by T L Barrett
“No, I’m telling you, Clint really wants us to come see something. He told me himself back up at the old center playground. He was really nice. He isn’t like he used to be, Andy.” Todd panted, still apparently winded from running directly from the center.
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Andy said.
“And Lydia Belle is going, too. She talked to me about it. She said it was cool.”
Andy’s heart beat a little faster at the sound of her name. Andy and Lydia had spent the previous summer teasing each other mercilessly at the Kiwanis public pool. He also knew that every time Clint had come around flexing his well-developed chest muscles, Lydia would desist in all horseplay and simply gawk in awe. Such had been his heartache.
“Lydia Belle is going?” Andy asked and rubbed his hairless chin. The thought of her going there to Clint’s glorified shed up in the woods made him feel queasy with jealousy.
“Are you going or not? 'Cause I am,” Todd said and turned to continue down the sidewalk toward the Heywood residence. Andy felt torn. His mother probably wouldn’t really approve of him going to visit Clint Heywood. He had heard her mention what a delinquent she thought he was. But, she wouldn’t be back from work at the restaurant that she managed until pretty late. His grandfather or an occasional baby sitter used to watch him. But, since his grandfather’s death six months ago, Gale Cooper had apparently decided that Andy was man of the house and old enough to be on his own the evenings she worked late.
Plus, he couldn’t just let Todd go there unaccompanied. What kind of a friend would he be?
“Wait up, Todd, I’m coming!” Andy called and hurried to catch up.
When they got to the Heywood house, they walked across the side lawn and could see the well beaten path leading up through the trees. An early summer breeze stirred the poplar leaves around the path opening into making a hissing sound. The hair on Andy’s arms stood up. He paused on the side lawn, feeling like an intruder, and watched his friend go to the opening. Todd peered up through his glasses at the relative gloom of the woods. He turned and motioned for Andy to follow. Unaccustomed to Todd taking the lead, Andy hustled to pass him on the path.
Clint and Lydia stood close to each other and talked outside the club house. When Andy and Todd came into view, panting up the hill, Clint stepped a bit away from Lydia and put a hand down to his side. Clint was wearing a Punisher T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off the side to show off the sinewy cords of his arm muscles. Lydia was already dark with the summer sun and wore a powder blue smock shirt. Andy noticed for the first time, just how much she had developed over the past year.
“Hey guys,” Clint said, uncharacteristically relaxed in his manner. “You made it just in time for the big show.” Sensing no ambush of older boys waiting in the bushes, Andy came forward. Todd followed cautiously behind.
“Hi, Andy!” Lydia said. Andy felt his face start to burn red. He gave her a shy wave.
“All right,” Clint said, and popped his big knuckles. “First you guys all have to swear an eternal oath never to reveal what it is you are about to see or hear.”
“I swear,” Todd said. Clint gave the smaller boy a narrow-eyed inspection.
“Cross your heart,” he said. Todd crossed his heart. “Now you,” he said to Andy. Andy, trying not to look at Lydia with his blushed face, swore and crossed himself.
“Now, you have to, Lydster.”
“Oh, Clinty!” she giggled and swayed her hips.
“I mean it!” Clint said. Lydia raised her slender hand and swore prettily.
Andy and Todd had never been inside Clint’s club house. Clint opened the door with a grand air of solemnity and had them enter. The interior was lit by a bunch of candles and light coming in from the dusty glass in the front of the shed. A strange and intricate sigil had been drawn in chalk on the floor of the club house.
“Be careful wear you walk,” Clint instructed. “There’s a place marked out for everybody to sit.” Andy saw that the center of the sigil was a kind of pentagram. At the points of the pentagram were five circles outlined. Todd, Andy and Lydia took their seats as Clint instructed them. Clint lifted a candle, walked the circle three times and then took a seat.
“Who’s going to sit there?” Todd asked and pointed to the empty circle at the top of the pentagram.
“You’re supposed to leave that one empty. It is in case somebody wants to come in during the ceremony.” Clint said.
“Ceremony? What is this?” Andy asked.
“Relax, Cooper, and I’ll tell you,” Clint said. “My uncle serves in a very special unit in the Armed Forces. He just got back a couple of weeks ago from an assignment. He was in Romania or somewhere. Last week he got really good and drunk and he told me about this place called the “Scholomance”. Apparently there were all kinds of weird people there that could do some crazy shit. I kept bugging him about it until he showed me some of it. He told me he’d bust my ass if I ran my mouth about it, but he was pretty shit-faced. I don’t think he even remembers telling me about it.
“The next day I got on the internet. Turns out there are all kinds of crap out there about it. Some of it I had to really look for, but I think I figured out how to do the real deal: magic, man! My uncle didn’t have it all right, like I said, he was pretty drunk, but he had a lot of it. So, you guys get to see the real thing. I picked you guys because I knew you would take it seriously.” Clint looked at the other three children with gravity. Andy never imagined Clint studying anything. This change of character was intriguing, the complement he had just paid them, all the more so.
“I need a volunteer,” Clint said. Everyone looked at each other. Emboldened by the invitation and the solemnity of Clint’s speech, Todd raised his hand.
“All right, you need to put your hand out,” Clint said. He leaned forward and took out a pocket knife and unfolded the blade. Todd pulled his hand back and held it protectively against his chest.
“Oh, Jesus, don’t chicken out on me now!” Clint said. “I only have to make a tiny cut. We just need a few drops of blood.” Looking white, Todd shook his head. Clint sighed and turned his eyes on Andy. Andy swallowed.
“I’ll do it, Clinty,” Lydia said.
“Well, you boys just got pussied out by a girl,” Clint said. Andy almost felt relief to hear the tone that the he was used to hearing in the school yard from Clint Heywood. The stuffy world inside the club house had gotten a little surreal feeling.
Lydia offered her hand up, and Clint took it gently and sliced the pad of her ring finger. She hissed and jerked backward, but Clint held her fast by the wrist. He pulled her forward and squeezed the finger like a tube of toothpaste. A few red drops of blood splashed down into the center of the circle. After three had fallen, he put one hand upon her head and began to chant something under his breath. Andy couldn’t make out what language in which Clint chanted. It might have been Latin, but Andy didn’t think so.
Lydia’s eyes rolled up into her head. Her mouth fell open. She made a strange sound in her throat. Clint let go of her and sat back.
“Can you hear me?” he asked Lydia.
“Yesssss!” she said in a strange voice. The hair on the back of Andy’s neck stood up.
“Will you answer any question I ask?” he asked.
“Yesssss!” she repeated.
“Which one of us three will live the longest?” he asked motioning to himself and the other two boys. Andy’s mouth fell open. There was something about the hissing voice that was coming from Lydia’s throat that made Andy know that whatever it was, it knew the answer to this question. He wanted to put his hands to his ears to stop from hearing it.
Lydia lifted her cut finger and moved her hand like the counter of a Ouija board across the circle of boys. Finally her finger came to a stop and pointed directly at Andy.
“What?” Clint said, almost getting up. “What the fuck do you know about anything anyway? You’re just a stupid girl. Let’s have some real fun, shall we? W
hy don’t you act like a chicken?” Lydia’s expression instantly changed. Her eyes bulged; she jumped up on two feet and bent forward, bobbing her head in a decidedly avian way. A stage hypnotist had come to town the winter before, and Andy’s mom had taken him. The hypnotist had convinced a young man that he had become a chicken. The results had been comical, but were nothing like the total immersion in the role that Lydia exhibited. It was as if Lydia was gone and a chicken had possessed her body. Clint giggled as Lydia the chicken scooted across the circle, fluffed her imaginary feathers, and began to peck the air near Todd’s head.
“Cut it out! Make her stop!” Todd whined, covering his head in fear.
“Stop it!" Clint said. Lydia stood upright and stopped. “Now, do a handstand.” Andy had often witnessed Lydia doing all kinds of cartwheels and such in their school years together. He had no idea if she could do a handstand or not.
Lydia could do a handstand. She stood on her hands, with hardly a tremor, her body almost ramrod straight and perpendicular to the floor. Her powder blue shirt fell down around her shoulders. Andy stared at the curves under her blue bra. He felt a stirring in his shorts.
“Now do that with only one hand to hold you up,” Clint instructed. Lydia lifted one hand off the ground, bent a bit in the air and held herself aloft with one hand. The muscles in her arm bulged. Sweat dripped off Lydia’s forehead into the inner circle. Andy could see Clint enjoying the view from his angle.
“Let her stop,” Andy commanded. Clint sighed.
“You can stop,” he said. Lydia gracefully lowered herself to the ground. “You can do what you want,” he said. Lydia turned, went to Clint and leaned over him. At first, Andy couldn’t see, then he realized that Lydia was trying to kiss Clint‘s neck.
“Stop that!” Clint said and gave her a good shove. She fell back on her back side. She started to cry and make a hissing noise deep in her throat.
“Wake up, already; I command you to wake the fuck up!” Clint said. Lydia’s eyes rolled back into place, her posture changed. She smiled and sighed.
“That was fun! What happened?” she asked. The smile looked surreal with her cheeks still wet with tears.
“You stood on one hand!” Todd said.
“I did? Oh my God, really? I have always wanted to do that.”
“And you acted like a crazy chicken, too,” Clint brayed in hilarity.
“I wonder if you can do it now in real… I mean, if you can still do it, now.” Andy said. Lydia considered this and placed her palm down on the floor.
“Ow, not today, my arm hurts wicked bad,” she said and rubbed the muscles on her strained arm. “And I feel really sleepy,” she said.
“Well, that’s probably enough for today,” Clint said. “But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can do all kinds of stuff with this! Tomorrow we will do something like you’ve never seen before.”
“I’ll be here!” Todd said with enthusiasm. It wasn’t until after Todd spoke, that Andy realized that there was no way he was going to miss it, as well.
***
The next day, a dead sparrow waited in the center of the circle.
“Did you find it just lying around?” Todd asked. “You are supposed to contact the authorities if you find a dead bird lying around.”
“I didn’t find it lying around,” Clint said.
“Did your cat kill it?” Lydia asked. Her hair was a loose corona around her head. Dark circles haunted her face.
“No, I shot it with a BB gun. Can we get started or what?” The other kids looked at Clint with wide eyes. “Todd, I know you’re ready today, my man. Am I right?” Todd scooted forward, held out his hand, the heel thrust outward. He turned his head and closed his eyes. Clint grabbed the hand and maneuvered it over the dead bird. Then he sliced Todd’s finger. Todd whimpered and tucked his head. Soon a few drops of blood fell upon the bird as Clint whispered words in an esoteric language.
The sparrow bounced. Then it bounced again. After a third jolt, it was on its feet. Andy could see the jagged wound just below the bird’s neck where Clint had killed it with a BB. The bird jerked its head and regarded them. It took a tentative hop toward Lydia and emitted a terrible hissing sound from its throat. The girl screamed and began back-peddling. The bird appeared to be full of life, all except the wound and the little eyes. The eyes of the bird were clouded still, like those on any bird or animal decomposing on the side of the road.
All of a sudden, the bird took flight. It flew straight into one of the windows. A wet smudge remained on the glass. The bird flopped on the floor for a few seconds, recovered itself and took off once more. It missed Andy’s head by mere inches as it flew about the club house and came back around to the window. It struck just inches above where it first had hit. It flopped about and tried to drag itself toward the children. Todd let out a comical scream in falsetto and tried to crawl behind Andy.
Clint got up and stomped on the bird with a work boot. Each time he did so, he would lift his foot and find the mutilated remains struggling to move and defend itself. Finally he pinned the body with a boot and sliced the head off the bird with his pocket knife.
“You brought that bird back from the dead!” Lydia said with awe. She no longer looked at the older boy with shy desire.
“Wait till you see what I do tomorrow!” he said.
Todd dragged himself all the way down the street home. He didn’t even say goodbye when Andy turned to go up the steps into his house.
***
On the third day, Andy had to offer up his finger to be cut by Clint’s knife. Afterward, he spun right out of himself and, grinning, turned upside down in a back somersault. Clint floated by grinning wickedly at him. Andy drifting through spangled leaf shadows, and then the leaves themselves, and then a burst of head-burning-blue filled his mind as he touched the sky.
When he came to, Clint was slapping his face and yelling at him to wake up.
“Jesus, I thought you were having a seizure or something!” Clint said.
“Did you see it? I was floating right up in the air!” Andy said sleepily.
“You didn’t float. You just laid there. Clint levitated!” Todd said. His eyes glowed with awe for the older boy.
***
Despite the throbbing from where Clint had cut his finger, Andy fell into a hard and early sleep that night.
He dreamed that he stood in the kitchen. His finger bled copiously, and he had literally covered the entire floor with his tacky blood.
“Look what a mess you‘re making!” his grandfather said. Andy turned around and found his grandfather standing by the kitchen sink and smoking the Winstons he had smoked until the minute of his death. Andy looked down sheepishly at his finger and tried to staunch the blood with a pinch. More blood coursed out of this finger and onto the floor.
“I’ll tell you something, mister!” Grandpa Cooper said in his thick Vermont accent. “You got to cut this crap, right now! You’ll bring all kinds of trouble down on your mother!” Andy pouted his lips out like a little kid. He had always hated to trouble his grandpa, for he loved him so. He doubly hated to now that Grandpa was dead, and all.
“See there,” Grandpa said, pointing out the kitchen window past the backyard. “There’s a wicked storm brewing, little man.” Andy looked past Grandpa’s old bent finger, at the dark clouds hovering above.
Grandpa Cooper was gone. This made sense to Andy: Grandpa Cooper was dead. Andy looked out the window and saw that the horizon had changed under the awful purple light of the storm. The houses all the way down Spring Street looked blasted by time, rot and evil. An insidious presence like smoke seemed to slink down the empty cracked street. From the broken windows of the old Victorians, awful shriveled faces looked out at him from their dusty prisons. Andy shifted his eyes away from their gaze…
…and into the gaze of the being standing in Andy’s back yard. This thing was horned and polished like glass. Its beauty hurt the eye like a thousand trumpets blaring away und
er twin suns that shone through the awful morning storm; their only purpose in rising to sear away the boy’s soul to ashes. And the suns were his eyes. Andy could not look away from them.
He could babble and yell for seven years or a thousand, but he would never look away from those eyes again.
***
Gale Cooper came home from work through the storm. She hoped Andy was not too frightened by the thunder and lightning crashing all around the valley of Bearfield. Gale sometimes forgot just how young the boy was still. He really was too young to leave alone this many nights in a row. He was a good boy, she trusted him, but he was too young for such responsibility. She drove, perhaps too fast for the lashing rain, motivated by a feeling of urgency.
She came into the house to find it dark. She called his name, but her voice was swallowed by the thunder. She turned on the kitchen light and found the milk and a box of cereal left out on the counter. A bowl of cereal looked like it might have had three spoonfuls eaten from it. She checked the meal she had left for him and told him to microwave for dinner. It remained in its dish in the refrigerator. She called again, and there was no answer.