“Yes,” she answered, mocking my whisper. “I went looking.”
“And?”
Her voice came back at normal level. “I couldn’t find it. Are you sure it’s in the woods?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I told you, we came out somewhere along Prescott.”
“Tony, I walked a dozen acres with my EMF meter and I didn’t pick up a thing.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“That’s all right. I’m going back out tomorrow. If it’s there, I’ll find it.”
“I’m sure you will,” I said, though I wished I wasn’t. I turned around and stole a peek outside the back window. “Speaking of the portal, where’s Jerome?”
“He’s in the bathroom.”
“You locked him in the bathroom?”
“What? No. I didn’t lock him in.”
“Then what’s he doing in there?”
“I don’t know, taking a dump?”
“Lilith, Jerome doesn’t know how to use a toilet.”
“Maybe he’s taking a bath.”
“He doesn’t bathe either. How long has he been in there?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “Three, four hours maybe?”
“You left him in the bathroom for four hours unattended?”
“Tony, he’s not a baby, besides, I have a thing going on here. I told him if he went in there, he couldn’t come out again until everyone was gone.”
“Oh, great.”
I pushed passed her and ran to the bathroom. No one in the living room gave me a second look, which was good, because even before I got there, I knew we had a big problem on our hands. Water, lots of it, gushed from under the door and was rolling down the hall toward the bedrooms. I pushed the door open, slipped inside and closed it quickly behind me.
“Bossman!” Jerome cried. “Come play. Water fun.”
“Jerome, what are you doing?”
The question was more rhetorical than practical, as I could see what he was doing, sitting in an overflowing tub, splashing water with cupped hands all over the walls, floor and ceiling. For play toys, he had found Lilith’s shampoo bottle, two plastic tampon applicators and a roll of toilet paper. The shampoo bottle had become his squirt gun. The applicators went up his nose so he looked like a walrus, and the toilet paper became a soggy roll of great little peel-n-stick wads in which to paper the walls with.
As bad as that was, it all paled by comparison to his favorite toy, my electric razor.
“Bossman look. Zzzz!” he squealed, turning the razor on and dive-bombing it into the water. “Zzzz...”
“Jerome, no!” I shouted, falling back against the door after feeling the electrical shock migrate through my wet shoes and up my body. I reached over the sink and ripped the razor cord from the wall socket with a jerk. “What the hell! Are you trying to kill us?”
He frowned. “Aw, Bossman no fun.”
“Fun?” I crossed the room and shut the water off in the tub. “Jerome, listen. You must never play with electricity. Do you understand me?”
He pulled the tampon applicators from his nose and looked at me quizzically. “What is lectisity?”
“Electricity.” I grabbed the razor and held it up with the plug end dangling in front of him. “Anything with a cord like this.”
“Zzzz,” he said, pointing at it and smiling.
“Yes. Zzzz. It’s dangerous. You are not to touch anything with a cord like this ever again. You got that?”
“Jerome got it. Jerome smart.”
“Good.”
“Bossman angry?”
I ignored the bubbles percolating suspiciously behind him, knowing that laughing would only mitigate the seriousness of the issue. Instead, I knelt beside the tub and looked into his eyes, which had morphed into something resembling my own. How could I get angry, I thought. I couldn’t, though I did manage to retain a stern look for effect.
“No, Jerome, Bossman not angry, but I think you’ve had enough bath time for one day. Come on. Hop out.”
He crawled out of the bath, but before I could wrap him in a towel and figure out a way to sneak him past the house full of guests, he opened the door and bolted out.
“Jerome, no!”
It was too late.
The group in the hallway screamed first, with the shrill cries sweeping the room in a progressive wave. The ensuing commotion resulted in a stampede out the front door, bodies knocking over tables, chairs and lamps as they fled. Lilith, whom I thought would be as angry as a hornet, wasn’t. Instead, she just stood there, her eyes hollow, her hands splayed empty. I went up and asked her what was wrong. She shook her head.
“She’s gone,” is all she said.
“Who’s gone?”
She turned and looked at my tipper-over recliner. “The old hag crocheting my hand cozy. She’s gone.”
I looked at Ursula, who offered me only a shrug. “`Twas a fine cozy,” she said. “Methinks I could not do one better.”
I pointed to the flood of water in the hall. “Ursula, is there any chance I could get you to return all this to normal?”
She didn’t answer, but a snap of her fingers set everything straight again. Just like that, the water was gone, the furniture upright and the house appeared better than new.
“Thank you,” I said. “How about that, Lilith? She’s got that whole Pentacle Prodigy thing down tight, doesn’t she?”
Lilith hooked her brow and drew a tight-lip smile. I knew that look. It’s the one she gives me just before a I told you so. Only this time, she said, “You think?”
“What do you mean?”
She walked over to the sofa, picked up a knitting needle the old woman had dropped in her haste, and stuck it into the armrest. A gash in the fabric caused a torrent of water to erupt from the sofa like a busted dam.
“Slide!” Jerome cried, and immediately took to
belly surfing the resulting wave across the room and down the hall.
“What the hell?” I said, pulling my pant legs up in a futile attempt to keep them dry.
Lilith seemed neither surprised nor concerned. She folded her arms and pitched her weight onto one hip, saying, “Don’t blame her,” she said of Ursula. “The poor girl didn’t know what to do with the water, and she couldn’t very well stuff it all back into the pipes.”
“So she stuffed it into the furniture?”
“Ah-huh.”
I looked at Ursula, feeling suddenly sorry for her, as she seemed genuinely embarrassed, biting her nails and retreating shyly. “Yeah,” I said, “I see now why Dominic wants her to lose it.”
“Oh, `tis not for that,” she said, offering clarity in his defense. “`Tis not so much the magick what he doth distain, but the nature of that I cannot control.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the nature of nature.”
“I still don’t get it.”
She turned her head and blushed. “`A personal thing it is.”
I looked at Lilith.
“It’s her orgasms,” she said. “They scare the hell out of Dominic.”
“Oooooh, I see, I mean I don’t see.” I fluttered my hand in front of my face to erase the visual in my mind. “That’s more information than I need. I think I’m going to ahmm…” I gestured a nod down the hall, “go change into something dry and leave you girls to figure out what to do with this mess.”
“Uh-uh,” said Lilith, pointing to Jerome. “Not until you take ol` fish face here out back where he belongs. He’s caused enough trouble in here for one night.”
“Fine,” I said, taking Jerome by the hand and leading him through the kitchen. “Come on, pal. Let’s go build a fire and dry ourselves off like we used to back home.”
“Fire!” he said. “We make big fire. Burn all the things down. Right Bossman?”
“That’s right. Big fire. Burn all the things down.”
As we stepped outside, I heard Lilith say to Ursula,
“See what I mean. He’s even talking like him now.”
Chapter 6
“What the hell are you doing out here?”
I looked up at Lilith through sleep-stitched eyes, her form silhouetted against the morning sun in that oh so-familiar pose of hers, wide stance, hands on hips, head tilted at just the right cocky angle.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“The matter is that you’ve been out here all night, sleeping in the dirt with that overgrown iguana. Why didn’t you come back into the house and—Oh my god! What is that?”
I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes with the backs of my hand. “What’s what?”
Jerome was just stirring. I think he knew what. I could tell by the way he scooted back on his tail and out of Lilith’s reach.
“That,” she said, pointing at a fresh pelt alongside the smoldering fire pit. “Did you two eat squirrel last night?”
“Lilith, I can explain.”
“Explain my ass! Who are you? I don’t even know you anymore.”
“Listen, you have to remember, Jerome and I—”
“No, no, I don’t want to hear it. I just want you to go into the house and shower up. Then you, me and fur breath over here are going out to find that damn portal. And I swear, Tony, so help me, if we don’t find it, I’m going to make one myself and fire his little green ass through it so damn fast, no matter where it goes. I don’t care if it takes him to the moon.”
I started to open my mouth to counter her, but she cut me no slack and stormed off in a righteous strut.
I waited until she was in the house before I stood, brushed the dirt from my clothes and said to Jerome, “She seems a little high-strung these days. Don’t you think?”
Jerome simply pointed to a nearby tree and said, “Pee.”
I patted him on the shoulder and nudged him on. “Yeah, go ahead. I’d like to join you, but Lilith would probably frown upon that. We’ll come and get you when we’re ready.”
An hour later, after a shower, shave, a change of clothes and coffee, I was ready to go. Lilith drove. I sat up front, Jerome in the back, and though we gave him explicit instructions to keep out of sight until we got there, Lilith had to keep yelling at him after catching him repeatedly poking his head up to see where we were going.
“I don’t believe it,” she complained, after scolding him for the umpteenth time. “He doesn’t listen. He’s worse than a kid.”
“He’s excited, is all,” I said. “What do you want? He’s never been in a car before.”
“Yeah, and he’s never had my foot up his ass before either, but he’s sure as shit going to find out what that’s all about if he doesn’t do what I say.”
I turned in my seat and pointed at him. “Jerome, you have to listen to me. I need you to keep your head down so that no one sees you. Understand?”
“Down.”
“That’s right, and why?”
“Cuz you Bossman.”
“Because I’m the boss. That’s right. Now do it.”
He pinched the corner of his mouth, pantomimed zipping it shut and then ducked below the seat. I turned back around, only to find Lilith gaping at me.
“W…what was that?” she finally asked.
I shrugged. “What was what?”
“I did everything I could do to instill the fear of God in him to make him obey, and then you go and do it simply by telling him it’s because you’re the boss. How does that work?”
“Because I am the boss.”
She smiled, reached over and patted my knee. “Whatever you say, sweetheart.”
A little while later, she pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road and turned the engine off. “Okay,” she said, pointing out the windshield. “Yesterday, I covered the entire area from the left side here, all the way to the lake and back. Today we’ll search this end.” She gestured a sweep toward the right side of the road. “I’ll tell you what would help though, and that’s if you could remember your direction of travel before you two found the road.”
“That’s hard to say. It was so bright; Jerome and I couldn’t see a thing. We stumbled around blindly for the first half hour.”
“Do you remember seeing your shadows? Were they in front of you, behind you?”
“I don’t think there were any shadows. It had just rained. The ground was wet. I’m sure it was overcast.”
“Yeah,” said Lilith. “We did have a late afternoon storm roll through here the day before yesterday. I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means.”
“What do you think it means?”
“The portal, if it relies on the electrical energy from storm clouds to initiate conduit, then we may be spinning our wheels out here today.”
“You mean your EMF meter won’t register the convergent points associated with the portal?”
“Not if they’re not there.”
“What do you want to do?”
She pulled up on the handle and bumped the car door open with her shoulder. “We’re here now. Let’s explore.”
“What about him?” I nodded toward Jerome, rolled up in a ball behind the back seat.
“He can come,” she said. “The more the merrier.”
We started walking in a northerly direction, looking for clues, which frankly, neither Lilith nor I expected to find. Her theory about the portal needing electrical energy from storm clouds made sense, seeing how it had taken the power of the witch’s key, three industrial magnets and a truck battery to establish a portal connection the last time we all went through one.
Yet, that was okay with Jerome, who seemed quite at home in the woods. At last, he was in an environment where he could change colors and blend in with his surroundings perfectly again. It made me smile to see him scamper from tree to tree, camouflaging himself until he could virtually disappear.
It’s strange, but even I began feeling differently out there. Something about the woods, the dry leaves crunching underfoot, the aroma of the trees; it made me long for the dark forests again. I don’t know why. It’s a hellish place, fraught with imminent danger at every turn. Yet it’s also curiously seductive, as if every minute there holds victory over death itself.
I imagined that’s what Jerome was thinking, too. I could tell by the way he foraged, unearthing small plants, overturning stones to expose their mossy underbellies. He was homesick, and I…I was...
“Tony!”
I turned around to find Lilith a dozen yards away, looking at me as though I had wandered off in marginal consciousness. In a way, I suppose I had.
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m following Jerome.”
She pointed to her side. “Jerome’s right here.”
He was. I had been following a mirage of misshapen shadows and refracted light. I looked back over my shoulder. The woods had grown suddenly dark. Strange shapes loomed in the distance. Trees that once stood tall and erect now appeared crooked and bent as though up were an ever-changing direction, confusing the inclination of their growth.
Something ahead of me stirred. A beetle buzzed me and landed on my shoe, another on my arm. A phantom breeze ferried in whiffs of sulfur, souring the air. It was the smell of malodytes, and the beetles, they, too, were signs of the malodytes’ presence.
I turned again to warn Lilith. She was gone. Now the entire woods had fallen into darkness. Eerie whispers carried on the wind. Twigs began snapping under heavy footfalls. I backed away, slowly. The footsteps grew closer, so, too, did the smell of sulfur, and with it the feeling of inevitable doom. I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Without a witch’s key, I had only my ability to make zip balls to protect myself. Yet even for that, malodytes had developed a clever defense. They’d learned to carry long metal poles, which they jab into the ground as a sort of lightning rod against them.
I searched the ground for a weapon: a tree branch or a rock, but found nothing suitable. The branches were all too dry and flimsy, the s
tones either too large to pick up or too small to affect a meaningful deterrent against malodytes.
My only hope was to blend in, to camouflage myself where I stood, and pray they wouldn’t find me. I quickly gathered up a spread of fallen leaves and burrowed under them like a fox, curling myself up into a ball.
I waited, listened, as footsteps drew closer, zeroing in with uncanny precision, as if they knew I was there. I swallowed hard, took a deep breath and held it. The footsteps stopped within inches of my prostrated form. There were two of them, a big one and a small one. Did they know I was there? Had I left some part of my body exposed? I wondered why they hadn’t plucked me from my feeble nest and shredded me to pieces already. Surely they knew, they sensed me, maybe smelled me.
I heard the rustle of foliage as the larger one took up position near my shoulder and began pawing at the pile of leaves over my head. My body tensed. My heart began pounding so loudly I was certain they could hear it. There was no escaping. I could hold my breath no longer. I let it out with a scream, so loud that it startled the two creatures back a full step and a half.
I sprang from the leaf pile and ran from them as fast as I could. Of course, they came after me. I knew they would. Malodytes are excellent runners, but not such great swimmers. My only hope was to find a lake or a river, or some other body of water deep enough to thwart their attack.
“Tony!” I heard one of them yell as I put the first ten yards between us. I glanced over my shoulder. They were falling behind, but still chasing me with determination.
I gained another ten yards in half as many steps before it suddenly occurred to me that malodytes couldn’t talk. I looked over my shoulder again. The forest was no longer dark, the trees no longer bent and twisted. Sunlight poured through the canopy and bounced off everything, squeezing shadows into stubby footnotes of high noon.
I stopped running. The malodytes were gone. Lilith and Jerome were advancing in their place. I was back in New Castle. Safe, for now.
“Lilith! Thank God!” I said, holding my arms out to receive her.
“Tony!” She threw herself at me, her momentum spinning us around and knocking us both to the ground. I landed on top of her, supporting the bulk of my weight on my elbows.
BURY THE WITCH: Book 10 (Detective Marcella Witch's Series) Page 6