He straightened the wheel and gave the gas pedal one last stomp. He slipped the truck into neutral, held the wheel straight, and balanced in the open door. The truck sped toward the fence. He waited until his self-preservation instincts hit max and jumped.
His ankle collapsed when he hit the ground and he rolled away onto his shoulders. The truck flattened the fence like it wasn’t there. It smashed through the tower legs. The vehicle lit up bright neon blue. The tower legs sheared away. The blue swirl in the sky disappeared. The air sizzled as escaping energy vaporized the mist around the tower. The truck burst into a ball of flames and a red and black mushroom cloud rose up and engulfed the tower. The tower toppled over like a felled tree. It hit the ground in an explosion of cobalt sparks.
Andy lay on his back and watched in stunned amazement. As elation took its place, the ground rumbled so hard that he bounced off the asphalt. Cracks spread from the tower base across the parking lot. A sinkhole formed and sucked down the concrete platform and the burning truck. Blacktop crumbled in an expanding circle.
Andy’s heart thudded in his ears. He scrambled backward in a crab crawl as the earth beneath him tilted downward. The flaming truck disappeared into the infinite void. The tower followed, sliding into the pit like the tail of some great retreating leviathan. Andy’s palms slipped against the rain-slicked asphalt and he slid down the angled slab toward the darkness.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Walking Bear dashed after Dolly as the fire dragon yanked her into the air. He grabbed her around the waist, lifting off the ground after her. He squinted against the brilliant flames.
Something popped and sizzled. The blue glow in the center of the circle disappeared. The fire dragon and the flames around the inscribed circle vanished. Walking Bear dropped back to the ground, Dolly hugged in his protective arms. She looked dazed, but incredibly, unburned.
Lyle gave his hands, no longer cloaked in the cerulean magic aura, an incredulous stare.
“No, no, no, NO!” he roared. “This cannot be happening!”
The earth rumbled and the entire plant shook back and forth. Sections of the ceiling fell in a series of overlapping crashes. Overstressed metal beams moaned a chorus of warnings. The concrete floor shattered into a sea of expanding cracks.
Lyle pointed at Dolly and Walking Bear.
“You’ll all pay for this. This is not over! Patenda excovchel.”
As the floor of the plant within the circle crumbled and fell into darkness, Lyle vanished. The candle holders tumbled into the void.
Walking Bear wrapped a big arm around Dolly’s shoulder and hurried her to the exit door. The expanding sinkhole followed them at each step. As they reached the doorway, the unconscious bodies of Chester and Denny rolled into the blackness.
“Wait!” cried Shane. He lay on the floor, his arms dragging his body toward the door. A stain of urine trailed back between his useless legs. The eyes that stared out from his face of charred flesh no longer glowed. “Don’t leave me here.”
Walking Bear looked down with contempt, Dolly with compassion. She knelt, grabbed the doorway with one hand and reached out with the other. She leaned forward and Shane grabbed her wrist.
The ground collapsed out from under him. Shane hung over the void, fingers locked on Dolly’s wrist, his nails drawing blood. She teetered in the doorway and leaned toward the abyss.
Shane managed a toothy, evil grin from his mangled face and laughed. “Bitch.”
Walking Bear drew his knife and with one great stroke severed the tendons in Shane’s arm. Shane’s hand flew open and he plummeted into the dark, screaming.
Walking Bear grabbed Dolly around the waist and pulled her to her feet. They ran through the parking lot as the ground caved in behind them.
Rough asphalt scraped Andy’s palms as he fell into the sinkhole. He jerked to a stop and his collar choked him. Autumn had caught him by the back of his shirt. She pulled him back to the edge. They turned and scrambled for the exit road.
Behind them the sinkhole grew. The Apex plant creaked and groaned and then collapsed into the growing hole, as if the earth decided to ingest all that was evil. Andy and Autumn were halfway up the access road before they felt safe enough to stop. By then the hole had devoured even the edges of the parking lot. On the far side, the hole had taken the tip of the Everglades, and water poured in over the edge in a waterfall. The rain had stopped. The wind was gone.
Andy scanned what was left of the parking lot.
“My mother? Walking Bear?”
“I saw them walk into the plant,” Autumn said, voice filled with sadness. “Just before the tower came down.”
Andy was about to call out when Walking Bear loomed out of the scrub. He had his arm around Dolly’s shoulder.
“Mom!” Andy rushed to her side. Walking Bear released her but she did not move. Andy hugged her. She did not respond. “You’re all right?”
“Where am I?” Dolly said.
Andy’s relief at her survival waned, replaced by the familiar dread of her incoherence. He looked up from her shoulder to Walking Bear.
“In the plant,” Walking Bear said. “There was a…she went through a lot. Give her a few moments.”
“Lyle?” Autumn asked.
“Escaped before the collapse,” Walking Bear said. “Sometimes justice is not fully served.”
The water rushing into the sinkhole had a soothing, cleansing sound to it. The eastern horizon fired up a promising pink ribbon.
“Let’s see if we can roll your truck onto its tires and get back into town,” Andy said. “Otherwise it’s a long walk.”
Chapter Seventy-Four
That was as close as Lyle wanted to cut it. He could actually feel the ground collapse under him as his teleportation spell extricated him from the sinking Apex plant. How could so much have gone wrong, so many lines of defense breached? He’d be leaving this fly-speck town a few presents before he departed. They had earned it.
He rematerialized in the rear of the Magic Shop in the center of the runic circle. He had to collect his talismans and get out of here. He rushed for the back door and bounced off the edge of the circle.
“What the hell?”
Gold coins glowed at the compass points of the circle. The coins he’d given those stupid kids. The amplifiers. All in one place? Oh, shit…
Ricky stood at the wrought-iron lectern, the thick yellowed spell book opened before him. A single red candle burned at his side. His right arm hung in a makeshift sling.
“I knew you would come back,” Ricky said. “Too many toys to leave behind.”
“Impudent mortal bastard,” Lyle raged. “You don’t have the power.”
“I do,” Ricky said. He pointed at the book. “A binding enchantment. It keeps you in there with the rest of us out here. For the length of your immortality.”
“You can’t do this,” Lyle said. “You are just a useful tool. You are bound to me!”
“Some ties are stronger.”
“I’ll get out of this,” Lyle said. “And the first thing I’ll do is hunt you, your family and your friends down. You will die so slowly.”
“Someone will need to know the reversing spell,” Ricky said. “And it will be gone.”
Ricky picked the open book up by the edge of its cover with his good hand. He suspended the dry, brittle pages over the red candle’s flame. Fire leapt across the small gap and the book went ablaze.
“You stupid child! Centuries of incantations are in there. Do you know what you are doing?”
Lyle flashed back to a thousand years ago, to the night his master died at his hands. The last words his master said were, “Do you know what you are doing?”
“One break in this circle,” Lyle said with panicked desperation, “one movement of a coin, and I’ll work my way free. You can’t keep this undisturbed forever.”
“I can’t,” Ricky said. “But we can.”
Chapter Seventy-Five
One year lat
er.
The crowd at the new marina exceeded all expectations. Anglers from both coasts were ready for the opening of the Lake Anamassee Recreation Area. The deluge of rain from Hurricane Rita had been more than enough to fill the sinkhole that consumed the closed Apex plant. Now on the anniversary of the freak storm, Citrus Glade was ready to reap one of the benefits. Tourism tasted sweeter than anything Apex ever churned out.
Mayor Flora Diaz looked sharp in a coral linen dress and high heels. She carried an enormous pair of scissors she had borrowed from the mayor of Miami-Dade. A foot-wide red ribbon stretched across the spanking-new boat ramp. A flotilla of boats sat on trailers waiting for that ribbon to part and so begin the day’s catch-and-release contest. Word had spread that Lake Anamassee was going to be south Florida’s prime fishing destination. A dozen dignitaries sat on folding chairs in the shade of a white canopy. A few local heroes were there as well.
The mayor stopped first at Felix Arroyo. He’d taken up an end chair to give him room to extend his right leg. The “Shelter Savior” walked with a cane now, but he walked, which was more than the doctors hoped for a year ago. Flora smiled and bent to shake his hand.
“Where’s the family?” she said.
Felix pointed to the edge of the lot.
“Fleecing the tourists,” Felix said.
Carlina, Angela and Ricky were working a table that sported an Arroyo Groves banner along the edge. They were doing a brisk business in citrus and preserves. Ricky looked over and waved.
“Ricky looks completely recovered,” Flora said.
“You should see him working the trees,” Felix said, beaming. “And remember, he’s Ricardo now. And touchy about it.”
Autumn came up behind Flora and hugged her shoulder. “Big day, Madam Mayor.”
“You are sure we have some fish in there, right? We don’t need a bunch of fishermen returning empty handed.”
“It’s brimming with fish,” Autumn said. “Spring was a riot as nature filled this new niche. We’re lucky they aren’t climbing up the ramp to escape the overcrowding.”
“Are you sure you’ll be happy managing the lake?” Flora said. “It won’t be as thrilling as it matures and stabilizes.”
“I’ve found that I have a little swamp cypress in me.” Autumn said. “Time to put down some roots.”
“Speaking of which, where is your fiancé? Andy oversaw the construction here. He told me he’d be here for the opening.”
“He was planning on bringing Dolly. But I’m not sure…”
Flora looked solemn. Autumn didn’t have to say more.
Andy sat next to Dolly in her room. Dust coated a half-finished painting on the easel. Walking Bear stood at the window, alternating his view between inside and outside the room.
“I’ll have this painting done soon,” Dolly said. “In time for the grand opening of the marina.”
Andy gave his head a sad shake. “Maybe not. The marina opens today.”
“Really,” Dolly said, a bit confused. “Well, sometimes time gets away from me these days. I’ll finish it soon anyway. My son oversaw the marina’s construction. He heads the DPW. You should meet him. You’d like him.”
Andy blinked back a tear and went to Walking Bear as Dolly inspected her painting.
“She doesn’t get much better than this anymore,” Walking Bear said. “Since the hurricane–”
“The hurricane” was the standard euphemism. No one, even the inner circle who knew the whole truth, ever mentioned Lyle or sorcery by name.
“–she really hasn’t recovered. She went through a lot during those days.”
Andy was certain that the magic she had tapped into, the good energy as opposed to the bad that had fueled Shane and Vicente, had burned through what continuous coherence Dolly had left within her, run the rest through on fast forward. Before each visit, he held out hope for just a few moments with the mother he knew, with the woman who saved the state.
“You know,” Andy said. “The week after the hurricane, she once had a few good hours. She knew that she was slipping in and out, now more out than in. We talked some about that night. She said the sacrifice was worth it.”
“You should have seen how brave she was,” Walking Bear said.
“She still is,” Andy said.
Most of the town was out at the marina opening, far from the other reminder of the events one year ago today.
On the town square, where once stood the building that housed Cooper’s Tack and Harness, Everyday Shoes and finally the Magic Shop, the new mini-park now bloomed. Brilliant flowers and lush bushes lined a short path to the monument at the center, a thick box clad in polished marble and inscribed with the names of those lost during Hurricane Rita. A select few, under the personal direction of the mayor, had built the monument within the walls of the building, so that when the condemned structure came down, just the memorial was left standing.
The team had taken great care in the clandestine construction. Beneath the marble veneer, the two walls of steel-reinforced bricks had an outer sheathing of lead. It was designed to last forever and was dense enough that even on the quietest night, with an ear pressed to the cold, slick surface, one could not hear the howling screams within.
Acknowledgements
Eternal gratitude goes to my wife, Christy, who demands I take the time to create and endures strange looks from all her friends who read my works.
To my faithful beta readers, K. P. Hornsby and Janet Guy, whose frank honesty keeps me humble and saves my dear readers many painful reading experiences.
To CSM Larry May, USAR, for sharing his experiences during combat operations in Afghanistan, and for his decades of service keeping our nation free.
To Don D’Auria and the folks at Samhain for the white magic they do turning my collections of words into something greater than their sum.
About the Author
Russell James lives in hurricane-prone Florida and weathered three direct hits in one year. As far as he knows, no magic was involved in attracting any of those storms.
Black Magic is Russell James’ third horror novel following Dark Inspiration and Sacrifice. He has also published the paranormal alternate history short story Touch and Go. Visit his website at www.russellrjames.com, follow on Twitter @RRJames14, or drop a line to complain about his writing at [email protected].
Look for these titles by Russell James
Now Available:
Dark Inspiration
Sacrifice
Who can save the children from the Woodsman?
Sacrifice
© 2012 Russell James
Thirty years ago, six high school friends banded together to confront the Woodsman, a murderous specter whose prey was children. None of the friends will ever forget the horror of those weeks…or blood chilling image of the Woodsman.
Now the six have returned to town for a long overdue reunion. Except the Woodsman hasn’t finished with them yet. As a new nightmare unfolds, ripping open old scars and inflicting fresh terror, what will each of them have to sacrifice this time to keep the children safe and the Woodsman at bay?
Enjoy the following excerpt for Sacrifice:
Lightning arced across the night sky. In its flash, the Sagebrook water tower stood like a gleaming white beacon above the trees on the hill. Ten seconds later, thunder rolled in behind it, the way every event has an echo that follows.
Five figures scurried along the catwalk around the tower, one of the old-fashioned kinds, where a squat cylinder with a conical hat sat on six spindly steel legs a few hundred feet in the air. A newer tower served the people’s water needs, but the old girl was an icon for the Long Island town, so the trustees kept it painted white and emblazoned with the “Sagebrook-Founded on 1741” logo to remind themselves of their heritage. Once per year, the logo changed to celebrate the graduation of the Whitman High senior class.
The boys on the catwalk were going to see that this year it changed twice. These seniors had commi
tted more than their fair share of pranks; stolen street signs, a tap into the high school PA system, swapping the state flag in front of school with the Jolly Roger. But this stunt would top them all
They had all met in the sixth grade, where their teacher had dubbed them “The Dirty Half Dozen” due to their inseparability and penchant for trouble. (The title had stuck.) They hadn’t done anything as dangerous as tonight’s foray, but anything worth a good laugh was worth doing.
“Who’s got the red?” Bob whispered, though no one but the boys could be within earshot. He crouched at the base of the new banner that read “Congratulations Class of 1980” with “Go Minutemen” painted underneath in red letters. Bob was rail thin with an unruly head of brown hair that consented to a part on the right and little else. An unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.
“Right here,” Paul said. He handed Bob a can of red spray paint. Paul stood several inches taller than the rest of the boys and his broad shoulders made the narrow catwalk a tight fit. He wore his Minutemen football team jacket, though Dave had told him the white leather sleeves would look like two glow worms crawling across the tower at night. His hair was cropped close and he sported the shadow of what he euphemistically called a moustache.
A blast of cold wind hit the tower. The snaps on Paul’s jacket hit the metal railing with a reverberating ping.
A third boy, Jeff, hung over the catwalk railing. He had a long face with ears that had stuck out just enough for a good round of elementary school ribbing. He held his New York Mets ball cap tight as he looked down at the perimeter fence. A ten-year-old Olds Vista Cruiser station wagon idled near the hole in the fence. There was a slight lope to the modified V8’s rumbling exhaust through the turbo mufflers. The headlights were off, but the parking lights lit the edges of the car. Jeff spoke into a cheap Japanese walkie talkie.
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