Page 13 of Jacob Michaels is Dead

“This book will.” I smiled to myself as I tore the car door open. “It’s a spellbook.”

“A spellbook?” Lucas snorted playfully. “Like a book that witches—"

I turned to him, a half-frown decorating my face. Lucas shifted on his feet.

“Sorry.” He offered. “Obviously, you would have a spellbook.”

“Right.” I nodded as I bent down and reached into the backseat of the car to retrieve the book I had taken from Oma’s—my family’s—home. “Well, it’s my family’s book. I mean, I think. It’s just been around as long as I can remember, and it might be able to help us. It won’t give us the ending of the story, but maybe it can get us out of this fucking town. No matter who’s trying to keep us here.”

I lifted the heavy leather tome from the backseat and pulled it out of the car. Turning to Lucas, I smile widely as I handed it to him. Tentatively, as though he was afraid that it might bite him, Lucas took the book from me, cradling it gently in his own hands.

“Go on.” I urged him. “You’re the college graduate. Find us a spell that will get us out of here.”

Lucas swallowed hard, steeling his resolve, before giving me a firm nod, then he fanned the book open. I watched eagerly as Lucas looked into the book, as though it would reveal the universe’s secrets to him. Hell, maybe it would. I hadn’t used the book in so many years, I had no idea what the book could do for us. I couldn’t even remember what all was in it. All I could remember was a beautiful hand-drawn sketch of a skeletal tree in early Spring, a single flowering bud on one of the branches, near the end. It was the best hope we had for getting out of Point Worth, though. Anything that could help us cross the city lines and stay on the other side had to be a great thing. I watched as Lucas’ curious expression turned to confusion as he stared down at the pages in the book. He flipped a page. Then another. Then another.

“What is it?” I asked. “Is there something that can help us?”

Lucas’s brow furrowed even deeper, then he finally looked up at me.

“Rob.” He shook his head. “This is, I don’t know, a children’s storybook? This doesn’t have any, uh, spells, or anything. I mean, it literally starts with ‘Once upon a time.’ And there are children’s drawings. Slightly morbid ones, but still.”

He turned the book so I could look down at it.

“What?” I grumbled as my eyes met the pages.

As sure as Lucas had said it, the pages were filled with what looked like any ordinary children’s story. Flipping pages as Lucas held the book, more writing—in a fancy script, but stories nonetheless—and pictures of ghosts and goblins leapt out to greet my eyes. The book was worthless.

The man and woman lay on the ground, unconscious and bleeding as the boy cowered in the corner, his hands held up defensively as the hooded figure bore down on him. For hours after leaving his room, the young boy had been at the mercy of the man in the black hooded cloak. Screamed at, threatened, forced to watch his parents squirm and plead as the menacing figure tortured them until they lay on the floor, nearly lifeless and unable to do anything to protect their son. The man in the black hooded cloak never stopped grinning as he subjected the young boy to the sights and sounds of his parents being punished for his stubbornness. Of course, the boy wasn’t stubborn, he had been prepared. For his entire life, as short as it had been up until that moment, he had been warned that the man in the black hooded cloak would arrive one day.

And he was never to willingly accept anything the man gave him.

No matter how greatly he was tempted.

No matter what the man said.

No matter what the man did.

No power was great enough to pay the price that would be asked of him.

So, when the man arrived, in the boy’s sixth year of life, the boy said:

“No.”

For hours, the man in the black hooded cloak did all that he could, after rising from his throne of gleaming white bones, to convince the boy otherwise. Even as his parents screamed in agony and writhed on the floor, the boy kept saying:

“No.”

To some, it may have seemed callous that a boy of such an age would allow his parents to endure such misery. But it had been his parents who made him promise to always say:

“No.”

For they knew what it meant to say:

“Yes.”

There is power in words.

There is power in: