FROM BAD TO WORSE
How the two of them ever got to the point of falling in love, I’ll never understand. The differences between my mom and dad eventually yawned into an abyss so wide and so deep that it threatened to swallow the family. My mom never stopped trying to keep it together. She pretended to believe in my dad’s church and what it stood for. She even went as far as to perform her rituals in secret. Honestly, though, it did no good. It was like trying to stop an avalanche from pouring down a mountain, because Dad knew her façade was all bullshit. He openly resented the fact that she refused to give up her Wicca practice and fought back in his own screwed up way.
For as long as I could remember, Dad had spent more time in bars than with us, holding his worn-out Bible with one hand and taking shots of whiskey with the other. He emptied our bank account faster than he and my mom could fill it. She did the best she could to budget our money, but Dad’s spending habits were hard to keep up with.
So , to bring in extra cash, Mom made candles and sage bundles and sold them to the neighbors. Certain that the scented candles were somehow tainted with evil spirits, my father forbid her to burn them in the den, which was the one room in the house that needed the scent of a candle the most. The sickly stench of stale alcohol saturated the walls and blanketed the furniture and carpet. I was too embarrassed to have anyone over to my house. I never knew when or what shape Dad would be in when he came home, but more often than not, he would pass out in the den after hours of drinking. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone seeing him like that. People in small towns like ours talked too much about everyone’s business but their own.
Imagine opening up a box and never knowing what was going to be inside. That’s what my childhood was like. Rainbows and unicorns one day and gargantuan tarantulas the next. I’d withdraw into my shell for days on end, preferring my own head space to the rocky footing of my life.
But Mom was always looking out for me. She taught me to look for the consistency outside my window - the simple concepts, things I could count on - like the perfection of the seasons and the cycles of the moon. She let me watch her perform rituals and taught me simple manipulations of the elements, things that could be duplicated over and over.
Back then I was in a hurry to grow up so I could do the rituals on my own. At ten years old, I wanted to be just like her. Skilled and talented. Unwavering in my faith. Steady and strong.
But at the first real, serious test, at the moment where maturity, skill, and levelheadedness were needed, I failed.
Horribly.
After that, m y mom no longer had the burden of hiding our practices from my dad – for a couple reasons.
One, I ran from everything she taught me, by tucking my budding talent into the darkest corners of my mind, hoping it would never be discovered.
Two, Dad was dead.
CHAPTER ONE
After Dad died, s taying in the obscure, Bible-thumping town in Illinois where I was born wasn’t an option. We’d lost our home and we had no friends to speak of. Our only family was Aunt Sarah, who lived a few hours away.
W e packed the car with what little we had and drove across the country, leaving behind the life we’d known, along with memories of Dad. A yellow highlighted line snaked its way across the grids of the map and settled in Sandpoint, Idaho. I had no idea why Mom had chosen there, of all places. Wasn’t one town just as bad as the other? I only knew the name of Sandpoint through a few discussions I’d overheard between my mom and Aunt Sarah when she would visit. Aunt Sarah said there was something special about that particular town. Something about a bridge. Something about a vortex or Christ grid.
Whatever the reason, I didn’t care. As long as it took us far from the life that was never normal, away from a life that had me living in
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