by Mark Tufo
“Shit. She must like you. I wrecked the thing and now she’s letting you drive it,” Peter said.
“Can’t underestimate charm,” said Matt, winking. “Okay, where’s Glenn?”
They all looked at Allyson.
She closed her eyes, concentrating. “He’s not in the building any longer. Neither is Vickar.”
She turned her head slowly toward the thick copse of trees to the southeast of the building. Then she pointed.
“They’re there, on a trail.”
Emma snapped her fingers, then pointed. “I’ve been to a graduation at the high school over there, about three quarters of a mile away. There’s a dirt trail that runs through those trees, and they’re pretty thick. It leads from the football field all the way to this parking lot. During graduations and big football games they use this as overflow parking. You can either wait forever for the shuttle to drive you back or walk, so lots of people choose to walk this trail back.”
“But on normal days it’s deserted?” Allyson asked.
“I guess it would be,” said Emma. “Kids around here get dropped off by their parents or they’re driving BMWs.”
“We need to hurry,” Allyson said.
“Peter, take this, Isabel said. “You must be the one to use it. It will take a strong, steady hand, and I feel you possess this ability.” She passed the bag with the hemlock stake to Peter, who slung the rope drawstring over his shoulder and nodded.
They began walking to the tree line. Isabel walked behind them, and when Peter turned to wait for her, she waved him on.
“Go. I’ll be there, I promise. But hurry, and trust that I’ll follow.”
Peter nodded and joined the others. Isabel’s figure became smaller and smaller behind them.
They entered the dirt trail and were immediately shaded by huge Liquid Ambers and Oaks, their branches filtering the sunlight. Shadows abounded.
“Should we try to communicate non-verbally?” Emma said.
Yes, for now, Peter answered.
I think we should stay on the trail, Matt said. Everywhere else there are leaves. The crunching might give us away.
Okay, but keep your eyes peeled ahead. I don’t want him seeing us before we see them, Peter said.
Allyson closed her eyes again for a long moment, then opened them. They’re around this bend, Peter. No more than a hundred yards ahead.
Peter turned around and looked for Isabel. She had done everything to teach them who they were, and why they were here, on this Earth. For her not to be here made him nervous; as though he couldn’t find the strength and power to do what was necessary without her presence.
He knew he could not go back to find her.
As they came around the bend, staying as far to the inside of the turn in the trail as possible, they heard voices.
They stopped.
Peter slid the stake from inside the bag, discarding the sack. He loosened his belt and slid the stick through it. He wanted both hands free and easy access to the weapon.
*****
“Glenn, why did you wish to take a walk? Not that I’m opposed to it, mind you. I’ve always been one to take in nature.”
Glenn shrugged as he walked alongside Vickar, watching the trail ahead. “I have some apprehension about the election. I needed to walk to clear my head, and didn’t want to think of something I needed to ask you then forget it again.”
“Well, did you think of anything?”
“I did, but it’s not a question.”
“Oh,” said Murdock Vickar, stopping on the trail and turning to Glenn. “What then?”
Glenn pulled out the 9mm Glock and pointed it directly at Vickar’s face.
“I know who you are,” he said. “And I know what you’ve done to me.”
To Glenn’s surprise, Vickar laughed out loud. The laugh echoed through the tall trees, causing several birds to take flight, as though the evil within the sound was palpable. He threw his head back and laughed again.
“Go ahead and shoot me,” Vickar said, smiling. “But tell me how you discovered . . . or better yet, tell me what you think you know.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything, Murdock Vickar.”
Vickar’s face fell still. His smile disappeared.
“I said tell me what you know, how you learned my true name.”
It was Glenn’s turn to smile now. “You can’t control me anymore. Your controlling spell was purged, and I’m shielded from you now.”
“Father,” the voice came from off the trail. “He speaks the truth.”
Isabel.
Glenn didn’t want to look away from Vickar, but the warlock himself was searching the woods for the source of the voice. “Show yourself! Who are you!”
Isabel stepped out onto the dirt trail, as though from thin air.
“Why, I am your daughter, Father. I am the daughter borne of the rape committed against one of the original four. And as you know, you later killed my mother.”
“Ah, my little Isabel. You look quite good for your age.”
Isabel looked at Glenn. “Put the gun away, Glenn. It can do no good here.”
“Yes, it can!” he shouted, thrusting the gun once more into Vickar’s face. Vickar turned to stare into the barrel.
“I need to be the one to kill him! He ruined my life!”
And he pulled the trigger.
As the explosion rang through the forest, Vickar threw his hands toward the sky. As the distant group of witches and Isabel looked on, everything changed. Vickar stood where Glenn once was, and in his hand was the gun.
The bullet slammed into Glenn’s chest, a spray of crimson blood accompanying the blast. Glenn’s body flew backward like a rag doll and he dropped hard onto the compacted dirt path.
“Glenn!” Emma shouted.
*****
Emma ran to where Glenn lay, and ignoring Vickar, she pressed her hands against the wound, the blood pumping through her fingers. She looked momentarily up at Vickar, and he met her eyes.
“Ah, Margaret. It’s good to see you again.”
Anger boiled up inside Emma, and she threw her hand up. The gun that Vickar held flew from his fingertips and disintegrated into a cloud of dust. Vickar laughed, a booming, horrid sound, and said one word:
“Liquefy.”
The ground beneath Emma and Glenn began to churn. Vickar moved his hand in circles, not even looking at them, and as he did so, the ground for an eight foot radius beneath them turned to mush, then mud, then to liquid earth. Emma struggled, trying to keep a hand over Glenn’s wound while digging in her pocket.
Peter knew what she was trying to get.
I’m losing the syringe, Peter! I’m going to lose it!
And as Emma and Glenn began sinking into the pit of swirling earth, Vickar laughed yet again.
Matt screamed and balled his fists down at his sides. Veins bulged in his forehead and at his temples. The forest suddenly came alive, branches growing rapidly, the moss hanging from them multiplying exponentially. The vines along the ground crawled lightning fast toward Emma and the badly bleeding Glenn.
Emma was almost out of view, sinking fast into the swirling earth. The syringe teetered on her fingertips and fell from her grasp as a vine curled around her wrist and tightened, dragging her out of the cavernous sinkhole.
“Matt, save Glenn!” shouted Emma. “I dropped the syringe!”
Matt had already noticed the syringe and sent a small vine darting down to retrieve it.
“I can’t get to Glenn!” Matt said, anger in his voice.
And then Murdock Vickar’s hands fell still.
The ground sealed, flat and hard again. Emma lay beside Peter, breathing hard, staring at Vickar. Her foot was partially sealed in the earth, and she yanked at it, pulling it free.
“Galen, why have you done nothing? Why do you watch as your weaker friends try to protect you? You’ve never been strong enough. I’ve killed you all so many times, it’s become second nature to
me.”
Peter threw both hands to the ground.
With his motion, Vickar’s arms fell straight to their sides.
Peter crossed his arms around his own chest and held them firmly, and Vickar gasped for breath. But still be smiled, looking into Peter’s eyes.
His face grew red, then purple.
“The . . . power . . . in . . . me is greater!” shouted Vickar, breaking Peter’s constrictive magic, his arms once again moving free. Peter’s arms flung open wide from the sorcerer’s more practiced, more powerful magic. His muscles burned from the forced movement.
“Glenn!” shouted Peter at the unmoving ground.
Then Peter threw his hands down toward the ground where Glenn lay buried, his fingers splayed wide. Orange-red flames and sparks flew from his fingertips, penetrating the earth. The ground immediately exploded skyward, an eruption of earth filling the air before them.
And when the dust, dirt and grass settled back to the ground, Glenn lay on the edge of the cavernous hole in the Earth’s crust, his chest rising and falling weakly, blood and dirt staining his shirt.
Vickar stood safely away from it by ten feet. Peter had done it only to uncover his entombed brother.
Allyson’s voice filled the momentary silence. “I see a future without you, Murdock Vickar. I see us with children, happy, playing. They are many years in the future. You are no longer of this earth, yet we are.”
“Katherine, you foolish girl, it shall never happen!” Vickar shouted, and suddenly the forest burst into flames.
The wind exploded out of nowhere, and the forest was ablaze. Matt, Allyson and Emma covered their heads with their arms, but Vickar stood still, the flames licking around him.
Peter looked to Isabel for guidance. She stood staring at Vickar, and then she was gone.
Disappeared. Before his eyes, she had vanished. The flames licked all around them and Peter felt a surge of power within him. Raising his fists to the sky, then splaying his fingers wide, he threw them toward the ground. A torrent of rain burst from the sky above, instantly dousing the flames, drenching all of them.
Sensing Vickar was off his guard, Peter withdrew the stake from his belt and rushed toward the warlock, taking full strides.
Vickar’s eyes went wide.
“Stop!” Screamed Allyson Her next words were not spoken, but thought. He must be disabled with Emma’s drug!
Peter stopped, anger on his face, the hemlock stake clutched by a death grip in his hand. He was physically shaking with anger.
Matt had heard Allyson as well, and quickly came up with a plan. When I say the word, everyone drop to the ground! Where is Isabel?
Vickar took their inaction as fear.
“I shall kill you all as I did in 1728, and 1766, and 1808, and 1857, and each time after, for it is your destiny to die by my hand!”
They all moved backward and away from Vickar, their eyes moving back and forth between the sorcerer and Matt.
“Now!” Matt shouted.
As everyone dropped flat to the ground, every plant in a quarter mile radius extended and slithered lightning-fast toward Vickar, spinning around his legs, lacing and intertwining between and around them, beneath his arms, around his shoulders, neck, and head.
Before he could react, he was cocooned in leaves and twisting wood, and it wrapped tighter and tighter around him, like a thousand boa constrictors.
Through the leaves and sticks, Vickar shouted, in a booming voice, “This is like kindergarten! Your magic is unsophisticated and childish, which is why you shall never defeat me!”
And as the four witches watched, Isabel materialized, holding the syringe, standing inches from where Vickar stood immobilized by the living things of the forest.
Her hand flashed up jabbed the syringe into his neck.
She pressed the plunger of the syringe in hard and let go. The syringe jutted out from between two twirling vines.
His evil eyes rolled back, then down, blank.
“Release him, Matthew,” she said.
The vines and branches receded as quickly as they had come up. Isabel stood in front of him, looking directly into his eyes, which remained opened, dilated.
“Father, I know you see me. I know you can hear me. I also realize you are finding it impossible to organize a thought, to put together an incantation, or to even think of my name, much less a spell that will bring you back yet again.”
She turned. “Peter. Bring the stake. You must be the one.”
Peter didn’t hesitate. He moved forward, gripping the stake, and as he raised his arm, Isabel held up her hand.
“He can still comprehend what I say, Peter. And I have more to say. She turned back to her father.
“While the part of your brain that you need the most is frozen, like a mosquito frozen in amber, I must tell you this before Peter, or, if you prefer, Galen, kills you for the last time. My oh, so dark father, I have hated you since the day I knew what you were, and I have since helped these four discover their destiny. You raped my mother and gave me life, but if I could purge the dark blood that runs inside my veins I would do so in an instant. So you will die by these witches’ hands today, as you should have in 1694.”
She stood aside. “Peter.”
Peter raised the stake, grasped Vickar by the shoulder, and slammed it deep into his chest. Even as the warlock’s body began to shift and change, Peter withdrew it and pulled back again.
And he plunged it into the creature’s brain, twisting it. Black blood flowed from both veins, and his face began to age. The evil sorcerer that had looked a mere fifty-five years old moments ago now looked eighty, then ninety, then ancient beyond comprehension.
And a moment later he was a skeleton, standing there, Peter’s hand still on the shoulder of bones.
Peter stepped back suddenly, and the bony framework collapsed into a heap of dust and ash.
Murdock Vickar was no more.
*****
Two weeks later, Allyson and Peter were once more sitting in the car and on their way to Isabel’s home. She had told them there was one more thing she wished to share, and of course they had agreed. She had saved all of their lives, and ensured not only a full life for all of them, but eternal rest when ultimately, their lives were over.
They arrived to find her on the porch, smiling at them.
“Hello, my friends. It’s so good to see you,” she said as they got out of the car.
Peter walked to her and she stood, her arms open. He hugged her tightly and she returned the hug. Allyson followed suit. They hugged for a long time. Allyson had begun to feel the bonds of the sister she had never had in this life, though clearly the slow-aging witch was old enough to be her mother.
“I’ve one more surprise for you both. I think you’ll enjoy this.”
“What is it?” asked Allyson.
“We’re going to meet someone,” she replied.
“And where is this someone?” Peter asked.
“Not far. Peter, you drive.”
Peter led the way and they got inside Allyson’s Audi.
“Head toward PCH,” said Isabel.
The old woman directed them south on Coast Highway, and to a shopping center on the left near the Pottery Shack. Peter parked the car and they got out.
Smiling and humming to herself, Isabel got out of the car and led the way. Allyson and Peter glanced at one another, shrugged at the same time, and smiled, following close behind.
Isabel turned into one of the many shops, this one on the second floor of a wood frame building between an ice cream shop and a souvenir shop.
It was called Chakra By Chantelle.
They walked in and a tiny bell rang on the door. Inside was the smell of herbs, spices, and incense, and from the ceiling hung every variety and color of crystal, reflecting the sunlight beaming in through the lightly dust-covered windows.
A woman stood from a simple wooden chair behind the counter and smiled. She looked to be in her forties, and wo
re a peasant dress and brightly colored necklaces, her long brown hair partially braided and pulled behind her head. She was quite lovely, and had a beaming smile.
Allyson’s heart skipped a beat.
“Ellen?” she said.
The woman looked confused. “Ellen was my mother, I’m afraid. I’m Chantelle Jameson, her daughter.”
Allyson looked at Isabel, whose smile was bigger than ever.
“And was your father named Christopher?” Peter asked.
The woman’s eyebrows went up and she smiled widely, looking at Isabel.
“And who are these wonderful guests you’ve brought to see me today? They seem to know so much about my parents.”
“I’ve told them stories of them,” Isabel said.
“But you’re too young!” Allyson said. “Your mother must have had you . . . I don’t understand.”
“I get that a lot,” she said. “But I’m almost fifty-five years old.”
She looked to Peter no more than forty. Her hazel eyes caught the reflections of the sparkling crystals dangling from the ceiling, a permanent smile in them, in the tiny crinkles around the edges. And then it hit him. If she were the daughter of Chris and Ellen, she was also one of them, whether she realized it or not.
A witch.
Allyson hesitated, then said, “Would you mind if I hug you? I’m sorry, but I feel a connection, and-”
“There is no reason to apologize, Allyson.”
“I haven’t even told you my name!” Allyson said.
Peter smiled and shook his head.
“You look like an Allyson,” the woman said, and came around the counter. She opened her arms and drew Allyson into them. She held her tightly. When she let go, she said:
“You, too, Peter. Don’t be shy.”
Peter hugged her as well.
They returned to the car after buying some odd crystals and some incense, and talking with Chantelle about her business and her life. Her parents had died when she was in her twenties. Her father had died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a freak accident, and her mother was reported to have died under mysterious circumstances a month later.