The Little Black Book

My Grandma’s always been kind of weird… Well I guess that’s no way to start a new journal is it? Besides, I never know, maybe this will be the next journal to be largely published and become famous in my death; or at the very least it’ll be made into some sort of crazy science fiction fantasy epic with all the big budgets and everything that comes with those type of big Hollywood affairs. After all these words that I am about to write down will seem pretty farfetched, I assure you though, this all really happened. I suppose I should introduce myself then, just in case there’s someone else who’s going to be reading this. My name is Sue Hardy, and what I’m about to write down in these very pages is nothing short of mind blowing.

It was the week after Thanksgiving. The Holiday was much different this year. It’s not all the time one spends Thanksgiving in a hospital after all. My mother had been fairly sick. She contracted breast cancer, she was a fighter though, she fought as hard as she possibly could. We all were under the impression that she was going to make it, at least that’s what my father had me and my little brother believe. Little did we know that cancer had spread to her lungs. It surely had to be the absolute worst holiday season of my life, because just a week after Thanksgiving after I was leaving school. I decided to go visit my mom. I went up to her room and to my dismay it had been empty. At first I was pretty happy. I thought she had went home, maybe she was in remission and they finally let her leave this crumby place. Mom did always hate hospitals. As I began my walk back to my car I passed her doctor- Dr. Jeffery Bramkins. I approached him excited, I must’ve looked like such a fool. “Susan I didn’t realize you were here with your father” he said to me. I was so happy I could have cared less that my dad was up here, I just wanted to see my mom. With no hesitation I said “My dad’s still here? Where Is he, I want to see my mom! I had no idea that she was coming home”. He looked at me his look saddened, “Sweet child, I better get you to your father”. He took me to my dad, we caught him just as he was about to leave out the building. I looked in his eyes and asked him where mom was. The look he had on his face though, it wasn’t the look he should’ve had. He looked sad, I could tell he had been crying but he’d wiped all his tears away. A sudden feeling of dread washed over me, I was mortified. I knew before he even could tell me. He looked at me, grabbing my arms trying to comfort me, “Susan I… I…”. He couldn’t get it out though and that second I knew. All I could say was “No, no she can’t be. She’s strong, she can’t be. She was just here! I just talked to her, she can’t be”. My dad quickly hugged me as tight as ever. This was comforting him just as much as me. I broke down in tears. My best friend, my role model, the strongest woman I’ve ever known was no longer here. Every memory, every laugh, every smile, every tear shed, every picture taken in the past suddenly became just that, in the past.

Like I said, that had to be the worst holiday season of my life. My dad tried his best to keep me and my brother active, keep our minds off the pain, and for my little brother I think it may have worked. He was only eight, given that fact of course he had a very strong emotional connection to our mother, he’s a momma’s boy to the core. He was only eight though for all that pain he dealt with he could disregard it for a new video game, or an action figure. I think he had a much easier time getting over it than I had. Me though, I was lost. I stopped communicating with my friends, I stopped using social media, I could barely even eat, the sheer thought of her being gone was just too much to bear for me. The wound was still far too fresh, and for my sixteen year old mind I just couldn’t deal with it.

Christmas eventually came around. The first time I’d seen those bells, drank hot chocolate, and watched It’s a Wonderful Life without her. I couldn’t even watch it, it just made me sad. Christmas Day came along eventually. I know I kind of started this whole journal off talking about how weird my grandma is, and I promise that’s all about to come into play right about now, but first I must elaborate. My dad would always tell me and my friends stories of how they’d always catch his mom doing weird things when they were kids. Chanting strange things, mixing things in the attic that he described as “smelling god awful”. He said they used to think she was a witch, but later as he got older he realized how ridiculous that idea sounded. Thinking back, it doesn’t sound as crazy as he may have thought. My grandma gave me a book for Christmas. A little black book. She told me she understood what I was going through, and she knew how hard it was to deal with those type of emotions. She told me to write it all in this journal, she found it to help her a lot to keep a journal for herself back when her father passed when she was a little girl. I figured “Why not? Maybe it will help”. I began to use the journal around the time when we went back to school after break.

I remember the first thing I wrote about, I believe I started about a math test that I had that day, but it quickly devolved into me writing about this boy in my History class. I remember writing in the book that I’d wish that he’d just notice me, that he’d ask me out or something. Later that day when I was heading to my car after school he had stopped me. He actually asked me on a date. You can imagine I was really excited and I obviously said yes. A few days later I was writing in it again. My phone had gotten broken in gym class and I was pissed. I wrote in the book that I wanted the guy who threw the ball that cracked it to get hurt, break his leg or something. The next day at school everyone was all over him. I had no clue what was going on but everyone was asking him what had happened. He was telling them he was walking home from work and got hit by a car and broke his leg. At this point I was kind of freaking out. The two things I’d written in my book wishing to happen actually happened. I was a bit skeptical initially. I figured it was a mere coincidence. I had to put it to the test though, something simple. I wrote in the book wishing my phone was fixed. I pulled it out my pocket, still cracked and shattered. I began to feel stupid. Why would I believe that my stupid little journal my grandma had given me was some sort of wish granting gift? But before my very eyes I couldn’t believe what I saw. My phone repaired itself. The cracks began to go away, the rising shards of glass suddenly began to form. I was amazed.

So obviously I had to test it out again. The next words I wrote in the book were “And then 20,000 dollars hit my bank account”. Immediately a notification popped up on my phone from my bank. I opened it and looked at it. I almost screamed out in the middle of class. 20,000 dollars added to the 85 dollars I already had in my bank account. I rushed home after school absolutely exhilarated. Little did I know these wishes would put me in danger. I went to the mall after school with a friend. When I was at the mall I could’ve felt a hundred eyes following me around. I didn’t pay It much mind though. When we were leaving though that’s when things got actually crazy. Three guys approached us, two dressed heavily in kevlar, and the one who was leading them in a suit and tie. They asked me to hand over something called “The Granter''. I had no idea what they were talking about. The leader introducing himself as Maxwell Carter had his goons kidnap Tatianna and they held me making me watch as they did. He had some type of ability to know when the Granter was used and what for. Carter told me that if he doesn’t have the Granter along with the 20,000I’d wished for by midnight I wouldn’t like the outcome. He gave me an address to meet him at.

I got home just as my grandma was talking to my dad searching for me. When I walked in she quickly asked where I had been. She rushed me asking where the book was. I told her it was in my room. She went on to explain the book to me, telling me it was an artifact from around the time of the Salem Witch trials. She told me the book had been passed down from generation to generation to be protected and it was a mistake of hers giving it to me. She had meant to give me another similar looking book. I told her about Maxwell and his men and she told me we were going to have to go save Tatianna.

We went to where Maxwell wanted us to meet him with no intention of giving him the Granter. We gave him the regular black book my grandma had intended to give me, and initially it worked, but he quickly realized it was a fake. He looked to his guards and simply said “Get them”. They chased us as we tried to escape. Grandma told me I was going to have to defend them, she told me to use the book, “You can do whatever you wish to do with it. You have to defend us”. I wished for an armored tech suit and to guard them with. She told me that beating all the goons and Maxwell was the only way, but what I soon realized was that physical defensive action wasn’t the only course I could take. I made space between the us and the guards, and I wrote in the book for Carter and his team to be cast to a prison dimension my grandmother had told me fables of as a younger child. I figured that it had to be true since all the other mystical stuff turned out to be true. All the guards along with Max Carter were overtaken by a bright light. When the light went away, so did they.

To this day I still have the Granter in my possession. My grandmother figured that I would be the next protector, I had kept it out of evil’s hands better than anyone in the past. That’s not to say I hadn’t had a little fun with the Granter myself. That was all ten years ago though. Now I’m an archeologist. The Granter had simply given me a purpose in life. Now I travel the world collecting possibly powerful artifacts that could prove disastrous in the wrong people’s hands. Let’s just say that this line of work simply just isn’t for the faint of heart.