Free Josh and the Magic Vial by Craig Spence Page A

explain me getting sick, can it?”
    Millie shrugged. “It might,” she said. “I’m not sure.”
    â€œBesides, I started having dreams before Endorathlil pulled her little magic stunt.”
    Exasperated, Millie raised her arms in supplication, and then let them drop to her sides. “I don’t know what’s going on, Josh. All I know is, you’ve got to tell someone — your parents, the police, someone .”
    â€œBut that’s the problem, Millie,” he objected. “What am I going to tell my folks — that some old lady tricked me out of some hair, some fingernail clippings, and a drop of blood? Or better yet, that the old bat is going to hex me on the night of the next full moon. They’d put me in the nut house, Millie. Don’t you see?”
    Josh put down his pen. Since Millie’s visit he’d been thinking how strange he’d become, how even his best friend looked at him as if he were a lunatic. She hadn’t said anything like that, of course. How could a friend tell you to your face that you were off your rocker? But what he’d seen in Millie’s eyes was something close to pity, and it shocked Josh to think he was so far gone. The sensation was like waking from a bad dream.
    â€œThanks Mil,” he grumbled, half-annoyed.
    Was this his room? Josh surveyed what had become his hermit’s cave, not quite believing what he’d done. Some other kid had drawn the hundreds of sketches, which plastered every available surface. They’d been drawn in a trance, and now that Josh had snapped out of it he blushed. “Inspiration,” Millie had called it once. He’d been naive not to see through to her real meaning.
    The birdman leered at him, brazen and evil.
    â€œMurderer!” Josh growled. He hated this cartoon now. The image mocked him from every corner of his room, reminding him how he had betrayed the companions of King Carak and — somehow — Millie, too. Josh trembled with rage.
    â€œEnough!” he shouted.
    Springing from his seat, he attacked the drawings that covered his window first, ripping at them frantically, a drowning boy, clawing for air. Down! Down! Down! Every last one of them. “Bastard!” Josh muttered. “Fiend!”
    Torn sheets fluttered to the floor like wounded birds. They lay in heaps, which he trod underfoot and kicked. But his revenge was not spent even after the blizzard ended. Panting, hot with fury, he stood amid the rubble of his delirium and looked for more.
    â€œEndorathlil,” he thought. “She has done this to me, and now I must return the favour.”
    But how?
    â€œTell my parents?” Josh snorted dismissively. They’d ground him. “Go to the police?” No way. They would just tell him to be a good little boy, and steer clear of nasty places like Lil’s. They wouldn’t understand.
    No, he had to do this himself, not with Mummy and Daddy’s help, not with a police escort. He had to go see Endorathlil alone.
    He remembered vaguely how she had subdued him with her spell. “Magic?” he sneered. “Not likely.” It had been some kind of trick — hypnosis, or a narcotic gas. What did he care if she’d taken bits of hair and drops of blood, and was prepared to perform some kind of perverse rite with these shavings.
    There was strength in hatred. Endorathlil would pay for what she had done, pay with something precious. He remembered her necklace, how she had concealed it when she noticed him looking at it. He remembered, too, the strange attraction he’d felt toward the unusual piece of jewelry, and her protectiveness. That was something precious, he thought. She would miss that if he could get his hands on it.
    â€œI need bait,” Josh muttered.
    He cast about his room. Nothing. Then a wicked thought took hold of him. On his mother’s dresser sat a jewelry box. As a child he used to play with the