Under the Overtree

by James A. Moore

  From the woods, she heard the mingled sound of Mark and Cassie screaming out in denial and, with a certain sickening dread, turned to look at the light. Lisa Scarrabelli finally noticed that she stood on asphalt at the same time that her mind took in the dark shape with burning eyes set low to the ground. She thought about the shape for only a second before her brain supplied the last words she would manage for quite a while. “Oh, it’s a car.”

  Perhaps Lisa would have preferred to die right then, perhaps she would have wished to avoid the car all together; either way the choice wasn’t hers to make. The car hit her at speeds far too excessive for the road conditions. The impact lifted her one hundred and twenty-three pound body off of the ground as if she weighed less than a balloon in a strong wind. She never felt the metal bumper collapse against her thigh even as her bone was shattered; she never felt the windshield explode against her face and skull; she never felt her flesh tear against the vinyl hood of the old Impala. She was unconscious when her back slid over the rear of the car. She didn’t have to see the tar rush forward to eagerly shatter her ribcage and spine. The last irony would probably have done permanent damage to her battered ego; she never realized that her car was only twenty or so feet from where she finally skidded to a halt.

  She never saw how quickly Mark stopped at her side, afraid to move her broken but breathing body. She never saw the look of insane rage that crossed his face as he looked towards the Impala where it stopped almost a football field away.

  But Cassie did. It was a look she would never be able to drive from her mind.

  7

  They watched from the sidelines, even hiding Themselves from Him. Terror rippled through Their bodies. This wasn’t supposed to happen; it was just a joke. They had meant to have a good laugh at the expense of the girl who had so frustrated Him, at the expense of the Writer, but NEVER, NEVER at the expense of HIM.

  They watched from a distance as the Chosen One approached the car that had struck the girl. The other humans would never understand if he did the man harm, the humans wouldn’t realize that Their strength was also His strength. With desperate speed, They sang to Him, calming the passionate fires that They had instilled for His own protection. It was not easy; They struggled to make Him obey, chilled for the first time in memory by His strength of will. “Soon,” They whispered in the silent tongue. “Soon, he will be Yours, but You must wait, until all is quiet again.” Slowly He calmed and They sighed with relief. The Mate of the Chosen had already opened the silent car near Their victim. She held a box for talking from within and They sensed that she called those who could help on the device. Carefully, quietly, They touched the one They had hurt so much and they slid beneath her broken skin, making changes and fixing what They could. She would live, of that They were certain. She had to live, on that They all agreed. She held Their progeny, Their only other hope, the only chance They had, should the Chosen prove too strong to finish bending.

  Shivering in the night’s heat, They conferred. Accusations would have to wait; for now They had to work even faster than They had desired.

  Just as They felt all would be well, one of the Watchers approached, in a frenzy of fear. The Watcher explained that the Hunter had returned. The woods shivered in fright as the ambulance pulled to a stop. The winds screamed in terror as the attendants took care of Lisa Scarrabelli’s battered form. The Hunter was back; the very thought terrified Them. He had been gone so long. They had hoped to never see him again. The Folk scattered throughout the town of Summitville, trembling with terror and anxiety; each knew now that the Hunter had returned, each knew that Their lives could end in a matter of minutes if the Hunter spotted Them.

  This changed everything, the Hunter wouldn’t just destroy Them, he might destroy the Chosen, or the Chosen’s Mate, or even the whole town, if he so desired. They had to find the Hunter and soon, if They hoped to bring the Masters forth. They had to Find the Hunter and kill him, before he became aware of Them; They prayed it was not already too late.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  1

  A week passed in which everything proceeded in the way that life should; peacefully. With the exception of Lisa’s hospitalization, the world was mundane. Mark’s grandparents left earlier than expected, apparently opting to try their luck at a little gambling down Vegas way and life returned fully to the norm, except in the cases of Lisa, her family and Tyler.

  There is such a thing as simply giving up, shutting away all that matters and all that hurts in an effort to stop the soul numbing agony that life has thrown in your direction. Tyler had decided that giving up was the best way to take life after his first visit with the breathing battered mannequin that had been Lisa.

  The shock was too heavy for anyone to notice at first, everyone that was close to him was experiencing their own pain. But, as is all too frequently the case, Lisa had started to show small signs of recovery. Virtually everyone who was close to her was ecstatic to hear the news; Tyler was totally unaffected. Tyler no longer smiled, not even the sad little smiles he used to give when he was hurting deep inside. He no longer seemed to have the energy to get out of bed before noon; it was as if he was the one who had been hit by the car.

  Truth be told, his body was fine. It was his heart that had been shattered once too often. Mark tried to comfort him, Cassie tried to comfort him, all to no avail. He staggered through his days watching all of the shows that used to have him roaring with laughter and now did nothing for him. He lived by habit not desire.

  William Phillips was in the county jail for several days before being released, the blood tests were enough to convict him of driving under the influence and his license had been taken away on at least a temporary basis. That was just as well in his eyes, he had no desire to get behind the wheel ever again. Nothing changed when it came to his drinking, however. He simply stayed at home to get drunk; leading to violent arguments with his wife of eighteen years and finally culminating in her moving out to stay with her brother’s family in Boulder. Less than two weeks later, William ended his life in a less dramatic way than that of his son; he suffocated in his own vomit while sleeping off his latest drunken stupor.

  Chuck Hanson marked the case closed and even attended the funeral. Aside from Lisa Scarrabelli’s family and the minister, he stood alone as the body was lowered into the ground.

  That was the only case of violent crime, intentional or not, that Hanson managed to close during the summer. The strain of his job had started to show itself in the way he walked and in the haggard expression that always covered his face. Although no one showed it in their talks with him, or even in their faces when he was around, he knew that the town was losing their faith in the man they had elected to protect them.

  Rick Lewis for his part had sent the samples to every government agency he could think of as well as to several different colleges in the area. The results had not to date been conclusive. The only positive response he had received had been from one of the parapsychology departments that said it showed all of the properties inherent in the few documented cases of ectoplasmic activity and offered to send someone to aid in any way possible. Rick was so desperate for any solid evidence that he actually took them up on their offer. The psychologist that joined him had a list of credentials as long as her name, Jaquelyn Fitzgerald Rosenquist. Had she been less of a fanatic about the supernatural they would have gotten along better. As it stood, they could tolerate each other and he did appreciate the help.

  With her, Jackie—a name she insisted on despite Rick’s belief that she looked more like a Jaquelyn—brought several thousand dollars worth of monitoring equipment; machinery she was sure would be of use to them later on despite its occupying over half of his office’s free space. He would have been able to label her a kook with greater ease if she hadn’t proven to be a veritable font of knowledge on damn near every case in history that couldn’t be explained away easily.

  Her knowledge was more useful than they had expected, when she m
anaged to put the finger on Jonathan Crowley as a parapsychologist who had been quite the figure of attention in the early part of the Eighties.

  The day had been stretched to its limits and the sun was setting when Chuck Hanson mentioned the name in passing. Chuck had just stopped by for the seventh time in as many hours to see if there had been any progress on the joint analysis of the “Goop” as he had taken to calling it and mentioned briefly that he had spotted Crowley skulking around in the old cemetery at the heart of town, the cemetery that contained the earthly remains of the town’s founders and the marker for Stoney Miles.

  The name Crowley had perked Jackie’s attention immediately and she smiled as she asked, “Which Crowley, Alastair or Jonathan?”

  Hanson looked at her with his head tilted, as if he were listening for a distant sound in the woods at night and replied with the proper name. “Well, I guess maybe we are on to something out here, after all.” The prospect made her high cheekboned face seem almost girlish. Her smile was as radiant as the early morning sun and as eager as a starving man’s at the sight of a Thanksgiving spread.

  Both men looked at her with puzzled expressions, silently asking her to continue. After a moment of calculating the looks they exchanged, she finally realized that they had no idea who Crowley was. The concept obviously shocked her.

  “I thought everybody knew who John Crowley was! Why, he’s one of the most important men in the field of parapsychology, or he was, until he went into retirement.” She looked at them to see if that had helped; it hadn’t. “Jonathan Crowley was the first man to document and record a full figured apparition,” she explained patiently, as if to mentally slow children. “His use of Kirlian Photography in a house reported to be haunted was a simply amazing break-through. The man should have gotten a Nobel Prize for his work.”

  The two men stared at Jackie as if she had grown an extra nose on her face. She fidgeted for a moment and then tried to shrug off everything she had just said. “Naturally the laymen refused to believe that it was anything but a hoax, but all the experts in the field agreed that there was simply no way he could have superimposed the image of that girl onto the film. No way at all.” She fought the urge to check her face for extra nostrils and finally let loose with a sigh of epic proportions. “Will you please tell me why you’re staring at me that way?”

  That was all it took, the two men smiled and Jackie realized that her chances of leaving this room anytime in the near future were absolutely non-existent.

  2

  Tony had all but forgotten about his uncle’s damned book; the last few weeks having been completely occupied with worrying over his sister. The book was really the last thing he could have given a good goddamn about, until he saw Patrick Wilson and Tyler step into the hospital room. Patrick was dressed with his usual care, hair just so and blue jeans pressed and creased; Tyler looked like he hadn’t showered in about a month, which was fairly close to the truth.

  He studied Tyler closely and knew where it counted that Tyler was grievously wounded by the injuries that had befallen Lisa. He knew in an instant that the only reason Tyler was here was because his brother had forced him to be here. Tyler really looked like shit, his face was pale and listless, his eyes were downcast and stared straight into the ground as if they were glued into an unmoving position; they shone in the pale light of the hospital room, looking more like glass orbs than like part of a human being. Tyler’s clothes looked like they had been slept in, wrinkles upon wrinkles, like old parchment that had been badly misused. Patrick smiled wanly, hoping that Tony would read his meaning from the look in his eyes; Could we leave them alone together for a few minutes? Tony nodded and stood aside, watching as Patrick forced his brother to sit next to Lisa and look at her.

  Lisa had looked better in the past, when half of her face hadn’t been covered in scabrous growth that looked all too much like the dirt of the grave and when her eyes had opened and looked at people and acknowledged that they were there. What wasn’t covered in bandages or stuffed with tubes on her body looked too pale for life, too fragile for the world they were all living in. As long as he lived, Tony would never forget the look of raw anguish on Tyler’s face as he and Patrick stepped away from the bed and out of the room. Tyler looked like a man whose entire life had been one injury after another; he looked like a man who had suffered a fatal injury and still couldn’t manage to die.

  Deep inside of his soul, Tony wondered how many of those injuries he had caused to fall on Tyler’s shoulders. He suspected that he knew the answer. It was an answer he didn’t like. The kind that, if examined in close detail, would make him realize just how small a person he really was.

  Outside of the room, the two young men stood in uncomfortable silence for several minutes, staring anywhere but at each other. Finally, just for something to talk about, Tony brought up the books.

  Patrick stared at him blankly for a few seconds before finally understanding what it was that Tony was talking about. When he finally did understand, he confessed to a lack of knowledge to the whereabouts of the old tome. Seeing the expression on Tony’s face, he quickly promised to find the book as soon as he got home.

  They stood in silence for almost thirty more minutes, before Tyler came out of the room in which Lisa lay in deathless sleep. He looked better. Not healthy by any stretch of the imagination, but better just the same. As if a weight had been lifted off of his soul. He even managed a tentative smile at Tony, which he forced himself to return, before walking slope-shouldered away from the room.

  3

  Mark and Cassie held the kiss for a long time before calling it a night. The movie had been fun, the dinner enjoyable and the walk home relaxing, but the night was growing old and Cassie’s curfew still stood at eleven o’clock. Sometimes Mark couldn’t help but wonder if the curfew would have been lifted for a local boy like Tony. Most of his mind told him that the answer would have been no, but there was still that part that acknowledged the lack of enthusiasm on the part of Cassie’s parents, at her dating an outsider like him. Try as he might, as nice as he might be, her parents refused to look at him as anything but a stranger. He should, he supposed, be used to that by now; he had been the stranger all his life.

  He was less of one here, he realized that, but he was still a stranger. Just a stranger with friends. Friends, he pondered the power that one syllable word had over him, as he wandered seemingly without direction into the woods.

  As he entered the forest, Lake Overtree a distant glimmering jewel suspended halfway between earth and the heavens in the distance, the reality of his friends came back to him. With each step he took he remembered more of the Folk in the woods, their tender caresses and the love that They felt for him. Every tree he passed was like another loving parent, giving him the full memory of his secret friends as if They were giving him a precious garment to shield him from the cold realities of the world.

  No matter that Cassie’s parents disliked him, he had more love than any person could ever need waiting in the clearing just ahead. He had pleasant memories by the dozen and more of the same to come, in his little private spot in the woods. He felt the troubles and worries of the day fade away from his soul the closer he came to his destination.

  There, the stone that was more comfortable than any bed could ever hope to be. There, the trees that held the Summer’s heat at bay with their shading. There, his friends. He could cry when he saw Them; no creature was ever meant to be so very beautiful. The way Their delicate wings rustled lightly in the gentle breeze, the way the stars were reflected in Their almond eyes. How could God have created such things of beauty, only to hide them from all the world?

  They danced with joy to see him again; some lifting into the air to hover around his head, others swarming over the ground around him, plucking delicately at his clothes or caressing the exposed flesh on his body, leaving pleasant little tingles where Their skin contacted with his.

  He smiled rapturously, allowing the Folk to guide h
im to his place on the stone. He told Them of his day, feeling Their grief over the horrid fate that had befallen Lisa; They laughed to hear of the movie he had seen, lost in wonder at the thought of the worlds beyond the stars and They crooned with delight to hear how well he and his beloved Cassie enjoyed each other’s company.

  He smiled in turn, when They whispered the secrets of nature in his ear; how the Robin’s eggs had finally hatched, how the Wolf had passed through Their glen just today and paused to greet Them, he shared Their grief in hearing that the Old Owl had passed from life today, leaving the world just a little colder for his passing.

  He lay his head down upon the stone, feeling Their loving caresses and hearing Their gentle words, a perfect lullaby by which to sleep. As he slept, he dreamt. He dreamt of perfect days, days when all was right in the world and all the little pains of life were sloughed away like water from a duck’s back. He dreamt of Cassie’s slow approach, her perfect body gleaming palely in the moon’s faint glow. He dreamt of kissing her delicate skin, the sweet taste of her flesh upon his lips. He dreamt of her caresses, of their passionate love-making, of the days when all the world would realize as he already did, that they were meant to be together, forever.

  And as he lay sleeping, lost in a world of dreams, They reached towards him and into him, making the necessary changes. Their time was almost upon Them.