Nora parted her lips to speak, but found words pretty impossible to air. “I… i… what do you mean?”
The woman waved Nora over, and gently led the girl towards where Sarah was bound with her frail and slender hand.
“I understand you don’t know who we are, but after watching you for years and other generations coming from our bloodline, we know everything about you Nora, daughter of Sarah and Muzin”, the woman spoke again.
Nora nodded her head, acknowledging her name.
“You have led such a wrong path following this vile woman”, the woman said, pointing towards Sarah.
Nora cleared her throat, stared around briefly and finally found her voice to speak. “Who are you?”
The woman smiled, and simply replied, “I am the first tarot card reader in our lineage”.
Nora gasped, while her mother broke into a rather annoying laughter. “They are your great aunts, and mothers and families but they lack spine!”
The woman wove her hand towards Sarah, causing her to twirl in pain as the gags around her body tightened further.
“We will not have you defile our names and insult us some more after all you have done!” the woman yelled. “I am Meralda, the first of our line and I will deem it fit that you burn in hell for your crimes”.
Sarah fell silent for a while, before breaking out again in rather insulting laughter and snickering.
“Did you think I came unprepared?” she asked, holding up her hand and the bag of ash Nora had seen with her earlier.
Meralda yelled atop her weak lungs. “You beast! You dare carry your son’s sacrificial remains into this holy crypt!”
Sarah rose from the altar, casting off her binds with ease as she slowly got to her feet to the scared looking crowd now gasping and whispering inaudibly.
“I haven’t come here for you, Meralda”, Sarah warned.
Nora seemed confused and unsure of what to do. She looked from her daring mother to the angry Meralda who looked as if she had been pelted with eggs to her face.
“We know what you have come for, but you cannot have it”, Meralda replied. “You tainted a sacred deck once and attempted to use it to fuel your own evil agendas and we will not hand you another one”.
Sarah nodded her head without uttering a word, while she paced along the room with her eyes solely fixated on her feet. She paused to look at Meralda briefly, before doing the same with her daughter.
She finally halted her pacing again and spoke. “You know what? How about I make you hand it over?”
Meralda cackled weakly, as did the others who saw her words to be nothing but empty threats.
“Some parlor tricks cannot save you from eternal damnation”, Meralda warned.
Sarah shrugged her shoulders and simply replied, “I know nothing can save you from me now”.
Nora watched her mother toss the bag of ash in the air, before snapping her finger as the content exploded in Meralda’s face.
“What are you doing?” Nora asked, staring blankly at her mother.
Sarah shoved her daughter out of the way as the women sitting slowly rose to their feet and watched Meralda begin to cough aloud after inhaling most of the ash Sarah had tossed in her face.
“You know what I want, and I will get it one way or another”, Sarah whispered to the old lady as she continued to cough in discomfort and suddenly fall to her knees.
Merlada growled and clung unto her throat as he face turned purple and her tongue began to gouge from within her mouth.
Sarah turned to the others watching angrily and smiled. “I know you’re all bound by the rules, and it clearly states that nobody shall be harmed or blood shall be spilled in this crypt!”
“Your soul will rot now, Sarah!” a woman yelled.
“There is no going back from what you have done now!” another cried.
One after the other, they began voicing aloud and in deafening chant without Nora understanding a word they were saying. Sarah ignored them all as she went on a knee and placed her hand on Meralda’s chest.
Meralda let off a bloody cough and whispered, “You damn your own soul as well as your daughter’s”.
Nora drew closer, looking teary as she watched her mother smirk over the old lady. “Nothing about what you say scares me one bit… I always get what I want”.
Meralda laughed hard and in difficulty, spewing some more blood in the process.
“You have no idea”, she whispered.
The haunting chants continued and grew even louder without any signs or intent on simmering down, the woman looked up, arms linked and hummed continuously, setting a discomforting tone for Nora, while her mother seemed unperturbed.
“We shouldn’t be doing this”, Nora called to her mother. “We shouldn’t be here!”
Sarah shot her daughter a torrid look, before jamming her clenched fist into Meralda’s chest, prompting the lady to gasp aloud in her last breath, as Sarah lingered her hand in the woman chest for something.
“Legend has it that she always keeps it close to her heart”, Sarah giggled. “These old fool always have a way to get literal about everything”.
She yanked her hand out, and with it came a box with strange inscriptions on it as Sarah held it out to admire every single bit of the art work on it.
“Remarkable”, she muttered in lust.
She held it out to Nora to see, but Nora refrained from touching it, after all, she had just seen her mother murder someone to get it.
“She was old and ragged and doesn’t need it in this world”, Sarah cajoled her daughter.
Nora shook her head still and slowly began to step away from her mother as the woman got to her feet.
“I want to go home”, Nora demanded
Sarah agreed and waved her daughter towards the entrance through which she had come. They raced towards the exit, but came to a halt as the women chanting slowly began to descend from where they stood to surround Sarah and her daughter. The walls of the crypt shuddered
