8 Gone is the Witch

by Dana E. Donovan

  “Look for Snitch tree,” Jerome answered. “Kumoru always grow by Snitch, but Snitch not always grow by kumoru.”

  “Great. So what’s a Snitch tree look like?”

  Jerome reached up and gave Carlos a pat on the arm. “Friend no worry.” He pointed to himself with his tail. “I let for you to know.”

  I could see Carlos was uncomfortable with that. I was just about to make light of it with a joke, when something crawled out of the dark, into our campsite. It propelled itself forward like a spider, only it was much larger, say like a cat, a really big cat. It scurried in short spurts and stopped quickly with one multi-jointed leg frozen in mid-step.

  Ursula screamed, which startled it. It jaunted sideways and then held still again, its bloated, cuticle body seemingly tethered to the ground by eight segmented stick legs like some grotesque parade float.

  Its tiny arrow-shaped head turned and looked at us. On the end where its nose might be, a split-horned appendage snapped open and closed like a lobster claw. I realized then, that was the sound we all heard in the woods, the sound of twigs snapping. Only it wasn’t twigs. It was this steroid-pumped arthropod. Worse still, he brought company. Lots of company.

  Chapter Ten

  “Jumpin` Jehovah!” Carlos cried. “What is that?”

  We all slowly backed away. Through the corner of my eye, I saw Jerome scurry over to a large rock that lay at the perimeter of the clearing. He scrambled up onto it and screeched.

  “Treklapod! Very dangerous! Veeery dangerous!”

  “Spread out,” I said. “Give me room.”

  I whipped up a zip ball and launched it at the porky little invertebrate. Instead of blowing the fucker to smithereens, however, the super-charged sphere of energy merely struck the creature’s back and ricocheted off into the woods.

  “What the hell,” said Tony. “It’s armored!”

  “It’s his exoskeleton. It must be negatively charged to resist a zip ball’s impact.”

  Carlos pulled his gun and drew a bead on it. “Yeah, let’s see him bounce this.”

  “Wait!” said Tony. “How many bullets do you have left?”

  “Not sure. I know it’s my last clip. I emptied the first on those bastard zombies that stole our clothes.”

  “Then save your ammo.” Tony pulled his bayonet and lowered it at the creature. “I’ll hold it off. You guys head on out. I’ll catch up.”

  Carlos holstered his gun and unsheathed his bolo. “I got a better idea. You head out. I’ll catch up.”

  “Guys?” I said.

  Tony inched closer to the thing. “Carlos, I’m not going to tell you again.”

  “GUYS?”

  Carlos sidestepped the giant bug. “We’ll do it together.”

  “GUYS!”

  The two looked at me. I pointed out beyond the tree line where a thousand beady eyes glowed like red hot embers. “You may want to take a look at this.”

  Carlos squinted into the darkness. “What the….”

  “I think it’s his family.”

  “Fuck. What the hell do we do now?”

  “New plan,” said Tony.

  “Is it a good one?”

  “It’s a simple one.”

  “I like simple. Let’s hear it.”

  “RUN!”

  The five of us turned tail and ran as fast as we could. Jerome, only because he was fastest, led the way. Ursula, who suddenly was not so dead on her feet, fell in behind him. Carlos and I followed a close third and fourth, while Tony pulled up the rear.

  With every step, we heard the menacing tromp of hundreds, maybe thousands of the bony-plated fuckers scurrying behind us, snapping their horns, chinking their armor; and of course their legs, their hairy, segmented, needle-tipped legs pattering the ground like heavy rain.

  I looked back at Tony. He had stopped to spear one of the bastards with his bayonet. He’d turn and run, stop again when another nipped at his heels and then shish-kebab that one, too. I slowed down to help him, but he waved me on, told me to keep moving. I did, though it didn’t matter. We didn’t have far to run. We all piled into one another after dead-ending on a small ledge jetting out over a slow-moving river.

  “Hell, not again!” Carlos yelled. “Another damn river? What is it with this place?”

  Jerome said, “Is way out. Treklapod no swim. You jump now.”

  Carlos looked over the edge. “Are you crazy?” “It’s a four-story drop. I’m not––”

  I pushed him over the edge before he could back away. I looked at Ursula. “You ready, hon?”

  She didn’t hesitate. She held her nose and stepped out into thin air. I watched her hit the water feet first. Seconds later, she bobbed to the surface, floated on her back and let the current sweep her downstream.

  Tony took my hand. “Your turn.”

  The words barely left his lips, when the horde of hungry treklapods broke from the tree line and blitzed the jetty.

  “You mean our turn.” I grabbed Jerome, and the three of us leapt off the edge holding hands, running in air the entire way down. Before hitting the water, I remember counting no less than six of the furry faced fuckers spilling over the ledge behind us. I only hoped Jerome was right about them not being able to swim.

  The water was cold and deep, and though it moved faster than I judged from up on the ledge, it posed no significant danger of undertow. If anything, it came as a welcomed relief. We were all so thirsty and dehydrated; we would likely have jumped in even if mutant killer treklapods weren’t chasing us.

  My only concern was if someone drank so much while swimming that cramps and spasms might cause him to drown. Of course, I thought about Carlos.

  “Oh, Cramp! Cramp!” he cried. “Stiff legs. Can’t move. Can’t move my legs!”

  Jerome was with Tony and me, employing a unique style of swimming resembling a mix of dog paddle and frog kicking. “I save you!” he shouted.

  He took a deep breath and disappeared under water, surfacing moments later beside Carlos. He then did something I would never have imagined. He came up behind Carlos, grabbed him under the arms and inflated his body like a blowfish, puffing up to three times his normal size.

  “Hey!” Carlos yelled. “What’s going on?”

  “You keep still,” Jerome ordered. He rolled onto his back and raised Carlos from the water. “I float. You ride.”

  “How... how are you doing that?”

  I heard Jerome say something about air cells, but they were too far ahead of us by then to make it out.

  Tony was still treading water. He called to me. When I looked at him, he spread his arms out, kicked his feet up and began to back float downstream. I understood that he wanted me to do the same, so I did.

  I suppose we floated like that for five or ten minutes, or so it seemed. It could have been one or one hundred. I couldn’t say for sure, as my brain began experiencing bouts of static skips. I felt as though my recollection of the immediate consisted only of broken memories, as though segments were cut out and the rest spliced together. Fearing it was a prelude to passing out, I figured we’d better find dry land quickly.

  “I’m not feeling right,” I said to Tony, who was staring up into the starless sky, unblinking. “Tony?” I could see him breathing and kicking slowly, his toes barely breaking water. “Tony, can you hear me?” When he didn’t answer, I plowed a wave of water over his face.

  “Tony!”

  “Lilith! What the hell?”

  “Something’s not right. We should get to shore.”

  He treaded upright and took in our surroundings. Trees and rocks lined the banks, but nothing so formidable we couldn’t make landfall.

  “Yeah, okay, but we should...”

  I waited for him to finish his thought, but when I saw that strange look wash over his face, I realized he probably had.

  “We should what, Tony?”

  “Are we moving faster?”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re moving faster. Th
e current’s picked up.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means...” He looked ahead for the others. They had put a considerable distance between us in a very short time. “Means we’re heading for a––” Before he could finish, the three of them vanished from the horizon.

  “Waterfall?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He pointed to shore. “Swim!”

  We both leveled out and began swimming for our lives. By then, the water’s flow had graduated from swift to unbelievably quick. For every foot we traveled towards the shore, the water pulled us back another two. It wasn’t long before we both realized we weren’t going to make it.

  “Don’t fight it!” Tony yelled. “Save your strength for after!”

  “After what?”

  “After we go over.”

  He rocked his head back and splayed his arms. I did the same. We held hands and let the water take us. Up ahead, the rush of water grew louder. We found ourselves needing to kick our feet just to maintain a forward position. I didn’t know if the fall would kill us, and of course neither did Tony, but we wanted to see it coming just the same.

  I felt Tony squeeze my hand as we neared the event horizon. There, the river boiled in a froth of angry whitewater, thrashing and spraying against a line of jagged rocks protruding like shark fins in staggered formation.

  He shouted something to me, but I couldn’t hear his words above the roar.

  “WHAT?”

  “I LOVE YOU!” he hollered.

  “I LOVE YOU TOO!” I screamed back, wishing then I had told him that more often.

  Looking back, it’s funny how I don’t remember the actual plunge over the falls. I guess my brain experienced another static skip in the old memory bank. What I do recall is my head popping out in the torrent of a hydrokinetic minefield. I remember gasping for breath, reaching for Tony’s hand again and finding it. His robe had mushroomed around him, making him look like a soggy Mister Potato Head.

  “Tony!” I wrapped my arms around his neck to kiss him and accidentally dunked him under. I felt him struggle against the weight of his robe to pry my arms off. I let go. He came up coughing and choking, bitching that I nearly killed him.

  “Lilith! What the hell?”

  “The hell,” I said, “is that I’m happy to see you. Pardon me if we’re both alive.”

  “Tony! Lilith!”

  It was Carlos, standing on the shore with Ursula and Jerome, flagging us in.

  We swam through the swirling mist towards their voices and crawled up onto the sand like primordial life forms oozing from the sea. Carlos came to me and helped me up. He then went to Tony, who was already on his knees and halfway to his feet.

  “I got it,” he said, waving Carlos off.

  We hugged and laughed, and gave each other high-fives for making it over the falls alive. When I turned to see just how high the drop was, I nearly shit. I walked to the river’s edge and toed the line where the sand and water met. I rocked my head back all the way and gazed up at the falls.

  “Where is it?” I said, blinking up into the darkness. As far as I could see, it was just a ribbon of water falling from an ink black sky. “Where’s the top of the fall?” I turned to Carlos. “I can’t see where we went over.”

  “It’s up there somewhere.”

  “But... how high up is up?”

  “I’m embarrassed to say, I don’t know. I think I passed out. I don’t remember the fall at all.”

  “Nor I,” said Ursula, joining us at the shore line. “Methinks I too hath slipped a moment into the unknown.”

  I looked to Tony. “Do you remember anything?”

  He shook his head. “I remember slipping past the rocks at the edge of the fall, but then nothing until you nearly drowned me back there.”

  “Jerome?” I walked up to the half-pint piñata and nudged him on the shoulder. “Do you know what’s going on here?”

  He pointed up at the falls. “Is short cut. Like wormhole.”

  “A wormhole? To where?”

  “Other universe. You home now.”

  “Wait,” said Carlos. “What’s he talking about? Are we back in our own universe?”

  “No.” I waved my hand to dismiss that notion entirely. “We’re not home. Look behind you. Have you ever seen a waterfall from space back home?”

  “I don’t get it then.”

  “We’re still in the dark universe. We’re just on the other side of it now. Jerome, why did you say we’re home?”

  He pointed at himself. “My home. You stay.”

  “No!” said Tony. “We don’t stay. We go. You hear? We are going to find our friend. We’re going to rescue her, and then we’re going to get the hell out of this God forsaken nightmare. Do you understand?”

  “Okay we go.”

  Carlos said, “That was easy.”

  “Wait.” I looked around at the relative fortress that our natural terrain offered. “Check it out.” I hiked my thumb up over my shoulder. “First of all, we got the river behind us.” I swept my hand over the rocky cliffs towering several hundred feet high in a horseshoe shape around us. “These walls offer good protection from animals, treklapods or whatever other mutant creatures this place has to throw at us.” I then pointed at a narrow pass carved out in the base of the rock running parallel to the river. “And see there? That’s a defendable strait if ever I saw one.”

  “What’s your point?” asked Tony.

  “My point is that we’re all tired and hungry. We need to stop and get some sleep, and this place is as good as any. I mean look. The sand is soft; it’s comfortable. We have natural defenses.” I gestured along the base of the cliffs to the row of washed up driftwood. “There’s plenty of fuel to keep a fire burning.”

  “She’s right,” said Carlos. “We could all use a rest. We’ve been through a lot.”

  I could see Tony wavering. “I don’t know...”

  “I could sleep,” said Ursula, who until then had shown little in the way of complaining. “If thou wert to rest, I would welcome thee thy kindness.”

  “Okay, fine. We’ll rest. Sleep if you can, but when I say it’s time to move out, we––”

  “We move out,” I said. “Got it.” I turned to Carlos. “You want to collect some firewood?”

  “Sure, I’ll help you.”

  I laughed. “Pah...lease. I meant you and Tony.”

  “We’ll do it,” said Tony. “Carlos and I will get the firewood. You three just stay put. I don’t want anyone wandering off. Once we’re all settled––”

  “Eat!” Jerome cried.

  “What?”

  He pointed out at the water, “Eat,” and started toward the river.

  “Jerome! Where are you going?”

  He called back. “You stay. Jerome get food.”

  “What food?”

  “Is surprise. You see.”

  Sure, we’ll see, I thought, because we needed another surprise like we needed a hole in the head. I told Tony and Carlos to ignore him and to just go and get the firewood. In the meantime, Ursula and I moved up the beach a ways to a cluster of small boulders in the sand that appeared prearranged in a circle fit for a campfire.

  “What do you make of this?” I asked her. “You think someone put these here?”

  She shrugged with indifference. “`Tis not Stonehenge.”

  I took that to mean she could hardly care less.

  We got on our hands and knees and pushed the sand out in a circular pattern, forming a crater some four feet around and a foot deep. Carlos and Tony returned a short while later with their first load of driftwood. They dumped it in the center of the pit and stacked it in pyramid fashion like the skeletal frame of a teepee.

  “Okay,” said Tony, looking at me. “We don’t have any matches, so it’s up to you.”

  “No problem,” I said, confident I had done it the night before and therefore could do it again.

  I herded everyone back from the edge of the pit, assumed t
he stance of a Western gunslinger, strictly for effect of course, and spun a zip ball up in the palm of my hand.

  Now, I don’t deny that I knew something was wrong with my zip ball. I could see that from the start. For one thing, it had no zip. It didn’t churn with excitement. It just sat there, sputtering like an old neon sign. It wasn’t the usual power sphere, round and full like a baseball borne of blinding light, electric sparks and energy. Instead, it looked more like a flattened golf ball, dipped in white talcum and spackled in blue pigment.

  I didn’t want to let it go. I knew it would flop. Yet, I couldn’t keep holding it in my hand. I pitched it at the logs and watched it break apart like sand, fizzling in a pitiful spit of static glints as dull as a Fourth of July sparkler.

  I know. Imagine my embarrassment.

  “What was that?” Tony asked.

  “That was me warming up,” I bluffed.

  “Yeah? How’s that working for you?”

  “Do you want to do this?”

  He stepped back and presented the floor without further comment. I readjusted my stance, held my hand out, palm up, blew into the wind and conjured up another zip ball.

  Unlike the previous, the second zip ball was much brighter, fuller. Unfortunately, it was much the same in disappointment. It spun in place for all of two seconds before disappearing in a puff of blue smoke and white light.

  “Lilith.” I could tell that Tony was losing patience with me. “I’m soaking wet. I’m freezing and I really am not in the mood for games.”

  “What games?” I immediately tried spinning up another zip ball. “You know, I don’t understand. This has never happened to me before.”

  I tried it three more times before Ursula nudged her way to the edge of the pit, balled up her fist and pitched a six-foot bolt of lightning at the logs, turning them instantly into a flaming inferno.

  “Wow!” said Carlos. “Girl’s got game.”

  I said to Ursula, “How did you do that?”

  She shrugged. “I thought naught of it, is all.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t think about magick,” Tony said. “You just have to do it. Remember? We learned that our first night here. You can’t act. You have to react.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”