Summer's End

by Lisa Morton

  When it proved quiet, I opened the door and stepped out. Still safe. Closing the door, I glanced down—and saw a dent in the door panel.

  So much for the drugged theory.

  I walked, fast, to my front door, got in, closed it behind me and checked all the locks, then collapsed onto the couch. I’m not used to adrenaline rushes, and I was surprised to realize I was shaking. My little tortoiseshell cat, Roxie, helped by sitting at my ankles and mewing at me in gentle concern. The simple act of stroking her warm back and feeling her purr beneath my touch calmed me. We sometimes forget the power of the most common acts, don’t we? This ancient communion with another species, something that has been part of human life for thousands of years, was its own kind of magic, with a peculiar power to restore and heal.

  The phone rang, jarring me from my brief peace. I got up, stepped around Roxie, and checked caller ID—it was Ricky, calling from North Carolina.

  Hearing his voice was another gift, but—after exchanging the usual greetings—his message was disturbing. “I had the strangest thing happen tonight, and I knew you’d appreciate this.”

  The film had put their cast and crew up in a nice hotel in downtown Wilmington. Ricky had a room on the fifth floor, and we’d already joked about how they called the view from his window “Cape Fear Riverfront.” It was too bad he wasn’t making a horror movie.

  “I had this nice dinner tonight with a couple of guys from the crew—we found this little seafood place you’d love—and then I came up to my room. I was just getting ready for bed when I thought I heard something on the other side of the window, so I looked—and there was some kind of strange face out there. I only got a glimpse of it before it disappeared. It must have been one of the guys punking me, because they know about you and Halloween—at least that’s all I can figure.”

  Cold rushed through me, freezing me to the spot. “What did this face look like?”

  “Well, that was kind of the giveaway: It looked like a jack-o’-lantern. I figure they probably picked up one of those battery-operated things that are in all the stores right now and lowered it down on a line. In fact, it was probably Dave from Effects—he’s been teasing me all week.”

  A jack-o’-lantern. Of course. It was so obvious, and yes I’d missed it—they looked too much like malevolent, glowing jack-o’-lanterns for it to be sheer coincidence.

  “Hon…you there?”

  “Sorry. Long day. You’re not going out again tonight, right?”

  “No. Why?”

  What could I say? That what he’d seen hadn’t been a cheap Halloween prop; that he was being threatened by otherworldly forces because of me? Because of something that an Irish archaeologist in Los Angeles had unleashed? Something that pulverized the well-ordered, rational world we both believed in…or at least, used to believe in?

  And then there was his job—this film was important to both of us. It was a good supporting role in a serious movie, with a young writer/director who we liked and admired. And, frankly, the money would make our lives much easier. If I told him now I was in trouble, he’d leave the movie and come home. We couldn’t afford that…and frankly, I wasn’t ready to involve him in this. There was only one person who could help, and I would need to deal with him alone.

  “Just be careful.”

  “Are you okay?” He knew me too well, and his warmth thawed the chill that had paralyzed me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just another long day.”

  We spent the rest of the call talking about my signing, the interview I’d given today to a Montreal radio station, a nice customer review that had gone up at Amazon for my book. We said the things that parted lovers have said to each other, in letters, on phones, in text messages, for centuries. Then we hung up.

  I checked the locks again, risked a glance outside, and decided to try to sleep, even though I knew it was unlikely. And if I did…would my dreams leave me more exhausted and unsettled in the morning?

  October 29

  A strange whining sound from Roxie woke me in the morning.

  It was earlier than my usual waking time, but the sun was already up, and I was surprised to realize I had slept.

  But that sound—I’d never heard her make anything like it. She was in the living room, so I couldn’t see (or imagine) what would have caused her to act that way. “Roxie?”

  She didn’t stop—she sounded almost like a small child uttering a string of nonsense syllables. The sound brought last night’s unease hurtling back, but the fact that it was already light outside was reassuring.

  I got out of bed, ventured into the living room—and saw instantly what had provoked the sound from my cat:

  Outside, on my enclosed, second-floor balcony, a large carved pumpkin rested. The jack-o’-lantern’s face was a small masterwork of carving skill, exuding vicious glee.

  I picked up Roxie, trying to calm her, and together we stared at the sinister objet d’art beyond the glass. After a few seconds, I saw that the shadow around the base of the pumpkin wasn’t just dark. It was dark red, and thick.

  The thing was oozing blood. And as I knelt so I could see through its empty grin, I saw there was something inside, something with fur.

  Whatever was in there wasn’t moving, but it was still bleeding. The thin shape just visible through one eye socket might have been a tail, a pointed extension was possibly an ear.

  A cat. Maybe still alive. Probably not, but…

  If it was still alive, I couldn’t stand there and watch it bleed out. Yes, Ripley went back for the cat in Alien, and I’d risk a dangerous encounter now to check on an animal that wasn’t even mine. That’s one of the things about compassion—it trumps both fear and common sense.

  Because I knew, at that moment, exactly what I was confronting. There was no question that the jack-o’-lantern and the bloodied animal were not the work of ordinary pranksters. For one thing, my balcony is difficult to reach, accessible only by going through my living room or coming down from the apartment building’s roof. The pumpkin was a large one, and would have been hard for even a strong man to carry down a ladder. And I didn’t want to accept that any humans were capable of inflicting gruesome harm on a small animal and then stuffing its corpse into a hollowed-out squash.

  No, I trusted then that if I stepped outside, I might be facing vicious, inhuman things.

  I locked Roxie in the bedroom, then went to the hallway closet and found the baseball bat stored there. It was a good, solid wooden Louisville Slugger, and had been given to me years ago as a gift after I’d called the police on a psycho who’d threatened a friend with it. It had heft to it, and gave me enough confidence to slide the glass door open and step out onto the balcony.

  It was still early, but the day was already warm and clear, and it was hard to believe anything more threatening than a hungry squirrel would be nearby. I was guessing the sidh moved at night and had left this before vanishing at dawn, but I didn’t know that for sure.

  And…there might be something hurt and alive inside the pumpkin.

  I used the bat to reach down and knock the pumpkin’s top aside. A smell assaulted me, a thick, musky odor that I knew from an emergency visit to a veterinarian to fix an injured cat: The smell of fear and feline blood.

  I bent over the pumpkin and looked in. I could see there was a small animal within: black, unmoving. A black cat. I poked at it tentatively with the bat, but there was no response. I went back in for a heavy towel and then returned. I laid the towel by the pumpkin, picked it up gingerly, and tilted the cat out onto the towel.

  Now it was clear: It was dead. Its throat had been slit. Gore matted its soft black fur.

  I understood then how the sidh had earned their reputation as savage pranksters: A black cat was not just a classic Halloween icon, it was also the source of one of the most common urban legends: that Satanic cults kidnapped black cats every Halloween and sacrificed them in diabolical rituals. There was no basis to that story whatsoever.

  Unti
l now, that is.

  The sidh had slain an innocent cat to taunt me. The message was clear, and my response would be as well.

  I took little comfort from the fact that I didn’t know this cat—it didn’t belong to a neighbor, it wasn’t a local stray I’d glimpsed from time to time. I wrapped up the small corpse in the towel and placed it in a plastic bag; later on, I’d find a nice patch of yard and bury it. I’d deal with the pumpkin and the blood later. I had something more important to do now.

  I found ó Cuinn’s phone number and called him.

  He answered on the first ring, and sounded wary when he heard my voice. “The little friends you called up are stalking me,” I told him.

  “Can we meet somewhere?”

  I knew he was worried about the police still possibly tracking him, but right then I didn’t give two fucks about him or the cops. “No. Just reverse this shit, Conor. I don’t care what it takes, get rid of them. Now.”

  There was a pause before he answered, “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean—you can’t, or you won’t?”

  “I mean, I can’t. Look at the manuscript yourself—the banishing spell is only partial. That section of the manuscript is illegible.”

  “You’re kidding.” I paced my living room, wishing I could reach through the phone and strangle ó Cuinn. “You called these things up before making sure you could get rid of them?”

  “I…I really didn’t think they’d be a problem. What exactly are they…what—”

  I cut him off. “They left a dead, mutilated cat on my balcony this morning, just for starters.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t the work of pranksters?”

  I had to laugh at how our roles had suddenly reversed themselves: two nights ago I’d walked out on this man when he’d told me we were both Druids, and now he was arguing in favor of human mischief while I advocated for the supernatural. “I’ve seen them, Conor.”

  “Oh. Dear God. I never thought—”

  I hung up on him. He was an irritating idiot. He was the fool in every bad horror movie who read the ancient spell out loud, who taunted the killer, who had sex while a madman lurked in the shadows. I’d solve this without him, then.

  I brought up the manuscript on the computer, and found the banishing spell. He was right about that, at least: The beginning of it was there—it involved a rod made of ash and a spoken command—but the rest was lost.

  I’d find another way, then. Could I still use logic against something that was essentially illogical? At this point, didn’t it make the most sense to accept the irrational, to just acknowledge that the supernatural did exist? But could that doorway be only partly opened? If the sidh were real (they were), what else was behind that portal? I’d met one goddess already—how many more were there? Was there one single God, watching impassively?

  Unless He was going to intervene now, I’d have to wrestle with that question later on. Right now I needed to come up with some way to fight the deadly tricksters Conor had called up. I needed to think about practical magic, not impractical theology.

  I tried to remember everything I could about Samhain encounters with the sidh, and later Scottish stories of fairies on Halloween. A few tales talked about silver or iron; one odd legend mentioned wearing your clothes inside out. Mostly the old folklore suggested avoiding them.

  I pulled down some of my reference books and flipped through them, but everything that I found described ways to protect yourself from the sidh, not get rid of them. Or even hurt them.

  But I knew there was a way—Mongfind had recorded one, but I only had part of it. A rod of ash…a command…what else?

  I glanced out my balcony at the bloody jack-o’-lantern, and the sight of it triggered a realization: The sidh had carved the pumpkin in a recreation of their own faces. Their heads, in fact, with the oversized, round shape and glowing features, looked like living jack-o’-lanterns.

  Was it possible that the classic Halloween jack-o’-lantern—that most beloved of the holiday’s symbols—had been based on the faces of the sidh? Or was there even more to it than simply remembering the sidh in folk art?

  Before bringing Halloween to America[16], the Irish had carved turnips into jack-o’-lanterns. Common wisdom held that the vegetables—with a candle placed inside—had been used to startle passersby on Halloween night, but now I believed they might have served another purpose:

  What if the jack-o’-lanterns had originally represented the ultimate defense against the sidh on Halloween night? Were they perhaps used in Mongfind’s ritual? Were stories of Irish lads smashing their sculpted turnips on Halloween night indicating more than just sheer playfulness?

  The baseball bat was made of ash…it would certainly be very effective in smashing a pumpkin…

  Somehow I knew this was right. Maybe it was some part of the Morrigan, still residing in me; or my own intuition, telling me that the connections I’d just drawn were simply too strong.

  Maybe it was Druid knowledge, buried deep within me. Magic encoded in DNA, like musical ability or language skills.

  I would wait until evening, when the sidh were present again. I knew I’d be putting myself in peril, but I also thought it might be the only way to banish them—would they react to a command and a banishment ritual during the day, when they didn’t seem to be present?

  No, I had to risk it. At sundown, I’d use the bat—my rod of ash—to shatter the pumpkin they’d left me as a cruel taunt, and I’d command them to return to their own world.

  And if I was wrong and it didn’t work…then come Halloween, the sidh would make any human terrorists look like preschoolers.

  October 29

  Evening

  I spent the rest of the daylight hours going over Mongfind’s manuscript, paying attention to the charms, spells and rituals that I’d only glanced at before.

  Most of them were little more than recipes or instructions: How to prepare a tea that would cure nausea, how to make a poultice for a leg wound, how to keep berries picked in October from spoiling by November.

  But then there were the more serious magicks as well. These included:

  · Shapeshifting

  · Communicating with the dead

  · Enchanting a spear so it would never miss its target

  · Creating a cup that would never empty of mead

  · Traveling via an astral body

  · Invisibility

  · Invulnerability in battle

  · Passing into the Otherworld, or the realm of the sidh

  A few of the incantations were missing key words; despite Mongfind’s precautions, parts of the manuscript had blurred with the passage time. A few sections were spattered with something dark that covered the writing—probably Mongfind’s own blood, coughed out as her lungs had failed her over that long final winter.

  There were some instructions on creating protective wards, in case I failed in my attempt at performing the banishing ceremony.

  I should perhaps make clear that none of these practices were presented as symbolic acts; this wasn’t some new age book in which transforming into a wolf meant you’d been granted a license to behave a little wildly in the sack. No, in Mongfind’s book transforming into a wolf meant you grew hair, got down on four paws, and grew teeth as sharp as knife tips. This wasn’t bogus spiritualism; this was the real deal.

  As the sun dropped in the sky, I made sure the (now empty) jack-o’-lantern, its base stained red, was placed squarely in the center of my balcony. I moved everything—chairs, potted plants, etc.—well away, so I’d have room to swing the bat. I took down the wind chimes and the cute orange lights Ricky had strung around the eaves. Then I stepped in, closed the glass door, and waited.

  Five PM…five-thirty…six, and the sun was gone. The sky overhead glowed like burnished steel, leaving the ficus and magnolia trees to stand in mute silhouette. I made sure my lights were all on, my front door locked, my bat in hand.

  I hoped I wouldn’t need to worry ab
out my own cat; she’d been fed an hour earlier, and was now probably curled up on a corner of my bed, sleeping off dinner.

  Or so I thought, until I heard her screaming.

  The shriek was piercing, and sent me rushing into the bedroom; it sounded as if she was still on the bed, and now the cry was punctuated with hissing. I reached the bedroom—

  The lights went off in the apartment.

  The terrible sound of the cat’s shriek redoubled.

  By the light coming in through the bedroom blinds, I saw a flash of something moving around the edge of the bed.

  Of course: they could come into a building. I’d been stupid to think that somehow doors and walls could keep out things that came from another dimension.

  I felt my way to the apartment’s breaker panel in the hall, threw back the hinged cover, and started flipping switches. The power returned, the lights came back on—

  Something rushed past me, leaving the skin of my leg chilled through my jeans. I heard a high-pitched tiny cackle from the living room, echoing as if it came from the far end of a cave.

  Clutching and lifting the bat, I stepped cautiously into the living room. Behind me, the cat quieted and I heard her paws hit the floor as she leapt from the bed and scurried beneath it in alarm.

  Good girl.

  That left me just needing to get through the living room to the sliding door, and the balcony beyond. Meaning, of course, I just had to get past what waited for me somewhere in the living room.

  One step…two…

  I heard something skitter behind a bookcase to my right. I edged to the left, trying to move away from it—

  And heard a snicker below the couch to my left. Followed by a tiny cry from behind the desk in front of me.

  There was more than one of them. In fact, they were hidden throughout the entire apartment.

  One brushed against my ankles. I jumped and swung the bat, which crushed a corner of the coffee table but nothing else.

  I turned, seeking them, determined to take a swing at the next little fucker who touched me.