DARKNESS CONJURED
Sandy DeLuca
FIRST EDITION
Darkness Conjured 2011 by Sandy DeLuca
Cover Artwork 2011 by Zach McCain
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DELIRIUM BOOKS
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North Webster, IN 46555
www.deliriumbooks.com
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Greg F. Gifune for helping me to hone my craft. Rob Dunbar just for being Ron Dunbar. Shane Ryan Staley for all that he does. Matt and Julie for their love and support.
For Gianna and Sophia...
and for KR wherever you are
I wish you could know them...
In 1968, they were teenage girls, unwed and pregnant. Shunned by family and society at large, like countless women of their generation, they were forced to give up their babies...
People Magazine
September 18, 2006
Volume 66, Number 12
Author Notes:
This story is based loosely on incidents that occurred decades ago. Im not sure if the ghost tales are real, but they stirred my imagination. The Amelia Leech Home is a product of my imagination. The unwed mother was branded as a shameful figure in the sixties. Deeds and pregnancies were hidden. This is a story about the sadness regarding that notion. It is also a tale of terror.
Parts of this novella are loosely based writings of John Dee and his Angelic Magic and Moloch from Miltons Paradise Lost .
February 11th, 1968
The Amelia Leech Home is haunted by those who lived and died here. Decades of terror permeate. Hopeless cries erupt from behind bolted doors.
I hear whispers when walking up stairs after sundown. Ive seen figures out of the corner of my eyepassing by a windowor by an open door. The dead in perpetual anguish.
Living residents are tormented as well. There are bullies and thievesstealing from my roomdestroying things dear to me. My good wool blazer has vanished. Photographs of my family kept on my bureau have been smeared with feces. Ive learned to hide whats sacred behind wooden planks in my closet.
My room is small. I sleep on a shabby bed. Theres a small bureau near a grimy window and an old braided rug in the middle of the scratched wooden floor. My room is one of many in this monstrous structure.
My father sent me here. He wants my pregnancy hidden. He says the baby has to be adopted once its born. He told me, I dont want people mocking you. Well deal with it as best as we can.
My mother cries a lot. She swears a trio of soothsayers have come to claim a satanic debt.
My sisters are silent most times.
Im not like them. I need to do whats right for me. I dont care what people think.
Im almost twentyolder than most of the girls here. I can work as a waitress and get government assistance. I am prepared for a life of ridicule and poverty.
I touch my stomach and think about where I came from. I wonder where Im headed.
Is that the wind howlingor something crying out from the bowels of this house? Im terrified of night and I regret things Ive done.
I wish Id never met Ken, that Id never agreed to go with him on that steamy day in August, but I was lonely, tired of spending nights with my mother while my father wagered bets and shuffled cards in smoky back rooms. I wonder what evil alliances he made over the years and if my flesh and blood has been offered in sacrifice.
* * *
I am the youngest of three girls. My first memories are of days spent living in a tenement house on the poor side of town. I remember my sisters Beth and Jen going to school in early morning. My mother worked in the citys only surviving soap factory. Sometimes she put in ten hour days. Back then my father stayed home, took care of the house and made sure we were fed.
My toys were handed down from my sisters. My only friend was my father when my sisters were not around.
Dad and I would sit in our living room after the house had been cleaned and the breakfast dishes done. There were stacks of books piled at his side. Hed read to me, but I didnt understand the words, or exotic names he pronounced. After lunch hed climb up to the attic, with me at his heels. Vague memories of burning candles and the smell of dampness still linger. An odd piece of jewelry, with even odder symbols, hung around my dads neck. Sometimes hed remove a ceramic figure from beneath a wrinkled scarf. Terra Cotta. Painted face and long graceful limbs. Creepy, mysterious and beautiful all at once.
What are you doing, Daddy? Id asked him.
Praying to angels. Lailah is your guardian angel. She watched over you when you were born, hed tell me and then hed begin to read from an old book.
Sometimes orbs of light floated over his head. Most times everything was silent and hed snuff out the candles only to make his way back downstairs.
I dont know if he continued his prayers as I grew older. I only know he began to go out nightly after my mothers heart attack. He grew quiet, distant and reluctantly did odd jobs during the day.
Always before midnight Id hear his footsteps on the attic stairs. I wondered if his vigils turned darker when I heard sounds erupting from the attic and saw dark shapes drifting by my window.
Years went by. Diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis added to my mothers already fragile health. My father grew bitter, sometimes downright cruel. By my nineteenth birthday he barely spoke to me, except to criticize or scold. Yet, once in a while, hed smile at me like he did when I was little.
There were no smiles when I dropped out of business school. I was tired of struggling with Economics and Accountingtired of my father reminding me that my sister Beth was getting her Masters and my sister Jen had given birth to her second child, happily married to her high school sweetheart.
My dad told me, Took hard earned money to further your education. If you cant make it in school then its best you find a husband. Youll never survive on a womans paycheck. Lots of guys in town ask about you. I thought about the guys my father knew. Id take my chances in life without them.
My mother would hug me and say, Theres somebody out there for you, Meg.
I wondered where and how Id meet this somebody . I had visions of being thirty, still unmarried and living with my parents. I told myself I wouldnt let that happen, but I let down my guard and got into this mess.
I was bored with staying home on weekends while others were out dancing. The drinking age is twenty-one, but fake IDs and sweet talking bouncers cure that problem for girls my age.
My father forbade me to go to nightclubs. He said Id only meet bums, guys who liked to drink and party. He said girls who went to bars were tramps. Hed heard stories about casual sex in back seats of cars. I figured Id get a taste for what Dad forbade once I saved up and was far away from him.
Most of the guys who frequent clubs are in college, or their birth dates havent been selected by the draft. However, turmoil over the war in Nam made rebels out of others. In 1967 burning draft cards became vogue and hippies made Haight Ashbury in San Francisco their Mecca. It seemed every time I turned on the radio Aretha Franklin was singing, Respect.
