by Ray Garton
His eyes were the most piercing blue she’d ever seen and they were softer now than they’d been since she met him. She ran a hand through his hair and stroked his face as she whispered, “And you are one hell of a date, Giles.” She didn’t expect him to understand, but the look of confusion that creased his brow surprised her. He looked a little hurt, as if perhaps she’d insulted him. “Oh, I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
Kassandra kissed him. It was a long slow kiss and she thought he would pull away; instead, he wrapped both arms around her, held her close, and returned the kiss, then whispered in her ear.
“Had only our lives not been so . . . out of joint . . . had we but . . . well, what I care to say . . . is . . .”
They both stiffened nervously.
The silence around them was shattered by a sudden powerful wind that sent leaves swirling over their heads.
Redferne stood and turned and Kassandra held tightly to his coat.
Beyond Redferne, coming from the other side of the graveyard, Kassandra saw a tall shimmering whirlwind dancing toward them, dodging the few headstones still standing, headed straight for Redferne. It was the same whirlwind she’d seen outside her bedroom window the night the warlock had arrived.
“Redferne?” she whimpered, frightened and confused. “What’s happening?”
He was gone in a heartbeat, sucked into the eye of the whirlwind, spinning like a top.
“Redferne!” she screamed, hobbling after the whirlwind as it danced away from her. “Don’t go, Redferne!”
“The pages!” His voice faded in and out as he shouted, going from a garbled roar to a distant echo. “Burn them! Scatter the ashes on hallowed ground! The pages . . . andra . . . the pa . . . urn them . . .”
An arrow of pain in her leg stumbled her and she fell before Redferne’s tomb as the wind dispersed . . .
. . . and with it, Redferne.
The silence that fell on the graveyard then rang with finality.
Even the wind had breathed its last.
The water of the bay made little more than a noncommittal slurp against the shore.
In the stillness that had fallen over the night, she realized it might never have happened, any of it, that it all might have been some nightmarish hallucination. But the nail in her foot was real.
The pain was real.
Crying softly, she leaned on the tomb as she brought herself to her feet. Her hands crunched dead leaves scattered over the tomb, scraping them away as she pulled herself up. Both arms propped against the tomb, she prepared herself for the pain that would come with standing—
—and her eyes found the inscription on the tombstone. It was beneath the pentagram, carved centuries ago by long dead hands:
I SHALL REMEMBER YOU ALWAYS
’TIL TIME AND TIMES ARE DONE
Her tears blurred the words into a gray smear, then dropped into the grooves of the small chiseled letters and flowed through them like tiny rivers.
She cried over Redferne’s tomb until her pain was unbearable. She moved away from the tomb, got her shoulder bag, and looked at the stacked pages a few yards away.
The Grand Grimoire had not budged. Even the hellish winds had not moved it.
With her bag and the pages, she would have to crawl across the graveyard to the street—she knew walking was out of the question—and, if she were lucky, catch a cab to the hospital.
“Lucky,” she grumbled as she began her painful crawl, thinking, After this shit, I’ve probably used up all my luck.
The graveyard silently ignored her as she dragged her body over its sleeping dead . . .
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
CITY OF LOS ANGELES
Year of Our Lord
Nineteen Hundred Eighty and Eight
27
The Final Chapter
Hillside Gardens was a small graveyard located outside of Glendale, and Chas had told Grandma years ago that, should he precede her to the other side, she was to see that he was swiftly and unceremoniously laid to rest there.
By the time Kassandra got back to Los Angeles, Grandma had heard of Chas’s murder and, sturdy as stone, had quickly made all the necessary arrangements.
Kassandra had found four messages from her on the answering machine and promptly called her. Grandma sounded cool on the phone, but when Kassandra went to her house the next day, the old woman embraced her and sobbed so loudly she felt ready to fall apart in Kassandra’s arms.
It was the first time Kassandra had allowed the woman so close to her. This time, however, she wasn’t allowing it; she needed it.
She drove Grandma to Hillside Gardens, although she felt like never getting behind the wheel of a car again. She’d flown from Boston to Denver and, from there, she’d piloted her Corvair back to Los Angeles. She’d come back flat broke and exhausted without the foggiest idea of what to do first.
But she knew she’d get by.
After surviving the last few days and nights, she knew she was meant to get by.
“Chas has several friends at rest here,” Grandma said as they walked slowly through the garden of gravestones and small flat markers.
Kassdndra used a crutch to keep the weight off her bandaged foot.
“Three died of AIDS,” Grandma went on, “another in a car accident. I think he wanted to be close to people he knew.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” Kassandra said.
“I wish you’d tell me what happened, dear. Were you in some kind of trouble? How did you hurt yourself?”
“I’m sorry, Grandma, it’s just . . . it’s such a . . . a crazy story.”
“I’ve seen a lot of crazy things in my years, but . . .” She patted Kassandra’s shoulder. “It’s up to you.”
They said nothing when they found Chas’s headstone.
As she stared at Chas’s name and dates of birth and death chiseled precisely into the granite, Kassandra began to cry.
Grandma stroked her cheek with a dry hand and said, “Would you like to be alone, sweetheart?”
Kassandra nodded and, as Grandma turned and shuffled away respectfully, she put down her crutch and sat Indian-style in front of Chas’s grave to have a long, quiet cry . . .
She’d stopped in Utah, just outside of Salt Lake City.
There was a small shopping center off the highway. Most of the stores were empty, having moved closer to the city, but one remained in business: a small hardware store.
The clerk was friendly, a middle-aged man with a slight paunch and a nervous tick below his right eye.
“You got any shovels?”
“Two kinds,” he said, turning to a wall covered with garden tools hanging from hooks. He took down two shovels—one round-nosed and one flat-nosed—and held them up for her to see, saying, “Depends on what you’re digging.”
“A hole.”
“Well, then, so far we have the right tool.” The man chuckled, seeing more humor in his remark than Kassandra did. “What size hole? How big?”
“Not big. Just deep. Real deep.”
He held out the round-nosed shovel and winked. “Stick with this, hon. Won’t dig it big, but it’ll dig it deep.”
She paid with her MasterCard and started out of the store, stopping to look at a local map mounted on the wall by the door. She studied the map until she found what looked to be the right area for her task, then put the shovel in her trunk and drove to the Bonneville Salt Flats.
And there she buried it.
Even in bright daylight, driving the roads on her way back to California, Kassandra had not felt safe in her car. Not with the pages. They’d been bundled together in the trunk during the drive, but still . . .
She did not feel safe.
But as she patted down the patch of freshly dug earth with the shovel, a weight lifted from her shoulders. She stepped back and stared at the small mound, beneath which—about seven feet beneath—lay the Grand Grimoire.
Kassandra was hot and dirty and sticky with sweat, but she’d never f
elt cleaner in her life than she did at that moment. Her muscles ached, her neck was stiff, and more than anything, her foot throbbed relentlessly, but she felt healthier than ever.
She felt free.
And as she drove away from the small deep grave, she realized, for the first time in too long, what a beautiful day it was . . .
“Would you like to have dinner tonight, dear?” Grandma asked as Kassandra composed herself behind the wheel of the Corvair.
“I’m broke, Grandma.”
“I am a financially comfortable old woman, Kassandra, and I love to spend my money on friends. It’s on me. The best in town. We’ll have a long talk.”
Compared to her option—being alone—Kassandra thought dinner out sounded wonderful. But, even without the darker alternative, she thought it would be a fine idea.
As Kassandra started the car, Grandma said, “I’ll miss him.” She said it in that relaxed way the old have when they speak of death: with acceptance. “He was such a comfort. Not many my age have such a friend.” She frowned a little and shook her head. “Aging can be so cold and lonely. Every time I look in the mirror, it comes as a great shock to me. I don’t feel any different, you know; I feel like the girl I was seventy years ago. But when I look in that mirror . . . you have no idea, Kassandra.”
“Oh, Grandma,” Kassandra sighed, “I think I do.”
The old woman looked puzzled, frowning as she studied Kassandra’s face.
Kassandra took Grandma’s hand and squeezed it, saying, “We’ll have dinner tonight, Grandma. And . . . I’ll tell you a story. A long and crazy story . . .”