The Encounter

from going in and, even though the idea of visiting an exhibition of skulls in the dim light of the evening made her feel slightly uncomfortable, she thought that what she could imagine would be much worse than what was really inside.

  She pushed the gate open the rest of the way and walked inside. She couldn't see any type of building which could house the exhibition. All she could see were huge bulges that she couldn't identify spread around the park. She walked towards one of them and, when she was closer, she couldn't help letting out a strangled cry. The bulge in front of her was a representation of an enormous skull about two meters high. It looked like it was coming out of the ground itself, with only the top half visible, like the body of a giant that had been badly buried. Its eyes were two huge empty cavities staring blankly up at the orange sky. Getting over her initial fear, Luna slowly walked over and looked closer. The structure appeared to have been made out of the branches of a bush, held together with a metal mesh, with the whole thing covered in white paint. However, the time that it had been exposed to the weather and vegetation surrounding it, gave the skull a very real look, as if it really was a skull that had been abandoned there many years ago.

  She continued to walk through the park. Every couple of meters she found similar sculptures: a skeleton with its arms crossed over its chest, huge skull on pedestals, recreations of car accidents... It was a museum of death and, with a shiver running down her spine, Luna felt that Death itself could be walking in that park, that Death could enjoy that which humans rejected at being faced with a reality that scared them.

  She left the park walking quickly, without looking behind her. The light was a lot weaker and the road seemed dark and threatening. She knew that she had nothing to be afraid of, but she would feel better when she had gotten away from that place and was sitting in her aunts' kitchen, drinking a cup of hot chocolate and telling her aunt about everything she had seen that afternoon.

  The gate to her aunt's house rose up a few meters ahead. She felt safer as soon as she entered the garden. She walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. She waited for a few seconds but there was no answer. Maybe her aunt wasn't home yet. Taking the key that her aunt had given her before she had left from her jeans pocket, she opened the door.

  Once she was inside she called her aunt again to no avail. The house was dark and silent. She turned on the living room light and decided to go into the kitchen and prepare the cup of hot chocolate she had been thinking about earlier. She could wait for her aunt reading a book, sitting on the sofa in the living room while she drank her chocolate. It was a shame she didn't know how to light the fire, it would have been perfect.

  Walking towards the kitchen, she discovered a small door on the adjacent wall. She hadn't noticed it that morning, but now the door was ajar. She walked over and opened it fully, thinking that it was most probably a pantry or broom closet. But it wasn't anything like that. Old wooden stairs stretched out in front of her in the darkness. Why hadn't her aunt told her about that place when she had shown her around the house after lunch?

  She looked for a light switch around the door but couldn't find one. She couldn't walk down the stairs in the pitch black. She decided that next time she went into the city she would buy a flashlight so these things wouldn't happen again. She walked into the kitchen and started opening drawers until she found a box of matches and some candles. They would help to have a quick look around. Lighting one of the candles, she put the box of matches in her pocket and walked back to the stairs.

  For a second she thought if it would be best to wait till her aunt got home and ask her what she kept down there. It was very possible that she had just forgotten to show her that part of the house or that the room was just a basement where she kept old furniture and thought there was nothing interesting for her to see. But, what if she kept something important down there, something secret that she didn't want to show Luna? She raised the candle to light the stairway and walked down the stairs.

  3. Revelations

  Emma sat down on a rock and looked around her, feeling tired and beaten. She swore that she had seen hundreds of rosemary bushes around her while she had walked through the forest in the past. It was impossible for all of them to have disappeared. It almost seemed like somebody had been pulling them out so that she would not be able to find them, but that was a ridiculous idea.

  The forest was getting darker by the minute; it would soon be night. She wasn't afraid of the dark, she had walked through that forest so many times at night that she could almost walk through it blindfolded and as sure as she would in her own home. But she had walked very far that day and felt exhausted. She wanted to be back in her kitchen, talking to Luna, although she must have walked several miles away from the house looking for those damn bushes.

  She stood up, ready to turn back and leave her search for the next day. Feeling desperate, she looked around her surroundings once more. She really needed the plants. She could still feel that presence pushing, even harder than before, trying to penetrate her mind, and with each passing day she found herself with less strength to fight against it. She had to perform a ritual to protect herself from the negative force because she was not sure if she could continue to fight against it alone. She also didn't want to feel tired or in a bad mood during the days that she finally had Luna with her. She wanted to show and teach her so many things... Why did those feelings have to start that precise summer?

  She tried to calm down, the idea of somebody trying to see her thoughts was unpleasant, but she had nothing to hide. She had no dark secrets from the past that could be used to hurt by somebody who was trying to read her mind. But it was precisely this that made the whole situation even more confusing. What interest could that stranger have in her to spend weeks trying to break through the mental barriers that she had put in place, taking into account the amount of psychic energy that the person had to use to achieve this? And what kind of being was strong enough to spend weeks tirelessly insisting on that siege?

  If she could only convince herself that it was her own imagination, that she was getting obsessed over nothing... But, since the night before, she was convinced that that was not the case. She had used the help of the Blue Moon to try and identify the person attacking her, to find out who it was or at least scare them, but everything had been in vain. Despite having used her strongest clairvoyance spells, she hadn't been able to lift the fog separating her from the being. She had not been able to see her attacker but she had been able to feel their resistance and power. And whoever it was attacking her, it seemed that they had felt her attempts to uncover their identity, because since then they had been attacking with more force than before. For this reason she had to try that old protection spell she had found in some of her grandmother's old notes. The problem was she needed rosemary for that and all of it had seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

  She stood up, closed her eyes to breathe in the aroma of the forest and, after greeting the guardians of the elements, she muttered a request:

  I plead here your generosity.

  Give to me your focus and clarity.

  Guide me to that which I cannot seek.

  Restore my calmness and peace.

  She was sure she felt how the breeze that caressed her skin changed slightly. She forced herself not to open her eyes while the aroma of the forest kept changing. The smell of the damp earth, the pine needles and the fresh grass began to disappear, being replaced with a new fragrance that she recognized immediately. Rosemary. She smiled and, without opening her eyes, began to follow the aroma. A few meters ahead, she opened her eyes and looked upon the green bush with blue flowers. She gave thanks mentally to the guardians and bent down to pick some of the stems. Now she could go home.

  Luna rested her hand against the wall, feeling unsure. The stairs creaked with each step, causing echoes. Under the shimmering light of the candle, the centre of the stairs seemed to glow, as if the wear of hundreds of footsteps over the years had polished and
smoothed the wood. She held the candle high and looked down. She couldn't make out anything from where she was, just a large table in the middle of the room.

  There was a strange aroma floating in the air, of herb and spices. Maybe that was where her aunt prepared her medicines. If it was her work place, then maybe she shouldn't go down there, she could break something. She lowered the candle again to light up the next step and continued walking down. She wouldn't touch anything, just have a quick look around and then go back upstairs.

  Once she was standing in front of the table she felt quite perplexed, trying to find a logical explanation for the collection of objects on it. Some of them could be used to prepare medicines or creams, like a small silver knife, a chalice or an iron cauldron, but she found no other relation for the rest of the stuff. On the table there were loads of candles and stones of all shapes and sizes. She was under the impression that they were not laid out at random, but that they placed following a specific design, with the centre hosting rough stone figures representing a man and a woman. Luna moved closer to the small figures but she didn't dare to stretch her arm out to touch them. She had