“Why bother? You convinced seniors to buy a small house from you and an insurance plan, the burned the house down and built a bigger one with the insurance money. I see what the senior got out of it, but what about you? You killed them shortly after they entered your ‘program’ but why? How did you get the payoff from that?”
“You still think like a human. I don’t care about the money or the houses. What powers every echelon from Empyrean to Tartarus is souls, my dear, souls! The payoff wasn’t in dollars but in souls sold into bondage here, in Wreyth. Those people knowingly agreed to arson and fraud. That gave them to us. They traded a few palsy years in a bigger house for millennia in this hellhole. And the more of them I sent here, the longer I could stay in Midgard, well away from here!”
“But Granny Rose wasn’t like the other greedy or befuddled seniors you targeted. She knew what you were.”
“All the better. When she recognized me as a werewolf right off, I knew I was onto something big. That’s when I realized you were the heir of one of the most ancient and powerful Talismans in the world, the Clogyn.”
“You can’t take it by force,” I said.
“Oh, I won’t need to. After I kill you and your sister, the Clogyn will belong again to your mother. Your helpless, comatose mother, lying in a bed in a house near this very spot, just a few dimensions away. I will kill her. If any other heir turns up, I will kill that girl too. As many as I need to, until there are no more Hoods of the Clogyn left, and the Talisman is without a master. Then I will claim it for my own.”
“Not if I kill you first,” I said.
“Or I do,” said Bryn.
“Or I do,” said Cormac. “Maybe you want to reconsider this plan, buddy. It’s three against one.”
“I’ve only begun to level up!” laughed Harry Wood.
He began changing again. This transformation was a whole new ballgame. First, he turned wolfish. Fur and fangs came out, until he looked like the wolfen in granny clothes as he had at the cabin. But he didn’t stop there. His body kept growing. The clothes ripped at the seams and fell away. Soon he was bigger and more over-muscled than the Hulk.
He kept growing.
And growing.
And again with the growing.
This was getting ridiculous.
Soon the Wolf loomed over us like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Then he surpassed nature altogether and reached supernatural proportions. He was a Giant Wolfman as tall as the tower. Let’s not get into the size of his schlong. Just… ew.
He leaned back his snout and bayed at the starless, smoggy sky. Maybe there was a moon up there someplace. Not sure.
“Now I feel stupid for mocking the old lady,” Cormac admitted. “The dragon would have come in handy after all.”
“Sure, we’re going to die,” I said, “But we’re going to go down kicking his hairy ass!”
Harry Wood the Wolf Giant started smashing houses with his feet. His voice was as deep as thunder. “This fae body is fabulous!”
His laughter made everything shake like a barely detectable earthquake, about 2.3 on the Richter scale. Not the kind you dive under the table for, but, dude, that was just from his belly laugh. I didn’t want to hear his roar. While Scary Harry broke off the support timber from a neighbor, I opened my picnic basket, looking for weapons too.
It was bleak. We had guns aplenty, but we’d used up most of the ammo during the fight on the burning freeway.
All I had left were two grenades and my Spirit Gun.
“This is my fault,” Bryn said suddenly. “I see that now. It’s just like Joseph Campbell said. I’m the Hero With A Thousand Faces. I refused the Call to Adventure and now, unless I step up and accept my Destiny as the Chosen One, the monster is going to kill my sister and my…uh, this guy I just met.”
“This guy you just met?” Cormac asked. “Is that all I am to you?”
“No,” she said. “You’re more. That’s why I know what I have to do. Roxy, give me the red thing.”
“The Clogyn,” Cormac said.
“Give me the red jacket!” Bryn held out her hand. “I’m ready to accept my Destiny as the Heir of Little Red Riding Hood!”
I looked at Bryn and realized there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Nothing. Not even this. Rosamunde’s words echoed in my mind. A fairytale is a big truth wrapped in a small lie.
“Okay, Bryn,” I said. I took off the red leather jacket and tossed it as far over her head as I could.
“Roxy! Real mature!” She dove to reach it, and Cormac shadowed her to keep her shielded.
While they were busy with that, I ran straight at the Wolf.
“Hey, Harry!” I shouted. “What big fucking teeth you have! Bite me!”
His head moved faster than a snake, and he did. As his huge jaws opened to grab me, I jumped into his mouth.
And I pulled the pin of the grenade.
Chapter 12. A Painted Door Has A Thousand Keys
They really were big fucking teeth. Teeth as long as ski poles and fat as traffic cones snapped together to enclose me in a cage of bone.
All the better the blow you to hell, my dear.
The grenade and I rolled around on Harry’s big, bumpy, and, by the way, super disgusting tongue, but nothing went boom. Shit! A dud.
Ha. Long experience has taught me that the first thing I do is always a dud! That’s why I brought two grenades!
I pulled the second pin and for good measure lobbed that baby like a bowling ball past the pink pins of his dangling uvula (yes, that’s a real thing) down his throat. To my delight, he swallowed it.
I’m not sure how it felt outside Harry Wood’s mouth, but the explosion that shook me, still inside his closed mouth, felt like an 8.9 on the Richter Scale. Maybe even a 9.2 I rode that sticky tongue like a Beach Boy rode a surfboard.
Everything stilled. I couldn’t believe I was still alive. The jaws and palate around me were still intact. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Light shown between the teeth. Cormac and Bryn pried open the mouth, which was on the ground.
“Thank God, Roxy, you’re alive!” My sister pulled me off the tongue into her arms.
“I’m sticky,” I warned.
“I don’t care!” She squeezed me and sobbed into my shoulder. “I thought you killed yourself, you idiot!”
“Yeah, that was the idea, but my schemes never work out like I plan…”
I felt something foul and sticky scrape the back of my calves. All blood drained out of my head and fled around my body in crazy circles.
“Harry is still alive!” I shouted.
Cormac and Bryn jerked me the rest of the way out of the Wolf’s mouth just as it snapped shut again. A huge growl came from the beast. I could feel the hot breath against me like exhaust from a plane’s jet.
I whirled around.
The Giant Wolf had been felled by the grenade, and a huge hole showed in its gut. Entrails spilled like beached seaweed on the asphalt. A weird sound came from the mouth.
Chuckles.
As we three watched in horror, the body shrank and shriveled. Soon Harry Wood was the size of an ordinary human man. Even that was too much to maintain. The body reverted to the shape of a frail old woman. Harry still lay on the ground, bleeding and sniggering into the road.
“Nice try,” Harry Wood ground out the words. “But it takes more than eating a grenade to kill a fae body! I can still eat you, Hood!”
“Eat this,” I said.
I scored a perfect head shot with the Spirit Gun.
His soul blasted out of his body, frizzing into green vapor before it popped out of existence on this echelon.
“Any idea where werewolves respawn?” I asked.
“A much deeper hell than this,” Cormac said.
“Bring Rosemunde’s body up to the Tower!” a voice from somewhere above us trilled out.
I glanced around in confusion. Bryn pointed up to the window in the tower.
The fairy princess in the b
ikini waved at us vigorously. She started tossing down her long braids like rappelling ropes.
“Oh, right, I forgot about the Braided Bimbo in the Tower,” I said. “Where was she when we were fighting the werewolf? She’s in the perfect position to be a sniper. But nooooo.”
“Let’s see what Rapunzel wants,” Bryn sighed. She noticed Cormac’s expression and whapped him in the arm. “I know they’re big, but don’t stare at her… braids.”
“Fear not, Lady Bryn.” He grinned. “No one has better braids than you.”
We tied Granny Rose’s body to Cormac’s back. (“You’re absolutely sure she’s not a werewolf anymore?” he kept asking.) He bore the weight easily and climbed up the side of the tower like he was advertising a sports drink. Bryn followed, and I huffed and puffed up last.
The room in the tower was plain, and almost unfurnished, but it was the first place we’d seen in Wreyth that was scrubbed clean and smelled fresh.
Then I saw the Painted Door.
It looked exactly like the one in our kitchen, except the perspective was from the other side. Cormac and Bryn were already laying Granny Rose before the threshold.
“I can’t do the magic,” said a soft voice. “You’ll have to do it.”
I examined the fairy princess. I noticed two things, pretty important things, that I’d completely missed before.
One, she was a spirit.
Two, she was my…
“Mom?” Bryn gasped. “Mom, is that really you?”
“Bryn, baby. It’s me.”
Bryn threw her arms around Mom to hug her tight. Of course, Bryn fell right through the insubstantial spirit body and almost hit the stone wall.
“Mom,” I asked, “Why are you here, what’s with the hair, why are you a ghost, and above all, why are you wearing a bikini?”
“The hair is just a wig.” She lifted it off her head and hung it on a hook. She shook out her much shorter bob.
“Wow,” I said. “I did not see that coming.”
“I am the prisoner of a powerful demon,” Mom continued. “He’s the one who captured my soul. I happened to be wearing a bikini that day, and it’s harder for spirits to change clothes, you have too… never mind. It’s hard. The only reason my captor hasn’t sent one of his minions to kill my body is that he still hopes to force me to give him the Clogyn. Why he brought me here to Wreyth today, he wouldn’t say, but I presume it was to force me to watch while Harry Wood killed you. Obviously, things didn’t go as either Wood or my captor planned.”
“Who is your captor?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you, but he’s too careful for that.”
“Maybe your captor was Harry Wood.”
“No. Harry is just a penny and nickel criminal who used to run cons with your dad. The demon who keeps me imprisoned is far older and far, far more powerful.”
“We have to get you back to your body!” Bryn said.
Mom shook her head. “You can’t. Only one thing can wake my body in Midgard from the sleeping spell Granny Rose put on me. Arrange that for me and my soul will return. You can still save Granny Rose. You must hurry before my captor returns. Bryn, have you accepted your Destiny as my Heir?”
“I have,” said Bryn.
I smiled for her, trying not to feel a tweak of jealousy when she held up the Clogyn in one hand and placed the other hand on Cormac’s arm.
Bryn walked to me and handed me the Clogyn. “But so has Roxy. You’re going to have to accept two Heirs.”
“That’s not the tradition,” Mom said.
“We’ll have to make some new traditions.”
Are we going to share Cormac too? I didn’t ask. I slipped the jacket on, savoring the feel of the leather. I hadn’t had it long, but it already felt like a second skin.
Mom glowed much more strongly than before when I looked at her now.
“But some traditions are important,” Bryn continued. “I realize now that the fairytale heritage you and Granny Rose passed on to us isn’t what causes tragedy. Tragedy is just the sucky part of life. Leave out the fairytale and the suck is still there. It’s like this place, trashed, tedious, ugly, stuck. The fairytale is believing that if someone loves you, you can find the strength to live past the tragedy.”
She glanced coyly up at Cormac from under her lashes. Bryn was never coy. His expression was equally idiotic. He leaned down and kissed her.
I was wearing the Clogyn again. I saw their lips meet in their first kiss. I also saw their souls meet.
The light was blinding. With the eerie double vision imparted by the Clogyn, I saw them both transfigured into a prince and princess. Cormac wore a crown and velvet cape and deep, royal blue suit. Bryn wore a diamond tiara and a billowing, gauzy dress—a wedding dress.
They were soul mates. It couldn’t have been more palpable. It couldn’t have been more painful. A screwdriver jabbed me in the heart, then screwed me.
“Ah, Roxy,” Mom said softly. Her eyes were wet. When she looked at me, what did she see? As a spirit herself, she must have seen my soul as clearly as I saw theirs.
“When you choose to see the truth, you don’t always see what you want to see,” she said. “You see what you need to see.”
“I don’t want to leave you again, Mom,” I whispered.
“Granny needs you. Many people need you. Not just me. Help them, Roxy—you and Bryn—you have the power now.”
“What power? We have a gun that only takes out ghosts and that’s about it…. No offense, Mom, but couldn’t you have been descended from a more useful fairytale heroine? Or am I supposed to let myself get devoured by a wolf every time?”
“Seeing things as they really are, without flinching, is the greatest, and rarest, power of all.”
“How about with a little bit of flinching? Just a pinch of flinch.”
She laughed. “You’ll figure it out, Roxy.”
Bryn outlined the Painted Door with her finger. Mom said that because this was designed as a kind of cosmic Emergency Exit, we didn’t need the usual paraphernalia. No matter what echelon we might ever find ourselves trapped in, even to the deepest of hells, if we could just make it back to our home, we’d find a Painted Door that would let us escape to Midgard.
In end, it took less than a minute to perform the ritual. The edges of the Door glowed. The painting seemed to open, and I could see our cheery cherry colored kitchen beyond.
“We’ll find a way to bring you back, Mom!” Bryn shouted. She and Cormac walked through the door hand in hand. How sickeningly adorable.
“Oh, and one more thing, Roxy!” Mom cried as I, the third wheel, followed, “Talk to Juanita about Lillian!”
“Okay. Wait, wha…?”
But I stood in my kitchen, back home in Midgard, with Bryn and Cormac. Rosamunde’s spirit waited for us, ready to re-unite with her body. The fairy in the mini mod and go-go boots poured into the injured, elderly body. Before our eyes, she completely healed, body and soul.
Mom was gone.
No, not gone. She was out there. We would find her, and bring her home. Someday.
Epilogue
“I’m glad you came back, Lillian.”
I wore my leather jacket over a tank top and cut-off jeans. Bryn and I had an agreement to share the Clogyn, but mostly I hogged it, and mostly Bryn didn’t mind. Which was fair because she hogged Cormac, and although I minded, I pretended as hard as I could that I didn’t.
Yeah, so I’m still a big, fat liar.
Before me, on the scarlet and silver tablecloth in our kitchen ‘office’, I laid out the Wand, Key, and Book of Names. I didn’t need to consult the Book of Names. I already knew which Key to use, thanks to Juanita. The label read: Abundantia (Celest.).
Lillian looked the same as the last time I’d seen her. A walrus sized package on the outside, but a skeletal wraith on the inside. Before she’d had no mouth at all. Today, her mouth was sewn shut with ugly black thread. I supposed it was an improvement.
Lillian
dabbed her billowing cheek folds with a tissue. “Roxy, the thing is, everything you said about my mother was true. She was a horrible person. She did nothing but tear me down every day of my life. But I still… I still wanted to connect with her. And at first you told me she was saying nice things about me, even though she’d never said anything like that to me when she was alive. I wanted to believe it…”
“I know.” I took a deep breath. “That’s why I lied to you before about what she said. I didn’t think I had the same power that my mom did, so I screwed up, I took the easy way out. I told you what I knew you wanted to hear.”
“So my mother doesn’t really love me.”
“She’s on her own journey and you deserve better than to have to keep letting her spirit haunt you. I wanted you to come here today to meet some of your other relatives, people you’ve never met, but who have been watching over you since you were born. They are angels, Lillian. Real angels. They are also souls who love you just as you are.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I’ve met a special person. Her name is Juanita. I didn’t realize it at first, but she’s your Guardian Angel. She’s the one who let me know about all the angels you have cheering for you. With your permission, I’d like to invite them here today.”
Lillian nodded, though she looked doubtful.
I traced the Painted Door with the Wand, tapped the Key, and said aloud the invocation. “Beings of light, we invite.”
The Door glowed with the most exquisite radiance. I wished Lillian could have seen it with me.
A host of shining beings poured through the Door. Unlike other ghosts I’d encountered, I didn’t feel a chill when they passed through me, I felt warmth. Lillian’s eyes grew wide and I knew she could feel the warmth too. They filled the room with a deep, shimmering presence. Each one paused to hug and kiss Lillian’s starved soul, to murmur words of love and sweetness. I saw tears on the wraith’s face. Lillian, physical Lillian, looked bewildered.
The angels began to sing, outpouring love in the complex harmonies.
“I feel them,” whispered Lillian. “They are so beautiful. And they… I can’t understand why…they think I’m beautiful too.”
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