by Brian Harmon
“She told us once that she was in a fire when she was little. People died. Maybe her parents. She never said. She was…” She sank back into the seat as if all the energy had been sucked out of her. “She was afraid of dying like that.”
“Oh God…” Eric fixed his eyes on the road ahead of them. He felt awful. He was the one who was supposed to be protecting these girls.
“You’re bleeding,” Holly told him.
“I know. Little bastards have sharp teeth.”
She retrieved a tissue from her purse and began dabbing at his ear. Until she touched it, he hadn’t even realized he’d been bitten there. How many times had the little monsters pierced him? Looking down, he saw several bite marks on his exposed arms. He could feel plenty more all over his body. He was going to have a lot of bruises tomorrow. If he survived that long.
“What did you do back there?” he asked.
Holly looked almost ashamed. “I thought they were going to kill you,” she explained. “I had to do something.”
“I’m glad you did. But what was it?”
“Del taught it to me. It’s only for emergencies.”
“I’d say that counted.” He recalled the bisected imp lying on the ground. Thankfully, she’d had decent aim.
“I’d never done it before. I never thought I’d actually have to.”
Eric stared at the road ahead, half expecting another of those little creatures to run out in front of them again. Was that some kind of magic spell? It had likely saved his life, and yet there was something a little terrifying knowing that such a thing actually existed. “Can all your sisters do that?”
“Not all of them.” She lowered the tissue, frowning. “Not Sylvia. Not Regina.”
Eric couldn’t find any words for her. He felt terrible. He couldn’t imagine how hard this must all be for her.
But she took a calming breath and went back to tending to his ear. “Grandpa called it a ‘thrust.’ It was how he described it when he taught Del. The name kind of stuck. Everyone’s is different. Some slice like a blade. Some puncture like bullets. Some burn like lightning. It’s kind of like a fingerprint. Grandpa told me once that since it comes from inside us, it’s shaped by who we are inside, but I don’t really understand what that means.” She smiled. “I guess I slash things. I wonder what that says about me.”
“That you’re one bad-ass chick?” Eric suggested.
She actually managed a little laugh. “I don’t know about that.”
“Well, you saved my butt back there, so thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Satisfied with the state of his ear, she turned her attention to the bite marks on his arms.
He wanted to tell her to stop, that he was fine, but he felt like she needed something to focus her attention on, something to keep her mind from lingering on her dead sisters.
Pulling out his phone and dropping it into the cup holder again, he said, “Did you get anything from those imp things that time?”
NOTHING, replied Isabelle. IT’S LIKE THEY DON’T EXIST
“They definitely exist. Trust me on that.”
I KNOW. THAT WAS TERRIFYING. BUT EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT THEY’RE OBVIOUSLY REAL, I COULDN’T TELL THAT THERE WAS ANYTHING THERE
“So what does that mean? Are those things invisible to you?”
MAYBE
That was just great. She couldn’t even warn him if they were near.
SORRY
“Not your fault.”
“Be still,” said Holly, taking his hand from the steering wheel and dabbing at the shallow gashes on the back of his wrist.
A few miles farther down the road, the cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but he knew who it was before he answered it.
“What happened?” asked Delphinium.
Eric felt awful. He didn’t want to have to be telling her this, but he had no choice. Besides, she’d already told him that she felt it when both Regina and Marie died, so it stood to reason that she already knew what he was going to say. She was only calling to find out how it had happened. “We…couldn’t save her… I’m sorry.”
Delphinium was silent.
“He beat us there somehow. There were two imps waiting for us. They almost had me for dinner.”
“Two of them?” She sounded shocked.
“I definitely wasn’t just seeing double. There were two sets of teeth working on me.”
“It doesn’t make sense. You should’ve had more time.”
“I’m sorry. We just weren’t fast enough.”
“Sylvia…” sighed Delphinium.
Eric wondered if this was all his fault somehow. Had she made a mistake trusting him with this task? Was he only making things worse?
He couldn’t stop thinking about the poor girl in that fire.
“We’re heading back your way.”
“No. You’d better get to Poppy as quickly as possible.”
“Poppy?”
Holly was still dabbing gently at his arm. Now she paused to listen.
“She’ll be the closest to you.”
“Let me hand you to Holly. I can’t write down directions while I’m driving.” He passed the phone to her and then focused his attention on the road ahead, still expecting another of those freakish imps to run out in front of him.
Chapter Twelve
According to Holly, Poppy was Penelope Underweir. She was apparently lying low at a women’s shelter two towns south of here.
Eric had to force himself to watch the speed limit. Getting pulled over for a ticket wouldn’t save any lives. But after their disastrous failure back at the motel, it was torture to keep a light foot on the accelerator.
It didn’t make sense. Jude told him that the first of the girls, Regina, had died a couple of days ago. Delphinium told them when they arrived that the second girl had died that morning. Only a short while ago, the two of them had barely missed the magic man as he brought business at The Dirty Bunny to an abrupt close. The attacks were picking up speed at an alarming rate.
Was the magical maniac already on his way to murder Poppy? Could they reach her in time?
Holly had settled back into her seat and hadn’t said a word except to give him directions. Nor did he try to talk to her. In the space of just a couple hours, she’d suffered the news of three heartbreaking losses. And all this on top of the recent death of the man she called Grandpa. All things considered, she was holding up quite well, but he wasn’t sure she could handle another death in the family.
As they approached the intersection around which the next small town had been gathered, Eric’s phone rang again. This time, it was Paul.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Hell if I know!” exclaimed Paul. “I’m completely turned around.”
“It was a little tricky after we left the interstate,” agreed Eric, recalling all the different country roads Jude had turned down.
“What interstate? We’re driving along just fine and then all of a sudden Fifty-Seven shrinks down to a two-lane road. I guess we got in the wrong lane or something.”
“Probably. Just backtrack.”
“We did, but we still can’t find the damn interstate!”
“Wow. That sucks.”
“I know it does. Whatever road I’m on now doesn’t even have shoulders.”
“That’s the way it goes, I guess. Call me when you figure out what you’re doing wrong.”
“Sure. Are you okay?”
“I’m a little chewed up, but I think I’ll survive.”
“So what’s going on down there? Is it like last time? And the time before?”
Paul was one of the few people who were aware of his strange journeys and all that they entailed. The first time, Eric had called him only to pick up his vehicle, which he’d left behind when he set off on foot to explore a bizarre fissure between this world and another. But Paul’s curiosity and concern for his younger brother had gotten the best of him and he’d attempted to follow. He’d
ended up trapped for several hours inside a sweltering cabin at a deserted nudist resort by a strange creature that vaguely resembled a baby rhinoceros. Then, less than a month ago, Karen sent Paul to help when he stumbled onto some crazy business involving invisible buildings and a boy who’d been missing for six years. Misfortune had smiled maliciously down on him again that day, however, and he was shot with a Taser, wrecked his truck and endured an embarrassing encounter with a manikin named Rose.
“I’m definitely seeing similarities.”
“Run into any monsters yet?”
“I wasn’t using a metaphor when I said I was feeling a little chewed up.”
“Oh. I see… Well, did you get a picture?”
“No. They didn’t stop to pose.”
“Right.”
Eric had a disc hidden in his office with cell phone pictures from his past two trips. They were proof that he hadn’t merely been suffering paranoid delusions, that he’d actually seen all the impossible things he encountered out there.
“Any of those agents involved?”
The nameless organization. “Not sure yet. Someone’s causing trouble. Whether it’s the same people or not, I don’t know, but this ‘magic man’ is clearly just as dangerous.”
“Well, we’re on our way. Assuming we ever find the damn interstate again…”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”
Eric disconnected the call and dropped the phone back into the cup holder.
He glanced over at Holly. There were tears on her cheeks again. Her pretty eyes were red and glistening in the passing headlights. He felt awful for her, but he had no idea what he could possibly say to make it any better, so he simply remained quiet.
They entered the town of Lundt a short while later. It was only marginally bigger than Dacksey, but considerably nicer to look at. There was a quaint, artsy look about the buildings here, with a few little touches of high-class, and there was an abundance of parks and open lawns.
Holly directed him down a brightly lit street past a small residential area and back out into the surrounding farmland where a long, secluded driveway led up to a large, colonial-style house.
A sign out front identified the place as the Wordsley House.
They parked in front and stepped out of the van. Although night had fully fallen by now, the temperature had dropped only slightly, and the air was thick with humidity.
A stout, middle-aged woman in very conservative dress answered the door and promptly looked them both up and down. She looked at Holly in her short skirt and watery eyes with a strange mix of pity and disappointment and at Eric with an unmistakable combination of contempt and distrust.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“We’d like to speak to Poppy, please,” said Eric. “Or…maybe it’s Penelope…”
“Underweir,” Holly reminded him.
“Right.”
The woman continued to measure them with her oddly judging eyes. (But mostly Eric, he saw.) “This house is a refuge for abused and frightened women. We look after them. We take responsibility for them. I’m going to need to know why you’re here.”
Eric stood there for a moment, unsure what to say. He tried to imagine telling this woman that a dangerous wizard was loose in the cornfields of Illinois and that they were here to take Poppy back to her coven so they could combine their witch powers and fight him off. Somehow, he didn’t think she’d find him amusing.
“Could you just tell her that Holly’s here, please?” asked Holly, smiling sweetly. “She’ll know who I am.”
The woman looked at her, her eyes twitching briefly and disapprovingly to that short skirt again, then she quickly turned her eyes back to Eric, as if she expected him to attack her while she was looking away.
“We can wait here,” he assured her, trying to sound like the kind of guy who was probably not a serial rapist, or whatever it was she seemed to think he might be.
Still, she lingered. Eric thought she was going to tell them to leave and force them to find another way to get Poppy out of there, but at last she said, “Fine, then,” and promptly closed the door between them.
Eric heard the lock click loudly into place and looked at Holly. “Nice lady. I think she likes me.”
She giggled a little in spite of her recent tears. It was a good sound. He was happy to hear it.
A full minute passed without a sound from inside.
Eric was just beginning to think that the woman had simply locked them out and walked away. But then the heavy lock snapped loudly back and the door opened again, much wider this time.
“Come in,” said the woman. “But please be quiet.”
“Of course,” agreed Eric. He was trying his best to be polite, but the woman stared at him as she pushed the door closed behind him, watching his every move.
Now they were standing in a roomy foyer with fancy light fixtures and expensive-looking rugs.
“End of the hall, on the right,” directed the woman.
But as they began moving toward the indicated doorway, a young woman emerged from the next room to greet them.
“Poppy!” exclaimed Holly in an excited whisper, and she hurried toward her.
“Holly!” returned Poppy.
Eric stopped as the two embraced. He hadn’t expected this. Poppy was older than Holly, but not by much. She appeared to be in her early twenties. She had short, dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses. Her lips and nails were painted purple and she had an assortment of piercings in each ear. She wore a black tee shirt and black, denim capris. Her style was borderline gothic, though not in that morbid way that kids sometimes dressed. She was more cute than creepy. But it wasn’t her fashion sense that surprised him.
It was the wheelchair.
It hadn’t occurred to him that any of these girls might not be able to walk. What if they had to make a fast exit, like back at the club? What if those imps attacked them again? He didn’t like the idea that simply yelling “run!” might not be an option.
Holly was bent over her friend, hugging her. “I missed you so much!”
“I missed you too.” Her eyes drifted past Holly to Eric. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”
Holly knelt down beside her. “Del needs us to come home,” she said softly. “We’re all in danger.”
Poppy looked concerned. “Is everything all right?”
Holly gave her a pitiful look. Tears sprang to her eyes at the thought of having to tell her what had happened.
“Let’s go to my room,” said Poppy, wheeling her chair around. Then, in a louder voice, she said, “It’s okay, Clara. They’re family. We just need a few minutes.”
Eric glanced back and found the woman who opened the door for them still standing there, brooding over them. He had to admire her commitment to protecting the women who came to this shelter for help. She was impressively intimidating.
He certainly had no desire to cross her.
Holly took hold of the chair’s handles and pushed Poppy through a spacious living area, toward the back of the house.
Eric saw a timid-looking little woman curled up in an oversized armchair in front of a large-screen television, looking back at him with frightened eyes. Even from here, he could see the bruises on her exposed arms.
The sight was heartbreaking.
He began to understand the distain with which he was greeted. If he spent long enough in this house, getting to know the women who lived here, he was sure that he, too, could learn to meet any man who appeared at the door with instant and seething distrust.
As they passed a wide stairway, a woman’s voice drifted down from above: “Is everything okay, Poppy?” It was a middle-aged blonde woman dressed in frumpy sweat pants and an oversized, long-sleeve hoodie in spite of the summer humidity. Eric thought that either her room was excessively cold or there was something about her body she wanted to hide. Bruises, perhaps? Or scars? Perhaps even needle marks.
“P
erfectly fine,” Poppy assured the woman. To Holly, she said, “That’s Stacy. She gets worried every time someone comes to the door.”
The woman lingered at the top of the stairs, half hidden around the corner of the wall. She looked as if she expected someone to rush her at any moment.
“A lot of Jehovah’s Witnesses around here?” asked Eric.
Poppy uttered a soft snort of a laugh. “Not exactly. It’s the same reason Clara probably gave you the evil eye when she opened the door. You never know when some asshole is going to show up and try to force his way in because he thinks he has some God-given right to talk to the woman he beat the shit out of just because she’s his wife.”
“Does that happen often?” asked Eric.
“Not since I’ve been here. Clara’s got a reputation that scares most of the bastards off. But I hear it does happen.”
Holly pushed Poppy down a back hallway, past an immaculately clean washroom and into a little bedroom. The room was mostly empty, with only a small bed and a writing desk with no chair. It looked like it had been emptied of any other furniture to accommodate the wheelchair.
Poppy backed her chair against the wall beside the bed and fixed her eyes on Eric. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“No. I’m Eric Fortrell.”
“Del found him with one of her spells,” explained Holly. “She says he’s going to help us beat him.”
Poppy eyed him up and down. She looked skeptical. Eric didn’t blame her. “So you’re our ‘chosen one,’ then?”
“He saved me,” said Holly.
This softened her expression a little. “So you’re some kind of super-powerful witch doctor or something?”
“Me? No, I’m…um…an English teacher…actually.”
“An English teacher?” She looked at Holly and cocked her head as if to say, “Really?”
In his defense, Holly said, “Del says he’s the one. You’ll see. And wait until you meet Isabelle. She lives in his phone.”
Poppy stared at her for a moment. Then, in that “I’m dealing with lunatics” kind of voice, she simply said, “Okay then.”
“It’s true!” Holly looked embarrassed. “I guess I made it sound kind of crazy, huh?”