Death Becomes You

I walked into an empty house, just like every other day. “Hello,” I said to the walls while putting my bag by the stairs. “I’m home.” The book Lilac gave me was secured in a death grip, causing the binding to imprint on my forearm. I wiped the kitchen table, even though I knew no one had eaten off it, before I set it gently on the table.

Angel of death. Brings on plagues, floods, and damnations. My thoughts bounced around my head. “Yeah,” I stated, wanting to punch the book, “you certainly did bring me a list of damnations didn’t you.”

The memory of my mother fading into that horrible beeping mess that surrounded her inside that ambulance. I knew she didn’t die quickly. She couldn’t have if it was anything like the woman on the street, Evelyn Harris, or Annie. Her golden eyes still haunted me. I don’t remember her screaming, but I can hear her inside my memories. Chandler crying all the time. The thought of losing him cause me physical pain. Now, my brother was gone because Azrael said I destroyed him by saving him in that car. That stupid so-called angel blamed me for my brother’s suicide.

“That man deserves every ounce of pain that can be mustered for him.”

I opened the book, carefully so I wouldn’t break the already loose binding, and read the first faded page. The table of contents. It said Summoning page DCXXXIX. I growled to myself before going to my bag, pulling out my laptop and searching for the correct Roman numeral sequence to identify the page. 639. She pushed to the correct page and began reading.

“You will need; one white candle, floral scents (of your choosing), and tourmaline.”

Simple enough. I pulled out my lavender and rose scented candles and the cherry blossom incents I begged for when I was younger. There was a white candle in the disaster emergency kit that my mom always kept prepared; I grabbed a bowl to use as a candle holder. I Google searched tourmaline to find out it was just a black stone. My grandmother gave me a pretty decent sized black onyx pendent for my thirteenth birthday. She claimed it was a family heirloom, so I figured I didn’t need it anymore.

“First, spread the floral scents around the room. Death is attracted to flowers.” Really? I began to question the authority of this stupid book. I never saw any flowers in any of the scenes where I found him. Except for the unlit candles in my room, and the wildflowers in the woods where Annie crashed. Okay, maybe there’s something to this?

“Second, light the candle.” No shit! I put the bowl on the table in the entry way, just in front of the mirror before I lit the wick. The flame rose slowly while I finished reading the steps.

“And the last step is to stare into the depths of the flame while holding the tourmaline in both hands.”

“This is stupid,” I said aloud instead of in my thoughts. How could staring into a flickering into a red-orange flame and holding a black stone bring anyone…

“Where did you get that?”

My eyes shot to the mirror but I couldn’t see anything except the exploding colors of the candle flame. “Oh my God!”