The Boys Are Back in Town

by Christopher Golden

  Together they raced to stop Dori.

  The witch held the girl, and even as the two Wills ran toward them, they could see the elder's fingers disappearing, being absorbed by the younger. With an ecstatic shudder, the witch threw her head back, her body beginning to merge with Dori's so that they appeared hideously conjoined.

  They would not reach her in time.

  Magic made the impossible possible. And so perhaps it was magic that had allowed Brian Schnell to hold on to one last spark of life as his body was immolated. His back was broken and his flesh was charred and blackened, but he managed to raise his upper body, to look blindly in the direction of his sister with embers where his eyes ought to have been, to reach out a withered, smoking hand and cast a single spell that caused the elder Dori to cry out in pain and to go rigid, momentarily paralyzed.

  His final spell.

  When Brian slumped to the floor, pieces of his body fell away in a cascade of fiery ashes. He would not move again.

  Elder Dori shrieked and seemed to struggle against the spell. Young Dori's eyes searched fearfully and found Will's, even as her future self began to move again and the merger continued.

  But Brian had bought them precious seconds.

  Simultaneously, the two aspects of Will James thrust out their hands, their frantic thoughts identical, and reached into their minds for the only spell they could think of, the first magic they had ever done that lingered, that remained with them. It had tainted them so deeply that it required no words. They felt the magic flow from them like a brutal exhalation of breath, of energy. The air that separated them from the witch and the girl seemed to shimmer.

  The witch did not cry out. She simply jerked upward, pulling away from Dori, pulling out of her, and went completely rigid for a moment.

  Then she fell to the floor. Dead.

  Orange soda trickled from her nostrils, sticky and sweet.

  EPILOGUE

  An angry horn blared.

  Will blinked, his eyes clearing, and he inhaled sharply as though for a moment he had forgotten to breathe. He threw himself back against the driver's seat, arms rigid, knuckles white as he jerked the steering wheel to the right, veering out of the path of the fire-engine-red pickup truck that thundered down the narrow, tree-lined road toward him.

  He held his breath, heart pounding, jaw rigid. The pickup barely missed clipping the Toyota's rear end. Only then did he realize that he had overcompensated, that in order to get out of the way of the pickup he had cut the wheel too sharply on that narrow road. Trees loomed up in front of the Toyota and Will tried to right the car again, but he was out of time.

  By some miracle the Toyota sailed off the road between two trees—one close enough to tear off the driver's side mirror—and crashed through a split-rail fence. The car shuddered as the tires ran over rutted ground and tall grass and Will hit the brakes, bringing the car at last to a stop in a farmer's field.

  For long seconds he sat rigid behind the wheel until at last he let out a breath and slumped over, resting his forehead, waiting for his pulse to slow, struggling with a fog of disorientation that enveloped him. What the hell was he doing? Had he fallen asleep at the wheel? He couldn't even recall where he had been going, where he was, or what day it was.

  Head spinning, profoundly unnerved, he put the car in park and climbed out, engine still running, to orient himself. The field was part of a large stretch of farmland complete with a red barn and a small silo. In the distance he saw a large, fenced pasture, but it seemed unoccupied. Beyond the farm was a hill lined with orderly rows of apple trees; the field he had driven into was, he now saw, a pumpkin patch.

  October. Almost Halloween. Though the sun shone brightly, the wind was cool, and he shivered as he stared at the few pumpkins that remained, mostly broken or misshapen things unfit for anyone's front stoop. He knew this place, had passed it a thousand times. The narrow, tree-lined street was Old Buffalo Farm Road. He had been on his way to Eastborough. On his way home.

  “What the hell?” he muttered, glancing around in confusion.

  Then, as if in answer, it all came flooding back to him. The deck of cards began to shuffle in his mind, image upon image, all of them in conflict with one another. Will cried out from the pressure in his head and staggered back to lean against the Toyota. He clamped his hands to the sides of his skull and squeezed his eyes shut. It was all simply too much. Far too much.

  Will knew. He remembered everything. Every variation, every twist of fate.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered to himself, doubling over, eyes watering. “Oh, Christ.”

  As suddenly as it had begun, it subsided. The rush of memories began to assert themselves, to settle into layers of mental sediment. His breath had come in short, harsh gasps, but now it began to even out. Will inhaled deeply several times, slowing his pulse and his breathing, regaining his composure.

  The memories sifted and merged and faded, and gradually, an entirely new set began to take their place. He could still recall all of those other versions, including the terrible events of the week he had spent in another time, another era.

  A week that now had never happened.

  Yet he remembered.

  A sudden chill made him shudder. The Toyota purred against his back. Will glanced at his watch in the very same moment that he remembered where he was heading.

  It was Sunday morning. Reunion weekend was almost over, but a number of his friends and classmates would be gathering at the Carriage House for brunch. With one more glance around at the farm, he climbed into the Toyota and turned it around, there in the field. He would have to stop back later and offer to pay for the broken fence, but for now the anticipation was too great. His hands trembled on the wheel as he guided the Toyota over the broken bits of fence and between the trees, back up onto Old Buffalo Farm Road. He barely noticed the shattered mirror on the driver's side. It was entirely unimportant.

  Much as he wanted to speed, he drove the rest of the way to the Carriage House with great caution.

  It was a wonderfully rustic, early-nineteenth-century inn with a small river running across the property. The parking lot was already full when he arrived, so Will parked on the street, climbed out of the car, and trotted around to the side of the building, where the entrance was.

  Stacy's eyes lit up when she saw him. She wore a hunter-green turtleneck and brown pants, and the wind blew her black hair across her face so that she had to reach up and tuck it behind her ears. Will felt his pulse quicken; despite all that weighed upon his heart, he could not have prevented the smile that spread across his features then, even had he wanted to.

  He trotted up the walk and she came down to meet him halfway. Her hand reached out for his and he took it, bending down to kiss the spray of freckles that decorated the bridge of her nose. The corners of her eyes crinkled in happiness, and she gave him that tiny smile that was always so full of mischief.

  It was the most natural thing in the world.

  “You're late,” she said.

  In the new set of memories that had superseded all of the others, the reunion weekend had gone very well between them. Better than well. At Liam's on Friday night he had been mesmerized by her performance, by her voice and her eyes. The guys had tormented him in the way they had always done to one another. Lebo had arrived late, but late was better than not at all. They had celebrated and promised each other that they would make a greater effort to keep in touch. On Saturday, Stacy had been waiting for him at the gate of Cougar Stadium, and she and Will had sat with Ashleigh and Eric, Mike, Nick, Danny, and Keisha.

  And that night, she had saved all of her dances for him. It was the beginning of something, and he felt light and agile and happy, as one always does at the beginning.

  “I was unavoidably detained,” he said. “But I'm here now.”

  That mischievous smile again. “That'll do.”

  Hand in hand they walked into the Carriage House, through the main foyer, and along a corridor that le
d to the large private room the class had reserved for the occasion. Mere seconds after he had stepped into that room, with gourds and Indian corn and pumpkins decorating the antique tables and the autumn sunshine beaming through the high windows, he paused and inhaled sharply.

  Mike Lebo stood at the brunch buffet, putting together a plate of fruit for himself. Beside him stood Danny Plumer, who quietly muttered something that made Lebo laugh out loud, then shoot Danny an eye-rolling look of slightly appalled amusement. At a table in the corner, Nick Acosta popped a slice of bacon in his mouth, listening intently to Ashleigh going on about the latest remarkable escapades of her twins. Her husband, Eric, held her hand and simply watched her talk, content just to be in his wife's presence.

  His eyes surveyed the room. Tim Friel stood waiting while the chef made him an omelette. He saw them all. Lolly and Pix. Tess O'Brien. Joe Rosenthal. And standing in the full sunlight beneath one of those tall windows, her red hair radiant, he saw Bonnie Winter.

  Stacy tugged his hand. “Hey, you all right?” she asked, brows knitted with concern.

  “Fine,” he said with a grin. “Very fine.”

  He slid his arm around her and they walked across the room toward the table where Ashleigh, Eric, and Nick were eating breakfast. Lebo and Danny called out to Will and he waved. More than anything he wanted to go over and throw his arms around Lebo, but he didn't want to make a scene. There would be time later.

  Plenty of time.

  All of the dark memories remained, but they lingered now only as shadows in his mind, enough to remind him always how much he had to be thankful for, how much he had almost lost and how much he had gained instead. For though he remembered the Will who had touched the magic and gone back in time, though he remembered the younger Will James who had been visited by his future self, he was no longer either of those men. None of it had ever happened, and yet there were ripples. Things had been set right, and then some.

  Will had never cast the spell that would make him forget what he and Brian had done to Dori. Though it weighed upon him, in time he made peace with his guilt. Long before Caitlyn had broken things off with him, he had realized that he loved her more than she would ever love him. The end of their relationship had broken his heart. Love could be that way. But their breakup had not hobbled him, and so Will had also made a kind of peace with Caitlyn, and with the way things had evolved for them.

  Now here he was with Stacy. Between the way things were developing with her and the promotion to Lifestyles editor he had received on Thursday, he was having just about his best week ever.

  As he and Stacy reached the table where Will's friends were sitting, a cell phone began to trill. Ashleigh reached for her purse. Both she and Eric wore expressions of concern, as any parent might who had left their children at home, so far away.

  “Hello?” she said, and immediately she smiled, her mood lightening. “Oh, hey, Caitlyn. When are you guys—”

  Her smile disappeared.

  Tremors of dread went through Will and he felt a pain in his gut, as though his trepidation had hooked him there, and begun to pull.

  “Oh, God, Cait, I'm sorry,” Ashleigh said, her voice barely a whisper.

  They were all looking at her now. Eric touched her elbow as though to reassure her that he was there to catch her if she should fall.

  “All right. All right, I'll call later. I'm . . . I'm so sorry.”

  Will was staring at her as she clicked the phone closed and slipped it back into her purse. Her eyes were downcast and she chewed her lower lip. Stacy's grip on his hand tightened. When Ashleigh finally lifted her gaze she did not look at her husband or at Nick, but at Will.

  “What happened?” he asked, his voice so small he was not even certain the word had come out.

  “It's Brian. He's been . . . staying with Caitlyn while he was home for the reunion. You know the two of them have been off and on ever since . . .” Ashleigh stopped to take a shuddering breath, one hand going up to wipe her eyes as the tears began.

  “He died.” She glanced around at the others, then back at Will. “Sometime during the night. He just . . . the hospital says his heart just stopped. Twenty-eight years old and he's dead of heart failure.”

  “Oh, my God,” Nick said, shaking his head. He was pale, his features stricken. “I can't . . . How the hell does something like that happen? I mean, that young? I don't understand. And he was . . . he was one of us. How does that happen?”

  No one had an answer to that. Or, more accurately, no one was willing to offer it.

  Stacy squeezed Will's hand and he turned to her. It hurt his heart to see the sympathy in her eyes, but he did not know that he was crying as well until she reached out to wipe his tears away.

  “I'm sorry,” she said, her voice low, the words just for him. “I know you guys were close.”

  Close, he thought. But it was true. They had been. The path their friendship had once taken had been altered by magic, by their knowledge of the many different ways in which their lives might have unfolded. They had healed the rift between them during their senior year and remained close ever since. In a way it had even seemed natural to Will that Brian and Caitlyn should gravitate toward one another.

  They had wielded a dark power beyond their control—he and Brian and Dori—they had received dark gifts, one of which was that the magic had tainted them enough that they could never completely forget the way the world had been before it had been tampered with. He knew Brian remembered and he was certain that Dori remembered, otherwise nothing at all would have changed and they would have been locked in an eternal loop, repeating those awful events over and over.

  Will wondered if Kyle Brody remembered, though in this newly forged reality he had only met Will that one time, when Will had been sitting in front of his childhood home on Parmenter Road waxing nostalgic, annoyed at the way the kid's family had taken all the character away from the house. He hadn't performed any magic, but he had seen it; he had helped. It had probably touched him.

  The rest of them, though . . . at their own invitation, they had received these dark gifts. They had tapped in to the mysteries and secrets behind the veil of the world. That was magic, after all.

  There in the Carriage House, with the autumn sunshine streaming in and friends laughing all around, he stood and held Stacy's hand while Eric comforted Ashleigh and the word began to spread through those gathered there that one among them would not be appearing for the day's celebration, nor for any other ever again. His grief was overridden by a terrible melancholy, but there was the strange certainty that somehow he had always expected this, that he had been waiting eleven years for it.

  And that Brian had, too.

  Will James pulled Stacy to him, kissed the top of her head, and just held her close. Despite the sun, the shadows beneath the tables and chairs and in the corners seemed somehow deeper, darker, and he felt a trickle of fear go through him.

  Magic always costs, he thought.

  He only hoped the price had been paid in full.

  AT THE HOUSE on Parmenter Road, Kyle Brody waited until his parents had gone off to church, and then he went to the closet under the stairs and climbed in. Even with the light from the hall, the crawlspace at the back of the closet was impossibly dark, oil black, and when he pushed his hands into the shadows there it was almost as though they disappeared.

  He rooted around in the dark, his breath quickening. All weekend his mind had been filled with strange images, things that did not belong there, memories that did not belong to him and were quite simply impossible. Yet they haunted him, these half-remembered things, dangerous and unsettling, like nightmares that would not be dismissed upon waking. No matter how he tried to ignore them, to forget them, they lingered in his mind until at last he had no choice but to prove to himself that it was all in his head, all just a little fringe of madness that had infected him. People had always said he had an imagination that was too vivid.

  His fingers closed on somethi
ng rough and heavy and unpleasantly warm and he flinched away from it, trying to peer through the darkness of the crawlspace. It was real. For a long moment he held his breath and then, cautiously, he reached into the shadows again and slowly withdrew the book. Its cover was slightly battered, a deep burgundy leather, but with a texture that was like nothing he had ever felt.

  Kyle opened it, face flushed, pulse going rapid fire, and he flipped the first few pages until he found the title.

  Dark Gifts.

  A slow smile crept across his face as he rose and carried the book, which was so much heavier than it seemed it should have been, upstairs to his room.

  CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the award-winning, Los Angeles Times bestselling author of such novels as Of Saints and Shadows, The Ferryman, Strangewood, The Gathering Dark, and the Body of Evidence series of teen thrillers. Working with actress/writer/director Amber Benson, he cocreated and cowrote Ghosts of Albion, an animated supernatural drama for BBC online.

  Golden has also written or cowritten several books and comic books related to the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, as well as the scripts for two Buffy the Vampire Slayer video games. His recent comic book work includes the creator-owned Nevermore and DC Comics' Doctor Fate: The Curse.

  As a pop-culture journalist, he was the editor of the Bram Stoker Award–winning book of criticism CUT!: Horror Writers on Horror Film, and coauthor of The Stephen King Universe.

  Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. He graduated from Tufts University. There are more than eight million copies of his books in print. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com.

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