Or is it something more?
The next bookmarked page made my mouth go dry:
November 29, 1984
I feel it inside me. Sometimes I can hear it speaking, telling me I can’t hang on forever. That I’m not strong enough to win.
“If you give in, if you work with me and stop fighting me, the world can be ours. I can give you anything you desire.”
Last night, it told me its name: Azha.
Every hair on my body stood on end.
Fingers shaking, I moved to the next bookmarked page:
February 21, 1985
I am running out of time. Losing more of myself day by day. The children are frightened of me. When Azha is in control, I say and do terrible things. David looks at me like I’m a stranger. I have been frantically trying to learn all I can. I spent yesterday in the city at the New York Public Library. A very kind reference librarian helped me; then after, I went to an antiquarian bookstore.
I have been trying to find a way to beat it. To send it away. To keep David and the children safe.
But it gets stronger each day.
On an undated page was a messily scribbled note, only half-legible:Spell for Binding, then something about a full moon, a string, salt water, a sacred seal.
At the bottom of the page, two words scrawled in huge letters:
TOO LATE
I jumped ahead to the next marked page—the ones in between were mostly full of strange scribbles, incomprehensible words and shapes.
May 4, 1985
David is dead.
Suicide.
But not really.
Azha made him do it.
I slammed the book closed, heart clenching like a tight fist in my chest.
Breathe, I told myself.
She knew. She knew what was happening and was powerless to stop it.
I looked at the journal, at the mess on the desk, and began putting things together. I imagined a scenario: Paul, finding these notes while going through my mother’s things for the retrospective. Paul, who must have always sensed there was something not quite right about my mother. But even when he saw the truth laid out in her own words, he didn’t want to believe it. So he’d come to my house and asked her himself.
I remembered the conversation I’d overheard:
Don’t pretend you didn’t know all along, my mother had said.You’re one of the cleverest people I know, Paul. The truth has been staring you in the face and you’ve just refused to look at it.
Even then, he hadn’t wanted to believe, insisting it wasn’t possible, but knowing the truth, feeling it in his gut and understanding the terror of it. Running from the house, hurrying to get back to Woodstock, pack his things, get on that plane, and get as far away from Azha as he could.
That’s not Mavis.
THIRTY-ONE
