Welcome To The Family

Chapter Eleven

Babe silences as he hears shoes click down the stairs. "Help! Help!" His voice is hoarse from yelling for help. She turns down the music.

"Sorry, no one's coming to help you, sweetheart."

"Let's just get this over with." Babe's voice cracks with sadness. So much for a higher being.

Miss Hendricks coddles his blanketed head, "don't be sad, darling. You'll live on in my heart." She takes the knife and pricks his palm. She dabs her finger in the pooling blood. She places a finger-painted dab on the forehead of both paintings.

She unfolds the aged parchment and begins to read from the inked paragraph.

"Pluto audiat clamorem meum,

switch animabus illorum,

et cor meum tuum est."

All the lights in the basement extinguish except for a single light above Babe's head. The blub begins to flicker.

"Hello, my child." Miss Hendricks warms at the sight of it. Her face drops as she decodes the message in her head. "It's too late the spell has been cast. I know he's wonderful, but it's time for you to return home." She decodes another message. "We're also running out of your blood. If this fails, we have only one more chance to bring you back." The bulb goes static, then beings to dim. The blood on the blonde boy's forehead begins to vanish. His blue eyes fade to black.

Simultaneously on Babe's painting, the blood vanishes, and his blacked-out eyes fill with blue eyes.

"Mom? MOM!" Babe begins to thrash in his bonds.

"Calm down, honey." She coddles his head. "What's our word?"

"Our word?"

"You know the word."

"I don't remember. My memory is foggy."

"You know I can't let you down until you say the word, sweetie." The painting of Babe starts to bubble. The blue eyes fade to black, and the light above his head commences to blink. She drops her head.

"Let me out, mom, please. It's me, Aaron." The bag rips off his head.

"I know it's you, Babe." Tears begin to stream from her face, and she returns him to his upright position. Babe remains quiet; the jig is up for him.

"You don't know your true age, do you?" She picks up the knife.

"I'm seventeen."

"No, you're not, or it would've worked. We've ironed out all the kinks over the past five years." She closes her eyes and takes a breath. "You were left on a doorstep with nothing but a baseball, no birth certificate. Odds are you're eighteen." She stomps her feet like an angry child. "This is UNFAIR!" She throws the knife across the room in a rage.

Babe remains quiet. He assumes the less he says, the better.

"Why?" Why won't this work." She cleans up the tears trickling down with her free arm. The knife calls for her attention. She walks over and slowly picks it up. It's blade scrapes against the floor. Her watering eyes romanticize the knife. She looks at Babe, who's gradually realizing what is about to happen. "Please, no. I won't tell anyone."

"Babe, I'm sorry, but you know I can't risk that." She walks over to him, assessing her plan of attack.

"I swear, I won't. I understand why you're doing this."

She raises the blade above her head and aims for his heart, which double dutches in his chest, and then something clicks in his mind.

"What if I could get you another soul? We'd be in this together."

She pauses her attack, shakes her head. No, you're just trying to trick me."

"No, I'm not. I'm sorry about Aaron, and I know the perfect person. No one will even miss him."