Taking Back Sunday Read Online Free PDF Page B

and bleed in places where nothing wounded her. She would burst into tears and tear at her hair from the pain.
    Specters haunted her. Ghosts of cloaked men emerged from the shadows. Their awful chanting echoed in her mind all day and night. She pretended that she couldn’t hear them, but it didn’t work. In her nightmares, they would stab her, whip her, and pour scalding water over her.
    Walls, she kept thinking, put up your walls. Use your ability to block out the witchcraft. But as soon as she did, an extraneous force would tear them down.
    When Sunday stopped fighting it, she became aware of a second layer of chanting. It’s was Bernadette’s voice weaving a spell. As the days went on, Sunday went mad. When she came to Bernadette for counsel, Bernadette refused to help.
    “You will tell me!” Sunday shouted.
    Thunder clapped outside, and in a heartbeat, a bolt of lightning smashed into the ground just outside the wall. “You will tell me who I am, and you will tell me what you have done to me!”
    The withered witch crouched in the corner of the room, holding her shaking knees to her chest just as Sunday had done in her nightmares. Never had the powerful matriarch appeared so helpless and frail. No spell she could cast, or magic she could conjure would stop the Incarnate in the throes of rage.
    Sunday grabbed a vase and threw it against the wall. The broken shards rained over Bernadette. A wave of anger beat against the walls. The sound of it muffled only by the relentless roaring of thunder outside. Another lightning bolt struck, this time at the roof of the house. Electricity climbed through the soles of Sunday’s feet and fizzed up her legs. The house trembled beneath her feet. Smoke poured over the side of the house from the fire brought on by the lightning strike. Sunday couldn’t see the flames, but she felt them dancing. With a flick of the wrist, she could have made them all disappear, but she did no such thing.
    “Bernadette, you will tell me now!” She was screaming; her voice sliced through the air.
    Fists pounded against the front door of the house. The guards were trying to get in. They thrust their bodies into the door, one by one, like rams against the gates of a castle. They were hired to protect her. Now, they were beating down the door to stop her.
    “I am an old woman,” Bernadette whimpered. “You cannot hurt me. If you do, you will only hurt yourself. I am your mother. I am the only one who cares for you!”
    Livid, Sunday beamed a book across the room. A severe gust rose out from her hand as the book flew from her hand. The book hit the wall above the old matriarch’s head with so much force that it dented it.
    “You lie!” Sunday wailed. “You tortured me! I know what you did! You’ve used me. You’ve put me under a spell, and you’ve forced me to love you! I am not your slave! Tell me who I am! Tell me why you’ve done this to me!”
    Bernadette aged even as Sunday watched. Cataracts formed a film over her eyes. Her face grew more and more wrinkled. Yet, as Bernadette began to wither away before Sunday’s eyes, Sunday grew stronger and surer of her own strength. It was the Incarnate’s power and unleashed as it was, Sunday couldn’t rein it in.
    “You’re going to die here, woman!” Sunday yelled at Bernadette.
    There were no answers coming. Visions of her past swirled in her mind, and her body became electrified with fury.
    “Bernadette, please!” Sunday’s voice broke as though she would cry. She wanted to know so badly. “You don’t want to die here. Tell me the truth!”
    But nothing came. As Sunday watched the effects of her loss of control, Bernadette became a shell of her former self. Bernadette had always looked old, but now she fell apart as she rotted into a corpse. The old woman’s body crumpled on the floor. Sunday fell to her knees and held her head. She released an unearthly howl that shook the walls of the massive house.
    It was over, and she had