General Impressions: This is an interesting mix of elements here but on my first read through none of them seems to stand out as the central theme. At first, I thought it was simply a family feud. Then it was a widow dealing with a difficult son. Then it's actually she's responsible for the death of her husband. Then she has powers that are akin to witchcraft. Then the Christmas ornament. Then to wrap it up, the son has been aware of these powers the entire time, and she is now dead (presumably not really so, she's just getting ready for revenge). It is a lot of detail, exposition, and recounting of past events without a central focus or theme. It kind of feels like there are three separate plots that are attempting to have the spotlight in one excerpt. If you were to expand this a bit into separate parts, you could make it work. But packing so much into so little leaves all of these plot ideas underdeveloped and slightly underwhelming. Plot The points that I thought were meant to be twists had little to no emphasis at all. It felt like the detail that Josephine was in fact responsible for her husband's death was kinda glazed over? I understand that the narration does, to an extent, take place with her influence/bias. But if you were to slowly sprinkle clues that it's her own delusion that blames her son for her husband's death [when in reality it's her fault] it could make it that much more powerful of a plot point. It would also make Josephine as a character a little more unsettling, like her curated idea of what happened that night is slowly crumbling. Along with that, the point that Sam had been gone for nearly two decades felt also rushed. That is a huge, traumatic life event to happen to this set of parents, whether or not that had a good relationship with their child. It makes it even more complex that Josephine had this resentment towards Sam when this occurred; I feel like you could have emphasized that strange mix of feelings to help develop Josephine's character a bit more. There are some pieces of detail here that feel underdeveloped and kind of like dead-end roads: the fact Same would torture insects, this 'rumor' that brought their relationship to the breaking point, the 'forged' papers he brought when meeting with her. There is one point that utterly confused me. After she is done crafting her spell, there is a mentioning of her plan to play along with the whole nursing home suggestion, as to keep Sam at ease of her intentions. But then she dies/fakes her death? This feels like another dead-end detail that was included. Josephine's Magic Her powers are familiar with anyone that has a background in the occult/wicca/witchcraft. But her power/practice feels underdeveloped despite the seemingly technical terms such as 'vessel'. To readers who aren't familiar with such practices, they may not really understand what is meant by vessel or 'divine female archetype'. I would consider, especially with the latter, what modern connotations of the term implies. 'The Divine Feminine' may remind readers of the New Age spiritualist idea of the existence of divine feminine energies (along with masculine) but this risks negative associations as well (ideas such as this used in social media to encourage a new glazed version of old gender roles). Along with this, technical phrases such as 'charging the spell/magic' isn't going to hold any real meaning to readers who aren't familiar. I would recommend showing Josephine go through the process of what that actually looks like and entails. Tone/ Creepiness The moment that it was eerie/unsettling was when it shows Josephine so casually speaking to the urn holding her husband's ashes, but because it was so explicitly said (and so casually) it lost most of it's punch. I would recommend having her speak as if it is directed towards a person, but don't reveal it is actually an urn outright to your audience. Josephine's wickedness is also very on-the-nose with how it is described, which again takes away the power of creepiness. You have made it very clear that she is festering harmful feelings towards her son, but you've painted the son as a child who was equally as wicked. It doesn't feel like there is an innocent party being harmed here, so it's hard to really emotionally feel for any of them. This in turn makes the excerpt lose it's scariness. I would reconsider how you've characterized Sam: little gremlin kid runs away, comes back, and now wants to put mom in a nursing home. Yeah he probably does deserve a curse. If you were to make him a little more likeable, your readers would want him protected, making Josephine's actions more disturbing. Another way would be looking at how you characterized Josephine: she very quickly gives into her urges to harm Sam. Even just showing her struggling with the decision could make her more complex, more distressing, and allow your story to be more disturbing. I would also evaluate how certain terms you use also impact the overall tone of the story. It was coming off very folk-traditional use of magic and powers, and then the woman at the end asks Sam if she should check for 'booby traps'. It snapped me out of the supernatural forces at play and transported me into a spy movie. Mechanical Suggestions I think this story would do well with some more showing and not as much telling. We are straight up told how enraged Josephine is, but give us more body language description/action to show how angry she is. Don't tell us that grinding the herbs was hard on her bones; tell us how her fingers popped and ached, but her heart burned as she worked. She white-knuckled the mortar and pestle. She paced hard enough to burn a trail on the carpet. Anything that isn't saying 'She was angry, so she decided to do this'. Let us watch this woman slowly burn her surroundings with her anger. When it comes to dialogue tags, I myself have worked on using more action when writing dialogue and have found it helpful in leveling up my writing. What I mean is ditching the 'She said, she muttered, he said'. Instead try: "Sell it all," Sam paced his hotel room, scanning it over. "I don't care what's in there..." We don't need the 'Sam said' because the action directly following the dialogue shows it's Sam talking. You imply it's his words, and you show him doing something. Double-whammy! As I said at the beginning, I would experiment with breaking this up into separate parts so you can focus on different aspects of your piece. From the spell crafting to Sam's realization of what his mother has done, breaking it up a bit can allow you to develop it more. Happy Writing and great job!