So Long, Not Goodnight

Chapter Twenty-One

"I thought..." Gerard tremored. "I thought that we were safe."

Frank took his hand and guided him towards the front door where they sifted a salt line not so long ago. Reaching out, Frank pointed at a smudge in their protection. "Mikey must have stepped on it on his way out and made an alley for the spirit to enter."

"We still have some salt..." Gerard panicked. "Let's just put more down."

As he made his way into the kitchen and ransacked the cupboard, Frank put a hand on his right shoulder. "We can't... That will trap us in with it... With her."

"What do we do now?"

Frank shrugged. "We can try to expel it with a house blessing. Do you have any... Sage or flowers?"

"Sage, no," Gerard looked around the space and back to Frank. "Flowers... Yeah. We have roses and lavender out front and I'm sure my mom has some in vases throughout the house."

"Okay," Frank fanned his fingers out in front of him. "I'll cut some from the lawn and you find whatever you can throughout the house."

Gerard nodded aggressively, his eyes wide open and aware of every corner and small space around him. "Meet me back here as soon as you get what you can." Frank pulled Gerard to him again and kissed him fiercely. "I... I love you, baby."

Just for a second, all this fell away and Gerard was basking in Frank's paradise. "I love you, too."

They separated and Gerard made his way to his mother and father's room where a bouquet of flowers were all dried and flaking from their shared dresser. He gathered the vase gently in his grip and brought it to the kitchen table. From the foyer, he found a few sunflowers that lay on the small table that his mom left to dry in the sun. He made his way up the steps again and found another bundle of foxglove and clover from Mikey's room. He remembered Mikey saying how Ray had taken him hiking and he gathered something to remember the trip by. He whispered a promise into the empty room that he would only use a few and return the bunch to him. Suddenly, there was a rough cracking sound as Gerard twisted towards Mikey's bureau. The mirror began to crack and make out We'll meet again in the glass; an evil etching. 

Gerard fled from the room and into his own where he noticed earlier his mom had a vase of dying calla lilies at his window sill. He reached out for them and another break shattered through the air as those words were drawn in ripples on his bedroom mirror. Holding the dead flowers in his other hand, he raced out of the room, hearing the bathroom mirrors shatter as he passed and ran down the stairs, almost tripping over the last step as he made his way to the kitchen where Frank stood, roses, lavender, and dandelions were strewn over the table top. Gerard added his last contributions to the pile. "What now?" He looked over at Frank, grabbing the table to stabilize his shaky knees.

"Now," Frank flicked the electric of the backburner of the stove on, showing the glow of an orange ring below the kettle that sat upon it. "We mix a bunch of this shit together."

Frank found a bottle of olive oil in the pantry, pulled a small bowl from the cupboard, and searched through a few drawers until he found a pack of matches. Bringing everything over to the table, he began picking rose petals from a stem and dropping them into the dish. "Start crumbling up some of those dried flowers in here," Frank instructed, pointing towards the bed of petals.

They were so brittle as soon as Gerard took hold of the bunch from his parents' room, they immediately crumbled into a colorful dust that Gerard swept into the bowl. A few clovers, a stalk of foxglove, pulled pieces of yellow dandelion, and sprigs of lavender were all tossed together as Frank drizzled some oil on top. Before Gerard could ask why, the kettle whistled, it's steam pouring into the air and pluming up towards the ceiling. Frank grabbed it's arm and poured boiling water into the bowl and began to stir. It smelled as though the kitchen had turned into a garden. The oil sat in yellowish bubbles on top and the pieces of the petals and stems floated around bleeding pigment into the once clear water.