by T S Paul
The monster in front of me started to burn but not with the kind of ferocity that it needed to. The rain and its wet clothes were working against me. That and the scarecrow had some attachment to the land here, so it had access to some kind of power. I had to roll away from the next strike, smashing my body through another pumpkin. I was going to bill the sheriff extra if my jacket was ruined. I might bill him extra anyways just for the day off I was going to have to take to get these bruises in order.
The sickle came down, again and again, forcing me to let go of the fire I had been channeling and sending me scurrying backward like some kind of perverse bug. My leather pants were soaked and covered in crud. I was sure my fabulous hair was trashed from the rain, and probably full of ash and the remains of the happy pumpkins I had rolled through. Whoever wrote the superhero movies never really got this part right. Fighting for your life was a dirty business, no one ever walked out clean.
Scuttling away wasn’t a plan that was going to work for my long-term survival. The scarecrow was still burning, but not enough that I felt any kind of confidence that it would die before that blade found its mark. My mind was racing, was this really going to be the end? My back slammed into something, and the scarecrow’s blade descended.
Rolling to the side didn’t work for me this time. Well, at least not as well as I wanted it to. The sickle came down catching the end of my leg. A burning sensation rippled up my leg in cascading waves of pain. I knew the wound was bad, but there wasn’t time to heal it now. Rolling backward I put whatever I had run into between me and the thing that was hunting me.
Brushing my wet hair out of my eyes I came back to my feet. Blood was pouring out of my leg faster than the rain was coming down from above. I heard some kind of grating sound and realized that the scarecrow was laughing at me. I’d never been one to stand by and let something evil happen, but when evil laughed in your face, it was time to kick some serious ass.
It dawned on me that what I was using to shield myself from the scarecrow’s attacks was the stand Gramps had been talking about. That might be the thing tying it to the land and giving it a boost in power. Not to mention the fact that it had been able to avoid the brunt of my magic. I pulled on the earth again a little shocked at how weak I felt. A few shots rang out from the sheriff’s gun as I backed up a step. The scarecrow jerked and cast a look over its shoulder back towards the sheriff. It took one step in that direction before I called its attention back to me.
The bullets hadn’t hurt it, but I was hoping this would. “My mother always told me not to play with fire, but I was never really that good at following the rules.”
I channeled all of the power I had left into a burst of white-hot flame. It incinerated the scarecrow’s stand and the creature buckled to its knees. Mr. Sizenberg broke from the sheriff’s grip and ran towards the creature screaming. “No!”
Gramps must have lent me some of his energy because I managed to get a weak flame onto the scarecrow just as Mr. Sizenberg reached it. He couldn’t do anything to help the scarecrow but try and put out the fire with his hands still cuffed behind his back.
Mr. Sizenberg screamed again. “What have you done?” As he backed away from the roaring flames.
Before the sheriff or I could take a step towards him to try and pull him away from the burning scarecrow, it rose back to its feet. An inhuman wail escaped from its cloth mask into the night. The burning scarecrow turned towards Mr. Sizenberg and launched itself at him. Mr. Sizenberg let out a scream of his own as sparks swirled around him. The ground seemed to open up below him, and both of them were sucked into the hole before we could do a thing to stop it.
The rain fell down around us, and I just looked past where the two had been a moment before at the sheriff as he walked cautiously towards me. My necklace heated up again and I felt a little tug in my leg as gramps did some improvised healing. The pain sent me crashing to the ground. The sheriff fell to his knees beside me gun back in his holster. He wrapped his arms around me.
“Are you, ok?” The concern I read in his eyes made my heart stutter.
“I’ll be fine.” The last thing I wanted him to think was that I was weak or that I couldn’t handle the jobs he brought me on. The money I made from his office helped a lot with my Dad’s expenses. I needed the work more than he knew.
“Is it over?” The sheriff’s eyes were still a little wild with adrenaline from what he had just witnessed.
“I’m pretty sure it’s over.” I moved around in his arms so I could point to a spot behind him. He slowly turned so he could follow my outstretched hand. There, sticking up from the ground, was one of Mr. Sizenberg’s hands. The tanned skin stood out against the dirt. What a horrible way to go, choking on the soil you killed so many people to see it prosper.
“I don’t know how I’m going to explain this?” The sheriff sat down hard on the muddy ground.
“I find it’s normally better not to. Just let people think what they want to hear, you know.”
“Well, I have to write something in my report.” He wiped the rain out of his eyes, gaze still fixed on the outstretched hand of Mr. Sizenberg.
“That’s why you earn the big bucks.” He cast me a quick glare. “At least you don’t have to explain why your handcuffs were on him while he was buried alive.” The sheriff looked back at the hand. “They seem to have come off at some point.”
“What a mess.” He let out a small sigh, probably thinking about the mounds of paperwork he was about to have to process.
He rose back to his feet and pulled me gently back to mine. My wounded leg held my weight which was a blessing. The last thing I wanted was to fall back on my face after the sheriff had helped me up. That and I knew as long as I could limp back to my Jeep I could make it home. All I really wanted to do now was sleep, but unless I could get in touch with one of my employees, I’d have to open the store tomorrow. So while rest was on the menu, it was going to be more of a delayed gratification thing.
Once I made it home, I’d also have to give up my idea of pizza and Netflix. All the pizza joints were closed by now, and I’d be spending at least a small portion of the night outside. The magic I could pull in from the forest behind my house would help me heal and restore some of the energy I had lost creating all of that fire.
“Why don’t you head home while I call for backup?” He gave me a look that said it really wasn’t a question, and the best thing for me would be to get out of here as soon as possible. “The staties are never going to believe this.”
“Try and go easy on the kid, huh?” Jayce didn’t seem like that bad of a fellow, a little misguided maybe but not a bad kid.
The sheriff seemed to sober instantly remembering he had a prisoner in his car. “I don’t think that will be a problem. Who’s going to press charges against him now?” He gave the hand one last look and then started walking back to his car. I hobbled along behind him thinking that next time I might just listen to Gramps and not pick up the damn phone.
Chapter Five
Zoey
It took me a little longer to heal the cut in my leg and all the bruises than I would have liked. I’d gotten quite good at mending some of the bigger items, like gashes and veins that had been ruptured, but the little stuff I was still learning. While I hadn’t been in danger of bleeding to death, my leg still looked like someone had hit me with a baseball bat repeatedly. And did I mention that it hurt every time I moved?
With Gramps’ help I eventually got the hang of the healing, and now I was able to move a little better than the shambling hobble that I had been forced to use the last two days. No one looking at me now would be able to guess that I had almost been killed by a psychopathic scarecrow, or how much pumpkins hurt when you landed on them wrong.
The worst part of the whole episode was that I couldn’t really talk about it with anyone but Gramps. He listened to me for as long as he could stomach it, which was all of five seconds. Then he asked me to pour him a bowl of sugar cubes,
and he disappeared inside of his little house. I couldn’t believe how much he loved that thing. Gramps had claimed my old Barbie dream house for himself when I was in my teens, and now I couldn’t imagine him sleeping anywhere else. He was back to watching trash tv, but I didn’t have the heart to make him turn it off. That decision alone is probably what made him come out and help me with the bruises a day later.
Still looking around the store at the last of Mr. Sizenberg’s pumpkins I couldn’t help but think that it would have been nice to have someone around that I could tell about my day. Dumping my emotional garbage out on someone else and having them tell me everything would be ok, might have been nice.
It would be nice to have someone in my life that I could trust besides Gramps. There was still hope that my father would recover from his coma, but that seemed less likely every day. Maybe one of these days I’d be able to make some friends in the paranormal community. Most of them just preferred to try and avoid me. I was a wild card to them. None of them knew exactly what I was, but they knew that I had the power to defend myself. That tended to make them a little nervous. I really couldn’t blame them. I wasn’t a were or a witch. I was something different altogether.
Looking up to scan the store I saw two young men walking in my direction. Both of them dressed in faded jeans and t-shirts with flannels tied around their waists. Their long hair was tied back in simple ponytails. I wondered if maybe they had walked into the wrong shop. One of the many hazards of being located right next to a dispensary.
The cute blonde one opened his mouth first. “Do you have an Immortali-tea?”
Oh great, another one of those. “Let me guess you read that book about a druid by that guy with the huge bushy beard and the nice smile?”
The black-haired version of what might as well have been the same guy said. “So I’ll have to take that as a ‘no’ on the Immortali-tea?”
He left it open as a question, but his buddy was already sniggering. I wished that I could say something cool like “no one ever touches the witch,” but I wasn’t a witch, and neither of them had touched me. Still, I got tired of people coming into the store and thinking because they might have heard something about me that I was some legendary druid like in the books they read. Newsflash, I wasn’t a druid, and I wasn’t two thousand years old. I was just twenty, an actual twenty.
It was time to see if I could get them to move on so I laid down the best get the hell out of my store line that I had. “No, but I do blend a special brew called impotence-tea. I’d be careful with that one though.” I just couldn’t stop myself from dropping them an over the top wink before continuing. “The last guy that bought it, well, let’s just say he’s never been the same.”
I had laced my words with enough sarcasm to kill an elephant, but these two must have missed it. Both of their faces went chalk white, and they turned around and hurried out of the store. I’d have to remember that one for next time someone came in here asking the same silly questions. Threaten a man’s libido and watch him run. Might not earn you the chance for a lot of dates but it sure was fun watching them scurry away.
The store’s phone rang and the caller ID listed the sheriff’s office on the other end. If Sheriff Steven’s had another job for me already, he was going to be disappointed with the results of his latest inquiry as to my availability. I was still a little pissed off about our last outing. Not that the sheriff had done anything wrong, I just didn’t fancy get my leg cut open by another scarecrow anytime soon.
“Maggie, can you watch the store?” I waited until she acknowledged the comment and then picked up the call. “Trinity Books and Charms, how can I help you?”
“It’s Sheriff Stevens.” His voice was gruff.
“What’s up, Joel?” I’d never really used his first name before, but even as I said it, I realized that it just felt a little wrong. Maybe it was because we only had a business relationship. It wasn’t like we were friends. Still, after what happened at the farm, I thought I’d give it a try. Lesson learned. I guess it was back to good old sheriff for Joel.
“I was just calling to give you a heads up. We finished searching the farm today. The staties brought in some of that ground penetrating radar stuff, and we found more bodies, lots of them.”
“That’s horrible sheriff, but not surprising given what we saw. I’m sure I would have read about the bodies online, so what’s the real reason for your call.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a damn sight too perceptive for a twenty-year-old. I mean shouldn’t you be off somewhere sneaking beers and breaking boys’ hearts.”
That was a good one. As if this girl had time to date. “Some of us had to find our path to responsibility a little earlier in life than others.” It came out sounding frosty but I wasn’t bitter, I promise.
He let out a chuckle. “Well, it seems like you broke at least one heart.” My stomach dropped. “My plan was to keep you out of the paper, but our friend Jayce had a different idea. It’s a good thing he’s not writing the article himself, or it might have been titled: Hot Babe with Cool Hair Saves the Day.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“Now that you know you are going to be famous around these parts, or at least the center of the city’s gossip mill for the foreseeable future, I wanted to make sure that I thanked you for everything you did.”
“You’re welcome Sheriff, but you might not be so fond of me when you get my bill.”
“I’ll just push it off on the staties, those guys have a bigger budget and want to take all the credit for finding the bodies anyways.”
What was with people always wanting to take credit for someone else’s work? “That really blows, Sheriff.”
“Yeah well, it will help keep our sleepy little city out of the news, so I’m just going to write it off as a win.”
We said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone. Our city wasn’t all that sleepy. I was always getting into some kind of trouble. If it wasn’t the sheriff calling, then it was the local pack, or worse yet just a mundie with a problem. Despite how cool I played it with the sheriff I was eager to find out more about what happened at Happy Pumpkin Farms. Maybe if Gramps was feeling a little less grumpy tonight, we could talk about it.
That reminded me to get something to sweeten the pot. Prime Now had Ben and Jerry’s. That would be just the thing to get my little sprite to loosen his lips. Sugar always made him a little punch drunk and then he would let some juicy bit of gossip slip. Wasn’t the news always more interesting when it was something you shouldn’t have been able to get your hands on in the first place?
I pulled out my cell and opened the app. Wasn’t it a wonderful time to be alive when you could order your favorite food online and have it delivered to your house in less than an hour. If you had to find pleasures in the small things, you didn’t have to look much further than that.
From the Formless Wasteland
by Taki Drake
Chapter 1 – Awareness
A dim light grew in the darkness. He was not sure where the concept of light or darkness came from. Awareness. The concept of detecting something, anything. He wondered if his head hurt. What was a head?
The entity was becoming more aware. Floating in a numb and fragmented form, the being was confused, unanchored. He had nothing more to do than try to assemble some frame of reference, some guide to… well, everything.
Little memories started touching him. Flashes of people, men and women. He was gaining new words the longer that he was at this. A stab of satisfaction. Something figured out. Apparently, he was male, a man. Similar to some of the images flashing in his mind.
One of the images lasted for longer than the previous. He was looking across a distance at another person, and that person was looking back at him. His mind supplied the word, “friend.” That person had been a friend. It was a man, a little bit heavy and starting to go gray at the temples. The entity felt a warm wash of energy slip over and
through him. Ah! he thought. That was how happiness felt. I was happy he was my friend.
The unanswered question of why he was standing across from his friend nagged at him. What was going on, that they had been standing like that? Floating in the formless chaos that filled the area around him, the man gnawed at the unanswered question, twisting and turning it like a piece of taffy in his mind.
Finally, the twisting and turning clicked into another piece of information, another fact. They were beginning a spell, a working of magic. Another piece of information! He was a magic user, a witch. The bright stirring of energy in the pit of essence startled him. But the feel of it reminded him that this was satisfaction. The man felt more real more energized now. He had figured out that he was a witch, user of magic. He was a man and had another friend who was also male. At one point, he and his friend were doing a spell together.
This was progress. Every fact helped create a framework of reference, something that the man could use to anchor himself in his reality. Encouraged and re-energized, he turned his attention back to see what else he could remember.
I wonder if I had other friends? he wondered. As if that articulation was the key, another memory erupted. This memory carried intensity and feeling. The man huddled down with the sheer power of those feelings, shaking as they slammed into his sense of self.
He could see the memory and found himself clutching it to his center as a special and precious gift. The woman had deep red hair and large brown eyes. She was smiling at him, and he could feel the warmth of his response to her. Her smile was special. Every time she smiled like that, he knew that the world was not all bad, that good things could happen even when you didn’t look for them. He knew that some people might not find her beautiful, but he did.
In his memory, he watched as both of her hands reached for him. Her hands were scarred with small old burns and cuts, the hands of a working woman, not a noble. He remembered the feel of those hands on his own skin, gentle and loving.