“I’m sorry,” I said, catching up with my aunt at the stairs as she was descending, going in the opposite direction.

She nodded, then motioned me to follow.

I did, without another word. Getting caught with a girl over after being invited to stay there made me look bad enough. The last thing I needed was to open my mouth and say something that would make me look even worse. There was no excuse for what I’d done.

She kept walking until we had reached a dark hallway with only one other door in it, at the very end.

Here, she paused. “How…? No.” She turned to me, eyes full of accusation. “How long have you known this girl?”

“She… moved to town—I mean, Portland—about a month ago. We’ve been dating ever since.”

“Around the time I invited you to stay here.”

“I—I guess.” That certainly didn’t make this sound better.

My aunt drew a deep breath, sighed, and looked like she was about to hit me. Instead, her hands moved around in a circle, a blue light showing. It hung there for a moment, then turned red.

“This isn’t good,” she said, eyes moving to me and dismissing the light.

Before the glow had cleared, or she had the chance to tell me what it meant, laughter filled the house. Not only Steph’s laughter, although hers was definitely there, but I could also hear the shrill laughter of two others, at least, plus that of at least three men. As my nerves struck again, my aunt looked at me with horror.

“The girl… you let her in the house?”

“I… er, I don’t know.”

“DAMMIT!” She turned, hesitated, then faced me again in a fury. “You let her in… You!” Taking a breath to calm herself, she stared at me, eyes full of worry. “I never should’ve opened my door to you. You’ve doomed us all.”

“That’s… harsh,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew there was much more going on here than I understood.

“Follow me, quickly,” my aunt said, leading me to the door at the end of the hall.

“I don’t understand,” I started, and pulled out my cell. “Let me call the cops.”

She held out a hand and a spark flew off my phone, the screen dying as smoke started to emerge from the sides and it grew incredibly hot. I dropped it, staring from the burning wreck of my phone to her glowing hand. She tucked it away, then turned toward the door, muttered something, and held the hand up. Again, it glowed, surging in brightness, and the door opened.

My mouth felt suddenly dry. “I really… don’t… understand.”

“This isn’t simply a case of your girlfriend—soon to be ex, I hope—bringing her friends over to rob the place. Do you understand? This is…” She hung her head, grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me through the doorway. Once we were inside, the door closed. We were surrounded by pure darkness except for the glow of her hand.

She leaned close, voice hushed, “It’s no coincidence, not at a time like this.”

A candle lit behind her, on its own, then several more. She spun on her heel, went to a spot on the wall between two of the now-flickering candles, and pushed. It budged, then opened inward, revealing stairs on the other side.

Not even checking to see if I would follow, she marched up the stairs. Of course, I was right behind her. Each step was a reminder that I’d messed up but also a reminder that I had no idea how, or to what extent, at least.

When I reached the top, I was out of breath and anxious, looking around a very well-lit room. Only, it wasn’t natural light or electricity, it seemed, but some sort of glowing lights that were forming a square around us as my aunt chanted.

“Tell me,” I said. Then louder, “What is going on?”

She paused, turned to me, and then went back to her chanting. A final glowing ball connected with the others, then lines shot through all, lines that separated and snaked out toward the walls. Now the walls and floors, everything, glowed green for a second before fading.

“A war,” she grumbled. “The shisa outside would’ve done their part, too, but I assume you invited the little bitch in.”

“I… did.” My instinct was to tell my aunt not to refer to the girl who had just been going down on me as a bitch, but in this case I was getting the impression that Steph had somehow royally fucked me over.

“Wonderful.”

“What, like how a vampire needs inviting?” I scoffed. “Come on.”

“It’s similar, but in our case, demons, succubi, witches… all of that. I honestly don’t know if any vampires are involved, but—”

“I’m sorry, go back. You’re telling me you believe in demons and vampires?”

“And witches,” she said, touching her finger to her nose. “Don’t forget about them.”

My mouth opened, then shut. Then finally opened again. Certainly there were words to reply to that, but they weren’t coming to me right now.

“The thing you need to understand,” she explained, “is that there’s a whole world beneath the surface that you don’t know the first thing about. Yes, demons, witches, all of that. Get over the shock, because it goes deeper—back to the days of elves, goblins… you name it.”

“Bullshit.” The word sort of slipped out without me realizing what I was saying. One sideways glance from her was all it took for me to say, “Sorry,” and then she was motioning me to the closed door.

Before she opened it, she leaned in, lowering her voice. “I invited you for a reason, believe it or not. And you’re going to have to put your big boy pants on for this, because we’re not on the fucking bunny slopes.”

Hearing my aunt swear, as poised and proper as she always seemed, hit me even harder than this talk of witches and elves.

“Why us?” was all I could think to say.

“You’ll see, with time,” she replied. “Right now, what I need you to understand is that you are so much more than you believe. So am I. We’re going to work together, to bring back the world of magic. Are you with me?”

“If witches and whatnot are here, what do you mean by ‘bring back,’ exactly?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Remnants, only. Pieces of the puzzle left behind, those who fled. What I’m talking about, though, is a whole other le—”

Slamming doors and pops of explosions cut her off.

Laughter echoed all around, followed by a burst of light and what looked and sounded like shattering glass. It was the light from my aunt’s ward, and as she saw it fall, her eyes filled with worry.

“We have to move, now!”

She had us moving through the doorway and running through a hall only to stop short as dark forms appeared, filling the opposite end of the passageway. They loomed and swayed unnaturally—and they were coming for us. Her hand had me by the forearm, grip unnaturally tight. She pulled me back and into a side room, then slammed the door shut behind us. Muttering to herself, her hand moved hypnotically, strange light trailing from her fingertips.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

When a blue line formed in front of her, she turned to me. “Remember what I said.” She grabbed me by the shoulders with both hands, staring into my eyes. For a moment, I thought she was going to kiss me—awkward, to say the least. “Don’t forget, it’s up to you.”

She stumbled back, hit the wall, and looked up at the ceiling as the clattering of hooves sounded above. With clenched teeth and pushing through some pain that I couldn’t understand, she reached for me with one hand, her other going to the wall beside her for balance.

The clattering grew louder. Darkness seeped into the room and filled it. Her blue line formed a spiderweb of lines around us, flickering like a bug-trap light when the shadows converged. They reached for me and were repelled, but suddenly changed tactics, all of them moving at once on a single point in the lines, bursting through, and entering my aunt through her chest.

She faced me with eyes that weren’t scared, but determined. Her lips moved as if to say something, but instead of words, only thick, black blood emerged.

That same substance seemed to fill her eyes from within, and then she was on her knees, toppling over. A new glow came from her hand, this time starting to float over toward me in swirling blue tendrils. My hand reached out instinctively, and the light began to swirl, moving around my finger, then starting to enter me in a way that made my whole body tense up.

Getting back to what I’d done earlier to calm my nerves… there was a bit more to it. At the moment, I was searching for a way to calm myself. Knowing this was really happening but also conflicted because it had to be a hallucination, I searched my memory for ways I had dealt with similar situations, trying to think of any time I had tripped out like this. Nothing registered in that regard, but past experiences using my supposed power, or maybe magic, did come to mind.

For example, the time when I was ten, on a camping trip and some asshole in the next site over had been playing the most annoying trance music—I mean head splitting, kill-me-now crazy beats and synthesizer, whatever you call it. My whole family had been pissed, but me? I was on the verge of walking over there and punching this grown man in the nuts. Only, it didn’t play out that way, because instead I was in the tent, hands over my ears rocking back and forth, my dad screaming at the man that he was going to murder him if he didn’t turn off the music.

I’ll go back a step, to when I was even younger, first. Hands over my ears while I rocked in the corner… had kinda been my thing. Call it whatever you want, but I don’t ascribe to medical terms for my behavior, especially when I account for this next part. The fact that the day when the music had been bothering me, it suddenly changed to classical, then again to an upbeat jazz song that my dad had always played when trying to comfort me and get me out of my fits when I was young.

Having first assumed that was what was happening, I stopped rocking, stepped out of the tent, and looked around. Everyone was confused. My dad had a fist held back, one hand grabbing the man by his long, blue beard. Others were turning to look at me, curious. My mom knew that song, knew what it meant to me. Some of my cousins did, too.

And the strangest part? I was pretty sure I’d changed the music to that song. There was no other explanation—the guy insisted we’d done something weird to his phone where he’d been playing the music from, because no matter what song he selected, it would play that same jazz tune.

That hadn’t been the only time. My dad and I had been going to grab a burger once, when I was about twelve. I remember not really wanting to go, because the wind was blowing like crazy and dark clouds were moving in. But we went, walking because the restaurant was close by. Right when we were within sight of the place, the rain came, but then it turned to hail.

We ran, and at first it was fun until my dad slipped and whacked his head on the curb. I started rocking… and then the hail was suddenly gone, warm sunshine on us. Only us. All around, the hail continued, but as my dad sat up, rubbing his head and looking at me, he knew something was off about the situation. And I knew I’d changed it all.

Call it a sort of alchemy of my surroundings. Not changing anything to gold, but changing the scenario, somehow. Always in simple ways, like the music and the sunshine.

So now, with my aunt dying there, floating lights swirling around her hands as she gasped for breath, I knew I needed to do something. To at least try. Even though my oddity had never worked like that—to heal someone, in this case—I knelt, rocking, hands to my ears. She continued to take those breaths, now sounding like sucking, grasping for life noises, and I rocked, not sure what to focus on here except for maybe the floating ribbons of light.

Only, a moment later she took a loud breath, then stopped altogether. The lights descended on her, and my panic took hold. If I lost her, I lost any semblance of sanity here. There had been magic, demonic forces at play, and without her I had no way of knowing what was going down.

The magic light was approaching, entering me. Burning. Pulling at my insides. Like a beast clawing to get out. Suddenly, I doubled over in pain and wondered how I was going to deal with this. How I could possibly escape this one.

Part of me said it was impossible, that this would be my end, as it had apparently been my aunt’s. But another side of me said to fight, like all of the characters in my favorite games. Did they give up? When faced with the threat of not finding the third piece of the Triforce, had Link given up? No! And so I couldn’t either. I had to live up to the legends of Simon Belmont, Master Chief, and the Mordor guy.

As these thoughts hit me, I realized something was happening. The light was changing, adapting to me and my thoughts. Just as the music had changed that day long ago, the light was forming a screen in front of me, words moving across the screen in a way that actually made sense.

The screen read: You are being given these powers. Do you accept? Yes/No.

I stared for a long moment, completely caught off-guard by this. My girlfriend and her friends had just killed my aunt. Now they were trying to kill me, as far as I knew, all to find something—I had no idea what. And, apparently, my aunt had some sort of power or magic that was becoming mine? Maybe I could’ve selected no, abandoned whatever this was and run off to join my parents on their road trip around America… but that sounded worse than anything a bunch of demons could throw at me. Sorry, but as I said, I had just moved out for the first time. That wasn’t about to happen.

Plus, I already had something, whether it was powers or magic or whatever. My mom and the doctor had thought I was crazy, but part of me never accepted that. So, it’s not like I was completely floored to find out that someone else in the family had powers as well. I clicked “Yes,” and then watched as random runes scrolled across the screen, followed by: Level 1 Witch.

I frowned at that. Witch? Could a man be a witch? I scratched my head, trying to remember if Harry Potter had been called a witch or something else, but whatever. I could think of myself as a sorcerer or mage, if this was for real and anyone asked. Oh, wizard! That’s what he’d been called, I thought, and laughed at myself for getting lost in such details, as I often did.

The idea of talking about whatever this was with someone made me freak out for a brief moment, until the screen changed again and pulled my attention back to it. Apparently, the screen was telling me my stats:

Level 1 Witch

Statistics

Strength: 4

Defense: 4

Speed: 5

Luck: 7

Charisma: 6

Mana: 300

Current Spells

Passive: Situational Alchemy, AKA “Transmutation”

The best I could figure, my sort of alchemist powers had converted the magic into a digestible format for my mind. Instead of simply taking on my aunt’s magic, I’d converted it into a way of leveling up. Gamified it, you could say. While maybe she’d also started as a beginner and gotten stronger, been able to use more spells as she become more experienced, I would actually have a screen tracking my progress and telling me when I leveled up and all that.

Badass!

Maybe I’d call myself an Alchemist Witch, or something along those lines. I was starting to get into the idea, scrolling down the screen by touching it in mid-air although I couldn’t feel it, exactly—it was more like using virtual reality controls, where it was clear when I was touching it, but there was no actual resistance—when an explosion sounded on the other side of the door.

Shit, I’d nearly forgotten about Steph and the demons. I was hoping my new powers would give me the ability to throw fire balls or something, but so far it looked pretty much useless, other than the stats on the screen making me feel a bit insecure about my strength. I had to be more than a four in that regard!

Another explosion, and smoke came through a crack at the top of the wall. Now I heard their hooting and hollering. They weren’t far from getting in, which meant I had to figure this out, pronto.

Whatever they were looking for, my aunt either had to have known about, or been searching for it as well. Right?

“Jericho, are you in there?” Steph said, and a new hope had been shattered—a hope that this was some fake version of the girl I had been dating. Most people called me Jay or simply J, and didn’t even know my full name. She liked it, though, and preferred to use it, especially during romantic times. Her voice was smooth like caramel when she added, “I want you. Come on out.”

All it took was a glance down at my aunt’s corpse for me to shake my head and say, “Not a chance.”

“Dammit, let us in or we’ll rip your head off!”

Shit, that escalated fast.

Another glance, and I shuddered, looking around for a way out. I tried using the magic, pulling up the screen again, but nothing worked. Figuring out how to use it would take time. A look back at my aunt, and I realized her hand was still out from when she had been reaching for the wall. Or… not reaching, but pointing!

I went to the wall, focused, and put up my hand. This time, while my hand didn’t glow and open the wall magically, the screen returned. It showed an option for “open,” so I selected it and waited.

Sure enough, my hand glowed and a door appeared. It opened inward, clunking my aunt in the head. I cringed, gently moved her out of the way as I whispered an apology, and then made my way up the steps.