The Hex Breaker's Eyes

Copyright 2014
by S.D. Tennant

Cover design
copyright 2014 by S.D. Tennant

Cover contains
images from George Mayer and stocksnapp, licenced through
BigStock.

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Small-town
fifteen-year-old Mindee Vefreet thinks she’s going crazy when she
sees a girl from school glowing in the dark. But when bad things
start to happen around the glowy girl, it quickly becomes clear
that what Mindee’s eyes can see is very real, and very
dangerous.

Mindee is a
seer, able to see hexes clinging to the victims of black magic.
With no knowledge of magic or the occult, and no experience in
breaking spells, attempting to break the hex seems almost
impossible. Soon other people are getting hexed, the magic is
turning lethal, and Mindee is drawing dangerous attention.

Because, to a
certain type of witch, the only thing better than a good seer is a
dead seer.

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Epilogue

I wasn’t
frightened until the girl started to glow in the dark.

“You seriously
can’t see that?” I ask my best friend.

“See what?”

“It’s right
there, as big as a person. Bigger than a person.”

Tamara looks,
but she doesn’t see it. Maybe I’m going crazy.

Across the
street from us, a girl is glowing. Well, I shouldn’t say that. It’s
not like she’s painted in neon green body glitter or anything. But
this girl’s got a real sort of, well, glow. There’s yellow light
radiating from her. She looks like a low-watt light bulb. I swear
she does.

But Tamara
doesn’t see it.

We’re walking
home from the Milkshaker, which is a sort of retro 50’s diner on
Main Street, and across the street from us there’s a girl I
recognize from school walking the same direction that we are. I
don’t know her name. But that’s not important. The important thing
is the glowing. Because seriously, this girl is lighting up the
area around her body for a good couple of feet.

I’m Mindee. My
best friend is Tamara. We’ve known each other since Mrs. Ulrich
used to babysit us both, back before kindergarten. We’ve been
friends longer than either of us can remember, so it’s freaking me
out that she can’t see the glowing aura of light coming off that
girl. I mean, it’s a little hard to see the glow when the girl’s
standing under a streetlight, but there are times when she’s right
in between two lights, in the darkest part of the shadow where she
should be barely visible, and she’s lit up like a firefly.

“She’s
glowing!” I say, exasperated. I make sure to keep my voice down so
the girl doesn’t hear me.

Tam raises an
eyebrow to mock me. “Like what, her shoes? I’ve seen little kids
with those light-up shoes.”

“Her entire
body. A gigantic two-foot radius around her body. Watch when she
goes between the lights.”

So we walk
along, keeping pace just behind the girl across the street, and we
watch her walk. She passes into the shadow, lights it up in a
manner that a cartoon might use to show you someone with radiation
poisoning, and then walks under the next streetlight.

“I didn’t see
anything.”

I’m trying not
to get upset now. I’m starting to worry that I’m seeing things, but
it’s so obvious to me that what I’m seeing is a real light. It’s
not like the flashy lights that float in front of my eyes after I
look into the sun or something. It’s a girl who glows like a
lantern.

“That girl’s
entire body glows in the dark. How do you not see it?”

And then Tamara
decides to talk in a gentler, slightly less condescending voice,
when she asks, “Are you seeing things?” My mouth hangs open. “I
mean it, Min. Are you seeing like glowy blobs in front of your
eyes?”

“No,” I say, as
if she should know I already ruled that out. “I see everything the
same as it always is, except that girl is glowing.”

“If that’s a
joke, it’s not funny.”

“Jeez, Tam,
look at her.”

Tamara grabs me
by the arm and pulls me to a stop. “I mean it,” she says. “If this
is a joke, stop it now. You should know better.”

Her tone is
serious. Having been around through my entire life, Tam knows all
about me. About my family history. Of course she’d be offended if I
pretended I was crazy. But I’m not pretending and I’m not crazy.
The girl is glowing.

“I’m not seeing
things,” I say in a voice that sounds too whiny. I try to sound
more sincere when I look Tam in the eye and say, “And I’m not
faking this.” For a second we’re just standing there, looking at
each other. We both sigh, as if there are no words left to say. The
girl is getting really far ahead of us now.

“Go to bed
early and get some sleep. If this keeps up, go to a doctor,” she
says. Now she’s getting me worried.

“I’m not
crazy.”

“What’s more
likely,” she says, “that a girl can glow in the dark and only you
can see it? Or that you’re nutso-cuckoo-pants? ‘Cause I vote for
nutso.”

I look at the
ground, my shoulders doing that squirmy thing that I hate but can’t
seem to stop myself from doing. “Cuckoo-pants,” I admit.

She nods and
winks in agreement. “You could have a brain tumor,” she says,
perking up. “Or, like, that crazy optic nerve cancer that gets so
big it makes your eye pop out.”

“Gross!” I say,
slapping her on the arm. We start walking again. “I don’t have
cancer. Girl who glows in the dark, she has cancer. But not
me.”

We laugh a bit.
I’ve had a lot of miserable times in my life. Bad, bad times.
Sometimes, telling a joke about the worst possible things makes it
easier when you actually have to face something horrible. But then
the laughter dies and we walk in silence, each one of us convinced
the other is crazy but too polite to push it. But her position is
‘everything-is-normal’ and my position is
‘a-human-being-glows-yellow’ so her version sounds saner. Maybe I
should just sleep. Maybe I do have some kind of oddly specific
brain cancer that makes me see things.

Or maybe I
have... Nevermind. Not going there.

We get to Queen
Street, which is my street, and we break off. I go down Queen, she
continues down Main until she gets to Churchill, which is still a
few streets ahead. It’s a ritual we’ve gone through many times,
since this is also the way we walk home together every day after
school. I cut across the gas station’s lot and she sticks to the
sidewalk. We don’t hug or anything. In fact, I’m halfway across the
lot before either of us thinks to wave goodbye. She waves, I say
“See ya,” and then I’m walking alone.

And glowy girl
is ahead of me. We live in what is either a big town or a small
city. About four thousand people. Enough that we have our own
elementary and high schools, and other towns bus their kids here
for school. Our town’s called Blue Ribbon, by the way. There’s a
whole historic reason for that, but who cares, right? Blue Ribbon,
Ontario, Canada, population 4,156. Home of the Wildcats.

The reason I’m
telling you about the town is because you might be wondering how
this girl could live my very own neighbourhood and I don’t know her
name. Well, that’s easy. I don’t know anybody’s name. I could count
my friends on one hand and have the middle finger left to show to
the world. I’m invisible at school. And I suppose I should be,
since I do nothing there. No clubs, no sports, not particularly
excellent at any class, not dumb enough to be made fun of. I sit at
the side of the class, stay quiet, and rarely get called upon. I
suppose I do this on purpose, since a few years back when I did get
attention I hated every moment of it.

Before school I
hang out with Tam and her boyfriend Ryan, and sometimes her other
friend Marlene, who is in my chem class and is my lab partner. But
other people, other girls? I have no idea what those people even
talk about.

The girl in
front of me is dressed in a trendy jacket she must have gotten in
Toronto, painted-on leggings and slutty shoes. She is not the sort
of girl I would ever have a conversation with, even if she was in
my grade, which I doubt. I doubt that I would have ever even
noticed her walking in front of me along this walk home, if not for
the fact that she’s a human glowstick.

But there she
is, shining yellow for only my eyes to see. Hard to ignore.

I wonder if Tam
was right, so I deliberately turn away from the girl, wondering if
I’ll start to see other things glow. One girl glowing seems oddly
specific, but if I start to see random cars or fire hydrants glow I
might have a problem. But I
don’t
. Nothing else glows like
her. I’m not just seeing things. If this is a brain tumor, that
tumor likes this girl and nothing else, which is probably not how
tumors work. I know of a few disorders that might cause this kind
of hallucination, but once again... I’m not going there.

The glowy aura
around her starts to shift and change and, I don’t know the right
word, undulate? It’s flowing around her like water, with some parts
of it getting really far from her body and then flowing back in. It
keeps happening like that, and then one time the blob of light
stretches so far away from her it reached all the way up to the
streetlight just as she passes under it.

And the
streetlight goes out.

The aura fades
back down to her, lighting up only the area within a few feet of
the girl’s body. It stays close to her for about twenty steps, and
then as she gets close to the next streetlight, it stretches up
above her head again as she walks under the streetlight. And that
light goes out too.

I walk along
behind her, watching the aura churn and shift, expand and contract,
and every time she walks under a light, the light goes out. And
every single time, it happens because that glow of light reaches up
and slaps the streetlight. All the way down the street. We’re
getting close to the intersection of Queen and Bradley when I hear
my dad’s voice behind me.

“Mindee?” he
shouts. I was so focused on the girl that it takes me a moment to
register that he’s calling to me. He shouts again from behind me,
and the girl I was watching stops and turns, looking back at him
before continuing on her way. That’s when I clue in, and turn
around to face my dad.

“What?” I call
back.

“Where are you
going?” he asks, a look of concern on his face. My dad is dressed
in his sweats and a t-shirt, which is the outfit he wears around
the house before he goes to bed. He’s barefoot, which is probably
cold on his feet.

“I was just
walking.”

“Where?”

“Home.”

He gestures
behind himself. “You forget where you live?”

Wow. I had been
so focused on the girl I had walked right past my own house. Dad
had obviously noticed me, and now he’s smiling, almost gloating
that he has some fresh material to bug me with. My father is
convinced I’m a space-case. I suppose my natural resting face is a
bit distracted-looking, or maybe I come across like I’m off in my
own world sometimes. Every now and then the way my dad talks to me,
I’m convinced that
he’s
convinced that I smoke pot. (I
don’t, never have, BTW.) Maybe I’m just naturally a little
absentminded, but at least my dad seems to enjoy mocking my little
mental lapses. I blush a little, and go back toward the house. As I
pass Dad, he makes a grand show of putting his arm around me.