I can’t tell you what she did with the rest of the time she was given.
Sometimes I wish I could.
I can only assume she grew old, like me, fell in love, as I did, and told her children the story of the wall at the end of the garden. Perhaps she too has grandchildren. Perhaps they too play at the end of the garden and try to climb the wall.
What’s that whistling Gran?”
I lick my finger and rub at the chocolate he’s managed to spread across his face.
“Shh, Dylan,” Emma says. “It’s just the wind.”
It is summer, and I am in a good mood. Everything hurts less in summer. Dylan nods his head furiously and races across the garden, kicking a ball as he goes.
“Can I get you a drink, Mum?” Emma stands and tucks in her chair. She is turning thirty-eight tomorrow and has come down to visit. I hear a note of concern in her voice recently when she speaks to me.
“Tea please.” I don’t want any tea, but she will feel better making some for me.
She kisses my forehead and goes inside.
“Gran!” Dylan shouts.
I sigh and turn, expecting him to kick a ball at me. He likes doing that.
Surprisingly, he doesn’t kick a ball at me. Instead, he looks at me with wide eyes. “Listen!” he says, beckoning me over to the wall.
Rising slowly, I walk to the wall, now verdant green, strewn with wild, fragrant blossoms. Coiling fingers of moss creep up from the bottom, and ivy twines over the old charred branches. Robins, wrens, and blackbirds weave in and out, darting up through the verdure to settle at the top and gaze down at the world. Some chirp and fly away when I near.
“What is it?”
“Knocking!”
He points at the wall and presses his ear against it. I join him.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
“Mum?” Emma shouts from the patio. She is holding two cups of tea. I know she has put too much sugar in mine.
I don’t answer.
Knock.
Knock.
I place my hand against the branches and a word comes to me from a place I haven’t been in years. I whisper it.
Dylan stumbles backward and is caught by his mother as the wall begins to rumble. A thin crack runs through the branches, arcing into the shape of a door.
I push open the door in the wall, the wood still trembling.
On the other side is a woman. Her skin hangs loose and is dappled with liver spots, her hair is thin and white and falls limp, plastered to the sweat on her forehead. She walks very slowly through the doorway, propping herself against a walking stick. Her body is thin and wasted. She looks like she is dying.
We don’t speak. She drops her walking stick and falls against me, hugging as tightly as she is able. I hug her back.
Dirt Road Magic
written by
Carrie Callahan
illustrated by
YINGYING JIANG
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Though a lifelong writer, Carrie Callahan has only recently found her voice with what she calls Dirt Spec—a style that mixes gritty realism with speculative elements. Dirt Spec comes from her experiences growing up sub working class and not seeing herself reflected in the shiny prose of high-gloss fiction. Writers of the Future is Carrie’s first professional sale, and only the beginning of her exploration of sci-fi through a dirty lens.
As a first-generation college student, Carrie also developed a passion for helping her peers hone their writing, carving space for students to practice and share their writing outside of the classroom. Since graduating, she’s continued to pursue this passion through her YouTube channel, About Write, where she attempts to democratize creative writing education and teach everyone that to be a writer, they don’t have to be perfect—just about right!
When she isn’t writing about imaginary worlds (or teaching others how to), Carrie can be found exploring the digital worlds of virtual reality in VRChat. She lives with her patient husband and adorable dog in the hills of bourbon country Kentucky. www.carriecallahan.com
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Yingying is a self-taught artist with an overactive imagination and propensity for daydreaming. Although she graduated with a science degree from the University of Oxford and spent her post-university years working in fields completely unrelated to art, her passion for drawing could not be stemmed and in 2016 she decided to take her interest more seriously, culminating in creating a website and holding a debut exhibition in Tokyo.
Having grown up living on books such as Harry Potter, her love of fantasy and magic often crops up in her drawings. As a Chinese-British national she is also interested in combining western and eastern influences.
Yingying works mostly with digital media and describes her natural style as semi-realistic. She finds endless inspiration in the beauty of nature and from art masters such as John William Waterhouse and Hayao Miyazaki.
Although Yingying has not quite let go of her day job, she continues to develop her art and storytelling skills and takes on freelance projects from private clients.
When not working, she enjoys developing her YA novel, playing the piano, and seeking out the best afternoon teas in the land. www.yingdraws.uk
Dirt Road Magic
Aluminum foil on the windows couldn’t keep out the summer heat. The air conditioning struggled to keep the trailer just under sweltering, and, overhead, a dim yellow light washed everything in a dingy glow. I sat on my bed in boxers, polyester blanket itchy on my back as I practiced the words Old Hurley had told me to say, trying to get the towel draped over my dresser to respond.
I said the words as quietly as I could to keep them from escaping the thin walls of my bedroom. The harsh, strange syllables blended together as I uttered them under my breath.
Nothing.
I tried again, this time wiggling my fingers desperately at the towel, willing it to move, to swish, to do anything. I said the words a little louder.
I climbed off my bed and stared intently, repeating the incantation again, but the fibers and folds hung inert. I hopped and struck a pose like a mage, shaking my room and sending a hollow thrum through the trailer floor. Clenching my fists, I commanded the damned thing to move with all my power!
“What the hell—” my mother asked.
I rushed to close the door, but she’d already stuck her French tips through the crack and pushed her way in.
“It’s nothing!” I struggled to explain, reaching for my shirt. “I’m just practicing some—uh. Some meditations. Old Hurley showed them to me.” As soon as the words were out, I realized my mistake.
“Hurley again? That man gives me the creeps,” she said, shivering dramatically. She wore a low-cut shirt and bright lipstick. “You’re too young to be hanging out with him. You’re not even in high school yet, Jake!”
“And you’re too old to be dressing like—” I thought, not realizing I was muttering out loud.
“What was that?” Mom asked, eyes widening with implied danger.
“I said I’m old enough,” I replied, louder. “I’ll be in high school next year.”
“Well, I don’t want you hanging out with some creeper in the backwoods. It’s weird. You should hang out with kids your own age, like Robbie.”
Robbie lived down the same dirt road behind the church as Old Hurley. We used to be best friends—in second grade. That was until he got into BB guns and tormenting small animals.
“Come on,” she continued, waving her hand at me. “Get dressed.”
“What? Why?” I asked, already reaching to grab my pants.
“Cause Rick is on his way over, and I want you to go to your friend’s house. Robbie’s house,” she clarified, crossing her arms.
“I don’t get why I can’t be
here when your boyfriend comes over,” I replied, raising my eyebrows.
She scowled. “Just go to Robbie’s house and come home later, OK?”
I tugged on my pants. I could go to Old Hurley’s house and practice. Maybe he could tell me what I was doing wrong. My mom followed me down the narrow hall to the living room.
“Listen, you take this for food.” She shoved a couple wadded up dollar bills into my hand. “And I don’t want to see you back here until after seven, got it? And tell Robbie’s mom I said Hi.”
“Fine,” I replied, shoving the money in my pocket. I would’ve felt guiltier for lying if she was more open minded about my friends.
She kissed me hard on the forehead. “Now you go and have fun. I’ll see you later!”
I wiped the lipstick off my face, grabbed my backpack, and opened the door.
“And stay away from that creepy pedophile!” she yelled before the door slammed shut.
The sun was bright and harsh as I worked my way past the other trailers, toward the church and the field that would take me to the dirt road. The endless buzz of cicadas hummed over everything.
Sweat dripped down my face as I plodded across the field, the sun burning my skin. I worried about blisters, but then there was always the aloe and Old Hurley’s incantations. Occasionally, a stirring of breeze interrupted the sticky heat and rippling humidity.
I walked along barbed-wire lines strung between rotting fence posts, and when I got to the road I stopped to pick the dried burs off my pants. I waved my hand over them like Old Hurley had shown me and muttered the strange words over and over. Nothing.
I sighed and plucked the spurs, their thorns making my fingertips itch.
“Crap,” I said when one of them pricked my finger.
I walked along the road, dust kicking up around my sneakers and painting them gray. In the deep bottoms of potholes, light glistened on mud left over from yesterday’s rain.
Old Hurley lived in a trailer like mine, but bigger: a double wide. It was back off the road a little, behind a copse of trees with low branches. I walked the ruts of his driveway into the blessed shade and ran my hands along the pine branches on my way to his place. On the porch, I knocked my hand against the rough, unpainted frame of the screen door. When no one responded, I knocked again.
“I’m coming, I’m coming, god dammit!” Hurley croaked as he came to see who it was. “Oh, Jake. Didn’t know it was gonna be you.”
“I told you I was coming today,” I replied.
“Yeah, yeah—sure,” he said and nodded, pushing open the screeching screen door to let me in. He glanced around outside, looking for someone I think, as I stepped past him.
All the windows were open, and the breeze felt cooler inside his house. The lights were off, and the sunlight that found its way in cast high-contrast shadows. Hurley stood against a chipped bookshelf, his eyes bright and sunk into his roughened face. The silver stubble on his chin was erratic, patchy. His knuckles were knobby and twisted with some kind of arthritis. He wore faded basketball shorts and an old, paint-splattered construction shirt. The smell of cooking pasta and stale cigarette smoke barely registered beneath the odor of his many cats.
“You want some mac and cheese?” he asked, stepping over a lazy, gray feline on his way to the back of the trailer.
“Sure,” I replied, following him into the linoleum-tiled kitchen, hopping over the pile of fur.
In the kitchen, Hurley walked to his sink with a pot full of water and pasta elbows. The steam drifted neatly out the window over the sink as he whispered something to it and wiggled the colander.
“Lemme just mix this all together—” He dumped the pasta into the pot and added some milk, then the powdered cheese. “Can’t forget the butter,” he said and dropped in a spoonful of margarine.
“That’s not butter,” I told him, shooing a calico off the table. “It’s margarine.”
“Who the hell cares?” Hurley said, not expecting an answer.
I shrugged as I brushed a clump of cat hair away and sat on a vinyl dining chair. He said something in his special language, and a spoon started stirring the pot in a jerky motion. I’d only seen the trick a few times by then, but I still tried not to seem too interested, sneaking glances over when I thought he wasn’t looking. I didn’t want Hurley to think I was rude or naive or anything, like a little kid who didn’t “get it.” Hurley was always telling me how I “got it.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I didn’t want to prove him wrong.
He caught my wandering eye as he lit a cigarette.
“Thing you gotta understand is that none of this shit—” He gestured around his kitchen and out the window to encompass everything. “None of it matters. What matters is what you think about it, in here.” He tapped on his forehead with his cigarette hand, dropping a little bit of ash. He cursed and shook his foot, then rubbed it against the back of his calf. “The sooner you learn that,” he continued in a strained voice, “the sooner you’ll master what I showed you.”
Hurley turned and said something guttural to the pot, which stopped stirring itself. The mac and cheese was dumped into two plastic bowls—the kind you get from cereal box tops or Goodwill—and placed in front of me.
“Did you practice what I showed you?” he asked as he put his cigarette out in the ashtray on the dining table.
“I tried, but—” I hesitated. “But my mom’s being weird about it. She walked in on me, and I tried to explain. She told me I couldn’t come over here anymore.”
Hurley paused mid bite. “We’ll see about that,” he said, and got up. He rummaged through his kitchen drawers, muttering to himself in English, cursing and slamming things around. “Where is it?” I heard. Then more incomprehensible mutters.
Eventually, Hurley pulled a thin chain from one of the drawers and wrangled an attached pendant from a lump of tangled jewelry.
“Here it is!” He said, and dropped it in a glittering pile next to me before sitting back down.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Give it to your mom. Tell her it’s from me, and she’ll stop bugging you about coming over to my place.”
The pendant was about the width of a penny—an irregular purple gemstone knocking around inside of a cube-shaped cage of gold. Even though the gemstone looked small enough to fall through the gaps, it didn’t. Somehow, it was always barely too big to escape. I could feel it radiating that little bit of heat I’d come to recognize as the presence of magic.
“Is this real gold?” I asked.
Hurley shrugged. “Could be.”
“How does it work?”
“How does any of this work? Just give it to her, OK?”
“It’s not gonna hurt her or anything?”
“Ha!” Hurley laughed around the food in his mouth. “Course not! Don’t worry about it. It’s safe as any other piece of jewelry. Promise.”
I shrugged and shoved it into the front pocket of my backpack, not sure if I was really gonna give it to her.
“Whatever you say, Boss,” I said, and Hurley smirked.
After we finished with the mac and cheese, Hurley took our bowls to the sink.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ve got some errands I need to run today—some special errands.” Special meant magic, though Hurley never used that word. He looked at me. “Do you want to come with?”
My heart leaped into my throat. It was the first time Hurley had invited me to see what he did, out in the wild. He’d told me he helped people with their problems, and I believed him. At that point he’d already helped me with a few of mine—the regular sunburns, my crappy grades, and getting the attention of this one girl in school. He told me I’d have the power to help people, too, with practice.
“Well, y-yeah, of course!” I stuttered, and Hurley smiled before turning back to the sink. He muttered something, and the dishes
clanked against one another as the water shifted on.
“Let’s go!”
I grabbed my backpack and followed him into the backyard. His truck was old and covered in dust. It smelled like it looked with an extra pinch of mildew as I hopped into the passenger seat. I pulled hard to close the door and it creaked before slamming suddenly shut. Hurley lit up another cigarette before he climbed into the driver’s seat, setting the whole cab teeter-tottering with the change in weight.
“Aren’t you gonna lock your door?” I asked.
“Nah. That door’s only opening for me and the cats. Your mom expect you home anytime soon?”
I shook my head. “Nope—not ’til around seven.”
“Great,” he replied and put the truck into gear.
The truck bumped over the potholes, bouncing me on the cab seat. Hurley didn’t believe in seatbelts. It was a relief when we pulled onto a real road, paved in even asphalt.
“Where are we going?” I asked eventually, bored of staring out the window at decrepit strip malls and scrub.
“Buddy of mine, Tad,” Hurley responded. He rested his hand out the window, letting the ashes of his cigarette blow off in the wind. “Just needs a little help is all.”
“Am I gonna help?” I asked.
“Not today. But you can watch.” He took a drag from the cigarette and fiddled with the radio, finding a rock station and blaring the volume.
We pulled off the back road onto a long, gravel driveway. The little rocks chinked against the undercarriage of the truck, and Spanish moss draped the tree branches overhead. The house we arrived at was small and shabby—hardly better than a trailer—with chipped and dirty white paint over rotting clapboard. The porch sagged and groaned under our feet as we waited for someone to answer the door.
“Come in!” came a distant, reedy cry.
Hurley opened the door and I followed him in. The house was cold, the AC blasting through rusted vents. The walls were close and dark with wood paneling; the carpet was worn down and stained. Other than that, the house looked clean. There was a Cowboys blanket pinned to one wall over a sagging couch, and a man lay there—Tad, I assumed—with one brown hand on his back, the other slack.
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 35 Page 36