I wanted to try my hand at movie adaptations, and since they never put out a paperback for The Craft, I thought...
Also, I added a bunch of scenes, plus the cut scenes that are found on the special edition dvd. I always like book versions of movies because they fill in a lot of things that happened between the action, and also what the characters are thinking. Anyway, I hope you like it. I'll be adding chapters and hope to finish in a month or two.

Also: These characters, the story, music lyrics, etc. is the property of the movie studio. I make no money off of this. This is just a writing exercise.

Chapter 1: The End of The Beginning

Nancy quickly tossed her candles, herbs, and athame into her knapsack and made a b-line door of her trailer.

Don't let her be awake don't let her be awake...

She had bargained on her mom being cold out in dreamland after the amount of liquor she put away that night, dead to the world like her stepdad who was passed out on the couch, big hairy belly sticking out of a dirty undershirt that used to be white in some former life.

But the uneven, frantic footsteps of Grace Downs caught up with her, Nancy could hear the shrill voice,

"Nancy! Nancy what are you doing this late at night?! You can't do that!"

It was way past her "curfew", it was true, though the idea that slurry drunks like her mom and stepdad could formulate something so domestic as a curfew was certainly a laugh. They could hardly pay their utility bills.

The night was dark, dark blue, almost black, and the air was crisp, wild, foreboding.

Excellent, Nancy thought as she ran out and let the slamming door crush the tip of the cigarette dangling out of her mother's mouth.. Perfect night for a ritual.

The muted voice could still be heard from within the trailer as Nancy stalked away,

"You can't do that!"

*** *** ***

Bonnie and Rochelle were already starting to unpack their equipment upon the grass when Nancy arrived. They would use the verandah in Rochelle's yard. No worry about 'Chelle's parents putting up a fuss, her mom was out of town on business and her dad put night shifts in the hospital. They had this space all to themselves, and would take full advantage of it. They could chant as loud as they wanted. And since what they wanted was to call Manon, to make him finally listen to them, loudness would be necessary.

"Hey, Nancy," Rochelle greeted in her calm, unflappable manner.

"H-hi," Bonnie whispered through her lank, stringy dark hair.

"Merry meet, girls," Nancy said as she pulled a bundle of sage out of her backpack. "Lets just get right to it..."

Without any further ado, the girls began to set the patio table on the verandah up as an altar, carefully positioning crystals, bottles of essence, candles, and incense in a manner pleasing to their god. They hoped.

Nancy had a lot riding on this ritual tonight. Their little witchcraft circle had been attempting to invoke Manon at every full moon for the last three months. At first it was fun: the mystery, the anticipation. But their wishes had remained unfulfilled. Bonnie still had her scars. Rochelle was still being picked on by Laura Lizzie and her band of bleach-blond racist barbie-dolls. And Nancy was still poor, still hated, still bearing the reputation as the girl Chris Hooker laid and dumped.

If something didn't happen soon, Nancy knew that the circle would dissolve, and with it any personal power she held over the girls by virtue of her Craft knowledge. Rochelle was on the verge of leaving, she could tell--the way the girl made that tired, impatient sigh towards the end of their chanting, as if she had better things to do. Bonnie would then follow after Rochelle, because the two of them had been friends before they met Nancy. They would both leave, leave Nancy all alone...

No! Something had to happen tonight, something had to! Nancy resolved to will something to happen, anything, to save this circle.

Because without the circle, without the power of three chanting as one, Nancy knew she didn't have a snowball's chance in hell in achieving what she really wanted: power.

(Bonnie had mentioned something about how they really needed a Fourth to make proper magic, that there were four elements and four directions and there needed to be four to a circle--but that was a lot of crap as far as Nancy was concerned. Rochelle and Bonnie, she could handle. But a Fourth, that was a wild card, that could be anybody, it could be someone who would want to challenge Nancy, even oust leadership of the circle...no. It was safer with three.)

They began to chant, three pairs of lips moving as one, eyes downcast in concentration:

"Now is the time,
Now is the hour
Ours is the magic,
Ours is the power"

The delicate tinkle of windchimes could be heard in the air. It definitely seemed a bit colder, a bit windier, but the girls didn't stop to contemplate it, to drum up the hope too soon and gawk and coo over Manon as if he was Tom Cruise. They continued to chant:

"Now is the time,
Now is the hour
Ours is the magic,
Ours is the power"

A pulse could be felt through the yard, through the palms of each girl, resting on the beads of sweat accumulating on their skin despite the chill...

Nancy slowly began to look up, look up and straight in front of her, in a trance, her voice rising above those of the other two:

"Now is the time,
Now is the hour...
Ours is the magic--
OURS IS THE *POWER*"

Just at that moment it felt like centuries of witchcraft compressed into less than 30 seconds and flashed before Nancy's eyes: occult symbols, ancient etchings of sorcerers, lightening quick glances into secret books of magic...and then there was just sky...sky...

*** *** ***

Sarah sat back in her airplane seat in dread, looking off into space.

It was all too much: dad's new wife, the move to L.A....

And oh, let's not forget, the suicide attempt she made last year.

And---hello!----the death of her mom.

This self-pity only made Sarah more depressed. She knew she had everything in the world to be thankful for. Her dad loved her, and his wife adored her. Part of the reason Dad decided to make the move was the hope a new environment would clear his daughter's mind of bad memories and give her a fresh start. When she had returned to her old school after the "incident" and about a month of in-patient and out-patient intensive therapy, everyone considered her the "suicide girl". But she had felt singled out, different, even before this all happened. Maybe that's what happens when you grow up without your mom. When your mom dies while giving birth to you---

"God, Sarah, you're so *pathetic*", a little voice inside her said.

Funny. That little voice. It didn't quite sound like her own.

*** *** ***

It was raining buckets by the time they touched ground at LAX, sheets of water. Great.

Sarah's father sensed her discomfort.

"It'll be a lot drier once we get in the house, honey..."

The taxi ride down the winding roads to the new house was kind of neat, though. So many plants, so much green. It was like a little rainforest. Sarah could have sworn she caught a peek at a large snake crawling on a tree trunk, but she was sure it was just her imagination. They were in Los Angeles, after all, not the Amazon.

They closed their umbrellas and entered the sprawling Spanish-style house; maybe they should have kept them open. Water dripped from the high golden roofs and delicately accumulated on the floor below.

"Yeah, it's a lot drier in here Dad..." Sarah moaned.

"Oh, God...we need a new roof." Jenny, Dad's wife, added.

But Mr. Bailey always tried to look at the bright side of things.

"Yeah...but it's big," he said, and added dramatically with a goofy smile, "It's BIG!"

As the couple began discussing the imminent home improvements that would have to be performed, Sarah drifted away to explore her new room and unpack. It was hard for her to fight the feelings of emptiness. Empty room, and empty heart. A fragment of a lyric by the band Our Lady Peace played in her head,

"...this is the end of the beginning...of the beginning...of the beginning..."

Well, once the furniture is moved into place and the pictures are hung on the wall it won't be so bad, Sarah thought, walking to a small cardboard box and opening it. The first thing resting inside of it was a black-and-white photograph in an ornately carved wooden frame. It was of a woman in a pretty sundress holding a straw hat, standing in the middle of lush trees; she was beautiful and serene. Sarah reverentially stood it up on the table. Mom.

Finding the photo buoyed Sarah's spirits. She would unpack and decorate her room. She would enjoy living in this new house. She would go to school and make lots of new friends. She would start a whole new chapter of her life.

She bounded down the stairs to grab some of her larger framed pictures. The deep gold of the walls, the clay pots lying here and there...there was something spiritual about it, like an old Mexican church, so different from her typical suburban prefab house back in San Francisco. So many things were different here.

As Sarah knelt to peer into one of the wrapped picture frames, the sound of the door swinging open suddenly filled her ears. She turned around and gasped, hardly able to articulate a sound.

Standing in the doorway was a disheveled man with a scraggly beard and dirty, damp clothes. He looked hungry, crazy--and in his hands was a snake!

"Found this out back, you want it?" he asked, offering the serpent to her.

Sarah twirled around and leaned back against the picture frames in horror.

"Wha...no!!!"

"Relax, what's the manner with you...RELAX!" The scary man barked back at her.

Sarah screamed,

"Dad!!!"

Her father ran down the steps and regarded the man with alarm and anger,

"Hey...Hey!!"

Mr. Bailey grabbed a poker from the fireplace.

"Get the hell out of here!" He yelled, chasing the bum out the door with the poker. Then he turned to his daughter in concern.

"Sarah, you okay?"

"Y-yeah, I'm fine...he just surprised me, t-that's all," she answered, trying to catch her breath.

"You sure?" he asked, trying to stop his heart from beating out of control as well.

"Yeah, I'm fine..."

But as soon as the words left her lips, a new terror slowly came into her view. The snake. It was resting on her father's foot and about to crawl up his leg.

"D-dad?"

He looked down and instinctively hurled his poker at the creature. Sarah couldn't watch.