Final Solstice

by David Sakmyster

  O O O

  Spinning little wheels over pavement. A baby carriage on its way through a park. Mother and father each holding a handle. Beautiful sunlight in the long blonde curls of twins, skipping ahead toward a playground.

  The sound of the girls’ footsteps drown out the crying, wailing of the baby boy. Fierce green eyes squint against the glare.

  “Put the visor down,” the mother insists.

  “We’re almost there,” says dad. “Just a minute and we can put him in the shade.

  “But he’s miserable, it’s right in his eyes.”

  “He can take it. Jesus Christ he’ll be fine.”

  “I can’t stand the crying, you didn’t hear him again last night.”

  “What can I say? I sleep like the dead.”

  “Bastard.”

  She pushes faster, and the carriage shifts, the sun spears brighter into the child’s eyes and the wails intensify to a fever pitch and all of a sudden …

  The clouds devour the sky as if dumped from a massive funnel. In seconds the park plunges into shade and the winds pick up, swirling at first and then driving hard from the north, gathering speed.

  “What the hell?” the father says, and then louder: “Girls! Girls! Get back here, run to the car!”

  The last part is lost in a peal of thunder that sounds as if a war has just erupted in the skies.

  Hail the size of fists begin to pelt the park. They hear it first as the great chunks of ice slam into the metal slides and the bars of the jungle gym. Then the plunk-plunk-thud against the earth and the pavement.

  But the rest is devoured by screams and cries of pain.

  “RUN!” the father yells again, but then immediately falls to the ground, slamming his forehead against the concrete path, and his dazed eyes lock on the green of his son’s. The baby carriage, overturned, provides the only respite from nature’s onslaught as hailstones bounce off the rims and the protective side covering.

  Other screams eventually dwindle. Someone’s crying, whimpering and calling a name, “Avery …” but even that silences with another thwump sound and a squish like a hammer bursting a melon.

  The baby … silent now, just blinks at his father, even as the hailstones keep battering his body and crunching his skull. A huge gash in his dad’s forehead keeps pumping red. Blood runs into the rainwater that has started to fall like a wave of archers’ arrows, cleaning up after the stones have done their job. Drenching, washing the world clean.

  Eventually, the baby sighs. Snug in his restraints, Avery Solomon closes his eyes and drifts to sleep.

  O O O

  “After that tragic little story hit the news, people were drawn to the miracle baby that had survived such a horrific event. Donations flooded in and my grandmother was grateful, but she was old, with one foot in the nursing home.”

  Solomon smiled wistfully as the room returned to its nocturnal components and the visions—either in Mason’s head or still projected somehow, he couldn’t understand which—dissolved. Mason still leaned against the large stone, looking about for a chair, anything to rest on. He only found the altar in the center, and the light hitting it revealed just enough of traces of red to give him the chills. Had they already done sacrifices here? What the hell have I walked into?

  And more: What was Gabriel a part of? How deep did this occult shit go?

  Solomon had his back turned now, and began pacing. “Keep listening Mason, I’m getting to the part about you.”

  “Oh good,” he replied, forcing dialogue, if for nothing else, to keep grounded and not leave his mind adrift, dangerously close to going over the edge of the earth.

  “So that’s when Louis Palavar entered my life. A tidy sum he paid to my grandmother, along with promises of visitation and constant updates … of course which never happened. She was dead within a month.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Things happen. Anyway, that’s how I came to the Palavar ranch. And for a time, it was just me and my new ‘father.’”

  “What did he want with you?”

  “Same as he wanted with you,” Solomon replied without turning around. His head was inclined up at the stars and the faint galaxy above. “We were—are—like lightning rods. There’s a power within us, an affinity with nature that goes beyond natural selection, beyond luck or just karma. You hear of people who can sense changing air pressure in the bones, an advancing thunderstorm in their sinuses. But others, like us—it’s more than that. We are part of a long history of men and women. In the past we would have been called sorcerers, shamans, medicine men or magi.”

  “Druids,” Mason whispered, and Solomon’s eyes widened.

  “Ah, so you’re not completely clueless.”

  “I didn’t say I believed any of it. All those people—just like the rainmakers in the dust bowl or snake charmers at the circus, they played on people’s gullibility. Their needs. They used some general forecasting ability, modest sensibilities of rainy seasons and typical historical behavior. Red sky at night sort of proverbs, that’s all. Spoken in the right way, with ceremony and maybe some animal sacrifice, and your followers are suddenly in awe of your powers.” Mason shook his head. “It’s not all smoke and mirrors, but as Arthur C. Clarke said: ‘Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Just keep the advanced tech—or knowledge—away from the common folk and they’ll believe in wizardry. Or druidism.”

  Solomon gripped his staff and turned, displaying it for Mason. “You’re not wrong. But you’re not entirely correct, either. Palavar showed me that, and showed you too, before you forgot.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Remember, I know. But we learned, you and I. Especially what we could achieve with the right tools.” He hefted the staff, admiring every nook and twisting grain of wood. “The way to harness that power.”

  “Wait,” Mason said. “Back up for a minute. Palavar brought you there, adopted.… Why? Because he thought you, even as a baby, had this innate power over weather?”

  “A dangerous power, but something, for sure. He wasn’t positive, but the signs were there. A sudden violent storm out of the thin air, one that I alone survived. It could have been dumb luck, the way the carriage fell and protected me, but it could have been more. I was under extreme stress, I’m told. Reacting to my parents’ emotional state, and furious with how they were ignoring me.”

  “You were a baby, for god’s sakes.”

  “Exactly, not knowing any better. Trying to influence the world and get what I want, when normally the only way was through tears.”

  “So okay, Palavar thinks you can do that and wants to what, train you? Or keep you out of the way so you won’t harm anyone else?”

  “Both, for sure. There on that farm, away from the greater population … my outbursts, if they stirred up the weather again, could only damage the land or some cows. But it was also … a time of testing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Palavar was … not a nice man. At least, not outwardly to me. You see, he had to develop my powers, had to use me to see if I could do it again, and to what extent. And what could be controlled. To achieve that, he … beat me. Abused me.… The torments …”

  For a moment, the side wall melted away into a snarling visage of a middle-aged man with a rugged beard and blazing eyes … and a belt gripped in a fist that drew back and swung down … again and again.…

  The scene melted away, back to the serene circle of stones.

  “It worked,” Solomon said. “My pain, my frustration and anguish … You saw, in your research …”

  “The tornadoes, the wild weather over several years.”

  “I brought it all, yes. Not too extreme at first. At first, it was thunderstorms and hail, wind and lightning. But oh, we harnessed it.”

  “How?”

  “Palavar … he was no ordinary man either.”

  Mason frowned, and a flash of light in his mind lit up that familiar cottage in the mountains
, then it was gone—and he was grateful that none of that showed up on the walls. He felt sure it would give away something Solomon shouldn’t know about Mason’s knowledge.

  “He belonged to an order. He wasn’t the leader yet, but he would soon rise to that position. With my help. With our help.”

  “I’m completely lost,” Mason said, feeling suddenly weary beyond belief. He thought of Lauren, of Shelby, and suddenly wanted nothing more than to be as far away from this place as possible. He thought of Channel 7 and Pamela and wished he was still at his old job, thinking about nothing more complicated than the latest prevailing wind speeds.

  “Look,” said Solomon, and the walls shifted again, and this time the circle of standing stones had transplanted back into the earth at Palavar’s farm, in the same configuration that Solomon had drawn on the wall in his bedroom.

  Eight figures wearing white robes and hoods …

  “A KKK rally?”

  Solomon laughed. “Notice the different hoods? And belts made out of mistletoe, with holly wreathes around their necks? No, quite a different group here.”

  “Druids, then.”

  “From a long and noble line, tracing back to the Celtic traditions and the—”

  “Time of the Saxons and the invasion by Rome.”

  Solomon nodded approvingly. “So you paid attention in some history classes! Not just a science boy, after all. Does this look familiar?”

  “What do you mean?” Mason asked, even as the hairs at the back of his neck were standing up.

  “It does, doesn’t it?”

  “A drawing, on the wall upstairs in his farmhouse.”

  Solomon let out a chuckle. “Knew you’d seen that. It must have pulled at your subconscious.”

  “Why? Why would something you drew have made an impact on my mind?”

  “Because I didn’t draw it.”

  Mason blinked. And the images flickered. Remained, but the viewpoint pulled back—up and back, through an upstairs window to where two boys were crouching, peering out through the glass, watching the ceremony outside. It was dusk, but still light enough even though there were torches beside each stone.…

  And a body on the altar.

  One of the boys pointed and the other nodded. He went for his crayons, looked out the window, then started to draw.…

  “That’s how we learned,” Solomon said. “From the council, gathered here at Palavar’s request. He had something to show them, after all. The power of nature, harnessed by two new recruits. He offered to train us in the old ways, just as he was trained, and as most of them were. It’s a long tradition, and without such training …”

  “You make it sound like Jedi school,” Mason said. “And he’s Yoda?”

  “Something like that, only we weren’t the ideal students.”

  “What do you mean? And what, for that matter, did we learn? Assuming I believe I was there with you. You could be making all this up. Hypnotized me maybe, into believing it. My mind … it’s …”

  “Believe what you want,” Solomon said. “You were there, because that’s how you got that scar.” He pointed past the scene now, where the boys were frozen in time, again looking out the window, down into the clearing where a young woman was voluntarily stepping through the circle, shedding her robe and lying naked onto the white slab. She spread out her arms and then crossed them over her chest as one man—Palavar—came forward. Raising up a knife …

  The image dissolved as he brought it down in a graceful arc, and again Mason and Solomon were alone in the dark.

  “We learned,” Solomon said, “what he didn’t want us to see. Secrets we weren’t supposed to know until much, much later. Up until that night, we had been mere tools for him to experiment with. We were lightning rods in the purest sense, and he used us to call down all sorts of weather. To improve his crops, to cause drought and tornadoes, to wipe out competing farms … We gave unwilling support, but we were just as guilty.”

  “But … if he was such a hotshot druid as you claim, and if they really have these powers over nature, why did he need us?”

  Solomon smiled. “Fair question. But the truth is that just like the forecasting you did at Channel 7, magic is no different. You can’t do it alone. Especially as the stakes get higher and the results you want are bigger. To reach farther distances or impact whole sections of the country and not just a local park where you’re having a picnic … then you need help.” Solomon walked to the altar and set his staff upon it.

  “You need … sacrifice. Blood, especially. Sometimes it’s antecedent to the effect you want, other times it’s promised in return for what you’re asking for. Or perhaps it’s the release of energy at the moment of death that does it. The sacrifice of one so connected to the natural energies of the world could certainly buy up enough potential that he who wielded the knife could control greater outcomes and call upon greater sources of energy.”

  “Now you’re losing me.”

  Solomon shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t lost back then. In fact, it was all crystal clear. After that sacrifice, the one we just witnessed, we saw a tornado the likes of nothing since. The druids, with Palavar at the center of the circle, summoned that demonic thing out of thin air, spun it around like a top, dressed it up in lightning, then sent it on a massive killing spree where it decimated eighteen counties and tore up half the neighboring farms.

  “So after that, after Palavar and his pals recovered and slept and drank and had some all-night parties, you and I … we saw the writing on the wall, quite literally. We put two and two together and came up with the idea that one of us, like a fattened cow, would be sacrificed next.”

  “Was that it? Was that why he wanted us?”

  “Perhaps,” Solomon said. “But it was too early. I found that out later. For the sacrifice to work, for it to really have power …”

  “It had to be made willingly by the victim.”

  Solomon again looked surprised. “How did you know that?”

  Mason licked his lips, thinking of how not to give away Shelby’s theory. He pointed at the section where the images had been. “The clearing, that woman. Unless she was drugged, it looked like she was a volunteer.”

  “True. We didn’t know it at the time, but she was. A martyr for the cause. Maybe brainwashed, or maybe Palavar had some leverage over her. I’m not sure. But she did it for him, for them. And you saw what happened.”

  “Okay, saying I believe all that? What are you getting at? What does any of this have to do with Solstice, with me, with … whatever you’ve been trying to do at the UN? Why do you need me?”

  Solomon turned and leaned against the altar.

  “I’m sad you can’t just accept that I wanted a reunion with my childhood playmate. My friend and my one-time brother.”

  “Reunions aren’t my thing,” Mason said. “And I doubt they’re yours either. Especially after you tried to kill me.”

  “Did I?”

  Mason lifted his shirt partway. “Remember this?”

  “I do,” said Solomon, “but I also remember I wasn’t the one to give it to you.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  Solomon shook his head. “Do I have to show you? Or can’t you remember? Aren’t the blocks gone yet?” He suddenly picked up the staff, took a step and slammed it down on the floor, creating a crack like a peal of thunder … and a flash of light—

  And Mason was lying on the slab under the dying sunlight peeking through the gently-waving willow branches. Young Solomon approached, a scared look on his face under the hood of his sweatshirt as he held out the knife—hilt first.

  Mason took it, and turned it around. Held it with both hands, pointing at his stomach. He nodded to Solomon, took a deep breath …

  And plunged it down.

  Chapter 4

  “You can choose what to believe, Mason control four of the wildest, but the truth is that you have within you the power to be like us.”

  And, say
ing that, Solomon backed up and raised his staff, and suddenly there were seven others in the room. All wearing grey suits. Three women and four men, each standing by a stone. Each wearing holly wreaths around their necks and holding staves.

  Solomon took a deep breath. “You lack our training, but the power in you is vast, intense and dangerous. You unwittingly called it upon your family as a boy, with tragic results.”

  “What?” Mason’s head swam with the implications and the sudden guilt. Was he right?

  “It would have been much worse later, especially in puberty, had Palavar not found you and worked with you and—failing you, as he realized when he found us in the circle, you bleeding out and me trying to summon and control four of the wildest cyclones at the same time …”

  “No.…” Mason shook his head and held his stomach, feeling the renewed pain. “But I survived, I … remember.”

  A flash, and Palavar was there, his hands bloody and also full of dirt and some sort of green leaf, stuffing everything into Mason’s wound and muttering words of ancient power over him, barely making himself heard over the shrieking winds and the competing tornadoes pounding and demanding tribute.

  Palavar stepped away from Mason, the wound patched, the blood flow ceasing.

  “The sacrifice is incomplete!” he shouted—to Solomon, to the skies. And he bent low and raised a staff and stepped onto the altar, straddling Mason as Solomon cowered on his knees. The four tornadoes rocked and flayed and spat up chunks of earth. Palavar switched directions and raised his staff.

  It looked like he was wavering, losing strength. His staff cracked down the middle.

  “No …”

  Just then, others came running out of the farmhouse. A young black man with dreadlocks, a pretty brunette, a blond man with a long pale face and spindly arms, several others. They spread out quickly, dodging debris and struggling to see through the stinging wind and dust, but they managed to get in position around the altar, and a sort of luminescent green haze formed from around the stones, connecting side to side, then diagonally and forming crisscrossing lines of shimmering power that built and built and suddenly exploded backward.