by Lisa Morton
But…
Their voices came from all around me now. They whispered together, but because there must have been dozens of them circling me the whispers became a single loud pulsing hiss.
I felt a sharp sting in my right calf, and knew I’d been bitten. I kicked backwards, but only managed to nearly throw myself off balance and go down.
How long before they’d all be on me, with their claws and jack-o’-lantern grins…
Of course: The jack-o’-lantern. They’d almost made me forget my original purpose.
I ran to the glass door and slid it open. Behind me, talons raked both ankles while they cackled in feral glee.
But they were too late; I’d reached my goal. I raised the bat and turned to face them. The lights were out again in the apartment, and through the glass I saw their eyes, glimmering, savoring what they thought was their victory.
The command was simple: I ordered them to return to their own world, and then I brought the bat down. The pumpkin caved in, spraying orange pulp in a wide circle.
The sidh’s chortles turned to shrieks. The glow of their eyes faded. And behind them…
I saw their world, for an instant that has proven to be unforgettable: A black, starless sky looked down on a lifeless landscape. Gray, leafless trees sprouted from depthless bogs, stones sculpted into shapes like headstones with leering faces rose from mounds of soggy earth—and then the stone faces turned to leer at me. The sidh scuttled among it all like maggots on a rotting corpse, and before the gap between us closed, I saw from the way they glared at me that mere prank-playing wouldn’t be involved should we meet again.
It was over. The lights in the apartment flickered back on, the bat dropped from my fingers into the mess of the shattered pumpkin, and the pain ignited in my legs.
I moved into the light to examine the damage they’d inflicted on me: There were three striped claw marks on my left leg, and four pinprick puncture marks on my right. They were trickling blood, although none seemed deep enough to require stitches. But…
Were the sidh venomous? Did they carry disease, had they succeeded in killing me in a way that would just take longer…and be even more painful?
I swabbed the wounds out in the bathroom, but stopped before bandaging them, wondering if Mongfind’s writings could offer any aid. Upon checking, I found a recipe for a poultice that would cure “the bites of dangerous creatures of all kinds.” It required a few herbs I didn’t have, but that I thought I could find at a nearby health food market.
I put bandaids on and stepped out the door. A moment of apprehension caused me to wait halfway down the stairs, ears straining…but I was reassured by the normal night sounds: Cars, dogs barking, a neighbor’s inane television sitcom.
I’d successfully performed a banishment ritual.
As I headed to the market, I felt fresh confidence, and I knew I would survive the sidh’s wounds.
I could create and control magic, even better than Conor ó Cuinn.
I was a Druid.
I was living inside one of my own Halloween stories.
I’ve written two Halloween-themed novellas[17]; both are about ordinary, middle-aged adults who find themselves surrounded by ancient, malevolent supernatural forces on Halloween. In both, the protagonists fight to hang onto something: (a child, a business). In both, the fight climaxes in another world.
What was I fighting for? I wasn’t fighting to protect my (dis)beliefs; they’d already been taken from me.
There was something bigger at stake. Much bigger.
But now I felt fever setting in, and I had to concentrate on making it to the market, buying what I needed, getting home and putting together Mongfind’s poultices. By the time I crawled into bed, the heavy packs of herbs taped against the burning wounds, I was shaking and sweating. If Mongfind’s cure didn’t work, whatever else was at stake wouldn’t matter, at least not to me.
October 30
Before Dawn
Fever dreams:
I soar into the night sky, but instead of more stars appearing the higher I go, they disappear, one by one, then whole galaxies, and I realize something huge has reared up between me and space. Something completely black and lightless, huge and freezing.
Bal-sab. Lord of Death.
I look down, and the earth is below me, but it’s no longer my earth; I’m in the past now, looking down on the ruins of the great Celtic palaces. It’s Samhain, and there are no Druids left to sate Bal-sab’s hunger, so he takes his sacrifice in other ways. He waves a vast limb, and the portals to the Otherworld open, releasing the sidh. They ravage through Europe, bringing the Black Death with them; when wise women attempt to banish them, they fester in the minds of neighbors, judges, priests and inquisitors, who torture and burn the women. The witches.
Centuries pass, and Bal-sab’s voracious appetite continues unabated. He finally tires of letting the sidh do his dirty work, and he takes to whispering in the minds of great men, infesting their brilliance with visions of mass destruction. Those he seduces produce ever more powerful weapons: Catapults, cannons, nerve gas, nuclear bombs.
Where are the other gods? Why do they allow this?
“Because we must,” answers the Morrigan, and I feel her presence beside/inside me.
“Why? Why can’t you stop him?”
“He is Death. Death, more than any of us, must continue. Without Death, there would be no balance.”
“But…” I struggle to find the words. “The world wasn’t always like this.”
The Morrigan’s sadness courses through me like tears in a creased cheek. “No. And it need not be this way now.”
“How?”
But I know. Even as I ask it, I know.
“Even Death can be forgiving,” she says, before disappearing.
I awoke, then. It was early in the morning, still dark outside, but my fever had broken and the pain from the cuts was gone. I got up to drink some water, then returned to bed, still weak. Before I drifted off again, I made my plan:
I’d call ó Cuinn in the new day.
October 30
Day
Conor was surprised to hear from me.
“We need to meet today,” I told him.
We made arrangements to have lunch at a coffee shop near me. We’d meet there at two, it would be fairly empty by then. We’d need to talk where we wouldn’t be heard, because we’d be discussing murder.
ó Cuinn was right on time. I knew the waitress—Ricky and I ate here frequently—and asked her for a back booth. The place was quiet, just us and a few other groups closer to the front. Conor ordered black coffee, I asked for an iced tea.
“You look tired,” he said, once the waitress left with our drink orders.
“More than tired…I fought the sidh last night. They got in a few good jabs, but I won.”
The way his jaw dropped would have been comical under other circumstances. “You…you banished them?”
I nodded. He forced his jaws closed. “How…?”
“I improvised. It worked. They clawed me in a few places, but Mongfind left a cure for that, and it worked, too.”
“So…?” He left his question unasked, but I knew what it was.
“Yes,” I told him, before adding, “so let’s talk about the Samhain ritual.”
The grin that crossed his face made him look uncomfortably like the sidh, and for a moment I regretted this meeting.
“Well, that’s brilliant. You know it won’t work without you.”
“Do you have…everything?”
He was about to respond when the waitress brought our drinks. Conor stopped abruptly, averting his gaze, nervous and guilty, and I wondered how he’d possibly stayed out of jail if he’d acted this way with Bertolucci. Once she’d gone, he leaned close and whispered. “Yes, everything’s been arranged.”
“Everything,” of course, included a human sacrificial victim. One I would be required to help kill.
I almost asked him how he’d manage th
at part—maybe he’d lure a junkie or transient with money; he was slightly built, and I couldn’t picture him physically subduing anyone—but I really didn’t want to hear details.
I know now, of course, that I was an idiot. I should have asked him. If I’d known what he had planned…
But I didn’t, whether from cowardice or simply revulsion. I didn’t ask him who we’d be killing.
“There is one thing only you can bring,” he said.
“What?”
“Recall that the ritual indicates the use of a wand; it’s crucial in creating the circle that will protect us. I can’t supply you with that—you must find your wand on your own.”
“Is that Mongfind or J.K. Rowling?”
He grimaced briefly, then added, “Children’s fiction aside, magicians often speak of wands finding them, rather than vice versa. The wand is most likely found near a special tree, or forested area.”
“Why do you know that? How long have you been studying this stuff?”
He actually reddened at that, revealing a secret passion. “I…it was just a purely academic study. Until…”
“Of course.”
He reached into his jacket and removed a long bundle wrapped in a white handkerchief. “This is mine. I acquired it several years ago, from the area of Tara[18] in Ireland.” He pulled the white linen away to reveal a surprisingly plain, sturdy foot-long twig. The only unusual feature was a sort of groove that wound around the narrower half. “This is ash. The spiraling around it is the result of vines growing in the trees; finding something like this is quite rare.”
“Have you used it, Conor?”
He looked away, abashed. “Only once…”
“When you summoned the sidh.”
“Yes.”
“Well, at least we know it works.” I enjoyed mustering that sarcasm; I still didn’t like Conor ó Cuinn, despite the fact that we would soon be partners. “So…have you thought about where…this…will happen tomorrow?”
He nodded. “Mongfind specifies that it must occur in a sacred oak grove. There isn’t much sacred here in Southern California, but at least there are plenty of oaks.”
Touche. I had to admire the way he’d just repaid my sarcasm. “Thousand Oaks[19], perhaps?”
“Actually…yes. I’ll e-mail you directions.”
We sat silently for a moment; when we weren’t discussing the supernatural, we really had nothing in common. After a while, Conor said, “You understand that there is an element of danger to us in this.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant the ritual or kidnapping someone to be offered as a blood sacrifice. “Do you mean…?”
“Summoning Bal-sab. That’s why the first part of the ritual calls for the creation of a protected space.”
Of course I’d read Mongfind’s description of encountering Bal-sab, but I realized only now that I’d still thought of it as fiction. A real encounter with a physical representation of Death…do any of us know ourselves well enough to perfectly anticipate how we’ll react when confronted with something genuinely terrifying?
“Then we’ll just have to be sure we create that space well, won’t we?”
That shut him up.
The rest of the meeting was devoted to lunch. We ate quickly and quietly. A last meal? Or the last meal of an old world?
As we finished, Conor asked, “Do you know where you’ll look for your wand? Maybe you’ve got a special park you like, a garden…?”
“I do know, but it’s…neither of those things.”
He realized I had no interest in sharing a private plan with him, and he accepted that without further argument. “Well…tomorrow afternoon, then.”
He left. I followed him out of the restaurant, climbed in my car, and headed toward the 5 freeway. Even though it was just past three p.m., traffic was heavy, and I headed south at barely ten miles an hour.
What will this all be like, if we succeed? Will there still be traffic jams, road rage, smog, hundred-degree fall temperatures thanks to global warming, gas at five dollars a gallon, increasing ranks of homeless, greedy corporate heads, ambitious politician, junkies, cancer, and all the other things that grind us down every day even as we take them for granted?
It was hard to imagine a renaissance in the middle of the SoCal metro sprawl.
October 30
-
October 31
I left the freeway at Cesar Chavez Avenue and headed east. My destination was only a mile from the freeway.
When Conor had mentioned a “special tree,” my thoughts had immediately gone to a photo I’d taken sometime in the early 1980s. Back then, I’d briefly considered going into professional photography for my day job, and I’d worked to assemble a portfolio. One day, completely by accident, I’d stumbled across an amazing cemetery just east of downtown L.A. At the time I didn’t know that Evergreen Cemetery was the oldest extant cemetery in Los Angeles, but its melancholy beauty, age, and hodgepodge of monuments and headstones had yielded some of my best photos.
My real prize, however, was a picture of a gigantic spreading oak that overlooked a significant chunk of the graveyard. In the final black-and-white print, the tree looked impossibly huge, and somehow wise.
I knew exactly where to find my wand.
At this time of the afternoon, on a weekday, the cemetery was mostly deserted. I was also saddened to see that it had fallen into some disrepair in the years since I’d last visited, but I spotted the oak easily enough, and parked as near to it as I could.
Evergreen dated back to 1877 and supposedly held some 300,000 interments. There were no superstars resting here, no shining beacons of Hollywood history, but Evergreen was home to many of L.A.’s more interesting historical figures. A tall, white monument marked the plot of the Lankershim family; Isaac Lankershim had once had a town named after him, until that town was renamed North Hollywood in 1927.
I strode across the lawn, and was saddened to see patches of dying grass and headstones that had literally fallen in disrepair. A few graves were clean and well kept, testament to longstanding families that still honored their dead.
I passed the quaint, cobblestone cottage that would be opened for funerals, and elaborate granite memorials that were taller than I was. In some places, the headstones were so crowded together that it was hard to see ground beneath them. I passed a stone angel I’d shot thirty years ago, and saw it was now missing most of one upraised arm.
The oak had been significantly trimmed back, but it was still there, providing a surprisingly lush green canopy for those resting beneath. The sun was slanting in from the west now, but there were still areas beneath the oak hidden from light, perhaps permanently. The ground was spongy here, and I sidestepped around a large gray mushroom cropping up from the cracks in a plaque that marked an 1892 burial.
I didn’t know what I was looking for, really, so I searched for a place to sit. There were no benches in this area, and I finally opted for a small patch of dry grass without a marker. Was it nonetheless a grave, one for which the marker had crumbled or been removed? I offered a silent apology to the resident beneath me, if that was the case.
I’d picked a spot in the sun, but the day’s autumn warmth faded quickly, even as the sun’s light did not. I shivered once, wondering why the temperature was dropping when sunset was still hours away.
The first tiny nudge—it wasn’t truly a physical sensation, but I can only compare it to that—came then. I turned, expecting a visitor or a guard, but there was no one to be seen nearby, just a few distant joggers on the path that encircled the cemetery. A leaf, perhaps, that had fallen from the tree…
It happened again, this time feeling more like a small puff near my ear, like a sentient breeze trying to whisper its secrets. Then I remembered something from Mongfind’s book about contacting the dead:
“The new Druid will experience the initial attempts by the dead to reach us as the smallest of touches or sounds, or perhaps a movement half-glimpsed when nothing’s th
ere…those with experience, though, will understand that the dead are anxious to communicate, and that we need only open ourselves to them.”
Open ourselves to them…I wasn’t sure what that meant, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. Weren’t close encounters with death at the heart of most great horror fiction? I’d certainly written about it myself dozens of times, everything from a story about a haunted bookstore[20] to flesh-eating zombies[21]. Again, I had to ask myself how much deeper I wanted to explore the real version of my fiction.
Yet I felt no fear about this potential meeting. Perhaps it was the gentleness of the approaches to me; there was something timid about it. Maybe the ghosts were more afraid of me.
And I hadn’t come here to parlay with spirits; I was in search of a tool. But I had no idea how to go about finding what I needed; perhaps one already dead would know how to help me deal with a Lord of Death.
It was, paradoxically, too bright to see them, so I closed my eyes.
Whether what took place was dream or reality or trance or some other state, I can’t say.
It was:
Gray, as if all light and color had been leeched from the world. And in this gray realm were gray people…hundreds, thousands, of them. They were dim—not translucent, not see-through shades with faint blue glows, not cheap movie effects, but rather like someone you’d glimpse from a distance standing in an unlit corner of an attic. I could see just enough of them to make out a few details: An out-of-fashion cut of hair, a nineteenth-century uniform, a woman’s dress from the 1940s. Some of them moved slightly, wavering as if they were underwater. It was hard to tell how much awareness they possessed, but a few seemed to be murmuring. I could hear their voices, but too faintly to make out any words.
I watched them for a while before I rose to move among them. They didn’t react…nor did I. There was nothing frightening about them; if anything, they seemed…sad. Stuck. How many of us feel like this in our lives: Drained, trapped, unaware? Death should be different, but perhaps it was just an extension of life.
As I walked through them, I saw a change happening, slowly: As the sky darkened, they brightened. Colors faded in on their clothing and skin; some took tentative steps.