The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding

  Don’t think about them, I thought. Not when that tightness was back in my throat, and all I could picture was my comfy bed back home, and the late-night snack Mom would have made me if she caught me still up at this hour. We would have watched a movie, just the two of us, or she would have told me a story I’d never heard before, about her scientist parents exploring the Amazon.

  Where was she now—still in China? Had Mom and Dad come home once they realized what had happened? Maybe Prue was with them….

  “I could use your help, Prosper,” Uncle Barnabas had said, offering me the palette of face paint. His costume was something like that of the undead ringleader of a circus, complete with a blood-splattered top hat. “Let’s see if you put that paint set to good use over the years.”

  I studied his face for a moment, staring at his long nose and bright blue eyes. And, just to prove a point to Nell, I settled on a ghoulish skeleton face, mixing a bit of green into the white that covered him from forehead to chin, just to be that much more putrid. I patted black, ringed with a bit of purple, into the dips and dimples of his skin, added a tiny bit of red, like blood, to the stitches I drew along either side of his mouth.

  Finished, I sat back. Since there were no mirrors, he turned to Nell for her assessment.

  “How do I look?” he asked.

  “Creepy,” she had admitted, dragging the word out reluctantly, like it was coated in thorns. Wrapped up in her arms, Toad had lifted a paw and patted her hand.

  Another scream. This time a girl, in the eardrum-piercing range. Uncle Barnabas’s loud, booming fake laughter followed, then, like clockwork, the screeching sirens on the second floor went off, and another set of kids lost it.

  “More satisfied customers!” His voice sounded deeper as it came through the microphone. And weirdly Irish.

  —douse them with boiling tar, crack them o’er the head with a saw! Alastor was still singing in a cheery voice.

  “That doesn’t even rhyme,” I growled, pushing myself off the makeshift bed. “Try bar.”

  When pacing did nothing but make my stomach churn and cause Toad to cling to my ankle by his teeth, I limped over to Uncle Barnabas’s bookshelves and began to pull books down, flipping through them. The spines were all shades of leather—brown, black, blue—and soft from being handled so much.

  I arranged them by color as I put them back, Toad watching me like the old nanny Prue and I used to have—the one that would slap the inside of my hand whenever I was bad or silly or trying so it wouldn’t leave an obvious mark. The second Mom figured out how that nanny was disciplining us, she kicked her to the curb so hard that the old lady practically got whiplash.

  Grandmother had hired her.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m putting them back, don’t worry,” I muttered, absently rubbing my hand at the memory. “Can’t read them anyway, they’re all in Latin. Oh—crap!”

  The last book was so old and brittle, the binding all but fell apart in my hand. A chunk of the paper landed on the dusty floor with a thwack loud enough to make me jump. I glanced around, making sure Nell and Uncle Barnabas hadn’t come back, accepting a swat on the nose from Toad in punishment.

  My hand stilled. The pages had flipped open to another engraving, this one a circle of inky monsters with horns and tails.

  “Nominibus daemonum,” I read from the title page. “Nominibus…?”

  The meaning is plain, if thou—you—possessed the smallest measure of wit. Thou clearly does not even speak thine own ancient language, Alastor scoffed in disgust. The names of—

  There was something in the sharp silence, the way he cut himself off quickly, that made me curious. Dangerously curious.

  “The names of?” I pressed. “The names of…daemons…demons? The names of fiends? Why would there be a whole book listing just names?”

  Alastor, for the first time in hours, remained strangely quiet.

  I turned the page to a picture of a huge black snarling demon and decided to shut the book. I’d have to ask Nell and Uncle Barnabas about it tomorrow, to see why my heart had given a little quiver, even though I wasn’t nervous at all.

  It took another hour before my brain went fuzzy enough around the edges to go to sleep. I was starting to drift off into dreamland when I felt the first twitch in my toes.

  Then they curled and stretched and curled again. On their own.

  I sat straight up, yanking the blanket up to my chin. The moonlight streaming in through the window was all the light I needed to watch my toes start wiggling.

  “Could you not?” I hissed. “Seriously!”

  Toad lifted his sleepy face from where he’d buried it in the blankets.

  It felt like my feet were buried in a pound of sand. I couldn’t move them myself or make them stop as they tapped against the couch cushion. One-two-three-four-five, over and over.

  “Holy crap—stop!”

  Shall I? I think it best to explore my new habitat.

  Alastor let out a low laugh and continued to play with each finger and toe. They were only little movements, but it felt like hot pins were streaming through my veins. My right arm burned like nothing else as it suddenly began to flop around on its own. The sensation was in my left arm, too, making the cut there hurt like you-know-what…but it didn’t budge.

  The fiend grunted with the effort.

  Iron, he hissed. That malt-worm dared cut me with a cursed blade?

  “Uh, last time I checked she cut me, not you,” I said. I lifted the bandage so it was directly in front of my face. “Does that mean…if she had cut my other arm and my legs, you wouldn’t be able to control them either?”

  The idea that my icicle of a grandmother had done me a favor—whether she meant to or not—was too ridiculous for me to believe. I pushed the thought away.

  Alastor was silent again, and I was starting to suspect this was a very bad thing.

  Uncle Barnabas had asked me a million and a half questions about Alastor while we ate our cold pizza dinner. Each time I had to answer, the words felt clogged in my throat. The truth was, I couldn’t feel the fiend inside of me in the normal sense. He wasn’t a little beetle roaming around under my skin. It was more…it was more like someone had forced me to swallow a thundercloud. It growled and rumbled and every once in a while felt a bit gusty. I could tell when he was frustrated or angry, because I felt frustrated and angry too.

  It doesn’t matter, I told myself. I’ll get him out soon.

  Alastor’s voice came slithering out. We shall see about that, no?

  I scooted down the couch and kicked off the blanket. I was hot and sticky with sweat. Feverish, almost. Even with the wind, the night sky was breathing in through the open window. I was miserable and wide-awake. It was a good thing there wasn’t a phone or computer, because I’m not sure I could have resisted calling my dad’s cell phone, just to hear his voice for a second. I would have broken Nell’s spell in a heartbeat if it meant I could sneak off and hide back inside my own house and know for certain that Prue was safe.

  “Did you always hate my family this much?” I asked him. “Do you have to hurt everyone? We weren’t even alive back then to try to stop them.”

  Not that thou would have, came the rumbling response. Every Redding heart is poisoned by greed.

  “Not my parents’,” I said.

  Are they not eager for praise from the world? Dost they not hunger to find the best care, not just for others, but for thy sister? Alastor mused. Thy parents did not make the contract, but they have cherished its effects, benefited beyond their dreams. And if it should all come tumbling down, if thy parents should lose thy good name…ahhhh, what a delight it would be.

  My heart thumped painfully in my chest. As if Toad could hear it, he fluttered over from the end of the couch, his wings flicking and snapping against my face.

  “Don’t do it,” I whispered. “It wouldn’t just hurt my family. It would hurt thousands of kids around the world—”

  They will feel my pain. Th
ey will feel the agony of the girl-child your forefather burned alive. I swore I could hear the smirk in his voice. And it will be all thy fault, Maggot. Who would accept you then, knowing you were the cause of such misery and misfortune? Who could love such a weak fool? But thou art well acquainted with scorn and mockery, art thou not? How certainly thou will prove their every suspicion that there is nothing remarkable, nothing worthy about you.

  He wasn’t…I tried to breathe, to fight the sting in my eyes. He wasn’t wrong. Everything he said was true. If I couldn’t stop him, if I was the reason my own family failed, faltered, fell—

  Thy misery tastes of pepper, Maggot. Delicious. But there is a way to save them, to ensure they will not hate thee. Thine own family—mother, father, sister alike. All safe, all cared for. You would only need to agree to a contract of your own….

  A tiny black paw pressed against the tip of my nose. Toad’s gleaming emerald eyes glared at me, his claws out, just above my tender eyeballs. Rather than blind me, he removed his paw and leaned down, peering into my eyes. For the first time I noticed that his ears weren’t as small as the rest of him, they were just folded down. Now one rose of its own accord, forming a perfect little triangle, listening.

  “Can you hear him?” I whispered, wondering.

  Changelings are nothing more than mice in my realm, Alastor said. I see this fiend is no more than a lowly lap pet. Foolish. The only good use for them is to pickle them and roast them over a blazing fire.

  Toad answered my question, and Alastor’s charming mental image, with a howl, drawing his claws back to strike. I seized him by the belly and launched myself up off the couch. “Come on, come on, buddy, you know I don’t think that. He’s just trying to get us worked up. Let’s find a good distraction.”

  Since I couldn’t read half the books on the shelves, and the other half would most definitely give me nightmares, that was out. I stood at the center of the attic, hands on my hips, orange pumpkin shirt glowing in the moonlight. The smell of sour milk seeped into the air, and, just as suddenly, I knew what I had to do.

  So gross, I thought hours later, trying to breathe through my mouth as I tied off the rancid trash bags and walked them over to the open window. I squeezed and shoved them through, trying not to squirm as one of them started leaking mysterious liquid all over my hands. So, so gross.

  Nell and Uncle Barnabas didn’t seem surprised to find me still up, but they did seem a little confused by the fact I was in the middle of sweeping the floor.

  “What?” I said defensively. “It was dirty.”

  I don’t stress about things being clean, I swear, but I like to organize my clothes by color in my closet and for there to be no dust or crumbs on my desk at home. It wasn’t like there’s anything wrong with that. People shouldn’t have to live with boxes and bags left out everywhere to trip over, never mind mugs crusted with days-old dried oatmeal. Or unmade beds. Or spider-infested curtains. Or the threat of stacks of books falling over and crushing them.

  “It’s…” Uncle Barnabas began, taking off his glasses to wipe them before replacing them back on his face. “Very clean in here.”

  You bet it was.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” Nell asked, raising an eyebrow. She didn’t sound tired in the slightest, and I felt like I had taken cold medicine. I had to drag myself around the room. It was almost midnight—my parents usually forced me and Prue to be in bed by nine thirty, ten at the latest if we had family movie night.

  Tonight was family movie night.

  Don’t think about it, don’t picture it, don’t miss it….A whole lot of good telling myself that was going to do.

  Still, a small, excited part of me recognized there was at least some good in all of this. No bedtime, no plain, boring food, and no Grandmother. In Redhood, you lived by the rules, or you couldn’t live there at all. As much as I wanted to think my parents were different, they still had their own unique set of them. Here, with the exception of my two commands from the resident witch—no mirrors and no revealing my name or location—I was mostly free of them.

  At least, as far as I could tell. But if Nell and Uncle Barnabas knew what had happened, that Alastor had been able to control my arm and toes…

  “He—” I began, but stopped myself. Did I really want to tell them about the toe controlling? If they knew that, would they strap me down, or lock me in some kind of closet? “Alastor’s like a baby. All he does is whine and cry.”

  “I might have something to help shut him up,” Nell said. “I’ve never tested it before, but it could work….”

  Uncle Barnabas’s hand came down on my shoulder and Nell’s eyes locked on it.

  “Is it a new spell,” he asked eagerly, “or a hex?”

  Nell grabbed her purple backpack and pulled out a sheet of notebook paper and a pen, bringing both back to the couch.

  “It’s just a pocket spell,” she said.

  “Pocket spell?” Uncle Barnabas grunted as he tossed his costume’s hat off onto his bed. “This folksy stuff is beneath you, Cornelia. Your mother was a magnificent witch, and I have to think she would be disappointed you aren’t trying to push yourself more.”

  Nell kept her eyes down on the paper. I thought I saw her hand tremble around it, but just as quickly, she handed it to me.

  “It could help,” she said quietly, smoothing back a loose ringlet of her hair. “What you want to do is write down the fiend’s name. A-L-A-S-T-O-R.”

  “Why don’t you write it?”

  “Because you’re the one seeking protection, not me, genius.” Her eyes rolled behind her glasses. “Just do it, okay?”

  Alastor stirred in my mind, like a pile of fallen leaves, disturbed by the wind. He let out a curious Hmmmm? as I wrote his name down.

  “Now fold the sheet along the middle, right through his name. Keep folding it smaller and smaller. As you do that, imagine his power diminishing until it’s nothing.”

  Not likely.

  “Shut up, Alastor,” I said. I looked at Nell, all of a sudden feeling very determined. I folded the paper over one last time, until it was the size of a pill. “What now?”

  Nell stood, her shoulders hunched, and went to get a candle and a mug from the kitchen. She snapped her fingers and lit the wick. “Light it on fire and drop it in the bowl—yeah, like that. Now repeat after me. Your control is slipping. I bind thee back.”

  As stupid as I felt saying it, repeating it, the pocket spell worked fast.

  Like magic.

  Nooooooo! Alastor wailed. Stop, curse thee, stop!

  I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. I kept repeating that one line, I bind thee back, over and over, until the fiend stopped sniveling and hollering and the paper burned itself through. Nell leaned over the bowl and stuck a finger in the black ash. Before I could stop her, she swiped it against my forehead.

  I have no clue what I was supposed to feel, but my stomach had stopped jumping around like a grasshopper and I couldn’t feel the prickle of Alastor’s presence inside me. Nell’s bright eyes watched me from behind her glasses, Toad climbing up her back to perch on her shoulder. He gave her cheek an approving lick. She even smiled a little when I did. Maybe it wasn’t real magic like Uncle Barnabas had said, but it had been something.

  “Well, that’s enough excitement for one night. It’s time for you both to hit the sack.” Uncle Barnabas stood and stretched. “You have a busy day tomorrow—”

  “I know,” I said, smiling dreamily at the thought of dusting the bookshelves and finding blank, clean paper to sketch the attic. A day at home with nothing to do but draw. Heaven.

  “—a new school is always a challenge, but I have faith you’ll do well.”

  It felt like he had reached over and punched me in the throat. “Wait—what—why?”

  “Because one of us needs to keep tabs on you at all times, to make sure no one tries to take you, or the fiend starts acting up,” Uncle Barnabas said. “I’ve been training Cornelia to handle such a sit
uation, and since she is required by law to attend school, so must you. Besides, the local coven put a heavy protection spell around the school grounds. It’s the one place we’re guaranteed no fiend, or anyone with ill intentions, will be able to enter. And it’ll go a long way in establishing a new identity for you here.”

  “Plus, they have a sprinkler system,” Nell said casually, “in case we try any spells after school and they, uh, misfire.”

  I stretched myself back over the couch, pulling the blanket up to my chin. My gaze drifted over to Uncle Barnabas. “Can’t I just go to work with you?”

  “Spoken like someone used to always getting their own way,” Nell muttered.

  “I’m afraid not,” Uncle Barnabas said. “We’ll have plenty of time to experiment after I do some research in the archive. I have this under control.”

  Nell stepped out of the bathroom in her pink pj’s. She passed by her father without looking at him, even as he told her he’d wake us up in the morning. I waited until Uncle Barnabas was in the bathroom and the shower water was running before I turned to face her bed. Nell braided her hair, glaring at the opposite wall. I tried to figure out what she was trying to kill with her eye daggers when the overhead light suddenly snapped off.

  As I pressed my face to the pillow, I suddenly remembered the book I’d found. “Is there some kind of importance to a fiend’s name?”

  Nell had been arranging her blankets, but stopped at my question. “That’s random. Why do you ask?”

  “I just saw one of the books earlier, and Alastor had kind of a weird reaction to it,” I said.

  “You already know his name,” Nell said sharply. “That’s just…an encyclopedia of known and vanquished fiends. Don’t try to pretend like you know anything about this world.”

  “I wasn’t trying to,” I shot back. Why did she have to make every conversation feel like walking through thorny brambles? “By the way…I thought the pocket spell was awesome. I don’t care what Uncle B says.”