He sat alone in his grandmother's quiet library, using his fingers to track the words in her journal, which he'd only found a couple of days ago. He'd never been close to his grandmother, but reading about her now made him feel more connected to her than ever. It seemed like they had more in common than he ever could have guessed. Reading through her words made a part of him wish that he could talk to her again. But, that would never happen.

His grandmother was a funny woman. She kept a record of her life for years, sometimes writing just a few words, other times writing pages and pages of what was happening in her life. One entry said, "Today was utterly stupid." Another entry said, "That Charlene is an idiotic excuse for a hairdresser. It'll take weeks for my hair to look normal again."

"I'm sad today. Peter is away on business."

"I'm sad today. Peter is working late at the office."

"Does Peter even remember he has a wife at home? And a daughter?"

He knew how this story ended. He knew that one day his grandmother, Fern, would find out that her husband, Peter, was cheating on her and was living a double life. Apparently, she found out when Peter was involved in a minor accident. Fern was notified. She had been confused because the accident wasn't anywhere near his work where he'd said he would be that evening. When she got to the hospital, that's where she saw the other woman, who had gone to his side to comfort him.

Not only was there another woman, in another town…. She was also pregnant.

Fern told him to leave and never come back. And he listened to her. He never came back.

How could someone do that to the person they love? That they VOWED to love?

He could relate to how Fern felt. The person he loved had left him, too.

His only companion now was this journal and the other books in his grandmother's library.

Turning to the next page in the journal, he ran his fingers over the groove the letters had made in the paper.

"I think our family must be cursed. When I told my mother about Peter, she didn't seem surprised. In fact, she said, "I told you not to get involved with him. I don't know why you didn't listen." Mom has been telling me not to get involved with anyone for my whole life. I thought she was being protective, not serious. So I pushed her to tell me more. She explained that her mother and her mother's mother were also in relationships with cheating husbands. When I asked her about dad, she said that he'd also had several affairs throughout the course of their marriage. Why? Why us? It can't be normal that everyone leaves like that. Could it be that curses are real? I'm going to go to the library and read about them today."

There was another entry, shorter, below that one:

"I think these curses could be real. Maybe our family is cursed. How else would this keep happening over and over again? No one would believe me if I told them. I'm just going to have to figure this out for myself."

The next several pages were missing from the journal, having clearly been ripped out. He wondered to himself if she had ever figured it out. He thought for a moment about his own mother and father and how their marriage had fallen apart as well when he was younger. There was so much from that time of his life that was unclear. He was too young to truly understand. His parents had died not long after agreeing to separate. Ironically, they were together when a drunk driver hit them head on. That's when his grandmother took him in. He wasn't sure if there was any way to prove that infidelity was the cause of their separation. Hell, he knew Maggie would've never cheated on him. He just couldn't understand how things could have been going so well only for her to have left him behind. Maybe if he learned about these curses, he could figure out if his grandmother ever broke the curse latched onto his family.

And if she couldn't do it, maybe he could.

Grief overwhelmed him. The loss of his love and the loss of his grandmother were still too fresh and raw. Tears spilled out of his eyes and dripped onto the pages of his grandmother's journal. He had never felt so alone in all of his life.

And for what reason?

Because of some wretched curse?

But why? Where did it come from? How could he get rid of it?

As his anger grew, so did his resolve. He didn't deserve this. His family didn't deserve this. He was going to get Maggie back. And he was going to ensure that his progeny were never going to suffer like he or his ancestors did.

In the days following his grandmother's funeral, Randy spent hours digging through old family picture books, journals, letters, and anything he could get his hands on that might give him a clue about this family curse. He went to the library and read book after book about curses and spirits and the supernatural. Pages, sticky notes, and pictures were tacked to the wall in his grandmother's library. Well, his library now. She'd left everything to him.

He found a ball of yarn among his grandmother's things and used it to connect ideas he had pinned to the wall. He was able to trace his family's ancestry back to the 1600's. So far as he could tell, all of the couples in his family on his mother's side, were never able to stay together very long. Recurring stories of infidelity cropped up everywhere. Some of the wives just lived with it, noting that they were financially dependent upon their spouse for survival.

There was one man, though, that Randy theorized might be the source of all of the trouble. Randy read through many articles printed in the newspaper about this man. In the late 1690's, William Spect, his great-great-great…..however many greats, grandfather was accused of witchcraft. In one of the articles that reported his arrest, a mention of the man summoning evil at a crossroads was mentioned. It wasn't a lot to go on.

Randy googled what he could about summoning… spirits? Demons? Maybe that was where William got his power from. Or, maybe one of those things cursed him. If he could figure out how to kill whatever cursed his family, surely the curse would be broken.

Randy threw himself into his research. He lost his job and withdrew from anyone he knew. He learned about how salt could repel spirits and how to trap demons. He read about crossroad demon deals and an idea formed in his mind. Maybe, if this thing was a demon, maybe he couldn't kill it. But maybe he could make a deal with it.

He found information about how to summon a crossroads demon. It took a few hours of digging through some shady blogs to get the incantation, but he'd figured it out.

That night, he was going to make a deal.