Balance Of Power, page 1

"I came here to ask you to be my maid of honour.," she said"YES YES YES!!!" Samantha said. "of course I'll be your maid of honour!" Then their food came and they talked about the plans for the wedding which would be in May, six months away. And discussed the responsibilities Samantha would take as the maid of honour. After they ate and the bill was paid, they decided to walk around outside, and check out the shops lined along Wicker street. It was the main street of the city and always had interesting stuff to see and do. They came to a used bookstore. Samantha said "Hey, why don't we check out this bookstore?" Both of the women, in their twenties now, shared a love of books. "Sure, why not?" said Mandy. And they went into the store that smelled of old leather and ancient paper. The books were all over the place and not in any particular order. Their were shelves filled to the top, but also stacks along the aisles, seemingly there because the shelves were full. Samantha began looking through titles on one shelf and Mandy was browsing another. Samantha saw a book titled "The Power In You". It was an occult book with magick spells and rituals, said to bring anything the reader desired if the spells were performed. Supposedly they were also secret and not known by many others. She decided to buy the book, as it was only three dollars. And maybe she could try one of the spells and get everything her heart desired. She went to Mandy and told her she was going up to the counter to pay for the book and Mandy came along with her. They then left the store and went to a nice little coffee shop to get lattes and talk some more.
As they were leaving the coffee shop, Samantha nearly ran over a woman wearing Gypsy garb. The woman looked her in the eye, staring with her cold dark blue eyes into Samantha's, and said "Be Carefuuuul what youuuuuu wish forrrrrr, youuuuu just might get it!" And she went russhing off. The women looked at each other and together they said"That was weird."
It was getting late and Mandy had to meet her fiancee for dinner, so the girls went back to their cars at the restaurant and got in their cars and left.

When Samantha got home she made herself a sandwich and a cup of tea and curled up on the couch to read the book she had bought that day.

Three weeks later Samantha was done reading the book and had bought the supplies she needed for a certain spell that was said to be the most powerful one in the book. It was a spell that could get you whateveer you visualized in your mind as you did the spell. It would be done during the full moon, which was next week. So, Samantha waited for the night of the full moon.

On the night of the full moon, Samantha cast a circle and called the four quarters and lit the candles on the four sides, one black, one white, one red and one green. Just like the book instructed. In the center she had a small cauldrin with the herbs and oils in it. She took a knife and started to chant the words the book provided as she sliced her palm and bled into the cauldrin, concentrating on the things she wanted most. As she was finishing the spell, a strong wind blew open her front door and blew out the candles, leaving her standing alone in a dark apartment. There was nothing that could explain that wind, no windows open anywhere, not in her apartment,not in the hallway. But, she shrugged it off and completed the ceremony, closed the circle and dismissed the four quarters like she read in the book. It was well after 2AM when she finished the whole thing And she had started at midnight. She felt exhausted when she was done, so she decided to go to bed. She went to her bed and fell fast asleep. During the night, however she had strange, vivid dreams that frightened her. She woke up and figured that it was probably an overactive imagination after doing all that mumbo jumbo.
She got ready and went to work. When she got to the newspaper, the boss asked to see her. She wondered if she had done something wrong, but that was not the case at all. He began by telling her that the lead journalist had a freak accident and had been killed and that he wanted her to be the new lead journalist, which would be a six figure job. She agreed right away. This would mean more hours and more travel, but Samantha was thrilled. This is the chance she'd been hoping for when she did the spell the night before. Not only that, but that Friday evening she met the man of her dreams while she was out on the town with her friends. Things were going exactly how she hoped they would when she performed the spell.
A couple of months later she found the perfect two story colonial and her and her new love moved in. His name was Drew and he was an artist that worked at a Gallery by day and did his artwork at night in one of the rooms they had converted to a studio. Things were perfect. But it wouldn't last long.
May had come at last and Samantha had to go back to her home town to be Mandy's maid of honour. And that was the last good thing that would happen to Samantha.
When she returned home, Drew was still at work. She unlocked the door to her house, she entered the large living room and could see straight into the kitchen as it was right behind the living room and had no wall to seperate it. There at her kitchen table were two children,a boy maybe 5, abd a girl about 4. She walked towards her table and said"How did you get in here?" And the children looked at her, then she noticed what was wrong with them. Their eyes were black and their faces pallid. They had dark circles under their eyes and dried blood on the sides if their heads. They were Dead! They were Ghosts!!! She couldn't beleive it, it was impossible, she didn't believe in those things! But, here they were, plain as day. She turned to run out, but then she heard a loud CRASH! And she turned bacj towards the kitchen... (CONT)