by Harper Lin
“Like what?” Bea asked.
“I don’t know. Did the guy ever do any drugs? Was he in a place where there were toxic fumes? Had he hit his head recently? Was there a history of crazy in his family? I’m not saying Lisa Roy wasn’t telling the truth. I’m just saying, with the only connection to these kids being six feet underground, it’s anyone’s guess as to what they really are, if they are real at all.”
Both Bea and my aunt looked at me thoughtfully.
“Or I could be wrong.” I shrugged.
We all sat quietly for a second. Bea twisted a couple of strands of her beautiful red hair, and Aunt Astrid tried to peer around a corner in a dimension only she could see. I couldn’t resist another bite of pepper steak just as I heard a frantic knocking at the door.
Before any of us could move, the door opened. My assumptions about these black-eyed kids immediately changed. We realized we were all in trouble.
Exploding Head Syndrome
“Oh, my God!” Bea cried. “Jake! What’s the matter?”
Jake stumbled inside, fell to his knees, and nearly passed out on the floor with his feet still partially on the porch.
I jumped up and ran out front, looking around for anyone or anything that might have been trying to make a getaway, but the street was deserted. It had that same eerie quiet, as if everything was holding its breath. Without anyone to chase or call after, I darted back inside the house. We pulled Jake’s size-fourteen feet inside so we could shut the door tightly.
Bea immediately began to work on him. She ran her hands up and down his arms and legs. Making circles over his chest, she closed her eyes and mumbled a request for help from all of nature and the life force around us.
“What do you see, Bea?” Aunt Astrid asked nervously.
“He’s been attacked. It looks to me like he made someone or something very mad. There are scratches on the walls of his mind. His heart has been bruised. Whatever did this wanted to hurt him, but from what I can tell, Jake was able to fight it off.”
“Is he dying?” I asked, my eyes filling with tears as I looked down at the big, strong ox whom I loved as a brother lying helpless and almost unconscious on the hardwood floor.
“No,” Bea snapped back. “He is not dying, but he’s badly hurt. We need to get him to the spare room.”
The three of us had a heck of a time trying to get Jake to his feet. He could barely stand and seemed as helpless and unsteady as a newborn colt. His legs visibly shook underneath him, and he was drenched in sweat. When we finally got him close enough to the bed, he flopped down with a thump onto the soft blankets, and the old bedsprings creaked out an objection at being forced to support something heavier than a cat.
Once Bea got Jake out of his shoes and removed his belt, she tucked him underneath the cover.
She turned to Aunt Astrid. “I don’t want to move him.”
“Of course, honey. He can stay here,” Aunt Astrid reassured her. “As long as he needs to. I’ll get some sage burning. The white candles and crow feathers will be gathered, too. He’s safer here than anywhere else, Bea.”
I told Marshmallow and Peanut Butter to stay close.
“Do either of you sense anything?” I asked them. “Anything at all that might still be lurking around outside? Anything that might have attached itself to Jake?”
“I don’t sense anything,” Peanut Butter said. “Why? Should I? I can try a little harder and see what happens.”
I shook my head and scratched him under the chin.
“I thought I did when he first came in,” Marshmallow said. “But whatever it was let go. It’s long gone by now.”
I called to Treacle in my mind. He answered me almost immediately and said there was nothing strange going on around him. I told him to be careful, and I suggested he stay either closer to home or Old Murray’s shelter, just in case.
Marshmallow hopped up on the bed and curled up by Jake’s feet. Peanut Butter stretched out along the bookshelf that stood by the headboard. I patted Marshmallow behind the ears, and as I left the bedroom, I could hear the two cats purring their own vigil for Jake.
Bea came into the room with warm water, a washcloth, a raw egg, and some salt.
“Aunt Astrid is right,” I said. “This is where he’ll get the best care.” I took Bea’s hands in my own and squeezed them. “He’ll be all right, and we’ll find out what did this. And we’ll give it such an ass—”
Bea cut me off as she usually did when I was about to cuss. But this time, she cut me off with a hug.
I hugged her back tightly. “He’ll be okay, Bea. With you at his side, he’ll always be okay.”
She nodded. I could tell Bea was trying to hold it together. She went into the spare room, sat down next to Jake, took his hand in hers, and began to quietly chant a healing rite.
I stayed with them through the night. Jake was getting better and better by the minute, but Bea was exhausted. She believed a few more incantations would heal the damage the unknown fright had caused him. He wasn’t talking yet, but he’d stopped shaking, his temperature was closer to normal, and he seemed to be sleeping the kind of deep sleep of a person who had hiked for over an hour uphill through four feet of snow. Something had attacked his mind and exhausted him trying to get in.
When it was almost daylight, I looked outside to see if anything was out of the ordinary. Nope. It all looked normal.
“Aunt Astrid,” I said quietly as she began to make coffee in the kitchen. “I’m going to go to my place and change clothes. I want to just give the place a quick once-over, you know, just in case.”
“Yes, honey, go ahead. I’ve put an extra spell over everyone, so you should be safe. But I don’t have to tell you if there is any trouble, you run those legs back over here and don’t stop until the door is shut behind you.”
“I will. I think I’ll check the café too. I’ll drive if that makes you feel any better.”
“It does, Cath. Thanks.”
Before I left, I asked her if she had seen anything in her study of the other dimensions in front of us. She still continued to look a bit past me as though something were just beyond a curtain, but she couldn’t quite make it out. Not yet.
* * *
After cleaning up at my place, I climbed into my car and headed off in the direction of the Brew-Ha-Ha. It was still very early. Most people were probably getting ready to head to work.
I couldn’t help but let my mind drift to something I had read recently.
I’d heard about a new phenomenon discovered by scientists called Exploding Head Syndrome. It wasn’t nearly as gruesome as it sounded. People who suffered from the affliction often heard loud noises in their heads like gunshots, breaking glass, and doors slamming when they were dosing off or in a very light sleep. Those loud noises startled the afflicted people into alertness, and in most cases, made them run around their houses checking for fallen mirrors, broken windows, or even thwarted break-ins. But of course, they would find nothing and just chalk it up to a vivid dream they couldn’t remember.
The scientists who had identified that singularity considered it an odd action of the brain.
But a witch like me knew better. Sometimes I wondered how the scientific community had come so far from its paranormal roots.
Exploding Head Syndrome was not just a trick or hiccup in the brain. It was actually a very valuable talent. Some people were good at math. Some people could paint. Some people were fantastic athletes. And some people could hear other beings entering and exiting alternate dimensions. Those loud crashes and door slams were mere echoes of some entity, usually a rude one, who had just pushed its way through to our dimension. But because the people didn’t ask for identification or shout halt, who goes there? and chalked up the noise as a dream, the entity just passed along its merry way, causing whatever kind of havoc it wanted.
The people who had that gift didn’t realize it, and therefore never developed it. Instead of visiting Grandma in the next city, they
could have visited Grandpa who was in the alternate dimension two doors down.
But abilities like that would have been scary if someone didn’t have a reference point. If I hadn’t known about my witchy heritage before I realized I could talk to an animal telepathically, I would have had myself committed and the key thrown away. I began to wonder if John Roy had been such a person. He may have never known why he was able to hit all the green lights coming home when he was in a hurry or how he was always able to help his wife find her keys when she misplaced them.
Unfortunately, he was in a morgue and destined to be buried within the next forty-eight hours. There was no chance for Bea to get a peek at him to see if there was any paranormal residue left on him from the tragedy.
Aunt Astrid said she had felt something was floating through the dimensions, but whatever it was was moving at a glacial pace and not stirring up any trouble. However, she wasn’t sure if it was a natural ripple in the time and space current, if something was just lazily drifting through the astral plains, or if something more insidious was inching its way along, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed.
I couldn’t help it. Worrying about Jake wasn’t going to do anyone any good, so I decided I needed to keep busy. And what harm would there be if I just took a drive past the Roy residence, right? I didn’t ask anyone’s permission, which guaranteed no one would tell me no. But I had a feeling I was going to have to ask for forgiveness when I was all through.
Prestwick
My car was a ten-year-old, teal-colored Dodge Neon. The muffler was starting to fall off, and the window on the passenger’s side couldn’t be rolled down without coming off the track. A couple of empty Tasty Burger sacks were crumpled up in the back seat, along with a jacket I had tossed in the back when the weather had been hot for one day before plunging back into the fifty-degree range. I wasn’t the neatest person, especially compared with Bea, who had a neat streak a mile wide.
“A clean car runs better,” she often insisted.
“A new car runs even better than that,” I would always say back.
So I hopped in my old Neon and headed off in the direction of the Prestwick neighborhood to see what was going on. I had no idea where the Roys lived, but I knew where Darla lived. Blake had said they were at opposite ends of the of the development, so I thought I would start at Darla’s.
Crossing over to Prestwick from the normal part of town was like slipping into another dimension. There was a beautiful sign as I entered the area that was a little over four feet high, five feet thick, and seven feet wide. It was made of solid oak and had the word Prestwick carved into it in elegant, rolling script. The reason I knew it was solid oak was because if I ever encountered anyone who lived in Prestwick, they told me the story about the sign.
Some old geezer by the name of Ignace Gigot had decided he wanted the area for himself and his thoroughbred horses, so he named the place after his most prized filly, Prestwick. On his property were some huge oak trees, and during a particularly bad storm, one of the older trees was uprooted and fell. Sure, it would keep him in firewood throughout the next three winters, but he had a vision.
He chopped the wood with his own two hands. He dragged the wood to the workshop he had in his barn. He sanded, smoothed, and lovingly carved the name of his favorite horse into the giant block of tree trunk. Then, with his own bare hands, he loaded the behemoth onto his cart, which was being pulled by Prestwick herself, and carried it to the edge of the property, where it still remained.
Of course, they never mentioned that Prestwick died under the strain of pulling such a heavy load all by herself. No, I’m just kidding. I like to add that just to mess with some of the neighborhood Prestwickans when I hear them telling that story.
Mr. Gigot did all of the work with his own bare hands. After more and more people began to settle in and around Prestwick, the land belonging to Mr. Gigot was sold off in pieces. But residents kept the name and the history that came with it.
I pulled into Prestwick and couldn’t help but notice the immediate rainbow of fall colors that arched over the streets as I drove in. Someone somewhere in their city planning committee must have made sure certain types of trees were planted in order to make one neighborhood more beautiful than another.
I came to Darla’s house. It was up on a hill, of course, so that at any time day or night, she could look out any window and look down on everyone else around her. It was a beautiful home. The fact that she still got to live in it after the crimes she’d committed was a thorn in my side.
Anyway, I quickly averted my eyes as if I were in fear of turning to stone. I headed down another street in the hopes it might bring me to my destination, the Roy residence.
The roads snaked all around, and I was pretty sure I would have a hard time finding my way back to the main road. I hadn’t thought to leave a mystic trail so I could find my way back. Luckily, I wasn’t in any kind of danger. I was just gathering intelligence. I wasn’t planning on doing battle on my own with any beasties from another dimension. Plus, even using a little of my magic would have drained my body just enough to have kept me yawning throughout the day. Staying sharp and conserving resources were more important, and who knew what Bea might need after she had stayed up the whole night tending to Jake.
But as the road began winding further and further into the neighborhood, I was startled to realize how big that part of town was. The deeper I drove, the houses became bigger and more beautiful. They made Darla’s house look like a Lincoln Log set. I had to admit that gave me some level of satisfaction.
I turned onto Butternut Drive and thought I saw a street that would cut through the middle of the current subdivision I was in. As I turned onto it, I realized it wasn’t a street but a driveway. The asphalt turned into beautiful, old cobblestone that looked amazing but was in bad need of repair. The shocks on my car were gone, and I felt every bump as I rolled over them.
I came to a rusted gate that blocked the drive and was joined on either side by a wrought iron fence. There were several no trespassing signs. The gate was bound shut by what looked like yards and yards of rusted chain and a padlock the size of a baseball mitt.
As I made a three-point turn that would have made any driver’s ed teacher proud, I saw a sad and weather-worn For Sale sign. I wondered what was at the end of such an elaborate driveway and gate.
I made my way back down to the street and continued my search for the Roy residence. As I went back the way I had come, it was only pure chance that I came upon a house that had several cars parked in the driveway and along the street in front of the house.
Had it been me, I would have called my immediate family and closest friends for support during such a horrible tragedy. I wouldn’t have wanted to be alone, and I assumed Mrs. Roy was no different. Slowly, I inched up to the mailbox and saw what I was looking for. R-O-Y. I was right.
As quietly as I could get my car to go, I passed the house completely and turned left down the nearest side street. After a quick U-turn, I was in a position to observe but not be observed. It was early, and when I shut off the car engine, I could hear the songs of the birds waking up in all the colorful trees. I looked around, hoping no one would notice me. My car stood out like a sore thumb. The cheapest ride in the Prestwick neighborhood was probably last year’s BMW.
Still, I didn’t want to just give up. Not yet. So I turned the heat up a bit and cracked the window, smelling the cool autumn air and the smoky smell of wood burning in a fireplace.
When I looked toward the Roys’ house, I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary right off the bat. I tried to see if they had any pets in the house like a dog or a bird. But I didn’t get any reply to my telepathic inquiries except from a nosy pug dog across the street that seemed to know the German Shepherd on the next block was in heat.
The window from which John Roy had jumped was boarded up with plywood. It looked like a scab on an otherwise perfect face.
I was about to get out of the ca
r and take a walk past the house to get a better look and try to see if there was any kind of mystical residue left when an all-too-familiar car came around the corner.
Stale Coffee
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mumbled.
Blake Samberg’s car was slowly pulling down the street I had just come from. Oh, my gosh. What if he had been behind me the whole time, and he knew I was snooping around?
As soon as the driver’s head turned in my direction, I ducked down in my seat. This was mortifying. I held my breath as if that might help him not see me. Had I been thinking on my feet, I might have used a camouflage spell. But that required a huge output of energy, especially if I were going to conceal my car, which I would have to do. And a spell would have tipped off any thug spirits that someone was investigating. I wasn’t all that keen on putting such a big target on my back so early in the game. I was just trying to collect intel. I wasn’t looking for a fight.
So as I sat all scrunched down in the driver’s seat, I studied the fabric of my car seats and realized they were very stained. A Jujyfruits candy box peeked out from underneath the passenger seat, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember having eaten them. I wasn’t even sure I liked them.
I had a layer of dust on my console, and the leaves on the floor could have very well been there since last fall. How could I have been riding in such filth?
I leaned over and sniffed the fabric of the seat, fearing I might be accosted by some foul odor I had long since grown immune to. That was when I realized I didn’t hear a car driving by. Maybe Blake was too busy looking at the Roy house to have seen me.
After I scooted up in my seat, I looked around and didn’t see him. I let out a big sigh and stretched my neck to look up in the rearview mirror. Blake’s car was right behind mine.
“Son of a b…”