For the Lonely and the Lost

I was almost done with Great-Grandma’s recipe books. I had decided to digitize them as my latest project. There had been a lot of those since Stan had hared off with that 30-year-old plastic named Diana.

I could admit... I was keeping myself busy. A lot. There were nights that I didn’t sleep at all and I just kept keeping busy.

I felt sorry for Edwina. That poor little kid had been through so much. It wasn’t like her dad was great. He hadn’t really wanted kids.

I shook my head at the thought of the way he had crowed about it all through our dating years.

He wanted kids the way kids want a puppy. He was just too selfish and self-deluded to see it. Which meant that the minute our daughter was born, he started to understand all of the responsibility that came with children... and a family... and a house... and a yard. And after the first year, that was the beginning of the end. He decided that since I loved our daughter, that meant I should be solely responsible for her in every way.

While I had always wanted to be a mother, I hadn’t wanted to be a married single mother or a single mother at all. But that’s what Stan decided needed to happen.

I wasn’t glamorous enough for him. I wasn’t overweight, but he decided that I needed to diet. He hated my long hair and complained constantly that I spent too much time with Edwina. When I pointed out that we were a family and we should all be spending time together, Stan told me I was boring and that he didn’t have time for the kiddy stuff that Edwina liked.

She was 4 years old at the time.

He said we needed to put her with someone who could relate to her... maybe his mother or a sitter.

When I started a home-based business to spend more time with Edwy, he did nothing but disparage me. Said I needed to quit being lazy and get a job like a real woman instead of hiding behind a little kid.

I had always been a workaholic before Edwy, but once she was born I was ready to stop the whole world and just spend my days with her. Stan couldn’t understand it or me.

Then he found Diana, sharp-dressed, smart-mouthed, short-haired Diana who lived in stilettos and spoke like a customer service rep who never took a day off. Stan found her at a luncheon for job interviewees, as he had lost his job two months before.

They spoke over the phone and then started having lunch together... then Diana began tutoring him privately.

I took on side work to fill the financial gap with Stan not working while he carped at me about being lazy and how I needed a real job. But we would need to find a sitter for Edwy, as he wouldn’t be able to watch her while he was having sessions with Diana.

My business was supporting us and the savings from before Stan lost his job had tided us over for the first month and a half of his unemployment.

But I was lazy now, I guess.

Then I finally had to take out loans, on the back of my business, and he blamed me for those too.

Everything was my fault according to Stan.

Oops! I had accidentally just erased half of a page!

Darn it!

Oh well, back to work. I needed to focus, but it was hard. Despite the fact that I saw Stan for what he was... all the things that he said still hurt so much. Probably because he was the one I thought I would spend my life with. I thought we would build a family and a life together.

Turns out he never wanted any of that.

I felt the tears before they could drip onto the recipe pages and wiped them away with the back of my hand.

Unfortunately, not before one of them fell on the cover of the last recipe book.

I hastily wiped it off. I was here to help bring these amazing recipes into the new age of the internet... NOT destroy them with my tears over that worthless jerk!

I grabbed a rag and polished the black leather, making sure not a smidge of water was left. It seemed pretty sturdy, but I wasn’t sure.

Thank goodness it hadn’t fallen on the pages!

I inspected the cover.

Hmmm, no harm done.

I ran my fingers over the surface and it felt warm... alive in some odd way.

I set aside the other book I was working on and opened this one. It had been buried in Grandma’s attic in a locked trunk, along with some other odd bits and bobs.

Great-Grandma was definitely into what people nowadays would call that witchy stuff.

I laughed to myself, like any of that was real!

I read through the book and found it was written in different languages per entry. That was odd.

Hmm.

Adjusting my oversized computer glasses and relaxing to Adam Levine’s “No One Else Like You”—I had it on loop while I worked; it helped me stay in the zone—I flipped through the book until I found a particular entry. It was written in some sort of odd glyph script... but it was as though I could read it.

The glyphs shifted until I could read the title clearly:

For the Lonely and the Lost

I read it and I seemed to have all of the ingredients here in my kitchen. I always worked best in here. It was peaceful.

It had some odd ingredients... but I had them all.

I felt a bit dazed as I collected everything and set it on the counter. I lit a candle and began a weird chant.

And the book began to glow.

I looked around at the lighting and it seemed fine, and then I studied the book.

Yep.

It was glowing.

How strange.

Edwy would LOVE this! She loved all things fairytale related.

I turned to get her and heard a whispered:

LATER.

Well, after I finished I would go get her.

I turned back to the pages and began the chant again.

I was almost done when the book was knocked off the counter and I was shoved back to land on my butt on the hard kitchen tile with a surprising amount of force.

I sat rubbing my sore butt and blinked up at...

Grandma???

How had she gotten from her place to my kitchen? How long had I been out of it? Had I missed her call?

Questions danced in my head as she gathered the book and bound it up in some old cloth. The book gave a screech as it shut, and then it went back to being a normal book.

“Grandma?!”

She looked pissed!

“Edith! How could you? You know the attic is off limits! What in Hades possessed you to bring this thing here?!”

She seethed.

Gran had always been a calm little old lady full of cookies and crayons and hugs. I had never seen this side of her. Her gray hair stood on end and her eyes glowed green. Her skin appeared paler than usual.

I backed away.

“I was digitizing Great-Grandma’s old recipes—the ones you always made for me! I didn’t want them lost and the pages were starting to degrade... even the ink is starting to fade out. What is going on, Gran?”

She sighed tiredly and her hair and eyes calmed. She slumped onto a kitchen stool and put her hand over her face.

“Oh, Edi. Oh sweetie... yes, they were meant to FADE. I couldn’t destroy them and so I let time do it for me. They were almost gone. And this book... it will never fade, Edi.”

I stared at her, wondering if dementia was kicking in.

“Gran... what do you mean?”

She looked up at me. The glow had come back to her eyes and it made her look quite creepy.

“Edi, you were about to summon an interdimensional being here in your kitchen, and you are asking me what I mean?”

I gaped at her.

She looked sad and resigned at the same time.

“Edith, do you remember your great-great-aunt Irene? The one we never hear from and whose family we never go see?”

I felt like I was sucking a lemon when I answered. It always felt that way when I thought about that side of the family, even though we had never met.

“Yeah, I remember you and Mom talking about them. Why?”

She twisted her mouth and looked away.

“Irene was the one to create this book.”

She waggled the black leather-bound book in her old hands.

I blinked at her.

She sighed again and I could tell it was story time by the way she smoothed her dress.

“A very long time ago, Irene was a lonely and ignored little girl who never fit in anywhere. Until one day she found something out in the woods. It was a clear glass pebble. She brought it home and began writing in this book. She was consumed by it. Every day after school she would sequester herself in her room to write everything down until she found a spell that would bring her what she wanted most in the world... a friend.

“And it DID bring her a friend—a cosmic horror from beyond our dimension that needed to eat... animals at first, and then people soon after. And Irene, being the lonely and foolish little girl that she was... fed it.”

She hung her head then.

“Gran, that’s not possib—”

“I am speaking.”

She shut me down with a look and then waved a hand at my music player. It sparked and shut off.

“Now you will have the good grace to let me finish.”

I shut up and nodded.

“Irene kept feeding this thing. A burglar, a vagrant, the postman... and then more and more. She fed her own father to it. Not that he was much of a father, but he was still the child’s parent. When her sister came home from school, she found everything and she shut down the book and Irene. But it was too late and there was no way to send the entity that had been summoned back to where it came from. So Irene’s family has been saddled with guarding it ever since. Your cousin Shiara ended up with the duty after her sister Bianca fled. This book brings nothing good, Edith. Now erase those files and dispose of the remnants of this summoning quickly. If this book fell into the wrong hands... I don’t even want to think about it.”

Her face had taken on a stern cast, and she slipped the book into her huge black purse, clicking it shut audibly.

I felt chilled to the bone while a bead of sweat trickled down my back.

I did as Gran bade me. I cleaned everything up and salted it all. Then I salted the candle and put everything in the trash. I erased all of the recipes.

After we cleaned up, I walked Gran to the door.

“How did you get here?”

She smiled.

“I put a spell on the book so the moment it was opened, I would be alerted. Then I teleported here.”

She said it so matter-of-factly, like chatting about the weather.

I stared at her.

“Gran, are you a witch?”

She looked at me quizzically.

“Edith, of course. You are too... and so is Edwy. Your mother didn’t tell you?”

I shook my head. Mom had passed when I was 9, and we hadn’t talked about this much. But I remember her doing strange things. I just chalked it up to my imagination.

She looked at me sympathetically.

“I know you miss her, sweetie. I’m sorry she had to leave you so soon. If you have questions after tonight... well, maybe it’s time for you to come to the cottage for a while. Edwy was going to need to start spending her summers there anyway.”

I blinked at her.

“Why?”

She sighed again.

“Because she needs training. She has a lot going on and she will need some guidance. Your father didn’t want you involved in all of this. But I thought that he would at least tell you what was going on... he was a witch too, you know?”

My jaw dropped.

“What?!”

She looked uncomfortable.

“So he didn’t tell you ANYTHING?”

I shook my head.

“No. All I know is that he blamed something for Mom’s death. And he was really Christian after Mom died. I just figured it was his way of making sense of everything.”

I shrugged.

She nodded.

“We have a lot to talk about...”

“GRANMA!!”

A shriek of pure joy and pounding little feet signaled Edwy was awake and inbound.

I had thought she was asleep.

She threw herself at Gran in a hug/glomp, and Gran smiled bright, grabbing her tiny frame and lifting her while spinning her in a circle.

I had never realized just how spry Gran really was.

I had a lot of questions alright.

“I have to go, my dear. Bridge club soon. But I will be back very soon. Your mother has just agreed that you both need to come out and see me for the summer. How’s that sound?”

She grinned at my daughter and Edwy lit up like the sun.

“Yaaaayyy!!”

She danced around and then looked at me solemnly.

“You mean it, Mommy? Are we going to go?”

The tentative hope in her small voice made me buckle.

I smiled.

“Of course. It’s long past time for a vacation. I will call your dad and let him know in the morning.”

She practically glowed and hugged Gran once more. I heard her say a quiet thank you in Gran’s ear and watched Gran’s answering smile.

Edwy picked up her blanket, dropped in her enthusiasm, and made her way back to her room.

Hmmm.

It was odd that she didn’t make a fuss... maybe she was just tired.

I saw Gran off at the porch where she just stepped off the last step and vanished into mist.

I gulped and went back inside.

I had so many questions.

*****

I watched from around the corner as Mommy and Grandma left and watched as Grandma vanished from the porch. I’d seen her do stuff like this a lot when nobody was watching.

I waited till Mommy went back to the kitchen and then closed my door really quietly. I listened to make sure that nobody was coming and then did a circle around myself and the book with my toys.

I opened the book to the spell Mommy had been saying in the kitchen. She hadn’t seen me in the doorway. I watched her a lot when she was staying busy. I was worried about her since Daddy left. And I wanted her to play with me, but she never did. Daddy didn’t either when I visited him and that meanie Diana. She didn’t like me and I didn’t like her either.

It was the same way at school. People just didn’t like me. Animals did though... and bugs.

I read the chant. Maybe I’d be able to find somebody who really liked me.

There was a sharp pulse in the room and a glow, and then I went to sleep.

When I opened my eyes I looked around.

Maybe it didn’t work.

“Hello. You were out for a while.”

A large pinkish light was in the corner of my room. Glitter pulsed here and there within the light.

I stared at it.

“Hi, who are you?”

“You called me... don’t you remember?” the light pulsed when it spoke.

I blinked, so it had worked.

“Yaaaay! What’s your name?”

The light thought for a moment.

“Hmm, great question... Zoe. My name is Zoe... and you’re Edwina, right?”

I nodded happily.

“Ok, well maybe I should change... I think this would attract too much attention here.”

There was a quick snap like somebody snapping their fingers and a teenage girl a little taller than me appeared. She had pink glittery stripes in her dark brown hair that hung in a huge and heavy-looking braid flipped over her left shoulder, and a jean vest on with shredded blue jeans and a pink top.

I started to cry.

“What’s wrong, Edwina?”

“Will you play with me?”

She looked at me with shock.

“Yeah... we are best friends now. Where you go, I go. Friends forever!”

She put out her hand and I placed mine in hers.

I felt a quick jolt and she smiled.