Amara Hargrove (The Fourth of Briar Wood)

by Lauren Bolt

  “This is where you live?” Amara asked in disbelief.

  “It’s not as big as it looks,” Sophie replied. She pushed the button on a garage door opener strapped to the visor above her head and pulled into a garage that could comfortably fit five, maybe six cars. She parked next to the cleanest and shiniest black Range Rover Amara had ever seen. In fact, it looked like it had never been driven. Why was Sophie driving around in a late-model Hyundai when she had the means to drive something nicer?

  “Come on in. It’s in the library.” For a minute Amara had forgotten what it was that Sophie wanted to show her. In fact, since passing through the gated entrance she’d forgotten completely about the events that had transpired only minutes before and was transfixed on her surroundings.

  She’d grown up in a spacious, nicely decorated house, and had never wanted for anything. But Sophie’s resort was on another level. Past the garage, they passed through a richly appointed chef’s kitchen and into the double-door entrance of a library that made the one at Santa Lucia High School look like a joke.

  “What do your parents do for a living?” It was probably rude to ask but Amara couldn’t help herself. She’d never seen such an immaculate display of wealth and her curiosity was getting the best of her.

  Sophie scrunched her nose as she rifled through a stack of old, leather-bound books.

  “My dad died a long time ago and my mom is a kind of hippie Wiccan. Here it is,” she announced as she pulled out a large tome that looked as dusty as it did old. “I found this in her collection of heirloom texts.”

  “Some light reading?” Amara joked. Obviously being a hippie Wiccan was very financially beneficial to the Parker family, however, they managed to earn it.

  “I have other intellectual pursuits besides science. She encouraged me to read this the night she left for her retreat out in Briar Woods. Here it is!” She turned the book around and slid it across the massive wood table it had been stacked on.

  The paper was thick and looked to be handmade. It had turned brown from age and Amara imagined whoever wrote on it used a quill dipped in ink to do so.

  “This is all in Latin,” she frowned, eyes scanning over the page for any word that might stand out or ring a bell.

  “Tres sumus coniunxit. Nos adiuvetis in itinere. Diunitas. Mali. Humanitas. Nos coniungimus. Omni natura conuenire. Ligare nos in unum corpus. Nova nos accipere. Et nos ipsi immolate. Nostra potestate. Essentia nostra. Ex tribus unum faciunt.” Sophie looked at her expectantly.

  “I don’t read, write, or understand Latin.” That much seemed obvious but Sophie was looking at her as though she understood something.

  “It’s like the chant. Natura enim, quae in servitium tribus. Una ex tribus. It’s related to this spell.”

  “A spell?” Amara practically shouted. “Why would my parents be chanting a Latin spell from an old book your hippie Wiccan mother owns?”

  Sophie’s face was strained. “I have no idea,” she exhaled. “Look, this text here speaks of a spell that binds the essences of three individuals to make a fourth. Or to make one. The three represent a triangle: divinity, neutrality, and evil.”

  “Evil?!”

  “Well, yes. Most things exist as opposites of one another. North and south. Good and bad. Divinity and evil. But this calls for a third dimension, a neutral one. Anyway, according to the text, these three figures bind together their divinity, their evil, their neutrality, into an entirely new being. They make this sacrifice to nature and nature, in turn, creates the fourth. You see?”

  Amara merely stared back at Sophie. Nothing made any sense and the fact that she was there, listening to quite possibly the smartest person she’d ever met going on about spells, nature, and evil, was just further evidence to the point.

  Maybe she was witnessing her own psychotic break. She once heard the story of a neuroscientist who witnessed her own stroke in some odd, meta sort of way. Only Amara had no real knowledge of how the brain worked so if she was witnessing her own psychological demise, she’d really have no idea of it.

  “Amara? Are you okay?”

  She inhaled fresh oxygen and tried her best attempt at a polite smile. “I need to use the restroom.”

  Sophie pointed to her left. “Right through there.” She had the inquisitive look on her face again and Amara knew she was trying to again figure her out. Maybe she had some kind of knowledge of the brain and could explain what was happening to her?

  It was an elegant bathroom, all white and marble with the prettiest silver finishes. But its best feature was that it was quiet, something she needed in that moment. A white tufted couch invited her to sit down and she obliged, slumping down into the plush comfort without a second thought. All she needed was the silence; a chance to let her brain work stuff out.

  Her mind went quiet for a full three minutes before something began to nag at her. Some small but specific detail that was being overlooked. What was it? Something someone said or something she’d seen? If only she had the photographic memory.

  The newspaper her father was reading. Something about a fire in Briar Woods. As in the same Briar Woods Sophie’s mother was going to?

  She moved quickly for the door but stopped before her hand could turn the handle. There were voices coming from the library; one was definitely Sophie, but she couldn’t place the other.

  As quietly she could she cracked open the door and pressed her ear against the opening.

  “I can no longer protect you, Little Sophie,” the unidentified woman said.

  “Protect me from what? I don’t understand.”

  “There are things coming this way that I cannot stop. I’ve done all I can to prepare you, to provide you with the knowledge you will need from this point on. But you must do it without me.”

  “Why do you look like… Are those burn marks?”

  Amara couldn’t hear a reply, but she had the sudden urge to open the door and make her presence known. She couldn’t explain it but followed her instincts anyway.

  Now in full view, she could see that Sophie was the spitting image of her mother. Long dark hair will high cheekbones and the same perpetual look of inquisitiveness. Her mother seemed taken aback when Amara stepped out of the restroom and into the library, but her expression quickly changed to sheer surprise. Even relief.

  “You found her!” She expelled a breath of held air and swallowed back a sudden burst of excitement as she tried to remain composed. “Where? How?”

  Sophie and Amara exchanged looks. Amara couldn’t quite grasp that the elder Parker was talking about her.

  “Mom this is Amara Hargrove. She goes to Santa Lucia High.”

  “No, no, no, no, no.” The woman spread her arms out and took a step towards Amara, who took an instinctive step backward. She smelled faintly of smoke and wood and the thick cotton dress she wore was covered in what appeared to be soot.

  Suddenly the woman was in clearer focus, like a camera lens that had auto-focused. There were the faintest green and brown stains on her dress, thicker at the knee with a tapered line that streaked downward. A few branch remnants were still clinging to the fabric like splinters. Her hands were dry and cracked from some kind of exposure, and her hair looked as though she’d been electrocuted.

  Amara, gripped with an unknown fear, whispered, “Were you caught in the fire at Briar Woods?”

  Sophie gasped. “What? A fire? Mom!”

  The woman’s lips curled into a smile that looked like it was meant to convey pride. “It was no fire,” she whispered. She looked to her daughter again and extended out her arms, grabbing on to Sophie’s hands and holding them tight.

  “Mom, what is going on?”

  “Sophie listen to me. These things coming… There’s nothing you can do to stop them from coming but once they are here you have what you need to survive.”

  “Mom you’re scaring me,” Sophie cried.

  Her mother smoothed her hands down the sides of Sophie’s face and smiled. “Use what
I have given you. And you,” she looked up at Amara and smiled again. Through the smudges of dirt and debris, the smile lifted her cheeks and warmed her eyes. But there was also a sadness to it, and Amara had the distinct feeling that the woman knew much more about her than she could say.

  “When my daughter understands she can explain to you who you are. What you were made for.”

  What she was made for? What did that mean?

  “Only you can protect her. Help her. Guide her. I’ve already given my life to you, use it as it was intended.” Ignoring Amara’s shock and bewilderment, the elder Parker turned to Sophie and smiled kindly. “I’ve done all I can for you. I love you, Little Sophie.”

  In less than a moment, she faded into the air like an old photograph until she was gone. Vanished from sight. A bittersweet magic trick that was only too real.

  Amara stood completely still as she tried to figure out what had just transpired. Sophie moved around her like she was being fast-forwarded. She laid the old books out on the table one by one and flipped through the pages of each, moving around from tome to tome looking for something. Amara could only remain still, watching the room pass around her, her brain working to make some sort of logical sense out of everything she had seen and done that day up until the moment her mother faded into the air.

  “I’ve got it!” Sophie screamed finally. She closed a large volume and ran to stand in front of Amara with her hands planted firmly on her shoulders.

  “What are you-...”

  “Tres in unum sacrificium. Factum est. Defende nos ab novissimis.”

  A flood of light blinded Amara. As she shut her eyes to shield them a dozen images enveloped her mind: Three women kneeled in a triangle formation deep in the woods chanting. ‘Tres sumus coniunxit. Nos adiuvetis in itinere. Diunitas. Mali. Humanitas. Nos coniungimus. Omni natura conuenire. Ligare nos in unum corpus. Nova nos accipere. Et nos ipsi immolate. Nostra potestate. Essentia nostra. Ex tribus unum faciunt.’ A dog with scraggly hair howled up at the sky, its teeth covered in gleaming red liquid under the moonlight. A woman with razor-sharp teeth biting into the skin of another, pools of blood seeping out. A bright crack of lightning that split in two as it touched the heavy wooded blanket of the forest floor. One by one images flashed through her mind’s eye, each more terrifying than the last. She could not see them for more than a flash of an instant, nor could she recognize anything about them. One flash looked like her parents, empty shells waiting for her in the dining room of her house. Another a young man’s face roaring in rage.

  When the images suddenly stopped Amara found herself falling. A pair of hands caught her beneath her arms and, weighed down beneath her, sank to the floor with a strange elegance as if it was all purposeful.

  “I’m fine,” Amara protested as she wiggled out of Sophie’s embrace. She sat back on her feet and put her hands on the ground to steady her. “I’m fine” she repeated.

  “I’ll go get you some water,” was the last thing Amara heard before she toppled over the ground, and fell into a deep sleep.

  The hours passed as if they were minutes. She’d blacked out for only a few moments and spent the next several drinking as much water as she could. She was parched. As she drank Sophie spoke, connecting the pieces of a very disjointed puzzle. She didn’t think it was possible for explanations to make even less sense once they made absolute sense. When she next looked up out the large windows of the library she saw that daylight was approaching. It was a new day.

  “I know now what she meant when she said she’d already given me the resources I would need. My whole life she’s been whispering things to me, telling stories without context that I realize now were just pieces of something much larger. I used to think she just enjoyed telling me fables about the kinds of nightmares kids dreamed, but I think there was some element of truth in them. What if every scary creature she ever told me about is real? What if that is what’s coming here? To us?”

  Amara didn’t know how to respond. She’d seen the very images Sophie spoke of in her own mind and she felt that she ought to be frightened. Though oddly enough she wasn’t. Whether it was denial or acceptance she couldn’t tell. But she understood so clearly then that everything she’d seen, everything Sophie’s mother had told her as a child, was some kind of fundamental truth. And more than that, that it would soon be her reality.

  The elder Parker’s words echoed in her ears. Things are coming. If the images she’d seen were any indication, they had to be as prepared as possible.

  Their lives depended on it.

  On the far opposite end of Santa Lucia, a young man held a contained specimen up to an Eastern-facing window. As the sun picked up in the sky and rays of light flooded in, the deep red-purple color was unmistakable. A few feet behind him, various equipment was scattered across an old wooden desk. Four small samples were spread out across the space along with a long strand of hair.

  A faint smile spread from the corners of his mouth up to his eyes. His fingers closed around the object and he looked out the window where he had an unobstructed view of the entire town.

  “Amara Hargrove,” he whispered to himself.

  With a swift turn, he grabbed a bag with the rest of the period five blood samples, his varsity jacket, and headed out the door.

  Thank you!

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  Table of Contents

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