Chapter Four
Monica
I knew something was wrong before I even opened my eyes. The earthy scent of rotten leaves and pine needles filled my nose, and my heart was beating a slow rhythm in my chest.
I groaned. Somehow, I didn’t even need to look around to know where I was.
“Monica.” Henrik’s voice was stern and deep. I opened my eyes to see him sitting next to my cot, scribbling in a leather-bound book.
I sat up, hugging my knees to my chest and letting my shoulders slump in defeat. “Why did you bring me here?”
Henrik glared at me. The lines on his face seemed more prominent, and his wild shock of white hair was tied at the nape of his neck with a leather thong. Instead of everyday robes, he wore a loose-fitting tunic of some woven material with a pair of creased linen trousers. I almost laughed. He looked like one of the old hippies that my parents knew.
“Do not force me to tell you,” Henrik said sternly. “You know exactly why I’ve brought you here, Monica.”
I shivered and pulled the thin blanket around me. “It was an accident,” I said blankly. “I never meant to hurt her.”
Henrik groaned. “Come,” he ordered. “You are to stay here with us until you’ve learned to control yourself like an adult.” He stood up, rubbed his lower back, then turned on his heel and lumbered out of the small cottage.
Despite my unhappiness at being spirited away to the coven, I couldn’t deny how beautiful the woods looked. It was late fall, and I should have been cold. Aside from the blanket around my shoulders, I was wearing a thin sweater and jeans. But I was smart enough by now, to know that Henrik and Ligeia controlled every aspect of their environment. I might as well have been in a laboratory, with electrodes at my temples and wearing a paper gown. Sometimes the whole ‘embrace nature’ thing seemed like a gimmick that Henrik used to bring in new members.
“You’re awfully argumentative today,” Henrik observed slyly as we walked together through the crisp woods.
I rolled my eyes. “Stop,” I said, shaking my head. I tapped my temple with my pointer finger. “I don’t want you in here. Not today.”
Henrik grabbed me by the shoulders. His eyes were filled with anger.
“This is not a joke,” Henrik hissed.
“I never said it was.” I yanked myself free and crossed my arms over my chest. “I told you, it was an accident!”
Henrik shook his head in obvious disgust. “You will be the ruin of everything I have built,” he said bitterly.
I narrowed my eyes. “That’s a bit much,” I said dryly. “You’re acting like I caused some giant, Earth-shattering event.”
Henrik whistled once, so low that the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Seconds later, Ligeia appeared. Her long hair was bound in an elegant braid, and she wore the same shapeless garments as Henrik. She glared at me.
“Monica, what were you thinking?” Ligeia demanded. “You need to be more careful!”
“You’re acting like she wasn’t provoking me,” I said, glaring at both Ligeia and Henrik. “Come on. She tried to do, like, a fucking exorcism on me! In the middle of the library! At my school,” I added for emphasis. “What was I supposed to do, just sit there and let her?”
Ligeia exhaled forcefully. “Take this,” she said. She passed me an earthenware mug filled with a steaming, foul-smelling liquid.
“What is it?”
“You don’t get to ask questions right now,” Henrik snapped. “As I said, you will remain with us until you’ve learned how to control your impulses. Now that Prudence has sensed you, she isn’t going to relent. She will keep attacking. You cannot allow yourself to lash out again.”
I bit my lip and sniffed at the liquid suspiciously before downing it all in one gulp. It was bitter and hot, and it burned my throat all the way down. I choked and sputtered, leaning against a tree until the rough bark made my skin throb in pain.
“What the hell was that?” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “What are you doing to me?”
Ligeia and Henrik exchanged a glance.
“Just some herbs,” Ligeia said. She smiled calmly. “Hallucinogenic herbs. You’ll be taking them daily and working with the others on controlling your impulses.”
My stomach twisted painfully, and I cried out, retching and gagging. I was sure the liquid was going to come rushing back up my throat, hot and vile, but nothing happened. After a few seconds, I felt a strange, heavy calm descend over my limbs. It felt like I’d just crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my body.
“Come,” Ligeia said. She nodded her head to the side. I followed her. My movements were jerky and strange, like a doll, but I couldn’t stop. The nausea returned, and my mouth felt unbearably dry. After a few seconds, I was aware of everything in my body pulsing and twitching and moving together. My organs, full of blood and bile, shifted wetly together, squished inside my abdomen, protected by a cage of bone and fat. My stomach sloshed from side to side, filled with spit, and bile, and that hideous, liquid tea. I even felt the spongy tissue of my lungs breathing in shallow, jerky breaths. Suddenly, I wanted very much to stop thinking.
“You have to be aware of yourself at all times,” Ligeia said softly. She took my hand. “Do not be afraid, Monica. This is a procedure you must learn to accommodate.”
“It’s uncomfortable,” I said stiffly. My heart skipped a beat, and my stomach lurched. My center of gravity shifted, and, for a moment, the world around me plunged into a terrifying warp speed. Trees, and sky, and dead leaves spun round and round, faster and faster, until I felt rooted to the spot by an unearthly, centrifugal force.
“You can feel the Earth move,” Ligeia said. “Don’t fight it, Monica. Embrace this; embrace this and learn.”
I moaned lowly as Ligeia guided me to a clearing in the woods. Large, flat rocks were placed in a circle. This time, I needed no instruction. I walked unsteadily toward the rocks, lowering myself onto one at the center.
Sitting, the vertigo was almost worse. I kept my eyes wide open, unable to look away from the swirling blend of green, and blue, and brown all around me. My skin stretched and expanded with every breath, and I shuddered with the realization that my skin was the only thing keeping my body together. Instantly, I pictured myself melting onto the dirty ground, organs seeping out of my pores with blood, and sweat, and piss. I shuddered.
“Do not be afraid,” Ligeia said softly. She lowered herself down next to me. When I looked at her, the world stopped spinning. Her blue eyes seemed to be the center of the universe, her lined, worldly face, the face that guided the sun and the moon.
“I…” I trailed off, unable to compose my own thoughts into words.
Ligeia pressed my hand. “Just breathe,” she said softly. “Breathe in, and the world breathes with you.”
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. Then I felt it – the powerful air sucking into the sponges of my lungs, the stretched feeling in my chest when I was filled with oxygen. I felt my blood revitalizing and turning from blue to red with the infusion of air. I felt my whole body lift and sink with each breath until I was riding on a tide of highs and lows, all connected. There was no place where my body stopped and the Earth began. And with each breath, I grew more confident still.
“There,” Ligeia said. Her voice was low and filled with approval. “You are beginning to understand, Monica.”
I stayed with the coven for a week, drinking that noxious tea and training myself to become one with the Earth. The hangovers each morning were awful. Instead of feeling like one with the universe, I felt like a disgusting creature that needed to be put out of its misery. But Ligeia assured me the feeling would pass, and after a few hours, it did. Still, I looked forward to the day when Henrik would approve of my going home.
It didn’t take long. After seven days of hallucinations and seven nights of agonizing, sweat-filled sleep, Henrik came to me.
“You may depart us,” Henrik said. “But do not think we will turn a blind eye, Monica.” His eyes stared at me with heady disapproval. “I am proud at the work you have accomplished in such a short time. But in no way should you take that to mean that you are free from making the same mistakes again.”
I leaned over and vomited hot bile onto the grass, sputtering and wiping at my mouth.
Henrik waited patiently for me to finish. “You have a new handle on yourself,” he said. “And we expect you to keep control of that at all times.”
I shrugged, trying to play off how sick I felt. I was so exhausted and tired. I couldn’t wait to get home, take a long shower, and collapse into bed.
“I’ll try harder,” I said weakly. “That’s all I can do.”
Henrik smiled, but he still looked serious. “Yes,” he said heavily. “This is a tense time for our worlds, Monica. We cannot have you fail.”
I swallowed, grimacing at the taste in my mouth. “I know,” I said. “Trust me. I know.”
---
The next morning when I woke up, I was so happy to be home that I could’ve cried. My sheets smelled like fresh laundry and dirty hair, and I sighed, pulling the covers around me. The air in my bedroom felt cold, and I frowned when I realized the window was open.
I shivered as I climbed out of bed and pulled on a robe. When I got to the window, I gasped. A solid foot of snow was blanketing the ground, and icicles hung from every surface. ‘This is weird,’ I thought, closing the window and blowing on my frozen fingers. ‘It normally doesn’t snow until December.’
Downstairs, Jamie and Brian were cooking breakfast. Neither one of my parents seemed surprised to see me. I can’t say that I expected otherwise, but it still stung.
“Oh, hi there,” Jamie said. She passed me a plate of bacon without even looking at me. “Long trip, huh?”
I stared at her. “Yeah…” I trailed off, biting my lip. “Um, did I tell you guys where I was going?”
Jamie smiled indulgently. “Honey, you know you don’t have to do that! We trust each other in this family,” she said.
I narrowed my eyes. “How long was I gone?”
Jamie shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. She frowned, ticking her fingers. “A few weeks? Maybe a month or two?”
My jaw dropped. “What day is it?”
“It’s the twentieth.”
“Of September?”
Jamie laughed. “Honey, no. It’s December!” She laughed. “I think you and David smoked a little too much reefer!”
I sank against the back of my chair. I couldn’t believe it. Over a month had passed since I’d last been home! I shivered again, wrapping my arms around my body and hugging myself tightly. What the hell was going on?
Brian sat down next to me with a steaming mug of coffee. Even though the scent was totally different, I couldn’t shake my association with the hallucinogenic tea, and I coughed, trying to squash the urge to vomit.
Brian chuckled. “Bad hangover, huh? Coffee always helped me,” he said calmly.
I licked my dry lips. “So, Mom said I’d been gone for over a month,” I said slowly.
Brian looked perplexed for a moment, then nodded. “Yep,” he said slowly. “That sounds about right.”
“And you guys didn’t care that I was gone? You didn’t go around asking anyone what had happened to me?”
Jamie turned to me with a perplexed look on her face. “Sweetie, why would we do that? We trust you,” she repeated, emphasizing the word. Her eyes were glazed. “We trust you,” she said again, in a strangely toneless voice.
“That’s right,” Brian repeated. His voice sounded hollow. His eyes had the same blank, vacant look as my mother’s.
Tears came to my eyes, and I nodded quickly, pushing away from the table and running out of the room. My appetite was no longer there, the realization hitting me like a ton of bricks.
Jamie and Brian weren’t just typical hippie parents.
Henrik had been controlling them.
The entire time.