Curses for sale

It’s the strangest advertisement ever to have appeared in the local paper:

Curses for sale

Afflict your enemies

Sabotage your rivals

Take revenge for misdeeds

Send $50 cash (no cheques)

plus a photo of the one to be cursed

to

PO Box 55/141

Results guaranteed!

It seems like the work of a harmless crackpot, but it’s harder to laugh off a week later when the post office where the private box is located burns to the ground.  Firefighters investigating the blaze find the bodies of a young man and woman in the wreckage.

Image credit

The man is charred beyond recognition, the woman is identified as Regina Trett, a local who has often been seen in bad company and is known to have an interest in the supernatural.  She seems to have died of smoke inhalation, her body is unmarked except for an occult symbol burned into her neck.

Possibilities

1 Regina recently broke up with her lover, and helped herself to a few of his prized occult books when moving her things out of his house.  The spells she’s read don’t look too hard, and she’s always been inclined towards mysticism, so she decided to set up shop as a witch for hire.  She had some sporadic success with the curses, managing to summon the odd swarm of flies or force a car to swerve off the road.  This was enough to alarm Mitchell Firth, the ex-boyfriend.  He knew her haphazard approach and willingness to gloss over anything she didn’t understand was courting disaster.

She ignored his warnings, and an attempt to break in and reclaim the books was foiled by the tough women Regina has been rooming with.  Becoming more and more worried, for his own safety as well as hers, he waited at the post office and confronted her when she arrived to pick up the latest batch of answers to her advertisement.

Furious at the interference, Regina spoke a spell she’d memorised and summoned a mystical fire creature to scare him.  She flubbed it though, and while she got the creature she wanted, it wasn’t bound to obey her.  Mitchell was killed on the spot and Regina was burned as she attempted to call it to heel while it spread flames around the tiny post office, eventually succumbing to the smoke.

Regina’s adventure is over, but the danger isn’t -- somewhere along the way she managed to summon something much stronger and darker than she imagined, without making any of the customary offerings or taking any of the basic precautions against its malevolence.  It’s still making its way closer across the planes, but it won’t be long now.  Its approach can already be sensed by the psychically gifted.

2 The adverts were placed by a secretive order of modern-day alchemists.  They’re not serious about curses, their interest is in the people who answer, as test subjects for their research into the chemical processes of human hatred.

Regina was the first of their customers, and studying her advanced their understanding of the brain’s function tenfold.  Completely drained of anything resembling will or thought, she also made a useful living automaton, returning to the post office every day to collect a new batch of subjects presenting themselves for research.

Sick with worry after days of wondering where she’d been, Mitchell was alerted by a bystander who recognised Regina’s face from a flyer posted outside the post office.  The reunion was short-lived, though -- Regina had been programmed to immolate the letters and herself if recognised by anyone.  The pair of them lost their lives in the fire that destroyed the post office.

Even without the latest batch of customers, the conspirators have a list of dozens of potential victims and no fear of being uncovered.

3 The advert was placed by Terry McGivern, a university student studying psychology.  He didn’t believe in the supernatural, he just wanted subjects to write about for his thesis.  It was a pleasant surprise to the amoral young man that he could make some money from their credulity at the same time.

Regina wasn’t interested in buying a curse, but she was terrified that someone had paid to have one put on her.  She staked out the post office and latched onto Terry as he arrived to pick up the money from his next bunch of suckers, begging him to sell her protection.  Amused as well as hoping for a profit, he made a show of reluctantly agreeing to sell her a magic charm to protect her from bad spirits.

It’s Terry’s bad luck as well as Regina’s that a friend of hers was injured in a car accident the same afternoon.  Convinced she’d been outbid by whoever intended her harm, she confronted him again the next day, demanding that he honour their deal and provide her with stronger protection -- as well as healing the friend.

Nothing he could do would persuade her that black magic wasn’t the cause of the accident, or that he didn’t have the power to mend her friend’s wounds.  Pleading escalated to threats.  Regina splashed Terry with a bottle of gasoline and repeated her demands holding a lit match... which she subsequently lost control of, causing their deaths.

Terry is out of the curses business, but his landlady discovered his stash of research material and is embarking on a campaign of blackmail against his customers.

© Chris Kerr