Witch Clan: Matriarchs by John Stormm (best beach reads of all time TXT) 📖

were two Johnnies in the ravaged living room. Dave was tossing the baby up in the air and catching her to try and stop her crying. Surprised to see someone else in the room, his missed his catch and Johnny bounced off the couch and caught his sister before she could hit the floor and dashed for Lorry’s legs, pushing her back down the hall to the front door. In the living room, Dave was livid with Johnny for stealing the baby and began hitting the boy on his head and back with a golf club. She all but fell backwards out the front door as Johnny kept pushing his baby sister at her. Regaining her wits for the moment, she took her daughter from her son and moved out the front walk from the house.

“Boy, is your father ever mad at you now,” she said, still trying to reconcile what she saw.

“Apple banger,” Johnny said, rubbing his hip.

“Was that a cuss word, young man?” she growled. Johnny just shrugged his shoulders. Dave was still inside trashing the house with a golf club and swearing at Johnny. Patty came over to see if they needed any help and escorted her back to her house where the party was winding down. Ted had made a pot of coffee and drank it black to try and clear his head. Beatrice took Linda, who was none the worse for her adventure and rocked her to sleep in Patty and Ted’s bedroom. Patty was dabbing a washcloth at some of Johnny’s bruises as he sat quietly, staring at the wall as though he could see through it, to what was happening at home. Lorry had Ted walk with her back to the house to check on Dave. As they walked up the front walk to the door, Dave burst out the door with a mangled golf club in hand, wailing like a baby then threw himself on the front lawn face first.

“I killed him,” he sobbed. “I killed the little bastard. I really did it.” Lorry looked on in horror as Ted knelt down beside him and gently removed the golf club.

“Who’d you kill, sport?” Ted chided him jokingly. “Everybody is safe at my house and you’re behaving like a wild man here. C’mon, get up and show me what you did tonight.”

“I’ve really done it this time, ol’ buddy,” Dave said. “He wouldn’t stop staring at me with those spooky eyes of his and I let ‘im have it good. He hurt my baby and I lost my temper and killed him.” Dave led the way back into the house. Ted and Lorry exchanged looks, and followed him inside. The house was in shambles and the living room was lit at a crooked angle by a fallen lamp. Lorry put it back up on its end table, the hot light bulb had already begun melting a spot into the carpet. Dave tossed aside cushions and debris looking to uncover the body he swore was there. Ted looked throughout the entire house and finding nothing, calmed him down.

“If you had hurt anybody that bad,” Ted said, “there would be blood all over the place, or even on this golf club. You didn’t kill anybody, sport. You just had too much to drink. You need to slow down on this stuff, Dave, and dry out for a bit. Too much juice will ruin your life, my friend.”

Dave sat on the floor sobbing, while Ted went into the kitchen to brew coffee for them. Lorry began picking up the mess as he continued feeling sorry for himself. Over and over, she played it all back in her mind. She had seen him hit Johnny with that club too. But it couldn’t have been Johnny, because he was pushing her out the door carrying his baby sister in his arms. He was with her at the Kraft’s’ house and he only had a couple bruises. It must have been the booze that had them all confused. Somehow, Johnny was responsible for all of this insanity. Dave was going to end up in a padded cell, or worse, and leave her and Linda to fend for themselves. Her mom knew how to handle the boy; he was all her idea anyway. A carefully worded letter to her mother was in order, but how was she going to explain this?

With Ted and Patty’s help, Dave stopped drinking himself into a stupor the next few holidays. Even so, by Linda’s first birthday the following February, the rift had seemed to grow between Dave and her son. Johnny would not speak to him at all, which was fine because she had no idea of what Dave might do if Johnny had called him an “apple banger” to his face. She had no idea what that meant, but it probably had something to do with his golf swing.

The worst of it was that when Dave was in the general area, Johnny never took his eyes off him. The silent stare was all the emotion Dave could evoke from the boy. He would never turn his back on Dave, even if it meant he had to leave the room walking backwards to do it. He would play normally with his sister all day, and then when Dave came home, he would back away and go to his room. He would stubbornly not so much as blink as long as the man was in the room. Psychiatrists probably had a word for this kind of behavior, but whatever it was, no doubt it would be as expensive as it was hard to pronounce. His schoolwork wasn’t suffering. He was at the top of his class with straight A’s. It was more likely the boy’s way of getting back at Dave for calling him a bastard and kicking him. It was scary to think of how long he would carry a grudge.

On a good note, her mother’s letters indicated that she was all for the idea of Johnny's return. Could she really give him up again? She had to save her marriage. Little Linda needed her daddy and Johnny didn’t have one. This family couldn’t long survive that kind of tension. She had to make a decision, and soon.


Dark Visions

Emma rode the great bay stallion, and together they rode the winds. Soaring high above the mountains and valleys, she watched below for the herd with the lovely gray mare and the unicorn foal. On a windswept western prairie, the sound of a screaming stallion caught her attention and she wheeled about to investigate. The scene unfolded in a box canyon, where a wild Appaloosa stallion reared to attack and attempt to chase off a silvery white colt. A gray mare huddled to the back of the canyon with her nursing foal and the stallion stood between them and the unicorn colt.

The colt had suffered numerous bites and hits from the larger stallion as evidenced by the marks on his silvery hide. No longer did the silvery nub appear on his forehead, but it had the beginnings of a fine spiral horn. The colt made no aggressive action, nor did he attempt to defend himself from the stallion, but the intermittent flashing in his eyes attested to the anger and fury brewing within. The Appaloosa was in a terrible lather and insane with rage and although the unicorn was doing its best not to present any threat, the colt had but three choices. He could leave the herd and fend for himself in the wild. He could stay and be crippled or killed by the crazy stallion or he could lower his horn and charge the larger beast in defense. The colt was the smaller of the two, but by no means was it defenseless.

The storm clouds gathered over the box canyon and lightning flickered ominously in the skies. The furious stallion's hooves pummeled at the colt whose eyes flashed in defiance, mirroring the stormy scene above. The wind knocked Emma from her steed and she came tumbling down to land on her feet between the enraged Appaloosa and the very surprised unicorn colt. Stretching her arms forward...

She steadied herself by gripping the kitchen counter with both hands and leaning heavily, trying to catch her breath.

“Are you alright, hon?” Willard asked, gently gripping her shoulders.

“Just a bit over tired, I suppose,” she said. "I seem to be dreaming as much standing up as lying down these days."

The letters from Lorry were becoming more and more troubling. She rubbed her temples trying to loosen up the tension between her eyes. Her grandson was withdrawing from human society, and who could blame him? He wasn't seeing humanity at its best by any stretch of the imagination. Lorry's assertion that her son was the evil shadow of his father had all the earmarks of becoming a self fulfilling prophecy in the way she rejected the boy. Johnny wasn't communicating much in his letters anymore. Had he given up trying to fit in? Her hopes rose with her daughter's hints of sending him back east for the summers and possibly longer. Lorry feared for her marriage.

Emma feared for Johnny. It was a shame she could not pull him out of school in mid-year and get him back before worse happened. June was still four months away and she could sense the tension building from three thousand miles away.

"Our boy isn't doing so good out there, is he?" Willard asked in response to her worried silence.

"Not for any lack of trying," she replied. "Lorry means well by him, but he reminds her of Lee, and there's nothing he can do about that. No