In the Midnight Hour

by Katrina VanBuskirk

  Sarae was still crying. She said, her voice thick, “Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Remy said gallantly, placing the velvet bag back into his pocket.

  Marcus held out a hand to Sarae and she took it. “Let’s go see what the owls have found,” he said.

  “Let’s hope it’s not worse,” she replied miserably.

  Remy followed on through the thick, overgrown forest.

  Every part of the night-dark forest looked just the same as every other part. Why were there so many trees in one place? What was with all the damned thorns? Some of the trees had clusters of gigantic thorns sticking out of them, thorns as big as his hand.

  “Those are black locust trees,” said Sarae.

  “I don’t care what they are, just keep them away from me,” Remy said.

  Sarae and Marcus were up ahead, talking for some reason about school plays. Marcus was telling her about the school play in which he sang “When You Wish Upon a Star” and the gigantic star broke loose from the curtain it was pinned to and crashed to the ground behind him. “Turned out to be a really bad wish,” he said.

  Remy nodded, looking up at the starry sky. He’d seen more stars in the desert back home, where the air wasn’t as humid and the sky was so much clearer. But this sky at least wasn’t bad.

  But then a smell of death came out of the forest, carried by the wind.

  It was very strong, this smell of corruption and decay.

  Remy pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his nose with it. “What is that? What are we walking into now?” he asked.

  Hinto’s voice hooted out of the darkness like a mysterious call.

  “Here,” the great horned owl said.

  Marcus lifted his phone and Sarae lifted her flashlight to illumine the forest ahead of them.

  “Where is …?” asked Marcus, but the question died on his lips.

  The smell of death was coming from a deer.

  A dead deer.

  She was lying on her side with half her chest and ribs torn away.

  Ceremony in the NIght Forest

  “Oh, God,” said Sarae.

  Remy slowed, looking the scene over.

  “Stay back,” he said. The two paused, Marcus looking over his shoulder at him. He could see the question in his eyes.

  Remy covered his lips with one finger – realizing that that the phones and lights certainly were giving them away, if anybody was watching. He’d have to stay alert.

  He pulled the velvet bag of powder from his pocket.

  Sarae was standing still, but slowly turning her head, trying to peer into the darkness around them.

  “I don’t see anything around here that would have caused this kind of damage,” Zoe hooted as small owl flew down to a tree branch over their heads.

  “I’m still looking,” said Hinto from overhead. The screech owl flew back up to join the great horned owl in casing out the situation.

  Remy looked up into the dark leaves, illuminated by the backlight from Marcus and Sarae’s phones. “Do you see anything human? Or inhuman?” he asked the owls.

  “Just a couple of raccoons walking this way, hoping to grab a snack,” Hinto said.

  “Trash pandas,” Remy muttered.

  “What could have done this?” Marcus whispered, turning his head away from the deer. He was not good with gory scenes.

  “Mountain lion, though they’re kind of rare here.” said Sarae.

  “A non-magical creature did this?” Remy asked skeptically.

  Sarae started, her eyes opening wide. “Why? Do you think the creature that did this was … magical?” She looked back down at the deer.

  “Come back here and stand behind me, and watch,” Remy said, beckoning to Marcus and Sarae.

  They did, standing slightly behind him. With a flourish, Remy brought some powder out of his velvet pouch into his hand, and blew.

  Hinto dove in and swooped up through the powder cloud, his great wings flinging the dust far and wide so it sparkled in the air above the deer with a silvery-blue glow.

  And by the glow that the blue powder created, Remy could see the edges of tracks through the air. Lines of motion hung in the air before him, marking where someone had walked around the carcass.

  In the middle of the carcass, over the deer, the motion lines were strongest. Remy could see that whatever had cut down the deer had done it in one powerful strike, by a strong blue sweep in the air. The powder’s glow also revealed the impact when the deer had fallen. The blue lines marked where the being had passed once or twice above the deer and around it. And they marked where it had fed for a time.

  “These are the traces that the being left in the air,” Remy explained. “It was a semi-magical being.”

  “A semi-magical being? Killed this deer?” asked Sarae as if not hearing him a right.

  “Definitely not a ghost.”

  “A semi-magical being?” Sarae asked again.

  Remy frowned at her thick-headedness. “Well yes, that is what I said the first time. And the second time.”

  “But … but what kind of magical beings do we have here?” she asked with some astonishment.

  Remy raised an eyebrow. “You’re the master of all native flora and fauna. Why don’t you tell me?”

  Sarae seemed flustered. “I … I didn’t move out here but a year or two ago. I didn’t even know we had any magical beings here. All I’ve dealt with were ghosts.”

  “Hinto? Zoe? Can you make any sense out of this?” Marcus asked the owls.

  “Only that the fucker who did this is gone now,” said Hinto, wheeling his head around, his great eyes like spotlights.

  Zoe fluttered her wings. “When we were flying through the forest looking for the girls, we didn’t see anything but normal forest animals that live here. And the marks of the killing happened last night, by the looks of this poor deer.”

  “Several other animals had been eating here,” Hinto added, opening his wings and dropping from the branch he sat on to the deer. He landed on the deer’s flank, taking a closer look at her torn flesh. “Those are the other marks. Some vultures fed during the day here – probably a few foxes or raccoons as well, by the looks of it. But there are other marks that are definitely not of an animal I recognize.”

  But then a new realization struck Remy – something that Hinto had taught him long ago.

  “It’s a sacrifice,” he said, gazing at the deer.

  “What?” Sarae asked, her head snapping up to look at him.

  “It seems that this animal was a sacrifice,” Remy said, musing aloud. “So if that’s true, then there should be a letter there ….”

  He pointed the flashlight at the side of a tree seven steps away.

  Illuminated in its beam was an odd letter. It had been written on the bark of the tree in chalk – a sign like a double-p.

  Everybody was stunned into silence.

  It’s them. They’re still here, Remy thought.

  He grew cold.

  “What is that?” Sarae breathed. “I’ve never seen a letter like that before.”

  He didn’t answer her question. “So that means there’s another letter there,” said, Remy, pointing with the flashlight to the next point of the compass.

  Just as he expected … another odd letter, this one like a T with three crossbeams.

  The flashlight’s beam wavered slightly as a tremor passed over Remy.

  “And there,” he said, finding the other two points of the compass and a letter of some sort written on the trees with chalk.

  Jesus. They couldn’t have found him already.

  Then Remy pointed the flashlight and searched … and there was a pyramid of rocks stacked on the ground. He walked around the perimeter and there were pyramids every ten steps around the deer.

  “Well, fuck,” he said quietly.

  One of the small pyramids of stacked rocks was at his feet. “What. In. The. Fuck,” said Remy, looking down at it. He ki
cked it over, angrily.

  “Wait, what are those rocks?” Sarae asked. “What is all this?”

  “Markers that denote … a sacrifice.” Remy chose his words carefully. But then he looked around the deer. No time to worry about them right now. If they were here, that meant there was a horde of black spirits gathered around this place, waiting for their master to gather them in and make them stronger.

  He had to dispel them, and fast.

  “Have you ever done a ceremony of healing?” Remy asked Sarae.

  “Not yet,” Sarae said, walking around the circle and kicking rocks over the way he had. “But I’m about to start, aren’t I?”

  “Smart girl.” Remy looked around the circle. Then he walked to stand next to the back of the deer, with the torn carcass in front of him. “Say I am one corner of a triangle. Sarae, you take your corner over here by the front hooves. Marcus, you be the other point, by the deer’s back hooves. Be equidistant from each other.”

  They stood and arranged themselves. Sarae took her place in next to the front of the deer, gazing out into the forest, her whole body alert.

  For some reason the way Sarae’s hair lay around her shoulders and the watchfulness in her dark eyes made her seem beautiful in the starlight.

  “You might give me a hand,” Sarae said. “I haven’t done a ceremony of this sort before.”

  “Just do your breast,” Remy said.

  There was a long silence after that.

  “Um.” Sarae put a hand on her hip, piercing him with her gaze. “Freudian slip much?”

  Remy sputtered. “Your best. Do your best.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Marcus, trying to hide his laugh, put a hand to his mouth and pretended to sneeze.

  “I’m going to lead the chant, and I’ll walk you through this ceremony,” Remy said, taking his place at the head of the triangle, trying to clear his mind of breasts and anything else related.

  “We have something of a ceremony like that,” said Sarae, “if you’re talking about the primordial chant.”

  “Close,” Remy said, impressed that she’d even heard of that one. “You should be able to follow along if you’re familiar with the crown.”

  Sarae suddenly was standing before the deer wearing a breastplate of gold and a sword and shield.

  “Whoa! What the hell!” Marcus cried.

  “You’re more advanced than I thought,” said Remy.

  Sarae raised her eyebrows. “Actually, I don’t know where this came from,” she confessed, lifting the sword. “Oh, man. Look at this!” She swept it in a wide circle against invisible enemies.

  “It was me,” Zoe said, landing on a nearby branch. “You are going to need a little spiritual help here.” The little screech owl trilled a note that pulled in some kind of glowing field, barely seen over their heads.

  “Protection against … other unsavory influences,” Remy explained, and then he began singing.

  Remy led, and then Sarae and Marcus sang, following him, until they’d gone through the healing song that way. Then he let dust fall down from his hand onto the deer’s head, chanting. He brought his hands together, then flung them apart, and both owls suddenly called at once, in harmony, a note that sent chills down his spine. He sang a third note to the owls, shifting his voice from chord to chord. Then he knelt and called upon the good spirits to cleanse this place.

  When Remy had finished his call, he said, “Sarae, do you have any songs for cleansing?”

  She nodded as he got back to his feet, and then her voice rang out in a chant, punctuated by notes from Zoe. When she swung the sword, a white light moved out from her.

  Remy was pleased to see this. She really had some power in her – she just needed to be taught.

  And his heart crumpled like ash as he watched her sing.

  He couldn’t train Sarae the way she needed to be trained. They were already here. Better to just run, and let them chase him, rather than let them get to her ….

  And the ceremony was done.

  Sarae’s sword and shield vanished. “Aww!” she said, looking down at herself, clearly disappointed.

  “That should drive any foul spirits back under the ground for a while,” Remy said.

  Remy was very tired from the magic he’d worked – and from the realization that he needed to leave.

  “We’re done here,” he said wearily, putting his velvet bag into his pocket. He felt drained, as if he’d run a long way across this godforsaken hell. “Let’s head back. I don’t how late it is, but ….”

  “It’s two a.m.,” Marcus said, yawning. “Way past my bedtime.”

  The owls led them back through the forest toward the Mercedes Sprinter. Remy was ready to lie down and go to sleep – just not in this hell of a forest.

  “Do you need any help?” Sarae asked him, coming to his side.

  He looked at her compassionate dark eyes, there in the night forest.

  Yes. Yes. He did need help.

  He wanted to wrap her in his arms, pull her close, cling to her.

  God help him, he was alone in the state that wanted him dead, and there wasn’t a place here that wasn’t out for his blood, whether it was the mosquitoes or the gigantic thorns on those trees or those damned pyramids of rocks that they’d built, or the dark spirits that lurked at the edges of the magic that he and Sarae had created together.

  Their magic had pushed those foul spirits back, but for how long?

  What did Sarae have to do with any of this? Nothing. She had nothing to do with that dead deer or those spirits. But he knew that they would kill her, yes, and Marcus to, to get to Remy.

  “I’m fine,” Remy lied quietly.

  Sarae looked slightly disappointed.

  He let her go ahead, chatting with Marcus. The lights from their phones flickered ahead of them, casting their shadows back over him.

  He ached to touch Sarae now, to caress her lithe body. To kiss her deeply, to lift her into his arms and carry her, to make her cry out in pleasure, to lie next to her and watch her as she slept, to gently lift her hair out of her eyes.

  It wasn’t much that he asked of the universe.

  Because Remy knew now that they were already here. If they were here, he was going to leave, or he’d have to drive Sarae away before they got to her.

  But he wanted a little bit of her, just a little taste of love, before he did.

  A Call from the Dark

  Sarae, following the owls, led Marcus and Remy back to their cars through the dense woods, keeping her ears and eyes open. She was more tired than usual – she hadn’t realized that the singing would wear her out that much.

  Remy kept itching his arms and ankles. Then he’d scratch his neck. “If I get poison ivy out in these woods I’m going to call the authorities.”

  “I’m afraid the authorities can’t do anything about your rashes,” Sarae said mildly.

  “So that makes everything better,” grumbled Remy, picking small sticks out from under his collar. “That stopped my itching right away. So much better.”

  “Once you get out of the woods, you’ll be okay,” Sarae said. “If you’re worried about bugs, take a shower as soon as you get back to your camper.”

  And then she couldn’t stop imagining Remy in the shower, soaping himself up, the hot water sluicing down his abs and legs.

  Ugh! Why couldn’t she stop thinking like this! She had to stop these thoughts.

  Maybe I could join him in the shower, she thought. That might help.

  Sarae groaned internally and put her hands to her head.

  Send Marcus on a little nighttime stroll, that corner of her mind added. Then you could lean back on the shower wall with the water running over your naked bodies and let Remy pound you into sweet oblivion….

  “We are nearly back,” Marcus said quietly.

  “Oh, thank God,” Remy groaned.

  For once Sarae had to agree with him.

  You could follow Remy in, that corner of her mind add
ed. Mmmm, hot loving!

  “Stop it,” Sarae snapped.

  “Stop what?” Remy asked, stopping to address her with those smoldering eyes.

  As if he’d been thinking the same thing she had been.

  “Nothing!” She gripped her head.

  Come on, Sarae, she told herself. Just invite him to your house tonight. Don’t be afraid, he won’t bite.

  Or maybe he will!

  Oh, God, now she really wanted him.

  She slowed down slightly, her heart pounding, to match her pace with Remy’s, letting Marcus walk a little ways ahead. She looked down at the ground, trying to gather the courage. Thinking about Remy’s hot body on hers was one thing. Confessing her lust to him, and asking him to her home, where she’d had no visitors for a full year, was another.

  “Wait.” Marcus suddenly stopped. He shone his phone’s light into the forest all around. “Do you guys hear a noise?”

  “No,” said Remy.

  Something snapped off in the woods, far behind them.

  “I do,” said Sarae, instantly on the alert.

  Something was running through the leaves on the opposite hill. It was running through the trees and brush that grew thick on the forest floor.

  “A raccoon?” Marcus asked, moving toward Sarae, staring in the direction of the noise.

  Sarae’s mouth went dry. What was that? These ran faster than any human could, and they were bursting through the brush and vines of the forest, straight at them.

  “Too big to be raccoons. And there’s several of them.” Sarae started to move up the hill they were on. “Guys. Guys.” Her heart began to pound.

  Hinto flew low over their heads. “You need to run, now.”

  Zoe’s small voice came from overhead. “It may be you’re already too late. Do you have any weapons?”

  Sarae felt the blood drain from her face.

  “I do,” said Marcus. “Come on guys, let’s run.”

  She turned and ran with Marcus and Remy, but not fast enough. These people, or whatever they were, had reached the bottom of the opposite hill and were running up this one straight behind them. It was a high hill, but they were coming up it as if it was flat and level ground.

  “Stop,” she heard Marcus say, and she felt his hands on her shoulder.