11 Chapter 11 Part 1: A Dark and Stormy Night

 I would like to thank Julie Demers for helping me prepare so much in this manuscript that I can not name them all! Pizza toast!

Part 1: A Dark and Stormy Night

It was a dark and stormy night. The witch carefully walked across the street, into the park, down the path, and to the tree where she had been gathering her ingredients together over the past few weeks to carry out her spell this very night. A night not unlike the fateful night decades ago where she had carried out a similar spell. It had worked, for a while. This time she had carefully made a checklist and searched in ancient texts to finally carry out, correctly, and finalize her spell and carry out her plan.

She carried her basket and in it a book, a candle, and some matches. She looked up in the night sky at the full moon, rain pelting her face. It was almost time.

She went to the nook of the tree and got the articles out she had hidden there. She took out her bundles of herbs, sage, twigs, a crystal ball, and her newspaper clipping. She took them all in her basket across the path. She sat her basket on the big rock next to the brook. She lit the sage and waved it all around her general area. Then she lit the candle and opened the book. She took her herbs and twigs and carefully placed them in their assigned spots to the north, south, east, and west. She looked over her book and waited.

Finally, at the stroke of midnight, she blew the candle out. She held up her crystal ball and let the moonlight shine through it. Then she brought the crystal ball down, she held it in one hand with the other moving in circles above it chanting:

"Double double this this

Double double that that

Double this and that!"

She repeated it 3 times. Each time she dramatically held up the crystal ball to the moonlight.

After the 3rd chant, she held the crystal ball up to the moon. There was a bolt of lightning and a roar of thunder. The ball began to glow an eerie bright silvery gold light that glittered and reflected in the brook all around her. It was so beautiful and she was so proud of herself for doing it correctly. She began to cackle her cackling laugh, louder and louder into the night....

....meanwhile, across the street, a man was up in his 3rd story window, took his hand adorned with an SHS class ring that glistened in the light, pulled his curtain back in place, and smiled to himself. By tomorrow night everyone would know...

...across the neighborhood, over at Stoneybrook Day High School campus, in an old wooden barn that had been used as a shed, long forgotten and overlooked, two familiar faces were digging deep into the soil; and them, as well as their employer, were looking for something very important and very valuable....