I held Carrie up under the moon—but notmymoon—before I took off my mask. Then I was sucked into Carrie’s fears, transported through decades, consumed by a different time.
They said in the moments before death, you could watch your entire life as it happened before your eyes. And I watched Carrie’s.
Though it wasn’t Carrie’s soul I had gripped in my fist.
It was that of Clarice Danvers.
The Curse of the Hollow Heathens
“The sky was a grave gray as the elder Heathens crossed the Norse Woods, carrying lit torches, angry and spewing threats into the beast of the woods. ‘Sirius!’ they called out, the flames from the torches moving swiftly like fireflies. Usually, the forest was calm, unstirred, and the place where they fed and nourished, but on this night, the dead would rise, and the Heathens of the Norse Woods Coven wreaked fury, searching for the moon girl who threatened a coven. They searched for the white-haired witch with the dark soul. The one who tempted Bellamy to slaughter two of the Heathens but failed.
“Bellamy Blackwell was tied to a cot drenched in sweat. ‘LET ME GO!’ Bellamy cried out, and his cries lowered to whisper, ‘Please, do not hurt her!’ He had never experienced this type of pain, this kind of evil surrounding him. Thoughts of his beloved Sirius stacked, building four walls around him and caging him and consuming him entirely. ‘Please,’ he croaked through the agony. ‘Do not hurt her, let me go to her.’
“‘It is for the best, Bellamy,’ cooed his mother. ‘You are not yourself anymore. The creature has turned you into a monster.’ The cloth dipped into the bucket, and she wrung it out before patting his forehead, keeping him tied to the bed. Chaos stirred just outside the small cottage doors. Shouts and chants became one with the woods, embedding themselves into the trees.
“A song that would replay for centuries.
“On the border’s edge, Bellamy’s father, Horace, and the other Heathens captured the witch. Horace’s strong hand tangled into her wretched white hair and dragged her through the leaves and twigs and brush as they marched between the trees. Branches cut her flesh as she cried out, the sound of her hair ripping from her skull inside her ears.
“Sirius’ white dress, muddied and torn, turned to rags dangling from her bloodied body. After tying her to the tree, the Heathens surrounded her. Fire from the torches formed a perfect circle as the twine squeezed and pinched into her flesh. ‘I love him,’ she cried out helplessly. ‘You are making a mistake. I would never harm him, I love him!’
“The coven worked together, gathering broken tree limbs and dropping them at her feet, leaning them over her body. ‘Bellamy!’ she screamed out for him, begging for him to save her as terrified tears rained from her eyes, but the woods and Heathens swallowed her cries.
“‘Bellamy doesn’t want you,’ spat Horace. ‘You are nothing but a pesky wench!’
“‘Lies!’ cried Siri, trying to break free from the tree, seeing their glowing faces through the branches surrounding her. She’d never been so scared. ‘You are all liars! You know nothing about love!’
“Horace retrieved Bellamy’s necklace from his pocket, the one Siri had gifted him, and hung it in front of her on the branch so she could see. ‘You do not see Bellamy here, now do you? Where is your beloved Bellamy?’ He turned, calling out, ‘Oh, Bellamy. Your sweet Siri will be dead soon, where art thou Bellamy?’ The Heathen’s laughter bounced around the night air. ‘Why, look at that. Bellamy is not here. He does not care. It seems Bellamy has come to his senses, wants the wench gone!’ He walked closer, breathed through the cracks of the branches. ‘For he was the one to arrange your death!’
“Siri shook her head, darted her eyes around, to the green, the blue, the gold, the black. The Heathens of the Norse Woods. To her, she realized the truth. Bellamy would never come. ‘You kill me,’ she continued, desperate, ‘your coven will burn. Instead of lusting over your desirable features, women will only see their greatest fears in your faces, as you have shown me!’ She looked up to the sky, lips trembling as they lay their torches at her feet. ‘No one will love you, and those you love will only fear you!’ She remembered the night Bellamy had spoken of becoming a monster without her, and the fire blistered her feet, the pain excruciating. ‘You are all monsters, as Bellamy said he would one day become! Nothing but monsters who will live the rest of your days in the dark. I sentence your souls to an eternity without love, without compassion, without freedom! Only then will you know such pain!’
“‘You know nothing!’ Horace shouted in return, the fire crawling up her ragged gown. ‘Things of the night cannot know or understand such things. You never belonged here!’
“A gut-churning cry left her lips as the fire melted her flesh, yet she continued to chant, keeping the image of her new-born daughter in her mind for something to hold on to, knowing her baby, her blood she was leaving behind, would forever be safe in the hands of her keeper. ‘The curse shall crawl through the Heathens veins and into your first-born son. Misery will repeat. Over and over and over,’ cried she as the fire took her. ‘Love has turned us into the darkest of monsters of all…’
“And a black wave rolled through the Norse Woods and throughout the town. Something dark. Something malefic and prophetic.
Something that would later be called The Curse of the Hollow Heathens …
Chapter 42
Julian
There was onlyone book I could ever connect with. One.
I’d read it many times over. Cracked its spine. Folded corners of the pages. Blurred the ink with the only tears I cried, hid them inside the walls of its bindings where no one could ever see. The oil prints from my fingertips stained its curled and yellowed edges. The book had rested under my moon milk atop my nightstand during restless nights. I’d memorized every word and line and paragraph and page. Recited it as if I’d lived the life myself—as if I’d wrote it in another life. I’d allowed no one to touch it, for it had become my most prized possession. I was both the creator and the monster in the story—the creator who shut himself out from the world due to his tortured mind, and the monster who never deserved a name.
And there was one sentence that came to mind fromFrankensteinat this moment: “Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish.”Nothing.
Clarice Danver’s life flipped through my brain like a Rolodex. The memories were so quick, but I grasped every single one. Her greatest fear was not being able to save herson.
Her greatest fear was not breaking the curse of the Hollow Heathens.
All for herson!
My emotions spiraled from adoration to anger to hopelessness to desperation to rage all over again as she had experienced them. She had been pregnant, desperate to find the answers. She had stolen the books and was caught. Before being banished from Weeping Hollow, she had written the answers into the Danvers book before Matteo Cantini confiscated them.
The mark of the moon. The birthmark. Sever the curse by severing the life which held the birthmark of the moon. It was all right here—the truth flashing through her memories in my mind.
