“Like... you?” Lucas asked as they continued to follow their helper.
“Yes. I’m a Dreamweaver too. I’ve been here... well, I don’t know how long for certain. I went somewhere I shouldn’t have.”
“When?”
“Eighteen-ninety-five. What year is it now in the real world?”
“I don’t think you want to know.”
Other Lost Souls emerged from the camouflage of the old, gray trees. Desperately reaching out.
Suddenly, a woman stood within a foot of them, crying out in pain, her hand about to touch Lucas’s shoulder. The monkey jumped down, screeching and throwing her off balance.
Lucas and Amy ran ahead, taking advantage of its diversion. His diversion. He’d been human once.
Amy shot Lucas a fearful look, probably thinking the same thing: That could be us!
More Lost Souls converged on them, like roaches coming out in the dark. Lucas grabbed a half-broken branch and batted them back. When it flew out of his hand, knocking a—God, just a child—backward onto the ground, he conjured his sword again.
The monkey was suddenly above them, limberly jumping from branch to branch. “This way,” he said, gesturing with a long, hairy arm toward the right. “The Beyond is not far from here.”
“What’s your name?” Lucas asked, nearly out of breath.
“Silas Moorehaven.”
“Thank you, Silas. You saved us back there.”
A hundred yards ahead, he could see the edge of the gray trees and light. At least lighter than in here.
Soon they burst into an open field of wheat-like grass. On the other side, a craggy mountain rose, and at the top, the castle with the mysterious door.
The Lost Souls raced toward them but seemed to hit the same kind of invisible shield they’d encountered before. Silas, too, remained just inside the forest, sitting on a branch and pointing ahead. “You’ll go up that mountain. Watch out for the goats; they’ll try to kick you off.”
“Oh, great,” Lucas muttered.
Silas lifted a palm that was cut and scarred. “Be safe. Return to the world. And let my family know... no, it’s better that they think me dead and in heaven.”
“Is there any way we can help you?” Amy asked.
“No. I did terrible things whilst Dreamweaving, and this is my penance. Perhaps I can gain absolution by helping you. Go on, find your child.”
With regret, Lucas turned, along with Amy, and continued running toward the towering mountain. He had done terrible things too. But he had killed bad people, at least.
They ran through the waist-high grass, watching for terrible creatures hiding within. Things moved closer, making the grass sway against the wind, reminding him of sharks weaving through water. They reached the base of the mountain and jumped up to the first ledge, then climbed higher. He turned to look over the sea of grass. A dozen creatures the size of basketballs carved paths through the grass, some only a yard from the edge of the field. They looked like piranhas, flat with large eyes and serrated teeth.
“God,” Amy said on heaving breaths.
Lucas looked across at the dark wood and beyond. “I think God is absent from this place.”
They climbed up the jagged mountainside. In the distance, mountain goats whinnied and hopped easily across the rocks toward them.
“Damned things probably have fangs,” he muttered, grabbing onto the next outcropping.
“And hooves that shoot poison,” Amy added, keeping pace beside him.
The goats grew closer, fiery orange eyes narrowing on them. Lucas glanced down at the long, jagged fall they would suffer if knocked off. He eyed the distance between them and the herd, probably ten of them, and the castle at the top. “We might make it.”
“We will,” she said. “Look!”
Sayre, with Smudge in some sort of backpack, scrambled over the top ledge. He glanced down at them, a smirk on his face. Then he kicked a loose rock, sending it crashing down at them.
Lucas ducked, but it hit his hand, smashing bones, cutting skin. Pain rocketed through him like an electrical shock. He hung by one hand, unable to move the fingers of his other.
“Lucas!” Amy wailed.
“Keep going,” he gritted out, putting more weight on his feet. The pain isn’t real, isn’t—shit, it feels real.
Sayre knocked another rock down. It bounded closer, rock by rock, falling right between them as they leaned away. Then he was gone.
Heading for the doorway.
Amy slipped a few feet. “I’m fine,” she called. “Keep going, as much as you can.”
That was barely, but he wasn’t about to say it. He grunted and breathed out in pain, coming up to the edge. Sayre stood at the door, patting the completely flat surface, searching for the way in.
Smudge looked back, giving him a fearful look. What had Sayre told him about the two crazed people chasing them? He just hoped the little guy didn’t alert Sayre to his awkward attempt to climb over the edge.
Amy hauled herself over, then held out her hand to help him. They fell in a heap, alerting Sayre to their presence now.
Now he looked fearful. They were about to ruin his plan. They lurched forward, Amy with her arms out to scoop up their son.
The door slowly opened.
She was only feet away, calling, “Baby boy, don’t go! Come here to your mama!”
The boy reached out to her, the fear gone. Amy’s fingers brushed his. Sayre knocked her back and dove into the blackness beyond the door.
“No!” Amy cried, lunging for them. The door materialized again, and she slapped and pounded on it.
Lucas stilled her hands. “We can’t go. We don’t belong here.”
“Neither does Smudge!” Tears streamed down her face. “We were so close!”
Lucas gathered her in his arms. “Let’s go home.”
They woke, with Eric and Fonda watching over them. “Man, you guys were writhing all over the place,” he said.
“It was bad.” Lucas sat up and checked his mangled hand: unharmed.
“Horrible,” Amy said. “And we just missed saving him.” She dissolved into tears.
“Try the pregnancy test again,” Lucas suggested. “Just in case it was all an illusion.”
“The tests weren’t.” But she pulled herself from the bed and went into the bathroom. When she emerged a few minutes later, her face was pale, her mouth open. She held up the stick: two lines.
*
Amy let the nurse rub her belly with the gel that allowed the ultrasound wand to glide over the small mound of her stomach. She squeezed Lucas’s hand and held her breath. Would Smudge be alive? Eight more tests had come up positive. But she wanted to know that he was all right.
“There’s the heartbeat,” the tech said, pointing to the screen. Amy didn’t even look, so relieved that she let her head drop back to the pillow.
“Wait,” the woman said. “That’s strange.”
No. No strange! Was there now some horrid creature inside her? But she and Lucas pressed closer, studying the mystery of the screen. “What?” they asked simultaneously.
The tech smiled. “You have twins. Interesting that we didn’t see it before, though it happens. Congratulations double!”
She looked at Lucas, and could see that he was thinking the same thing. “Sayre,” they uttered.
“Oh, don’t be scared,” the tech said, wiping off the gel. “You’ll do just fine.”
When she left, Amy remained on the table, her hand on her belly. “One of them is Sayre,” she said. “And we won’t know which one.”
“The door to the Beyond must be the way back here. It’s the only explanation.”
“What do we do?”
Lucas put his hand over hers. “We raise them the best we can. And we face the ultimate test of nurture or nature.”
23
ace of wands
tori eldridge
Upright: Creation, Invention, Enterprise, Principle, Beginning, Source, Birth
, Family, Origin, Money, Fortune, Inheritance
Reversed: Fall, Decadence, Ruin, Perdition, To perish, Clouded joy
Bali, Indonesia 1965
Gunshots cracked the night and woke Wayan from a dead sleep.
His mother shouted from somewhere in the compound, “Where is your father?” The panic in her voice rose with each word. “Where is he?”
Wayan bolted out of his bed and jumped off the sleeping pavilion. His bare feet landed hard on the gravel path. Pebbles crunched. Shouts rumbled from the street. The night sky glowed with an unnatural light. Beyond the stone wall of his family’s compound, another gun fired.
Although only eleven, Wayan reacted with the speed of a man. He sprinted to the front gate, dodging the free-standing partition that blocked the way and prevented bad spirits from entering his family’s home. What did it matter that spirits could not turn corners? Evil men could.
“Father!”
Wayan ran through the towering entrance gate. It resembled a temple, but what good were stone pillars and a pagoda roof if they could not even protect one man from a killing squad?
His mother tried to chase after him, but his little siblings pulled at her dress. “Wayan, wait!”
He did not listen. Instead, he ran into the dirt road where men in para-military uniforms shot their rifles into the air and laughed. But these were not military men. They were something so much worse. Neighbors and friends. Men and boys. Maniacal in their anger and fear. A handful of them stood in the street, surrounded by jeeps and illuminated by headlights, kicking and jeering at someone lying in the dirt.
His father.
Another gun fired, and a man with a camo jacket and cap strode into the center of the road and shoved the jeering men aside. “Get back, you roof rats. No more fun. Time for the Communist to die.” Camo Man pointed at one of the tough boys. “You. Give me your machete.” Then, armed with both gun and blade, Camo Man confronted the one man who was not threatening or harming Wayan’s father.
His uncle.
“You want your brother’s body?” Camo Man said to Wayan’s uncle. “Then kill him yourself.” Wayan’s uncle backed away from the machete. Camo Man shrugged. “Fine. But if I do it, I will dump him in a pit with the rest of the PKI commie trash.” Wayan’s uncle dropped his head and clenched his fists against his thighs. His head shook and he muttered something Wayan could not hear. Camo Man jabbed him with the tip of his rifle. “What did you say? Speak up.”
“I will do it,” said Wayan’s uncle, and held out his hand. “Give me the gun.”
Camo Man laughed and passed him the machete, instead.
Wayan shouted, “No!” But his mother clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Hush,” she said. “There is nothing you can do.”
Wayan felt his brother’s fingers clutch at his leg. Felt his sister’s arms wrap around his waist. Felt his mother’s hand press against his mouth.
He could not move. He could not scream. All he could do was watch the machete cleave his father’s throat.
Bali, Indonesia 1970
Wayan woke with a start and disturbed his brother who grunted with annoyance, rolled on his side, and fell back to sleep. Five years had passed since that terrible night, and his brother was the same age now that Wayan had been then. Their sister was two years older than that. Even so, the three of them—sixteen, thirteen, and eleven—shared a bed with their mother. No more sleeping pavilions. No more compound. No free-standing partition inside a grand entrance gate to confound the spirits. All they had was this one-room hut and each other.
Wayan’s sister whimpered, as if caught in a nightmare of her own. Had his visions infected her dreams? He hoped not.
“Hush, Made,” Wayan said, drawing out both syllables of her name to lull her back to sleep. “You have nowhere to go.”
None of them did. The school had kicked them out. Teachers refused to teach them. Parents shunned them. Friends stayed away. No one wanted to catch the Communist taint. It wasn’t fair: His father would get reborn into a new life while his eldest son was stuck with the one he had ruined.
Wayan swung his legs off the side of the bed and was hit by a wave of pain. His head throbbed and his neck prickled as if stabbed by a thousand needles. Sweat formed on his chest and back that had nothing to do with the morning’s sticky heat. He had never experienced a headache this bad or this sudden. His nostrils stung as though inhaling the stench of his father’s cremation. Too many memories. Too much pain.
He had to get out.
He felt his way to the door and nudged it open. Sunlight stung his eyes. He covered them with his arm and staggered until he fell, face down, onto the road.
*
Wayan breathed in the soothing scent of damp earth, rich with dung and life.
“Get up,” a man said. “You cannot lie here.”
A foot pushed into Wayan’s ribs and rolled him onto his back. Rocks dug into his exposed skin. This was not the soft, damp soil he had expected. This was hard, dry asphalt, and with only a pair of cotton shorts to protect his skin, he felt every bit of its sharpness and heat. Sunlight stung his eyes, and he held up a hand to block it.
“You get pain in your head?” the man asked.
Wayan grunted. Now he knew who was speaking to him. It was Pak Nyoman, the healer.
“I tell you what to do last month, already,” Pak Nyoman said. “Why you not do it?”
Wayan started to laugh and ask how he was supposed to atone for all his father’s ill-deeds in one month, but stopped when he felt the sound throb against his temples. Besides, Pak Nyoman would not want to hear his excuses. He had diagnosed Wayan’s headaches four weeks ago, when they had begun, and proclaimed them a result of bad karma. Of course, those headaches did not begin to approach the torture of today’s.
“Never mind,” Pak Nyoman said. “Get up. You cannot stay here.”
As the healer helped Wayan to his feet, neighbor women in lacy shirts and bright colored skirts covered their mouths in shock, nearly toppling the grocery baskets they balanced on their heads. A couple of farmers huffed at the sight. But no one did anything to stop Pak Nyoman. They knew he was more than a healer. He was balian, a shaman with enough supernatural power to ward off Communist contamination. He commanded their respect and their fear.
“You must walk as a man,” Pak Nyoman said. “I will not spoil you, like a dog on my hip.”
As Pak Nyoman spoke, Wayan looked from the balian’s plastic thong slippers to the gold and brown skirt, to the white cotton shirt, to the patches of graying whiskers, which arched and fell like a cat’s fur, to the orange patterned scarf that circled a head of spiky gray hair—and felt dizzy. Motion and pain had blurred the colors into an orange-brown-gray mess. But as Wayan trod dutifully behind Pak Nyoman, the dizziness stopped, and the pain receded. By the time they had turned the corner, he could see exactly where they were headed. He just found it hard to believe.
Pak Nyoman’s family compound could not compare to his uncle’s—where Wayan used to live—but it dwarfed the hut he now shared with his mother, sister, and brother. The compound had a low stone wall, aged into pleasing gradations of tan and gray, offset by hints of orange, and clusters of pale green lichen. The entrance gate stood tall but humble, with two dark wooden doors left open to show the partition wall that would confound the spirits.
“Hurry up,” Pak Nyoman said, waving his hand. “I do not want everyone to see my business.”
Wayan nodded with understanding: It was one thing for the balian to invite him inside, it was another to let anyone see him do it.
Like all family compounds, this one had numerous pavilions, most of them with only one or two walls. The only exception was the patriarch’s sleeping pavilion at the kaja side of the compound, the side nearest to sacred Mount Agung. His pavilion had four walls, a door that locked, and a large front porch with heavy teak benches. As the eldest son, Wayan’s father used to sleep in such a pavilion. Now Wayan’s uncle did. And Wayan
never would.
“Come on,” Pak Nyoman said, leading Wayan away from the main pavilions, where guests were usually received, and toward the less auspicious side of the compound that held an enclosed kitchen, a small rice barn on stilts, a bath house with the standard bucket-shower and squat toilet, and a small storage pavilion.
Wayan bowed his head in acceptance. He could expect no more than this, especially while the patriarch’s wife glared at him from the kitchen window. No doubt, she would tell her husband who his younger brother had brought into their home. And equally without doubt, her husband would not approve.
“Come and sit,” Pak Nyoman said, gesturing to the wooden floor in front of a stack of large plastic containers. He placed a cushion on the floor for himself. “The pain is gone?”
“Already,” Wayan agreed.
“But it will return. Geledag-geledug,” he said, imitating the sound of a beating drum. “You must take care of this or it will return twice as bad.”
“Me? You are the healer.” Wayan shut his mouth before he could say more. “Forgive me, Pak Nyoman. Please tell me what I should do.”
The old man nodded his approval at Wayan’s change in attitude. “I am not just a healer, I am balian,” he said. “I have learned the ways of the tangible and the occult—and I tell you, there is work for you to do.”
“Because my father’s karma rubbed off on me? I know. But how can I make up for all his wrongdoings in one lifetime? I can barely get through the day.”
“Hush. You squawk like a becica bird in the rain. I am not talking about karma. A leyak has worked his magic on you.”
Wayan gasped. A leyak was a wielder of powerful magic, a walker between worlds, an intimate with the forces of evil. The same name was also used for black magic and horrible demons with disembodied heads and entrails dangling from the torn ruins of their throats. How had Wayan attracted the attention of such an evil being?
“What would a leyak want with me? I am nobody.” His voice cracked like a boy, but he couldn’t help it. A leyak’s spirit could inhabit animals and do terrible things in the night while their bodies appeared to sleep in their beds.
Never Fear - The Tarot: Do You Really Want To Know? Page 44