She needed air. Her car felt like a sauna, a hot, dry grave, but she couldn't get out on the driver's side as a semi barreled by and shook her car angrily in its wake. She crawled over the seat, the armrest digging into her ribs, her feet kicking at the door behind her to propel her on. She pushed the passenger door open and fell out, headfirst, her hands striking the pebbly ground. She gulped for air, felt it fight into her constricted lungs.
Out of the car, she cried, hands and knees holding her up and the sun gone behind the trees, leaving her in a cold shadow between two ridges of forest. She did not know where she had stopped, but the road stretched out before her and woods lay on either side.
Driving was out of the question. She tried to stand, to balance against the car for support, but her knees failed her. They pooled like jelly and refused to hold. On hands and knees, she crawled away from the road. Her vision tunneled and then became a single tiny spot through which she made out high weeds and fat cattails. She pushed through them headlong, felt their scratchy flowers on her face and hair. Further in, an eternity of struggling, the forest floor became mossy and soft. She collapsed, her fingers sore, and rested on a bed of red pine needles. Curling into a fetal position, she closed her eyes and rocked against the pain. Her head felt swollen and soft like an overripe melon. She slept.
Chapter 12
Sebastian ripped through the boxes, no longer handling the journals delicately. He wanted answers now, today, not in six months, not in another year. Two years of his life he'd devoted to finding Tobias, to tracking Claire's murderer, to learning about the Vepars, and yet he felt as lost as that first day. That first day after she was dead and the apartment stood empty, with hot blasts of air through the open windows, and him, Sebastian, alone forever.
His hands shook as he gripped each page and stared at it, his eyes willing some new clue to rise from the faded lead writing. Writing, ha! More like chicken scratch. Damn her, damn Claire for her terrible handwriting that left him deciphering each word like hieroglyphs on a cave wall. He flung a notebook against the wall; it hit and smacked the floor, pages splayed, but intact. He wanted to burn it all - to build a fire in Sydney's pit outside and torch the remnants of Claire and her murderers. Maybe then he could sleep again, maybe he could get on with his life.
He took a swig from an open bottle of wine beside him, gulping the bitter red liquid and caring not that some splattered on the Book of Shadows. He didn't give a damn if it was old, let it smolder with the rest of the junk, with his sanity.
He flipped the pages, glanced over spells that he didn't understand and suddenly didn't care to. He'd read the newspaper clippings, read about Aubrey and the fire that had consumed her. It enraged him all the more. Death seemed to be the only constant on his crusade for revenge. He stood and walked again to the window, scanning the driveway for Abby. She still had not returned. Was she dead? Murdered like Claire and Devin? Maybe she had returned to her boyfriend and her family. He hoped for that choice, he prayed that she was making amends with her boyfriend, even if he was an asshole, because it meant that she was alive and safe and he didn't have to face another body, another departed soul.
He had boxes of paperwork, journals and books. He had read more witchcraft books than he could count, but still felt no closer to Tobias, to the Vepar who had stolen his sister's life. He picked up a photo of Claire and sighed; her bright blue eyes peeked from beneath a straw sombrero. It had been her sixteenth birthday, and they had gone to a Mexican Restaurant. She had laughed when they placed the colorful hat on her head and sang Las Mananitas. Then she and Sebastian devoured their fried ice cream and went home to watch movies and pretend that their life was normal.
He set the picture aside and picked up a binder stuffed with newspaper clippings. Many were articles from the days after Claire's death as the local cops fumbled with the case and eventually arrested and convicted some poor chap who had nothing to do with it. But what could Sebastian say? My sister was a witch and she was murdered by a group of evil demons called Vepars? Oh, and by the way, the Vepars don't look evil, they look totally normal, but if you stab them, their blood is black? Ha!
He drank more wine and examined each clipping. He had looked at them all, but not closely enough, never closely enough. He found more photos with the detective, Detective Alva, they called him in Trager, but Sebastian found no mention of him in any of the articles, despite his image appearing in more than one picture.
As he looked at the last clipping, he saw the detective again, tucked into the scenery like a potted plant. He leaned in and studied the man, his long body and short, stunted arms. He had to speak to him. He knew it was risky, that the detective might be a Vepar, although how could that be? Why would he risk getting so close to the dead?
* * * *
Abby touched her head, smoothed two fingers along her brow-line, but felt no pain. She stared around her at the craggy rock walls, some slick with algae. She was dreaming. But how could she know that? Except – yes – she stood again in the dark cave, and like her previous experience, she did not feel real. No – touching her head was no more than vapor pressed against vapor. No physical body greeted her fingers.
She moved forward, unafraid. She wanted to return to the fire, to the yawning cavern of cloaked figures and the warmth that pulsated around them like a shield. She would be safe there. She took the familiar route, followed the path to the right, and slipped silently along as the passage narrowed and then opened wide. But the fire was gone, and the figures were gone. In the center of the room stood a small, round pool of water - shallow - a puddle really. Had she taken the wrong tunnel? Was she lost? She moved forward, drifting not of her own volition, and she stopped at the water's edge, staring down at the shining surface. It reflected a high, white moon lost in a black universe.
She slipped her fingers into the water and watched as it crawled over her hands and wrists, like a cloth slowly saturated. The water, icy, climbed along her forearm and up her bicep. She shrank from it as it edged up her neck, but it continued, enveloping her head. As it rose over her eyes, she closed them tight, and it covered her entirely.
For several minutes Abby swayed in a state of suspension. The water buried her and then she was moving, flowing with the water, as the water. It raced along the cave floor, snaked along walls and around bends. She could see the fine grains of sand on the floor; feel the smoothed edges of pebbles beneath her. She picked up speed and then exploded into the sky, water spewed fourth in a gush that flowed out of the mountain and rained into the sea. She was every part of the waterfall, the mist, the spray, the thick stream of water like a snake. And then she was whole again, but moving beneath the water like a creature, an animal that must have gills - for how else could she breathe? But then she was not breathing, only moving, slowly now, sifting along the seabed like a current.
As she moved, she gained momentum and felt control return to her. She could direct herself, and she darted up from the floor and then back down again. She reached out with invisible hands and slid her palms along the oily seaweed. Her eyes devoured the sights, the tiny gray zebra mussels and thick-bodied, brown fish. In her mind she laughed, almost expecting a surge of water to flush into her lungs, but none came.
As a child, she'd dreamed of living in the water. For hours she would swim along the lake's edge, goggles and snorkel securely attached, watching the tiny specks of sparkling sand like sea creatures crawling across the lake bed. She would pretend that she'd been shipwrecked on an island, and after years of isolation had grown able to breathe beneath the water, a mermaid with legs. She'd slide her fingers along the shining stones; pretend the large rocks were oceanic monsters stalking her in the summer sun. She got so frightened of her make-believe monsters that she would move close to the shore and swim with her body nearly scraping along the beach bed before returning to the depths. In her case, the greens, because even Sydney would not allow her to swim by herself in the dark, blue waters where the lake bed steeply dropped off.<
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She propelled her new liquid body forward, gaining speed as she shot across the dark lake. Algae fingers and darting fish parted an open path before her. She could feel the grin on her nonexistent face. She came to the shadow of a small metal fishing boat and drifted directly beneath it, able to see the tiny blotches of rust decorating its belly. She could hear the laughter of two lovers as they whispered in their metal retreat. They had slipped away, seizing the solitude of the shadowy bay, completely unaware of her silent intrusion on their romantic escapade. She moved away, her mind abuzz with a dream so real that she dared not consider it.
Abby turned over in the lake and stared up through the water at the navy sky. Thousands of gaseous balls, only specks to her earthbound eyes, blinked back at her. The moon - no longer full, but still plump and radiant - cast a single streak across the dark water. Below her, a fish floated lazily in a mass of seaweed, his white underbelly drifting above glossy tentacles. She expected him to dart away, but he remained unmoved, and she slid closer, slipping her fingers over his greenish bronze scales and feeling the prickle of his barbed skin. His yellow eye stared past her, searching for more menacing or appetizing lake life.
As she glided further into the lake, swirling water caught her attention. She dived towards it, watching as the small tornado gained in size, grasping sand and seaweed and spinning them in a white cone of bubbles. The tornado began to burrow, sand lifted from the sea floor, blinding Abby, and she started to swim away, afraid of being sucked into the vortex. But then the sand started to clear, and she saw the tornado disappear into a crevice that started as a black split and grew wider until she looked down into a long, dark hole that ran jaggedly along the sandy bottom. The hole emitted a blue light that became an image, like a movie, and she watched, awestruck.
She could see Detective Alva, his bony fingers tapping thoughtfully on the hood of a waxy black car, recently washed and shining like a beetle's shell in the sun. His eyes scanned the empty dirt road before him, but no cars drove along the dusty street. On either side of the road, woods bore down. It was a three seasons road, clearly not often used, and snakes of green vine crawled across it, smothering the ditches on either side.
The detective cocked his head and smiled.
"Is that you, Tobias? Stealthier every day, my son."
Behind the car, a tall man, black clothes sheathing his bone-white skin, stepped from the trees. His eyes looked bloody, red pupils with black irises, and he grinned at Alva, who had turned to greet him.
"My child, you need to eat."
Tobias nodded and ran a slender hand through his black hair, slick and brushed back from his forehead.
"I should have kept Devin for myself," Tobias said, striding to the car. The men did not touch, but stared hard at each other for several minutes, a long time to Abby, who watched from another world, from a dream, she thought.
Tobias scared her. Something sinister leaked from him, but also something familiar. She had sensed him before, in the woods when Devin died, in the grocery store–the man hidden behind the freezer. She was looking at her ghost, at the thing that had been stalking her. She recoiled when his dark tongue darted from his lips and almost lost the image. For a moment, the sea flickered before her, but she concentrated on the men, and the vision returned.
"Well, as luck would have it, Trager City appears to be a coven in itself. Just today I met another young witch, more pure than any I have seen in a long time." Alva's smile grew wider as he spoke.
"Yes, yes, I thought so," Tobias said, leaning against the car, oblivious to the hot surface. "I've been following someone."
"Of course, your senses are improving. Can you find her easily?" Alva asked.
"Yes."
"Good, then do. The ritual will be stronger if you hold it in the same place."
"And you? Do you need her, father?"
Alva lowered his eyes to his fingernails; they looked sharper than Abby remembered.
"No, I am full now. But do not consume her all yourself, save some for the collective."
"Yes."
Tobias slipped back into the trees, barely a rustle as he disappeared into the forest. Two more people waited for him, but they wore thick, black robes that concealed their faces. One of them lifted a hand, and Abby saw pale fingers. The middle finger, long and slender, was encircled with a simple silver band, in its center a fat, white pearl balanced on the precious metal.
As Abby watched, her view changed, it moved away from the three figures and sped across the forest. She watched trees and shrubs and roads rush by and then she was staring at herself asleep on the wooded floor, at her body curled into a ball, her hand thrust into her chopped hair and cradling her head.
* * * *
Abby woke with a jolt and scrambled to her feet, spinning and searching the woods around her. Tobias was not there, nor were the others. She stood alone, returned to the woods, her dreams receding. Her head no longer ached. Instead, her brain buzzed electrically, like she'd been plugged into an outlet and recharged. She flexed her hands and then bent her knees, grateful to have her body back, but terrified of the visions that followed her.
Why had she dreamt of the detective and the strange man that he called Tobias? Why had she returned to the cave only to be catapulted into the sea – as liquid as the water that surrounded her? Sebastian had mentioned the name Tobias. Were they all in it together?
"Something is happening to me," she spoke out loud and a shiver ran along her spine. She thought of a lifetime of stories and books that revealed a secret world of fantasy and wondered if something much larger than murder was at work in her life.
A car roared by on the road. She moved to the edge of the woods and stared out. Her car remained in place, undamaged, and the road lay deserted except for the back of a white SUV disappearing around a curve. She heard another car approach and retreated to the woods, ducking behind a thick white birch. A small silver pickup truck passed and did not slow.
She remembered Tobias dipping into the woods to meet his friends. He had been following her. She felt sure of it. He had spoken with the detective of hunger and eating. Were they cannibals? The thought terrified her and she wrapped her arms over her chest.
"What if it's real?" she asked out loud. A cricket chirped in response, and a grasshopper took flight near her feet, landing on a Black-Eyed Susan and tipping the flower beneath its weight.
She had to act, to move, but where? She dared not return to Sydney's. Sebastian might be waiting. Maybe there was a whole group of murderers, a satanic cult or something. She also could not return to the police station and risk another encounter with Detective Alva. He had done something to her, hypnotized her maybe. That's why her head ached so badly. She knew that leaving the city was her best plan. She could hit the freeway and drive to Lansing, but what if they sought her at home?
In her car, Abby felt safe. She turned on the heat despite the scorching day, and her body trembled beneath the blasts of hot air.
When she pulled into the library parking lot, she did not have a plan. She wanted to look up Devin and Aubrey Blake on the internet. She also wanted to search Sebastian, Alva and cannibals in northern Michigan. It seemed ridiculous to expose herself, but the library had always been a safe place to her growing up, and she deluded herself now into believing that it still was. She watched the library door, blinking dumbly as a young man walked out and two older women walked in. When nothing aroused her suspicions, she slipped out of her car and jogged to the door, pulling it too hard and slamming it loudly behind her.
A bird-like librarian sat behind the counter, her dark eyes narrowing as Abby entered. Training her eyes on the floor, Abby hurried by, feeling like a kid stealing candy. What was it about librarians that made you feel so criminal?
She sat down at a computer and began her search. She started with Devin Blake. Over six thousand hits came back and she slowly scrolled the pages, hoping for something that popped out. She clicked on a site called Velvet Night
, because it not only mentioned the name Devin Blake, but also Trager City, Michigan. The introduction revealed that the site was dedicated to art from the dark side. The number two contributor was one Devin Blake. Abby eyed the list displayed beneath Devin's name: 'The Inferno', 'Bleeding Moon', 'Flight of Night' and 'Into The Cave.' Abby shuddered, sickened by the emotional torrent of a dead girl. She clicked on Devin's name, and a short bio appeared.
Hey, this is Devin, recently Blake, previously Kent - it's a long story and since you're here for art and not my life story, I'll skip it. My drawings come from a well inside of me, these images bubble up and I just draw them. Some are pretty dark and maybe a bit strange, but it's my therapy, my sanctuary and, quite frankly, my salvation. So keep your comments to yourself - I'm not here to please you - just to share.
The bio didn't reveal much, but Abby still read it twice more before returning to the drawings. It was Devin's voice in those words, her bit of self revealed. Abby clicked the image titled, 'Into The Cave' - it was dated only three weeks earlier. The image loaded slowly, tiny segments appearing like a puzzle. As more fragments emerged, Abby felt her pulse quicken. The picture revealed gray, craggy walls bending in a tight tunnel, a pinpoint at the end that opened wider. She leaned into the screen, the opening was drawn deep into the background, but Abby could see the speck of orange flecked by black, the fire and the cloaked figures. She shoved away from the computer as if Devin's face had popped from the sketch in a bloody grin.
Abby felt cold inside. She had been in that drawing - traveled the tunnels of clammy rock and seen the blaze. Her world tilted, but she clenched her eyes closed and gripped the chair's arms. The slow drum of the air conditioner, a meek cough from the stern librarian - she used these sounds to ground her. Opening her eyes slowly, she slid back to the computer, clicking other drawings, but nothing jarred her as the first. They were dark, as Devin had said, black shadows crouching in corners, several depicting massive fires filled with screaming faces. One more image was familiar. It was a single, glorious castle suspended above the water. Abby had seen something similar in the palm of one of the cloaked figures from the cave.
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 10