Juniper arrived on move-in day prepared for war. She didn’t know how much this creature might hate the idea of sharing its domain, but she wasn’t backing down without a fight. It was her or The Empty, and in this housing market, The Empty had better be ready to square up.
There was more than enough of her budget left over for professional movers to help unpack her things. As she'd never moved out before, she didn't have much in the way of furniture. All of her things fit easily into a medium moving truck. A bed, a desk and computer with all the fixings, a love seat and footstool, bookcases and their companions, and some storage took up the bulk of the truck. Everything else was a collection of smaller items that went in her bedroom, the kitchen, and the garden, with very few things in the living room.
She'd instructed the movers to set the furniture down in its final places and set each box in the room with the corresponding label on the floor. She had a suitcase and four boxes of things she wanted immediately, which was essentially an overnight bag, things to set up the house like a stud finder and screwdriver, and whatever she thought she might need if the other presence in the house got uppity.
The move went smoothly. The house was far enough from any others that there was no welcome wagon for her. That was just as well, because those kinds of things drained her, and she needed all her strength. From what she'd gathered from Fern, The Empty could only materialize and move around in dark spaces. If it were corralled and trapped in an area that was then lit up, then it would be further trapped in a state where it couldn't even materialize. All she needed to do was keep that room as bright as the surface of the sun, and it would have nowhere to go. It at least also appeared to be bound by the size and strength of its physical form in that it couldn't just faze through a door. It had to open it like everyone else.
One of the first things Juniper did was install the thickest steel bars she could find on the bedroom window on the inside and out. When that was done, she secured the bedroom door from the hallway side with a 2x4 nestled in two sturdy slots. It made her feel a lot better about her situation that if it ever did get out from under the bed, it would have to put up a hell of a fight to make it out of the room.
She set alarms on her phone to check the batteries on the lights at regular intervals. She added a smart lighting system to the room that would alert her if it should ever fail. She covered the outside of the door and window with wards until she was breathless and her hands shook.
And then, she put The Empty out of her mind. There were too many other things to do.
Unpacking took up most of her time. Dana helped along with a few of her other friends. She invited her sister, after she'd made some progress on the house. She gave an excuse and said that she was too busy. Neither of them bothered to ask about her coming over another time.
The house needed work, so much work. She created binders and notebooks and planners with every task and milestone she could think of. Every task completed left five more in its wake. There were walls to paint, floors to wash, weeds to pull, and boxes to recycle. It was neverending, and the exhaustion kept her from having to think about anything other than the task at hand. It was refreshing. Even in the quiet of a house all to herself, Juniper was never forced to be alone with her thoughts.
She set up in the furthest bedroom from the locked one. It was nearest to the staircase and one of the sitting rooms. She never heard a peep from The Empty, or even felt it as she walked down the hall. It was well and truly trapped. After a while, she would have forgotten about what was behind the closed door if it were not for her phone reminders to check the lights and the wooden beam over the door.
Juniper did not enter The Empty’s room for the first week that she was in the house. On the last week of September, her sister had called to hash out some details about the will that hadn’t been addressed yet. The conversation didn’t take long to devolve, and then for the claws to come out.
“Why do you always have to be so difficult?” Natalie shrieked.
“I don’t know, why do you have to be such an impossible bitch?” Juniper snapped back. “It’s not my fucking fault mom died, as much as you wish that were true, so stop acting like it is. She was sick. She didn’t fucking die because I made a confession to her while she was sick.”
“And you made it worse! You had to keep pushing the issue when it was clear she wasn’t going to budge! I saw her get sicker every time you two argued-”
“-then the old bitch should’ve just let it go! Who gives a fuck? It’s my life! She was dying and chose her own ideals over getting along with and accepting her daughter. If she got sicker, she did it to herself.” Juniper’s blood was boiling, and her head was hot and pounding with rage. Her hands shook as she held the phone on speaker.
“How can you say that?” Natalie raged. “She was dying and you just had to rock the boat! She didn’t need to know! What good did it do you to tell her?”
“Because I always had to fight to be accepted by her!” Juniper screamed back. “You got it automatically. You were the wonder child, the perfect student and the perfect witch and the perfect daughter. I wasn’t a single one of those things, and she always fucking hated me for that-”
“-Oh my god stop being so dramatic. She did not hate you-”
“-she did and you wouldn’t know because you never experienced anyone hating perfect Natalie in your whole life-”
“-except for you!”
“Except for me,” Juniper agreed bitterly. “Because you sided with her just for the hell of it even though you knew she was just being stubborn and cruel. So fucking forgive me for hating the both of you for only being able to respect me if I live up to your expectations.”
There was a beep as Natalie hung up. Juniper screamed a long, wailing shriek and launched her phone across the living room into the opposite sofa. She screamed and screamed, pulling at her hair, so overwhelmed with hate that had nowhere to go. She wanted to punch something, to tear something apart. She wanted all of this to go somewhere else so she could go back to puttering around her house and doing her stupid little tasks and pretending that Natalie didn’t exist and that her mother never did.
There was a distant calling, as if someone was saying I can take it from you. I can take it all away. She didn’t hear it in words. It was just a feeling, an image of her emotions being drunk up and drained from her. Juniper didn’t second guess it. She marched herself straight up to the second floor, removed the wooden bar from the bedroom door, and flung it open.
“Take this shit away from me,” she demanded. Already, she felt the emotion surrounding those words being pulled across the room. She gasped, already feeling lighter. There was no change in what she could or couldn’t see. In the light of the room, The Empty still had no form, still made no sound. She wondered if she turned the lights off what it would look like, but didn’t entertain the thought for long.
“I hate her so much,” she said, feeling the emotion being ripped from the words like wallpaper being peeled away to reveal bare surface underneath. “I fucking hate her. I hate her, I hate her,” she wailed, falling to the ground and bringing her fist to the floor. “Why was she the only one who got everything she ever wanted? Why was she the only one mom loved? I know mom could love, because she adored her. Why wasn’t I good enough?”
The Empty drank up her self-loathing like a man lost in a desert coming upon an oasis. It lapped up her hatred, basked in her loneliness. She felt it greedily consume the emotions around her words, pulling them from her like deep splinters.
“I just wanted to be me,” Juniper whispered. “I just wanted to find out who I am. But no, the strongest witches in our family are the women. Hah.” The Empty seemed to pause, waiting to see what emotion would come from this half-finished thought. “Maybe that’s why I was never a very good witch. Mom wanted to have lots of girls to carry on the strong genes from the women in our family. Hope she did a good enough job with Natalie, because I sure as fuck never cut it for her in the witch department or the gender department.”
She could feel The Empty take her words in more slowly this time, like it was rolling them around in its mouth and savoring their taste. It finally slurped down the last of her longing, guilt, and bitterness. And then she felt nothing at all.
Juniper swallowed hard, wondering what she had just done. “Thanks for that,” she choked out, rising quickly. She left The Empty’s room and shut the door, locking it in once more.
Comments (0)
See all