by Wither
“Solitude,” he said, “I like to run several miles a day without a lot of distractions. Helps me focus. Coach doesn’t mind if I practice at Marshall on my own time.”
“Well, that’s a long walk,” she said. “Why dorit I drive you over?”
“Don’t you have a class or something?”
“Free period,” she said. “I was going to spend it in the library with my psych text, but I can spare a few minutes. Just give me half a minute to clear some space for you.” She opened the passenger door and quickly shoveled the clutter from the front passenger seat and floor onto the clutter already piled in back. Checked quickly for spilled soda, grease, old gum. All clear. “Have a seat,” she said.
Alex was quiet on the drive over to Marshall Field, which was really at the ass end of the campus. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Alex looking at her legs. She smiled briefly, then turned a little red when she realized he’d been checking out the moon and stars tattoo above her right ankle. Her legs were in good shape from all the excer-cycling she did, but they were pale, even for a New Englander. Alex hardly seemed to notice. After a few moments, the silence weighed too heavily upon her. “So what’s the real reason for the sunglasses?” she asked. “Anything to do with that scar over your eye?”
“What if I told you I was in the witness protection program story?”
“Sorry, Charlie.”
“It’s much more interesting. Really.”
“I demand the truth, Mr. Dunkirk.”
“Ice skate,” he said.
“Skating?”
“Ice hockey, actually,” he said. “As a Minnesotan, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I really suck at hockey.” She laughed good-naturedly. “I went down, spun out of control, and got an ice skate lodged right about there.” He poked his scar.
“Ouch!”
“Blood on the ice, that day,” he said. “I can see fine, but ever since, I’m really sensitive to bright light, even fluorescent lighting. Sadly, the glasses are much more than a shallow affectation. This is where I get off.” She pulled up the gravel driveway to the fence around Marshall Field-It was an unmaintained track surrounding Danfield’s old football field, used mainly for scrimmages now. The bleachers had fallen into a severe state of disrepair—condemned, actually—and the field was now generally deserted.
Wendy got out of the car and walked with him to the gate. “Thanks for the lift,” he said.
“No problem…,” she said, wondering why she was lingering around. “Guess I better get going.”
“Right,” he said, “the library.”
She nodded. Still standing there. Say something, stupid! Wendy thought, then realized she wasn’t sure if that thought was directed to Alex or to herself. “You know, you’re gonna need a ride back.”
“Dorit worry about it,” he said. “That’ll be my cool down.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “It’s quiet here… actually, it’s quieter than the library, I’ll just sit and read my psych book. I have no fear of condemned bleachers.”
“Okay,” he said, “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
As Alex made his first lap around the track, Wendy settled in and heard a slight creak beneath her. Maybe a healthy fear of condemned bleachers was called for, after all. The rusting steel framework was the last obstacle preventing the long wooden bench seats from becoming several tons of mulch.
Alex rounded the far turn of the track, streaking by the visiting team bleachers. In a few moments, he would come around the near turn, and she didn’t want him to catch her staring at him like a lovesick little fool. Maybe offering to stick around had been a little over the top. She could have offered instead to stop by after the library. Alex passed in front of her, and she waved but was suddenly struck by a sharp pain surging down her fingers to her fingernails. They ached, as if someone were squeezing them with pliers. She examined them and saw the lavender crescent at the base of each fingernail had darkened and spread. Now the entire surface of each nail was tinted a deep shade of purple, reminiscent of winter days so cold her hands ached and her rings slid easily around her fingers like tiny bracelets.
Alex was heading for the far turn. Wendy stared down at her purple fingernails. “He’ll think I’m weird,” she whispered, “God, why am I so weird.” She stared down at her purple fingernails.
And what the hell is happening to me?
By the time Art staggered out of the woods carrying the little girl, his back was screaming at him in four different languages. He dropped her without ceremony on the gravel shoulder of Old Winthrop Road (but she didn’t seem to notice) and leaned against his parked Volkswagen bug, leaning forward with hands on his knees and waiting for the searing pain to subside.
When he’d recovered, he managed to wrestle the sleeping child into the passenger seat without doing himself any further injury. He’d been drinking a Big Gulp on the drive here, and now he soaked an old T-shirt from the backseat with the remaining ice chips for a cold compress. She recoiled at the touch of the damp cloth, her lip curling back from her teeth in a soundless snarl.
Hospital or police? He didn’t know the protocol for lost children, though the high fever was tipping the scales toward hospital. Weren’t fevers particularly dangerous in children? (He vaguely recalled a medical acronym, FIB—Fever in Baby.) He started the Volkswagen and peeled out from the roadside with a spray of gravel.
As he navigated the winding road back into town he kept glancing over at the little girl. He hadn’t managed to get the seat belt on her, and now he wished he’d taken the extra time to secure her. Thanks to the jostling ride, her fingers had slipped free of her mouth, and now her lips worked feebly, recalling a newborn’s sucking reflex. Art leaned over to lift her dangling hand back up to her mouth, noting now that her middle fingers were elongated, calloused, dark beneath the nails. Christ, what’s wrong with this kid? Art thought, then saw he’d allowed the Volkswagen to wander into the oncoming traffic lane. He swerved back into his lane. The violent motion shifted the little girl against the door, and she groaned.
“It’s okay, honey,” Art said, hoping she could hear him. Hoping he sounded more convincing than he felt. “I won’t do that again.”
She responded with a low growl. His blood ran cold. He glanced over—
And saw her eyes. The lids were open now, though the eyes were rolled so far back in their sockets he saw only pupil-less whites. And then she sat bolt upright.
Art swerved, reacting as she flew at him. He tried to pull away, but she came at him across the brief space separating them, shrieking like a feral thing. He tried to throw up his hands in defense against her snapping teeth, and the Volkswagen went out of control. He felt them hurtle into a spin…. Felt a sudden stabbing pain as her diseased fingers found his right eye…. Saw the sickly crescents of her own eyes, a yellow-white beneath fluttering lids as…
Wham! The Volkswagen glanced off something on the roadside, and they were weightless for one suspended instant before the impact— and the little girl was jerked away from him as if by a cable. With his one remaining eye Art had this time-slowed image of her sailing backward through a curtain of glass.
He lost consciousness almost instantly, and so he didn’t hear the broken sounds of the next few minutes: the hiss of the ruined engine’s radiator, the tinkle of bits of metal falling free of the wreck, the whimpers of the frightened little girl somewhere out of view. Only the approaching sirens managed to penetrate the deep receding blackness into which he plunged, like a stone dropped down a well, and by the time they arrived even they weren’t loud enough to find him where he’d gone.
She dreams she’s flying. Not like a bird, tethered to earth, beating its wings to stay aloft on the currents. No, she is different. Weightless. Drawn to a different gravity—the gray and. silent moon, looming above like a watchful parent. She swoops above the patchwork landscape, taunting the earth. Below sprawls her hunting grounds, fields. A farmhouse. A town. Huts of wattle and daub, homes o
f timber. Each golden with window light. They hide indoors tonight, her prey. She tastes their hearth smoke on the wind.
A giddy rush of vertiginous flight, and the town rushes up to meet her. Gliding past she sees the town hail, church spire, homes huddled like children. She swoops above the rooftops…
… and descends effortlessly to the grassy commons, where livestock stand in stupid clusters. Gliding silently down among them now she sees the cows roll the whites of their eyes. Sheep scatter, bleating in fear.
Suddenly, she realizes she is not alone on the common. She sees a man. Staggering, a drunk, coming across the common. He stops at the sight of her. His clothing is wrong, ragged and crude. His eyes go wide and she smells his piss as it soaks his pant (eg. He retreats a step, turning to run, and she comes shrieking at him—
Pointing at her accusingly, he screams, “Witch!”
Wendy woke with a start, banging her head against the bathtub soap shelf. Lavender flowers clung to her body wherever it emerged from the water.
All the images of the recurring nightmares were as familiar to her as her own backyard, but each time she awoke the fear was fresh and the details dissipated like smoke rings, eluding her grasp. It would be comforting to chalk up the colonial dreams to her comp lit course’s study of Gables, but the dreams had come before she’d started reading the book. Of course, the parallel was hardly helping matters. And she certainly wasn’t looking forward to The Scarlet Letter. Obviously she was identifying with the people of colonial times. Sometimes it seemed they were being persecuted; other times preyed upon. But was she observer or participant? Wendy was feeling more like an outsider than she ever had in high school. Could it all be just anxiety dreams? It didn’t matter really. She had decided to go through with the ceremony.
Her knees rose from the bathwater like the coils of some sleek sea serpent. The Loch Knees Monster, she thought. She flipped the drain switch with her toe, stood and used the showerhead to rinse clinging lavender petals from her body. The cleansing power of the flowers and her meditation in the bath were both designed to prepare her for her ritual that night. Sleep hadn’t been part of the plan but was clear evidence she was now centered, relaxed.
She walked to her bedroom wrapped in a towel, hoping she hadn’t slept too long. That morning she’d decided her out-of-body exercise bike tour would take a turn west to New Orleans, her next colorful stop, rather than continuing down to Key West and back up the Florida peninsula.
Second thoughts began to trouble her, but she pushed them back. It’s not as if she were going to be sitting in the middle of the quad. She would be utterly discreet, completely secluded. Nothing to worry about.
She dressed in a cotton blouse and baggy slacks. From the cedar chest at the foot of her bed she removed a white linen robe belted with a soft rope and a smaller wooden chest she would take with her to the forest glade.
She crept quietly down the stairs, praying they wouldn’t squeak. It was seven-thirty, and she could hear the television, her parents talking softly All clear. She carried the chest and robe down to the basement.
Regrettably, she shared the basement with her father. His end looked like the set of a cable-access show: a paneled room with a missing fourth wall. His mounted game trophies—bucks with massive antlers and glass eyes—hung from two walls. Against the back wall was a desk with a leather chair. Two hunting rifles and a twelve-gauge shotgun rested on wall racks. She called his side of the basement The Hunting Horror.
Between her father’s room and Wendy’s end of the basement was the old wooden frame pyramid Wendy’s father had built for her two years ago, after a lot of coaxing. Shed finally convinced him the pyramid would help her geometry grade. Back then she could often be found meditating on a folding chair within the confines of the pyramid, absorbing its ancient mystical energies. Or so she had hoped.
Wendy’s side of the basement was separated from The Hunting Horror by a linen curtain … and a state of mind. When she pulled the curtain along its ceiling track, the basement became her herb cellar.
On tiered wooden shelves mounted above an old desk, her herbs, seeds, flowers, and stones were separated and labeled, each variety in a separate airtight jar. For simplicity and portability, the herbs and flowers were labeled in linen bags in their jars, the stones protected in muslin pouches. She selected bags of sage leaves and chamomile flowers, ground monkshood rootstock and leaves, then a small sachet of anise flowers. Next, she took a flat gray moonstone, rose quartz, and a jagged tektite stone. On a last-minute whim, she grabbed her red jasper.
From the center desk drawer, she took several sheets of parchment and a charcoal stick. Finally, from the bottom shelf, she removed a full mandrake rootstock, her prize possession. The root of mandragora resembled a human figure and had been considered magical since primitive times. Anyone found to possess the root during the Middle Ages had been summarily accused of witchcraft.
Wendy placed each of these items, along with a mortar and pestle, in a large duffel bag she kept beside the desk. She gathered up her robe and wooden chest and went back up the steps, pausing to listen for anyone in the kitchen. Satisfied, she snatched her car keys from a hook on the wall and slipped quietly out the back door. She circled around to the front of the mansion, hoping the sprinkler system wouldn’t pick that moment to douse her. She hurried down the horseshoe driveway, slipped into the Gremlin, placing her bundle of items on the seat beside her. Remarkably, the car started on the first try.
The sky had darkened already, but the night air was dry and not too cool. She had worried that it might be too cold at night to follow through with her plans. But so far, so good.
As she pulled out of her driveway and cut over to College Avenue, she saw the first of the roving packs of Friday night revelers. Six girls working the Gap’s fall fashion line. Standard-issue accessories—the hoop earrings, the chunky black shoes, the boyfriend’s baseball cap.
On College Avenue the pedestrian traffic was heaviest: whiskered Phish in tie-dye and dreadlocks, Birkenstocked Liliths with their goateed lampreys. There went a trio of predatory lacrossers, all teeth and testosterone, cruising these waters for sorority frye. And there went whole schools of identical frosh, carried along on the whims of the tide.
She turned onto Gable Road, its blacktop beginning to crumble around the edges. She passed the Windale Motel and Restaurant and glanced at her odometer. The clearing—her clearing—was less than two miles ahead. She had centered herself, she was ready to perform the ritual, the ceremony. She smiled, then, bit down on her lower lip at the sudden thrill that filled her, an exquisite anticipation of the unknown.
Jack Carter made a habit of driving over the speed limit. Speed limits were designed for people with normal reflexes. As a well-conditioned athlete, he should be able to operate a motor vehicle at higher speeds than your average, slack-jawed Joe Beer-belly could. And frankly, the quicker he got through depressing little Windale, the better. Oh, yeah, freshman orientation had been a real hoot. The town was so fucking proud of itself and its “heritage of witchcraft.” They slapped a stinking historical monument plaque on every other building. Must be the odd numbered ones got the special treatment. None of that mattered at the moment, of course. He’d finally asked Jensen Hoyt out instead of Cyndy Sellers. He’d better not tell Jen he’d made the final decision with the flip of a coin. It had been a literal toss-up between the two. They both acted like they’d enjoy some quality time with him, but neither seemed incline to share. Cyndy had the better rack, but Jen was slender, with a nice little ass. And he really liked Jen’s generous smile. Jen’s smile seemed legit. Whenever Cyndy smiled, he had the uneasy feeling she was smirking…at him, maybe?
Jen was an art history major and always carried that damn sketch pad with her. Even tonight, she’d tossed it on the backseat. Hed left the top off of his roll-bar Jeep, because he liked the rush of air as it whipped around the windshield. After the next major pothole, he expected the sketchpad to fly out the ba
ck. Whatever. Maybe sometime he’d pose for her, if she wanted.
He looked over at her and could tell she was just as excited by the rush of air whipping back her long, straight black hair. She was wearing a white, sleeveless sweater with a plunging neckline to show off what little merchandise she had up top and a short, peach-colored skirt that was blowing back up her thighs, if she hadn’t kept her hand pressed to the material, the What color are your panties? question would be answered in short order. Maybe she went au naturel down there. Jack smiled at the thought.
Jen noticed Jack’s smile and responded with one of her own high-wattage, come-hither looks. “Where are we eating?” she asked.
“Best place in this weak little burg,” Jack said. “Moody Inn. Got a bud works there won’t give my fake ID a second look.”
When they arrived at the Moody Inn and Tavern (established 1660, according to the obligatory plaque), Jack parked the Jeep himself. He never let the valet dipshits touch his wheels. Thanks, but no thanks, Bro. Jen waited for him to open her door—well la-dee-da—so he walked around and held it open for her, getting an eyeful of her legs as she stepped down, one hand on his shoulder for balance. She was about four inches shorter than his six two. Tall for a girl, but a good fit. He hated slow dancing with short girls. Their asses were completely out of reach unless he hunched over like a fucking troll.
Jen finger-combed her long hair back behind her ears, then patted down her skirt before they went through the iron-bound oak doors. Just as long as she didn’t feel the need to reapply the minimal amount of makeup she wore, Jack was cool.
Jack ignored the maître d“ and signaled for his frat brother, Rich, as if he were hailing a cab. After Rich had a brief, whispered exchange with the maître d‘, Jack and Jen were seated at one of Rich’s tables. The maître d” left two menus on the table with a curt nod. After he left, Rich stepped forward and said, “Man’s got a major stick up his ass. Can I get you something to drink?”