The Otherworld

by Mercedes Lackey

  So he asked him, "Hey, Joe, when we catch the fish, can we make sooshee out of it?"

  "Naw," he said. "We have to throw them back." Then he eyed the boy warily, as if suddenly understanding the purpose of the remark. "You know you're on a strict Holy Fire fast. I'd get in big trouble if I let you eat anything."

  Somehow Jamie wasn't surprised. Even though Joe was his best friend, next to Sarah, he was still under orders from Brother Joseph. Now that he knew Brother Joseph was Joe's father, that added a new dimension to the threat. Jamie knew you couldn't get into nearly as much trouble with other daddies as you could with your own.

  He dropped the subject about food, remembering the vehemence with which Joe had responded to the milk carton question. He didn't want a replay of that miserable scene.

  The barbed wire fences receded behind them as they took a trail through the oak forest skirting the northern edge of the complex. Jamie felt a little happier, knowing the other kids, who would kill for a chance to go into the woods and play, were sitting somewhere underground dreaming about what he was doing now. Birds called and flew overhead, and something skittered through the grass and leaves along the path.

  Presently they came upon a clearing.

  Jamie suddenly felt cold. There was a foreboding sense of dread attached to the place, a feeling of evil, or suffering. He was sort of seeing things inside his head. The vague images flowing through his mind were shifting and confusing; having been told by Brother Joseph not to share these impressions with anyone else, he didn't tell Joe about his feelings or what he was seeing.

  "You've never been to this place before," Joe said firmly. "And don't you never tell anyone you were here."

  Jamie nodded, feeling a little sick to his stomach. The images grew stronger, and he began to wonder if Sarah was feeding them to him. She had done that before, when they first met, but that was a long time ago and they were good friends now. Sarah could talk to him in person now. That is, if she wasn't afraid of coming to this place.

  "We had to bury somebody here," Joe said suddenly, and the words shocked Jamie. "She died real young, but the Chosen Ones, we bury our own here."

  "This is like a graveyard?" Jamie asked, hesitating.

  Joe nodded absently. "Yep, but no one knows about it."

  Jamie looked about in alarm. "What 'bout the headstones?"

  "Like I said, nobody knows about it. If there were headstones, everybody would know, wouldn't they? Daddy was afraid of putting tombstones up because he was afraid they'd be visible from the air—" Joe suddenly cut his sentence off, sounding like he'd said something he shouldn't have. Jamie acted like nothing was wrong, even though the bad, dark feeling was getting stronger. It was different here than it was with the Holy Fire, and not as bad. The feeling was more a terror of something that had already happened, as opposed to something that was about to happen to him, as during the rituals with Brother Joseph. But he also suspected the two feelings were related, in a distant sort of way.

  They went over to a mound of dirt about as long and wide as a beach towel. The earth had been turned sometime recently, maybe this spring, but Jamie could see that it had been more than a few weeks. Wild weeds had sprung up, while the more permanent grass, which took longer to grow, came in around the edges. It was plainly somebody's grave, and the revelation left him feeling hollow and icky inside.

  Joe knelt and took off the backpack. From within the front pouch he pulled out a battered bouquet of wildflowers. Must have picked those while I was in class, Jamie thought, surprised. Must have been someone important, whoever this was.

  "I hate to think nobody remembers Sarah," he said as he lay the flowers on the mound.

  Sarah? My Sarah?

  Joe sighed. "You wouldn't remember her. She died long before you came here."

  "But . . ." Jamie blurted. He didn't know what to say, other than: Sarah can't be dead, I just talked to her! In my head! But that sounded too strange and unbelievable, so he didn't. Besides, Sarah was his secret, and lately Joe was showing basic problems where certain topics were concerned. Not untrustworthiness yet; but, well, there were things he just wouldn't discuss with someone who had blown up the way Joe had over the milk carton.

  Joe just knelt there, staring at the grave.

  Suddenly, despite the fact that he didn't want to believe it, Jamie knew this was the same Sarah. Had to be. As he looked at the mound of dirt, images formed mistily in his mind, a gust of something, a spirit, a smell, like baby powder, only a little sweeter. Sarah's scent. Jamie watched Joe in concealed horror, finally accepting that all along he hadn't been talking with a person, exactly.

  He had been talking with a ghost. And ghosts were supposed to be scary.

  But Sarah's not scary, he thought, in confusion. Sarah's my friend! He stared at the grave, while Joe bowed his head like he was praying.

  The images that had been lurking at the periphery of his mind now sprang into full, vivid life, coalescing, condensing, forming a story, a kind of movie in his head. A scary story—the kind his mommy wouldn't let him watch on TV. He knew that without knowing how he knew it. And he knew he would have to watch this story, because it wasn't just a story, it was real.

  * * *

  Jamie saw her clearly now, standing just beyond the clearing on a short, grassy knoll. Sarah was a girl his age with black hair and delicate brown eyes, in a calico dress that fluttered slowly in the windless afternoon. Joe didn't see her, and Jamie knew that was only because she didn't want to be seen.

  Her mommy and daddy had joined the cult, too, only they had disappeared suddenly, and nobody knew where they were. Brother Joseph told Sarah that they would be back, that they had just gone to Tulsa for a little while. Sarah didn't believe it then, but played along because she feared Brother Joseph, just like Jamie did now.

  And for the same reason. Brother Joseph had been starving her just like he was being starved, and had used her as an instrument for communicating with the Holy Fire. At first her parents had objected. Then they went along with it, or at least they told her to do what Brother Joseph said, until they worked things out. Then, they disappeared. Sarah was afraid Brother Joseph had something to do with that. The weeks went by slowly, and still no parents. This was starting to sound familiar to Jamie.

  Meanwhile Brother Joseph held the Praise Meetings, and the Black Thing came closer to Sarah no matter how hard she tried to keep it away. Sometimes, during the same rituals that Jamie dreaded, she actually touched that dark, horrible thing, but most of the time she pretended to see it, telling Brother Joseph what he wanted to hear.

  The preacher said it was a good thing, this Holy Fire, but Sarah knew better, and kept it at bay as best she could.

  Then one night it came too close, and she couldn't repel it. The hunger had been intense, and the lack of food had weakened her will as well as her body. Brother Joseph yelled at her to touch it—and, unable to fight him, she did.

  The suffocating thing tried to pull her in. She cried hysterically and broke with it. Brother Joseph ordered the congregation to leave, informing them the Praise Meeting was over. When they had gone, and his personal bodyguards had locked all the doors, he turned to Sarah and grabbed her throat with his perfectly white manicured hands.

  "You will do what I say, you little slut, always!" Brother Joseph screamed, and the images became shaky as Sarah lost consciousness. Then the series of images ended, and Jamie was vaguely aware of . . . a different kind of darkness. . . .

  * * *

  "Jamie! Jamie, what is it?"

  When he opened his eyes Joe was looking down at him, his face contorted with concern. "Are you okay? What's the matter?"

  Jamie's vision blurred again; he closed his eyes to keep from being sick, and he felt Joe pick him up and carry him away from Sarah's grave. He felt something wet and cold at his lips, and he drank deeply. The water had a funny metal taste to it, but he didn't care as he guzzled all that was offered.

  He opened his eyes again. Joe wa
s kneeling in front of him, his expression a mixture of concern and fear. The clearing where Sarah was buried was in sight but further away, making it tolerable now. Above, an enormous oak shaded them from the summer sun, and nearby he heard water running.

  "You passed out back there." Joe frowned. "Weak?"

  "I guess," he said, and admitted to Joe what he hadn't told anyone else. "I feel funny."

  Joe felt his forehead. "You're warm, but that ain't nothin' in this heat. Are you going to be all right? You wanna go back?"

  Jamie sat up, finding his strength returning—as much of it as there was, anyway. He didn't want to go back, so he forced a smile and said, "I'm fine now. Let's go fishing." He looked behind him, toward the sound of running water. "That a creek back there?"

  Joe seemed to be having second thoughts. "No, I'd better get you back. I don't like the way you just dropped like that." He paused, as if considering something. "You said you knew Sarah, back there. After you passed out. What didja mean 'xactly when you said that?"

  "Dunno," Jamie said. "I'm okay now," he added, trying not to let the disappointment show in his voice. "We'd better hurry, if we're going to get to supper on time."

  About halfway back to the vacation place, Jamie remembered he wasn't going to be getting any supper.

  * * *

  Frank Casey felt his tired eyes drying. He'd stared at the computer screen for a solid minute before blinking. There it was, right in front of him, all the information he needed to find a kidnaped little boy. And not a damned thing he could do about it.

  The three people who had just left his office, the boy's mother and the two oddball road-warriors, were the only people in the county who seemed to care about this peculiar cult setting up shop in their backyard. When he first learned of the Chosen Ones, Frank had been willing to live and let live, until he saw the clues that people were being controlled in some obscure, sinister way. And after listening to Cindy talk about the assault weapons, and the other implements of destruction the cult seemed to take a keen interest in, not to mention the power that one man had over the whole lot . . .

  It was all just too damned dangerous. Frank Casey could already hear the zipping of body bags.

  The cutbacks in the department couldn't have come at a worse time. Given that the county's economy was mostly tied to the price of a barrel of oil, the decrease in revenues from real estate and other taxes was inevitable. With fewer men, he couldn't collect evidence and be discreet at the same time. But if he spent enough time—some of it his own—he would probably see something that would justify a warrant, something that their high-powered attorney couldn't block.

  Frank Casey remembered the glint he had seen in Al's eye when he mentioned the stakeout, and smiled. The man was smart; so was his partner. They'd seen the hints, he was sure, just as he was certain they'd act on them. Yeah, you're hungry for it, too, the tall Cherokee thought. I can't authorize civilians to do stakeouts, but if you find something I'm sure gonna back you up on it. Every inch of the way.

  * * *

  Al waited, his arms crossed over his chest, projecting every iota of authority he had—not as Al Norris, Fairgrove mechanic, but as Sieur Alinor Peredon, Knight-Artificer in the service of Elfhame Outremer, who had once commanded (small) armies.

  Now all he had to do was convince one human of that authority. . . .

  Bob sighed, finally, and shook his head. "All right," he said, though with a show of more reluctance than Al sensed he really felt. "All right, I'll cover for you here, and I'll keep Cindy from asking too many questions, if that's what you really want."

  "It's what I want," Al said firmly. "Absolutely. I don't want to raise her hopes that I'm one of your foolish movie-star corambos—"

  "That's commandos, or Rambos," Bob interrupted.

  "Whatever. I don't want her thinking I'm going to charge into unknown territory and carry her boy off. I want to get the lay of the land and check defenses." Al frowned, though it was not intended for Bob. "The fact is, there is a very odd feeling about that place, even at a distance. The Native man, the deputy sheriff, he feels it too, although he considers himself too rational and civilized to admit it. I am not going to stumble about blindly in there—"

  "Fine, fine," Bob interrupted again. "But while you're off with Andur, where am I supposed to be sleeping?"

  "Ah," Al said, grinning with delight. "I have solved that small problem. Behold—"

  He took Bob around to the side of the RV; parked there, beside the Miata, was a white van. He enjoyed the look on Bob's face; enjoyed even more the expression when he opened the door to reveal the luxurious interior. Not as sybaritic as the RV would have been had Cindy not been with them, but a grade above the RV in its current state.

  Bob turned back to him, his incredulity visible even in the dome light of the van. "How in hell did you do that?" he demanded. "I know you didn't ken the van, you'd need more time than a couple of hours to make the copy—"

  "This is Nineve," Al informed him smugly. "Andur's twin sister. I called her from Outremer last night, when I realized that we would need two vehicles. You rightly said that the elvensteeds can crack Mach one in forms other than four-legged; she arrived here as soon as darkness fell." He permitted himself a smile. "Now you have lodging and transport."

  Bob regarded Nineve with a raised eyebrow. "Hope she was in `stealth' mode, or there's gonna be UFO reports from here to Arkansas." Then he unbent and patted the shiny side of the van. "Thanks, Nineve. You're here in right good time. And you sure are pretty."

  The van's headlights glowed with pleasure.

  "Now listen," Bob continued, "I got an idea. How 'bout we put Cindy in Nineve, and you an' me go back to bachelor quarters, eh?"

  Al thought about that; thought about it hard. Not that he had any doubt that a strong reason for Bob's request was his inherent puritanical feelings—

  But with Cindy in the van, he would be able to transform the RV into something far more comfortable—so long as he remembered to change it back before she entered.

  And I won't have to wear a hat to sleep, either.

  He sent a brief, inquiring thought to Nineve, who assented. Andur's twin spent a great deal of time with the human fosterlings of Fairgrove and liked them. Just as she had liked Janet. . . .

  "Good idea," he said, thinking happily of a long soak in a hot shower when he returned, and a massage at the skilled hands of his lovely chrome servant—small as she was, her hands never tired.

  Doubtless Bob was thinking of the same things.

  Better to get Cindy out of the way of becoming a temptation. Bob is right about that much.

  "Well, fine," Bob said, a slow grin spreading across his face. "I'll move her things now. Soon's she gets back from the laundry with her clothes, I'll intro—I mean, show her the new quarters. That oughta keep her busy enough that she won't be asking too many questions."

  "And I had best be on my way," Al observed, "if I am to learn anything of these people tonight."

  Andur revved his engine a little, as if the air conditioner compressor had come on, to underscore his eagerness to get on the road. It had been a long time since he and Andur undertook a rescue mission. It would be good to get back into harness again.

  Andur popped his door open as Al approached the driver's side of the car and shut it as soon as he was tucked into the seat. Al let the four-point seat-harness snake across his shoulders and his lap, and meet and fuse in the center of his chest. Not that he often needed it—but no one allied with racing ever sacrificed safety.

  Or an edge.

  Andur flipped on his lights, turning everything outside the twin cones of light to stark blackness by contrast. Despite the impatient grumble of the pseudo-engine beneath the hood, Andur had more sense than to spin his wheels and take off in a shower of gravel. Such behavior at a track was the mark of an amateur, a poseur, and would earn him and his rider as much respect as Vanilla Ice at a Public Enemy concert.

  Instead, Andur prowled out
with slow grace, making his way to the single unlocked gate for the after-hours use of mechanics and drivers. They proceeded with courtesy for the few folk still about and on their feet after the long day. Alinor thought briefly that it was much like being back at Court; it was considered good form to be socially graceful as a means of preparing one's mind before an imminent battle, and the coolness displayed gained one more status than strutting or worrying.

  Al did not have to touch the steering wheel; Andur was perfectly capable of reading his mind to know where they were going. Down the gravel access-road to the roughly paved county road that led to Hallet, and from there to the on-ramp for the turnpike—

  And there he paused, while Al read the map of the area and matched it with the one in his mind; the one that showed the rough details of the cult enclave. The turnpike was one possible route—

  But there was a better one; so in the end they passed the turnpike and took another county road, then another. Andur knew precisely the route to take, so Al leaned back into the embrace of the "leather" seat, and let his mind roam free.

  This was a land like a strong, broadwinged bird—with a deadly, oozing cancer. In this area's heart hid a festering wound in the power-flows of the earth, a place where energy was perverted, twisted, turned into something it made him sick to contemplate.

  He might not have noticed if he hadn't been looking for it; it was well-hidden. He might have dismissed it as a stress headache. There was no doubt in his mind that this was the work of "Brother Joseph"; it had that uniquely human feel to it, of indifference to consequences. There was also a hate, an anger, and a twisted pleasure in the pain of others.

  He opened his eyes and oriented himself, calling back the suppressed elven night-vision that made the darkened landscape as bright as midday sun. Andur had long since darkened his headlights; he certainly didn't need them to see his way. And now as Al watched, the shiny white enamel of the hood darkened, softened, going to a flat matte black. The engine sounds quit, too—they rolled onto a gravel-covered secondary road with no more sound than the crunching of gravel, which also quieted as Andur softened the compound of his tires. The sound of the cicadas in the trees beside the roadway drowned what was left.