The Dark Pact

My birthday was the worst day of my life. My parents died of asphyxiation when I was 16, but there was no evidence to suggest whether it was accidental or premeditated. I wished I was there at the time to know what exactly had happened.

My parents sent me abroad to live with my grandparents when I turned 12. They never gave me a believable reason for it; I was only told that their work was about to become too hectic, and that they wouldn’t have the time to take care of me. When I turned 18, I decided to revisit my home and look for clues.

“Delia, where are you?”

“Be there in a minute, grandma!”

I came down the stairs to find my grandmother holding a cake.

“Grandma, I told you: I don’t want any cake until I solve this mystery.”

“Dear, it has been two years now. Your parents wouldn’t want you obsessing about this so much that you forget to live your own life.”

“I know, grandma. I just…”

No words came to my mind or mouth. I felt my frustration pull at my skin as my hands began to tremble. Grandma saw that I was feeling uneasy and hugged me instantly.

“It’s okay, dear. It’s okay…”

A brief moment later, grandma sat me down on the sofa and handed me a pen drive.

“What’s this?”

“Your parents gave me this and told me not to show it to you until you turned eighteen.”

“Have you seen what’s on it?”

“Yes, I checked it after they died.”

I inserted the pen drive into my laptop. There was a video on it; it was a recording of my parents:

“Hey, sweetheart. We’re so sorry we had to send you away, but we had no choice,” dad said.

Mom and dad said that one day, as a baby, I fell gravely ill, and that no doctor they met said they could help me. My mom said she came from a line of witches, but that she didn’t have any powers herself. She had eventually found a witch in a nearby town who was willing to help, but she said she would name her price after the deed was done. My parents, in desperation, had agreed to her terms, not knowing what the witch had planned. Her price was me.

The witch had asked my parents to hand me over to her when I turned 15. She had warned them that if they were to try and deceive her, she would kill me, herself. However, my parents weren’t going to let either worst-case scenario happen. They sent me abroad and held a fake funeral for me. The message ended with them urging me to never return to the house again.

The pieces were beginning to fit. What I could assume was that the witch had visited my parents around the time of my 15th birthday, but they had told her I was dead. She probably knew they were lying and demanded that I be delivered to her before another year passed. A sudden burst of wind broke my focus as the front door flung open. The witch was at our doorstep.

The woman was a tower of dark energy, and had an evil smile stretched across her face. “Nice to finally meet you, Delia. Come quietly and I’ll spare your grandmother.”

Grandma suddenly screamed in pain and fell to her knees while holding her stomach. I knelt beside her and tried to pull her up, but she began to gasp and groan, clutching my shirt as her hands trembled and her eyes widened.

“Stop it!” I yelled, and, before I knew it, a pulse of energy surged from my body and volleyed the witch outside. But she was unfazed, and teleported before me in a second to grab me by my neck and hurl me through the living room wall and into the kitchen. I staggered to my feet as she stepped in through the hole in the wall. However, I was not helpless. With my newfound power coursing through my veins, I felt connected to everything around me.

I flung every object in the room at her, but she deflected them all. Before I knew it, the witch had overpowered me and was grabbing me by the neck again. “Come quietly. I have good use for you.”

Those words enraged me. I felt as if my insides were being consumed by a fiery hate, and it soon manifested before me as the witch screeched in agony and fell back. A fire rose from the arm she had grabbed me with and spread throughout her body, slowly consuming her in an infernal blaze as she wriggled and ran away before collapsing in the living room.

I rushed to grandma’s side and held her in my arms. She regained consciousness moments later and hugged me instantly. We watched from a safe distance as the witch’s body turned to ash within minutes.