The Bone-Tarot of Hollowbrook

At seventeen, I was obsessed with the occult, not as a lark, but as a desperate attempt to understand the suffocating dread that had settled over our house since my mother’s death. My tools were cheap and harmless: a worn deck of tarot cards I’d bought at a flea market, a handful of crystals, and a dried crow’s foot I’d found in the woods. My sanctuary was the attic, a dusty space with a single dormer window that overlooked the dead elm tree and the backyard where my mother’s garden had withered to black stalks.

On the night of my birthday, I invited my two best friends, Mia and Jess, for a sleepover. They knew about my ‘witchy phase,’ as they called it, and after a few hours of drinking cheap cider and watching horror movies, they begged me to do a reading. I set up my meager altar on a mildewed trunk: a black candle, a chipped bowl of salt, and the tarot deck, which I always kept wrapped in a piece of red silk. The cards themselves were ancient, with faded illustrations and a peculiar odor, like dust and old iron.

I used a simple three-card spread: past, present, future. For Mia, I drew the Lovers, the Three of Swords, and the Tower. I laughed it off as drama, but Mia went pale. For Jess, the High Priestess, the Moon, and Death. She shrugged, pretending not to care. Then it was my turn. I shuffled the deck, letting my mind go blank, and laid out three cards. The first was the Fool, reversed. The second was the Hanged Man. The third was the Five of Pentacles, but the image was wrong. The two figures in the snow weren’t huddled under a lamplight; they were staring up at a skeletal tree, and one of them had no face. I felt a cold draft snake down my spine, and the candle flame guttered. I quickly put the cards away, laughing it off, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been watching me from the shadows beyond the candle’s reach.

The weeks that followed were unremarkable, but then the letters began. They were written in an elegant, spidery hand on paper that felt like skin, and they arrived in plain envelopes with no return address. The first one simply said, ‘The dead do not forget.’ The second: ‘You think you are safe in your tower of wood and bone.’ I threw them in the bin, but they kept appearing, tucked under my pillow, in my coat pocket, even in my school books. I told myself it was a prank, but Mia and Jess had moved away by then, and my father was too deep in his grief to notice.

Then the images started. In my dreams, I would walk through a forest of white trees, their bark like polished bone. There was a path leading to a clearing, and in the center stood a stone well. A woman in a tattered dress would beckon to me, but her face was a blank void. I would wake up screaming, my sheets soaked with sweat. I began to sleep with the lights on, but the darkness seemed to seep in from the corners anyway.

Desperate, I decided to consult a medium. I found a woman named Madam Elara in a dimly lit shop that smelled of incense and old books. She was elderly, with sharp eyes and a voice like gravel. I told her about the cards, the letters, the dream. She listened in silence, then took my hands, her grip surprisingly strong. ‘You have touched something old,’ she said, ‘something that should have been left buried. The cards are not the source; they are a door. And you have left it open.’ She gave me a small pouch of herbs and told me to burn it at the crossroads at midnight. ‘It will seal the door,’ she said, ‘but you must beware. The something that came through is patient, and it knows your name.’

I did as she said. On a cold night, under the waning moon, I walked to the crossroads where three roads met. I built a fire and threw the herbs into it. The flames turned green, and I heard a sound like a thousand whispers, then silence. I went home feeling a sense of calm for the first time in months. But the next morning, I found a small figurine on my doorstep, carved from bone, in the shape of a crow with a human skull for a head. Its eyes were two tiny rubies that glinted in the dawn light.

I knew then that the door was not sealed. It had been opened from the inside. The dream visited me again, but this time, the woman in the clearing spoke. Her voice was like the rustling of dead leaves. ‘You have brought me into the world,’ she said. ‘Now you must feed me.’ She pointed to the well, and I saw it was filled with bones, human bones, and at the bottom, there was a pale shape, moving.

I took the crow figurine and buried it in the garden, under the dead elm tree. For a while, the dreams stopped. But I knew it was only a matter of time. And then, one night, I woke to find writing on my bedroom wall, in a substance that smelled like copper. It said, ‘The elm has ears. The earth drinks deep.’

I dug up the spot where I had buried the figurine. It was gone. In its place was a small, fleshy root that writhed when I touched it. I had a panic attack and ran out of the house, barefoot, into the cold. I didn’t know where to go, but I ran until I collapsed in the woods, not far from the crossroads.

When I woke, it was dawn. I was lying on a bed of moss, and a woman was kneeling beside me. She looked like the figure from my dreams, but her face was not blank; it was the face of my mother, aged and hollow. She smiled, and her teeth were black. ‘You have found me,’ she said. ‘Now you will give me your bones, and I will take your place.’ I screamed and scrambled away, but when I looked back, she was gone.

I never returned to that house. I live now in a small apartment in the city, with new friends, a new name. I keep the lights on. I do not touch tarot cards. But sometimes, at night, I hear a sound like the snapping of twigs, and I catch a whiff of that iron-and-dust smell. And I know that she is still there, waiting, patient, and that one day, she will come for my bones.