[Anthology] The Paranormal 13- now With a Bonus 14th Novel!

by Dima Zales

  All by myself I have to go,

  With none to tell me what to do --

  All alone beside the streams

  And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

  Her head felt heavy, her neck weak. Her toes and fingers tingled, and her cup wobbled as her strength eked away. Tea sloshed over the cup’s rim and would have scalded her if it had been any hotter. Petra set the tea cup down and stared at her fingers curled around the handle as if they belonged to someone else. She opened her mouth to speak, but Anne had disappeared into the foggy haze that filled the room.

  The strangest things are there for me,

  Both things to eat and things to see,

  And many frightening sights abroad

  Till morning in the land of Nod.

  5

  How to Make a Sleeping Draught

  Valerian, a flowering plant, can be found throughout Europe. Mix valerian, honey, apple cider vinegar and hot milk. Valerian is also used as a perfume, so you can smell good while you sleep.

  —Petra’s notes

  From the doorway, Emory stared into Anne’s bedchamber, aware that this act alone breached a moral code, but he couldn’t take his gaze off the girl on the hay stuffed mattress. She was everything he remembered—pink cheeks, red, full lips, clear skin and the most amazingly straight, white teeth. Her mouth hung open and a tiny trickle of drool stained the pillow beneath her hair. It was one of the loveliest things he’d ever seen in his long lifetime. “What have you done to her?” He cleared his throat because his voice sounded strangled.

  Anne fidgeted and lowered her gaze to the floor. “I’ve done nothing. She is fine, merely sleeping.”

  “You should not have brought her here,” Emory said. He wanted to ask how Anne had met her. It seemed remarkable that fate, by way of Anne, had delivered her to him again. “How long has she slept?”

  “Since afternoon,” Anne replied.

  Rohan, standing behind Emory, softly swore, “Zounds.”

  Emory gave his old friend a cautionary look. Rohan shared Emory’s disability when it came to women, although he did not have the effect on them that Emory seemed to. Rohan, in his dark and dusty robe, had a head as round and as bald as the moon, excepting the tufts of gray hair sprouting around his ears. Plus he had fingers and toes as thick as sausages. The women that cast come hither eyes at Emory spared Rohan hardly a glance.

  “I pray she will sleep through the night. I believe she has traveled far.” Anne’s voice lilted upward, as if asking if anyone would believe her lie.

  “Tis more than fatigue that has brought her to your bed, Miss Anne,” Rohan said, his voice tinged with disapproval— and laughter.

  Anne sighed. “’Tis but a sleeping draught. T’will not harm her.”

  “Such pride in your herbs, Anne.” Rohan tisked his tongue. “’Tis a cardinal sin.”

  Another reason why women would not fawn over Rohan. No one loves a prude. Emory smiled before casting a questioning glance at Anne. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “Do not preach at me,” Anne said, sounding more tired than annoyed. “I did not know ought to do. Left on her own, she would surely come to harm in the marketplace. A gentle woman wandering unattended, By faith, ‘tis a wonder she made it here unscathed.”

  “’Til you drugged her?” Emory asked.

  “When in doubt, take a nap,” Rohan quipped. “”Tis a worthy motto.”

  Anne shrugged. “Perhaps she will see more clearly when she wakes.”

  “She is of quality,” Emory said. “T’would be unwise to incur her family’s wrath.”

  After a long pause, Anne said, “They need never know.”

  Soft candlelight bathed the cottage room. The moon and stars shone through the open window from which came the smell of the cow and chickens, yet Emory thought he smelled the girl’s perfume, a scent foreign and intoxicating. He fought the urge to step closer.

  The girl was still, but her mouth, which had been opened, was now pinched shut. Her nostrils flared.

  She is awake, Emory thought, a tingle running over his arms.

  “Emory,” Anne blew out his name with a sigh, as if she read his thoughts

  Emory jumped, and tried to stop staring. “Of course her family will know. She will tell them,” Emory said, loudly, trying to communicate to the girl what she must do.

  “I’m not sure she will,” Anne said. “She seems quite daft.”

  “These things doth the Lord hate, a proud look, a lying tongue.” Rohan scolded Anne. He sounded good-natured, but his words were self-righteous.

  “’Tis true. I lie not.” Anne shook her head. “She seems to know nothing. Had all the intellectual capabilities of a turnip.”

  “Which she wouldn’t recognize even if she held one in her hand.” Emory chuckled. “This afternoon she mistook a turnip for a beet.”

  “You’ve met?”

  “Briefly. She was throwing vegetables at Lord Garret.”

  Anne smiled. “Ah, so she has more intelligence than I supposed.”

  “Perhaps,” Rohan said, “more sauce and mettle than intelligence.”

  “So, did his high and mightiness mind being targeted by vegetables?” Anne asked.

  “He never knew. She can add poor athleticism to her list of attributes.” He grinned, watching the girl stiffen beneath their onslaught of insults. He wondered what she would say when they met again? Because, although he knew they shouldn’t, he also knew they would. He would make sure of it.

  “They must be acquainted then,” Anne continued. “It seems unlikely that even she would toss vegetables at strangers, especially royal strangers.”

  Emory watched the girl seethe in mock sleep.

  “Perchance,” Emory said. “She kept calling him Kyle.”

  “Kyle? What is a Kyle?” Rohan laughed long and deep and even Anne smiled. Emory watched the girl dig her fingernails into the palm of one hand as if to keep from slapping someone. He couldn’t help staring.

  “What is this?” The tone of Rohan’s voice caught Emory’s attention. He held a small, vibrant pink object with a little cap, made of a polished, thin, ore. Underneath the cap, a tiny red cylinder rose when Rohan twisted the tube. It smelled odd, a scent Emory didn’t recognize.

  Rohan raised it to his nose.

  “Poison?” Emory asked, tone grave.

  Rohan shook his head. He returned the cap to the cylinder, dropped it back into the purse and pulled out a small, leather book filled with glossy cards. One tag had an amazing likeness of the girl. He ran his finger over the image of her face in wonder.

  Next they found a shiny object with characters that sprang to light when they touched it. Beeps in a variety of tones rang out. Rohan held the thing at arm length. “What evil is this?” he asked.

  “A musical instrument, perhaps?” Anne guessed.

  The thing screeched and Rohan dropped it. “Satan’s tool,” he gasped.

  Outside the window a cow moaned.

  “Anne, you said you found her crying over Geoffrey’s grave?”

  “She cried black tears.” Anne gazed out the window. “I best be seeing Buttercup before she bursts.”

  Emory waited for Anne to leave and then demanded, “You know nothing of this?” Rohan grumbled in dissent. “She is but a lost child.”

  Emory put his hand on Rohan’s arm and lowered his voice. “I need to know, is this your doing? Another trick, another ploy?”

  “Come, Emory, be reasonable. Not every event is a ruse of heaven or hell. The longer you live, the more you will learn that to be true.”

  Emory used an angry whisper. “You and I both know I do not live!”

  “Hush, man.” Rohan looked right and left, clearly not wanting to be overheard. “Anne said the girl knew Geoffrey.”

  “She lacks the look of a zealot.” Emory motioned toward the thing on the floor. “And by all saints, what is that?”

  “Let’s see what it can do.” Rohan picked it up and lumbered toward a
chair. Sitting, he set the thing in front of him.

  Emory watched while Rohan pressed buttons and used the tones to create a song. After a few minutes of mastery, Rohan began to sing along with his tune.

  “Come live with me and be my love,

  And we will all the pleasures prove

  That hill and valley, dale and field,

  And all the craggy mountains yield.”

  The lyrics made Emory uncomfortable, and he wondered if his friend had intentionally chosen the song. He sat beside Rohan and pulled the thing to him. He fiddled with the buttons until the device began to ring as if it possessed a hundred bells.

  Rohan stopped singing and stared with an open mouth. “Zounds.”

  Hours later, Petra woke. A cool breeze blew through the room carrying noise – crickets, a cow lowing, and a distant dog barking. She lay on her side, a scratchy wool blanket pulled to her shoulder and a feather pillow beneath her head.

  Daft? Petra bit back a snort and fought the urge to spit out her SAT results. A flush of anger washed over her, but she held her tongue and body still.

  How dare they look through her purse? How dare they drug her, study her, and discuss her as if she were an alien object, an insect on a pin, a brainless cockroach. She bet they didn’t know cockroaches were one of earth’s hardiest creatures, capable of surviving without food, water and even air for prolonged periods. And a dreamer or a time-traveler, even one caught in a nightmare, was much more clever and competent than a cockroach. A dreamer/time-traveler could accomplish anything, survive any physical hardship. Maybe.

  Hoping she was alone, Petra opened her eyes and saw rough plastered walls, a three legged table beneath a window without glass, and the moon and stars.

  We both know I do not live. What does that even mean? She didn’t know, she didn’t care, and she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. After listening for sounds of movement in the house, she crawled from the bed. Her arms and legs felt heavy, detached, as if they belonged to someone else, and she needed extra humph to make them move. Standing in the center of the room, she plotted her escape. The door didn’t have a knob, but a latch, a latch that would rattle if touched. She tried to think of where Anne and her father slept as the cottage appeared to have only two rooms.

  This Anne, even though she looks like Robyn, is not your friend, she told herself as she listened at the door, trying to make sense out of the craziness. Would time continue in Royal Oaks while she was in Dorrington? Was her body here or there? Was she even really here?

  And where was Zoe, what was happening at home? Had Zoe returned, reported her disappearance? Their parents would be furious about her abandoning Zoe at the fair, but at some point they would start to worry, right? Had that point arrived? They’d call Robyn, and her other friends.

  They’d call the police.

  She had to get home before she ended up on the eleven clock news.

  Hearing nothing from the other side of the door, she padded to the window. The shutters had been left open, but beyond the cottage gate the world looked dark and frightening. Tall pines swayed in the wind and threw dancing shadows across the road.

  The wind screeched through the gaps of the wooden walls of a shed, as if to say “one good huff and away you go.” A second structure on tall wooden legs stood beside the shed. Much too small and humble to be a barn, it had seed scattered outside the door. Chicken coop? She would have to walk past the roost, or coop, or whatever. Would chickens make noise? Did they sleep at night? Other than the KFC variety, Petra had never given chickens much thought.

  There’s a fox in the hen house, Grammy Jean would say when they were playing cards if someone tried to be tricky. Petra’s grandmother, who spent all of her life in California, had once been on Hollywood’s silver screen. If Grammy had lived to be seventy-something without ever seeing a chicken coop how was it that Petra, at 17, was now wondering about disturbing a herd—or was it a flock? of sleeping chickens?

  She thought again of the Girl Scout advice. When lost, stay put until someone finds you. Preferably someone without a sleeping potion. Okay, Girl Scout wisdom didn’t always apply. Petra drew a deep breath. She wouldn’t wait for the nightmare to end. She’d find her way home.

  The wind teased at her hair and she remembered her tiara. Looking around, she spotted the faux diamonds sparkling on a bedside table. She scooped it up and pinned it on, thinking that if dollar bills hadn’t any value, glass stones the size of pennies might come in handy.

  Across the road lay the inky, black woods. She’d never been outside where there hadn’t been a string of streetlights to dim the stars and moon. She thought of the crowded boardwalk that hugged Newport Beach, the lights over Royal’s tennis courts, the fireworks bursting over the Angel Stadium. She’d never walked alone at night before.

  Petra swung up onto the window ledge. Shivering, she dropped back into the room, grabbed the wool blanket off the bed, wrapped it over her shoulders and then slid out the window into the dark.

  Without her purse.

  Petra stifled a curse. Not that anything in her purse had any value in this Renaissance world, at least nothing worth the risk of climbing back into the room. Petra brushed off her skirt and pulled the blanket over her head like a cloak. Trying to remember the way to town, she followed the dirt road down a steep hill that led to a fog bank.

  The wind that had blown through the trees surrounding Anne’s cottage had blown itself out. Mist swirled around the structures and trees lining the road.

  Wrapping the wool blanket tighter across her shoulders, Petra tried to be brave, but random thoughts haunted her—highwaymen, wolves and other monsters, like dragons. When she first heard hooves beating down the road she thought it might be her own heart, still she veered into the forest’s shadows. The horses passed, but Petra remained in the woods, convinced she’d be safer among the animals than among men.

  Unless there were wolves.

  She didn’t know if England had wolves, but the creatures were common enough in fairy tales. A blood-thirsty pack wouldn’t have surprised her. Back home, coyotes, lean and rangy, roamed the canyons. They knocked over trash cans and scoured the neighborhoods for small dogs and errant cats. No one loved coyotes, but no one, other than pet owners, really feared them, either. A toot of a horn or a get-out-of-here shout typically scared them away. But wolves, at least the ones she’d seen in the zoo, were different. More solid. Menacing. From the edge of the woods she could still see the road, and if someone passed, she could easily fade into the thick woods, but if a wolf approached from the woods, she could run down the road. In her slippers.

  A dense, cottony fog hung in the pines, blocking the moonlight. Petra tried singing softly, and night birds answered. Something skittered in a nearby thicket. A twig snapped. She wondered where she was and how far from home.

  Suddenly a skin pricking sensation told Petra she wasn’t alone. What’s not a wolf? she thought, a red fox, a raccoon, skunk, or a possum? Harmless night creatures. Panic caught in Petra’s throat. She leaned against a tree, feeling the scratchy bark through the thin fabric of her dress. The fog disguised the forest, turning each tree, shrub and stump into an ogre, troll or ghost. Someone, no something, hid in the dark, watching her. She was sure of it. Petra limped away from the tree, scolding herself for being tired, scared, and hysterical. Perhaps the sleeping draught hadn’t worn off. Hunched beneath the blanket, she trudged along on wet noodle legs.

  She thought she heard another twig break. She swallowed and chose a stick off the ground and swung it as she walked in what she hoped was the direction of home. Her head thudded with every footfall, but she held it high, careful not to demonstrate weakness or fear. Another twig, closer this time, snapped. Clutching the blanket with one hand and the stick in the other, she broke into a run, praying for a straight path. Heavy breathing followed.

  The ground became uneven and rocky, and Petra realized she was running in a dry river bed. She stumbled, mindful of her ankles,
feeling every rock and pebble through her insubstantial, worthless slippers. Behind her, someone so close she imagined his breath on the back of her neck. Scrambling out of the riverbed and up the steep bank, she sprinted up an incline into a pasture and saw a roofline poking through the fog. As she raced toward it, her foot caught on something and she pitched forward.

  The blanket flew and became lost in the dark. She felt exposed and naked without it. She scrambled blind, looking for her stick.

  Hot breath that smelled of old meat blew down her neck. A wet muzzle brushed through her hair. Petra shuddered as waves of relief and terror washed through her. Not a highwayman, not a pack of wolves. She curled herself into a ball, tucking her head into her folded arms. The dog growled and pushed against her shoulder. The animal sounded a tiny bit like Frosty attacking a new chew toy.

  Something zinged past her head. Another landed near her foot. The dog yelped.

  Petra sat up to watch the biggest dog she’d ever seen lope into the forest. Thicker than a St. Bernard, taller than a Great Dane, a wolfhound? She’d never actually seen one before.

  Hot Horse guy from the stables, the same guy she’d heard while pretending sleep, emerged through the fog.

  His gaze flicked over her in concern. “Did you see him, then?”

  Petra brushed her hair from her face and tugged her dress into place. “Of course I saw him. He had his nose in my hair.” She studied the guy, remembering his words, we both know I do not live. He looked alive. Tall, strong, broad, most definitely alive.

  His face twisted in pity. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Well, no harm done, thanks to you. Good aim.” Still angry about his making fun of her and rummaging through her things while she slept, she added grudgingly, “I owe you.”

  Emory’s laugh sounded bitter. He picked up her tiara, brushed it off and set it gently on top of her head. “You mustn’t waste your time with repayment.”