Halfway Bitten

by Terry Maggert

  “Upper?” It was one word, but it meant many things. It revealed my uncertainty at finding that there were aspects of Halfway I didn’t know. For a hometown girl, that came as a cool touch at the back of my neck especially given my line of work.

  “It’s better if you see for yourself. My description is biased. Personally, I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in Halfway,” Gran said reverently.

  “You also think the pizza parlor is charming,” I teased.

  She snorted delicately. “Don’t be cheeky. I said I like the brick oven. The fake plastic grapevines are too kitschy for my palate, but the stonework is rather old world,” she clarified.

  “Fair enough. I do like the oven. I like what comes out of the oven even more,” I admitted, noting that it was only a couple hours until my usual snack raid. I sent a sternly worded warning to my stomach and hoped that it wouldn’t rumble in the sacred ground of the graveyard. I was giving myself even odds. I don’t do hunger well; it’s one of my charms.

  Gran let quiet settle about us and our smiles faded in that place between comfort and curiosity. I knew she would speak when ready, and I honestly had no idea what was going to be said. For the moment, I let the night keep my counsel. We passed a sort of threshold, where the interior of the town became indistinct. Growing up in Halfway, there were three known places. You were in town, or out of town, and then, if you were lucky, you were in the park. That kind of definitive existence is comforting, just like the solid grip Gran had on my arm when our feet began to crunch on the small stones of a cut through that led to the left side of our town cemetery.

  I looked at the terraces—four in all, ascending up the hillside, and each one covered in grave markers and sporadic trees. Low sheets of luminous fog drifted lazily near the ground, and somewhere an owl lofted a mournful hoot into the night air. If not for the distant blur of a lonely streetlight, we could have been anywhere in time. Gran stopped and began to speak.

  “Your power is like the terraces of this graveyard. It is founded on something sacred, just like mine, and on the witches of our family who stretch behind us into the distant shadows of a lineage that even I do not fully understand,” Gran said in a confessional tone. “Your grimoire is filling with spells. You’ve always been a great student, Carlie, but your power now exceeds your ability to translate those spells into mere words. You need alternative outlets to learn from, as well as places where you can turn to gather information. It is time that you understood how to speak to the dead.”

  “The . . . who?” I asked, stunned. I’d always thought of the dead as being unreachable, unless they were in torment. Then, more often than not, they reached out to the living, and the results were horrible. There is no pain like that of a ghost in limbo. It’s eternal, unending, and affixed to a memory that can often drive you mad with agony if you as much as brush up against it. I’d been trained by Gran to avoid ghosts, and now she was telling me that they were about to become a resource. I stayed quiet to let her instruct me; it was the right thing to do in that manicured graveyard filled with unquiet voices.

  “Witches are not precluded from talking to the dead, especially if that person is willing. There’s a difference between wailing because of pain and speaking to the living out of a desire to help. The dead see things, and if they’re good people, then they pass that information on to us,” Gran said.

  “Us?” I asked. Did she mean just our family?

  “Witches of goodness and light. The dead can be our eyes and ears, Carlie. They miss very little during their travels through the places between.” She looked up the hill to the highest terrace, a place that was nearly obscured by the low fog. “Don’t think of the dead as limited by their graves. That only applies to victims of trauma. It’s the singular reason for their insanity and pain, a sort of cabin fever brought on by their imprisonment.” A sad noise drifted from her lips and I knew she thought of someone specific.

  “Do you know any ghosts like that, Gran?” I asked. It seemed likely she did.

  She nodded slightly, and the stars glistened in her eyes. “I did, but they are at rest now. It was . . . the passing was difficult.” Uninvited tears left her cheeks with a single track on each. She wiped them away with an irritated wave and drew a steadying breath. For my Grandmother to verge on the loss of her composure was a rarity. I leaned toward her to listen even harder. My spirit sensed the truth behind her sadness.

  Gran took a decisive step up the central path. To either side of us, a garden of loss and remembrance peeled away into the fog, each stone the declaration of someone’s love. Flowers, wreaths, and other clues about recent visitors dotted the rows, some tattered by sun and rain, others so fresh the blooms were proudly unbowed. It was haunting and elegant, and I found a smile tug at my lips at the thought of loving so deeply that not even death could stop it. We ascended the path gradually, pausing every few steps so Gran could both orient and rest. She was hale, but the walk had already been quite long.

  “I know of spirits who have spoken to a family of witches for more than five hundred years,” Gran revealed. At my gasp, she nodded to recognize the enormity of that timeline. “If the relationship is mutual, then spirits may find no need to close the circuit between our worlds. Remember, Carlie, the difference between a necromancer and a witch is consent. A good witch honors the covenant between life and death, and will not abuse those who cannot defend themselves from the reaches of foul magic. I trust you as you were an extension of myself, but the temptations of necromancy are strong. I would be remiss if I didn’t armor you against all contingencies for when you conduct ever more complex and dangerous witchcraft. Do you understand?”

  “I think so. I mean, yes. It’s a lot to take in,” I admitted. I’m a good witch, but I know when I’m faced with something big. Like now. “Who will we speak to, Gran?” My curiosity bubbled over, and she smiled at me patiently.

  We arrived at the cusp of the fourth and narrowest tier, crowded with trees and verging into a less-cultured state. The hills nearest town blotted more stars to create a darkness that became a physical thing.

  Gran’s voice seemed muffled in the night. “Follow me, Carlie, and open your sight. Your step will be true.”

  I cleared my mind and let my power surge outward in a low wave. The land around me opened up to my gentle inquiry, and the results took my breath away. We stood in a mottled lawn of lights, varicolored and pulsing gently like waves in a mill pond. Occasional bursts of starlight flew to and fro, like a conversation between angels.

  “Are the spirits talking to each other?” My voice was a reverent whisper.

  “They are. “Gran chuckled. “And the things they say! So bawdy.” Her laughter was a tonic to my nerves, and I found the idea of ghosts being lewd to be nothing short of hilarious. And hopeful. “Ahh, there’s the gate now.” She pointed vaguely at a section of thick blackberry bushes, their spindles hanging down from an impenetrable midst.

  “Gate? There?” I goggled. Even in the dark, the bushes looked like a hedgehog made of thorns. It was a singularly uninviting scene.

  “Yes. Watch.” Gran stepped to the bracken, turned slightly, and waved a hand. There was a rustling like that of distant whispers, and the thorns parted into a clearing nearly three feet wide. Even for Gran, that was impressive magic.

  I stepped through the bristling mass into something completely unexpected. It was a fifth, smaller terrace that was hidden to the world. The fog was thinner, perhaps due to the incline we’d climbed. The border of the terrace was a low stone wall that looked to be at least a century old. Trees held the wall together at sporadic points, and a dizzying array of species loomed overhead, knitting together almost totally. A small, oval space remained clear of the riotous growth, letting the stars wink down at us in mute witness to our trespass.

  “Should we be here?” I asked, my voice dropping on its own. There was a sacred feel to the small place. Even standing there felt like a violation of some sort.

  Gran
smiled, waving gently at the clusters of graves. “They don’t mind. Trust me, you’ll see.” She began striding confidently to a single headstone on the right side of the cemetery. Even in the glimmer of my witch senses, I could still tell that there was something new about the grave.

  We stopped in front of the newest grave, the one that had drawn my attention. I sighed, drawing Gran’s attention.

  “What is it?” Gran looked at me with mild curiosity.

  “I don’t know. I’d sort of expected something more . . . witchy, you know? Like a two-hundred-year-old crypt, or something with a worn stone angel on top and creepy eyes that followed us everywhere. This seems rather tame,” I finished. I sounded childish even to myself, but Gran merely laughed.

  “Did you hear that, Maggie? She thinks you’re pedestrian. The nerve of young people,” Gran said to the space around us.

  A swirl of white light coalesced before us, hovering three feet above the plain headstone we stood near. The outline of a woman grew more substantial with each second, until a transparent replica of Maggie Freeman hovered before us, hands on hips and a rueful smile on her luminous face.

  “Bout time you brought the kid, Tess. I wondered when she’d put it all together and start doing the heavy lifting.” Maggie Freeman, now deceased, had passed into the afterlife less than two years ago, after four decades as the premier real estate agent in Halfway. To call her a fixture was an understatement; she ushered countless families into their vacation homes, cabin rentals, and purchases of God’s little green acre over the years. She died after a short illness, well into her mid-seventies, and more than a few people still missed her. I goggled at the shape before me, finally closing my mouth and regaining some measure of control.

  “Uh, hi, Maggie.” I’d known her since childhood. It was taking me a moment to process that she now hung in the air like a gossamer carving made of light. She was beautiful—it seemed that her ghostly figure was tailored to look like Maggie in her youth. She’d been quite the looker.

  “Hi yourself, kid.” Maggie’s spirit stretched and gave a dramatic yawn. “How’s tricks?”

  “Not as good as they should be, and by that I mean too many. You?” Gran asked, settling in for a chat. They’d been friends for decades.

  “Boring month, not many visitors. There are benefits to being dead, I suppose, but I do miss my Friday nights,” Maggie said, her breezy voice wistful.

  “Friday nights?” I interjected. What in the world could an old lady do on a Friday night?

  Maggie preened a bit, then laughed. “I should clarify. I don’t miss Fridays as much as I miss my evenings with Case.”

  “C-case? You mean the Judge, Mr. Caseldon?” I sputtered. I didn’t like where this was going. Our county judge was a hale man in his early seventies, who had no plans of retiring. He was also, now that I thought about it, a rather snazzy dresser, with good hair and all of his teeth.

  “That’s him. It’s hard to taste wine when you’re dead, even harder to recall when we’d finish dinner and then—” Maggie began, but I interrupted her with a half squeal.

  “Ewww! Stop it! I mean, I know you’re a woman and all, but still . . . I don’t want to hear—” I began.

  Now it was Maggie’s turn to interrupt me, which she did with a wicked ghostly smile.

  “Oh, what that man could do with his hands. He was also rather good with his gavel. Knew his way around a woman, that’s for sure,” Maggie said with utter delight as horror raced over my features. Gran laughed giddily while I waved my hands and kicked my feet in hilarious revulsion at the bawdy revelation. “Speaking of men, yours is a fine looking fellow, Carlie.”

  “You’ve seen Wulfric?” I asked in surprise. I wondered how it was possible that a ghost could know Wulfric.

  “We all have, dear. That man gives off heat in any spectrum, be it the land of the living or dead. Plus, he’s been around for so long. We look in on him now and again, and not just because he’s so pretty,” Maggie confessed.

  “Who is we?” I wondered how many lecherous old women could be buried in my town.

  Maggie waved airily, and tiny motes of cool white light trailed behind her hand to dance in the cool night air. It was a hypnotic effect, and I had to force myself to look away. It was sinking in just how close I was to the spirit world. I think that if there was a veil, it was indeed thin. “You know, when I was alive I would say that I was old, not dead. Now, I’m dead, but I’m still a woman, and I can appreciate that tall drink of water you’ve got for yourself, Carlie. Mmm—hmm, but he is handsome. Anyway, this place is filled with the dead. So are the lands around you, but Tess knows that. You will, too, Carlie. As you become more aware of your own power, you’re going to find that the mountains are crowded with souls, and not all of them are as happy as I am.” Maggie gave a ghostly leer. “Or the other ladies who drift about watching Wulfric. Who would’ve thought that a Mohawk and Viking would make such a lovely creature.”

  “Hey now, you dirty old woman,” I said, but I was smiling.

  Maggie held up her translucent hands in mock supplication. “But, to other matters. I suppose you’re here about the trouble?” She turned silently in air to focus on Gran.

  “The very same. I’m concerned, Mags. There are things afoot that I don’t like the looks of.” Gran’s lips were pressed together. I didn’t like that kind of concern on her face; it boded ill for Halfway. And me.

  “Hmmm. Well, let’s start with what you’ve seen, and I’ll tell you what I’ve heard. Sound good?” Maggie floated toward the ground, crossed her legs, and sat in an invisible chair of some sort. It was quite a trick.

  To my surprise, Gran followed suit after a careful wave of two hands. “Sit down, Carlie.”

  I leaned back, feeling with my fingers as if searching a lake bottom for lost treasure. To my utter shock, a hard surface met my touch. Gran smiled at the wonder on my face, then nodded that I should sit. I eased back, a stupid grin on my face at the display of magical skill. Gran really was light years ahead of me in terms of her power. I’d always known it, but something like this—so casual, and yet complex—told me I had a long way to go before I understand that woman’s magic.

  Gran began to make points with one hand, each gesture definitive and brisk. “A dead body, to start. Drained of blood, possibly groomed over time. She was young.”

  Maggie bristled visibly at that.

  “A second body, this time a bystander of some sort who may have gotten in the way, but could simply be a crime of opportunity. Thirdly, an old vampire who claims to be the last of his clan, hailing from the coast of Virginia. He gave Carlie the name Philip, but it could be a lie. Tell Maggie your impression of the creature, dear.”

  I cleared my throat, causing me to drift slightly in the air. It was like being the captain of a rather small airship, I thought, and the feeling left me a touch queasy and giddy all at once. “He certainly has presence. He’s a native man, quite commanding. There’s a cloud of sadness and frustration around him.”

  “That would follow. You know how vampires are about their familial structure,” Maggie said, her voice soft but steady.

  “Yes, well. That isn’t all, unfortunately. You see, the circus has come to town. So, it would be remiss of me not to mention the clowns,” Gran finished.

  “Clowns? Did you say clowns?” Maggie’s face blurred momentarily with the question.

  “Indeed I did. There are clowns, and a circus, and a ringmaster of some makeup that isn’t fully human. My senses tell me precious little, but my eyes explain enough that I think we need to visit the circus again,” Gran said. “The ringmaster clearly augments his show with something magical, but it isn’t our kind of power.”

  “Necromancy?” Maggie asked, her brows pulled together in a thundercloud of disapproval. Apparently, even the dead hated necromancers. A nice group, those people—they offended the living, dead, and everyone in between. “Blood necromancy, I assume?” At Gran’s nod, Maggie continued. “Nasty bu
siness, that. I mean, what we’re doing right now is a modest form of necromancy, after all. You must have some insight, based on your magical outreach?”

  Gran considered that for a moment while I remained silent, listening. “My senses tell me that there is something powerful and repugnant at play. I think—no, I know that there are many elements to what is happening in Halfway.”

  “Oh, indeed,” Maggie enthused in her soft voice. “We’ve seen activity across a spectrum unlike any other time. Lots of—they’re not half-bloods, but they aren’t really in either world.”

  “Like Wulfric?” I asked, wondering if his aura seemed, to Maggie, to be in two worlds at once.

  She shook her head definitively. “No, these are beings who are in the process of fighting off some sort of change. They’re tortured, and the light of their spirits spreads between what I can see and what I can only guess at.”

  Her description jarred a memory of something that Philip uttered. “The vampire from the Tidewater told me something about a bloodgift. Does that mean anything to you, Maggie?”

  Gran was watching Maggie intently. Friends or not, I could feel the tension that my question created.

  Maggie took so long to answer, I wondered if she was losing her hold on our plane of existence. Then I heard her sigh, a delicate noise like the rush of wind through distant reeds. When she spoke, her face flickered with emotion that translated into glimmering waves of uncertainty. “I’ve heard of it. I’ve only been dead for two years, but damn me if I haven’t heard that word.” Her celestial brow clouded with anger. “None of us are sure, but the ghost of a Canadian fur trapper told me that there were vampires fighting for territory and warm bodies to fill out the ranks of their clan. He said there are only two places you don’t want to be in these mountains—between a momma bear and her cubs.” She grimaced, and the lights in her skin twinkled at odds with the sour expression.