Saturday Night Séance

by S.J. Drew

could see his slight aura of death.

  "But they are more than that." He handed them an eclectic selection of mismatched towels. "In eastern mythology, they represent spirits of the dead, right?" he asked Isabella.

  She nodded. "But here they really are spirits."

  "Yes, as well as being fireflies. Strange place this is. I thought I'd seen a lot of the world, and I had, but I've learned so much in my time here. Are you hungry? Do you need a drink?" he asked.

  "I would love a drink," Leah replied.

  "Then come on into the back."

  "There's no one else here that we should know about, is there?" Maryann asked. "No vampires, for example?"

  "Oh, no. William left a month after dear Grace passed. I finished her work and helped him find his peace. Then he just walked into the sun. I've helped a few others, but none have come here recently. They're afraid to."

  The band took seats around the tiny kitchen table as Derek offered them various alcoholic beverages and some gumbo.

  "Are you going to tell us what's going on?" Nora asked in a stern voice.

  He looked at the four of them as he considered his answer.

  "You can't pretend you're not in trouble," Maryann said.

  "And if the weather is any indication, you're in some pretty serious trouble," Isabella added.

  He sighed and drank a shot of rum. "Your grandmother," he said, addressing Maryann, "was a powerful woman. I'm guessin' you got a lot of your gifts from her. When I took over this place, I had no idea how powerful she was, or how many enemies she'd made. William, actually, gave me some information on that, but I was sure I could protect this place as well as she did. I've been places. I've seen things. But I was arrogant. And now I'm paying for it."

  "Did-did you do something, Derek?" Maryann asked.

  "No. This, whatever this is, isn't my doing, but I'm just about out of resources. I've called in my favors, called up all my old friends, or allies, or anyone, and no one's answering any more. The list wasn't very long to begin with. That's my arrogance. I always thought I could go it alone and handle anything. And I did, but I never realized the consequences of that path." He sighed. "I even asked for help from some of my divine contacts. They told me I couldn't pay the price; they wouldn't even tell me what the price was."

  "So what is going on?" Isabella asked, sounding obviously irritated. The sound in the wind was setting her nerves on edge.

  "Are you okay?" Nora asked her.

  "The weather. This is so unnatural. It's making me anxious," she replied. "Sorry. But please, just explain what's going on."

  "That's fair," Derek agreed. "For a year or so everything was fine. I helped William, and I helped a young man find peace with Selene."

  "Um, what?" Leah interrupted.

  "I think he means he helped someone with being a werewolf," Maryann explained.

  "Oh. I guess that could happen."

  "The garden grew and I even got people to stop dumping their trash on the lot. Things were going pretty well." He poured himself another drink of rum and took a sip. "The problems started with vandalism, actually. No more dumping, but things breaking. The back window of the truck was broken. A tire was slashed. Flowerpots smashed. Nothing was done to the church itself, and it started so slowly I just thought some kids were coming in from New Roads to have some fun. And then I started to realize I knew very little about the protection Mrs. Parker had put on this place. All of it had a purpose. The garden. The flowerpots. Even that damned truck. Something was dismantling the protection."

  "Then what?" Maryann asked.

  "I tried to rebuild what I could, of course, but I was distracted by trying to find out what was going on. I didn't know if something had come after me, because like I said, I have a lot of enemies, or if this was something that was coming after Mrs. Parker, or the church itself. I should have focused. I let myself get pulled in too many directions. I thought it would be easy to find the answers, and it wasn't. Even right now I have no idea what's howling on the wind."

  "You hear it too?" Isabella cried.

  The other three looked at her.

  "That sound. I thought I was crazy but I can hear this sound, maybe like howling, in the wind. It's like that storm is a living thing," she replied.

  "Really?" Nora said, crossing her arms.

  "Yes, why would I make that up?"

  "No, I mean, really, you thought we'd think you were crazy for hearing sounds the rest of us can't? We're kind of used to this by now."

  "It's getting to her," Derek said kindly. "I can hear it too, and it's like a buzzing on the edge of your hearing, like a high-pitched squeal or a low-hum that makes you doubt your sanity. That sound was the second sign I had that something was seriously wrong. That only started about six months ago, maybe. It's hard to remember. It's so damn insidious it's like it was always there." He sighed. "And then, three months ago, the nightmares started. You probably won't be able to leave tonight, so just be warned, if you get to sleep at all, you'll probably wish you hadn't. And a month ago the storms started rolling through. Now, we've had bad weather before, but I knew this was different. This was an assault on the church disguised as a storm. Each storm has been worse than the one before, and I think this one may be the last push."

  "How much have you slept, Derek?" Maryann asked.

  "Not enough, and too much."

  "What can we do to help?"

  "I don't know that there is anything you can do," he answered. "You can set up your own protections. It may help. It can't hurt, I suppose. Leah and Nora, you can pray."

  "Then that's what we'll do," Maryann said with determination in her voice. "Come on, Isabella, let's do what we can." She looked at Leah and Nora. "This is a church for your god. I think prayers may do a lot of good here," she said, sincerely and not condescendingly. She grabbed the blonde's arm and practically dragged her back into the church proper.

  "Is this going to get better?" Nora asked when Maryann was out of earshot.

  Derek shook his head.

  "When will it get the worst?"

  "Soon. I'm not sure we'll get through the night."

  "Have you done everything you can?" she asked, eyeing the drink in his hand.

  He saw her glance. "Believe me, I have exhausted all my options, and myself in the process. I've got nothing to bargain with. Whatever is out there is powerful; more powerful than anything I have ever faced. I do need help, but I didn't want you pulled into this."

  "What do you think of Maryann's dreams about her grandmother?"

  "It depends on what the context was," he answered. "It could be her grandmother trying to get her here to help. Or it could be something darker trying to lure her here. I don't know, but I'm thinking the latter. I'm not doubting Maryann's abilities, or Isabella's, or your faith, but this is probably beyond all of us."

  They were silent for a few minutes.

  "Leah, shall we do as suggested?" Nora finally asked.

  "Yeah, I think we should."

  They left Derek in the dim light and went to the altar to pray.

  When Isabella and Maryann finished, Derek walked back into the nave.

  "Um, is there any place I can park the van where it won't get smashed up?" Isabella asked.

  "I don't know about that, but I put up a carport. You probably just didn't see it with the rain. Hand me the keys and I'll get it taken care of," he answered.

  She handed over the keys.

  He went to the back quickly and returned in heavy-duty rain gear. "Be right back." He disappeared into the raging storm.

  "So, what do we do?" Maryann asked. "If Mee-maw's protections can't hold, I don't know if mine will either, even with Isabella's help."

  Leah and Nora looked at each other, and then at the other two. "We, um, figured, you'd know what to do," Leah said.

  Maryann looked at Isabella.

  "I don't know. I've never
come across anything like this. This is powerful. I'd even go so far as to say whatever's out there is evil. But what we do about it, I don't know," the blonde replied helplessly.

  "So this is it," Nora said grimly. "We can't leave. The storm is too bad. So we wait for something terrible to happen to us, and hope we survive."

  The other three looked at her, then at each other, but they had nothing to say.

  The silence was broken by Derek bursting back into the church and the thin sound of a high-pitched wail.

  "What's that?" Maryann cried.

  "A tornado siren," Isabella answered immediately. She tried to check her phone. "No reception."

  "I got a radio in the back," Derek said, and they followed him to the minister's quarters. After a few false starts, he tuned into an emergency weather report, and sure enough the sirens were sounding for their corner of the parish.

  "Now what?" Maryann asked wide-eyed and obviously scared.

  "Well, we should hunker down here with mattresses over our heads," Isabella said. "If this was a normal storm. But since it isn't, maybe we should hunker down near the altar with mattresses over our heads."

  Leah blinked. "Sorry, sometimes I forget you're from tornado country," she said. "And your southern accent reappears when you talk about that stuff."

  Isabella sighed and rolled her eyes.

  "I think Isabella's probably right. I'll get some mattresses and blankets and we'll hunker down between the altar and the back wall and hope for the best," he said.

  And that's exactly what they did. He also brought a small electric light. The storm intensified. The wail of the tornado sirens were lost in the screams of the winds. The