by Neil Olson
“When you summoned the spirit,” Will said, turning back to Tom. “What name did you call it by?”
“No name,” Tom replied. “I know it’s been done that way. But it seemed foolish to call a single being, who may or may not be real, or respond to that name. Better to open ourselves to whatever spirit might be within the range of our call.”
“Then how the hell were you going to get rid of it afterward?”
“You continue to misunderstand,” Tom said calmly. “Most of these messengers are friendly. I intended that it should come of its own volition, converse with us at whatever length it chose and leave when it wanted to.”
“What if it didn’t?” Will pressed.
“There are means for extracting a name,” Tom said reluctantly. “If it came to that.”
“And you have it in mind to use those means tonight?”
The old man looked confused.
“I thought you knew the name,” he said. “That the being had spoken it to you.”
Will glanced at Sam, who wore a guilty look on her averted face.
“It spoke a word,” Will clarified. “Which might or might not have been a name. And which I might or might not have correctly understood.”
“It’s no good if it’s the wrong name,” Ruth tutted, shaking her head.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, Tom,” Margaret said.
“Wait,” said Nancy Chester. “What’s the consequence if it’s the wrong name? What would happen?”
Tom shrugged, obviously rattled by this unexpected turn.
“It won’t work. I can’t think of any consequence beyond that.”
Will looked hard at Ruth Brown, saw her puckered old mouth drawn up in a pout, as if she might have more to say on the matter. But it was Tom’s circle, not hers, and she kept quiet.
“Seems like Will ought to decide,” said Jimmy. Reasonably enough.
“We don’t have twelve people,” Will said, stalling.
“Twelve is ideal,” Tom replied. “But nine is sufficient.”
All eyes turned to Sam, who stood apart. Each of her hands squeezed the opposite shoulder. At first Will thought she had not heard, but it wasn’t that. She looked searchingly at his face. He had no idea what expression he might be showing, nor what she would see beneath it. Sam dropped her hands to her sides and stepped over to the table. Will began to sit down in the chair in front of him.
“Oh no,” said Ruth Brown, coming toward him, “that’s not your spot.”
After a brief protest, he climbed onto the table and lay down on his back, forcing himself to relax. Ruth arranged his arms and legs so that each pointed to a corner. She took off his sneakers and socks with the careless ease of a mother. Then she placed the five candles. One between his knees, one by each hip and two bracketing his head. He could see the flames jittering, feel the warmth on his ears. Finally, she took a pouch from her robe and flicked a pinch of the contents into each flame, muttering unheard words under her breath. Will smelled something spicy, sage or rosemary. He wanted to ask what she was doing, but instead imitated the dead silence of the others.
When she was finished, Ruth returned to the end of the table and placed one hand on each of his bare feet. Eugene Stafford and Jimmy placed a hand atop each of hers. Margaret took Jimmy’s right hand in her left, and Molly’s in her right. With her free hand, Molly took Will’s. Across the table, Eugene’s free hand linked to Nancy Chester’s, hers to Sam’s, and Sam’s to Will’s. They were all joined, except Tom. Who now pulled the hood of the robe over his head and peered downward.
“Close your eyes,” the old man said.
Will did so, and after a moment’s pause felt Tom’s hands clasp his temples and forehead. A current, low but strong, seemed to run through Will’s arms and legs, to hum in his belly and quiet his mind. There was a particular warmth where Sam touched him, and his sore right arm and shoulder felt better. He had not guessed it could feel so good to be physically connected to other people. To be encircled by care and protection. He felt tears seeping from his eyes.
“That’s all right,” said Tom. “It’s normal. Now, I need everyone’s full attention. Center your energy on young William here. Clear your minds.”
He began speaking in Latin. The older women recited with him, as if it was a familiar invocation, like the Lord’s prayer. Will caught something about “the heart’s circle” and “the powers of the earth,” but his disused Latin and dulled brain could do no more than that. Indeed, he felt his consciousness shifting in and out, and he began to lose track of time. At some point, the words slid from Latin to another language, more obscure and difficult. Welsh, or an old form of Celtic. Now only Ruth’s voice echoed Tom’s, and even hers went silent for stretches. As if the old man were venturing into enchantments unfamiliar to all but him. A long rumble sounded overhead. Again, Will felt himself slip out of and back into awareness. It took a few moments to realize the words had returned to English.
“...by the strength of our united and single will, and with the aid of those powers here present, we summon thee by the name of...” Will opened his eyes to see Tom’s face, red with effort, staring down at him. “Speak the name,” the old man instructed.
And a name came into Will’s head then. An unexpected name. It was on his tongue, ready to come forth, when Molly spoke first.
“Wait,” she said, and the energy of the circle wavered. “You mean banish, not summon. We’re banishing it.”
Tom huffed, and Will saw a frightening expression flicker over his lined face.
“We must summon it here first,” Tom said, keeping his concentration locked on Will. “Then we can banish it.”
“I’m not sure that’s right,” said Margaret uneasily. “Ruth, is that correct?”
Will could not see Ruth from his position, but the old lady made no reply. Tom’s grip on his damp forehead had slackened, but now the strong hands reasserted themselves with great force. Will felt the current rip through the circle once more, felt his tailbone rise up off the table. The sensation was not pleasant this time.
“Speak the name,” Tom said again.
Will tried to say something, anything. But the pressure on his head was making him take short, panicked breaths, and scrambling his thoughts.
“Speak it,” Tom ordered.
“Don’t” said Samantha urgently. “Don’t say it, Will.”
She seemed to be squeezing his hand, but then Will realized she was actually trying to release it. With the vise grip on his forehead, he barely managed to tip his eyes toward her. He saw her face grim with effort as she pulled her fingers away from his, one by one. Tom twisted Will’s head back straight.
“Speak the name,” he commanded again, in an ugly voice.
“What are you doing?” Will shouted through his fear. “What do you want?”
Tom’s reddened face was inches away, his eyes bulging. Furious. Mad. And then his expression morphed swiftly from rage to surprise. Or even fear. As if the circle held him hostage, and not the other way around.
“I only want her back,” he whispered.
Samantha’s fingers came free from Will’s, and the circle sprang apart. Will heard gasps and grunts all around the table, chairs scraping back. His own limbs quivered violently a moment or two and then were still.
He rolled onto his stomach, sweeping candles from the table, and rose to his knees. Tom Hall was collapsed on his chair. Arms at his side and glasses askew. The strong and fearful presence he had been just seconds before was utterly gone. He looked blasted, and Sam knelt by his side.
“Jane,” said the old man weakly.
“She’s not here,” Sam answered, taking his hand.
“She wasn’t supposed to leave.” The voice had become that of a sulking boy. “Cindy said I could have her.”
“Cindy?” Sam asked.
“They locked her in the cellar. She said if I let her out she would make Jane love me.”
“Jane loved you all on her own,” said Sam, her voice breaking. “But she’s gone.”
“I’ve seen her,” the childish old man cried.
“I have too, but that’s as much as we get. She won’t ever be back the way she was.”
“It promised me.”
“That’s why you called the coven that night,” Will said. “To bring it back. To make it keep its promise.” Tom made no answer. The long decades had vanished for him. He was a ten-year-old boy in love with the twelve-year-old Jane and willing to deal with the devil to have her. “I was going to be your host,” Will went on. “Like Cindy was before. Except my father interfered, and you called down lightning on him. You struck him dead.”
“Will,” Molly said. She was bent over in her chair, looking hardly better than Tom. “I’m so sorry. You never should have seen that. We should have thought of you sooner. Someone should have gone upstairs. It was so awful. A boy should never see his father like that.”
Her words were strange. His mind veered around them like negatively charged particulars. Refusing to adhere.
“I didn’t see anything,” he answered.
“Of course you did,” Molly said, “you ran right by him.”
“No. No, I went down the back...the back stairs.”
Visions flickered in his mind. Nausea rose in his gut. He looked at Sam for help. She gazed back at him steadily.
“There are no back stairs in your house,” she said.
There was a silver flash in the room above, and a loud boom. A ghost wind passed through the dank chamber and all the remaining candles were snuffed. Silence. And then one voice spoke.
“It’s here,” said Ruth.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
The darkness seemed to deepen with the old woman’s words. There were mutterings all around the table, and then someone screamed. Another voice picked it up. Jimmy shouted for calm but was drowned out. Chairs tumbled over and feet banged up the stairs. Will tried to jump off the table, but a strong hand seized his wrist.
Murmur, a deep and broken voice rumbled, right up against his ear. Murmur it said again fiercely.
Will tried to pull away. He knew that if a light were to shine that moment, he would see the burned, hideous face inches from his own. Those dead eyes. His flesh prickled at the thought; sickness rose up in him again.
“Let go of me,” he yelled, but the words were lost in the din.
The beast obeyed, and he toppled off the table. His shoulder slammed against a chair and his forehead struck the floor. He was on his feet and stumbling up the wooden stairs before he was even quite coherent. Jimmy was still calling for calm, but there was no calm to be had in any of them. Will stood in the dark room above. With the curtains still drawn, the only light came from the rectangle of the open front door. He gazed at it for several seconds, wondering what to do.
“Get out of the house,” a woman shouted, and Will ran. Barefoot and bleeding, into the night.
Within a handful of strides he was in the trees, his feet scraped and hurting. Through the branches above, he could see the clouds shredding and moving off. Moonlight filled the woods. A car engine started somewhere behind him, but moments later there was a heavy thud. As if, in his or her panic, the driver had hit a tree. Will should check on the driver, but his mind could not wrap around the thought. His feet would not move. Twenty yards away, a figure approached him through the trees. Large, lumbering, unnatural.
A bang, a flash, and he was out of bed. Voices screamed downstairs. A presence lurked. He had to get out. He ran across the muddy field.
“No,” he said out loud, in the night woods, the figure much closer now. Go back, he said to himself, his head ringing with pain, his stomach surging. Go back.
A bang, a flash, and he was out of bed. The voices, the presence. He pushes the door open and enters the hall. A scorched smell burns his nostrils. A figure lies at the top of the stairs, smoke rising from it. He tries to tiptoe past. He tries not to look. But he has to look. And what he sees cannot be real. It’s a Halloween mask; it’s someone playing a trick on him. It is too horrible to be real. It is too terrible to be remembered.
In the woods again, the figure was there before him. Grabbing him by the ears, making him look on its destroyed visage. Will kept his eyes open for as long as he could.
Hello, little man.
He fell to his knees. Pounding the wet leaves with his hands as he retched up his poisoned childhood in hot, acid waves.
After some passage of time he was sitting up again. Pulling deeply for air, but calmer. The fever was burned out of him, and he shivered in the cold night air. The looming figure had vanished, and Will wondered if he would ever see it again. He would have to check on the others in a moment, but for now he just needed to pull himself together. A faint red glow began to touch the trees around him. Will thought at first that it was dawn breaking over the top of Mount Gray. Then he realized it was the wrong direction. He looked through the trees to his left and saw orange flames dancing. The house was on fire.
Sam.
He was up and running before the blood was even back in his cramped legs. The gravel drive was well illuminated as he came out of the trees. He saw the Stafford boy running down the long slope for the road, stumbling on his torn robe. The fire was inside the house, but had burst out of several windows. The green Jeep had been driven straight into the front door, blocking it. The door was open inward, and a figure was trying to crawl onto the vehicle’s hood.
Will rushed over, his feet seeking some purchase on the front tire or fender, his hands reaching across to grab Molly’s. Black smoke poured outward over her head. She clasped his outstretched hands, and Will leaned back with all his strength, dragging her across the hood to him. They fell in a heap on the gravel.
“Who’s still in there?” Will asked, scrambling to his feet again.
“I’m not sure,” Molly gasped. “I think Nancy was behind me.”
With great difficulty, he pulled himself onto the hood and slipped the opposite way, through the dark door. The patch of carpet he landed on seemed to be the only thing not burning. The walls, the furniture, everything was wreathed in flame. The smoke hung thick about four feet off the ground. The heat made his skin begin to blister within seconds. He looked around quickly but could see no one. Then he turned and stepped onto the Jeep’s bumper, climbing back out of the fiery maelstrom. He scrambled across the hood to Molly again.
“I don’t see her,” he shouted. “Where is everyone else?”
“I don’t know. Most of them went up the stairs ahead of me.”
The south end of the house was not yet engulfed, and he went that way. Around the corner, he saw a body sliding out of a window. Nancy Chester, coughing and wheezing, being lowered from inside by two strong arms. Will ran over and took hold of her before she fell, laying her gently on the grass. Then he stood and offered his hands and shoulders to Jimmy Duffy, who seemed a part of the gray smoke billowing around him. Jimmy leaned hard on him a moment and then leaped to the ground, falling on his side. His face was covered in soot and he breathed with difficulty.
“You all right?” Will asked. The other man only nodded. “Is anyone left in there?”
“Don’t know,” Jimmy coughed.
“Sam, what about Sam?”
“She ran out right after you. I thought she’d be with you.”
Will stood and turned a slow circle. As if Sam would appear out of the night right there before him.
“Will,” he heard a voice call. “William.” Margaret Price, sounding not at all happy. She was in the woods up the slope, evidently seeking him. Will went the other way, back
to the front of the house, looking about desperately in the glow provided by the flames. On impulse he ran back the way he had come, into the woods on the eastern slope.
“Sam” he called, moving quickly but more carefully now. His cut and battered feet were killing him. In fact, just about everything hurt. “Sam.”
He thought he saw movement, parallel to him and a little below. He went around one tree, slapped aside some saplings and came into a small clearing. Her back was to him but there was no mistaking that blond head.
“Sam,” he said again, and she whirled about. He could hardly see her face, but her body was tensed, as if ready for an attack. He had assumed she was looking for him, but she gave no answer, and he did not sense any welcome. Will took a step toward her and she took two steps back. A terrible idea occurred to him. The Jeep. If she was not using her Honda, then she was driving the Jeep, as he had suggested to her days ago. She had left the house right after him. She, or someone in the house, had yelled for him to leave.
“What did you do?” he said. The words—hard, accusatory—were out of his mouth before he thought them through. Before he realized that she had taken a small and cautious step toward him.
“What did I do?” she cried. Her voice high and grief-stricken. “What did you do?”
“No, Sam, listen.”
He staggered toward her and she turned and fled. She was running away. Hurt, or worse, frightened of him. He was too surprised to move at first, but then he rushed after her. The slope fell off steeply just beyond the clearing, and he had to run to keep from plunging forward on his face. After a dozen yards he turned sideways to slow his descent, then took hold of a pine tree to stop himself. The scaly bark bit his palms and smeared pitch on his fingers. Sam was nowhere in sight. Will closed his eyes and listened. The slap of branches, somewhere to the left. He set out that way, slipping and stumbling as he went.
His mind, too, was stumbling. What did you do? Was she simply throwing the accusation back at him, or was there more? He thought he had come to understand himself, minutes before, in his revelation among the trees. That he had come to understand what it was that his mind had been avoiding all this time. But was there more to it than that? Could his body have been up to some mischief while his mind was elsewhere? No, that couldn’t be right. He had not hurt anyone. He had not set the house on fire. How would he have even done it?