A Blue, Ceramic Vase

There it was again. Window shutters slammed against their panes, while the wind howled like a crying cub away from its mother. There weren't supposed to be storms in Oklahoma that time of year. Everyone in the dusty little town was fast asleep, not yet woken by the beginnings of the storm. That is, everyone except for Avery. She squeezed her eyes closed, shutting out the sounds from outside her window and the memories of the night before. It wasn’t working all that well. The wind sounded too much like his scream.

“Avery, ya okay?” her brother called from across the hall of their small, one story ranch house.

She choked out a yes, burying her face back into her pillow. All that blood. That’s all she could think about since she got home. She hadn’t wanted to do it, but Clayton convinced them. If Cody didn’t die then we would, he said. One life wasn’t worth six, he said. 

CRASH. This time the shutter slammed so hard into the window, Avery swore there was a crack. She couldn’t bring herself to look, or drop her covers for that matter. 

“Avery, what happened t’ya?” her brother had asked when she got in that night. Her jeans were torn from the hike out to Buffalo Cliffs, and her boots muddy. She told her brother she was playing horseshoes with Lyla and tripped on her way home. He shrugged. Having been at the closest saloon all night, he was a bit too drunk to care. He had no idea she cried her eyes out for hours the second he left her alone.

SMASH. This time a shutter did break the window, sending shards of glass all over Avery’s twin bed. She threw her covers off and backed herself up against her headboard. She told herself this had nothing to do with the curse. Nothing to do with that damn vase. It couldn’t hurt her, it was buried by the cliffs. 

Along with Cody. 

The shutters stopped moving, the wind slowed, and she could no longer hear the howling sound that had been tormenting her all night. All was completely silent. All was still.

Avery let out a long, shaky breath. Finally, it was calm, but something still seemed wrong. She swore there was movement outside her broken window. Avery reached for her bedside lamp, trying to twist the knob as quickly as she could. The lamp clicked, but no light came on. Avery tried again, and just like before she heard a click but no light. 

“Shit,” she cursed, reaching for her top drawer, knocking off the ceramic arrowhead her grandpa had given her last Christmas. 

Avery wished her parents were home. She knew Mitch could sleep through anything, especially with the help of a few whiskeys. Her parents were at a bullfight in the town over, leaving Avery all alone to her thoughts and the storm.

Something moved again. This time Avery was sure of it. “Mitch!” she hissed as loud as she could. Where the hell was he? She pulled the drawer open as quietly as possible, blindly reaching her hand in, feeling around for her little flashlight. Her fingers closed around the rough cylinder, and with one quick motion she pointed it right at the window. Nothing. Just the broken window frame and the shutters slowly knocking against the house. 

Heart racing, Avery decided there was no way she was going back to sleep. She kicked off her covers and carefully avoided the glass shards that littered her floor. She almost made it to the hall before she felt a searing pain on the left side of her heel. A small point of glass had sliced a deep gash into her foot. She cursed watching blood pool by her feet. 

That’s when it hit her. Seeing the blood puddle continue to grow she flashed back to hours earlier, when she watched Cody’s blood pool around the rocks. Avery gagged reflexively, just like she did when she saw the body. Her need to vomit shocked her back into the present and forced her to move towards the bathroom. She propped the flashlight on the sink, wrapped her foot in a towel and stood over the toilet, waiting for something to come up.

The storm started again, but this time thunder cracked close enough to shake the little house. Again, she thought, where was her brother? 

Finally deciding she wasn’t going to throw up, she moved to the sink to wash off her hands. She turned the red knob and waited for the water to become painful. Squeezing her eyes shut she allowed the water to burn her hands, believing she deserved whatever pain it brought. Just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, something changed. The water cooled on its own. But the temperature wasn’t the only thing that changed. The viscosity did. No longer was the water thin and runny, but now thick and sticky. Avery’s eyes flew open in fear, and she let out a shriek when she saw her hands were being coated in blood. She slammed off the faucet and stared at her dripping, red hands. Hot tears burned down her cheeks, as she began sobbing out of confusion and fear. This time she didn’t try to be quiet.

“MITCHELL!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, wiping her shaking hands furiously on the once white hand towel.

“Mitchell, please,” she sobbed, grabbing the flashlight and running back into the hall.

Another roll of thunder shook the house, causing the one painting on the wall to crash to the floor. More glass shards went flying.

Avery ignored the painting and ran towards Mitch’s room, feeling one of her toes get sliced by the glass. She didn’t care anymore, she just needed to not be alone. She flung open his door, but to her horror the room was empty, the bed unmade, and a lamp knocked to the floor. 

She moved her flashlight around his room.

Something was wrong. 

Mitch had an annoying habit of needing all his stuff to be a certain way, but right then, everything was out of place. His desk was turned, and the chair knocked over. His boots were scattered across the floor, and the little tapestry their mom gave him was knocked off the wall. Avery felt the feeling of dread in her stomach grow. What could've done this?

That was when Avery felt a scrawny hand fold out on her shoulder. She let out a blood curdling scream and whipped her body and flashlight around. 

Nothing. 

“Mitch!” she screamed. “This ain’t funny!”

No response. 

“I’m serious! Stop messin’ around!” she peeked out of his room, shining her flashlight down both sides of the hall. 

Nothing

She turned back to his bed, and then she saw it. Sitting in the middle of his desk was the blue, ceramic vase. The same one that was supposed to be buried at the bottom of Buffalo Cliffs. She felt bile forcing its way up from her stomach, and with no way of stopping it she vomited all over her feet.

“No, no, no,” she whispered, backing away from the desk and the vomit. 

It couldn’t be. 

Clayton had promised this would all be over. The note in the vase said if someone wasn’t sacrificed then bad things would start happening. They hadn’t believed it, but then Clayton’s horses started getting sick one by one. Then Lyla’s cat died. Things kept happening, but it wasn’t until they all started getting stomach pains days later that they believed the curse. 

That’s when Clayton had come to the rest of the group with a plan. He invited them all over except Cody. Cody wasn’t really part of the group, and Clayton pointed out that if they didn’t do something soon, they would all be dead. He promised since his daddy was the sheriff nothing bad could happen to them. 

That night, they had each snuck out, not telling anyone where they were going. All six of them walked the same dusty path to the cliffs. Cody had suggested playing cowboys and indians, but Clayton said they were too old for that now. It was time they went somewhere grown up. Avery wished they hadn’t.

It was Clayton that pushed Cody. 

Clayton planned everything. Clayton kept reminding them of the curse. Clayton was even the one who found the vase. So, why was the vase in Avery’s house?

Without another look, Avery left her brother's room as fast as she could. Thunder shook the house once again, violently rocking the walls. When the boom quieted, Avery could hear the soft splashing of what sounded like the sink. She took a slow step back towards the bathroom whose door was shut. She hadn’t remembered closing the door, and she was almost positive she hadn’t left the sink on. As she got closer she was certain the sound was the sink, but there was something else. Her hands shook as she turned the knob, pulling the door open a crack. As soon as she did, thick blood pooled out into the hall, pushing the door open wider. Blood was spraying out from the shower and sink, filling the bathroom floor.

Crying out in disgust she slammed the door shut and backed right into something stiff. Something human. She couldn’t bear to turn around. “Mitch?” she whimpered, pleading that her brother was there to hug her and make this all go away. 

No response. She slowly turned her head, but all she could see was a wall. A whole two feet away from her.

She let out a shaky sigh of relief. I need to get outside, she thought, taking a turn down towards the front door. 

Before she could get to the front door she tripped on something. Something hard. Catching her balance, she shone her flashlight down at the floor. 

There it was again. 

The vase. 

Knocked over, but shining. The blue was somehow glowing, even in the dark. 

That was it. She had to get out. She left the vase and turned the corner as fast as she could, but immediately wished she hadn’t. A lanky figure stood between her and her one escape. A soft bit of moonlight shone through the little windows of the front door, illuminating the figure. Crooked and bent, it looked like it was once human, but not anymore. What stood out was the two large gashes in the side of its head, the left part of its skull crushed. Its eyes were cutouts, the light from the window shining straight through. Even with those horrific features, there was no mistaking who the figure was.

“Cody,” Avery whispered, swaying slightly from the overwhelming sense of nausea and fear. “Please, no.”

It took a step towards her. She took a step back.

“There’s nowhere ya can hide,” it croaked, barely a voice and more like a hiss.

“It wadn’t me, Cody,” Avery cried. “Clayton. Clayton, he…”

“Ah done dealt with Clayton,” he snarled. “Each one of ya ain’t gonna get away with what ya did.”

Avery kept backing up until her back hit the wall. Sobbing, her shaking knees finally gave out. She couldn’t take it anymore. She dropped to the floor and buried her face into her hands, not wanting to look at Cody’s gashed face ever again.

Hot air rippled down her neck as Cody whispered over her head, “Don’t ya wish we had jus’ played Cowboys and Indians?”

And with that the wind howled one last time, crying for those Oklahoma plains. Crying for the cowboys and the indians. Crying for the curse. Crying for the crossfires that took more than one victim. 

When the dust finally settled, there was only one thing left unbroken in that little desert town. 

A blue, ceramic vase.