by Norah Wilson
“Here goes.” Maryanne held the book forward. Brooke and Alex leaned in closer, looking on anxiously.
Maryanne opened the black cloth cover.
“Good,” she said. “The pages are covered with copper dust too.” That would have sucked, being able to open the cover, but not turn the pages without the aid of the copper knife.
She turned the first page, paused, then carefully turned the second page. The others leaned in even closer. No one said a word; it was like a collective holding of breath. One by one, Maryanne moved through the rest of the pages. She closed the back cover.
“Holy crap!” Brooke shook her head.
“That kind of sums it up,” Alex agreed.
“I…I don’t even know where to begin!” Maryanne said. “Literally!”
Where to begin? There seemed to be no coherent beginning or ending. No order at all. The book’s pages were a mixture of words and drawings. Scribbles going every which way. Symbols and verses. Some quite legibly written, others barely so. And on every single page, practically covering every bit of wordless space, there were lines. Four across and one cutting through. Lines just like those Connie had carved into the walls of this cave to mark her long and lonely days. Row after loopy row of them. Vesta’s sets were closer together on the page than Connie’s were on the walls, but there was no mistaking them.
“Was Vesta Walker counting her days too? Days married to Ira, maybe? Was that man her prison?” Brooke wondered aloud. “Her jailer? Maybe that’s all this is. Just a way to mark the days.”
“That can’t be,” Maryanne said. “There’s knowledge here. I just know it. I feel it. It’s a grimoire. Vesta’s secret knowledge. And it is caster knowledge, too. Why else would Vesta have covered the pages with copper dust—the only thing that would let Connie, or us, hold the book and turn its pages?”
“Good point,” Brooke admitted.
“But what’s it all mean?” Alex held out her hands for the book and Maryanne handed it to her. She turned the pages just as slowly as Maryanne had.
Suddenly, Alex stopped. “Oh wow!”
“What?” Maryanne said.
“The crossed lines. I’ve seen them before.”
“We all have,” Brooke threw out her hand toward the far wall. “Connie carved—”
“No,” Alex said. “Well, yes and no. They’re similar, but…I saw these in a dream. The dream I had of Vesta Walker and the other old woman on the tracks. These might be counting-off marks—lines of desperation—but they’re not. They’re something else. They’re freakin’ railroad tracks! Rails with ties intersecting. That’s exactly what they are!”
“Huh?” Brooke said.
“If they are tracks, they have to be going somewhere,” Maryanne said. “And if they’re going somewhere…”
“Then there has to be an ending, and a starting point!” Brooke finished for her.
High fives were exchanged, and light shimmered all the more around their black outlines as their hands smacked together. It looked almost like sparks when they connected like that, the more force, the more sparks. A very cool effect, but one wasted on human eyes. Only casters could see the light show.
Even with all the excitement, Maryanne felt a sudden wave of wooziness.
Her original was falling sleep. She’d had this feeling before, when she’d been burned so badly at the Walker farm and had to wait the day at Bryce’s house in caster form while her original remained back at Harvell House. One self was awake, and one was asleep. But while her original’s mind was starting to drift off to dreamland, her caster mind was reeling.
“We have to start where the tracks start,” she said. “Flip through the pages and find where the tracks begin!”
That was it! At least she hoped that was it. But what if there was no beginning? The tracks all seemed so…circular. Winding as they covered every square inch of the page.
Several page-turning minutes later, it was Brooke who saw it. “There!”
Maryanne and Alex leaned forward. It was the beginning. Definitely a set of lines unconnected, unlooped and not rolling into or from another set. Not only that, the four vertical lines were leaning toward the next set of five, as if to suggest a ‘follow me’ direction.
“Here, let me have it.” No one protested as Maryanne took back the grimoire. She ran a finger along the tracks, backtracking sometimes. Shaking her head as she did so. She worked for no less than half an hour, while Brooke and Alex held perfectly still. “The pictures,” she said. “The scribbles. I…I think I’ve got it.”
“Got what?” Brooke asked.
“I’m not sure. A clue? A hint? Some sort of message?”
“What does it say?”
“It says this…” Maryanne drew a breath and began, and she wasn’t one bit surprised to hear her words come in a chant.
Water blessed can make one well
But doesn't last long, before back to hell
Fly with the silver, cry with the gleam!
Not from the river, ocean, or stream.
“A freakin’ poem?” Brooke said. “What the hell does it mean?”
Maryanne shook her head. “I don’t know.” Not yet anyway.
“Shit, can nothing be easy?” Alex grumbled. “This is so frustrating!”
“Vesta wouldn’t have wanted to make it easy. She was probably hiding her knowledge from her jerk of a husband,” Maryanne guessed. “You can just imagine what he’d be like if he knew she was trying to help Connie.”
“He’d be furious,” Brooke said.
“He would be,” Maryanne said. “And maybe Vesta knew something Ira didn’t. Something he would have used to hunt Connie. To hurt her. Or maybe she knew something that would help Connie. Make her stronger. Safer.”
“Or something that could help us,” Brooke said. “Make us stronger and safer.”
“Exactly!” Maryanne said. “Guys, this is where we’re supposed to begin. This is what we’re supposed to know.”
Water blessed can make one well
But doesn't last long, before back to hell
Fly with the silver, cry with the gleam!
Not from the river, ocean, or stream.
“It is, isn’t it?” Brooke agreed. “Our start.”
“I think so.” Maryanne said. “Alex, don’t you just feel—”
Maryanne stopped suddenly. Still in front of the candle, Alex sat unmoving, but her head was in her hands as she slouched forward.
“What is it?” Maryanne asked, her voice sharp.
“I’m dreaming,” Alex whispered. “My original—I’m dreaming of him—C.W., that bastard who raped me. Who damned near killed me. He’s…he’s back in my dreams again.” She looked like she was about to crumble, to break into a grief-filled caster shriek.
Just looking at Alex, Maryanne felt a shriek building inside her. She couldn’t help it. Neither could Brooke, from the looks of her. Her black cast seemed to grow darker, bigger. If one sister screamed in her pain, they’d all be shrieking with her. For her. That’s the way it was. She readied herself. Braced herself.
But then something happened.
And it happened with Alex.
Chapter 8
Sweet Dreams
Alex
Slowly, Alex turned toward her original, bathed equally in shadows and flickering candle light. She was so devastatingly—oh dammit, heartbreakingly—helpless on the floor. Just as helpless she had been when C.W. Stanley attacked her months ago. When he’d drugged her…and raped her.
She’d woken up on the attic floor at Harvell House, naked from the waist down because the bastard had wanted her to know beyond the shadow of a doubt what had been done to her. Wanted her to be able to figure it out, even though the drugs had wiped her memory. He’d wanted the assault to be just that complete. And it had been. She’d woken in pain, but her physical discomfort had paled compared to the horror of a blank memory. Or the bone-deep sorrow.
He’d wanted to give her a nightmare, and h
e had.
Too often Alex found herself locked in the horror of the recurring dream, where her assault happened all over again. She knew every dark corner of the dream. Knew every chuckle that would rumble in C.W.’s throat before it erupted. She knew when the pain would come, even before it tore through her.
“It’s that same dream,” she whispered to Brooke and Maryanne, her caster voice quaking. Mournfully, her original cried out in her sleep. Alex could feel the tightening in her chest, the pounding of her heart.
She knew about sleep. Last term at school she’d done a fair amount of research on sleep and dreaming for a short story she’d written for Mrs. Fredericks’ writing class. But even after she’d learned more than she needed to know for the project, she’d kept reading. She’d found herself pulled to the subject matter. How cruel was sleep! The mind was alert while the physical body was paralyzed. But this recurring dream of C.W. Stanley went deeper than any other.
The dream turned darker, as sleeping/dreaming Alex felt C.W.’s hands tear at her jeans. As she tried to scramble away, he tore the back pocket almost clean off. She heard his first bit of laughter, then there it was, that musty, suffocating smell of the coat he’d put over her head. She could barely breathe! He was choking her! He was hurting her. And then she felt his weight press down—
Not this time.
“Alex, wake yourself up!” Maryanne squeezed her arm urgently.
“Screw that,” Brooke said. “I’ll wake you up!” She started toward the body on the floor.
“No!” Alex shouted at them both. Shouted to the world, the sound of her determined voice reverberating powerfully off the walls of the cave. “Not this time! This time I’m going to crush this nightmare.”
Maryanne said nothing.
Brooke zoomed back. “Do it!”
Alex couldn’t cast back into her body, but she had co-consciousness going for her. If she could use her caster mind to purposefully reach into that part of her subconscious—the part of her original’s mind that dreamed—then maybe she could…
“Hey, asshole.”
C.W. Stanley looked up from Alex’s helpless body on the attic floor and stared at her caster form as she hovered beside him.
“What are you doing here?” he said. “I broke you. I killed your soul. Took your spirit. I took everything from you.”
“Not even close,” Caster Alex spoke into the dream. “I survived. You didn’t take everything, Billy-boy. Far from it. You didn’t break me nearly as deeply as you thought you’d done. As you thought you could. I wouldn’t let you then and I won’t let you now. I already took my life back. Now I’m taking my dreams back.”
With a commanding wave of her outstretched hand, C.W. Stanley rose off the floor away from her half-naked body. She wasn’t touching him physically, but as she closed her fist in the empty air, it was as if she was closing it around this scrawny old man’s neck. He dangled there mid air, his feet scrabbling for the floor almost comically.
C.W.’s hands flew to his throat. “You’re…choking me. You…you’re hurting me.”
“Like you hurt me?” Alex’s words echoed around the attic. She pointed to her original’s form on the floor. In the dream, that Alex rose too.
No longer did she lay there helpless, hurting. She stood beside this other Alex.
C.W. gagged and struggled for breath. His eyes widened as he stared at the two Alexes. Then those eyes bulged as Alex—still not touching him—squeezed her caster fist tighter. C.W.’s eyes rolled to white, as both original and caster opened their mouths and screamed at him. Screamed not just with their bodily pain, but with righteous fury and hatred for the man who’d raped them. They screamed and screamed and screamed.
Helplessly, C.W. trembled in the air. His feet and legs started to shake violently as Caster Alex closed her fist tighter still. Alex’s original bent and picked up a heavy candlestick from the floor. It was the one C.W. had struck her with, sending her into that coma months ago. She smashed it into his ribcage with satisfying force. The dream filled with loud thuds as Alex landed blow after blow. In his helplessness, C.W. couldn’t even cry out. Then she whacked him one last time, squarely in that part of his anatomy he’d used to violate her, then dropped the candlestick.
Finally, Caster Alex let go and C.W. crumpled to the floor at their feet.
Alex—original and caster—shrieked their mind-numbing shriek again. Seizing all that pain he had caused, they twisted it and sent it driving into him.
“You’re done hurting me, old man,” Caster Alex hissed at C.W. He was broken, barely breathing, clutching his head as though trying to hold on to the last vestiges of sanity. “You’re dead. Powerless! You will never darken my dreams again.”
C.W. Stanley faded away. Misted away, like a poof of nothingness.
Her original’s dream turned to thoughts of better things. She was reading the Catcher in the Rye. Walking along Barrington Street in Halifax on her way to that little store that sold the stones Anika liked so well. Her graduation gown. Alex started to pull her caster consciousness away from her sleeping mind.
But before she could—and so sudden it was almost dizzying—Alex’s dream rounded a sharp edge, and there were two ladies, arm in arm on the tracks, walking away from her. Not just any two ladies. One in blue and one in black! These were the ones who’d been in her dream before, on these very tracks. Then she realized they weren’t moving away from her. No, they hadn’t changed direction. But Alex just suddenly knew they were walking forward on the tracks, toward something.
Alex tried to see around them, but couldn’t. Then they both turned to her. “Well done,” the one in black, Vesta, said, “Keep up the great work.”
Then, in the baffling way of dreams, the tracks dissolved and she was strolling the streets of Halifax with her friends again.
Alex pulled away, leaving herself to dream peacefully. Her original took a long, deep breath.
“Are you okay?” Maryanne asked.
Was she okay? Alex thought of the demon of a man she’d left broken in the dream. “Never better. I destroyed him. Kicked him out of my dreams forever. No, I did better than that, I gave him his own nightmare. I hope he can feel it in hell.”
“You twisted the dream?” Brooke said. “That’s totally sick!”
“Yeah,” Alex agreed with a grin. “It was.” She’d never felt so powerful, never felt this free. “Come on, guys. I want to soar!” Alex threw her arms wide. “Let’s get out there and feel the night around us!”
“Let the night feel us all!” Maryanne responded.
Chapter 9
Night Night
Brooke
Maryanne and Alex shot out into the night, but Brooke hesitated at the mouth of the cave, looking back at their bodies on the floor.
Despite her eagerness to cast out, she’d almost said something about leaving their three originals sleeping and unguarded while they soared. And how weird was that? Brooke wasn’t exactly known as the voice of caution in the group. But really, should they all abandon their bodies? What if—
“Are you coming, Brooke?” Alex called.
Brooke went out a short ways. Alex and Maryanne were swooping low over the moonlit pond. The same pond where early this morning, Brooke had broken through the ice. It hadn’t refrozen in that spot. Not solidly anyway, and the cracks in the ice were dark and jagged lines, some thick, some thin. Now there were more lines on the sheet of ice, spreading out in various places from that point of impact. As the days grew warmer, the high mountain snow was melting. It would raise the water in the pond and melt the blue-gray ice, causing still more cracks.
But it had started with her.
Would they soon have to abandon Connie’s winter hiding place? Find a place to build their Heller nest?
Oh God, had she given in to that fate already?
Should she just go ahead and let—
“Brooke! Come on, soar with us!” Maryanne called, as anxious as ever to break free.
; Alex looked just as eager. Whatever had happened to her in that dream world she’d injected herself into—and Brooke had a pretty good idea what might have been involved—she’d come away from it ready to rip through the sky.
The more Brooke felt the night around her, the more she yearned to join them.
Oh hell, surely it was safe to leave their bodies for a short while.
Her sleeping original’s left hand twitched spontaneously, and for a split second she thought it was in reaction to the idea of their casts leaving. Then she became aware of the softest, quickest touch on the back of her original’s hand. A fly. She’d just been twitching away a fly.
“Brooke, come on!” Maryanne called again. “Time to go.”
“Coming!” Brooke shouted.
The three of them soared down the mountain, skimming the treetops and feeling the familiar, wonderful exhilaration.
Casters in the night. This was what it was all about. This was what had brought them to tap on the stained glassed window, time and time again, and repeat the refrain, “I want out.”
It took quite a few minutes of soaring before they saw any lights, and longer still before they saw the first street lights. The houses, though…there were lights on in the windows of almost every one of them. More than usual for this time of night for sure. And many doors, especially on the outskirts of Mansbridge, were adorned with crosses. Brooke didn’t need anyone to tell her those crosses had to be made of iron.
The three soared low over the St. John River. They barely skimmed the dark water as they flew by the homes along it. At one of those places, a kennel of hunting dogs was set up out back, on the river side of the house. The dogs cowered in their cages as the casters passed by.
Brooke loved this beautiful power, but Maryanne absolutely laughed with it as the animals yelped and whined.