The people in the town took the distance between parent and child as the fault solely of the child. They found it hard to believe that Mr. Andrews could be disliked by anyone, let alone his own daughter. So, Annabelle with her flighty mind, long snow-white hair, and sea green eyes, entered a life of perpetual loneliness. A life she longed to change, but at the confusing age of fourteen, she could find no way out. That was until she found the book hidden away behind the piles of her father’s other books.

Like any respectable man of science, Mr. Andrews rejected anything of the fantastic, but there was a time in his youth when he had the need to satisfy his own morbid curiosities. He had come across the book when he had first visited Munich while on a school trip. It was an odd store that he and his schoolyard friends had stumbled into. The little store, tucked away in the corner of a busy street, was full of oddities and treasures said to be from the world over. The book caught his eye with its metal clasps, cover adorned with strange spiralling symbols, and pages that seemed to be made from paper much too old to have not rotted away. The shopkeeper, in his broken English, told the boys that it was an ancient book of alchemy and with it they could turn lead into gold and perform other, even more fantastical spells. Mr. Andrews and his friends openly laughed at the old German and told him that such things could not be done. But that evening, when his friends had gone to dinner, a young Mr. Andrews had made his way back to store and bought the book.

He read the book from cover to cover in private, and he always hid it away when any of his colleagues came to visit him. When he returned from his trip, he found time to try a few of the spells within the book to moderate success. Yet in the end, he chided himself, as a man of science, for having bought such a book. But something about it, with its metal clasps, old paper, and odd designs seemed to keep him from throwing it away. So, he brought it along with wherever he moved, and it had sat on his bookshelf for the past twenty odd years, until snow haired Annabelle found it behind the many volumes of science texts, all in the hope to find something to read.

At first, Annabelle did not know what to make of the strange tome. It resembled the spell books from her fairytales, with its abstract pictures and ornate design. She poured over the book night after night, reading how to turn a rock into a frog, lead into gold and other transformations. Soon she decided that she would try some of the easier incantations; Annabelle had no notions of any of them working, but she saw no harm in trying a few. The first spell Annabelle decided to try was to turn a rock into a little frog.

She needed a rock, but not just any rock. It had to be perfectly smoothed by a river and to be the colour of deepest green. This proved to be a task more difficult than she had originally thought; the nearest river was a good day or so travel away on foot. The journey would be much faster in the new motorcar her father had just bought. While her father paid her little attention, he would be sure to miss her if she disappeared for a couple of days. So with this in mind, Annabelle appealed to her father and asked him to take her to the river so she could see firsthand the erosive action of the water on the land. Her father, thinking that his daughter had finally taken an interest in science, agreed wholeheartedly to the idea of the trip, and was soon making the necessary preparations.

Annabelle let her father babble on about this and that while they drove down the gravel roads towards the river. He told her about the elm trees, the mulberry shrubs, the igneous rocks, and everything else they passed. She had stopped listening to him long ago, but she still smiled and nodded every once and awhile to give him the impression of listening. The only objects that did catch her attention were the scarecrows nailed to their posts that doted the countryside. Something about them made her uneasy, yet she could not look away. Perhaps it was their x-stitched eyes, their gnarled cloth limbs, or the forlorn way they hung from their posts; she did not know, but still they caught her gaze and would not let go.

The sun was warm, and spring was slowly giving way to summer. Annabelle enjoyed the sun on her pale skin and the company of her father. If this little bit of deception could bring them together, maybe it was not a bad thing.

The two of them spent the day by the water side. Annabelle found a couple of rocks which she thought would suit her needs, and the two of them had a lovely lunch of cucumber sandwiches and tea. The rocks were a pale green, like the colour which she thought the ocean would be and smoothed down by countless years of traveling with the currents of the river. Father and daughter laughed, and Annabelle thought that maybe finding the book was the work of providence, and that she was now on a path of reconnection with her father. She quietly thanked the book that night when they arrived home and re-read the directions for the spell to commence on the morrow.

The next morning, with her father out and about, Annabelle locked the door to her room and cracked open the book. The book called for the rock to be placed into a small bowl half full of milk. She was then told to place the bowl in a circle she had drawn on a sheet of paper, following the diagram in the book as a guide. This was all placed upon her small wooden desk that she had cleared for this occasion, though she had no expectation of this working. While she longed for it to work, what science her father had taught her told her that this was an impossible feat. The final directions were to cover the bowl with a black scarf, and repeat the words as follows:

The mountain stone, 

the rock of the river,

Let the frog come 

Out of the black.

Come now, do not delay.

Once the words were said, the bowl shook with such violence that Annabelle thought it was going to blow the small desk apart, until the bowl shattered with a pop. A sulphurous smell emanated from where the bowl had once sat, followed by the unmistakeable croak of a frog. Her heart leapt as she threw off the scarf that was covering the now moving mound and beheld a tiny frog staring back at her. Her mind raced at the thought of what just happened. Everything she had learned from her father was thrown to the wind. Magic was real, and the proof sat upon her very desk.

Over the following months, Annabelle slowly tried more and more complex spells from the book. She went from making little frogs, to making her cat speak –though, only briefly—and everything in between. During this time, she had got closer to her father than ever before. While her heart hurt that deceit was what brought them together, she basked in his loving glances and kind words. Yet soon the book progressed to chapters with dark warnings. One such spell was to bring something resembling a human, something like a doll, to life. Annabelle longed for a friend, and even if she get her cat to talk for more than a few minutes, a cat is not a person. Even with her renewed relationship with her father, the people in town still regarded her as strange. Staring with rude faces, the girls at school never talked to her, and the young boys were known to make crude gestures and call her names behind her back. This spell looked to change all that, and Annabelle started working towards her new goal: a friend.

The ingredients needed for the spell were great and varied, and it took her much longer to gather them all than she anticipated. By the time she had all of what she needed the summer had turned to fall, and the fall had turned to early winter. Some of the rare chemicals the spell called for she had stolen from her father’s lab when she had gone to him under the guise of some tale or another. The hardest to come by was the vessel for her spell; the book called for a figure resembling that of a human. Annabelle had no dolls for such a task, because her father thought they did nothing but rot the brain of a child. So instead, she was forced to look for some sort of substitution. Then the answer came to her, and she remembered the scarecrows nailed to their posts scattered across the fields outside of town.

Annabelle usually tried to avoid the roads that ran along the farms. She would always try her best to hide from the gaze of the scarecrows that littered the fields, but today she had a different opinion of them; their vaguely human figures would suit her needs quite well. Yet most of them still scared her as much as they scared the crows. Then she remembered the one on Mr. Delcore’s land was not as brutish and horrible as the others and was the only one that had not startled her during her trips. It was small of stature, and its face seemed to smile instead of scowl. The little X stitched eyes gave off a look of friendliness, and the clothing it wore was that of a girl about Annabelle’s age.

She did not feel bad about taking the scarecrow from Mr. Delcore’s garden, because he was a nasty old man had always had a nasty word to say about Annabelle. Getting her new friend off its perch was more difficult than she thought, but with the night to cover her activities she was able to get it down and back down the road to her house without anyone noticing.

Before going about breathing life into the scarecrow, Annabelle took off its old and torn clothing and dressed it in one of her many dresses. She had picked a black dress, with white lace around the openings. The front was pulled together up with white ribbon which was tied in a bow just below the neck. Annabelle also sewed on a wig she had found in one of the many trunks in the basement. It was a wig of scarlet red hair, and it draped over the scarecrow’s shoulders and went to the mid of its back. Satisfied with the outfit, she placed the scarecrow on the floor and proceeded to create her companion. She did as the book instructed and sprinkled a powder of many minerals and chemicals over the body, and drew strange, archaic symbols all around her room. Annabelle sat back to watch what she was sure to be a grand show.

Come life,

breath of life,

come to this lifeless soul,

show the secrets of life.

Open to me.

After Annabelle had spoken the incantation, the ingredients that the recipe had called for burst in flash of blue green light. A wind of such force started to blow around the room, and the scarecrow lifted off the floor as if suspended by wires like a marionette. The line of the scarecrows mouth ripped open, and Annabelle witnessed the wind rush madly into the black opening. With sound of ripping fabric, the blunt arms and legs sprouted hands and feet, and a faint voice was heard from deep within the scarecrow. At first the voice sounded like a distant agonizing scream, but soon faded into a voice of serene sweetness; a voice that Annabelle thought she recognized as her own. Now she too, was off the ground, and it felt as if someone was sitting on her chest. Breathing became hard, and she felt the wind rush into her and start to tug at something deep within her. Something was wrong, and she was scared for the first time of the book and of the powers she had been playing with. And then a darkness not seen since the beginning of time overcame her, and the room stopped moving.

“What have you done to my daughter, beast!?”

The voice of her father filled the haze of Annabelle’s mind. Soon, she felt someone shake her.

“I ask you again, wretch! What have you done to my dear child?!”

“I am right here, Father. I am all right,” Annabelle said as sight returned to her, and she saw her father looming over her. The anger and pain in his eyes struck her heart, and she made to embrace him to give him some sort of comfort.

“Do not touch me!” Mr. Andrews yelled as he pulled away. “Tell me what has happened, or I will not be held responsible when I snuff the life from your unholy form!”

“Father, why are you being so cruel?” Annabelle raised herself to her feet, “why do you look at me with horror?”

“I will not fall for tricks,” Mr Andrews said. “You will pay for your treachery!” Annabelle looked to where her father had cast his gaze and felt weak upon the sight. There lay herself, devoid of life. Her pale skin had lost what little colour it had, and her snow-white hair laid spread over the floor. Annabelle then looked at her own hands and was greeted with such a sight. Instead of her fingers, all she saw were the gnarled, cloth fingers of the scarecrow. She was wearing the black and white dress with its white bow and her hair was the dark crimson of the wig. Her spell had worked, but not as she had expected.

“Father, listen to me!” Annabelle pleaded, moving towards her father. “I found that book among the others,” she said, longing for his embrace and for him to comfort her. “I did not want this to happen,” she said as Mr. Andrews struck her, sending her to the ground.

“I know of this book, and I know what dark powers it holds,” he said as picked up the grimoire. “You made her do these spells, you made her do this!” Mr. Andrews cast the book away and was on top of Annabelle before she could do anything else. He started to tear at her, trying to pull her cloth body apart, spilling her straw innards about the room.

“Stop!” Annabelle cried out, but her father continued his onslaught. His rage and despair from the loss of his only daughter had turned to an uncontrollable rage, and he tore into Annabelle like a wolf tearing into a lamb. She cried out until it was over. Mr. Andrews took the torn remains out to the yard and set them ablaze.

Tears slid down his face as he watched the pile of cloth burn. He cried for the loss of his daughter. His mind was a blur as we watched the flames. The heap did not burn red; the flame was a dancing combination of dark greens and sky blues; it reminded him of his daughter’s eyes. Mr. Andrews fetched his shovel from the garden shed to bury the charred remains. It was well after the stroke of twelve when he had finished his burial, and he retired to bed soon after, his mind filled with thoughts of his lovely, lovely, Annabelle.