I’ve entered into a little contest of sorts over at Wattpad. The only prize is bragging rights, but it does mean I’ll be writing more horror stories over the next couple of months and that’s always a good thing. I had to pick five pictures out of a group of twelve and it has to be between four and six thousand words. I decided on my five and that I’d do it in five parts of around a thousand words each. This is the forth entry.

Finding Sarai wouldn’t be the problem. She had a connection to her daughter that nothing except death could break. The problem would be what to do once she got there. Julia was powerful and she had enough energy to wreak havoc on just about anything she would come up against. She was still weakened from the damage that Bowyers had done to her and she didn’t know what kind of creature it was that held her daughter. Ignorance and weakness could undo all of her advantages. None of that mattered as much as getting to her girl and doing whatever she could to see that they were free again.

The trail led her to a house. It was like something out of a faerie tale. Surrounded by a white picket fence, the little red brick abode was solid and exuded calmness and security. Julia knew there was more to it than that. The person who had her daughter knew about and had tapped into what humans called magic. The force that was inherent in creation could do a lot of things. Humans accessed that crudely through splitting the atom. With more training, willpower, and finesse you could create barriers and traps that would harm creatures like Julia and Sarai. Such barriers and traps were behind the white boards and woven into the house itself.

Julia took a deep breath and imagined herself as a million butterflies. Yellow wings spread and fluttered through the air. The wind carried her through the barriers and her feet touched down in the earth outside one of the windows. A box of flowers, black eyed Susans, looked at her from beneath the glass panes. At the center of each was an actual eye, vertical slit pupils tracked her every move. Bowyers knew that she was here.

A wicked laugh came from inside the house.

The sound pierced Julia like a hot lance. Pain threatened to dissolve her being. She resisted the dissolution, but it took some of the precious energy that she had stored up. Now she imagined that her wrists were tipped with mauls, a cleaving blade and a shattering club. She reduced the flower box to a shambles. Black ichor and yellow petals cover the brick facade, looking for all the world like someone had run a giant bumblebee through a food processor and smeared the result around.

Next she attacked the windows. Glass shattered and wood splintered. It allowed her access. She leaped through the ruined hole and landed on the hardwood floor of a dining room. Fine china, a place setting for six people, ringed a beautifully made cherry wood table. Each place had the remains of food at it. It was obvious to her that the remains were primarily human. Bowyers was a cannibal. More important, she wasn’t alone.

Chanting thrummed from beneath her feet. Some of the six were in this place’s basement, preparing something. Julia closed her eyes and breathed out. She imagined the breath flowing through the air and following the trail between her and Sarai. Her consciousness followed the trail. Sarai slept on a four poster bed, covered in green gauzy silk. A puppy seemed to be cradled in her arms. It was nothing more than a cleverly crafted spell to keep her asleep while the humans below prepared to undo her. On the other side of the curtain, a creature waited. It clutched the covering and pressed its face against it. It inhaled deeply, drinking in Sarai’s scent.

Julia coalesced behind this creature. “Bowyers. Release my daughter.”

The women spun on her heels. her true face revealed her to be that of an ancient crone, preserved well beyond a human lifespan. The withered apple doll face crinkled even more. “I finished you. How can you be here?”

Julia smiled. “A mother’s love can overcome destruction.”

Bowyers spat at the floor, leaving a sizzling hole. “You are no more this little one’s mother than I am. You are incapable of creating life.”

“That is true as far as it goes, but we can love the new lives created by others. She is one of my kind and I have been tasked with loving and teaching her. Does that not make me her mother?”

“A pale imitation.” Bowyers drew back her hand and slashed it across her body.

Julia was knocked back into the wall. Wood splintered and again, her body started to lose cohesion. She took two steps forward and sang at Bowyers. The notes of the stolen song were beautiful and heartbreaking. Julia poured much of her own anger and sorrow at the truth of Bowyers’ words into it.

The witch clutched at her ears and wailed. Bloody tears began to stream down her face. She fell backwards through the green cloth and landed on the bed beside Sarai. From the black dress she wore, she drew a long blade made from nightmares. She plunged it deep into Sarai. “If I can’t use her for my purposes then you can’t either. Be a sham of a mother to this fake girl’s corpse.”

Sarai shuddered under the weapon’s assault.

Julia could feel the connection to her daughter weaken. She glided across the floor, singing as she came. The wordless music changed to something like a dirge. She inserted herself between Bowyers and Sarai, grabbing the crone’s knifehand. The blade was a twisting mass of hate, coated in the blood of her little girl. Another blow like the first and Sarai would be unmade. Julia couldn’t let that happen.

Rather than trying to pull the knife away, Julia helped the old woman plunge the knife into her own breast. The pain was beyond anything Julia had ever experienced. More than a stab wound, the invasion was the last straw. Her essence broke down from the place where the wound’s edges began. She had the time and will to direct all of the energy of her death at Bowyers.

The old woman had a split second to look surprised before she simply ceased to be.

Sarai woke up once the spell followed its creator into oblivion. She smelled Mummy’s perfume and knew what had happened while she slept. She crawled from the rickety and rotten bed frame, its true appearance now revealed. There were no bodies left in the house. The witches in the basement were as dead and gone as their coven leader. The backlash from her unmaking turned them into ash.

The soft, doughy flesh and blocky frame of a little girl was replaced by the coltish arms and legs of a young woman. Julia had done well in her rearing. She cried at the loss of her mother, but there would be little time to mourn. It was time to serve the purposes that she had been created for. Protecting the creatures that killed her mother and served her father would be a ceaseless and thankless job, until she was entrusted with her own daughter to care for. To care for, and if needed, to die for. Such was a mother’s love.