by Noah Layton
Just as quickly as it had entered the vacuum of my surroundings, so did it vanish in an instant.
But it was replaced by something else, something that surrounded me and enveloped me as far as the eye could see. Whirring channels and wisps of light of all sounds and colors swarmed up around me like bees rushing from a hive to attack, but I felt not a single stab or sting of pain.
My body returned, dressed in my warlock gear, and as I looked up I saw a collection of figures stepping up to me, five to be exact. They appeared from the colorful mist of nothingness that continued to soar through the air all around me, all clad in some variation of the outfit that I was wearing, all of different ages. Weathered men, with tired, experienced eyes and wise stances.
They all carried their own staffs, all facsimiles of the one that I had been holding but was no longer in my grasp… Until they held theirs out, each of them melding into one until a single staff landed in my hand, the one that I had grabbed from behind the boards before, the one that was now in my possession and under my control.
The men smiled, vanishing into mist and falling into the light.
And just like that, the dressing room swarmed up around me, dripping into view like a canvas drawn in seconds around my body.
Lois and Brianna stared back at me, still stood in the spot where I had left them.
‘How does that feel?’ Brianna asked.
‘I…’ I started breathlessly, feeling the weight of the weapon in my hand, getting used to its coursing power and strength, the sensation of it seeming to whisper into my grasp. ‘It, uhh… It feels fine. What just happened?’
‘What do you mean?’ Lois asked.
‘I mean… Did you not see that?’
‘See what?’
I looked about the room. There wasn’t a single trace of the galaxy of color and light that had replaced my reality for several minutes. Back here in the coven, the girls hadn’t experienced the passage of time in the slightest.
But I knew what it meant. I knew the legacy that had just been quite literally handed to me.
‘Nothing,’ I said, gritting my teeth. ‘Let’s go.’
‘We’re not done just yet,’ Brianna said. ‘There’s one last ingredient to this recipe.’
I had turned to lead us out, heading halfway across the room when I turned to see the girls opening two more panels either side of that which I had taken the staff from. It took a moment for the lanterns to cast their flickering sheen over the contents, but the moment I set eyes upon what lurked within their closets I couldn’t help but smile.
‘If there’s one thing I’m sure of,’ I started, ‘it’s that you girls wanted to keep yourselves hidden from the prying eyes of the human world.’
‘True,’ Lois said, ‘but one of our own is in danger, and some asshole is about to open up a portal to hell. I really could give a fuck about subtlety right now.’
Chapter Fourteen
Even if we did have any of Scarlett’s invisibility concoction lying around, it was still light; there was no way that we could use the broomsticks to get to the field.
And there was no way that we were walking the streets in what the girls were wearing.
Time was a factor, and no sooner had I left the dressing room and descended the stairs than they returned, hurrying down the creaking steps to meet me.
Their robes were gone, though. Instead of the pink and red silk that I had gladly gotten used to over the last few days, they now wore black shoes, knee-high black socks and black skirts, hanging at the perfect height below tight shirts and black cloaks that covered their upper bodies, save for the generous amount of cleavage that they both displayed.
And, at the ready alongside their wands which were clasped in their hands, Lois and Brianna both wore the classic pointed hats, perched upon their heads and tipped back at the perfect angle.
‘Pretty fucking hot for a rescue mission.’
‘I ask again,’ Brianna asked, tilting her head to the side, ‘Are you really complaining?’
‘I’m gonna shut up now.’
‘Good,’ Lois said, reaching into her cloak and throwing me something, which I promptly caught. ‘You can drive.’
‘Drive what?’ I asked, but the girls had already taken off to the kitchen, heading towards the door that led to the garage. I lifted the object up and realised that it was a set of keys – no, just the one key, alongside a keyring that read If the broom fits, ride it.
But there was something else written on the actual car key – something that sent my eyes wide with amazement.
‘No…’ I called after the girls, running after them to the garage door. ‘You’ve gotta be fucking kidding…’
In the garage was a Chevy Impala from the 70s, awaiting like a purring panther. I could hardly see it in the spilt, residual light of the kitchen until Lois ignited the lanterns and illuminated it, turning it into a flickering, magnificent steed.
‘I can’t believe any day goes by when none of you actually get behind the wheel of this thing.’
‘It’s not exactly subtle,’ Brianna said.
‘And broomsticks are?’
‘You can be invisible on a broomstick which keeps you off everybody’s radar. But driving this thing around, even at night, whilst invisible, would cause more than a few heads to turn.’
‘Fair point,’ I said, admiring the car from nearby before my face fell. ‘Can we do this?’
A brief pause from the girls… Then from Lois-
‘Honestly?’ She said. ‘Maybe, maybe not. But the worst thing would be not trying.’
It wasn’t some grand motivational speech with epic music in the background. It wasn’t an inspirational quote. But it was exactly the thing that my stupid-ass brain needed to hear.
‘Let’s go.’
Tablet in hand, Brianna directed us through the 6pm sunset streets towards the baseball field. The engine of the car roared beneath my control, filling me with a greater sense of confidence… But that was quickly nullified when, from the backseat, Brianna’s cloaked figure went off-track from her usually directional instructions.
‘Something’s not right…’ She muttered. ‘I mean it is, but it isn’t… There’s something happening over the field. Some kind of freak weather warning from the local meteorological office. It just came up as an alert… Risk to life.’
She repeated those last three words from her screen, and in an instant I knew that we were heading in the right direction.
This wasn’t a coincidence.
‘Uhh… Guys?’ From the passenger seat, Lois rolled down the window and ducked her head out to look straight ahead of us. ‘What the hell is that?’
We had been travelling down a suburban street with only a few hundred yards of distance between us and the bleachers when the air around us seemed to change. One moment we were cruising at a steady but sharp pace, keeping an eye out for any immediate threats, the next...
The sky was awash with grey dimness. Any semblance of sunlight clawing its way through the atmosphere was gone, and the stillness of that lazy spring evening was replaced by a brutal gust of wind that struck the car so hard I felt the wheel shaking beneath my hands.
I dropped a gear, revving the engine a little harder to fight against the wind, and the three of us looked up through the window to see the cause of it all, and the source of our worst fears.
A swirling mass of darkness had gathered over the field a few hundred yards ahead. It was a floating maelstrom, suspended in the sky over the pitch, a hellish, swarming circle of death and destruction.
And we were heading straight for it – deliberately.
‘Not to state the obvious,’ I said, ‘but I’m gonna go ahead and guess that’s where we’re headed.’
‘Holy fuck…’ Brianna said. ‘He’s already started.’
A pang of dread struck me like a brick wall tumbling down upon my entire body. If the Purple Man had already started the process for opening the portal to the Third Circle, were we
too late?
Was Scarlett…?
I revved the engine harder, pushing the car onwards, but with every inch that we got closer to the swelling storm, it became endlessly harder to force the car further. Even with the muscle beneath the hood, there was no way that we were going to get even remotely close.
‘We’re gonna need to go on foot,’ Lois announced, turning to me and Brianna.
I pulled the car onto a nearby drive that was void of any other vehicles assuming that the occupants weren’t home. If I had just parked the thing on the sidewalk, we would no doubt come back to find it half a mile back the way we had come, smashed into a tree with the sheer strength of the gusts that were coming our way.
If we came back.
The wind struck us hard, but the girls’ outfits didn’t falter in the slightest – I had figured that the hats would never be practical for a fight, but they stayed perched on their heads effortlessly.
‘Wind tunnel,’ Lois said. Brianna nodded, and together they cast their wands up before themselves in a flurry of movement. At first I thought nothing had happened, but as they nodded to me and we headed out into the street, I found the wind to have suddenly stopped – or so I thought.
Not a whip of the crushing winds struck us as we stepped out onto the street and continued towards the field, but as I looked around it was a totally different situation.
While the Chevy was safe in its enclosure upon the drive, every other car on the street wasn’t. They were sliding across drives and onto front yards, some tumbling onto their sides, another parked on the sidewalk that came sweeping towards us.
We dodged it deftly, staying together in our small collective bubble as we hurried on. There had been a few people stood on porches and peering from their front doors, but as the strength of the storm got worse and worse, they had all but vanished.
We reached the end of the street, pressing on into a small parking lot… When everything suddenly stopped.
The trees perched around the parking lot behind the bleachers were still, their leaves motionless. I turned to look over my shoulder back at the street and saw the same scene of burgeoning destruction, trees on the verge of uprooting, cars still shifting steadily with their handbrakes firmly in place.
But our bubble hadn’t expanded. Brianna cast it off, and as we stood side by side looking towards the obscured view of the stadium, I knew that we had reached the eye of the storm, the end of the line, and the fight of my life.
Chapter Fifteen
I get into the passenger seat. Bloodied lip. Bruise on my forehead.
‘What happened?’
My Dad’s voice is not like the satisfying clocking sound when the bat hits the ball. A moment of victory and excitement. No, it’s disappointment and worry.
Not his voice, of course – my reaction to it. I’m sad that I’ve let him down, and I’m worried that he’ll be disappointed.
‘I got into a fight.’
‘A fight? That doesn’t usually happen.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Is it something I speak to somebody’s mom or dad about?’
‘No. It was with somebody from the other team.’
As he starts the car he lets out a little laugh, which he quickly stifles.
‘So because it was somebody from the other team that makes it okay to fight?’
‘It’s better than fighting with somebody from your own team, isn’t it?’
‘I guess so… But it’s still not the best approach. Why don’t you tell me what happened?’
I stay quiet for few moments. I don’t like crying, and I don’t want to right now.
I look out the window and tell him the story.
‘Johnny was about to make it to third base, and he could have gone for the home run. It was an awesome shot… But this boy from the other team tripped him. Nobody saw it but me, and he was out. He started laughing at Johnny.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I went over and…’
I don’t say anything. My dad doesn’t say anything at first, but he knows.
‘So you got in a fight… I don’t think this time it was worth it.’
‘But he tripped him!’
‘I know, but that’s not the point. Maybe this kid learnt his lesson, maybe not, but you can’t just go throwing punches whenever somebody does something wrong.’
‘But how will they learn?’
My dad wants to laugh again, but it comes out as a stifled scoff.
‘Some people don’t learn. They just go through life staying exactly the same, and they get really miserable and really disappointed. This boy from the other team might be like that, but people like that… Most of the time you just need to stay away from them.’
‘But what if you can’t? What if they won’t stop hurting people?’
My Dad draws a long breath, relaxing his hands on the wheel.
‘If they won’t stop… You just need to cut them down without a second’s thought. But it’s rare that you’ll come across anybody like that in your life, Tommy. People like that don’t come around often. They’re the villains of the world.’
‘And what do you do with them?’
‘Like I said. Cut them down.’
We hurried beneath the bleachers, I with my new staff in hand, the girls with their wands drawn. From behind the stands we peeked out, looking onto the scene surrounding the mound at the centre.
The Purple Man was there, head held high, arms to his sides as his mouth moved, inaudible spells casting from his lips.
Circling him defensively were his worgs, jaws snarling and faces as hungry as ever.
And by his feet was Scarlett, her wrists and ankles still bound. Her eyes were open and there wasn’t a spot of blood that I could see, but I didn’t how long I could rely on those things being consistent.
‘We need to take out the worgs first,’ I said, scanning the scene. ‘He might be the strongest out of all them by far, but if we don’t get rid of his minions first then we’re gonna be in a shitload of trouble.’
‘If we can do it fast then we’re gonna be fine,’ Lois said. ‘He’s about to open the portal. He won’t sacrifice Scarlett now. Whatever he’s doing, he’s already in the process… But we can stop him.’
‘Something doesn’t feel right,’ I said, shaking my head as gazed out towards him. ‘It can’t be this easy…’
‘What’s easy is us catching him off-guard before the ritual’s complete,’ Brianna said. ‘Even if he is fucking us around, do you really wanna risk it?’
I thought it over quickly, the constant, taunting threat of the clock ticking in my mind and all around us.
‘Fuck it,’ I said, ‘let’s do this.’
Approaching from three different sides seemed aesthetically the right thing to do, but that would only split them up. If we could get the worgs into one focused point then we could take them down first.
Emerging from behind the bleachers, we approached together. It didn’t feel right, but this was how we were doing it. No stealth – just a balls to the wall, we’re here approach.
The worgs came running the moment that they laid eyes upon us. There was something in their eyes that told me they remembered myself and Lois, but that didn’t matter; with a combination of fire and electricity we took the creatures down quickly, throwing everything we could at them. They had been a match when we had been caught off-guard in the forest but now they hardly posed a threat.
Still, the whole time, I couldn’t take my mind off of the Purple Man.
Once the creates keeled over, the three of us looked at each other before heading forwards. Scarlett’s eyes went wide as she panted for breath from behind the cloth wrapped around her mouth.
And still, the Purple Man didn’t move an inch – not until my anger took over again; the jolt struck him in the chest, sending him flying back from the mound and onto the grass a few yards beyond.
Lois hurried over to free Scarlett while Brianna and I approache
d the Purple Man. He was alive, moving, but not getting up.
Only when I got closer did I see his hands. They were soaked in blood, leaving not an untouched segment of skin.
He had cut his wrists.
‘That’s it?’ I said in confusion, looking down at the Purple Man’s uncovered face in person for the first time. He wasn’t exactly terrifying – early-thirties, messy hair, a greasy face and completely subdued. Exactly as he had been in the dreamscape. He could do nothing.
Nothing but smile.
Blood frothed up from his throat and seeped from his lips as he laughed up at us, coughing violently.
‘That’s it,’ he repeated back to me, smiling. ‘My part is done.’
I stared down at him, frowning. ‘… What do you mean?’
‘I’ve had my fun, and my function is served. Now it’s time to meet the real master… I know that he’s been dying to see you.’
It had felt like the weirdest victory, only because it hadn’t been a victory at all.
The Purple Man’s eyes rolled back with a final smile, and his head lolled motionlessly to the side.
Silence reigned, that same silence that had cast itself down when we had broken into the eye of the maelstrom, which continued to turn endlessly overhead.
And the ground began to shake.
I looked around at the girls. The color had drained from their faces.
A crack burst through the ground, splitting the earth like it was nothing more than a ripping piece of fabric.
Hurrying from the centre of the field, we moved back from the centre towards the bleachers, watching as the pitcher’s mound bubbled with pressure before descending into the emptiness below. A rough circle eventually began to appear, taking the space inside the square with it.
Where the warriors fight to stay beyond the edge.
A red nuclear glow began to emit from the centre, spreading out to the edges as a blast of heat struck us before simmering steadily.