by John Conroe
“No, no ye haven’t, but now is not the time to start, lad. Now give yer old aunt a hug.”
I didn’t begrudge my aunt hugs, not in private anyway. After a fierce squeeze, I was released to grab my bag and run out the door of Rowan West. Trey and his father waited in the fancy BMW SUV and I was quick to climb in the back and buckle up.
“All set, Declan?” Mr. Johnson asked with a smile. He was tall and confident, often smiling, but it was a superior kind of smile, like he knew stuff that you didn’t. I wondered if he would smile if he knew the kind of stuff I knew.
A half hour later, we were in Burlington, roaming around Mr. Johnson’s office building while he handled some special meeting that couldn’t wait. We were supposed to get ice cream down by the shore of Lake Champlain, but as often seemed to be the case with Trey’s dad, something had come up.
I had met Trey in second grade, playing kickball in gym class. He was a team captain and took a chance on me when he was picking his team. I wasn’t a big kid but having an aunt who favored soccer as the king of sports meant that nothing was wrong with my kicking abilities. Our team won, and a number of my kicks had helped that result come to be. We became friends after that, Trey convincing his parents to have dinner at my aunt’s restaurant. They were immediately impressed with her culinary skills, and Trey and I hung out. That’s how I met Jessica Connors, the really pretty girl whose parents were close friends with Trey’s. I was still friends with Rory, but having more friends was a new experience for me, and hanging around with Trey and Jessica seemed exciting.
“Hey, Dad just handed me a twenty and said we could go down and get ice cream,” Trey said, coming back from a huddled chat with his father, who had stepped out of the conference room a minute before.
Soon enough, we had big cones of soft Vermont creemees as we call them, mine chocolate, Trey’s a chocolate and vanilla twist with sprinkles, and we were roaming the waterfront. It was early summer, late afternoon on a Wednesday. The colleges were out, summer school not yet started, and there wasn’t a whole lot of foot traffic on the normally packed boardwalk that ran alongside Lake Champlain.
When our cones were done, we rock hopped on the shore, then found an abandoned lacrosse ball and started to throw it around one of the parking lots. A man with a dog saw us but he just nodded and smiled at us. His dog was a cute little mutt, kind of a ragamuffin, the kind of dog my aunt’s deputy friend Darci called a purse dog. The man’s right arm was in a big plaster cast. We ignored them both and went on with our game.
Ten minutes later, we heard the man calling and looked up as his dog raced toward us, the leash dragging along behind him. The dog came right to me and Trey grabbed its leash while I petted it.
“Oh thank you, thank you, boys. He pulled right out of my hand,” the man said, holding up his left hand as he approached. He seemed old to my eyes, maybe thirty, with blond hair and a really bright smile of exceptionally white teeth. “Do you think you could help me get him into my van over there? The little scamp likes to run and my arm makes it difficult,” he said to us.
The dog seemed really happy to be with us, almost avoiding the man, which in hindsight should have been a clue. But Trey and I just exchanged a shrug and followed the man to his white GM van. He opened the back door one-handed and I reached down to scoop up the dog. “What’s his name?” I asked, and then something hard hit the back of my head.
I woke up as my body rocked into someone else, and I heard a grunt that sounded like Trey. My head hurt and my arms were twisted behind me, stuck there. I pulled and felt the burn of adhesive tape pulling on skin and hair. I was duct taped. The body beside me was moving and shifting around as well and making enough sound that I was sure it was my friend. I tried to speak but found my mouth was taped shut as well.
Shifting and rolling around separated us and let me lever myself up to a sitting position. A few feet to my left, Trey did the same.
We were inside the white van, which was moving, the man with the dog at the driver’s wheel, although he seemed to have use of both arms just fine. His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror and he grinned. Reaching his right arm down between the front seats, he lifted a familiar-looking cast, except it was split open, revealing white Velcro straps that had held it in place.
“Gotta hand it to Vermonters. They raise such helpful kids,” he said, smiling happily as he turned the wheel to take a corner. Trey rolled into me and we looked at each other, eyes as wide as they could go. He screamed at me inside his taped mouth and I felt my own terror ramp up.
“This is far enough,” the man said, glancing at the little dog that was sitting on the passenger’s seat. “Right, Fluffy? Or whatever the hell your name is.” He made another short turn and then applied the brakes, bringing the van to a stop. Putting the transmission in park and shutting off the ignition, he turned around in his seat and looked at us with something like glee.
“Oh my God! Look how scared you are already! And I haven’t even shown you the good stuff,” he said, pointing at the floor of the van in front of us. A bunch of stuff was piled there: blue jumper cables, vise-grip pliers, a hammer, several rolls of tape, a plastic case with an Xacto-knife and spare blades in it, and a pair of big, heavy-duty car batteries.
He moved toward the torture supplies, his hand touching his crotch, his eyes still locked on us, shining with an unholy excitement. Squatting down, he reached for the Xacto knife and my terror peaked. We were going to die here and now… our lives cut short. And it was going to be painful… so painful. Something clicked inside my brain, some connection snapping into place. My terror changed to anger, then morphed directly into red rage. My carefully conditioned control slipped apart, the self-imposed shields I kept in place without conscious thought falling away in shreds. The power got out.
Mr. Slice-N-Laugh closed his hand around the plastic craft knife case, and the jumper cables shot forward like a striking rattlesnake, the clamps snapping shut on his arm. The other ends weren’t connected to the batteries but that didn’t seem to matter as electricity jumped, in fat blue arcs, from the terminals to the cables. Our abductor’s muscles locked up tight, his body shaking and jerking, his eyes suddenly as wide as ours. The overhead dome light sparked and exploded as additional arcs leapt from the metal walls of the cargo space to the batteries, joining the pulse that was feeding into the blue cables.
The killer’s hair stood straight up, his skin smoking as his body jumped and twitched uncontrollably. Outside the van, I heard a loud pop, bright light strobed through the windows, and then came the crash of falling and breaking glass.
Behind us, the rear doors suddenly smashed themselves open, late afternoon daylight and fresh summer air blowing into the van and flushing out the cloud of awful-smelling smoke that now poured from the man’s face and hair.
Trey was screaming nonstop and he suddenly shoved against me, falling backward out of the van. I felt myself fall out of the vehicle, but it seemed in slow motion and my landing was soft, as if I had fallen on a mattress placed on the asphalt of the parking lot.
Tires screeched, car doors opened, and suddenly a man and woman were by our sides, their faces shocked and fearful. They pulled us back, farther from the shaking cargo vehicle, then the man moved forward to look inside. Immediately he was backing away, his feet stumbling so much, I thought he might fall backward onto me. Something firmed him up and he looked around, his eyes wild, but it was just me, lying on the pavement. Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a phone and tapped three times.
“I need police and an ambulance! My name is Ted, Ted Thresher, and I’m at the big asphalt plant just off Intervale Road. There are two bound boys and a man in a van who appears to have electrocuted himself. A light pole exploded. Inter-vale Road. Of course I’ll stay on the phone; just send some damned help!”
He kept talking to the dispatcher, and the woman, who must have been his wife or something, was talking to Trey and me, saying that we would be okay. It was hard to concentrate
on her words as I was falling into a fugue, a cloud of hazy exhaustion. It was easier to just lie back and stare up at the blue summer sky, not a cloud in sight.
Some time later, I became aware of sirens and vehicle sounds and car doors slamming. A deputy leaned over me, her face somehow familiar.
“Declan? Declan, it’s Darci. Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Then she yanked at my face and tape ripped away.
I recognized Aunt Ash’s cop friend, the one who brought a smile to Ash’s face whenever she came into the restaurant for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, which seemed to be often. Aunt Ash had met her when she had quietly stepped forward to help the sheriff’s department find a missing person.
“Ah hi, Darci,” I said, sitting up with her help, face burning from the tape. I looked around and saw Trey being helped by a Burlington police officer and an EMT, who was cutting the silver tape on his arms with shears.
“What happened?” Darci asked. Before I could answer, another cop came over. “You know him?”
“Yeah. His aunt owns Rowan West, the restaurant in Castlebury.”
An EMT joined us and began checking me over while working on getting the tape off my arms.
The other police officer pulled Darci over toward the van, which had smoke wafting out of the open back. One rear door hung from a single bent hinge; the other was completely gone. I could see it laying on the ground fifteen feet away. The deputy sheriff and the Burlington cop looked inside, Darci’s solid form going tense at whatever she saw. My aunt’s friend turned back and looked at me, eyebrows up.
“Are you hurt?” the EMT asked. Her nametag said Kayla.
“No. I don’t think so.” I glanced over at Trey and found him staring at me, his eyes fearful. As soon as he saw me looking, he jerked his head away, turning his back, his shoulders hunching.
More police arrived, Trey’s father’s BMW pulled in just behind a fire truck, the firefighters immediately inspecting the smoking van.
The rest was a blur of voices, people in my face, strobing emergency vehicle lights and questions—lots and lots of questions. Trey’s father was right there with us, his voice getting hard at times as the police questioned us. Who was the man? Where had we been? And most important… What had happened?
The air suddenly swirled around the parking lot, blowing smoke and dust in multiple directions. A familiar Toyota came rushing into the lot, braking to a fast halt. My aunt jumped out and headed straight for me. A Burlington cop moved forward to stop her but a stray gust of wind blew a cloud of smoke from the van into his face, causing him to turn away and cough.
Then Aunt Ash was upon me, her eyes frantic as she looked me up and down, her arms wrapping me into a tight hug.
“He’s okay, Ashling,” I heard Darci say from outside my warm cocoon that smelled of roses and fresh baked bread.
“What happened?” my aunt asked, letting me loose enough to breath.
“That’s what we’d like to know,” another voice said. Detective Montrose, who seemed to be asking Trey and myself the most questions.
“And ye’ve been here this long,” Aunt Ash said, waving a hand at all the fire trucks and cop cars, “and ye don’t know any more than me?”
“We know a man, whose identification says he is Ernest Snell, apparently abducted the boys and drove them here,” Darci said, earning herself a sharp glare from the detective.
“You’re the boy’s mother?” Montrose asked.
“Guardian,” Ash said, her eyes locking in on the detective. “He’s me nephew.” A fresh breeze swirled up around us.
“Well, Ms…”
“O’Carroll,” Darci offered, which got her a second hard glance.
“Well, Ms. O’ Carroll, the suspect somehow became electrocuted before he could further assault the boys,” Montrose said, eyeing me closely.
“What are ye saying, Officer? He got hit by a bolt of lightning from the blue?” Ashling asked in disbelief.
“No, there were some car batteries in the van and cables,” Montrose said. “And it’s Detective.”
For a split second, a look of relief flashed across my aunt’s face, then she hardened her gaze on Montrose.
“So, a man took my boy and his friend Trey, drove them here, and electrocuted himself with his own batteries and you’re confused?” she asked.
“There is the matter of the van’s own battery discharging, as well as the lamppost here,” Montrose said. “Not to mention the condition of the van’s doors.”
“So this man attacks two young boys and somehow you’re blaming the boys for him killing himself and blowing up his van? What kind of detecting is that ye do? Is this your first case, is it?”
“It may be his last if he doesn’t back away from our boys, Ashling,” Mr. Johnson said, suddenly coming up behind my aunt. “I’ve had enough of this, Montrose. These boys have been victimized and I won’t stand for you interrogating them like they’re the ones to blame here. You should be looking into this man Snell, not two fifth-grade boys. And it turns out that both the mayor and Chief Daniels agree with me, as you’re about to find out.”
“Montrose! Get over here!” a new voice yelled, a tall man with lots of decorations on his police uniform who was just getting out of a Lexus sedan. The detective grimaced and then headed across the lot.
“You’re free to take Declan home,” Mr. Johnson said to my aunt. “Trey and I are leaving right now. And don’t take any calls from reporters; I’m working on getting this whole event quieted down.”
“Thank ye, Ted,” my aunt said. Trey’s father nodded and then went to gather his son, who still wasn’t meeting my eyes whenever I looked his way.
“This guy Snell is from out of state,” Darci said. “He’s been a person of interest in at least one missing person case, and we’re checking his recent whereabouts.”
“You’ll find he’s done this before and got away with it,” my aunt said, her voice sure.
“You sound certain?” Darci asked in a careful tone.
“I’m as certain of this as I was of finding that lost child,” Ash said.
“I see. Ashling, the circumstances that Montrose was mentioning are…” Darci trailed off.
“Uncanny?” Ash suggested.
“I was going to say odd, but sure, uncanny works. Some of the guys are wondering.”
“And jest what do they be wondering, Darci dear.”
“Is Declan… Does he have any of what you have?”
“Your Mr. Snell was a bad man, an evil man. There is a balance to things, Darci. Evil is balanced by good. I’d say this is a case where good did just that,” Ash said. “Now, I’m taking me boy home.”
“Sure. Listen, if it’s okay, I’d like to swing by later and check in on you both?”
“That would be fine then, Darci dear.”
I don’t remember the car ride home or much about that evening other than my aunt feeding me and then snuggling me beside her on the couch in the family room. When I woke up later, I was in my bed and I could hear Darci and my aunt speaking softly in another room.
The next day, my aunt took me out to the garden straight after breakfast.
“A bit of weeding will do us both good,” she said, immediately attacking the invading plants like enemy soldiers, yanking and pulling.
“Aunt Ash, you and Mom always taught me to be gentler with the weeds,” I said, shocked at her violence.
“That we did, Declan. We wanted you to be mindful of living things. You’re a powerful witch, boy, and we dinnae want ye to ever use your Craft improperly. But there can come a time when a witch must act to protect themselves and others, and that is both right and natural. The wild things of this world fight every day to survive. We have to survive too.” Her thickened brogue told me she was upset.
“You’re talking about that man yesterday. My magic killed him, didn’t it?”
“Yes, lad. Yes it did. It killed him dead most proper, it did. Does that bother ye, lad?”
“He was going
to kill us, Aunt Ash. And I think he had killed other kids. I’m glad I’m alive… I’m glad Trey is alive.”
“Me too, Declan. Me too,” she said, then took a breath. “I don’t know if Trey will be thanking you for it though.”
“I think he’s scared of me,” I admitted.
“Which is just one of many reasons your mother and I always hid what we are. It’s not fun to be isolated when people fear you. And Declan, always remember this: Scared people are dangerous people.”
“Yes, Aunt Ash,” I said, then braved the question I was dreading. “Aunt Ash, are you ashamed that I let my magic out? I mean, it’s hard enough that you got left with me, but now I messed up.”
She was on me in a flash, both hands gripping my head, her eyes inches from my own. “You listen to me, Declan O’Carroll. I could not love ye more if ye was my own son! You have never been a burden to me—never! And if your magic hadn’t taken a hand in things, you’d like be dead, so rip that weedy thought out of yer head and throw it as far from you as you can!”
She hugged me, then pulled back to look at me again. “However, I am upset with my own self. In all the worry about teaching you control, I never taught you to protect yourself. That changes now. See that weed? End it.”
I gaped at her. Her eyes narrowed and her pointing finger shook slightly as she pointed at a small dandelion. She was serious, very serious. Taking a breath, I studied the weed. Then, after a quick side glance to make sure she was still serious (she was!), I touched the ground in front of the dandelion. Silently, the little green leaves and unopened flower were pulled into the ground, disappearing completely.
“Good. Now that one, but use something different,” she said, pointing at a slip of green.
I pulled heat from the sun-warmed ground and sent it into the weed. It shriveled, desiccated and dead.
“That one!”
I pulled static electricity from around us and touched my finger to the clover. The spark was fat and sharp, the green shoots wilting over immediately.
“And that one.”
I touched the plant and started to pull its life energy.