Post by StoryGirl83 on Nov 10, 2011 23:00:51 GMT -5
Chapter Six – 1897
4:30 AM
Jani put down the last crystal on the floor. “We’re really going to see a ghost in here, Mom?”
Paige nodded. “Who wants to say the spell?”
“Not Chris,” Alanna announced with a laughing glance at her cousin sound asleep on the couch.
Paige chuckled as the sight of him. One arm hung off the couch. The other was flung loosely over his eyes. One leg had fallen off the couch and he looked most uncomfortable, but he was definitely sound asleep.
“We don’t have to write a spell, right?” Ladybug asked, remembering a conversation with Hope recently where Hope had corrected a spell she had written. Having her little sister correct a spell she’d written was never high on her list of good moments. It would have been bad enough if it had been Cilly. No, actually that would have been worse. Cilly didn’t bother with witch stuff often. She left that for Ladybug and Hope.
Paige shook her head. “No, this spell is already written.” She took the Book off the podium and brought it over to Ladybug. “See, no spell writing needed.”
Ladybug grinned. “In that case, may I?”
Paige looked at the other girls. “Any objections?”
Alanna shook her head. “Who are we summoning?” she asked, looking down at the crystals on the floor.
“Hopefully someone who can help us,” Paige retorted. “Ladybug?”
Reading aloud from the book, Ladybug chanted, “Hear these words. Hear my cry. Spirit from the other side, come to me. I summon thee. Cross now the great divide.”
Little orbs of light swirled around in the midst of the crystals. Within them a form began to take shape and when they dissipated everyone stared stunned at the man in their center. He was perhaps around seventy years of age, though it was difficult to tell. Whatever color his hair had once been was replaced by white. He had a receding hairline, but there was definitely still a decent amount of hair on his head.
He looked around the attic, his eyes taking in each person in turn. Finally, his eyes turned back to Paige. “You summoned me?”
“Well, um,” Paige looked at him confused. “We weren’t exactly expecting you. Who are you?”
“James,” he informed her. “My name is James Bowen. I believe this is the attic of my daughter’s home, but it looks very strange.”
“Your daughter’s home?” Paige asked surprised.
“Yes, her husband had it built for them to live in,” he told her. “That was in . . . 1913 I think. But . . . we are nowhere near 1913 are we?”
Paige shook her head. “2027 actually. I’m Paige. My sister lives here now with her husband.”
“Of course it is,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on down here, not since I died. Iris does. She wanted to follow the lives of our children. I found it rather depressing. And no one ever summoned me. So why did you?”
“Bowen,” Paige mumbled to herself. “I don’t think I know that name. Girls?”
Alanna nodded. “Aunt Prue’s past life was named Phoebe Bowen.”
“Gregory’s daughter,” James declared. “Gregory was my only son. We had two daughters and Gregory at the end. For a while there were those who thought we might have the Charmed Ones.”
Paige chuckled at that. “You were a few generations too early for that, I’m afraid.”
James looked at her startled. He looked around the room at the three girls. “Them?”
“Nope,” She shook her head with a grin. “My sisters aren’t here right now, but those two girls are mine,” she pointed at her daughters.” Their brother is asleep downstairs. And that girl belongs to my sister, Phoebe,” she pointed to Ladybug. “And sleeping beauty on the couch is my sister, Piper’s, youngest.”
James followed her pointing finger around the room. “The Charmed Ones? You and your sisters?”
She nodded. “That’s us. I’m surprised you didn’t here. Grams is rather proud of the fact that her granddaughters are charmed and I guessed she’d be your great-granddaughter?”
Alanna nodded. “Yeah, ‘cause Phoebe Bowen was from the same generation as Grams’ mom.”
“Enough of that, I supposed,” James declared. “You must have had a reason for summoning me.”
Paige nodded. “People have been dying, thousands of people. We don’t know what’s causing it, but it doesn’t seem to affect those who are magical. Does that ring any bells?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t. Do you know anything more?”
“Not much,” she admitted with a sad sigh. “It originated in Duxbury, Massa . . .”
“Duxbury?” he interrupted.
“You know the name?” Paige asked surprised.
“Of course,” he agreed. “I grew up not far from there on the outskirts of Boston. In 1897, that’s the year you want to know about,” he informed them. “It was the year my younger daughter gave birth to her daughter, Philippa.”
“I think that’s Grams’ mom,” Alanna whispered to her sister.
“How can you be sure?” Jani whispered back. “I’ve seen the family tree. There’s no first name listed for her, just an initial.”
“The year,” was Alanna confident reply. She looked up to see James had stopped talking and was looking at her.
“Philippa married a man by the name of Gordon Johnson,” James informed them, “if that helps you figure that out. They had two children, Penny and Donny. Donny was just a baby when I died.”
“That’s her all right,” Alanna confirmed. “Penny’s our Grams. Or rather she’s Mom’s Grams. Everyone just calls her Grams. We haven’t actually met her though; on account of she died almost thirty years ago.”
“Much as I wish we had time to hear you chat about that, Alanna,” Paige commented, not looking like she really did wish they had time for that, “we don’t. Every minute we spend likely looses another life or more than one.”
Alanna grimaced.
James sighed. “Duxbury. In 1897 we didn’t live far from there, but we were planning to move to San Francisco. It was about a week before we planned to move when the reports started coming in from Duxbury. There was a mysterious illness that was infecting the populous. No one was much worried at first, but Gregory said he recognized it.”
“Gregory did?” Jani asked, wondering how his son would recognize something he didn’t.
James nodded. “Since the very beginning of our line the men have rarely had powers despite the fact that one the first known witches in our line was a man. When it has happened it’s usually because of someone in the family married into some other magical line. Gregory’s power of weather manipulation came from Iris’ side of the family as did his daughter, Phoebe’s, power of cryokinesis. Gregory was always conscious of how unusual his having powers was. I have none myself, so he tended to be the most focused of my three. He memorized the Book of Shadows.”
Ladybug gaped at him. “He memorized it!?”
Alanna and Jani looked at each other. “Sounds like our brother,” Alanna retorted.
James just smiled. “Yes, he memorized it and in it, he found an entry from 1767. I don’t remember the particulars, but Gregory would. I do remember that it described the events happening then in Duxbury as having happened before in Duxbury. There was a spell that pushed it back, but could not end it.”
“Pushed it back?” Paige asked, confused.
He nodded. “The woman who wrote the entry said a witch she knew had cast the spell. She had done so knowing that it was going to kill her husband who had been infected.”
“The spell killed him?” Ladybug frowned. “Wasn’t it supposed to save people, not kill them.”
He shook his head. “It was supposed to protect those not infected. We don’t know how to cure it. We only know how stop it from infecting anyone else for 130 years. Once the spell is cast, everyone infected dies, instantly, even if they aren’t showing symptoms.”
Paige sucked in a breath.
“Uncle Leo,” Jani gulped. “We cast this spell, he goes from having four days to live to having none.”
“We couldn’t find any records from 1637 or 1507 or any time earlier, so we don’t know exactly when this started, but the entry stated flat out that it didn’t start in 1767.”
“Do you know the spell?” Ladybug asked, knowing that was the question no one wanted to ask.
He shook his head. “We didn’t cast it. There was another family that knew what was going, the family of the witch. They cast it. Once that happened I didn’t look too closely. I doubt even Gregory could tell you the spell at this point.”
“You said he memorized the Book of Shadows,” Alanna protested. “Surely that included that spell.”
“Isn’t it still in the Book?”
Alanna shook her head. “Our brother looked through it twice. There’s no mention of this anywhere. Somehow, sometime, someone removed it.”
“Then, I don’t know what you can do,” he admitted. “By the time he died, Gregory no longer remembered much of what was in the Book of Shadows. He’d likely remember more details than I do, but the spell? No, I don’t think so.”
“This is bad,” Jani admitted. “I was really hoping you’d have the answer.”
“I really wish I did,” James assured her before white lights swirled around him and he disappeared leaving behind only the crystals they had used to summon him.