I stepped into the room, breathing in its musty smell. The bed was still neatly made with the old red-and-white quilt, but was there the vague impression of a resting body there in the center? I shook my head. Surely not.
Turning, I pulled open the door of the closet: it was mostly empty, but there were some abandoned things—a red sweater that had never fitright, a pair of sneakers with the canvas worn through in places, a blue dress I didn’t remember ever wearing. I closed the closet door, went over to the bed.
I sat on the edge of the mattress, remembering the knife I used to keep tucked under the pillow: Descender. Each morning when I woke, I’d tuck it under the mattress so my mother wouldn’t find it.
It couldn’t still be there, could it? Was it even real? Or something I’d imagined, made up? How much of memory was truth and how much an embellished fiction?
Had I really once had a magic knife that I believed would protect me from evil?
I ran my fingers under the mattress and felt the sting of something sharp. Carefully I worked my way along, grabbed the hilt of the knife, and pulled it out, my index finger cut and bleeding.
It wasn’t much to look at, this great magic knife. It was an old hunting knife with a bone handle and a blade designed for gutting deer. The blade was tarnished, pitted with rust. But the knife felt good in my hands. Familiar. Safe.
As I held it, a memory flashed into my head, how I’d given it a magical charge with the power of the elements: burying it in dirt, washing it with salt water, waving it through a flame, then through the air, then giving it its name under the light of a full moonYou are Descender, I’d said aloud,a knife of magical protection and power, you will help me to banish the dark ones and send them back where they came from.
Where had I learned all that? From a book?
No.
I remembered now as I held the knife, which seemed to thrum in my hands.
My mother had given me the knife. She’d brought it to me back when she still had the strength and resolve to keep the demon inside her at bay, to compartmentalize; the ability to act of her free will and teach me what I needed to do to protect myself from what she knew she would one dayfully become. She’d given me the knife for the same reason she’d marked my back with magic sigils: the hope it would one day save me.
It made my chest ache now, thinking about it. About how frantic and desperate and frightened she must have been, feeling this terrible presence gaining power inside her, knowing she needed to do all she could to protect Ben and me, to prepare us for what was coming.
“This is not just a knife,” she’d told me. “We’re going to turn it into a magic knife, an athame, and it will be a powerful object of protection. I hope that you will never need it, but one day you may, and you need to be ready.” For a whole month we charged the knife, washed it with salt water, smudged it with smoke from burning herbs, buried it in earth, let the moon shine down on its blade. When it was ready, my mother said, “Now, for the final step, you need to name your magic knife and tell it what you need it to do for you.” I’d chosen the name Descender because it was a knife for banishing the darkest of creatures, sending them back where they came from. My mother told me it was a good name and that everything was going to be all right because the magic was strong inside me.
I wished now for whatever magic I’d had back then to return to me, to help me do what I had to do. Would it be enough? The adult me clumsily doing a spell of banishment I’d read on the internet and on the faded pages of my mother’s journal?
I had to try.
I thought of Paul, of how loyal he’d been to my mother, how he’d subsumed his own ambitions and desires to care for her. I imagined that if he were still alive, he’d want me to do this. He’d probably help me if he could—anything to save Mavis. If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel him there standing behind me, my father and Bobbi too—all of them rooting for me, telling me to keep going, to do what needed to be done.
I threw my knife into the bag and left my childhood bedroom and all its ghosts and memories, and headed out of the house and into the woods.
FORTY
THE PATH WAS GROWNover, hardly recognizable, but my body knew the way. The sun was out now, melting what little snow was left in patches on the ground. I considered the light and the relative warmth a good omen. I walked through the birches and maples and poplars, picked my way around the brambles and roots. I remembered how I used to believe they all spoke to me; that the trees and rocks and wind whispered secrets in my ears. That they were my truest friends. I touched some of the larger trees as I walked along, the bark cold and rough beneath my fingers.I remember you, I told the trees silently. And I asked them to watch over me now, to help me with my task.
Each step I took felt like a step back in time. I was a kid again walking this same path wearing my father’s old wool hunting coat, holding my brother’s Daisy BB gun in my hands. My mother was back in the house reeking of gin and cruelty:I’m not myself today. The woods were my safe place, my secret place, and I would often fantasize about not going home at all: building a little fort, eating berries, drinking water from the brook, sleeping on a bed of pine boughs.
I remembered shooting at anything that moved, telling myself I was brave. That I could slay any beast.
And now, armed with my old knife, I’d come to slay the biggest beast, to put the monster that had ruled my childhood to rest; to bind the demon and free my family.
As I walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being followed, watched. I kept stopping, turning around. But I saw only black-cappedchickadees, a cardinal, a chattering squirrel. I had the sense that they were trying to tell me something, to warn me, perhaps.
I heard a familiareee-eee-eeeand looked up, saw a blue jay watching me from the low branch of a nearby tree. I moved on, and it followed, squawking at me, staying close.
Before I knew it, I had reached the clearing where the old cellar hole was. It was closer to our house than I remembered. And it was more grown over now—the clearing smaller and darker, the old foundation so obscured I almost walked right by it. Trees were growing up inside the place where the house once stood, the rock and mortar foundation more crumbled, the whole thing slowly returning to the earth. One day no one would ever know that a house had once stood here, or that a child used to come play in its ruins.
I remembered the happy family that I used to imagine had lived here once long, long ago. A mom and dad and a boy and a girl who’d loved each other very much. Then I thought of the way I’d given them all a cruel ending in my made-up stories. I had killed them all in a house fire, made them all die from the flu. I didn’t believe in happy endings back then.
Did I now?
Yes, I told myself. I needed to believe.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me. I turned quickly, sure I saw a flash of movement through the trees: a shadow here and then gone. But there was nothing. Just my mind playing tricks on me. The ghosts of my childhood coming to give me one last scare.
