather be in the arms of this pathetic idiot."  Sofie gave Anthony another forceful shove.

"But that's fine---"  Sofie was cut off.

"Ryan?"  I heard Elisa's voice just outside.  I turned around and watched as she stepped around the remnants of what used to be my front door.  

"Ryan, what's going on?"  Elisa said as she attempted to walk through the door but, not surprisingly to me, walked into one of Sofie's boundary spells.  Elisa couldn't get in.  

"Oh just in time, Elisa!"  Sofie blurted, followed by a sadistic chuckle.  

"See, I knew it was going to be Anthony you opened up to first.  Like I said, I was counting on it.  That makes the next part so much more---Perfect!  This crystal gives me the power that the curse once gave you, and once I put it on Michelle, she will awaken from her sleep just as you did when I cast the curse on you."  Sofie explained, then she tugged Anthony across the room closer to where I was standing.   

"But see the curse is what woke you up, the curse turned you into a monster.  So, do the math---without the curse, your days are surely numbered."  Sofie nodded her head in self-assurance.

"First though, I'm going to make you witness the most painful thing yet."  Sofie said, as she squinted her eyes to express malice.  

Sofie grabbed my hand, and clutched Anthony's wrist more thightly.  I tried to free myself and yelled for Anthony to fight against her grip, but our attempts were futile.  It was then when I felt what she was doing.  Anthony's eyes filled with tears.  I could feel his pain, his life slipping into her.  

"Ryan" he yelped.  

I could feel her inside of his mind, taking every memory of --- me!  I watched as she erased our first meeting, our first kiss, even our arguments.  He was the only thing that I really wanted, my anchor to my humanity, or at least he had been.  I felt a piece of my heart fading, with her touch.  

"Ryan--please--help!"  he cried out again, I watched as he reached his free hand toward me.  

I couldn't move, I was paralyzed.  Frozen.  Forced to watch everything, feel everything.  I felt his heartbeat slowing, and his body numbing.  I couldn't help him, just like I couldn't help Michelle before.  I deserved what Sofie was doing to me, but he didn't.  

The most powerful flash of his memories hit me, it was our most precious moment.  I watched through his eyes, as we made love, felt his passion, his touches, and all of his emotions, then, felt them torn away.  Sofie was going to make me watch, as she killed him.  

Just as I had thought that, she must have heard, because she released us.  We both fell to the floor.   I was hardly conscious, and Anthony was most-definitely out cold.  

"Anthony!"  My voice came as a hoarse whisper.  

"Now, the crystal surely has enough power to awaken you sister!"  I heard Sofie's voice trail off as she got closer to where Michelle was laying.  

Slowly I pulled myself up off the ground and over the adjacent couch.  Sofie unhooked the pendant from her neck and placed it on Michelle, then muttered something I didn't hear.  

"Awaken, sister!"  Her tone was much louder now.   Michelle gasped for air as she sat up, like it were her first breath and she was being reborn.  Then, in a flash of light, both of them were gone.  The cold feeling that had filled my body after the crystal robbed me of my power, or curse, was gone.  I felt numb, and fell immediately to the floor.  

"Ryan!  Ryan, stay with me!"  Elisa had rushed to my side.  Apparently Sofie's boundary spell had been broken, once they left.  I felt her slapping me, repeatedly, on my face.  I couldn't fight it, all I could hear was a loud ringing-buzzing sound.  I had nothing to hold onto.  

"Ryan, please."  I felt her force my body into the sitting position.  

"Open your damn eyes!"  She yelled.  

"My mother is on her way!"  I heard Elisa's voice, but what I heard more clearly was Anthony's.  

"Where am I?"  Is what came first.  

"Oh, you're alright!?"  I heard Elisa respond with a tone of relief.  

"Who are you people?"  

At the sound of his confusion and brittle tone, my heart broke, now I was the forgotten, and everything just went black.